The New Girl (Downside) (10 page)

He goes down the corridor and showers, puts on clean clothes, sprays on deodorant. He checks his watch. 11.47. He slings his backpack over his shoulder. The girl’s going to be fast asleep
now, but maybe just being outside her house will resolve something. Besides, he’s not going to get any sleep in this state, so he may as well get some air.

Coming out the front door of Ma Beccah’s house, it’s the sort of crisp night he wishes he was a smoker. Smokers have a built-in reason to stand around outside and watch. You see
someone standing on a pavement in the middle of the night, not smoking, and you know he’s up to no good.

But here he is, not smoking, standing outside Tess and Fransie’s house. It’s dead quiet, not a car or a pedestrian, not a cat. The streetlights through the dying leaves paint
unwavering stencils on the pavement. The city thrums in the distance and he can hear the faraway rush of the highway, the bleat of a train down in Cleveland. The rocker on the veranda is vacant,
but Ryan can almost imagine the shadow of Fransie’s malignant father shunting it back and forth in the cool air. The single fluorescent bulb at the front door flickers.

Is it his imagination, or is he feeling calmer? Or is it just the fresh air after all? ‘Hello, Mr Ryan.’ She’s come out of the overgrown side of the garden again and is
standing alongside him, on the other side of the low precast wall. She’s wearing cheap tracksuit pants and a loose T-shirt, thin flip-flops on her feet.

‘Jesus, Tess. Christ, what are you doing here?’

‘Uh, it’s my house?’

‘I mean, what are you doing out? Why are you up?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Where’s your father?’

‘Out.’

‘Is anyone looking after you?’

‘Grampa’s there, but...’

They don’t love this girl like they should. She’s all alone in the world.

‘Hey, Tess,’ he says, ‘I got you something.’ He drops his backpack to the pavement and squats over it. He brings out the book and hands it to her.

She looks like a child on Christmas morning. The way children are supposed to react. ‘Oh, Mr Ryan! That’s awesome. I saw the movies. I always wanted to read Harry Potter. Thank you!
Thank you!’

‘It’s a pleasure, love. I got it specially for you. Because I know how nice it is to escape into stories. I’m sure you’ve got a great imagination.’

She blushes, looks down. She strokes the cover of the book and then decides something for herself. ‘Come, Mr Ryan. I want to show you something.’ She takes his hand and he remembers
when Alice used to do that. It feels so warm, to be needed. He steps over the wall and she leads him down the side of the house, into the overgrown bushes. They push through a narrow opening in a
thick, rough hedge.

Tess clicks a camping light hanging on a lopped branch and the space is illuminated. Instead of more tangled branches there’s a clear space surrounded by growth; it’s a little
room.

‘This is my castle,’ Tess says.

‘Like in a fairy tale?’

She doesn’t answer but she watches him proudly as he looks around. There are three cracked plastic kids’ chairs, a muddy quilt rolled up in a corner, a couple of cushions. A
half-empty bottle of Coke, a purple plastic box, some comic books.

‘Do you sleep here, Tess?’

‘No. No. Only sometimes. When’s Dad’s out, and...’

‘They don’t take care of you, honey. They should take better care of you.’

‘I’m okay. I’m fine. I wanted to show you because... because you’re kind to me.’

‘You know you deserve to be loved, don’t you, Tess?’

He realises she’s still holding his hand. It’s sweating. She’s looking at him with an open expression, as if waiting for something.

Beep-beep. Beep-beep.

Her cheap digital watch sounds a new hour. She lets go of his hand and looks at the display. ‘Twelve o’clock,’ she says.

‘Midnight,’ he says. ‘You know what happens in fairy tales at midnight, don’t you?’

‘What, Mr Ryan?’

‘Poor girls turn into princesses.’

Tara’s been working steadily, and Batiss’s baby’s face is already taking on that newborn rosy glow. She’s christened him Baby Tommy, deciding that he is
a boy, after all. She’s always loved the name – secretly planned to use it for her own firstborn son in fact – but it just seems right that he should have it. It suits him.

She gently places his head on its stand, decides that before she starts the finicky vein work on his forehead, she’ll sort out the colours she needs to re-mottle the Baby Gabby limbs. She
digs out her sponges, readies the paper towels she’ll use to blot up the excess paint.

