‘Dad looks the same.’ Kerri was calling from her hostel at Otago University and Matt could hear long-winded conversations trudging in the background—‘feta’ one voice said; another voice, female, said ‘genocide’. ‘He’s bought a new motorbike. Not like the gang ones though. Thank god. Not like that.’
Matt looked out the window and drummed his fingers on the glass. Rows of white-capped waves cut diagonal pathways across Lake Wanaka. Earlier in the day it had been glassy and smooth, a rare green opaque quality, like coloured glass. It could change quickly.
‘He seems happy,’ said Kerri, sighing loudly. ‘But then, you know Dad. He’s only happy when he’s living on the edge of this world and the next.’
The background conversations on the other end of the line had dimmed to the smoky sound of ideas being born and dying. Kerri’s voice, against them, sounded flat, wrung out. ‘You know Dad,’ she said again.
‘Yes,’ said Matt, as though he did.
Outside the window a tortoiseshell cat angled its way across the shallow arc of lawn, the mountains sharp and white in the background. Matt watched as it stopped in the very centre of the lawn and began to clean itself, lifting its hind leg like a mast.
Matt went down to the lake that afternoon. As he walked he tried to picture what his dad might look like now, attempting to fix on a feature he remembered—greyish hair, an arched nose, the small scar near his hairline. Each detail seemed to change the more he concentrated on it. He walked along the limestone track and down the grass verge to the water’s edge and skimmed a few stones. Far out in the middle of the lake two red shapes bobbed side by side—kayakers. They were heading further out. Matt watched until they disappeared around the curve of the bay.
Kerri called Matt on his cellphone a week later. It was lunchtime. Matt had been working on the chairlift all morning, standing at the bottom and helping the skiers and snowboarders—the indistinguishable, goggle-eyed bodies in grey and black and red and blue—onto the chairs that sped up and bounced over the snow.
‘So are you going?’ Kerri’s voice was edgy, verging on excited. Matt imagined her sitting on her small, regulation hostel bed, or standing outside a lecture hall. Her body cupped around the phone, bossy and small.
‘Going where?’ said Matt. He was sitting on the balcony of the café at the base of the chairlift eating hot chips from a Styrofoam cup that had tiny red stars in a ring around the outside. From a mound of snow nearby, a kea was watching him.
‘To Dad’s fiftieth,’ said Kerri. ‘I thought you knew. It’s this weekend. At their place. The girlfriend is organising it.’ Matt could almost see the pattern of fine lines around Kerri’s mouth becoming contorted as she spoke.
‘He didn’t ask me.’
‘He isn’t the one organising it. It’s her. She probably just forgot.’ There was a small pause. ‘I could pick you up. I was thinking of driving up. I could pick you up on the way. What do you think?’
Just then the café door opened and two small children, a girl and a boy, dressed in ski gear ran out on to the balcony and over to one of the ice-covered picnic tables near Matt. The girl climbed up and started to make animal noises—it was hard to tell what kind of animal. ‘Why are we wai-ting,’ she chanted.
‘We are suf-fo-ca-ting,’ chanted the boy. A glistening chain of snot hung from his chin.
‘Why are we wai-ting!’ chanted the girl again.
‘Careful,’ said Matt, holding the cellphone against his shoulder. ‘You might fall off.’
‘Matt?’ Kerri’s voice was strained. ‘Are you still there? What do you think? ’
‘Sure,’ said Matt. ‘Fine. Hey, Kerri—I’ve gotta go. Can I call you later?’ He turned off his cellphone. The little girl was watching him closely, as if gauging something. Then, suddenly, she launched herself into the air, arms and legs splayed, like a bat. Landing in a crouched position in a pile of snow, she stood up, dusted herself off, and walked back to the café door and into the crowd of skiers and snowboarders inside. The boy looked up at Matt. ‘She never falls off,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you know that?’ Then he followed the girl into the café.
