Chapter 33

chapter thirty-three

Last October

Troy couldn’t make himself care or focus. The market was quiet, but not that quiet. His heart wasn’t in it. He’d made only one trade in the last two hours. That was a signal he should stop for the day, according to his own rules, and rule number one was Follow Your Own Rules.

He looked away from his monitors at the floor-to-ceiling windows where a solitary seagull wheeled across a cloudless pale blue sky. The rippling harbour loomed ahead of him like a landing strip. He’d landed a 747 at Salzburg Airport once. It was a flight simulator experience. A gift for his thirtieth birthday from his ex-wife. The instructor said he had excellent instincts. Troy was now confident he could land a plane if the pilot got in trouble and the (beautiful, panicked) flight attendant came running from the cockpit begging any passenger with flying experience to come forward.

Could have been an airline pilot. Could have won Wimbledon. Could have been a married soccer dad in the suburbs, who made his mother a grandmother, like she deserved to be, instead of donating his kid to another man, making the other man the soccer dad, standing there on the sidelines, cheering on Troy’s kid, who would be fucking good at soccer, because the Delaneys were good at all sports, not just tennis.

Troy would let his kid play any sport he wanted to play. But not this particular kid, because it wouldn’t be his kid.

It was stupid to get sentimental. If he really wanted a kid he could have one. No problem. Claire had been the one with the problem. Troy had a high sperm count and excellent motility. ‘That is just so typical,’ Claire had said when she read his sperm analysis, back when she still loved him.He’d been relieved. He hadn’t slept the night before they got his results, terrified that the test would reveal a secret hidden failing. His father got his mother pregnant just by looking at her. Of course he did.

Handing over the embryos was the generous, kind, altruistic thing to do, except he couldn’t pretend to be an altruist because if Claire had cheated on him, he would have been vengeful as hell. He would have said, Let those little suckers thaw, give them to science, chuck them in the bin.

He was paying an over-inflated price for a not especially satisfying sexual episode with a girl whose name he couldn’t remember, although he remembered her job and her perfume: Pharmaceutical Sales Executive and White Linen. He’d never liked that scent but now he detested it. He remembered going home afterwards in a cab, looking out on rain-sodden city streets, opening the cab window in a fruitless attempt to make the stench of her perfume and his regret go away.

No regrets. That was another of his trading rules. Never waste time thinking about what could have been.

He hadn’t given Claire his answer yet. He’d been holding out hope for a last-minute reprieve: a reason to refuse her. Right now it was dinnertime in Texas. He imagined her sitting down to dinner with her husband. ‘Any word yet, honey?’

They must hate having their future dreams dependent on him.

The Texan cardiologist would never break Claire’s heart. The guy was a heart specialist after all. He probably treated Claire’s heart with all the specialist loving tenderness she deserved. Troy hoped he did treat her heart tenderly, even as he wished he didn’t.

He wished he hadn’t hurt her. He didn’t understand why he’d done it, except that all through his life he’d been at the mercy of a powerful desire: the desire to blow everything up.

What if I put the tip of my finger against that fragile ornament my mother said not to touch, and not only do I touch, I push? What if, halfway through a boring Geography lesson, I stand up and walk out without saying a single word? What if I jump off that bridge with the sign that says NO JUMPING? Take that pill? Go for that impossible shot? What if I pick up a girl at a city bar while my wife is going through IVF to have a baby we both supposedly want? It was like an invisible force took hold of him: Do it, do it, do it.

The girl meant nothing. She was just a girl sitting next to him at a bar, with giant teeth and a harsh laugh. Claire was smarter, funnier and prettier, her teeth were perfectly sized and her laugh was beautiful.

His actions were inexplicable. It was all kinds of fucked-up.

