Slights (24 page)

  The librarian grew, she was huge, and she hawked up a lump of mucus which must have come from her rotting lungs.

  She opened up my chest like it was a book and spat into it.

  Pookies pinched me, pinched tiny bits of my flesh like piranhas. I saw a woman with three children, nodding, yes, yes, yes.

  Workmates, biscuit hogs, shoving biscuits into my mouth, holding my nose with their bony ice fingers and I couldn't breathe, I can never breathe.

  They began to circle, and there were hundreds of them, like children making a tidal wave in a backyard swimming pool. Around, around, and I did not move to touch my bleeding because they had forgotten I was there.

  Around, around the room began to whistle, and then they were gone and I was lifted by the wind they'd made, tossed, smashed, my eye pierced by my own long fingernail, my wrist bent backwards, slashes all over me, and I screamed and they snickered from somewhere and I couldn't laugh and they wanted to watch for eternity.

But Ced had his feeling, and he found me, and I felt as if my feet were covered with magnets, and I couldn't lift my feet far from the steel road. I took heavy steps in a direction I had not chosen. My life was nothing. All my choices were irrelevant, dust in the balance.

  Nothing I did was of my own choosing.

  I awoke from being rescued with another resolution; concentrate on my career, make it big. I also resolved, again, not to slight anyone.

  I spent money on good clothes, walked carefully in the mall on the hunt. I put things properly on the hanger. I looked people in the eye when I gave them money. I got talking to one nice girl who sold me heaps of things.

  "Ooh, it suits you, love your hair," she said, but I'm not influenced by that sort of thing.

  "I need something to get me ahead," I said, and she understood. We talked and talked while I tried things on. I was quite bereft when she was called to the phone.

  Another girl took over; she whispered in my ear, "Don't worry about her, she's an absolute bitch. Everyone hates her."

  "At least she has taste," I said. "I'm not going to buy anything suggested by someone who's dressed like you."

  She left me alone; my friend came back with the perfect outfit.

  "Balloona!" I said.

  "Balloona? I love it," she said.

  I felt great, bags of clothes, a perfume girl tried to spray me but I turned my head away. "Don't ruin the day," I said. I hate perfume.

  I smiled at people at the hospice. I invited myself to meetings and made suggestions.

  Ced didn't tell them what had happened. And he didn't move out after all. He got two friends of his in to share with us. I don't know if he thought that would make me feel normal, but it didn't. I called them Mo and Ho.

  They seemed to be okay, and as Peter took Maria and the kids overseas for Christmas, I thought I would have lunch at home, with my housemates and their friends. But they all had things to do, though, important things, with family. They had presents under their beds; I stole one from each to open on Christmas Day. I wandered up to the shop and bought some turkey roll; I would have it sitting on the front step and I'd watch the street. Ced went to his parent's place somewhere in the country. No way would you catch me there with no way to escape.

  He left me a sketch pad and some pencils for a present. Like I'm an artist with inner needs.

  From one housemate I got a tie. From the other I got a book about skateboarding. I wore the tie and left the book on the coffee table. I thought that was thanks enough. They never mentioned the presents I gave them: deodorant to the smelly one (in the card I said "
Use it!
"), because a present should be useful. And a vibrator to the girl who never had boyfriends. It's hard to judge these things sometimes.

  I was on my own for New Year's Eve, too. Samantha was out somewhere and didn't get back to me in time. I had a tummy upset and spent a lot of time on the toilet, so I must have missed her calls. Ced was still in the country. Our two housemates moved out; they said it was the best time to move because the market was asleep. They told me to keep the bond to pay for bills, which put me in front, because they had just handed over money two weeks previously. I would have kept the bond money, anyway; I'd need to get his room fumigated, and she smashed three plates and two cups, having a shocking case of the shakes.

  I found out later they hadn't found a place at all; they went to stay in a hostel. Fuck them. It gave me more time to dig.

  I found a squeaky toy which shocked me when I stood on it, a broken doll, a Chinese food container lid and a beautiful pearl.

at twenty-five

Ced says I'm a natural at what I do, but he doesn't really know what I do at all. We had a patient, Mr 42, who was diagnosed with liver cancer six months ago and spent five months pretending it wasn't happening. This is a fairly common occurrence, especially amongst lonely types without anyone to say, "You need to see a doctor", or to pay attention to them in any way. I spent a lot of time with him, talking about the things he'd done. People he'd hurt, those he'd made cry, those he didn't even know existed.

  Ced looked in and saw us talking, and later in the tea room he said, "You seem to know the right things to say to make them feel better."