Matt’s dad had moved to Australia when Matt was seven. Every year or so he’d come back to New Zealand to visit them. Each time he came, Matt found him harder to recognise. The edges became blurred, the outline undefined—this strange man, standing there at the front door, grinning like there was no tomorrow. One year he had dark sideburns cut across his jaw like daggers. Another time he had a full beard through which his mouth, or the place where his mouth should be, was barely visible. One year he had dreadlocks with red beads threaded into the tapered ends. During his visit he would take Matt out for an afternoon—just the two of them. ‘I’ve got an afternoon with your name on it,’ he’d say, every time.
These rare afternoons were never alike. Once they went to the beach and his dad taught him how to find oysters in the rock pools, then eat them, by slitting the shells. They had a strong, pungent taste. Another time he took him, on the back of a motorbike (borrowed from a mate), to the top of the hill where the war memorial stood tall in its coat of rust-coloured lichens. While Matt played on the cannon that pointed out to sea, his dad sat on the grass smoking sweet-smelling cigarettes and smiling, languidly, at the sky. One year, when Matt was ten, they went rock climbing at the new sports centre recently built on the outskirts of town. Matt climbed nimbly up the first five walls, the ones with brightly coloured hand grips, while his dad belayed from below. The sixth wall was much harder; it had only the smallest finger grips—minute holes in the smooth, vertical surface. Halfway to the top, Matt decided he didn’t want to go any further.
‘Go on,’ his dad shouted from below. He had a shaven head that year. Matt could see the crown of his head below, a pale sphere with the shape of his nose pointing outwards, like a compass.
‘You’ll regret it if you don’t.’
But Matt was already climbing down, carefully—hand over foot over foot over hand. Down towards the ground and the island of soft, blue mats.
His dad dropped him off at the end of the driveway. As he got out of the car, Matt could see his mother and Kerri, encased in the brightly lit lounge, like toy people in a toy house. They were talking, looking at each other and moving their arms. Matt couldn’t guess at what they were saying. Years later, this is the part he would remember about that day, standing by the car with his dad, looking in, watching this soundless female conversation.
‘We had a good day, didn’t we?’ said his dad as he turned to leave. ‘Wasn’t that a good day?’
–
Kerri parked her blue Honda by the curb outside Matt’s flat on Saturday. Matt watched from the front door as she got out and stretched. He was regretting that he’d agreed to go, but it was too late now. Walking down to meet her, he threw his backpack in the boot. ‘I can drive.’
She smiled at him and took off her sunglasses. Her nose was flecked with pink. She was one of those girls who might have been beautiful, if she’d decided to be.
The temperature rose markedly the further they got from the mountain range. Kerri fell asleep against the car door, her head gently swaying with the rhythm of the road. Matt opened his window a fraction and the outside air beat nosily through the car like a terrified bird. Moaning softly, Kerri moved her head, but didn’t wake up.
Matt slowed the car to fifty when they reached Geraldine. It felt painfully slow after the open road. A scattering of shops and cafés had signs out on the pavement. A row of ride-on mowers was parked diagonally outside a red and green hardware shop. A mannequin stood naked and headless in the window of a ‘pre-loved’ clothing shop.
Kerri woke as they reached the edge of town. ‘I had this strange dream.’ She looked at him curiously as she spoke, her face small, striking. ‘I had children. There were two, I think. But then it changed and I was talking with a woman in a supermarket. And, just now when I woke, I felt so sad.’
The fifty-kilometre zone ended an
d Matt sped up to a hundred again.
‘I’m beginning to think it’s selfish to have children. I mean with the way the world is at the moment. It seems almost irresponsible—’ she looked at him ‘—what do you think?’
Matt wound up his window. ‘I’ve never thought much about having kids.’
Kerri examined the backs of her hands, as if trying to read a reminder she’d written there—a shopping list? A missed appointment?
They drove on for a while, the only sound a maple leaf caught in the vent, flapping violently in the wind.
‘There was another suicide bomber in the news last night,’ said Kerri. ‘In Pakistan.’
A sheep truck thundered past, tufts of wool visible between the slats. Matt rested his elbow on the window, feeling the vibrations from the motion of the car. Kerri examined her face in the side mirror. ‘Did you get Dad a present?’ She looked at him, hopefully.
‘No.’
