“Tell me if I’m doing it wrong,” she had whispered and he felt her hand crawl down his boxers and he wanted to warn her, because she was not prepared for what was about to happen. And then she started talking.
“My mum and dad . . .”
“No, no, no, no, no,” he had gasped. “You can’t bring up your mum and dad while your hand is down there, Finke.”
“They’re going to the Entrance next weekend,” she said. “Such an underestimated place. And I can’t go because I’ve got exams. So there’ll be no one else in the house. No one downstairs.”
And her tongue came out and licked his throat.
And then he got all religious on her. Very quickly.
Later, when they were almost asleep, he had called out to her.
“Finke?”
“Yeah?”
“We’ll make a good team. You plant. I build.”
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Date: 30 August 2007
Dear Tara,
It’s been very remiss of me not to ask about your boyfriend. I can’t imagine him not being your intellectual equal and I’m presuming that you talk books and film and music and politics and that there’s a passion to your conversations, despite the fact that you disagree on heaps of things and that he makes you laugh until you make that wheezing sound and that when you’re really cranky with him, he knows how to snap you out of it and that when you turn into a bit of wallflower, because sometimes you’re a bit awkward with people, he makes sure you’re never out there on your own.
I can imagine him being that type of a guy.
Love, Tom
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Date: 30 August 2007
Dear Tom,
I’d prefer not to talk about the guy I’m seeing. No offense, but it’s a private thing. Except to say that he doesn’t have to prove how smart he is 24/7, which I find very refreshing. We always see eye to eye and he’s not too intense. And dare I say it, for someone like me, who’s never gone for appearances, judging by the one guy I’ve been attracted to in the past, I can’t get over how good-looking he is. A six-pack up close is a very attractive thing and I would strongly recommend it. But enough of my superficiality. How’s life with you, Tom?
TF
Oh, she’s good. He is so impressed with her aim for the jugular.
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Date: 30 August 2007
Dear Tara,
Okay, then, while you’re at it. Give me the textbook reading of Thomas Finch Mackee that will convey my mediocrity. I promise I can handle it.
T
Despite how hard he tries, he can’t get the images of the other guy out of his mind. The next night while he’s carving out the sirloin at the pub, he’s using the chopping board with fury. Ned reaches over at one stage and removes the knife from his grip wordlessly and hands him the lettuce to wash.
“Ned?” he says after a while. “Oi, Ned?”
“What?”
“If someone says to you that the guy they’re going out with doesn’t have to prove how smart he is, what’s your response?”
“That he’s dumb.”
“And if he has a six-pack?”
“Dumb jock.”
“Not too intense.”
“Dumb jock with no personality.”
“And they see eye to eye?”
Ned pauses. “With the spitfire from Dili?”
“Same,” Tom corrects him.
Ned holds up a hand to where Tara would reach him in height.
“Dumb jock with no personality and short-man syndrome.”
“Thanks, Ned.”
“Anytime.”
It’s a madhouse the next night, with visitors coming and going for Grace and Bill, who are heading home the next day. Later, when the guests are gone, Georgie tries to organize dinner. Tom returns from the corner shop with the stuff she sent him to buy and he’s carrying Sam’s kid on his shoulder like a fireman carrying a hose.
“Can you do something to help around here?” she asks, irritated.
“Can’t, because I’m lifting a few weights before dinner,” he says, holding Callum above his head as if he’s a barbell.
Callum is delirious with laughter. It’s a frightening type of delirium. The type that will send Sam over the edge.
“Tom, did you give him lollies?” Georgie asks suspiciously.
“No.” She can tell he’s lying, pretending to be outraged that she could suggest such a thing. “Maybe one. Or two.”
Georgie hears Sam walk into the house while Bill is swearing about the force of the water coming through her pipes and how Sydney people waste water.
“Bill,” she says patiently, “Sam has a problem with us swearing in front of his son, so let’s hold back tonight.” She puts a finger to her lips.
“And I have a problem with Sam fucking up my daughter’s life. So let’s just call it even.”
“Bill,” Grace warns.
“I heard Sam say the C-word the other day, anyway,” Tom says, sitting down in front of the kid.
“What’s the C-word?” the kid asks just as Sam walks in.
“Can’t . . . say.”
Sam gives Tom a dirty look.
“If we finish eating everything on our plate, we’re going to Norton Street for gelato,” Georgie says brightly.
“Cool,” Tom says, liking the sound of it.
“Cool,” Callum repeats.
By the time dinner is served, Callum is off the Richter scale, Bill’s only alteration to his swearing is to change the word to frickin’ and use it more often, and Sam is livid. He tells Callum to “settle down” constantly, pointing to the kid’s untouched food, and Georgie’s insides begin to churn. It’s like being ten all over again, when Bill would go off because of the noise and mayhem.
“Eat,” Sam says firmly, and it takes her a moment to realize it’s not directed at her.
Callum looks down at his plate and shakes his head.
“I can’t fit in any more,” he whimpers. Sam doesn’t cope with the whimpering.
His stare goes on forever until the kid puts the food in his mouth but then spits it out, crying, and next minute Sam grabs him and takes him to the corner. “Now stand there until you’re ready to eat!”
