This Picture of You

by Sarah Hopkins

  ‘The short version?’

  ‘Is there a long one?’

  ‘Not really, not that I know.’

  ‘So go on.’

  ‘Well, Martin is my dad. But I didn’t know that till I was four.’

  So began the explanation to the mother of his son of how his own mother had raised him on her own for the first four years of his life. ‘They met in New York and had an affair. She came home and found out she was pregnant.’

  ‘She didn’t tell him?’

  ‘Yes, she did. I mean, I think she was considering an abortion . . . There may never have been a me. Unwanted pregnancy, shock horror—but then it was a happy ending. Here I am.’

  ‘So what happened? What changed her mind?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never asked her. Time started to run out, and she decided to keep it.’

  ‘Keep you.’

  ‘Yep, keep me. She told Martin. He sent money. I think he even said he’d come back, but Maggie thought it’d be for the wrong reasons, you know, obligation not love, blah blah . . . He came and saw me when I was a baby. I don’t remember it, of course, but anyway it didn’t work out and he went away and came back again a couple of times. Then we went on a holiday together to Coffs Harbour. That’s when I first remember him. I got blisters on my nose from sunburn and Mum blamed him. When we got back we started staying over in his apartment, then by my fifth birthday we all moved into a house in Balmain with a garden. I had a tree to climb and we got a VCR and I went to a school where I had to wear a stupid boater. And he was my dad. Only he was Marty, stayed Marty until I was ten, then I started calling him Dad.’

  Ethan stopped, but Laini kept shaking her head, then nodding and making little noises like she was hearing it all over again in her mind. Later, when Martin and Maggie came back into the room with Finn, Ethan’s effort to make light of it sank like a stone and took the whole table with it: ‘Anyway, so I was just explaining the big hole in the family history.’

  He could count on his hand the number of times since boyhood that he had seen his mother angry (‘Careful,’ Marty would say. ‘That’s a line you never want to cross’). Not one to shout, she released some kind of impulse, an ice-cold wave that pierced into the chest cavity of its target. He felt it even before she spoke.

  ‘Please, Ethan, understand one thing.’ She handed the baby to Martin and pressed a palm on the table as she turned to her son. ‘There was no hole. In answer to your question, Laini, Ethan was a beautiful baby with a mop of blond hair and grey-blue eyes, but he had reflux, chronic reflux, and when he was six months he started holding his breath whenever his crying went on for more than a few seconds. His lips went blue and he fainted. The doctor said it wasn’t serious, that it was relatively common, and that if I blew in his face he would come to, but still, every time it happened, every time he fainted, I thought to myself that this time he would not wake up.’ With that she turned back to Ethan. ‘Your father was not here, but there was no hole. I can tell you, those years with you, with just you and me, in many ways they were the most important years of my life.’ At which point she leant down to kiss baby Finn on the forehead and left the room.

  As Laini packed up their things in the kitchen, Martin finished off what little was left in his glass before filling it again. ‘They tell you all is forgiven,’ he said softly, staring into the wine. ‘For God’s sake, never believe them.’

  It wasn’t until they were pulling into their driveway that night that Laini asked the question. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  It was a quiet cul-de-sac in Cammeray, the hum of cicadas filling the mass of night sky. The house was what they could afford after they got married, the staged renovations funded with Ethan’s annual bonuses. While Laini was generally prepared to ‘make do’, Ethan had a habit of spotting a tap or a window in someone else’s house and thereafter hankering for the same or better in his own. So their front door was steel-framed glass and, later, the entrance ceiling lined in hoop pine, the kitchen bench a three-metre block of concrete poured in situ. If Laini objected to the expense, he’d hold her face in his hands and say: ‘I like beautiful things.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said to her that night, carrying Finn from the car. ‘It doesn’t matter anymore, I guess. Marty came back, he stayed. Like I said, happy ending.’

  But it wasn’t the right thing to say to her, the mother of a new baby. It made her frightened. In the middle of the night when she came back to bed after feeding Finn, he slid his arm around her and she turned to him with tears on her face.

