A Fraction of the Whole

by Steve Toltz

  “We want to do a television special on Terry Dean. The real story, you know? Stuff we haven’t heard. Maybe a miniseries. Over two big nights. The story as you’ve never heard it before.”

  The name of his brother made Dad stiffen up so he looked packed in ice. “So who’s stopping you?” he said, distressed.

  “You are. We have the police and media reports from the time, but everyone else who was there died in the fire. You’re the ultimate insider. We can’t do it without your contribution. There’s so much we don’t know.”

  “Is that why you came?”

  “Yes.”

  So this was how Anouk had convinced these two media giants to come home and listen to my father’s inane ideas. What a miscalculation! We all sat for the longest time in the most dreadful, ominous silence, during which I was afraid Dad might try to strangle every neck in the room. He shut his eyes, then opened them again. After several more minutes passed and it became obvious Dad wasn’t going to say another word, Oscar said, “Well, we’ll be off.”

  Once they were gone, Dad rose from his chair as if levitating, walked out of the house, and disappeared into the labyrinth. Anouk ran after him. I didn’t move for an hour, struck immobile by visions of my father killing himself or doing some fucked-up thing that would get him interned for another round in a mental hospital, and I’m ashamed to say the thought of these appalling things didn’t frighten or sadden me as much as they bored me to tears. That’s how sick of him I was.

  IX

  I hadn’t seen or heard from the Inferno in almost a week. I played a waiting game with the telephone and lost. It had become, in my mind, a weird surrogate for her, a plastic representation. The telephone was silent because she was silent. I began to hate the telephone, as if she had sent it to me as her delegate because she was too important to come herself.

  Shuffling around the labyrinth, I decided to bother Anouk. Shortly after we moved into the house, Dad had given her a spare room to use as a studio. Apart from being both sexy and annoying, Anouk was an artist of sorts, a sculptress. She was really into depicting the subjugation of women, the emasculation of men, and the subsequent ascension of women to a higher plane of consciousness. That is to say, the room was full of vaginas and dissected penises. It was an unsettling potpourri of genitalia; there were thin limping penises dressed in rags, bloody lifeless penises made to look like dead soldiers on a gloomy battlefield, penises with nooses tied around the shaft, charcoal drawings of terrified penises, melancholy penises, penises weeping at the funerals of dead penises…but they were nothing next to the victorious vaginas! Vaginas with wings, great ascending vaginas, twinkling vaginas flecked with golden light, vaginas on green stems with yellow petals protruding in place of pubic hair, vaginas with wide grinning mouths; there were dancing clay vaginas, exultant plaster-of-Paris vaginas, blissful candle vaginas with a wick like a tampon string. The most terrifying words you could hear in our house came out of Anouk’s mouth when you had a birthday coming up. “I’m making you something,” she’d say, and no smile was wide enough to conceal the oceans of dread bubbling underneath.

  Anouk was lying on her daybed making SAVE THE FOREST signs when I shuffled in. I didn’t bother asking what forest.

  “Hey, you free tonight?” she asked.

  “Today’s not the day to ask me to save anything,” I said. “The way I’m feeling right now, wholesale destruction is more in my line.”

  “It’s not for that. I’m doing the lighting for a play.”

  Of course she was. Anouk was the busiest person I knew. She began every day making long lists of things to do, which by the end of the day she had actually done. She filled every minute of her life with meetings, protests, yoga, sculpting, rebirthing, reiki, dance classes; she joined organizations, she left organizations in a fury; she handed out pamphlets and still managed to squeeze in disastrous relationships. More than anyone I’ve ever known, she had a life rooted in activity.

  “I don’t know, Anouk. Is it a professional play?”

  “What do you mean?”

  What did I mean? I meant that I respect the right of anyone to stand up onstage and speak in a booming voice, but that doesn’t make it a tolerable night out. From previous experience I could say without prejudice that Anouk’s friends took amateur theater to new, incomprehensible lows.

