Closed, Stranger

by Kate de Goldi

  WINNER OF THE YOUNG ADULT FICTION HONOUR BOOK PRIZE AT THE NEW ZEALAND POST CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARDS.

  A PRIZE-WINNING NOVEL ABOUT FRIENDSHIP, FAMILY AND AN IMPOSSIBLE LOVE.

  What made March really significant, what seared it on both our brains, was that Westie met his birth mother, Vicky, for the first time, a secret assignation … and I met Meredith Robinson …

  Max Jackson tells the story of his friendship with Westie, from its wild, head-smacking glory to its bitter misunderstandings. In just one tumultuous year, a volatile cocktail — two young men, two women, love and hate and the weight of the past — changes that friendship for ever.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Note on setting

  About the Author

  Also by Kate De Goldi

  Follow Penguin Random House

  For Trish Allen,

  with love and admiration

  I woke up on Westie’s twenty-first birthday with his voice laughing in my ear. He wasn’t there of course, but Westie never needed to be present to make his presence felt, if you see what I mean.

  ‘Hey Doc,’ he was saying. ‘I read that guys without much body hair have a seriously lower libido.’

  Oh, very funny.

  His voice echoed in my bedroom, a light voice, ridicule just under the surface. I could see his pale grey eyes widening, his head crooked, the beginnings of a sleepy smile.

  ‘No shit, Doctor, reduced testosterone, less hormone for putting it away.’

  I rubbed my hairless chest, swung my insufficiently hairy legs out of bed and sat there on the edge of it, staring at my feet.

  It was two long years since Westie had exited my life but sometimes I thought he’d never really gone; he would be there always, whispering asides, taunting me, offering his singular opinions, retelling old jokes and making me laugh, in spite of everything.

  Westie’s twenty-first. What would I have got him for the big one?

  On his seventeenth birthday I’d given him a video of Pulp Fiction, his all-time favourite movie. On his eighteenth I’d strolled round to his house with a present neat and square and small enough to fit in my pocket.

  ‘So, where is it?’ he said, when he opened the door. ‘Too heavy to carry round? You paying it off in instalments? Or you finally opened your tight little fist and got me something Class A, something prohibited, something mind-bending and reality-adjusting?’

  Westie was never backward about material gain. Westie was never backward about anything. Andy Westgarth was in your face like no one you’ve ever met.

  Andy Westgarth made his own rules. He gave appropriateness a new definition, he ignored all recognised boundaries of good taste and circumspection.

  To give you just one example. For our last two years at school Andy Westgarth kept a list of freaks — poor human specimens, rejects he’d stumbled on here, off-shore, holidaying with his parents. Top of the list: a girl with a big veined bony facial growth. Close second: a massive sweaty stinking taxi driver who’d once driven him and his mother to Brisbane airport.

  ‘Honestly, Doc, he was twenty-seven stone, bigger than the King of Tonga in his fat days, bigger than Mr Creosote, he was as big as that guy in New York who had to be cut out of his apartment. He spilled over the seat. He was stuck there for the day; he was so fucking massive he couldn’t even lean over and open the passenger door, he had to do it with a special hooked stick. And man, did he smell.’

  I could hear him so clearly sometimes. I could see him, like he was right with me, his eyes shot red and wide with their unique brand of stoned menace, his grin big and crazy, his voice filled with wonder.

  Why was it, I asked myself, staring at my bare feet, my tanned toes, why was it that Andy Westgarth had front seat in my consciousness, but I could never really summon Meredith? I could never have her full throttle like Westie. I could never quite see her or hear her. No matter how many times a day or night I tried to conjure her physical self, her very specific fragrance, I just couldn’t get them. They’d slipped out of reach, dived down some black hole of memory just as surely as Westie’s face and form and fervour had taken up permanent residence in my head.

  And I could hear him on that one, too, on my efforts to retrieve and remember, to catch hold of Meredith, and all the parts of the past that seemed important.

  ‘The past, Doctor? Who cares? Leave it to the Milo drinkers.’

