Dad was sitting at our usual outside table, overlooking the mall but close to the bar.
‘Hi, Dad.’ I was twenty minutes late.
He stood up as if I were royalty or something and I waved at him to sit down. We didn’t hug or kiss. I sat opposite him and ordered a cappuccino from the waiter. Dad looked at me blankly for a long time as if trying to figure out how he knew the daggily-dressed redhead sitting across from him.
‘Hello, daughter,’ he said, smiling with relief as if he’d just remembered.
‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘That’s alright.’ He gulped at his beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, blinked. ‘You made it in the end.’
‘Yeah. Traffic wasn’t too bad considering it’s Christmas.’
‘Yes. That’s right. Christmas.’ He grimaced and drank more beer as if to wash away the thought of it. I never bothered to ask how he spent Christmas. I imagined he spent it alone in front of the telly drinking tinnies and watching his old cricket videos until he passed out blotto in the chair. He probably didn’t even eat.
My cappuccino arrived. I ate the chocolate off the top and pushed it aside to cool. Dad ordered himself another beer. On my way up the mall, I’d bought him a pair of Homer Simpson socks, which I thrust, still in the sock-shop bag, across the table.
‘Happy Christmas,’ I said.
Dad whipped the ever-predictable envelope out of his breast pocket. ‘Merry Christmas, to my one and only daughter.’ On occasions like these he spoke as he might write in a greeting card, stilted and formal. As I tore open the envelope, pretending that I didn’t already know what was inside, he pulled the Homer socks out of the bag.
‘Socks,’ he said. ‘I need socks.’
‘Do you know who he is?’ I said, pointing at Homer’s giant, yellow face.
‘Yeah,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘You don’t, do you? He’s a cartoon character that likes to drink a lot of beer.’
‘Oh. Right. I get it.’ He put the socks back in the bag. I should have got him sports ones instead.
I pulled out my card, which was from the same twenty-pack of identical Christmas cards Dad had been giving me for the past twelve years – an obese surfboarding Santa being towed along the crest of a wave by a fleet of flying reindeers with pink-zinced noses, their antlers poking through red and gold life-saver caps. I opened it and, miracle of miracles, a twenty-dollar note fluttered out. For Dad, twenty was a decent session at the pub.
‘I wanted to get your mother a little something this year but I didn’t know what to get her. So, I thought you could pick her out something nice from the twenty and keep the rest for yourself.’ He was gripping his beer so hard I thought the glass would shatter in his hand, and his eyes had misted over. I knew what was coming next.
‘Dad,’ I said, under my breath, ‘do you have to do this, again? The past is the past – you can’t make up for it, it’s too late.’ He sculled his beer in one go and signalled to the waiter for another. I sipped at my coffee and tried to change the subject.
‘Scott’s back,’ I said. After what Scott’d done to me the day before, I couldn’t believe I was bringing him up, but then, it wasn’t easy making light conversation with Dad.
‘Who?
‘Scott Greenwood. He’s back from overseas.’
‘Oh. That’s good.’ On the few occasions Scott had met Dad, the two of them had got on well, bonding over cricket or the footy, depending on the season.
‘What about uni?’ he asked, staring gloomily into the distance.
‘Dad, I quit, remember?’ I paused. ‘Anyway, I’m thinking about going travelling.’
He grunted. ‘What a load of bunkum.’
For a few long minutes we said nothing as Dad drifted back into his pickled past and drank his beer. I stared down at the bobbing heads of the shoppers, jostling up and down the mall; saggy-titted women, tired and flustered, overloaded with carry bags, who’d rather drop dead of exhaustion than return home without that final all-important item crossed off their Christmas list.
‘You can’t leave your mother alone.’ It was like that with Dad. He’d stew on something for ages before short-circuiting back to an earlier conversation, like a fuse box with water damage. ‘Forget this travelling palaver. Your mother needs you.’ It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him about Randy but I held back, wary of his reaction. ‘Listen to me, daughter.’ Suddenly forceful, his words were lucid and direct, a man emerging from the haze. ‘I know your mother better than anyone else.’
‘But, Dad, I can’t stay in Brisbane my whole life. It’s not my fault she married an alcoholic.’
