Slights

by Kaaron Warren

  I said, "You don't need to be delicate with me. I'm not like Peter, big wimp. But I was too young at the time to be told anything. All I heard were whispers."

  He shuddered. It was dark in the pub, silver furniture giving only a dull reflection of the low light. Office workers appeared, strained, alone, nervous, or loud, in groups.

  I watched them, their simple lives, clear pasts. I was nervous of my next sentence; I had thought it a hundred times, even practised saying it, but it still scared me.

  "What is it, Stevie? Your lips are moving but nothing's coming out."

  "It's just I always wondered why he died like that. Why he took the bullet. Cos from what I can tell, you were fine, covered. I don't know. Maybe I'm confused."

  He smiled, shook his head. "You're good. I'll give you that. Is it only laziness holding you back?" He pinched my hand to let me know he was joking.

  We watched a small crowd, one pretty woman, five men. It was so easy for her; all she had to do was laugh. Whenever I try that I'm so boring, people can't keep their eyes open.

  He bought us more drinks. I sipped my beer; its bitterness didn't refresh me. I wanted his answer.

  I stared at him. He wouldn't look at me; concentrated on tearing a coaster into snow.

  "Come on," I said.

  "I wondered, too," he said.

  "Come on," I said.

  "Because he wouldn't have done that. He was a good cop, good at seeing into the future, seeing what would happen. It was like he wanted that bullet."

  "Did you tell Mum this?" I said. My ears were buzzing; shock or rage, I wasn't sure.

  "That's when she said, fuck off, don't come back."

  "My mum said fuck off?"

  We both laughed, hysterical little giggles which drew stares.

  "I wish I'd known that before she died. I would have liked to know she was capable of saying fuck."

  We laughed again, stupid laughter without mirth. Then he shook his head. "I can't tell you how much I regretted speaking. You know? I lost your mother. And you, too, Stevie. I've missed you."

  I looked at him and it struck me he wasn't that much older than me. He would've been twenty when Dad died. I glanced around the bar and wondered if people thought we were together.

  "Did anyone else say anything about it? How weird it was?"

  He shook his head. "No one else went beyond the hero thing. They couldn't get past that."

  Now I had a new, bad question. I couldn't ask it, though, wouldn't. Didn't want to know the answer. Didn't want to know why my Dad had hated me so much he wanted to die to get away from me. Dougie Page cleared his throat; he was about to ask me the difficult question.

  I gabbled before he could speak, oooh, work, ooh, the garden, ooh, my car, no, not my car, ooh, the wealthy, ooh, the state of the police.

  "Hmmm," he said." You're right. Spot on, love," he said, until I thought I'd lulled him.

  "So, can you tell me about it, Stevie? About your mum's accident. We never heard. Never got the details."

  "Why would you want the details of something like that?" I drank another beer.

  "You know, not the details. I mean what happened. How did it happen?"

  "There was an accident. That's what happened," I said, and he sucked his head back like a turtle avoiding a hailstorm. Ducking, weaving.

  "Fair enough. Don't blame you. Don't blame you."

  Who believes anything which has to be said twice?

  I tried to tell him about the digging and the bones. I wanted his help.

  "That's your business, Stephanie. Keep yourself to yourself. Don't unbury the past," blah blah blah, hours of it, cliché after shut up cliché.

  When we finally left, I was empty. Finished. I didn't want to think about what he'd told me about my father. The implications of it. I didn't want to be alone with the thinking and the memories, I didn't want to dig, I wanted to be gone before the smell of the night blooming jasmine took me and made me feel as if life was worth living.

  I'm always well stocked. Always. I went to the toilet and had a shower. I wanted to be clean. Then I got my stack of pills, all different colours, and I lay on the bed. Mum's bed, it used to be. Mum's and Dad's. Mine now.

  For a while I didn't think I would make it to the dark room. My body resisted. It was like I had a hook through my back, and someone kept tugging, tugging, pulling me backwards away from my destination. Finally chemicals took over, and as I sank away from consciousness, into the smell of mothballs and the sound of clicking, I could hear them murmuring, waiting for me, and my stomach filled with shit, I could feel it like a ball in there, but Dougie found me; pushed open the front door then sought me out in my bedroom. He confessed he thought I was waiting for him; my knees had fallen apart, my mouth was open, my arms flung wide. Then he realised I wasn't breathing normally. He saw the empty bottle of pills. He panicked. He saved me, when I didn't need it.

  The counsellor came to see me in hospital, so I knew things were pretty dicey. She never got off her arse, didn't even open the door for you when you came in for a session. She said, "Steve, maybe it's time you thought about others. I think you need to do something unselfish, something that will make a difference in the lives of others."

