“So when are you seeing that psychologist lady again?” his father queries, venturing a jolly tone as though he has no problem with them at all, the medical fraternity, magnanimously setting aside his pronounced scepticism (“Never done me any bloody good, not then, not now”) in exchange for supportive counselling for his son.
“What difference does it make?” asks Harry. “It’s all crap. You can go and talk to her if you like.”
“Not bloody likely.”
Senior adds twenty kilos to the bench press and eases himself down, Harry peering up his father’s nose as Alan tilts his head back to check his position, wondering if his father is as well acquainted with the interior of his (Harry’s) nasal cavity.
He hasn’t heard anything from the Club in nearly a week, but he knows time is running out. That’s just the way it is. Sooner or later someone will come asking, a deadline will be laid down. But can’t it wait? The season is months away. What is the hurry?
Sanding floorboards for Dean, seeing the way the materials change under his manipulations, the rough knots and blemishes gently pressured into giving way to the freshly hewn veneers, caressing the points again and again until the surfaces seem almost new. “Harry, can you do the lunch run?” asks his friend, holding out the keys to the ute.
Harry leaves the sander where it stands and takes orders for the shops. As he tallies the items in his head – two burgers, fries, etc. – he thinks to himself, this is how it goes, this is an option, another way to be, if he walks away, another road to tread; allowing the possibility for a moment, him and Dean going into business together, both their names on the company letterhead.
Dean wants to go to the pub, Parma and Pot special, but Harry can’t face it tonight, the smell bound up with his last image of Eddy, at Sportsman’s Night, retching all over the bathroom floor. Proudly regaling Harry with the details, his putrid breath right in Harry’s face. And then Marty stepping back onto the stage, this time wearing a top hat and carrying a magician’s cane, and on it went. “Abracadabra, gentlemen,” he’d said, waving it around, the unfurled ribbon of hair banging him in the eye. “As you know, this is traditionally the business end of the evening, so I have one question for you: are you ready?” Harry didn’t know what he was talking about but then Marty posed the question again. “Well are you?” And that is all it took. Blood oath. There was a whoop from one of the other tables (Matt?) and then wholesale pandemonium. Foot stamping, whistling, a tuneless rendition of the Club song. More grunting than melody as the room united behind the anthem. Red-faced Eddy grinning from ear to ear, banging his palm against the table as the lights went down and the music started up again – Loosen up my buttons, baby – and the dancers were back, sparkling in the footlights, all sequins and tassels.
The music seemed faster now but the dancers’ movements appeared slower, almost measured, the caution of someone previously wrong-footed trying to avoid the same mistake (though wasn’t the quickest way down a flight of stairs to monitor each careful step?). He thought of those pink Energizer Bunnies. Imagined some air had been let out of their tyres. Knew it was a mixed metaphor, that it didn’t make sense. Editing his thoughts as he went along, leaping from one unrelated image to the next, until he ended up home again, peering into his mother’s fish tank, thinking it was like the women were dancing underwater.
If you could call what they were doing dancing. A form of erotic line-dancing, perhaps. Part Madison, part Can Can. In boots and custom babydolls, opaque panels suggesting so much more than if they had been completely sheer.
They strutted through the rest of the song and then the music changed and the group dissolved, dividing off into traditional pairings for a waltz; the titillation of semi-naked women in intimate proximity one step nearer to that fantasy realised, then one of the ladies broke formation, veered into the centre – hands on hips, spreading her legs in an unabashed proposal, inviting her partner to kneel before her, face planted in her crotch – while the other women continued their sexless box steps.
He was drunk enough that he could watch without flinching. Though not so drunk that his cock didn’t stiffen in his pants. It was the idea more than the reality. Wouldn’t know what to do with them if he could take them home. Witnessing without really seeing. Coveting without actually wanting. He stared and stared until their features effectively disappeared. Like repeating a word until it stopped making any sense. What did they look like, he might have asked himself later? How exactly did it go?
