Slights (6 page)

  Oh, the pain, the pain. I burnt the sheets we slept in. Jason left soon after, so I got to wear his green t-shirt.

Even though I couldn't drive my car, not for five years, I had guys come and look at it until, almost a year after the accident, someone finally said, "It'll take a lot of work, but I think we can do it." This bloke, Ray, didn't shake his head once. He was inspired by the challenge; he quit his job and came to work for me. I said I couldn't afford to pay him fulltime mechanic's wages, so I wasn't sure if it was a good idea.

  "Tell ya what, pay me what you can, shout me a few meals, a few beers, and let me crash on your couch. Then we'll be square." I'd gotten used to the house being empty again, after Jason and Mark moved out, but Ray quite liked the squalor of my place and ended up doing most of the cooking. He taught me the pleasures of beer drinking and drove me places. He really helped keep me sane, helped me cope with not having a car. I'd lost my freedom.

  He had a fiancée to whom he was devoted. I'd fart if she was in the room and not apologise. I always said no if she offered me anything. They were saving money to buy a house, so she was living at home. He was, too, when he wasn't crashing at my place. I built up a sense of when they were about to have sex and I often walked in singing.

  My car was a thing of beauty when he'd finished. I'd been there every minute I could, and I knew where the bits went. From what he taught me, I could fix my own car next time.

  We drove it down the coast; I made the fiancée sit in the back seat.

  "Oh, she's beautiful, beautiful," Ray said. I was speechless; my car was running again.

  He took photos of my car, as a reference, and I wrote him one as well. From calling his repair shop to speak to him, I knew that he had been fired the day before he came to see my car because they discovered he was wanted by the police.

  "He must have known we'd been out to look at your vehicle and thought he'd take a look himself. We didn't want to turn him in, but we told him he had to find something else," they told me. I never said anything. His name or picture never appeared in the paper, so I can only hope the respite he enjoyed at my place, a stranger's place where no one would think of looking, helped him.

  I couldn't understand the risk he'd taken letting his fiancée know where he was. What if they'd followed her? Seems cops aren't as dedicated as they were in my Dad's time.

  Things came together for a while, then, with my car working. I couldn't drive it, but I could sit in it and rev it up. I had my house to myself, no one to judge me or tell me what to do.

  Then Peter and his repulsive girlfriend Maria decided it was time for a memorial.

  "Mum's been dead for a year, Steve, and you didn't get to go to the funeral. A lot of people are asking me about it," Peter said.

  "No one's asking me." I polished my car. There were no dents left in it. No indication.

  "It's a good idea," Peter said. "Maria thought everyone could come back here afterwards."

  I looked at him. He hated coming to the house, hardly ever stepped in the door. Even being in the garage made him uncomfortable.

  "I've got nothing to wear," I said. Peter laughed. He gets my jokes; I guess that's one reason to keep a brother around.

  "You'll have to find a dress. Jeans and singlet would look bad," he said.

  They planned it all, and I pulled out a dress of Mum's to wear. Seemed like a waste to buy a new one. It was a pink thing, with red flowers, and I looked appalling. But that was the point, really. I didn't want to look good.

  Peter collected me. He said, "Maria's going to meet us at the church. She's doing the flowers. So, it's okay for everyone to come back here afterwards?" He thought he was confirming that I had everything ready.

  I had never thrown a party before.

  I had never really been to a party either. I never knew enough kids when I was younger, and Peter always liked to go out for his birthdays; the movies, bowling, a picnic somewhere.

  Peter always had a lot of friends as a kid. Kids liked him; he liked the same things they did, like a sheep, a mirror. I liked my own things. I didn't know his friends very well. He rarely brought them home.

  They were so dull I had to kick and punch them when I saw them in a group one day at school.

  They said piss off. They didn't chase me. I'm dobbing, I said. They laughed.

  Peter waited for me after school that day, walked home with me. I thought I taught him a lesson but he only pitied me. He also dobbed.

  "You're so like your father," Mum said. "I can see you following in his footsteps."

