2.

With a flask of whiskey and no direction, I boarded a streetcar, thinking I might view the city from its luxury and happen upon the house. Maybe there’d be a few massive neon arrows pointing to it if I was real lucky. I shared sips with an ancient lady seated nearby who corrected me for calling it a tram.

‘Sounds like Saint Claude to me,’ she returned after my description of the house. I offered to help with her bags when we approached her stop, but was refused. She reminded me of my mother as she walked away with those heavy weights swaying either side of her little frame, so convinced the ground beneath would crumble before her feet gave out.

I stepped off the streetcar and walked to St Claude. Thick clouds obscured the sun, with heavy grey light only interrupted by occasional streaks of yellow that managed to find a way through. The wind was picking up, trees overhead groaning as their branches faltered and collided like drunks. Moving east towards Poland Avenue, I went north a block, then walked west back to Franklin.

I walked for hours as the day became darker. On one street sat an orange house with a green door and a porch. On another, a blue house with a white door. No doves on either, though what looked like an eagle on another. ‘It’s been twenty years,’ I thought, ‘would the house even look the same if it’s still here at all?’ Searching seemed naive, but none of the letters had held such specific detail about a place thus far, so I kept going. I worked my way through the flask and the neighbourhood, wondering why a dog’s bark sounded familiar as I passed the same street twice. The wind continued to intensify, spits of rain like needle pricks against my skin in the humidity.

Long grass surpassed the footpath on the next block, with smaller houses more tightly packed together. Occupants of cars bug-eyed me in silence as they rolled by. I passed a picket fence of rotting wood and flaking white paint, giving the house behind the same quick assessment I’d given every other. A fatigued cream colour; its door a mess of rotted wood with pale blue paint pulled into its fissures. The roof was brown but so stained it was almost black. A lone rocking chair sat on its front porch. ‘Close, but no cigar,’ I snorted between swigs. By the time I’d reached the next block, the rain had picked up. I decided to write the day off, find a streetcar and go back to the motel.

I passed the dilapidated house with the single rocking chair again and paused. If the closest I’d come to closure in New Orleans was pretending it to be the house in the letter, I was going to savour the moment. Standing at its fence, I pictured the place in better shape: sounds of laughter coming from inside its walls; my father bounding up the front steps and being welcomed by its inhabitants. Maybe he spent evenings on this very porch, looking out at a crimson sky.

The more I imagined, the more I wanted to believe these were the walls in my father’s letter. I had nothing to lose. The gate squealed open and I moved up the path. Chances were, even if it was the same house, it wasn’t the same people living within. A run-down mower sat abandoned on the lawn surrounded by overgrown grass in varying stages of neglect.

The porch’s tired boards groaned under my weight. I ran my fingers through damp hair and knocked on the door. There was movement inside but no answer. I waited then knocked again.

‘Who is it?’ asked a woman from behind the door.

‘Hi. I’m, ah, wondering if you might remember someone who used to live here.’

‘Plenty of people used to live here.’

‘Well, he was a young man.’

‘No young man has lived here for a long time. Bye-bye now, take care,’ she said, footsteps moving away from the door.

I knocked again.

‘Get lost! You want me to call the cops?’ she yelled.

‘Please, just hear me out. It was in seventy-seven. There was a young man – an Australian. Now I don’t know if you lived here back then, but –’

One lock turned, then another. A door chain slid. The blue mess creaked open a few inches as dark fingers with red painted nails curled around its edge.

‘… Dylan?’ she asked, her face still behind the door.

‘Yes! Dylan, Dylan Ward. So you remember?’

‘Of course. How could I ever forget?’

She opened the door and stared out with wet eyes. A dark woman, trim and taller than I, in her early forties, maybe late thirties. She stood in a silk bathrobe with hair in a bun; her lipstick was a few shades darker than her nails. A soft jaw and high cheek bones sat proudly on her face. She would’ve been young when my father was here. Perhaps he was a guest of her parents’. I didn’t want to ask where they were now.

