Demons (19 page)

So a few months went past, continued Marshall, and things seemed to have settled
down, although the truth is I was too busy to notice. I was running the campaign—doorknocking,
shopping centre walk-throughs, baby-kissing—then after the election settling into
my seat, getting the run of parliament, making sense of what I could and couldn’t
do. So far as I could tell, Rylan was doing okay, keeping his head down and not putting
his hand out too much. And by now Jackie was going through stuff too, as you know,
and I felt like I needed to protect her.

Then late last year, before Christmas, I got word that Rylan had found a new girlfriend,
younger than him, an artsy inner-city type and they were burning up the bars and
all that again. I never met her but I got the impression she liked the good life.
Then one day a couple of weeks ago he turns up at his parents’ with her asking for
money to start a new business. She’s a designer, apparently, and the idea is they’re
going to make quirky jewellery to sell at the markets.

Well. Because of the conversation Jackie’d had with them, the parents told Rylan
and his girlfriend that they’d have to think about it, then they rang me for an opinion.
I was in the middle of some big policy meeting and I didn’t really have the time.
But anyway. They asked what they should do: Rylan was asking for money to start a
craft-jewellery business. I said well, sure, that’s good, that’s great, he’s getting
his act together—but I think he should match them dollar for dollar. The parents
agreed and rang Rylan to tell him. So the next thing, of course, was that Rylan was
ringing Jackie asking could she lend him a sum of money, which, I soon found out,
was exactly half the amount he’d asked their parents for: the half, that is, that
he was supposed to be contributing. She rang me. I said no, fuck him Jackie, I don’t
care who he is, make the little shit go out and find his half himself, that’s the
least he can do. Jackie took my advice and rang Rylan—and after that the whole thing
went quiet. Then yesterday, Friday—is it Saturday? I’m confused—I’m in my office
doing some work and Rylan comes in, on his own, without the girlfriend, and says
he wants to talk. So I take him out the back and shut the door.

He’s angry, but hipster angry; it doesn’t really work. He says he thinks it’s me
behind the parents and Jackie not giving him any money and reminds me it was I who
said he should stop slacking off and do something with his life and now I was blocking
it. He was raising his voice. He said it was a pissy amount he was asking for compared
to the money his parents and Jackie and I spent every day. It’s not about the money,
it’s the principle, I said. That really set him off. He got all jumpy and started
pacing the room and yelling. He kept saying how he’d tried, I didn’t understand,
Jackie and I had been to uni, got an education, walked into good jobs. But he was
still lost, he said, had always been lost, the underachiever. Jackie was the special
one and he knew he’d never measure up.

I could see the tears in his eyes. I know I’m useless, he said, but listen, Marshall,
is making jewellery with my new girlfriend a lesser thing than what you’re doing
here? I didn’t know what to say to that.
What the fuck was I supposed to say to
that
? Every single human being, he said, every single human creature on this earth
has got to be worth
something
—but you, you all think I’m worth
nothing
. You won’t
give me a chance. Just because I didn’t finish uni, that means I’m a bludger, a slacker.
Doesn’t matter how much Mum and Dad or Jackie
love
me, the fact is they can’t respect
me. And respect is all I want, Marshall, to prove myself in your and everybody’s
eyes. It’s a pissy amount of money, but you won’t give it.

He opened his jacket. He’d strapped a piece of old computer circuitry to his stomach
with electrical tape, wires and other bits sticking out. I could see right away it
wasn’t real. In fact, it was pathetic. (And this is the guy who wants to go into
craft jewellery!)

It’s a bomb, he says. He’s sweating, shaking; it’s almost like he’s convinced himself
it is. (Legal fiction! Ha!) And if I don’t take him seriously we’re both going off
to meet our Maker. Then he starts bawling. I want to laugh, but instead I feel sick.
The sight of him screwing up his face like that is literally making me nauseous.
I let him go on for a bit then I walk out to the front office—there’s a regular out
there, an old Greek guy, Spiro, he’s always got something on his mind. I say hello
but sorry, I’m busy today. I tell my staff to take an early lunch. I have some family
matters to attend to. Then I go back to my office. Rylan is in the chair, his jacket
still open, snot running from his nose. I wait till I hear the front door close.

