by Ross Watkins
He hoped that the Sydney trip might somehow bring about this last possibility – that by spending more time with other Pomeroys he might find his place in the pack. No longer outside it. A change was on the cards – he could feel it – but he had no idea what that change would resemble. All he knew was that he wanted to go back to Perth more sure about who he was, and who he could become.
*
The Pomeroy family dinner began as expected, with Glenda’s lip-kissing by the front door and Mal’s nod.
‘The circus is in town,’ Mal said, and Riley was the only one to laugh. He didn’t understand his father’s constant grumbles about Grandpa. Riley liked his grandfather’s niggly comments, the jibes. He saw in him only the old man softened by the side-effects of homebrew, not the father who once upon a time was deft at wielding a belt. Grandma Glenda had grown on Riley too – within two days he became familiar with the sound of her movements as she bustled between fridge and counter and sink and bin. The tedium of her sighs and grunts of small effort. The click of knees and lick of fingertips. These were the aspects of a person you couldn’t know by just talking on the phone on birthdays and at Christmas and every so often.
At the beginning of the night all the ladies were in the kitchen, breaking open store-bought roast chickens and bagged salad. The inevitable potato bake was in the oven, which Glenda said she made because it was Adrian’s favourite. Nguyet made cha gio and goi ga.
‘Yikes,’ Grace said, joining Riley and Tam in the lounge room. ‘Bit crazy in there.’
Tam was lying on the corduroy sofa, checking out the games on Riley’s phone.
Grace sat next to Riley on the carpet. ‘Bro, you look weird tonight,’ she said.
‘Please …’
‘No, I’m serious. You look different somehow.’
Truth was, Riley didn’t feel himself. His emotions were amplified, and his guts hurt like someone had their hands in there and was mucking about with his intestines. He wondered whether it had something to do with his uncle. He was looking forward to seeing Adrian. But Riley had anxiety a lot and it didn’t always need a reason.
‘Do you feel different?’ Grace continued.
‘A bit,’ he said. ‘Hey Tam, when’s your dad getting here?’
Tam shrugged.
‘Like, how different?’
‘Grace, leave it alone, okay?’
‘I’m not trying to be a bitch. This time.’
‘That’d be a change.’
‘She swore,’ Tam said, his face still in the phone. ‘I know how to swear in Vietnamese.’
‘Really?’ Grace sat up. ‘Give us your best one.’
‘Doi la cho de.’
Riley and Grace laughed a bit.
‘What does that mean?’ Riley said.
Tam looked up and grinned. ‘Life’s a son of a bitch.’
All three cracked up.
‘My mum says that sometimes. When she’s really mad. She says Vietnamese don’t like swearing so they don’t have many swear words.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t even reckon that should count as swearing,’ Riley said, ‘because sometimes life really is a son of a bitch.’
‘What’s all this about bitches?’
Adrian was standing in the doorway – he’d slipped in while everyone else was outside.
‘Hey, Dad,’ Tam said, monotone, not looking up.
‘Miss me?’
‘Nup,’ Tam said.
Adrian feigned a growl and came over to the lounge, grabbing the boy around his waist, then lifting him upside-down into the air. Tam giggled as the phone dropped onto the sofa and his pants slid a little. As did Adrian’s grip. Tam squealed.
‘I got you, buddy,’ Adrian said, then righted the boy and held him to his chest. ‘I wouldn’t lose you that easily.’
Glenda came in and hugged Adrian, commenting on his nose, which had a thin strip of gauze taped across it. The two of them then went out the back. Riley got up and followed. He stood at the doorway and watched his uncle do the rounds – more awkward hugs and polite words. Adrian looked at Riley a couple of times, over shoulders.
Mal poured an extra grappa and Adrian sat at the table, and they all started talking about stuff Riley had no interest in. Everyone seemed a bit uneasy. Even from the doorway Riley sensed some great big knot at the table that no one was brave enough to untie. He knew that sometimes things were better left that way, though the hurt was clear on all their faces. Despite the drinks they sipped on. Despite the food Grandma Glenda and Nguyet were carting out to the table.
