the odd employment

War would hardly wake me, but Timmy couldn’t sleep through drizzle. Not until fatigue does him in and knocks him out. Rhoda is in between. Nothing worth noting unless perhaps the one-off sleepwalk. Trips to the kitchen to check on the chicken in the grill. Once caught taking a midnight tinkle in the bin. Timmy would never find out about it nor would she. A man must protect the ones he loves. A man must protect the ones he loves but he can do so only so much. Heaven and hell and everything between knows I would have chained my beloved of two decades to the bedposts had I foreseen the terror in the eyes of our ten year old Timmy. Our only kid, Timmy.

From what I gather there wasn’t much drizzle that night. So whatever kept Timmy awake is Timmy’s secret to keep. I suspect it was the dog.

Me, I was out like a blow to the head with a spade. My boy must have pinched me, punched me, slapped and scratched me but I woke to only a gentle rocking of my shoulder. And when he said to me, ‘daddy? Daddy?! Daddy,’ I knew all wasn’t right.

Her silhouette spooked me as it did our boy, motionless against moonlight that leaked into the dining room from who knows which window. I called her name saying, ‘Rhoda’. She said nothing so I took Timmy by the hand and we went to her. But halfway to her I stopped and said to Timmy, ‘Timmy, go to bed.’ He said, ‘but–’, but I said, ‘Timmy–’. So he left me with his mother and I took her by the armpits and staggered back to bed.

*

Taking Timmy to school in the morning I told him mommy simply had a really big dream, a big humongous one. He asked me, ‘is mommy going to be okay?’ and I said, ‘I think mommy is.’ I dropped him off at St. Ignatius saying, ‘don’t worry, okay?’, and then I drove myself straight to the offices. Jill was in the copy room when I walked in just before midday. I said her name in an offbeat sing-song and she responded saying, ‘hey, Tobes.’ There and then I asked her who to see if I knew someone who sleepwalked. But first we talked about that evening’s lottery, about our chances of hitting the jackpot.

*

Hay fever was in the air and spring cleaning in the bones, Rhoda’s bones to the very core. She pulled down every curtain one Saturday morning and let the sunlight kill my slumber. And then made me sweep clean the garage for which I hated her until lunch. All Timmy had to do was smooth out his duvet. After a sandwich lunch he gazed at the TV in the sun-beaten living room while I washed the dog and Rhoda tended to the pot plants.

Coda was an Alsatian, a lean streak of shades of black and brown with a regal greying round the flanks and muzzle. Ears that pricked at every rustle, eyes like needles, breath like a gassing, for all he was worth Coda was the dumbest thing I knew on four legs. He was moulting so I quickened things with a heavy duty brush. Funny, each time I dragged it through his coat he whimpered like Rhoda’s nose circa that time of year.

*

‘They have doctors for sleep.’

I said this to Rhoda in bed, after she was done talking about April. Rhoda always talked about visiting her sister who lived interstate. When we had Timmy April spent two and a half months with us while Rhoda got over her depression. We lived somewhere else then. But Rhoda dragged with her a sense of debt to April, dragged it to every place we’d been since. I see, sometimes, that it makes her sad.

I told her about the sleep doctors. I said, ‘these people dedicate their lives to sleep, Rhoda, think about it.’ And she said, ‘the less they know the more they make. They’re good, these doctors. What did you say they call it?’

‘A parasomnia,’ I said. I’d looked it up.

She considered it. ‘Parasomnia.’ Then she sighed. ‘Coda’s hairs are everywhere.’

I said, ‘sorry. It must have been the wind.’ Then I tickled her tummy, but she turned away; I kissed her nape, but she said, ‘Toby.’ My rise fell. I tugged myself in silence but never quite came and never quite went to sleep. Must have been why I saw the dark blotch cross our doorway like the shadow of a cloud.

‘Timmy.’

My word was to his body what a shock was to the heart and he spun like a wind vane in the gust. He’d been peeking through a window that looked out onto the front yard and front gate. I asked him why he wasn’t sleeping as I shifted the curtain and lace with my hand and squinted into the moonlit dark.

‘Coda squeezed out again.’

As I looked upon the front gate no sense was being made inside my head. The spaces would hardly let through a big man’s thigh; the bars were thick galvanised sheets angled like rooftops, with blunt edges that would peel the same man’s thigh like a carrot being peeled with a fingernail.

‘Again?’ I said to Timmy.

He must have thought I was reprimanding him because he froze up. Maybe I was in a way. My hand swam in his head hair as I told him to go to sleep, that I’d wait for Coda if Coda ever chose to come back. I promptly nodded off against the wall but came to in time to see the dog string his rump and hind legs through two of the bars like a paraplegic, making that dog sound which sounds like a cheap dog whistle, with the odd yelp thrown in. Each yelp he gave shot through me like pain. But as soon as he was through he limped a step or two and trotted off out of sight into the back.