‘She still blames me?’ Tears were forming in tiny weirs at the bottom of his eyeballs.
‘She doesn’t really talk about it,’ I lied. There wasn’t a day she didn’t curse Dad for ruining the best years of her life.
‘Do you think if I quit the grog she might have me back?’ It was the same question every year and I was sick to death of it. I decided to spill the beans.
‘Unlikely. She’s got a new boyfriend. He’s working on a cure for cancer and he’s building her an outdoor power shower and he’s got a great sense of humour and he treats Mum like gold… ’ On and on I went, pumping Randy up to be some kind of superhero, while Dad’s face contorted in a painful wince. I left out the bit about him being a bald, artificially enhanced geek who drives a rust-bucket, and finished with the clincher.
‘… and he’s moving in.’
Dad couldn’t speak. His face was screwed up tight as a walnut. ‘But she’s mine,’ he finally managed through clenched teeth. ‘She’s my woman.’
‘She’s not your woman. She divorced you, remember?’
‘But I still love her.’ He drained his beer. ‘I’ve always loved her.’
‘C’mon, Dad. Don’t torture yourself.’
He pulled out a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet. ‘Here. Get her something special. Jewellery. Gold jewellery.’ I stared at the note lying on the table, slated that he’d rummaged a hundred for Mum when all I ever got were scummy fivers.
‘She won’t want it, Dad,’ I said, huffily. ‘Not from you.’
‘Well, tell her it’s from you.’ He got up and shambled towards the toilets on thick, stocky legs. Each year his shoulders got a bit more stooped, his shorts a bit saggier in the bum.
‘Hey, I gotta go,’ I called out to him.
He waved backwards, not turning around. I slipped the hundred in the card, next to the twenty, and headed down to the mall, relieved that it was over for another year.
Blondie’s on the radio. I’m in my biggest, puffiest skirt and Dad’s spinning me around and around. The lounge room’s all blurry and I can’t tell which way’s up or down. The baked beans we had for dinner are all tumbly-jumbly in my tummy like I might vomit. I hope I don’t vomit. Not on my nice pink skirt. Sooner or later, he’ll let go. I’ll fly through the air and crash land into Mum’s new apricot leather lounge suite. She’d be so angry if she knew.
He lets go.
I’m flying through the air but the couch is out of range. I land with a thud on the floor but it doesn’t hurt that much; just a bit of carpet burn on my knees. Dad rushes over to see if I’m alright.
‘Must have lost my grip,’ he says.
His face is huge and red and spinning. I struggle to sit up.
‘Old noggin OK?’ He rubs my head with his big, rough hand. I would have cried when I was younger but I’m five now. Besides, I don’t want to stop the game. I pick myself up and hold my hands out for more.
‘Give it a rest for a while, hey? I’m all out of puff.’ He lies down on Mum’s couch with his shoes up on the armrests, which he’s not meant to do, and cracks open another bottle of beer. Watching Dad drink is boring so I start spinning around on my own. My skirt billows out, making a lovely cool breeze between my legs. Over and over, I keep spinning and crashing, spinning and crashing, until the baked beans come up in an orange pudd
le on the carpet. Dad’s fiddling with the radio so he doesn’t even notice when I hide the vomit under one of Mum’s satiny cushions and sit on top.
‘That’s more like it,’ he says, looking over at me all prim on the cushion. ‘Since you’re being such a good girl, let’s go out for an ice-cream when I’ve finished this stubbie.’
Driving in the car, Dad lets me sit in the front as a special treat so long as I promise not to tell Mum. He turns the radio up really loud and we sing along to our favourite song about talking Japanese. I make my eyes go all slanty and Dad bursts out laughing. When the song finishes, he says, ‘Bloody funny-looking bastards, those nips,’ and we laugh at that, too.
We go to the drive-through bottle shop where Dad buys a carton of beer and a can of lemonade for me. Halfway home, I remind him about the ice-cream and we turn around and drive back to the corner shop where they sell Jelly-Tips. Dad gives me the money and I go inside. When I come out he is drinking a beer from the carton, even though the man at the bottle shop said they weren’t cold. We sit in the car while I eat my Jelly-Tip; picking the chocolate shell off first, then sucking the jelly, then making the vanilla ice-cream last for as long as possible. Dad drinks another beer and tosses the empty can out the window.
