The Family Men (22 page)

I ain't seen nothing.

She reminds him of his father when he is cornered, unable to keep his story straight but incapable of any honesty.

“Okay. I just don't understand why you'd say that when you know my mum knows Arlene at Dr Kirby's.”

“That's not right. That's confidential.”

“Don't blame me. I can't help the way things work around here. It's not like you're not in everyone's business. A place like this, you've got to mind yourself. People talk.”

“But, no, she wouldn't. No. I know she wouldn't. Anyway, I don't believe you.”

“Fair enough,” though he knows she does. He taps the accelerator again just because. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

“Maybe what was a bad idea? You coming over pretending to be nice then accusing me of lying? Yes, that was a bad idea. You're an arsehole, Harry. I thought you were different but you're not. You're as mean as any of them. Forget I invited you in. I didn't. You're not invited. You're uninvited. From everything.”

“Fine, off you go then. Why don't you do that. See you later.”

Rosie blinks a couple of times, quotation marks on her thoughts, before sticking her feet out the car door. “You know, it must be nice being famous, everyone wanting to know you, to do you favours, going around taking this or that, everyone acting like you're special, but you're right, it is a small town and you're just a big fish in a small pond. That's all. People only notice you because of your brother and your dad. Local hero. Whoopty-do. If it wasn't for them, people wouldn't care about you at all. Not one little scrap.”

Her torso shakes as she rails at him and he thinks about fucking her, the way her buttocks wobble as he enters her, dimply and loose, her body so stable in the centre of the bed; regretting slightly the passing of that, that he hadn't paid more attention (hadn't registered it was the last time, the last time they were together).

He waits until she has closed the door before leaning across and dropping the bag of tchotchkes out the window. “There's the rest of your stuff,” he says, gladly off-loading it, the balance of their short season together. He drives off, leaving her and the Safeway bag side by side on the footpath.

They were deft mentors, Jack and Eddy, the way they threw themselves in, fast assuming control of the situation – in so far as the situation was still under control – but that didn't mean there was anything to admire. Harry suggested they stop, said it a couple of times, “This isn't a good idea,” but they were well beyond that. Trousers around their ankles, dress shirts hanging at their thighs, the rest of the boys urging them on, to put on a good show. And Harry was more than welcome to join them, they'd made that clear – after all it was his privilege, his prerogative, he could have her first if he liked. He'd earned that much.
Rising star!
But why cast himself in that drama? If there was one lesson to master, certainly his mother had taught him that (
… if you can't be useful
). And he couldn't stop this train. So he scoffed his Jack Daniel's as he left them to it (left her to it).

The trophy was still on the stage when he departed.

Harry would like to wait for time to do its passing, for it to soften the edges and heal the wounds, for it to temper his impatience with a dose of enlightenment, but time is a gradual instrument and he can't stand it anymore. Not any of it. The idea of Jack and Eddy strutting around like they've gotten away with something, another pair of knickers for their famed trophy drawer, one more in a gluttony of misdeeds, nearly enough to send him over there. Not because he needs to be told what happened after he left Sportsman's Night, and not because it would make any difference if he did hit them for six, but just for once to even up the fixture, to make them own their offences, to force them to suffer for their trespasses the way others have been forced to suffer theirs. But Harry knows it would be about as effective as pissing into the wind.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been fourteen years since my first confession and I have never told the truth. I have been lazy, cruel and indecisive. I have lied. I have committed the sin of omission. I have twisted and turned, I have squirmed. I have been weak, afraid and uninspired. I have not taken the higher road. I have chosen the easier path when it has been expedient and it has always been expedient. I have not stepped up. I have gone along. I have baited and switched. I have avoided. I have been undone and I have blamed others for my undoing. I have hidden when I could have led. I have not come to the aid of those I could have helped. I have turned my back on those who needed me. I have turned a blind eye. I have abandoned, judged and sinned. I have failed.

He puts down the cricket bat and grabs his car keys.