‘You must have wanted an excuse to get out,’ Claire had said, her face ashen. And it was true, he must have wanted an excuse to get out of the relationship, although he wasn’t consciously aware of wanting to get out, but why else had he done it, and more to the point, why had he instantly confessed the moment he got home, before he’d even taken off his shirt? While Claire looked up from her book in their bed and smiled, and the cells of their potential children multiplied and divided in a Sydney clinic? It was called self-sabotage, according to Amy, who was the only one in his family who kind of understood, because she had a tendency towards it herself, although even she took a long time to forgive him for breaking her beloved sister-in-law’s heart.

Enough!Troy slammed both fists on his desk so hard that his three oversized monitors rattled. He did not do this. What was done was done. He walked to the windows of his home office and pressed his forehead against the glass. Every single person in the world who came to his apartment talked about the incredible views, except for his brother. Logan had walked into this room, laughed out loud, clipped Troy on the back of the head and said, ‘Jesus, mate.’ Maybe that was his way of saying it was incredible, but why couldn’t he just say it was incredible? Why was it funny? Just give him credit for the view, for Christ’s sake. Even their father had said, ‘Bloody good view.’Although Stan followed it up with, ‘Hope you can afford it.’ Sometimes he wanted to show his dad his bank statements, like a preschooler giving him a finger-painting: Look what I did, Daddy. I got rich without tennis, Daddy. Except not as rich as Harry fucking Haddad. Troy kept a permanent eye on the dickhead’s net worth.

He went back to his desk, opened his email, typed in Claire’s name and wrote the message, fast. Dear Claire, I’ve thought about it, it’s fine, go ahead, make it happen, I’ll sign all the forms you need. Love, Troy.

He pressed send. He looked at his hands still resting on the keyboard. What had he just done? Those words were now on a computer screen in Texas. It felt inappropriately futuristic. A message of that significance should have been sent in a handwritten letter that took months to cross the ocean. But everything about this moral dilemma had once been impossibly, laughably futuristic. Frozen microscopic babies waiting to be brought to life.

She could be reading it right now. He tried to imagine his ex-wife’s face. What would she think of the word ‘love’?

He would never have said yes if he didn’t still love her.

The thought hit him like a punch in the nose. It wasn’t just about redemption, it was about love. Was the email he just sent his first ever act of unconditional love? The most unselfish act of his life? To zero out the most selfish one?

His apartment buzzer rang. He walked to the security monitor in a daze.

‘Hello?’ he said roughly.

A face loomed in the screen. He took an instant step back, appalled.

It was Savannah. What did she want? Something must have happened to his parents. Was his mother back in the hospital? Had his father hurt his knee again?

‘Oh, hi, Troy, it’s . . . ah, Savannah here.’ She leaned in even closer to the camera. ‘Your . . . mother’s friend?’ Her voice crackled through the speaker.

Your mother’s friend. That was a strange way to put it. He waited.

He pressed the speaker and said, ‘Are my parents okay?’

‘They’re fine. Can I come in?’

He looked around his apartment. He felt an overwhelming, irrational sense of resistance to the idea of Savannah being here, her rabbit-like eyes darting back and forth, evaluating and judging. He had no idea if that judgement would be negative or positive. All he knew was that she would be far too interested in everything she saw.

But he could hardly say no, not when she’d been taking care of his parents, preparing their meals, even doing their laundry, apparently. She’d cooked that extraordinary Father’s Day lunch: the best food Troy had ever eaten in his family home. She’d been the one to grab hold of Troy’s mother, supporting her safely to the floor when she’d fainted. She’d said, ‘Call an ambulance,’ while Troy’s family all froze, their minds still trying to catch up. Instead of Savannah feeling indebted to them, the family was increasingly feeling indebted to her, and that was making everyone feel off-balance. Amy, Logan and Brooke had all recently left messages for Troy saying to call them urgently regarding ‘the Savannah issue’ and he hadn’t yet called back.

But now Savannah was here. At his place. Why not his brother’s or sisters’? He wanted to say, You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m busy. I’ve got other things going on.