*

Carlton Keyes was perhaps into dogs because he was himself a dog; on this the whole office could agree. At the water boiler I questioned him about Coda and about the night before. He said it happens, in that voice of his; that it was that time of year, and that the bitches were in heat. He told me this as though no one else in the world knew it. Death alone would stop the males and their heat- seeking missiles, he said. He was painful to be around but he knew things, Carlton Keyes.

I came home that evening to a wife paging through women’s magazines on our marital bed. Three or four of them were spreadeagled beside her submerged ass and hips. Lingeried and like porcelain, every Playtex girl on every open page was a benchmark for and an affront to real women. Rhoda’s eyes searched me where I stood in the doorway.

‘Is this normal?’

The words tumbled past something caught inside her throat.

‘Is what?’

‘This, Toby, is this?’ she said, and raised up a magazine and thumbed what looked like a chip fat stain on it. ‘He’s only ten. Do they think like this at ten?’

I wished I had an answer she would have liked.

I wished I had something I could have said to her at dinnertime to stop her draping dirty, sad looks over our boy. Sorry looks. Looks you gave someone who was into pain and suffocation and feet. I wanted to tell her not to worry as I put away the dishes she washed and handed to me; I wanted to tell her that there was an explanation for it. But I had to protect them from the facts.

Timmy was in bed and yet to doze off. Walking past the en-suite to my bedside I saw Rhoda inside, in front of the mirror, wearing a dressing gown. She mustn’t have known I was looking. She stared at herself. She touched herself, touched her face, touched her neck, turned her head, stroked her curls, trailed her fingers down her chest and touched her breasts like they were stray dogs. Flicked them up and down because they sagged just enough to allow it. Flicked them with distaste. Then she continued to floss.

When I told Rhoda about Coda she said she’d told me so. By now we were in bed.

‘Told me how?’ I said.

‘We should have had it neutered,’ she said, but I asked her what good would have come of it. She was right in saying it would have been good for Timmy in the end but I wished she would look at me when she said it.

I told her I’d talk to Timmy. I said, ‘I’ll talk to him.’

She said, ‘I’ll talk to him too’ but I said, ‘you wouldn’t know how.’

I pulled the duvet to my nipples and told her not to fret, that it was my place as a father and that I’d do it.

‘Toby,’ she said, ‘I don’t like that the dog does that. It’s not civil.’

‘It’s a dog, Rhoda. What else is it going to do?’

‘I’ve seen better.’

‘Better dogs.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that can roll over too, and sit.’

I sighed and pulled at my chest hairs and said, ‘chopping its balls off might be harsh.’

‘Why must I see a shrink because you say I walk when I sleep?’

‘Because you need to get better sleep. And it won’t be a shrink. Just a doctor.’

‘My sleep does me fine.’

‘You never have any energy for us anymore.’

She looked me up and down and looked me all over and her face seemed to twitch a little and before we knew it we were both asleep until I woke and decided to please myself a little. It was while pulling that I heard Coda and his dog sounds and stole away from bed to take a look. Again I drew aside the curtain and lace and witnessed him squeeze himself like a rock-hard motion.

Then he was gone.

That night I took the car for a roll through the neighbourhood. I wasn’t sure if I was in search of the dog or just rolling through the streets of our neighbourhood. Not much was about. I did catch a possum in the headlights scurrying into some poor class act’s prim little hedge. I must have circled our block four times before I turned off onto Karlsson Street and then onto Hunter before busting onto Oates; rode it all the way down to where it became Convent-Leigh. I saw people on the street forming non-memories and being drunken silly with one another. Somehow I found myself down Mason Avenue where all the naughty places were. Places announced by cheap neon lights that bleached clients blue, green and pink. Further along Mason were women and wannabe women smoking and squelching stubs with their stilettos as they held out for guys like me. I parked in an unlit spot and window shopped, thought about finishing that tug but never got round to it. There were cute young ones that looked too right in their school-girl get-up. One of these was acquired by a man in a Burgundy sedan but as they drove past it struck me that he looked like he might be a monster; something about the way he stared out from beneath his brow made me dread one of the next mornings’ papers.

The route I took home was convoluted and stupid. I wanted to wash my hands and rinse my eyes. I rolled through familiar turf not far from our house. And as I did I let the headlights sweep the streets. They caught two more possums; a tyre almost killed one. Calling it a night I headed home and somewhere along the way I found him.

The dog was skipping along the footpath in my general bearing and his eyes flashed twice in the headlights. As did, perhaps, what must have been his dick as it dangled from its sheath. I just drove myself home and left the car in the driveway, left the keys on the coffee table on the way to the master bedroom and was relieved to find Rhoda sleeping. Lay in bed and waited for Coda and, when he came, listened to him yelp and whine his way back in.

*

Rhoda was at the hotplates flipping cakes in a pan. I was having my juice and my paper but would later be having coffee with pancakes.

I said to Rhoda, ‘you should drop in on April one of these months.’

It took her a while to answer what with all the mixing and pouring and flipping and stacking she was doing.

‘You don’t just drop in, not interstate.’

‘She’d give up her bed; you know it. Call her. We’ll be fine on our own for a few weeks.’

She talked over her shoulder. ‘But you’d have to come too. Wouldn’t you?’

