‘Yeah,’ I agree, ‘I am Katniss.’
Did I log out of my Gmail this morning? What if she’s doing the crossword and decides to go to the desktop to look up a clue on Thesaurus.com? Or what if she decides to check out their stupid knitting site? Or look up what’s on the telly? And while she’s there she has a bit of a snoop around, and …
‘I’ve gotta go,’ I say, and am out the door.
The distance between my house and Sas’s has never felt so far, but I take the quickest route, crossing the back of the school field down into the area we call no man’s land, where sticky paspalum heads slap against my bare lower legs. I risk a short-cut leap over the stinky old ditch, getting sweaty and hot in this stupid hoodie, and sneak through the lane down the side of the dental clinic to come out at the bottom end of our street.
At home it’s up on the screen. Mum’s not here, but the attachment has been opened and it’s sitting there, on the screen. Shit. The dialog box for the printer is open.
Wait. Result: based on the DNA analysis, the alleged father Jed Jordan cannot be excluded as the biological father of the child as they share genetic markers.
But what does that mean? That Jed could be? But how? That can’t be right, can it? 99.9 per cent accuracy, the site said. They test 300,000 different nucleo-somethings to determine paternity with 99.9 per cent accuracy. Is there part of my life that I can’t remember living? Did I pass out? Did I star in some missing scene that ended up on the cutting-room floor without me ever getting a chance to view it?
Good test, bad test
I went through the gate, expecting to find Jed looking relieved and freed. He wasn’t in the shed, the recording studio, the glasshouses. Just as I was crossing the lawn to return home, Lauren came out of her front door and waved me over to the house. She stood under the lintel with her arms crossed, her face more unfriendly than usual, and said, ‘You might as well know, a complaint has been laid, the girl was only fifteen when … and he’s down at the police station helping them with their inquiries.’
‘Sorry – for the same … but the test? Didn’t it clear it up?’
There was a pause. Lauren’s eyes were glassy. ‘No. Well, it came back positive.’
‘But …’
‘I know,’ Lauren said.
She turned abruptly and went back into the house, closing the door behind her, making it clear this was not a moment she cared to share.
Thoughts on a marriage
When you are prompted to say the words for better or worse in front of your witnesses, you do not imagine this. As the celebrant pauses, your mind races with the panicked idea that he might one day lose all the abundant hair on his head and his bony scalp will make him less attractive to you, or that his balls will shrivel and hang down in saggy old sacs and he will need some chemical enhancement to get it up, or that he might get some terminal illness and you will have to nurse him through it, or he might make a terrible mistake with money and you will have to cope with some kind of drastic reduction in your circumstances. But you do not imagine this. Not a scenario involving an underage girl.
The victory of a cat on a hot tin roof is staying on it as long as she can. If you ever seriously thought of leaving him before, it was child’s play, just toying with an idea, compared to the head-rush that came at you today. There had definitely been times when you let yourself think that you might not still love him, but you’d never really properly doubted that you loved him. Maybe not always with the addict’s passionate craving, but as so much a part of your life that you were not fully aware of the comfort you took from knowing it existed – until an evidentiary torpedo came at your every assumption.
Even in your most intimate relationship, you can only ever know the parts that have been presented. He doesn’t, for example, know anything about your bleakest behaviour. Can anybody truly know another?
One of Jed’s fans once decided she was the person who knew him best. Well, not just one, but this one was intense enough to be memorable. She started popping up at his gigs, standing up near the front and staring at him with the overblown, horsey enthusiasm of the commitably insane. ‘I know you,’ she used to mouth at Jed. Sometimes she’d yell it out. ‘I know you.’ At first Jed tried to be kind to her, and then he tried not to engage with her. The loon element, the other guys in the band used to call her. Look over there, Jed, the loon element has just arrived. Then she stopped coming. They almost missed her.
I know you. Half threat, half invitation.
There was an early phase when you used to try to fathom his every thought. The tell me what you’re thinking phase. But over-familiarity becomes a little unromantic when you enter the next phase of marriage, which is the one where you wish you could be surprised more.
Is the phase after that the one where you wish you could be surprised less?
‘I don’t understand how the result came out like this,’ he said, ‘I swear this is not right. You have to believe me. It’s some kind of terrible error.’
‘Proof is proof, Jed,’ you replied, and in the brief moment of time available before those two sheepish police officers appeared around the side of the shed he gave you a terrible look. Not defensive or guilty, or angry, or cowering, or shrugging. It was a look of deep pain. The look of a man who has just discovered that he has never been truly known.
300,000 different single nucleotide polymorphisms
The trees in the garden rustled, some birds were singing, occasionally the house creaked, a low hum emitted from the fridge, the clock on the Atlas ticked loudly, a child was shouting further down the road, a car had just gone past, nothing much else. There was none of that arcing current in the air that suggested Dylan’s presence, so he was most likely out.
