Drowning in You (34 page)

Seeing your name on the
scoreboard for fastest swimmer and telling strangers that that
superfish is my very own daughter.

Charlee, I’m not sure I want
more of these moments. You get what you’re given and if I had any
more time here, I bet I’d screw it up. You were a better daughter
to me than I was a father to you. Between these moments there were
the weeks I’d be away for stretches at a time, sometimes nonstop,
for work. Plans, trips, meetings.

The way I see it is when your
mother and I were given you as our daughter, we were given an angel
to look after. It’s time we leave you to be your own person; it
doesn’t mean we’re gone.

Don’t you ever for a second
doubt your worth. You have a place on this Earth as a miracle of
patience, love, kindness, care and part-comedian all packaged into
one gorgeous daughter of mine.

I fought as hard as I could,
but this is all the time I’ve been given.

I’ve loved every second of it
because of you. Because I had and will always have you, no matter
what form I’m in.

I don’t stop existing. I’m you,
always.

All that matters are your
choices; you’re only limited by your actions. Remember that. Don’t
let anything or anyone hold you back from what I know you’re
capable of.

Love always,

Dad.

31. Jack of All

Dexter

I figure it this way: Murphy’s
Law applies to those few events in your life that matter the most.
Take now, for example. I haven’t seen Dad at home for a couple of
days. He hasn’t run away. While I’ve been at the mechanic’s, he’s
been home, then he leaves for work later in the day, comes home, by
which time I was out again at the gym or with Elliot.

Taking this extreme bad luck in
mind, I barge through Dad’s spare room. Operation Uncover History
has begun and he will probably find me now. Good.

On one side is the window I
crouched behind when I listened in on his plans. On another side is
a pile of paper shaped like a desk, with an actual desk possibly
still somewhere underneath. But I’ve been there, shuffled through
that. The single bed in the middle of the room is much the same.
However, it’s now that I’m thinking otherwise that I notice the
shelves and sliding cupboard.

I go to the
cupboard and push the door along the tracks. When it opens, a
number of eras are revealed. One side of the eye-level shelf holds
videotapes, probably too drowned in dust to be salvaged, but I keep
them in mind. On the same side, the shelf below, are photo albums.
The labels say stuff like: “Lisa’s 30
^th
”, “Jack’s first day at
school” and “First trip to the Rockefeller Center”. There’s
miscellaneous stuff, too. Old T-shirts splattered with paint, a
drill set, etc.

I wipe the top of the videos,
swiping away a thick layer of dust. I brush that off on my
drawstring pants and twist my head sideways. The videos are all
labeled with white stickers that are curling at the edges. One of
them is marked “Mick and Walter’s camp trip to the Murray
River”.

“
Those won’t
work. I’ve already tried,” a voice says from behind me.

Dad stands in the doorway,
hands shoved in his pockets, nodding at the video I have pulled
out.

“
What have you
been hiding? You were friends with the man I accidentally
killed?”

Dad grunts and crouches beside
me, taking the video and turning it over in his hands. “Do you
think those services could save the tape and convert it to DVD or
some shit?”

“
Probs,” I
say. I tap the video spinning in his hands. “You have plenty of
explaining to do, old man.”

Without speaking, Dad agrees
and takes me to the car. I hop in the passenger seat. Dad comes out
of our street and turns the opposite way we need to go for work,
the shops, things like that. I only go in this direction to go
fishing occasionally or if I’m heading across to one of the towns
outside of Melbourne.

“
Here,” he
says. “Read this. It’s finally been released publicly.”

“
What’s been…”
but I’m stunned into silence.

The newspaper dad’s flopped
onto my lap is turned to the fifth page where some random reporter
I may never be able to personally thank has published an article
detailing fault of the Mason’s Ski Lift Resort accident as
responsible by wear and tear, undetected by safety checks, which
were too far apart.

Screw “unthankable”. I’m going
to find the reporter’s email on the news site and explain my
gratitude.

After fifteen minutes of
silence, the lanes narrow and the corners turn into the type where
you can’t see the end of them. Most of the sky is blocked by the
tops of trees, which span at least three lengths of our car and
have trunks wide enough to hide two bodies behind them.

