Addition (14 page)

‘Have you seen anyone about it? Someone professional, I mean.’ He turns and looks at me. The sun is behind me and both eyes crinkle and one closes because he can’t shield them while he’s swinging.

‘A therapist. I had kind of a bad turn; that was when I stopped going to work. I saw a therapist, twice a week, for a while. She wanted me to take antidepressants. We did hypnotism, the whole bit. She was younger than me—possibly she was about twelve. Every appointment made her more irritated, like I was still counting simply to spite her. I felt like taking her out for an ice-cream to apologise.’

‘What did she say was behind it?’ He’s stopped swinging now. He stands up and kneels on the swing.

‘It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what she said. She took one little event from my childhood and blew it right out of proportion because of some archaic Freudian perspective that says everything has one simple cause.’

He leaves his swing and walks over to mine. I’m panicked for a moment. What is he doing? I won’t be able to bear it if he holds my hand and looks into my eyes, all sympathy. If he tries to unravel me. If he kneels beside me and touches my knee like I’ve got cancer, I’ll scream. If he looks at me with that mix of concern and relief—the furrowing of his brow meant to be empathetic but which really conveys triumph because no matter how fucked up his life might be, it isn’t as bad as mine—well, if he does that, I won’t cope at all. If he looks at me like that so help me I’ll punch him right in the face.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t touch me. Instead he stands behind my swing and gives it a push. I shut my eyes as I feel the breeze on my face and in my hair.

‘Humour me,’ he says.

Not this again. Jesus. Move on. Move on.

‘When I was little something happened. It’s a small, very small incident that I’ve dealt with so many times. It was very upsetting, I’ll admit, but kids will be kids, and I refuse to bow down to it. I refuse to blame who I am, and I kind of like who I am by the way, on one incident, one minute out of a lifetime of minutes. Besides I don’t have a problem with it. I can discuss it anytime. The fact is that they don’t know why I’m like I am; they have no bloody idea. It’s easier to pin it on one thing than to think about the complexity of an entire person.’

‘So tell me.’ I can’t see him. I’m only conscious of those hands pushing me.

I shut my eyes. Even on this warm day the chain is cold to the touch; it must leave blisters on smaller, softer hands. Tell him the truth. Be big, like Nikola. Then he will know the heart of you, and if he decides to leave then you have the diamond-clear and sharp knowledge that, for a moment at least, he knew you.

11

The swing creaks, once on the upswing and once on the downswing. Tired wooden plank attached to a chain. The sky-blue paint on the chain has peeled from years of exposure to sun and rain, and with each movement of the swing a fine red dust floats to the ground.

‘My parents were very proud of me,’ I hear myself say. ‘I was bright at school. So grown up. They bragged about me constantly to their friends and relatives. Showed everyone my report cards. As a special treat, because I was so mature, when I was eight we were given a puppy for Christmas. It was a soft, adorable little bundle of mischief. People didn’t train their dogs so much in those days. Puppies were just puppies until they got older and learned better. Anyway this puppy was just plain annoying. For some reason it didn’t take to Jill the way it did to me. It followed me everywhere. I was supposed to look after it. I was the big girl.’

I could see the backyard from my room. Our house was long and narrow, a single-fronted double-storey terrace. In the middle, at the end of the concrete path, was the incinerator. In the right corner was an enormous flowering gum tree, and in front of that was the clothesline. I can see it now, easily, without even shutting my eyes because my whole mind back then was turned to escaping.

‘Mum and Dad worked so hard to buy the place—nice house, nice suburb—so that their kids would have a better start than they did. Down the back was this steep set of steps. The puppy was so small. Couldn’t possibly negotiate all those stairs by himself. My mother told me over and over: “If you go out the back door, be sure and shut it so the puppy doesn’t fall down the stairs.”’

‘Oh God,’ Seamus says.

‘One day I forgot. He fell down the back stairs.’ I look up to the sky, a moment of silent prayer, but I’m not sure he notices. ‘The puppy died.’

‘You poor little thing. You must have been devastated.’

Poor little thing. Tell him. Tell him everything. Everything.

