Afternoons with Harvey Beam

by Carrie Cox

  ‘Look, make yourself at home,’ Harvey says. ‘There isn’t much in the way of food, sorry, but—’

  ‘I know, right? Unless you count the grapes in all this wine.’

  ‘They’re mostly gifts from advertisers,’ Beam says quickly.

  He imagines Cate checking out every corner of his apartment as she is talking.

  ‘I’ve never actually stayed on my own before,’ she says. ‘This is going to be so cool. Jayne wants to sleep over one night too.’

  ‘God, your mother will love that.’

  There’s a pause and Harvey can hear his balcony door slide open and a rush of Sydney fill his ear.

  ‘Hey,’ Cate says, ‘can I use the pool down there?’

  ‘Well, I guess so, but don’t be too obvious because I’m really meant to be there with any guests.’

  ‘So no skinny-dipping? No Borat mankinis? Ha-ha.’

  Beam thinks Cate is sounding way too sunny for someone who just blew her final year of high school and ran away from home, but frankly he’s also enjoying this experience of talking to one of his children about something other than drop-off and pick-up times.

  ‘You need to keep in touch with your mum,’ he says, ‘even if it’s just texting her your whereabouts each day. And I’ll be checking in too.’

  ‘Tevs.’

  ‘Tevs?’

  ‘Whatevs. Whatever. Okay.’

  ‘Your generation is destroying the language I love.’

  ‘We’re not destroying it, Dad. We’re dragging it into a more efficient age. Touring the facilities and picking up slack.’

  ‘That’s from a song.’

  ‘I saw it on Tumblr.’

  Beam decides not to embarrass himself by asking what that is.

  ‘Okay, well, love you, Cate. Be good and … yeah.’

  ‘When will you be home?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet but it won’t be long,’ Beam says, fingering a copy of Marie Claire on Penny’s table. Someone actually reads this? ‘There’s not much I can do here except get in the way.’

  ‘And it’s a pity more people your age don’t think like that, Dad.’

  Beam smiles. Smartarse.

  After Cate’s call and because he no longer knows how to simply put down his phone with any sense of finality, Beam checks the headlines on his ABC app and then the cricket scores and then his new favourite distraction, BuzzFeed. He briefly considers heading to the noisy part of the house to give Penny a hand with bathtime, but there was a time when middle-aged men could towel down a young nephew without feeling like a creep and that time has passed. Instead, he wanders about the house looking at the many photos Penny has placed in novelty frames—events, birthdays, Christmases. Beam is in none of them. His fault, he knows that. But still.

  He flicks through the stack of Shorton Standards on Penny’s dining table. This is the newspaper from which Beam used to pilfer most of the headlines for his early-career radio bulletins. Cut-and-pasting from young journos who likely got it wrong in the first place. There’s more colour in the rag now but the stories are the same: snakebites, croc sightings, repeat drink-driving charges, business closures. If it can kill you or embarrass you, the Standard is all over it, spelling errors notwithstanding.

  Penny emerges from the dimly lit hallway, sets up the boys in front of the TV and heads for the kitchen, an armful of dirty clothes on her hip and dinner on her mind. Beam is suddenly reminded of Suze’s common refrain during those early child raising years: It’s not hard, Harvey, it’s just relentless. Suze had been a good mum but those groundhog years, with no extended family help in Sydney, no lifelines, had just about felled them.

  ‘You want some leftover lasagne?’ Penny asks, looking deep into the fridge for answers. Beam thinks about saying no; his sister hadn’t been expecting him a couple of hours ago, but he’s ravenous.

  ‘That’d be great.’

  Penny lets the microwave work its worrisome magic and she feeds the boys and then she dishes up to Harvey and puts on a load of washing and supervises teeth brushing and reads a bedtime story and finally she turns to Harvey, having not yet eaten anything herself, and says, ‘Hey. Wanna get drunk?’

  And Harvey says, ‘God, yes.’

  Penny fetches two glasses, a bottle of something wine-ish from the fridge and then dumps a plastic bowl of chips on the table between them. It’s hot in here and the ceiling fan’s heart isn’t in it.

  ‘So what did you think about Dad?’ Penny says. ‘What was that like for you?’

