The Turning

22

22

“Can you call your dad? You’ve got his number don’t you?”

Chris nodded, slightly annoyed that he had to quit messenger and his girlfriend for the moment in order to complete a task that his mother could have done through speakerphone in the car. She had an urge to snap at him, tell him to listen to her and perhaps confiscate his phone. She would never do this, though. He was twenty, far too old to be treated like a disobedient child. She wouldn't tell him that he was being rude because he was old enough to figure it out for himself. He was an adult now, something she was strangely still used to. He was in ignorant bliss, the sort that only young people in the grips of blind love can possess. She wanted to tell him that whatever was going on between him and this girl in Queensland would not be worth it in given time. They almost always weren't at that age.

“Why’s that?” he muttered.

“Cause I just tried him and couldn’t get on to him,” she said.

“What makes you think he’ll answer me?”

“Well….”

She didn’t really know. Her husband might have left his mobile at home for all she knew. She could picture it on the kitchen bench or more than likely in the hamper of clothes, thrumming with incoming calls.

He grudgingly pressed the phone to his ear and waited for his father to pick up. His mother was driving and by the time he had finally let the call go, they had come out of the carpark and were heading westward out of Griffith. He shrugged.

“He didn’t answer. He’s probably at the pub like you said.”

“Well then try the pub,” she said softly.

“I don’t know the number.”

“Me neither,” she muttered. She wound down the window, enjoying the flutter of cool air drying the perspiration on her neck.

“All right, we’ll just see when we get home,” she said.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. She shook her head. 
“Nothing. Missus Spencer reckons there’s a riot or some bloody thing going on but I think she just heard a car backfiring down the street.”

She glanced at him. “How’s uni going anyway? You haven’t said much.”

He began to tell her about the classes he had been doing and the good grades he had collected at the end of the term, leaving out the part about how he had failed one of those classes and would have to re-do it the following year. He would definitely leave out the fact that the reason he had failed the class was that he had gone to a party in Byron Bay on the night a major assignment had been due, and that he had gotten so blazed and drunk that he had nearly drowned during a late night swim in the ocean. It had been Maddie who had pulled him out because of course, the others had been too far gone to even know that he had been in trouble.

She was a Christian and had attended church at the all-girls Catholic school every Sunday since she had been six. He'd been dragged to a few of these, usually with a hangover or bong lag or both. He wasn't quite sure why a seventeen-year-old girl in the midst of her HSC had found anything appealing about a twenty-year-old, second-year university student, though he didn't much care. What he cared about was breaking her Christian values and stealing her virginity like the pennies from a dead man's eyes. Only it hadn't been that simple of course, and having ten thousand miles between them now didn't make it any easier. His desperation determined his persistence. He was still a virgin himself.

He hated telling his mother that he didn’t have to be back in Queensland until January 25th. Now she and his father would expect him to hang around all through the blazing summer, spending his break like a tired old dog lazing on a sunlit deck.

Oh, there were mates, of course, mates who he had gone to school with who he would eventually catch up with. They had all played football together and had sipped their first tastes of beer at sixteen and seventeen, away from the unsuspecting eyes of parents. They had gone camping on weekends since they were fourteen, they’d run from the cops at fifteen when his mate Zack had snuck out the family van while his folks had been away in Sydney. Someone- probably that big butcher bloke Ben Yates- had called Chris’s father and had informed him that some drunk drivers were chucking donuts out at the common and when the red and blue lights had appeared they had legged it towards the bush, leaving the van to stand amid the hovering dust. The cop never really had caught them. By the time that he had identified the model and the owner of the vehicle, the boys had snuck back around to Zack’s place and had pretended that the ringing of the doorbell had woken them.

What do you say? Someone flogged mum and dad’s car and thrashed the s**t out of it?

They had been through a lot together and he would see them, but when he was ready. When he was absolutely positive that Maddie wasn’t going to give up the goods, or else he’d be on the plane again, flying back, before the end of the week.

Which would be when?

He took out his phone again, not so much ignoring his mother’s attempts at a conversation but acknowledging how little effort she was putting into it. Her mind seemed to be elsewhere and that was fine by him. So was his. She had turned the radio up, listening to the local raffles being announced at the Griffith Ex-Servicemen’s Club, muttering about how she had brought a s**t-load of tickets and that if they didn’t so much as win the meat trays, she would sell her kidneys. It was one of her favorite sayings. He was waiting for a reply from his fling and staring heatedly at the screen as though it might grow a mouth and produce words. Maybe he could catch up with his old mates tonight, considering it was Friday. He had nothing else planned.

Or we could just buy a couple of slabs and go out to the common. Re-live the good times.

Yes, they could do that except it would never exactly be the same. Not like when they had been young and the very act of sneaking out had been a rush of adrenaline. They were older and a little wiser but it would be good fun just the same.