The Family Men

by Catherine Harris

  “You only swore four times?” says Father Murphy. “And you’ve been here three times in as many weeks. Is there something troubling you, son? We’ve been seeing a lot of you lately.”

  It is a fair question. He and his brother have always gone to church but only so often that they can’t be accused of not going, their mother at pains to stress that the choice of St Augustine secondary college was less about her spiritual beliefs than her interest in them receiving a private-school education; their father’s public profile affording them privileged status, the school happy to offer heavily discounted fees if it could claim the old man as one of its own.

  Harry tries to answer the priest, saying something about girls, about how everyone’s obsessed with them, like Dean, watching his big over-muscled body lumbering after this woman at the pub, twirling her under his arm, then nearly tripping on the dance floor as he stumbled after her, how it was like witnessing a car accident, the way he pursued her, an absolute train wreck, the stark loneliness of that one-on-one play. Knowing it would never happen on the field (one in, all in!), how even if the team was losing, there was a unity in the side, a sense of pulling together, everyone knowing which position they were supposed to take, who they were dogging, who they were defending, whose back they were supposed to have. But it doesn’t come out right. Finally he stops. “That’s all, Father. Thank you, Father. Everything’s fine. Amen.”

  Alan is poised to go in as Harry comes out, an eager commuter late for work.

  Harry counts parishioners as he waits for his dad, noting that the girl who’d blown him the kiss just before is now sitting with the Tiptons. She isn’t their daughter, Erica, is she? He doesn’t recognise her at all. Two teenage boys sit on the other side of the aisle, near the side exit, watching him watching her, the seconds dragging. As he and his father leave, the two boys approach them with footy cards to sign. “No problem,” says Harry, scrawling his name across his picture. The old man is flustered but Harry is ready – often as not he forgets his watch but he usually remembers a pen. He doesn’t want to think about sex anymore and yet sex is all that he can think about, images of naked women in compromising positions populating his imagination, intruding on his thoughts as attentiveness might intrude on a dream so that it becomes impossible to keep dreaming without becoming aware of its own violability. Masturbating in the bathroom. A model from a Kmart catalogue. The neighbour’s Jack Russell running up and down the side of the house, yapping, as he is showing her a thing or two, and then right at the crucial moment her face morphing into Andrea’s, the Club’s yoga instructor, with her impossibly chipper grin. He experiences a sensation almost like pain. And then it is over. He is free of it again as his heart beats so loudly he expects he should be able to hear it thump above the barking, the emptiness of the bathroom like the emptiness of a football stadium an hour after the game. Thinking of running through drills on cold winter mornings, frozen grass snapping beneath muddy stops, the way his coach always says he has quick hands. He smiles to himself, the crude irony, as he wipes his come off the toilet rim, his mind white-hot, an electric blur, everything shimmery like a mirage, the whoosh of nothingness howling around him like the wind.

  The shed out the back of the house is set up as a makeshift gym. It is nothing much: a bench press, some weights, a “strive” motivational poster on the wall. The place has a strong whiff of fertiliser about it, a combination of Blood & Bone and dirty socks that can be overwhelming on a hot day. Harry pulls back the latch, the rich loamy scent greeting him like a punch in the face.

  Here, at least, he can leave the rest of the world behind.

  He gets started with some warm-ups: star-jumps, squats, push-ups. Those standbys he’s been doing since he was a kid. The Under 9s lined up on the school asphalt, leaping and bending, handballing back and forth, the teacher yelling “both hands, both hands” until the action became rote.

  That’s his skill, what he’s always had over the others. The way he can zero in, shut out anything in the moment that he doesn’t need. Doing circle work, Eddy testing him with a misdirected ball to his face, the same crap he’s been pulling since they were in kindergarten, but Harry catches it and pumps it on, his reflexes as twitchy as a prize fighter’s.

