Now she was-well, she was better. She had stopped watching that moronic TV show, a total irony because here in Australia, Home and Away aired every night at seven-thirty. Jake had expected Ava to be glued to the set as she had been at home. But being in Australia had eradicated her need to watch a show set in Australia. Plus, she was too busy for TV. She didn’t mope around the house the way she used to do on her sad days, or stalk like a hungry tigress on her angry days. Now she hit an evenhanded balance. She offered Jake a host of potential activities: sailing lessons at the Fremantle Yacht Club, an internship at the Science Museum (set up by his Uncle Marco), a visit with his cousin Xavier, who was not quite a year older than Jake.

“You used to love playing with Xavier,” his mother said. “Don’t you remember?”

What Jake remembered was that Xavier had given him an Indian rope burn and cheated at thumb wrestling.

“I’m too old for a play date, Mom,” Jake said.

Ava insisted that he needed something to do. The American International School kept to the same schedule as schools back home, so classes wouldn’t begin until September. He couldn’t just sit and rot for the next two months.

He turned down all of his mother’s overtures. He seethed at how happy she seemed. All it had taken was Penny’s death.

His parents still fought all the time-Jake overheard them from the private distance of the shed-but now it was for different reasons. Now his father was the one who didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. Jordan refused to see anyone from Ava’s family: “They all blame me, Ava,” he said. “You poisoned them against me.” Now his father was the one who paced the floor, impatient and restless, as if waiting for someone to rescue him.


Their first family outing was to the Harborfront for fish and chips, his mother’s idea. There were half a dozen huge establishments with picnic tables overlooking the water, and they all sold the same thing: fried haddock or whiting with pale, limp “chips,” which were french fries, or sort of. The restaurants also specialized in fried shrimp, fried clams, and something revolting called fried whitebait, a little fish that looked like a minnow; you were meant to eat the eyes and tail and everything.

Ava had waited tables at Cicarella’s as a young woman, and so they selected an outdoor table there. Ava said, “I’m going classic: fried whiting and chips. Gentlemen, what would you like?”

Jordan said, “Nothing for me, thanks.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?” Ava demanded.

“I mean I’m not eating.”

“But you agreed to come.”

Jordan sighed. “Yes, Ava, I agreed to come.”

“So if you agreed to come, you have to eat. Eating is part of the deal.”

“Is it?” Jordan asked.

They were going to fight again, and out in public this time. Jake agreed with his father, he didn’t want to eat here either. This place was seedy; in America it would be considered almost honky-tonk, with its stench of frying oil and its scores of cawing seagulls. But his father’s refusal to eat came across as being juvenile and mean, and Jake felt a stab of sympathy for his mother, who obviously had dreamed of eating here at least forty-two thousand times over the past two decades.

Jake said, “I’ll have the fried shrimp.”

“Prawns,” Ava said.

“Whatever.”

“Or you could have yabbies,” Ava said. “Which are a bigger bug, sort of like crawfish.”

“Please don’t call them bugs,” Jake said. “I’ll have the shrimp.”

Ava stood to order the food, and Jake was too embarrassed to look at his father, whom he felt he’d betrayed somehow. Jake was used to the usual teams-himself and his father on one side, his mother (and in some weird way, Ernie) on the other-and totally unprepared for the way their roles had switched. Jordan was, quite clearly, the bad guy now, the spoiler, while Ava was the good guy. His mother was just trying to have a pleasant evening out with her family, to show them a bit of the culture she’d grown up in.

Ava brought the fish and chips to the table wrapped in white paper, and when she unfolded the paper, they were all enveloped by steam and the smell of fried fish. Ava closed her eyes and inhaled. Then she wielded a squirt bottle of vinegar and doused her food with it, giving the whole mess a new smell.

Jake said, “Ketchup? Because I’m American?”

His mother laughed, the short, high-pitched yelp of a Yorkie.

His father said, “I’ll get it.”

Ava dug into her meal with a voraciousness Jake couldn’t remember seeing in her before. This, to her, was the best food on Earth.

Jake’s father was taking a long time getting the ketchup, and Jake’s shrimp were rapidly cooling; in another few minutes, he knew, the fries would be stiff and inedible.

Ava said, “I bet he went home.”

Home? thought Jake. Would his father do that? Pretend to be getting ketchup and just leave?

“He’s miserable,” Ava said.

