by Kim Kelly
‘He’d say it’s just fancy mechanics, putting the bits back together,’ Dan replied. ‘He wanted me to follow in his footsteps, his last hope from four sons. But no thanks. I want to have a life. He’s set a bad example for us.’
She wanted to ask him if he had an intense and overbearing father like she did, if it might be some quirk of Germanness, but she couldn’t ask him something so personal and presumptuous as that; she asked him instead: ‘You’ve got three brothers?’
‘Yep. All older, though, in their thirties,’ he told her, eyes on the road. ‘All over the place, too – they couldn’t leave home fast enough. I’m the baby – and they abandoned me. I was a mistake, or probably more likely Mum wanting someone to talk to other than Dad, who’s not there even when he is there, if you know what I mean.’
Like me? Addy shrugged and attempted a smile, staring into the foreign streetscape that unfolded past the blank brick walls of the University of New South Wales.
Dan continued as he drove: ‘Dad couldn’t function without her. Gee, who’d want to be a man like that? He’s just turned sixty-four and won’t stop. Anyway, when Mum’s had enough, she chucks down the tea towel and says, “Richard, you can do what you bloody well like, but someone else is cooking my dinner tonight” – which usually means Chinese, at Souths Juniors, because the food really is pretty good, and it’s only five minutes from the hospital.’
He seemed to laugh to himself then, and with such fondness for his parents Addy was grounded for a moment there, with an inkling that was more felt than thought: this was the kind of family she wanted for herself one day, with children who would impersonate her and laugh at her with love behind her back. Who wouldn’t want that?
As they half-circled a roundabout, he pointed up a hill to the left through the streetlight-studded dark: ‘Five-minute drive that way – that’s home. Coogee, near the beach – and also five minutes from the hospital.’ That fond laugh again, tossed across his shoulder, and suddenly, too suddenly, he was slowing the car and telling her: ‘There’s the club.’
It was a building shaped like a huge ship’s prow, clad in grey-green tiles; an unholy shrine dedicated to the pursuit of sport, beer and boobs, in that order, and all subsidised by the poker machines that would certainly have filled one of the windowless floors inside, as they did at practically every other leagues club across the state.
And we’re having our first date here? Is this a first date?
Don’t be insane. He’s only being kind, giving you a lift.
Yeah, really? Because guys do that all the time, don’t they.
Why else would Dan the Man be seen with you anywhere? He’s a doctor’s son who went to Sydney Boys. He’s a nice boy, and you’re just —
Shut up.
You need a beer.
Fuck off.
‘What’s your favourite Chinese, anyway?’ he asked her, swerving into a carpark.
She heard the question but couldn’t form any other response apart from: ‘Oh everything. Mmm.’
The car had stopped and they were getting out; she was so removed from herself, she could not have said how she got that seatbelt off, and here was Dan Ackerman holding out his hand to her before they crossed a broad, black road, oil slicks shimmering iridescent under the rising moon. She looked at his hand for a moment as though it were a foreign object. Just take it, you stupid freak. What the hell is wrong with you? And at the first touch of her hand in his, at the first sense of his real-life actual warmth, she hoped she’d come back to earth at least a little. Please.
She didn’t. The road seemed an ocean of blackness, impossible that she should be walking upon it, and once inside the leagues club, she thought the swirls in the gaudy carpet might rise up to clutch her ankles and drag her down; she almost hoped they would.
Please, stop.
‘It’s only on the first floor,’ she heard him say, and she found it hard to believe he could still see her face, it felt so numb, so absent, but there he was, smiling at her, with that sweet smile and that tidied-up haircut, as though everything was fine.
She tried to focus on the people they passed on the staircase: two young women, about her age, shoulder to shoulder, whispering under the thump of distant music and the hum of the air-conditioning system; blue eyeshadow and crimped hair like fountains on their heads; white jeans and striped pastel shirts. They were generic club girls she’d seen a hundred times before; they all had boyfriends called Scott or Shaun, and were almost finished their hairdressing apprenticeships because it was the perfect job to combine with future family commitments. They were the kinds of white-bread Aussie girls that Addy had gone to high school with, in bulk, who said she’d be pretty if she did something with her hair, who told her that boys didn’t like girls who read as much as she did. These girls were alien creatures from a planet far, far away, and Addy didn’t need a stress-induced hallucination to think it. But they did return her from the brink: she could feel her feet upon the stairs – she wasn’t going to take a tumble for their entertainment.
