‘Do you want to read my short story?’ I said to Elise. We sat at our normal places on a bench by the canteen.
‘No,’ said Elise.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yup.’
I put the sheets down on the bench, being careful to avoid the damp patch from my water bottle. I figured you’d have to have a heart of stone to not be tempted by the words marching down each page.
‘You might enjoy it,’ I said.
‘Unlikely.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m not going to read it.’
I sighed. ‘Don’t you care about my feelings at all?’ I asked.
‘Nope.’
‘Surely you must be the tiniest bit curious?’
This time Elise sighed.
‘I know what it’ll be like,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s okay to be just, you know, shit-hot at English. A whiz kid with words. But no. You have to be a freaking genius.’ She picked up her sandwich and pointed it at the sheets, then at me. ‘It’ll be brilliant and I have no reason to feel more inadequate than I do now. No wonder you’ve got no friends.’
‘True,’ I said. ‘Friends are supportive and would read short stories that other friends have written.’
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘You’ve got no friends. Proves my point.’
I gave it up.
‘How’s the war zone at home?’ I said.
She unscrewed the cap from her orange juice.
‘It’s hilarious,’ she said. ‘Now the D word is out there, it’s all happiness and light. They are so nice to each other. And to me. It’s like they’re in some kind of reality TV show where everyone is disgustingly … freaking nice. Tell ya, I wish they’d always been unhappy. My childhood would’ve been brilliant.’
‘I’ll bet they talk a lot and don’t say anything.’
‘Exactly,’ said Elise. ‘That’s exactly what they do. What idiots.’
‘You’re still in Phase 1,’ I said. ‘That’s a good phase.’
‘The others?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of pre-judging. But hey, kid. All I can say is strap yourself in, because it’s a wild ride.’
‘I hate you, CC,’ said Elise.
‘I know.’
As always when it’s his turn to have me for the weekend, Dad picked me up after school on the Friday.
‘What do you want to do this weekend, kiddo?’ he said as I belted myself into the front seat.
‘We could go in search of UFOs,’ I said.
Dad put the car into gear and pulled out into traffic.
‘We could,’ he said. ‘But you know what I reckon? I think UFOs are not the kind of thing you can go looking for. I think they’ll find you when they’re good and ready. When you least expect it.’ He glanced over at me. ‘Tell you what. You think about Saturday and Sunday. Tonight we’ll go down to St Kilda beach, have a picnic. What do you say? We could get a takeaway pizza from Republica, watch the sunset, chew the fat or the margherita, whichever you prefer. Solve all the world’s problems.’
‘Solving all the world’s problems seems like a great way to spend a Friday evening,’ I replied. ‘And the other good thing is once we get that out of the way, we’ve still got the weekend.’
‘Atta girl,’ said Dad.
It wasn’t going to be a spectacular sunset. You can tell by the way the clouds ride the horizon. But the sun was pretty and fire-red as it kissed the sea. You could almost hear it hiss.
Dad and I had got a good spot and we sat eating and drinking and not really talking too much. It’s one of the things I love about Dad. He knows when to shut up, when to keep his thoughts to himself and let others do the same. That’s not to say he won’t talk when I want to. And after I’d put away over half a large pizza, I suddenly wanted to.
‘Dad?’ I said.
‘Hmmm?’
‘Why have you never found another woman after Mum?’
Dad shifted himself onto his knees and faced me.
‘What’s to say I’m into women anymore?’ he said. ‘Maybe after the divorce I decided that men were the way to go. That’s the problem with your generation, Cate. You’re closed off to possibilities.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I am suitably ashamed. Let me rephrase. Why have you never found another partner after Mum?’
‘What makes you think I haven’t?’
I gave this some thought.
‘Maybe because I’ve been staying with you every other weekend for seven years,’ I said, ‘and not once have I seen you with anyone else. It’s always just the two of us.’
‘That’s a problem?’
‘No, of course not.’ I didn’t really understand why I was having this conversation. I’d thought about Dad’s apparent monastic existence plenty, but the time had never seemed right to bring it up. It didn’t seem right now. Maybe it’s like UFOs. Maybe sometimes conversations find you. ‘But I worry about you, Dad. Sometimes I think that perhaps you’ll grow old and lonely, that you’ll never find someone to talk to about adult stuff or … I don’t know … I don’t like the idea that you’ll never have someone to keep you warm in bed, no one to snuggle into, no one to tell you how wonderful you are, no one who will make your eyes light up when you see them.’ I felt like crying and I didn’t know why. Actually, I did know why. Dad took my hand in his.
