Slights (22 page)

at twenty-four

The scar across my forehead I got when I was eighteen. I also got the ones all over my arms. And one across my foot, where my spade had slipped, I got that at nineteen.

  Some people like them, though. I don't know what it is. A man came to dig up the dead tree in my front yard and he was neat, good clothes, but there was something in his eyes. He was polite but he didn't mean it. He arrived at seven, both mornings, and I was up and ready to go.

  "Early riser, ay?" he said when I brought him a cup of coffee.

  "Best time of the day," I said. I knew the passwords, the responses. I could use them any time I liked. He finished late on Saturday afternoon. He worked then because he gets paid double, and I was there, he said. He could check me out. He couldn't stop staring at my arms, my neck, all the damage.

He knocked on my door. "All finished," he said.

"Balloona!" I said.

"Balloona," he said. His fists clenched.

"Come in, I'll give you a beer," I said.

  "Fuckin' flat," he said. Threw the glass into the sink, oh, and the smash.

  "Fuck you," I said. I didn't want violence; just the words. I like my ears assaulted. They can't always figure when to stop, but he was smart. Gentle, gentle touch, kisses, sweetness, but this into my ear:

  "You are so fuckin' ugly. Someone paid me, you know, big bucks, to fuck you. I said no way, not for a million. You stink, you bore me shitless. You're worthless, no one likes you. You could marry a prince and no one would call you a princess. You make me sick."

  He stayed till Sunday night. His name was Scott.

I never hold a grudge. Peter ignored my twentyfourth birthday, but I still rang him to wish him a happy twenty-sixth. The answering machine was on. I left a message.

  "Hello, Mrs Searle, this is Mr Fucky Fuck of the Fucky Fuck laundry. You requested the Fucky Fuck special for your Fucky Fuck jacket which had vomit and blood all over it. The Fucky Fuck jacket is now ready. Please collect it from me or Mrs Fucky Fuck."

  He rang me back days later. He didn't say anything about forgetting my birthday. He didn't ask how the hospice was going, he didn't care that the patients loved me and the staff thought I was a gem.

  He said, "You're a bloody shocker, Stevie. You're going to have to come visit soon." He had a whinge about being lonely, not having anyone around to laugh at his jokes. I didn't ask how his courses were going, and he didn't tell me. He was in the news sometimes, these days, getting famous.

  "Maria's out, I take it," I said.

  "Yeah, yeah, out at some women's meeting. Hey, how's the nursing going, anyway? Killed any patients lately?" We laughed at that, and I felt so good I asked him to come for dinner. "I'll even clean up. Cook," I said. "You're all welcome."

  He said, "Actually, there were some things I wanted to clear up down there. Since when were you a cook?"

  "Since I didn't want to starve," I said.

  He laughed as if I were joking. Already Mum's death was in the past; to him, I had always lived alone in that dark house. We never had a mother or a father.

  When they got out, their faces were a laugh. The manure on my front lawn was dry and cracked, and a fly colony had started a new life. That shit stank. The kids shouted, leaped about, all that energy. They were both filthy, those girls.

  The first thing Kelly said was, "You've got a pile of poo, Auntie Stevie."

  "Auntie Stephanie," said Maria. "Steve's a boy's name."

  "And Maria is the name of a saint. So I guess we're both living a lie," I said. I smiled. "Come on in," I said. "I use the back door."

  The smell wasn't so bad once the door was shut.

  "Something smells good in here," Peter said. He pulled down the blinds in the kitchen, as usual. He hates looking into the backyard. I had worked really hard to make a nice dinner, harder than I would admit to them. I had even asked the opinion of the lady at the butcher's, who is a shocking gossip once she gets your ear. She suggested I cook something simple for the kids, a treat like meat pies, something easy. So I bought frozen for them.

  For us, I made, on the suggestion of the butcher woman, Prawn Cocktails, Beef Wellington and Chocolate Mousse. A menu straight from the RSL.