I told her I guessed so and drank some juice.

‘What are you going to say to Timmy?’

I said nothing.

‘Toby.’

‘Right–’ I said. ‘I’ll just take it as it comes. It’ll be better that way.’

Rhoda took a scourer to the pan in the sink.

I said to her, ‘you should see your sister if you want to. You should see April. I’d hate for me to be keeping you from anything.’

Rhoda said, ‘promise you’ll talk to Timmy,’ and I said, ‘yes, yes, promise.’ Then I watched whatever news was breaking on telly while I waited for Timmy to have his milk and cereal.

Coda watched us exit the driveway after Rhoda had closed the front door.

I drove Timmy to his school and we listened to the radio the whole way there without saying any words. In the lot he hardly let me slow down for him to get out and as he shut the door on us I realised I’d forgotten to talk to him about a thing I’d been meaning to talk to him about. I would have called him back but he was late and in a rush. I’d forgotten to tell him that I would be picking him up from school a little late that day because his mother would be seeing a sleep doctor and we just might be a little late.

On an ageing couch in the Ward 8 lounge the father sleeps with a dated copy of The Lancet blanketing his lap; the newest issue will soon be collecting dust in the family P.O. Box. He took out a subscription seven months ago with the help of a doctor friend, who also helped him subscribe to the MJA, the BMJ and the Journal of Paediatric Haematology/Oncology –

“Sir.”

– And possibly the New England Journal of Medicine. Just for some semblance of control. Some way to help his helplessness.

“Sir.”

When he’s not quietly cursing the word-tangled articles and wondering about paraproteins and p-values, when he’s not giving ward staff the cynical eye and popping cans of Sunkist from vending machines –

“Sir?”

– He co-owns a less than thriving luxury upholsterer, Conroys and Oost, which operates out of Elanora Heights and boasts clientele as far north as The Entrance, down low as far as Scarborough and westwards to the Blue Mountains, out Katoomba way.

“Mr Oosthuizen, sir.”

A cold hand on the arm stirs him and though he is out of it he stands with a cartoonish sense of purpose. The older-than-she-looks nurse informs him that Dr Gunn would like to speak to him and Mrs Oosthuizen. That Kip is now awake and that he has just had something to eat, something light.

He is led off down the hallway busy with people seemingly idle, the back of his shirt rumpled and untucked and The Lancet left lying limp and in an odd way on the floor of the lounge while a soapie plays – muted – on the TV.

A joke must have just been shared if the three tired smiles are anything to go by. They all turn to look as he enters but it is Gunn alone who speaks.

“Mr Oosthuizen.”

“Doctor.”

“Sir, have a seat,” Gunn says, slowly letting go of his smile.

“Champ. How are you feeling?” the father whispers to his boy as he settles into a chair near the back of the room.

“Fine,” says someone other than Kip or the doctor.

He’d hardly noticed her on entering, and he knows it and Lydia Oosthuizen knows it. Man and wife stare at each other as though oddities each to the other.

“So he’s eaten then,” man says to wife.

The wife, now as the mother, looks at the boy, who gives a lethargic nod to the man. “Good,” says the father to the son. “That’s good.”

The doctor proceeds to hack at the itching silence with talk of 70% cure rates, outpatient treatment every four weeks, vinblastine, chlorambucil, and the risk of permanent infertility. But Gunn couldn’t be more pleased with the prognosis, the finally clearing horizon.

It all sounds good, Lydia guesses, content that all she can do is nod and guess to herself considering Graham most likely isn’t hearing a thing…considering the blankly smothering gaze he’s fixed upon their son. Despite the ‘I understand’ glances he throws – on occasion – at Dr Gunn.

Once the spiel is over they thank the paediatric oncologist, who then reassures Kip in a quasi-private manner clearly meant for show. He finally sweeps out after quick handshakes with both parents, who then sit if not collapse upon the cheap vinyl chairs. The late afternoon sun saturates the room in a haze of warmth and light, seducing Kip to slumber and tricking the adults into blinking a lot more than they normally would, so much so that they forget what it is to speak; to think.

*

Kip remembers little of the day of discharge. Only that he felt a weirdness on leaving that was thankfully not coupled with some melancholy desire to return to that place of ruin, that room with its machines. It was strangely low key, and satisfyingly so. No applause. No slow walk through a tunnel constructed from smiling hospital staff in their unflattering get up. Just a quiet departure from the place he’d come to regard as home, an exit dignified in its anonymity.

But if that place was not home then he is not sure where home is. One week on and dad has been oddly absent, not counting the afternoon he took some freshly done laundry – dried but unironed – and disappeared. Shirts for the office and shirts for play. Pants too, and some books and things. And for all the keenness in his eyes he simply could not stay to watch the Tahs and the Crusaders collide on the big 50-inch. The Tahs. Their Tahs.

He just left.

“He comes home when you’re sleeping,” mum assures him as she chops the carrots more viciously than he remembers.

“Why’s he always working all the time? What about on the weekend?”

“Things are hard, Graham, things aren’t getting easier,” she snaps, as she does the asparagus ends.