  ‘I … well, it’s horrible obviously,’ Beam says, realising he hadn’t really had time to think about what he had felt this afternoon with his father, how it might best be described. ‘I mean, it’s that look, isn’t it. So much is gone and it’s hard to know what’s left. What you’re really talking to. But I think, you know, I kind of wasn’t shocked. And I don’t know why because it is shocking, but standing there I just felt, um …’

  ‘Sad?’

  ‘I guess so,’ he says, grabbing a handful of chips. ‘Maybe.’ Not really. ‘But also just sort of powerless in the face of inevitability. Cancer’s a cunt.’

  Penny laughs. ‘Yeah, and I don’t know why the Cancer Council hasn’t embraced that rousing motto.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m a bit tired, I think.’ And Harvey had been feeling tired but now he suspects the wine is giving him a fresh round of fuel. His first glass is gone in minutes.

  ‘What’s Bryan’s story, anyway?’ Harvey says. ‘I thought women were supposed to take on the martyr role in these situations.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Penny says, topping them both up. ‘In a way I think it’s given him a sense of purpose. You know he didn’t so much give up his job as lose it. He doesn’t know that I know this so don’t say anything but the bank tried to offer him a voluntary redundancy last year and he didn’t take it, didn’t take the hint or whatever, and they’ve been trying to manage him out ever since. He’s not the right fit anymore, apparently. So now Dad is his job.’

  Take the payout, Harvey, fill out the forms, see a counsellor—it’s on us.

  ‘Poor bastard,’ Beam says, and wonders if he means it.

  ‘I mean, it’s been great in a way,’ Penny goes on, ‘because, honestly, Naomi and I both have families to run and I have the business and Bryan has just handled all the stuff we wouldn’t have had time for.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not a life, is it? It’s just avoiding life.’

  Penny shrugs. ‘Well, we all do that.’

  And then Beam puts it out there before working through the many reasons why he shouldn’t: ‘Do you think Bryan is gay?’

  Penny looks at him hard, puts her glass down and then throws her head back in contrived hysterics.

  ‘What?’ says Beam incredulously. ‘I mean, he doesn’t necessarily come across that way, but it’s just something … you know, no girlfriends, no kids … the shoes.’

  ‘The shoes?’ Penny is really laughing hard now. ‘What about his shoes?’

  ‘The shoes he wears,’ Harvey says. ‘They’re … I mean, I saw them today and they’re not regional shoes. I think he must buy them online.’

  ‘So in the midst of seeing your father on his deathbed, you’ve looked at Bryan’s shoes and thought, yep, gay?’

  Beam throws his hands up in mock theatrics, partly to remove them from the chips and the wine, if only briefly. ‘No, I mean it has occurred to me before,’ he says. ‘Not that it’s a big deal or anything. But maybe if he’s been living this sort of false life for so many years, that’s why he’s so … you know, uptight.’

  ‘No, I think Bryan is just Bryan,’ Penny says confidently. ‘I don’t think he’s gay. Asexual if anything.’

  Yeah, right, Harvey thinks. Because that’s a thing. ‘I still don’t understand why he hates me.’

  ‘He doesn’t hate you, Harvey,’ Penny says but her voice falters a little and they both know the truth lies elsewhere.

  ‘Well, maybe he does,’ she adds finally
. ‘To be honest, I think he’s never forgiven you for leaving him behind.’

  ‘Leaving him behind!’ Harvey’s hands fly up to his temples as if to prevent a sudden brain explosion. He pushes back on his chair, considers getting up, doesn’t. ‘Shit, Penny. I mean, he was the one Dad picked to live with him. Not me, not you, not Naomi. We’re the ones who were left behind.’

  ‘Look, you can’t overthink that decision, Harvey,’ Penny says, bringing her voice down to remind Harvey of the sleeping children up the hallway. ‘Dad picked the easiest option for him. Mum couldn’t handle all four of us, he had a two-bedroom house, we were girls, and you were … you wouldn’t have gone with him anyway.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you can underthink that decision, Penny,’ Harvey says. ‘At least not as much as he clearly did. You can’t just make a decision like that with no explanation and let everyone else spend the rest of their lives trying to work out what it really meant.’