  ‘Don’t tell me those things don’t matter, Ethan. They matter. You didn’t have a father, and then you did. I mean, can you remember how that felt?’

  ‘Sure I can. It was like we were a real family. We even looked alike; people used to say it all the time—the spitting image, like father like son. I loved it when they said that.’

  And so he had. There didn’t seem to be any point in telling her the rest of it, that sometimes when Martin went to work, Maggie had to hold Ethan in her arms to calm him down. Yes, his father made them a family and in that way the ground had firmed, but then there were those days when the front door closed behind him or the car took off and the very same ground seemed to open up and swallow the little boy whole.

  But Laini didn’t prod. She didn’t know there was a reason to. Instead, she asked him to tell her the story again about Nana Lil.

  ‘Come on, hon . . .’

  ‘Tell me.’

  It was one of his first memories. They were baking in the kitchen, her cream puffs. He dropped a bag of flour on the floor and it exploded like a bomb. The memory was how it had scared him, that he went to cry, but that when Lili saw it, she’d started laughing, a big and spluttering laugh, and they laughed together making flour footprints on the floor.

  ‘I loved it when you told me that,’ Laini said. ‘Everything matters, baby. Don’t leave me out.’

  She slid her arms around him and pulled in close for the first time since Finn was born.

  ‘I won’t, I won’t . . .’ he repeated again and again, in between every kiss. And though his body moved in complete accord, in his mind he reserved the right to disagree with the essence of what she had said. In the beginning, yes, it had seemed possible to be that man, the man who slowly releases the innermost pieces of himself—possible, and strangely rousing. But that was the beginning. That was before.

  Max Green was the short and handsome managing partner who rode his bicycle to work and spent his four-week holiday every year snowboarding in Beaver Creek. Somehow he managed to keep the tan all year round as well as the bounce in his step. Everyone liked Max; everyone could talk to him, nothing too big or too small, et cetera. It wasn’t that Ethan was trying to buck the trend, but the fact was Max wasn’t really Ethan’s kind of guy. For all his ‘I’m here for you’ touchy-feely crap, Ethan sensed a deeply held view on Max’s part that he was better than the rest of them. Max Green ate amaranth for breakfast and quinoa for lunch; he lingered in front of mirrors to worship at his temple and repeated a secret personal mantra to himself every morning. Ethan knew the type, everyone did: Max Green thought his shit smelt like meatloaf.

  ‘Here is Ethan!’ Max said, waving him into his corner office. And when he sat down: ‘How is Ethan?’

  Uncertain as to how long he was going to persist in the third person and whether it required immediate discouragement, Ethan limited his answer to ‘Ethan is fine’ rather than ‘Ethan is fine, how is Max?’

  ‘And the home front? The lovely Laini?’

  ‘Never better.’

  ‘And how is your dad recovering?’

  ‘It’s slow, but he’s doing pretty well.’

  ‘Terrible thing. Great man. That must be taking its toll—on you, I mean.’

  Ethan nodded, shrugged. ‘As these things do, sure.’

  ‘And generally, there’s a lot on your plate.’

  ‘Of course, we’re busy.’

  Max nodded, th
umbed his chin. ‘That’s my view of things.’

  Even for Max, it was an odd turn of phrase.

  ‘Are we here to talk about workload, Max?’

  ‘Or whatever you want to talk about.’

  ‘You called the meeting, Max. I thought you wanted to know how it was working out with Sally.’ Sally was the new solicitor Ethan had hired to assist with the increasing workload.

  ‘I do, I do. Tell me.’

  ‘She is working on a third of my files. It’s left me open to focus on new business, just like we planned.’

  ‘I saw Tina McCarthy was on board, good to see. And I’ve only had good feedback on Sally.’

  ‘She had four years under her belt. She knows what she’s doing, no question about that. And she’s putting in the hours.’

  ‘Okay.’ Max looked across the desk now, hands in prayer position. ‘So what are we here to talk about? You want to get to it?’

  Ethan shrugged. ‘I guess . . . Though I’m getting the sense you’re about to tell me the sky is falling down.’