‘We’d better get back before Mum gets home,’ he says.
‘OK,’ I say, wishing I could have another Jelly-Tip.
Dad pulls out from the kerb.
There’s a screech-bang-crunch like in a Roadrunner cartoon.
I go flying through the air.
I hear the crack of my head against the windscreen.
Dad’s screaming out my name. And then, everything goes black.
When I wake up, I’m in hospital and Mum’s sitting beside me. She tells me how I nearly went to heaven. Every day she brings me presents: books and hair-clips and Freddo Frogs and felt-pens and puzzles and, one day, a pair of pink hippopotamus slippers. But Dad never comes. Maybe he’s in a hospital for grown-ups. I ask Mum where he is but her mouth goes all twisted like a caterpillar and she says a bad word – bastard – under her breath. When I get home, Dad’s not there either. His plastic Buddha’s missing off the telly and his cricket movies from the bottom shelf of the bookcase have all gone, too.
13
It was just after eight when I arrived at Hollie’s dead mum’s party, wearing a black evening dress with diamanté straps. For Hollie’s sake, I’d decided not to go to the rave. Besides, I’d convinced myself that, after his abysmal post-root behaviour, I was through with Scott for good. As I ran up the drive and down the side of the house to the back, my heels sinking into the pebbly path, I felt good and virtuous for the first time in ages. I prayed that Danny had turned up; if he hadn’t, Hollie would be in a terrible state. Last I’d spoken to her, around five that afternoon, he was stil missing.
The backyard had been transformed into a Japanese-style garden complete with a meandering creek spanned in the middle by a red-lacquer bridge. In broad daylight, it would’ve looked a bit Disney but at night the effect was enchanting. Centre-stage, golden water tumbled from a jade sculpture, pooling in a circular pond glinting with black and orange koi-carp. Madame Butterfly blared from speakers set up on the deck. Manicured bonsai, especially imported for the occasion, stood as attentive as the kimono-clad waiters carrying silver trays of luminescent cocktails and black fish-spawn on ice. Red and yellow lanterns were strung up from the gum trees beyond which the bush loomed, a wall of solid black. From the dark, the crickets throbbed a backbeat to the hum of party chatter, opera and the chinking of crystal. Each year, I was always surprised by the odd and varied assortment Hollie cobbled together – distant relatives, university acquaintances and the odd scruffy English professor, most of whom only came for the French plonk and gourmet tucker. Whatever their thoughts about the Danny scandal, it didn’t stop random neighbours flocking, too, all eager for a free piss-up in the name of dead Mrs Bailey. As I headed past the crowd of first arrivals, fidgeting in makeshift black-tie, guzzling pink champagne and spoofing over the scenery, I couldn’t see Hollie or Danny anywhere. Mr Bailey didn’t seem to be around either; some years he showed up, some years he was conspiculously absent, not that Hollie seemed to care.
I made it to the spiral staircase, decked out in fairy lights, and climbed up to the house. Helping myself to a glass of champagne, I roamed from the kitchen to the lounge room, the dining room, the piano room, the parlour, even peeking behind the oak-panelled door to Mr Bailey’s study, but there was no one around. I tramped upstairs and, as I proceeded down the thickly carpeted hall, nipping into each bedroom, the noise of the party became muffled and distant. I called out to Hollie but there was no reply. It wasn’t like her to neglect her guests. At parties gone by, she’d flit around, topping up drinks, bringing around tray after tray of delicacies, laughing theatrically. She’d even stand up on the deck and say a few words, just like Mrs Bailey used to do. The number of times I heard someone remark, ‘She’s the spitting image of Lesley, isn’t she?’