  Beam is now looking at an empty chair because Penny has gone to get another bottle from the outside fridge. He hates himself for this, ripping out this old weed and holding it aloft like a petulant child. The truth is he never thinks about this anymore, never has any reason to. It’s being back here that does it to him. This fucking town. This quagmire of owed apologies and frayed endings and stupefying bullshit. He could have been on a boat on Sydney Harbour today.

  ‘Have you seen Mum yet?’ Penny says, coming from behind him and giving Harvey’s shoulder a squeeze on the way past.

  ‘No. Tomorrow I think.’

  ‘Yeah, we’ll visit Dad in the morning—I do mornings, Naomi does arvos—and then I’ll drop you at their place, if you like.’

  Their place. Beam picks up the chance to shift the topic from their father.

  ‘And what do you think about Mum moving into Naomi’s?’

  ‘I think it’s stupid, Harvey,’ Penny says as though she’d been waiting for the question for several hours. ‘I think Naomi’s natural gravitation towards complication has peaked. Mum is sixty-seven, not eighty-seven, and so what has Naomi signed up for here? Having Mum under her roof for the next twenty years? For what? Company?’

  ‘She said Mum nearly died.’

  ‘And that’s bullshit obviously, Harvey. She had mild concussion, that’s all. Nothing broke … except Boner.’ Penny pours another wine. ‘RIP Boner,’ she says.

  ‘Oh God,’ Harvey says mid-gulp. ‘Please tell me Mum didn’t accidentally kill a dog.’

  ‘Nope, a cat. The neighbour’s cat.’

  ‘Oh shit, that’s horrible.’

  ‘I know … it’s …’

  Penny covers her mouth and Beam thinks she’s about to cry, thinks shit, but there is a sudden snort and an explosion of wine. His sister is laughing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, waving her hands in front of her face. ‘I’m just … it’s … oh God.’

  Instantly Harvey warms to the new theme. ‘Is it because of the name? Penny, be honest. If Mum had landed very hard, virtually impaled herself, on a Megsie or a Snow, would you be having this reaction?’

  ‘Stop it, Harvey,’ she says, now almost weeping and indicating she may need to wee. Or just did. Beam is really enjoying himself now.

  ‘Fluffy? Smoky? Tom? Would these work better for you, Penny? Engender a little more sympathy for the cat squashed by our falling mother?’

  And Penny is gone, fleeing to the bathroom, and Harvey sits back and smiles to himself. Here is a moment. He is happy right now, and five minutes ago he wasn’t. And this, he thinks to himself and not for the first time, this is what is good about alcohol. Its rare amplification of aggression notwithstanding, its preference for addiction and the steady erosion of vital organs aside, alcohol can at least make the sheer gnawing inexplicability of life seem very funny indeed.

  When she returns, Penny is chastened, if still grinning and crimson, and wants to make it clear that she feels very sorry for any animal killed by a falling neighbour or indeed via any means of misadventure.

  ‘And I’m so glad you’re here, Harvey,’ she says, ‘because I haven’t laughed like that in ages.’

  ‘Glad to be of service,’ he says, offering up his glass to be chinked.

  And then they talk a little about work, although Beam reveals nothing about his current positional hiatus, and about kids, their interests and personality quirks, and Beam is proud that his descriptions of Cate and Jayne don’t seem to be too short on detail given how little time he spends with them.

  ‘And do they get on well?’ Penny asks. ‘Cate and Jayne?’

  ‘Um, I think so,’ he says, and realises he has no idea. ‘I mean, I don’t hear of any major fights. I think they’re probably like most siblings—they have their moments.’

  ‘Then Suze has done a good job,’ Penny says. ‘And you have too.’

  ‘Thanks. It’s all Suze, really. But um, you and Naomi. How long has this current battle been raging?’

  Penny looks down at the table and flips Marie Claire over as though suddenly embarrassed by it. ‘Well, it’s actually not raging anymore, not as far as I’m concerned,’ she says. ‘I mean, we don’t really speak anymore, but that’s probably a good thing and a safe thing. No more open hostility. It’s just …’

  ‘It is what it is?’ Harvey says attempting a Naomi hair flick that doesn’t quite work.

