Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

On her way back up to the house in the early evening dusk, Lucy saw that the dog was once again chained up in her kennel. Dora had disappeared some time during the afternoon and she’d wondered what had happened to her. As soon as Lucy walked into the kitchen, where Melanie was preparing dinner, her sister turned to her.

‘You let the dog off her chain.’

‘Yeah, I did. I don’t see why she has to be chained up like that.’

Melanie leaned on the bench, her face taut. Every muscle in her body was rigid with tension.

‘She’s chained up because Dad wants her to be. So you have to leave her like that or he gets upset. And when he gets upset, he takes it out on me. He can still do that, even if he’s only whispering at me. The things he says — they are just so gross. Would you not take her for a walk like that again? Please. It’s too hard, Luce.’

Lucy turned away, shaking her head against rising furies.

‘Do you want some tea?’ her sister called out to her but Lucy did not reply.

She walked slowly down the hallway to the lounge room, drawn towards the sound of the television. Yellow light shone through the door onto the carpet in the hallway, a contoured and gleaming polyester blue.

As Lucy drew closer, she began to chew on her thumbnail. Through the door she could see the television was turned on to an evening game show, ‘Wheel of Fortune’, the volume turned up high. Then her mother, sitting on the lounge watching the show, and her father, stretched out in his reclining chair, apparently asleep, the tray of medications Melanie had prepared earlier sitting near him on a coffee table. She stopped at the door. The room was filled with an odour of sickness, like rotting flowers. Seeing her, her mother pulled herself upright, dragging her cardigan down past her waist. She tried to speak but could not, looked from her daughter to her sick husband, whose eyes remained closed.

‘Hi, Mum,’ Lucy said, going inside.

Her mother nodded in silent response. Her husband opened his eyes and looked at his daughter.

‘Hi, Luce,’ he said. ‘We heard you were home. How are you?’

Her father’s face had become an under-face, the kind you arrive at after sickness has stripped everything else to the bone. Illness had drawn pain to the surface of George Hurst’s face, it was almost the only thing that still existed of him. Lucy could not speak. She almost cried.

‘Come home to see your old man at last,’ he said against the racket of the television show. ‘Come and give him a kiss, hey? I know I’m not too pretty to look at these days.’

She did not. She sat in an armchair opposite them both.

‘Stevie asked me to come home,’ she said slowly, looking from her father to her mother, who was still playing with the ends of her cardigan. She had not changed at all, she was a round-faced woman, a little pudgy, with flat hair brushed back behind her ears.

‘How are you, Lucy?’ she said, now that her husband had spoken.

‘Are you keeping well?’

Above the noise of the television, the air seemed to simmer with a thousand jangling and unheard sounds.

‘Yeah,’ Lucy replied.

‘I’ve been worried about you,’ her mother said, her attention drifting back to the television set.

‘What have you been up to out there?’ her father asked.

‘Don’t you know?’ Lucy said, poker-faced.

‘Stevie told us you were living with some friends. You had a job in a shop. He said you were doing well,’ her mother said.

‘I’m glad you’ve come, Luce,’ her father said. ‘I wanted to see you.

I haven’t got that much time now. I want you to know your mother and me have always really cared about you. Always.’

‘Always,’ her mother said, looking away from the television screen and back to her daughter. ‘I always did what I had to do for you, Lucy.

I made sure I looked after you. I did the best I could, I couldn’t do any more than that. I hope you know that.’

‘We’ve been worried sick about you since you left.’ Her father moved his chair a little more upright. ‘I thought, my little girl out there all on her own. Who’s going to look after her? And we never heard anything from you, except through Stevie. Not even at Christmas.’

‘You could have sent us a card,’ her mother added. ‘We wanted to hear from you.’

‘Why didn’t you come looking for me?’ Lucy asked.

‘We couldn’t, Luce. We didn’t know where to find you,’ her father said.

‘You could have asked Stevie.’

‘He said you didn’t want to see us,’ her mother said, her face slightly red.

‘It’s hard for a man, worrying about his daughter like that. My little girl, I thought, and I don’t know where she is. And she won’t tell me.

She won’t even tell me.’

The TV show host invaded the lounge room noisily and Lucy saw her mother’s attention once again drift back towards the screen. She got to her feet and turned it off. Her mother blinked a little, but did not speak. Her father stared at her with eyes that were large and bright in his worn face. She sat down again, staring at him, unable to turn away even though she didn’t want to look. It was horrible to see him like this.

‘I’m a sick man, Luce,’ he said, reading her thoughts. ‘I can’t hide it. Sometimes I think I can’t bear the pain any more. I want it finished.

When it’s finished, I’m going to be happy.’

Lucy, watching and listening to him, had no thoughts. Her feelings were thin, her mind was blank, flat like a sheet of unpainted plasterboard.

‘You have to understand that me and your mother love you. More than anything.’

Lucy did not answer, she sat there waiting. Her gaze shifted from her father to her mother and back again. Her mother kept glancing at the blank television set but she said nothing. Lucy felt weightless, with her feelings slipping towards chaos, the quiet sounds in her head buzzing like insects.

‘Luce, I’m dying, but your life will go on and you’ll do what you want to do with it. You’ll get married and you’ll be happy. And I’m glad for you, I’m glad. Because all that’s ever mattered to me is how much I’ve cared about you. All I ever did was care about you. It’s a normal thing for a father to do.’

In the midst of his illness, there was a flash of her father of old. She knew that look so well. On Saturday mornings, from her place at the cash register, she would watch him as he sold old or fatty or tough meat to his customers. He had always had that same look. Are they going to take it?

‘Did you worry about me?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Luce. I did.’

‘Did you lie awake at night worrying about me?’

‘All the time.’

Lucy waited, again chewing her thumbnail. She imagined how her father would look if she shot him in the chest now, and then looked at her mother, working through the same fantasy, bringing both images together powerfully in her mind. Under her bulky sweatshirt, her gun pressed against her midriff.

‘Did you ever lie awake and wish you hadn’t done what you did to me?’ she said.

‘Look at me, Luce,’ he replied almost immediately. ‘I’m dying and I’m dying too soon. I want us to be friends before I go. You’re home now. This is your home. There’s always a place for you here. And in my will. I’ve remembered you in my will, Lucy, I’ve remembered you especially. You can think about me one day when I’m gone and thank me for that. You can say to yourself, my old man was very generous to me in his will, he did that for me, it’s made my life easier now. Your mother and me have broken our hearts worrying about you these last few years. I’ve broken my heart worrying about you. But I’m not accusing you for that. There’s no point in accusing people for things.