going to get her heart broken and won’t be able to handle it.’
‘I don’t think you’re a pathetic loser.’
‘But the rest of it, you think that’s true, right?’
He stops and looks at me, letting a drip from his icy pole fall into his lap. ‘I don’t think Alex is going to be your great love story, no,’ he says.
We stare at each other, and then Sal and Anthony get back into the car, and we don’t say anything for the rest of the trip.
21
Moving-day Blues
The next day, Dad and I stand and survey his new lounge room. There are boxes everywhere: boxes that have detailed labels like ‘Books—Literary Fiction, A–G’, ‘CDs—Jazz and Classical’, ‘Clothes—Winter’ and then boxes that just say ‘Fragile’, ‘Kitchen’ and, mysteriously, ‘Good Stuff’—they’re the ones from after we got tired of labelling things.
I’ve never moved house before. Not that I’m moving now, but I’ve never experienced anything to do with moving before. I thought packing could be fun (it wasn’t, at all) and that unpacking would definitely be fun, because I like putting things in their places. But now we are staring at the room filled with boxes and it feels like a momentous task we will never get through.
The last time Dad moved house was before I was born, so this feels all new to him too.
‘Dad?’
‘Yeah?’
‘How long has it been since you lived on your own?’
Dad takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. He looks tired. But even at his most tired, he is patient. He will always answer me, no matter how irritating my question, and his answer will be considered and thoughtful.
‘Well, let me see. Your mother and I got married when I was twenty-eight. And we lived together for a while before that. So, twenty years, give or take?’
Honestly, I don’t know how they could be bothered separating at this point.
‘Honey, don’t sit on the boxes—you’ll break them.’
I sigh and stand up. Dad’s apartment building has a lift, but even so, I am gruesomely sweaty from helping the removalists carry boxes in from the truck, up to the lift and into the apartment. The glasses are still packed so I walk to the sink and drink water straight from the tap.
‘Natalie, no. Please don’t do that.’
‘There are no glasses and I’m dying of thirst.’
‘I should have bought some paper cups and plates.’
‘Or we could just unpack the kitchen stuff.’
But we don’t. We just stand there looking at it all. Some of the kitchen stuff isn’t even in moving boxes—it’s in its original packaging, because Dad went out and bought a whole lot of new stuff. We had a good time discussing the merits of various blenders and toasters. (‘Dad, if you don’t buy this four-slice toaster you could regret it for the rest of your life.’) It felt so important that he should buy the spiraliser at the time, but now it definitely feels like there’s too much stuff.
‘I like the nautical look,’ I say, patting the big blue-and-white striped cushions he bought for his new couch.
‘Oh yes, I’ve had my eye on those for a while.’ I don’t know why exactly, but hearing him say this makes a solid ball of sadness form in the pit of my stomach.
‘Let’s leave everything for an hour and go and get some food,’ I suggest. This is the kind of idea Dad would normally hate. He’s a great believer in ‘getting things done’ and ‘enjoying the reward after doing the hard work’. But not today. Today he’s living on his own for the first time in twenty years and moving sucks.
‘Let’s get food,’ he agrees.
Dad and I walk down Port Melbourne’s main street and I make excited conversation about all the new things he has to discover here, even though surely he knows because he’s the one who decided to move here and I actually know nothing about the suburb. He nods along, but I get the sense his mind is elsewhere. I was planning on getting sandwiches, but Dad says we should get ice-cream.
Dad and I love ice-cream. It’s our thing. Mum will eat it, but it’s never her first dessert choice—she likes cakes and baked goods—but Dad and I have always known that ice-cream is the superior option.
We walk all the way along the beach to Albert Park to get Jock’s famous homemade ice-cream. We walk mostly in silence. Dad seems lost in his thoughts. I’m obsessively thinking about Alex, and then forcing myself not to obsessively think about Alex because