  Penny replenishes both their glasses. God bless the Beam bladder, Harvey thinks. Big, if not entirely robust.

  ‘I’ll tell you why I hate that phrase, Harvey. Because nothing just is what it is. Everything is how we make it, or what brought us here. Things happen, shit happens, stuff is said and can’t be unsaid. Mistakes are made that can’t be unmade. And that is why things are the way they are. Thinking that it’s all just chance and kismet—that’s crap.’

  Harvey loves that she knows the word ‘kismet’.

  ‘You love that I just used that word, don’t you?’ Penny smiles and she touches Beam’s hand. ‘You and your words. You and your books.’

  And out of nowhere Harvey thinks, We shared a childhood. We are still sharing a childhood.

  ‘Look,’ Penny says. ‘Honestly? Naomi needs it more than I do. Mum. She needs Mum and the attention and the validation and all that stuff. There’s not enough to go around, there never was, and so Naomi can have it. I have learnt … am learning … to get that stuff from friends. If you can’t have a functional family, just have great friends.’

  And Harvey winces at the statement, because he suspects he has neither.

  ‘Well, that’s great, Penny. So you’re all sorted then.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, I just think … I mean, they’re just words, aren’t they?’ Careful, Beam. ‘Admirable words, but not … I just don’t think it’s possible to sidestep family when you’re still standing in it.’

  ‘And you think running away, what you did—that’s the answer?’

  ‘I think it’s fucking brilliant. Seriously, Penny, I do. I’m back here one day and already I’m up to my neck in all this shit. Stuff I don’t even think about in Sydney. I mean, it’s not all bad stuff but it’s still … headfuckery.’

  ‘I think you overrate geography, Harvey. No matter where you go, there you are.’

  ‘That’s a very misused saying, Penny. And you know I love my sayings. A little respect, please.’

  Penny laughs, and Harvey does too. They have drunk a lot of bad wine in a short amount of time and this conversation wouldn’t have happened otherwise. That’s how it works in the Beam family. It is, yes, what it is.

  There’s a loud knock at the front door and Harvey looks at his phone—11pm.

  He hears Penny discussing something with a male voice on the other end, then a pause, a thank you, and the door being shut, locked. His sister re-emerges into the dining room holding aloft Beam’s Adidas sports bag, triumphant.

  ‘Hey Harvey,’ she says, smiling. ‘Your emotional baggage arrived.’

  9
r />   ON AIR

  ‘And it’s just gone ten minutes after nine and the sun is smiling down on your city today, perhaps a little too brightly in the west where the fire danger is high again, but on the balance of things you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’

  Beam nods affirmation through the glass: The PM is on the line.

  ‘You certainly wouldn’t want to be in Canberra, anyway, where a bunch of thinkers and talkers—I think “movers and shakers” would be stretching it—have gathered together to discuss that most unsexy of topics: the Australian Constitution. Yes, it’s day four of the 1998 Constitutional Convention, the talkfest that should ultimately deliver you, the Australian people, well, what? That’s the real question, isn’t it? Is this exercise, this staggeringly expensive exercise, about genuinely exploring the possibility of an Australia that isn’t bound to the British monarchy—and that’s an awful lot of coins to be reminted, folks—or is it about drowning the republican debate in so much waffle that it’ll never resurface again? Mr Howard, you’d probably prefer the latter result, would that be fair to say?’

  And it’s a great interview. Beam is flying and Howard comes along with him, reluctant at first but gradually brought around by Harvey at his most charming. Beam has never been one for full-frontal attack, not even now when it’s the height of broadcasting fashion. He leaves the stinging barbs and militant retorts for his callers, who seldom disappoint, and instead he wins over guests with a measured intellect that is neither dominant nor intimidating. Beam is good at what he does, is getting better period after period, and he fucking loves it.

  The red light on the studio’s second phone is flashing, has been for the last twenty minutes, and he can’t understand why his producer hasn’t intercepted it. It’s time for headlines and Beam thanks the Prime Minister for his generosity, politely on air and then much more profusely off. Makes loose arrangements to have lunch when John is next in Sydney.

  And that’s who Harvey Beam is now: a man who lunches with prime ministers. At the very least, makes plans to.