  Much later, I realised she didn't mean that as a compliment.

  I received little sympathy from her when I told her about my day at school. It had been a bad one; Peter's friends told me to piss off, and my lunch was stolen by the new kid, some guy who thought he'd make himself big.

  Mum couldn't care less. She said, "Make a sandwich if you're hungry." I don't know what she would have said if I told her he tried to pull my pants down, too. I was so shocked I could only run away, lock myself in the girls' toilets. I could hear him outside, calling for me, telling people I was taking my pants off to get ready for him.

  The new kid had all these tricks which were supposed to make him look cool. He lifted up his desk lid and felt around without looking for what he needed. Then he casually brought it out like it just fell into his hands.

  I waited a week. I didn't plan anything, I just waited. I saved my orange juice bottle, washed and sitting in my desk. I didn't want to break it too soon; I didn't want to cut myself. I waited until I got into the classroom first, then I smashed the bottle and put the bits in his desk. There were large bits sticking up, small bits hidden.

  I told Mum how well my trick had worked, how the blood filled his desk and he had to be sent home, and she just went about fixing dinner.

  I left school before the eighteenth birthdays started happening and lost contact with them all.

  Peter took me to a party once but we got there very late and everything was a mess. I had no idea I was supposed to have my house perfect, for people to stare into every corner. I didn't clean up a single room; not even the kitchen.

  There were only a few clean plates. I was only nineteen; I was enjoying not having to clean up.

  My bedroom had dirty clothes everywhere and a smell which wasn't sweat; it was something similar. I was used to it, found it a comfort, but I discovered you weren't meant to smell like that when you were a grown up.

  If I had thought about it, I never would have imagined guests thumping upstairs for a look; I had no idea how curious people could be.

  Peter was good at the memorial service. Maria was kind to both of us, and she must have spent hours not to look glamorous. People gave her barely a glance; they grasped Peter by the hand, hugged, they said good things to him. They avoided me. No one knew what to say; I think people find it harder to deal with another's guilt than another's grief. My forehead scar has never faded completely, and serves to frighten people as my earlier scar did when I started school.

  When we got back to the house ahead of the guests, Maria was appalled.

  "Stephanie! Do you call this tidying up?"

  I laughed. "I didn't tidy," I said. I boiled some water for coffee as she huffed about the kitchen, piling, wiping, cleverly hiding the mess. I sat with my coffee and watched.

  "Didn't you make me a coffee?" she said.

  "You really shouldn't ask questions you know the answer to. It makes me feel sarcastic."

  She opened the fridge. "Where's the food?" I had plenty of stuff in there and couldn't figure out what she meant. I had left-over things, a tin of beetroot in a bowl, some Chinese, some Thai. There was some bolognaise I made myself which was pretty bad but tasted okay on toast.

  Maria left the kitchen and I heard her and Peter muttering. I followed; he was tidying the lounge room, using her technique of piling things into drawers and shoving them into cupboards. He was moving more quickly than I'd ever seen him move, clutching up armfuls of my things: bras, books, shoes, undies, magazines.

  "I can't believe you, Steve. They'll be here any minute. Where's the drinks, at least?"

  I opened Dad's liquor cabinet. It was something we'd never touched; Mum used to take the glasses and bottles out every now and then and dust the shelves, but everything went back where it came from. She never took to alcohol, preferring something sweet and tasty, lemonade or juice.

  The times I drink are always troublesome.

  "There's heaps here," I said. There was vodka, scotch, rum, brandy. And tonnes of wine under the house. Dad used to have visitors sometimes, when we were all asleep. I loved the comfort of male voices, a low hum which would wake me, not because it was loud, but because it was continuous.

  I never saw Dad bring home new bottles, but the old ones never seemed to empty, either.

  These were the bottles I indicated.

  "You're fuckin' joking, Steve." Peter swearing was pathetic; he did it so rarely he actually pronounced the "g". Maria stomped about, sweating, red, freaking out. I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. I'd seen a party. Everything was a mess and the bottles were half-empty. It seemed easy to me.

