Make or Break

‘I’m sorry I have to be quick! I’m late!’ I said, rushing into Sylvie’s restaurant and sidestepping waiters bustling about, setting tables. I navigated various dogs and headed to where Jimmy was standing behind the big gold bar with a serious expression. ‘I realised I hadn’t got Annabelle and the kids any presents so I quickly packed and Trust took me to the Waterfront, and oh my god the traffic getting out of there was mental, and—’ I stopped, realising Jimmy’s face wasn’t its usual sunny and happy self, and that perhaps I should have come in a little less manic seeing as we were going to have yet another emotional goodbye. ‘What?’

Jimmy came out from behind the bar, pressed my phone into my hands and pulled me to the side. ‘I think you were right,’ he said, his voice low and his face ashen. ‘About the vagina artist.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I said, my mind on traffic/check-in time calculations.

‘The vagina artist turned up and I think, yeah . . .’ He frowned in the direction of the gallery. ‘I think you were right.’

‘Right about what?’

‘He’s in there now, setting up.’ Jimmy looked awkward. ‘With his family.’

I slowed my racing mind and forced myself to think about what Jimmy was saying. Vagina Artist. In the Gallery. With his family. I was right . . .?

‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘He’s a local.’

Jimmy looked nervous as I wove through tables and chairs to the open gallery door and looked in. Frankie, her pink hair tips up in a chignon, and a slim lady with her hair in a ballet dancer’s bun, stood with their backs to us appraising the positioning of a vaginal sketch on the far wall, perhaps fifteen metres from us. There was no man. Two blond children sat on a leather bench nearby, their backs also to us, looking at an iPad. I turned to Jimmy, confused. He motioned for me to keep looking so I turned back.

Sylvie came out from behind a partition in the middle of the room, about five metres from where Jimmy and I stood peering around the edge of the doorframe. ‘If you’re allowed, you can ask the kitchen staff for some ice cream,’ she said to the two kids.

The children, a boy who looked about nine and a girl of perhaps eleven or twelve, looked in the direction of someone behind the partition and said ‘Can we?’ in sweet little South African accents.

I turned to Jimmy and made to start the phrase, ‘What the f—’ when I heard my father’s voice and my stomach dropped.

‘Well, just this once. Aren’t you lucky?’ he said, just like he used to when Annabelle and I were young and someone had offered us something special and not of Mum’s dietary specifications. Then my father stepped out from behind the partition. My father. The vagina artist, who’d been in Mozambique with his ‘family’.

My breath caught in my throat and I felt dizzy. I put a hand on the doorframe to stop the room from spinning. Jimmy’s hand rested on my arm.

It was him.

It was really him.

I wanted to run away. I wanted to keep watching. I wanted to faint. Time seemed to slow. My feet felt anchored to the floor. Dad accepted a hug from the boy, took the iPad from the girl and the children turned and skipped towards the doorway. Dad, without looking in our direction, walked to the far wall and joined Frankie, Sylvie and the lady with the ballet bun who was adjusting the information card underneath a painting. The kids bustled through the doorway, barely registering us in their pursuit of pudding. I felt like I might vomit as the bun lady placed her slender hand, which sported a large solitaire diamond, affectionately on Dad’s shoulder and turned to Frankie.

‘It took such a long time to convince him to exhibit,’ she said in a melodic South African accent.

Dad slipped his arm around the slender-handed lady’s slender waist. She turned and smiled at him and I saw her profile. She was probably only about forty.

Just then Trust burst into the restaurant, rousing me from my nauseous trance. ‘Miss Jess!’ he called from the open front door at the other side of the room. I ducked out of the gallery doorway and fell against the wall. ‘We must go!’ He tapped his wrist urgently even though he didn’t wear a watch.

I looked up at Jimmy and backed away. ‘Did you know? Did you know this whole time?’ I remembered him looking at the photo of Dad when Pete and I had first met him.

