Thomas, seventy-five and still driving despite the doctor’s threats, pulled into the carport and turned off the ignition. As the engine ticked and cooled, he sat clasping the steering wheel, as if he might change his mind and decide to drive away again. His guts felt like some bad-tempered behemoth had reached inside him with a giant noodle spoon, and given it all a big old stir. How did folk do this week after week, year after year? Yabbering away at a professional listener, hoping for a miracle in their heads. Wasn’t therapy supposed to make you feel better?
He looked down at his hands. When did his hands become those of an old man? He’d only retired four years ago. Four years ago he was selling vacuum cleaners and dishwashers, but now he had an old man’s hands. Gripping the steering wheel, his hands felt as strong as they always had, yet look at them – the veins showing through, the skin dryish and spotted with age. As seemed to be the way with the inevitable passage of time, as Thomas grew older, the years seemed to pass more quickly.
Everything he could possibly want was inside this house: this house for which he had excitedly signed a mortgage back in 1960. The year he became a home owner and a husband and a head of sales.
And here he was now, over half a century later, and apparently his bowel was killing him from the inside: an arse-end revolt. But for fifty years he had loved two women who loved each other, and a fellow couldn’t ask for any more than that, could he?
Except for that one thing. That burning knowledge he carried around with him in his chest, keeping it dark from the world. He sat there in the car and felt it grow huge inside him. Why? Now, he couldn’t think of a single forgivable reason for his years of spineless silence.
Thomas thought of Elsie, who doted on her grandchildren and still led knitting classes – only now she put them on the internet, for the whole world to see. He thought of Aida, zipping around at lunch time delivering hot meals to those who needed them with local Meals on Wheels and who still, at seventy, took herself off walking in the bush. (Although now she carried a fancy mobile phone and didn’t take the steep or rocky trails, she admitted.)
He thought of Millie, still working with farm animals, who dropped by almost every day to help Elsie and Aida around the house, and Millie’s three children – Jordan, now almost eighteen, Jasmine, fifteen and Elijah, thirteen.
Thomas took the keys from the ignition and jingled them in his palm. The streetlights came on as the sun slipped behind a looming bank of storm clouds on the western horizon. Rain coming tonight.
Then he thought of Arthur, a bank executive who divided his time between Sydney and London where he had a Pommie wife and two teenagers, Cara and Samuel – who all visited at least once a year.
He was a father, a grandfather, and in a few years’ time he could even be a great-grandfather.
It was with that thought, with the possibility of the downy-headed great-grandchildren he would never meet, that his shoulders gave way. Sobs burst up and he fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. After a time he composed himself; he waited for the shudders to pass and called himself a sissy. Get a grip, he said to himself. You need to be strong for them.
You need to be strong when you tell them.
He got out of the car, and went inside his home.