The Turning (11 page)

Thanks for collecting him for me.

Can’t have them thinking you left a child in the rain.

Bye, Fay.

Already Marjorie was on the porch unfurling an umbrella in preparation for their rescue. He could imagine old Don out there trolling the streets for them right now. He honked the horn as he
pulled away.

On Saturday morning Dyson drove out along the coast with a pair of binoculars to show Ricky the humpbacks coursing their way towards the tropics, and for a while they stood on
a headland as a whale and her calf lolled in the clear, sunlit water at their feet. The boy was enchanted. Vapour and spray rose around them. The crash of tails whacking the surface resonated in
their own skin and hair. They hooted like sportsfans until the show was over. Heading homeward, with Ricky still euphoric, Dyson thought about the whaling station, now a museum, on the outskirts of
town. He figured he’d let that keep a while. For now the boy was alight with wonder. Why dash that excitement with cold, nasty history right at the outset?

As they came back into town Ricky spotted the football oval and rose in his seat.

Dad, can we kick the footy?

The sun was out, there was a ball in the back of the car. Dyson wheeled them in to park beside the other cars around the boundary. A junior game was in recess so they dashed out to the western
goal square and punted the ball up and back between the posts. While Ricky capered solemnly around the turf, Dyson took in the twelve-year-olds in their team huddles on the flank. Nothing had
changed in thirty years – the coach’s harangue, the half-sucked orange quarters on the grass, the fat and hungover parents nursing their breakfast meatpie and fag.

Dad, watch this! Frank Leaper snaps on goal!

Ricky hooked the ball across his shoulder. The kick fell short but Dyson ushered it across the line.

A car horn blared.

Through! cried Ricky.

Six points, Dyson said.

The horn went again: shave-and-a-haircut-ten-cents. Dyson looked over. Don Keenan waved from the wheel of his ancient Holden.

Out in the centre the umpire blew his whistle for the resumption of play and the teams straggled back out onto the park. Ricky whined and baulked at having to vacate the goal-square but Dyson
herded him back to the sidelines. They drew up beside the old man’s car.

Got a bit of a kick on him, said Don Keenan.

How are you, Don?

The old man shrugged. What doesn’t kill you makes you older. Know anythin about addiction?

A few things, I spose, said Dyson leaning against the old HT as two boys flew for the bouncedown. The ball shied out to a solitary kid who was so stunned to have possession of it that he stood
motionless until run down by the pack.

Thanks for takin an interest in Fay. It means a lot to us.

Dyson said nothing.

We’re just about at our wits’ end, said Don. No parent should have to see the things I’ve seen.

She’s trying, said Dyson.

You got that right.

The ball soared, spiralling into the sun.

But we love her, said Don. You understand that, don’t you?

Dyson said he did.

Late Sunday night, when Ricky was long abed and the fire all but out, there was a gentle knock at the door.

I’m sorry, Fay murmured. I just had to.

He let her in and with her came the night chill. They sat by the hearth but he didn’t stoke the fire for fear of encouraging Fay to linger. She sat down in a quilted jacket, jeans and
hiking boots and fingered the book he’d been reading. As she leant in toward the remains of the fire her hair crowded her face.

Everything alright?

She shook her head.

He sighed. Want a cuppa?

Yeah, she said. Coffee.

He went into the kitchen to fill the kettle. When he returned Fay was putting wood on the fire.

I should have been at a meeting tonight, she said. I’ve skipped two in a row.

So don’t miss the next one.

There’s no one I can turn to, Pete. You’re it.

Your parents know you’re here?

Yeah. They’re freaking. When . . . when I get agitated and restless like this they think I’m gonna go out and score.

And are you?

I’m here aren’t I? Shit, they’re still searching my room and I’m thirty years old, for Chrissake. Least if I’m here they’ll relax. God, they’re
ecstatic. You’re the Golden Boy. Dad even drove me, she said with a girlish laugh.

He drove you here?

So fucking sad.

Dyson lowered himself into a chair and felt a new weight of fatigue on him.

Tell me about your wife, she said.

