The Slap (2 page)

‘I wish I could do that.’ But the last five years had been a carousel of stopping and then starting again, promising himself that he could smoke five a day, why not, five a day would not do much damage; but he could not stop himself rushing through to the end of the pack. Every time. He envied the old Chinese guy. He’d love to be able to smoke three, four, five a day. But he couldn’t. Cigarettes were like a malignant lover to him. He would find the resolve, soak his pack under the tap and chuck it in the bin, determined to never smoke again. He had tried cold turkey, hypnotism, patches, gum; maybe, for a few days, a week, once even a month, he could resist all temptations. But then he would sneak a cigarette at work or at the pub or after a dinner, and immediately he would fall back into the arms of his spurned lover. And her revenge was exacting. He would be back to worshipping her, not able to get through the morning without her. She was irresistible. Then one Sunday morning, when the kids were at his parents’ and he and Aisha had a graceful morning of slow, easy, delightful sex, and he’d wrapped his arms around her and whispered, I love you, you are my greatest joy, you are my greatest commitment, she’d turned around with a sardonic smile and replied, No I’m not, cigarettes are your true love, cigarettes are your true commitment.

The fight was cruel and exhausting—they’d screamed at each other for hours. She had wounded him, shattered his pride, especially when he’d been mortified to realise that it was only his feverish sucking on cigarettes that had allowed him any measure of control in the argument. He’d accused her of being self-righteous and a middle-class puritan and she had snapped back with a litany of his weaknesses: he was lazy and vain, passive and selfish, and he lacked any will-power. Her accusations hurt because he knew them to be true.

And so he resolved to quit. To really quit this time. He didn’t bother telling her; he couldn’t bear her scepticism. But he was going to quit.

The morning was warm and he stripped down to his singlet as he sat down at the verandah table with his coffee. As soon as he had lit the cigarette, Melissa flew out of the back door and ran screaming into his arms.

‘Adam won’t let me play.’ She was howling, and he dropped her onto his lap and stroked her face. He let her cry till she was spent. He didn’t need this, didn’t want this, not this morning of all mornings. He wanted the cigarette in peace. There was never enough peace. But he played with his daughter’s hair, kissed her on her forehead, waited for her tears to end. He stubbed out his cigarette and Melissa watched the smoke extinguish.

‘You shouldn’t smoke, Daddy. It causes cancer.’

She was parroting admonishments she had learnt at school. His kids struggled with their eight times tables but they knew smoking gave you lung cancer and that unprotected sex caused venereal disease. He stopped himself from scolding her. Instead, he picked her up and carried her into the lounge room. Adam was intent on his computer game and did not look up.

Hector drew a breath. He wanted to kick the lazy little bastard but instead he plunked his daughter next to his son and grabbed the game console from the boy.

‘It’s your sister’s turn.’

‘She’s a baby. She’s no good.’

Adam had wrapped his arms tight around himself and glared rebelliously at his father, his soft belly bulging over the waistband of his jeans. Aisha insisted that his puppyfat would disappear in adolescence but Hector wasn’t convinced. The boy was obsessed with screens: with his computer, with television, with his PlayStation. His sluggishness unnerved Hector. He had always taken pride in his own good looks and fit body; as an adolescent he’d been a pretty good footballer and an even better swimmer. He could not help but see his son’s corpulence as a slight. He was sometimes embarrassed to be seen with Adam in public. Aware of the scandalous nature of such thoughts, he’d never revealed them to anyone. But he could not help feeling disappointed, and he seemed always to be telling off his son. Do you have to sit in front of the TV all day? It’s a great day, why don’t you play outside? Adam’s response was to be silent, to sulk, and this only fed Hector’s exasperation. He had to bite his lip to not insult the child. Occasionally Adam would glance up at him with a look of such hurt bewilderment Hector would feel a crushing shame.

‘Come on, mate, give your sister a go.’

‘She’ll wreck it.’

‘Now.’

The boy threw the console onto the floor, rose unsteadily to his feet, and stormed off to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Grabbing her father’s hand, Melissa stared after him. ‘I want to play.’ She was crying again.

‘Play by yourself.’

