Afternoons with Harvey Beam

by Carrie Cox

  ‘Is that you, Harvey?’ Lionel Beam says, and he seems to be trying to lick his dry and mottled lips.

  ‘Yes, Dad. It’s me.’

  Penny looks at Harvey, her eyes suddenly wide and wet.

  A lawnmower fires up outside the window and their father says, very slowly, ‘Well, now I know I’m really dying.’

  16

  As an up-and-coming voice on radio, a guy from nowhere special with something to prove, Harvey Beam prided himself on being a hard worker. Even when Suze, dripping with toddlers and drowning in tedium, would argue that spending twelve hours a day doing what you’re good at and what you love is the very opposite of hard work, Harvey had nevertheless retained a measure of satisfaction about the hours he kept. First to arrive, last to leave. Short lunch, non-smoker.

  Lately, however, Beam’s come to think Suze might have been right: he does gravitate towards easy, even if he’s not always aware of it.

  At nine weeks premature, Jayne had been born in a state of respiratory distress, or as Harvey most easily described it to people, she couldn’t fucking breathe. Her immature lungs lacked the substance that enables them to expand. Fortunately her arrival was pre-internet and so Harvey was unable to google himself into a paranoid frenzy about the many other complications she was perilously close to: chronic lung disease, heart collapse, brain haemorrhage.

  He and Suze had been lucky—the neonatal unit at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital is among the best in the country. God help the too-tiny babies born in regional and rural Australia, Beam had postulated on his show when they were finally out of the premmie wilderness.

  But maybe one never makes it fully out, for Harvey still believes that Suze was never the same after Jayne was born. She had always been looking for the next sign of a post-premmie complication: cerebral palsy, impaired vision, hearing problems, psychological scarring. She showered Jayne with love and worry in equal parts, swaddled her in protective anxiety, and grew increasingly impatient with Harvey’s well-intentioned refrain: For God’s sake, Suze, she’s fine.

  And she was fine, but never to Suze’s satisfaction. She would look at Cate and see a robustness that was never present in Jayne, and Harvey—not that he ever admitted it—could see it too. At least, Cate just felt easier than Jayne, easier in terms of not being a threat to Beam’s patina of calm, to his holding together of this little world containing the lives he’d helped create. Jayne’s fragility, her implied neediness, frightened Harvey to his marrow. He distinctly remembers, even now, looking around the ward of the neonatal unit each day for weeks on end, seeing couples in various states of despair and hope, and thinking, How are any of these people keeping their shit together?

  As his daughters had grown up, Harvey always spent more time with Cate than Jayne, not deliberately and not because he loved her any more—and he’ll frankly never understand parents who literally apportion their love via a hierarchy—but basically because Cate was less frightening to him. She was easier, and somehow still is.

  And now, sitting in this hospital room in Shorton, his father having thirty minutes ago uttered a sentence of acknowledgment that Harvey still can’t decide wasn’t a clever insult—vintage Lionel Beam—he finds himself thinking about Cate and Jayne and wondering if they will ever find themselves in a similar position to this: looking down on a man they are supposed to love but don’t. Can’t.

  As if summoned, Jayne’s name appears on Harvey’s phone.

  Her message reads: Hey Dad, thanks for that but I have heaps of stuff on and I said yes to extra holiday shifts at work. But THANK YOU. Say hi to everyone. Love you. X

  Beam looks up at the ceiling and sighs in relief. Thank you Suze. He looks through the window at a man on a ride-on mower, cutting through grass and weeds that will only grow back. Everything is relentless.

  Finally he looks back at his father, for all intents and purposes the least threatening Lionel Beam has ever appeared, and Harvey knows he can’t stay in this room. For he has nothing to say and nothing he needs to hear.

  You can never go back.

  17

  Grace has chosen the Shorton Hotel, a corner pub in the main street that looks as though it predates the town itself, as the venue to catch up with Beam after her shift. And he’s relieved because nothing that ever happens inside the Shorton Hotel could be classified as a date—there is no white-linen pressure, no sense of time stretching too far or running short, but there is more than enough aged timber and cardboard beer coasters to quickly soak up awkward attempts at conversation.

