My Father’s Eyes

BY NATHAN HOBBY, 1998

 

            Amber was crying again before I left. 

            Five PM, Thursday.  The agreed time.

            Pushing her from my mind and thinking of the money, I flick the tiny switch at the base of my neck and feel my consciousness recede.  I’m pushed into a corner of my brain as my father takes over my body.

            Before he died one month ago, he had a digital replica of his consciousness burned onto a sliver of silicone that is now embedded in my brain.  His will says that if I want to inherit his modest fortune, I have to switch him on for two hours a week until he asks me to stop. Otherwise I’d never be doing this.  No-one carries ghosts for the love of it unless they’re stupid or sentimental.

            Incredibly, my hands stay steady on the steering wheel.  People on the streets see me pass and remain oblivious to the turmoil inside my head.

            It is a small death,  dimming, slowing, rendered translucent, a peripheral to consciousness.   Handing over control.

            He speaks to me, his voice coming to me like one of my own thoughts:

            <Hello Ryan.>

            Dad.

            <It’s good to be back>

            I am silent.  Unlike me, when he’s switched off he doesn’t exist.

            <I really appreciate it, you know.  Once I get this... this business sorted, you can switch me off for good, and I’ll die content and you can have my money.>

            Thanks.

            I don’t encourage conversation; I’m sulking, as always.  The bastard.  Making me do this.

            He parks the car at the side of the road and the walks up the overgrown path.  He knocks on the chipped lime green door that I have come to know too well.   His unfinished ‘business’ - a plump, average looking woman who opens the door immediately.

            “Hello Janine.”

            She still hesitates, a little uncomfortable at this new face, before smiling and hugging him.  Through dulled sense perception, I feel her touch and I try to recoil but my body does not react.  Mercifully, she releases him.

            I have nightmares of her: I am in the bush, hunting, when this huge bear that I somehow know is her comes up and engulfs me in its embrace before I can shoot it.  And slowly I meld into its skin, become a part of it, and there’s no way I can escape.  Inside it, I am rendered mute.  I become stiflingly hot, my vision blurs and all my desire to hunt is sapped away.  I become a warm, fuzzy nothing.

            She repulses me; I tell myself that it isn’t me touching her, I try not to feel violated, raped, used.

            Am I betraying Amber?  She doesn’t like talking about it.  It’s driving a wedge between us, I’m sure.  I wish I loved her more.  I wish she needed me as much as Dad needs Janine.

            My father was a fifty year old school teacher when he died of cancer; Janine was the school nurse.   He retains the manner in his afterlife.   Always constructing long winded, awkward sentences; always so legalistic.  And now he is going through the same ritual he follows each week on these visits: into the sitting room, for a cup of tea, inane chat, all the time the both of them lusting after each other.   Always hiding themselves in convention.  They will not be consummated; will or no will, he’s not having sex with her in my body.

            The weather talk, again.   I sit in this corner of my brain watching, the tedious ritual like a bad soap opera I’ve seen a million times.

            “So, what have you been doing?” he asks her.

            “Oh... this and that,” she replies, and goes on to elaborate the repetitious goings on of her school, her craft club, her neighbours.

            But as much as I despise them, there’s something here I want.  The way they find it so enjoyable sitting here talking to each other.  How each other’s company is the best thing in the world.

            I think of Amber and the times we talk - when we have to, when we’re arguing.  Is there anything to us beyond sex?  We’ve been married a year... what about when that wears off?  What will we have left?

            Dad is holding her hand as they sit on the edge of the leather couch.  Tenderly, as if she’s a princess.

            Amber’s always so introverted, so cold.  My ice maiden, I call her, and it used to make me feel good, because I possessed her.  I had her body.  I thought I had melted her.

            “I love you,” Dad suddenly says, and grasps her, kissing her full on the lips.  Slight moisture, her face filling my vision.  With a terrible start I realise I am almost relishing it.  I gag.  Amber, I whisper to myself, Amber I’m sorry. 

            They break away.

            “Oh dear,” Dad says, looking to his watch, “I’ve really got to go.”

 

*

 

            I’m in the car on the way home, control returned to me, and I’m wondering where our love is going.  Are we even in love?  Would I come back just for her?  Just to talk to her?

            Would I wait for her if she died, wait for her to come for just a couple of hours a week?  Would I hold myself faithful for that?

            I pull up at our small unit in the outer suburbs.  I think of the inner city flat we’re going to buy when I inherit the money.  I think of how it’s all going to be worth it. 

            I push open the door.  She’s sculpting, again, on the kitchen table.  Her hands messy with clay, she looks up from the distorted, headless female torso before her.   I stand staring at it.  It frightens me.  For some reason it reminds me of the bear of my dreams.   The same potential... to consume.

            “N-nice,” I finally manage.

            “Thanks,” she says icily, “How was work?  Sell many cars?”
            “Good - a few.”

            I am walking away, dumping my brief-case down in the lounge.

            “And the other... the other thing?”
            I look over to her from my lounge chair.

            “Horrible.  It’s for my Dad, all right?  Since my Mum left he... he’d been looking for happiness.  If I can help him die truly happy because he’s found true love, then it’s worth it.”

