We Could Be Something, page 1
Also by Will Kostakis
For young adults
Loathing Lola
The First Third
The Sidekicks
Monuments
Rebel Gods
The Greatest Hit
For younger readers
Stuff Happens: Sean
First published by Allen & Unwin in 2023
Copyright © Will Kostakis 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
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Cover illustration by Astred Hicks
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willkostakis.com
The first book I ever signed was to my mum.
I wrote, ‘Every word is for you.’
Still true.
CONTENTS
ONE The gays are fighting HARVEY
1
2
3
4
TWO The first thing you do is dig SOTIRIS
1
2
3
4
THREE Big dreams HARVEY
1
2
3
4
5
6
FOUR There's this guy SOTIRIS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
FIVE Storms HARVEY
1
2
3
4
5
SIX All I ever wanted SOTIRIS
1
2
3
4
5
SEVEN The way through HARVEY
1
2
3
4
5
6
EIGHT The call SOTIRIS
1
2
3
4
5
NINE In tandem HARVEY
1
2
3
4
5
6
TEN The end SOTIRIS
1
Acknowledgements
About the Author
1
The one night I haul my arse to sleep before ten, I’m woken at ten-thirty by my father rummaging through my wardrobe. He’s getting up me for how many red shirts I own.
It hurts to open my eyes wider than a squint. ‘Huh?’
‘Red shirts,’ he says, like any of this is making sense to me.
I blink. The orange glow of the hallway lamp is hitting him like a spotlight. He’s dressed. Fresh fade, designer stubble, knitted jumper, too-tight pants, boots, duffle bag open at his feet … He’s going somewhere.
He drops two red shirts onto the bag.
‘Ba?’
He ignores me. He’s fixated on the shirts. ‘I’ve counted seven.’ He runs his thumb down the stack. ‘Eight.’
‘Ba.’
‘This one’s nice.’ He waves a V-neck at me before letting it fall. ‘That’s three.’
‘What are you doing?’ I ask.
He smacks his lips. ‘If you had to go an indefinite period with a reduced wardrobe, how many red shirts would you need?’
‘Me?’
‘That’s what you means.’
He’s packing my bag. ‘What have I done?’
‘Just tell me how many.’
Kinda putting me on the spot here. ‘No idea. Five?’
‘Tough. Three’s enough.’
‘Then why did you ask?’
‘You can wear one on the plane. That’s four.’
Right. I’m wide awake now. ‘I’m getting on a plane?’
Ba’s moved on to shorts. He plucks out a striped pair and instinctively checks the crotch for holes. Bingo. Two of them. He discards that pair and checks another, cream-coloured, and to his delight, no holes. He lets the shorts fall onto the bag.
‘Hello?’ I ask. ‘You’re gonna need to give me some—’
‘I’m leaving your father.’ He says it as if it’s some big revelation, as if I haven’t clued into the fact that they low-key hate each other.
They groan and bicker, and for ages, I’ve been wishing they’d get on with it. Have the big fight. Say the horrible thing they can’t take back. Split up. Move on. It’d be rough, sure, but they’d be better in the long run.
I figured they were too chickenshit. But they’re doing it. Ba’s leaving.
Wait. He’s packing my bag. I’m getting on a plane.
‘I’m coming with you?’
He groans. ‘Yes, Harvey.’
I’m in bed. ‘Now?’
‘Right now.’
‘Sydney?’
He nods.
‘For real?’
I must light up, because he tells me not to look so happy about it.
I fix my face.
My mates and I have a pool going. Ten bucks each in the kitty; the first one to bail on school without being expelled or imprisoned gets the lot. Dropping out in Perth is tricky, unless you wanna suffer an apprenticeship or some shit. In Sydney, all you have to do is turn seventeen, and I’ve done that.
I’ve had zero luck convincing my parents to let me move east, but that’s what’s happening now, right? Ba’s fleeing and he’s taking me with him.
‘Now, Harvey.’ And he’s out the door with the duffle bag.
I stare after him.
Now, Harvey.
I kick off my doona. I throw on the closest shirt and shorts and follow Ba as far as the spot in the hallway where Dad’s loitering. There’s nothing to suggest he hasn’t been there the whole time, looking like a shot of depresso between two framed family portraits. In 2014’s, we’re sailors on the pier. In 2019’s, a choir on the vineyard.
I lean against the opposite wall. Dad shrugs. He’s dressed after-dinner casual – singlet, trackpants. I’m itching to ask how a night implodes like this.
He reads my mind. ‘The manure,’ he explains.
Oh, they’ve graduated from bickering over trivial shit to bickering over literal shit. That tracks.
