by Ross Watkins
Why he did not share her want confounded her. She knew the reason couldn’t be practical: they could afford another child, both financially and in the love they had left in them. Especially if what they had given Tam was any indication – and what Tam had given them. Adrian was a good father, an involved father, an intelligent man with a soft voice and plenty of heart and time to offer those he cared for, cared about. He wasn’t domineering. He never raised his hand, and only sometimes his voice, when need dictated. So his aversion made no sense.
A reason must exist, she told herself, and she began asking him about work stresses, about whether he should consider other options. He denied anything but the usual difficulties of trying to teach teenage boys something about how to express themselves, about being persuasive, about life. Another form of employment wasn’t an option, he said: he’d been working hard at establishing his career as a teacher and wasn’t about to let that go, especially for no good reason, just a bit of stress in the workplace. Stress she wouldn’t and couldn’t understand, he told her – which was a blunt thing to say, and unlike him.
Around this time she noticed his quietness, and there was something else in him that had also changed. Something she could not identify, let alone confront. She suspected that whatever was holding their family back was coming to some kind of crisis point. And maybe – she hoped, prayed – maybe even a resolution.
During the months that followed she kept a closer eye on Adrian and his movements. She took advantage of the times he invited Rafiq, Amy and their kids to dinner, listening to their conversations, reading between the lines, asking Amy elliptical questions to see whether Rafiq had mentioned Adrian at home, watching Adrian interacting with their sons. Nguyet became an expert listener. She suppressed the urge to be heard and instead found a certain power through observation. Some assumed her English wasn’t good, and this only strengthened her. It granted her knowledge. And with this knowledge she could position herself in social circumstances to gain a surreptitious hand. Not that she wielded this hand – the power was in knowing what she perceived, what she knew.
One night, Adrian slipped. He’d been in the study, preparing a lesson on the computer, and when he’d had enough he went and got into the shower, complaining of an aching neck. Nguyet went into the study and saw that he’d left his email open. She scrolled through it, fully aware of the breach but justified in her thinking. Almost all of it was mundane – administration, student queries about assignments and grades. But then she came across someone calling themselves godhand. This person had emailed three times with no message, but each time there was an attachment. She opened these, beginning with the first. They were stories.
She didn’t know what they signified – what they meant to Adrian, why they’d been sent or what they revealed about her husband – but it was clear that Adrian was a character in the stories. One even described her and Tam, the house. All this was deeply disturbing. All this gave her cause to say something, to ask questions, to make accusations, to shout out the resentment she now felt towards him, but she chose not to. Not right then, anyway.
She chose instead to remain silent, to watch, to exercise charm – complicity and force. She didn’t know what her husband had done, but she knew it was something foolish. Nguyet would not be foolish. And so she waited.
And waited.
And then the allegations were made, and then the police knocked and took Adrian away, allowing her time to swear out loud, to cry, and then to centre herself again and regain her sense of determination. She packed two suitcases and collected Tam from school, and then she waited again, this time for Adrian to arrive home, so he could see her walk away. Perhaps that might provoke him into opening up, to finally lay bare his problems. She hoped, too, that one day soon he would provide a reason for her to come back home. Until then, she would wait.
*
Thumbing the wedding photo in her purse, Nguyet knew that waiting was the right thing to do. She still felt the strings attached to her heart, and that those strings were tied to the hands of a good man, a decent man, her husband, Adrian Pomeroy. In this she trusted.
A door opened and a male doctor came from his consulting room. He leant over the reception counter and was handed a folder – a folder Nguyet knew held antenatal ultrasound images. A folder that held black and white etchings of a truth, like black words on white paper, and determined the terms of a new life – a life that looked forward, not backward.
The doctor turned to face the waiting room. ‘Mrs Pomeroy?’ he said.
She closed her purse, stood and smiled.
‘I am Nguyet.’
NOEL
Noel knew he was too close to everything, and that everything was too close. This impossible city, this impossible family. To call it suffocation would be downplaying what he felt right then, right there in the hotel room with Wendy packing her shit. He was getting his wish. But he also felt pissed that she and the girls were hitting the road to the nation’s capital, especially in the hire car.
‘So? Get a-fucking-nother car,’ Wendy said.
He was standing at the window, looking first out at the Parra hubbub below, then at her and the suitcase on the floor, then out again. He’d tried opening the window but it was sealed. The only air coming in was ducted and cold. Like a fridge. Like a fucking tomb. Just like his marriage. Noel smirked at the thought and shook his head.
Wendy looked at him as she folded a shirt into the case, but didn’t say anything. Always so fucking neat with her packing – it gave him the shits how immaculate she was sometimes. Your wife’s a real trooper, mate. She’s such a catch. Such a trophy. She’s immaculate. Simmo had wanted her bad from day dot, and now Noel regretted not letting him have her. At least then Noel could’ve basked in the glory of Simmo’s dumbstruck face when he rocked up at the station with the full knowledge that Wendy could also be a right cunt.
