The Family Men (17 page)

Convenient.

Any other time and he would immediately be on the phone to Geoff, the team manager – the classic definition of finding oneself in hot water – but given their current contract discussions, he is going to have to go this one alone.

His mother hits the roof. “There's ‘devout' and then there's ‘Devout'. You say she saw a doctor? Which doctor? I want his name. When? Where are these results? Who is this girl? Did she ask you for money? Who does she think she's dealing with here?”

Harry immediately regrets his decision to discuss it with her. “It's only a ‘what if'. Nothing's happened. I was only thinking out loud, what to do if that kind of thing did happen. If. If. That's all. But it's nothing to worry about. Nothing. This is why I don't talk to you about stuff. I knew you'd be like this.”

Diana shakes her head. “No you don't, Harry. You can't pull that with me. Of course you knew I'd be like this. That's exactly why you told me. So is it true or not?”

He shrugs.

“We'll see about that.”

Where are all the bus drivers? The happy men in trucks? As a child, Harry liked them best, more than the fire engines and trains, tractors, taxis and planes. More even than the cars with their team colours and tiny seats. While other kids raced Matchbox cars up and down the street, he occupied himself ferrying imaginary school children to and from the local primary school.

His mother likes to say that he is the eccentric one of the clan, the rebel, the dark horse, the wolf in sheep's clothing. Claiming him, when it suits her, as the child most resembling her side of the family (when he isn't giving her the shits, that is) – doing everything on his terms, his way, right from the outset – itemising his differences, like a party trick. He was even born breech.

At the computer he thinks for a minute before typing in
p-r-e-g-n-a-n-t
, not really sure how to tailor his search to find what he is looking for. Never mind. There isn't much information anyway. Well, there is, but it doesn't tell him anything he doesn't already know, nothing to help him feel clearer about what it is that he should do. What he is looking for is a cheap exemption clause, a way to rationalise forgetting the whole thing. He feels so stuck, is having trouble getting beyond simply not wanting to be in this position, is struggling to think through the reality of the situation in any practical way.

Surely marriage is out of the question? He can't bring himself to contemplate the details, a proposal, a ring. There'd be no getting down on one knee. Preposterous in this situation. Any ceremony would be perfunctory at best.

He can already hear his mother's objections:
You're doing what? Not if I have any say in it.
His mother never having approved of any of his girlfriends (not that Rosie is exactly a girlfriend, though doubtless she'd qualify now – the mother of his first child). Trollops, most of them. Trollops and sluts. Their characters invariably flawed, their motives corrupt (yes, Rosie would fit that bill). “Ask yourself,” Diana would say, “would she still be interested if you were a plumber?” Harry knows the answer, of course he does, but in this circumstance he isn't at liberty to protest.

He hears the meow of the screen door as his mother returns from the car. He hits the home key but not fast enough, the image of a bikini-clad pregnant woman filling most of the screen.

“Looking at porn again, are you sweetheart?” says Diana breezily as she passes by the den lugging another box of last year's calendars.

Gulls balance on the fence beams overlooking the beach, gently buffeted by the squally wind. He opens a loaf of bread, doughy white, the kind the Club says they shouldn't eat, and pulls out a slice, rolling it into a fat cigar which he swallows in one mouthful. The sky is a smoky shade of blue, like the flat afternoon of mid-season, the ladder still an open scramble, the contest anyone's to win. He knows it would be easier – for the Club, for his family, for the fans – if he just renewed his contract and got on with it but he can't bring himself to do it. It feels too much like rolling over, too much like giving in. Though what is he trying to prove? That he's too witless to be held responsible for his actions? That he is beyond reproach? Or rather, unable to be held to the same standards as other people – childlike in that respect, beneath blame? He thinks of his father, dropping him at the shops that morning, the man like a child on a play date swearing to be good, waving him off, Harry promising to collect him outside the hardware in a couple of hours.