  Grace is now twenty minutes late but that’s okay, Harvey reasons, because he’d been slack at replying to her original text and now he must be punished, plus she doesn’t want to seem too keen. Oh yes, Harvey thinks in a deliberate moment of arrogance inspired by his second beer, I know how women think.

  When Grace finally arrives ten minutes later, still in uniform but with her regulation ponytail gratefully released, and with Beam’s third beer perched in front of him (he had asked the barman for a red wine but the look in response made him pretend he was misunderstood), her excuse is solid: she’d been placating an angry Bryan about the dosage management of Lionel’s morphine.

  ‘Your brother doesn’t seem to trust the hospital at all,’ Grace says after Harvey returns from the bar with a gin and tonic for her. ‘Has he had some sort of bad previous experience there?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ Harvey says. Not that I would. ‘But Bryan and Dad both share a belief that they are intellectually superior to most people.’

  ‘Well, the best patient care doesn’t come out of books,’ Grace says, fingering the rim of her lipstick-smudged tumbler. ‘It comes out of experience.’

  And Beam is embarrassed that it’s his family who are responsible for making a professional have to explain themselves.

  ‘I mean, it’s grief too,’ Grace adds. ‘Watching someone die can make some people very angry with the world. That’s not uncommon.’

  ‘Well, if it’s any consolation,’ Beam says, looking helpfully into Grace’s green eyes, ‘Bryan thinks I’m a dickhead too.’

  Grace looks down at her drink.

  ‘Not that I’m saying you’re a dickhead,’ Harvey splutters. ‘Or that Bryan even thinks that. Shit. I mean—’

  ‘It’s okay, she says. ‘I know what you mean.’ And Grace self-consciously adjusts her uniform, which Harvey presently regards as the classiest outfit in the room.

  Then she stares at him, really stares for a few long seconds, and Beam wishes to God he knew what she is looking for in this moment so that he can deliver it. Because he’s starting to sense something about Grace that might be larger than random seat allocations on a plane and a sick patient in hospital. But then beer has always made him feel this way—at first revolted and then … hopeful.

  ‘How long have you not gotten along?’ she says finally. ‘You and Bryan?’

  ‘Since I left town,’ Harvey says. ‘No, before that. I mean, we’ve never been “brotherly”.’ Beam punctuates the air with his fingers. ‘Mum put us into all the same sports as kids … tennis, cricket, footy … because we were so close in age. It was just easier for her—two birds with one stone. But it made us natural rivals and not to Bryan’s advantage. Sport isn’t his thing. Not that it’s mine either, but at least I could catch and run without, you know, standing out for the wrong reasons. Bryan was always more focused on his schoolwork. He’s a smart guy.’

  ‘You don’t seem stupid,’ Grace says.

  And even though this meeting has quickly ventured into fairly unsexy terrain, Harvey realises he is enjoying it. Grace is beautiful and fresh and she is sitting right here in front of him and he has nowhere else to be.

  ‘Like your father?’ Grace asks. ‘I noticed the books beside his bed. They’re not the sort of thing you find on the bargain table at Dymocks.’

  Beam laughs. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I read the preface of one today and briefly considered hanging myself with Dad’s drip line.�
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  Grace laughs a little too generously.

  ‘But actually, Dad only got into academia later in life,’ Beam says, wondering briefly if he’s ever had cause to explain this before. Possibly not. ‘He was a loans manager at a bank when I was really young and then he decided to go back to university—unfinished business—and he did it all via correspondence and apparently just got it. It was like it was his calling and because it came to him late, he threw himself into it as though he was dying.’

  Beam bristles a little and Grace fingers one of the spare coasters on their little round table.

  ‘Doesn’t Bryan work at a bank too?’ she asks.

  ‘Did,’ says Beam. ‘Same bank. And he’s also completing his PhD, I think. So, yeah, literally following in our father’s footsteps.’

  Harvey briefly considers that he and his brother do now share one defining trait and that is unemployment.

  ‘Hey, do you want to get something to eat?’ Grace says, placing her hand on her stomach. ‘I haven’t had anything since breakfast.’