  The nurse checking my chart looked up. "She should try being a nurse. That'd stop her feeling sorry for herself. The things you see make you feel lucky to be alive."

  "What sort of things?" I said.

  The nurse shook her head. "I couldn't begin to tell you. Little kiddies dying, terrible injuries. You soon realise you're damn lucky to be on this earth in one piece."

  The counsellor agreed. "We'll look into it for you. Okay? Some study will do you good."

  "How much study?"

  "An enrolled nurse needs a year," the nurse said. "You could start with that."

  It was an interesting thought.

  Access to the dying. The chance to look into their eyes.

  It was worth thinking about.

  Peter looked at me distrustfully when I told him the plan.

  "I'm hurt," I said. "You want to do good but you won't let me do good."

  "You're right. You should give it a go," he said.

  Auntie Jessie surprised me by telling me it was a terrible idea. "For someone like you," she said.

  "What do you mean, someone like me? A woman?"

  "Someone with your interest in death," she said. "These people need help, not your curiosity."

  I was offended, truly offended. "I'm not doing it for me, Jessie. It's a sacrifice. It's less money than anywhere else, and it stinks, and you're dealing with sad people the whole time. How can that be for my benefit?"

  I knew what she meant, though. I remembered looking into the faces of the dying, when I was in hospital. I remembered the feeling it gave me, the sense of fulfilment.

  "I'm doing it anyway," I said.

  Sometimes, Auntie Jessie would talk to me about the most gruesome, exciting crimes, or tell me about her latest favourite book, and I couldn't understand her lack of animation.

  Auntie Jessie had more books than anyone I've ever seen. She kept most of them in boxes and wouldn't let anyone read them. She said people didn't treat books with respect. It seemed odd she would keep so many books when she had a whole library to play with. I stayed with her quite often as a child, to give Mum a night off and me a treat. Mum never seemed to need a break from Peter.

  Jessie had wonderful books about forensics, detectives, murder. When I visited, I curled up in her huge armchair, a pile of books waist high on the floor beside me; I worked my way through.

  The books inspired me. I found the sections Auntie Jessie found inspiring, read them, underlined them again, in pen this time, red or purple, whatever I had. She had a quote by Agathon in one of the books, and I wondered if Stalin had read it too.

  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. Book V1, 2 "It is to be noted that nothing that is past is an object of choice; for e.g. no one chooses to have sacked Troy; for no one deliberates ab
out the past, but about what is future and capable of being otherwise, while what is past is not capable of not having taken place; hence Agathon is right in saying:

  'For this alone is lacking even to God,

  To make undone things that have once

  been done…'"

  Agathon quote, 1 Fr. 5, Nauck

  It gave me an idea for a story, and I wrote it for a class assignment. The only time I ever got an "A" at school. Mrs Nicholson said, "Refreshing and charming." I loved that. I never got words like that again. It was called "The Sacking of Troy".

  The Sacking of Troy

  by S. Searle

  There are great things afoot in the workings of mankind. Only one man can save the day and it is always a strong man, a good man, a man who shows up on time to work and does not take sickies. A man who has only one girlfriend at a time and does not keep three women waiting while he performs nebulous duties. This man is always honest. This man does not steal food from his employer.

  This man is not Troy.

  Troy got his job at Woolworths because his big brother worked there for years and was now head manager of the cigarette booth. Brad had an attendance record which was being noticed in high circles, and he never blew his nose on his sleeve. He was popular because he was going places and there was always a chance he would give out free cigarettes when the floor manager took her tea break.

  Brad looked good in his short red coat. He had a smile which was quite believable and a laugh which didn't shock anybody.

  There was no reason to think his little brother Troy would be any different.

  Brad knew, but he was under the control of his mother, who insisted Troy be given a chance. She could not see Troy in the light everyone else saw him in, because he was charming and he gave her kisses still, although he was fifteen.

  The Starting of Troy caused a stir of anticipation. The customers were no cause for gossip – only the ones who liked to catch the cashiers out in errors. They received slow, painstaking service. The best gossip to be had was about each other.

  Troy arrived with sunglasses on, greasy hair, sandshoes. Brad received a word of warning; had he not drilled the dress-code into his brother?

  Troy wore scuffed school shoes the next day and declared that his ignorance of the difference between a Naval orange and a Valencia would remain just that.

  He began to feel besieged the next day when he did not properly pack a customer's bags, and he lashed out. Brad was called to speak with him.

  "Troy, you must be careful. The people here are very unforgiving. They don't like temper or any other emotion. Perhaps if you were in Paris things would be different, because the French are a passionate race. But you are here, where we are dispassionate, and you must abide by the laws, however unfair or invasive you find them."

  On his next shift, Troy was discovered having sex with Diana, who had gone out the back for a cigarette and been surprised.