  I sipped my lukewarm tea and nodded. He didn't have to know what I told them. That their smiles were desperate smiles: look at me dying on the outside and the inside, I'll be brave, I'll take my punishment.

  Good stuff.

  I did some more digging. I found a dial for a television, a mug handle, sharp to touch, a spent light globe and a thin leather belt, now green with mould in places, such good quality it could still be worn.

  Dougie Page came to the hospice to give me a list. He hated the place, but I was on double shifts and hard to catch. He didn't like the smell; breathed through his mouth and talked funny.

  "It's a list of missing people. We're not sure if there's a connection, but it's some names which have come up in conjunction with each other. And some of the things missing along with them. I don't know if any of them mean anything to you."

  I took a look at the list. Four names. Paul Harris, Chew Wang, Albert Mitchell, Chris Stepanos. The names meant nothing. But the descriptions of their items were familiar: a pipe, a cheap watch, a lighter, and an old coin.

  "Nothing," I said. I didn't want him to know of the things I found in the back yard. That was my information; knowledge to keep safe.

  I got home from work at 3am, unable to sleep. I thought I should sort through some papers, destroy things, destroy stuff I didn't want people to see. But I didn't really know the difference.

  One thing I did find was the card my old English teacher had sent me for Mum's memorial. I hadn't thought of her, although she called me periodically and tried to make me talk about stuff I didn't want to talk about. She wanted the details of things she didn't need to know.

  I called her, anyway, and she said, "Come to visit, Steve." I arrived there, thinking I'd stay for a day, thinking that would be plenty. She admired my car. It was a good day; she read poetry, some she'd written herself. One was about me, she said, but I didn't recognise myself.

  She was mad, but fit, and she lived in a log cabin, built by numbers, out in one of the new plastic suburbs. She was surrounded by strangers who thought she took up room, but they left her alone. She liked that; left her time to write. She was working on her autobiography. I wondered how much her obsession with suicide and death would feature. I thought I'd call her, see her, but I hadn't got around to it.

  We ate and drank.

  She had bought a meat pie, home-made tomato sauce, shortbread.

  "I haven't found another student like you, Stevie. It broke my heart when you left school. We could have got you to Uni. I know it."

  "I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go," I said. "I wanted the bucks. Studying is for the birds," I said. "Anyway, I love nursing. It suits me."

  She laughed. "For the birds," she said.

  I told her about the jasmine in my back yard.

  "Sounds lovely," she said. "I must come for a visit." This was too much; I didn't want her in my home. I was cold and she didn't move to turn the lights on.

  "Look, I'd better get going," I said.

  "Oh," she said, waking from a dream. "I thought you'd stay. I thought you'd stay the night. I've got a spare room. I thought we could go for a drive tomorrow, see some sights, you know."

  "You know. You know. I thought cultured people didn't say you know."

  "I know." We giggled. "I've got so much to tell you," she said. "And you me. We can talk about whatever it is that's bothering you."

  That was my big cue to fuck off. Analysis by amateurs; everyone wanted to do it to you if you were an orphan.

  "Not much to talk about," I said. It was like some magnetic force drawing words out.

  "Why don't we get a nice plate or two of Indian food, sit around, talk into the night. We have a certain affinity, Steve. I don't know if you feel it. I certainly haven't felt it for another student, but then you were not like any other student I ever had." I worried for a moment she was being sexual; that was not my desire. But she just liked me. She liked me as I was.

  "I'll go up the road and get some," I said. It would be nice to sit on her front lawn, sniff the jasmine.

  I thought it was simple, an offer to buy Indian food. I didn't know what would happen. I would have let her go, if I'd known. Let the teacher get picked up in my place.

  I wandered out, her money jiggling in my pocket. Let her pay. It's the least she can do.

  I was walking, walking, because the restaurant was close and the parking bad, and a car slowed behind me. I thought it was her; I stupidly thought it was her. So I turned with a smile on my face, my thumb out, ha ha hitching.

  It wasn't her. It was a guy, and he stopped. He had a baseball cap on. He said, "Get in, I'll drive you." Pauly, I thought and all the others. All the missing children, condemned to life in a room eating dog shit. I picked up a rock and threw it at his window. "Fuck off," I screamed. I ran back towards Alice's house, but I couldn't find it, I was lost. I didn't want to know if he was following, I knew he was; I knew I was going to be raped and locked in a cold dark room, cold and dark with people who hate me. All the streets and houses looked the same. I found my car, climbed in, drove home. Money in my wallet. Didn't ring Alice. She rang me. Where are you? Fuck off. Fucking hate you. Fuck off.

  My car is a special family car. We got it when I was eight. Sandwiched between my appendix and Dad's death, eight was a good year.

