The Best Thing (10 page)

‘Felt so good when I saw you come in, up the Club,’ he says afterwards. ‘Knew I’d win then. Couldn’t let you see me lose, first fight you ever seen, eh.’

‘Would’ve put me right off.’

‘Me too. You wanna get to the top without losing at all, if you can. You know, “undefeated in 32 matches, 24 by knockout”. You read about it in
The Fist
like that all the time.’

I let my jaw drop.

‘What’s up?’

‘I didn’t realise you could
read
!’

He looks taken aback. ‘Course I can bloody
read
! What d’you reckon I do with all these?’ He waves his arm around, obviously meaning the magazines rather than the socks.

I can’t stop myself cracking up. ‘I thought you just looked at the
p-pictures
!’ But he’s caught on—he’s gripping me tight in his arms and legs. ‘Aagh, aagh! Help! I’m being suffoca—’ I run out of breath from laughing.

His nose is in my ear. At the edge of my sight I can see the tiny bandaids holding his eyebrow together. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, half-serious, half-laughing, ‘You’re a bitch and a cow. You know that?’

He keeps giving me, hard, suffocating squeezes. ‘I kno-
ho
. A ba-
hitch
anna ca-
how
.’ Splutter, splutter. ‘But not all the ti-
hime
!’ I rush in before the next squeeze.

‘Nah, not all the time,’ he agrees, relaxing a bit but still holding pretty tight. ‘Hardly ever. You’re all right.’

I’ll do, will I?’ I try to turn and look at him but his head’s in the way.

He puts his hand up to my other cheek and holds on. ‘Yeah,’ he
growls
.

And, of course,
again.

Well, here we are at the cottage, all together as a family. Isn’t that
sweet
? Isn’t that
lovely
? Except every time I see you diving into a wave, Dad, I can’t help remembering you diving into old Rick.

It’s amazing how hard it is to believe it happened now. The way Dad’s acting you’d think everything was fine. I’ve kept away from situations where I might be left alone with him, just in case he starts talking about it. No,
thanks
; no explanations,
please
! ‘Your mother doesn’t understand me, Mel’ or, ‘A man’s got to feel he’s attractive, Mel’ or, ‘You mustn’t be too hard on Ricky, Mel. She’s a lonely woman.’ Or some other crap.

And Mum’s quite normal, of course, even though half the time I’m screaming at her (in my brain) about what I saw and what a bastard Dad is. She’s in holiday mode—so peaceful, so determined to see the bright side of things. Maybe Dad’s been porking everything that
moves
, with her
consent
, for
years
, while she refuses to make a fuss
to hold the family together
. Maybe she knows all about Ricky—but if she
doesn’t
, I can’t exactly go up to her and say ‘Do you
know
Dad’s having it off with one of your best friends?’, can I?

Do
you know, Mum?

If I don’t stop the thoughts they build and build until they gridlock in my brain and I’m shaking with rage and powerlessness. Thoughts of Mum and Ricky, laughing and laughing—Ricky on that couch and Mum on the floor, unable to stop. Ricky. Ricky being everywhere we looked, the last few months. At home with Dad a couple of times when we got back after the shopping. (Well, no wonder he didn’t want to come with us—he’d miss his regular Thursday-night gig with Rick, wouldn’t he?) Dropping by. Borrowing things so she’d have an excuse to bring them back.
Still doing all the things they usually do—tennis Wednesdays, all four of them; Sunday morning coffee just her and Mum, over at Leichhardt. Ricky standing at our kitchen door, all legs and nipples. ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ she says to Dad. And him all rumpled, busily getting out glasses! Busily covering up!

Ambra, glaring. Joshua, spitting. I go cold. How long’s it been going on? Have Josh and Ambra seen what I’ve seen? Worse? What are we all going to do?

Sitting here in my room in the beach house with Mum and Dad out on the deck reading the newspapers, oh so civilised, is sending me mad, not knowing what to think or do. When my brain wears itself out playing the Dad-and-Ricky video and the fight video, I go out and exercise my legs instead, walk the bay beach to the rocks and watch the grey water going wild, stride the never-ending surf beach with the sea-thunder coming up through the sand, rinse my head out with wind and water and space until there’s not a single thought-scrap left. I’m trying to give Mum and Dad time to get back together properly—you know, you guys,
! Do it! ‘Rediscover each other’, like the magazines suggest, revive your jaded marriage! Isn’t that kind of me? I’m so considerate! When I’m there watching the way they’re together-without-being-together it seems crazy to hope, but who knows what goes on when I leave? One look from Dad to Mum, one recognition (‘How could I do this to her?’ or, ‘She’s still the Jan I married, really—why didn’t I see that?’) and the situation—his, mine, Ricky’s, this terrible hovering—might begin to fix itself up.

Went shopping with Mum this morning, for a few last things for the party. Ooh boy, am I looking forward to this party! Aren’t you, Dad? Aren’t you
itching
to sit at the dinner table and look around at the happy, birthday-candle-lit faces of your loving family, Mum so innocent, me so
knowing
?! Don’t be scared, Dad, I won’t say anything—not yet, anyway. I mean, I
could
do a Lisa and use that knowing to get myself a car for my seventeenth, or an all-expenses-paid trip overseas or something. But things are
bad enough already. This whole weekend feels like a sick joke I’m playing, a joke on myself as much as on those two. I got to see the fight, but now I face the payoff,
exile
with my estranged parents.