But Dad also misses the gravel
turnoff for the path to the lake for fishing. Not that we have
rods, hooks or bait with us, but it was the only thing I could hang
on to.

Then it hits me. The only other
thing out this far is the crash site. I almost ask where we are
going, but I keep that thought to myself. Dad would have said
something if he needed to, and I don’t plan to rush or stop what’s
going on.

As we round a corner, the spot
where Jack and Lily crashed through the barrier appears. Dad slows
the car in the shoulder of the road, kills the engine and slips the
keys in his pocket.

“
Come here,
would ya,” he says without meeting my eyes.

We walk the length to the crash
site. There are four crash barriers spanning that corner.
Corrugated, reinforced steel that doesn’t stand a chance against a
car swiped off the highway by another driver.

This walk is by far the longest
time anyone has taken down this strip. No matter it’s the same
distance, Jack and Lily have crashed ten times already and I’ve
only walked several body lengths. The blood that drips from Jack’s
ears is a constant flow. Lily’s face is untouched, even in death.
Not a bruise, not a single drop of blood. Not from the front of her
face anyway.

Eventually, when my shoulders
have transformed to structures made of weathered steel, ready to
buckle after scores of years, we stop at the middle barrier where
Jack’s truck, the eighteenth-birthday gift our parents bought him,
crashed through and crumpled against the tree that doesn’t show a
single scar, unlike us humans.

Unlike the Hollingworth family
who haven’t had a dinner together at the table since.

Dad strides up to the barrier,
crouches next to it, his hand resting on the top. “When that fucker
killed my boy, and your Lily, your mom and I had four thousand
dollars to pay off on our credit cards and had a home loan that was
always one payment behind the bill.”

I lean against the barrier,
rest my hands by my side and look to the steep cliff on the other
side on the road where the trees climb forever up that
mountain.

“
Yeah, we’ve
been a bill behind every payment for as long as I can
remember.”

“
Walter gave
us ten grand. We had so many expenses, not just with the funeral,
but because of the suspicious circumstances that we used it all one
way or another. Had one hundred bucks left over for ourselves. That
went on the credit card bill.”

“
That was
kind,” I manage.

“
Do you know
how I thanked him? I sent him an email with the words: ‘Appreciate
the money. Jack would have been happy.’ Didn’t even say the words
‘thank you’. I hadn’t seen his face since Jack’s funeral. Before
that, since before Tahny was born. Over the years Walter’s called
or emailed a few times. Occasionally I’ve picked up or replied, but
mostly I just think about how the world should have less people
like me and more people like him.”

Dad looks up. It’s a sight to
see his red eyes. The rims are puffy and the color of a tomato. But
he just sits there, holding all that pent-up frustration inside,
unlike the way he usually screams or hits something. Until he
does.

Dad stands up, clenches his
fist, and hammers into the barrier. He pumps his fist into it
repeatedly. Those edges are sharp, so when he shows no sign of
stopping after the fifth hit, I leap up and wrestle him away. He
elbows me from in front, but I squeeze his arms tighter and say,
“That barrier isn’t you or your past. You need to stop.”

For a moment I think I’ve made
a mistake because he freezes. I think I should have said “isn’t the
guy who killed Jack” or “isn’t Walter”. But it’s clear the barrier
is more than just a physical wall. It encompasses Dad’s mistakes.
He shrugs out of my grip and slumps back over it.

“
Why, Dad.
What happened? I mean, Jack, Tahny and I never even saw you speak
to him.”

“
When your mom
was pregnant with Tahny, I suspected Walter was the father. Us
Hollingworths and the Mays? We were closer than that damn Uncle of
yours who hasn’t called for one of your birthdays. A couple of
times, Walter even told me he took Lisa out to pick a Valentine’s
Gift for Melissa.

“
Your mom and
I thought I was sterile—I had the mumps as a child, I was a heavy
smoker—plus I didn’t recall us doing anything around that time, so
being the idiot I am, Walter and I had a massive blowout, both of
us had a broken rib and exchanged worse words. Anyway, would you
believe he forgave me as soon as we were released from the
hospital? I hadn’t even
apologized
, for Christ’s
sake!”

