Letters to Claire

Sunday came. It was Marnie's final full day at the farm. I'd be staying for the next week, as Luther's birthday was in a few days and my family wanted to be there to celebrate it, but I knew it would be quieter and less fun without the girls around.

Ryan still hadn't responded to me. My phone had rung earlier that day and I'd thought it was him, but it was actually Claire's parents, asking if they could have Luther for a day. I'd agreed to take him around Monday night, so he could have a sleepover at their house and spend Tuesday morning with them. I don't dislike Claire's parents, and they don't seem to dislike me. Luther loved them, and I knew he'd be excited about going over.

I probably would have procrastinated about calling Ryan for a few more days, but if Luther was gone, I wouldn't have minded going shooting. I knew I'd be rusty as fuck, but I'd heard whispers of rabbits in a nearby area, and bunnies have always been a favourite target of mine.

Just before lunch, I tried calling Ryan. His phone went to voicemail so I left him a pretty short, blunt, to the point message. I told him I didn't give two shits about his personal feelings towards me, but I wanted my rifles back.

After lunch, Marnie, me and the kids all fell asleep, in various rooms and in various positions. It was a warm afternoon and we were all still exhausted. Anyone with kids knows how rare it is that they fall asleep at a convenient time but we had three kids asleep within half an hour of each other.

Marnie and I had a quick fuck, not worth mentioning really, but it did what it was supposed to, and almost immediately afterwards, we fell asleep in each other's arms.

Luther was the first to wake. It was after five and my head was a bit groggy at first, but overall, I felt a million times better. An afternoon nap goes either two ways; it makes you feel shit, or it makes you feel great.

Over the next half hour, everyone else stumbled out of bed. I thought about dinner. Marnie been really good about keeping us all fed, and always told me not to help, so I knew that if I wanted to give her a break, I'd have to take her out.

I also wanted to give her a good send off. I knew it would be at least a week before I saw her again.

'I reckon you should let me take us out to dinner,' I remarked. 'We can go somewhere local, or somewhere in Toowoomba. You wouldn't have to dress up.'

'It's ten to six,' she replied doubtfully. 'Even if we left now, it'd be past seven before we got served.'

'I'm not hungry, and the kids haven't started asking for food yet,' I pointed out.

'Fair enough,' she replied. She gave me a smile. 'Sounds good. I'll go and put a clean nappy on Jazz, a clean shirt on Edith, and I'll try and get myself presentable. I'll be ready to go in fifteen.'

'Sure,' I agreed.

The kid and I left the house looking more or less reasonable. Marnie looked good, though; she'd put on some make-up and was wearing a pair of jeans that were tight enough to show off her bum, and I immediately started thinking about what I might be able to persuade her to do later that night. She knew what I was thinking, I could tell from the way she smiled at me, but it was okay, it was all okay. A few days spent in close quarters with someone will teach you a hell of a lot about them.

We went to a RSL for dinner. It was nice and simple, and I knew there'd be a decent kid's menu. Sad, really, when you start thinking less about how much drinks cost and more about the availability of chicken nuggets, but good, too, because it means you have a family.

There were lots of other kids around. There were quite a few of them sitting at a table alongside ours, part of a family gathering, and somehow Edith and Luther got talking to them. Within ten minutes Marnie's daughter and my son were sharing iPads with them. This left Marnie and I alone at our table with Jasmine, who was perched on her mother's knee, surveying the room.

Marnie reached over and touched my hand. 'Thanks for inviting Edie, Jazz and I out to the farm. The girls have loved it. There's so much space. We don't even have a backyard that's safe to play in. We only have four foot fences and one of our neighbours has a dog that barks and froths at the mouth every time we go outside.'

'Thanks for coming along,' I replied. 'It's been a lot more fun having you around. Normally, by day two I'm bored shitless.'

Marnie stared at me thoughtfully. It always disconcerts me when a woman stares at me. They get a certain expression on their face and you get the gut feeling they're thinking about something deep and meaningful.

'What is it?' I asked.

She leant over and touched the collar of my shirt. 'You look really nice tonight,' she said. 'That shirt suits you.'

It wasn't until that moment that I remembered the shirt was one of the last things Claire had bought me.

'Did your wife buy it for you?' Marnie guessed.

Damn she was perceptive.

I nodded. 'Yeah.'

'She had good taste.' Marnie adjusted Jasmine's position. 'Am I like her? Claire?'