  Everything in the shed is just as he left it the previous afternoon, the barbell in the same position against the wall, his lifting gloves on the stepladder. He and his father usually take turns spotting for each other, assiduously recording their progress in an exercise book bound with a grubby rubber band, each figure written in pencil, never pen, insists his father, because too much is already indelible – mistakes can be made but ink is not easily amended. Harry dutifully dates the top of the page and gets to work on his abdominals.

  Two hundred sit-ups and ten sets of the plank later – one minute on, one minute off – until his muscles are burning, he stops and scrutinises his naked midriff.

  Neither he nor his father is really designed for the kind of muscle mass promoted on the back of FastShake, the powdered protein supplement they’ve taken to spooning into their milk each morning. Years of playing football has added some bulk to their frames, but left to its own devices fuel rapidly turns to fat. No amount of training will ever result in the sculpted definition depicted on the product label. They are too run-of-the-mill for that. Extraordinary footballers, yes, but as athletic all-rounders, not quite extraordinary enough.

  Still, they strive, like the poster encourages, periodically adjusting their weights, increasing their repetitions, filling the ledger with smudged notations detailing their progress. More kilos here. Fewer kilos there. Loading up for a few days then a day or two off to relax: that’s how you do it, he’s been instructed, it is important to give the muscles a rest in between.

  Harry loads an extra ten kilos. He knows he shouldn’t perform these lifts alone – so many stories (apocryphal?) of people slowly drowning in their own blood, pinned beneath a bench press for days because they’d trained without a partner. But these aren’t skull-crushers and he is determined to shatter the plateau.

  Can’t be told …

  Lying there, on his back, forcing the metal bar away from his chest, there is no more sex, no more noise, no more music, just the pressure of the weight bearing down on him: he feels the deafening strain of it all the way to his feet.

  *

  The girl got off the train and made her way through the busy station to the meeting point. Greta said the contact would be there around six so she still had plenty of time. She ducked into the Ladies to check her lipstick, pulling out her compact and holding it up to the grim light (the wall-mounted mirrors more like dull carnival mirrors, gobbed and battered sheets of polished steel about as useful for cosmetic touch-ups as the ones at school). Her face appeared to her in a series of small framed segments as she batted her eyelids, checked her lashes for globs. She applied more lipstick, carefully tracing the outline of her mouth, then blotted her cheeks with rouge, her mother’s voice ringing loudly in her ears: “You look like a cheap tart.”

  You’ll see, she thought. You’ll see. The bathroom smelled of urine and ammonia, the floor still slick in places from being mopped, a metal bucket of soupy grey water parked unceremoniously by the janitor’s cupboard. As she straightened her skirt one of the toilet stalls swung open and a large woman emerged. She seemed to fill the entire doorway. The girl could smell her from over a metre away, her thin greasy hair plastered across her forehead, her soiled jumper, coat and scarf a thick winter pelt, restricting her ability to move. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. The woman paused when she saw the girl, held the stall door open, gesturing for her to take her place. The girl decided she didn’t really need to go.

  She left the bathroom, passed through the ticket barriers and took up position near the information windows.

  The foyer was full of teenagers. Just like her. Loping about, all looking for trouble (maybe not so much like her). They were mostly clustered under the clocks near the front steps though s
everal groups were also congregated inside like packs of wary dogs circling and defending their territory. Once or twice a boy glanced in her direction; in one instance one of the lads hanging around near the railing actually took a few steps her way, but then he thought better of it, appearing to change his mind, sensing her anxiety, perhaps, that there was something else going on, her nervous energy emanating like a force field, subliminally warning him off as clearly as if she’d told him to go fuck himself.

  Not that she was aware of it, focussed as she was on the crowd. Commuters kept pausing in front of her as they stopped to check the platform numbers. She’d been there before but in these circumstances the station took on a gothic quality, menacing and overwhelming, the ceilings impossibly high, the area loud and cavernous, the city streets surging onto its steps, a barrage of traffic and hubbub threatening to engulf her.

  It was nearly six o’clock. A blur of faces. A couple of times she thought she saw someone from her “real” life (Justin from the Garden department, her friend Stephanie’s younger sister), her heart thrilling with the pleasure of recognition – not of them per se but of her knowing someone, the reflexive validation of her existence – but then it turned out not to be them, only someone who looked like them. Which was just as well really. She preferred not to have to explain herself to anyone from home.