The letter itself he gets Dean to write:

“To whom it may concern …”

III.

Renunciation

From the little that Matt said later, it could
be extrapolated thus: with one in front and one behind, the brothers were effectively screwing each other.

And then the party really got started.

The girl didn't remember much. There was the music and the lights, the dancing. Then afterwards, when she woke up on the stretcher in a side room downstairs, or rather, when she came to, the rest of the girls long gone, groggy and dazed, her mouth dry, the tight scratchy feeling of cracked lips. It wasn't until she went to the bathroom that she noticed her underpants were missing, special red sexy ones she'd nicked from work. Blood on her thighs.

She needed to wee but the burning sensation was so intense she had to stop before she got started. It was as though someone had taken a knife to her pelvis, searing her in her most sensitive place.

She bent forward letting her head fall between her knees, the motion fanning the tiny wisps of pubic hair ringing the base of the toilet.

Tears landed on the tiles between her feet but she wasn't aware that she was crying. It's just that it hurt so much, the tiniest little drop stinging sharper than any open wound she'd ever treated, yet she was busting. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt such an urgent need to go.

She braced herself and released another drip, the splash blotted by her heavy intake of breath, time seeming to stop as a thin veneer of sweat broke out across her top lip. Was it possible for the pain to feel like both a burn and a cut?

She flushed the toilet, then balanced herself over the bathtub where she rinsed her vagina with warm water cupped from the calcified faucet. “Please stop,” she whispered, willing the pain away.

Gradually it subsided and her thoughts were overtaken by a swirl of images, of smoke, of crushed velvet, and of the men, dancing with her as the audience clapped, clapped, slow careful dancing, and then the dancing stopped and they laid her down, the audience still applauding as a distinct yeasty scent overtook her, a feeling of drowning, and then her mind went blank.

She closed her eyes and shook her head as though in doing that she could make the images go away.

And perhaps it wasn't even true. She might have been hallucinating, been ill with a fever. Imagining things. Terrible things. No, they couldn't be true. Her mother often said she was fanciful, had an overactive imagination.

But then Greta returned to the room. “Three hundred bucks,” she said, opening the girl's handbag, stuffing the cash inside. All twenties. And then the man who met her at the station (when was that, days ago, weeks ago?) bundled her into the back of a silver Audi and dropped her home, the early hours, Greta smoking in the front passenger seat, the smell of cigarettes mixed with the distinctive musk of Greta's perfume, easy listening on the radio for the entire hour's drive, the green-skirted hula doll on the car's dashboard madly swivelling at every turn.

Greta tapped the side of her nose as the girl prepared to get out of the car. “You did good, kiddo,” she said. “Keep this to yourself and there'll be more work if you want it.”

Ray's Mazda was parked in the drive. The front door was unlocked. The girl tiptoed inside, her stilettos in hand, ladders in her fishnets, the stockings all torn around her feet.

*

In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
Amen
. He's had this dream before. Or he's dreaming that he's had this dream before. Except that this time the priest is young. Too young. In his pinstripe suit, ankle boots and goatee. Making lame comparisons between Tracy and Deborah Harry songs (“Die Young Stay Pretty”). People dabbing at their eyes as he lunges at cheap gambits, God taking the special ones early, that she must have been too good for this world. It is humid. Sticky. The ground dry and lumpy as though it has rained and then dried again, the surface hard and irregular as coral.
You are dust and to dust you shall return
. Harry feels his armpits dampen inside his jacket, sweat run down his back. He watches himself rise from the folding seat and join the procession of other mourners approaching the grave.
I am the resurrection and the life
. The coffin is partly scattered with red roses. The scene reminding him of a movie, though even in the dream he can't remember which one. He holds out his arm and drops his rose. It seems to catch on a burst of warm air and spirals slowly down. An eternity until it lands. Then he turns without saying a word to anyone and makes his way back to the waiting car.

Halfway between the city and oblivion the sea is black. On the highway cars concertina in their rush to the coast, piling up on each other like waves.

