Just Went Out For Milk

Leaving Home

It was on the first day of Grade Three that I received two pieces of conflicting advice, which would shape my course of action whenever trouble found me from this point on.

I stood at the school gates. My older brother, Stevie, knelt down in front of me, his blonde fringe dipped below his eye.

‘You’re twins, Dane; you know he’s got a short fuse.’ He nodded toward Josh, who sat by the swing set with his arms crossed, sulking because he had been bullied at lunch. ‘I’m not going to be there all the time, so you need to stand up for him.’

‘But what if one of the big kids tries to fight me when I do?’

‘Never back down for what you believe in, and especially not for the people you love.’

He faked a slow motion punch to my jaw. I took his fist in my palms and kicked him in the shin. ‘Like that?’

‘Yep, just like that,’ he chuckled as he rubbed his leg.

That afternoon Josh and I walked up our driveway, scuffing our feet in the dirt. Before we could touch foot on the first rickety wooden step Mum flung open the screen door. Behind her came the smash of glass.

‘Boys, take your school bags and go into the paddock.’ She was panicking in a way I had never seen her do before. ‘Run!’

I didn’t think about what was happening; just followed impulse and my mother’s instruction.

Since then I have known what it’s like to feel a rush. I’ve always lived on a whim. Well, mostly. If I had followed every urge I’ve ever had, I would have had much more sex and killed a lot more people.

Although I often met conflict head on, it was my impetuousness and an echo of my mother’s advice that found me at Tullamarine airport on an overcast November day in 1986, with only a backpack, about to board a plane to Los Angeles. Any plans I had for a life in Australia had been crushed in the preceding days.

It was on the Melbourne waterfront that a friend and fellow docker, Teddy Fitzpatrick, first told me about life in America. Bear, as we called him, was a gentle giant who towered over me and dwarfed my six-foot-four frame, whose voice hit octaves so low they made Barry White sound like a Chipmunk. Teddy had been on a university exchange to the States as part of his medical degree.

For years I roamed North America. The travel and encounters along the way bred new life into me. The quiet nights I slept under stars in Texas, the noisy nights at bars in Brooklyn, the days I strode along deserted Midwestern highways. The endlessness of the Grand Canyon and wandering through misty woods in the outskirts of Minnesota.

It didn’t matter how much I journeyed, though, the urge to move on remained. As soon as an adventure was done, I needed a new one. Another chance to start over.

The constant throughout my life was always the beach. I would find myself there when I became lost and needed to feel at home. I’d sit on sand and rocks, in sun and rain, and listen to the waves wash into the shore and whisper, ‘Life always carries on.’

I stopped on the shore one scorching-hot afternoon in California, 1988.

I lay on the sand of Venice Beach. A lonely cloud floated across the blue summer sky. A gentle sea breeze massaged my skin and soothed the heat of the sun’s rays. Water ebbed and flowed on the shoreline like the slow swinging arm of a pendulum. The place was alive with vibrant sounds. From the boardwalk behind me, local merchants hollered, drum circles pattered African beats, street performers turned out tunes, impassioned street-ballers trash-talked and metal clunked from Muscle Beach Gym. On the sand children played, narrated only by their unaffected laughter. The bikinis, bronzed skin and bodies: it was amazing. For a boy who had grown up in a small country town some hours out of Melbourne, it felt like a movie set.

An old man with leather for skin plucked the notes of Hotel California on an acoustic guitar. At the moment he hit the second G, something walked across my line of vision.

The girl wasn’t obsessed like everyone else – checking to see who admired them. She seemed to notice very little, alone in her own world. She was about the only girl on the beach not in a bikini, but with her sun-blessed skin and the way her light, white summer dress clung to her body, there was every reason to suggest she would have shamed them all. She passed no more than a few metres in front of me, brushing her wavy brown hair from her face. I cleaned my Wayfarers. ‘If her personality is half as good as how she looks, then wow,’ I thought. ‘I need to know.’

