The Family Men

by Catherine Harris

  And by then of course she is gone. He loiters at the corner thinking she might have ducked into a nearby house, but after several minutes when she doesn’t reappear he gets back behind the wheel, does a u-turn, and retraces his route. His mind is all questions, a rising tide of discomforts messily sloshing in on their own polluted shore. What is she doing there? Is she looking for him? Does she know who he is? Has she seen him before? It is too much to bear, the prospect that she lives nearby, that she might wash up on him again and again. Or is this his opportunity for absolution? Can she exonerate him? Wanting to grip her shoulders, to say, forgive me, please. But he’s struck too sorry, too dumb, the guilt a palpable gag, depriving him of the ability to speak, to express what he wants to say, her lifeless eyes blinking at him like a discarded doll’s. Besides, what can she offer that would fix this in him? What is it that he is trying to make right? He briefly considers ringing Laurie, someone older with more life experience, as the Club likes to characterise anyone over the age of twenty-two, but quickly dismisses the idea, his coach being the last person he’d feel comfortable talking to about such matters, not counting his mum and his dad.

  He creeps along, alternately scanning the street and the rear-view mirror for a sign of her amongst the trawling tourists, at once hoping to find her and also dreading it, wishing he was wrong, coming face to face with her as terrifying a proposition as losing track of her, until the driver behind him finally loses his patience and sounds his horn. It is a long steady sound, the kind made by pressing the heel of your palm all the way in so that everyone stops and looks, even the whining infants. And it is fair enough too, ordinarily Harry would have done exactly the same thing, he can sympathise with the guy, but in the moment he is so inflamed by it, it is all he can do to stop himself from getting out of his car and beating the shit out of the motherfucker.

  His pulse is racing. By the time he gets back to the church he is nearly forty minutes late.

  *

  The girl stepped forward as the man approached, smiling, though she could feel her face was flushed and tight (nervous), even though she’d gone over it in her mind a million times, the way she’d extend her hand the same way Greta had when they first met and say, “Hello, pleased to meet you,” as though of course she was old enough to be doing this and of course she felt comfortable about it, because if she was eighteen she would feel comfortable about it and so why wouldn’t she now; the fact that no one else knew what she was up to being evidence of that, that she was mature enough to be making her own decisions, standing on her own two feet, steering her own course in the world.

  After all, she was there, wasn’t she? No one could gainsay that.

  So she flexed her fingers, ready to extend her hand, a handshake, to make his acquaintance, but the man walked directly to the information counter without so much as a glance in her direction.

  Wrong person. She did a quick check around but no one appeared to have noticed. Was it still a faux pas if no one saw you make it?

  She’d always had good instincts about people, had prided herself on it, knowing who to latch on to, when someone had something to offer and when they didn’t. Or so she thought. That’s how she found herself here. On her own recognisance, thank you very much. No one would have expected it. Least of all her dad. It would give him a kick when she showed up out of the blue. Though she’d probably have to ring him first (coordinate where to meet, something distinctive to wear so they’d recognise each other). The last time he’d seen her she was two years old. She didn’t even have the same hair colour anymore.

  She’d stay at his place, imagined he’d insist – of course you will, I wouldn’t have it any other way – wondered what his house was like, if it even was a house, and whether it would be big enough for the two of them long-term or if they’d have to move. Maybe to a complex with a cabana and a pool? Splashing her toes in the cool clear water, her body baking beneath a sun-bleached sky, the two of them discussing what they’d do together that weekend, where they’d explore. She was well into that daydream, picturing herself in a one-piece bathing suit, painted fingernails, her hair pulled back, the long strands fixed with her pearl slide, very Gwen Stefani, when a short stocky guy tapped her on the shoulder.

  She jumped, let out a startled gasp.

  “You Greta’s friend?”

  She nodded.

  “This way.” He turned and started walking before she’d fully processed that this was him, the contact, the one she had been waiting for, in that half second allowing him to gain an extra leg so that she then had to run a little to catch up.