'I suppose so, in some ways. In others, no, not at all. You're both very warm, very caring. I'm going to sound like a pig, but I love watching women cook.'

She shrugged. 'I love it when a man does the washing up afterwards.'

'Yeah, well, what can I say? I have to try and offer you something, right?'

'I could say the same thing about myself,' she replied. She took a sip of water. 'I'm about to ask you a question and it potentially has an answer I'm shit-scared of.'

'No worries,' I replied, thinking 'oh fuck, here we go'. 'What is it?'

'How old are you?'

That was the last thing I'd been expecting. 'Twenty-five,' I replied.

She winced. 'Ouch. I'm thirty-one.'

'I figured that.'

'Until I met your father, I assumed you were around my age.'

'Most people do,' I agreed. 'Most of the women I've been with have been older than me. Claire was three years' older than me.'

'Does it bother you?'

'No. You?'

'I feel guilty, like I'm cradle snatching.'

I laughed. 'I'm not eighteen. I'm old enough to make big boy decisions, Marnie.'

'Still,' she said, blushing a bit. 'Oh fuck. Twenty-five. You're a bloody infant.'

I laughed again, because I sure as shit didn't feel young.

'So,' she said. 'What's the deal with the farm? Are you supposed to go back and run it when your father dies? Or is one of your brothers going to do it?'

It was a reasonable question, all things considered. You'd want to know something like that about a potential partner, wouldn't you? And yet, my skin crawled, not because I'd have to reply, but because I'd have to explain things that made me uncomfortable. Difficult things, private things. I was grateful the kids were still occupied at another table.

'My brothers won't go back,' I replied. 'The eldest one is a vet, and, uh, let's just say he and my father have some differences in opinion about farming practices.'

'You side with your father?'

'How'd you guess?' I grinned.

'The expression on your face.

I shrugged. 'Animals are there for eating, wearing and keeping us company, depending on the species and the human's need. It's as simple as that. I'm not having a shot at my brother; he's got a right to his opinion, and he does a lot of good stuff. He volunteers in indigenous communities, and goes and desexes and vaccinates camp dogs for free. He does this in his own, unpaid, time. He puts his money where his mouth is and I can't knock him for that. I, on the other hand, think if you aren't going to do look after a dog, and you can't find a better home for it, do the right thing and shoot it. Don't wait for a stranger to come and help you out.'

'Interesting.'

'What part?'

'All of it,' she said. 'Do you argue with your brother?'

'No.'

She nodded thoughtfully 'There's another adult brother, isn't there?'

'Yeah, but he and Dad barely tolerate each other.'

'Fair enough. So when the time comes for your father to step back, it will be you, or one of your father's new kids, taking over. Most likely you, though, right? That's what the farmhands suggested.'

'Really? They spoke to you about this?'

She shrugged. 'They asked a lot of questions about how I liked it out here, and when I said it was nice, they said 'good, because Neal will take over one day'.'

'Wishful thinking and sheer gossip,' I corrected. 'I lived at the farm after Claire died. It was hell.'

Marnie was puzzled. 'Why?'

'Because for all of my life, my father's been an alcoholic, and for all of my life, it's been up to me to clean up after him. I'm not giving you some sob story, so don't take it that way, but I'm fucking fed up to the gills with his drinking. I lived with him from the time I was six until just after I turned nineteen. Every night, he and I would go to my grandparents' house for dinner. I'd eat, he'd drink. By the time we walked back to our house, he was half-pissed. By the time I went to bed, he was a mess. And he'd keep drinking all night, up until ten or eleven at night, and then he'd pass out.'

'Christ,' Marnie swore.

'He drank and he drank and he drank and he drank. He never cleaned the house or washed my clothes. He never parented me. He just existed in his own, private existence, and it was up to me to pretend that everything was okay. It was up to me to hide the worst of it. When his parents died, he'd been working on the farm for over twenty years, and still didn't know what to do, or when to do things, not because the information wasn't available to him, but because somebody had always covered for him.

There was a Christmas where I was nineteen and living with Claire, and he got drunk and tried to get one of his mates to kill him. His friend ended up bringing him around to our house. That's what we all want, right? A drunk, suicidal parent being dumped on your footpath on Christmas. I know I sound like a cunt. I know he loves me. And for a while, around the time he met the woman who's now his wife, it seemed he'd cleaned up. But when I moved to the farm after Claire died...' I trailed off.

