Behind

by Nicole Trope

  At fifteen I looked like I was twenty. The problem was that Miss Blakewell didn’t just tell me to stop talking. She asked me politely to stop talking. ‘Can you please concentrate on your work?’ is what she said, and when she said it, I heard a slight tremor in her voice. She was unsure of my reaction. She was afraid of me and that made me angrier than her request to stop talking. I felt my body heating up and I knew that I was going to explode even though it had never happened to me before. I had, by then, perfected the art of moving into others’ personal space. If I was standing, I would step close to them, and usually, no matter who they were, they’d back away. A few people didn’t, of course. The principal and some of the sports teachers and my father. My father never backed away, but then my father is the one who taught me to step into someone’s space, to threaten with my height and my size.

  Miss Blakewell couldn’t have known that I was talking to James because I couldn’t really concentrate on my work. That morning my father had hit me from behind with a mug in his hand. He slammed the cup right into the back of my head. I had a headache. A low buzzing and pain that made me want to sleep. I probably had a slight concussion but I would never have mentioned that to anyone. I wouldn’t dare.

  That first time, the first time my rage boiled over into the world, the reason my father hit me was simple: I left the mug in the sink instead of putting it in the dishwasher. I knew what I was doing. I knew I was provoking a reaction, but at fifteen I seemed unable to prevent myself from doing that. I was as big as my father by then. As big but not quite as strong. But I’m as strong now, as strong, stronger, the strongest.

  I know that when I stood up to confront Miss Blakewell, James tugged my arm to get me to sit down. I know that I watched my arm move like it wasn’t my arm. I know that I hissed, ‘You’re pathetic,’ after she fell backwards. I know that the girls in the class screamed and that someone ran frantically for help. James and another boy held me down while we waited but I wasn’t really fighting them. I was shocked at what I’d done, completely shocked, but I was also, for the first time in a long time, at peace.

  ‘Miss Blakewell was pathetic. She should have stood up to me, should have stood up for me,’ I say.

  Poor Miss Blakewell. I stood up and slapped her. She fell back against a desk and hurt her back. Cue expulsion and the first in a long line of psychiatrists that I wasn’t actually allowed to say anything to. My father never did get me any professional help as the school psychologist suggested when I was fourteen. That only happened after I hit someone. It was a condition of Miss Blakewell – sweet, kind Miss Blakewell – not pressing charges.

  ‘What do you mean she should have stood up for you?’ I can hear the excitement in Dr Sharma’s voice, see the curiosity in her eyes. She’s having a lightbulb moment.

  I look at her. I’m not feeling that sharp today. I accidentally swallowed the sleeping pill from last night instead of spitting it out. ‘Slip of the tongue,’ I say. ‘She should have stood up to me.’ Her face returns to neutral.

  I never told anyone about my home life, and I only told James the truth about my father and what it was like to live with him after we left school. I’m surprised that James still has anything to do with me. He has a strange kind of loyalty to me, one that I can’t really explain but one that I’m grateful for. He’s so different to me, just a normal guy living his life. He has a wife and two kids, and even though I’m not allowed to be in his home, he calls me regularly to check up on me. He didn’t even sugar-coat the not coming to his house thing – just said, ‘You’re my mate but I know how things can get and I can’t have you near my family.’ I thought I would be angry at him for that but I understand. I’m happy to meet him in a pub or for a walk. There’s no pretence with James. I loathe the pretence that I lived with for years and years. Everything picture-perfect on the outside, writhing with shit on the inside.

  Dr Sharma looks at me and I look back at Dr Sharma, and whatever hope she had for today’s session dissipates into the air.

  ‘Kevin,’ she says, ‘we are almost at the end of your stay and thus far I’m not sure that you have demonstrated any need to be here.’

  ‘Fine, send me to prison.’

  ‘I don’t want to do that but you don’t seem to want my help.’

  I study Dr Sharma, considering explaining about my mother and what she did. I wonder if she could find a way to help me accept it and move on with my life because I’m forty-one now and I’m really tired of being this man, this really messed-up human being. I want to be different.

  One day, when I was thirteen, I imagine myself saying, I came home expecting everything to be normal – or as normal as my life at home could be – and everything, everything was entirely different and my life was never the same again. One day, when I was thirteen, I realised that not only did my mother not like me – which I understood, I was an arsehole teenager – I realised that she didn’t actually love me either. I know that if I told this to Dr Sharma, her face would light up like the sky on New Year’s Eve and she would believe that she has finally found the one missing piece of the puzzle so she can put me back together again and make me whole. She would claw at me for details of that one terrible day, sucking the story from deep inside me where I need it to stay.

  I’m not ready to open this particularly ugly wriggling can of worms. I’m not ready to discuss it and I will probably never be ready.

  I know what I need. I need to feel different; I need to find some peace. In order to find some peace, I need to have justice. In order to have justice, I need a small window of time. Just a small window when I am back out in the world.

  There will be a gap between my being released from this hospital and remanded in prison if I get a good enough lawyer. I know there will be a gap and that’s all I need. A small gap and a little bit of time with him. And justice will be served.