‘Me neither. I feel bad. Fifty is a big deal. It’s not just some random age like twenty-four, or thirty-seven. It’s a big deal.’
Matt glanced at her; he could see the freckles on the side of her face.
‘Remember when Dad came over for my birthday when I turned nine? We had a swimming-pool cake with blue jelly for the water and chocolate fingers around the outside for the fence. No one wanted to eat the jelly, only the chocolate fingers.’
Matt nodded slowly but didn’t take his eyes off the road. This was a story Kerri told often. But he wasn’t sure if it was a true story or not. Kerri collected stories the way some people collected old coins, storing them up to show later, fingering the shiny surfaces and noticing the tiny imperfections, the bits that made them real. Sometimes they were pieces of stories other people had told her. Sometimes they were just conversations she had overheard. She would retell them, over time, gradually making them about her.
‘What about the time Dad took us camping?’ she said.
The traffic was getting heavier. Another sheep truck came towards them, speeding by in a throb of stagnant air.
‘Yeah,’ said Matt, ‘I remember that.’
‘Remember how we cooked sausages on the fire so they were all crispy and charred and we had to peel off the outside layer? Wasn’t it fantastic?’
Two cop cars sped by. Matt watched them disappear in the rear-view mirror.
One Friday evening when Matt was twelve, his dad appeared unexpectedly at the front door. He was wearing ripped jeans and a red jacket with COWBOY emblazoned across the chest. While Matt and Kerri listened from the lounge, he explained to their mother that he wanted to take Matt away for a camping weekend—just the two of them, a father and son thing. Matt and Kerri heard their mother reluctantly agree.
‘I wouldn’t have wanted to come anyway,’ said Kerri from her perch on the couch. ‘Even if he’d asked me, I wouldn’t have wanted to come.’
Matt’s dad arrived at the house the next day in a brown Holden with a trail of bullet-hole stickers across the bonnet. He’d bought a tarpaulin especially for the trip. This was rolled up in a bundle on the back seat along with a supermarket bag containing sausages and white bread. He turned on the stereo when Matt got in the car. A loud, angry song by Creed came on.
At the first intersection two hitchhikers, both female, straddled the curb. Matt’s dad braked violently and then reversed, his hand pressing the back of Matt’s seat.
‘Ladies.’ He wound down the window. ‘What can I do you for?’
One of the girls leant her elbows on the edge of the driver’s window. She had a thick accent Matt could barely understand. On her exposed shoulder was a tattoo of a rose. Several minutes later Matt was relegated to the backseat where he sat beside the other girl. She was wearing a crocheted top with holes the size of ten-cent coins. Matt could see her bra; it was white with pink and green butterflies.
‘There’s this party tonight,’ said the girl in the front seat in her thick accent.
‘No shit,’ said Matt’s dad.
The party was in a barn at the end of a long, gravel driveway. Matt stayed sitting in the car when they arrived. He watched his dad get out and sit on the bonnet, talking with the two girls. Another girl came over to them carrying four bottles of beer, two in each hand, her fingers twisted around the bottlenecks.
Later on Matt lay down on the back seat and slept. When he woke up it was dark and his dad was peering in the car window, tapping on the glass. Matt opened the door and his dad handed him a sausage wrapped in a piece of white bread. Tomato sauce had leaked up his forearm. It looked like coagulated blood.
‘I told you we’d have sausages.’ He grinned. There was a smudge of something black on the side of his face. ‘We’re having a good time, aren’t we?’
They left in the afternoon the next day. Matt’s dad sat far back in the seat as he drove, his right elbow on the windowsill, only the tips of his fingers touching the wheel. Matt studied him for a while, pretending he was looking out the far window. The space between them felt thick. His dad turned on the stereo and tapped his fingers in time to the music. In front of them the road continued on in a straight line, cutting the hills into half-moons. His dad stopped the car at the end of the driveway. They just sat there for a while, listening to the music. Then Matt got out and went inside.
Matt and Kerri arrived as it was getting dark. The house appeared to be on the brink of collapse. It stood unsteadily on its exposed piles, one of which had crumbled into a mound of bricks. The mint-green paint along the weatherboards was blistering and cracking in a cobweb pattern. Around the house was a sea of mud, fringed with grass and weeds. They walked up a concrete driveway riddled with fractures. On the paler stretches of concrete, islands of dark-coloured moss converged to create moss continents. Lines of dandelions invaded from the edges.