Here, then, were the sounds of a small life, a small uneventful life. And yet how much had happened lately? And today I was expected to believe that Jed was that much of a liar? And the girl too? Was she so wily that she could portray Jed’s innocence so believably, when really they’d had an affair of some sort? Had he coached her? Did he get her to come along when he knew I would be there so they could put on some kind of pantomime for mybenefit?
No, no. That didn’t work. Who could believe they were pretending? Why would the girl offer so eagerly to do the test if she knew it would turn out like that? It didn’t make sense. But what other reason could make the result come out the way it did? Jed was framed somehow? No, that didn’t make sense either. But why wouldn’t the girl tell? What was stopping her? And if Jed didn’t do it then how could his DNA get mixed up in …
Something came to me, a refrain of conversation: So did ya drill her?
Was this possible? Was it technically possible?
There was nothing in the information on the kit. There was an 0800 number, though.
‘I need to ask a technical question about pre-natal paternity testing.’
‘Yes, I can help you,’ the voice at the other end said. ‘What is your question?’
‘So, say if a test was done and the father of the baby was actually the son of the man who tested, would it be possible for the test to come out positive?’
‘I don’t understand. Who is the father?’
‘Sorry this is complicated. Let me take this slowly. Let’s say a pre-natal test was being done.’
‘Yes.’
‘And let’s say the person who was being tested for elimination was Man A.’
‘Yes.’
‘And the person who actually fathered the baby was Man B.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Man B was the son of Man A, so could it be possible for the test to come out positive?’
‘Oh, I see.’ There is a long pause that seemed to be full of active recrimination. ‘Well, it depends on some factors,’ she said crisply. ‘In that situation you would need our highest accuracy test. We would need to know the situation beforehand, and both the potential fathers would need to be tested.’
‘But if it wasn’t known, and only Man A
was tested?’
Another long pause, which later could be construed as a reluctance to admit a weakness in the efficacy of the test. ‘Well, in those circumstances, yes it is possible.’
‘Thank you.’
Yes it is possible. This could be the answer to more than one question.
It took a moment for it to occur to me that if it was true, then my son could be the mortifying end to the girl’s awful unsayable sentence that started with ‘Because …’
It was a certain kind of personal-risk test to send your generally mutinous son a text asking him to come home for an emergency, but Dylan responded quickly, and about ten minutes later rushed in the door. The skateboard under his arm ruched up his tee-shirt sleeve, providing a glimpse of the tail of a tattoo that I never knew was there. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I’m fine.’ He cared a little, at least.
The tee-shirt he had on was from the new range he’d begun working on – a small concession – using death quotes from some game he’d been playing. This one read: An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind – Gandhi. He’d worn two others this week: It is lamentable that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind – Voltaire and Before you embark on a journey of revenge you should first dig two graves – Confucius.
‘So what’s the emergency?’
‘Well, there’s just something I need to know.’
‘What?’ The way he said it, he’d definitely been doing something he shouldn’t.
‘Do you know a girl called Haley?’
For just a second his eyes widened, then he shrugged, and I could see he wasn’t quite sure what to say. ‘Might do. Why? Did she say something?’
Not a good answer. ‘Okay, this is important. Is she your girlfriend?’
‘Not likely.’
‘But you know her? Is this what she looks like?’ I cleared the screensaver on the computer to show the photo of Jed and Haley, taken from behind.
‘Oh shit. Yeah. I never put that together. She’s the one who … is she doing it with him?’ A small amount of emotion crossed his face. He really was invested in this somehow.
‘No, but, well, have you and her … ?’
‘What?’
Trying to be matter of fact: ‘Have you had sex with her?’
‘Waah, what are you asking me? This is too much.’ He was suddenly so disturbed I began to see that the answer couldn’t be no. He turned, ready to flee, but I reached out and grabbed his arm.
He tried to shake me off.
‘Wait. Please. This is important. And this is tricky. Jed’s being questioned by the police.’
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know actually. Something to do with sex with a minor is my guess.’
‘So they’re doing it?’ he said. ‘That expla—’
He pulled himself up and it looked as if lots of things were rolling over in his mind. Was he jealous? Was he working out that he was possibly guilty of the same crime?
‘Not necessarily. Listen, please sit down. This is really complicated.’
He reached for a kitchen chair and sat on it backwards, jumpy and uneasy, his right leg jiggling. His boy-face, a face I hadn’t seen for a long time, revealed itself to me now – that face that still contained vulnerability and fear, and in which I could see a struggle against the need for dependability and reassurance.
First I explained to him about the girl coming over to Jed’s and apologising, and the call from the newspaper editor, and the pregnancy, and the offer to do a DNA test to clear it all up.
‘Pregnant?’ he said, alarmed. He put a hand up the sleeve of his tee-shirt and scratched uneasily at the place where his new tattoo was. It appeared some culpability might be registering. ‘So if the DNA test came back positive, then they were both lying, weren’t they,’ he said in a voice that contained some desperation to believe what he was saying was the truth.
‘Well, not necessarily,’ I said gently. ‘The test comes out pretty much the same if it was Jed’s son that actually got her pregnant.’
‘But isn’t his kid like ten?’