  He’d said that once. I sat on my bed staring at my feet, but in my mind’s eye I saw the Scarborough Track, the pine-needle path. I could smell the dead sheep odour that hung about the hill, the salt spray carried up from the sea. I could see the grey and white birdshit on the rocks; I could hear the seagulls screaming below us.

  It was three years ago. We were running the zig-zag to Whitewash Head, sucking wind the worst possible way.

  ‘History,’ said Westie, panting hard. ‘I’m with that car guy, whatsisname? The Ford dude. History’s bollocks.’

  ‘Bunk.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said it was bunk.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  It was a winter day, late April maybe, a dirty cream sky looming inches above our heads; our breath clouded briefly and was gone. We were climbing steeply, sweating like turkeys. I’d mentioned Joseph Banks, naturalist, adventurer, dude.

  ‘He’s dead, Doctor. Who cares?’

  ‘History,’ I said. ‘He’s history.’ It came out lame, though I meant it. I liked history. I liked the people, the places, I liked the story.

  ‘History.’ He spat into the ice-plant beds beside the track, a big contemptuous gob. ‘It’s an old story and a fucking dull one too. It’s for grannies, Doctor.’ He was soaring now, carried away by his rhetoric, this new fervent belief. ‘It’s a long boring story, a Milo drinker’s lullaby.’ He accelerated then, pushed ahead up the last of the zig-zag, calling back over his shoulder. ‘Who cares about the past, Doctor? Who cares about the future, even? I’m for now, there is only now …’

  His hair was long then. It flew out behind him, damp, blond-streaked, corkscrewed, dumping on the back of his ski-tanned neck, bump-bump, bump-bump. I stared ahead, seeing his hair, feeling the crush in my lungs, my legs tiring, my body yelling for rest. I watched Westie’s hair bump and fly as I listened to his airborne words.

  ‘Thing about now,’ he called, ‘it just goes on and on, it’s always there, for ever and ever and ever. World without end.’

  If only.

  Then is important, Doc, I said to him often enough, feeling it in a vague sort of way but not knowing like I do now. Now, I know well enough, now, I would say to him if he was around, now is nothing without then. Then is crucial. It tells you everything; it has designed, built and painted every corner of the present.

  Then makes a hostage of you; it ties you up and whispers in your ear; it fills you with cold longing to do it all over again differently.

  Then, I would say to Westie, then is the bit that goes on and on, it’s always there, for ever and ever and ever. World without end.

  Amen.

  Chapter One

  Imagine a Sunday. This is where it begins, I think. You know Sundays — if you’re deaf, blindfolded and shipwrecked you still know a Sunday when it hits you; you recognise that lethargy, that crawl over the skin, that creeping despair.

  And Sunday round our place h
ad a graveyard ambience all its own: the air heavy, the rooms cold, Dee and Leon like the walking dead. Nothing new of course. My brother had always been difficult, but my mother had lost it spectacularly when the old man walked out a couple of years previously.

  So I was outta there. I walked round to Westie’s. He’d rung twice already, laughing down the line.

  ‘I’ve been reading the phone book,’ he said. ‘Some burk at Telecom’s actually spent time working out the sounds the phone makes. No shit, it’s on page 41, listen to this—’

  ‘You stoned, Doctor?’

  ‘Course. But the phone book’s a very big gas, Doc, even when you’re straight. Never know what you’ll find — listen to this, there’s stuff written to describe the sounds, it’s fantastically loony, listen, here’s what they say for the dial tone: ‘Hmmmmmmmm … Busy tone is Burr, pause, burr, pause … They’ve actually written this, Doctor, can you believe it? What about this: Number Unobtainable tone: Pip-Pip-Pip-Pip pause Pip-Pip-Pip-Pip pause … Or Disconnect tone: Buzz-Buzz-Buzz-Buzz …

  What could you say? You had to be there. You had to be bent.

  ‘Hello, Doctor? Do I hear laughter? A small chuckle? Hello? Anybody home?’

  He rang again just as I was about to go out the door.