'...he started drinking again,' Marnie guessed.

I nodded. 'He'd drink and tell people he'd been with me, talking about Claire, when really he'd been hiding out in a shed getting pissed. He'd leave the empty bottles in my bin.'

'Oh God.'

I was telling her things I'd never told anyone else. It hurt, but it was a relief. 'The fucked up part is that I feel like me losing my wife was nothing to him but an excuse for him to drink.'

The last statement was so raw and painful that I couldn't hide the hurt and anger I felt. Oh, I was bitter all right. I was bitter.

'Oh sweetheart,' Marnie said, leaning over and kissing my forehead. She moved Jasmine to one arm and used her free one to hug me. 'I'm so sorry. I had no idea.'

'It's not your fault. It just... if we're honest, it pisses me off. And it pisses me off that everyone who did understand something was going on, has at one stage or another asked me what it was really like and I've had to lie and say 'not too bad, it was worse than it looked', just so they could go home feeling warm and fuzzy.' I shook my head angrily. 'That's why while I'll visit my father, and I love him, I'll never run that farm. Ever. I don't care if it gets sold. I don't care if one of Dad's new kids takes over. But I, personally, wont' have anything to do with it.'

'I completely appreciate why.'

The conversation had stirred up a lot of emotion, but I felt better for telling her. Truthfully, I felt relieved. I'd known that sooner or later, she'd start asking questions, and that there would be no room for lies or glossing-over of facts.

~~~~~~~

Our meals were ordered, served and eaten. The kids were still alarmingly alert, so neither Marnie nor I was in a hurry to leave.

Luther said he wanted to go to the bathroom. I got up and took him to the restaurant toilets. Someone had just finished making a fucking mess of a stall, and Luther downright refused to piss because of the stink in the air. It was a righteous fucking hell of a smell, so I understood.

We went to the toilets in the bar. There was a man at the urinal but I barely noticed him.

'Ryan,' Luther announced.

The kid was obviously yet to learn that interrupting someone mid-piss wasn't cool, but he was correct in his identification of the man; it was Ryan. My friend -- if I could call him that -- glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes widening.

'Luther needs to piss,' I said simply.

I tried to lead Luther into a stall. My son can and will pee in a public toilet if there's no trough, but given a choice, he'd rather pee 'with the big boys'. He was unimpressed that I was trying to get him to pee in a stall when there was a urinal available, and was very vocal in his disapproval, but I refused to give in.

After much coaxing, he weed in the toilet. Success. I decided to take the opportunity to piss, then we went out to the basins to wash our hands. I'd thought Ryan would have been long gone, but to my surprise, he was waiting by the handbasins.

'Cruising tonight, are we?' I asked. 'Out to suck some d-i-c-k?'

He gave the smallest snort of amusement. 'No. I wanted to speak to you. I got your message. Got both of them, actually. I just didn't know how to respond. I thought you might be ready to smack my head in.'

'Nope.' I held Luther up so he could reach the soap dispenser. 'Just wanted my rifles back. I appreciate you holding onto them, but if I'm not ready for them now, I never will be. '

'Yeah, no worries. They're at Simon's house. I'll get him to drop them around.'

'Sure, sounds good,' I agreed.

'I heard you were seeing someone,' he said.

'Marnie. I'm here with her and her daughters tonight.'

We fell silent. I finished washing Luther's hands, then washed mine. You never wash your hands quite so fastidiously and regularly as when you have a child.

I turned to Ryan. 'I'll see you around.'

'Yeah, sure,' he agreed.

He seemed depressed.

I know that in most circles, I'm seen as a peacemaker. Maybe I just can't walk away from people who seem genuinely unhappy, because my father always seemed unhappy and it pains me that people are depressed by life. I don't think I've ever been genuinely 'depressed'. I was depressed that Claire died, and grieved long and hard, but it wasn't a state of mind that I felt I'd never escape from.

'You alright?' I asked.

He sighed tiredly. 'I've made a mess of things and I don't know how to fix them. My boss told me to be back at work tomorrow morning if I wanted to keep my job, and I just can't find it in me to get in the car. My old man's pissed off with me. Georgie's told me it's over until I can sort myself out. I dunno. What's the point of any of this?'

'How 'bout you come back to the table with me and Luther?' I asked. 'We'll see what we can figure out.'

'You sure mate?'

'Sure,' I agreed. 'No point dwelling on the past, is there?'