She refused to say anything about smoking dope with Adrian the night before. Silence as self-defence – that old trick. He knew it well, so he decided to flex his interrogation muscles. ‘Weren’t you guys in Mum’s car?’
No reply.
‘He mustn’t have had the gear on him, then, so where’d he get it from?’
Nothing.
‘Did you drive back to his house or did you meet up with some sleazy dealer?’
Still nothing.
He laughed. ‘You’ve always had a thing for Adrian. Probably sucked him off in the driver’s seat.’
‘Excuse me?’
Right on the money.
Wendy went on. ‘Lower your voice – you know the kids are just next door, and they shouldn’t have to hear that crap coming out of your mouth right now.’
‘What, the princess and the tranny?’
Wendy’s expression showed the explosions going off within the confines of her dim little head, so he decided to keep pushing. It was the only way he felt like he was getting a victory. Push her to spill her guts and feel the bite of guilt – that bitch of a thing he knew so well. He’d come to consider it his muse, the guiding hand behind each of his actions and inactions. Guilt was pressure. Guilt was power. Guilt was Noel’s motivation, but it was also his release. Was it like pressing a scar? Nup. More like fingering an open wound. It was time others understood that too – the full force of culpability come home to roost. His wife was simply the first in line.
‘So did you suck him off or what?’
‘Did you?’ Wendy said.
‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’
He knew exactly what that meant.
Wendy was the one shaking her head this time. ‘Noel, you sometimes forget the things you say.’
He recalled no such conversation, but it didn’t matter – he didn’t want a bar of it. ‘I bet you did. I bet you smoked a joint and got all cosy in the car and that’s why you’re taking off – because you can’t handle it.
You’re so transparent.’
‘We’re leaving because Adrian doesn’t need us to be here. Especially with the case being dropped. And we’re leaving because—’
‘The case isn’t dropped, only the allegations. Get it right.’
‘And we’re leaving because we’ve all had enough of your bullshit to last us another week without you. At the very least.’
‘Rightio.’ He stood beside the suitcase, arms crossed. ‘At the very least, hey. What’s that supposed to mean?’
If he pushed hard enough, he knew, she’d make the choice he could never make himself, and not because he was emotionally dependent on them but because his deceit depended on everything else staying normal. He’d replaced his own family with a constructed one; he’d taken Wendy to Perth to free himself of his dependencies, but he’d ended up creating another. But he knew now that his pathway to destruction had progressed beyond rescue; that he no longer needed his family, and they didn’t need him.
‘You know what that means, Noel. You’re intelligent enough to work that one out for yourself. You don’t need me to mother you anymore, and I sure as shit don’t need to carry your baggage anymore.’
Good, he thought. Let’s go for broke. ‘You’re such a fucking teenager,’ he said.
She stopped zipping up the suitcase to laugh, incredulous. ‘I’m the teenager? Do you know how ridiculous that is? While you’ve been doing your little disappearing act – for quite some time now, I might add – I’ve been the responsible one, looking after the finances, raising our children—’
Noel just had to smile at that one.
‘—and even though I have no idea where you go or what you get up to, I know that deep down you’re still just a teenage boy, acting out, playing for sympathy, knowing that I’ll be there to clean up after you and tuck you into bed. It’s sad. It’s pathetic. It’s time you grew some real fucking substance, Noel. Your kids need it and I need it, so maybe some time away will force you to mop up after yourself and learn some responsibility.’
Wendy pulled the case up onto its wheels, then yanked out the handle and made her way to the door. Noel rushed over just as she opened it, slamming it shut with his left palm. He held his right fist to her face. She winced. He was so close he could smell coffee on her breath, the complimentary shower gel on her skin. He longed to kiss her.
He lowered his fist. ‘We’re all guilty, Wendy,’ he said. ‘We all have something to be sorry for.’
She rolled her eyes and put her hand on the handle. ‘Go to hell,’ she said, then she pulled open the door and closed it behind.
A moment later he heard her talking to Grace and Riley in the room next door.
I’m already there, he thought.
Within minutes they and all their voices were gone.
*
Noel was on a roll so he figured he’d just go with it, even if it took him to perilous places.
He laced his shoes and headed out. First he organised another car, grabbing a taxi to a rental depot, doing the paperwork and eventually making his way back to the hotel via a bottle shop. On his way past the front desk he asked the staff for some blank paper and a pen, which he took with his whisky up to his room.
He removed his shoes, then poured a drink and put it on the floor next to the bed. He cleared the lamp and clock radio from the bedside table and shifted it in front of him, put the blank paper and pen on top, then reached again for his drink, draining the glass. He got up and poured another, this time right to the rim. He sipped, then replaced it on the floor and looked at the white sheet of paper.