  So much for “pleased to meet you”.

  *

  As with all of his dreams, he isn’t sure how this one starts. The girl sits on the floor. She is sweating, hands tied behind her back, moisture glistening on her brow as she inhales deliberately through her nose, the tape across her mouth making it difficult for her to breathe. He takes a cloth and wipes her forehead just as the perspiration gathers into a drop, trickling into her right eye, forcing her to close it in a slow wink. Her chest rises and falls quickly as he leans towards her, her body pressing itself further against the wall as though she can push right through it and escape if she tries hard enough. He wants to tell her not to worry. To relax. That he isn’t there to hurt her. It will be over soon enough. Stroking her hair, clearing the damp strands that have fallen across her blood-drained face. He imagines the relief of it. His voice a low consolation in the empty room. As though words can soften the exposed brickwork, can cushion the cold uncarpeted concrete beneath his feet. But his voice won’t come. Only the familiar fury, a crashing muteness on the tip of his tongue. Will it never stop? Coughing, so Freudian, saying, “It’s the dust.” The only words he can speak. So oblique. Say what you fucking mean. And then he slaps her. Hard. Out of the blue. Her eyes wide with the shock of it. The red mark on her cheek blazing brightly, a brilliant rose, then slowly, slowly fading.

  Like most men he knows, he isn’t one to cry – can’t remember the last time he did – but it is something akin to tears making his eyes blink and his throat constrict as though there is a giant fist pressed in it. This relentless anguish. His mind playing tricks on him again. How else to explain it? The dreams and hallucinations. Because he has to admit it looks self-serving, saying he saw her, like he’s making the whole thing up so that he can keep talking about it. And it had all happened so quickly. Harry knows it makes no sense. He can’t remember the last time he ran into one of his mates down the street. But he is sure it was her. He is. Or, he had been sure. At the time. Hadn’t he?

  In the car on the way back from the airport, Matt struggles to take him seriously. “What did you see? What happened? Where? When? How exactly? You think it means something because she ran in front of the car? A million girls cross the street every day. Anything could happen. It’s not a sign, some cosmic conspiracy. Are you sure you weren’t pissed?” Kate giggles in the back as Matt lambasts him from the passenger seat. A familiar pattern. The older brother chastising the younger. “Why do you have to be such a dick?” Harry disappearing into himself, he is so accustomed to it, watching the scene at one remove as he pulls into the driveway. Then another five minutes of bickering in the car until their mother (hitherto peering out from behind the living room blind) comes to see what is taking so long, so they all shut up and follow her inside. “What’s going on with you two?” she says later over dinner, their first family meal together since Harry moved out – chicken schnitzel, mashed potato, carrots, welcome back, Matt food – not that anyone is calling it that.

  Neither of them answers.

  Matt sits at the table scrolling through his phone, his mind already on the next thing, a replay of the last time he and Harry were in a car together, Sportsman’s Night, in the taxi on the way to the nightclub. There’d been an accident near the station so the driver took the long way around, catching every traffic light in between. He had no idea who they were, thought they were going to a wedding rec
eption. Matt was texting so Harry answered for him. “Yes,” he confirmed. “He’s the groom.”

  It had been that same time of night, the blue hour fast tipping into black. Outside the venue, a nondescript looking mid-sized office building, two security guards monitored the entrance but that was the only clue to what was going on inside. Matt paid the driver cash, passing across the money like a john tipping a whore, then marched ahead before Harry had properly closed the taxi door. The bouncers knew them by sight. They immediately stepped aside. Harry had his invitation folded in his back pocket but they didn’t even ask him his name.

  Alan likes to say that in every question lies a kernel of truth, an opportunity for salvation. That’s what they promote at AA, truth and salvation. Honesty and redemption going hand in glove. As though God, as they understand him, is sitting around worrying at his beads, waiting for some mortal admission of hypocrisy. Bless me, Father, for I have been confused. Of course the truth isn’t always welcome elsewhere.