  And without correcting him: ‘There has been another one of those complaints, Ethan,’ Max began. ‘About your attitude, the way you interact with staff.’

  ‘Is this about the IT guy again? I apologised for that.’

  The IT guy was a Mr Fix-it on level nine who was paid a six-figure sum to deal with glitches in the computer network. A month ago, Ethan was working on an urgent deed of settlement when the document froze on his screen. He called down to IT; he called all three numbers on his sheet and no one picked up. Ethan had been in the office since five a.m. It was now ten, the deed was due by midday, and the client was a fucking arsehole. After trying the phones a third time, Ethan went down to level nine, and when he walked into the office there was Peter, sitting back in his chair with his legs on the desk and a game of Scrabble on his screen.

  ‘I sent a written apology. And no one’s even asked him why he wasn’t picking up the phone, or why the fuck he didn’t see the messages. I’ll tell you why: he was working out how to get his J on the triple-letter score. Am I not entitled to get a little angry?’

  ‘He said he felt threatened, Ethan, that you physically threatened him.’

  ‘That is bullshit. It was an expression. Anyway, I apologised, what else can I do?’

  ‘Nothing. We’re sorting that out. If it were an isolated incident you wouldn’t be here. But there is more.’

  Ethan looked across the desk at little Max in his big chair and tried to lengthen the inhalation; instead he choked on his breath, coughed to clear it, and as he coughed, the muscle seized in his neck.

  When Max continued, it was more a background noise: ‘So the other complaint . . .’

  Ethan raised his hand in the air, then reached over his shoulder to the back of his neck. With the other hand he cupped his chin.

  ‘Ethan, what are you doing?’

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘Ethan?’

  And he cranked it. Crackle, pop . . . pop, pop . . . less than perfect, but a substantial release.

  When he opened his eyes, Max was looking away, shaking his head. ‘You know how bad that is for your spine?’

  Ethan shrugged. ‘I find it helps.’

  ‘You should see my chiropractor.’

  ‘You were telling me about another complaint.’

  ‘Yes, I was. Plural actually. If you get the word-processing girls to stay back, a simple thank you is all it takes. And last week in the lift . . . Brad Styles is a nice young bloke, Ethan—you could just say hello. Ethan?’ The voice was getting louder. ‘Ethan? Are you listening to this?’

  He nodded. ‘I am.’

  ‘And?’

  Sifting through the responses forming in his mind, he settled on the least offensive. ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a third option that I want you to consider.’ Max seemed to hesitate. That was unlike Max. ‘I want you to see a counsellor.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Come on, Ethan, you know as well as I do this has been going on for a long time. A counsellor will help, a qualified psychologist. Someone who can get you through this—get you to the other side.’

  Ethan made an effort to swallow but gave up midway. Rising from his seat, he walked to Max’s window to assess the view of the park from a fresh perspective. The fountain was too distant to be a starting point. He would have to pick someone entering from either Elizabeth Street or the southern steps. The same game in reverse. ‘Thanks for the suggestion, Max,’ he said, turning to walk towards the door. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Max stood up, then reconsidered and sat down again. He felt taller from his chair. ‘I called it a third option, Ethan. The other senior partners canvassed a fourth—but I didn’t think you’d want to hear it.’

  Ethan stopped at the door, waited.

  ‘A fifteen per cent cut in your equity.’

  Without turning around: ‘You can’t do that, not with what I’m bringing in.’

  ‘Read the partnership agreement. Three strikes, remember? You know as well as I do the pile’s been building. Counselling is a good option. I had to fight for it, Ethan. I’m on your side in this. And I should tell you, out of friendship, I’m the only one who is.’

  The handle on the door was surprisingly cold to touch.

  ‘Get back to me in a couple of days, okay? This is just about jumping through a couple of hoops. That is all it has to be.’