He calmed. He breathed. He composed himself as best he could.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t know what to write. He’d had years to come up with the right words. He’d composed this letter a thousand times over – sometimes while taking out grubs, sometimes after sex, often while doing nothing much at all. And always at a burn. That was the best time, the time he came closest to knowing the words it’d take to redress what he’d done. He’d wanted to start the conversation a long way back but hadn’t known how. Picking up the phone, calling Adrian to say it was about time they had a talk – it was a simple enough action, but that didn’t indicate how difficult it truly was.
But in his current state of mind Noel thought, Fuck it. The way he saw it, Adrian had been screwed over recently, and Noel had a distinct feeling it had something to do with what he himself had done all those years ago. That somehow those actions had been seduced back to life – into both their lives. Noel had watched Adrian with Tam and Nguyet and admired him for what he’d made for himself. And now that Adrian was probably in the clear, he didn’t need his big brother around to look out for him, nor did he need manifestations of the past fucking things up for him again.
No. It was time for the end. Or what he hoped would become the end. He had no idea how Adrian would react, but tried not to think about that. Right then, it was all about getting the words down. It was about getting that ghost and pinning it to the page, each pen stroke stabbing that bastard of a thing right in the heart.
And so Noel wrote …
And afterwards, he drank. He drank so deep and long that for a few hours he forgot.
*
The next morning Noel got up and got going. He drove to Adrian’s place, parking several houses down and on the opposite side of the road. He watched the house for movement.
Nguyet and Tam came out first, getting into the car, ready for the school run. The car pulled out of the driveway and left in the other direction. Noel then had to wait for Adrian. He knew Adrian had no car, but he hoped he might step out for some reason, during which time he’d have the chance to get inside the house.
Failing that, he’d have to use a different method, a more direct one, perhaps knocking on the door and going inside for a chat – two brothers catching up. At least there was stuff to tell him, with Wendy and the girls taking off for Canberra, and he could always ask how things were going with the case. Finding conversation points would be easy, but he didn’t know if he had the stomach for that. Not now. Not with what he’d written and what he was set on delivering. Because that had to happen, one way or the other, before he came to regret it. And that moment would inevitably arrive.
Midmorning, Adrian came out the front door and headed along the footpath, in the direction of Noel and the hire car. Noel sank low in the seat and was thankful the car wasn’t recognisably his, staying down until Adrian had passed – stretching his legs, probably. Once he was well out of sight, Noel got out of the car and got to work.
*
This was an invasion – Noel knew that – even though his intent wasn’t to take but to give.
Gaining access was fairly straightforward. He slipped down the side of the house and checked if any windows had been left open or unlocked – nothing. There was a shed in the back yard, containing a lawn mower and some tools. He picked up a decent screwdriver and hammer from a shelf, then walked to the laundry window. The screwdriver’s flat head wedged neatly between the window frame and sliding panel, so he only had to tap it with the hammer a few times before the lock jumped the latch. The window slid open. How simple it was to be a burglar, it struck him: all it really took was common sense, and a complete lack of empathy for the people you were fucking over.
Noel didn’t muck about. Experience told him that the people who get busted doing this kind of thing were the ones who lingered too long. He only had to find a place to put the letter – somewhere Adrian’s wife and kid wouldn’t find it first.
He walked the rooms and went into the study. He opened a desk drawer and placed the letter down, but then thought again. He had no idea how long it would take Adrian to find it there – and there was a good chance Nguyet might open the drawer first. No, he had to be smarter than that. He walked into their bedroom and saw the book on the bedside table. A book – of course. That was ideal.
He let the book fall open in his hands and slipped the folded pages inside. He closed the book, put it back on the table and looked around the bedroom one last time to reinforce his decision. He then went and shut the laundry window, unlatched the lock on the back door and shut it behind him. After putting the tools back in the shed, he made his way back to the street and the hire car.
During the drive to the hotel Noel began to shiver. He tried to light a ciggie but couldn’t. He hit the steering wheel with the meat of his palm. Grow some balls, you pussy, he told himself, but before long he had to pull over on a service road. He got out, bent and vomited into the gutter.
‘Noel,’ he said aloud, standing and wiping his mouth, ‘you’re losing it, buddy.’
ADRIAN
If something could be said to definitively deny the past, to wipe clean what one thinks is real, and instead reveal it to be a false memory, part of childhood make-believe – what then? What if this were the only crime to be found guilty of, and all others were wrongly accused? What if the event which Adrian Pomeroy believed formed the foundation of his identity were obliterated? Who would he become? He would still be Adrian Pomeroy the husband, father, son, brother – he would still be that person because that is who he is to others. But what about who he is to himself? Would his own construction of himself be altered somehow if someone were to outright deny what he had always believed to be the substance, the grist, of his past? Their past?
And what if that past were to be undeniably confirmed? What then?
Adrian has heard people say they don’t understand why the abused are reluctant to speak out long after the event. Perhaps because talking about it might just be its undoing, and the undoing of you. Memory made unreal, or memory made real – it’s a lose-lose situation.
While Adrian has never asked to have done to him what was done, he would not now want it to be taken back. He concedes that this is a strange certitude, but it is a certitude nonetheless.