‘The bag has been sitting in the laundry for eight days, Jeremy!’ Ba calls from the master, where I assume he’s packing his own luggage. ‘You promised it would be sorted over the weekend and it’s Wednesday.’
Dad exhales and asks me if I’m okay.
‘I’m fine.’ I sound too fine, so I exhale in solidarity. ‘How are you? Do you want me to stay?’
He shakes his head. ‘Go to Sydney with your father.’
I tell him I don’t have to.
The answer comes from their bedroom. ‘Harvey doesn’t have a choice,’ Ba says. ‘He’s coming. I’ve bought the ticket.’
Dad doesn’t protest. ‘Try east-coast life on for size.’ He conjures a reassuring smile. My parents have always been a united front when it comes to Sydney, but I had an inkling Dad was open to the idea of me dropping out. ‘You never were built for school.’
Vindication. ‘Exactly!’
‘What time’s your flight?’ he asks.
‘How should I know?’
Dad sputters a laugh. He isn’t talking to me.
‘Soon,’ Ba calls.
‘Have you booked a taxi?’
No response. Dad raises both eyebrows. The silence perseveres.
‘I’ll drive you,’ he says eventually.
Ba is adamant. ‘You’re not driving us.’
Dad’s phone syncs the moment he starts the car. I dunno what song he’d choose to soundtrack the breakdown of his marriage, but a Nicki Minaj banger about starships and their propensity to fly probably ain’t it. I cackle before I can stop myself. Dad scrambles to kill the track.
‘You didn’t have to drive us,’ Ba insists. His voice sounds brittle.
Dad lets the indicator do the talking. Two ticks warn any oncoming cars, then he pulls out of the park.
The air in here is thick.
I watch the constant stream of streetlights, half-expecting Ba to renege on the break-up by the time we reach the Shell on Thomas Street. The right turn onto the freeway. Swan River. He holds firm.
They’re doing it. They’re finally doing it.
And I get Sydney.
I post a GIF in the group chat, this brick shithouse of a man accepting a gold medal. I tell them to pay up
It’s not how I pictured it, but I’m glad I’m slinking off into the night. Makes for an easier goodbye. No buildup. No half-slurred two a.m. speeches. No pretending we’re more than what we are. When I mute the group chat, I’m not twisted up about it. We’re not friends like that. They’re good fun. That’s all. They’ll react in the morning, then they’ll carry on, share memes, bitch about the usual teachers, and me not responding will become so normal, they won’t even notice when I quit the group.
At the airport, Ba can’t get out of the car fast enough. Dad says goodbye and asks me to text him when we land. I feel like I have to reassure him. I tell him Ba will come to his senses somewhere over South Australia.
‘That’s sweet of you to say.’
I yawn. The gentle rumble of the cabin is doing its thing. Only a matter of time before I’m dreaming. I look to Ba across the narrow aisle. We were assigned either side of an emergency exit row. I try to read his expression. He can be a ridiculous man and this is him at his most ridiculous. ‘Manure, huh?’ I ask.
He doesn’t face me. ‘It was more than that.’
But he won’t say.
He massages his bare ring finger. The cabin lights dim. He becomes a dark silhouette. And I catch myself feeling … Um. My parents are splitting up and I’m actually sad for them.
I let my eyes close and the rumble lulls me to sleep.
2
My grandmother has two children she loves equally, Ba and the cafe on Victoria Street. It was an Italian place when she was hired to rescue it in the eighties. Her impact was immediate. People would say they were going to Gina’s, and ignore the regular menu for the daily special – whatever my great-grandmother had whipped up the night before. Dolmádes. Spanakópita. All the favourites nobody can pronounce. After a while, the owner got the hint and offered Gina the joint. My family sold their old place and what they made on that was the down payment on the entire terrace. They’ve lived above the cafe ever since.
When our taxi pulls up at the intersection with the huge Coke signs, I know we’re close.
Ba arches an eyebrow at me. ‘Look alive.’
I groan. It should take longer to fly across a country, long enough for a solid eight hours.
There’s a truck in the cafe’s loading zone, so the taxi driver lets us out a fair way down Victoria Street, by a vacant shopfront. The floor at its entrance is tessellated with unopened mail and Domino’s coupons.
Ba grunts. He struggles with his stubborn suitcase handle. ‘Bastard left us in the next suburb over.’
I help him out. The handle extends for me. ‘We’re not that far.’
Seventy metres, tops. Ba exhales like we’re facing Everest.
‘You okay?’
He just starts walking, the loose wheels of his battered suitcase rattling behind him. I catch up.
‘What’s the strategy?’ I ask.
‘Be honest. Tell your grandmother you’re dropping out of school and moving here.’
‘I meant about you leaving Dad.’
His silence says everything.
‘You can’t not tell her. She’ll know what’s up.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Yes, necessarily. We fled in the night.’