  ‘You’re as useless as anyone else,’ I say to her, knowing that it will mean I am sent to prison. ‘You can’t help me. None of you ever could.’

  25

  Rachel

  She is slumped on the couch in front of the television, a glass of yellow-gold wine in her hands. Ben is upstairs reading Beth a story. For the past three days there have been no more dolls. She has not heard from him at all. Perhaps he is done with her. Perhaps the dolls were a way to frighten her, to unbalance her just as he had done to her mother when he turned up at her work every time they found somewhere new to live. Is he done with her now? Is it over? She hopes so but she knows that it’s wishful thinking. She knows, deep down, that she is fooling herself. The picture, the torn picture, could only have come from her mother’s apartment. It was one of the few she had kept of the whole family. And Rachel knows that her mother kept it in her bedside table drawer, that she looked at it every night, stared at the faces until, perhaps, the truth of who that family was disappeared.

  He’s been in her mother’s apartment, in her house, at Ben’s work, at the hospice. He is everywhere. Everywhere. And it feels like each time he makes contact, he is closer to stepping out of the shadows and confronting her.

  She would like to talk to Ben, to tell him everything, but he seems angry with her, almost as if he blames her for him losing his job. He’s started asking her for all her receipts for grocery shopping. ‘We have to economise,’ he said. ‘I can take over the weekly shop for now, while I’m not working. You just be with your mother.’

  Her phone is right next to her all the time, and even though she checked five minutes ago she picks it up and checks it once more, making sure she hasn’t missed a call from the hospice. Veronica has not woken up again. Sometimes her face contorts a little and Sam raises the level of morphine in her drip but nothing wakes her. Rachel hopes it is a peaceful sleep. Her mother’s revelations have stunned her. Not only did she see her father over all the years they were running but she made a deal with the devil to keep Rachel safe. How could she have done that? But what other choice did she have?

  Rachel k
eeps going over it, thinking about it from different angles, trying to imagine the choice she would make if she had been her mother in that situation. She knows what choice she made as a child. She remembers what she said and did and what she encouraged her mother to do. But she was a child. And then when she refused to discuss him, she encouraged Veronica to stay away from him. It was self-preservation but guilt scratches at her nonetheless. If Veronica had contacted him, her father would have known that the agreement was broken and come after them. There is no doubt about that.

  She closes her eyes. Is that what happened? Did Veronica somehow reach out to her brother, breaking the agreement and sending her father after her?

  Outside in the empty street she hears a car drive by and her hand grips the glass tightly. Who is there? Is it him? But the noise is soon gone and she realises it was probably someone just looking for another street. Today, as she left the suburb, she had to pull over to make way for three bulldozers, all heading to different plots of land. Something that should have frustrated her filled her with joy. It was starting. Soon there would be tradespeople up and down the street, noise and confusion, and help would be only a shout away. But not at night. At night the silence reigned. If it was summer, there would at least be the sound of insects to remind her that she and her little family were not the only living things in the street, but outside there is ice in the air, and in the morning she knows that a light frost will have settled over the grass they have only recently laid.

  Maybe the cold will keep him wherever he is and away from her.

  The merry-go-round of thoughts is making her dizzy and she wants it to stop. She should only be thinking about her mother now. That’s all that matters.

  She’s only been home for an hour and she will go back soon. She knows she shouldn’t have left but sometimes the walls of her mother’s room begin to close in. She only meant to come home long enough to have dinner but then she saw the open bottle of wine on the counter and poured herself a glass. It’s unlike Ben to be drinking midweek but there’s no way she’s going to mention it. He seems to be on the edge of another angry outburst all the time. She supposes her mother spent her whole married life not saying anything to her father. Her husband is not the same kind of man but she cannot think of what to say to him, of how to help him, especially after the last time she tried. She doesn’t have the energy either. She can feel her mother’s life trickling away.

  Today she talked to Veronica until she felt her throat close over. She spoke about the few small holidays they took when her mother had managed to scrape together some money, about visits to the beach and movies they’d seen together. ‘Do you remember when we went to see Mary Poppins when it was being shown at the cinema, Mum? It was so much better than watching it on television. Remember how you sang along to the songs and I got embarrassed and then I realised that everyone in the theatre was singing? Do you remember the chocolate cake you baked for my twelfth birthday? Remember how it flopped in the middle so you filled it with candy? Do you remember when we went bra shopping and the woman asked if you were my sister? Do you remember, Mum? I remember. I remember it all. I remember you coming over after Beth was born and you were so sick but you still told me I needed to go and lie down. You could barely hold your head up but you wheeled her up and down the street outside in her pram so I could sleep for an hour. I remember what you said on the night before I got married about Ben making me laugh and that being the best sign for a good marriage. I remember shopping for a wedding dress with you and we both got a little drunk on the champagne they gave us. I remember, Mum, and I won’t forget, not any of it, I promise.’

