by Shona Husk
What he wanted wasn’t fair on either of them. Maybe he wasn’t sure what he wanted. After all, his dad had suddenly died and he’d been asked to make a decision that could affect the rest of his life.
‘I know.’ She hadn’t been planning on sleeping with him once they sailed. She didn’t really want what they had left in limbo either. It would be too easy to slip up. If they were going to break up they had to do it properly. No hard feelings. ‘Let’s say it’s over. It’ll be easier.’ That was a lie as it hurt already.
He was quiet again. For a heartbeat she wondered if he was still there or if the connection had dropped out. ‘This is the most friendly break-up I’ve ever had.’
‘Me too.’ It also hurt the most because she really liked him. If he got out and got off the boat it would be easy … easier. The idea of sailing and leaving a boyfriend behind again filled her with dread and distrust. And yet if she ever wanted a relationship, at some point she was going to have to find that trust again.
‘Okay. I’ll see you next week.’
What would it be like to be trapped in a boat with her ex? By the end of the trip they’d either be well and truly over each other or ready to tear each other’s clothes off. ‘Take care.’
‘You too.’
She hung up. Her eyes burned and she blinked away the tears that blurred her vision. Breaking up with someone had never felt so wrong. For a heartbeat she was tempted to call him back, but the fear that they would be found out was enough to make her stop. She needed to get qualified. She hadn’t worked this hard to have everything derailed by a man who’d started off as her one-night bit of fun.
Chapter 16
Kurt put down the phone. That hadn’t gone quite as planned. He wanted to call Rainy back and tell her he’d changed his mind. And what? That they were going to keep going? After the rumours that had started this week he was sure it wasn’t worth the risk. She’d end up hating him if she got kicked off the boat. That was the one thing he didn’t want.
He got up and opened some of the blinds. He was sure some of them hadn’t been opened in years. There was a thick coating of dust in the back rooms of his father’s house. His old room was as he’d left it last time he’d been here. He’d had to make the bed before he could lie down and have a nap. He wasn’t sure he’d really slept. He was restless, like he’d had too many coffees and couldn’t settle. Talking to Rainy hadn’t helped.
Staying here wasn’t helping. The past pressed all around him and not in the comfy way memories should have. It was suffocating. He’d almost considered staying at a motel to avoid the place, but he’d been tired. When he’d put his key in the lock, he’d been surprised it had worked.
The house was as it had always been, barely furnished. No pictures on the wall. It was impersonal and yet at the same time he knew every hairline crack that traced up the wall and along the cornice. The stain on the ceiling from the storm-caused water damage that had happened when he was fifteen. Even the sofa in the lounge room was the same—a little more worn and a little more stained from where his father ate in front of the TV—but the same. The large flat screen TV was new.
He kept expecting his father to come in, open the fridge, grab a beer and plant himself on the sofa until his next shift. Kurt looked in the fridge; sure enough there was a carton of beer in there, and a half-empty box of long-life milk that smelled like it had died a while ago. That was it.
Jesus, Dad. If the truck hadn’t killed him his lifestyle would’ve. He poured the milk down the sink. There were a few empty cups waiting to be washed. He did the dishes and stacked them up to dry. He could’ve thrown them in the bin. It didn’t matter. None of it did.
He rested his hands on the sink. If he got out, this would be his life. The house had been left to him, according to his aunt, and it was almost paid off. She’d suggested he fix up the place. Great town to start a family, she’d said. Like hell. She’d acted as if she knew him and gave a damn.
He didn’t want to have a fucking family here.
He didn’t want to live here.
But he did want a family one day. That was one thing he was sure of, and he was never going to be able to keep that together while in the navy.
The brittle tone in Rainy’s voice filled his mind. He should ring her back, but he had no solution. Even if he got out, she was still in and navy relationships had a high failure rate. What were her life plans? He hadn’t asked. They’d hardly spoken about anything except for when their next secret date would be. When he’d asked her opinion about what he should do she’d danced around the edges, because she didn’t care enough to have an opinion or because she didn’t want to be offering advice that could backfire?
He stared out the window above the sink without really seeing the washing line that had been crooked since the day he’d moved in with one suitcase of belongings. He’d never had much more than that until he’d joined the navy and started earning some real money. But even now his biggest possession was his car. The rest was all in a savings account, put aside for when he got out and he decided to buy a house and join the real world.
He was standing in the real world. This is what people did. They had houses they didn’t look after and jobs they hated.
In two more years he’d be thirty. He turned and looked around the house, a three by one in an okay suburb in a town he’d grown to hate. The place he’d been dumped after his mother’s death. Living here would be admitting his father was right and he’d never amount to much. The fear of failure, of failing again, gripped his chest and made it hard to breathe.
While he didn’t know exactly what he wanted, he wanted so much more than this. If he got out and couldn’t find a job this is all he had to look forward to. An empty house and an empty life. He flipped the drying rack onto the floor. The cups smashed and scattered porcelain shards all over the linoleum floor.
