Slights

by Kaaron Warren

  "Fuck you," I said. It was all strangers here; my loved ones had gone. Friends of Peter's from his election party, oh yes. Did they even know what I looked like? I hadn't been presented to Peter's society. There's something about it, whether it's my life or someone else's but I feel more in control than anything else. I feel like I'm tricking fate, taking it by surprise, and that it is my choice.

  I never quite expected it would be allowed to work. It was never supposed to work. People would come in time, they'd find me and love me for my helplessness. I have made six attempts to end my life. More truly, on six occasions I placed myself in positions from which I needed to be rescued.

  I had already killed people. But Lacey wasn't in the room this time. Neither was Den. Perhaps because they didn't have time to think of revenge, whereas the slighted remember clearly, and they stew. I didn't see Eve. Mrs Beattie was there, but I didn't kill her.

  They crowded around the bed, their faces hanging over me. Fingernails appeared and they began to caress me. The stroking became stronger, and I heard the noise, the strange clicking noise. I heard a sound like dice clicking, or knuckle bones. I could not tell what it was as they began to fade.

  Strangers, strangers, then Peter, and Danny, still there, still a child. As they shifted towards me I glimpsed a door. Truly, a door. I had not imagined there was a way out.

  I moved my legs, swung them, sat up. People helped me, Mr Stefanovic, a kindly hand, Isaac, who thought I was a guy but now knew otherwise, a gentle shove.

  My dope-smoking housemates gave me a joint; I thought, it's nearly over. I will walk out that door and there will be a golden path, and a voice, "Come, Stevie." My love. I sucked smoke back and choked. The room snickered. I tried to snicker with them but the growl I produced was drowned in their hysteria. The guy who tried to kidnap me was there, his baseball cap in his hands full of rocks. He tossed them around the room; people caught them and came towards me, spinning rocks, raising them,

  "Oh, very funny. Amusing. Laughing at another's distress, how mature." Nothing but a mumble. Laughing. I walked towards the door. I would not need to trick these fools. They left a path, fell silent, and I was strong again. I heard a voice on the other side, "Stevie," it said. It sounded like Peter, but he was here, giving me a neat push in the small of my back. People thumped me, best wishes, see ya, Stevie, and I grasped the door handle. It was warm, as if someone had been keeping it ready for me.

  "Surprise!" A chorus. A lecture hall full of faces, strangers, lovers, friends.

  All of them click click, waiting for me to finish dying.

  I watched myself die. I could see the moment when it happened; I slumped, my tongue fell out. I had focussed on my face; I wanted to see my eyes. I had seen surprise in some eyes, relief in others. Never horror.

  In mine, I saw horror.

  This is what did happen; this really did happen:

  I was found by Isaac, who thought I was a guy. The greatest shock to him was possibly seeing me with tits and a cunt. I imagine this is what he thought. "Who is that girl? Steve's girlfriend? Not a bad score for a guy I thought was gay. Where is Steve? Why is his girlfriend in the bath? Why is the bath red?"

  This is what he did think. He was disgusted beyond words at the sight of me videoing my own death. My nudity. He was sickened by my fleshiness. But he still saved my life.

  They thought I was done. They thought I wasn't coming back this time. And Peter found the time and sat by my bed and confessed every secret, every piece of knowledge, using me like a whispering wall, like a wishing well, a mirror.

  I came back from the dark room to Peter's voice. He wasn't there to rescue me, though, call me back to life. He was saying goodbye by telling me things I already knew but didn't want to face. He had a list in his head and ticked it off, neatly, in black pen. His head was full of black pen.

  He was talking, but I could see the words. Like I was reading them, a book in my mind. I can close my eyes and read them now. But I can't open the cover. Someone has locked the book. He said, "I never said it before. I don't want scandal. And what good does it do? Who will it help? Not the girls. Not you. But you weren't so good without knowing. Would you have been better off knowing? I wish I could have told you. I wish you knew. I wish you knew things that weren't about yourself. You didn't even know what pain was as a child. We protected you from it. I hate pain. It scares me. It means something is out of control."

  I'm thinking, now. Seeing his words and thinking. Mum was good with other people's panic, though she was a mess with her own. I remember one particularly late home-coming. Eve cooked sweet biscuits and let me eat them straight out of the oven, so hot they burned my air tunnel. They tasted almost liquid, like I had caught them in some magical transformation stage, between fantasy and reality.

  It was past ten when I got home, pitch dark in the back streets between infrequent streetlights. Houses were dark, too, because it was a school night, except for the rare place where they sat up watching television. These were the gaunt people Mum pointed out to me wherever we went; sicklooking people with hold-alls under their eyes, a lazy slump. These were the people who sat up all night watching television.

  I walked very slowly home because I felt quite sick and didn't want to jiggle my stomach much. Even so, I must have been home before ten-thirty – nowhere near the witching hour.

