The Piper's Son

She glances up from her work as if to ask a colleague a question and he gives her the best smile he can, because she deserves it. And then she’s crying. Just crying and crying like everyone in his life does these days. He walks around her desk and hugs her. Vows there’ll never be a reason for him to treat her the way he has. Because he doesn’t want her crying like this ever again. It’s a different cry from the one when Joe died, and Tom knows it’s all about him.

Later, they go down to the cafeteria.

“Why doesn’t he come up to get you?” he asks.

“Because I’ve told him not to.”

“If he had the balls, he’d come anyway.”

She’s silent for a moment and shakes her head.

“You don’t understand, Tom.”

“Then explain it to me, Mum,” he says, frustrated. “Because I don’t get it. Did he screw around behind your back or something? Did he hit you? Fuck, did he hit you?”

“No,” she says. “No.”

She waves to someone over his head, with a forced smile. “I’ve always let him — no,” she corrects herself vehemently, “asked him, to make the decisions. The ones I couldn’t make. From the moment you were born, I’ve said, ‘You make the decision, Dom. Because I can’t. It’s too painful and I might make the wrong one.’ And that wasn’t fair to him because he had to make some pretty shitty ones, Tom. I just need to know that I’ve made this next one for all the right reasons. I can’t go back without forgiving him.”

“He hasn’t had a drink in more than half a year. And Bill and he are really good together these days, especially talking about Grandpa Tom Finch coming home, and I’ve even heard him talk about Joe with Georgie sometimes.” He lies about that one. His father never talks about Joe.

She’s shaking her head. “This isn’t about his drinking, or Joe, or Bill, or Tom Finch, or this marriage, even.” She looks so intense, but it’s the fierceness of love. How could two people who are in love as much as his parents contemplate a life without the other?

“This is about his son. He left you, Tom, and we almost lost you. I don’t know whether I can forgive him for that, and I know he can’t forgive himself.”

He feels like he can’t breathe and he’s covering his head because he just wants to yell, but it’s the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and he’ll probably have security on him in a moment.

She takes his hand, kissing it. “But he can’t do that without your help. He can’t do that with your silence. You need to find a way, Tommy. He’s broken without you.”

“How do you know? You don’t even speak to him on the phone.”

It was strange to have his parents needing something from him. Something this big. In the past, they needed silence from him if he was making a racket. They needed him to apply himself. “I need you to be sensible, Tom.” But not this need. Not the need to make everything right.

“I want to see Anabel,” he says quietly. He can hardly recognize his voice. “Can you get her out of school? I need to see her. Please.”

She’s beautiful and, God, he loves the fact that she still wears a ponytail and looks like a kid her age. She’s ru

They take the City Cat up the river and then they get off at Riverside and he buys her an ice cream and they talk about Georgie and the baby for most of the time. It makes him feel bad that he’s never expressed excitement about the pregnancy. He’s never seen it as anything but Georgie being depressed or not accepting Sam in her life again. But for a moment he sees it through Anabel’s eyes and nothing can be more joyous than that baby being born to them all.

“I’m working on J-Lo,” she says.

“How?”

“Every Thursday I log on to mycareer.com.au and download any Sydney job she’s qualified to do and then I forward it to her.”

He thinks for a moment. “Good work, 99.”

“And I’ve heard her ring a few people to ask if they’d be referees if she needs them.”

“Can I have a lick of your ice cream?”

“No, you have smoker’s tongue.”

“You’re a mean girl, Anabel Georgia.”

She pokes out her tongue and he puts his arm around her.

He knows he’s ru

“Tom?”

“Yeah?”

“I miss Daddy.”

So do I, he wants to say.

“Grandma Agnes says that he doesn’t deserve a second chance,” she says.

“Yeah, well Agnes of God should be a bit more forgiving.”

“Since he’s been . . . sober, he calls me every night.”

“What’s his take on Evil Trixie?”

She laughs and he’s glad to hear it.

“He said that sometimes people get frightened when someone new comes along and threatens the status quo and that I should make sure they feel as if there is nothing to fear.”

“Oh, please. What kind of crap advice is that?”

“Trixie and I are now good friends.”

“And the situation with Ginger and the social justice committee?”

“Collective bargaining, he reckons. The Ninja and I are negotiating.”

He’s looking at a miniature Georgie, who sounds like a miniature Dominic.

“I think he’s writing to J-Lo,” she says.

Tom looks at her. “Dad?”

She nods knowingly. “She comes home and she’s all, ‘Any mail?’” Anabel puts on a sweet falsetto voice that sounds nothing like his mother. “And then she disappears into her room and once I walked in and she was all . . .” Anabel does this thing where she’s impersonating a silent coy giggle.

“Don’t be bloody ridiculous. He doesn’t do letters. And she doesn’t . . .” He impersonates her silent coy giggle.

Anabel sighs. It’s an Agnes of God sigh down to a T.

“I’m telling you, Tom. Those kids are writing smut to each other.”

He’s killing himself laughing, but she looks sad for a moment and he knows this is where she starts falling to pieces. The one thing all three of them, four counting Georgie, have in common is making sure that Anabel’s okay, and he wants to make everything right.

“He told me about Grandpa Tom Finch and how he might be coming home,” she says, her voice wavering.

He nods.

“I told Pop Bill that if Grandpa Tom Finch comes home, I’m going to play his trumpet. To welcome him, you know. Do you think he’d like that, Tom?”

Tom doesn’t know whether she’s talking about Pop Bill or Grandpa Tom Finch.

“I think he’d love it.” He doesn’t even know how those words have come out.

She looks up at him. “I think Bill cried when I told him I would. I wish everyone would stop crying, Tom. Uncle Joe would be so angry about it.” But she’s crying herself now. “He’d be so angry at us, Tom, for crying so much when all he did was laugh.”

It’s silent in the car and he doesn’t realize until they reach Byron that he hasn’t said a word the whole time. They change drivers at Le

Because back then there was the promise of the next day when he drove back to Georgie’s and they all got together. All the Mackees and their friends to say “Hooray,” as Bill and Auntie Margie Finch, and the rest of those who came from the Burdekin, would say. “Hooray” to Joe, who was off to London to a teaching job. And Dominic stood on Georgie’s table while everyone told him to get down. “No, no, no. I’m making a speech here.” And he did. One of those speeches that only Dominic Finch Mackee could make. Full of guts and emotion and humor. Tom remembers grabbing his uncle and saying, “I kissed the psycho Tara Finke last night. Can you believe it?”