Issue 35

Dad Bod

Vijay Khurana is a writer and translator. His novel The Passenger Seat was shortlisted for The Novel Prize in 2022 and is forthcoming in 2025. His stories have appeared in publications including NOON and The Guardian. He has also presented on Australian radio station triple j. In an original story for Port, he circles the subjects of memory and tension

Illustration by Alec Doherty

Fridge
The fridge is making unfortunate noises so I go to my wife and I say Rash, we need a new fridge. Rash’s laptop is inverted and looming. She whooshes air-in-a-can into its glowing keyboard as dead skin snows on her turtleneck. She looks great in that shade of rust. And who’s supposed to pay for that, Rash asks. Rash, I say, It sounds like whale song in there. The dairy might be too far gone already. Will you at least come and listen? Why don’t you try doing your exercises, she counters. (For my birthday she sent me to a specialist who informed me that 99 per cent of people do not know how to breathe properly. We think it just happens, he said, But it’s no less learned than pottery or windsurfing.) Rash holds her laptop so precariously above her that I worry for the bridge of her nose. But before I can warn her she brings it to her breast and cradles it, making circular motions over the screen with her special cloth. I go back to the kitchen and chew a speckled gum pellet. Something new has sprung up in the interim, an empathic trombone. One of the sides is almost too hot to touch. I can hear Carmella’s dogs talking excitedly in the living room. Kneeling before the fridge door, I trace the magnetic seal on all sides. Nothing seems to be escaping, and yet—

Projector
Carmella is newly two and getting her into and out of her high chair is murder on my back. Rash is smaller than I am, less brittle. We have different understandings of what pain might be. We had meant to book a holiday before Carmella’s second birthday, because from two they need their own seat on the plane, which Rash says would be money down the spout. Under two and they’re free, but they have to sit on your lap the whole time, which isn’t recommended for long-haul. We never went on holiday. Instead we bought a projector, and now Carmella watches five-foot talking dogs on the living room wall. I don’t know how she can bear the projector’s fan, but she just gurgles there on the floor, gazing up at Robo, Trax and Slider. Maybe she believes herself a cartoon too.

Mirror
Given her size, it is strange that Carmella has not acquired a diminutive. Even Rashida, very much a grown-up and in fact four years older than me, is Rash. But Carmella is Carmella. I have plucked at Carma, Mellz, Melly, Mell-Mell, Car, Cammy… none of them are the slightest help. If I stand at the hall mirror, I can hear fridge and projector fan and dogs and air-in-a-can all together. I try this for a while, closing my eyes and imagining the pull of an underground platform when the train is imminent. I once told my father that Rash earned more money than I did and Dad said, I’m surprised you earn anything at all. His skin is papery and his health is not what it was. He has no weakness to speak of.

Drain
Carmella wants me to change her show to the next episode. She doesn’t like this one because the dogs have gone to space, their faces obscured by bulbous helmets and their treacly voices dressed in radio static. She communicates her displeasure by a repeated bringing together of the lips while she breathes, pah-pah-pah-pah-pah. She might be addressing me, but she says the same thing to Rash. Everybody in this house is exhaling without end. Later I hold a spongy wedge of brie to my wrist. It is tepid at best. The cheese is tepid at best, I call out to Rash, who is now typing at great speed. One of the dogs replies: But we can’t have a picnic without lemonade. My daughter makes a noise like a drain. She is always doing this, begging to differ.

Accidentally
Rash’s job obliges her to travel. This morning she departed for a series of spiked clusters with names like Eindhoven and Paderborn. I watched from the porch as she disappeared into a taxi, levering Carmella’s drowsy arm even after the taxi had turned the corner. When we got back inside, the whole place smelled of fresh nail polish. After her last trip, she located her own postcards on the hall table and affixed them in a neat row on the fridge door, secured by magnets displaying the numbers to call if you swallow poison accidentally or wish to sell your home. The postcards are word-side-in except one, on which she sketched a continental breakfast in biro. One day Carmella will begin to see me as a subject. She will create images in which I appear as a series of vacant shapes connected only by association, with an indiscriminate face, blazing hair. This may well be something to look forward to.

Kettle
Towards evening I feed Carmella a bowl of unadorned penne, then run her puddle-deep bath. I kneel on the tiles, wiping traces from her either end. When she is safely reunited with her dogs, I fill the kettle and hold the button down until I can feel what is inside jostling to get out. From the bathroom comes the last gulp of a plughole thick with hair. I place a towel over the kettle spout, distributing the steam as evenly as possible, then wrap the towel tight about my head. I grope for the kitchen table, repeating myself in the wet warmth. I inhale as far as I can and count backwards from eight. The fridge falls silent. Then a thick plosive and shower of something sharp. I unwrap the towel and rush to where Carmella is glued to her dogs, surrounded by broken glass. Why don’t we go exploring, says one of them, the blue one, as I approach the window. One of the four panes has come inexplicably free, dispersing itself across the floor and leaving a neat rectangle through which air is now freely passing. We need a new window, I call to Rash, before remembering she is not here. I exhale into my palm and imagine the doorbell ringing and a man in an over-poured polo shirt standing on the mat. Good job, he might say. You didn’t do too bad, but we’ll take it from here. The dogs employ teamwork to overcome an obstacle as I wrestle Carmella onto my lap and force felt loafers onto her tiny feet. Her skin is immaculate, nor will it suffice.

Illustration Alec Doherty

This article is taken from Port Issue 35. To continue reading, buy the issue or subscribe here