Family Story
In the car trip over, they were planning their jokes. They weren’t being conniving. The father was having trouble coming up with appropriately nonchalant jokes, so the son had to work his out for him. After the car trip, they never talked about how singly unique this experience was. It was a moment that should have been something to relate later. It was like hearing that a princess had died, or a man had landed on the moon. It was a moment to be asked about at dinner parties when the conversation failed.
“Where were you when you had to drive out to a tap dancing class to pick up your neighbour’s twelve and sixteen year old daughters? You know, that night when their father died, but they didn’t know that yet. Remember how their mother didn’t want you to tell them? Remember how she had wanted them in the house, and safe, before she gave them the bad news? What did you do to appear natural? Where were you then?”
The father and son were in the car. They were planning jokes.
“Dad, I love you. You know that right?” It was probably the first time the son had said that in years, but it seemed important then.
They arrived early. They sat out the front of the suburban church waiting for the girls to come out. The son smoked. For once, the father didn’t admonish him for it.
The girls came out full of beans. The father and the son both hid their eyes.
They went through the motions they had planned. Unfortunately, they’d forgotten to plan how long and loud they would laugh at their own jokes. Each joke rang out like someone taking a sledgehammer to mud.
After a minute, the father and the son were out of jokes. Now they just felt
like frauds. In contrast to their intended flippancy, they were stuck in an
increasingly difficult silence.
To compensate, the oldest daughter took on the role of trip comedian. The
tragedy didn’t go unnoticed. More sledgehammers, more mud.
The trip was over. The daughters were lead straight into the bedroom which
their mother now had to herself.
The father and son sat down out the back with other family friends, all
of them were stuck in reverent silence.
A few seconds later, the oldest daughter ran through the room with the aim of hiding upstairs. She tripped on the first step and fell hard. Five caring souls rushed to her, but she pushed them off and kept heading up. The door above slammed and finally punctuated the silence.
This is based on a real event. So much so, that I was tempted to slot it in non-fiction, except it reads more like a fiction piece and probably functions better. No prizes for guessing which character I was.
This is attempt number nineteen billion to put this night into words. This was a real event, so much so that I was tempted to stick it in non-fiction, except it reads better as fiction. I’m still not happy with the result. It is one of those moments when the reality of a situation, the reality of the real, refuses to even be poorly expressed in art. I feel the need to justify myself here. Rather, I feel the need for someone else to justify me. Peter Goldsworthy says it all.
'I'm not even sure that [these stories] are my business. They do provide a different scale of priorities of importance; an idea of what is, finally, "really" important… If part of me likes to see itself as an upper-case Writer -- a narcissocrat, a junior member of the priest caste of our silly Art-worshipping culture -- another part is always accusing: Fine, But What Are You Going To Do When You Grow Up?
And yet turning these stories into fiction might help towards some kind of understanding, towards finding some essence, beyond curiosity, or voyeurism. Fiction is above all a reordering process, a sense-making process… "Undoubtedly the world is, and her riches can never be circumscribed by art" the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz has written -- but we have to make a start, especially under immense pressure from the emotions that surround death.'
The reason I focus so much on stories of death, separation, and grieving is that I want get somewhere beyond accepting that these things “just happen”. Even if I can’t, I hope to inspire someone else to find that point.
At the very least, if I’m wrong, and I have no higher purpose, I could just be a melodramaticist, constantly churning out scripts for teen dramas.