He sits back down and Georgie is staring at him, shaking her head. He has a look on his face that she hasn’t seen for years. In the old days he’d deliver it and it’d make her squirm inside. A look that made her feel small. That’s what Sam was able to do back then. Make her feel insignificant. What would you know, Georgie? Yeah, like you’re the expert, Georgie.
“I can’t do this,” she says, looking over to where the kid stands. “It’s like sitting through the last five minutes of Blair Witch when they’re forced to face the wall and die.”
Wrong thing to say, but then again she knows it is. Maybe deep down she wants to pick a fight, wants to provoke him so then he can grab her and put her in the corner as well and she can fight him back. Anything but what he dishes out to her these days. Silence and tiptoeing and unspoken rules and unsaid future plans.
It’s a filthy look she’s receiving. It belongs to the passive-aggressive hall of fame. She’d prefer her family any day, all rage and fury and getting it out in the open. Fewer lacerations in the long run.
“Sam, remove him from the corner,” she says firmly.
There’s silence now. Sam goes to say something, but then it seems he changes his mind. Except Georgie knows the weight of the words he’s swallowed.
“Say it,” she says quietly.
“What?” he asks.
“What you were about to say.”
“Georgie,” Grace warns, “let’s just finish eating and clear the plates, so we can all go for a walk.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head and looking straight at Sam. “He was
going to say that this is none of my business. That it’s his son. Say it, Sam. Have the guts to say it.”
Sam pushes his chair back, grabs Callum, and walks out, slamming the door behind him.
Georgie collects the plates off the table with shaking hands and then Dom’s at the sink taking them from her. “Fix this thing up with Sam, Georgie. Fix it now, or you never will,” he says.
The front door of Sam’s house is open and she walks in and can hear the crying from the kid’s room but she knows it’s not her right to go in. She finds Sam in the kitchen, where he’s standing with his back to her, hands clenching the sink.
“Do you want out?” she asks.
He turns to face her. There’s a look of bitterness of his face and she can’t help feeling that the bottom is going to fall out of her world again.
“Out of what, Georgie? What are we in?”
“Why do I have to answer that?” she asks. “Why can’t you?”
“Because words are a weapon with you. I’m scared to even open my mouth.”
It’s a controlled fury she sees in his eyes, built up over time.
“Okay, then, let’s talk about your son’s behavior tonight,” she says. “He’s a kid. Juiced up on sugar, courtesy of Tom, the village idiot. I’m not telling you how to raise him, Sam. I’m just saying that sometimes there has to be a difference in the way you punish him for not eating his food and for when he does something pretty dire. Because I’m warning you, I’m not into the pulling-the-arm-out-of-a-kid’s-socket routine and then sticking him against the wall. So you’ll have to find a different set of rules for ours.”
There’s silence for a moment and she takes a deep breath, almost relieved that she spoke, no matter how damaging the words can be.
“You never use his name,” he says. “And I know I have no right to ask anything from you when it comes to him. I know it takes an extraordinary person to love Callum under the circumstances, Georgie . . .”
“But you make me feel a little less than ordinary!” she blurts out. “You place yourself between us. You’re an interloper and you make things polite and careful. When I’m forced into being polite and careful, Sam, I find that gene inside of me passed down from Grace. The distant one.”
He’s shaking his head.
“Does it help that I enjoy his company a lot more when you’re not around?” she says, not able to stop herself. “Because that way, you aren’t watching me as though I’m going to turn into some kind of demon.”
“That’s ridiculous, Georgie.”
“Don’t call me ridiculous. And for your information? That look? The one you gave me in my kitchen? Well, I got that look a lot during the last year we were together. The one that said a bit less, Georgie. A bit more decorum, please. A bit less emotion. Our lives could be a bit tidier. Perhaps there’s someone a bit better out there!”
“You read most of it wrong!” he shouts.
“What part?” she shouts back.
There’s more crying from Callum’s room and then a knock on the front door.
“We’re scaring your son,” she mutters, walking up the corridor to where she can see the outline of Tom at the screen door.
“Nanni G wants . . .” and Tom does “gelato” in very poor sign language, so Callum won’t hear.
Outside, she can see Grace and Bill and Dominic sitting on the brick fence waiting. Her family. How did they shrink to this size?
She hears Sam come up behind her, switching on the porch light.
“And you did that all wrong, back at my house,” she says, quietly to him, because she’s not finished yet. “We promised Callum gelato and if you take that from him, he’ll think I broke the promise. I don’t want to be the bad guy here, Sam.”
In defense of her family, they know how to bounce back from an awkward moment with alacrity. It was what Jacinta had complained about for years. One minute tearing each other apart, next minute everyone back to normal like nothing happened. They walk through Petersham and pick up Sam’s mum along the way and arrange to meet Lucia and Abe and their kids. They can’t find a table big enough, so they end up sitting around the fountain at the Italian Forum. Georgie puts an arm around Grace because she’s cold and listens to one of her goddaughters tell her about Hannah Montana and Sam’s kid tell her about Ben 10 the Alien Hunter. Bill talks water restrictions and how the government doesn’t give a shit about anything outside Sydney, and Dominic bitterly complains about Leichhardt council and what an eyesore the Forum is and Sam goes on about what happens when developers think they’re restaurateurs. Their voices are drowned out by the Qantas 747 flying directly over their heads and Grace’s hand reaches over and covers the one around her shoulder and Georgie knows what her mother is thinking. Who she’s thinking of.