‘I want to play with Adam.’

Hector fingered the cigarette pack in his pocket.

‘It’s fair that you have time to play video games as well. Adam was being unfair. He’ll come and play with you in a few minutes, just wait and see.’ He was keeping his voice deliberately even, almost making a sing-song childish rhythm of the platitudes. But Melissa would not be pacified.

‘I want to play with Adam,’ she wailed, and gripped tighter onto his hand. His first instinct was to push her away from him. Guilty, he tenderly stroked the little girl’s hair and kissed the top of her head.

‘Do you want to come to the market with me?’

The wailing had stopped but Melissa was not yet prepared to concede defeat. She stared miserably at the door that Adam had slammed behind him.

Hector shook his hand free from hers. ‘It’s your choice, sweetheart. You can stay here and play video games by yourself or you can come with me to the market. Which would you prefer?’

The girl did not answer.

‘Right.’ Hector shrugged his shoulders and put a cigarette to his lips. ‘
Your
choice.’ He walked out to the kitchen with her renewed cries following him.

Aisha was wiping her hands dry. She indicated the clock.

‘I know, I know. I just want one fucking smoke in peace.’

He thought Aisha would also join in the chorus of resentment directed towards him that morning but her face broke into a grin and she kissed his cheek.

‘Right, which one of them’s to blame?’

‘Adam. Definitely Adam.’

He sat on the verandah and had his cigarette. He could hear Aisha talking calmly to his daughter. He knew that she would be on her knees beside Melissa, playing with the console. He also knew in a few minutes Adam would emerge from his room and sit on the couch to watch his sister and mother play. Within moments the children would be sharing the console and Aisha would have slipped back into the kitchen. He marvelled at his wife’s patience, felt the lack of his own. Sometimes he wondered how his kids would respect him when they were older—whether they even loved him at all.

 

Connie loved him. She had told him. He knew that it had almost caused her physical pain to say the words, that she’d almost choked on them. Her agony underlined his own shame. Aisha, of course, often told him that she loved him, but always calmly, nonchalantly; as if from the very beginning of their relationship she had been sure that he loved her in return. Telling someone you loved them should never be dispassionate. Connie had spat out the words in terror, not knowing or trusting their consequences. She hadn’t dared look at him as she said it, and immediately flicked a lock of her hair straight into her mouth. He had gently flicked it away and then kissed her on the lips. ‘I love you too,’ he had answered. And he did, he certainly did. He had been incapable of thinking of much else for months. But he hadn’t dared speak the words to Connie. She said them first. She had to say them first.

 

‘Have you got any Valium left?’

‘No.’ He heard the reproach in Aisha’s answer and he noticed her quick look at the kitchen clock.

‘I’ve got plenty of time.’

‘Why do you need Valium?’

‘I don’t need it. I just want it. It’s just to take the edge off the barbecue. ’

Aisha suddenly smiled, her eyes glistening and mischievous. He screwed his cigarette into the ashtray, walked through the glass doors and scooped his wife into his arms. ‘I’ve got plenty of time, I’ve got plenty of time,’ he sang. He kissed the fingers of her left hand, sniffed at the sweet tang of cumin and lime. She kissed him back and then gently pushed him away.

‘Do you mind that much?’

‘No, of course not.’ He certainly would have preferred not to have to give up Saturday evening to play host to a mixture of family, friends and work colleagues; he certainly would have rather spent the last day of his smoking life doing something just for him. But for Aisha, the evening’s small party was a way of repaying countless dinner and party invitations. Aisha believed they owed it to their circle. Hector felt no such obligation. But he was a genial host and understood the importance of the evening for his wife. And he had always been proud of the fact that they shared a respect and tolerance for family.

‘I don’t mind but I’d like some Valium. Just in case Mum decides to break my balls tonight.’

‘It’s not
your
balls she’s going to break.’ Aisha’s eyes darted back to the clock. ‘I don’t know if I have time to go to work and pick some up.’

‘That’s okay, I’ll drop by and get them after the market.’

