The Slap (52 page)

‘That was a terrible thing to do,’ she chided him as the girl walked away. Hector ignored her, but he was blushing. Good, he was ashamed. When the girl returned with the drinks, he apologised to her. This seemed to alarm her even further. He ended up repeating
Terima Kasim, Terima Kasim
, until she smiled and he could smile back. Aisha wanted to laugh, suddenly he seemed goofy and lovable again, but in his present mood he was liable to interpret laughter only in a thousand negative ways. She would not speak until he spoke. Her stomach felt tight, her head was throbbing. She doubted she could eat. The beer was refreshingly cold and she drank it greedily.

‘I think you should ring Sandi and congratulate her.’

‘I’ll send a card.’

‘
I’ll send a card.
’ He made his voice hideous, whiney, jeering her. He turned away from her, shaking his head. ‘You’re fucking incredible. ’

‘What?’ She meant it. What had she done? What did he want from her?

‘I don’t want you to send a card. I want you to ring her. I want you to go over and see her.’

‘I have no problem with seeing Sandi, you know that.’

‘You just have a problem with my cousin.’

My
cousin,
my
mate,
my
man Harry. ‘Yes, I do have a problem with your cousin.’

‘Can’t you just forgive him?’

‘For assaulting my best friend’s child? And for doing it at my home? No, I’m not going to forgive him.’

‘That child deserved it.’

‘Hugo is a child. Your cousin is meant to be a grown man.’

‘
Your cousin is meant to be a grown man.
’ That same ugly jeer. Aisha watched two couples walk hesitantly up the steps and into the restaurant. One of the women held a baby and one of the men was holding a toddler’s hand. Another waitress emerged from the shadows at the back of the restaurant. For the first time Aisha was aware of the world just a few metres away from her. She could see bodies moving around in a kitchen, the flicker of a television set. She knew her husband’s eyes were looking straight at her but she ignored him. Reaching for her beer she caught Hector’s eye and he pounced.

‘He’s a terrible child.’

‘He’s just turned four. How can a four-year-old be terrible?’

‘By not having been disciplined, by not being taught to respect other people. He’s a terrible child now and he’ll turn out to be a cunt of an adult when he grows up.’

She would not take the bait. He was using the word
cunt
in exactly the way she hated it to be used, as a vileness, as an insult to her. He was doing so deliberately. The two couples were French and she was conscious that the young waitress had switched easily to speaking the language.

‘Harry at least had the decency to go and apologise to them.’ Hector was shaking his head in disbelief. He leaned across the table, furious. ‘It should have been Rosie crawling on her hands and knees asking his forgiveness.’

She felt her reserve break, split apart. That sounded exactly like his mum. Exactly Koula’s words, her expression, her sentiment.

‘What did Rosie do except protect her son?’

‘What Rosie has done is use Hugo as an excuse not to deal with the failures of her relationship with Gary. And just like she indulges Gary and refuses to deal with the reality of his situation . . . like his being a fucking alco, like his being the world’s greatest artist in his own head but unfortunately he doesn’t have any bloody talent . . . like the fact he never wanted the kid in the first place.’ Hector breathed deeply. When he spoke again his tone was quieter, more measured. ‘I don’t doubt that Rosie loves her child. Jesus, Aish, I don’t doubt Gary’s love for him. But they are complete fuck-ups as parents. He’s a little monster. No one likes him. Our kids can’t bear being with him. What does that tell you?’

She kept silent. She felt overwhelming pity and despair for Hugo. She saw him interact with such puzzlement and hurt when confronted with the world. He was shocked that he was not the centre of the world when he stepped away from Rosie. But he’d learn. Of course he’d learn. That was also the way of the world, that was what happened with kids. They met other kids.

‘He’ll change when he goes to school.’

‘Yeah,’ Hector was laughing. ‘Yeah, sweetheart, he’ll change and you know why he will change? Because the other kids are going to bash the living shit out of him. Have you asked our kids what they thought of Harry slapping him?’

She could not believe he’d had this conversation with their children. She leaned across the table.