  She stood against the wall, one eye on the clock, the other alert for the person who was meant to be collecting her, wondering if she’d know him on sight or if he too would look like just another face in the crowd. It was very strange meeting up with someone you didn’t know in that way when there were so many other strangers around. She’d said as much to Greta. Appointments were usually made between people with real names, were scheduled to occur at specific times at properly designated addresses. Without those particulars how would Greta’s friend know who she was? How could he be sure he had the right person?

  And then she saw him. On the other side of the flower stall. A tall guy in a leather jacket. She was certain of it. The butterflies returned to her stomach. He was coming right for her.

  *

  What else would Harry have told her if he could have, aside from “Go home”? “Get out while you can”? He’s not sure. And who’s to say she would have listened anyway? She may have been perfectly happy doing what she was doing. Wasn’t that always the comeback, that it was the individual’s right to choose? Who was he to judge her lifestyle, to interfere? That’s what Jack would have said, he was pretty sure of it. And Eddy. And Laurie. And Matt. And probably his dad too, or at least he would have back when he was still playing. Harry was the one with the problem. Harry was the one with the issue. And maybe they were right. Maybe what had happened with the girl didn’t matter. And what he’d done didn’t matter either. It was simply a question of perspective, a decision to be made, his choice to press reset and everything would return to normal.

  In the kitchen, a giant jigsaw puzzle of London’s Tower Bridge progressively covers the table. Harry holds his plate directly under his chin, the Vegemite rapidly integrating with the butter, a spreading fungus atop his toast, as he peers at the technicoloured walkway, a post-jubilee blue, that his father must have acquired in the divorce.

  A piece of the railing is missing. His father, still in his pyjamas, shuffles in like an obedient psychiatric patient who has earned extra privileges within the asylum. “Don’t even think about touching that puzzle,” he says, his voice slightly gravelly, placing his tooth glass on the sink, the long cuffs of his faded candy stripes dusting the grubby floor. He looks like a meth addict, pallid and gaunt in his oversized flannels, his thin hair curtaining his ears, the shapeless strands in urgent need of a wash. As he speaks, Harry can see the hole from his absent right lateral incisor.

  “You don’t want me touching it? What? You mean like this?” he says, disengaging a piece of the suspension scaffolding.

  His father turns his back, refuses to be drawn in.

  The following Sunday Harry decides not to go to church. Rather than parking the car, he idles out the front of the building, the sound of the spluttering vehicle amplified against the quiet morning as his father grabs hold of the overhead strap and hoists himself out of the passenger seat, a great heave-ho, swivelling his feet onto the footpath and then propelling himself forward, all his weight on his left knee. “I’ll pick you up after,” Harry tells his dad, wanting the old man to get a wriggle on so that he can get the hell out of there, away from the prying eyes of the parishioners, the not-so-benevolent witnesses to his ambivalence.

  Alan is not amused. “It’s not good enough, son. Not good enough.”

  “It’ll have to be good enough,” says Harry, the familiar pulse mounting at his temples, the prefiguring of a headache.

  A sign sponsored by a local real-estate company graphically depicts the parish’s fundraising efforts for the new roof. His father leans through the wound-down window and looks Harry squarely in the eye, the image of the red unfunded steeple appearing to emerge out of the top of his head. “I know you don’t believe it, but you owe yourself more than this. None of us is alone, Harry. God is watching.”

  Harry shrugs. “He can watch me drive away then.”

  “What will I tell Father Murphy?”

  “Stuff Father Murphy.”

  He feels a twinge of guilt as he says it, not having a problem with Father Murphy, the man, so much as what he stands for, the retributive church in all its shambolic glory. Alternating its charitable embrace with the less orthodox cold shoulder, for him it has always been the embodiment of a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too sanctimoniousness. Because what young child truly understands the first thing about their parents’ mistakes other than the way they immediately affect them (and why should they be held in any way accountable)? Gilded censure from the pulpit – If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother – surreptitious glances in their family’s direction, as though any amount of choir practice can expunge the sins of their father. Bless me, Father, for my father has really fucked up! You try living like that, he might have said.

