Dead Dog in the Still of the Night Read online

  When Primo walked in, his father saw him approaching and lifted a hand in recognition. Primo was surprised. More and more lately the old man didn’t recognise any of them immediately.

  ‘So, it’s you,’ his father said.

  ‘Yeah, it’s me,’ Primo replied and bent to kiss his father on the forehead as his mother asked he do for her sake. His father’s skin was clammy and rough, with calloused scabs, once hidden by a luxurious sweep of jet-black hair.

  ‘Take me for a walk outside. These old people make me sick.’

  Primo nodded feebly and released the brakes of the wheelchair, pulling it away from the table.

  ‘You’re not going now, are you? We haven’t finished playing,’ a woman said, drawing yet another wooden marble from a cloth sack.

  Tuesday.

  Bingo.

  Primo looked at the numbered mat at his father’s spot on the table. He had placed blue plastic bottle tops on all but three of the numbers. The old man was three numbers short of bingo!

  ‘You want to finish the game?’ Primo asked.

  The old man frowned but said nothing.

  ‘You don’t want to win?’ the smiling female attendant asked. ‘You are so close. Three more numbers just to get, yes?’

  The old man stared back at the young woman as though that was enough to answer all her questions.

  ‘Okay. You already won once today.’ She smiled thinly and focused her attention back on the game. A moment later she called out the next number. ‘Five! Cinque. Five.’

  Primo noted it wasn’t one of the numbers his father needed.

  ‘He ate all his lunch today,’ the woman Primo knew as Deloras informed him. She always sat opposite his dad at the meals table and at bingo, in a proper chair, always wearing the same pearl necklace. ‘You ate all of the soup, didn’t you?’ she said to the older man. ‘But you left the mash. I don’t think you like mash.’

  Primo’s father didn’t answer. He blinked instead, his eyes out of sync.

  ‘We had apple custard,’ Deloras told anyone who would listen as Primo turned the wheelchair away. ‘Last night we had peaches and ice-cream. Not too much ice-cream though. Just a dollop. Maybe half a spoonful.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks for that,’ Primo said dismissively.

  The woman seemed satisfied with herself and smiled broadly.

  ‘We have a sing-along today, after bingo,’ she announced, but Primo was already pushing his father toward the exit. ‘You like singing, remember?’

  ‘No, not today,’ Primo heard another of the residents say loudly. ‘I’m going shopping today. At Myer. My daughter works at Myer. She owns it.’

  ‘No she doesn’t,’ another voice snapped in reply. ‘You liar.’

  There was a muffled grunt of anger and then the sound of weeping.

  ‘Liar. Liar.’

  Primo sighed heavily. There seemed to be an air of stagnant alarm, as though the residents, and perhaps the carers, too, were in a constant state of trepidation.

  If not for his mother’s insistence, Primo would have abandoned his tentative visits a long time ago.

  Outside, the sun wasn’t as Primo’s father expected.

  ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’ he grumbled and shielded his eyes. ‘The sun takes out my sight. Too bright.’

  ‘Wait here and I’ll get your sunglasses. And a hat. Do you need your hat?’

  ‘No, I don’t wait here. Maybe I go for run and you catch up,’ his father answered deadpan. ‘Yes, I wait here. What you think? Maybe I have a miracle from the God just now, this moment, and I get out of this.’ When he slammed both palms into the armrest of the wheelchair the entire structure rocked from side to side. ‘I wait here. Of course. I wait here.’

  ‘Do you need a blanket for your legs?’

  The older man’s eyes glazed over. He’d get a blanket anyway. Just in case.

  Just in case his father got cold. Just in case his father suddenly asked for the blanket.

  Just in case.

  ‘I want to talk to you, Santo,’ the old man started the moment Primo returned. ‘About your mother.’

  I’m not Santo, Primo wanted to say, but didn’t. There was no real point to it. His father would just become even more confused if he tried to correct him.

  ‘Your mother has another man.’

  Primo didn’t flinch. He kept a steady pace as he manoeuvred the wheelchair over the rutted footpath. He’d heard this before.

  Bambino was parked in the side street to their right, out of sight. Primo steered his father’s wheelchair left.