  ‘It will be soon,’ Sam told her as she left today. ‘You need to prepare yourself. Go home and get some rest and I will call you the moment I need to. We’re only a few minutes away from you and I don’t want you to make yourself sick.’

  As Ben comes downstairs, Rachel looks up at him, feeling her thoughts of her mother drift away. ‘She’s out like a light. Apparently a very busy day at school. Are you going to drink that?’

  ‘What… oh, yes,’ she says, realising that her glass has tipped to the side, nearly spilling the wine. She takes a sip and then puts down the glass. ‘I think I should go back and be with Mum. Can you handle getting Beth to school in the morning?’

  ‘Of course. It’s not as if I have to get to work. I’ve got an interview with a recruitment firm at eleven but that will be over by the time school is out. Just stay with her, babe, stay as long as you need to.’ Rachel watches her husband as he says this. It sounds like he’s rehearsed these words, as though he doesn’t mean them at all. He doesn’t look at her as he speaks.

  ‘You’re angry with me,’ she says.

  ‘I’m not.’ He shakes his head. ‘Why would I be angry with you?’

  Ben slumps down on the couch and Rachel moves along until she is sitting next to him. ‘You’re a good guy,’ she says. She rubs her hand over his cheek. He is letting his beard grow and she can see some patches of grey coming through. He doesn’t react, but after a few seconds he moves his head away as though her touch is irritating him. She sits up, away from him, stung. He is worried all the time. When she stops for a moment to think about him, tearing herself away from thoughts of her mother, of her father, she understands that he’s worried all the time. She wishes she could give him more, could be more encouraging, could even take on some of the financial burden, but she’s trapped right now. Just like her mother warned her.

  ‘I’m unemployed,’ he says. ‘Good guys usually have jobs.’

  ‘You’ll find something soon. I know you will, and if the worst happens…’

  ‘Then what, Rachel? Then what?’ He gets up to pour himself another glass of wine and takes a deep sip.

  ‘We can sell the house,’ she suggests. ‘I know we’ve only just moved in but we can sell it and go back to renting.’ It would be awful to lose their dream home but it no longer feels like a dream. In reality she would feel relieved to move somewhere else. She would like to leave this place and all the terrible things she associates with it behind. It is the house where she has lived as her mother is slowly dying and the house where her past has returned to torment her. She cannot look around at the clean lines and open spaces and enjoy them anymore. It is the house where she has lived as her whole world fell apart. She understands now why her mother didn’t mind the shoddy rental apartments they lived in. The apartments meant she was away from her own beautiful, picture-perfect house where terrible things happened.

  She may be safe from her father back in a rental apartment surrounded by people who watched everyone coming and going. Her father may not want to harass her if others can see what he’s doing. She would welcome the noise that comes with having people all around her. The oppressive silence of the empty suburb forces her into the turmoil of her own mind. She would be happy to leave here but she cannot say this to Ben, who would be devastated that she does not appreciate this dream home he has worked so hard to provide for them.

  ‘The way the market is now we’d probably land up still owing money on the mortgage and having to find rent as well.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ben, I wish I could help. I wish I could just get a job but right now…’

  ‘Right now, you need to be with your mother so let’s just get through right now. You said you were going. You should go.’

  ‘Maybe you could ask your parents for some help?’

  ‘I know I could but it means they will have to take money from their retirement fund to help us and I couldn’t live with myself if I wasn’t able to pay it back.’

  ‘You’ll get something soon, Ben, you will.’

  ‘Yeah, soon.’ He stares ahead at the television.

  ‘Ben, listen,’ she begins, reaching out for him.

  The ringing of the bell startles her and she jumps, yanking back her hand.

  ‘Who could that be?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’ll go,’ she tells Ben even as he’s standing up.

/>   ‘No, let me, you never know. After that scare you had, you don’t need to be answering the door at,’ he looks at this watch, ‘eight o’clock on a Wednesday night.’

  Rachel nods as he leaves the room. Heart racing, she picks up her wine glass and drains it. Is it him? It could be him. Have the dolls stopped because he means to show up here himself? She stands up quickly and goes to follow Ben.

  Her husband is standing at the door, talking to two policemen, and for a moment she is relieved, sure they have simply come to check up on her since the supposed break-in.

  ‘Um, Rachel,’ says Ben, ‘they’re here to tell you, to ask you…’ He shakes his head, seeming confused.

  ‘Ma’am, are you Rachel Watson?’

  ‘I am, I mean I was. I’m Rachel Flinders now.’ She swallows. Have they come to tell her about her mother? Surely not, Sam would have phoned. He wouldn’t have let her miss her last moments. Police don’t come to tell you someone has died unless it’s a violent murder or an accident. She looks down at her phone that she has clutched in her hand. Only the time is displayed. She hasn’t missed any calls.

  ‘We’re very sorry but we’re here to inform you that your father has passed away,’ one of the officers says.

  ‘My what?’ Rachel gulps in air as her stomach twists into a knot. She bites down hard on her lip. ‘My what?’ she repeats. She has heard the words but they don’t seem possible.