By DAMIAN WEST
It’s just on dawn, near freezing, blowing dogs off chains in the food pantry queue as Matt, shivering softly, stands huddled whilst praying all the while to go unrecognized by the team he once managed and local community he once served. Not to leave his prayers to chance or God alone, Matt’s unkempt beard, XXL puffer jacket and beanie drawn down below his eyebrows all play together in purposeful and dishonest harmony to add 30 kilograms to his wasted frame. Meanwhile he trusts his shivering for want of warmth is enough to disguise his shaking for want of drink.
As much as the drink, he pines for his son as he sifts through cellophane fragments to recall what he can about him which now, after three years, is not much. Eight years old now? Still living in Melbourne? He’s no longer sure. He recalls their last days together though with a clarity that leaves him dumbfound.
The Toyota hatch had skidded and lurched and finally halted in the loose gravel carpark, kicking up small plumes of dust that took a moment to settle while, inside, Matt had seized the moment to heel-rake beneath the seat the bottle of vodka and half deck of Marlboros that he knew this time enjoyed a shared destiny with all the other drugs now and for all eternity that would not include passage through his own inner workings.
Comforted by this silent affirmation, Matt looked up suddenly in the way of someone who senses they are being watched. The small boy’s hands were pressed against the glass, his face beaming. Jesus! Matt regathered himself and smiled a forced smile that was soon inhabited by authenticity and truth as the final glass slither of separation fell down surrendering itself to a portal of loving embrace.
“Daddy! You’re here, you’re really here!
Darling, I can’t believe it! I’ve missed you to the moon and back a million times!
It went on like this for a long moment ‘til the boy turned to his daddy’s feet.
Daddy, what were you kicking under the chair just then?
What? Nothing bubba, was just stretching my legs.
No Daddy, I saw you. You were kicking something under the chair.
What? Really? Oh, maybe there was just a bit of rubbish there? I don’t know.
Matt, still surveying his son’s eyes, saw the love break free from its taproot and rise above itself to shimmer and lie like a desert mirage as the anarchic network of copper wiring in his brain grew tight and hot and shot sparks wherever it touched itself. The copper tangle knew that other objects besides the booze and smokes must exist beneath the seat somewhere as Matt now found himself slumped over his own guts like a question mark and set his right arm free to go fishing as his face went red.
Let’s just see what we’ve got here….
The hand repelled glass, cardboard (too risky), soft plastic, before hooking onto the familiar feel of newspaper or equivalent print propaganda.
What’s this? Here we go. Wednesday’s newspaper from up in Brisbane. That’s what you must have seen me kicking around.
Can we read it together, Daddy?
Sure, inside the house we can. Now can you please tell Mummy I’m here?
The synaptic copper tangle now angled for time. Matt peeled open the large black bag, first lining its insides with pages from the old newspaper he had just recovered from beneath the seat before placing it splayed at his feet. Quickly, Matt felt for the bottle and smokes, feeding them into the bag with feline finesse and concealing them in newspaper he wrapped around them before pinching the long ends together into a seam like a pork dumpling. Matt drew two more page from inside the tabloid, scrunching them loosely and stuffing them on top. Now he set to work filling the remaining void with assorted car-trash, the accumulated detritus of two days on the road – fast food wrapping, soft drink cans, receipt dockets, local rags from two horse towns, travel brochures promoting big things like big prawns and big bananas and such. He sealed the contents with a firm double knot and got out from the car with the bag plus two large suitcases in tow, heaving his load towards the front porch where the small boy and his mother now waited.
You’re still alive! How was the drive?
Ahhh, you know. Long. Hey, I’ve got this rubbish here. Where are the bins?
Around the corner there. You can take them out too. Bin day tomorrow.
Recycling too?
Yeah, both.
The news of impending bin collection left Matt feeling he’d just added the final stroke to an utter masterpiece. He’d won. The love now came back down to defy words and concepts as the copper wire grew cool. Matt grinned as he hauled those bins to the kerb and could see and hear and smell those trucks as they grumbled up to extend down to the bins their robot arms in invitation to come play and to help solve problems neither would ever understand. He went inside, showered, ate well, and fell asleep with his son in his arms knowing it was all ahead of him.