  “Is Dad speaking to you?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I thought after the other night he might have been inclined to murder you.”

  “Not at all. He’s fine.”

  “He’s fine? I thought he was depressed and suicidal.”

  “So are you coming to the play or not? In fact, I’m not giving you an option. You’re coming, that’s all there is to it.”

  ***

  There’s theater, there’s amateur theater, and then there’s just a group of people who bump into each other in a dark room and make you pay for the privilege of cringing for two hours. This was that kind, and every second hurt.

  Anouk was responsible for the operation of a single spotlight, which she swung around the stage as if she were looking for an escaped prisoner going over the wall. Forty minutes in and I had exhausted all my sudden-apocalypse fantasies, so I swiveled around in my seat and looked at the faces of the audience. The faces I saw seemed to be enjoying the play. My bewilderment was indescribable. Then I really thought my eyes were playing tricks on me: sitting in the back row of the hall, perched on the edge of his chair, also seeming to enjoy the play, was Oscar Hobbs.

  A loud, unbelievable laugh from one of the actors distracted me. It was the worst pretend laugh I’d ever heard, and I had to see who was responsible. For the next twenty minutes I was held spellbound by this minor character- his inauthentic smile, some plainly hilarious eyebrow acting, and then a whole scene of tearless sobbing- and when the play finished, the lights were turned on, the audience was applauding (perhaps sincerely) and I scanned the room in time to see Oscar Hobbs sneak out the back door.

  The next day in the morning paper there was, surprisingly, a review of the play. It astonished everyone involved in the production- a play that small and shoddy in a theater that foul and dingy didn’t usually attract professional reviewers as much as it attracted homeless people looking for some soup, and having so little faith in the professionalism of their own work, the organizers hadn’t bothered to alert the media. The strangest and most suspicious thing wasn’t the review itself but the content: it focused solely on the play’s lighting: “deeply atmospheric,” “moody and arresting,” and “bold and shadowy.” Everyone who read it agreed it was the silliest they’d ever seen. The actors, the director, and the writer weren’t mentioned. Anouk was startled both by having been singled out in the review and by the ugly and childish reaction of her colleagues, who turned on her viciously, accusing her of planting the review, bribing a journalist, and “showing off with the spotlight.”

  Anouk was confused, though I wasn’t. I’d seen Oscar Hobbs at the hall, and it wasn’t hard to see his fingerprints all over this thing. What did I make of it? It was no more than amusing. The gods can step down and salivate over the mortals like the rest of us, can’t they? Anouk had one of those bodies that demanded, as a man, your rapt attention, and Oscar Hobbs was just a man, after all. As I said, it was amusing, nothing more, and while I enjoy watching the befuddlement of my family, friends, and peers, I can’t hold on to secrets for very long. So that night, after Anouk hung up the phone at the end of a long argument with the play’s producer, I told her.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she screamed.

  “I just did.”

  She scrunched up her face so her eyes, nose, and mouth were no bigger than a mandarin.

  “What the hell does he want?” she said quietly.

  I gestured at her body and said, “Take a guess.”

  “But he can get anyone he wants!”

  “Maybe because of something you said to him in the casino. What did you say?”

>   “Nothing.”

  “Come on.”

  “All right,” she said. “I told him his soul’s got one of those stains on it that smudges when you try to wipe it clean.”

  ***

  Two days later I was at work, standing outside the building smoking a cigarette with my boss, Smithy, and I was thinking I’d have to leave the job soon and I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t announce my coworkers’ faults on the way out. I was wondering whether they’d give me a quitting-in-a-huff party when I saw a Porsche Spyder drive up to a no-stopping zone and stop there. It was the kind of car James Dean died in. It was a nice car. I’d die in there too, if I could afford it.

  Smithy said, “Feast your eyes on that.”

  “I’m feasting.”

  Oscar stepped out of the car and walked up to us. “Jasper.”

  “You’re Oscar Hobbs!” Smithy said in shock.