Silhouetted in the front door of the house was a short blond woman. She called out, waved, then walked towards them. Up close she had a round, lined face and crinkly skin around the top of her neck. She wore a white top with fake fur around the collar. The fur looked dangerously flammable.
‘Rhonda,’ she said in a voice that sounded like smoke. Her accent was distinctly Australian. ‘Kerri! Good to see you again. You must be Matt, right?’
Matt took her outstretched hand; her fingers were dry. She held his hand a fraction too long, as if compensating for something. He wished again that he hadn’t come.
‘I’ve got some bad news for you. Your dad’s in the sin bin. They got him this afternoon doing one-eighty on his motorbike. One-eighty.’ Rhonda’s voice surged towards the end of the sentence. It was hard to tell if she sounded proud or shocked. It could have been either.
‘Anyway he put up a bit of a fight. Nothing really—just a bit of argy-bargy, you know what he’s like. They’ve locked him up for a night or two. Serves him right.’
Matt looked at Kerri, who was standing motionless behind him.
‘He’s had it coming.’ Rhonda clapped her hands together. ‘The cops have had their eye on him.’
‘We came all this way,’ said Kerri in a small voice, her face showing all the complexities of dismay. She pushed her sunglasses further onto the top of her head.
Matt put his hands in his pockets. ‘Shit happens,’ he said to no one in particular.
‘Come inside,’ said Rhonda. ‘You look cold.’ She zipped up her coat and a tuft of fake fur caught in the zip. It stuck out, a bobble of white, like a rabbit’s tail. ‘I’ve called the other people I invited. I called you too, but I got your answerphone.’
‘I had my phone on silent,’ said Kerri.
The house was surprisingly clean and tidy. Matt and Kerri followed Rhonda through a narrow hallway into a lounge furnished in orange and brown and burnt red—a colour scheme that reminded Matt of movies set in the seventies. A leather couch faced a television mounted on the far wall. Paper streamers hung from the ceiling in loops—blue, yellow, orange, red. In the corner, a pretend log fire threw pretend flames of gas up a grey chimney.
Cooking smells drifted from the next room. Rhonda stood in the doorway, as if about to move into the kitchen. She looked at them for several seconds, then abruptly smiled. She was almost pretty, in a raw and sloppy way. ‘Fuck him,’ she said, laughing. ‘We’ll do it anyway. We’ll have the party—just us.’
Kerri looked at Matt and smiled a protective smile. Matt shrugged; he felt drained and listless, as if he was setting out on a road trip somewhere he didn’t particularly want to go but someone else had decide the route a long time before.
A week before Matt’s fifteenth birthday, a cheque arrived in the post. With it, a note.
Come to Queensland mate, I’ve forgotten what you look like.
It was dark when Matt got off the plane at the Gold Coast airport. It was the first time he’d been overseas, not that Australia really counted. His dad was standing inside the sliding doors, hands in his pockets. Matt watched him from a distance, checking his features, trying to find evidence of something that wasn’t quite palpable.
‘Mate,’ said his dad as Matt walked over to him. For a moment he thought his dad was going to hug him. But he didn’t. Instead he turned the forwards gesture into a handshake. They walked outside the terminal to a Holden parked astride a double yellow line. His dad drove quickly, tooting at a dawdling taxi, overtaking a van.
‘I’ve made me a bit of money since I’ve been over here,’ he said, doing the fingers at a motorbike pulling out from the curb.
‘Yeah?’ Matt watched lines of multi-storey motels and hotels on either side of the road blur into an endless stream of flashing neon.
‘Yeah,’ said his dad.
Circles of coloured lights outlined the entranceways to restaurants. The lights seemed to wink at Matt as they passed by. Eventually they turned off the motorway and drove down a street leading towards the beach.
‘I thought we could go for a drink,’ said his dad. ‘Just me and you; before I take you back to mine.’
The Red Queen Page 2