***************
Three days later, Matt found himself rummaging mindlessly through a small pile of papers on the lounge room coffee table as the small boy mindlessly watched cartoons before bedtime. Matt found himself mindlessly filter through the rental agreement for his tentative new home and soaking up, mindlessly, strings of words here and there before a single word sent him wild.
What the fuck is Johnno’s name doing on this thing?
Stop going through my stuff. It’s got nothing to do with you.
You’re having a laugh, right? My brother being on your tenancy agreement has nothing to do with me.
Jenna fixed her gaze on an imagined dot between Matt’s eyes and took it up an inch.
Okay, Matt, since you really have no idea how the world works, I need you to shut up and listen for once. We had to get away from you. I refuse to raise my boy around a dad who does nothing but get wasted and mouth off all day every day. You haven’t worked in eighteen months. I had to leave my job to get Ryan away from you. You know what the rental market is like now? Actually, you probably don’t. It’s fucked. I would have had zero chance getting this place alone. I went to Johnno, not the other way around. He hasn’t given me a cent. He just helped bolster the application, but says he’s always there if we need anything. He’s heartbroken by what’s going on. He’s been awesome.
“Awesome”, ha ha! Yeah, we all know how fucking “awesome” Johnno is. But thanks for the reminder. Such a fucking legend, that bloke, hey.
Matt, I’m giving you this chance. You’re already ranting like a drunk which scares the shit out of me. I need to see that you’re really up to this like you say you are. Please pull your head in. Ryan needs you. I don’t need you, but Ryan does. That’s it.
Through muffled vitriol, Matt made tracks out the front door. Outside, the night air played cruel tricks. The copper hissed and sizzled. He said shut up to the night and the moon and made room to celebrate consciously that at least, in this hour of humiliation, the means to him confirming Jenna and Johnno’s insultingly low expectations now lay miles away buried beneath a mountain of land fill. Scanning the streetscape, he found solace in the bins still sitting kerbside. He imagined their dark hollow insides, their affiliate sounds that could signify nothing else in the whole world – the lid closing on an empty bin, the rumbling empty bin pulled up a driveway in the early evening. He sniffed at the air and softened. The copper cooled as he started towards those empty bins to retrieve them.
***************
He reached for the general bin first, hauling it up inside the gate and leading it into the small passage at the side of the house where he had first found it three days ago. He returned for the recycling bin with its distinguished yellow lid look, and on taking up the handle was hit by its heaving weight. The implications of this data were processed in two phases over the course of a second. The bin remained unemptied. Jenna got the weeks wrong. By extension, his black bag of tricks remained in situ.
Matt’s heart suddenly raced. He ran dizzy and hot, euphoric and ill. Ryan briefly entered the internal melange. Matt pushed him aside to lock into the fight. He conjured Jenna and then Johnno, and worked himself into a frenzy of utter indignation that only a bottle of vodka could fix. The bin! The fucking recycling bin! Could she for once in her life just not fuck up with the things she thinks and says. Who fucking dresses her in the morning? Seriously! It’s her fault I’m gonna do this! No wonder she’s got Johnno lingering in the background. All this independence fucking mythology. Jesus H Christ. They’d make a fine couple, the idiot and the rescuer, both up on their high horses all day! Look what they think of me while they go ahead and fuck up all over the shop. If that’s what they want to think of me, well fuck them.
Then, out of nowhere, the pragmatist addict spoke up to remind Matt that there was plenty at stake here, to get a grip quick smart. Matt looked at the bin for a very long time. Just looked. Didn’t touch. Looking is okay since he wasn’t going to do this anyway, so it didn’t hurt to look, but even in this moment he reeled with guilt and shame. He summoned Jenna’s transgression once more to rekindle the rage and quiet the shame. He cast a furtive glance over his shoulder to the house where silhouettes of Jenna and Ryan played on the curtains. To feel such shame when nothing has even happened, he thought. He wheeled the bin back to its station flying high on fresh dread. He opened the lid, pulled out the black bag, placed it at his feet and quickly unknotted it before plunging his arm deep through Coke cans, chip packets, magazines and old newspaper to reach his pork dumpling prize. His heart pounded as he took hold of the bottle before returning the black bag to the bin. His fingers, slaves to the fiend, worked fast on the lid in a bid to outrun his closing conscience, and he soon emptied three large swigs that at once put a lid on the terror and the fear. He breathed slow and deep to regain his breath as he felt the warmth spread across his chest and rise into his head to send it swimming amongst the stars. He opened the cigarette packet to find a lighter inside. He thought to light up but told himself the smell of smoke would be a dead giveaway, and instead rewarded this act of self-discipline with two more swigs. He screwed the lid on tight and stashed the bottle and smokes behind the bin and made his way back inside.