Jack elbowed him. “Look at her, Squeaker. That one. Wouldn’t mind taking her for a spin around the track.”
Blinking, trying to focus. His eyes awash with the flash of silver lamé and gold.
He thought he’d made his position clear to Rosie – it was over, they were done – but she wants to talk to him nonetheless. “I think I’m pregnant,” she says, when she finally gets him on the telephone, dropping a bombshell into the middle of his morning tea.
“A baby? You think or you know?”
“I’m pretty sure,” she says. “I’m late. I’ve done two tests.”
He casts his mind back, tries to remember, the timing, when they were last together, or the time before that, if he used a condom, the implications rushing at him like flood-borne leaves converging on a stormwater drain. And just when he thought he was clear of her. Free of that monkey on his back. One less complication. If only it was someone else’s. He wonders if she is really sure. She must have had other boyfriends.
“You do know it’s yours, this child, the little one,” says Rosie, as though she can read his thoughts, standing in the phone box quietly rubbing her abdomen as she listens to the silence on the other end of the line. “This baby, your responsibility, your kid.”
His mind flashes to his father all those years ago, to that poor, stupid girl on that dark, lonely street.
Only sixteen, the little one.
You do know it’s yours.
He agrees to meet with her to discuss their options, so flummoxed by the implications that he has trouble breaking it down, the details. How far along is she? What does she want to do? Unable to form an image in his mind’s eye of what the baby might look like, if it would be better or worse if it looked more or less like him. “Do you reckon it’s true that babies look like their dads?” he says to Dean as they dry off next to his ute.
His friend laughs. “I don’t know. It’s a fair bet. Why? Don’t tell me Kate’s been moonlighting with the younger brother?” He says this as a joke, to be funny, because there is no way in hell Kate’s been playing the field. Dean reckons she’s so straight-laced she doesn’t even take her clothes off in the shower, has probably never even seen herself naked.
“Oh no, she’s seen herself naked,” Harry reassures him, allowing himself the memory of Kate sunbathing topless on his brother’s balcony, her toned lotioned back glistening in the heat.
“You should give her one. That’s what she needs. Next time Matt’s away. Loosen her up a bit. He might even thank you.”
Harry ignores him.
“So what’s white and hangs from the clouds?” says Dean.
“What?”
“The coming of the Lord.”
“You’ve got a problem, mate.”
Rosie sits up the back of the cafe in her chemist assistant’s uniform (or he thinks it is her uniform) drinking a Coke. He’s chosen the least conspicuous place he can think of, the coffee shop next to the florist, but he sees her before he’s fully stepped inside, the white of her dress outlining her form against the varnished pine chairs and plastic floral tablecloths as distinctly as Joffa’s gold jacket against a flock of Magpie guernseys. She has a huge pimple on her chin but she doesn’t look any fatter than usual, not particularly pregnant. She raises her hand at him in greeting. “When did you find out?” he asks, in lieu of hello.
“The other day,” she says. She’s seen a doctor. “I figured as much, but he confirmed it.”
It is exactly the situation he’s bee
n warned about. Every athlete’s worst nightmare. No, he knows about worse nightmares. But it is up there. And so obvious it is almost comical. Except that it is happening to him.
“What do you want to do?” he asks, knowing what she is going to say, his mind scrambling nevertheless (are abortions performed around here, does he know anyone who’s organised one?) as she mutters the words “Catholic” and “devout”.
Convenient.
Any other time and he would immediately be on the phone to Geoff, the team manager – the classic definition of finding oneself in hot water – but given their current contract discussions, he is going to have to go this one alone.
His mother hits the roof. “There’s ‘devout’ and then there’s ‘Devout’. You say she saw a doctor? Which doctor? I want his name. When? Where are these results? Who is this girl? Did she ask you for money? Who does she think she’s dealing with here?”