If he stayed in, he could save up another fifty thousand, buy himself some time to sort himself out. Time to find a job, so he landed on his feet. How much did he need put aside to feel safe? To feel like he was never going to end up living paycheque to paycheque?
The times his mother had lit candles and they’d played board games hadn’t been for fun, it was because the electricity was off. He had enough distance now to look back and know that his father had lived better than his mother and he’d never once sent her money. And according to his father she’d never asked.
Now he’d never know for sure what had happened. All the questions he thought he wanted answers to would never be voiced. He’d missed his chance to get to know his father as an adult.
He rubbed his eyes and blamed the lack of sleep for the burning, gritty feeling. His father didn’t have the power to upset him anymore. He grabbed the broom and pushed the shards to one side. Then he opened the fridge and pulled out a can of beer. One by one he cracked them open and tipped them down the sink. The sour scent of beer filled the kitchen. He gagged and turned away to draw breath.
He didn’t know what he was going to do with the house, or the furniture or anything else, only that he would never set foot in this place, this town, again after he left. He was never coming back. His home was in the west. That was the one thing he did know.
***
Given that he could count on one hand the number of family dinners he’d ever had, Kurt knew that dinner with his aunts wasn’t going to be great. Awkward at best. He sat at the table with Jean and her husband. His other aunt, Sandra, and a few cousins who he wouldn’t have recognised if he’d tripped over them.
As the two overcooked roast chickens were carved up, although carved might have been the wrong word, more like hacked up, Kurt refrained from offering to do it. Given the tension surrounding the meal, he didn’t think they’d appreciate him showing them they were doing it wrong.
His contribution to the meal had been some wine, two bottles of good stuff that had been placed in the fridge as everyone grabbed beer.
‘Glad you could make it back. It’s b
een two years since you came home?’ Jean didn’t look at him as she spoke.
‘I think so.’ Closer to three.
Jean made a sound in the back of her throat. Her husband patted her hand.
There was definitely something going on. He was going to get ambushed and even though he knew it, he couldn’t back away.
‘David really struggled on his own,’ Sandra said. ‘After you left he kind of gave up.’
Oh, he’d given up long before Kurt had left. It had been Kurt who’d done the yard work, cooked and done everything else around the place while his father worked or drank. He bit his tongue on those comments. ‘I needed a job and the navy offered.’
‘You didn’t have to go to the other side of the country when your dad needed you,’ Jean snapped. Her face crumpling. She put down the spoon she’d been using to dish up peas and left the room.
‘The subs are based in the west. I didn’t get a say.’ His father’s death wasn’t his fault. ‘Dad was an alcoholic when I moved in. Me leaving didn’t change that.’
‘Don’t you say those things about our Dave.’ Sandra pointed at him, telling him off as if he was a child. ‘You’re his boy. You should’ve looked after him.’
Kurt looked at her for a moment. ‘I was his son. He should’ve looked after me after Mum died. I didn’t have a father. I was the cook, the cleaner and general hand.’
Sandra mouth fell open in shock. The cousins stopped talking to listen in.
He glanced around the table at the stunned expressions. ‘I’m sorry, but that’s the truth of it.’
‘Enough,’ Jean’s husband said. ‘We all know Dave didn’t exactly help himself, and he won’t be getting any second chances now.’ He handed the carving knife and fork to Kurt. ‘You finish and I’ll get Jean.’
Kurt stood and looked at the items in his hands. The knife was dull, and the carcass was a mess. Sandra was watching him and his cousins were giving him sullen stares. Somehow he was the dickhead out of that exchange.
But if he couldn’t tell his family the truth, who could he tell. His father was selfish and bitter and had only taken him in because he felt obligated—not obligated enough to actually help his mother or spend any time with his son before her death. He only had vague memories of the time when his parents were together, and most of them included arguments and beer. The cans had been a staple in his father’s house for as long as Kurt could remember.
While it was kind of wrong, he wished his father could’ve waited to die until he was sea, but the navy would’ve flown him back anyway.
‘So, thigh? Breast? Do you have any preferences?’ At least this bit he could do right. Maybe he could skip dessert and leave early.
‘I’m getting another beer.’ The cousin with tatts all up both arms, Felix or Freddy, got up. It looked like he was used to putting a few beers away every night from the pregnant-looking gut on him.
Looking around at his extended family, the people he’d rarely seen even when he had been living with his father, losing his apprenticeship wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Joining the navy and getting away was probably the best thing he could’ve done.
***
By Tuesday Kurt had cleaned up the yard, and after speaking with his aunts, started emptying the house. They found it hard to believe he didn’t want anything, checking with him as they took what they wanted. After the funeral he was going to put everything else out on the verge for free, and anything left by Thursday was going to the tip. Then the house would be empty and ready for sale or rent—that bit he hadn’t decided yet—he could go back to Sydney, stay in a motel, and fly out of there first thing Friday morning. It was a perfect plan.
The whole time he was thinking about Ellis. They’d be out at sea doing pretend weapons firing and whatever else STG threw at them. He was wasting week of his life in a dead-end town, and putting on a suit for a man who wouldn’t have known how to knot a tie if his life had depended on it.