  ‘This is unbelievable. Have a look, page 41, this is my favourite. For Fax tone, they say, ‘You have called a fax machine.’ Sound is — I love this, it’s insane: Skreeeeech Shhrillll … And this is how they spell Screech: ess, kay, arr, ee, ee, ee, ee, ee, five ees, and the Shrill: ess, aitch, aitch — two aitches — arr, eye, el, el, el, el, four els, it looks insane, Doctor, get the book, have a look, it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen—’

  ‘Roll a decent one,’ I said, ‘I’m on my way.’

  He was in the gazebo down the back of his parents’ property. The little glass-and-wood room was filled with sun and plants and a familiar sweet smell.

  ‘Guess what?’ said Westie, as soon as I opened the door. He was lying on the bench with a hand behind his head, a joint in the other, his eyes closed, a half-smile hovering.

  ‘What?’

  I lay down on the other bench, shut my own eyes, shut out family, life, the past and the future, prepared myself for a good diversion, a Westie-ism, a triumph maybe, a madness, or just a piece of ordinary, everyday weirdness.

  ‘I got a call,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  He always had a handful of girls hanging round, ringing him up, lusting after him. It was one of the great acts, Westie and his harem. The more cool and detached, the more mean and cynical he was, the more they went for him. He was king of the backward come-on. He crooked his finger but he couldn’t care less. I’d been studying his method for years but it was difficult to pin down, impossible to imitate. Girls liked me, I knew that; I knew I looked good, I was smart, I was sporty, I could talk and act, but I had never, never had Westie’s success.

  ‘Not a girl, Doctor, a woman. An older woman.’

  Excuse me?

  ‘Branching out, Doctor?’

  ‘Moving on, Doctor.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Name’s Vicky. Vicky Crawford.’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  I imagined a friend of his mother’s, someone rich and skinny and well dressed, lots of hair and heavy gold jewellery. Westie eyed all his mother’s friends, gave them points.

  ‘What’s she like?’

  He winked sleepily, took a long toke, holding it in. ‘She’s my mother, Doctor.’ He spluttered a bit, the smoke burning his lungs, making his eyes narrow and water; then he let it out slowly, marking each word.

  ‘She’s. My very. Own. Personal. Birth. Mother.’

  Where does a person’s story really begin?

  When they’re born? Or before that, when their parents’ desires collide and have the happy accident, as Dee always described it.

  ‘All children are really happy accidents,’ she insisted, when she was full of gin, at her sentimental worst.

  Did Westie’s story begin at his beginning — his birth — or before that, way, way back when his own mother slipped into the world, a miscalculation in her parents’ universe? Or did it begin properly years later when his mother decided on a new beginning for herself, no baby. Or did it begin further in the future when she found Westie again and gave them both a second start, a chance to rewrite an old story?

  Or is that simply where it began to go downhill?

  And Meredith’s story? Hers seemed so settled and benign, a happy progress unmarked by hiccoughs — right up to the end. I knew where her story finished, but I never worked out where it started. With her mother? With her remote, unknown father? With me?

  And what about me, what about my story?

  Sometimes I thought I didn’t have a story — not one I could call my own, just one that was a subplot in the lives of everyone else — and especially the chaotic life and times of Andy Westgarth. Or if I did have a story, it didn’t begin with the business of birth, with anything as ordinary as parents. Sometimes I thought my story, the real life of Max Cooper Jackson, didn’t begin till the first day of intermediate school seven years before that graveyard Sunday when Andy Westgarth of legend (his fame and fervour preceded him) left his old group of friends, strolled up to me and claimed my friendship — complete, undivided, four-hundred-and-fifty-fabulous-freewheeling percent.

  ‘Those guys reckon you look like me,’ he said, swinging his state-of-the-art pencil case. He looked me over good and hard.

  ‘You do a bit,’ he said, ‘but I’m taller.’ He was then. And my eyes were blue. His hair was dirty-blond and curly; mine was darker, less kick in it. But according to him we could be brothers; it was perfectly possible, he said. He could in fact be anybody’s brother, because he was adopted. All around the world there were guys who might be related to him, but so far I was the most likely candidate.

  Anyone else introduced themselves to you that way when you were eleven you’d be wary, wouldn’t you? You’d give them a wide berth. But from that first moment I had conversations with Westie like I’d never had with another boy. He had a way of saying things, intimate things, without making you squirm. I don’t remember clearly, but it seems at that moment I packed up my own pencil case, turned from my new desk and followed Andy Westgarth off into the sunset.