Marshall looked down at his plate, straightened his knife, aligned it with the fork.

I ripped into him, he said. I didn’t hold back. I’d listened to everything he’d said
but it was all piss and wind. The tears too, it was all an act. I tore shreds off
him. I said this private enterprise stunt was a load of crap, it was just another
excuse to bludge off his parents. If he was a loser, like he said, it was his own
fault, no-one else’s. And this? I said, pointing at the ‘bomb’. Really? Did you
really
think I was going to buy that? I didn’t stop. Once I’d emotionally beaten him to
a pulp, I showed him the door, escorted him all the way to the front, told him to
dry his eyes and zip his jacket, said I hoped he understood all I’d said was for
his own good. Then I went back in and rang Jackie. I told her what I’d said, and
why. She was upset, of course, but we talked, and things seemed to settle down. I
said I thought we should still go away. Rylan would be fine. A weekend down the coast
would do us good. I said I’d pick her up about four. Tilly would stay at her friend’s.
Three-thirty I got the call.

Everything went quiet.

You got down here with Tilly around nine, said Hannah, like she was clarifying something
with herself. Yeah, said Marshall. Only—what?—five and a half hours after your brother-in-law
committed suicide? Yeah, said Marshall, again. And you left Jackie at home, she said.
Marshall nodded. Again it went quiet.

Well, said Megan, standing up and gathering the plates, I don’t know about you guys
but I’m just about ready for the next story.

I’ve got one, said Adam, getting up.

Marsh, come on, forget it, said Megan. He hadn’t moved. The timer went off. That’s
mine, said Lauren. Where’s Evan? said Adam. They all looked around. He was at the
top of the stairs, shoes off, clothes muddied and dripping, a stupid grin on his
face, holding Marshall’s two bottles of donor wine triumphantly over his head. It’s
still raining out there, he said. Everyone, even Marshall, laughed.

While Evan had another shower and changed they stoked the fire and lit more candles.
It was freezing outside, and whale-belly black. The wind was wild. The rain relentless.
No-one had forgotten the road was blocked and half the driveway gone or that Tilly
was downstairs on her phone—but they tried to push it from them and move on. Two
nights of stories: leave all the frenetic stuff behind, find a bit of quietness and
order. But the plague was still out there. A sub-audible jangle creeping up through
the floorboards—gossip, backstabbing, trumpet blowing, everyone talking over everyone
else—that all the wine in the world wouldn’t still.

Evan came back, shivered a moment, and started pouring. Megan poked the fire. The
dishwasher hummed. The house groaned. The rain dripped into the pot.

All right, said Adam, picking up the stick. My story is called
Home
. I like that,
said Hannah. It’s sort of about real estate, said Adam. Evan raised an eyebrow and
put the bottle down. It was something that made the papers, but not in a big way—if
you recognise it don’t go spoiling it for everyone else. I heard it from the defending
lawyer; I was out having a drink with him and it came up during a conversation we
were having about country-property prices and how tight the market is these days
and how desperate some people are.

It’s about a couple, like in Lauren’s story. Heterosexual again. They were both well
off, successful. Like Lauren’s. But. No. Wait. I’ll go back.

Adam: Home…

This couple were childhood sweethearts, you see, deeply in love. Their names were
Cass and Dale. They’d gone to kindergarten together, then primary school, then secondary
school, eventually even to the same business college. Their parents were old friends,
and when they were little the kids would play games together from dawn till dusk,
big rowdy games that nearly always ended in tears. The two families went camping
at the same site every Christmas, and Cass and Dale would spend whole days in each
other’s company, damming the river with rocks, jumping off the rope swing into the
big swimming hole. They played doctors and nurses. They never missed a birthday.
They married in their early twenties and had their first kid shortly after. But the
kid was disabled, severely disabled, and right from the start he needed around-the-clock
care. But that was okay, they were both in good jobs, earning good money—Dale in
IT, Cass in HR—and they could afford to pay. But the boy, Oscar, was very sick, and
it was not the carer’s fault when one day he swallowed his tongue, choked and died.
So. You see.