  “That’s right,” he said back.

  “That must be the problem with being famous,” I said. “Everyone tells you your own name.”

  “Jasper. Can I talk to you a minute?”

  “Sure,” I answered and, turning to Smithy, excused myself. Smithy nodded at me enthusiastically, still wearing that shell-shocked face, the one that looked as if he’d just found a vagina among his own genitalia.

  Oscar and I stepped into a small patch of sunlight. He looked nervous.

  “I feel kind of funny coming to see you about this.”

  “About what?” I asked, sensing the answer.

  “Anouk came into my office and really let me have it for that review.”

  “She did?”

  “I also made sure the media reported an environmental demonstration she went on. But she was furious. I don’t understand it. She really hates me, doesn’t she?”

  “It’s not personal. She hates the rich.”

  “How can I get her to like me?”

  “If you could demonstrate that you’re oppressed in some way, that would help.”

  He nodded rhythmically, as if to a beat.

  “What do you really want with Anouk, anyway? It seems that you’re making a lot of effort here. I’ve seen the women you go for. Anouk’s nice, and she has her own style of beauty, but it doesn’t really make any sense. You can rake in the über-women anytime you like. What gives?”

  “The thing is, Jasper, the world is full of ordinary people. Some are beautiful, some are not. What’s rare is extraordinary, interesting, original, and creative people who think their own thoughts. Now, while waiting for this extraordinary woman, if I have to spend my time with an ordinary woman, do you think I’d be with a beautiful ordinary woman or an unattractive ordinary woman?”

  There was no need to answer that, so I didn’t.

  “Women like Anouk are rarer than you think.”

  After he left, Smithy said, with forced nonchalance, “How do you know Oscar Hobbs?” and I said, “You know, from around,” and because I’m as pitiful as the next man, with the same howling ego, I felt for the rest of that day like someone important.

  Still, I was confounded. This man wasn’t just running after Anouk like a snorting dragon, he was actually infatuated with her, and she was shooting him down! Power may be an aphrodisiac, but one’s own prejudice is a turnoff, and evidently the more potent of the two. I remember her dragging me once to a rally where the speaker said the media barons were in the pocket of the government, and then a month later to another rally where this speaker said the government was in the pockets of the media barons (she agreed with both), and I remember trying to explain to her that it only looks like they are, because by coincidence the government and the newspapers just happen to have the exact same agenda: to scare the shit out of people and then to keep them in constant freezing terror. She didn’t care. She decreed her everlasting hatred for both groups, and nothing could persuade her otherwise. I began to think of Oscar’s rich and handsome face as an amusing test of the strength and vitality of her prejudices.

  ***

  I arrived home around sunset and walked dreamily through the advancing shadows of the labyrinth. It was one of my favorite times in the bush- the edge of night. As I approached my hut, I saw the Towering Inferno on the veranda waiting for me. We hurried inside and made love and I studied her face vigilantly during it, to make sure she wasn’t thinking of anyone other than me. To be honest, I couldn’t tell.

  Half an hour later a voice was at the door. “Knock knock,” the voice said.

  I grimaced. It was Dad this time. I climbed out of bed and opened the door. He was in a bathrobe he’d bought months earlier, and the price tag was still hanging off the sleeve.

  “Hey, tell me something about that girlfriend of yours,” he said.

  “Shhh, she’s asleep.” I stepped onto the veranda and closed the door behind me. “What about her?” I asked.

  “Is she on the pill?”

  “What business could that possibly be of yours?”

  “Is she?”

  “As it happens, she’s not. She has an allergic reaction to it.”

  “Great!”

  I took a deep breath, determined to bear him with as much patience as I had stored in my depths. His grin drained the pool.

  “All right. You win. I’m curious. Why is it great that my girlfriend is not on the pill? And this better be good.”

  “Because that means you use condoms.”

  “Dad. So fucking what?”

  “So- can I borrow some?”

