They lacked the glamour of films with strong female leads, which was disappointing, but they were shot competently enough and held my interest sufficiently for me not to fall asleep, even though it was approaching eleven by the time they’d finished. At the pace of about one centimetre per hour, I’d edged my way towards Mal on the couch but still we never touched. My continual (forced) yawning was meant to encourage an offer of lying across his lap, but it failed.
‘Man’s man,’ was all Mal said during the credits of Magnum Force. ‘And one of the best ever.’
I had expected Mal to be the type who talked all the way through a movie but had been grossly mistaken. He sat there in complete silence, barely moving a muscle as the plot unravelled, not even letting out a sound in the exciting or surprising parts.
‘You chose good,’ I said to him, meaning it. ‘I didn’t think I would like them all that much.’
‘My old man is a bit of a movie freak too, eh, bro? Loved the shit. I borrowed them off him last time I went home.’
‘Mum doesn’t get many flowers,’ I said, unsure why.
‘Well, I can’t understand that, eh?’
‘I worry about her sometimes . . .’
Heh heh heh. ‘But you’re just a kid, fella, you should leave the worrying to us grown-ups.’
‘It’s just us though, always has been, even before my Pa died. Mum’s a bit . . . well she gets lonely. She can get a bit carried away, you know? Lets her mind take her to places she shouldn’t go.’
‘Hey, Tom, seriously, mate. You need to chill out a bit. She’s a woman, bro, not your kid sister. Your mum’s real smart, and tough, she knows how to look after herself.’
‘I know that, I’m not stupid!’
‘No, I’d never say that, bro.’
‘If you say so,’ I said and followed it with a genuine yawn. ‘I need to go to bed.’
‘Hey, yeah, okay bro.’ Heh heh heh. ‘Maybe see you in the morning, eh?’
‘Thanks for the movies. Maybe I’ll choose next time, though.’
Heh heh heh.
I brushed my teeth, got into fresh pyjamas and climbed into my mother’s bed. This was pure force of habit and even though I knew Mal was home, I lay there wondering what would happen next. I listened to Mal make the noises of a man in a house with which he was unfamiliar: fumbling with the TV remote to find the right station; shuffling out to the fridge to look unsuccessfully for something to eat; doing a piss without pulling the chain on Pa’s old cistern. My thoughts turned to Spencer, and how disappointing it was to see him walk off with Simon Harlen, Fitz and the gang. Surely he could see I was better than all of them? What I wouldn’t give to relive that night, to have pretended I hadn’t discovered those magazines of Pa’s, covered them over with harmless debris and come back to them at some other time when I was alone. I knew I needed to talk to Spencer; it was stupid to just let him drift away. If I could just casually explain the misunderstanding then surely we could pick back up right where we’d left it.
I eventually fell to sleep and dreamed vividly of Katharine Hepburn. In it, she was old and shaky, regal – but she was sitting next to me at school and pretending not to notice I was staring at her longingly. In her face I could see a resemblance to my uncle Vincent, the familiar contours, the same skin tone and angle of the eyes. She looked at me just like Mum did, a look of acceptance and blind devotion; no matter what I was ever capable of, whatever became of me, she’d always think the best of me.
When I woke it was still dark and I struggled to gauge how long I’d been asleep. I could hear the sound of the toilet water bubbling away, followed by a loud burp. Mal walked into the bedroom wearing only his underwear, his eyes bleary from watching too much television. The glow of my mother’s neon clock was bright enough for Mal to see me staring at him.
‘Jesus Christ, Tom. What are you doing in here, mate? Scared the far – hell out of me, eh?’
I was still groggy from the dream, my voice hoarse. ‘Sorry,’ I croaked. ‘I wasn’t . . . I always sleep here!’
‘Mate, you’re getting too old to sleep with your mum. You have your own bed, eh? You want me to carry you in there?’
I so desperately wanted for that to happen but I knew it would have been the wrong thing, a disloyalty to Mum. ‘No.’ I yawned.