Riley turned inside.
*
Adrian collected dishes and cutlery and Glenda said not to worry, that it was her job, that he should just relax, but he told her to sit and he’d take care of cleaning up. Nguyet was fussing over what Tam had and hadn’t eaten yet, and Grace was back in the lounge room watching TV. Mal and Noel were talking about the work still needing to be done on the kit car, which Riley assumed was the thing under the blue tarp behind the garage. And Wendy was giving a fair amount of attention to her wine glass, getting pretty pissy.
Riley rubbed his stomach. It felt bloated, and the fingers were in his intestines again, having a dig, so he got up and took his plate to the kitchen. Adrian was running water in the sink when he walked in and put his plate on the counter.
‘So, how’s it all going?’ Adrian said.
‘It’s okay.’
‘I mean the trans stuff. Sorry, your mum mentioned it earlier – I hope that’s okay.’
Riley shrugged.
‘So how is it, with your mum and dad and everything? They coping?’
‘Sometimes it’s hard to tell if we really are one big happy family, or if we’re all just trying really hard to make it look that way.’
‘I know what you mean.’
Riley nodded. ‘I get the impression things are a bit shitty for you at the moment.’
‘I’ll say. But hey, it brought you here so I guess it’s not all that shitty.’
Riley smiled, but felt his guts churn again. He held his stomach.
‘Toilet’s down there,’ Adrian pointed out.
Riley went to go.
‘And hey, if you just be yourself, they’ll come around eventually.’
‘Yeah. I hope you’re right,’ Riley said, and Adrian went back to the dishes.
Riley went down the hallway. Along the walls were framed family portraits – photos of Noel and Adrian when they were young boys, then as teenagers, and one of each with their wives and kids. And Grandpa Mal was right, Riley did share some of his uncle’s features: he could see it in the shape of the eyes, lips and nose. It was especially evident in the photos of Adrian around the same age as Riley was now.
Then Riley looked at their family photo. He normally avoided looking at photos like this – at the little girl he’d been not all that long ago. The truth was that little girl did know happiness, and knew it well. He wondered when she’d lost that capacity for delight, the sense of ease within herself. Before doubt was seeded. Before the frustration, the resentment coming from some place inside she couldn’t locate.
Riley shut the toilet door but took grief in with him. And when he sat he looked down, and what he saw made him shudder and cry so hard he had to lift his shirt and hold it in a bunch against his mouth.
It all broke in on him in that one moment. He screamed into the cloth.
*
‘You’ve been in there ages, bro.’ Grace knocked gently on the door. She must have heard Riley sobbing.
He tried to clear his voice to make it sound normal, but it was alarmingly girlish. ‘Where’s Mum?’
‘She went for an ice cream run. Why?’
‘I won’t come out unless Mum’s here.’
‘Why, what’s wrong? Have you been chucking up in there or so
mething? Have you crapped your pants?’
‘Grace, why do you have to be such an arsehole?’
Grace went quiet for a moment, then apologised.
‘I said I need Mum. Can you call her mobile and ask her to hurry up?’
‘I’m seriously worried now, okay? Can you just let me help you, just this once? I swear I’ll never offer to help again.’
Riley folded some toilet paper and wiped the wetness from his face as much as he could. He stood and got himself ready, then opened the door. Grace looked at him, then around the toilet. She pulled him in close. ‘What is it? Tell me.’
*
By the time they went out the back and tried to make it look as though nothing had happened, Mal and Noel were showing clear signs of being drunk.
‘Now, what’s your name, George?’ Mal said. He was looking at Riley, standing with Grace in the doorway.
Noel squinted at Riley through a smoke and grappa haze. ‘It’s Riley. You know that, Grandpa,’ he said.
‘You know, the last time you were here I swear that bloody soccer ball was glued to your friggin’ foot.’ Mal laughed. In front of him on the table was a giant bottle, almost empty.
