by Carl Nixon
He falls and somehow manages to get back to his feet. Turning back to the house, he sees a wall of angry faces. Richard is not among them. Someone throws a full beer can and it brushes his arm before hitting the fence with a solid thump. Turning, he limps to the gate and out on to the street where his car is parked.
Sarah catches up to him as he is opening the door. ‘Wait.’ She thrusts the painting towards him. Newspaper hangs loosely from it. She is clearly in a panic. ‘Take it. Please. Richard’s sorry that he took it.’
‘He’s not sorry at all,’ he says angrily.
She glances back through the open gate towards the house. ‘I shouldn’t tell you, but he owes money to some people. That’s why he took it, because he needed the money to pay them back.’
So, he thinks, it is back to money again, seemingly the theme of all his conversations with this girl. ‘Richard is very lucky that I haven’t pressed charges against him, against you both. I’m going now.’
‘What about me? What about the baby?’
‘Not my responsibility.’
She has the sudden look of a poor swimmer who finds she is out of her depth. He gets into the car and starts the engine. She taps on the glass and he lowers the window reluctantly.
‘I’ve got nowhere to go.’
He considers simply pulling away, leaving her standing on the footpath in the rain. Against his better judgement he reaches over and unlocks the passenger door.
‘You can stay for just one night.’
She climbs in next to him without a word, and closes the door.
As he pulls away he glances in through the open gate and sees Richard standing on the front step, looking towards him with an unreadable expression. He drives on.
He folds out the couch into a bed and shows her where the bathroom is. He rings reception and asks for a toothbrush, extra soap and a flannel. The manager sounds annoyed but agrees to bring them.
While they wait he gives her his towel and watches as she lies curled on the bed, drying her hair, rubbing it vigorously with both hands. She is younger than he first thought. Twenty-one, maybe twenty-two is his guess. And now affixed to his son, to him, through this child she is carrying.
‘Do you mind if I watch television?’ she asks.
‘Not if you keep the sound down.’
Without uncurling her body she uses the remote control to flick through the channels. Seemingly at random she selects the end of what looks like a movie from the ’60s. He thinks of her not as a cat — which is the obvious metaphor. There is something too stolid about her for a feline comparison. He struggles to find something suitable but is stumped.
In the bathroom he checks his face in the mirror. The left side of his cheek is red and slightly swollen and there is a small cut across his cheek. There is also an angry bruise the size of an orange on his thigh and his thumb is throbbing. He uses a warm flannel to dab at his face. Still, it could have been worse. Richard could have timed his punch better, possibly even shattered his jaw.
There is a knock on the front door. The manager’s eyes flick past him as she hands the items over. The girl is still lying curled on the corner of the folded-out bed. He is aware of how it looks.
‘My niece has decided to stay with me tonight. There’s been a problem at home.’
It is a lie that he immediately regrets. How many nieces has this woman seen sashaying past her office? Young relatives who visit for an hour or two and then slip away. He takes the items, thanks her and closes the door.
‘Here you are. I’m going to bed. Good night.’
‘Good night.’
‘Sarah. I must ask you. Was it Richard who hit you? Did he do that to your face?’
She looks up at him from her place on the bed. ‘No, it wasn’t Richard. It was someone else.’
But he can tell that she is lying.
He cannot sleep. He lies on his back in the dark for a long time, staring up at the dimpled ceiling. He can hear the faint sound of the television from the other room and then it is turned off. Finally he leaves his bed to get himself a glass of water from the kitchen tap.
Sarah is in the bathroom. The lounge lights are off but a bright fluorescent glare from the string of small lights above the mirror spills out across the carpet. She has left the bathroom door open, deliberately or not he does not know. He moves past the edge of the bed towards the kitchen and feels as if he is intruding.
In the large mirror he has a clear view of her. She has showered and is standing naked beneath the bright bathroom lights, drying herself with a white towel. She bends towards him from the waist to dab at the moisture on her thighs. She straightens up and begins to rub her short hair.
If she is aware of him in the lounge, she gives no indication.
Her breasts are heavy and he can clearly see the blue veins running down to her nipples which are bruised the same colour as the skin above her eye. He is aware of the dark cross-thatch of hair beneath her swollen stomach where, what is most likely, his first grandchild is hanging between nothingness and life. He looks away.
He returns to his room without the water. Closing the door, he stands with his back against it. His heart is racing as though he has just returned from a run. He wonders what the future will bring. What will become of Richard? And of the girl and this new child, this grandchild? On the chair next to his bed lies the painting, but he takes no solace from its presence.
Weight
he stretched his muscles in the sharp light thrown by the naked bulb. It hung above the back door, next to the place where the wood was soft and rotten, but attracted no moths because it was August and the nights were as still and cold as metal. The light barely reached him where he stood in the middle of the lawn, spilling only thinly over his shoulders and back and then stopping, as if exhausted. It carried no warmth, and beyond him there were only shadows.