  Kelly ran around trying to find presents. She couldn't understand why she wasn't being spoiled. Kids of five are like that, I guess. She was like a puppy and I hate dogs; I ignored her. Carrie stared up at her big sister, wondering what was going on. They both waited and waited and then started crying.

  I sat them in front of the TV and brought their pies out.

  "Thanks, Auntie Stevie," they said. They kept looking at each other, like, "I can't believe it."

  Peter and Maria were in Mum's room, looking at her things. They wanted to take some mementoes. "Just a couple of special items," Maria said. They took something every time they came to visit.

  I knew that all these years (it had been six since Mum died) Maria has resented the fact that I got the house and Peter got nothing. He only mentioned it once; since then he hasn't asked me for anything.

  Maria was up there fingering our parents' things. Mum never threw out Dad's belongings. I'll never throw out any of them, even though Peter says she wanted us to. If she wanted them thrown out, she would have thrown them out herself.

  I guessed what Maria would steal; the silver picture frames, saying she wanted the photos. I'd say, "Why not just take the photos, then? I've always liked those frames," just to watch her squirm.

  "Dinner's ready," I shouted up the stairs. The kids were shovelling down the hot meat as quickly as they could.

  Maria entered the TV room, looked over their shoulders, screamed.

  "Oh, my God, that's
meat!
" She knocked both plates over and sent the small food remaining flying.

  The kids looked stricken. They knew it was meat but had forgotten how evil it was.

  "It was nice," Kelly said. There were bits of meat and pastry all over the floor. I don't know if Peter or Maria cleaned it up; I certainly didn't, and I never thought of it again.

  "You
know
we're vegetarians," said Peter. It was his Course voice, the one he used for people who didn't quite get it.

  "Since when?"

  "Since we were married," Maria said. "Since we realised the damage a carnivorous diet can do to the human body."

  "Well, you're going to be fuckin' hungry tonight," I said.

  I set out the Prawn Cocktails and sat down. They sat down. I ate my Prawn Cocktail. Then I ate Peter's Prawn Cocktail. Then I ate Maria's Prawn Cocktail. No one said a word. When I brought out the Beef Wellington, Peter rose and opened the two bottles of wine on the bench. Dad had quite a collection and I was making a good dent in it.

  I suppose Peter thought I should give the wine to him; bad luck. I like to have it for guests.

  Peter and Maria drank those two bottles while I ate my Beef Wellington. It was delicious. Peter got two more bottles. They watched me eat, malevolence brimming up.

  The kids were quiet. I knew there was a horror movie on, and they were keeping silent in case their Mum noticed and made them turn it off.

  Kelly already loved that sort of thing. Carrie, only two, was asleep. Meat poisoning.

  I brought out the Chocolate Mousse. The kids had already eaten theirs.

  "Is there gelatine in that?" Maria said. She could hardly talk.

  "Yep," I said. "Horse's hooves." It looked like they'd have to stay the night; there was no way either of them could drive.

  There was no way I was going to go out in the cold to drive them miles home when they should have stayed at my place anyway.

  "You'll have to stay here. You can't drive," I said.

  "I can't drive?
I can't drive?
You're the one who can't. You're the one who smashed Mum up. You're the one who killed our mother." Peter began to weep, two bottles of red wine coming out as tears. He began to sob. Maria placed a hand on the back of his neck.

  "How can you live with yourself?" she said. She sounded almost sober but her eyes could hardly focus.

  "You don't know how I live," I said. "You have no idea."

  I left them to the house and went to stay with Scott, the new man in my life.

As I turned into my street the next day, part of me worried they'd take over, that I'd find my stuff on the front lawn, snails crawling all over it, the neighbourhood kids picking through it. But Peter and his family were gone when I got back.

  I didn't see them again for a while; Peter forgave me, though. Maria made him suffer for my behaviour. He rang me every day to whinge about her, and I could only agree with everything he said.

  Maria found errors in his every movement. If he was home early, she wondered what was happening at work. If he was home late he had to account for every moment. I know there was no sex, but he was used to that. He told me about it: "I can tell you." I wished he wouldn't. And she spoke through the kids, made jokes about him to them.