  And Beam would actually be satisfied with just another drink—liquid dinners have become a staple for him—but he says, ‘Yes, that sounds great. Here or somewhere else?’

  ‘Somewhere else,’ Grace says with a smile.

  They wander down the main street, a conceivable couple, Harvey thinks, even if he does have maybe ten years on Grace. But the walk might give them away, he decides, the self-conscious, slightly maladroit pairing of two people guessing at each other’s pace.

  They settle on a Thai restaurant. It had been Shorton’s first but there are others now. The once bright-red facade has relaxed into a dull pink and the signage is missing more letters than it contains.

  Grace apologises, for the third time, about still being in her nursing garb and Harvey assures her she looks absolutely fine. ‘Thursday night with a woman in uniform at a place with one hundred and sixty-seven numbered menu options?’ he says. ‘I’m the envy of every man I’ve ever met, Grace.’

  They share a pad Thai (#83), some steamed rice that has congealed to pudding status, and a bottle of red wine. Harvey is careful not to let the conversation veer back to their common ground of Lionel Beam and his warring entourage. He wants to get to know Grace and he wants to get there quickly; nail it in one solid interview.

  But she’s a tricky proposition who insists, because she’s not had children or climbed any mountains, physical or proverbial, that her life is barely worth discussing.

  ‘I wish I was better at embellishment,’ she says.

  Of course she’s wrong about her life’s ordinariness, as humbler people generally are. Harvey teases out the details of a woman who has nursed sick children in three impoverished countries, and later her own father to a particularly nasty death exacted by pancreatic cancer. She barracks for Colling-wood (he will overlook this), hates cooking (this too) and loves Australian cinema. This latter fact alone, Harvey tells her, makes her truly unique.

  And this kind woman, incredibly, loves Eskimo Joe, his favourite band.

  As he pours them each another glass of wine, Harvey can’t help himself.

  ‘And so, Grace … love?’

  ‘It’s a many splendoured thing, Harvey.’

  ‘Apparently,’ he smiles. ‘But have you had it? Are you up to three or four ex-husbands now?’

  She looks at him quizzically, her brow slightly furrowed, and Harvey wishes he’d used higher numbers to make it clear he was joking.

  ‘Just the one,’ she answers finally.

  ‘Oh.’ Beam reaches for the bottle and quickly realises he just did so a minute ago. ‘Oh right,’ he says. ‘An ex-husband?’

  ‘Yep. Matthew. Long time ago. Three years from start to finish. No great story there.’

  Harvey looks down at Grace’s delicate hands, whose fingers are making unconscious figure eights on the paper table cover.

  ‘So,’ Beam says, imagining his producer making gestures through the glass … Throw to an ad! Don’t mention the ex. ‘Was he a former drug baron who couldn’t shake the old tails or did you come home one day and find him singing Celine Dion in your underwear?’

  Grace laughs a little, but not convincingly. ‘No,’ she says, ‘we just wanted different things. Well, actually we wanted the same thing—kids—but it just wasn’t happening. We started to think it would never happen for us. He just sort of gave up.’

  ‘Three years isn’t that long,’ Harvey says, hoping this doesn’t cause offence. ‘Sounds like he gave up too easily.’

  ‘Well, I took up an overseas posting with Red Cross for six months. I wanted to get that out of my system and I thought the break would do us both good, but obviously it didn’t. It literally broke us. So I kept working overseas and … that was that. But anyway, old news,’ she says and dismisses the past with a wave of her hand. ‘Since then I’ve been dating up a storm.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It sucks, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It really does.’

  Beam decides to tell Grace about the date that saw him pull up stumps on set-ups contrived by friends. Her name was Roberta, a tall brunette with siren-red glasses, a friend of a friend of a work colleague. Just after they’d ordered main course at a ridiculously pretentious restaurant of her choosing, Roberta excused herself to go to the toilet and didn’t return for fifty minutes. Fifty. Minutes. Beam had naturally, somewhat embarrassedly, assumed that Roberta had simply not warmed to his countenance—perhaps he’d had something poking out of his teeth or nose?—and had done a runner. It happens. But those big-ticket meals weren’t going to eat themselves and so Beam, bolstered by self-pity and excellent red wine, hungrily began to consume both plates. And all the bread and her mojito. He was actually quite enjoying himself, thought this might work for a light talkback segment next week: How to salvage a disastrous date. The joys of eating alone. He was just about to order dessert when Roberta returned to the table, looked at her empty plate and then incredulously at Harvey.

