After the funeral we sat in the garden near the crematorium where inside arguably her father was being burnt to ash and we looked out over the flowers and manicured plots and saw the breeze working. She asked me
“Do you believe in heaven?”
“Well, yes in a certain way. Probably not the way you think”
“In what way?”
“Well, okay, so, you’re asking because you hope that your father is still somewhere right?”
“…”
“Okay can I ask you this then, do you believe in the soul?”
“Yes”
“Okay then, so we have that. We feel there is something such as a soul. OK, so then lets imagine that the soul really exists and is outside of what we think of as body”
“Okay”
“So you believe in this”
“Yes, I do”
“Okay. So, the soul then, has no relation to this meaty living life thing we thing is happening here. Look around, all of this, the soft sun, the way it’s so quiet, all those people who were talking to you up there…all of that, has nothing to do with the soul”
“But…”
“Well I mean they all have souls yes but I mean, the way in which we all work is so…so, meaty and human, right? That stuff has nothing to do with the soul”
“…okay…”
“Okay so what I mean is, if there is a soul, it is way beyond what we can understand, WAY beyond what we know and think and feel, so, I think, it’s amazing and immense and important that we think like this, that we think of this as something out of our grasp, an impossible thing to, just, imagine“
“Yeah”
“Yeah and so, your father, what is essentially your father is is, somewhere. I mean, I’m not going to lie to you and say, ‘you’ll meet up again in some wonderful place where, lets face it, sounds pretty stupid, right, like, ‘where all souls meet up’, BUT, and here’s the cool thing, if you are a soul, I mean, why not meet up? Why NOT get together in some way, right? And, in getting together, maybe THAT is heaven. Maybe all the souls noticing one another, being together in this other this world thing we can’t possibly imagine…maybe that is heaven”
“Wow”
“Well why not. Maybe your dad is just, you now, getting there now, getting into this huge crazy unknowable thing just now”
“Imagine…”
“Yeah and knowing him he’d be all like ‘hey, what the fuck is all this!”
And she laughs and I hold her hand and we look at the bees moving from flower to flower.
- – -
In the waiting room while my sister is in labour for the tenth hour, had maybe eight bad coffees and am talking too much to a guy who is waiting for his wife to give birth. I offer for fun and to break the tension in the room:
“Fucking hell how long does this take?”
“No idea. It’s my first”
“Well good for you. I’m not even having a kid. It’s my sister”
“Ah ok. Well cool, you’ll be an uncle”
“Ha, yeah, I didn’t even think about that. I was just thinking ‘fucking hell there’s a baby in my sister’. That was freaky enough for me”
“Where’s the father?”
“In there. Hey, why aren’t you in there with your…wife?”
“Girlfriend. Yeah I have been in. Been over 30 hours now. This is just…fuck this is just…”
“Hey, you wanna go grab a cigarette, I mean christ, 30 hours. You been up that long?”
“Fuck of course I have. Man, this is…this is. Yeah fuck lets go out for a ciggie. I’ll just check with the nurse”
And he gets up and walks into a room. Poor bastard, covered in sweat, smells like onions. He comes back and nods for me to get up. We walk along and get into the lift. In there is an old man in a wheelchair that looks dead, standing next to him is a middle aged woman in a full suit playing with her iPhone. We get out on the ground floor and go out the front to the car park. I hand him a cigarette and we light up.
“Fucking weird to smoke outside a hospital, feels wrong”
“Yeah. Hey, check out the nurses over there”
And there are three nurses in tight blue uniforms smoking.
“Crazy”
We finish our cigarettes, quickly and in silence really and go back inside. Walking past the others who look either upset or happy. Hospitals are for the many dying and for the few who are born. That’s it. We get out on our floor and soon a nurse runs over the my smoking buddy and pulls him but the arm and is talking quickly. I go and sit down and my see my dad talking to a nurse. He sees me and comes over with
“When are gonna quit that shit? Anyway, forget it, your sister had a boy”
“No way! Cool! Can we see him?”
“Not yet, give them a chance”
And I sit back down and feel weird. My sister had a boy. Fucking hell. I feel proud and pathetic at the same time, thinking ‘there’s no way me and Christina are having a kid’. Saw my father’s face, he was stoic and exalted at once. Became a grandad in a minute. I see the other guy, having his first kid, come back out of a room and walk slowly over to the waiting area seats, slumps down, looks exhausted. I decide to go over and talk to him
“Hey. My sis just had her kid. I’m a freaking uncle!”
“Huh? Yeah yeah…”
“What’s up?”
“The baby…is dead”
- – -
Three knocks on my door. Sturdy ones. One two three. I opened the dor and it was the police, a man and a woman
“Yes?”