I came to Mrs Bailey’s bedroom door. After a few deep breaths for my jangles, I turned the cut-crystal doorknob and pushed inside. The room was cloaked in dark shadows, the air chilly. No Hollie here either. Walking up to the mirrored wardrobes, I took the opportunity to check myself out. I dropped my hands, letting them wander, slipping smooth down the slinky front of my top, over my breasts, my stomach, my hips. I lifted the hem of my dress up to admire my pins; the way my thighs sliced without touching, the way my butt sat firm and pert with one nice crease underneath.
Someone giggled.
I spun around, tugging down my dress. Hollie was lying sideways on the bed in a full-length geisha dress in blue silk. She’d been hiding in the shadows. Her face was painted white and seemed to hover in mid-air, immaculate as a mask. Her lips were shaped into a perfect cupid’s bow and her hair was pulled into a severe bun, so tight it tugged at the corners of her eyes. She held an open bottle of Moët by the neck.
‘Hey, I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ I said, plonking down on the bed. ‘What’re you doing in here?’
‘Waiting for you.’ She took a swig from the bottle and stared at me. ‘You’re late.’
‘Sorry. It’s been a crazy kind of day. First Mum tells me her new squeeze is moving in, then Dad has his annual Christmas breakdown on me. I’ve had enough of both of them.’
In a blink, Hollie’s face was transformed and she beamed a hundred-watts. ‘You can come and live with me.’ Like she hadn’t tried that one before. She wriggled towards me, her silky dress sliding against the satin coverlet. ‘We could have so much fun together, don’t you think?’
‘Maybe. What about Danny?’
‘Oh, he won’t mind.’
‘No. Have you seen him?’
‘He’s late, late for a very important date.’ She laughed, rolling around on the bed.
‘You’re pissed.’
‘Am not,’ she slurred.
I grabbed the bottle off her and had a go. There was only a mouthful left.
‘C’mon,’ I said, pushing off the bed. ‘Maybe Danny’s downstairs.’
‘No. You’ve got to dress up, too.’ She ran after me, pulling me back by the waist.
‘But, Hollie, there’s isn’t time. Your guests are waiting.’ I sighed, relenting, ‘Alright, then.’
Hollie shuffled geisha-style across the room. She flung open the mirrored doors to Mrs Bailey’s dressing chamber, a treasure trove of lace and chiffon, satin and organza, hoop skirts and netted bustles, frills and sparkles and ribboned hems. Mrs Bailey had loved to dress up. She had gear from almost every epoch imaginable – Egyptian, Roman, Medieval, Regency, Elizabethan, French Renaissance, 1920s Flapper, Sixties Mod. The floor was littered with shoes; brass-buckled pixie and Victorian lace-up boots, platforms, red glittery pumps, crystal-beaded mules, fluffy kitten heels, black patent knee-highs and silver stilettos. Accessories spewed from boxes lining the shelves above the costumes: tiaras and cowboy hats; pink
and purple and lime green boas; wigs of all shapes and colours; a magic wand with a sequinned star; a life-sized pair of lilac-feathered wings.
Hollie shut the door, killing the noise of the party, and switched on a lamp. It was dark and stuffy, the air thick with the smell of moth-balls and old lace. ‘Here.’ She threw a dress at me. It was exactly the same as hers – embroidered silk with covered buttons running all the way down the side – except red. I stripped off to my daks and tried to pull the dress over my head.
‘It won’t fit.’ I looked up. Hollie was checking out my tits. ‘What?’ I crossed my arms over my chest.
‘Nothing.’ She glanced down. ‘Unbutton it first.’
I slipped my arms into the sleeves and pulled the edges together but the material was too slippery.
‘Let me do it,’ Hollie said.
I turned around to face her. In heels, she was the same height as me. She crouched between me and the wall. With light, nimble fingers she started buttoning me up from the hem, pulling the satin tight, smoothing the fabric over my chest. My heart quickened. Although we’d been dressing up like this since we were kids, it felt different this time.
‘Now your face.’ Hollie smeared white goo all over my cheeks and painted on lips. She brushed my hair and pinned it up with bobby pins and chopsticks, which dug into my scalp. When she’d finished, she stood back with a strange little smile. She bowed, her dainty hands pressed together, and said, ‘You look beautiful.’ She held a hand-mirror up to me. I looked like a total freak but I nodded and bowed.
The Dark Part of Me Page 14