‘Come on up. It’s the top floor.’ He pressed the buzzer.

He looked around, trying to see his home through her eyes. Troy’s apartment was meant to be minimalist yet glamorous, luxurious yet understated, but was it possibly . . . pretentious?

For one terrifying moment a seismic tremor of doubt shook his entire belief system. His heart raced. Jesus. Pull it together. He was turning into his sister. Next thing he’d be in therapy.

He opened the door to his apartment, his most devastating smile locked and loaded.

‘Hi,’ said Savannah as she emerged from the lift. ‘Wow! Have you got this whole floor to yourself?’

‘Not quite.’ His devastating smile faltered. There were two apartments on the top floor of the building, although his faced north so it was the better one. Was she somehow making him feel bad about his multi-million-dollar north-facing harbour view apartment with a rooftop infinity-edged pool?

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘This is a nice surprise.’

‘Is it?’ said Savannah. She looked different. She had a kind of stylish bohemian look going on: yoga teacher with money.

‘You look great,’ said Troy. He felt an unexpected surge of attraction. She wore a long pendant with a greenish-coloured stone. It somehow complemented the trashy key necklace she always wore. Her hair was tied up in a half-up, half-down way that no longer reminded him so strongly of his mother’s style: not quite as voluminous.

‘Your mother bought me all this.’ Savannah gestured at her outfit. ‘Your mother has been very good to me.’

‘You’ve been good to her,’ said Troy, carefully, because she seemed to be making a point. ‘Can I get you a drink? Tea or coffee?’

‘No, I think I’ll just get straight to it,’ said Savannah.

‘Right then,’ said Troy. It was like this was a pre-arranged business meeting. He indicated his custom-made white leather couch. Amy had managed to get chocolate on it last time she visited. ‘Have a seat.’

She sat at the very edge of the couch, feet together, back straight. She adjusted the pendant between her breasts.

‘Extraordinary view.’ She swept her arm in a quick graceful arc, as if getting a required formal acknowledgement out of the way. She didn’t even look at the view.

‘What can I do for you, Savannah?’ He sat in the Eames chair opposite her and smiled. She didn’t smile back, which was disconcerting. People generally smiled back when Troy smiled.

If he’d had to guess, he would have said she was here to ask him to invest in a crummy small business venture with little hope of turning a profit, like a nail salon or a vegan café. Although she was a good cook, so maybe she could turn a profit on a vegan café?

She said, ‘While your mother was in hospital, and it was just your father and I alone, he . . .’

She stopped, lowered her eyes and fiddled with the green pendant, turning it this way and that as if she were considering buying it.

‘He what?’

She dropped the pendant and looked back at him steadily.

Troy’s heart stopped. ‘No.’

Her eyes held his, patiently, insistently, gently, like a doctor insisting you must understand that the cancer is incurable. ‘I’m sorry, but he did.’

‘He didn’t actually –’

‘He made a very specific request, which I refused.’

‘You must have misunderstood,’ said Troy.

‘There was no doubt,’ said Savannah. ‘I can give you his exact words if you like.’

Troy recoiled, held up his palm, tried to control his nausea.

‘I was really upset,’ said Savannah. ‘Because your parents seem so . . . happily married, and I really love your mother. I think she’s great. Truly. I thought your dad was great too.’ She sighed, grimaced. ‘I’ve been at sixes and sevens trying to decide what to do.’ She looked at the ceiling. ‘On the one hand I think she deserves to know the truth –’

‘No,’ said Troy. ‘I don’t think so.’

It was unbearable. He could not bear to imagine his mother’s pain, her shock, her shame. She would be so embarrassed.

How dare his father do this: his father who had spent Troy’s whole life sitting up there on his umpire’s chair, judging Troy’s every action.