  Matt avoids eye contact as they sit around in the lounge room having drinks. Two Crown Lagers and two white wines. “Bottoms up,” says Diana in Harry’s direction. And then a wink, code for everything’s good with us now. As long as he remains quarantined at his father’s he has been forgiven. Harry takes a slug and puts his bottle down on the side table, what had been “his” bedside table, he realises, repurposed as a drinks stand and imported into the living area, his room already converted to general storage, the bed shrouded in patterned oilcloth, supporting boxes of family memorabilia and scrapbooking supplies, the floor an obstacle course of surplus from his mother’s office: unused card stock, last year’s calendars – The Surf Coast – marketing gimmicks (pens, coasters, a tray of shot glasses) for companies recently gone out of business. So much for empty nest syndrome. He gestures to the table. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  Kate giggles again, her signature response to everything, then says something about the high quality of the players at this year’s draft camp. Like she’d know, Harry thinks, wondering if Matt picked her precisely because of that, because even though she never knows what she’s talking about she is always happy to throw in her two cents, has no reservations sharing her half-baked opinions. It fills in the awkward pauses, makes him look like a genius.

  Matt’s girlfriends have always been like that. Chatty. That is the thing with them. They’ll talk your ear off, just like Diana. Though Kate is chattier than most. He once timed her talking nonstop for nearly eleven minutes. At the dinner table she says “awesome” eight times before the meal has been served.

  A yellowing article about Matt and Kate clipped from one of those women’s magazines is affixed to the refrigerator door by a grubby Beautiful Hervey Bay! magnet (a Mother’s Day present circa 1996, the last remaining one of a set of four):

  Football’s hottest “it” couple arrived looking stunning as they beamed for the cameras. Laughing and holding hands on the red carpet, he wore a custom-made modern black-tie suit, while she dazzled in a pale pink and sheer lace gown.

  Harry is pretty sure he gave his mother those magnets, those and a dish of potpourri. The kitchen is a riot of tchotchkes. Harry counts the dolphin figurines as Matt takes his time choosing another beer. There are eighteen.

  When his brother finally emerges from the depths of the Kelvinator he pretends he hasn’t heard properly. “You want to what?”

  “Don’t give me that. You know what I said.”

  Matt shrugs, takes a slug of his Heineken. “I don’t know why you keep hammering on about this. It’s a small town. Everybody knows us. It’s a bit late to be worrying about being recognised, don’t you think?”

  I ain’t seen nothing.

  The smooth sheen of Matt’s broad tanned forehead glints under the fluorescent light, as waxy as a whiteboard asking to be defaced. Harry lowers his voice. “What if we run into her again and she says something to somebody? What if she tells someone? What then?”

  “Okay. Let’s play this out. What’s she going to say? Worst case scenario? Go on, give it your best shot.”

  “I can think of a few things, none of them pretty. That’s my point.”

  “But what difference does it make? It’s not like you did anything illegal. What is it that you think will happen?”

  “Are you trying to be funny? The shit could hit the fan. That’s what.”

  “Yes, but what shit? What fan? Who do you think’s going to listen to any of it? Let’s get one thing straight, alright, I didn’t do anything wrong. And no one’s accusing you of anything either. So leave it alone. It’s your word against hers. Your. Word. Against. Hers. An AFL footballer versus a nobody. No one’s going to believe a word she says. That’s why it hasn’t come to anything yet. Not that it should. And it won’t if you don’t make an issue of it. Okay? So I don’t want to hear about it again. And if I was you I’d keep my trap shut. Especially around the Club. I don’t know what you think you’re doing bringing it up all the time, asking questions, but nobody likes a shit-stirrer. And I for one don’t appreciate you dragging me into your little dramas any more than you already have. Got it? So toughen up little brother,” he says, tapping Harry sharply on the clavicle like he is niggling an opponent … get out of the kitchen. And then he saunters back into the dining room with his beer like everything is hunky-dory.