  I loved the new car smell. A smell without history. Peter and I would hang our heads out the windows, letting our mouths dry out so much we could hardly breathe.

  Gradually our smells took over. Dad drove it for a year, then Mum, though she hated driving at all, Peter when he got his licence, then me. I insisted Mum give it to me; I needed it. I was a courier. Peter said to me once, "If you hadn't pinched the car off me, Mum might be alive right now." What would he want with an old car like that? Doesn't fit his image.

  Peter and I both learned to drive in it. Dougie Page taught us on Sundays. Mum didn't want the responsibility. I could lean my head back and feel the dent where Dad used to rest his head. If I closed my eyes I felt like him.

  My dad loved looking after me, getting me things no other little girl got. We were at the pictures once, a very special event because Dad hated the movies. Mum said, "But our second date was at the movies. Didn't you like it then?"

  "And what movie was on?" Dad said, and Mum laughed, and they started kissing and wouldn't stop. I hugged their four knees to my chest so hard they tripped over.

  "Do you want to go to the pictures?" Dad asked me. Oh, yes, I did, I wanted to sit between Mum and Dad, and Peter has to sit way up the front because he's half-blind.

  The movie was wonderful. I still have the poster on my wall, a girl in army gear, mud on her cheeks. I'm the only one who got one. Dad talked the woman behind the counter into pulling down the advertising one behind her. For me. Mum slapped him all the way home. "Big
charmer!
What a
charmer!
" Peter snuck in one night and drew a moustache on the girl; I snuck in the night after that and drew a moustache on him.

  At work, Ced said, "How was your visit to the old teacher? What's she like? Does she still think you're a genius?" He said this while we were washing a woman covered with pustules. We were used to it. She listened to us, distracted, enjoying a glimpse of real life.

  "She's turned into a lesbian. She tried to have a go at me," I said.

  The patient gasped. I took her mind off her suffering just for a minute or two.

at twenty-six

I'm thinking surprise party. I'm wondering, how dumb do they think I am? No one mentions my twenty-sixth birthday, no one wants to know where the party is?

  I thought I'd let them play their little games. Every one of them should have known I'd rather be amongst it, planning, anticipating, deciding who wasn't going to be fucking invited.

  This is what should have happened:

  My friends were so good at keeping secrets I had barely an inkling. They called me through the day with birthday wishes, to put me off the scent, and asked what I was doing to celebrate.

  "Oh, not much, you know, just a quiet drink at home with Peter, I think. After all, he's the one who's known me the longest."

  This is what should have happened:

  Peter picked me up from work in his Mercedes and it was nice and cool inside because it's always hot in February, my birthday, too hot for people to care.

  The car is cool and he has champagne. Maria isn't there because both children are sick.

  Peter starts talking about all the great birthdays, how it's important the two of us are always together.

  He says, "We don't need third parties," meaning Maria.

  "Or fourth or fifth," I say, meaning the kids, and he laughs. He agrees.

  We have a drink in the beer garden of the one real pub in town, then another. Peter leaves me alone for a few minutes and I shut my eyes to the sun, because it sets late here in summer and is at its most benign now.

  "I ordered take away from Alla Bussola," he said. "I thought we'd go home and eat it."

  Neither of us like to eat in at restaurants. It's the one true thing we have in common. It's much harder for Peter, in his job, because he has to do it often. I never do it.

  We both love food, love to eat it quickly, chew loudly, slurp, not talk, taste everything, lick the plate. When we have our happy moments we talk about being rich enough to own a restaurant just for us, where we choose off the menu and behave as badly as we like. I still think about it sometimes.

  We pick up the takeaway and I can't resist eating the garlic bread. I wipe my greasy fingers on the seat and Peter says, "Oh, Steve," but nicely, as if he's glad I'm like that.

  The owner of the restaurant hates us taking his food away. He doesn't let anybody else, but we talked him into it. We lied to him about being agoraphobic and he's a lovely, trusting man, and a wonderful cook. He does the cooking himself, and he serves.

  We take away the garlic bread, and this fried cheese which makes my tongue melt. There are garlic prawns on the thinnest,
strongest
garlic pasta. There is pasta with salmon and vodka, chicken with the greenest asparagus, there's tortellini so tender you don't have to chew. And there's zuppa inglese, a potent, marsala-drenched cream-whipped heaven.

  We eat it all in the car up the road from his place.

  "Come in for coffee," he says, or should have said, and I do.

  If I'd been suspicious, all the cars parked by his house would have confirmed it.

  But I say, "Looks like someone's having a party and didn't invite you."

  "Bastards," he says.

  I still don't get it, even at the front door where someone has strung some streamers.