‘I don’t understand how you could lose control of yourself like that,’ Stan had said after Troy jumped the net and attacked Harry for his flagrant cheating, propelled by white-hot rage. It was as though Troy had lost control of his bowels in public. ‘I just don’t understand it.’ Troy had seen that same disgust each time he transgressed throughout his life, except there was never again disbelief, just resignation, as if it were to be expected now, as if once again Troy had proven himself to be exactly as disgusting as his father knew him to be.

‘You’re a fool,’ his father had said when Troy cheated on Claire. ‘She was too good for you.’

‘I know,’ Troy had said. That’s why I did it, Dad. Before she noticed.

His father’s betrayal felt like his own betrayal, as if he had been the one to make a move on Savannah. Hadn’t Troy just moments ago felt a faint flicker of desire for this girl? He might have acted on the very same desire his father had acted upon, as his young house guest, young enough to be his daughter or even his granddaughter, walked past him in Troy’s family home. Did his father think Savannah would feel obliged? That he had some power over her because she had nowhere else to go? Because she’d already been knocked around by one guy? Did he forget that he was Stan Delaney, retired tennis coach in old-man slippers, not Harvey Weinstein in a bathrobe? Jesus Christ. Mum is too good for you, Dad.

Or did he think, No harm trying? Worth a shot? Because he didn’t get much these days? Oh, for fuck’s sake, now he was thinking about his parents having sex, and his father having sex with Savannah, and it was quite possible that Troy’s own sex life would be irretrievably damaged by this single moment.

Or was this just part of an ongoing pattern of behaviour? Had his father cheated before? It had always been a possibility in the back of Troy’s mind that the reason for their father’s disappearances all those years ago was another woman or even another family.

‘But it was always so random,’ Amy said, the one and only time they discussed it, when they were both at the right level of drunkenness to bring up their father’s former habit. ‘So arbitrary.’

‘Exactly,’ said Troy. ‘It seemed arbitrary to us because he needed an excuse to see his girlfriend. We were walking on eggshells trying not to upset him when he’d already decided ahead of time that something stupid and meaningless was about to upset him.’

‘That would be too cruel,’ Amy had said.

‘Well, it was cruel,’ said Troy, and he’d been surprised and embarrassed by the break in his voice. ‘What he did was cruel.’

But all that had happened such a long time ago, when everything was different: their clothes, their hairstyles, their bodies, their personalities. If he saw old footage of himself he couldn’t believe he’d ever spoken at such a high pitch, or with such an uncouth flat-vowelled drawl. His parents were no longer those people. Now they were smaller, weaker, less impressive, no longer in charge of anything, not even the tennis school. Once he’d run late meeting them for dinner and when he got there his eyes skimmed right on past the elderly couple in the corner, and he’d kept looking for his parents, his huge intimidating father, his energetic tiny mother, and then he saw the elderly couple waving at him, dissolving into his parents, like that optical illusion where you saw either the old hag or the beautiful girl and once you knew the trick you could see both: it became a choice.

He could choose to see a vile old sleaze making a move on a young girl or a pathetic elderly man trying to reclaim his lost youth. He could choose to see the father who had chosen to believe Harry Haddad over him or he could choose to see the father who appeared like magic, huge and hairy in his boxer shorts, there to slay the monster, the moment Troy screamed ‘Daddy!’ from his bed.

But then he grew out of his nightmares, and it was his mother who kept coming to his rescue after his dad gave up on him because of Harry fucking Haddad. It was his mother who charmed school principals and police officers. She was the one who helped get him back on the track that had led directly to this enviable life he now lived.

He had to ensure his mother never heard about what his father had done. He had to save her, the way his mother had always saved him, and in doing so he would give his father the pardon that he never gave Troy.

‘You must not tell my mother,’ said Troy.

‘Like I said,’ Savannah placed her hands on her knees, ‘I’m still trying to decide.’

And now he got it. Why she’d come to him and not one of his siblings, and why she was behaving like this was a business transaction.

She was here to make a deal.