Page 69 - 2017 WTP Special Edition

—Would you grab two of those beers from the fridge, I say.
down the phone, telling me I owe her a new dining room suite. In Norwegian pine. From Ikea.
Thomas returns, busts two beers from the card- board. We stand looking over the road, like fenced horses.
—Not Effing likely, I said —Thomas can get a job, and buy it himself.
—Do you know the name of that class of tree, I ask him, tipping a chin uphill.
Then there was all that talk of the court case. And do you think I could get Thomas to pick up a job? I wanted to sue him myself. I wanted to join Tracy Mallon in a class action, for the heartache caused.
His eyes follow mine.
—What class of job, I ask Thomas again?
—Jacaranda Mimosifolia, I say —I don’t reckon it’d grow back home, I don’t reckon it’d like the loamy soil.
He’s facing the ebb of the street, the cars, the walk- ers, the drunks from the Franklin tavern. He finish- es his beer. Drops the bottle into the flower bed.
Thomas gives me an odd look, deserved of that last comment. On the surface, this could be one of those moments you imagine sharing with your son. Father and son, shooting the breeze, with beers. But Thomas gets all wistful now, back
—Volunteering, he says.
to staring across the road, the lights in the flat- blocks, the shadows moving behind curtains.
—What, in the name of God class of job, is volun- teering?
—I’ve got a job, he says. —You’ve got a job? —Yeah, I have a job. —What class of job, I say? —A job, says Thomas.
—In Greece, he says —there’s a refugee camp. And it won’t cost you a red cent. I’m crowd-funding it.
I suppose you may as well know a bit more about Thomas, and jobs:
—You may grab the rest of those beers, I say, when I finish staring at the side of his face.
At age fifteen, our illustrious boyo, Thomas Pat- rick Ahearn, pale faced and ossified on ecstasy and hash, in the free house of Oaksey Mallon, took a circular saw to the legs of the Mallon’s fur- niture, and lowered their dining room tables and chairs by precisely 100mm.
~
For two weeks, the Mallon’s sat marginally lower at their dinner table, flummoxed you’d imagine, until a notion must have furrowed in Tracy and she upturned a chair and correlated the fresh cuts with the fine saw dust she’d been finding deep in the carpets. Next up, I’m at home watch- ing EastEnders, and I’ve got Tracy Mallon bulling
—What the hell is this dad? She’s unpausing the video.
I hear all the usual noise of an evening, a dog chained somewhere, music from the flat blocks, noises all spun out of silence. And the silence, mo- mentarily, I must say, between Thomas and me, it has no presence. Momentarily, it has no jostle. And there’s a rarity.
But Thomas, when Thomas comes back, is not fetching me beer. Rita and Anika are with him. Anika has the laptop cradled like an infant in the crook of her arm. Shaking it now in my face.
The front room, I’m frogmarched to it. I’m sat alone in the inquisitional centre of the sofa. Anika
and Rita build thickets about me. Thomas hangs by the door. Rosie is cleared to the kitchen with
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