“Mum, you said Graham.”

“I said Kip.”

That night Kip stays awake with little effort but he hears no car pull up to the garage; sees no car as he stands in the pitch dark living room, staring out at the unlit driveway. It’s sobering how quickly he seasons to a house without a dad. How dumbly he comes to accept that his father doesn’t sleep in mum & dad’s bed anymore, doesn’t live at home any longer. Though the words ‘dad’s moved out’ never quite occur to him. And why should they?

So mum isn’t quite as gifted a carpooler as dad was. Can’t quite work an audience under the age of ten. Can’t quite bring herself to marvel at the awesomeness that is Transformers, the single greatest treatment he remembers receiving on the wards. Besides, the pool’s down from five to three, driver included: just Lydia, Kip, and this other boy Lance.

Ghosh’s parents, Brett’s mother, both very sorry, both very grateful for the offer. But six months is ample time for alternative arrangements to become permanent arrangements. Ghosh has moved schools anyhow, and Brett never cared much for Kip, a feeling fairly mutual.

Lydia watches the two boys toddle off into the bustling quad at St Augustine’s, Kip’s daffodil-yellow cap standing out almost as much as his egg-bald head very soon will. She then slips out the station wagon and steals into the head office, filling the secretary in on her appointment with the headmaster and taking a seat as she is told to please do.

Why the hell would you go private?

The words still sting, variations of which spat forth from every friend’s mouth at every mention of Kip’s lymphoma and of their plans for its destruction. It had been like a reverberating chant, a Greek Chorus of sorts really. No one understood their reasoning nor seemed to want to. But Lydia and Graham were adamant, stoic, and perhaps – in retrospect – daft as shit. They’d researched and they’d decided…what had they decided? They’d thought and thought and finally concluded that…what had they concluded again? Lydia massages her forehead skin as she juggles half-formed thoughts in her jellied mind, hoping she doesn’t mistake this meeting for the interview she will be having at 1:15 this afternoon, during the lunch break of her current job which she is damn intent on keeping.

Kip was never a presence, magnetic, the class Clooney or school Connery. Not anywhere, certainly not on the ward. But never before has he felt so anonymous, egg-head notwithstanding, despite eyes like wet cats in shallow grottos, a gaze pale and famished. One would think he’d never been absent at all, that he had not swayed on the verge of being an absentee forever. That perhaps some doppelganger filled in for him these last few stolen months.

He wouldn’t have thought it but he quietly yearns for the occasional tease, to be called baldilocks or Charlie Brown or Peter Garrett or something equally lame, and to be pointed at. Even a look of pity which comes naturally to some of the teachers might be refreshing coming from some of the boys. Anything other than nothing. Something to assure him that these last six months have meant more than just needles, tears, bad food, hair loss and vomit.

*

Graham is thankful to have his son for the night. At least before Kip starts spending evenings and nights with the neighbours, the Petits, while Lydia prostitutes herself at some college for adult education, putting her English major to nocturnal use and teaching immigrants phrases they will never use in the real world. Not once did he believe the mother of his child would be working two jobs, like a minimum-wage-earning bum, or a too-young mother, not the wife of a moderately-successful self-employee struggling valiantly to pay for half a year that has come and gone like lottery money, or the mildly talented sales manager that she appears to be.

He sighs into his pasta and carbonara sauce and sighs once more when his son asks him if he is ever coming home.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen, sweetheart.”

“But how come? It’s been ages and you’re always working and mum says you come back at night but you don’t.”

“Kip. Kip, listen. Some things were never meant to happen. See. Sometimes it takes something really really big for you to realise that those things were never ever meant to happen. Ever. But hey. All that matters is that you’re better now. Isn’t it.”

They eat in silence. Not an awkward one, but a beautiful, snug-like-the-quilt-Nan-made-me one. Kip pops a mouthful of penne, puts down his fork and chews. Halfway through chewing he smiles and Graham smiles back. The man then looks around at the tiny flat and the few remaining, unopened boxes and thinks to himself, what a shitbox, what a dump. Fuck.

He washes up while his son watches TV, hopefully something appropriate for a nine-year-old though you can’t be sure about seven o’clock programming these days, these crazy days and times.

Man and boy sit on the sofa together after the washing-up’s been done, son cuddled up to the father who kisses the hairless head at his chest and strokes the once-withered shoulders just below.

Memories of promises he once made flood him out of the blue as though he were a dying man, a bystander shot suddenly through the heart or thereabouts. Promises of a sister or brother for Kip, of another life upon which he and Lydia could dish out love. Promises of a ski trip to Switzerland in the coming Sydney summer, perhaps with a cheeky Italian detour to Lugano, maybe Milano, savings for which he fought to preserve until they simply had to be eaten into as the chemo snowballed and Ward 8 became the place where their hearts grudgingly were.

Has the room gone cloudy and hazy all of a sudden? Graham slyly stubs the inner corner of his eyes with his finger tips, rubs them up and down and sniffles.

“So. Champ. What d’you reckon about Narrabeen Public?”