“Mr Bernstein”
“Yes”
“I’m constable Peters and this is constable Hedrick. We are her to inform you that your daughter, Imelda Turner, has been murdered”
“Imelda…? Fuck. Imelda…I…I haven’t seen or heard from her in…thirty years”
“Sir I know this is tough news to hear”
“Tough? Yeah it’s….” blow air out of my mouth “tough, sure”
“Sir if you can we need you t identify the body”
“Me…? I…um. Well, I frankly wouldn’t…I mean, I don’t know what she looks like”
“Well, sir, you are the closest living relative and”
“What about Jane…uh that’s, her mother”
“Jane is living on Norway sir”
“Norway? Jesus Christ. She’s in Norway? Fucking hell”
“Yes Mr…can I call you…”
“Jack”
“Jack, okay. Jack can you come with us to indentify the”
“The body yes. Sure. Okay, um, let me, let me get some things”
And I close the door trying to remember her face but can only see the two year old and her mother in that house that I left and it seems so long ago and strange and not even part of my life or thoughts and those two or three years try to flood back but they are just snippets like photos and I grab my jacket, keys, cigarettes and lighter and head out the door with the police officers. We drive for a while and they lead me into the morgue, signing in where we need to and talking to me
“She was involved in a robbery”
“A man is in custody for shooting your daughter and the shop owner”
“We don’t know the details but we think she may have been an accomplice”
“Did you know your daughter whereabouts recently?”
“Are you in contact with her mother?”
I can only say “No” to everything. I have not seen or heard from them since I left in 1983. I don’t feel comfortable saying this. I feel ashamed for not being a proper father. We walk along the cold concrete hallway towards a grey metal double door and there is guy sitting there and the police says a name, he gets out a clipboard and they sing in, hand it over to me and I look at it not knowing what they want and the attendant puts his finger to a blank rectangle and I scribble my name. We go in and the attendant gestures to us to come to a table and there is a body with a sheet over it. I know it is my daughter and I am surrounded by strangers and a sheet covering my thirty or so year old daughter and I don’t want them to take the sheet off.
“Sir if you could tell us if this is your daughter?”
“I…I’ll…” little cough “I’ll try”
And the attendant removes the sheet to reveal her face and I cannot see the little girl I knew but I cry anyway, proper tears because my only daughter is dead and the woman police officer puts her arm on my shoulder and I say “I’m sorry”.
- – -
Waiting for my daughter come home, it is one am but I told her midnight. Twenty minutes later she opens the door and I get up and say
“Where the hell have you been? I told you MIDNIGHT!”
“Oh dad”
She says, running over to me, throwing herself in to me and crying. I hug her back and say
“It’s ok honey, I just want you to be safe that’s all”
And she wouldn’t stop crying, really sobbing into my chest so I say
“It’s ok honey. I’m not angry at you. It’s just if I say to be home at…”
“Daddy….daddy…I…” and she wails loudly, hardly able to breathe, loud crying and I now some thing is wring by the way she is pulling at my back.
“Honey, what is it, what’s wrong?”
“Daddy…….I….daddy I was raped”
I pull her face away from me and ask “What!”
“Daddy” she says, eyes blood shot and only now do I notice how bad she looks.
“You were…raped? Who? Who did this?”
“Some guy, some guys at this…this party”
“What! Where? Who? I’ll fucking kill them!”
“Daddy…” she says, falling back into my chest and crying harder than I’ve ever heard
“Shhhh darling shhhh. Where was it. You were at Cindy’s party, right?”
“Yesss”
“OK. Are they there?”
“I don’t know…”
“Honey, go and talk to your mother ok. I’m going to…I’m going to Cindy’s”
“Dad-eeee” she creams, crying and scratching at my back and my face is hot and I’m trying not to cry. I take her up to my bedroom and put her into bed with my wife. I leave her there, go down to the garage and put my golf clubs in the car, open the garage door and drive out. I feel sick, imagine smashing in the face of the young cunts who raped her. Imagine them now drinking their beers and laughing and telling everyone. It takes fifteen minutes to drive across the suburb to Cindy’s house. The party is dying down and I take my nine iron inside with me. A few kids stare and I start asking for Cindy. I eventually find her in the kitchen doing shots with some other girls. I tell her what happened and she tells me ‘Scott’. I go around looking for Scott and find him out in the backyard by the pool. I tell him I am Sarah’s father and he says “So what” and I hit him on the side of the heat with the nine iron and he falls off the deck chair and onto the small pebbles around the pool. I bring the club down onto his young face over and over until someone grabs my arm and asks
“what the fuck are you doing man?”
And I say “this kid raped my daughter” and they say
“this is Sarah’s boyfriend! What the hell are you doing”
And I say
“Which one of you mother fuckers raped my daughter?”
And none of them move and I ask it again but nothing happens.