‘Mate, I reckon you need to get in your own bed, eh?’
‘But when Mum comes home, she’ll expect me to be here.’
‘I’ll talk to her when I go pick her up. I’ll let her know that you’re next door. You’re too old to sleep with your mum, eh, mate? Don’t you want your own space?’
I got out from my side of the bed and walked past him without speaking, brushing past the hairiness of his arms. Mal ran his fingers through his hair and yawned silently.
‘Hey, mate,’ he said, looking at me over his shoulder, ‘you want me to stay with you for a bit, or something?’
‘No! I’m not a baby,’ I snapped.
‘Yeah, fair enough, eh?’ Heh heh heh.
Thirteen
Hanna, who’d dropped her second H some years before, decided we would meet at a park on the harbour foreshore. It was a warm morning without sunshine, sticky to the skin, threatening rain. I came prepared to charm Bankes with a book about tractors and other farm machines, a last-minute grab from the poor selection at the local newsagent. But I needn’t have worried about his reaction, as Hanna chose not to bring him.
‘His dad wanted QT,’ was all she said.
Hanna had applied for a new job, one she felt was out of her depth but her due, regardless. Her career helped keep Hanna grounded and she’d been through about fifteen jobs since we’d left university. With each new role, I was shy and reserved meeting the new company or cast, holding back until I’d sized everyone up, so I marvelled at Hanna’s positivity when starting new jobs, settling into one of those workplaces where she knew no one would become a true friend and they’d see her aloofness as a reason to keep things superficial.
‘My current boss is such a sycophant,’ she was saying, ‘you have no idea the lengths this guy will go to to lick arse. He has this singsong voice that’s all sweetness and fairy wings and his bosses just love him. I don’t think he has ever pushed back on a single request and when he’s providing a critique of my work he spends the first ten minutes telling me how wonderful it is before skirting around a suggestion as harrowing as changing the first letter of a certain word to a capital. Tears well in his eyes at any hint of confrontation.’
‘Sounds entirely ghastly. Is he a poofter?’
‘No. He has this perfect wife and a perfect house and two children who look like they’re from one of those horror films, you know the ones?’
I took a sip of my lukewarm wine and nodded. Hanna had prepared, to my astonishment, an actual picnic basket full of picnic-type foods and instructed me to bring some wine that struggled to stay cool against the humidity of the day.
‘So I need to get out, because he sure as hell isn’t going anywhere and I can’t stand to spend too many more days looking at that sweet dimpled smile of his. There’s such a thing as too nice, you know?’
‘Fuck yeah, I mean, what a cunt, how dare he?’
She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’
Hanna put some cold meat and cheese on a roll for me, wrapped it in a paper towel and handed it across the picnic blanket.
‘Thanks, Mum.’
‘Well I figure if you’re going off and leaving me I might as well try and make it a semi-memorable send off. Me doing something for you, as sickening as that is.’
‘Total sycophant.’
I asked Hanna about motherhood. She wasn’t the type of mother to send photos randomly, or post gaga updates on Facebook. For all intents and purposes, the average person wouldn’t even know she had a kid. Like most wannabe parents, I think Hanna was assuming it would give her life a more concrete foundation for the second act. She spoke about Bankes with love and . . . well, practi
cality was the only other word that sprang to mind. This was a challenge she’d willingly taken on and now she was going to deliver on her responsibilities as best she could. My own experiences of child raising had been significantly less hands-on and I’d never had a conscious moment in my life where I thought being a parent was something I wanted, something I’d be good at, or something that would make an iota of difference to how I lived my life, or at least, what meaning it gave to my life. Most often, the toddler Lexi made me squirm and I found myself watching parents in public places and thinking only Why the fuck have we subjected ourselves to this? Various ex-colleagues of mine had swung in and out of my life with children in tow and it was easy to see who was stuffing up their poor kids by being more friend than disciplinarian and breaking like a well-dried twig to their brat’s every whim. At least in leaving Lexi I hadn’t subjected her to all of my flaws. In photos, Bankes appeared well adjusted, a happy kid, albeit one in a world that seemed entirely his own.