‘I made a reservation,’ Dan told the waiter at the door of the restaurant. ‘Ackerman, for two.’
He made a reservation? A cold sadness swept through Addy at the fact: here was a boy – a man – beyond perfect. An everything man; an all-occasions man; a renaissance man of many talents. And Addy was in every way undeserving of his attention. She was mentally unstable. Aimless. Damaged.
Find a way to put him off gently. There would be no arguing with herself about that, and it was the most grounding reality of all. She couldn’t lead this one on. She would not break this boy’s heart or cause him the slightest grief; she would make herself forgettable. Shouldn’t be very hard.
‘It’s like walking back into the womb, hey,’ he said, a soft aside to her alone, as the waiter showed them to their table.
What? She looked up at him, wondering what she’d missed; and in that instant felt her hand in his, just as he let it go. Oh.
‘All the red,’ he said, gesturing at the walls. They were indeed all red, decorated everywhere with black and gold, and topped with internal roof awnings in the style of an ancient pagoda, but otherwise so red the place glowed.
‘It’s like being inside a Chinese lantern,’ she said, gripping the metal frame beneath the dining chair as she sat, to stop herself from floating away.
He laughed, a happy, generous laugh, settling into the chair across from her, drawing her back to him: ‘Yep. That’s exactly what it’s like.’
He did not stop smiling or agreeing with her from that point on, even when she asked for an orange fizzy – he only laughed again and ordered two.
‘So, what are you going to do after uni, do you reckon?’ he asked her as their dim sim entrée arrived.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she replied, seeing an opportunity here to show him what a total screw-up she was. ‘I’ve just dropped out of law.’ Then she dropped her heart’s desire onto the tablecloth like spilt soy sauce: ‘Reckon I might want to be a writer, because I’m obviously out of my mind.’
But he said: ‘Wow.’ He sat forward over his plate, keener than ever: ‘Lucky I stole those notes of yours, then, hey – they’ll be worth a fortune one day.’
‘Steady on.’ She laughed now, too; how he drew and drew her to him. She said: ‘I haven’t even written anything yet, or at least nothing fit for human consumption.’
‘You’ve started something, though?’ He could not have been more interested or more sincere – or more right.
She looked away, forking a dim sim onto her plate: Why the hell did I mention writing? She tried to shove that subject back in its box: ‘It’s nothing – only rubbish.’
‘What’s it about?’ He was only keener still.
Oh, please, shush. She wanted to bat it away again, telling him: ‘I’ve really got no idea …’ But he did genuinely seem to want to know, didn’t he? She trusted Dan Ackerman; she took the risk and told him: ‘It’s strange. This morning I found out some thing
s about my family, my grandparents, and when I started writing it all down, it was like it, whatever it is, wanted to write itself. Like I’d disappeared into the words or something.’ She rolled her eyes at herself: ‘See? Crazy.’
But he said: ‘Wow.’ He leaned even further forward, elbows on the table, and she noted that he hadn’t touched the food there, as he asked her: ‘So, what’s the story?’
And the question was like a door opening onto her soul, light flooding in; she let the story pour out between them: ‘My grandfather was a lawyer in Nazi Germany, apparently. He’d been this small-town nobody who somehow distinguished himself during the First World War. Afterwards, he got political, the wrong kind of political, and the Gestapo …’ Dan Ackerman did not move his eyes from hers; she felt the heat rise in her cheeks, not from embarrassment, but from the injustice, the cruelty: ‘They killed him, beat him up in front of my dad, who was only a little kid at the time. I don’t know what happened after that, except that they took my grandmother away and she died as well, I don’t know how, except it was horrific. So horrific that Dad hasn’t told me any of this. I found out by accident, long story, big coincidence – you couldn’t write that bit.’ Dan was frowning now, thoughtfully, quietly; maybe too quietly. ‘Anyway,’ she shrugged, ‘when I started writing it down, it just sort of took over. I might not know what I’m doing, but it feels like something I should do, I suppose.’ She shoved a hunk of dim sim into her mouth, mostly to stop herself from saying any more.