Kip is slow to answer. “Am I moving?”

Christ, Graham thinks in calm exasperation. That woman. That Lydia.

“No, nothing,” he says to Kip, “dad’s just a little tired.” So fucking tired. “How are things at school?”

“Okay.”

“No one being silly, being an idiot?”

Kip lifts his head from his father’s chest and shakes it three times.

“Good.”

Graham attends to the knock at the door and grants Lydia entry with hardly a hello. Kip begins packing his few things with the longsuffering of a production-line worker, as though it’s a job he’s been doing for decades. Slow and joyless.

Lydia says, “Have you had dinner?”

Graham says, “Of course. It’s quarter to eight. What, aren’t you working tonight?”

“After I drop him off at the Petits’.”

“Why not just let him stay here?”

“Graham,” she says with the weariest groan.

“Fuck, he’s your son, take him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she manages to say through lips contorted with disgust.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I know anything anymore.”

“I just want him to be close to home, Graham. I trust Clara and Dale.”

“Whatever. I’m not arguing. I need sleep.”

Only then do they notice that Kip is hanging about in a ghostly manner, his backpack hitched up high, him pretending not to have seen or heard anything though one can’t question the heaviness that must be clutching at his throat.

“Night, champ,” Graham says as he watches Kip shuffle past him and out into the stairwell, eyes on no one, followed out by his mother in her long wool coat.

“Okay then…” Lydia says in a moment of limbo. Then she turns and heads down the staircase, adding an extra two beats to the helter skelter echoing of Kip’s descent.

Back inside and alone again, Graham aimlessly wanders the kitchen, opening and closing cupboards, sweeping crumbs onto the floor, looking in the fridge and being disappointed by the lack of Coronas and cubed ice. Ignoring the Manila envelope that wasn’t on the kitchen top prior to his wife’s arrival a few moments ago.

*

Patience is not a gift of hers and however much of it she might have once had has been depleted so much so that she’s now in the red.

That Colombian bitch, she thinks. And that Angolan prick. And that Taiwanese whorebag, and that Dutch dick who is clearly in no need of late-night English tutoring, the filthy sleaze.

She locks up and makes her exit on tiptoes as some classes have only just commenced, at ten thirty on a Friday night. In the car she takes a moment to breathe not having planned on sobbing much less bawling, head first upon the steering wheel – BAAAAHHP! – And then against the window. How did it come to this? How could something inside a sweet little child turn out to be such an undoing? Undoing everything. Unless nothing had been done up to begin with. And even if there had been nothing to begin with, at a time there had been at least ignorant bliss.

How hard will Kip freak when he comes home to find that his beloved big screen is gone, pawned off for a measly, ordinary 27-inch on which SpongeBob will look so much less than ordinary? The mountain bikes too, exchanged for hard fast cash, as was the tumble dryer, the lawnmower, and a stash of old records and miscellanies. Besides, where they’re going, these things would have been mere redundancies.

They are expected to be out of the house in a little over a week to make way for the new owners, and her sister and her sister’s husband are expecting them any day now, anytime. Whether Kip would understand the very tightness of money is anyone’s blind stab. But it’s for his sake damn it. For the boy to continue living he cannot live as he once did.

Lydia starts the car and careens through a tight angry U in the parking lot, coming to a jolting halt were the gravel meets the road and its steady stream of headlights.

*

“What’s cancer like?”

“Karen.”

Eleven-year-old Karen Petit jumps at the hollow sternness of her mother’s voice. Kip gives her the plainest look, and if a face could pull a shrug then that is what Karen’s face has just done. She stands oddly and skedaddles, leaving Kip alone with the television, all noise, all colour, bugger-all purpose.

Clara Petit calls out from the kitchen: “Honey, your mum won’t be much longer now.”

Kip cares precious little. Tomorrow he returns to Paeds for his first round of outpatient chemo and who knows how that will go. He might sleep through it, or drift off in some dreamy stupor, or he might throw up every inch contained within his skin. Right now all he sees are visions, like a colour-saturated montage from a movie reel. Road trips with the folks out to the country to see Nan and Pa. Trips to Thredbo and slapdash outings to Palm Beach to picnic by Barrenjoey lighthouse. Nights when mum would sit beside him as the fan swept across his sweat-drenched body, as she iced his forehead and sighed, gently cooed. Days when he was so fatigued he could hardly breathe, when dad would read him Watership Down till he dozed. How mum wouldn’t force broccoli on him because he really truly had no appetite. How he would catch them on the sofa, barely touching, watching M*A*S*H wooden-faced and silent, and tell them – with tears in his eyes – how it felt like there were fire ants beneath his skin.

There are visions. Then there is a feeling, guttural, deep down and unwilling to be found. A dull pang, a sting of nostalgia blade-sharp yet murky as a long dead lake; a feeling he cannot articulate to himself. The kind mankind must have felt prior to its very first words, its first meaningful grunts. Words which – on uttering – would go along the lines of “things were so much better back then. Back when I was getting sicker.”

