The Family Men by Catherine Harris Page B

remove as he pulls into the driveway. Then another five minutes of bickering in the car until their mother (hitherto peering out from behind the living room blind) comes to see what is taking so long, so they all shut up and follow her inside. “What’s going on with you two?” she says later over dinner, their first family meal together since Harry moved out – chicken schnitzel, mashed potato, carrots, welcome back, Matt food – not that anyone is calling it that.
    Neither of them answers.
    Matt sits at the table scrolling through his phone, his mind already on the next thing, a replay of the last time he and Harry were in a car together, Sportsman’s Night, in the taxi on the way to the nightclub. There’d been an accident near the station so the driver took the long way around, catching every traffic light in between. He had no idea who they were, thought they were going to a wedding reception. Matt was texting so Harry answered for him. “Yes,” he confirmed. “He’s the groom.”
    It had been that same time of night, the blue hour fast tipping into black. Outside the venue, a nondescript looking mid-sized office building, two security guards monitored the entrance but that was the only clue to what was going on inside. Matt paid the driver cash, passing across the money like a john tipping a whore, then marched ahead before Harry had properly closed the taxi door. The bouncers knew them by sight. They immediately stepped aside. Harry had his invitation folded in his back pocket but they didn’t even ask him his name.
    Alan likes to say that in every question lies a kernel of truth, an opportunity for salvation. That’s what they promote at AA, truth and salvation. Honesty and redemption going hand in glove. As though God, as they understand him, is sitting around worrying at his beads, waiting for some mortal admission of hypocrisy. Bless me, Father, for I have been confused . Of course the truth isn’t always welcome elsewhere.
    Matt avoids eye contact as they sit around in the lounge room having drinks. Two Crown Lagers and two white wines. “Bottoms up,” says Diana in Harry’s direction. And then a wink, code for everything’s good with us now . As long as he remains quarantined at his father’s he has been forgiven. Harry takes a slug and puts his bottle down on the side table, what had been “his” bedside table, he realises, repurposed as a drinks stand and imported into the living area, his room already converted to general storage, the bed shrouded in patterned oilcloth, supporting boxes of family memorabilia and scrapbooking supplies, the floor an obstacle course of surplus from his mother’s office: unused card stock, last year’s calendars – The Surf Coast – marketing gimmicks (pens, coasters, a tray of shot glasses) for companies recently gone out of business. So much for empty nest syndrome. He gestures to the table. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”
    Kate giggles again, her signature response to everything, then says something about the high quality of the players at this year’s draft camp. Like she’d know, Harry thinks, wondering if Matt picked her precisely because of that, because even though she never knows what she’s talking about she is always happy to throw in her two cents, has no reservations sharing her half-baked opinions. It fills in the awkward pauses, makes him look like a genius.
    Matt’s girlfriends have always been like that. Chatty. That is the thing with them. They’ll talk your ear off, just like Diana. Though Kate is chattier than most. He once timed her talking nonstop for nearly eleven minutes. At the dinner table she says “awesome” eight times before the meal has been served.
    A yellowing article about Matt and Kate clipped from one of those women’s magazines is affixed to the refrigerator door by a grubby Beautiful