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“Jesus Christ,” Kallie mumbles again, and I shoot her a look that says, “Why the fuck did I bring you?” Though, indeed, the sight of him struggling to walk to the downstairs toilet where no doubt Julie will have to aid him makes me feel so, so very sad.
Once they’re out of the room, both Kallie and I pour most of our tea in the nearest available pot plants.
“Julie said in the kitchen it’s in his blood or something. He’s been having chemo on and off for two years. But he had to retire six months ago when it got bad and the deterioration since has been fast.”
I stand up and stare at the picture of myself, so proud, so bold, so ignorant. “He just told me then that Mum didn’t like his bad temper, not that he would’ve ever hurt her. But he admitted he could suddenly turn.”
“Now we know where you get it from,” she laughs.
“Fifteen years I’ve waited… and he suddenly just comes out with it. Was he the reason why she left?”
“I don’t think he meant anything by it, Mira,” she tries to soothe. “You heard what Julie said, he’s not fully with it. The drugs…”
“And he said he used his fists sometimes when he was a cabbie. It makes you wonder… doesn’t it? What he did and got away with… what my mother ran away from.”
Kallie has asked me a number of times why I didn’t try to find her. Well, I was too scared to discover why she left. I was afraid it was me, that I was the reason. People always told me I was silly to ever think that, but they don’t know what it’s like when you’re abandoned by a mother. The child can’t help feeling like it’s their fault, because otherwise, why did the parent leave someone they’re meant to love above all others?
“I wish I never told you,” she says, shaking her head. “It’d have been easier if he’d died and you wouldn’t have to see this.”
“No,” I tell her, “not at all. I needed to come here. I’ve put it off too long.”
Julie and my father return to the room and he grimaces when he plonks his bony arse back down again. He’s so skinny and pale when I remember him always being pot-bellied and tanned, his thick wrists adorned with gold watches and bracelets. He used to wear big gold rings, too. Now he’s just an old man in a pair of grey tracksuit bottoms hanging off him, a red jumper that’s stained and a set of hands that can’t even hold his own food anymore.
Once he’s eaten the rest of his toast and drunk his tea, a routine that makes everyone in the room wince, Julie leaves us while she does the dishes. While she’s gone, I have a question for him.
“Dad, I want to find Mum. How do I find her? Where did she go?”
He takes a deep breath and mumbles, “Far away from me.”
His eyelids fall shut again and I’m frustrated in my attempt to glean what info I can.
When Julie returns, she says, “He’ll sleep for a while now his meds have kicked in. I’m going but you’re welcome to stay.”
I stand and walk with her to the door. “Julie, I wanted to ask, has he ever mentioned my mother?”
She shakes her head. “No, but he mentions you a lot.”
“Oh? What does he say?”
“That you work for some rock star, that you like music like your mother did. That you’re tall and beautiful. That you’re clever, too good a person to be bothered with his illness.”
I smile into Julie’s eyes. “You made that last bit up.”
She grins and whispers in my ear, “He’s harmless now but I see a look in his eyes sometimes, stormy and dark.”
She takes a deep breath and leaves. The logical part of my brain wonders if that’s why he wasn’t around for me, because he’d decided to protect me from what he really was.
I want to forgive both of them, but I can’t.
It’s even harder to forgive someone who’s passed into myth and legend; someone who has become more like a shadow than anything that was ever living and breathing.
Returning to the living room, I discover Kallie just staring at the old man snoozing in his chair.
“Is this what life ends up like? Is this what we’re all destined for?” she asks rhetorically.
“I’m just gonna have a look around upstairs, then we’ll go.”
“I’ll wait in the garden. Need some fresh air,” she says, wafting a hand in front of her face.