The in-laws would gloat if they could see all this: the sad commute from Chatswood to Artarmon to Wollstonecraft to so on and so on. Mondays to Fridays, like a one-track record on repeat. The quick, desperate weeping in the train station lavatory. Before that, the innocent unknowing kisses and hugs from the wife and the kids; have-a-good-days and love-yous.

Imagine the insults they’d hurl, the questions, the judgements, the spitting on the ground, the arrogant look-aways. The dusting of hands as if to say, ‘I was right all along. My work here is done.’

Look at him, they’d think, disgusted in that quintessentially Nigerian way of being disgusted. Doesn’t he have shame? He wanted to read literature. What did literature do for him in the end? Chinyere, didn’t we tell you to marry someone with sense? Someone with a Profession. You went to read Law and then went to marry a man who read nonsense. Didn’t we tell you? How does it feel now, to be taking care of your –

He gets a shove in the back. Then another. Oh crap. People are waiting to alight and they’re looking at him all pissed off as he hurries out onto the platform at North Sydney and stands beside the hissing train. Diligently, like a porter. Head down, like a porter destined to die a porter.

People stream out, stream it. All he can hear are Chinyere’s parents. See him there like a servant, they’re saying. What kind of name is Miles anyhow? Miles Agahowa. What kind of useless surname is Agahowa? I knew someone with that surname. She was useless. They dust their hands again.

The train departs.

Next to him a woman is talking on her flip-phone. She is going on about some guy, presumably to a lady friend. Says things like, “I’ve dated too many kids, Loz, I’ve dated too many and now I’m just tired, sick and tired and pissed.” Things like, “as if gender equality gives him the right to be such a shit. As if. He pretty much just moved off of his parents’ couch onto mine. I know! Get an effing job!” And whines and sighs followed by words like “see you tonight, babe. Should be a good night.”

The lady buries the phone in her bottomless handbag, looks ahead, looks around, and then her eyes meet Miles’. She looks at him as if to say, You’ve been listening to what I’ve been saying, haven’t you? And Miles looks down at his shoes as if to say, I’m sorry. Please don’t judge me; I’m in a really bad place right now. Which is accurate.

The water view from the bridge, Opera House’s browning ivory shells, the plainness of Centrepoint Tower, all hold little beauty anymore. That calm he once felt now feels like one huge big nothing and he suddenly becomes aware of how little he is; schoolkids even, towering above him like trees from the Niger Delta.

Flip-phone woman gets off at Wynyard. Miles hops down one stop further at Town Hall, along with the masses. Like ants they go their own little ways, bumping, almost bumping, scuttling round one another and popping through ticket gates and dispersing like pollen.

Miles emerges onto the surface, onto George Street with its rush and its racket and its buildings blocking out the sun. Looking down along it, his nostrils begin to sting and the breeze makes his eyes shimmer. Or maybe it’s not the breeze.

Somewhere up there, in that building over there reaching for some puffs of cloud, is where he first felt euphoria. Where he consummated his love for words, for reading them, for the eureka moment when a gem glints out from among the dirt. But to Bleak & Flats Publishing he was just a rubber. Use and discard. And they did. Reader for nine years, never making editor, by choice: he’d had it coming. But, one month on and a generous redundancy package in the bag, he still feels more gutted than a snapper at the Fish Markets. More fucked than a hooker paid in counterfeits.

But if there is a good side to everything it must be that he was a loner, just him and the words. The good thing about not having friends from work: wives can’t wonder how other wives are dealing with layoffs.

He stands on the street corner with his briefcase and thinks, I’ll do juju on you all! Juju being black magic. Then he turns and descends into the subterranean and buys a one-way ticket to Bondi Junction. He walks past a charcoal-black man wearing orange, green and brown, whose whole look screams ‘I have a humanitarian visa’ and ‘I shovel gravel for the city council’. Whose eyes seem to say, Join the club, my brother.

In response Miles would say, ‘I have a degree in English literature, my brother,’ to which the man would reply, ‘how’s that working out for you?’

‘I hope you’re enjoying the minimum wage.’

‘Have fun lying to your children.’

*

Because standing on public transport is his little thing, his little OCD quirk, Miles refuses to sit, despite how odd it might seem what with all the empty seats, what with the lack of rush, what with the lack of a job to rush to.

The train hits Bondi Interchange and Miles hits the bus stands; joins the 380direct to the beach. On the 380 there is a black man, another one. An African. Must be. Oh, and he’s debonair: shaved head, pinstripe suit, slick tie. A dentist Miles guesses. He stares Miles down as Miles walks to the back door and stands against a pole.

Dr Dentist (or Mr Diplomat; one can never rule out diplomat) is most probably considering the back of Miles’ head thinking, Jobless…aimless and wandering…unsure of himself…feels he is not worthy to sit in a public bus. Why did he have to be one of us?

Miles can’t wait to get the hell off.

*

It feels nice out on the promenade. Enough for Miles to forget, momentarily, how much he wants to die. The sun is civil in its heat, the breeze gentle, the ocean serene in its violence, the sands lightly peppered with people who apparently don’t work. People like him. He should go down and introduce himself.