With my backpack still attached, I ran after her and left the sun bakers behind me with a shower of sand. The bottom of her dress ruffled in the breeze like the sail of a yacht. She crossed her feet as she walked, hips swaying side to side ever so slightly. Every few steps she made a small skip forward as if to dodge imaginary cracks in the ground.

I slowed as I caught her. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. She was tiny, so perfectly feminine. I touched her shoulder. ‘Hi …’

That was as far as I got.

Before I could finish any introduction she spun and kicked me in the nuts. ‘Don’t touch me you fucking creep.’

I fell to the ground and held on.

I went to talk but the pain increased, as it does with a firm kick to the crown jewels. I gasped for air. She had taken my breath away, in every sense, but for some strange reason I felt more alive than ever.

I coughed and spluttered, and finally wheezed out, ‘Hello would have been nicer.’

The corner of her lip curled upward and sunshine glazed her cheek. I was captivated by a smile that would spawn a thousand happy memories.

‘Hello,’ said Kayla, and she had me.

Chapter 1

It was one of those nights when something eerie is in the air. Like the calm when haze covers a city sky and you can smell a bush fire burning thirty kilometres away.

For late October the heat was outrageous, even for California. It was as if autumn had jumped back to summer for the night, the way a scratched CD skips on a track. The kind of night when people sleep with windows open, bedrooms like oversized ovens, a gentle breeze and the cool side of the pillow the only fleeting respites.

Midnight had long expired when Kayla and I sneaked out of the apartment with a blanket and ran through the streets hand in hand. My ears rang and eyes, although burning, remained peeled and alert with the energy of over-tiredness.

On the beach, the tide rolled into the shore, the shhh of the water, a sound usually drowned by the eclectic resonances of Venice, heard from far away in the dead of night.

The day to come would mark five years since Kayla had kicked me in the nuts. Five crazy years. Every twist on our rollercoaster ridden with passion. The laughs we shared brought on stomach cramps, and Kayla made me smile so much my jaw ached.

Beside the pier, we stopped and held hands. Moonlight illuminated her face. I got lost in her emerald eyes, a place where I could see everything beautiful about this world. Kayla’s effect on me was mystical, beyond what words can describe. I ran my hand through her hair and down her neck, then pulled her close and felt the curves of her waist, the smoothness of her skin beneath her tee, and let out a snigger. It was hard not to when the immensity of what I felt for her crashed over me in a wave of joy. I loved her more than I ever thought I could love anything. In times like this, I wished I could lock it away to keep it safe, and perhaps one day express it properly. ‘I’m so bloody lucky to have you, Babe,’ I said.

‘You’re pretty awesome, Dane.’

One smirk from her, a flair in those eyes, and the joy inside me erupted like a volcano and spat passionate lava, energy surging from every muscle in my body. We broke into a rushed and urgent tango of tearing each other’s clothes off.

Into the early hours of the morning, we lay atop the blanket under the pier and screwed like hormone-riddled fifteen-year-olds. Our bodies slid against one another, heat steaming in the glow of moonlight. Kayla’s sweat filled my mouth as I massaged her neck with my tongue and lips, and then her nipples, down to her legs and back up to her pussy. Her thighs tightened around my head and she clawed my forearms as her body jolted to the movement of my tongue against her clitoris. Sand stuck to my knees as I came up for air and moved back to her neck and then mouth.

I’d been away on a breather for nine days. Kayla was wound up and so was I, which I discovered with powerful, body-clapping thrusts inside her. She rolled me over, off the rug and into the sand, and while she grinded on top of me she held my throat. I grasped her buttocks and drove her back and forth. I tossed her onto her back once again and pinned her down. My pubic bone pressed into her clitoris and she lost control, her fingernails breaking skin on my back as she came. We switched, slapped, clasped and took control of one another in turn, and as we faced each other on our sides Kayla’s third climax brought me to explode in time with her.

Panting, we sprawled over the rug, exhausted, and covered in sweat and sand.

