I: Charlie, like all the Wild men, is a wild creature.
It wasn’t a surprise when Russell showed up to his wife with the news that Charlie would be staying with them. It wasn’t a surprise to Olivia, not at all, when her husband came one day to inform her that his nephew would be riding his motorcycle to Melbourne because “He’s going through a rough patch,” and somehow or another, Russell has always been looking out for him since his father died.
Olivia hasn’t seen Charlie in twelve years, not even at his grandmother’s funeral eight years ago. The then seventeen-year-old never showed up. He had gotten drunk and eventually got into a fight that landed him in jail, from where Russell pulled him out a couple of days later, hoping he’d learn a lesson—one that neither of them ever truly learned.
Charlie, like all the Wild men, is a wild creature.
Olivia is in the middle of a painting session when she hears the distant sound of a motorcycle speeding toward the farm, snapping her out of the state of concentration she needs to work.
She’s a painter, has been for as long as she can remember, and at forty years old, she enjoys a reputation that keeps her busy with commissions all year round. Realistic portraits are her specialty—a photograph taken by her mind in the perfect moment and then translated onto a canvas drenched in oils, gestures, and features of the person being portrayed. People who seek her work say it’s transgressive, and in a way, it’s true. She’s a woman in the mid-seventies, living on a farm in rural Melbourne, a simple wife who, without pretensions, leads the life any painter who isn’t a fool would want to have.
An ideal space to practice her art.
A peaceful and leisurely life.
Books, cigarettes, and bourbon.
The motorcycle’s sound, now closer, alerts her, and she hurries to put the brush in the solvent jar and the palette on the table beside her, full of paint bottles. She wipes her hands, takes off her apron, and then heads to the door, thinking of the last time she saw Charlie, and the bad judgments she made—the threats she voiced and the promises she couldn’t keep. It’s hard. It’s hard to see him again, even though she hasn’t stopped thinking about him all this time.
Charlie reminds her of the most painful chapter of her existence.
Olivia married Callan Wild, accepting to be the stepmother of that child with heterochromatic eyes—brown, blue, and green—who, on her wedding day, spent the time watching her suspiciously from afar in the company of his unpleasant grandmother, Evelyn. The child resembled his mother so much that there were barely any features left of his father; in appearance, he was a ray of sunshine with golden hair and long lashes of the same gleaming hue. Kerry, his mother, had died under unfortunate circumstances when the child was nine, and since then, he had become quiet and withdrawn, something that didn’t change when Olivia entered his life by marrying his father.
The marriage lasted three years, ending the day Callan had a fatal accident that left his only son an orphan. Callan’s mother took custody of the teenager, and the last time Olivia saw him was in December 1963, when his grandmother pulled him away from her. They said goodbye with a hug, teary eyes, and unsaid words. Olivia’s gaze lingered on Charlie, sitting in the back seat of his grandmother’s car, until his face became a smudge of paint, ever more distant.
They didn’t attend the wedding. Neither his grandmother nor Charlie showed up a year later at Olivia and Russell’s wedding, held in a lovely chapel in town. The grandmother, a religious fanatic with a mind full of paranoid conspiracy theories, blamed Olivia for the death of her beloved Callan and condemned her as an “adulterous witch” once she learned of her affair with Russell. She called him a “traitor like his father” and stopped speaking to him unless she needed his money.
With different fathers, Russell and Callan inherited their affections for their respective parents.
Olivia steps out onto the porch of the house, searching for the motorcycle she can already spot, approaching the house and kicking up a cloud of dust in its wake. It’s about to rain, and the sky has clouded over a bit, but the sun’s rays still manage to catch the golden hue of the long hair of the man riding the motorcycle, dressed in a worn black leather jacket and dark sunglasses.
Unsure of what she feels but never a coward, Olivia stands her ground until Charlie reaches her, raising more dust as he approaches. The trees bend sharply to the right under the forceful wind that heralds the storm, and the workers around hurry to find shelter for all the animals. The sky, full of madder and indigo brushstrokes, has begun to darken as the sun dips below the horizon.
Olivia thought she’d see the same boy she said goodbye to that December; in her mind, he never changed. Almost her height but scrawny, his eyes wide and filled with a sorrow much larger than his thirteen-year-old self. His face was smooth, and his voice soft, barely transitioning from that of a child to that of a boy with a long way to go before becoming a man.
But the one who gets off that motorcycle is not that child Olivia tried to raise as her son for three years so long ago, in another life. The one who dismounts that beautiful Harley-Davidson is a fully grown man, tall and handsome, with broad shoulders and respectable facial hair. It’s still him, of course. The same ever-sad, intense eyes, the same lips in a perpetual pout of discontent. It’s still him, with that cold, disillusioned expression, and that sly, half-smile.
However, there’s something that has changed dramatically:
“Hello, Liv,” Charlie breaks the silence with his adult voice, deep and fiery like his late father’s.