  "And you know how easy it is to make kids laugh. She says, 'Look at Daddy's nose,' and they crack up."

  "Her point?"

  "She thinks I've got a strange nose. She says it looks like a blobby sausage."

  "Imagine what she thinks of mine, then. Just tell her that her stretch marks look like an aerial view of the moon. That'll shut her up. In fact, let me talk to her. I'll tell her."

  "I wish. She wants to talk to you, anyway. That's a warning. She's got this thing about the house, she thinks it should be part ours or something. I'm not bothered by it but you know what she's like."

  I couldn't imagine him having too many arguments about it.

  I'm not a mild-mannered, mysterious type. I like noise and plenty of people. I love a good big fight, the kind where you can whack your fists around and feel that flesh, hear that bone.

  Maria showed up at my door without phoning a month or so later. She was dressed all in black with enormous shoulder pads. She was there for a verbal; I wasn't interested.

  "Fuck off, Maria." I slammed the door in her face and went back to the kitchen. I was making freezer spaghetti bolognaise; everything out of my freezer went into it.

  "We need to talk." She'd let herself in.

  "Give me the key." I poked her with my metal spoon, held out my hand.

  "This is Peter's key. He's entitled to a key to his own mother's house."

  "Look, Maria, you'll have to speak to Mum about that. She's not keen on having too many keys about these days; you never know who's walking up and down the street."

  "What?"

  I handed her a spoonful of mixture. "What do you think" She grimaced, turning her head away. "Just a drop more Kit-e-Kat, don't you think?" I said.

  "I can't believe you don't even know how to cook. It's pathetic."

  "Ssh," I said. I pointed to the ceiling. "Mum's been trying to teach me for years. I've taken to buying takeaway, pretending I cooked it, like in the ads. She loves it. She's a pretty smart old bird; she probably knows. But anything to keep her happy."

  "But Steve. Your mother…"

  I looked at her, wide-eyed. She sat down.

  "Your mother's dead, Steve. I was there at the funeral."

  "You were there for Dad's funeral," I said.

  "Your Dad died when you were kids."

  I shook my head. Reached out my hand.

  "Come up and say hello. She misses you. She thinks you don't like her."

  "I liked her," Maria said. She was pale; her eyebrows tilted, turning her smooth expression into a frown.

  "Well, come on, then. Come and say hello," I said.

  She rose and walked ahead of me up the stairs. "Where is she?" Maria said.

  "She's in her room," I said. Her voice had lost all its aggression. She feared – what? That Mum sat, stuffed, in her old four poster bed? That I would plunge a knife between her shoulder blades and bury her in the backyard? That she was insane; that Mum was indeed alive and her life in the past six years had been a dream?

  "Still trying for kids?" I said. She stopped on the stairs but didn't turn around to look at me.

"Kelly and Carrie," she said.

"Nice names. Is that what you'll call them?"

  She pushed open the door. The air inside was fresh; I kept it well open, in case visitors dropped in.

  "There's no one here," she said. She turned to face me.

  I smiled and held out my hand. "The key," I said. She placed it in my hand, but hooked her fingers; drew her long nails across my flesh. I grabbed her wrist and she slapped me with her other hand.

  "Stop it," she said. "I came to talk, not fight."

  "We have nothing to talk about," I said. We were at the top of the stairs. "Go home," I said, like I would to a dog. My arms ached with the desire to push her. Her fingers dug into my arms; it didn't hurt. She was a weak, helpless woman. I twisted my neck, drew her left arm towards me and gently sank my teeth into her wrist. Not to cause damage; a cat giving warning of pain to come.

  Why should she have children, anyway? Why should those two horrid beasts be alive when there are tiny souls queuing up waiting for my womb to be real? Peter makes a lovely father. I could have been a good mother. I would let my daughter drive, too. Then it would be her own fault if the accident hurt her and I'll never know my grandchildren.