The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope

7

‘You really should know how to discipline these kids better,’ I say to her.

‘Oh,’ she says, reaching out to me where I have a hold of Sophie, my hands in her hair. Up close it smells like coconut.

She is hopping from one foot to another as though trying to stand up taller so the way I’m pulling her hair hurts less. ‘Ow, ow, ow.’ Her voice is high and distressed and it should bother me more than it does, I guess.

Sophie shouldn’t have run off to the door. I have expressly forbidden them from moving. I would have thought that she would listen to my instructions but she didn’t. I feel anger surge inside me, and as I pull on her hair, and her face turns pale with pain, I wonder how hard I would have to pull to just yank out a clump of it. A shiver runs down my spine in the warm room as I watch the way her small face contorts. I should feel something but I don’t and I don’t know why. But I do know it’s not my fault. I wasn’t always this way.

‘Stop wriggling or I will pull out your hair!’ I yell and she stands still. I take a deep breath, and my thoughts stray to myself at this age, at five, and then at ten because ten is when I started to become this person, this man standing here, capable of hurting this child and feeling… nothing. When I was ten, everything began to change. I felt it, heard it and I watched it happen – slowly and painfully.

My parents finally got divorced when I was twelve years old. I remember the horrible sadness that hung in the air in our house – after they told me what was happening, but before he actually left. For the first time in a couple of years the house was quiet when they were both home. I was used to angry sniping and snide comments from them. Shouting and crying from her. Lies and denial from him. Both of them kept reassuring me that they loved me and that my life wasn’t going to change at all and that the divorce was not my fault. There was obviously some stupid manual they’d read. My life wasn’t going to change except my father would no longer be living with us. My life wasn’t going to change except my mother and I had to move into a small flat where my bedroom wasn’t actually a bedroom but rather an alcove with a hastily thrown up Gyproc wall. My life wasn’t going to change except I would now spend every second weekend with my father at his own hideous small flat where we would consume vast amounts of junk food and he would engage in a campaign against my mother that was so pervasive, it’s a wonder I ever agreed to go home again.

The reasons for their split have never been fully explained to me but I do know that it involved my father cheating more than once. I do know that money that was supposed to be for our family was used for other women, for gifts and expensive hotels. One Monday afternoon my mother and I stood at the checkout at the supermarket with a week’s worth of groceries only for my mother to be told she had insufficient funds to pay for the food. I remember her face, the way her eyes dropped to the ground and she flushed a bright red. Behind us a line of impatient shoppers sighed and clicked their tongues. ‘But… I just got paid,’ she said. She was working part time in a delicatessen, just to bring in some extra cash, and she was good at keeping track of her money. Not good enough though.

‘What do you want me to do?’ the woman at the checkout said, boredom painted across her face.

My mother grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the store, leaving all the groceries sitting in bags at the checkout. I felt sorry for her. But I was also angry at her for allowing it.

‘He’s such a bastard,’ she muttered as we drove home. What did she expect me to say to that? How was I supposed to answer her?

She was waiting for him as he walked through the door, crouched in her anger, and she leapt as he said, ‘Hello.’

He apologised. He always did, his shoulders rounding and his mouth drooping at the edges. But she was humiliated and furious and she wouldn’t let it go even though he got in the car and went late-night grocery shopping with another card. That night the fight went on for hours. I put on my headphones and cranked up my music, disappeared into another space so I didn’t have to listen. I hated them both.

Every time I heard them fight, I vowed that my life would be different. I was going to be a different man to my father and I was going to marry a woman vastly different to my mother, who seemed to me to be filled with pretty words about her love for me and empty gestures.

My dad wanted me to come and live with him.

‘If you lived with me,’ he would say, ‘you would be able to eat whatever you want. I wouldn’t care about homework; you’d be able to game as long as you wanted.’ It sounded as though living with him would be paradise. I was a thirteen-year-old kid. I didn’t know any better.

‘I want to live with Dad,’ I said to my mother. ‘He’s lonely.’

‘He’s not capable of taking care of you. He’s lonely and I understand that, but it wouldn’t be a good idea.’ She used her patient voice when she said this. I hated that voice, that smooth, quiet voice that meant she was trying to control herself.

‘Dad lets me game as long as I want to.’

‘That’s exactly why you shouldn’t live with him. Rules are there for a reason. You have to get through school and get into university.’ There was an edge to her voice as she struggled to keep herself from yelling.

‘I hate you.’

That always stopped her in her tracks. I would watch her bite down on her lip and shake her head, holding back on all the things she wanted to say to me. I knew the one thing she really wanted to say was, ‘I hate you too.’ I felt it coming off her. It was in the air.

Eventually all we did was fight. She wanted to keep me on the straight and narrow. She preached about school and grades and healthy food and he told me that life would be one big party, and even though I had some idea that it couldn’t just be a party, he was very persuasive. I kept at her.

When I was fourteen, she gave in. ‘Just six months,’ she said. ‘And you need to call me every day and come and visit every weekend.’ She dropped her eyes and I saw defeat.

I was so excited on the first night when I moved in. He ordered pizza and let me drink a whole beer. We talked about how great it would be to be together all the time. ‘Your life is your responsibility. If you want to attend school and do the work, that’s up to you. If you don’t, that’s fine. You clean up your own mess and you live your life.’ I was in heaven.

I went to school while he went to work, because it was something to do. I was happy. My friends thought I was the luckiest kid they knew, even if my clothes weren’t always clean. She rang me every night, and sometimes I took the call and sometimes I didn’t. When I didn’t, I would see a smile on his face, a small one like he was trying to hide it, but it was there. I understood on some level that he was using me to get at her and it was working, because she asked me to come home every single time, begged me, cried when I hadn’t spoken to her for days.

And then he lost his job and it all went to shit.

‘Please d––’ Sophie moans, her hands reaching for mine as my fist clamps tighter around her hair. Her voice is desperate and there is something, a small tug, a tiny spark of something inside me. But I know if she thinks Sophie has gotten to me, she’ll use that. I know her. And I need to know what Sophie said. I need to know if she was clever enough to say something when she ran to the door. Because if she was… Her soft curls are making my hand sweat but I can’t let go until I get the truth.