‘I was thinking this day might come, and now it has,’ she said with a delicate gulp. ‘Come in, Mister Ward.’

The house was much cleaner inside than out. Bookshelves stood full and organised. Not a single cup or plate astray on the coffee table. A sheet covering a television nestled between two large speakers. On the dresser by the door, a small porcelain dove.

‘I’d already hung up my drinking shoes for the evening, but I can make an exception for special company,’ the woman said. ‘Would you like one?’

‘Sure, thank you.’

‘Heh, how did I know you’d say yes?’

‘Safe guess, I suppose,’ I replied, offering a handshake. ‘I’m sorry, I’m –’

I paused as she reached a hand right past mine, bringing it to my face, a thumb covering my closed mouth.

‘Uh-uh, that word doesn’t come from you while you’re here. I should be sorry for what happened to you. Poor, poor boy,’ she interjected, brushing damp hair from my forehead and outlining my face with the tips of her fingers. ‘Funny. I tried to imagine what you might’ve looked like after all these years,’ she sighed. ‘But there it is; there’s that jawline.’

I was taken aback by how little I’d had to say. It seemed enough that my face shared similarities with my father’s, and that I was about the right age to come bearing questions. I’d never taken comments about how much I looked like him well, but I did then, even feeling a kind of strange pride that he’d told her about his family in Australia.

She ushered me to the couch and I sat. My father’s words began to make sense to me. There was love in this house and in her. Even an unannounced stranger like me, the son of a man she used to know, seemed to be welcomed as if an old friend.

‘There are so many things I want to talk about,’ I said, looking up to her, experiencing a wash of relief. ‘I know it’s sudden. If I’d had a number I would’ve phoned ahead.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, striding around the couch, running fingertips along its top as she passed. ‘You coming knocking is no surprise, though I never dreamt it’d take this long.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, watching her move around the room. ‘How did you know I’d be able to find you, or that I’d even look?’

She opened the door of her liquor cabinet and removed two glasses, one at a time. Her movements were vague but delicate, as if she were afraid anything she touched might be damaged. She was beautiful and genial; like a warm breeze moving through a room, caressing everything but interrupting nothing.

‘Well, I wasn’t going anywhere, and I had a feeling you were counting on it. Besides,’ she said, filling each glass, ‘we can only resist our curiosities for so long.’

‘Yeah, suppose I was counting on a lot of things,’ I said. ‘It does feel foolish to have expected so much to stay the same. Suppose I wanted to believe there was something new to be found about a man I wouldn’t even recognise today.’

‘Sweetie, I’m sure you’re not all that different from the man who sat here all those years ago.’ She lowered herself onto the coffee table in front of me, handed me a glass and raised hers for a toast. ‘To discoveries, old and new.’

I clinked my glass to hers. I sipped and she slugged.

‘Well, after all these years, I’m here,’ I said, not sure myself what I had expected. ‘Where should we start?’

‘Hmm,’ she answered, turning her face towards me with a blank yet somehow coy consideration. The gentle hum of a fingertip skirting around the rim of her now-empty glass the only sound in the room. Setting it down, she stood and moved towards me, placing a hand onto my chest and sitting on my lap.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked, startled.

‘Sweetie, I think this would be a fine place to start. I can’t be the only one who’s been thinking about it,’ she whispered. Her hand slid from my shoulder to nape, crushing into a fist and pulling my hair into a ball so tight it hurt. She yanked my head back and brought her lips to mine.

I turned my head away. ‘I don’t understand,’ I squeezed out, but the protest was futile. She placed her hands on my cheeks and steered me back towards her. It wasn’t a romantic embrace, the taste of desperation on my lips growing each time she pulled them back towards hers.

Things started to click. This woman was yet another in love with and left by my father. Laying eyes on me had only reminded her of the man who’d walked out so many years earlier. Now, broken and lonely, living in a house that used to be so full of life and love, she was trying to find some warmth in the cold. Another home left in a similar state came to mind.

