Closed, Stranger

by Kate de Goldi

  ‘Don’t say it, boy,’ I said, putting down my book. He was going to ask something pre-pubescent and grubby, I knew it.

  ‘Do you—’

  ‘Don’t say it, Leon.’ I closed the book threateningly, sat up. He knew perfectly well how effectively, how hurtfully, I could hold his arm up his back.

  The reason I can remember so well every word, spoken and implied, of that exchange with Leon is that later it seemed like the last becalmed, trouble-free time, the last time I was completely blissed-out, featherweight and insulated, the last magical moment before things began to gather momentum, head downhill fast, and spin seriously out of control.

  There was a moment when I was very content, when I laid down my history text book and happily prepared to thump my brother. And then there was Dee at the door, holding out the telephone.

  ‘Max,’ she said, stepping into the middle of our eyeballing, saving Leon before he could get himself in the crap.

  ‘For you,’ she said.

  ‘Lucky, very lucky,’ I mouthed to Leon as I took the phone.

  ‘It’s Liz Westgarth,’ said the phone.

  Call me prescient, but as soon as I heard her voice, steely and sad, I knew exactly what had happened. The shit had finally hit the fan round at Westie’s and was being sprayed in fifty different directions.

  Including mine. Liz Westgarth wanted me round there. She wanted answers, she wanted someone to tell her what the hell had gone down, she wanted someone to explain. So she said.

  ‘Don’t even ask,’ I said to Dee’s questioning face, as I pulled on my jacket, went out into the winter night.

  The streets were empty. The air was cold and wet and smelled of smoke. A southerly was brewing. Everyone was inside feeding their woodburners, heating their backs and legs. I wished earnestly that I was still beside ours, dealing happily to my little brother.

  Or that I was lying under Meredith’s piano, perhaps, watching her feet work their mysterious rhythm on the pedals, looking up at her small sharp chin, her lips parted, moving slightly as she played.

  Or that I was in bed, the duvet up over my ears, shutting out the heavy night air, the coming storm, the sound of miserable families going into battle.

  Chapter Five

  All wars are about ownership, really. I said this one time, to Meredith.

  You think? she said. We talked history sometimes, the business of the past, why I liked it, what use it was.

  We were lying in her bed, in her spartan room, staring up at old Frederic C, his fevered eyes looking away from us, fastened on something else. I pulled out that famous quote, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, handed it to Meredith.

  Don’t you reckon? I said, about the other. Ownership of land, of the high seas, of gold. Food? God?

  She was quiet for a while, eyes ceiling-ward, her arms tucked behind her head, exposing the soft hair, the delicate skin of her underarm. Her skin was tender and glassy-white, a whisper-blue tracery of veins beneath like the river lines on topographical maps. I put my lips to the slight curve of flesh, kissed its sweetness.

  ‘Some religions don’t believe in ownership,’ she said. ‘Buddhists, for example. Nothing’s permanent for them. Be cautious about attachment, they say. To things, to anything. The more you shed, the less worldly weight you carry, the higher your realm. I like that,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not a Buddhist, though?’ I looked around her almost bare room, at her severe aesthetic.

  ‘Moi?’ She slid her eyes sideways, smiling. ‘No. I’m a good atheist like my Mum brung me up.’

  Yeah, I thought, enviously. And I get a mother who sings Presbyterian hymns with her ex-ballroom dance partner when they’ve had too much to drink. I get a mother who doesn’t really believe in God any more than I do, but insists every house should have a Bible, like some bit of furniture, a big white and gold one with tissuey pages and a red velvet ribbon to mark passages that no one’s read.

  ‘I like that idea of weightlessness,’ said Meredith. ‘You pare away everything; you shed and shed until you weigh nothing, you almost are nothing; you are featherweight, floating off, merging with the physical world.

  ‘You are like the beginning of Chopin’s B flat minor Nocturne,’ said Meredith, almost crooning, ‘weightless and clear, suspended for a moment, so simple and unadorned, but … profound.’

  She was astonishing sometimes, the things she said, the way she saw the world. She was only eighteen, she was small, but she was fierce, and she left the adults in my life for dead.