Jake stared down into the golden grease of his dinner basket. He feared he might cry. Everything was wrong; it had been wrong back on Nantucket, and it was still wrong here. But then a handful of ketchup packets hit the table, and Jake looked up to see his father holding an icy mug of beer.

“Sorry, mate,” he said.


On the way home, Ava wanted to stop and see the statue of Bon Scott, the lead singer for AC/DC. At first Jake thought she was joking-but no, there it was, a statue of the musician right there on the promenade. Bon Scott had grown up in Fremantle.

Ava chattered about how she and the other waitresses used to listen to AC/DC on their breaks and how Bon Scott’s death had wracked the city with grief. He was buried in East Fremantle; Ava and her girlfriends had whiled away many an afternoon drinking jug wine on his grave.

“You do know he drank himself to death, right?” Jordan said. “The man was a degenerate. And they’ve put up a statue of him, like he’s George Washington.”

Ava smiled dreamily. “I like to remember the music.”

“For God’s sake,” Jordan said, frowning at the statue. “An actual tribute to the man who brought the world ‘Highway to Hell’?”

“You can try to ruin my evening,” Ava said. “But it won’t work.”

“And ‘Hells Bells,’ ” Jordan added.

“Dad,” Jake said.

Jordan clammed up and kicked an imaginary pebble on the path.

Jake thought, I have to get out of here. But how?


A few days later, on a Friday morning, Jake and his father were sitting together in the kitchen, and his father was trying to figure out how to use the French press. Jake’s father had wanted to buy an electric coffee maker, but Ava had said no, there was no need, the French press would suffice; the coffee would be better, in fact. And so every morning Ava woke up before either Jake or Jordan and made the coffee using the French press, and though Jordan now complained about nearly everything, Jake hadn’t heard him complain about the coffee.

Jordan fumbled with the plunger of the French press and squinted at the small print on the package of coffee beans. He made some frustrated huffing noises.

Jake asked, “How come Mom isn’t up yet?”

Jordan said, “I’ll tell you how come.”

Then Jake remembered that his mother had gone out the night before with some “old friends” to hear jazz in Northbridge. Jake’s father had been unhappy about this, and Ava had said, “You’re more than welcome to come with us, Jordan. It’s not what you think.”

“Here’s what I think,” Jordan had begun, his voice getting the hairy texture that meant he was about to attack. Jake took that opportunity to leave the room and head back out to the shed. Then he heard his father say, “I think you should go alone, is what I think.”

Jake watched his father now. “You have to fill the kettle, Dad,” he said. “And then pour the hot water into the carafe.”

“Yeah, but how much coffee?” Jordan said. “And where does your mother keep the grinder?”

Jordan shrugged.

“Ava!” Jordan shouted.

I have to get out of here, Jordan thought once again. Here the kitchen, and here Australia.

Ava shuffled into the room a few seconds later. Her hair was knotted up in a disheveled bun, her complexion was grayish, and she walked with one hand held in front of her, like a blind person who was afraid of running into something. She squinted in the bright sunlight.

“What’s up?” she said. Her voice had a raspy edge. She put a hand on Jake’s head and said, “Good morning, sweetheart,” and Jake smelled cigarettes. His mother, he realized, had been out drinking. And smoking. His mother was hung over.

“I can’t figure out how to work this goddamned thing.”

“Here,” Ava said. “Give it to me, I’ll do it.”

Jordan threw the coffee beans against the counter, and the bag split open, beans scattering everywhere. He said, “Nice of you to finally make an appearance. I could have walked downtown, waited in the ridiculous line at the Dome, and walked back, and I still would have had my coffee sooner.”

“I’m sorry,” Ava said.

Jake found himself drawn into his parents’ argument. He found himself thinking, You don’t have to apologize to him, Mom. He’s being a jerk.

“How was Roger?” Jordan asked.

Ava patiently gathered the spilled beans into a pile and slid them into her cupped hand. She didn’t answer, and Jake found himself saying out loud, “Who’s Roger?”

“Your mother’s old boyfriend,” Jordan said. “Who took her out to a club last night until three in the morning.”

Jake found himself thinking, Really? He told himself, Get up this instant and go out to the shed. Everything was inside out and backward. His mother had gone out drinking, she had come home at three in the morning. But he couldn’t move. He wanted to hear if the part about the old boyfriend was true or not.