‘Tara!’ Stephen yells up the stairs. She listens to his footsteps flumping down the corridor towards her sanctuary, reluctantly unlocks the door, blocking his view into the room with
her body.

Stephen’s face is pink and puffy. His blue work shirt is crumpled and sweat-stained. ‘What the hell are you doing, Tara?’

‘Working.’

‘But Martin hasn’t had his supper yet –
I
haven’t had my supper yet.’

‘Martin knows where the fridge is, so do you.’ Although she hasn’t eaten all day, Tara isn’t even slightly hungry. There’s a tube of Pringles stashed in her bottom
drawer if she needs them. She goes to shut the door in his face, but he shoulders his way in.

‘What the bloody hell are you—’ He stops dead as he takes in the printed photographs tacked up on the wall above her desk. To help her with those all-important details,
she’s created a collage of blown-up images of Baby Tommy’s anatomy: close-ups of his features, his little bunched fists, his darling chubby legs and, of course, his eyes and mouth.
Seeing it through Stephen’s eyes, she realises it probably resembles a murder board – the kind of prop that’s always hovering in the background in crime shows.

‘What the hell is this?’

‘My commission.’

He moves closer to the enlarged print-out of Baby Tommy’s mouth, the black thread puckering the delicate skin around his lips. ‘Jesus, Tara. That’s sick.’

She swallows a snappish response. Baby Tommy isn’t sick. Can’t he see how beautiful he is?

‘Who would want something like this?’ Stephen asks, voice thick with disgust.

‘A client.’

‘Who is this client?’

‘What do you care? They’re paying me.’

This makes him pause. ‘How much?’

‘Five thousand,’ she says, without a twinge of guilt at the lie. He knows that most Reborns go for between two and three thousand; the lawyer in him will approve that she’s
upped her rates.

He turns away from the photographs with a shrug of revulsion. ‘What’s wrong with Martin? Is he ill? He’s shut himself in his room.’

‘He’s your son, why don’t you ask him?’

‘I
have
asked him, I’m asking you. Christ, first you almost burn the house down, now you hole up in here for a measly five grand. What’s got into you?’

‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

She can feel the electric charge of a major row crackling in the atmosphere between them. A showdown is way overdue – they need to clear the air – but if she gets into it now, it
will use up valuable Baby Tommy time. She’ll have to backtrack, try and nip it in the bud. ‘Nothing, Stephen. I didn’t mean anything. Look, I’m sorry about supper, I guess I
just got carried away in here, forgot the time.’

His body language loosens instantly and Tara feels a jab of triumph – it’s so easy to play him, almost
too
easy.

‘It’s fine. I know Martin can be difficult.’ He reaches out and takes her hand. ‘And I know I’ve been... distant, preoccupied lately. There’s big shit going
down at work again.’

She slaps a practised expression of concern on her face. ‘What sort of shit?’

‘Trouble with the trust account.’

‘Again? You want to talk about it?’

He runs his hands through the sweaty clumps of hair at his temples, starts to ramble on about the audit that has the senior and silent partners squirming. Her ability to listen calmly while he
unpacks his day is one of the fundaments of their relationship, although he usually prefers to spill his guts to her just after they’ve made love. But that hasn’t happened for a while,
has it? In fact, she can’t actually remember the last time they had sex. Was it a week ago? Two weeks? A month? Hard to believe that just over a year ago he used to sneak out of the office,
drive across town to the Melrose apartment she shared with a bunch of students, and all so they could have twenty hurried minutes together. She watches his lips moving, a bubble of spittle popping
at the corner of his mouth. The thought of his hands on her now makes her skin crawl.

She finds herself wondering – as she does more and more these days – what would have happened if instead of staying in Joburg, letting herself slide deeper into their affair,
she’d carried on with her round-the-world adventure, caught a flight to Buenos Aires as she had planned to. She allows herself to dwell on the forbidden issue of whether he would have even
consented to the hurried divorce, the hasty marriage, if she hadn’t fallen pregnant. More and more these days, she doubts it. She has to face it. If it wasn’t for that ill-fated
pregnancy, she wouldn’t be trapped here. She’d be back in New Jersey, or possibly teaching in another state, praying that the school administrators didn’t dig too deeply into her
background (she is, after all, just one Google click away from being found out). Still, she can’t afford regrets, and in any case there’s something about this place that’s got to
her, squirmed its way under her skin. It’s not the city itself; she’s still struggling to get a handle on its aura of suppressed violence, clogged highways, paranoid security estates
and sprawling townships. She’s not sure what it is, suspects it’s because there’s so much
need
here. If what she’s read on IOL is true, there are thousands of South
African children locked in an epidemic of foetal alcohol syndrome and abuse; casualties of a country ripped apart and slapped back together, the seams still showing. Kids like Jane, for instance.
Staying here and helping needy kids like her, well, it would be a way of doing penance for what’s gone before, wouldn’t it?