Jenna, I’m really sorry. I’ve been mulling over what you said before, and you’re right. I know I’ve been fucking lousy and that you and Ryan both deserve much better. I’ve been working hard on things the last six months, I need you to know that I’m committed to staying sober down here, I’ll do anything it takes. And I’ll get a job and provide for us all. You know I’m better that what I have been. You and Ryan are all that matter to me, you’ll soon see babe, just give it a minute.
Matt turned to Ryan who was now back on the couch, and commenced singing “Michael Finnegan”, slow as can be at first and in the thickest Irish accent he could muster. Ryan giggled. By the tenth repetition, words and spit flew from both their mouths, and tongues got tied and contorted as they rolled around the floor laughing in fits. Jenna laughed too.
At the end of the song, Matt, talking to no one in particular said that he had a few calls to make, that he would be back soon. He went straight outside to the bottle and took another great swig. And then another two. And then he backed her up for good luck. He put the bottle back behind the bin but like a person subliminally unhappy with the levelling of a newly hung painting, returned right away to take another great gulp before screwing the lid back on tight and putting the bottle back behind the bin like he meant it. He gazed at his friend the moon and wondered to himself what all the fuss was about. He stepped back towards the front door and, half tripping on the top stair, staggered to a stop in front of Jenna and Ryan.
Let’s dance! Ryan, go grab the iPad.
Yay! Daddy, play that song you played in the car yesterday!
Sure mate.
Matt did not notice Jenna slip away from the room as he orbited the iPad hand-in-hand with Ryan in wobbly off-kilter circles of laughter, missed steps, slurred song lyrics, and tumbling about. After a few songs, Matt turned to spot Jenna sitting at the kitchen table nursing a large glass of wine. He walked over to join her with hands clasped together firmly behind his back and eyes fixed on his leading toe with each step.
Jenna, you’re having a drink.
Yeah, I thought I might as well join the party.
Sorry?
Knock it off, Matt. I know exactly what you’ve been up to the whole time. You even reeked like last night’s grog the moment you first got here. You’ve been holding onto some secret stash somewhere, conning yourself into believing you’d never touch it. You’ve been trying really hard, I know. Then the slightest thing upsets you and off you go.
Matt stared at the clock above the kitchen sink trying to summon something.
But it’s not like that! I mean, I arrived with some left over in the car, but threw it in the bin the moment I got here. You told me both the bins would be gone the next day. I thought this whole time it was gone already. It was only just before I found it was still there and I was worked up at the time, you saw it. Honest to goodness babe, that’s what happened. I’m not going back.
None of that matters, Matt. If it weren’t that, there would have been some other reason. I’ll be cutting ties with you forever soon Matt. I’ll give you enough time to get settled here and find your own place so you can spend time with Ryan, but after that, we’re done.
Matt’s heart broke free from its chemical restraint and into an unruly gallop as he marched outside to whip himself into a stratospheric outrage. He emptied the bottle into himself half a glass at a time. No longer with the awareness of space or time to care for his surrounds, Matt took the drink to the front porch in plain view of Jenna and Ryan where he also lit a cigarette, taking deep heavy draws between supplementary sips. He flicked the cigarette’s dregs onto the gravel driveway and eyed the dwindling embers, feeding himself the line that when the last of the orange gives way to dark, he’ll be ready for life come what may.
He took a deep breath and told himself to speak from the diaphragm to convey authority and trust.
You know what’s seriously unfair about this whole situation Jenna?
