by Carl Nixon
His son was looking down at him.
His father sucked in air. ‘Okay. One, two, three!’
Even with his elbows locked straight the bar felt tremendously heavy. More than his own body-weight hanging above him. He watched it tremble as though a breeze had entered the garage. And then, slowly, he lowered it. He felt the crushing weight trying to rush down on to him, through him, but he held it. For a moment the bar touched his chest and bent his ribs inwards, and then he was trying to push it up and away.
It was too heavy. He got it so far, a hand’s width, and then it stopped. He trembled and strained, his face red. His teeth ground together and his lips pulled back. His eyes screwed down into puckered holes.
‘Push. Push!’
He heard his son’s voice, but he was inside himself wrestling in his head with the weight. He felt it paused like a video picture, almost frozen, flickering between falling back and going forward. He felt his arms begin to shake, his muscles shiver and spasm. He knew that he was holding his breath and that was wrong but he had to. He had to have everything behind the weight, even the air. It all counted. He had to push it away.
Push.
Push.
Push.
Away.
Back up to where his son was waiting.
He felt something deep inside himself rip and tear. He was not precisely sure where it was, just somewhere deep in him, in his gut. A stabbing that twisted inside him. He heard himself cry out, all the trapped air flying out of him up into the shadows above. The weight fell back.
And then his son was helping him. Pulling the weight up and away from him. And then it was gone.
‘You okay, Dad? Dad?’
He lay with his eyes closed. There were small silver lights blinking on and off in the darkness. He opened his eyes and his son’s face hung above him where the weight had just been. He closed his eyes again.
‘What is it? Are you okay?’
He lay for a time as if he was getting his breath back, and then he sat up. The pain moved inside him, sliding sideways like a living thing.
‘Yeah. Think I just pulled a muscle. I should have warmed up more. Reckon I’ll call it quits for tonight, eh?’ He did not look up into his son’s eyes.
‘You sure you’re okay?’
‘Fine. I’ll be good as gold in a few minutes.’
The father stood up and left the garage. He walked slowly. He was not breathing hard but sweat stood out on the darker skin beneath his eyes and on the slope of his nose. He did not want to go inside yet. Instead he walked over and stood next to the old pear tree. Behind him he could hear his son unloading the plates and pulling the bench press back into the corner. The metal legs scraped over the pale concrete. After a few minutes his son turned out the garage light and pulled down the door. Neither of them spoke, and the father did not look around.
After his son had walked back to the house and the door had closed, he stood alone in the darkness with only the light from the naked bulb. Deep inside him he could still feel the pain, small and sharp like a sliver of cold metal. Above him the stars were hard to see through the naked branches of the pear tree and he thought about how he would have to get around to taking it out. It was old and gave no pears that were worth eating. The night was bitter and in the morning he knew there would be frost on the grass.
Family Life
afterwards we went out to the kitchen and Maureen made me some eggs for breakfast. We’d only been together a couple of weeks. Short enough anyway that I still enjoyed watching her move around the place. She was wearing an old silk dressing gown with a picture of a crane on the back. It was frayed around the edges but still looked good on her. I remember, she had bare feet. Maureen moved from the fridge to the counter with a carton of eggs. She broke half a dozen into a glass bowl and whipped them up with a fork, and then she saw that I was watching her.
‘What are you looking at?’
‘You. Just thinking how good you look.’
She huffed air out through her nose and kept on whipping the egg. ‘Hope you like your eggs well cooked.’
‘Sure. That’s fine.’
She served them up on toast and then sat down opposite me at the table.
I was still looking at her. ‘So what have you got planned today?’
She blinked slowly. ‘You don’t have to hang around, you know.’
‘Sure. No. But I thought you might want to drive out somewhere. Go for a drive out of town.’
