The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir (29 page)

When I was a kid and heard all these things Mum and Dad used to say, I never thought they’d stick with me. But here I was, twenty-two years old, newly engaged and I had this deep need to call my dad and say to him, ‘Dad, I’ve found the right woman.’

Of course, I had lots of reasons not to tell the prick. But Suzie encouraged me to make contact.

‘You still love him, Anh.’

‘No I don’t. Not anymore.’

One night I was sitting up late at night, unable to sleep. Those bloody crickets were so loud. I went out to my car, drove up the road to the payphone, got out the fading shop-a-docket that had been in my wallet for two years, and dialled the number.

‘Hello,’ a raspy voice answered. I recognised it straight away.

‘Dad, it’s Anh.’

‘Anh… hello, son.’

A silence followed for what seemed like four years.

‘Anh?’

‘I… I got your number from Uncle Eight. He told me you’re living in Melbourne now.’

‘I am living in Melbourne now.’

‘What’s your address?’

Within two minutes I was in the car driving to Melbourne.

It’s incredibly difficult to describe the feelings that go on inside you when you’re on your way to see a father you once adored, but for eight long years have been fantasising about killing. You play out the whole thing over and over again with different scenarios: a joyful reunion full of happy tears; an angry reunion where you knock him out. You drive and you cry and wipe the wet steering wheel with your flannelette shirt.

‘What’s the kid’s name, Dad?’

‘His name is Anh. I named him after you.’

That floored me. I looked at the little kid and he was the spitting image of my brother Khoa.

‘He looks just like Khoa, aye?’

‘He’s just like Khoa,’ Dad said. Then he called the kid over.

‘Come here, Fatty!’

He might’ve been named after me, but he got the nickname of my brother. When Khoa was a kid everyone called him ‘Fatty’. Not to be cruel, it was just his nickname… because he was fat.

I played with Fatty Anh for a few minutes. He was a huge strong one-year-old and incredibly bright and cheeky. It was a welcome break from the tense conversation. I felt an urge to play with this kid who a part of me wanted to dislike; after all, I had always been incredibly protective of my brother Khoa and my sister Tram, and here’s this strange kid from out of nowhere wanting to butt in on our territory. But on the other hand, the little tacker was hilarious and it was his resemblance to Khoa that took away any ill feeling that was desperately trying to surface.

I stayed for about an hour, mainly making small talk: ‘How’s your brother?’ ‘Good.’ ‘How’s your sister?’ ‘Good.’ That sort of thing. Then it was time to leave.

‘Anh, what’s your phone number?’

I gave him a dodgy one. It was strange to give my father a fake phone number but I didn’t want him calling our house, just in case Mum or one of the kids picked up.

Then I drove all the way back to Sydney. It was a very long drive. I was emotionally spent. I was running on adrenaline, it was just too much—too many feelings, too many thoughts, too much confusion. I got home and fell onto my bed exhausted. I hadn’t slept for twenty-six hours.

I didn’t tell anyone about my meeting with Dad, not even Suzie. For a week I lived with a lot of uncertainty and questions mulling around in my head. Dad had acted like I’d gone away for a short holiday and recently come back. What I had really wanted from him was an apology, so I called him again.

This time he sounded different, his speech seemed affected by something. He was slurring severely. I hadn’t noticed it so much when I’d seen him so I asked him what was wrong.

‘Nothing wrong,’ he said quickly, too quickly. There was something going on but it was still too early for me to understand. Bloody hell. The guy sounded weird, so it was not really the time to launch into blame and anger, so I let it slide. I was also frightened. I wanted to reconnect with the man I used to know, not deal with some strange illness. Dad was quick to get me off the phone and I was glad he was letting me off the hook.

‘I ne-ad to go. Cawl meee ba-ack soon, Anh. In a few we-eeks.’

‘Okay, bye.’

A month later I flew down to see him again, this time with Suzie. We arrived around midday and I’d prepared Suzie; I’d told her about my half-brother, the other woman and the state of my dad.

What I hadn’t prepared her for was Dad’s showmanship.

