CHAPTER 2
2
A LTHOUGH E MMET HAS COMMUNICATED through little more than a series of feral grunts since being dragged from his bed this morning, I can tell that he’s impressed by the business-class cabin. He’s undertaken the Sydney–Dubai return flight annually since Rebecca relocated there a decade ago, but always in Economy. Despite working for the airline, which would have arranged an upgrade for her without any difficulty, she insisted that it was wrong to waste such advantages on a child. Let him wait until he can appreciate it, she said, and it didn’t seem to be something worth arguing about, particularly as there was always a steward or stewardess assigned to look after him.
Although he’s never refused to go, I’ve been conscious in recent years that he’s grown less enthusiastic about these trips. It won’t be long before he snubs them entirely, which will be her problem, not mine. It’s not the lengthy flight that bothers him; it’s the anger he feels towards his mother, a rage that’s been smouldering within him for some time now, probably since puberty hit. It doesn’t concern me unduly. After all, it’s to my advantage that he shows little interest in the world outside of Sydney, where the beach and our home in North Bondi is central to his sense of well-being.
‘Nice, right?’ I say as we sit down. The cabin is laid out in a 1-2-1 formation, and I’ve booked a central pair with a privacy barrier that can be raised between us.
‘Pretty cool,’ he admits, offering a small concession to the comfort of our surroundings before ruining the moment by glancing to his left, in the direction of an empty single seat. ‘Do you think anyone’s sitting over there?’
‘Why?’
‘If no one takes it, could I move?’
I blink, telling myself to take a breath before replying. There are moments when I think there is nothing more difficult in this world than being a parent to a teenage boy.
‘But why would you want to?’ I ask.
‘Because it’s better. There’s a window.’
‘How about just enjoying the seat that I booked?’
‘I’m just asking.’
It pisses me off that even here, in such luxurious accommodation, he’d still prefer to move as far away from me as possible. I’m fairly immune to the sense of entitlement that kids his age have but I do feel that the occasional thanks, Dad wouldn’t kill him.
‘I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘These planes are all organized through weight distribution. They don’t like it when someone changes seats.’
‘You honestly think something terrible is going to happen because a sixty-five-kilo boy moves across the aisle?’
‘Sixty-five kilos?’ I ask, trying to suppress a smile. He’s fifty-five at most. The look of complete outrage on his face when I say this sends a knife through me and I regret it immediately, recalling his attempts to bulk up his muscle mass. ‘It would probably be fine,’ I say, hoping to salvage the moment. ‘But wait a bit, yeah? They’re still boarding. Someone might take it still.’
He nods, accepting this, and we start to settle in, arranging our belongings. I store my backpack, removing my laptop, phone and book, before examining the menu and small bag of cosmetics that awaits every passenger on their chair. Emmet is doing the same, studying the tiny tubes of moisturizer, deodorant, toothpaste and lip balm with care. Along with his attempts to grow stronger, he’s become increasingly concerned with his skin in recent months and I’ve noticed a range of serums and moisturizers making their way along the shelves of his bedroom, a liquid army prepared to repel the advance of pimples, although so far he appears to have been lucky in that his skin remains blemish-free. Next, he picks up the television control and starts scanning through the endless list of films and TV shows on offer, removing a small notebook from his backpack and scribbling down various titles. This is a boy who loves nothing more than a good list, tracking every book he reads, every film or TV show he watches, his daily steps, his weight, even a record of the best waves he catches. Although he’s unaware of it, I invaded the privacy of his phone recently and was shocked by what I discovered there – it’s one of the things I’m hoping to discuss with him on this trip – but I’ve never seen inside his laptop and imagine it holds any number of complicated spreadsheets, along with God knows what else. For a time, I wondered whether there was an element of OCD to his relentless list-making, but I think being organized simply calms him, offering him the illusion that he’s in control of a life that has, on occasion, been badly disrupted.
‘You know there’s a shower on this plane, right?’ I ask him, and he turns to me with a sceptical expression on his face.
‘No way.’
‘It’s true. Up towards the front. Only for the first-class passengers, but still. Can you imagine? Taking a shower in the air?’