  It isn’t his fault (nor his brother’s nor his mum’s) that his dad has made such a royal mess of things. Nor is it their fault that the repercussions continue to reverberate, a perpetual ripple in their already rippled lives, a private undercurrent of familial shame. Nothing is ever directly said about it, of course. Theirs isn’t that kind of community. The congregation just intimates their feelings of approval or disapproval. Happy to condemn when condemnation is easy – invitations to gatherings not forthcoming, conversations changed or ceased when one of them enters the room – even happier to sing a fallen man’s praises once he’s seen the error of his ways. A virtuous cycle if ever there was one, his classmates having grown up to become loyal parishioners themselves, prepared to forgive just about everything they know about him, about them, the minute his dad joins AA (the community choosing to overlook Senior’s follies thereafter), or is that as soon as he has been accepted into Rotary, their new fundraising cash cow? As though it doesn’t matter how they conducted themselves prior to that point or what they are really about, as long as they are prepared to wear the mantle of local heroes, the town’s first family, to play their roles as favourite sons.

  Harry watches his arthritis-ridden father hobble up the front steps then drives down to the beach while he waits, relishing the quiet as the gulls dip and dive through the waves, sea spray coursing through the air, their wings skimming the salt-whipped foam.

  Mass usually lasts about an hour. Harry gives it a full ninety minutes before heading back to the church, anticipating the usual routine that occurs afterwards, his dad holding court, prognosticating with Barry Delaney about the Australian cricket team’s chances in the upcoming Ashes series, how they’ll go, whether they’ll be able to win them back, generally spinning his particular brand of bullshit to some kid or the parent of some kid who
’d idolised him since they were a child.

  Just thinking about it makes him feel sick. Or does he feel sick anyway? Lately everything has been turning his stomach.

  Front Street is crowded with the familiar blur of window-shoppers looking to stuff their faces on pies and fries and jam-filled donuts, while kids with ice-creams scream to go home and bored teenagers flirt with each other over Cokes outside the hamburger place. The drivers are like lemmings, crawling along, looking for the takeaway, so intent on finding a park that they pay no attention to the road. It is worse than dodging runners on the field. His first impulse is to lower the window and yell at them to get out of the way, it taking all his self-control not to simply ram into the back of them, to physically slam the other cars with his frustration. But even in the heat of one of these episodes he never loses sight of how it would play out in the court of public opinion, the inevitable like-father-like-son comparisons (this family has no sense of proportion) and the Club’s public reprimanding of his actions, emptying the fantasy of most of its pleasure (though not entirely, and in fact Dean did do it once, rear-ended an old git rubbernecking on Pacific Avenue – a great day as far as they were all concerned, financial penalty aside – but Dean could get away with it, he just paid the fine and moved on because he had no public image to uphold).

  Harry turns into Centre Street to avoid the worst of the stragglers, his mind already skipping ahead to the surf he is planning later that afternoon, reports forecasting a light northerly fanning a solid four-foot groundswell, when he nearly runs over her. A girl, the girl, walking back in the direction of the shops. She is wearing jeans and a hoodie, no make-up, carrying a backpack, so it isn’t an easy spot, quite the departure from when they’d first laid eyes on each other, but he is sure it is her, the way she grips her top, pulling it around her as one might draw the panels on a robe as he slams on the brakes, almost giving himself whiplash as she disappears around the corner. His mouth is instantly dry, sitting there stopped in the middle of the road, unsure what to do next. It isn’t even about what he’d say or wouldn’t say to her, the scope for that being way too big to contemplate in the split second of recognition. No, it is simply the unexpected nature of it, running into her like this being beyond anything he anticipated – the idea that her life that could intersect with his any more directly than it already has catching him so off-guard that it takes him another minute before he gets out of the car.