Читать книгу The Styx - Patricia Holland - Страница 14

After my mother left Styx River Station, my father didn’t really need anyone. He liked being the token single father, someone all the mothers fêted and simpered at. He liked making a show at school events of being the devoted father.

I can see him now, pushing me up the path to school from the car park. He, the picture of an RM Williams rural bloke. Me, skinny, legs and arms undersized and always askew, pushed in an undersized pastel-pink wheelchair that, from its very nature, could never be cute.

He always had something slightly skew-whiff to match me: rumpled hair, shirt-tail hanging out, sleeves rolled too high, uneven. Something for everyone to latch onto to pity, to offset the endless well of pity they couldn’t allow themselves to properly begin to negotiate towards me. It could almost comfortably be displaced onto him. He would only have to turn up three or four times a year at most, to attract the tag of devoted father.

It wasn’t a big deal for him to no longer have my mother around. He always liked going to social functions alone or with a wingman or two. He attracted more attention that way. For him, the chase for attention was sublime. He walked differently, dressed differently, stood taller. And smelt of going out.