What kind of state are you in, Fay?

Frazzled, she said. Teetering. So tell me about her.

Dyson shook his head. Fay whistled through her teeth.

What do you want from me? he asked.

Respect, she said. No. Adoration. Shit, Pete, I just want a safe place to be. Someone trustworthy. I can trust you, can’t I?

Fay pulled her knees up to her chin and in that single movement, with her hair down her arms and her eyes tilted up at him, she became an eerie ghost of her teenage self. Dyson got up and went
back to the kitchen to make her coffee. He stood, shaken, at the stove. He turned a teaspoon over and over in his hand so that the light caught it.

You didn’t answer me, Fay said in the doorway.

I don’t know the answer.

Can’t trust yourself, you mean.

Jesus, Fay, what is it that you really want?

I dunno, she said arching against the doorframe. Just now? Comfort, I spose. A few of the edges taken off. This fucking town – I shouldn’t have come back.

So why did you?

I want my kid.

Dyson felt hemmed in now. He was revolted by her. He couldn’t help it. All that restless will, the cruelty of it made him sick.

What are you thinking? she asked. Your face went black. What’re you thinking about me?

Nothing, Fay.

I used to be a prize once. I was a trophy and you had me.

Let’s go and sit by the fire, he said. Here’s your coffee.

You’re uncomfortable.

Yes.

I came here for comfort and you’re uncomfortable, she said, her face flushed.

I don’t think there’s any comfort I can give you.

The simple pleasures, she said, lifting the mug to her mouth.

Maybe you should go.

You don’t understand what I’ve been through!

And I’m rapidly losing interest in finding out.

You don’t know what’s been taken from me, what I’ve given up. It’s inhuman. No one should have to go through what I’ve been through.

The blood was in her face now. Her eyes glittered. She was beautiful again.

Fay—

Jesus, I’m aching. I need love.

Your family—

I need more!

You’ll meet good people, he said. It’s a slow road.

I can’t wait. Can’t you see, I can’t wait.

Think of Sky.

Don’t do that to me, she said. Look down your nose, turn me away, lecture me. I really thought you were a friend.

I am, he murmured, and as he did so he knew it was a lie.

She dragged her hair back off her face and wiped her eyes. You can’t even spare me a hug?

Dyson felt such a shit. He sighed and looked at her, relenting. Sensing it, she smiled.

Let’s go to bed, Pete.

He froze even as he reached for her. Fay, you really should go.

What harm can it do?

Fay—

I can’t drink, can’t drive, can’t live in my own place, can’t do Mr Speed. Jesus, I can’t upset Mum and Dad. A mercy fuck isn’t against the law, Pete,
it’s not a blow against the Higher Power. Hello, my name’s Fay Keenan and I’m desperate—

Stop it.

You used to beg me.

Please keep your voice down.

I can’t believe you!

Well you’d better believe it.

It’s so humiliating, she said beginning to weep. I’m coming apart here and you’re just . . . just watching?

Fay, you’ll wake Ricky.

I don’t give a shit.

Just calm down.

She wiped her face with the sleeve of her baggy jumper. A glistening trail of snot and tears lay on the wool and Dyson stared at it while his mind raced.

You won’t even hold me, will you?

No, he murmured. I’m sorry, but I can’t.

I don’t think we were ever friends.

You’re probably right, he said. We were obsessed, caught up in something. Too young. We were children. We did damage.

Fay gulped at her coffee. She looked at him carefully as though taking his measure. She was beautiful. Any man would want her. She’d taste of coffee and cigarettes and tears and her hair
would fall around you like a curtain.

You have no idea how my parents adore you, said Fay. I could have hated you for being in town when I came home. My big moment. Nothing I’ve done in the past six months to put my life right
could impress them the way you did by simply arriving unchanged of old. And you know what? Stolen thunder and all, I was glad. Happy for them, happy for me. We really thought you’d be there
for us.

I appreciate that, he said. But I don’t think they expect me to sleep with you.

They don’t know how cold and dead inside you really are.

That’s probably true, he admitted, exhausted now.