Stretching forward, he pushed both hands against the raised bark of the old pear tree which pricked into his palms. The tree was old and its roots lifted up the grass beneath his feet. As he stretched he thought about how he would have to get around to taking the whole thing out, borrow the chainsaw from his brother. This year the tree had given only a few pears and even those were small and bitter. Every year there was more fungus and disease on the leaves.
His left leg pushed back and locked so that he felt the muscles of his calf and behind his knee pull tight. He carried little fat, not even around his gut. The tendons on his leg stood out in the cross-light like reinforcing beneath the skin. Changing position, he grasped his ankle with one hand and pulled the leg up behind him. He grunted and felt the tight stretch in his quad. The distant single bulb and the heavy shadows made it look as though the leg had been amputated at the knee.
He heard the sound of the door closing, and his son came out and walked with loping strides over to where his father was standing. They both wore thick sweatshirts and black rugby shorts and running shoes without socks. His son did not speak but stood, his legs wide apart, and slowly circled his head, dipping his chin down to his chest and then opening up his throat to the night sky. The night was perfectly clear, although he could not see many stars because of the reflected light of the city. The son’s breath clouded white in front of his face, and his father knew that in the morning there would be a frost on the grass.
‘I’d say she’s gunna be a cold one,’ he said.
‘Yeah.’ His son began running on the spot, his legs making long shadows that jerked wildly across the grass.
‘Probably a frost. It hasn’t been bad this year though, milder than usual.’
There was only the faint thud of the son’s shoes on the grass. He was eighteen and still mad about what had been said over dinner. He felt that he was old enough now to disagree with his father without being told he was talking back. He had decided that next year he would go flatting, leave home for good.
His father changed position, bending sideways from the waist, pushing down with his hand towards his bar
e ankle. ‘How was training?’
His son waited before replying. ‘Mr Newton is talking about trying me out at lock. Says I’m getting too big to stay at flanker.’
‘What does big matter? You’re still fast.’
‘Yeah, but no one else is as tall. We need someone tall at lock.’
The father grunted. He twisted his body to the left, his hands on his hips. He held himself there and then swung to the right before relaxing into a gentle up down up down rhythm that nearly matched his son’s, his toes never leaving the grass. They moved together almost in unison for a few minutes but did not speak.
‘Want to get started?’ said the father.
‘Yeah. Okay.’
The son was the first to the garage door. He grasped the handle and, even though the rollers were rusted and stiff, pulled it up in one movement so that the door lifted into the ceiling space. The light was off and he found the switch and flicked it on. It was a double garage but there was no car, only an expanse of uncracked concrete, smooth and pale like dirty ice. Tools hung from the walls on nails next to a figure-eight of old rope. The smell of weed spray and motor-oil lingered and mixed with the petrol from the cracked tank of the lawnmower.
The son pulled the bench press over beneath the light. Going back, he fetched the dumb-bells, rolling them ahead of him with his foot. He unhooked the weight belt from its nail. It was thick black leather, worn smooth by use so that the white letters had faded away to nothing but faint lines and circles.
His father picked up the bar and laid it across the stand at the head of the bench. He then bent at the knees and picked up the iron plates and slipped them on to the end of the bar. ‘You go first.’
‘Okay.’ He did not look at his father.
He lay back on the bench and pushed himself with his legs so that he slid along until his head was beneath the bar. Reaching up, he measured the distance from the edge so that when he lifted it the bar would be even and balanced. One and a half hand-widths and then his fingers curled. The metal was snow-melt cold. His father stood behind him, ready to lift the weight off should his son fail, although he knew that he would not be needed yet. His son lowered the bar to his chest, pulling in air, and letting the metal gently tap the hollow where his breast bone spread his ribs.
‘That’s good. Nice and easy. Remember to breathe.’ His father’s voice came from above and behind. Sixty pounds was not heavy. The son could feel the muscles in his chest and shoulders, cold with the first few repetitions, stretch and warm as the blood pumped into them.
His father had taught him to breathe when he was twelve. He remembered being taken out to the garage after dinner for the first time. His father had pulled the dusty weights from the corner.
‘Lie back. No, put your feet down on either side of the bench. That’s good.’ His father had placed his callused hand on the boy’s ribs. There had been no weight on the bar.
‘Breathe out on the way down. Never hold your breath.’
His father’s fingers had spanned the boy’s chest. Heat had radiated from his palm and seemed to soak downwards. Thinking back now, the son remembered that it was summer and that the sunlight, which seemed to go on late into the night, had leaked through the perspex skylight above him.
‘Suck the air in on the way down. Slower. That’s right. Breathe. Good, now let it out as you push up.’ His father’s hand had not been heavy. He remembered feeling disappointed when it was taken away.
Now it was winter and cold, and it was his father’s turn. The son gave him the belt and he notched it tightly around his waist. The father lifted more slowly than his son, his eyes fixed on the shadows above him, forehead creased in concentration. He did fifteen repetitions and was breathing hard when he dropped the bar back into its cradle.