With my eyes closed I can gauge the movement of the swing as it arcs back to meet his hands. I can feel his hands go back with the swing just a little before he leans towards it and pushes it forward. I imagine his legs astride, the left slightly ahead of the right. Any deviation in the pace or the effort or the speed will reflect hesitation in his mind, and I will have lost him. I am alert for the movement of the swing to change, but it doesn’t. It continues, up and down, like we were discussing the chances of rain.

‘He just tumbled down. Hit his head. Died instantly without even a whimper. He lay at the bottom of the stairs like he was sleeping. This is the worst part: seeing him there, lying dead like that, my only thought was for myself. That my parents would no longer think me wonderful.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Rusty,’ I say. ‘His name was Rusty.’

That’s it. That’s as far as I can go. I can’t do more than that.

Seamus gives the swing another push. ‘How did your parents react?’

‘They were distraught. I mean, they didn’t blame me, they really didn’t. And they had owned dogs before. Puppies die, you know, they get hit by cars and God knows what. I suppose it was the shock that it might have been one of us, Jill or me, who could have fallen. And because it was an accident they saw it as repudiation. That they weren’t good enough parents.’

The street is quiet. No more late arrivals, and the early diners are leaving. I stretch out my leg; hold it straight against the pressure of the air rushing towards me.

‘The old guy in the photo?’

‘Nikola Tesla. Inventor. Born 1856. Mad about counting. Counted everything.’

‘Tesla? As in Tesla coil?’

My shoulders drop. I hadn’t realised they were tensed. Seamus has heard of Nikola. Billions haven’t, but Seamus has. My stomach feels better. I should carry antacid with me but there are 14 tablets in a roll and that gives me the creeps.

‘At high school we all had to write projects on famous inventors. Alexander Graham Bell, Fleming. You know. I’d never heard of Nik…Tesla before. I thought I was the only person in the world with this thing for counting. A bit of a freak, I guess. As a teenager I could easily have…sometimes I felt it would be better for everyone if I wasn’t around. When I read about him, found out that someone as great as Tesla was also a counter…It just about saved my life.’

‘So…this accident…do you think it’s behind your…’

He hesitates for a second and for an instant I think he’s going to say ‘sickness’.

I reach out my foot and dig it into the rubber. He stops pushing and I swing to a stop.

‘No. No I don’t. I don’t go into spasms if I see a puppy. I don’t cower in the corner at the sight of stairs. I can talk about it very easily. People have much worse trauma than that. Besides, I’ve done my penance.’

I can feel the warmth of the sun on my face. I walk around the swing and stand in front of him. I lift my arms and slide them up his shirt, around his neck, and nestle my fingers in the short hairs at the nape. He brings his hands to my hips, and hooks his thumbs inside my waistband.

‘And what penance is that?’

‘I made a pledge to be very, very nice to animals.’ I nibble his Adam’s apple.

He pulls me closer, and gestures back at the restaurant. ‘You didn’t eat a thing in there. Once again I’ve failed to feed you.’

‘Never mind,’ I say. ‘You can make it up to me somehow.’

The drive home is too long. Red lights. A Volvo in front of us. The block of flats has too many stairs, ten times as many as it did this morning. I fumble with the key even though I have opened this door ten thousand times. The door takes too long to open because the hinges are in slow motion. Inside, there’s no hope of reaching the bedroom. It’s miles away.

Seamus kicks the door closed with one leg and pushes me against the hallway wall. His open mouth is on my throat, but he can only kiss one hollow at a time. I can’t undo his belt fast enough. Can’t pull his shirt over his head because his hands are lifting up my skirt.

One arm is tight around my waist, the other yanks my pants down. His trousers are already on the floor around his ankles. He lifts me and rams my inner thigh—the angle is all wrong. My pants are caught around my knees, too high for my legs to spread.

‘Fuck,’ he mutters. This time he rips my pants all the way down. They pool on the floor.

Later I’ll take my time. I’ll feel the taut skin of his cock in my hand and in my mouth. I’ll tongue him and he’ll feel my hard teeth and my soft lips and I’ll suck him hard and soft just to hear him moan. Later he’ll be under me, and how deep, how fast, how long, will all be up to me.

But not now. Now I can’t wait, not one more second. His hands are big and wide on the cheeks of my bottom. He spreads them apart and lifts me again. The wall is hard against the small of my back and it pinches my hair.