‘Answer me something, Cate,’ he said. ‘At what age do you think you’ll be an adult? I don’t mean when you can vote or drive a car or have sex or any of that stuff. When do you feel you will be an adult?’
‘I don’t know, Dad.’ When I thought about it, it seemed like a question without an answer. You’d only know when it happened.
‘I’m thinking sixteen,’ he said. ‘And I know that’s arbitrary. Like, fifteen years and three hundred and sixty-four days you’re a kid and then, bang, you wake up an adult.’ He took a swig of his ginger beer and frowned. I knew he wanted a proper beer but you can’t have alcohol on St Kilda beach. ‘That’s stupid. But I have to work with something.’
‘Where’s this going, Dad?’
‘I want to give you my full attention while you’re still a child, Cate. I don’t want to share you with anyone else. For our weekends, it’s just us. The rest of the time?’ He shrugged. ‘I work. I see people. Believe it or not, I go on dates.’ He chuckled. ‘My bed hasn’t always been cold, you know.’
We both did the yeew thing together and then laughed.
‘I like the world we’ve got, Cate,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to share it. Not until you hit sixteen, at least. After that, who knows? Maybe I’ll start introducing you to all the women who are throwing themselves at me in a frankly embarrassing and undignified fashion.’
I thought. It was good to know that Dad wasn’t a hermit and I was glad I’d brought the subject up. Now I wouldn’t have to do it again. Because we both liked the world we’d created. I didn’t want to share it either.
‘Excuse me?’
I looked up. Two young men stood in front of us but it was difficult to make out their faces. Maybe they weren’t young men. They seemed more like boys, but their faces were sorta lost against the darkening sky. One of them carried a guitar.
‘Are you Caitlyn Carson?’
I turned to Dad, who shrugged.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Who are you?’
‘Then this is for you,’ said the one without the guitar.
And he started to sing. After a few words, the guy with the guitar started fingerpicking. It was a song I’d never heard before.
‘You fill up my senses, like a night in a forest. Like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain. Like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean, you fill up my senses. Come fill me again.’
I so wanted to laugh, but another part of me wanted to cry. I could tell the song was way old, but it was … beautiful. So I just sat there. I wasn’t even embarrassed, though everyone around must have been staring at us.
‘Come let me love you, let me give my life to you. Let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms. Let me lay down beside you, let me always be with you. Come let me love you, come love me again.’
There was a couple of minutes more and, as far as I could tell, the lyrics just sort of repeated. It should have been silly, it should have been predictable, ludicrous, but it wasn’t. I watched the young man sing. He gazed into my eyes and for a moment or two it felt like the words were only for me, that he did love me and wanted to drown in my laughter, die in my arms. God help me, I wanted it too. Maybe not the dying bit. I choked on laughter as I thought about it. How would I explain that to all the people here on St Kilda beach? I don’t know. One minute he was fine. The next, he drowned in my laughter and died in my arms. Should I have thrown him a lifejacket?
It was over too soon. They finished the song, bowed and walked away. People around applauded. I nearly forgot to join in. To be honest, I was too emotional. No one had ever sung a song to me before, looked into my eyes and made me feel as if the words had been written for me and no one else. I had to choke back sobs. I was a mess.
When I had a bit of control, I turned to Dad.
‘What was that about?’ I said.
‘You have an admirer,’ he said. ‘That much is obvious.’
‘The song?’ I knew he’d know it. It was old enough and so was he.
‘“Annie’s Song”,’ he said. ‘John Denver. He wrote it for his wife, I don’t know, sometime in the early 1970s.’
‘For something so old, it’s incredibly beautiful,’ I said.
‘Ah.’ Dad drained his ginger beer, looked at the empty bottle as if it had disappointed him somehow. ‘Yes. Old. Incompatible with beauty, normally, with just a few exceptions. Mozart, Beethoven, Bach. They didn’t know about rap then, mind. The poor delusional fools. And as for words, well, old Shakespeare couldn’t really string a sentence together. No idea of beauty, that man. Then there’s Steinbeck and Hemingway and Emily Brontë, the old fools, and …’
I elbowed him in the side.
‘Someone once said sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, Dad,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Dad. ‘But that was Oscar Wilde and he was unbelievably old.’
‘That was so lovely,’ I said. I stared up at the gathering stars and felt those words’ truth as something solid and indisputable. Who were those guys? Why had they sought me out? It was a mystery, like the stars above us. I like stars. I like mystery. I smiled.