Just Last Night(73)

“My grandad had a shop, then a chain of successful pharmacies. He sold them, retired at forty-eight, set about drinking, gambling, and womanizing. He and my grandma loathed each other in that way you loathed each other in a toxic marriage in the 1950s, but never dreamt for a moment you’d leave. Or that your poison might infect the kids. When my grandad was home, he chain-smoked so many cigs, there was a nicotine patch on the ceiling above his chair.”

“Woah!”

Finlay casts a look upward at the ceiling. “My dad would be able to point to the spot.”

I try to imagine this space, like a television device “star wipe” effect, dissolving into a vision of the Hart paterfamilias dragging resentfully on endless cigarettes, the mother offstage banging pots and pans, little Iain and little Don playing with a train set.

Fin drinks his pint and I drink mine and I think of the utterly terrible and bizarre set of circumstances that led to me sitting here, as the sky outside turns from deep blue to paler purple. What would Susie think of me being here? Hotly resentful of me for getting along with Finlay, of that I’m sure. Almost as if I was showing her up, by showing it can be done. And I get a peculiar sense—given we never kept much (well, so I thought) from each other—she’d be nervous that I was prying.

“What’s the story with your family? Your dad is Down Under?” Fin says.

“Yeah, he emigrated when I was sixteen,” I say.

“That’s a difficult age for your dad to leave you?”

“Hah, yeah it is, and thank you for calling it leaving, because that was a very controversial word, at the time. I’m not leaving, Evelyn. I’m only ever twenty-four hours away and there’s internet and the phone and in many ways I think I’ll be more present than I was before.” I pause to eye roll. “‘I’ll be more around on the other side of the planet than I was when I was in the same house’ is quite the self-justifying crock of shit, isn’t it? If I ever get married, I’m going to offer him a video link to walk me down the aisle, which I’ll tell him is more like being there. I’ll kiss the screen of the laptop. Thanks, Papa!”

“Why did he go?”

“He met a woman online who he’d dated at college. Remember when Friends Reunited was a thing? My parents were unhappy anyway, but instead of Relate, my dad got into late-night emailing with ‘the one who got away,’ then left my mum for her. She was in Adelaide.”

“That is . . . well, ouch,” Fin says.

“Quite. It gets better, by which I mean worse, obviously. My brother, Kieran, goes out there aged twenty, my dad sets him up with a bar job. Kieran meets a girl, drops out of university, and stays. Can you imagine my mum after that phone call?”

Finlay is frowning, impassive. I get the impression he’s gone into professional mode. And how did that make you feel, Evelyn?

I drink more beer. I will want more beer, I can tell.

“I’ve only been out to visit twice,” I say. “It’s not very comfortable. My dad spends his whole time on salesman mode, showing off about what a great life it is. It was like he’s making a tourist board ad. His second wife, Amelia, has two sons in their twenties, who my dad seems to manage to be a very involved father to. So that’s nice, isn’t it? Glad to have been his practice slope.”

“Has he never acknowledged how difficult it must’ve been for you?”

I shake my head. “When I cried or ranted at the time, I got told it was terribly hard for him too, but he wasn’t happy, and didn’t I want him to be happy? My dad’s pretty skillful at putting his feelings first.”

“How did your mum manage?”

“She rushed headlong into a short-lived second marriage with Nigel, a man who I can only describe as a human burp.”

“A what?!” Finlay says.

“Like the personification of an egg belch. You’d have to meet Nige to understand it. I wouldn’t recommend it though. For the five years of their marriage, mother-daughter relations were strained. She ended up agreeing with me, but it somehow hasn’t made up for it. ‘Thanks for pointing out my spouse was awful, turns out you were in on the ground floor on that one’—things you’re never going to hear.”

Fin smiles, with sad eyes.

“It’s just lost time we spent fighting. You should see me in the wedding photos. I wore a black lace birdcage veil. It’s like they invited the Babadook.”

I cackle.

“You haven’t seen much of your brother since, then?”

“No. We Skype every so often. I feel bad for him. He feels permanently guilty about going. It wasn’t his fault. He was never very academic, struggling at his degree, goes out to visit Dad, and suddenly it’s sunshine, beers, a wage from bar work, a girl. Of course he stayed. Now his life’s out there, and that’s that. Mum feels he chose Dad. And that Dad not only betrayed her, he stole her son. It’s not good for her to see it like that, but equally I can’t blame her, given that’s in effect exactly what happened.”

Hmmm, didn’t I once tell Mum she had to let go of her justified bitterness about things she couldn’t change, to be happy? Or else “her demons would eat her”? (Always the dramatic Goth.) Who needs to take that advice now, I wonder? Never try to be wise at age twenty-five, it will bite you fully on the ass later.