You’ve
obviously settled on keeping your head down, Dad, hoping it’ll all go away. I’ve read that that’s what unfaithful men do. I mean, Ricky’s probably been pleading with you to leave us (though I don’t think
her
kids are all that impressed with you) and you’ve probably promised her you will ‘when the time’s right’—and the time’ll never be right, right? It’s just too
comfortable
where you are, and too
interesting
and
exciting
stringing two women along. Yours and Mum’s sex life is probably sparking up nicely, you being all sexed up from your affair—like, if I whipped home now I might find you and her, similar scenario but a different pair of legs wrapped round you, you with your eyes shut tight imagining the other one.

Aagh, it’s
disgusting
, and you
know
it is, Dad, and I’d like to see you
admitting
it. You’ll have to at some stage, I know that much—you aren’t going to just cruise through this and tell me on your death-bed, ‘Well, we had our ups and downs, Mel, but you know I always loved your mother and at least we
kept the family together.’
And that’s such an achievement, isn’t it? Physical proximity is all you’d be talking about. Sure, we were a
close
family, always in each other’s pockets. We never talked, never knew what was on each other’s minds, but heck, there we were, all
together
, no-one could deny it.

So what do you say, Dad? Will I tell Mum right there over the roast lamb and spuds tomorrow night—your favourite meal, forever tainted by the memory? I could just drink a
little
bit too much champagne, and the words I’ve been bottling up for six days would come tumbling out while Mum looked at me and then at you, her eyes getting wider and wider, that contented smile draining away from her face.

What would she do? Spit on you? Scream? Run down the hill and plunge into the freezing surf? She’d probably do something
really boring like go to the bedroom and close the door. Then I’d go for a walk and when I came back you’d have
sorted it all out
, told her a bunch of lies to keep her calm, and things would go back to
normal
. Nice for you—I couldn’t hack it though, Dad. When your brain’s been stretched with a new idea, they reckon, it can never go back to the size it was. Now that I’ve seen you adulter-ing I can hardly see any of you that
isn’t
the adulterer. A big question mark hovers over all the rest—how could you have been a
loving father
or a
loyal husband
one day, and a bastard the next? There must have been the seeds of bastardry there all the time.

Having seen what I saw … The impossibility of undoing events, the fact that I can’t perform a fast-reverse—-just a few seconds would be enough—so I didn’t hear that room with its cross-currents of panting, didn’t see … that. Detail after undignified detail, clear as clear. I blush for you and Ricky, Dad, it feels like all the time. I think it’s really strange—it makes it worse, somehow—that you can continue to walk upright, pretend nothing’s happened. You’re so good at it—so
practised
?, I can’t help thinking. I flip through our family life like a secret photo album, dreadful new pictures popping up on each page.

My only comfort is Pug. I feel as if he’s saved my life. Not just before, putting his protective layers between me and school, between me and my ‘friends’, but now, even in this dire place, giving me a whole other area of life to escape to. I can imagine really clearly what he’d be doing now, absorbed in training, and then coming home, showering, throwing on crumpled clothes and leaving for his parents’ place to ‘sort ’em out’, or up to King Street to hang out with his mates. He’d be missing me but he’d never say anything to anyone about it—just like me. Private. Keep Out.

‘I appreciate you being discreet about this, Mel,’ you say in the two accidental seconds we get together in the car. Our eyes meet in the mirror.

‘Covering for you, do you mean?’ I sneer. ‘Is that what you think I’m doing?’

‘Whatever you’re doing’—you can see Mum heading back to the car—‘it’s right not to hart Mum.’

I could strangle you, you horrible blackmailing
philanderer
. If Mum wasn’t coming back I’d scream at you, but instead I say sweetly, ‘Oh, you’re so right. After all, it’s nothing to do with
her
, is it?’

Mum’s bum hits the passenger seat. ‘To do with whom?’

‘Lisa.’ I glance away from Dad’s eyes in the mirror. ‘I hate her.’

‘I thought you were best friends. What’s she done now?’

So I have to make up a ridiculous story about this
tiff
Lisa and I are having—not a serious enough one for us to split
permanently
, because she’s such a useful ‘best friend’ to have—how would I ever get to see Pug without my ‘dates’ with Lisa?

So anyway, you’re off the hook—for the moment, Dad, for the moment only, so don’t get too comfortable.
Being discreet
—gee, you make me sick! ‘It’s right not to hurt
Mum’
—you were thinking of
Mum’s
happiness all the time Ricky was
raping
you, right? You were weeping with sympathy for
Mum
. Calling her ‘Mum’ was a good ploy.
Remember, Mel, you have a duty not to hurt your mum, after all she’s done for you
. Well, you can keep your Rickysticky paws off Mum and me; it’s
your
leg of the tripod that’s looking shaky. Just because I’m keeping quiet now doesn’t mean I’ll be quiet for ever. Sometime when I can’t stand all the pretending any longer I’m going to tell her—I
am
! I’m not going to
be discreet
about it, either—I’m going to shout it out good and loud, possibly even up and down our street: ‘David Dow screws around! I know! I saw him screwing Ricky Lewis in our front room! Third of April, one-thirty p.m.!’ And old Mr Close’ll lean over his balcony railing and sing out, ‘Think we don’t know, young Melanie? Think we haven’t sat here all day and seen him
popping in and out with every woman in the neighbourhood?’ Well, Dad, how do I know you
haven’t
, now that I know you
could
?

Dad led me down to the water. His hand wrapped mine halfway to the elbow; I was the height of the bottom edge of his bathers. The waves ran at me, eye-high, hurried, their tops juggling froth. At the last moment he swung me up so that the ocean only dashed the sand from my feet, leaving them fizzing cold.