In the shower, with the warm jets of water falling onto his head and shoulders, and the steam rising around him, he looked down at his lean body, at his thick limp cock, and cursed himself. You are such a prick, such a fucking lying prick. He was surprised to find himself speaking out loud. A jolt of humiliation flashed through him, and he sharply turned off the hot water tap. The shock of ice-cold water on his head and shoulders could not banish his remorse. Even as a child, Hector had never had time for make-believe or rationalisations. He knew he had no need for the Valium and the only reason he was saying he did was so he could see Connie. He could simply choose to drive past Aisha’s clinic and not stop for the pills. He could, but he knew he wouldn’t. He did not once dare catch his own eyes in the mirror as he was drying himself with the damp towel that smelt of soap, of himself and his wife. Only in the bedroom, running a small squirt of wax through his hair, did he dare look at his reflection. He saw the grey at his temples and at his unshaven chin, the wrinkles at the edge of his mouth. He also saw that his jaw was still firm, his hair still full, and that he looked younger than his forty-three years.

He was whistling as he kissed his wife. He grabbed the shopping list and his car keys from the kitchen table.

When he started up the car, an appalling bleating pop song assailed his ears. He quickly changed to another radio station, not jazz but comfortable acoustic drone. Aisha had picked up the kids from school the day before and allowed them to choose the station. He never let them dictate what was to be played in the car, and Aisha often mocked his sternness.

‘No,’ he would insist. ‘They can play the music they want when they develop some taste.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Hector, they’re kids, they have no taste.’

‘Well they’re not going to get any listening to crap top-forty shit. I’m doing them a favour.’

This would always make Aisha laugh.

 

The market carpark was packed and he weaved slowly in and out of the crammed lanes before he managed to find a space. The Commodore—reliable, comfortable and dull—had been a concession. Their previous family cars had included a rusted late-sixties Peugeot that was missing a hand-brake and which they ditched as soon as Adam was born; a sturdy Datsun 200B from the seventies that had given up the ghost somewhere between Coffs Harbour and Byron Bay when Adam was six and Melissa just a baby; and a monstrous late-model Chrysler Valiant that was seemingly indestructible and which had taken the family back and forth across the country a number of times to visit Aisha’s family in Perth. The Valiant was stolen by two young men high on alcohol and petrol who smashed it into a phone box in Lalor and then poured petrol all over the interior and set it alight. Hector had almost cried when the police told him. Then Aisha had declared that she was no longer interested in any car older than ten years. She wanted something safe and less expensive to run. Reluctantly Hector had agreed. But he still dreamed of another Valiant—or a two-door ute, or an old EJ Holden.

He stretched out in the car seat, rolled down his window, lit a cigarette and pulled out the shopping list. As usual, Aisha was thorough and meticulous, listing the exact quantities of the ingredients she wanted. Twenty-five grams of green cardamom seeds (she never bought spices in bulk because she believed they became stale too quickly). Nine hundred grams of squid (Hector would ask for a kilo; he always rounded up, never down). Four eggplants (then in brackets and underlined, she had indicated European not Asian eggplants). Hector smiled as he read down the list. His wife’s orderly habits sometimes made him frustrated, but he admired her efficiency and he respected her calm manner. If left to him, the preparations for the barbecue would have been chaotic and resulting in panic. But Aisha was a marvel at organisation, and for that he was thankful. He knew that without her his life would fall apart. Aisha’s steadiness and intelligence had a benign effect on him, he could see it clearly. Her calmness assuaged the danger of his own impulsiveness. Even his mother—who had initially bitterly resented his relationship with an Indian girl—admitted as much.

‘You’re lucky to have her,’ she would remind him in Greek. ‘God knows what gypsy you could have ended up with if you hadn’t found her. You have no control. You’ve never had control.’

 

His mother’s words came back to him again after he’d loaded the box of vegetables and fruit into the boot of the car and was strolling back to the delicatessen. The young woman walking in front of him had denim jeans tightly cupping her round, tantalisingly small buttocks. She had long, swinging straight black hair and Hector guessed she was Vietnamese. He walked slowly behind her. The noise and clamour of the market had fallen away; all that existed was the perfect sashaying arse before him. The woman darted into a bakery and Hector awoke from his fantasy. He needed to piss.