Christos Tsiolkas - Barracuda

‘Driving here I was convinced that I was going to stay until she died, that I was going to show her, show them all, that I was a good daughter. I was going to tell you to take the car and drive back to Melbourne, leave me here to look after her. I was going to stay until she died.’ She made a gesture of frustration. ‘But I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to go home, I want to be in my own house, I want to kiss and make love to your father, I want to hug Theo, I want to put on old records and put on make-up and dress up and dance to great music and I want to laugh. I want to dance and laugh and fuck.’

She shook her head. ‘There was never music in my parents’ house, there was no laughter. No wonder I wanted to run away first chance I got. No fucking wonder.’

It was her third gin and tonic. She was getting morose, thought Dan.

But the next moment, she brightened. ‘I still remember the first night I ever danced. There was a girl at the salon where I was an apprentice, she was a dancer — every Friday night she’d take a dance class in a little studio on Rundle Mall. She kept inviting me and I kept declining, but then this one afternoon after work, I said I’d go.’ His mother was tapping the table. ‘Now what was her name?’ She banged her glass hard on the table. ‘Renee! That’s right, her name was Renee. Well, she took me dancing and it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever experienced. The music, the steps, the dresses, the joy on people’s faces — I had never witnessed such joy. I danced there that Friday and I went the Friday after and the Friday after that. My father followed me that third Friday and dragged me home, literally pulling me by the hair all the way through the city and across the park to Mile End. And he hit me and we had the most massive fight and I told them then that I was never going back to a meeting, I was never ever going back witnessing. I told them that God wasn’t in their stern bloody Kingdom Hall, I said that God was in music and in dancing. I told them I didn’t believe in their God anymore. They threw me out that night. I left with one small suitcase and a pair of boots under my arms.’

The memory made her falter, and melancholy returned to her face. ‘The funny thing is that it was what my father always used to say to me: “You Aussie kids don’t know how lucky you are. Look at what you have, all you have. Me, me, I came to this country with a suitcase and pair of shoes in my hands. That’s all.”’ Her eyes were wet as she turned her gaze to Dan. ‘Well, fuck him. I know what that’s like. I learned exactly what that’s like.’

Dan rubbed at his face, almost scratching at it. He couldn’t quite understand what his mother was saying, thought he must be missing something. ‘And they never wanted to see you again? Just because you didn’t believe in God?’

His mother sighed. ‘Maybe that was an excuse, maybe they were already looking for a reason to chuck me out. Your dad thinks that was what happened, reckons I must have been too loud-mouthed for them, too opinionated, too independent. I was already challenging their stupid rules. By the time I met your dad I was a couple of years out of home and working in that pub in Broken Hill. I had toughened up, mate, I had to.’

His mum looked around the pub, as if she’d only just realised there were others around them, that other lives were being lived. ‘Your father doesn’t get religious faith. He doesn’t understand it. My old man, my mum, I can call them lots and lots of things, but hypocrites about their faith they weren’t. Nah, they truly believed I was banished from them.’

She finished her drink and looked wistfully at the empty glass. ‘One more? Is that OK?’

‘Sure. I’ll get it,’ he said. He went to the bar and ordered her another gin but also got her a big glass of water.

His mother unleashed a further torrent of words as soon as he sat down. ‘What I hate is, it’s like I still want to prove to them all that I am a good person — that I’m not evil. That was what the fantasy of staying by her bedside till she died was all about. It wasn’t about her, it was about proving something to Bettina and to my dickhead brothers. But what for? They can’t forgive me, they have to be right with God. And why should I care? I know my kids are beautiful, I know my husband is wonderful, I know, I know my life is good. What do I want to prove?’

And Dan suddenly understood: They know I’ve been in gaol, they know what I did. That’s why she wanted me here — not Regan or Theo — to prove to them that I am a good person, to show them that I am not evil.

‘I don’t give a fuck what they think. They’re not my family.’

His mother shrank away and he regretted the severity of his words. He hadn’t meant to be that harsh, he just wanted her to know that, in this alien town, all that mattered was her and him, none of the others. Words, he thought, they betray you. Again, he thought about Dennis, how the mangled sounds, the agonised syllables, didn’t matter. Dennis said what he meant, he had to — it took too much energy to talk in circles. Dennis was direct.

‘Mum,’ he said, grabbing his mobile, ‘I’m just off to the loo.’

He texted Dennis: Mum and I are at the Torrens Arms. You want to join us? He sent it off, waited. Dan thought there was no way Dennis could join them: his mother treated him like a baby, she wouldn’t let him out. How would he get there? Was he even allowed to drink? Just as he pushed open the toilet door he felt the phone throb in his pocket.

‘Dennis is joining us,’ he said, as he slid into the booth.

‘Really?’ Then, suspiciously: ‘On his own?’

‘I think so.’

‘Good, he’s a nice kid.’

He’s a man. He’s an adult. ‘He’s my age, isn’t he?’

‘Two years older,’ his mother answered. She looked around the pub, at the despondent man at the bar, at the bored waitress tapping her cigarette packet in her apron pocket, at the three burly red-faced men shouting and joking in a corner, their table a forest of empty glasses. She screwed up her nose, as if she found it all distasteful. ‘I didn’t even know he was born until much later. After I had you. I rang home to tell them that they had a grandchild. I got my old man. You know what he said? He said I already have a grandson, I don’t want yours. I have Bettina’s son, I have Dionysus.’

Then she surprised him by throwing back her head and cackling and convulsing with laughter. ‘God, he was a tough old bastard,’ she said as she wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘You got to hand it to him — the last of the old patriarchs.’ She raised her glass. ‘Let’s drink to that. Let’s drink to the passing of the old guard. We’ll never see the like of pricks like him again.’

She sculled the drink, slammed the glass on the table, swaying as she rose from her chair. ‘If Dennis is coming, we should get another.’

Dan grabbed her hand and pointed to the glass of water. ‘First, drink that,’ he ordered.

He could tell that she was surprised, but she sat back down and obediently drank from the glass.

‘What did giagia say, when you told her about me?’

‘I didn’t speak to her, the old prick wouldn’t let me. But a few weeks later I got this card, some stupid cheap Hallmark card of a stork with a blue balloon in its mouth. There wasn’t even a note in it — she hardly had any schooling, I know that, but not even my name — just this dumb card with fifty dollars inside it.’ She cheekily pointed at him. ‘It kept you in nappies for a month. That’s my mother, that’s what she was like.’ Then she gently corrected herself, ‘What she is like.’

The shrivelled carcass, the mask-like face, the empty eyes. He had no sense of who this woman had been. Just the meat of her dying body and the shade of her in his memory, a ghost already, overshadowed by the untamed life force of her husband.