The Family Law Read Online Free Page B

house with them, tried too, but the window wouldn’t budge. Soon, they realised everyone’s rooms had the same problem. Dad crossed his arms.
    â€˜It’s no big deal,’ he announced. ‘Plenty of air coming up through the stairs, right?’
    For the next few years, upstairs became an oven of badly ventilated bedrooms. In summer, they kicked off the sheets in their sleep and woke up stewing in sweat. Their restaurant, Sunny Village, was downstairs, where everyone slaved over woks and grills, undergoing a weekly cycle of burnt fingers and broiled faces. There were other problems too, like the army of stray neighbourhood cats, sent moaning and insane with pleasure by the kitchen’s meat scraps. When one jumped into the restaurant’s kitchen in a single neat pounce, Mum screamed. It hissed at her, took some meat in its mouth and ran off. After Candy was born, Mum put an umbrella over her bassinet, just in case the cat returned with rabies.
    After Mum quit work and Dad leased a new takeaway called Sun-See, it was rare to see him during daylight hours; work rendered him almost exclusively nocturnal. In the mornings, when Mum would get us ready for school, he would lie immobile under the blankets, having fallen asleep only three hours earlier. After we’d put on our school uniforms and eaten breakfast, we’d sometimes stand next to the bed and poke him.
    â€˜Mmm?’ he’d ask in his sleep. ‘Mmm?’ He continued to snore, oblivious. When we got back from school, he’d already have left for work.
    During the school year, there would be fleeting windows of opportunity for Dad and I to see each other. When I woke up in the middle of the night, sleepily trudging to pee, he’d be in his usual spot: watching television in the living room, eating fruit with a small kitchen knife. Nothing much changed about this routine except for the fruit – kiwis, apples, starfruit – which depended on the season. He’d always be watching an episode of a Cantonese soap opera, one of the stack of videos he trucked between the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane, distributing them to what seemed like the entire region’s Chinese community. These melodramas had been recorded from television to video, and then copied from tape to tape and transported from Hong Kong to Macau, Melbourne to Sydney, Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast. By the time they got to Dad’s video player, the colours were saturated and bleeding, the audio buzzy and sharp. After flushing the toilet, I’d watch them with him, lying on the sofa, dozing in and out of consciousness, trying to follow the latest family scandal.
    â€˜What’s happening?’ I’d ask groggily.
    He’d point to the television with his fruit knife. ‘See this woman? She had an affair,’ he’d explain, ‘and now she is crying because both of her men have left her.’
    â€˜And what’s this other woman saying to her now?’
    â€˜She’s saying it was all her fault.’
    â€˜Wow,’ I’d say. ‘What a bitch.’
    Dad would nod in agreement and pop a bit of chopped apple in my mouth. The next day, I’d wake up in my own bed, not remembering how I got there.
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    By the time Dad was running his new restaurant, Happy Dragon, his reputation had taken off. Situated in a beachside hotel resort, it boasted a cocktail bar and framed art you plugged into the wall. When switched on, the picture simulated a real, flowing waterfall, which blew our minds. In summer, we’d drink pink lemonade and swim in the resort’s freezing kidney-shaped pool, pretending we were famous and devastatingly rich, which – to some extent – we were. By then, Dad was earning enough money to send all five kids to a private school, and our pocket money became spontaneous and unplanned, like some demented game-show. Here, have five dollars a week! Or how about twenty dollars to cover the fortnight?