  As for the adults in Westie’s life, God spare us.

  How was I supposed to answer Liz Westgarth’s questions — not that they were directed at me, as it turned out. How was I supposed to deal with their furious faces? What could I tell them? What exactly did Liz Westgarth want from me? I slunk round there as instructed, but I never did understand why I had to be there in the middle of their big family drama.

  Liz Westgarth didn’t shout. Her voice was raised but it shook and cracked on certain notions. She stood behind the breakfast bar, her face pale, old-looking, her usual bustling confidence crumpled.

  I felt sorry for her, and for old Dave the Rave, as Westie called his old man — Dave was a silent kind of guy. Though I’d always known it would happen, I really didn’t get their fury, their distress. So Westie’d found his birth mother. So it was a bit unorthodox the way it had all come about. So? How were you supposed to do something like that?

  Through social workers, apparently, as Liz spelled out eventually, indignation soaking her voice. You did it, apparently, with great preparation and counselling—

  ‘Counselling?’ said Westie. ‘Get real.’

  —and everyone being informed—

  ‘Yeah,’ drawled Westie, ‘pity all this informing didn’t start eighteen bloody years ago with the people concerned being given the information they were fucking entitled to.’

  But couldn’t they live with it now, I thought, as their voices rose and fell? Couldn’t they be adult and civilised, if that wasn’t an oxymoron? Couldn’t they just be zen and leave Westie alone with his new self?

  Apparently not.

  Dave was perched on a high stool, his hands clasped awkwardly between his knees. He barely spoke, as usual. He looked as if he were there under sufferance, there bodily but elsewhere mentally. When Westie doled out his views in foul language, in slow, hostile tones, Dave hardly moved; he just blinked slowly, like a watching cat.

  But Liz couldn’t shut up. She went on at Westie about the hurt, the hurt. Her hurt, Dave’s hurt and his — yes, his, Andy’s — hurt; he might not feel hurt, not yet, but he would be, this would hurt him, it couldn’t fail to. And then, even worse, on and on about this woman, her selfishness, her unfairness, her deception, the betrayal of trust, of contracts, yes, contracts, there was a legal arrangement, you know?

  Bad move, Liz, I thought, watching all this like a hired audience of one. I could have told her Westie was as loyal to Vicky now as Robin to Batman. He wasn’t going to hear his mother bad-mouth his new heroine. He wasn’t going to let her get away with this legal number, this righteous wounding; he wasn’t going to let her call Vicky this woman.

  He sat at the dining-room table, his face turned away from Liz and Dave, and expressionless, but his body taut, ready to go. Go ape, that is. I wanted to tell Liz to shut it, quit criticising Vicky or she’d get it from Westie, hard and horrible and any minute now.

  ‘I think what your mother’s trying to say,’ said Dave, into a chink of silence, ‘is that there are proper channels to go through — Social Welfare, counsellors — and we would have preferred this … your—’

  He paused, embarrassed, looking for the right word.

  ‘Her name’s Vicky,’ said Westie. He turned full face to his parents. ‘Vicky Crawford, okay? You can say it, you know: Vicky Crawford.’ It was a sneer. ‘Have a go, why don’t you? Say after me: Vic-Key. Cror. Ford. See! Easy!’

  That was when L
iz started sobbing and Westie finally lost it.

  ‘What is your fucking problem?’ he yelled, standing, pushing back his chair. His face was suffused. ‘What’re you so bloody upset for? You don’t own me! She had every fucking right to find me. And none of you, you two and those Social Welfare arseholes and bloody MPs making all the fucking rules, none of you had any bloody right to stop her or say when it was appropriate, or how the fuck it should be done!’

  ‘Andy.’ Liz’s voice came out like a mew. Her hands were up to her face.

  ‘Don’t speak to your mother like that!’ shouted Dave at last, sliding off his stool, standing, his hands on the breakfast bar.

  ‘I’ve got news for you, Dave,’ said Westie, dropping his voice suddenly, making us all strain forward to hear him, though I knew instantly, horribly, what he was going to say.