  ‘I know who him is, too,’ his father continued. ‘I see them together. They was have the sex.’

  Primo felt a dull quaking in his throat. ‘Dad, please.’

  ‘She not see me. I was too clever for them. I was hide near the fence what is behind the house, and I see them. They do the sex.’

  Primo looked down at his father’s ears sticking out on either side of the peaked cap he was wearing. Even as a child he had thought his father’s ears looked odd folding back over themselves.

  ‘You remember my girlfriend Maddie, right?’ Primo said. ‘Well, she’s going to Europe soon. She might go to Italy too, even though her family’s Irish, like Mum’s. I was thinking maybe I might go too, if I can scrape the money together and stuff. After my exams, you know. I could look up your rellies and Mum’s too, in Ireland. If we went to Ireland, that is.’

  If his father had heard, if he had any opinion, Primo didn’t find out. The old man didn’t speak for the rest of the short trip to their regular coffee shop.

  Once their orders had arrived Primo said, ‘Mum loves you, Dad. You dishonour her when you say things like you said before. Doesn’t she come see you every day? Doesn’t she wash all your clothes because you don’t like how they wash them at the Home?’

  ‘Of course she loves me.’ Primo’s father smiled suddenly, stirring his latte with concentration. ‘Why you need tell me such a stupid thing? You think maybe she not love me?’ The old man paused, then added, ‘If you think this, then you not understand you mother. She is good woman.’

  Primo smoothed down the pages of the newspaper that lay at his fingertips. It was as though his father’s past was being looted from him in fragments, and soon there would only be a vast dark space of nothing, bearing no resemblance to the life he had lived.

  ‘You have girlfriend, Primo?’ his father asked, leaning slightly forward and grinning expansively as he lifted the latte to his lips.

  Primo swallowed. So, you recognise me now, he thought grimly.

  He was the last-born son, the youngest son by twenty-two years to Santo, the first-born son. Primo. Number One. He wasn’t even Number Two son. He was Number Three.

  But he was Primo.

  Number One.

  Primo smiled at the incongruity and reached for his Coke.

  ‘Yeah, it’s Primo, Papa. Maddie is my girlfriend, Dad, sort of. Maddie. Remember? She’s the pretty one you said looks like that famous Italian actress.’

  ‘Sophia Loren.’

  ‘No. The other one. Gina someone-or-other.’

  Primo’s father licked the top of his glass. ‘Gina Lollobrigida. The one with the big tits. You girlfriend have the big tits?’

  Primo looked past his father at the window of the coffee shop. He caught sight of his own reflection and held it. The back of his father’s head was reflected in the window, the letter U from the café’s name, Urban Vibe, etched on his skull.

  ‘I got my driver’s licence this morning, Dad,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Got an almost perfect score, too.’ Primo paused and licked his lips before adding, ‘I guess it’ll be okay for me to drive Bambino now and then, eh, Dad? I can finally get rid of Adrian’s old shitty bike, too.’

  Across the table his father gazed at Primo blankly, as though he hadn’t heard. Coffee residue clogged the corners of his lips, and Primo noticed a crusty sore in one of his dad’s nostrils.

  ‘So, what do you think? Ca
n I take Bambino out for a spin?’ When his father ignored him Primo sat forward and touched him lightly on the back of the hand. ‘Dad? It’s okay for me to drive Bambino, right? She just sits gathering dust otherwise. And that can’t be good, right?’

  ‘You have a bambino?’ his father asked and Primo sighed. It was all getting too hard, trying to keep up the appearance of normalcy. No wonder his mother was exhausted.

  You wear Mum down, Primo thought, with a pang of frustration.

  A woman pushing a stroller, heavily laden with shopping bags, became jammed behind the old man’s wheelchair.

  ‘Sorry,’ Primo said and got up to gently move his father’s chair.

  ‘Why you sorry?’ his father countered. ‘You not responsible for you mother not love me.’

  Primo and the woman exchanged an awkward nod. The child in the stroller pumped chubby fingers in the air, grabbing at nothing, content to repeat the gesture again and again.

  ‘Thanks,’ the woman said under her breath. She took a table two down from them and lifted the child out of the stroller and onto her lap. The child wasted no time grabbing at the menu, dropping it at his mother’s feet.