‘How’s Jakob?’ I ventured.
She sighed. ‘Absent, mostly.’
‘You’re okay though?’
‘With what?’
‘Everything.’
‘It’s funny, you know. I wasn’t dissatisfied with life before Bankes but it just all felt so pointless. Without being a bitch about it, I was selfish. I had my own space, my own money, I could go wherever I wanted and travel whenever I wanted. But something was lacking, or so I thought. And being a mother is well . . . it’s just not that different, you know? There was no miraculous moment when life just suddenly made sense. I’ve replaced one sort of monotony for another, only now I get zero time to myself and it’s slowly driving me insane.’
‘You just need to get to school age. Trust me as much as you can on this. I so wish I’d stuck it out with Lexi. I’m such a fool for running like I did. Babies and shit, you know? Ugh. I just loathed every second of it. But I missed out on watching Lexi turn into a real person, develop thoughts of her own, respond to me as a little person instead of the alien she was as a baby. I don’t think I will ever forgive myself for that.’
‘School just seems so far away . . .’
‘He’ll be eighteen before you know it and then you and I will be all Absolutely Fabulous all over again.’
We talked about Sydney. Property prices continued to bulge like sweatpants on a suburban mum and we both wondered how long it would be until they burst at the seams. Last month Hanna’s parents had sold their inner west home for two million, some five hundred thousand more than they had bought it for three years earlier, and without having done a single thing to improve it. Hanna and Jakob had also just forked out close to a million for a two-bedroom renovator not much further out and it had holes in the floorboards and a rotting roof. Both sets of parents had pooled in a more than deposit-sized sum. Lucky bitch; my mother wouldn’t have been able to contribute one week of my rent. I insisted there was nothing wrong with renting and Hanna said there was if you were trying to build a home for your child’s security. Gone were the days of Hanna’s savings contributing to a chain-smoking style of travel – she was never without an itinerary in her hand before this whole family caper got in the way. Motherhood had stamped out her selfishness and I wasn’t altogether pleased about its amplifying effects.
‘I think I’m falling in love . . .’
‘With who?’
‘Don’t be a smart-arse.’
‘Here we go again.’ She pretended to bite the edge of her wine glass.
‘Please don’t judge me, it’s not the same as all the rest – this time is different, I promise.’
‘Okay, I won’t judge if you can tell me how it’s different. Why do you think you’re in love with this particular specimen?’
‘Because I dread the thought of him not being around.’
She made the noise of a buzzer. ‘That answer is incorrect. That’s not love, that’s lust. Try again.’
‘Because I can never say the right words when I’m in his presence, he has me all kerfuffled.’
‘Let’s explore that further, shall we? In our first year of university you claimed to be similarly affected by a waiter with blue eyes, a boy in your theatre history tutorial with blue eyes, a boy you started chatting to as you passed him on a certain bridge . . . also with blue eyes. Does Mal have blue eyes?’
‘Oh god, please don’t bring everything back to Mal, there are some things I’d rather forget, okay? Why the fuck do you always have to be so right? Don’t you ever get tired of it? I certainly do.’
‘Nope.’ She gave a self-satisfied chuckle. ‘Contestant number three?’
‘The answer is: it’s not love.’
She clapped her hands together slowly. ‘It’s the hockey team factor, my dear. When you were seventeen, one of the players took pity on your sorry arse and you mistook it for love, which is why you ended up in hospital after the whole team used you for a puck. When you were twenty-two, you fell for a serial polygamist who used you as a taxi service – and I don’t only mean that crappy Datsun you had back then. Now Damon – let’s face it – sure he might have a pretty face but there’s not all that much going on upstairs. And you’re what? Twenty years older than him? Let’s just say he admits it’s something more than a freebie place to stay. He moves in. What on earth are you two going to talk about after year one? And when he hits his thirties, and comes to that strange I need to settle down now phase, just as all men do, is he going to want someone in his fifties? And ask yourself this too: when his looks start to fade, what will be left behind? I’ll tell you what – a dependant. Someone for you to look after. And he’ll be appreciative, might even blow you from time to time, but he’s not going to love you for it. Eventually he’ll resent you for it and where does that leave you? Blah blah blah, you know how the fable unfolds.’