His father probably hated half the people who’d turn up.
Rainy hadn’t called again.
No one had called him over the weekend.
That burned. She was the only person to actually care and he’d pushed her away. Just like his father. He looked at himself in the mirror; he even looked like a younger version of the bastard. He straightened his jacket.
Out the front Aunt Jean, or her husband, honked the horn to indicate they were waiting for him. Of course he was coming. Where else was he going to go?
The trip to the church was silent. They assumed he didn’t want to talk for all the wrong reasons. They thought he was holding it all together very well. They didn’t realise he resented being here.
At the front of the church was the closed casket, and a few flowers. There was about twenty people there, most of whom he assumed were cousins or related somehow. Most smiled sadly at him. They all knew of him even if they didn’t actually know him. He was the one who left Uncle Dave to take care of himself. It was a big black mark against his name in their books. He wasn’t going to bother pointing out that his dad was a grown man who could live how he wanted again. Sentiments like that didn’t go down well.
A picture of his father was propped up to one side. He looked younger than Kurt remembered, his nose hadn’t taken on the bulbous gleam of a heavy drinker and his eyes were clear. How old was that picture?
When his mother said he was like his dad she hadn’t been lying. He’d thought she had been until he’d re-met his dad years later at her funeral.
He took a seat at the front as expected. God, was he going to have to think of something to say? He was going to have to lie. No, he could do better than that.
The service got started, for the most part Kurt tuned out. He didn’t care about the bible readings or the songs. Fourteen years ago he’d sobbed all the way through his mother’s service. His father had told him to stop being such a baby. That had been the start of their relationship and had set the tone for the years that followed.
Aunt Sandra got up. She was older and frailer than Jean, who’d been busy making sure Kurt was fine in that house all by himself.
‘Most of you only know David as a truckie, as a single father to Kurt and as a quiet man who didn’t get out much. He was my younger brother. The one who put lizards in my bed, and told on me when I tried to sneak out and see my friends. He was, as all little brothers are, a pain.’ She drew in a breath. ‘But when he was seventeen he became the man of the house after our father died. He gave up on his dream of being the first Garland to go to university and got his truck license.’
What? His dad had acted unselfishly? He leaned forward on the hard pew. His father had never mentioned any of this.
Sandra continued. ‘From that day on he made sure that Mum, Jean, Margaret and I survived.’
Shit, he had a third aunt too. Why did no one ever talk about Margaret?
‘It was only after I’d married and Margaret had run away to Melbourne that he found a wife and started a family of his own. Unfortunately it didn’t last, but I still remember him showing off Kurt as a baby to Mum. When Mum died, David withdrew and his marriage fell apart. It was as if something had broken inside.’
A lump formed in Kurt’s throat. That was the man he knew, miserable and broken.
‘I wanted you all to know that without him, his sisters would’ve ended up on the streets. Maybe I didn’t tell him how grateful we were enough. But we were. We would’ve done anything for him, but he never asked for anything. Even when Kurt arrived on his doorstep, he insisted on shouldering that responsibility too. David was a good man, but he had too many demons and they rode him down.’ Sandra stepped down.
Jean was crying. Everyone was looking at him. He’d rather be in the middle of the ocean on a sneaky not making any noise than sitting here right now.
He’d rather be facing Commander Fisher and explaining his relationship with Rainy.
Kurt stood up. His mind was totally blank.
Hi
s father had planned to go to university. Why hadn’t he? He’d been single for ten years, he could’ve done two degrees in that time. Why had his father given up on the things he wanted from life? But Kurt already knew the answer; it was easier to go with the known safe option and continue what you were doing.
‘Thank you all for coming.’ He took a couple of breaths. Jean nodded at him, Sandra smiled encouragingly. ‘I never really knew my father until after my mother’s death. I was a teen who …’ Who hadn’t known anything but thought he did. He’d been hurt and angry and had kept the door to his room firmly closed. ‘Was struggling. I’m sure there were many times he’d have liked to throw me out but he didn’t.’ Kurt looked at everyone in the small church. What were they hoping he’d say, that he loved and missed him? He couldn’t stand in a church and lie like that. ‘I wished I’d known him better.’ His voice broke on the last word.
He didn’t really know either of his parents. And there was nothing that was going to change that. He had no siblings to talk to and compare memories. He’d been cut free of his past and was now drifting with no idea what came next.
***
He refused the lift back to his father’s house and walked. After a block he tugged off the tie and shoved it in his pocket. The town had changed over the last six years. Shops he’d gone to as a kid had closed, new ones had opened. The pinball game zone where he’d wasted his pocket money was now a two-dollar shop. The ice-cream shop was now a takeaway joint. Where there had been a corner store, a bakery and a video outlet was now a big chain supermarket.
He bought himself a burger from the deli, then sat. He picked at his lunch, no longer hungry now he had it. He couldn’t say he was going to miss the place. But he didn’t hate it either. With his friends he’d had fun. There’d been times when he was happy, usually while his father was away working and he was home alone.
Now his father was actually gone. Forever. Tomorrow there’d be fresh dirt marking his grave.