  ‘Kids,’ she said to no one in particular.

  ‘Have them when the time is right,’ Primo’s father called over his shoulder.

  Primo didn’t meet the young mother’s eyes. He looked down at the empty glass his father was spinning gingerly in its saucer.

  ‘Everything in its time,’ the old man said in a whisper. ‘I like to go now. I finished.’ And, as though to emphasise this, he held up the empty glass for Primo, and then for the young mother. ‘See. Is empty.’

  The young mum shrugged in Primo’s direction. You don’t know the half of it, Primo wanted to say, but said instead, ‘He has a very firm idea about when to have kids.’

  Obviously uncomfortable now, the mother busied herself with the menu.

  Primo allowed himself a small smile and swung his father’s wheelchair back toward where they’d come from an hour earlier.

  With his iPod plugs firmly in his ears, Primo settled into a steady pace, deliberately targetting the potholes and shards of broken concrete.

  ‘I always say his wife too much the boss in that house,’ his father said without warning. ‘Adriano not even can go pub for drink after the work. Must come home for look after the little girl so the wife can have rest.’ The old man threw both arms in the air in angry disgust. ‘She home all the bloody day,’ he snorted.

  ‘Her name’s Stella, Papa,’ Primo said forcefully. ‘Adriano’s wife. Her name is Stella. She works too. From home. And the little girl has a name too. Bethany. Beth. But you know that, don’t you? And you know why Stella kicked him out too, don’t you? Of course you do, eh.’

  Primo stopped pushing and stood in front of the wheelchair, pulling the plugs from his ears.

  ‘You remember all sorts of shit when you want, don’t you?’ he snapped. ‘Why not my girlfriend’s name? Why not that Mum couldn’t possibly have an affair because she spends every minute worrying about you!’

  From under the shadow of his cap, Primo’s father chewed his lips, blinking furiously, his hands gripping the armrests, but he said nothing.

  ‘You’ve switched off, haven’t you?’ Primo said shortly then laughed with his mouth only, and they set off again.

  A short time later, settled back in the sitting room in front of the TV, Primo’s father asked for someone to turn down the volume. He wanted to rest.

  ‘Have a good walk?’ the bingo attendant asked, reaching for the volume control.

  Primo didn’t bother answering. The day had turned. There was a solemnity in the regret that lately seemed to wash over him more and more, and which Primo was finding harder and harder to ignore.

  Just as Primo turned to leave, the old man said under his breath, but so that Primo couldn’t miss it, ‘Bambino not a toy.’

  It wasn’t what Primo had wanted to hear. He wanted to hear how much she liked the car, and how rapt she was that he’d gotten his licence and he wouldn’t be relying on her to drive them around. That’s what he’d wanted to hear, not this.

  ‘It’s just not working out, Prim,’ Maddie continued. ‘There are all sorts of reasons, but I guess it’s mainly that I’m feeling shut in. I need to really have some time to myself, to find out what I want, you know?’

  No, I don’t know, Primo thought. He had no idea. Why didn’t she fill him in?

  He was not going to make this easy for her, he decided, even though he’d seen it coming for weeks.

  The confined interior of the tiny car forced them to sit close, their knees touching. Primo felt Maddie’s tension and shifted so that she pushed herself even further back in her seat and against the door.

  ‘Maybe if we have a little time out,’ Maddie said through tight lips. ‘Sometimes a bit of space makes all the difference in the world.’

  ‘So, you want to break up but leave the option open for us to get back together?’ Primo said. ‘A bit like an open contract, where either or both parties can suss out if there are any better options on offer, and then come back to the original arrangement. Is that it?’

  Maddie shook her head and pressed the tips of her fingers to her forehead. ‘No, it’s not like that at all, and you know it. I don’t want to hurt you, Primo.’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Look,’ she said finally. ‘Primo, it’s like this.’

  She was being dogmatic now, Primo decided, her tone changed from comforting to confrontational.