  There were police cars out the front. Three. This was exciting; some of Dad's old friends come to visit and bring presents. I ran towards the house, sure that Peter had taken all the attention and the goodies, angry at Eve for keeping me so long.

  "Stevie!" My mother, pig noises, squeals and grunts, and she rolled on top of me like I was an unwanted runt.

  "Get off, Mum," I said.

  "Where have you been? Look who's here, we're all worried sick."

  There were six policemen (no women, though I didn't wonder about that at the time) sitting around with cups of tea, talking, surreptitiously watching the late night comedy hour playing silently on our TV in the corner. A present from Uncle Dom, Mum always kept the volume way down, as if by being uncomfortable when we used it, we weren't being disloyal to Dad.

  Mum's arms were bruised; Peter told me later she had been throwing herself at my cupboard, thinking I was in there somewhere, and the police had held her down.

  "She's been at it since I got home from school," he said. "Screaming, punching." He showed me his own bruise. "And all because of you." He gave me a bruise of my own.

  The police stayed twenty minutes, thirty. Peter found some whisky and gave Mum a glass after the cops left, and she slept for twenty-four hours, woke up thinking I was still missing, then she hugged me for too long.

  But when Peter was scared – when some big kids teased him, or if a stranger tried to get him in the car, or if he got lost, and he was shaking with fear and unable to speak – it was, "There, there," and perfect calm.

  He burnt himself once, very badly, when I told him to pick up the wood from a fire by the red bit because that was colder. He knew it wasn't true but he did it because I told him to in such a positive way. The pain was so great his finger was sucked onto the wood; he couldn't let go. He whimpered. Mum looked up, dropped her whatever, laid hands on Peter.

  "Just let go, darling, that's the boy. Drop it down," and he did. Almost burnt the palm off his hand; he went around with a thick bandage for weeks, so my trick backfired. He got all the attention and care.

  When I was younger, I took great pleasure in showing him all my cuts and bruises, describing carefully where they came from. Even other people's pain made him wince.

  He said to my body he thought was dying, "He never hit Mum. Never hurt her. I was the big man. I was the one who copped it. I never told her the whole story, either. I don't know, Stevie. It scares me, sometimes. Do I have the potential to commit violence like that? Am I the one he passed it on to?"

  I didn't tell him he needn't fear. That I was the one.

  Peter said, "I only ever wanted the w
orld to be a better place. But I couldn't always do the right thing. God, Stevie. It should have been me. I'm the one who should have stayed trapped in the house. I should have found what you found in the back yard."

  I thought, "Why didn't you ever say you knew what I was finding? Weak bastard. Why didn't you share it with me? But I never felt trapped. I felt free, released. I felt I could do anything, that there was no law for me, no punishment. He told me so many things. Some things I knew; some I didn't. I knew that they never locked the doors at his lectures, and that no one ever tried them. That made him feel good about himself; people trusted him.

  He said, "I never had parties at our place cos of Dad. I was scared of him, Stevie. You weren't; you loved him. You didn't see. You saw what I had, though. You saw my future. You said one day, "You can tell a lot about people. You listen to people. I just remember their faces." It was one of the only nice things you ever said to me. It got me thinking. Sometimes, if I was feeling like a failure, I'd remember what you said, your face, and that you believed in me. Maria would die if she knew it was you, the most, who inspired me. Not her. Fuck her. He never hit Mum. But it hurt her when he hit me, especially when I was whacked for her, or for you. He never hit women."

  Peter was dreaming. He had a fantasy world, this is what should have happened, where he had an excuse for being bitter. It didn't happen.

  "Women are special glass creatures, handle with care, fragile," he said. His words a balloon. "God, Stevie. Why were you such a smart kid, but so dumb at the same time? That time you were angry at Mum and me, cos you thought we were laughing? We were crying, Stevie. God, bawling. You never had to cry like that. And another thing. About your eighteenth. We didn't want the garden dug up, because we knew what he had buried there. And we were scared for you, also, Stevie. Because you didn't have many friends. Not enough to fill the laundry, let alone the back yard. And neither of us could stand to see you there waiting for your friends to show. Then you started digging, after Mum died, and maybe I hoped you'd find out and ask me some questions. Ask questions of somebody, do something. But you never did. I thought you'd deal with it, but nothing happened. Did I dream it all? Did I make it up? Or don't you care what our father was?"

  Words, words, words. He said, "My throat is sore. I've worn it sore from talking. I know Dougie tried to talk to you, tell you about how Dad died. But he said you didn't want to hear that Dad was deliberately careless that day. Dad feared discovery. I don't know what Dougie knows. That's why he hung around Mum so much. He wanted to comfort her. Tell her it wasn't her fault. She knew that. It wasn't her fault. I didn't think suicide ran in the family. At least you don't pretend to die a hero. You're true. But you couldn't see what he was like. You don't know what it was like, Steve," Peter said. "I know you felt unloved, because he didn't hit you. But who needs that sort of love? I know you thought you had to suffer to be loved. I know that; it's why I've forgiven you so many times."

