And then, of course, there was Clay, who stood, then eased to a crouch. On the day of her death he’d found a peg in his hand, and he clenched it now till it hurt; then returned it soon to his pocket. Not one of us had seen it. It was bright and new—a yellow one—and he flipped it compulsively over. Like all of us he waited for our father, but our father had disappeared. We kicked our hearts around at our feet; like flesh, all soft and bloody. The city lay glittering below us.
“Where the hell is he?”
It was me who’d finally asked, when the wait became two hours.
When he arrived, it was hard to look at us, and us to look at him.
He was bent and broken-postured.
He was a wasteland in a suit.
* * *
—
It’s funny, the time beyond a funeral.
There are bodies and the injured everywhere.
Our lounge room was more like a hospital ward, but one like you’d see in a movie. There were boys all torrid, diagonal. We were molded to whatever we lay on.
The sun not right, but shining.
* * *
—
As for Michael Dunbar, it surprised us how fast the cracks appeared, even given the state of him.
Our father became a half father.
The other half dead with Penny.
One evening, a few days after the funeral, he left again, and the five of us went out looking, and first we tried the cemetery, and then the Naked Arms (our reasoning still to come).
When we did find him, it was a shock to open the garage, and he lay beside an oil stain, since the police had taken her car. The only thing missing was a gallery of Penny Dunbars, but then, he never did paint her, did he?
For a while he still went to work.
The others went back to school.
I’d already been working a long time by then, for a company of floorboards and carpet. I’d even bought the old station wagon, from a guy I sometimes worked with.
* * *
—
Early on, our father was called to the schools, and he was the perfect post-war charlatan: well-dressed, clean-shaven. In control. We’re coping, he’d said, and principals nodded, teachers were fooled; they could never quite see the abyss in him. It was hidden beneath his clothes.
He wasn’t like so many men, who set themselves free with drink, or outbursts and abuse. No, for him it was easier to withdraw; he was there but never there. He sat in the empty garage, with a glass he never drank from. We called him in for dinner, and even Houdini would have been impressed. It was a slow and steady vanishing act.
He left us like that, in increments.
* * *
—
As for us Dunbar boys those first six months, we looked a lot like this: