Dark Roots Read Free Page A

got Kelly when he was two years old from a workmate who said he needed a lot of exercise, whose relief I could feel as he brushed dog hair off his car’s upholstery and declined a beer.
    He was a sucker for the dead-of-night runs, Kelly. Heeler-cross, and I never saw him tire. On Sunday nights when Disneyland was on, Kelly would be pressing himself to the back door, staring inside with such longing that Louise and Matthew would beg Vicki until she’d relent, and they’d slide open the glass door and Kelly would be allowed to come in, so abject and grateful he’d be practically crawling, licking our hands, cramming himself between the kids, and Vicki saying, Look just leave him alone and he’ll calm down, kids, just relax and stop mucking round with him , but finally something would be overturned and Kelly would be outside again, and it would be, Okay now, time for bed, school tomorrow , the dog staring in through the glass with desperate remorse. You could hear him, sometimes, this barely audible high whine, still as a statue, only a muscle in his throat giving him away.
    Half past three in the morning, though, and Kelly was beautiful to watch, down across the footy oval and up the hill, turning around to recover the ground back to me, a long shape in the moonlight. He’d streak past me, and out of the darkness I’d feel him nudge my hand in passing as he came forward again; he could have gone all night, barrelling into the sleeping suburbs. I’d pound up those streets with my chest hurting, my feet feeling like sinkers, knowing I’d never score 174 again. Catching my breath at the servo, Kelly would go round behind the 7–11 and root through the weekend garbage, and nobody was there to give a shit.
    Here’s how you get into a bed without waking the other person: flush the toilet and come back in as if you’re practically sleepwalking, fold back the sheet so that it doesn’t disturb them, slowly straighten out your legs under it, and watch the red digital numbers change from 5.15 to 5.16, to 5.17. They’re so silent they’re eerie, digital clocks — it’s as if time is not passing after all, just kind of rolling.
    Why don’t we talk more, after the kids are in bed? is what Vicki used to say. Then it became why don’t you talk more , then oh, Andrew, he never talks. Don’t bother , Vicki would say at the barbecues we went to, to other women drinking wine on the folding chairs. I married a non-talker.
    When she stopped talking, though, when she got so jack of it she closed up and just worked silently in the kitchen like a black cloud, I could hardly stand it. I would rather have her filling in the blank spots, even complaining, even shouting, than silent. Spreading butter on bread, on the eighteen rows of sandwiches she was going to put in the freezer so that you’d know for a week it was going to be devon and tomato sauce, then cheese and ham, things that froze well, so careful with placing the squares against the crust of the bread, saying, Andrew this is just crazy, I’m going to have to do a night course or something to get out of the house . Tucking the corners back on the sandwich bags, wiping the back of her hand against her eyes like she thought the kids wouldn’t notice. Watching her, a hundred things came into my mind to say that I discarded, everything staying unsaid — like when Matt was born and we just sat there looking at each other. The difference was then it didn’t seem to matter, me being something that she used to call inarticulate and she now called withholding.
    Ham and cheese, ham and cheese, ham and cheese, seed mustard on Dad’s, chutney on the kids’. I couldn’t take my eyes from her hands, remembered them squeezing mine on our wedding day as I’d stood up to make my speech, the culmination of four days of nervous diarrhoea. I married a non-talker , Vicki saying with a tight smile at