The Family Men (2 page)

Sex, Drugs and the AFL.

Not that girls aren't a dime a dozen. There are girls everywhere. At the beach. At the pub. In the stands week after week. But “Brandi”, or perhaps “Tiffany”, isn't just a girl anymore. She has been distinguished, elevated, has become a specific individual, the type one might know or run into. She could be the daughter of a friend of his mother's. She might be a friend's girlfriend or fiancée. She could have attended school with one of his cousins. She might work beside Rosie (his current booty call) at the chemist, her identity clearly printed on her prominent PharmaC
name tag.

So yes, he would prefer to remain ignorant of her name. Then there would only be one name to remember, that of the original girl, his father's girl, Tracy, long gone but still clambering about in his head.
Stripper Killed in Hit-and-Run.
Isn't one name enough?

“Come on Harry, take pity on me,” says Margo. “Everyone's away. We can have lunch, talk it over, chew the fat. You've had a stellar year but it can't all have been easy. That's a lot of pressure on a player with your lineage, second in line to the throne. But there must have been a morning or two you didn't feel like getting out of bed, a training session where you wondered what the heck you'd signed up for. People love to hear about that stuff, not just the chockies but the boiled lollies too. Makes them feel like they're part of it. What do you say?”

For a moment he is tempted to tell her the truth, to say, get out your notebook, this is what I know. He clears his throat, a prelude to a confession, but then he pictures Laurie's face, steam rising.

He often thinks about the girl, imagines her getting herself ready, excited, packing her bag (make-up, fishnet stockings, new satin knickers, her sequined silver bra), the big night finally arrived, her special secret, the telly on in the other room, Jack shooting his mouth off, the usual shit –
I could tackle her
, or some such nonsense – a big dumb grin on his face, the rest of the panel laughing along as he bandies his innuendo because he is dressed in a suit and tie, a real gentleman, and is an excellent ruckman, but she doesn't care, calling, “I'm going, Mum,” as she exits the front door, glass panels rattling as she trips off into the evening.

Outside the air would have been cool, goosebumps forming on her arms as she walked. He imagines her hurrying along, trying to warm up, but not too much, she wouldn't want to get sweaty, not if she could help it, kicking off her trainers, slipping on her high heels, the shoes clicking on the rutted footpath –
tap, tap, tap, tap
– a hollow bang, as though she was nailing up the city's holes.

The girl hurried along the footpath, the sound of her steps echoing in the cool air, her subterfuge powering her along, part thrill, part terror, being in possession of her first big secret, stage one in her escape plan for the west.

It was not the kind of secret she could trust with her current crop of friends, concerned as they were with provincial interests – bands, boyfriends, clothes – picturing them confronted by a stern parent, witnessing the immediate crack, spilling her beans all the way down their fair-weather fronts. She had no need for it, to include them, their feeble guilt being offered up to her after the fact, their benign gestures of supplication as her dreams scattered in the breeze.

At school the official curriculum determined that they investigate options for the future (training courses, vocational pathways), their formless youth plotted along an incompetence spectrum, barely able to place one foot in front of the next, balanced on the precipice of an inevitable abyss if they weren't confronted with some basic truths (aptitudes playing second fiddle to opportunities). And for many of her peers it was justified, they didn't have the first clue what they were going to do with themselves in the next hour let alone tomorrow, if challenged outlining a perpetual now of contentment defined by easy friendships and ongoing featureless stress-free jobs that would somehow sustain them into an effortless, nebulous adulthood.

Not her though. She had long known exactly what she wanted to do, how it would unfold, had fixated on the future the way her peers fixated on certain celebrities, obsessing over their choreographed details, never fully processing the gulf between the world they inhabited and the one they aspired to know. Imagining themselves fully formed while she had always understood herself as a work in progress, viewing her adolescence as a waiting game, biding her time as a means to an end. Step one, get some cash together. Steps two, three and four, get out of town, away from her mother and her leery boyfriends, her mother saying, “Can't you just be nice,” the two of them always at odds about it as though the girl shouldn't mind these men accidentally walking in on her in the shower, insisting on coming into her room to kiss her goodnight before bed, running around with no clothes on pretending to play father of the house. But they weren't her father.
You're not my dad.

And now it had commenced. The countdown.

She saw the railway station at the end of the road, the street lights like sentries, framing the way. She was nearly there. She took a deep breath before accelerating her pace; she wanted to remember this moment, to imprint it on her synapses so that she could retrieve it in the future, this shout-out from her past: the place where one chapter ended and the next part (the good one) properly began.

*

What did Jack say? That it was all good fun? The way these girls earned their keep? There was no need for anybody to feel bad. It was a game, part of their shtick, making a mission of it, competing for famous marks. And it was a far cry from that business with his dad all those years ago (though the past is never past). The situations were completely different. There was nothing clandestine about this. It was all above board. It wasn't as though she was dragged out there against her will. She walked. Somewhat teetering, but of her own accord. It was a public engagement. She was being paid for her services. She was young but she had seemed obliging enough. Smiling. Especially at the beginning.

Or perhaps that was the issue, she appeared too cooperative. Not exactly drunk. She didn't flail. Yet not exactly sober either. There was something automatic about her behaviour, earnest yet robotic, a sense that she was doing what she had been told to do but without an appreciation of what any of it actually meant, the shimmying. They had all played along, the women. Keeping in time, running through the steps to the music. An ensemble entertainment. And then one was invited back for the finale. One and one only. By popular ballot. For a special solo performance. This is how he expects it would have been framed. As a privilege. An honour. A real feather in her cap.
You're the one that they want, honey
. Quite the coup.