He considers this.
‘What if there’s, like, turbulence? Wouldn’t you get thrown around?’
‘Maybe the stewardess would come in and save you.’
Once again, the words are out of my mouth before I can take them back, and I tell myself that I need to think before speaking over the days ahead. It’s a crass comment, after all, sexist and outdated, and he blushes at the idea. At home, even on the hottest days, he never takes his T-shirt off any more. And yet, at the beach, he’s always in just his swimmers. Perhaps there are different rules of conduct by the water.
‘There’s a bar too,’ I add, pointing towards the rear of our cabin. ‘We have access to that, so we can go down there at some point if you like.’
He thinks for a moment, as if deciding whether there is something he could object to about this, but, finding nothing, says, ‘That’d be fun,’ and I grasp at this small concession. I’d imagined him placing his headphones on his head and either submerging himself in films or sleeping throughout the thirteen hours that lie ahead of us. It’s not that we need to be locked into constant conversation, but it would be nice to feel that we’re not completely ignoring each other.
‘What’s going on here?’ he asks. ‘Are we rich suddenly?’
‘What?’
‘I mean, all of this,’ he says, looking around. ‘How come you’re splashing out?’
‘We’re not rich rich,’ I tell him. ‘But, you know, we’re comfortable. And honestly, if we have to spend so long in the air, I thought we might as well do it in style. It’s not like you ever ask for anything.’
‘I didn’t ask for this.’
‘No, but I bet you’re glad that I did it.’
‘Could be worse,’ he says, returning to his notebook and scribbling something down before flicking through the monitor again. He stops at a mini-series from a few years back about a young Greek swimmer in Melbourne with aspirations towards the Olympic Games, reads the summary carefully and makes a note of it.
Since childhood, Emmet has been a natural swimmer and, in more recent years, he’s also become a skilled surfer. For a time, Rebecca and I called him the Bish: half boy / half fish. At first, she didn’t want him anywhere near the beach, didn’t even want him to learn how to swim, but I managed to persuade her that this was not just unreasonable but irresponsible. A child simply cannot grow up in Sydney without spending half their lives running in and out of the waves. She of all people should know the dangers that water holds for the uninitiated. Now Emmet knows the waters of Bondi like the back of his hand, could tell you the different currents you might encounter every few feet from Backpackers’ Rip to Buckler Point, and, along with his friends, has walked from Spit Bridge to Manly a dozen or more times, stopping at every beach along the way for a swim.
For a few years, he made vague references towards the Olympics himself, ambition that are, sadly, implausible. He’ll never be tall enough, his feet will never be large enough – they remain a stubborn size seven – and he has no more chance of making it to the Games than I have of performing on Broadway. But, to my relief, he hasn’t mentioned this in a while, the word ‘lifeguard’ popping up in his vocabulary more frequently of late, an idea that I’m encouraging. Although cautiously, of course; too much enthusiasm on my part will only turn him against it.
A stewardess appears carrying a tray holding glasses of champagne, water and orange juice. Despite the early hour, I choose the champagne, and she apologizes that, as we’re still on terra firma, it can only be Bollinger. Once we take off, she assures me, we’ll be switching to Dom Perignon. I try not to laugh and tell her that’s fine, I’m happy to slum it in the meantime. On the other side of the aisle, a young man is carrying a second tray and, when Emmet reaches for a glass, the steward glances towards me.
‘Just an orange juice,’ I tell Emmet, and he does as he’s told with one of his trademark sighs. If any of his lists include the multitudinous indignities he has to endure as my son, I’m sure this latest one will make it on to it.
Further down the plane, I notice the door to the cockpit open, and one of the co-pilots emerges, stepping into the toilet cubicle towards the front of the cabin. I recognize him immediately as one of Rebecca’s colleagues from when we first moved to Sydney all those years ago, and I retreat into my seat a little. I can’t imagine him scanning the cabin when he emerges but, if he does, I don’t want him to notice me. Whenever our paths crossed in the past, we always got along perfectly well, but I know that if we catch each other’s eye now, he’ll feel obliged to come over and say hello, and I’d prefer that he didn’t. No one is supposed to know that Emmet and I are here, after all. Thankfully, when he reappears, he makes his way back into the cockpit without so much as a glance in our direction.