For an instant, we don’t move. Then I sink down on him and wrap my legs around his waist. I claw his back. He clenches his teeth and puts one hand on the wall to brace himself. He is inside me. It’s exquisite…if I lean forward…

But then he stops, and shudders. I can feel the spasms inside me. His strength seems to drain and he leans against me. I unwrap my legs; they take my weight with only a little wobble. We rest, standing together, both sweating.

‘Shit…I’m sorry.’ His breathing is heavy. ‘That was…’

‘It’s okay.’ I hope I sound convincing.

‘Perhaps we should try it in a bed sometime.’

‘Good idea,’ I say. ‘How about now?’

In the afternoon we sleep together in my single bed. At least Seamus does. I can’t. I can only look at him. As soon as Seamus closed his eyes, I turned Nikola face down.

Nikola, like all truly great people, had a truly great obsession. People don’t understand obsessions. An obsession is not a weakness. An obsession is what lifts people up; what makes them different from the grey masses. Do you think we’d still be talking about
Romeo and Juliet
today, over four hundred years since its first performance, if the two lovebirds had followed their parents’ advice and each settled down with more appropriate partners in four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom neo-Georgians in a new subdivision on the outskirts of Verona?

Nikola once misjudged the electricity coming from one of his machines and 3.5 million volts went through his body, leaving a mark on his chest on entry and a burnt heel on exit. Another time he was experimenting with an oscillator, a device used to amplify mechanical vibrations. It caused a mini-earthquake, shattering windows all over Manhattan, and confirmed his belief that, with a little experimentation to find the exact frequency, he’d be able to split the earth in half like an apple. He loved talking about Martians. He wasn’t a popular guy. He left New York in a hurry and moved to Colorado Springs, and that was the beginning of his obsession.

My obsession leaves at 5.12 p.m., after kissing me for 8 minutes at the top of the stairs.

I can’t get Seamus Joseph O’Reilly out of my head. My routine becomes mechanical, the counting without any pleasure or purpose. I speak to him every night; who phones whom no longer seems important. Tuesday and Wednesday he visits late at night and stays until dawn.

I think of him every second. I cook my food but can’t eat it. I can’t sleep much, and when I do I dream of arms around my breasts, dreams so clear that it takes a few moments on waking to realise he isn’t there.

On Thursday night when the phone rings, I jump.

‘I’m so sorry it’s not a Sunday,’ Jill says.

‘It’s okay.’ This new sexy me is almost adaptable.

‘Harry and I leave for China tomorrow…’

‘I think you may have already mentioned that.’

‘Hilly has a violin recital on Saturday. I discussed it with her weeks ago, and she said it was okay that we would be overseas. But this morning she made a fuss about it. I think she’s upset that no one in the family will be there.’

‘Relevance to me?’

‘Look, Grace, I know it’s hard for you. But is there any chance you could be there?’

She interprets my silence as reluctance.

‘It’s the school fair—there’ll be stalls and things. I’ve been making jams for weeks. Hilly can get there by herself—she’s staying over at Stephanie’s place. Stephanie plays the cello. You could meet her there. I don’t want her to be the only girl with no family in the audience.’

I’m distracted for a moment by a vision of Seamus as a schoolboy. I doubt he was the violin type. Not the chess type, either. I’m thinking tennis. Or cricket. Imagine a little boy with Seamus’s eyes, bat in hand, concentrating. My heart squeezes. I’d like to see Larry play her violin, but how? Before I can stop myself, it’s out of my mouth.

‘I’ll get Seamus to take me.’

There’s silence for a moment, and for a moment I think I’m safe; she’s distracted by a burglar or perhaps a fire in the kitchen.

‘Who’s Seamus?’

‘He’s a friend.’

‘A friend? You mean a boyfriend? You’re seeing somebody?’

‘A little less astonishment would be flattering, Jill.’

‘Gracie, darling…it’s not that. You’re beautiful, and so clever. It’s just…do you think you’re ready?’

‘We’ve been out a few times, that’s all. No vows exchanged.’

‘Do we get to meet him?’

‘Yes…Maybe…I don’t know. Let’s see how it goes at the recital.’

‘Hilly would love to be the first one to meet him. Do you think…? Do you think you’ll be okay?’

I’m a new woman with a new boyfriend. Everything is peachy.