When the battered front door of the housing commission unit opened, Suzie and I laid our eyes on the biggest seafood feast we’d ever seen. Dad’s plastic table was covered with a mouth-watering banquet—lobster, crabs, prawns, scallops—that just didn’t fit in with the surroundings. Dad had always loved seafood. When he won at the races, or when a big cheque came in from a delivery of garments, we’d be off to the fish markets. In this case he must have borrowed the money or at least spent their entire week’s budget on this one meal for his son and his son’s fiancée.

‘Suzie!’ he cried out.

My dad grabbed her hand with both of his and shook it vigorously. Suzie told me later that she liked him instantly.

What surprised me was Dad’s speech. He sounded completely normal. We all got stuck into this enormous feast, talking, laughing, my father telling Suzie stories about ‘When Anh was a kid’.

‘Anh tell you about the time he stitched his finger to the business shirt?
RRRRAAAAAARRRRR
! “Daaaad! Muuuuum! Heeeelp!”.’

‘Anh has bad asthma, I stay awake with Anh all night watching the soccer till he tired enough to go to sleep.’

‘You ever lock your keys in the car; just go see Anh!’

I realised that, when he wasn’t drunk, this guy was indeed the most wonderful dad in the world. Somehow, during the past eight years I had managed to block out all the good memories and focused solely on what he’d done wrong. I realised I still very much loved this laughing, beautiful, terribly flawed man.

After the meal a cab came and picked up Suzie to return her to the airport. She had to get back to a court case in Sydney the next day. I was going to stay a few more days with Dad.

My father dragged the top mattress off his queen-sized bed ensemble out to the living room for me to sleep on. We sat at the plastic table and talked late into the night, and I realised that as Dad got tired, his speech started faltering again. Not as bad as it was on the phone, but enough for me to notice. There had been talk of an illness from Dad’s partner at the first visit but it was glossed over, and now I really wanted to know. All the facts, everything.

I thought,
Just ask him what’s going on.
But I didn’t. I put it off. I was scared of what he might tell me.
Okay,
I decided,
I’ll just have another glass of wine and then I’ll ask him about his health
.

All of a sudden, he started wobbling in his chair and said, ‘I’m just going to have a lie down.’

Dad awkwardly slid off the chair and slumped down on the mattress a metre away. I watched in horror as he curled up into a trembling ball and started crying.

Suzie and I had a long engagement because we wanted to save some money, and we were only twenty-two. I had a few thousand stashed away from casual work, and the comedy was starting to take off, so a couple of weeks after proposing to her we went shopping for what was going to be my biggest purchase ever.

One afternoon I went to Suzie’s office at Allen, Allen & Hemsley, one of the biggest law firms in the country, to take her shopping. Suzie was wearing a beautiful business suit but I was dressed for a comedy performance I was booked for later that night. In my early years I used to do gigs in old jeans, a flannelette shirt and thongs. Not just any thongs, but Kmart double pluggers that had worn so thin I could tell you when I stepped on a coin whether it was heads or tails.

It dawned on me that when you go shopping for expensive jewellery you really shouldn’t look like you’re casing the joint. Everywhere we went people looked at us strangely, because it looked like Suzie was my lawyer, and we’d just gotten out of a trial where she had to defend me for an armed hold-up. I’ve never seen shop assistants so nervous. One section of a particular shop had two extra doors to get through and, as soon as we got past the second entry, there were three staff and a security guard hovering near us and watching me like a hawk.

‘Maybe you’d prefer to look at these ones over here,’ the senior shop assistant said, shooing us over to the cheaper rings with diamonds the size of a grain of sand. ‘They might be more in your price range.’

Being the proud young suitor that I was, I was offended.

‘Actually, these diamonds are a little small. Got anything bigger?’

At this point I could tell the lady was thinking I was about to pull down a balaclava and Suzie was going to reveal that under her suit coat she was hiding a sawn-off shotgun. She scurried off and came back with the manager. He was a short Italian man desperately trying to look imposing and official. Then he saw me and his face lit up, ‘Anh!’

A couple of weeks earlier I had been on a TV special and the owner had seen the show. He gave me a special discount—‘Only for-a you. You-a da funny guy on-a da TV’—on a stunning diamond ring, which put me in the good books for a long, long time.