Later, she hovers with Sam on his front step. Tonight she wants more than just, I might see you at the station on Monday. But Tom’s there at the gate.
“Bill sent me to say, quote, ‘You better not be staying at Sam’s, because all he does is give you high blood pressure,’ unquote, and then Nanni Grace said, quote, ‘Oh, Bill,’ unquote.”
Sam makes a sound of disbelief. “They’re blaming me for your high blood pressure?”
“Let’s go.” Tom says it with force. He’s not leaving without her.
A moment later, Dominic jogs by. “At this time of the night?” she asks.
Tom takes Georgie’s hand and leads her away, but he turns back to Sam for a moment.
“I’m sorry about the packet of snakes I gave Callum,” he mumbles. “And the lime ice-block. And the Redskin.”
Georgie pinches him hard for lying to her, but as they walk back toward her house and she watches Dom do his fist thrusts in the distance, she can’t help laughing until she’s forced to stop because she can hardly walk.
“He’s OCD,” Tom says.
“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s just a bit obsessive . . . in a compulsive sort of way.”
“Between my OCD father and you, I can’t understand why I’m not in the nuthouse.”
And she keeps on laughing until her stomach aches and her bladder feels weak. It’s the third time she’s laughed this week. But it feels better than crying.
Tom doesn’t realize until he wakes up on the morning of his mother’s birthday that he honestly believed his father would go to her. That he was counting on it. Praying for it subconsciously. Birthdays were big for his mum and every single year his father would come home feigning indifference and then spring something ridiculously extravagant on her.
“We can’t afford it,” she’d say.
“We can afford it. Tom and Anabel can just go without food for a week,” he’d say.
It was usually a fancy restaurant. His father was a foodie. Looked like a steak and chips guy. Yet another contradiction.
But this year, his father stays closed up in Georgie’s study and Tom feels it in his gut. That if Dominic doesn’t return to Jacinta Louise today, he never will.
He works alongside Ned, who’s complaining about five assignments and exams coming up and Francesca, who’s counting down the days before Trombal gets home. He finally rings his mother during his break while he’s having a smoke out back. Asks if she’s had a good day and he can hear her lie when she says yes. He tries to mumble I love you and Happy Birthday but Ned’s emptying the garbage beside him, listening to every word. Francesca doesn’t say much, but he feels her watching him with those big empathetic eyes and he even stays longer to scrub the stove until it sparkles so he doesn’t have to chat with them for their nightly postmortem on the pavement, which usually consists of Francesca believing that Stani’s going to let them play one Sunday afternoon if the old-timers call in sick. Or disappear. He’s worried that if the regular band members are mysteriously killed, he’ll have to point a finger at Justine and Francesca.
When he does leave, waving off Stani who always has that intense I’m-watching-you look on his face, Tom makes it as far as the end of the street before h
e realizes he’s being trailed.
“We’re going to Brisvegas,” Francesca says from the passenger window. “You coming?”
He can hardly see her in the dark. “You’re going to Brisbane?” he asks with disbelief, without stopping. He’s not in the mood for Francesca and her crap tonight. “What are you going on about?”
“We leave now and we’ll get there by eight in the morning, stay a couple of hours and then head back at lunchtime and get back here tomorrow night.”
He stops walking, well and truly pissed off.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You mean ridicolos,” Francesca says, imitating Stani. “We can drive through the Gold Coast. It’s a metropolis. I’ve been dying to get there for years.”
“The same Gold Coast you called a cesspit and boycotted for Schoolies? And we got stuck at Siobhan’s cousin’s flat at Engadine like the biggest losers around.”
“And I’ve regretted it ever since, so let’s drive through the Gold Coast.” The way Francesca can feign sincerity is amazing.
The car engine stops and he hears the door opening from the driver’s seat.
“Tom, get in the car,” Justine says firmly. “We’re going to Brisbane. I’m taking the first two hours, then Frankie, and then you and then Ned. Every two hours. Stop. Revive. Survive.”
“Ned? What the hell has he been telling you?”
“Get in the car. Now.”
They have a standoff. The two horsewomen of the apocalypse still win, despite their dwindling numbers.
He gets in and slams the door, glaring at Ned, who shrugs.
“Don’t you have five exams or something?” Tom accuses.
“Some people clean the fridge to avoid studying. I go to Brisbane.”
“I’ve got a plan so we don’t fight over the music,” Justine tells them. “Everyone gets their MP3s ready and they choose two songs each and we plug in when it’s our turn.”
“That’s fair,” Francesca says. She turns to face the back and nods. “Fair?”
“Frankie will choose the two shittiest songs each time, just to piss us off,” Tom mutters.