‘We didn’t flee.’
Gina’s wiping down a wonky table on the footpath. She’s got her white shirt tucked into black pants, hair pulled back severely. Nature’s facelift. When she clocks us from a distance, she shrieks. She startles the customer beside her, but she couldn’t give less of a shit.
‘Ah, fuck,’ Ba mutters. ‘Is it too late to get a hotel?’
‘Yep.’
She ditches the rag and barrels towards us.
‘I didn’t leave your father, okay? Distract her. Not that your head won’t distract her plenty.’
‘My head? Oh.’ He means my hair. People above a certain age can’t handle the skullet. Buzz cut up front, mullet in the back; it breaks their brains. But even then, I doubt it’ll keep Gina from noticing her son has left his husband.
She throws her arms around me. The hug is … a lot. She has all the energy of an overwhelming Greek grandmother, but to a casual observer, she could pass for my mum, or my sister if the casual observer was hitting on her and laying it on a bit thick.
She doesn’t reckon she’s old enough to have a teenage grandson. Watch this.
‘Hi, Yiayia.’
‘Oi! Gina,’ she corrects. She pulls back and gives me the once over. ‘You’re tall. Perfect height. Don’t grow more.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘And we’re shaving your head.’
I laugh. ‘Sure.’
She turns her attention to Ba and arches the same eyebrow he does. ‘What are you doing here?’
I give him a few seconds, and when it’s obvious he’s incapable of answering, I rescue him. ‘I’m dropping out of school.’
‘And you wanted to see me react in person? Brave.’
‘It’s easier in Sydney.’ I gesture at Ba. ‘He’s here for moral support.’
‘When were you going to tell me?’ she asks, finally moving to embrace her son. ‘Hi, darling.’ She pecks his cheek and then scans the surrounds, as if expecting Dad to pop out from behind a parked car. ‘Where’s my son-in-law?’
Another chance to spill the beans. This time, Ba swats it away confidently. ‘He has to work.’
‘He needs to be his own boss,’ Gina says, peeling off her apron and leading us back the way she came. ‘Éla.’
We haven’t visited for a while, but we were here so much when I was a kid, the red door sandwiched between the cafe and the real-estate agency is seared into my mind. It’s an effort to open. Gina blames the rain, expanding timber. ‘Ah! There we go.’
She leads us up the stairs and the house aggressively reminds me that half my family is Greek. Sure, I live with someone I call Ba who has his Mediterranean moments, but he hasn’t been around his family much, so it’s like his stores are depleted. He’s Greek-Australian fusion, and the balance is off. He’s a drizzle of olive oil on a kangaroo steak. This place is … I’ve already counted two commemorative Parthenon plates on the walls, ANT1 is blaring from a distant room, a torrent of words I don’t understand, and there’s the choking smell of liváni. It might be painfully early, but my great-grandmother’s already smoked the place.
We abandon our bags in the formal dining room. Nobody’s ever had a meal in here. It’s where they keep the antique table and cabinets. One’s filled with china and treasured ornaments, and the other’s stuffed with old photos and funeral pamphlets. The last time I cracked a joke about the mausoleum, Gina threatened to make room in it for me. It’s stacked with pics of her brother when he was around my age. He didn’t get to be much older.
I round the bend and I’m in the kitchen. There’s a moment when my great-grandmother doesn’t know anyone else is here. She’s watching the TV in the adjoining room. But something makes her turn. She lights up. A sharp intake of breath. ‘To paidí mou!’ She claps her hands together.
I don’t feel like I’ve done anything to earn the reaction. I’m just the guy from the fortnightly video calls who laughs when she bends over to kiss the screen.
‘Hi.’
She’s at the plastic-covered table in the centre of the kitchen, halfway through her boiled eggs and toast. She’s in her robe. Her hair is thinner and whiter than it was the last time I saw her in person. Short wisps of it are combed back roughly and her face is specked with more sunspots than I remember. When I’m close enough to hug her, I notice the butterfly stitch across her left eyebrow. I realise that the most prominent sunspot is a bruise.
In Greek, a grandmother is a yiayia. A great-grandmother is a proyiayia. They’re like regular grandmothers, only they’ve been around long enough to go pro.
Yesterday, my proyiayia lost a fight with a rubbish bin. She was in the courtyard, cleaning out the bin with the hose. She lost her grip and the lid hit her head.
‘The lid did that?’ Ba asks, casually inspecting the injury. ‘Nasty.’
Gina’s tone is severe. ‘She admitted she fainted.’
My great-grandmother is defiant. ‘I no faint.’
‘Did your vision go black?’ Gina asks.
My great-grandmother nods.
‘And did you wake up on the ground?’