  ‘I’ve decided to go to Europe with Celine and Tania. Their dates coincide with when I want to go. They’ve committed to the trip, and I’ve decided I’m not going to wait for you to make up your mind, to talk to your parents, to do all those things you’ve been promising to do for months but somehow never actually got round to doing.’ The words came out in a gush. ‘You never should have promised me you’d come,’ she said. ‘You knew all along that you wouldn’t, didn’t you? I postponed this trip just so you could finish Year 12, and now it’s almost over but you haven’t even really discussed the trip with your folks.’

  Maddie shook her head faintly and touched a water spot on the windscreen, then added, ‘In a few weeks school’s over for you but for the exams. When are you going to make some firm decisions? I can’t just wait and wait and hope you’ll come good on your promise.

  ‘I’m going without you, and you can live with it,’ Maddie went on. ‘I’m done waiting for you to break the news to your parents, for you to find the money, for you to give me a date so I can book tickets. I’m going with Celine and Tania, and you can like that or not, it’s your choice.’

  Maddie reached for the door handle and stepped out of the Fiat. She slammed the door behind her and it slapped back open.

  Primo didn’t move. He sat and watched her through the windscreen, his fists knotted on the steering wheel, his mouth pulled into a tight slash across his face.

  ‘It’s just hard right now, you know,’ he called finally, in an effort to appease her, at least for the time being, until he could work out a better strategy. ‘With my brother back in the house for who knows how long, and my old man the way he is. Shifts at the freight yard have been hard to get too, you know.’

  Maddie sat on the end of the bonnet and folded her arms around herself.

  Primo’s lips smacked the air noisily. He stared past Maddie, out towards the Melbourne city skyline, focusing on the tallest building, the Eureka Tower. Its golden summit tossed the sunlight back at him sharply.

  Maddie was right and wrong, he thought with biting indignation.

  ‘It’s my dad,’ he offered half-heartedly. ‘With him in the nursing home, it’s tough now. I can’t just leave Mum on her own.’

  When Maddie looked back at him, Primo felt a pang of desire crunch him in the stomach.

  They had known each other since he’d partnered Maddie’s sister, Shannon, for the Year 11 formal at the end of the previous year. Things hadn’t worked out between him a
nd Shannon, but he and Maddie, a full two years older, had hit it off right from the start. They even followed the same footy team, Carlton, and she was doing the same Arts degree he hoped to do once he passed Year 12.

  It was all good, Primo told himself. Maddie was pretty and smart, and knew what she wanted to do with her life – become a primary school teacher and work with gifted kids. And now he was spoiling it all. The thought bit hard.

  ‘I want to come, Maddie,’ Primo said. ‘I really do, but things are tough at home right now. Probably will be for a while yet, especially now with ...’

  ‘You’ve wimped out on me,’ Maddie cut him off. ‘I even put off buying tickets to give you time to save. And don’t use your dad as an excuse. It makes you sound pathetic.’

  The words, like a grenade, exploded around Primo in the confines of the little car.

  ‘I’m not wimping out,’ Primo shot back. ‘I haven’t been able to save as much as I thought I would have, you know. I’ve been getting less shifts at the factory than I’d hoped. And I’ve got school to think about.’

  Maddie stepped away from the car. She walked off and Primo was forced to get out of the car if they were to continue their conversation.

  ‘I’m not using the old man as an excuse,’ he said into the space between them. ‘What? You reckon I don’t want to go to Europe with you? You reckon I don’t want to see all those sights you’ve been raving about for like, forever?’

  Maddie turned on him, her face blazing with anger. ‘That’s exactly right, Primo! The places I’ve been raving about! The places I’ve been going on and on about! Not you! Not once have you been as truly excited about the trip as I am.’

  Primo stepped toward her, but Maddie held up her hand, bringing him to a stop.

  ‘You were never really going to go with me, Primo,’ she said. ‘You just liked the idea that I’d wait around until I got sick of the whole thing and brush it aside.’ She lowered her voice. ‘We’ve made the bookings, Primo, me and the girls, and we’re going.’

  Before Primo could respond, she added, ‘What happened to you convincing your mum to sell the workshop? Your dad doesn’t work anymore and the place is just sitting there empty collecting dust. There’s a few dollars in the equipment and stuff, even if your mum doesn’t sell the actual building, you said, remember?’