‘And look at her now, eh?’ Noel slurred. ‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’
Riley stared at his dad so Noel stared back. Riley looked away.
‘What?’ Mal said, though it was less a word than a snort.
‘Dad …’ Grace piped up.
‘But she is, though, isn’t she? Even dressed up like a dyke.’
‘Dad, don’t—’
‘She can’t piss standing up, though, can ya?’
Riley began scratching his arm. He fought back tears.
‘Not now, Dad,’ Grace urged. ‘Please.’
‘This conversation’s got me friggin’ beat,’ Mal said.
‘Why not now, eh? She got her period or something?’
Grace looked at Riley, now scratching his arm like crazy. He met Grace’s eyes and a sob cracked from his mouth.
‘Holy hell, is that right?’ Noel went on. ‘That’s just too funny.’ Then he clapped and laughed so hard he started coughing. Soon he could no longer breathe.
Riley wanted nothing more than for that to happen.
ADRIAN
Adrian stood at his mother’s kitchen sink, tipsy, but he’d been careful not to go over the limit. He was saving himself for an escape of a different kind, and the time was fast approaching.
Wendy came in. Her heavy-lidded eyes said she’d been going harder on the drink, which was unlike the Wendy he’d known. She leant against the brown laminate benchtop. Her body seemed loose; the tension had dropped out of her.
‘Pomeroy conversation no longer pleasing you either?’ he asked. In the window, against the dark outside, he watched Wendy’s reflection.
She shook her head, pulled her glass to her mouth but didn’t sip. ‘Not sure I’ve ever been pleasured by a Pomeroy.’ She spoke over the rim of wine, her eyes sliding to some thought.
Adrian kept at the dishes. ‘Maybe I’m the wrong Pomeroy you should be talking to about that kind of thing.’
Wendy made a sound of distaste. ‘Talk? To my charming husband?’
Adrian raised an eyebrow at the reflection. ‘Then perhaps that’s something you should talk to Noo about. God knows you’d have a better chance of talking to her than I do at the moment.’
‘No, I don’t think so. Not at all.’
‘And everyone else out there wants to say something to me but nobody’s game. Everybody’s skirting the fucking obvious.’
She sipped the wine, then cradled it against her chest. ‘I don’t care what’s being said or not said, Adrian. You’re just a person, and people sometimes do things that don’t make sense until you dig a bit further, like acting on desires they didn’t know they had. Our actions are a strange sequence of events, sometimes. I mean … did you do it?’
Adrian considered his response. He rinsed a cup. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.’ She took another sip, only deeper. ‘Look, I don’t go around telling this to anyone, but Noel has never’ – she lowered her voice, almost theatrically – ‘he’s never made me orgasm. Not once, believe it or not.’
Adrian had no idea what to say to that.
‘Can you imagine what that’s like? I mean, I’m convinced I married a fucking teenage boy sometimes. He just takes what he wants, then gets up and leaves for a cigarette or for work, and if I’m lucky I’ll get some stupid text message later. I thought I was marrying an astronaut – you know, attached to the mother ship – but it turns out he’s a fucking cowboy.’
Adrian understood. Noel appeared to be the giving kind – the upright cop, going out of his way for others, putting himself in harm’s way for strangers – but this masked a selfishness beyond anything Adrian had seen in another person.
‘I’m sure you’re not like that,’ Wendy continued. ‘I’m sure Nguyet’s quite happy in that department.’
‘You’re not propositioning me, are you?’ It was half a joke. ‘Because you know I like boys now.’
She prodded his backside with a foot. ‘Don’t be a dickhead as well as a paedophile.’
They both laughed. It was good to laugh like that. It’d been a while.
Adrian finished the last dish, put it in the rack and pulled the plug. He turned to face her. She was more gratifying in the flesh. ‘Do you want to come for a drive? There’s something I need to do.’
‘Not me on the back seat, I assume.’
He hoped his expression said: Please, enough of that. ‘We could say we’re buying the kids some ice cream or something.’