‘Hm.’ He nodded as she chewed, and after half a forever, he said: ‘Sounds like something worth doing.’ She wasn’t sure if that was nothing more than a platitude, until he continued: ‘My grandfather’s an artist. He’d know what you’re talking about. He was in the First World War as well, as an Australian, though – long story, too, but he was born here, to German parents – and when he came home, to Australia, he suddenly had to paint. He always says it was like he didn’t have a choice. He ended up going back to Europe, back to Germany, to go to art school, dragged the whole family over when my dad was little, but that was in the 1930s and things got unpleasant, as you could guess, and they were only there a couple of years before they had to turn around and come home again. He didn’t care about that, though, he never wanted to be famous or anything. Painting is just something he has to do – it’s the way he talks to the world. He’s a small-town nobody, a coal miner, originally. Just a tech-head, really, like me …’ Dan looked away, the blush to his cheeks matching hers, and he told the tablecloth: ‘I’m sorry your family had such a hard time.’
‘Sorry?’ Addy was lost for a moment in the mesh of history she seemed to share with Dan Ackerman, the scribbly lines of their true stories intersecting and reflecting. It was unreal. It was also somehow right, that like should attract like. Wasn’t it?
‘I mean war is such a giant serve of bullshit, hey?’ He smiled, pensive at the edges. ‘Our grandfathers were on opposite sides, but only by a trick of chance. My granddad survived only by a trick of chance, too – he got pretty smashed up.’ Dan’s smile widened into something else, somehow half ironic and half daydreamy as he said: ‘Who knows? Maybe your grandfather was the one that fired the shell that hit mine, and he’s sent you to me to make amends. Gee,’ he snorted, and stabbed a dim sim, ‘there’s some crazy for you.’
Addy’s whole mind smiled as she stabbed the dim sim beside his: ‘You’ll have to do a lot better than that if you want to beat me for crazy.’
The special fried rice with prawns arrived, and the honey chicken, a platter of sizzling steak, too, and she allowed herself a small, warm moment to imagine that chance might be tricking her nicely this time, that maybe this thing with Dan Ackerman was really real and right and true – that maybe, just maybe, it was meant to be.
THE FIGHT & ITS UNEXPECTED AFTERMATH
‘Maybe’ is a favourite word of chance – it’s noncommittal. Maybe boxing matches at leagues clubs aren’t the most conducive places for love.
Addy could smell the massed testosterone before they’d even reached the ring – before they’d left the restaurant.
As they got up from the table, she said to Dan: ‘I think I need a drink, something alcoholic.’
‘Sure.’ He frown-smiled at the idea as they made their way out, with five minutes to spare before the fight. ‘The bar shouldn’t be too crowded yet – what would you like?’
She really would have preferred to hold his hand again, both to ground her balloon and to keep her mind inside their blossoming togetherness, but she couldn’t do that; she didn’t want to drag him with her, wherever she was going now. Outside, in the no-man’s land between entertainment halls, with industrial levels of cigarette smoke swirling around them like it had been pumped from a fog machine, and the plucky, plunketty strains of ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ somehow radiating up through the concrete and the carpet beneath her feet, she said: ‘Dan, it’s really lovely you came with me tonight – you can’t know how much I appreciate you giving me that lift here, and for dinner, and everything – but you don’t have to come to the fight with me. I can get a cab home.’
He stopped, mid-stride, and then turned to her with a scrunched-up squint: ‘Nah … Unless … You don’t want me to hang around?’ He looked uncertain: and she saw in that look the first glimpse of his heartbreak. Breathtaking.
‘No!’ She scrambled at it: ‘I didn’t mean that.’ What did she mean? ‘I mean, if it’s not your scene, I don’t want you to put yourself through it.’