Each year dozens of people die at the beach. Half cocked weekend warriors way out of their depth.

Only the day before Dean swore he saw a body drifting near the Bluff – it was facedown, he said, floating in the sea – but when they went back later there was no sign of it, just the busy tide as always thrashing between the lighthouse and the Rocks.

In his fantasies everyone is dead: Diana, Alan, Matt, Kate, Rosie, Margo, Laurie, Ted, Jack, Eddy, all lined up on a motel bed. Only the girls survive, getting on with their lives as though the others have never existed. Occasionally he envisages them together, his girl, his father's girl, always fixed in time, running through native flower meadows, the warm sun high in the sky as they course hand in hand through hip-height grasses. Or they might be dressed as cheerleaders, standing side by side on a curated winter field, bright and brassy, happily singing the Club song as the players stream onto the field, glorious warriors in their gold and Prussian blue.

Baby, can't you see?

At night, when it is quiet, he lies listening to the breeze.
Sssssssss.
The soft rustle of the leaves penetrating his sleep, its own melody, blowing through the eucalyptus leaves like a promise.

Sopping wet with perspiration, back from a run, Harry approaches Margo's Citroën, which is parked in front of the house. This time he can afford to be sociable. “Do you want to come inside?”

Margo smiles. “Can I take a raincheck?”

“Suit yourself.”

It is a perfect morning for footy practice, the kind he used to almost look forward to, the rote formula of it, trading the polished cowhide back and forth, firm and dry between his calloused fingers. He rips off a shoe, pulls at his sock to line up the stitching, then leans a hand against the car as he stretches out his quads, first one leg and then the other, the gentle breeze loosing a steady supply of gumnuts on the hood as they make small talk about Christmas, how she spent a few days at the family beach house, swam, read a book, ate too much plum pudding. Magpies chortle on the power lines. “I should probably go in,” he says when he is done. “Take a shower.”

Margo nods. “Just one thing,” she says, removing her sunglasses. “And I promise it's off the record, way off, strictly between us, I swear, but was it you? I need to know. Did you write it? Do you want to tell me more about it?”

“About what?”

“The letter, this business with the girl. You know I can't do anything with it. Not unless I get someone else to confirm the allegations. But the Club's hardly going to admit to anything, are they? Or any of your compatriots.”

He scoffs. “I don't know what you're talking about. I really don't.”

She smiles. “That's funny.”

“Why?”

“No, that's not what I mean. It's just I thought you'd say that, that's all. That's alright. I get it, because what are you going to do? You're damned if you do and damned if you don't, right? Don't want to be a dobber. Not in this country. A crime greater than treason. But that's as good as shooting yourself in the foot. You look guilty as sin or you compromise the team. What a choice. You give them half a chance, step out of line and they'll let you wear it. That's it, isn't it? I'm right, aren't I? You've got nowhere else to go. No other way to play it. Maybe you can just give me a sign so I know I'm not completely off-track. A little hint. What do you say, a wink for ‘yes', a frown for ‘no'?”

“Sorry Maggie. You're barking up the wrong tree here.”

“Is that so? Which tree should I be barking up then?”

He shakes his head and laughs. “I don't know. I can't help you. I don't know what you mean.”

Little league, juniors, TAC Cup, VFL, AFL. That is enough. Harry slips the Saint Christopher medal into his pocket, then loads his tent and rucksack into the back of his car.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Diana is always saying that the men in the family are cursed, their talents having leached from them as much as they've bestowed, keeping them fixed in a one-note existence of speed, intensity and strength, a dead-end combination of diminishing returns. And maybe, Harry thinks, she is right, everyone dipping into the well too many times, putting nothing back (and he doesn't mean the weekly tenner for the church collection plate). Compounded as interest, handed down from father to son, each generation shouldering what its forebears couldn't, lugging it in its own clumsy fashion, that inherited dead weight, on and on until finally someone says
stop
and takes care of business.