I paused for a long time to see if anything occurred to him, but he just looked confused. My own pulse-rate was beginning to rocket and I took in a large breath, trying to instil some calm. Outside the window the breeze was picking up and I could see the tea towels on the line flapping and waving.
‘Have you ever wondered who your father might be?’ I said carefully.
‘You’re not telling me …’
‘I think so. I never knew for sure, but this …’
It was an awful lot for him to take in. He was probably Jed Jordan’s son. He had probably got a girl pregnant, and Jed was being questioned over an offence that Dylan himself may have actually committed.
We talked for a long time. He told me that it was a one-off thing with Haley, that she’d refused to speak to him afterwards. He even admitted he liked her and was a bit hurt and confused by it all.
‘So you didn’t force her … or … ?’
‘Course not. What do you think I am? It was more or less her idea, that’s why it was so weird when …’
It’s strange having a conversation about a sexual liaison with your son. There are things you want to know and things you don’t want to know. The expression on his face reminded me of a night back in Melbourne, before I’d bought the apartment and we were living in an upstairs flat just off Fitzroy Street. The downstairs tenants used to like to sit out on their back porch on Friday and Saturday nights, drinking and smoking pot. I’d come in from work and they’d be hard at it, arguing away. The porch was half-closed in, so from upstairs you couldn’t actually hear what they were saying, just the tone, and it really sounded like they were talking a lot of stupid shit. They’d get louder and louder, and he had a nasty mean smoker’s laugh that really cut through. It all became too much and one night I leaned over the balcony and shouted, ‘Please shut the fuck up.’ The woman yelled back, ‘You shut up, you midget bitch, with your retard son.’ Dylan and I had looked at each other uneasily, and for a moment were a team, a not-quite-right team, but also all we had – and, we both knew, more than others might’ve suspected of us. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have said please,’ Dylan commented, and we’d both laughed.
Now he wanted to know why I never told him about Jed, and I had to admit that the reason was I was never sure.
‘So there was more than one?’ he said, looking shocked and a little personally injured.
There wasn’t any sufficient response I could make in that moment. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to tell him about that night.
The next part was hard. In order for Jed not to be pursued, the truth would need to be admitted. Not just about the baby’s paternity, but Dylan’s too. And if Jed could be questioned about having sex with a minor, could Dylan as well?
The lawyer I’d been dealing with was not a specialist in crime, more conveyancing, he said, but his understanding was that if there was only a two-year age difference, the girl was close to sixteen, and she consented, then these days it was unlikely to get to court. ‘If the police went around taking an interest in all the teenagers that were at it these days, the courts would be pretty damn overwhelmed.’
When I got off the phone, I found Dylan sitting on the back porch, in my Dad’s old vinyl chair, his eyes fixed on the backyard gate.
All at sea on the royal settee
The long wait for him to come back from the station is tortuous. Accusations are running around untamed, seeking out the ear of the police and God knows who else. And people are probably readying their lighters. They love to make a bonfire of a public figure, and a rock star, even a washed-up one, is very ignitable.
It’s time to bring in the special forces – you should be calling someone, briefing the legal team Frank has on standby – but you can’t get up off this sofa, your stomach is fisted up in fear. You’re completely embedded in the comforting familiarity of this old h
orse-hair-stuffed thing that arrived on the back of a truck a few days after one of Jed’s down-country tours. He’d found it in the back room of some junk shop and had it shipped to the house.
‘But look at it,’ you’d said. ‘It’s all stained.’
‘But can’t you see how great it is. We’ll get it re-covered. In some unlikely colour. What is the most unlikely colour?’
‘I don’t know. Purple?’
‘Perfect! Purple it is,’ he said, and a few days later another truck arrived to take it down to the upholsterers.
The audacity of this fabric, the most aristocratic purple he could find – together with the gold trim and the restored legs, the whole thing came back looking every inch the fat satisfied queen of all she surveyed, hogging the room’s attention. It used to make you feel like children sitting in it, him at one end, you at the other, with your feet only just touching in the middle. You’ve both come to love it so much that you joke about it being the first thing you’d save in a fire. The two of you’d be struggling under its dire weight as photo albums and portraits of his ancestors burned all around you.
He’d once sat down one end with his guitar and played you a silly song he’d made, a ditty really, to try to ease you out of your post-partum stew as you lay half-terrified under a blanket with your finally sleeping baby … hair not washed for a week, babychuck on your shoulder, but still so beautiful it hurts …
You can’t move even when you hear a car come up the driveway at last.
Jed comes in and finds you planted there. He sits down the far end, side-on to you.
‘So what happened?’ you ask.
‘That cop that just gave me a lift home, young guy, asked me for an autograph for his mother.’
‘His mother? The cheek.’ You are trying to signal something to him by a lightness of tone.
Jed smiles, but it’s a hard-won thing.
‘So?’
‘They haven’t charged me. They said it was just a chat, to clarify things. They haven’t talked to the girl yet, it was the mother who …’
In the Neighbourhood of Fame Page 20