‘Come on now, this isn’t necessary. We can just talk,’ I said, trying to push her away.

‘Please. Kiss me,’ she countered, her despair palpable. Anchoring herself to my shoulders, she rolled onto the couch, pulling me on top of her. ‘Even if it’s the last time, just let me make it better, then we can talk about whatever you want.’

I felt a twang in my gut, the same I used to feel when returning home from school, only to find my mother with that faraway look in her eyes. The more hopeless this woman’s efforts became, the more I felt my resolve weaken. Maybe it was the only way I could ease her suffering, even if only for a little while. Maybe, in some strange way, I could help this woman have the goodbye kiss my mother never did. Maybe I’d never made a good decision in my entire life. I stopped resisting, lowered myself to her and our lips began swimming in the ocean of the other.

As she held onto me tight I began to feel ill, whether from the movement combining with the liquor in my stomach, or from the fact this woman was imagining me to be my father.

‘Oh, Lord, I’ve been waiting so long for this,’ she murmured, looking through me to the ceiling. ‘They all said you wouldn’t come back, but I knew. I knew.’

‘What do you … what do you mean, “come back”?’

‘There were others. Oh, baby, there were others, but none like you. I waited and wanted and hoped, and now you’re finally here.’ She smiled and raised a hand to my face. ‘And you haven’t aged a day. I missed you, Dylan.’

I moved my face away from hers, everything still except our rising chests.

‘No, don’t stop. What’s wrong?’

I withdrew the hand I held the small of her back with, raised and waved it between us, watching eyes that did not react.

‘Oh no …’ I said, standing and stepping back from the couch.

‘What’s wrong, Dylan? I’m sorry I put it on so heavy. I didn’t know I’d feel this way.’

‘There’s been a terrible misunderstanding here.’

‘No, there hasn’t! You’re back after all this time, it can’t be a mistake,’ she said, reaching out to where I no longer stood.

‘My name is Mark. Mark Ward … I’m Dylan Ward’s son.’

‘What? Dylan, stop playing. This isn’t the time for your jokes.’

‘Oh god, oh shit. I wish I was joking.’ I became frantic. ‘My name is Mark Ward, and, uh, I came here from Australia, because a house just like this one was described in a letter written to my mother twenty years ago, by … by my father, Dylan.’

She sat in silence for a moment before drawing the shoulder of her robe back over her chest, holding the thin fabric closed in a clenched fist. After a moment, she exhaled a deep breath. I took a step closer, anticipating an invitation to explain. She took another collected breath and began screaming. Feeling around, she snatched one of the empty glasses on the table and hurled it where she thought I was standing, missing me by a few feet. It hit the dresser with the porcelain dove and knocked it off. I watched it shatter against the floor.

‘Get the fuck out of here! You’re not my Dylan!’ she yelled.

‘I’m sorry – I didn’t know you thought I was – I thought I just reminded you of him. I was trying to help.’

‘Trying to help me?! What the fuck is wrong with you?’ she shrieked, locating and launching the other glass at me.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m so sorry!’ I stammered as the glass shattered around me. I opened the door, ran down the steps and through the gate. Her screams erupted from the house and chased me down the street. Porch lights flickered on all as I ran. I’d never run so fast. The sky was a gruesome chaos of purple and black, swirling and falling to earth. Rain glinted white against its wickedness as it was caught in lightning.

A car’s horn blared and tyres screeched, missing me by inches as I ran through an intersection. A few blocks away, already saturated, I stopped and threw up on my boots between breaths. I watched the rain dilute and wash it off the leather and then I ran again. I hailed a cab and went back to the motel. The receptionist asked how I was doing. I stared at her as water ran into my red eyes. ‘Okay then,’ she said.

I got out of my wet clothes, climbed into bed, turned off the lights and listened to the storm raging outside.