‘For the record he’s twenty-four but yes, I defer to your superior wisdom. You really ought to take your show on the road. “Aunty Gay” or something like that.’
‘Nah, it’s only you I can help because you’ve been on the same misery-go-round ever since I met you. I’ve got news for you: the carny never stops this ride, so if you don’t leap off, you’ll be on it forever. So the answer’s simple: if he’s really under your skin, pause poor Puppy’s paws in your pores.’ She was immensely proud of her little rhyme despite it hardly making sense and chuckled, so I reached over and punched her in the arm.
The truth of the matter was Damon was ignoring me. I had not heard from him since he’d left my flat that morning. Oh, he sometimes responded to a text or a voice message with a one-word reply that seemed to have no bearing whatsoever on what I’d said. I offered to let him stay in my flat via a tentatively worded voice message and after three days he sent a text that said, Vanilla. I immediately sent three question marks in reply but needless to say it went no further and for hours on end I tried to work out what he’d meant, or if in fact it was even meant for me. More recently when I texted that I was flying out in a few weeks and did he want to meet for a drink to get my keys he wrote back (quickly this time) Dresser. Which I could only interpret as where to leave payment for a hooker.
‘Do you have any of these problems with Jakob?’ I said to shift the focus off me.
At odd moments, Hanna’s life became a fantasy for me and I imagined myself the dutiful housewife and Hanna single again, exploring the world, pitying me for the compromises I’d made. Hanna had thought that Bankes’s existence would encourage her husband to be home more, but that hadn’t transpired. On paper they had a successful life, but spiritually it was as full as a retiree’s optimism.
Rain started to patter onto the rubber-backed blanket, so we moved it to shelter beneath a tree, but the space was home to a swarm of mosquitoes and we were instantaneously under attack. We went to sit in Hanna’s car to finish the last of the wine (well, I did, as she was driving), scratching at our fresh welts. Her car was filthy and smelled like melted sugar treats, stale bread and nappies.
‘W
here is this all leading?’ she asked as she gazed out at the frenetic activity of a park packing up in the rain.
‘Sometimes I wish I knew, but mostly not.’
‘Did you ever think in our university days that we’d be here?’
‘No.’ I drained the plastic cup and looked at her. ‘But it’s not all bad, is it?’
‘Not all. Things could be a lot worse, I suppose.’
‘Yes, just look at Lana,’ I said.
Fourteen
Mal was around for another morning to drive me to school. It was a stinking hot day already, the air thick with humidity, distant dark clouds threatening an afternoon storm. Mal was wearing blue shorts and a tight singlet that made the roll of his lower belly more pronounced. His arms were wide but unshaped, and the hair under them was so thick it looked as though there was no skin beneath. I’d heard my mother making love to this man just a few hours before, lying in bed, mesmerised, ashamed to be overhearing but too fearful of being caught out as a voyeur to make a move to block out the sounds. Afterwards, Mum’s mood was unbelievably light and for this I was thankful. It was a far cry from the nights after Pa’s death when she’d cried herself to sleep like an inconsolable baby. Mal was thoughtful and considerate around the house, too. He didn’t leave his crap lying about, he always helped clear away the dishes and offered to help me with outside chores. And he was clean.
Unlike most of my mother’s callers, Mal wasn’t afraid to engage in conversation with me; he was genuinely interested in my movie index cards and gave no indication that he was judging me unfavourably. Being dropped at the school gate by him filled me with a sense of pride and I hoped Harlen and the rest of them had caught a glimpse of Mal, who for sure would not take any shit from any of them, or their dads.
Tom Houghton Page 14