  ‘Case you missed the crucial bit. She’s—’ he raised his eyebrow at Liz — ‘not actually my mother.’

  Total silence. I watched two big tears roll down Liz Westgarth’s stricken face.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you, Andy,’ said Dave Westgarth, his voice wobbling dangerously.

  ‘Try leaving me alone,’ said Westie.

  ‘I’m outta here,’ he said, walking to the kitchen door.

  ‘Andy,’ said Liz.

  ‘Andrew!’

  Slam.

  They’d completely forgotten I was there.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ I told Meredith, the next morning.

  It was freezing — snow to 500 metres after the southerly. The Port Hills were bright with a dusting. I wasn’t dressed for the weather but I was steaming anyway.

  ‘He says he doesn’t want them to know; says he’s going to take his time telling them, it’s none of their business, he likes them not knowing — and next minute he’s shoving the whole story down their throats, like he wants a nuclear war.’

  We were walking down Clyde Road to uni. Fridays, I detoured to Meredith’s on the way to lectures and we walked together to the campus. Sometimes I even carried her music. There was only her music, she didn’t believe in bags; I liked being a text-book boyfriend — caring and courtly. Mr Knight-in-shining armour. Mr Good-living jock. Mr Mortgaged donkey, Westie said, if he ever saw us.

  Westie had Friday lectures, too, but there was no sign of him the morning after the Westgarth family blowout. He’d barely been around uni in the last month. I wasn’t sure what he was up to. I knew he was dropping out of Economics but until a few weeks ago he’d more or less been doing his other papers. No As, I realised; he’d given up on scoring a trip to the Colorado mountains, as promised by Dave. He’d given up on most things since Vicky had arrived in his life.

  I didn’t give a shit. I was seriously pissed off with him after last night’s move, after suckering me into his family horrors.

  ‘And why does he tell Liz I know all about everything, get me the big summons? What did she want? Corroboration? And what did he want? Moral support while he gunned down his folks?’

  Meredith was quiet. She’d hardly said anything that morning; she was letting me rave.

  ‘It was like he wanted to make them scream with pain. I don’t get it,’ I said again.

  ‘No,’ said Meredith.

  ‘And then Liz’s ringing me at 2 a.m. to see where he is. How the hell do I know? Last I saw of him was same as them — when he exits the kitchen door at 9.30. So after Liz rings, Dee wants to know all the gory details. I could kill him.’

  Meredith took my hand.

  ‘So I suppose he’s at Vicky’s. I don’t even know where she lives. I thought she was staying with her folks, but she isn’t. She’s house-sitting or something. Or he could’ve driven up to the Bellbird, slept in his car, slept in the stone house. We did that one time — after one of Stevie’s parties. We made a fire in the grate, slept in front of it. We were totally out of it.’

  That was a year ago, back in the bad old pre-Meredith days, when Dee and Leon and the old man would all drive me spare and Westie would tool round in his car, show me his stash, drive us both up the hill — get us some distance, some magnificent oblivion. It seemed like a long time since we’d done that number. Done any number, come to that — I’d hardly smoked since I’d met Meredith. Not that I missed it. Or, not much.

  ‘Jacko,’ said Meredith, pulling on my hand, pulling me out of my thoughts.

  We were outside the Music School. Meredith had two hours with her piano tutor. I’d have liked to watch them, side by side on the piano stool — how I imagined it — heads bent, both concentrating on Meredith’s hands. She had a recital in August. I even knew about the programme: Bach, Schubert and Shostakovich. Before March I’d never heard of Shostakovich, but now I knew he was Russian and had composed Preludes and Fugues, like Bach. Bach, Westie would say. Fugue. Recital.

  Fuck him.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ said Meredith, taking her music from my hands but standing there, not leaving. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’ I gave myself a mental shake, tried to stop thinking about Westie. It was the old story; his dramas became mine, they invaded my life and my thoughts. It was incredible how consuming they could be.

  Meredith stood, biting her lip. She did that sometimes when she was thinking hard about something, framing a question or a response. It was weirdly sexy.

  ‘He’s at Vicky’s,’ she said. She pressed her music against her chest, curling over it, rocking on her heels.