She looked sceptically towards the window where the day showed through overcast. It must have been nearly eleven already. Watching her, I reckoned that maybe she was thirty-seven or thirty-eight but it was hard to tell exactly and of course I hadn’t asked. Those thin lines that smokers get were just starting to spread up from the edge of her top lip like collapsed under-runners. From the look on her face I could tell she was still undecided about going for a ride.
‘I’ve got nothing I’ve gotta do today,’ I said to encourage her. ‘How about we drive out to the beach. We could have a picnic.’
She looked towards the window again and shrugged. ‘Why not. But don’t expect me to make any food. This lot’s all you get, okay.’
After we’d finished eating, Maureen changed into a pair of black jeans and a pink fluffed-up top that I didn’t think suited her. I didn’t say anything, although I would have if we’d been together longer — but that top, it made her look like she was trying too hard to look younger than she was. We took my car which I’d cleaned and vacuumed the day before. The leather had that good new smell, and as we drove through town I was suddenly feeling better than I had in a long time. The radio was playing songs I remembered from when I first left school and started working, back before my divorce, when things had looked more promising. I reached over and put my hand on Maureen’s knee.
‘I’ve just gotta do something, okay,’ she said. ‘It’ll only take five minutes, promise. Just turn left up here.’
She gave me directions through the eastern suburbs until I pulled the car up outside an old bay villa in a street close to the industrial part of town. No one had bothered painting the house in years or even mowing the lawns, and the guttering sagged down in places. It was what real estate agents would call a ‘handyman’s dream’. Maureen got out without a word and started up the path. I was curious and shadowed her around to the back door, expecting her to tell me to go back to the car. She didn’t say anything, though. When she went in without knocking I followed.
Inside, the house was dim and the air carried the musty thickness of dogs past and present. I walked behind her through to the kitchen. A small dark-haired girl sat in the corner watching The Wizard of Oz on video. Even from where I was standing on the other side of the room I could hear the kid breathing. A slow rasp like someone filing the edge of a piece of sheet-metal. She looked up as we came in and then looked back at the screen.
I stood by the door and watched as Maureen went over and picked up the girl. ‘Hello, there, Pumpkin. You been a good girl?’ The little girl nodded and coughed deeply as if Maureen’s picking her up had loosened something in her chest. ‘What you been doing then?’
‘We killed a mouse. Phil picked it up and threw it over the fence.’
Maureen frowned. ‘Well, honey, maybe that mouse was only sleeping.’
The little girl gave her a look like that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. ‘It was dead. Phil hit it flat with his shoe.’
Maureen sighed and nodded and put the girl down. She went over and pulled the yellowed curtains away from the windows above the kitchen sink. There was leftover food on plates on the table and there was a bar-heater by the girl but where I was standing it was as cold as it was outside, maybe even colder. Maureen flicked on the jug and got down a packet of instant coffee from a cupboard without having to search.
She looked at me. ‘You want a cup?’
‘Sure.’ I was keen to keep driving out to the beach but reckoned there was no point in pushing.
We were sitting drinking coffee and watching the video with the girl when a door closed somewhere in the house and a guy came to the door of the room and stood there looking in. He was short but not fat, with the wiry look that little guys have who keep the weight off by smoking or exercising a lot. The most distinctive thing about him was his hair. At some point he’d had hair plugs planted across the top of his brow to disguise his receding hair. Now that he was bald as a monk, the plugs were marooned there in the front like a row of pine trees on a barren ridge.
‘My my, isn’t this a pleasant family picture.’
Maureen frowned at him. ‘Don’t start anything stupid, Phil. I’m just here to check on Angela.’
‘Sure you’re not here to check up on me?’
‘Just leave it alone, Phil.’
He came into the room, walking the way little guys do who want to seem bigger than they really are. He still hadn’t so much as looked at me, and Maureen didn’t introduce me or bother explaining what I was doing there in the kitchen drinking his coffee. It made me feel awkward. Phil sat down opposite, looking at Maureen who stood up and started making him a coffee without him asking. He watched her with a sort of half-smile.
