The Family Men Read Online Free PDF Page A

that, what do you want me to say? This too shall pass? I thought my children would be more resilient” – lamenting his refusal to adapt.
    â€œGive me an example,” Harry demands, when she suggests he is behaving strangely, that his entire demeanour is uncharacteristically hostile, pugilistic.
    â€œWhat are you talking about, an example?” she says, gesturing at him slumped at the table behind a pile of blackening banana skins. “You, here, now, this is an example. You’re not a child anymore, Harry. It’s no way to live,” she insists, reminding him that he always has a choice, lest she be held responsible somehow for appearing to have allowed it, to have inadvertently given her permission for the business to devour him, to have eaten him alive. Just as it did his father (and so many before and since), at first quickly, and then slowly, until that was all that was left of the man, her first husband, her only husband, the husk of a career supported by a tired aging body governed by a mind too cosseted to cope with failure. “You’ve got to find a way forward, to be comfortable with who you are. You can’t let football dictate everything. You see that, don’t you? That you’ve got to have a plan. Otherwise, where will you be in ten years? At the pub? Crying into a beer that someone else has paid for? There’s only so long a player’s career can last. You’ve got to keep an eye on the morning after, take a long-term view, think about tomorrow,” she repeats as though it is a chorus from a song (now that is helpful advice, not). Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow . The words ring in his head until he is so sick of hearing them he deliberately slams the door behind him when he leaves.
    Fucking bitch. He doesn’t need it right now. He doesn’t fucking need it. He takes off in the direction of the oval, at first walking, but quickly breaking into a run, the sky a pale shade of slate grey as though it wants to rain but can’t.
    That is the way the weather has been lately, the seasons distorted approximations of themselves that have got everyone into a tizz about heat and water levels and the future of the planet. Not in such a tizz that they do anything differently, mind you. Just enough to give themselves a headache. At the Club they started a recycling drive, installing three different coloured bins in the change rooms with transparent panels down the sides so you could see what was being put in them (rubbish, paper, bottles and cans), “Reuse Reduce Recycle”, the sticker said. A red rag to a bull. Within twenty-four hours the garbage had been stuffed with a truckload of condoms – all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy! – a photograph of the prophylactic wrappers finding its way to page one of the Herald Sun, sending Ted Parker, the Club president, into a tailspin, instructing Laurie to burn the offending articles immediately, which Laurie did, all players in mandatory attendance out the back beside the dumpsters (with the exception of Jack, sequestered at home, buried deep in the doghouse, taking a blow on Club orders), sending a great plume of black smoke against the muted sky. Matt reckoned it would have been visible as far away as Whittlesea.
    Jack made it his business getting in people’s faces, but especially the Fureys’. Pulling out of a pack at Harry’s first training camp, telling him, “I’ve got my eye on you, Nipper,” then a knee in the groin just to teach him a lesson, how to be a man; the two dynasties having long been at each other, an agonistic species constantly asserting how it’s done.
    â€œIgnore him,” said Matt, about as useful as putting Tony Liberatore in the ruck. Not that Harry needed to be told. That Jack was testing him was implicit. Less clear was how to make him stop.
    Harry runs until his lungs give out, the burning forcing his pace to a crawl until he can catch his