He walks up and down the length of the beach numerous times, but never on the beach. Disillusionment will do that to you.

Pasted to a telephone pole is a poster with the word MISSING screaming off it. A sixty-something-year-old man: plain-faced, conservative to the core probably, loved by many, all of a sudden lost and at large. Grandkids keep asking, ‘where’s poppy?’

‘Wherever poppy is, he’s thinking of you and you and you and you. Okay?’

But inside mom and dad know that the only child grandpa ever really cared about – that One-Stop auto shop he birthed and breastfed and brought up – is gone, liquidated, and so too his will to live. They know exactly where he is. That he won’t be doing a Lazarus along with the economy, whenever the economy does. The poster is just a sick formality to convince his restless ghost that his family made every effort.

Miles can’t understand how it is that he has been staring at a poster for fifteen minutes, in a daze for fourteen of those. Even more unbelievable, how hours can be burned up just strolling. Simple, aimless strolling. Hours, days, burned up. Boredom, guilt, calories, the last scraps of hope and sanity. Kilometres upon kilometres. Miles. Popping into surf shops, sitting on benches, looking odd with his coat and his briefcase as he watches the hissing surf flirt with the sand, kissing and running away. Being suddenly overwhelmed and disappearing into a public toilet cubicle, shuddering but unable to force out even a tear.

It’s lunchtime and he could vandalise a plate of fish and chips. Café Kuhli seems good, reasonable. And it is good. Reasonable, not so much. But the waitress is pretty.

A little drama plays out on the beach as Miles is slurping down his chips. Someone has stepped on something (needle? broken bottle? bluebottle?) and the sand is getting redder. A lifeguard flies out with a first aid kit. Miles imagines himself flying out with a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and an appraisal of George Saunders’ newest book.

‘Why are you thinking about me? I can’t help you now, I’m dead,’ he can envision his father saying, spit congealed in the corners of his mouth. ‘If you were a doctor you wouldn’t be like this, eating fried potato and walking around like a street kid, like agbero. Useless. You wouldn’t be eating fried potato with money your lawyer wife gave you, watching that man exsanguinate.’

‘Papa, it’s my own money.’

‘Of course. What else could you do with your own money?’

Miles signals for the bill; would like to signal for a paper bag to vomit in when he takes a look at it. Luckily his wallet contains a fifty he hadn’t been aware of. So he leaves a hefty tip for the pretty girl, a tip he cannot afford. Just like his father used to do whenever they ate at roadside restaurants in Abeokuta.

Across the street, hanging around the bus stop, Miles feels a buzzing in his coat followed by an annoying, instrumental ditty. Into the pocket goes the hand and out comes the phone. A number he does not recognise, international no doubt what with its string of digits.

“Hello?”

“Hello!”

Nothing. He knows what this is.

These peo–ple, he thinks in his most savage thought-voice. His nephews Angus or Elias most likely, calling to ask for money for who knows what. Demanding ‘just some thousand dollar’ which he will end up sending because – well – because he just can’t not. They do that, these people, these so-called ‘family’. They call, then they hang up. Saves them credit. He will never call back, so he puts the phone away.

On the 333, not to the interchange this time but straight to Elizabeth Street, the buzzing starts again. Like Billy the Kid drawing a gun Miles brings the phone to his face.

“Hello?!” Probably a bit too loud because people turn to look.

Again, no answer.

Miles wants to throttle somebody. Like that lady down there who keeps looking, turning and looking as though she hopes she won’t miss anything.

Idiots, he rages at his nephews. Fools! Selfish, he rages at the rest. They think people breathe money in the west? Bathe in it, dine on it? Piss it, shit it, impregnate their wives and lovers with it? Maybe he should one day ask the Western Union clerk how transfer of bodily fluids works. Chinyere is far more accommodating, far more generous of heart, of spirit, of mind. Stupidly so? Maybe.

Miles suddenly thinks of her, of how he would kill to lie by her feet and cry like a buffoon and beg for her pity because her mercy would be too much to ask let alone her forgiveness. It would slay her to think that he feared her judgement, expected any judgement at all. That he feared being an embarrassment to her.

As the city floats slowly past he can’t help but feel that he has never felt so small, and that she – God, Chinyere – that she deserves bigger.

Dora and Nonso. What about Dora and Nonso?! Could a father sink lower than lying two-faced to his kids? Lying about who he is and what he has become however shameful? Accepting from them Hallmark cards that claim he is the World’s #1 Dad. Eating Dora’s everything-goes omelette in bed, and Nonso’s burnt toast.

“I am scum,” he tells himself softly.

‘Idiot,’ say the in-laws.

“Scum,” he says again.

‘My child. I didn’t say it. You said it,’ says his mother, looking away wet-eyed.

The bus scrapes the kerb.

Miles drifts along Elizabeth Street, crosses over to George Street, traversing all those other streets. Sleepwalks into Dymocks and peruses books of all sorts. Blows two hours perusing. Hopes one of the store clerks will notice him and find it incredibly odd that this black guy has come in every working day for near on a month now and done nothing but peruse. But no one approaches and when the clock hits four he is walking to Wynyard.

