Last Day in the Dynamite Factory by Annah Faulkner Page A

sense of a lifetime of bullshit. Ben isn’t who I thought he was.
I’m
not who I thought I was. I need time to process all this …
stuff
.’
    â€˜How
much
time, Chris? How long are you going to carry on with this pathetic behaviour? You have to come to terms with what happened. Let go. Forgive and forget.’
    â€˜For-
get?
’
    â€˜Oh, for … all right!’ She bangs a colander against the sink and glares at him.
    He glares back. Each looks at the other as if they’ve unwrapped a parcel that doesn’t contain what they expected.
    The timer on the oven pings. Diane drags a tea towel off her shoulder and turns to retrieve a tray of perfect scones, evenly gold and studded with sultanas. The action flings Chris back eighteen years to an evening when the reality of his existence hit him with such monstrous clarity its tattoo remained on his brain forever. A child squirming in his arms, another at the dining table drawing pictures, a wife with a tea towel over her shoulder and the sudden realisation that this was it. This was his life. A life arrived at without a plan, without council approval or periodic inspections. Concreted, stumped and cross-braced into place, its doors clearly marked,
No Exit
. No way out from his precious, needy brood. Diane had brought a tray of perfect scones from the oven and caught his expression. The anxiety that filled her eyes told him she knew exactly what he was thinking.
    I am a family man, he’d told himself, fighting panic. I have a wife and children. I am lucky. I am responsible. This will pass. Is this all there is? Stop that. Shut up. Help me.
    There was no cosmic response, however. Just the sound of the clock ticking on the stove.
    Get a grip, idiot. This will pass. Everything will be all right.
    And it was. He’d made it – until a week ago – without his house falling down.
    Diane takes a fresh tea towel from the drawer and covers the scones.
    Chris goes to his den and puts
Les Misérables
into the boom box. He selects a track, ‘Bring Him Home’, sprawls in his chair and allows the words of paternal longing to fill the room.
    Minutes later, a tap on the door. ‘I can’t handle that music, Christopher. Please use the headphones.’
    He puts on the headphones, lamenting her dismissal of music so ‘sentimental’, and pulls out a memory. Another one. This one at his mother’s grave in Melbourne just before he, Jo and Ben moved to Port Moresby.
    Jo had sat on the hard, cold ground, gazing at her sister’s headstone. Chris stood nearby, trying to summon a memory, a feeling – anything about his mother – but all he felt was frustration that she had died before he could know her. He tries now, in the light of his new knowledge, to recall Jo’s exact expression, but he can’t. This has been the pattern of the past week – zigzagging across his history, trying to recast the characters. But they stubbornly resist: Ben is still his adoptive father, Liam is still his cousin.
    Thinking of Liam makes his heart spongy. He can’t remember his brother’s voice but he does remember his laugh – a raucous outburst followed by an uncertain frown – as if he wasn’t really sure something was funny after all. The first time he heard it Chris followed the sound and found Jo and Ben leaning over the baby’s cot. They reached out to Chris as he came in and he stood between them, watching the little fellow laugh up at them and laugh even harder when they laughed back. He remembers Jo trusting Liam to his care on his first school day and being so proud he nearly floated away.
    Chris picks up a pencil and draws Fletcher, gazing down the shaft of an old arrow. It’s notched and frayed and unlikely to be reliable.
    Chuck it.
    No. This is history. You can learn from it if you’re willing.

    Early the following morning Chris stops by Ben’s on his way to work. His father,