Harry immediately regrets his decision to discuss it with her. “It’s only a ‘what if’. Nothing’s happened. I was only thinking out loud, what to do if that kind of thing did happen. If. If. That’s all. But it’s nothing to worry about. Nothing. This is why I don’t talk to you about stuff. I knew you’d be like this.”
Diana shakes her head. “No you don’t, Harry. You can’t pull that with me. Of course you knew I’d be like this. That’s exactly why you told me. So is it true or not?”
He shrugs.
“We’ll see about that.”
Where are all the bus drivers? The happy men in trucks? As a child, Harry liked them best, more than the fire engines and trains, tractors, taxis and planes. More even than the cars with their team colours and tiny seats. While other kids raced Matchbox cars up and down the street, he occupied himself ferrying imaginary school children to and from the local primary school.
His mother likes to say that he is the eccentric one of the clan, the rebel, the dark horse, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Claiming him, when it suits her, as the child most resembling her side of the family (when he isn’t giving her the shits, that is) – doing everything on his terms, his way, right from the outset – itemising his differences, like a party trick. He was even born breech.
At the computer he thinks for a minute before typing in p-r-e-g-n-a-n-t, not really sure how to tailor his search to find what he is looking for. Never mind. There isn’t much information anyway. Well, there is, but it doesn’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know, nothing to help him feel clearer about what it is that he should do. What he is looking for is a cheap exemption clause, a way to rationalise forgetting the whole thing. He feels so stuck, is having trouble getting beyond simply not wanting to be in this position, is struggling to think through the reality of the situation in any practical way.
Surely marriage is out of the question? He can’t bring himself to contemplate the details, a proposal, a ring. There’d be no getting down on one knee. Preposterous in this situation. Any ceremony would be perfunctory at best.
He can already hear his mother’s objections: You’re doing what? Not if I have any say in it. His mother never having approved of any of his girlfriends (not that Rosie is exactly a girlfriend, though doubtless she’d qualify now – the mother of his first child). Trollops, most of them. Trollops and sluts. Their characters invariably flawed, their motives corrupt (yes, Rosie would fit that bill). “Ask yourself,” Diana would say, “would she still be interested if you were a plumber?” Harry knows the answer, of course he does, but in this circumstance he isn’t at liberty to protest.
He hears the meow of the screen door as his mother returns from the car. He hits the home key but not fast enough, the image of a bikini-clad pregnant woman filling most of the screen.
“Looking at porn again, are you sweetheart?” says Diana breezily as she passes by the den lugging another box of last year’s calendars.
Gulls balance on the fence beams overlooking the beach, gently buffeted by the squally wind. He opens a loaf of bread, doughy white, the kind the Club says they shouldn’t eat, and pulls out a slice, rolling it into a fat cigar which he swallows in one mouthful. The sky is a smoky shade of blue, like the flat afternoon of mid-season, the ladder still an open scramble, the contest anyone’s to win. He knows it would be easier – for the Club, for his family, for the fans – if he just renewed his contract and got on with it but he can’t bring himself to do it. It feels too much like rolling over, too much like giving in. Though what is he trying to prove? That he’s too witless to be held responsible for his actions? That he is beyond reproach? Or rather, unable to be held to the same standards as other people – childlike in that respect, beneath blame? He thinks of his father, dropping him at the shops that morning, the man like a child on a play date swearing to be good, waving him off, Harry promising to collect him outside the hardware in a couple of hours.
He winds down the window a couple of centimetres to throw out some crumbs, the winding action itself enough to draw the birds’ attention. They converge on the vehicle en masse, a battle cry of squawks and beating wings. The ocean makes a divine racket. He lowers the window the rest of the way, sticking his arm right out, inviting the possibility that they’ll go for him, that in their rampage they’ll enter the car and attack. But he doesn’t care. Bugger it, he thinks, let them peck me. Almost willing them inside, wanting to be overcome by their savagery.
“Who are you angry with today?” asks Judith, the counsellor, at their next (and final) “chat” before the new year, absent-mindedly smoothing her skirt, her thoughts already on lunch.