  ‘You ate my meal?’ she’d said, as though the best part of an hour hadn’t just vanished. ‘You ate? My meal?’ People in the restaurant had begun to stare. Harvey began to shake his head nervously: ‘No, no, your meal, I don’t know what happened.’ He glanced around nervously: ‘Did anyone else see what happened to this poor woman’s meal?’

  Grace is looking hard at Harvey now, graciously wincing, feeling his mortification.

  ‘And then,’ he tells her, ‘Roberta picked up the carafe of iced water, poured it onto my lap and turned the whole thing into a Woody Allen scene.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Grace says, covering her eyes and peering at Beam through her fingers. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I said to her, “Roberta, my ninety-two-year-old grandfather doesn’t shit for fifty minutes,”’ Beam recounts with, he imagines, pitch-perfect comedic timing. ‘“And your steak was cooked perfectly.”’

  A big, rapturous laugh streams out of Grace, and Harvey is quietly thrilled. Lately it’s seemed like everyone only says the words ‘Ha-ha’ now as some sort of acceptable replacement for actually laughing.

  ‘It gets worse,’ he says. ‘She started as accounts manager at the station two weeks later. I haven’t questioned my pay in years.’

  Grace’s laughter fills the room now, piercing the air with shards of light and uniting the room’s diners in a flash of public revelry. It’s a perfect moment and Harvey is grateful for it—for fate, Shorton, everything about this moment. Encroaching age and experience have made it harder, not easier, to meet new people, and he grows impatient with the effort required to get past all the preconceived ideas and concrete-set worldviews. Some days he just couldn’t be arsed, quite frankly. Perhaps it’s why he started losing his edge on air; he’ll concede that. But tonight has been effortless and enjoyable and when such things happen, Harvey thinks, when they happen unexpectedly and perhaps undeservedly, it’s as though the world has spun back to your side.

  Af
terwards, Grace drops Beam at Penny’s house in the small car she has hired for her stay in Shorton. He invites her in for a coffee, unsure if Penny will still be awake, but Grace politely declines.

  ‘So I’ll see you tomorrow?’ Beam says. ‘At the hospital?’

  ‘Tomorrow’s my RDO,’ Grace says. ‘Think I might check out your local beach if it’s sunny.’

  ‘It’s always sunny here,’ he says. ‘Just ask my mole doctor.’

  Grace smiles, but Harvey also spies her masking a small yawn.

  He moves to get out of the car, thanks her again for the lift, then turns to kiss Grace lightly on the cheek. Too much? Too …? Ugh.

  ‘Watch out for the sharks tomorrow,’ he says lightly. ‘And the stingers and the crocodiles and the hole in the ozone layer.’ Stop.

  ‘Thanks Harvey,’ she says. ‘I will.’

  Penny is waiting up for Beam, and he realises there was never a chance she wouldn’t be. She wants to know all the details—was this a date date? How old is she? Any kids? Where is she staying? How long for? What did they eat? What did they talk about? Was she funny? Did she mention their father? Bryan? Where is she from? Why is she single?

  ‘Penny, this is exhausting,’ Harvey says after a solid forty minutes of interrogation. ‘It was just dinner. She’s a nice girl.’

  But Penny is thirteen years old again and living life vicariously through her seventeen-year-old brother. She has always looked up to Harvey; thought if anyone was going to unlock the key at Shorton’s city gates, it would be him. And even though she had missed him terribly when he did leave, the twenty-one-year-old voice of Shorton Radio headed for the great unknown, Penny had also been grateful that he’d at least demonstrated it was possible.

  Beam checks again that it’s okay if Cate stays for a few days and Penny says of course. ‘Maybe she can even help out in the shop?’ she says. ‘You know, if she’s bored?’