Now Wendy was raising an eyebrow at him.
*
They pulled up at a small park adjacent to a two-storey house. The park had a swing set, a slide and a climbing apparatus.
Wendy leant forward, looked. ‘Is this a regular thing now?’
They’d shared a joint only one other time, the night before his wedding.
‘I try not to make a habit of it,’ Adrian said, texting on his mobile.
Next moment a window on the top floor of the two-storey house slid open and a kid clambered out onto the roof. He eased himself from the guttering onto the side fence, a tall corrugated-iron job, and jumped to the ground. Hood up, he walked over to the swings.
‘Here’s my guy,’ Adrian said. He opened the car door and walked across the road to meet him.
‘Hey, sir.’
‘Evening, Christos.’
‘Double the usual, eh?’
‘Yeah, mate, things might be tight for a while.’
‘So I hear.’ Christos looked past him to Wendy in the car. ‘Plus you got company.’
Adrian turned to see Wendy, her face lit by the stereo LEDs. He liked the fact that she was along for the ride. He somehow felt safer with Wendy around. She was looking straight at the two of them.
‘She’s family. She’s okay.’
Christos seemed fine with this, although it was difficult to see any kind of expression beneath the hoodie.
‘Okay, so double the stuff is double the usual price.’
‘Of course,’ Adrian said.
‘No sympathy discounts or nothin’.’
‘Sure. And you’re on a good deal with this buyer so I don’t see why you’d want that to change.’
‘Yeah, well, you know the price of me keeping my mouth shut about our set-up.’
‘And you know that I could bring you down for dealing to the Year Ten boys on school grounds.’
Christos looked back up at his bedroom window. The light was on. No movement. He turned back around, snorted, then spat a long tendon of saliva on the swing seat beside him. ‘Well, credibility and shit, hey.’
Adria
n understood. Recent events had certainly deteriorated any advantage he had in this arrangement. ‘Can’t argue with that, I guess,’ he said.
‘So is it true what they’re saying?’
‘Depends on what’s being said.’
‘That you and Akker sucked each other off in the library quiet study zone.’
Adrian shook his head. Back over in the car Wendy was no longer watching. ‘No, that’s bullshit.’
‘That’s what I was thinking, sir. Actually, there’s a lot of people saying the same as me. Heaps of people say Akker’s making shit up.’
‘Really?’
‘Totally.’
This confirmed what Rafiq had said, but it also appeared Adrian had supporters.
‘Interesting,’ he replied.
‘Yeah, well, let’s do this, hey? I gotta get back inside before my mum realises and shit.’
‘Sure,’ he said, and passed over his cash for the baggy of weed.
*
They pulled up at a park in Holroyd. Adrian sometimes brought Tam here to ride their bikes, but tonight he and Wendy sat on the pier overlooking a duck pond with a dribbly fountain. Adrian rolled a joint, lit it and handed it to Wendy.
She drew on it gently. ‘How are we going to mask the smell? Noel’s going to have a fit. He can detect marijuana from a kilometre away.’
‘Well, it looks like we might be putting that ability to the test tonight.’
She passed it back to Adrian, who drew hard. ‘Perhaps his powers are fading,’ she said. ‘Something’s not right with him lately.’
‘Just lately? Something’s always been not right with Noel … Sorry, I don’t mean to disrespect your decision to marry the bloke, but as his brother I think I can say with a reasonable degree of authority that he’s never exactly been settled. Sometimes he manages to create a convincing façade.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I mean, I love him, I’m just worried about where it’s all going. He’s become uncommunicative. Unless you count grunting. Which I guess you can, but it’s not exactly conducive to a healthy relationship.’
Adrian drew on the spliff again. He felt the familiar warmth sweep into his lungs, his heart accelerating, yet as he exhaled, his body slowly undid itself, as though all its ligaments and tendons became elongated, supple. He passed it back. ‘Did something happen on the job?’ he asked. ‘He must have to deal with some pretty grim stuff.’