‘What have you been saying about this to Adam and Melissa?’

He gauged her temper and sat back. ‘Nothing.’

‘So how do you know?’

He didn’t answer her.

‘How do you know?’

He crossed his arms defensively.

She suddenly guessed. She let out a hollow laugh. ‘Your bloody mother. Of course.’

‘Harry’s family, Aish. Rocco is their cousin. They know what’s going on.’

‘You mean they get
told
what’s going on.’

He spoke calmly. ‘They were there. I think they made up their own minds about it.’

She experienced a moment of panic, almost vertigo. It had to do with her children. They belonged to Hector in a way they could not belong to her. Her husband and her children were connected through family, through that network of kin that was not available to her. It would not have mattered if her mother lived in Melbourne with them. Her mother would not be able to bear a life revolving only around her children and grandchildren. She had her practice, her friends and her own life; her family were part of that life, not all of it. Aisha thought that was wise—how life should be. She could live a continent apart from her family. Hector could not. She knew this when she had married him. In agreeing to be with him, she had to agree to be with all of him. But she had never stopped resenting that fact, and knew that her children would never be able to understand that resentment. She wished Raf lived in the same city with her. They loved her brother as much as she did. But she couldn’t share their love for their
giagia
and
pappou
, for their uncles and aunts. Of course, she had affection for Manolis, sure, a solid friendship with her sister-in-law, Elizabeth. But her real family in Melbourne was Rosie and Anouk. And her children did not love them.

She looked at her husband with something approaching hatred. You’ve bound me to your life, she thought bitterly. How had it happened?

One of the women called out in French to the toddler who was walking over to the bandstand. She half-rose to grab him but the band leader raised his arm, called out
D’accord D’accord
and lifted the child onto his lap. Delighted, the little boy began to shyly tap on the xylophone, drawing excited laughter from the musicians.

Aisha nodded towards the bandstand. ‘Isn’t that lovely?’

Hector turned around and looked at the little boy now happily bashing the xylophone’s keys. He smiled widely and turned back to Aisha. ‘He’s having the time of his life.’

‘So’s his mother.’ The French woman was holding a beer and laughing with her friends. The child’s laughter, garrulous, ecstatic, suddenly seemed to have banished all the bitterness and resentment of the day.

Aisha touched her husband’s hand and he folded his fingers around hers.

‘I loved seeing the children in Bangkok,’ she said wistfully. ‘I’d see them every morning, on my daily walk, and they’d all be dressed neat as could be in their school uniforms, boys and girls, laughing and swinging their bags high in the air. They looked like they owned the streets. Not at all in a threatening way, not like when you see packs of kids back home. They just looked safe and happy and completely at home.’

She glanced back at the toddler who was now sucking greedily on a slice of mango that the band leader had offered him.

She turned back to Hector. ‘Greece and Sicily were like that, do you remember?’ she urged. ‘The kids owned the streets there as well.’ She sipped her beer and was lost in a reminiscence of their time in the Mediterranean. It was so long ago, before their marriage—their first overseas trip together. They had been so young. They had fought then as well, a terrible, destructive argument in Santorini. Back in Athens, Hector’s cousin, Pericles, had told them that everyone fought on Santorini. The
brakolaka
, the vampire spirits, caused arguments because they could not bear to see a couple happy in love.

‘Greece must have changed so much. We must take the children soon. We must.’

It was then that Hector started crying. Not quiet, discreet tears, but a sudden explosion of painful sobbing. His body shuddered, rocked, and heavy tears streamed down his face and onto his shirt. Aisha was shocked, could not speak. Hector never cried. His grip on her fingers tightened, and it felt as if he could, with just one further squeeze, break her hand. The waitress had been on her way over to them, but she stopped, confused, scared, looking at Hector in open-mouthed wonder. The French couples had fallen silent; the women were looking down at their menus, the men lit cigarettes and were looking deliberately over the bannister to the street below.

The embarrassment spurred Aisha to action. She jerked her hand away from her husband. ‘Hector, what’s wrong, what’s happening?’