‘So what do you think?’ Stephen says.

‘You poor thing,’ she says, hoping that he won’t ask any specific questions. ‘No wonder you’re so stressed. Sounds like a nightmare.’

It’s the right thing to say – all he needs. ‘How about we go out for supper at the weekend? Just the two of us.’

‘That’ll be nice.’

‘I’ll order take-away tonight, shall I? What do you want? Pizza? Simply Asia?’

‘Whatever you want, Stephen,’ she says, willing him to leave, fingers itching to pick up her mottling sponge.

‘That’s my girl.’

He wraps his arms around her, buries his face in her hair. She pulls back, catches the fleeting look of distaste on his face as he gets a whiff of her unwashed body and stale breath.

She doesn’t care.

She’s only had three hours’ sleep, but this morning she feels more alive than she has for weeks. Freshly showered and dressed in a newly ironed shirt and pair of
Levi’s, she smothers the temptation to check on Baby Tommy – the lure of him is so strong she can feel it in her gut – and pads down to the kitchen.

She makes herself a cup of instant, pulls open the fridge and sees they’re out of milk. Goddammit. Now she’ll be forced to go shopping after library duty instead of heading straight
home to Tommy.

She should really go and check on Martin. Make sure the little bastard is up and ready for school. She drains her coffee, makes her way up to Martin’s room and taps on the door. No
response. She knocks again. ‘Martin? You up?’

‘Go away!’ There’s a panicky edge to his voice she’s not heard before.

‘You okay?’

‘Don’t come in!’

She presses her ear to the door – hears what she thinks is a muffled sob.

Should she go in? There are no locks on Martin’s door; Stephen confiscated the key months ago after he’d locked himself in to avoid being punished for smearing the word
‘Bitch’ on her car window with mud. She turns the handle, steps inside, sees him frantically trying to push his bed linen into the wash basket. The pungent odour of urine fills the
room.

He rounds on her, cheeks wet with tears. ‘I told you not to come in! Get out!’

‘Hey,’ she says, ‘it’s cool.’

‘It’s not!’ He drops the sheets on the floor and screws his fists into his eyes like a much younger child. It’s the first time she’s ever seen him cry.

‘Here,’ she says, ‘let me do that.’ Careful not to show any disgust, she rolls the sodden sheets together, wraps them inside the duvet cover.

He wipes his snotty nose on his sleeve. ‘Don’t tell Dad.’

‘Of course I won’t. Besides, it’s no big deal. It happens to everyone.’ Does it? Isn’t late-stage bedwetting one of the signs of a psychopathic personality? She
chides herself for being so unsympathetic. Poor kid is in a state.

‘I had a bad dream,’ Martin says.

‘You remember it?’

He shakes his head. She can tell by the way his eyes shift that he’s lying. ‘You want to stay home today?’

‘No!’

‘You sure?’ That way, she thinks, with only a hint of shame, she’ll have an excuse to carry on with Baby Tommy instead of doing library duty.

‘I’m sure. You swear you won’t tell?’

‘I swear. It’ll be our secret. Really, you can trust me, Martin.’

He sniffs.

‘Hey, what went on in that meeting last night? That Encounters thing?’

‘Just stuff.’

‘Is it a... Christian-type thing?’

‘No!’

‘What then?’ She’s heard that the Scientologists have spread their tentacles throughout South Africa. But even Mr Duvenhage wouldn’t allow that kind of hokey shit at the
school, would he? She remembers the soda can on the flyer – perhaps it’s some kind of marketing drive.

Martin sighs. ‘It’s just stuff. Primo stuff.’

‘And that word – primo. Where did you hear it from?’

He shrugs. ‘Dunno.’