Nobody came.
He ran round to the back of the house for the second time. He stood in the garden, at the edge of the pool, and looked up at Dad’s window. The curtains drawn, no light. Cupping his hands round his mouth, he called again. ‘Dad?’
He went over to a flowerbed and felt around in the mud. He came back with a handful of pebbles. He missed with the first. The second just touched the glass and fell away. The third almost shattered it. He waited. Nothing happened.
Moonlight lay on the glass roof of the sun-lounge, blue sheets of it, like lightning paralysed. The rain, still fresh on the grass, began to seep through the soles of his boots. He turned and stared at the pool. Those black patches on the surface, they’d be dead leaves. Every time he came home he had to scoop them off the surface. It was one of his jobs. But now the anger rose in him again. All this way and fuck it, I can’t even get in.
He ran round to the front door. This could go on till morning, it was ridiculous. He pushed the mailbox open, pressed his cheek against the metal, and yelled. ‘Dad? Dad? DAD!’
This time he heard a click and knew instantly what it was. That click was printed on his memory. It was the sound of Dad’s bedroom door. He took his mouth away from the mailbox, and put an ear there instead. He could hear Dad’s voice, distant, shaky.
‘Nathan? Is that you?’
‘Yes, it’s me, Dad. It’s only me.’
He saw Dad feeling his way down the last flight of stairs, the pyjamas, the slippers, the blue cardigan cut off just above the elbows, feeling his way through some kind of thick barbiturate mist. He heard keys turning in the locks, bolts being drawn. The door opened, and he moved past Dad, into the hall.
‘Sorry if I look odd, but I was dead out.’ Dad was bent over, locking the door again. ‘Sorry if I look strange.’
And he turned, shy, somehow, and they held each other. Nathan smelt warm sleep, clean skin. If someone had told him that he’d been angry a moment before, he would’ve denied it. ‘You go back to bed now,’ he said gently. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Next morning, after breakfast, Dad said, ‘It was that calling, that word “Dad” in the middle of the night. It took me back all those years. You never forget it.’
They were sitting in the room that overlooked the pool. Dad had taken his pills, and now he was relaxing. Nathan sat next to him. He could hear the au pair girl washing dishes, the mutter of Dad’s radio. It was all so familiar and yet, at the same time, it was utterly remote.
‘When I arrived last night,’ he said, ‘all the lights were on.’
‘Were they?’ Dad was staring at the blank wall above the TV. ‘It must’ve been Helga. She’s new, you see. I haven’t trained her yet.’ He looked at Nathan. ‘Have you been eating properly?’ And then, before Nathan could answer, ‘You look thin to me.’
It was always the same when he went home: Dad didn’t stop talking until his voice hurt.
That morning Dad told his favourite story again, the story of his drive along the coast with Kay, only this time he took it one stage further, down from the cliffs and into the house. It had been lying empty for months, he said. It was almost derelict. A leaking roof, cobwebs slung across the rooms like hammocks, moss growing on the walls. People had broken in too. The downstairs was inches deep in sherry bottles, newspapers, strange men’s shoes, and someone must’ve lit a fire in the kitchen because there was a big black patch on the floor, as if a rocket had taken off. Later that day he found a letter for Kay’s mother lying in the hall. The address on the envelope was ‘Viviente’, 7729 Mahogany Drive, Moon Beach. ‘Viviente’ used to be the name of the house, Kay told him. It meant ‘full of life’.
‘And you know what?’ Dad turned to Nathan. ‘It was almost a miracle, really. The week after we moved in, we discovered she was pregnant. With you.’
‘I never knew that,’ Nathan said.
‘Well, there you are. You learned something.’ Dad sat back, looking pleased with himself.
Nathan smiled. It was no wonder that Dad went back over that day so often, especially in the light of present circumstances. He was returning to a world that had been kind to him, a past he could be sure of. His love for Kay was one love that had never spoiled. It was over, yes, but it would never end.
In the afternoon Nathan drove to Georgia’s. She had two rooms above a hardware store in Venus. The place was littered, as Georgia’s places always were, with science fiction, jewellery, sunglasses, invitations, tapes. From the window you could see one thin strip of blue between the houses opposite; her view of the harbour. She made coffee in a dented silver pot and served it in dark-green cups with gold rims and gold handles, cups she’d stolen from home. ‘They were Grandma’s, I think,’ she said. ‘You know, before she went mad.’ She was so jittery at seeing him, she couldn’t keep still. Everything he said, she talked over the end of it. ‘I think I’ll roll a joint,’ she said. ‘Might slow me down.’ She spread her materials on the floor, her legs tucked under her, her tongue stuck to the centre of her top lip. He remembered her painting on brown paper when it rained. It was the same look. It took her so long to roll the joint, she’d slowed down before she even put a match to it.
There was some party they had to go to. As the taxi jolted through the streets of Butterfield, she linked her arm through his and kissed him. ‘You’ve been away so long, I almost forgot what you smelt like.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘No, it’s good. It’s like,’ and she had to smell him again, to remind herself, ‘it’s like fruit.’
Smiling, he stroked her hair. In the three years since he’d last seen her she’d grown it halfway down her back.
‘Do you think Dad’s all right?’ he asked her.
She frowned. ‘It’s hard to tell. All he ever says when I go and see him is, why do have to wear all that stuff on your face, why can’t you be natural?’
He laughed.
She rested her cheek against his shoulder. ‘You know what I’d like?’ ‘What?’
‘I’d like to be your brother.’
He smiled. ‘Sister isn’t enough?’
‘That’s different.’
‘What’s different about it?’
‘Brothers tell each other everything.’ She nodded to herself. ‘Everything.’ And her dark eyes glittered and she ran her tongue over her lips, and then she said, ‘How about it?’
‘Nobody’ll understand.’
‘They never do, do they?’ She smiled up at him. ‘Give me something.’
He stared at her. They ran on parallel tracks, he knew that, but some nights, especially nights like this, she drew ahead of him.
‘You have to give me something,’ she explained. ‘To make it official.’
He unfastened the woven leather bracelet from around his wrist. She watched, eyes wide, as if he was performing magic. He reached into his pocket and took out a pen. On the inside of the bracelet he wrote, ‘To George, my brother for forty years.’
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Put it on.’
She looked at it. ‘Is it special?’
‘It’s very special.’ He told her about the woman with the flute. He told her what he’d said to the woman and how stupid he’d felt. He told her that the bracelet had the woman’s music in it, and sometimes, if you waited for rain and then listened very carefully, you could just hear it, very faintly, like someone playing in the distance.