Taking a side each, they loaded on more round metal plates. Removing the thin 30s, they slid on a 45 each and then a 20, one on each side, to make it 130 pounds. The plates clinked against each other with a clear note like a brass bell that was cut short as they were pressed together.
The son slid into position, feeling the warmth of his father’s body lingering in the bench’s padding. He lowered the bar easily to his chest and lifted it, falling into an easy familiar rhythm. His father did not have to help for the final two as he had sometimes done in the past, and the bar rattled back into its cradle.
‘So how do you feel about being a lock?’
‘It’s okay, I s’pose.’
‘A lot of locks are wearing headgear these days, even at your level. Stops them getting cauliflower ears.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’d still like to see you play at flanker though. Perhaps next year when you move to the club.’
‘Okay. Maybe.’
But the son doubted that next year he would be playing for his father’s old club. There had been talk of going to Europe. There was also a woman his father did not know about. She did not like him playing in the forwards — playing rugby, full stop.
The father slid on to the bench and grasped the bar. He lowered the weight slowly. He still felt cold, though he had stretched, even after the first set. His muscles felt short and tight. The 130 pounds rose and fell but there was a twinge in his shoulder. His breath huffed out of him, pushed up with the iron weight towards the ceiling. When he had finished the ten repetitions, the same as his son, he sat up and turned so that he was sitting sideways on the bench, his elbows on his knees. There was sweat beneath his hair but he still did not feel warm.
His son slipped off his sweatshirt and hung it on a nail on the wall. He was wearing an old T-shirt, almost too small for him now, and his father saw how the light cast shadows under the curve of his chest and along the ridges at the back of his arms. In a few years he had gone from being tall and skinny to simply big. Solid and still growing.
‘I’m feeling good tonight. I’d like to go for it.’
The father stood up. ‘Why not?’ He smiled but his face felt as tight as his chest.
His son brought the weights that they did not normally use from the corner. Another pair of 45s, a different make, smaller and fatter but still with the large centre holes that let them slip on to the bar. Loading the plates on, working one side each, they bent at the knees and took off the 20s and picked up the 45s and slipped them on next to the first two plates. They worked together so that the bar was never unbalanced and would not flick up and crash down on to the concrete. One hundred and eighty pounds. The son retrieved the 20s from where they sat and, on a whim, slipped them back on.
His father frowned. ‘That’s two-twenty. You sure you’re okay with that?’
‘Yeah, I’m feeling good. I’ll just try and do one or two.’
‘Okay.’
He helped his son lift the bar off its stand, keeping his hands wrapped around it until he was totally sure that the boy had it under control. ‘Ready?’
‘Yeah.’
The father took his hands away and his son was left holding the whole weight above his body, elbows locked, taking the strain. The boy’s arms trembled slightly, and then he bent his elbows and began to lower the weight. He lowered it slowly, sucking in the cold air. The weight barely touched his chest before he was pushing it up and away, keeping it moving. His breath hissed out through his teeth like steam.
‘Good. That’s one. Doing well.’ His father hovered his hands under the bar. He was ready to snatch it up and away when his son’s strength was exhausted and the weight threatened to fall back. But his son lowered the bar again and then pushed it slowly back up, wobbling it only slightly as his elbows locked.
‘Good, keep breathing.’
And then again. Down and slowly up as though he were pushing away a whole world.
‘Okay, that’s three. Well done.’
But his son shook his head. ‘One more.’ His voice was a creak. He sucked in more air and then the bar travelled down. It paused over the chest and then began to inch back up.
‘Come on, breathe. You can d
o it. Lift!’
Slowly the weight was pushed up. The boy’s father curled his fingers around the bar, ready to lift it when his son couldn’t. But he was not needed. The son’s chest was taut and straining, the muscles contracting and bunched. He heard his son’s breathing and felt the breath push up against his own face. He smelt the sweet strain of the weight.
And then the weight was at the top of its arc and his father was guiding the bar back into its cradle, rattling and clanging. The son sat up. He breathed in long drags. His expression was triumphant.
‘Well, done. That’s a lot of weight.’ The father stood a little apart and looked at his son.
The boy had never lifted more than him. It had always been natural that he should be stronger, his son weaker, but in the past few months they had both been struggling beneath the weight. Both at the edge of their strength. His muscles ached for days afterwards. Lately, he had found himself making half-recognised excuses not to come out to the garage in the evenings. But never before had either of them had all the weight on. And his son had never lifted more than him.
The boy was watching him. His father saw how the stark light made slashes and pits of his face. He looked away towards the mound of cold iron plates on the ends of the bar and slid on to the bench.
‘On three give me a lift-off.’
‘Okay.’
The father paused, his hands wrapped around the cold metal as he tried to put his mind into the right place. Any thoughts of weakness or failure or what might happen would mean he would not be able to do it. Thoughts like that would trap him under the bar. The weight would come crushing down on his chest and he would be humiliated, pinned until his son was able to come around and flick the whole thing sideways off him on to the concrete.