At last he floated his eyes across to me. ‘That your Nissan parked out the front?’
‘Yeah.’ And then because I didn’t want to offend him I said, ‘I’ve only had it a few months.’
‘Right. I’ve been thinking of getting one of those myself.’
Behind me Maureen breathed out suddenly. ‘Is that right, Phil? Are you gunna buy yourself a new car, are you?’
I twisted in my seat to look at her and was sorry that I had. Her face had hardened up so that she looked mean and older than I thought she was.
She looked back at me. ‘Phil’s lucky if he can afford new shoes.’
I wished she hadn’t brought me into it, but Phil acted as if she hadn’t said anything. ‘How’s she run?’
‘Fine. No problems at all so far.’
Phil nodded like I’d told him everything there was to know about cars. ‘And a reasonable price I bet.’
‘Sure. Not too bad considering.’
There was no mistaking that he was the girl’s father. They had the same brown eyes. Large eyes that curved down sleepily at the corners. Those eyes suited the girl, but somehow looked out of place on a wiry little guy like Phil with tattoos showing below the sleeves of his T-shirt.
‘So whatdya do for a crust?’ he asked.
‘I’m an electrician.’
‘Much work on, is there?’
‘A fair bit. There’s a lot of new houses going up.’
‘Christsake, Phil,’ said Maureen, sounding tired more than angry. ‘Whatdya need to know for? We’re just here to check on Angela and then we’re going.’
‘I’m just being social.’ But he didn’t ask me any more questions. He sat running his fingers over the wooden tabletop, caressing it like he was feeling for a flaw in the surface. I tried not to stare at the row of plugs across the front of his head.
Maureen brought Phil his coffee and then went and sat on the floor behind the girl, her legs out in front on either side, and started stroking the kid’s hair. We all sat in silence and listened to the song about the yellow brick road.
When we’d finished our coffee, Phil asked where we were headed and I told him out to the beach. ‘How about taking Angela and me along? We’ve been cooped up here and I reckon a walk along the beach would do her good.’
I looked over at Maureen for help. She just shrugged and looked away like she didn’t care one way or the other. Of course I didn’t want to take them along. My plan had been to go with Maureen to the beach, maybe have a picnic and lie down together on a private spot in the dunes. If it had just been Phil asking to tag along I could have turned him down flat, but of course the girl was all rolled up with him.
‘We were just going to take a walk.’
‘A walk’s just what we need isn’t it, Ange?’
The girl kept staring at the screen, aware that no reply was necessary.
I looked from Phil to the kid and then back at Maureen. The truth is I’ve never been good at saying no to people’s faces. ‘Sure. Why not?’
Which was how I found myself driving out to the beach with Maureen next to me in the passenger seat and Phil and the girl sitting in the back. The girl stared out the window and asked what things were and Maureen told her. Obvious things mostly, like advertising billboards and later clumps of toi toi and cattle-stops. I got the feeling that she already knew the answers but liked Maureen to explain. Phil didn’t say a single word beyond complimenting me on how tidy I kept the inside of the car until we passed the sawmill on the edge of town out by the oxidation ponds.
‘That’s where I used to work. Harbidges’ Lumber. For ten years I worked there.’
Maureen went all tight lipped again and turned her head to stare out the window. I looked at Phil in the rearview mirror. ‘Is that right?’
‘It was good work until they got a new foreman a few years ago. That fat bastard had it in for me.’
‘Sure. I know the type.’
‘Kept harping on about every little thing that I did. Nothing was good enough for him.’
‘Some blokes are like that.’
In the mirror I saw Phil’s eyes flick towards the back of my head as though he was checking to see if I was taking the mickey. ‘In the end he arranged it for me to get the sack. After ten years I didn’t even get any redundancy.’