She didn’t want this wonderful guy to have to meet her meathead brother and his meathead coach, or any of her brother’s or her father’s mates that might be there – the whole boxing crowd. The whole sweaty, grunting festival of ug.
Dan’s squint twisted so that he looked as though he had a toothache: ‘I don’t have a scene, Addy, and I’m not too thrilled at the thought of leaving you at a boxing match on your own. That might be sexist of me, but there it is. I’ll make myself scarce if you want me to, though.’
‘I don’t want you to make yourself scarce.’ Fuck! ‘I don’t want you to go. I just … You know …’ Say something: ‘Do you like boxing?’
‘I don’t have an opinion either way,’ he said, hands in his pockets, curling over himself somehow, so that he didn’t seem all that much taller than her. He hunched up his shoulders: ‘I’ve never seen a match except on TV. I’ve never taken a swing at anyone myself except on a football field and I almost broke my hand on the other bloke’s head – never been keen to do it a second time.’
She laughed despite herself; he’d pushed through her gathering anxiety yet again. She said, with a little too much surprise: ‘You play football?’
He raised an eyebrow: ‘That’s funny?’
‘No!’ She scrambled and scrambled: ‘I didn’t mean that, either.’ Even if she sort of did; he seemed too rangy, too lean. She clutched at a joke: ‘I bet you play rugby union, don’t you.’ With the posh boys, the rich boys – the ‘soft boys’, as her father would call them, though she knew well enough union boys called league boys the exact same names – mostly ‘dickhead’.
‘I did,’ he said, leaning further into his pockets. ‘But not this season. My fitness is crap, from smoking dope and laying about. I didn’t even turn up to the first training session, and I’m not very proud of that – don’t tell Granddad. So,’ he raised both eyebrows then, ‘what would you like to drink?’
She wanted a schooner of Riesling, but she shoved down the craving with her own shame: ‘Oh. Don’t worry about it.’ She glanced unseeing at her watch: ‘We’re running late.’
They weren’t. Within thirty seconds, they’d found the door to the arena where the fight would take place. As expected, it was startlingly similar to the dozen or so other boxing venues Addy had seen over the past few years: a darkened barn, walls painted the colour of pallid flesh, tables ranged around the ring, which was raised above the punters, ropes strung around it like a toy farmyard for big boys; there was the jud
ges’ table at one side, and a gallery above, half filled. The noise of men everywhere else, sawn-off and raucous; and the smell of men: body odour, aftershave, and the burning stench of whatever gears were being ground in the effort to contain their rage. No matter how many times Addy tried to remind herself of the socially beneficial purpose of controlled violence, she always came up shocked. It always struck her as weird, too, that while boxing was probably the nation’s most multicultural sport, with all the great fighters being either Aboriginal or next-generation post-war refugees of some sort, the audience was invariably dominated by doughy, middle-aged white-bread men with oily comb-overs. There was so much Brylcreem, polyester and alcohol in this room, it was a wonder the lighting of cigarettes wasn’t banned.
‘Hello, darlin’ – lost, are ya?’ some leery beer-breath said as she continued around and past the judges’ table, to the far side of the ring, where she could see the unmistakable bear shape of Nick’s coach – Max Kovacs – talking to some other man she recognised, though she couldn’t think of his name.
Max Kovacs saw her straightaway: ‘Addy.’ He grabbed her around the shoulders with one huge, hairy arm and squeezed, not that he had any particular affection for her, it was simply the way he greeted people – hard up against his cast-iron Hungarian pecs. He dislodged one of her hairpins in the process and it bit into her skull. ‘Your father told me he couldn’t get here tonight,’ he said with rushed disappointment. ‘Shout out loud for your brother. It’s a very important bout.’ And with that instruction, he disappeared into the shadows at the very back of the room, no doubt returning to Nick, somewhere psyching himself up – Ug. Ug. Ug.
It’ll be over within the hour, she told herself. Even if they went the distance of the full twelve rounds. It used to be fifteen, but the rules changed when someone died during a world championship match a couple of years ago, a Korean boxer, brain haemorrhage from one too many knocks to the head. Sport of kings? Sport of world-champion idiots.