July 1980
“So everything here is under your command, Daddy?” I asked, looking at the diggers and bulldozers and dump trunks, all frozen mid-action as though under a spell. The piles of mud were like caramel, making me a bit hungry.
“Pretty much.” He squeezed my hand. “So, what do you reckon?”
“It’s fantastic.” I gazed at the sea view, the surrounding hills, the spindly scaffolding protecting the glass-fronted building like a tooth brace. “But where do you go to the washroom?”
He laughed and I giggled, looking up at him to fully take in his face. I loved to make him laugh. “Honestly, the things you think of.” He let go of my hand to tussle my hair. “That’s what I enjoy about what I do. You bring someone here and they each see something different.” He gestured to the view. “When I first saw this spot, I thought this would be a superb location for luxury apartments. And hey presto!” He slapped his hands against his legs.
“That’s very clever, Daddy,” I said, adjusting my sun visor. I’d just got it from tennis camp, including two sweatbands which I was using constantly, even on overcast days.
“It’s about having imagination, seeing the potential in things.” He took my hand again. “Someday, when you’re ready, I’ll teach you everything I know. And then it’ll be you in command of everything and not me. Sound good, Batman?”
“Yes,” I said, well pleased. Daddy never saw me as different to him and called me Batman because his real name was Robin, which meant I was the hero, not him, which suited me just fine. I was nine years old and already the fastest sprinter at school, of both the boys and the girls, and captain of the baseball and netball teams. I was going to take over the world some day and show everyone how it was done.
As soon as Daddy had shown me.
He was about to give me a tour of the portable cabins and toilets when there was the crunch of tires behind us and I looked over to see a car kicking up a lot of dust. They were going too fast and I was about to suggest that Daddy made them slow down since they were headed right toward the mud, when the car lurched to a halt and the driver got out with the engine still running, the door wide-open.
He was short, shorter than Daddy, with a bald head and clumps of hair on either side of his face that reminded me of a clown, but there was nothing remotely funny about him and he didn’t look as though he was laughing either. “You stupid asshole!” he shouted, waving his fist.
Before I knew what was happening, he was lunging at Daddy—pushing him onto the mud, pummeling his face. Blood spurted from Daddy’s nose and that’s when I started screaming.
“Stop it! Get off him!” I jumped on the man’s back, my hands around his neck, kicking his legs.
“Get the hell off me, you little shit!” he yelled.
Daddy’s nose was pouring blood, but the man was still trying to punch him. So I did what I had to do and sunk my teeth into his back. There was a second before he reacted and then he stood straight, reaching for my leg with his hammy fist and swinging me round, flinging me onto the floor. “You little—”
“Arghhh!” Daddy charged at him, bowling him over. “Don’t you dare touch her!”
Falling onto the mud, the man scrambled to his feet, retreating to his car, bandy-legged. “Stay the hell away from her, you hear me?” he shouted, then reversed with a whinnying noise, dust everywhere, until all was still again.
I gazed at the building site, the toothy machines looking back at me like silent witnesses. My bottom was in wet mud, which was seeping through my jeans. My throat felt dry and bulgy and although I wanted to cry, tears wouldn’t come.
Besides me, crumpled, lying in the mud, was my sun visor with its tennis racket logo. There was a clump of my hair caught in the Velcro and I realized the back of my head was hurting.
It was a while before Daddy spoke. He took a bent cigar from his shirt pocket and played with it, turning it in his hands. I noticed they were trembling and I offered to light the cigar for him, but he shook his head.
The sun had gone in. I was getting cold. I tried to put my visor back on, but the plastic shield had split and was sticking out like a splinter. Daddy took it from me, tossed it into the dumpster.
He didn’t touch me or speak to me as we went to the car and I started to worry that I’d done something wrong. Maybe that was a business partner of his and I shouldn’t have jumped on his back.
Before Daddy started the engine, he got another cigar from the glove compartment and I found his gold Zippo from down between the seats and lit it for him. He never asked me to; I just liked doing it—the noise, the action, the smell.
I watched as he dragged on the end of the cigar and hoped he would blow rings of smoke, like he sometimes did. But he didn’t. He wound down the window, turned his head to the side to exhale.
It was warm in the car; the leather seats were hot. I took my sweatbands off because they were muddy too and then Daddy spoke. “I’m sorry.” His voice sounded scratchy. He was still bleeding—had blood all down his shirt, messed up in his beard.
“That’s okay,” I said, wanting to do something to help. “Shall I see if there’s water in the trunk? I could wipe your face?”
He did something then that I’d never seen him do before. He cried. Not like I did. When I cried, I always went for it, howling. But he was sniffly, his head bent, pressing his eyes. And it was over in a second. And then he did something stranger—he started to laugh, gazing up at the ceiling, shaking his head and he said something like, Oh, jeez, what a fool.
“What must you think of me, eh?” he said, reaching for my hand. It was bloody, but I didn’t like to reject him because he looked like he needed a friend. So I sat there and tried to smile, even though I was sad about my visor.
“I’ll get you a new one.” He patted my leg.
That was the thing about Daddy: he could read my mind.
After a while, we left, making our way along the bumpy track to the main road, our bodies jolting up and down. Daddy even knocked his head on the ceiling and laughed. I was glad he seemed happy again.
But near home, when we got near the crooked hill that I always went down too fast in my roller skates, he stopped the car and turned to look at me with a serious expression that he normally used when I broke something. “You know, Batman, sometimes heroes have secret missions.”
I nodded. That was true.
“And even though you want to tell people who you love—people close to you—you can’t because it’s top secret and could ruin everything.”
I fiddled with my sweatbands, unsure what he wanted me to say or do. It was getting hot again. “Could we open the—”
“Listen to me,” he said, turning off the engine, staring at me. There was a drop of blood on the end of his nose that was dried, dark. I shuddered. “You can’t tell Mommy about this. Not a word, okay?”
I nodded. I wasn’t expecting him to say that. Surely, Mommy would want to know about this. The police would probably want to know too.
“Promise me you won’t say anything.”
I pointed to his nose. “But what about that? Won’t she notice?”
He smiled. “Good point… Let’s say that it was one of the construction workers. He showed up unexpectedly on site and demanded payment in advance—a cash injection before the end of the month to tide him over. And when I said no, he attacked me. How about that?”
I wasn’t sure I could remember all that, wasn’t really listening. I was watching a ladybug making its way along my leg and was thinking how much easier it was dealing with insects. They always stayed the same, aside from caterpillars, and you knew what you were getting. But with adults, you thought you were getting one thing and always got another.
And then the ladybug opened its wings and flew over to my dad and before I could do anything, he had squashed it. I don’t think he meant to though.
As we turned into our road, I asked him the question I was dying to ask. “Who was that man?”
“No one,” he said.
Our driveway had big electric gates. I didn’t like them very much because I had to press a code just to get in and out of the house.
“Come on then,” he said, putting his arm around me as we went up the steps to the front door. “And don’t forget to stick to the plan.”
I smiled up at him. I loved him so much. We were best friends, Batman and Robin. I wasn’t going to tell on him. But if Mommy asked me where my visor was, I didn’t know what I was going to say. Because I loved her very much too, even though we weren’t superheroes.
“Okay, here goes,” he said, as he opened the door. “Alice?” he called out. “You home?”