  ‘No doubt,’ I said, suddenly feeling like hijacking Meredith from her lesson, bearing her away to her bedroom, burying myself in that other addictive oblivion.

  ‘No, he is,’ said Meredith. ‘I know. He told me. He came round last night,’ she said, giving me such an intent — such an unreadable — look.

  I looked at her properly; I heard her silence. I heard, finally, the something she wasn’t saying.

  So, next I was sitting on the steps of the Student Union ampitheatre staring over the river at a wooden building, gloss-white in the afternoon sun. I was stalled, marking time. I had some idea I needed to waylay Meredith after her classes, walk home with her, sort out what had happened last night. I didn’t know quite what needed sorting out, just that it had to be done or I might implode.

  I’d been to my lectures, but I’d spent the entire time thinking about Westie visiting Meredith. I sat in the library for an hour staring at a book, but I was completely preoccupied by the fact of that visit, its unknown particulars which made me feel queasy — what they talked about, how they might have looked at each other. I felt heated up and prickly. I wanted to barge into the Music School, drag Meredith out of Music History like some Neanderthal, get her to tell me every inch of the time they’d spent together.

  But at the same time I wanted to run 50 ks — smother my agitation with physical effort; lose this obsessive thinking. It was an innocuous event, for God’s sake, Westie visiting my girlfriend. Yet I wanted to run away from my thoughts.

  So Westie went to see Meredith after a big showdown with his parents. So Meredith invited him in and talked to him till 2 a.m. Who cares?

  I tried the defining Westie motto, but it didn’t work. I was a million miles from careless unconcern. For some reason I couldn’t abide the thought of Meredith, my girlfriend — my girlfriend, talking intimately with Westie.

  Who said it was intimate? I did. There was something uncomfortably intimate about Westie going round to Meredith’s, telling her things, asking her, however implicitly, for sympathy; there was something warm and close, too close, about her lending a concerned ear.

  And now she needed to talk to me. What exactly did that mean?

  He didn’t even know her that well. He hardly knew her at all. They’d met a few times over the last three months, talked a bit, Westie knew a bit about Meredith, but he wasn’t on the sort of terms with her where he could bowl round and pour his twisted little heart out to her. She was probably too polite to tell him to bugger off. And he was probably
out of it, not taking in other people’s cues. I knew Westie’s raves; I knew Meredith’s still, patient listening. But why did she need to talk to me?

  I was up now, jumping the steps of the ampitheatre two at a time, this disordered, one-sided internal conversation propelling me back along the path towards the river, over the bridge, past the library, past the History Department where I should have been at a tutorial, past Law, past the Music School, out to the road, retracing the steps I’d taken this morning with Meredith.

  Of course I wouldn’t waylay her. Unthinkable. And I couldn’t talk to her about it. What was there to talk about? Only some humiliating, possessive feelings better left buried. I couldn’t let Meredith see I was some sad male version of my mother, ready to stick potatoes up someone’s exhaust pipe, so to speak, only worse, because unlike Dee I had no concrete reason to go off my head.

  And something else. I couldn’t let Meredith see that as well as galloping suspicion of her and Westie, as well as ridiculous paranoia about an innocent time they’d spent together, that I felt — this was completely pitiable — I felt slighted. I was — all right I was jealous: jealous that he’d gone to talk to her and not me. His best friend. His customary port of call.

  Why had he gone to see her and not me?

  And why did she need to talk to me?

  I crossed Memorial Avenue, ignoring the lights, the traffic, seeing instead Westie arriving at Meredith’s front door, Meredith getting up from the piano, answering the door, each looking at the other. Fuck. I was right back where I’d started, smelling a Westie manoeuvre, fearing a blatant piece of Westie poaching.

  Well, we’d competed over girls before, and every time — no surprise — he scored. Not this time. Meredith was different. She was mine — I loved her, I needed her in a way I’d never known with other girls. Westie could back right off; he could keep his confessions and confidences, his careless predatory eye to himself.

  I turned into our drive, swift with resolve. Good. The car was there. Dee was home. I’d borrow the car, go see Westie. Sort it out.