He winds down the window a couple of centimetres to throw out some crumbs, the winding action itself enough to draw the birds' attention. They converge on the vehicle en masse, a battle cry of squawks and beating wings. The ocean makes a divine racket. He lowers the window the rest of the way, sticking his arm right out, inviting the possibility that they'll go for him, that in their rampage they'll enter the car and attack. But he doesn't care. Bugger it, he thinks, let them peck me. Almost willing them inside, wanting to be overcome by their savagery.

“Who are you angry with today?” asks Judith, the counsellor, at their next (and final) “chat” before the new year, absent-mindedly smoothing her skirt, her thoughts already on lunch.

“Why do you think I'm angry?” he answers, though he plainly is.
See it, believe it!
He hates those kinds of questions almost as much as he hates the people who pose them: the double-talkers with their hidden meanings, eternally poised to trip him up. Why do people expend so much energy looking for side entrances when they can go directly to the front door? If the corridor's open, the corridor's open. The only reason to avoid it would be if you didn't trust your team. She could have said, what exactly is the nature of your problem with the Club? He'd have gladly confided a home truth or two if she'd asked him that.

“So is there anything else?” she says, madly jotting down consultation notes, details of their plan going forward: “Take a few days off, continue with the mantras and relaxation exercises, maintain your fitness program, commit to a decision date,” action items that she will report to management and the leadership group. “Remember, if you can imagine it, you can do it! Everyone has the power to step up. You are not your father. You are your own man. I believe in you, Harry.”

As she speaks he concentrates on her eyes – wide set, yellow-speckled brown – staring at them until the image starts to distort, her chin narrowing, the skin scaling, her high cheekbones moving further and further apart. When he next blinks it all fits back into place but he still half expects to see a fork-tipped tongue.

And then their time is up. He grabs a juice from the foyer vending machine and drinks it in one go, pitching the bottle in the empty recycling bin.

The Club rooms feel deserted. Most of the staff are already on holidays, there isn't even a receptionist stationed at the front desk. In the restaurant, a couple of uniformed caterers are preparing for a private function, setting tables for some three-course event, a Christmas party most likely, glasses and polished cutlery gently clinking under their loveless ministrations.

The smell of fried onions reaches around the block, people lined up as far as the ATMs on the corner for their sausage and sauce and white bread roll but there is no sign of his dad. Father Murphy waves Harry over and tells him Alan has gone home. “I tried ringing but your phone is off. Dad's had a bit of a run-in. He's alright. Don't worry. He got a touch hot under the collar, that's all. A couple of kids got wind of who he was, set up over there and started calling out names. I told them to pull their heads in but they wouldn't. You know what kids are like. Ratbags. Then the boys' father arrived and he and your dad got into it. I sent Alan home before it could get out of control.”

“When was that?”

“About an hour ago.”

Shit. Harry rings the house but there is no answer. He races home expecting to find his father on another tear – preparing himself for it along the way, deciding he's just going to leave, that he'll call Matt, wait for him to get over there and then go, he's not sure where, let Matt deal with it for a change – but instead his father is sitting in the kitchen, stone-cold sober, red-faced and sweaty beside a packed overnight bag, a nice bruise developing above his right eye, a packet of once-frozen peas making a wet mess of his barbecue-splattered trousers. “Drive me to the station, will you? I need to get to the Skybus. I've got a five o'clock flight.”

“Where do you think you're going?”

“Away for a couple of days, clear my head. Get a bit of perspective. I haven't been out of town for months. Look, before you say anything, it wasn't my fault.”

Harry almost laughs. “Who do you think you're talking to? Fuck, Dad, you could be done for assault. And with your reputation. What if he calls the police?”

“He won't.” He points to his eye. “He was a big guy. I came off worse than him. Much worse.”

“You're lucky you're not in hospital.” Harry pulls out a seat opposite and sits down, his fists squeezed so tight the knuckles are white beneath the skin. “You always say that, that it's the other person's fault, like you think it makes you tough or something, that it's better because he could have killed you but he stopped short. What if he didn't?”