  Maria said, "We'll just have to keep them in here and the kitchen. Oh, God, what's the toilet like?"

  I shrugged. "It's okay. The walls are pale purple and the tiles are white, but I don't mind it." She stared at me. I wondered if she was thinking, "Thank God we live across town."

She said, "I mean, how filthy is it?"

  "Well, I usually do my shits down here, but it should be okay. I've been constipated lately."

  Peter said, "What's the yard like? Maybe we can put them out there."

  "It's looking good. I've got jasmine in one corner. Won't be long before I do the next batch." I liked to dig for hours on end, sleep, eat, buy my needs from Mrs Beattie at the corner shop. I really enjoyed entering that place. It was dark, cool, small, the goodies all lined up like a marching band. I loved picking things up and putting them down, just out of place, until Mrs Beattie said, "Can I help you?" as if I hadn't worked there for three years, from the tender age of fifteen. Her arms were fatter than ever, and she hadn't bought a new dress in years, so you could see a tight line of strain pressing into her flesh.

  The thing she hated most was the way I bought lollies. I had half the kids doing it too; they had a fine instinct for what irritated an adult.

  "I'll have a red traffic light. And a green traffic light. And another red traffic light. And a yellow traffic light. And a green traffic light," until my bag was full. I don't even like lollies; I gave them to all the sugar-starved children.

  While I worked in the backyard, I didn't have to think about the bad stuff, like Mum, or not being able to drive, or losing my courier job, or everyone hating me. I thought about the yard and how I would fix it. I kept finding things which reminded me of Dad; I thought of him a lot. I don't know why; it was stuff I'd never seen before; so many things, so many. All of them things precious to men. There was not a woman's thing amongst them. Nothing to remind me of Mum.

People started to pile in to my house. "I'm so sorry," they said fifty times each. "Your mother and your father, too."

  I wanted to be outside, digging.

  People muttered about the house, picking up our things. "Such a terrible loss, when the father died," I heard them say. "I remember the little girl could barely walk, she was so devastated."

  It's very hard for me to make sense of the day Dad died. I was nine and considered myself grown up. I was in Year Four and finally doing real work; Art was now a subject with a name and we only did it once a week. There were three whole years of babies below me, kids I could bully. There were only two years ahead of me, and half of those kids were scared of me. I was a clever one in class and that made me feel older still.

  I always got home before Peter. He liked to dawdle home, kicking stones, looking at boring boy things. I couldn't stand it. I wanted to be home as soon as I could, wanted the school part of the day finished with. I wanted to get home and investigate what Mum had done all day, look at the clues and tell her what I thought.

  If there was washing on the line, that was easy. Or if dinner was bubbling. Her other activities were more difficult. A faint scent of perfume in the air and an empty pantyhose packet meant lunch with her friends. Parcels on the bed meant lunch with Dad. Parcels on the bed and something nice to eat in the cupboard meant shopping.

  This is what should have happened. My Dad took me to the zoo. Not Peter; just me. He told me that I was the one who has to look after Mum and Peter. I am strong, and clever, and I will inherit everything. I promised I would look after them. I said, "But why, Dad? You're not going to die."

  He hugged me, stroked my hair. "We all have to die," he said. And two days later, after a fight with my mother (because she so loved to feel guilty, I'll give her this part of the fantasy), after telling Peter off for acting like a baby, after winking at me, he left for work, to chase a criminal who wanted to kill the innocent, chase and catch and kill him. But the criminal had a partner, as they do, and the partner shot Dad in the back. Dad was paralysed, he lay in the gutter. He knew he couldn't live like that; he was not strong enough to live with any affliction. So he willed himself to die, knowing that I had everything under control, that his family would be safe.

  Or this may have happened: he is taken to hospital, where he begs me to turn off the machines keeping him alive. This I do.

  This is what did happen. I slept in, lied to Mum, said I was sick, sank back into sleep knowing I would not have to do sports that day.