  Back in his office, Bob was working the far end of the tank. Strands of Spirulina had started to sink to the bottom. Once they reached it they just formed part of the gunk. Maybe he was doing something wrong, Ethan mused; maybe he had to cut back on the food. At the window he picked a guy down in the park in an orange baseball cap but lost him as soon as he got past the second lamppost. His mind wasn’t on it, or the guy took off his hat.

  Maybe Bob was on a hunger strike.

  He picked up the phone to call Laini. But what was he going to say? He’d never told her about what happened with IT. It wasn’t going to make sense in a vacuum: I didn’t say hello to a solicitor in the elevator so they want to take my money. Or worse: I am going to see a counsellor. Fuck it, this was some sick joke. There was only one thing to do: put it out of his head, business as usual. The McKenzie arbitration at three p.m. Dinner with the parents. He’d see the counsellor. No one needed to know. Then he’d spend a Sunday afternoon with his partnership agreement and a fine-tooth comb and work out how the hell he was going to get out of this place . . . That was when he’d talk to Laini, when he’d had a chance to package it.

  The phone still in his hand, he pressed an internal line. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Have you got a second? I need you in here.’

  Sally Rigg brought in the file for tomorrow morning’s mediation and took him through her summary and bottom line, sensible and within reach, exactly as he had asked.

  ‘Done and dusted, I should think,’ Ethan concluded after skimming the document a second time.

  ‘Do you want me to be there?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Today she was wearing a grey pencil skirt and white blouse with a high frilled collar. His eyes went all the way up and down. ‘You playing dress-ups?’

  Deadpan, Sally leant back in her chair and crossed her legs the other way. ‘I love this shirt.’

  ‘I hate it.’

  ‘Then stop looking at it.’

  He leant forwards so that he could see down again to the skirt that covered her knees.

  ‘Where is the skin?’

  She held up her hands, her palms facing him.

  ‘What good are those?’

  Her eyes widened, just a bit.

  ‘Sorry, I like your hands. I worship your hands.’

  She undid the top button of the blouse. A glimpse of clavicle.

  ‘They want me to see a shrink.’

  Her hands folded now on her lap, she tilted her head to one side and squinted, getting him from the right an
gle to consider the proposition. ‘Anger management.’ It was not a question.

  He nodded.

  ‘So see a shrink. I do.’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘He’s trying to work that out. I’ll let you know when he does, if you like. Though that might take this to another level. I’m not sure you’re ready for that.’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ he said. ‘Let’s keep it straightforward.’

  ‘Yes, let’s keep it about Ethan.’

  ‘God, you can be nasty.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘The door,’ he said, starting to tap the side of the desk. ‘Then I want you to come here . . . pull up the skirt, and bend down for me—’ still tapping ‘—right here.’

  ‘In your dreams. It isn’t even closing time.’

  He leant forwards again on his elbows. ‘Alright then, let’s do it your way. You close your eyes and I’ll walk you through those dreams . . . but the skirt—be a good girl and show me some of that skin.’

  Chapter 17

  On Maggie’s second visit to Iris, children were climbing on the broken swing in the garden, and on a couch on the porch a young woman rolled cigarettes.

  ‘Hello,’ Maggie said, and without a smile the woman gave a single nod of her head.

  ‘Is Iris here?’ she asked.

  The woman hesitated. ‘Who should I say?’

  ‘Maggie. I’m not . . . from the department.’

  The woman licked the cigarette paper and rolled it down over her lip. ‘Irrissss!’ A trio of mynah birds burst out of the Christmas bush at the edge of the porch.

  Iris appeared, smiled. ‘Maggie, you back!’

  ‘I thought I might try to catch Tyson,’ she said, which only in small part was true.

  ‘He ain’t around, but never mind that. You sit down with Peggy here and I’ll get us a cuppa. There.’ She pointed to a chair next to the couch. ‘I ain’t leaving you standing this time.’

  When Iris went inside, Peggy offered Maggie a rollie.

  ‘Thanks, no,’ Maggie said.

  Peggy had come from Dubbo to stay with Aunty Iris and ‘take a break from the place’. When Maggie said Iris had told her a bit about the troubles there, Peggy looked puzzled by the idea this white woman knew her business.