Is this going to be another sad one? said Evan. Megan, sitting next to him on the
couch, whacked him hard across the back of the head. Ow, he said. Everyone laughed.

All right, so, said Adam.

Naturally the first thing Cass and Dale did after they had mourned the loss of their
poor little boy was to try and have another baby to see if they could fill the void.
I can’t imagine how it must have felt. But the trouble was, no matter how hard they
tried, nothing happened. It was like God or whoever was saying you’ve had one and
it turned out badly so no more for you now, okay? But they wouldn’t give up. They
tried all the natural methods, all the old wives’ tales, everything, then they turned
to IVF. There was no question, obviously, of them not being accepted into the program;
as bargaining chips they had on the one hand the tragic death of their first child
and on the other the argument that the procedural checks and balances would make
sure they didn’t have another like Oscar to break their hearts again.

But still Cass couldn’t get pregnant. First it was her eggs, then it was Dale’s sperm;
then it was neither. At some deep level their genetic material just didn’t want to
get together; it had got together once and wasn’t happy with the results. They gradually
became resigned to their fate—although the medical profession, hell-bent on trying
to help them, took a little longer to catch up. It was Cass who eventually called
a stop; she knew her body better than anyone. Enough was enough. Dale felt the same.
They were childless, and childless they would remain.

But the weird thing—and it was probably this that drove a lot of what happened next—was
that once they stopped trying they became not only a childless couple but also a
couple who for all intents and purposes
had never had one
. Oscar became a memory
and barely that. His ashes were buried in a lawn cemetery way out in the sticks;
for the first few months they visited the grave every Sunday and put flowers on it,
but soon this ritual became less regular and then was abandoned. For the first few
months, they kept his room the way it was, his bed still spread with his favourite
stuffed animals, the
Toy Story
poster on the wall; pretty soon they’d not only stopped
going in there but had even dismantled the shrine. Cass put the stuffed toys in a
big black garbage bag, put that bag in the hallway, then a while later in the boot
of the car, then a couple of weeks later, again, when she happened to remember it,
into a charity bin. Oscar’s room became the spare room; they piled their work papers
on the bed, took down the
Toy Story
poster and put up a wall planner instead. It
became the bits and pieces room, then by default the storeroom. If Cass saw a new
set of crockery on special, for example, or a set of pure cotton towels, she would
buy them and put them in there. They still called it Oscar’s room, but it was no
longer Oscar’s room at all.

But the most liberating thing (for Cass especially, but Dale too) was that once they
had grieved the loss of the child and accepted the fact of their childlessness they
no longer needed to care about their bodies. During the restrained period of mourning
over Oscar, then the strict regime of healthy eating and exercise imposed on them
by IVF while they tried for a replacement, Cass and Dale had become puritans. She
owned a library of healthy-eating books; he, to increase his chances of producing
healthy and plentiful sperm, had given up drinking and installed a running machine
in the garage.

The first sign that this regime and their pursuit of a second child was over was
when Dale one night brought home a bottle of good wine and suggested they drink it
together. Cass didn’t object. When they finished that bottle he went and got another.
Something was released in them, like a knot unravelling, a flower blooming. At some
point that evening, after the second bottle, they both seemed to have arrived at
the same consolation; after all they’d lost they at least had each other.

It was the beginning of a new life. They would no longer be servants to Cass’s empty
womb, or the countless doctors and specialists and their well-meaning advice. After
that first drought-breaking bottle they drank every night. Neither of them mentioned
the taboo they were breaking, the sense of a great burden having been lifted or whether
or not, in fact, their quest for another child was officially over. They talked about
everything else: their childhood together, their teenage years, the million shared
moments.
Do you remember this? And then that happened? And that?