  “Condoms? What for?”

  “To put on my-”

  “I know what they’re for! I just- I thought prostitutes brought their own condoms.”

  “You don’t think I can sleep with anyone who isn’t a prostitute?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You don’t think I can attract a regular citizen?”

  “As I said, no.”

  “What a son!”

  “Dad,” I began, but I couldn’t think of an end to that sentence.

  “Anyway,” he said, “have you got any?”

  I went into my bedroom and grabbed a couple of condoms from the bedside table and took them back to him.

  “Just two?”

  “All right, take the whole pack. Have a party. I’m not a pharmacy, you know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Wait- this woman. It is a woman, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it’s a woman.”

  “Is she in the house now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who is she? Where did you meet?”

  “I can’t see what business that could possibly be of yours,” he said, and walked off the veranda with a slight lilt in his step.

  Strange things were afoot. Anouk was being pursued by a man dubbed by Guess Who magazine as Australia ’s most eligible bachelor, and Dad was sleeping with unprofessional person or persons unknown. New dramas were stirring in the labyrinth.

  ***

  The morning birds, those little feathery alarm clocks, woke me around five. The Towering Inferno wasn’t in bed beside me. I could hear her crying on the veranda. I lay in bed, listening to those little deep gulping sobs. It was kind of rhythmic. Suddenly I knew what she was up to. I leapt out of bed and ran outside. I was right! She had her little mustard-sized jar pressed up against her cheek and she was depositing a new batch of tears. It was almost full now.

  “This is no good,” I said.

  Her eyes blinked innocently. That pushed me over the edge. I stepped forward and ripped the jar out of her hand.

  “Give it back!”

  “You’ll never get him to drink it. What are you going to tell him it is- lemonade?”

  “Give it back, Jasper!”

  I unscrewed the lid, gave her a defiant look, and poured the contents down my throat.

  She screamed.

  I swallowed.

  It was awful-tasting. I tell you, those were some bitter tears.

  She looked at me with such intense hatred that I realized I’d d
one an unforgivable thing. I thought it had the potential to curse me for life, like disturbing a mummy in his tomb. I had drunk tears that were not shed for me. What would happen to me now?

  We sat in our respective corners watching the sunrise and the bursting of the day. The bush began to seethe with life. A wind picked up and the trees whispered to themselves. I could hear the Inferno thinking. I could hear her eyelids fluttering. I could hear her heart beating. I could hear the ropes and pulleys lifting the sun into the sky. At nine she rose wordlessly and dressed. She kissed me on the forehead as if I were a son she was duty-bound to forgive, and left without a word.

  Not ten minutes later I sensed something, a disturbance. I strained my ears and heard distant voices. I threw on my bathrobe and left the hut and wove my way toward them.

  Then I saw them together.

  Dad had locked the Inferno in a conversation. Dad, a labyrinth within a labyrinth, was talking at her as if he were engaged in some vigorous activity like a tree-sawing competition. Should I do something? Should I stop him? Should I scare him away? How?

  He’d better not be asking her about her allergy to the pill or about her preference for ribbed over flavored condoms, I thought. No, he wouldn’t dare. But whatever he was saying, I was certain he was doing me more harm than good. I watched them anxiously for a couple more minutes, then the Inferno walked away while he was still talking. Good for her.

  ***

  That night we were in a pub. It was a busy night, and when I went to get the drinks, I kept getting elbowed. Everyone crowded the bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention. Some pushy customers waved their money in the air as if to say, “Look! I have hard currency! Serve me first! The rest of them want to pay with eggs!”

  When I returned to the Inferno, she said, “We need to talk.”

  “I thought we were talking.”

  She didn’t say anything to that. She didn’t even confirm or deny that we had just been talking.

  “Anyway,” I said, “why do you need to preface talking by saying we need to talk? You want to talk? Talk!” I was getting worked up, because I knew more or less what was coming next. She was going to break up with me. Winter had entered my body all of a sudden.