You know they never did find out about our little secret. God knows, every other shitty thing I ever did somehow got back to them, but they never even suspected that. Two days shy of seventeen.
And your fuckin mother paid for it.

Oh, Fay.

You know how my parents are. You know what it’d do to them. It’d crush them. Break their hearts.

Don’t.

And you, the tin god. They could blame you for everything that’s ever happened to me, everything I’ve put em through.

Dyson went cold. He held on to the bench and stared at her. God, how thoroughly she saw through him. He never really knew if Fay regretted the abortion they’d obtained all those years ago,
but she gauged him well enough to sense how it ate at him. And she knew where his real vanity lay, what it would cost him to be reviled by her parents. When Fay took off to leave them in the lurch
again, how could he live here in town with them, meeting them at the school gate every morning? What would he be to them, then, the killer of their unborn grandchild?

Pete, if I leave this house and go down to the trawlers and score tonight, what’re you gonna tell them? That you turned me away? Ruined my recovery like you ruined me before?

Did I, though? he murmured. Ruin you. Is that how it was?

She laughed and put the mug on the bench.

There was a thud from the livingroom and Fay turned, startled.

Ricky? she called.

Dyson slipped past her and saw a log fallen out onto the hearth. A plume of smoke rose in the room and he kicked the smouldering wood back into the grate. He leant on the mantle to get control
of himself.

Fay stood in the middle of the room waving smoke away. Her manic mood had broken.

So that’s a no, then?

It’s a no, Fay. Regardless.

It’s blackmail, she said. I know.

It’s vicious.

You think I’d do it? she asked, smiling. You think I’d tell them?

No, he whispered prayerfully. Because you love them. I think you love your daughter. You’ve come too far, Fay. Too much self-respect.

Dyson wondered if it might be true, whether she had any pity in her at all.

Well, said Fay. I spose we’ll see, won’t we?

Yes, Dyson said turning back to the smouldering log in the grate. I guess we will.

He kept his back to her.

The door shut so quietly that he had to turn around to see that she was gone.

I
WAS SIXTEEN
when the old man shot through. A year later we moved back to the city where my mother cleaned houses to pay off his debts and keep us
afloat and get me through university. She wouldn’t let me get a part-time job to pay my way. The study, she said, was too important. Cleaning was a come-down from her previous job, eighteen
years before, as a receptionist in a doctor’s surgery, but it was all she could get. She told me there was more honour in scrubbing other people’s floors than in having strangers scrub
your own. But I wasn’t convinced. The only thing worse than knowing she knelt every day in someone else’s grotty shower recess was having to help her do it. Some days, between lectures,
I did go with her. I hated it. There were many other times when I could have gone and didn’t. I stayed home and stewed with guilt. She never said a word.

My mother had a kind of stiff-necked working class pride. After the old man bolted she became a stickler for order. She believed in hygiene, insisted upon rigour. She was discreet and deadly
honest, and those lofty standards, that very rigidity, set her apart. Carol Lang went through a house like a dose of salts. She earned a reputation in the riverside suburbs where, in time, she
became the domestic benchmark. She probably cleaned the houses of some of my wealthy classmates without any of us being the wiser.

She was proud of her good name and the way people bragged about her and passed her around like a hot tip, but I resented how quickly they took her for granted. I’d seen their patronizing
notes on floral paper, their attempts to chip her rate down. The householders who thought most highly of themselves were invariably the worst payers and the biggest slobs. It was as though having
someone pick up after them had either encouraged them to be careless or made them increasingly determined to extort more work for their money. Through it all, my mother maintained her dignity
and
her hourly rate. She left jobs, she did not lose them.

In twenty years she was only ever sacked the once, and that was over a pair of missing earrings. She came home with a week’s notice and wept under the lemon tree where she thought I
wouldn’t hear. I tried to convince her never to return but she wouldn’t hear a word of it. We argued. It was awful, and it didn’t let up all week. Since the old man’s
disappearance we’d never raised our voices at each other. It was as though we kept the peace at all costs for fear of driving each other away. And now we couldn’t stop bickering.