  Peter unlocks the door and pushes it open. He nods for me to go first. I step inside.

  "Surprise!" How can I name the hundreds of people who were there, when they only exist in my fantasy? Certainly a good time was had by all. And there, how frustrating my lack of experience in these things is. My imagination fails me. I cannot get beyond, "Surprise!" then all is a blank until I am at the front door, my throat sore from speaking so many farewells. Peter is in the back toilet, helping Maria be sick.

  This is what should have happened when I got home:

  "Happy Birthday!" The cheer is off-key; it makes me laugh.

  "No singers here, I take it?" I said. "No out-ofwork performers getting in some practice?"

  They ignore me and continue with their blessings. I can see they carry presents; some held in mock secret behind backs, others waved tantalisingly.

  "Very nice," I say, "what a surprise!" They look at each other, clap, shake hands. Oh, they are proud of themselves. Such pathetic plans: "Oh, Steve," says Auntie Ruth, "will you drive me to the chemist? I've forgotten to fill my prescription, and I'll be in terrible trouble by the morning if I don't have it?"

  Of course I agree – do I have a choice? I have no desire to hear her detail the physical result of my refusal. If I say no, my brother Peter would do it, and suddenly he's the hero again. It is his normal place in life. Somehow he received all the nice genes in our family. I am the lucky one, though. I am the lucky one. People like me in spite of myself. Look at the turn out for my party.

This did happen: I cruised slowly past the chemist looking for a parking spot, then snagged the last spot, sneaking in front of a red-faced arsehole.

  Auntie Ruth, of course, took an age at the chemist. I am rarely in these shops – I can't stand the smell. That chemical smell, cough medicine, soap, cheap perfume. I would have realised Auntie Ruth was up to something sooner, with her foolish delays, her questions, dropped coins and sampling of hand creams. But a woman stood at the perfume shelf and fascinated me.

  Her hair was an unlikely blonde. She wore a bum-length spotted fur which looked like it had been sucked by her cat. Fishnet stockings, not laddered. And sneakers with purple laces.

  She was selective. Out of the twenty types of perfume there, she made a neat stack at her feet, never looking down, but stepping carefully over as she discovered another shelf of perfume. She picked six bottles of perfume for a total cost of $12.

  I walked her aisle twice, both times knocking her pile of cheap scent over.

  "Sorry," I said. She tutted. I wondered how someone so much on the outreaches of society could be bothered by such a small thing.

  It astonished me that anyone could look so bad and care so little. She fascinated me, the way she didn't know I existed, didn't know who I was.

  "Can you wait in the car a minute? I have to get something," I said to Auntie Ruth. She was in no hurry. She knew we had nowhere to go, no party, no cake, not a present or a surprise.

  "Go on," I said. I gave a push in the small of her back, because she was an irritating woman who would not get moving. She wanted to try a sports bandage on to see if it itched, because Uncle Mike, her useless husband, had a bad knee and couldn't get out to mow the lawn anymore.

  "If you come to visit, you'd see the forest I live in," Auntie Ruth said.

  "Jungle. People usually say jungle."

  "I've never seen a tiger yet." She stretched the bandage around my arm, squeezing my veins till I felt them popping. I glimpsed her spy at her watch and realised she had something planned for my birthday.

  "You know I don't want any fuss today," I said.

  She said, "Okay," and meant it. She was one of the many who forgot my birthday.

  I watched until she settled heavily into the car, then turned to the perfume woman. She had finished with her selection and had balanced each box gracefully along one arm which she held out as if she were shaking hands.

  She bent to stare closely at a table of men's underwear. She realised what she was looking at and jerked her head up, embarrassed. She was short-sighted, vain, and she cared more about what people thought than I originally imagined.

  She's not what I want, I thought, then I saw her elbow a woman aside to reach the counter.

  The woman tutted. The perfume girl didn't notice, just plunked her things on the counter.

  "Are you a stranger?" I said to her. She noticed me then; someone potentially less stable than she was.

  "My mum told me not to talk to strangers," I said. I felt coy. My face was puckered like a child's.

  She said, "Everyone I know is a stranger."

  The cashier held out her change and stared at us, wanting us both to leave.

  "My husband is not a stranger," I said. I held my left hand tucked under my jumper. "My husband is an intimate friend."

  She walked to the door.

  "I need to talk to a stranger," I said. It was a gamble. People are either repulsed or attracted to need.

  "Go pay a counsellor, stupid bitch," she said, and I knew she was perfect, that she would see what I saw when she died, and if I brought her back she'd tell me about the people in the dark room, waiting to take little bites of her skinny arse.

