Jake asked, “How come Mom isn’t up yet?”
Jordan said, “I’ll tell you how come.”
Then Jake remembered that his mother had gone out the night before with some “old friends” to hear jazz in Northbridge. Jake’s father had been unhappy about this, and Ava had said, “You’re more than welcome to come with us, Jordan. It’s not what you think.”
“Here’s what I think,” Jordan had begun, his voice getting the hairy texture that meant he was about to attack. Jake took that opportunity to leave the room and head back out to the shed. Then he heard his father say, “I think you should go alone, is what I think.”
Jake watched his father now. “You have to fill the kettle, Dad,” he said. “And then pour the hot water into the carafe.”
“Yeah, but how much coffee?” Jordan said. “And where does your mother keep the grinder?”
Jordan shrugged.
“Ava!” Jordan shouted.
I have to get out of here, Jordan thought once again. Here the kitchen, and here Australia.
Ava shuffled into the room a few seconds later. Her hair was knotted up in a disheveled bun, her complexion was grayish, and she walked with one hand held in front of her, like a blind person who was afraid of running into something. She squinted in the bright sunlight.
“What’s up?” she said. Her voice had a raspy edge. She put a hand on Jake’s head and said, “Good morning, sweetheart,” and Jake smelled cigarettes. His mother, he realized, had been out drinking. And smoking. His mother was hung over.
“I can’t figure out how to work this goddamned thing.”
“Here,” Ava said. “Give it to me, I’ll do it.”
Jordan threw the coffee beans against the counter, and the bag split open, beans scattering everywhere. He said, “Nice of you to finally make an appearance. I could have walked downtown, waited in the ridiculous line at the Dome, and walked back, and I still would have had my coffee sooner.”
“I’m sorry,” Ava said.
Jake found himself drawn into his parents’ argument. He found himself thinking, You don’t have to apologize to him, Mom. He’s being a jerk.
“How was Roger?” Jordan asked.
Ava patiently gathered the spilled beans into a pile and slid them into her cupped hand. She didn’t answer, and Jake found himself saying out loud, “Who’s Roger?”
“Your mother’s old boyfriend,” Jordan said. “Who took her out to a club last night until three in the morning.”
Jake found himself thinking, Really? He told himself, Get up this instant and go out to the shed. Everything was inside out and backward. His mother had gone out drinking, she had come home at three in the morning. But he couldn’t move. He wanted to hear if the part about the old boyfriend was true or not.
“Mom?” he said.
She filled the electric kettle from the spigot. “I’m sorry,” she said, without turning around.
But she didn’t sound sorry.
His parents had turned the house into such a passive-aggressive war zone that suddenly the shed wasn’t far enough away from the crossfire. Jake had to get out of the house, and so he ventured down to South Beach. South Beach consisted of three crescents of pure white sand backed by stone walls. Between the walls and the access road was a wide swath of park with a grass lawn and Norfolk pines, picnic tables, barbecue grills, a playground.
Jake grudgingly admitted to himself that he did not hate South Beach. The water was turquoise and clear to the white, sandy bottom. The café served avocado and sprout sandwiches and burgers topped with fried eggs, and short blacks (espresso) and flat whites (cappuccino). The place had an easy, liberal vibe. But what Jake liked best was the transients who lived in their camper vans in the parking lot. These people showered in the public bathhouses, they ate cereal while sitting on their front bumpers. They weren’t much older than Jake; they had dreadlocks and tattoos and piercings and were deeply, unabashedly tanned. The women wore bikini tops and cutoff shorts and silver rings on their toes. Jake’s mother referred to these people as “ferals.” Like stray cats or dogs. For Jake, this only enhanced their appeal. Every afternoon he would take his assigned vacation reading, The Grapes of Wrath, by Steinbeck, and lie under a Norfolk pine or sit at a table at the café, where he would read, drink a short black, and observe the ferals.
What he liked most about them was that they were free.
On one of Jake’s forays into central Fremantle-he was on his way to Elizabeth’s Secondhand Bookshop to pick up the next book on his list, The Sun Also Rises, by Hemingway-he spied his father sitting at one of the café tables outside of the Dome. Jordan was by himself, drinking a short black. Jake thought about just walking by, not stopping at all, but that somehow seemed like it would be a great opportunity missed. He took a seat at his father’s table. His father looked up, surprised.
“Hey there,” Jordan said.
“Hey,” Jake said.
His father had the West in front of him; he was doing the crossword puzzle.
“I’m having no luck,” Jordan said. “The clues are all unapologetically Antipodean.”
Jake nodded. It felt strange to happen across his father like this. For the first time-maybe because they were out of the house, maybe because they were away from Ava, maybe because Jordan had let his guard down-Jake noticed that his father looked… what? Different. Sad. Lonely, maybe.
“Are you okay?” Jake asked.
Jordan laughed. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
“Oh,” Jake said. He shook his head, and stupidly, tears came to his eyes. “I’m never going to be okay again.”
He expected his father to refute this, but instead Jordan cast his eyes down and took a sip of coffee. “Can I order you something?”
“Short black,” Jake said.
His father flagged the waiter and ordered a coffee for Jake and another for himself.
“Dad, why are we here?”
“I thought that was obvious.”
“For Mom?”
“For Mom, for you.” He paused. “For me.”
“You’re not happy here,” Jake said. “That much is clear.”
“I’m doing okay,” Jordan said.
“You have a strange way of showing it,” Jake said. “How can you stand being away from the paper? How can you stand not working?”
“Those are tricky questions.”
“Let’s call this what it is. We came here for Mom. Please don’t say we came here for me. We came here for Mom.”
“We came here for Ava,” Jordan said.
“Because she’s the only one who matters.”
“No,” Jordan said. “She’s not the only one who matters. But she’s been wanting to move back to Australia for a long time, and I felt like I owed it to her to give it a try.”
“She makes you feel like you owe her something,” Jake said. “But you don’t owe her anything.”
“You’re saying that because you’re unhappy, and you think our coming here was the wrong decision.”
“You’re unhappy,” Jake countered. “You and Mom are unhappy together. I hear you, you know.”
“Hey now,” Jordan said.
Jake felt immediately ashamed. He had never commented on his parents’ marriage before.
“Just let your mother and me worry about what’s going on between us. It has nothing to do with you.”
“Except that I have to live with you.”
“True,” Jordan said, and his voice was softer now. “That’s true.”
“It’s hard,” Jake said. “Processing this on my own.”
“I’m processing it too,” Jordan said.
“Not like me,” Jake said.
“You’d be surprised,” Jordan replied.
“In my mind, you know, she’s still alive,” Jake confided. This was painfully true. When Jake was alone in the shed, he thought about Penny all the time-her long hair, her sapphire eyes, her lips, the warmth of her next to him, her voice. He had a recording of her singing “Lean on Me” on his iPod that he listened to way too often. Once he’d even masturbated to the song, and after ejaculating, he’d started to cry harder than he ever had before. He missed her, and truthfully, sex was the least of it. The worst part was not having his friend, his love, his champion, the person he’d told everything to.