Ryan came back to the table with Marnie, the kids and me.

'Marnie, this is Ryan, Ryan this is Marnie,' I introduced.

Marnie had no knowledge of what had transpired between Ryan and I, nor about Georgie's accusation. It's not exactly the sort of thing you tell a woman, is it? But she smiled at him and shook his hand, while he eyed her curiously, obviously not expecting her to look the way she did.

She was a pretty woman without make-up, but with it, she was really noticeably attractive. The tatts didn't seem so out of place, either, and she was good at getting along with a wide range of people. The principal at the school admired her, and the farmhands thought she was good value. Let's be blunt here, if she didn't have two kids, she'd have had no need to be dating a bloke like me.

'Sorry to Gatecrash,' Ryan apologised.

'The more the merrier,' she replied. 'We'll see how long you last before the kids start driving you mental.'

'Nah, they're all good,' he said. 'I was just sitting at the bar, trying to work up the motivation to get in my car and drive four hours to work.'

'Four hours? That's a hell of a drive,' Marnie agreed.

Ryan could it in a grader for twelve hours a day, so four hours on the road was theoretically nothing. It was his mental state that made it impossible. That, and the fact that he smelt of booze. He was too drunk to be driving anywhere.

'My girlfriend broke up with me,' Ryan explained.

Marnie grimaced. 'That's pretty shit.'

'It happens a lot. On, off, on, off,' he said.

I inwardly groaned. Ryan loves to talk about Georgie to anyone who'll listen. It's not just his friends who have to hear about his relationship woes, but anyone who doesn't manage to walk away or change the subject the moment he brings it up. I knew Marnie was about to receive the full back story.

To prevent either Edith or Luther hearing a conversation that wasn't fit for little ears, I set them up with their iPads as Ryan began to detail his relationship's failures and triumphs. Bless Marnie, she had the patience of a fucking saint. If one of her girlfriends had started talking to me about her ex-boyfriend, I probably would have said 'yeah' in the kind of tone that made them shut up, but Marnie let Ryan talk.

'Sometimes the things you're talking about are signs that a relationship's not going to work out,' Marnie suggested. Jasmine was starting to make 'feed me' noises, and Marnie plucked her out of her high chair. 'That's how it was between Jasmine's father and me. I thought I could fix our problems, but I couldn't. He didn't want me to fix them.'

'But I've tried really hard,' Ryan replied meaningfully.

'Yeah, same,' Marnie agreed wryly. 'I decided to give my ex a baby. Let's just say as far as lousy, ill thought out, stupid plans go, that one pretty much takes the cake. Needless to say, it didn't make him love me. Sometimes, chasing after someone and giving them too much just makes them take you for granted, and causes you to do really stupid shit. I'm not saying that's what you did; just that's what happened with me.'

Jasmine was clawing at her top, so Marnie adjusted it, unclipped her nursing bra and attached her child to her nipple. She'd stopped being self conscious about it around me, and at the farm -- no one there gave two shits, nor had anyone given her a second glance. The only person who'd commented on it was one of the older men, who'd remarked that it must've been tricky for her to continue nursing after returning to work.

Ryan didn't travel in circles where women routinely, openly breastfed. He turned to me with a grimace and cocked his head in Marnie's direction, as if I'd somehow failed to notice she was lactating. I ignored it and instead steered the conversation back to a practical route.

'How much've you had to drink?' I asked Ryan.

'Oh, I'd be right to drive. There won't be anyone doing breath tests between here and Roma.'

'If you're over the limit, maybe you should have someone drive you,' Marnie interjected, in the tone that made it abundantly clear that drink driving was not something she had an ounce of tolerance for.

Everyone has that one issue, though, don't they? That one, particular sin that they can't forgive or overlook. I have two of them; people who treat animals like people, and people who flush things that aren't flushable down toilets.

'I'll take you out to Roma, mate,' I offered.

'No,' Ryan replied tiredly. 'I'll need my own transport once I'm out there. I'm not going to rely on someone to drive me out, then rely on someone else to drive me to and from work.'

I glanced over at Jasmine. The child's eyes were wide open as she fed, two golden brown orbs that stared knowingly at me. I quite liked the baby. I liked Edith, too, but it's easier to like an independent child who is superbly good at entertaining your son, thus earning both you and her mother some quiet time.