He could not speak. His sobs had become louder, deep, racking cries. His breathing was jagged, his face and nose and eyes red and contorted. She grabbed a napkin and wiped under his nose. Ice water was in her veins—for the first time in her life she understood the metaphor, experienced it as real: she was feeling nothing but chilling detachment. She had never seen her husband cry. She would never have imagined this, the shedding of dignity so publicly, in such an agony of grief. She had never seen a man cry like this; or maybe only once before, long ago, an elusive but distinct memory of her father. He too had been howling, sitting on her parents’ bed, in his underpants and singlet. Her mother had slammed the door on her and Ravi’s terrified faces. Yes, only that once had she seen a man cry and her father too had been howling, like a wolf, like a maddened animal. There was nothing weak or submissive about her husband’s crying. He was a man broken, a man vulnerable, inconsolable in despair, but yet, for all that, still a man. Lost, but still a man. She had seen many women lose their control and weep, submit to the raw intensity of grief. She had done it herself. And every time it happened, she had encouraged the woman or the girl—or herself—to cry, to let their emotions play out their complete and necessary symphony. This was not the same. Every sob took Hector further away from her. She wanted it to stop. Her body, her heart, her mind, her soul, her hands, her lips, every part of her felt brittle. Ice water flowed through her veins. She knew why she had recalled her father’s inexplicable anguished outburst, an incident that had never been referred to by her parents again. Just like she had been then, she was scared. She was so scared that she couldn’t even form rational thoughts. All she felt was fear, the terror that after this moment, everything would be changed. After this, things could never be the same.

 

Until she had got Hector back to their hotel room, time ceased to be what she knew it as; it became impossible to comprehend. Time was both compressed and infinite, impossible to follow. She must have paid the bill, she must have somehow convinced her husband to get to his feet, must have struggled with him along Monkey Forest Road, or had she led him along the path by hand, as if he were a child? Later, much later, she would awake from nightmares that she knew were memories of that night. All she knew was that there was the street, the struggle to be home, the confused faces of the touts, the hawkers, the drivers, the tourists, and then they were in their room, he was sitting on the bed and she was kneeling before him and he had placed his arms around her, still distraught, still weeping, holding her tighter than he had ever held her before, his breath hot on her face, spittle, tears, saliva dripping around her neck and shoulders. Slowly, very slowly, time began to fall back into itself, to become recognisable again. Hector stopped howling. His sobs now came intermittently, with deep, shuddering breaths. She was conscious that her right calf was cramping, could hear the ticking of her watch, a Western pop tune playing from somewhere in the back of the hotel. She sat on the floor and rubbed her leg. Hector blew his nose and threw the sodden handkerchief to the floor. He rubbed his eyes. His voice, when he spoke, surprised her. It was firm, controlled.

‘I’m alright now.’ He roughly brushed his hand across his mouth. ‘Last Wednesday I went to fetch Melissa from Aftercare. Dad couldn’t go—St Vinnie’s had rung and he had finally gotten an appointment to see a specialist about his gout. Mum wanted to go with him and I said that was fine. I had an RDO due and so I took that. I pottered around the house, got some stuff ready for this trip and then at three-thirty I got in the car to pick up Melissa.’

She let him talk but she was confused. Why was he telling her this now ? Then she realised that, just before his outburst they had been talking about children; she was describing how happy she had been watching the school children in Bangkok.

‘There were cars stretched along Clarendon Street for what seemed like miles, just all these cars waiting to get to the school gates so parents could pick up their children. It was like a traffic jam. We were hardly moving, I was stuck behind this big black shiny new four-wheel drive and I started to panic. I thought I was going to stop breathing. I really believed I was going to die, stuck behind that bloody four-wheel drive, that the last thing I would see in life would be one of those fucking Baby on Board stickers.’

His voice had started to shake. Fearful that he might start crying again, she sat beside him on the bed. She made sure her voice was measured and reassuring.

‘It happens somedays. It can be a shit, it’s like all the parents have descended on the school at exactly the same time. It’s awful when that happens. How long did you have to wait?’