‘I see you’ve missed me,’ I said.

‘Another day and I was buying a dildo and changing the locks to the apartment,’ she said. ‘Don’t flatter yourself. You’re replaceable.’

I wiped sand onto her naked breast. ‘You’re a bitch, you know.’

‘And you’re a jerk.’ With a clump of sand in her palm she slapped me.

I left it there. With Kayla these play fights could go on forever, and would often escalate to the point where I feared for some part of my manhood.

Kayla rolled over and nestled into me. ‘You remember the house I told you about?’ she asked. ‘The one up the coast, just out of San Francisco, the one on the cliff overlooking the ocean? The one with all the ghosts and all that stuff that supposedly happened there. It’s beautiful. You know the one, right?’

I knew it well. Kayla crapped on about it constantly.

‘Yeah, what about it?’

‘We should buy it, tomorrow … we should just go. It’s been for sale forever. They can’t sell it because of the ghosts and the history and all that.’

‘We don’t have the cash, and I don’t know if I want to move from here. I like LA. I’ve made friends. I’m comfortable here. This is our home.’

‘You have no trouble leaving for ten days,’

‘Nine.’

‘Whatever. Fuck you.’ Kayla sat up. ‘Why can’t you just relax and think about it? We’ll figure out the money … Anyway, forget about it now. There’s something I need to talk to you about.’

It was nearing sunup and I hadn’t slept. I was crabby and needed coffee. ‘This is our home – what don’t you understand?’

‘We won’t buy the house. Screw it … Dane, I need to talk to you.’

I snapped. ‘So talk!’

Kayla swung her arm out and hit me in the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ She lay down with her back to me.

I realised what a grump I was being. ‘If you want to tell me something, I’d love to hear it,’ I reassured her, but it was little use. Kayla’s breathing had deepened to an opened-mouth snore.

As the sun rose across the water I shook her awake enough to dress. I slung the blanket over my shoulder, attached Kayla and piggy-backed her home.

‘I love you, Rascal. You know that, right?’ I said as I rounded the corner onto our street.

Kayla’s mouth clacked with saliva. ‘I know. I’m pretty fond of you, too.’

I bumped her arse and feet entering the apartment, which was met with a grumbled expletive. She slid off my back, stripped down to her knickers in a flash and passed out on the sofa.

I put on a pot of coffee. Although I fought against weights on my eyelids, my body clock was forever tuned to the early morning starts of Melbourne’s waterfront, and a dependency on coffee.

The alphabet magnets on the refrigerator were arranged into DANE EATS ASZ. Beneath the Z was a picture of the house in San Francisco that Kayla had torn from a magazine. I opened the fridge door. An empty milk bottle. No milk meant no coffee, and I needed coffee.

I took a pad of Post-it notes and sat at the coffee table across from Kayla.

Her head was propped up on a throw cushion. Mouth open and snoring with the sound of a two-stroke motor, ever so elegant my girl, her breathing grew louder until she snorted and startled herself, wriggled and then reset her position. I enjoyed watching her sleep, as gross as it was. When you fall in love with someone, you treasure their quirks as much as anything else. Flaws become unique marks of character: things you’d miss if they weren’t there.

The cream of the sofa showed through the gap in between her upper thighs, which ran all the way to her lace pink knickers. I grew hot as I surveyed her from toe to head: ticklish calves, tight little pussy, the indent of her waist, perky breasts, tanned skin, sex eyes (even when closed) and, despite drool seeping from her mouth, lips that drove me wild with what they could do.

I should’ve given into temptation …

I scribbled, ‘Just went out for milk.’

I stuck the note to Kayla’s cheek and kissed her forehead. She mumbled something about Colonel Clink and kicked out her leg.

The morning crowd was out on the footpath: drunkards stumbling home, dog walkers, joggers, the elderly aplenty. Three blocks over I entered the corner convenience store, the door jingling a familiar welcome.

