Page 97 of Malaise
“We’ve had this discussion,” he snaps. “If you weren’t paying attention the first time, then that’s your loss.”
“With all due respect,” Tanya intervenes, “my brother has done a lot to support and encourage Meg after you were so quick to cut all ties.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s done a lot more than that,” Dad chuckles. “Hasn’t he, Meg?”
Not as much as I’d like. But he doesn’t need to know that. I give him my best smirk, knowing he’ll draw assumptions from it that stretch the truth of it all.
The rose in his cheek deepens.
Score.
“I’m not going to pat your ego, Peter, nor am I going to offer you anything to persuade you to do what’s right. I haven’t got anything you need, and we’re not mutually invested in anything that would see such benefit from bartering a deal.” Tanya scoots forward, imploring my old man with her eyes. “I’m simply going to ask you, human being to human being, to find it in your heart and offer your daughter, if not me, this one reprieve. Do what you know is the honest and forthright thing to do, and make a statement to say Brett was with you that night. It’s the truth, and it needs to be said.”
“But it’s not what we want for Meg,” he argues. “Her mother and I, we had aspirations for her. She’s extremely gifted, but the last two or three years, she’s just thrown that out the window, and we don’t know why.”
“Because I was struggling to find myself, Dad.”
He finally looks at me with an ounce of the kindness I used to know. “You’ve always been headstrong, sure of what you wanted. What on earth could you have been searching for?”
“Identity.” My arms cross over my chest out of habit, given we’re discussing parts of me I’ve kept hidden so successfully for the past five years at least. “Do you know how my school days went?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I had no friends, Dad. Having yoghurt thrown at my head because somebody decided my presence irritated them wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I had people steal lunches from others’ lockers and place them in mine so I’d be framed. I had a girl threaten to beat me up on the way home from school with a steel pipe over a packet of fucking pretzels.”
He sighs, running a hand over his chin. “I had no idea.”
“No, you wouldn’t, because you never asked. Den was the only one who knew. He was the only one who looked out for me.”
“We would have done something if we’d known.”
“Like what, Dad? Talk to the principal and make it worse. Nobody could fix the fact everybody in my year saw me as the outcast, the target. I just had to ride it out, and unfortunately, acting out and finding unconventional ways to deal kind of went along with it.”
“Meg, that’s horrible,” Tanya whispers, reaching for my hand.
I take hers and shrug. “It’s life.”
“Regardless,” Dad says carefully, “it doesn’t excuse where you’re at now. We had one request, only one.”
“Ditch Brett,” I fill in. “I know. I can’t do it.”
“Then we’re at an impasse.”
“We are.”
I sigh, dropping Tanya’s hand to rub my palms over my knees. “I’ve come to terms with this, Dad. I don’t like that this is how things are between us, but I can accept it for what it is. You don’t agree with the path I’ve chosen for myself, but please, just do this one last thing for me and give a statement that sets Brett free.”
“I don’t have to do a single thing for either one of you.” Dad frowns. “Did you think that if Tanya here fancied herself up with well-spoken prose that I’d relent and do as you wish? Think again, sweetheart.” He shakes his head, looking Tanya over top to toe before talking to me. “She’s everything I don’t want you to be, Meg. I’d never agree to anything that gives you licence to become another one of them.” He shifts his attention to Tanya. “There’s a mirror in our entranceway, dear. Go take a long hard look in it and realise that words mean nothing when what you are on the outside, how you present yourself to the world, is all you’ll ever be: white trash.”
“Dad!”
“Don’t go thinking you’ve got anything worthwhile to say on this,” he threatens with a raised finger. “We’ve said our piece and it’s clear that this issue of your present company won’t be resolved anytime soon, Meg.”
Tanya stands, hands flexing at her hips. “I don’t need a mirror to know what the town thinks of my family, Mr Andrews. The sad truth of the matter is that ignorant, narrow-minded fools like you are the reason why people refuse to look below the surface and acknowledge their neglect and unfair treatment of people like my mother. People like you were the reason why the one person in my and Brett’s lives who had the determination to change our future, died regretting the fact she couldn’t.”
“Bullshit,” Dad challenges. “Your family cut their own path, choosing the easy way out by thieving what they wanted from the town instead of working hard to earn it.”
“Tell yourself what you need to so you can sleep at night, but I know the truth: that Mum applied and failed to even get a first interview for over thirty jobs in four years. The men who held the power decided that her foolish decision to marry a bad man who swept her off her feet as a teenager was reason enough why she shouldn’t be rewarded for trying to change her circumstance.” Her chest rises and falls rapidly as she takes a measured step toward Dad. “How dare you chastise and belittle us for being what you make us.”