Jimmy shook his head, frowning with confusion.

‘Miss Jess!’ Trust said urgently.

I turned and ran out of the gallery, wanting to be far away from whatever the hell I had just seen.

Jimmy rushed after me. ‘Wait!’

I dived into the open van door. Trust slid it shut and I turned in my seat. Through the restaurant window I could see Dad and the lady walk across the room and join the children at the bar. As Trust screeched away from the kerb I looked at Jimmy standing on the footpath watching me leave with a look of anguish, and the gravity of the situation hit me.

‘I will drive fast, but traffic—’

‘It’s OK, Trust,’ I said, turning on my phone. ‘It’s my fault. Just do the best you can.’

Trust nodded and made some decisive lane changes. My phone came alive with the apple chime and Jimmy rang through immediately.

‘I didn’t know, I swear,’ he said as soon as I answered. ‘When he came in with his English accent I just put two and two together. So that guy is your dad? Oh my god, you were right. I’m so sorry, are you OK? I can’t believe it’s your dad! Are you sure? Of course you know your own dad, but are you really sure?’ He was babbling and I had to close my eyes to calm myself. I still thought I might throw up. Trust’s hurried swerving wasn’t helping.

‘Yeah . . .’ I said, the words hitting home. ‘That was my dad.’

‘Christ,’ Jimmy said. ‘Do you want me to do anything?’

‘Yes please,’ I said, my chest burning with a sudden hot anger. ‘I want you to punch him in the face.’

‘Right,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’m not going to do that . . .’

‘Shit,’ I breathed in and out. ‘I don’t think there’s anything you can . . . Actually, yes. Can you find out as much as you can about that lady he’s with and . . . actually no, I need to . . . yes. No, I know . . . no, that’s not a very . . .’ I trailed off feeling both horribly in the moment and also like I was watching it all happen to someone else. Like how you feel after a night of missed sleep, which you’ve tried to counteract with far too much caffeine; distant and detached yet wired and keenly alert.

‘Um . . .’ Jimmy sounded tentative. ‘I’m not clear on the . . . the, ah . . . proceedings.’

I swallowed, trying to get my thoughts in order. ‘Do nothing.’

‘OK,’ he said, sounding relieved.

‘But maybe see if you can get the name of the lady he’s with? And her age.’

‘Right.’

‘And also the names and ages of those kids. And also try and find out where he lives and if he has two mobiles, and also—’

‘Hang on, I need a pen.’

‘No, don’t worry about it,’ I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. ‘Just do nothing like I asked.’

‘Right,’ Jimmy said, sounding confused.

‘God, this is so fucked up.’

‘I know,’ Jimmy said. ‘I really want to do something for you but I don’t know what.’

‘That’s OK,’ I said, and I began to feel nauseous again. ‘I’d better go. I’ll call you later.’

I got off the phone and saw that there were a bunch of missed calls and text messages from Priya asking me to call her back IMMEDIATELY. They were all from that morning.

‘Babe!’ Priya said down the phone. ‘I’ve got something awful to tell you. I’m going to need you to sit down. And get Pete with you, OK, because, I’m really sorry babe, but this is bad.’

‘Oh god, what?’ I said. My mind couldn’t dredge up a more horrifying scenario. I was all panicked out, it seemed. ‘Are you OK? Is Laurel all right?’

‘We’re fine, babe. It’s about your dad.’

‘Oh.’

‘OK, sorry about this, but Laurel and I were leaving our resort today and we saw your dad. With a young family. Two kids. Hot lady. Babe, you know I always like to see the positive, but . . . It didn’t look good. It looked . . . intimate, you know?’

I was quiet. Obviously I’d already seen what I had seen but this additional information made it hit home harder. That was really him: the local on holiday in Mozambique with his family. But he was my father. He lived at home with Mum. It didn’t make any sense.