‘Good morning, Skippy.’ George Hernandez tilted the straw hat that never left his head. His brother, Jose, who with tanned, wilted skin and deep brown, teddy-bear eyes looked close to a twin, uttered the same over his shoulder as he restacked the cigarette shelf.

Many years before, the exact date I’m not sure, the Hernandez brothers had come north from Mexico. They never said so, but, with certain intimations, made it known to me that rather than a Boeing they’d taken the Rio Grande. They had come with nothing other than wet clothes on their backs and a dream to make a life in the country that promised so much. Together they worked from the bottom and turned one convenience store into six, and took a bud of an idea and made it blossom into one of the largest funeral parlour chains in Greater Los Angeles, Ibis Funeral Homes. They still worked at the first store they’d opened.

‘Is an extension of the night for me, I’m afraid,’ I said and placed a bottle of milk on the counter, ‘so I’m in need of a kick to make it a morning.’

‘Coffee doesn’t replace sleep, Amigo.’ George took the coins and rather than slotting them inside the open cash register, dropped them into the jar marked with my name.

‘You know, if I keep this up you will have to start taking my money.’

‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘Maybe you take what we owe you though.’

In turn, the three of us glanced to the half-moon of plaster on the ceiling some shades lighter than the surrounding paint. It was how we became friends, how we learned to trust each other.

The evening after I first met Kayla I wandered into the Hernandez’s store. Had I not needed milk, had there not been a robbery about to take place, had I not tackled the gunman, had the bullet not shot into the roof: things may have been very different …

After this the brothers wouldn’t let me pay, but I wouldn’t keep the money, and so a compromise was reached – the jar.

Through the window, rain now teemed down.

‘I can find an umbrella if you want one, Amigo,’ said George.

‘I’ll pass. A walk in the rain can do wonders for the soul.’

‘Can do wonders for a cold,’ added Jose.

I took the milk from the counter. ‘I’ll pass.’

‘I hear a storm’s coming, going to wash everything away,’ said George. ‘Everything just disappear.’

‘This is Los Angeles, Fellas, think you’ve got your weather tuned to the tropics.’

‘You don’t get caught out in that storm, Hombre, you don’t get swept up in that water and disappear now,’ George called.

‘Life’s full of waves.’ I winked at him. ‘I learned to surf a long time ago.’

‘Send me a postcard from your desert island, Skippy.’

The doorbell jingled and I waved goodbye.

*

I had walked a block in the downpour. The throngs of early-morning folks had disappeared, and I was nearly alone. Over the road at the steps of an apartment building a man and woman cursed each other in screams and jagged hand movements. They were drug addicts, or alcoholics, or crazy – perhaps all.

The skeletally thin woman scrunched her face: the determined look girls get just before they jump on top of a man or slap them. She slapped him. Then, like a movie when someone sits on the remote control and bumps the fast-forward button, the man reeled back, cocked his fist and punched the woman square on the nose.

When I was a child I learned that it is never okay to strike a woman. Some men deserve to be beaten severely, some deserve to die, but no woman should be harmed. Blood poured from her nose. I was now only a couple of metres away.

In a flash, grey buildings, graffiti and sidewalks disappeared. There was no beach, no palm trees. A yellow expanse surrounded me – straw it might have been, or was it a kitchen with linoleum floor? Glass smashed, someone told me to run … I couldn’t.

The man was on his back. His head bounced against the concrete as it was pounded fist by fist into a bloodied pulp. I was on top of him at one point. Then I watched from my knees. There was an awful lot of blood, so much blood … Beyond the puddles of blood, the milk bottle was smashed to pieces, milk dripping into the gutter.

The next thing I remember, my face was pushed onto the bonnet of a car. Red and blue lights. Loud talking. Cuffs.

Letter 1

October 21 1993

Dane,

I need to tell you something.

Last night I tried but, like always, you got caught up and had to make a point. Next time I try, I will shut you up and make you listen.