  "Come on, Steve," said Auntie Ruth through my car window. "Never give money to a beggar. They might find your address and rob you."

  "Is this your car?" said the perfume girl.

  "Car, house, money. I've got two houses and three cars. I've got a wall of stereo and five thousand CDs. Do you like music?"

  She knew I was engaging her in conversation and she smiled at me. She pitied me now and was superior; although I had the clothes, the face, and I didn't have ugly fishnet stockings, she was the stronger, now. She was better than me

  I offered her a lift. She didn't trust me enough to ask me to drive her home; she said she was going into town to meet a friend. I didn't believe there was a friend. Ruth sat there in the passenger seat, waiting to be delivered home. Ruth did not drive; driving was beneath her. Beyond her, I would say.

  "It's Stevie's birthday," Auntie Ruth said. "She's twenty-six."

  The girl laughed. "How'd you get a name like Steve? I thought you were a girl." She laughed, and I almost felt slighted.

  "What's your name, then?" I could hear my childhood playground voice coming through, my "so what if I'm a girl, I can still beat you" voice.

  "Lacey," she said. She was staring at Auntie Ruth, sitting there all over lace and frills.

  "And my husband's name is George Glass," I said. I guessed she hadn't seen that episode of
The Brady
Bunch
, where Jan invented the name of a boyfriend by looking around the room.

  "Steve Glass, ay?" she said. She laughed. She picked at her nose with the finger stall I had not noticed her wearing on her index finger. She placed the tip of it in one nostril, and I imagined the leather warming there.

  "I don't usually take lifts with strangers," she said. I nodded. "But guess I can trust you," she said. I nodded again, and fate began its fat roll again.

  "Are you an actress, Lacey?"

  She laughed. "If you were a guy I'd think you were trying to pick me up."

  "No, it's just that you've got a really expressive face. I'm a casting agent, so I see a lot of people who think they can act. Some of them can. And then I see some who I think
should
be acting."

  "Really?" she said. She would never have enough dedication or motivation to do it. But it didn't hurt to tease. I changed lanes, horns blaring behind me.

  Auntie Ruth muttered and chuckled. "Husband!" she said. "George Glass!" She liked a good story.

  "Looking forward to your party, dear? Lots of George's friends expected? Lots of yours, too, I imagine. Hundreds of them. No room for a maiden aunt." She chuckled away, well-pleased at her joke.

  "You're no maiden," I said. "She's no maiden," I said to Lacey. I turned to face her to talk to her.

  "Watch the road!" Ruth said. The traffic was thick and needed my attention.

  "She had a lover, didn't you, when you were young?"

  "A lovely man. Clever, you know, always a quick word," Ruth said.

  Ruth was changing history as she became senile. She had no lover; it was common knowledge she was a virgin when she married Uncle Mike. Mum used to talk about what a fuss she'd made about it. It was Auntie Jessie who was the wild one. She never died a virgin.

  We reached home and I idled the car.

  "I'll see you later, Ruth. I'm taking Lacey into town."

  "But what about your party?" she said. Her crestfallen face, her sad face, made me believe for a moment that she had conjured up some people for me. I wondered if there were people inside, a husband even, waiting for me to come home, "Surprise" and presents and I'll drink a little too much and tire of their foolish faces and stand on the stairs. "Fuck off! Get the fuck out of my house."

  Auntie Ruth laughed. "I'll save you some cake."

  Lacey climbed into the front seat.

  "What about your party?" she said.

  "There's no party. Ruth thinks it's funny to make me think there is."

  She nestled her perfumes in her lap. I drove us to town.

  "Which one's your favourite?" I said.

  "They're all nice," she said. I looked for sarcasm but found none. She scrabbled in the sack she carried. "Thank God the old bitch's gone. Wanna fag?"

  I don't really smoke but can do if I need to. Thanks to Lee and his careful lessons.

  As I parked the car, I said to Lacey, "Where are you meeting your friend?" She stared at me blankly, had completely forgotten her lie. "Feel like drinks and dinner?" I said. "I'll pay."

  She nodded.

  I paid for Lacey's dinner, to see if she could tell who would be in her room. She thought I was such a sweet listener, asking her about the slights, letting her talk over dinner so her food went cold and she fell in love with me.

  "So tell me about yourself," I said. "I'm a stranger – perhaps we'll never see each other again. You can tell me about that little scar on your cheek; who disfigured you, sweetheart? Who would do such a thing to such a sweet face?"

  You'll tell me, I thought, and later I'll remember the name, the face, and there they'll be, waiting with knives, fists, to hurt you again to all eternity.

  I won't need to kill you slowly; they are waiting, ready in an instant.