“Excuse me, sir…”

Miles is too tired – or who knows what else – to just keep on walking to Wynyard station, so he approaches the young man wearing a t-shirt.

“Sir, I was just wondering: have you heard of GlobalSpree?”

Miles just stares at the boy’s t-shirt: GlobalSpree – spending injudiciously for social justice.

“Well…you’ve heard that thousands of children are dying every day in underdeveloped countries from preventable causes.” He’s beating pamphlets with the back of his hand. “Malnutrition, dirty water, preventable diseases, war – ”

“I’m sponsoring a very large family. A very large, useless family. Who call at two in the morning to ask for money.”

“Um… ”

“It’s very funny, because I have to eat. My wife has to eat, my children have to eat, they can’t go to school naked,  I can’t walk on the street naked, my wife can’t go to work naked. My children go to schools that are hungry for money. Fundraisers, this, that – ”

“Sir, I – ”

“On top of that, I have no job, I’m like a child. They ‘let me go’, as you people say here. So here I am, jobless. I haven’t done anything today. Can you believe it? Nothing. No–thing. You want to take my coat and send it to Sudan or Burkina Faso or wherever, for them to eat? Here. Take my shoes. Take my briefcase.”

People are beginning to stare. Subtly, respectfully maybe. But it is definitely a slow-down-as-you-walk-past spot on the pavement. The boy is flustered, dry-mouthed, keen to rip off the GlobalSpree t-shirt and make a dash for it. This job sucks and it doesn’t pay shit and it isn’t worth this.

“Sir, thank you for your time – ”

“Take my watch.”

“Thank you, sir. I won’t take any more of your time.”

“You’re very kind.”

The boy steps away.

Miles gives a stiff-handed wave goodbye, walks away semi delirious, ignorant of the staring.

*

Miles breaks his rule; sits down inside the train. Slumps really.

At North Sydney a cavalcade of people flood the thing. Miles is in the upper galley, whose aisle fills up with people flowing up from below, who search for seats and, not finding any, end up standing.

Beside Miles is a lady again, this time strapping in business attire, seeming sure of what she is doing in life, where she is going, and how she is getting there. As the train starts for Waverton Miles half stands and leans forward into the lady’s field of vision.

“Excuse me. Do you want to sit down?”

She half turns; looks at him from top to bottom to top, him still half standing, her poker face entertaining — what could it be — a smirk?

“No, I’m okay,” she says, then looks away.

Miles sits his butt back down, smiles to himself, embarrassed. No proof exists and no research has been done, but Miles will vouch for this: that she would have taken his offer like that if he wasn’t a jobless, bona fide sad excuse for a man.

Come Chatswood, Miles leaves the train, joins the escalator rising from the platform and emerges in Chatswood Mall on Victoria Avenue. He finds a bench in the middle of the walkway and plonks down on it. Wouldn’t he love to see his face right now. See if he hasn’t perhaps grown a beard or sprouted one or two greys. What a day. What a nothing day.

Oh Christ, now his shoulders are lurching and his face is squeezing and he sobs but tears aren’t streaming though his eyes do turn an emotional shade of red. Miles hides his face but couldn’t possibly care who might be slowing, gawking, pointing, whispering.

When he is done he raises his head. Looks up. A gaggle of schoolkids exit a surf/skate store right in front of him. They must be from Nonso’s school because that is the uniform: navy-striped shirts on black slacks. Because – for goodness sake – Nonso! Wearing sunglasses!

Today is Tuesday and on Tuesdays he has after-school tutorials. And here he is, wearing sunglasses.

Nonso sees Miles and slows. A moment passes between them. A father is disheartened when his son places a secure future in jeopardy. Miles would know. But what does a son feel when he comes upon his father on a bench in a crowded outdoor mall, eyes red and obviously dripping, shoulders hunched, his face looking older than the sum of his woes? What does a child begin to think?

The group keeps moving and Nonso with it.

Miles can’t decide whether to be mad or anxious. But the boy won’t say anything. And even if he does what would it be? And who would believe it? Were Nonso one of his cousins back home, back in Osogbo, he’d be addressing him as sir, forget ‘dad’. Doing half-bows in place of casual hellos and hi’s. Seniority trumps all, for now. Until, eventually, the bills become that little bit harder to pay and the budget becomes that little bit tighter and Chinyere demands she has a look at all the invoices and statements because it just doesn’t make sense.

‘Chinyere,’ he’d say as paper goes flying, ‘please. Please understand. Chinyere?’

Miles stands, kneads his head with his fingers and waddles to the nearest bus stand. Shrugs off whatever he can and collects himself. Starts piecing together some sort of a story in his head. Some sort of workplace grievance: colleagues, deadlines, racism. Work is always more believable when you appear to hate it.

 

* PS: I wrote this story before I saw or even heard of the fantastic film ‘L’emploi du temps’ (Time Out) directed by Laurent Cantet and released in 2001. It’s a far, far superior iteration of this premise and I recommend it highly.