  "What can I say? He's built like a horse. I could hardly resist."

  With that, Troy was sacked.

  THE END

  Mrs Nicholson wrote, "Although your methodology, logicality and metaphors are not always clear, I enjoyed this. A rare glimpse of imagination and humour such as this can make a teacher's week. Well done."

  My other great moment in school was also in English. We were studying poetry with Alice Blackburn, which everyone hated. I was so bored I cut stripes in my arm with my penknife; just drew the sharp thing across. I drew a weave of blood. I was completely involved in the design of it, the neatness of the squares. I could hear poetry in the background, knew it was poetry because it went up and down, soft and loud.

  I became aware of silence; realised they were watching me. I pulled my sleeve down, tucked the knife under my exercise book. I had things spread all over the desk, taking up room, making it look like I needed a whole desk to myself. Like I chose to sit alone, in a room full of best friends, leaning in to each other, shoulders touching, same sense of humour, same taste. They were all pairs, except the ones who were triplets. Samantha was in another class that year. They split me up from the only friend I had.

  Sometimes the triplets would fight, split into twins and a lonely only, an enemy. Then I would clear a space and that one would sit beside me. They would mutter, complain, tell me stories of slights I could barely register. And I never learnt; every time I'd agree, I'd help make terrible plans for revenge, I'd throw in my own nasty stories. Then they'd all be friends again, and my words repeated as if they were truly mine. Enemy number one, for a while, until they found someone else to hate.

  Alice Blackburn said, "Did you hear the poem? Would you like me to read it again?"

  I nodded; I remember thinking she could choose which question I was answering yes to.

  She wanted to read it again; I pictured her, sitting alone at night, memorising the poem. She loved it. Her cheeks were red. The poem was "Lady Lazarus", by Sylvia Plath.

  "Can you tell me what that poem is about?" the teacher said, soft voice, she was ignoring the sleeve of my school shirt, blood soaking neatly through.

  I was surprised by the simple question. I expected a real test, I thought she'd make a fool of me.

  "It's about suicide. And how suicide can be comforting, something to look forward to. I don't know."

  She smiled at me. "Very good," she said. She was sacked soon after; there was such a fuss about the stuff she was reading us. It didn't bother me. I thought it was interesting, that's all, the Sylvia Plath poems, Go Ask Alice; people seemed to die in all the books and poems she picked.

  Alice Blackburn, call me Alice, never lost sight of me after that. Periodically I'd hear from her, and she'd say, "Uh huh, uh huh." Dying to hear bad news. That's what I thought.

  I'd finished three months of my nursing course before Peter bothered to ask me about it. Even then, he didn't want to know anything. He wanted to talk about some things Mum had wanted done, which we didn't do.

  Peter said, "You realise, of course, Steve, that under the circumstances we are unanimously obliged to fulfil the requirements of our mother's will?"

  I snorted; I heard Maria snort too, but it must have been my own echo. I said, "I didn't realise they taught Fucking Wanker at Uni," and cracked up. I glanced at Maria to make it funnier, but she stared at me blankly, as if nothing had ever happened and I had never made her laugh.

  Peter said, "Things like throwing out Dad's things, Steve."

  "You leave his stuff alone," I said.

  My memories of events are autoscopic. I see them as an observer, an adult observer. There is a value judgement in every memory, from hindsight and education. Children don't have any of that, and I've forgotten the innocence, the freedom, of being without them. I can't remember so much of what I thought of the events of my childhood as they were occurring; but I know what I think of them now.

  People who say they have experienced near death witness the scene in a similar way; they are detached, disconnected.

  I am disconnected.

  People won't let me alone. If they're not trying to sell raffle tickets or chocolate, they're on the phone trying to ask me questions. Ring ring. "What?" I said. Who has time for niceties.

  "Don't bother," the person said. Touchy. It crosses my mind that they would have many slighted people in their rooms. People who are annoyed, irritated, all waiting for them.

  It strikes me that I could ask one of those door knockers in, and no one would know where they got to.

  at twenty-three

  I finished my nursing course. Simple. I don't know why my teachers at school thought I was dumb. I found a spot at the hospice, where they liked me because I worked hard and I wasn't squeamish about the gross stuff. I had the night shifts, usually, because I don't have any family, is how they put it. I did my digging after I got home, three in the morning sometimes. Sometimes I did it at dawn. But I liked what I was finding. I liked the feeling of finding this old stuff, and wondering how it all got there. I wanted to put a
sign up out the front saying "Night-shift nurse sleeping", because the noise during the day was awful. The Sanderson kid across the road ran home crying after I said boo. I was only getting the mail; he was staring at me. They need to control their children.

  I found an elastic band, a rain hat, a tiny crystal heart, a plastic whistle and two small white buttons.