‘You never physically left,’ said Indira slowly. ‘But whenever we had any kind of disagreement, you definitely . . . checked out.’
‘I checked out,’ said Logan. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
Now, he could hear the echo of his mother, except that his mother would say: What the heck does that mean?
He didn’t wait for an answer. What did it matter now? Indira was the one who had left, who had ‘checked out’ without an explanation.
‘I’ve gotta go,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ said Indira coolly. ‘I expect you do.’
Now, what the hell did that mean? He didn’t wait to find out. He hung up and slammed down his phone on the wooden arm of the couch. He sat for a moment, his heart beating fast. He remembered times throughout his relationship with Indira when he’d actually felt the desire to do exactly as his father had done, to stand up and leave the room, to go for a drive around the block to calm himself down over a disagreement, an accusation, an issue that seemed to be upsetting her, and he never once had.
It had taken all his self-control to force himself to remain, and as often as not, Indira had been the one to suddenly throw her hands up, to walk away, to slam the door behind her, and now she was acting as if that demonstrated some sort of character flaw. He hadn’t yelled like his mother. He hadn’t left like his father. He certainly hadn’t done anything unforgivable like his grandfather, whose violent actions hung like a shameful pall over their family. As a child, Logan had once found a tiny black and white photo of a man in a fedora and trouser suspenders in the back of a drawer, and when his father caught him studying it he’d snatched it from his hands as if it were porn. Stan didn’t need to say that the man in the fedora was his father. Logan had felt his father’s hot shame and he shared it, he accepted it as part of his heritage, like his height and hair.
Whenever there was conflict in his relationships he took immense care not to repeat the mistakes of the past. He clenched his body tight and waited for those potentially catastrophic feelings to pass, which they eventually did. But there was no recognition or praise or approval for what had cost him so dearly.
It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you won’t ever be good enough.
It was true about tennis. It was true about everything. He would always be average. Smack-bang in the middle of the bell curve on every scale. Good enough to get a girl like Indira, not good enough to keep her.
His heartbeat slowed. He was done. He saw it very clearly. He was done with relationships. The relief and absolute correctness of his decision reminded him of when he made the decision to give up competitive tennis. No more striving. No more failing. The absolute bliss of thinking, I will never lose again.
He would be a bachelor. His refrigerator would never see another tub of yoghurt. He would have no pictures on his walls, no hat stand, no throw cushions on his bed.
He would be fine. He would be better than fine.
His phone rang again.
He picked it up and saw that the screen had a spider web of cracks across it as though it had been shot with a miniature bullet. If it was Indira calling back, he would ignore her, but he saw it was the head of his department, so he answered in his professional voice.
‘Logan, mate,’ said Don Travis. He had a deep slow voice like Logan’s dad, but he was a relaxed Queenslander, and the one word that could never be applied to either of Logan’s parents was ‘relaxed’。
‘Mate, just wondering if you’ve got any problems with . . . ah, ex-girlfriends at the moment?’
‘Ex-girlfriends?’ Logan’s head snapped back so fast he hurt his neck. ‘What do you mean? Why?’
He looked wildly around his apartment. Was he being bugged? How could Don possibly know about Indira? Logan kept his personal life completely separate from his work. There were no office parties or drinks. There was an annual Christmas party that Logan had never attended.
‘We got an anonymous telephone complaint about you.’
‘What kind of complaint?’ Logan was well liked by his students. He never got complaints. He got thankyou letters.
‘Well, she was kind of implying sexual harassment, although it wasn’t really clear exactly what she was implying.’
‘What the –？’ Logan got to his feet.
‘I know, Logan, I know. Your record is impeccable. That’s why I wondered if you might have been through a relationship break-up recently.’
‘I have just broken up with someone,’ said Logan. ‘But she would never. Never in a million years.’