I nodded and muttered something I hoped sounded sympathetic. I also hoped that Phil had finished talking. I wasn’t in the mood for his talk. I guess that even then I was thinking it might be possible to salvage something from the trip. Maureen and I might still get to spend some time alone. The girl coughed again, lots of little coughs that ran together into a deep hack. It was a strange sound coming from such a small kid, an old man’s cough. A pack-a-day-for-forty-years cough. I wondered if anyone had thought to take her to the doctor’s but didn’t think it was my place to say anything.
Maureen looked across at me. ‘I haven’t been to the beach for ages. I used to all the time when I was younger, but I haven’t been for ages and ages.’ She smiled and reached over and put her hand on top of mine where it was holding the gear stick. In the rear-view mirror I could see Phil watching us.
Mine was the only car in the expanse of tarseal that overlooked the beach. In January you couldn’t get a park here, but now we were the only ones. The sun was starting to show through the clouds every now and then, and I thought that it might not be too bad even with Phil and the girl. I had forgotten about the wind though. As soon as we got out of the car the onshore easterly breeze cut into our skin.
‘It’s all right,’ said Maureen. ‘We’ve got more clothes.’ She fished some jackets out of the bag she’d packed back at Phil’s house and helped the girl dress. I got an old coat I used in winter on building sites out of the boot. Only Phil didn’t dress for the wind. He was still wearing the black jeans and the T-shirt he’d been wearing at the house, and I wondered how he could stand the cold. He waited next to my car while we dressed, and then we all walked down the track to the sand, the girl and me and Maureen in the front and Phil trailing behind.
I was surprised but the girl perked up straight away. She found a stick and began drawing big pictures in the sand. The tide was out and the wind was flattening the tops off the breakers. Phil walked ahead up the beach towards the rocks, and Maureen and I followed slowly. When he was far enough ahead I took her hand and pulled her close. I kissed her on the lips. Maureen’s mouth was warm and I slipped my hand inside her jacket so that it cupped one breast. She didn’t move my hand away or step back. After a while, Maureen put her arm around my waist underneath my jacket and tucked herself in close.
As we walked, the girl ran down to the edge of the water, occasionally shouting back at us to look at things she’d found washed up.
‘I’m sorry abou
t Phil.’
‘It’s okay. I don’t mind. I could’ve said no.’
‘He beat up that foreman. Waited for him one day outside his house and then beat him senseless with a soft-ball bat. Phil was lucky he didn’t kill him.’
‘What happened?’
‘Phil lied at the trial said that the guy had threatened to hurt me and Angela. But he still got two years. He’s only been out a few months.’
I looked towards where Phil was climbing nimbly over the rocks which marked the end of the beach. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine him waiting in the shadows down the side of someone’s house, an angry little man with a baseball bat and a chip on his shoulder. As I watched, Phil turned and started waving urgently back at us. He’d obviously found something and seemed excited. He called out but his words were blown inland by the wind.
Maureen sighed and moved apart from me, and we walked across the sand to the rocks, and then over them towards where Phil was standing. She walked carefully as though every rock wasn’t to be trusted and might move beneath her feet. I followed her, and the girl followed us all.
Phil had found a seal tangled in part of a fishing net. There was a terrible smell and at first I thought it was dead. It lay there black and still and stinking, covered in flies, but as I moved closer it opened one eye and looked at me.
‘It’s tangled up,’ said Phil unnecessarily. And then to me, ‘Give me a hand and we can get the net off.’
The truth was if I’d been alone I probably would have kept right on walking. The seal stank, and there were flies and other crawling insects. I could see at least two deep cuts on its flank, probably from the rocks, and I could tell that the net was wrapped good and tight around its flippers and head. Any fool could see it was pretty close to being dead. But Phil was already down beside it, pulling at the net, and so I joined him.
I used the work knife I always kept on my belt for electrical work to cut away at the nylon. Although the seal lay still, I was wary and stayed well down from the business end. Behind me, Maureen was explaining to the girl what we were doing, that we were trying to help the seal. The girl stood still and stared at us with her large brown eyes.