  He was talking about me in the past tense. He wanted me gone.

  I flicked open my eyes. My timing was perfect.

  "Peter?" I said.

  He nearly fell off his chair, and the nurses surrounded me before we could speak.

  I wouldn't hurt anyone through violence or slight. That was my promise. But as time went on, I forgot the circumstances of my promise. As people do. Some women forget the pain of childbirth and have another, someone's husband doesn't die and they forget they said they'd give up their lover. Everyone does it. Not just me.

  I didn't die.

  I got my Granny card this year. Handwriting not too bad: Hello darling, hope all is well – but no plane ticket. If they want me alive that much, why don't they get me up there to look after them?

  Then Gary showed up back in the street. Gary, who used to offer me his hard pink pencil when I was just a kid, eighteen. Who thought he'd be my father or my lover and was neither. He and his wife had split up, and she'd got the house. But I'd heard she'd died, and now he was back. Uglier than ever.

  He had bad teeth, yellow, with the front top two tilting in, as some do. When I went out to get my mail, he recognised me immediately.

  "Well, who would have thought? Little Stevie. All grown up, ay?"

  I looked at him with different eyes, now. He was a hated person. Much hated. I wondered what would happen when he died?

  at thirty-two

  "Truth or Dare?" I said. "Truth or dare, truth or dare, truth or dare?" I loved that game. It always gave me the thrill of the illicit, even as an adult.

  Gary stared at me. His eyes were bulging with over-indulgence. I had fed him a creamy, fatty, gassy meal; he licked the plate and asked for more. I poured wine into his glass, watched as he drank it down, down, down, down.

  "More?" I said.

  "What else have you got?" he said. He winked at me. He couldn't believe his luck. He was trying to pretend things like this happened all the time. He still couldn't believe I'd let him in; he'd been trying since I was eighteen. Since my mother died.

  "Tell me about your day," I said. I wanted detail; I wanted to know who he had slighted. It's a difficult question – most people don't notice those they've slighted.

  He loved to talk, this man, and he thought he had the storyteller's knack. I taped it; I like to tape their last story.

  "In detail," I said. He was surprised; very rarely did people want to listen to that sort of personal material.

  "I woke up, farted," he said. He looked at me, wanting me to laugh, but I just nodded. Nodded again to get him started.

  "Had a shower."

  "Did you go to the toilet first?"

  "Nah, pissed in the shower. Blew my nose, farted, came out, housemate says, 'Couldn't you let me go first if you're going to be that disgusting?' He says it every morning; I always set my alarm to make it up before him."

  "What happened to your wife?"

  "She left me. Couldn't keep up with my demands." He winked at me, the arsehole.

  "So what else did you do today?"

  "Got my car going – always takes a while."

  "What do the neighbours think of that?"

  "What do you think of it?"

  I pinched him.

  "They hate me, mate. So I leave it running for a while, just to piss them off."

  "What about breakfast?" I shivered.

  "Stopped off at Macca's. Couldn't make my mind up in the queue but, hey, it's a free country. The food was shit, but it's fast and cheap, so that's okay. I got to work early, like to be on board before the others, gives me time to settle before all the shit starts to come down. Had a coffee, read the paper, then I get my first call of the day." His voice changed, became harsher, took on a whining twang I guessed was his work voice.

  "This fucking wanker from upstairs thinks we're all here to serve him. Like there's no one else in the building. He says, 'Gary, I need you to get an envelope to blah blah', right, way over the other side of town, right, and he wants it there now! Fuck! What am I, a magician? So I go, 'Look, mate, we're talking peak hour, we're talking double rates. Traffic. I can't promise you a thing.' So he goes, 'Look, mate, I'll take it myself,' and he fuckin' did. Hops in his fuckin' beemer and drives it there himself. It was a fuckin' laugh."

  I moved closer to him, as if his words were interesting. They were only interesting because I could see the slights; his room was going to have to be the size of a football stadium. He filled a ninety-minute tape with this vomit, pausing only to drink the wine and eat the sweets I brought out for him.

  "And then I came here," he said. He had arrived late, with no wine, from the pub. He had not showered. I was slighted by his behaviour; there's no doubt. I couldn't stop it; at least I would know what that shiver meant, when he died. I'd be in his dark room.

  I said, "Do you want to play Truth or Dare?"

  "That sounds good," he said. His imagination was so poor he could not guess what might happen. He was a strange little man, thought he was eccentric because he wore a silver earring, a leaf of a
pot plant.

  "Me first," I said. "Truth or dare?"

  "Truth."

  "Okay. Do you want to have sex with me?"

  "Yes. My turn. Do you want to have sex with me?"

  "No. Have you ever masturbated?"

  He didn't answer. It had been a double whammy.

  "You have to answer."

  "No."

  "The game is called Truth or Dare. If you lose, you have to pay a forfeit."

  "Like what?"

  "Like losing a finger." I sliced down with the bread knife. I missed deliberately.

  "All right, yes. Have you."