I’ve rehearsed over and over again for the past week how I will tell you. You’ll be fine with it, and I remind myself of this every time I go through the sit-down, speak-calm and comfort-each-other bits, but it’s been eight days since I found out, and still I haven’t told you, and I know I need to.

I’ll treasure last night, regardless. I needed one more stupid night, one more sunset and sunrise unchained, and one more awkward, out-of-control round of sex on uneven terrain before I become a homebody by imposition.

How is it you finished school at sixteen and still have a higher education than me? It’s funny, now I come to think of it, that this is almost the entire extent to which we’ve indulged each other in our respective histories. With what lies ahead maybe it’s time for us to share where we came from. But I don’t know how you would accept my past. I think it’s a lot to ask.

‘The past is the past for a reason, Babe,’ you’ve always said when the topic creeps into conversation. ‘There’s a reason humans aren’t built with rear-view mirrors – we aren’t made to look back.’

I wonder if you have as many ugly monsters hidden in your closet. It would be easier if you did. One big disgusting monster party in our bedroom when the closet doors open sounds like fun.

The past is the past, you’re right, and it is unchangeable, but maybe we can glance back sometimes just to know the road ahead is so much prettier for the bumpy ones we’ve already traveled.

I haven’t written anything longer than a scribble for years – not since I traded a chewed pencil and knife for a handful of clay and a paintbrush – and after this I probably won’t, because this is just another rehearsal. When you’re home with some fattening milk for your coffee (and belly) I’ll sit you down and tell you. I need to tell you.

I was at the studio Monday morning when I received the call. For as long I could, I continued to slosh paint onto the canvas but stopped eventually and stared at the children huddled into the corner. Where the hell are they now? When the air became thick I left and escaped to the foreshore to further delay the drive to the tall white-plastered building.

As I walked along the sand my legs felt like they could walk forever. The waves rolled in at ankle height and cooled my feet at water’s edge. A Dalmatian bounded up to me and I petted its head before I tossed the chewed tennis ball for it to fetch. The dog bounced away after its prize. There was a family to my left with the porcelain-white skin of holiday makers from the north. The mom read a magazine under a sun umbrella, while the dad threw a football with the son and the daughter arranged a selection of seashells near her mother’s perfectly painted toenails.

The far end of the foreshore was deserted. I could taste the ocean air on the back of my tongue. As I crossed toward the boardwalk, the sand became softer. I could imagine what it would feel like to have clouds underfoot. There was a moment before I stepped onto the boardwalk when I turned to see distant white cliffs and a house peering over the ocean, a man outside, tall and scruffy, statuesque and unaffected by the wind. His arms didn’t move but he reached for me, clapped his little finger against his thumb, an invisible tear in his eye. I could’ve gone home. I didn’t need to go and find out – I already knew – but I did.

I went to the hospital. I waited in the waiting room for a doctor who was running late, sat in a chair I couldn’t quite get comfortable in, in a room of uniform and uninspired safety furniture. I listened to words I’d already heard from a doctor I’d already imagined with his hands clasped in the same way I’d already seen, and he told me the news I already knew.

Remember the lump, the one you couldn’t feel?

‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ you said. ‘Come on Kayla, you’re not a hypochondriac.’

You’re somewhere out in the warming Cali rain as I write this. And once you return I might just drag you right back out there. We’ll run around like children and laugh at the people as they flee indoors with papers on their heads.

At least one more occasion unchained before I settle into the shackles. Life is crazy, we’re crazy and free, and we were born to run. But we can’t run from this. I can’t run from this. I don’t need you here, but hell, I’d like it if you were. There’re not too many people who I can be bothered with, but you are one of them.

It’s cancer, Dane. The tumor is malignant, and they can’t tell me the primary cause.

They won’t operate on it, given the size and where the elephant sits on my inner thigh, so they will nuke it with chemotherapy first before radiation burns it up completely.

‘We have to be cautious and do everything to stop it spreading,’ said Dr Simms. ‘We will work to determine the primary cause, but the area is