“Why do you think I’m angry?” he answers, though he plainly is. See it, believe it! He hates those kinds of questions almost as much as he hates the people who pose them: the double-talkers with their hidden meanings, eternally poised to trip him up. Why do people expend so much energy looking for side entrances when they can go directly to the front door? If the corridor’s open, the corridor’s open. The only reason to avoid it would be if you didn’t trust your team. She could have said, what exactly is the nature of your problem with the Club? He’d have gladly confided a home truth or two if she’d asked him that.
“So is there anything else?” she says, madly jotting down consultation notes, details of their plan going forward: “Take a few days off, continue with the mantras and relaxation exercises, maintain your fitness program, commit to a decision date,” action items that she will report to management and the leadership group. “Remember, if you can imagine it, you can do it! Everyone has the power to step up. You are not your father. You are your own man. I believe in you, Harry.”
As she speaks he concentrates on her eyes – wide set, yellow-speckled brown – staring at them until the image starts to distort, her chin narrowing, the skin scaling, her high cheekbones moving further and further apart. When he next blinks it all fits back into place but he still half expects to see a fork-tipped tongue.
And then their time is up. He grabs a juice from the foyer vending machine and drinks it in one go, pitching the bottle in the empty recycling bin.
The Club rooms feel deserted. Most of the staff are already on holidays, there isn’t even a receptionist stationed at the front desk. In the restaurant, a couple of uniformed caterers are preparing for a private function, setting tables for some three-course event, a Christmas party most likely, glasses and polished cutlery gently clinking under their loveless ministrations.
The smell of fried onions reaches around the block, people lined up as far as the ATMs on the corner for their sausage and sauce and white bread roll but there is no sign of his dad. Father Murphy waves Harry over and tells him Alan has gone home. “I tried ringing but your phone is off. Dad’s had a bit of a run-in. He’s alright. Don’t worry. He got a touch hot under the collar, that’s all. A couple of kids got wind of who he was, set up over there and started calling out names. I told them to pull their heads in but they wouldn’t. You know what kids are like. Ratbags. Then the boys’ father arrived and he and your dad got into it. I sent
Alan home before it could get out of control.”
“When was that?”
“About an hour ago.”
Shit. Harry rings the house but there is no answer. He races home expecting to find his father on another tear – preparing himself for it along the way, deciding he’s just going to leave, that he’ll call Matt, wait for him to get over there and then go, he’s not sure where, let Matt deal with it for a change – but instead his father is sitting in the kitchen, stone-cold sober, red-faced and sweaty beside a packed overnight bag, a nice bruise developing above his right eye, a packet of once-frozen peas making a wet mess of his barbecue-splattered trousers. “Drive me to the station, will you? I need to get to the Skybus. I’ve got a five o’clock flight.”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Away for a couple of days, clear my head. Get a bit of perspective. I haven’t been out of town for months. Look, before you say anything, it wasn’t my fault.”
Harry almost laughs. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Fuck, Dad, you could be done for assault. And with your reputation. What if he calls the police?”
“He won’t.” He points to his eye. “He was a big guy. I came off worse than him. Much worse.”
“You’re lucky you’re not in hospital.” Harry pulls out a seat opposite and sits down, his fists squeezed so tight the knuckles are white beneath the skin. “You always say that, that it’s the other person’s fault, like you think it makes you tough or something, that it’s better because he could have killed you but he stopped short. What if he didn’t?”
For once the neighbour’s dog isn’t barking. Harry feels the same old fury rise up from his gut, knows it would take nothing for him to reach across the table, grab his father by the throat and squeeze until the breath leaves him, it not being about this guy versus that guy and which one’s more in the wrong, but about not picking fights with total strangers over stupid shit that means nothing but that could land you in all sorts of hot water because you’re a prize dickhead. “Why didn’t you just ignore him?” he says. “Why is that so hard for you to do?”
The Family Men Page 14