For who doesn't love being singled out? Every schoolboy's dream, to be two points down in the final quarter, taking an unexpected grab on the siren, game changer, the commentators scrambling for the right superlatives as you kick the winning goal. But fantasies rarely find such form in real life. There are too many intangibles. Too many unknowns. So much room between beginnings and endings, an unfillable void between how it might be imagined and the various ways it could actually go down.

And here again was another version:
Once upon a time …

The longer the show went on, however, the more convinced he became that whoever it was who had spun her that tale had omitted the end of the story.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession and these are my sins: I lied to my mother, I lied to my father, I lied to my brother, I lied to my coach, I swore, I had impure thoughts, twice I took the Lord's name in vain.”

It is a fair list for so short a spell. He doesn't mention the girl, what is really on his mind.

Father Murphy pauses, allowing for the probability of what hasn't been said – a lifetime of misgivings not long enough for the confession of most men's sins (including those who view their sporadic unbosomings as more of an insurance policy,
you never know
, than any faith they might have vested in the Almighty) – before issuing some advice. “Go easy on yourself, Harry. There's more to life than doing everything by the book. God loves your imperfections too.”

Not according to Laurie, he doesn't, thinks Harry, recalling the last time his coach took public aim at Alan, his go-to stooge, chastising Eddy (Jack's brain-dead brother) for turning up hungover to training, comparing him to their father in the good old days, hapless and erratic. “Lucky for me the big man was out of commission so often or I'd never have gotten a game. He can put it away though. Drink us all under the table. I'll give him that. You tell Senior, thanks,” he said in Harry's direction, before issuing “Steady” an additional five laps (discipline); Matt laughing it off as Laurie's sense of humour as Eddy chucked in front of the Williamson Stand, castigating Harry for being such a prig about it. “Who are you to question his authority? You don't know what goes on behind the scenes. You're hardly in a position to criticise. Try getting your own ducks in a row before you start telling everyone else what to do.” Glass houses and all of that. And finally, “If you can't take the heat—” Such was the traction that one's imperfections gained you at training.

What Harry would like to have done is to have punched Laurie squarely in the jaw, forced him to shut his cakehole. That would have sorted a few things out, made everyone stop and take notice. Though sure as shit if he had, he would have had to take on most of the team as well. Nick would have been in there in a heartbeat. And Keith and Richie had never met a brawl they wouldn't fight (those two being even bigger dickheads than Jack and Eddy, especially when they'd had a skinful – Harry still had the scar on his chin to show for their Rivalry Round celebrations), not to mention the rest of the coaching staff. Then he'd be saddled with a disciplinary suspension – beating up the coach coming under the banner of “insubordination”, the club having a zero tolerance policy when it came to players assaulting their office-bearers – so he could see it was always going to be more trouble that it was worth. Smarter just to look the other way and play on.

But Harry keeps that to himself. “Yes, Father,” he answers as he is issued his penance, and then he ruminates all the way home.

He isn't even sure what the problem really is. If there is a problem. And if it wouldn't be easier to just cut to the chase and issue a blanket apology to everyone who was there. Though what would he be excusing himself for? A lapse in judgement, would that cover it? No, he knows that won't do. People are rarely satisfied with such abbreviations; they greatly prefer the grisly details laid out for comprehensive public dissection, something to get their teeth sunk into. The situation might have felt less fraught if he'd been clearer about it himself, what it was that he had found so unsavoury, why he'd felt the need to behave as he had (then and since then), instead of struggling with this overwhelming sense of failure and regret, it being so unlike him to get “caught inside” (even when he was surfing, he rarely got trapped within the sets). Everything had been on the level. Certainly he hadn't done anything wrong. Technically, nobody had done anything wrong. Or had they? And if so, was his reaction a sign that he should feel proud? Hadn't he declared something about his capacity? Shown them something of himself. Too much though, or maybe not enough? So hard to gauge. That being the sticking point with his brother, he is sure of it (Matt begrudgingly returning his trophy to him the following day, Harry loath to touch it), why Matt gives him the third degree, Matt usually being the one to lead the charge, especially at work, though not sure what one would call it in this case.

It wasn't as though he'd mulled it over beforehand, it was implausible that he could have, there was nothing to consider. He just went with his gut. A split-second decision, an involuntary response, he was acting purely on instinct, overcome perhaps by the music and the heat. It was only afterwards that he computed the consequences, had some distance on the way his behaviour might have been interpreted by everyone else (the disgusted expressions on the boys' faces still visible in his mind's eye –
what is wrong with him?
– he doesn't need it spelled out to know they'd happily smack the shit out of him at the first opportunity).

In the kitchen his mum watches him plonk himself in front of the fruit bowl without so much as a good morning as he reaches for a banana, biting off the stem, the tough fibrous peel no match for his continuing preoccupations. “How was Mass?” asks Diana, not really caring about the service, she's long given up believing in the promises of organised religion, her ex-husband has seen to that, but the Club encourages the boys to attend, good public relations, they say, and she is happy enough to let her kids play along – one cup is as good as the other – especially if some of that credit is attributed to her productive influence. Credit where credit is due.