  *

  The girl got into the vehicle, a black BMW, sinking into the back seat, her skirt riding up so that she had to arch a little to pull it down, the two men sitting up front, neither of them speaking as they headed off before she had buckled her seatbelt.

  It felt like an eternity as they drove around, the city an aimless grid of uneven laneways and wind tunnels, poorly lit alcoves and overbright shopfronts, but it might only have been ten minutes, each intersection looking much like the last, the street signs missing or obscured by trees or other traffic. Was this a mistake? For the first time she had real misgivings. Hello, excuse me. Where were they going? Where were the other girls? Where was Greta? Would her mother be able to find her if she needed to? But her questions went unanswered, the men smoking, listening to the radio, a lively jangly music that never seemed to end. She couldn’t get her bearings (pin the tail on the tail). For all she knew they could have been driving around in circles.

  She decided she wanted to go home. She was going to say something – stop, let me out – but thought better of it, realising it made more sense to wait at least until they reached the venue, then she could explain to Greta in person and, if need be, catch a taxi back to the station. She had thirty dollars in her wallet. That should be enough for the fare. But then what? Home? Take two with her mother and Ray doing it on the couch? That had been an unwelcome surprise, opening the door to find Ray’s pale hairy bottom staring her right in the face. And not at all funny either, their laughter yet another sign that she didn’t belong there, that it was time to leave. Plus, there was the issue of the money.

  They turned down an alley, pulled into a parking space beside a dumpster and the driver shut down the engine. She thought they were still in town but she wasn’t sure where.

  The men said something to each other but she didn’t recognise the language, telling herself not to panic as they got out of the car.

  It was only after they ushered her out too that she understood she had arrived.

  *

  Harry knows Rosie will be waiting up for him but his is the wrong frame of mind tonight for her glass-half-full disposition. He goes home to find his dad sacked out on the couch, the Nurofen and a packet of Stilnox open on the kitchen bench, the tube of liniment lying uselessly on the coffee table. It isn’t the first time. “Back or headache?”

  “Both.”

  Smokey and the Bandit is on TV.

  “What’s this shit?” says Harry, pointing at the telly. “Change the channel, will you? Here, give us the remote.”

  His father swipes his hand away as his youngest son leans across him on the couch, almost knockin
g his coffee cup to the floor. “Leave it alone. My house, my rules. You know the score.”

  “But you’re not even watching it,” Harry protests. “How many of those pills have you taken? It says a maximum of four every twenty-four hours. You’re not supposed to mix them.”

  “Those labels are just guidelines. I know what I need.”

  “If you’re that uncomfortable you should go back to the doctor,” says Harry, rubbing his own thigh automatically, as though the pain is infectious, a gesture he’s picked up from being in the company of too many has-beens over the years, the effect of years of “physical abuse”, his mother calls it, the last thing he wants from the game, that kind of arthritic legacy. It is too late for heat packs. “Do you want a cup of tea?” he offers.

  “No. I already had one.”

  Harry leans back, resigns himself to Burt Reynolds (that is a moustache), taking mental inventory of his own physical condition, an orchestra of clicking ankles and knees, missing toenails, blisters, aching shins, intermittently tender Achilles tendons. His brother already has a bung shoulder. Barely eighteen months older than him, and his arm is taped more often than not. Matt isn’t allowed to lift so much as a stubby without a trainer’s permission. “Maybe you should lay off it,” Harry suggested when he first did it (popped the joint right out of the socket), Harry re-enacting the moment for their mum at the dinner table complete with sound effects, worried it could signal the end of his brother’s career if he didn’t allow time to fully recuperate, but Matt blew him off. “It goes with the territory,” he said, his tone another rebuke, it being plain that he found Harry’s concerns irritating, unmanly, certainly a sign that he didn’t have the right stuff. “You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs,” he continued, trotting out another cliché. Publicity would have been proud; it was exactly the way they’d been trained to talk, following up one sound bite with another. Enough practice and it came off sounding completely unrehearsed.