‘Babe? Are you OK?’ She said some panicked, muffled words to someone, I assumed Laurel. ‘Oh god, babe, are you OK? Are you there?’

‘Yeah, I’m here,’ I said, my voice croaky.

‘I would have gone over there and kicked his arse but we were getting on a ferry to go back to the mainland to get our flight tomorrow and he was boarding a sea plane. And it’s Teddy Roberts! It’s your dad! I know it doesn’t make any sense but I saw what I saw, babe, and I’m so, so sorry.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘Babe, put Pete on. I’ll tell him you need lots of looking after. Are you at the airport?’

‘We’ve broken up. He cheated on me and is staying here with that guy, Goat, from The Bachelor who he idolises and I’m stuck in traffic and might miss my flight.’ I started to cry. ‘Priya, everything has gone to shit. I just want to go home.’

‘Whaaaaaat?!’ Priya shrieked down the phone then turned and quickly told everything to Laurel. She came back on, incensed. ‘Pete is a muthafucking cunty possum-faced wank bastard fuck-hole . . .’ She kept ranting and I had to hold the phone away from my ear. ‘What the fuck!?! Oh my god, I feel like this is all my fault! God, you were going to go back engaged and now Pete is fan-boying over Goat and your dad has a whole second family!’

I hadn’t put that sentence together yet. Obviously those words were exactly the ones you’d use to describe the thin-handed lady and his two kids who were nearly the same age as his grandson, but I hadn’t said them out loud. And neither had the psycho in my head. Where was she? Taking a lavender oil bath?

‘What do you want me to do?’

I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about anything.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just get home safely.’

‘OK,’ she said, her voice calmer now. ‘Love you, babe.’

‘I know. I love you too.’

I hung up and looked ahead at the lanes of traffic. It was moving. Slowly. Trust threw quick glances my way while he navigated vehicles in various states of disrepair. I checked the time. It was going to be a fine line if I made the flight or not. Exactly how I started this trip two long weeks ago. Except in very different circumstances to those I found myself in now. No boyfriend, a cheating father and Annabelle not being constantly at the forefront of my mind. Plus a little tired from all the shagging I’d been doing with a bartending, scriptwriting muso who lived in the basement of his brother’s place.

I dialled Annabelle’s number.

‘Hi. I’m just in the middle of the kids’ dinner.’

‘It’s Dad,’ I said miserably. ‘He’s got a whole second family. For real this time. Jimmy saw it, Priya saw it and I saw it. I don’t know what we’re going to do! What about Mum? What about us? He’s got a whole second family, Annabelle!’

‘OK,’ Annabelle said, her voice soothing. ‘OK. Just take a second to breathe.’

I took a deep breath in and eased it out.

‘Good. Now tell me what happened. Slowly.’

Annabelle listened without judgement as I explained about Jimmy and the phone, Sylvie and the ice cream, the thin-handed lady and her diamond, Frankie and her pink hair tips, Dad and his arm around thin hand lady, about Trust bursting in and me being late for the flight, about how I ran out of there without confronting Dad and how I was currently regretting that decision because I was sitting in a van in traffic, probably going to miss my flight anyway, with a shit ton of accusations.

‘And don’t think you can convince me out of this disaster,’ I said. ‘It’s exactly what I thought it was! I can’t believe you made me doubt my intuition.’

‘Well,’ Annabelle said diplomatically, ‘it’s just that your intuition is generally, psychotically, paranoically, drastically incorrect.’

‘I concur,’ I said as Trust made a few brisk and frightening lane swerves. ‘But this time I’m right. So what should we do about it? Should I call him? Should I forget my flight and go back there? What should we do?!’

I started crying, Trust got worried and kept looking away from the road and making questionable driving choices, and Annabelle told me not to call Dad and just to get home and we would sort it out together. Then she had to go and get Hunter down from the top of the fridge, and suddenly the traffic opened up; Trust and I had a tearful yet brief goodbye, check-in was relatively empty and I made my flight.