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And then they’d be off: “No, I know you were there,” he’d say.
“It might not have been me in the games, Jim, but physios see a lot you know,” she’d retort.
And so on.
About five years ago, in the midst of this argument, she’d hit him with a knockout blow: “So, what you’re saying is, if I’d been a man, you wouldn’t have wanted to tell everyone about me? Show me off?”
“Of course not!” And his dad had sounded insulted, some real heat in his voice for the first time.
“Of course not, you wouldn’t have told everyone?” She went on.
“Of course I would tell everyone! It’s you!” He exploded.
She shot Joq a triumphant look. And Joq never forgot the flash of pity that went over his dad’s face before he smiled sheepishly in an attempt to soften the blow.
The point was, now whenever the arrangement he and George shared came up, whenever George did something as blindingly stupid as take a phone call for footy stuff like now—which was a new level of stupid, even Joq could admit that—his mum looked at him and that look communicated the whole fight all over again.
Only this time, when Joq looked at her, the triumph was gone. She was angry.
“You deserve better,” she said.
“Mum,” he started.
“I don’t want to discuss it, I’m not…” her voice petered out and she looked away. He got it. He was her only child. A happy accident when she was forty. At twelve years older than his dad, she called her husband her first happy accident and Joq her second. “Who gets together with an eighteen-year-old swimmer at thirty!” she’d laugh whenever she told the story. They’d had an idyllic life. Happy as a couple for over ten years. Happy with their only son for over twenty years after that.
Until George.
“I just mean,” she looked back at him. “I think you can do better.”
“You’ve said,” he replied.
“And you’re still not listening,” she finished quietly as George came back in.
“Joq? Not listening?” he asked, all smiles.
“You know, Joaquin,” his dad picked up a thread and ran with it, “always doing his own thing. Once, when he was a kid…”
They moved on and Joq did his best to ignore the frosty looks his mum gave George every time he looked at that damn phone.
19
It was in the game the following weekend that things came to a head. At least for Joq. George would continue to give off an air of denial. But Joq knew what he saw.
There was one point in it going into the fourth. It’d been a good game, kicks hitting chests, lots of shots on goal, high scoring. They were down one point, but the whole building was braced with the expectation that the home team would win it. Finn had one goal and he’d set up some beautiful plays to create others for Lacy deep in the pocket.
Joq was working, his team working the sections as he stood behind them, one eye on the screen watching the game, the other lazily drifting over the monitors every now and then.
A roar of outrage from the crowd so loud they felt it in the room made him snap his attention back to the game. He hadn’t seen what happened, but he saw Finn on the ground, his opponent standing over him, his arms wide, mouth already moving as he shouted denials.
Finn wasn’t moving.
“Fuckin’ clocked him,” Simo said.
“Suspension for sure. Idiot,” Cameron replied.
Joq waited for the replay. Only there was no replay because it’d happened off the ball.
“You got a view of it?”