For once the neighbour's dog isn't barking. Harry feels the same old fury rise up from his gut, knows it would take nothing for him to reach across the table, grab his father by the throat and squeeze until the breath leaves him, it not being about this guy versus that guy and which one's more in the wrong, but about not picking fights with total strangers over stupid shit that means nothing but that could land you in all sorts of hot water because you're a prize dickhead. “Why didn't you just ignore him?” he says. “Why is that so hard for you to do?”

“Because that reporter bastard lied to me. He set me up. He put us all in a terrible position. And now two brats at the shops, two brats not old enough to wear long pants, think they can fling shit at me in public because of something they heard someone say about some horseshit newspaper article that should never have been published. Every day it takes everything I have not to go to that arsehole's house and torch it. Do you understand? Every day, Harry. I could put a fist through his front door right now.” Alan pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger as though he is trying to remember something then seems to collect himself. “I'm not like you. I can't sit on my hands, work it all out in my head first. I can't deal with something by not dealing with it. It's not my style.”

“Piss off. Don't try to make this shit about me. Just because I'm not getting into fights with people or shooting my mouth off to anyone who asks me a question doesn't mean I'm not doing something.”

“Yes, but everyone's paying attention, aren't they? They all want to know.”

“So?”

“So make them go away.”

“What, by making some snap decision? I told Ted and Laurie I'll make a decision when I make a decision and then I'll let them know. Laurie's the one who says, ‘Step back, play smart, think things through.' Sometimes not doing something is doing something. Did you ever think about that? Sometimes it's the only thing you can do.”

“Yes, but my future doesn't hang on me not punching in that scumbag's door. No one's waiting on my decisions.”

Maryborough is only three hours away by plane, easy enough to get to but far enough to feel well away, the idea of accompanying his father tempting but not as tempting to Harry as having the house to himself. “What do you want me to tell your aunt?” says Alan, as Harry pulls up outside the station.

“Tell her I said hello.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I know.”

At home a note on the fridge lists a set of chores to be performed in his father's absence – put out the rubbish, lock the shed, water the tomatoes – and at number one, make up your bloody mind! His dad's parting words, that he needs to get his shit together. “That's a joke,” says Harry, “coming from you.”

“Watch yourself,” says Alan. “I'm still your father. I've made my mistakes. You though, you need to figure out your priorities.”

Harry blows into his mother's in a foul mood, happy to exchange his father's badgering about his future for her badgering about his father, the word “future” having taken on enormous significance for the old man all of a sudden, as though prior to Harry's resignation he had no future, or at least no future worth worrying about. His mother and Matt are decorating the Christmas tree, the same skeletal armature that has been in the family for years, its flimsy battered branches barely able to support their plastic-coated weight; little flecks of artificial Douglas fir needles floating to the ground as Diana, perched on the kitchen stool, attaches a glass Santa bauble to one of the upper limbs.

“What are you doing here?” asks Matt. “I thought you were going with Dad.”

“Nice to see you too,” says Harry, having assumed he'd have the run of the place, the home ground advantage, each of them slightly wrong-footed by the other's presence on his turf.

“Wimp,” says his mother when she realises her ex has gone away without Harry. “It's such a pattern. A real man would stay and face the music.”

“What music?”

“You, for one thing. Has it occurred to him that maybe he shouldn't be leaving you alone right now, that you might need someone to talk to?”

“No I don't. I wanted him to go. I'm sick of him moping around the place. It's only a couple of days.”

“Yes, and God created the earth in six.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“A lot can happen in a couple of days.”

There is some star-shaped shortbread on a plate on the coffee table, softening in the afternoon heat. “Help yourself,” says Diana, conveniently ignorant of the animosity between her progeny running back and forth across her new café au lait Freedom rug like an exposed electric current.