splinter verb: to break off from the
main body
Today is the first soccer match I’ve missed in three years. I got up this morning and kept thinking it was Sunday. Saturday means I should be in the middle of a game. I wait at home most of the day, hoping that I’ll hear Dad’s car. I press my face against cold glass, write Hi Dad in the mist my warm breath leaves on the surface.
Mum phones me from the nursery. ‘I’m pretty sure he’s not coming home today, Gracie. Come down and help me close up?’
‘I don’t feel like it, Mum,’ I say, and hang up.
I ride my bike to the field. The teams have trodden their story into the ground. The score is still up on the board. We won. And I wasn’t there. I imagine kicking the ball from the centre mark and watching it sail into the goal. The afternoon is slipping into darkness when I see Martin walking towards me.
‘Thought I might find you here. Want to have a kick?’
‘Nah. I’m just here to look.’
‘Faltrain, it’s time you got back on the soccer field. Coach says there’s still a place for you in the team.’
I stop dead. Feel sick. Soccer is the most important part of my life. I can’t come back to the team. And if I can’t play then I don’t want it to exist.
‘I’m no good anymore. And anyway, the guys don’t want me.’
‘Giving up are you? You’re acting just like my dad.’
I know by Martin’s voice, cut and bleeding and hovering, that he wants me to ask about his dad. He needs me to. For a second I remember the feel of the cold window on my cheek. I see the driveway without Dad’s car. Somehow I know that if I ask Martin that question then the day will splinter around me like glass. The pieces will be too fine and sharp to put back together. Just leave, I want to tell Martin.
‘What’s your dad got to do with me?’
He walks away. And the day splinters anyway.
Everything, Faltrain. He’s got everything to do with you. I want to shout at the both of you, stop feeling sorry for yourselves. Why don’t you ask how I am, once in a while?
Sometimes I just want to say, get up and get off the couch, Dad. I’m too tired to come home and cook dinner. I’m tired of looking after Karen when it’s not my job. I want to punch the wall next to his head. I want to cover the walls with fist marks so he can see how sick I am of this place. How sick I am of him and the lounge room where we used to watch telly with Mum. It used to smell like home. Now it smells like old runners and I hate it.
I remember a talk we had when I was about nine. She was in the garden, watering the plants with an old bucket we kept in the shed. She’d splashed some water on her shoes and some had hit her dress. She started crying and I remember saying to her, ‘Don’t cry,’ and trying to wipe her shoes. I kept thinking she’d be all right when the sun dried her off.
Now I wonder what she was really crying about. Was she so sick of it all that she wanted to run out the gate and never come back? I remember holding her hand and pulling her back inside the house. Did she stay a bit longer just for me?
I want to read that letter so I know how she explained it. He should have read it to us. She should have told us something when she said that last goodbye. I think about what was in it all the time. Did it explain how she had time to wash our socks before she left but no time to write me a letter? I remember opening my drawer the morning after she’d gone and all the socks were rolled together. All the underwear was clean too. She’d put the washing on just like always. She’d hung it out and waited for it to dry. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I try to work out how long it would have taken for her to do all that stuff. So then I’ll know exactly when she locked the door. Was she walking to the tram when Karen and me were on our way home? And the question that makes me feel sicker than anything, had she booked her ticket weeks ago, and was just biding her time with us? All her smiles fake. Every kiss goodnight a lie.
I notice things on the way home tonight that I’ve never seen before. The old man next door to us has shoulders that slope downwards. The guttering around the roof of our house is full of leaves. There are weeds all along our front fence.
I wish more than anything that Dad would come home. I imagine him making me dinner. The house is cold when I get there. Before I flick on the light I see the red blinking of the answering machine. That little red light makes the whole room look empty.
‘Gracie, honey, I’m sorry, I’ll be travelling for the next few days but then I’ll be home. I’ll call you from the hotel. I love you.’
‘I love you too, Dad,’ I whisper. I can’t bring myself to press the clear button.
Mum’s face smiles out at me from the picture hanging on the wall in the hallway. She looked so much younger. She’s leaning on Dad’s shoulder and smiling. They’d just been to their first dance. Dad’s arm is around her waist. Everything will be all right when she gets home. We’ll eat dinner and watch the Saturday movie together. She will let me call Jane.
I can’t stop thinking about her trying to take in the shop sign on her own. How will she hold her bag and lock the gate at the same time? I go to meet her.
Half the light in the day has escaped and so she doesn’t notice me at first. I’ve never seen Mum cry before. She turns, silver rivers streaking across her face. She has a line running from her nose to her mouth. I think of all the nights I’ve left her to shut up on her own. I wonder if she’s cried every time.
I feel like there’s someone behind us the whole way home, but when I turn the street is empty. It’s just Mum and me. And the quiet night around us.