The cabin is starting to fill now and a young woman in her early twenties approaches the empty window seat, the one Emmet had ambitions towards. She has the most extraordinary good looks – I’d be willing to bet that she’s a model – and appears to be dressed for a fashion shoot rather than a long-haul flight. My first thought is that while we’re living it up in Business, she looks aggrieved that she hasn’t been upgraded to the private suites of First. A middle-aged man a few seats away jumps up to help her store her hand luggage in the overhead compartment and she thanks him, her oversized sunglasses remaining firmly on her face throughout their interaction. He tries to make small talk, but she dismisses him politely before sitting down and kicking her shoes off. The body-hugging outfit she’s wearing is ridiculously short, barely reaching beneath her thighs, and her legs are bare and tanned.
I notice Emmet watching her, and it’s not because she’s taken the seat he wanted. His tongue is pressed against his upper lip, his eyes are open wide, and I realize in this moment that my son is straight. To date, he’s never expressed an interest in either sex to me, but I’ve always instinctively felt that he might be gay. I was, perhaps, relying on age-old clichés that are probably as insulting as they are redundant, but despite his water-based athleticism, he was always an incredibly sensitive child, eschewing team sports or any games that involved roughness of any sort. Part of a small, tight-knit group of equally delicate boys, he’s always seemed happier either in their safe company or on his own, reading books and watching esoteric foreign-language films. His taste in music too has always tended towards sensitive female singer-songwriters or gender-defying young men. It’s strange how a simple, unexpected moment can inform a parent about such an important aspect of their child’s life, but the fact that he can’t keep his eyes off the woman tells me that I’ve been incorrect in my assumptions. Is it wrong of me to feel a certain relief? Of course, his sexuality wouldn’t matter to me in the slightest, but the world, life itself, I think, is difficult enough without adding an unnecessary layer of complexity.
I try to imagine him flirting with a girl and find the idea close to preposterous. There were girls in his friendship group when he was younger, but over the last eighteen months, they seem to have peeled away a little, the business of puberty forcing a temporary division of the sexes. I daresay that many of those I knew as children, the ones who ran in and out of our home barefoot and screaming, will reappear in my life in the fullness of time as girlfriends in a year or so. It will be interesting to see how they’ve changed and whether one of them will break my son’s heart or have her heart broken by him. I think he’s incredibly handsome, but then I’m his father, so it’s natural that I consider him to be the most beautiful boy in the world. But what if those girls, or others, feel differently? What if his romantic life proves unhappy? The idea of him suffering any sort of pain sends an almost insupportable ache through my body. I want to keep him safe from all of that. In an ideal world, I would keep him young for ever, protecting him from all hurt. In that same world, someone would have done that for me. But my training also teaches me that to wrap him in cotton wool will serve only to stifle him and prevent him from growing into the man that he should become. It’s a conundrum for me, one that I am struggling to solve.
The model – assuming she is one – perhaps aware that she’s being observed, turns around, removes her sunglasses and fixes her eyes on my son, who turns away quickly, pulling a book from his bag and burying his face within it. He blushes again, a slow surge of scarlet rising from the base of his neck into his cheeks and ears, and he doesn’t look left or right in the minutes that follow, ignoring the cabin crew as they collect our empty glasses, not paying attention to the safety demonstration, and keeping his eyes firmly on the page as the plane taxis down the runway to take off.
We have thirteen hours in front of us, after all. And then, after we make our connection, a further seven hours in the air. Then finally, one further journey by train and boat until we reach our destination, where we might be welcomed or rebuffed. There will be plenty of time to talk.
But should I have thought this through more deeply before booking our tickets? Perhaps, but there was so little time to make a decision I could only do what I thought was right. At some point, I’ll have to confess to Emmet that the only people who know we are undertaking this journey are he and I.
That we haven’t, in fact, been invited.