I trail off, thinking as Dad
says this. How would it feel to have someone forgive you for
possibly the worst mistake you made in your life, when you didn’t
even have the chance to wrestle with your pride and be able to say
sorry first? I know I needed the time to forgive myself, as Dad
needed. Except Dad didn’t get to come to his own terms. I’m just
learning how it’s eaten him up all this time.

“
Took me a
month to accept the apology that I should have given first, and
several more months to decide to put it behind us. By that time
we’d become strangers—as if a friendship from childhood didn’t make
two cents’ worth of difference.”

“
What
happened?” I say, uncrossing my ankles and recrossing them the
other way.

“
Nothing. I
never worked up the courage to talk to him about it. It wasn’t
until the Mason’s ski lift accident that I realized I had to make
amends. We spoke on the phone a bit. He was desperate to loan me
money to get me out of my mess again, but I’d never learn if he
kept bailing me out. That Mick was a different guy than this one.”
Dad points to his chest. “So I decided I was going to save ten
grand to pay him back. Looking back, that’s a fucking ridiculous
thing to do.”

“
If you could
go back, what would you have done?”

Dad grins, but it’s a fake
thing. Forced up at the sides of his mouth, filled with sarcasm. Or
maybe it’s years of pent-up guilt, and now that it’s too late all
he can do is laugh about it. “How far back we talking, young
man?”

“
Not the fight
or anything. Just when the accident occurred. Why didn’t you visit
him, anyway? Mom was with him daily, and it killed her.”

“
Don’t you
think I know all that? Why do you think I’ve spent every other
night at the pub? I couldn’t just walk through those doors and
announce I had decided to apologize because my ex-best bud was
dying. I’d be kidding myself. That’s a worse insult—a forced
apology because he’s dying anyway. I thought it was better to prove
myself and show I could pay back the loan and that would be a
better way to make amends after all the years.”

“
It’s just
money,” I say.

“
Just money,”
Dad mumbles. As if suddenly remembering his bloodied hand, he rips
off the hem of his T-shirt, and wraps it around his
knuckles.

“
Wanna go
back?”

“
Yeah.”

The walk back
is even longer, if that is possible. Then the car somehow is
right
there
.

“
Mom said
Tahny’s pissed about something to do with this. Is she on Walter’s
side or something?”

Dad howls with laughter. He
clasps my shoulder to steady himself but he can’t stop guffawing,
which forces him to stop walking and bend over, pressing his hands
to his knees.

When he rights
himself, he says, “Oh, no. Tahny is just a spoiled brat.
She’s
still
jealous after all this time that Jack got a car for his
birthday and angry he smashed it up and angry and perhaps jealous
that it was Jack who was gifted ten grand, but he wasn’t alive to
enjoy it. I tried to explain to her that the only reason the money
came to our family was because Jack had
died
, but she didn’t seem to get it.
She’s a girl, though. I don’t get her head. That’s what your mother
told me.”

Didn’t figure that. Maybe Tahny
isn’t such a slut after all. Maybe this Hollingworth family really
is a complete bunch of strangers. Wish we weren’t.

On the ride home Dad announces
something.

“
Walter, the
little prick. He gave us a parting gift.”

“
Still
accepting your apology before you’ve had the balls to admit
anything, hey?”

“
Something
like that.”

Dad clears his throat and his
chest expands more than a usual breath. Thoughts race in my head,
wondering how much more of a bombshell he can drop on me.

“
He wrote me a
note, Walter. Wrapped inside was a receipt for payment of boat hire
for two weeks. Sleeps eight. Your mother and I are taking time off
work to go. It leaves in a week. Tahny jumped at the idea. She’ll
be bringing little Adam along. I didn’t know when was the right
time to tell you since we’ve only had about one or two proper
conversations in the last month, but we’d really like you to come.
Actually, Walter would. All of us. He specifically said, ‘I’m sorry
if our broken friendship ruined the relationships around you but
this is my way of giving you guys a second chance since I can’t be
around to do it myself, and we took too long to sort our issues
out.’”