  So to speak.

  My mother didn’t like it, at first.

  ‘What is it with that kid?’ I heard her say once to the old man.

  ‘Which kid?’ The old man’s behind the newspaper, his home away from home, only half listening. A typical example of their meaningful marital discourse.

  ‘Max,’ says Dee, meaning me. My family called me Max. Westie called me Doctor: he wanted me to be Doctor Watson to his Sherlock Holmes. Later, Meredith rechristened me Jacko. I always liked that.

  ‘Max,’ says Dee, ‘or Andy, I suppose. If Andy Westgarth said, “Jump”, Max’d say, “How high?” Do you think it’s normal?’

  ‘What?’ Irritated rustling of paper.

  ‘Is it normal to be such a follower?’

  ‘Who?’ Incredible, a communication gap that cavernous.

  ‘Max!’

  ‘Of course he’s normal.’ God forbid he fathered anything less than perfect.

  ‘Why’s he so enthralled by Andy?’

  ‘It’s called charisma, Dee. Some have it, some don’t. Andy’s got it.’

  I could tell he didn’t think I had it. He had a bagful of it himself, of course. He had so much, in fact, he had to share the excess around with a truckload of women. But that was another story, and one Dee was happy to share with us in technicolour detail after they split.

  He was a prick, the old man, no doubt about that, but he hit the nail on the head with Westie. I looked up charisma in the Concise Oxford: capacity to inspire others with devotion and enthusiasm. Forget the devotion, I wasn’t that wet, but Westie very definitely inspired enthusiasm. It was the wild, head-smacking way he presented things �
�� movies, music, girls, religion. Getting stoned and hanging out at Orana Park. Drinking a six-pack and standing under the airport flightpath when the Qantas Boeing was due. Staying straight and biking up Godley Head. Racing each other round the Crater Rim path. Doh-nutting on Kaitorete Spit. Cruising Taylor’s Mistake for Uma Thurman lookalikes. Writing to Uma Thurman.

  ‘Look at it this way, Doctor,’ he said. ‘She can only write back. Or not.’

  Not, as it happened.

  ‘Who cares?’ Westie said, when we never heard. ‘We’ve got her for ever on celluloid.’ We had copies of all her films.

  Who cares? What a rallying cry. Who cares? What a motto. Who cares?

  What a lament.

  ‘Who cares?’ said Westie, when our Year 7 teacher separated us for laughing too much.

  ‘Who cares?’ he said, when, for once, I did a better time than him in the high schools’ cross-country.

  ‘Who cares?’ he said, if I beat him at tennis.

  ‘Who cares?’ he said, when his cousin dobbed him for nurturing a couple of dope plants under lights in his wardrobe.

  ‘Who cares?’ he shrugged when his mother called him on two-timing Josie, his Year 11 girlfriend.

  ‘Who cares?’ he insisted, when my old man packed up, shifted out and went to live with Gilly, his twenty-five-year-old PA. God knows, I tried it. Not caring. I tried looking at the old man, his silver-grey hair and careful pectorals; I tried hearing him explain, a patient man talking to a fool; I tried watching him, blind to his family’s disorder; and I tried telling myself, So, Max, this is a man who has left his wife and two sons and now bangs a woman half his age. Who cares?

  I couldn’t do it. I was gutted by the old man’s departure and Dee’s craziness. As for Leon’s impossible behaviour … Who cares only worked when Westie was around, offering his inimitable commentary, chanting the mantra, turning the whole thing into a comedy.

  ‘Who cares, Doctor? Think of it as one less parent to worry about. One less monkey on your back. God knows, you’ve got your hands full with DeeDee the Dingbat.’

  This was after Dee had bawled out my philandering father and his new piece of skirt at a Court Theatre first night attended by the Fuller, Beachman partners, staff solicitors and Significant Others — wives, husbands, lovers. It was before the first act started, but naturally the audience was riveted to the offstage action, all their Christmases coming at once, a senior partner’s ex-wife losing it so publicly, so graphically, so pornographically.