He took a step forward but before he could continue his sermon, kicked Ryan’s latest Lego city creation into a pitiful heap of bricks and yellow body parts. Ryan wailed. Jenna brought him in to her chest as he continued to rise and fall in gentle sobs.
Daddy, you know what Uncle Johnnie said to me?
Ryan looked at his hands.
No, Ryan, I don’t know. What did Uncle Johnnie say to you?
Matt’s present lived experience of injustice and the worst kind of systemic cruelty would not play second fiddle to broken Lego dreams. His peerless sense of logic and grasp of human morality would supersede.
Uncle Johnnie thinks that drinking alcohol and smoking is really bad for you, and he thinks you should stop doing it forever.
Okay, Ryan. And do you know what I think about your Uncle Johnnie?
No.
Well, Ryan. I’m bigger than your Uncle Johnnie, I’m stronger than your Uncle Johnnie, and if I wanted to, I think I could kick the fucking shit out of your Uncle Johnnie with both hands tied behind my back!
Matt!
Ryan screamed the kind of scream that said he now saw the unvarnished truth behind an illusion he had worked so hard to preserve. A pillar of his worldview lay in ruins. He saw the treachery and manipulation and the cruelty, and on top of the bottomless hurt he felt, was flooded with an immense, wordless sense of shame that started from his tummy and went everywhere.
You’re a fucking arsehole, Matt. You’re sleeping on the couch, and tomorrow you’re gone. I don’t care where you end up, that’s your business.
Jenna disappeared with Ryan into her room while Matt took his business back to the front porch where he worked on the remaining half bottle. The booze had him bounce between remorse, indignation and grandiose plans and visions until the blackout drunk took hold, transporting him to the coach, laying him down, and cloaking him for the night in its motionless, timeless, amnesic brand of darkness.
***************
Matt did not leave the house the next day nor did Jenna ask him to. He made the next ten days without a drink, and Jenna had nearly reached the cusp of hope reborn until, on the 11th day, Jenna was called at work by Ryan’s school teacher, concerned that Matt had not arrived at 3pm to collect him. The time was now 4:30pm. Jenna left work to collect Ryan and arrived home at 6pm to find Matt unconscious on the lounge room floor surrounded by bottles. Matt left quietly later that evening after sobering up.
Abandoning his car in Jenna’s driveway, Matt phoned Johnno and borrowed cash for a return flight to Brisbane where he was promised some work by an old acquaintance. But once in Brisbane, the contact could not be reached, and soon the line was disconnected altogether.
He reached out to old drinking friends to find most of them had alternately sobered up or degenerated to the point of living in piss-soaked men’s hostels and halfway houses. He tramped about bunking for a night here or two nights there, begging for smokes and earning a buck for tawny however he could. Wherever he went he found his former networks reduced to cobwebs while his new networks were made of cobwebs to begin with; mere windows into a tedious dystopia of broken dreams and delusion. How quickly the days turned into weeks turned into months he found as his teeth cracked and consciousness crackled.
***************
At this moment Matt returned to himself, shivering in the queue for food hampers at the neighbourhood centre he had once managed. He had not intended to come here, but the location aligned with his plans for the day. Last night, Matt was hit by a new resolution to sober up for good. This was followed with the memory of a local Catholic priest who, having understood Matt’s demons and holding Matt’s service to the community in high esteem, had earlier offered to get him into a six-month rehabilitation program and finance it himself. Matt had learnt the priest was still serving the same parish around the corner from the old neighbourhood centre. He cried softly with this new hope as he waited and thought of Ryan.
Mathew Brady? Is that you? No way! It is!
The voice belonged to Michelle, one of Matt’s former employees who now, as it turned out, ran the centre.
Jesus Chris, Matt, you’re not looking so great. What the fuck’s going on? There’s gotta be a big story going on here. Look, I knock off early today at noon. Hang around here, then let’s head back to mine. I’m feeling thirsty. You look like you could use a good sesh yourself. We can get on it like old times! And we’ll get you back on your feet. You can stay with me as long as you need to, okay?
Copper tingling, Matt now thought of nothing but the drink.
BAD ORIGAMI 