            Her wet eyes turn away from me to focus intently on the sculpture.

            I lie.  I wish I was that loyal.  I do love him... but I’m too selfish to carry him just out of that.  It’s not stupidity or sentimentality that would make someone do that.  It’s sacrifice, sincerity.  Selflessness. 

            A minute later she suddenly says, “Nice?”

            And repeats - “You think my sculpture’s nice?”

            I sigh, turning down the trivision.  I can see we’re in for another argument.

 

*

 

            It is eight thirty pm, Tuesday and I am driving madly through traffic.  I left Amber at the dining room table, working furiously at her sculpture.  I don’t think she noticed me leave.  I’m going crazy. I keep thinking of Janine.

            I want to be loved, to love, properly.  I want to know what it really feels like.  Not secondhand tingling. 

            I’m in love with Janine I’ve decided.  It is not repulsion I felt, but attraction tempered by guilt because of Amber. 

            Well if I want to love Amber properly, I’ve got to see what it means.  What it’s truly like.  Or that’s how I rationalise it.

            I park outside her house and knock on the lime green door for the first time without having flicked the switch.  What if Dad finds out?  What if Amber finds out?  I ignore consequences; I stand here, waiting.  She opens the door and I am me as she hugs me to her bosom. 

            “You don’t usually come now,” she says, as we stand in the kitchen.

            “Ryan let me have some extra time,” I say, “I think he must be trying to butter me up for the will.”

            Does she know?  Is there anyway of telling?

            The kettle is boiling.  I am dizzy with the moment.  The experience, this woman here who truly loves me.  I inhale her scent.  It tells of fields of spring flowers, cool breeze at summer’s dusk.  It smells of her, of us.

            I stand behind her as she pours the kettle and put my arms around her bulging hips.  I feel her tense slightly to my touch then relax, like an old lover.

            “You know John,” she says, “I’ve really been needing to talk to you.”

            “Oh,” I say.

            I let go of her to pick up my cup of tea and follow her through to the lounge.  We sit down.

            “This is really hard for me,” she says.

            A moment’s silence as I sip at tea.  My heart is pounding fast.

            “I love you and I always will.  But I don’t think I can go on like this.”

            I feel like I’m about to faint.  She’s about to break it off!

            I’ve wrecked everything.  

            I panic.

            I flick the switch at the base of my neck, take the coward’s way out.  The world reels and jagged lines of white cut my vision.  Dad comes on line, bewildered as she continues.

            “This isn’t a proper relationship.  Not like this.  I think it’s best if we stop pretending.”

            More sips.  Even dulled, her scent becomes overpowering.  I can’t face this.  I can feel Dad’s heartache.

            “Does that... does that mean I should switch myself off... for good?” he asks, somehow orientating himself.

            Tears appear in her eyes.

            “I don’t know.  They... they could shelve you and in a couple of years they’ll be able to give you your own body.  But you can’t be living just for me.  Because we can’t have each other, not truly.”

            He says nothing.  He finishes the cup of tea that a minute ago was mine.

            “Maybe you’re right,” he finally says, and stands to leave.  He bends down as if to kiss her but then thinks better of it and pats her on the shoulder.

            “Thanks... for everything,” he says, and walks toward the door.

            In his head I am whispering, sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry.

 

*

 

            Stay on, I tell him as he gets into the car, I need to talk to you.

            He turns onto the freeway toward my house but I stop him.  I can’t go back there, not tonight.

             He stops at a rundown motel a few blocks from Janine’s house.   A bored receptionist signs him in and points him to a room.  It is bare, without even a tri-v, just an archaic small screen television sitting on the chest of drawers.  He turns it on without sound and  a twencen black and white melodrama flickers in the darkness.  He strips off my clothing and lies on the bed in just my underpants.

            He stares up at the ceiling and at last I feel able to ask him.

            How were you going to know when it was complete?  When you’d finished your business?

            He shrugs.

            <I was waiting for this, I guess.  For her to call it off.  I just wanted it to run its course, at least.>

            I’m shocked into momentary silence.  Suddenly love becomes more than distant... it becomes impossible.  More than anything I want to avoid ending up like him... but it seems inevitable.

            You know why I did it?  I thought you had true love!  I thought that was how it was meant to be.

            He begins to sob.

            <It was.  It was.  And now... and now I’ve had my turn.  It’s time for me to go.>

            He reaches for the switch to return me.

            No! 

            He pauses.  Lovers are kissing passionately on the TV screen.

            Dream my dreams for me.  At least for tonight.   I need to think.  I need to work everything out.  But I can’t be alone.  I need someone to talk to me.  But no-one’s really got the answers, have they?
            <I don’t know.  I’m not inside everyone else’s head.>

            But we are two.  For now, at least.  We’re ahead of the rest of them. 

            Silence.  My cliches turn and attack me.  It’s time to face things as they are. 

            I know that.  He knows that.

            I am the bear.  Not Janine.  Consuming myself, blinding myself with lies and lust, naivety and ignorance.  And now, to escape, I’ve got to find the truth. 

            So we lie on this double bed in the smell of starched sheets, a space beside us, father and son trying to piece together life, love and death.