Contrition

by Sheldon, Deborah;

  The toot of a horn made him jump.

  The Toyota Corolla pulled into the driveway of the clinker-brick shithole. He glanced at his lounge room window. Nothing; Meredith was gone. He switched off the mower. Heart lifting, he hurried across the road as Donna got out of the car.

  “You managed to swap your shift,” he said on his approach.

  “Yeah, didn’t you get my text?”

  “The last time I checked my phone was about nine last night.”

  “Oops. Sorry for texting so late.”

  “Nah, it’s all good.”

  “So you’re not busy today?”

  He shook his head. “Even if I was…fuck it.”

  Donna shut the car door and smiled at him, looking up through her lashes, a faint blush on her cheeks. God, she was lovely. He wanted to take her face in his hands and kiss her, but he was covered in flecks of grass, weeds and dirt.

  “I’ve dropped off Cassie,” she said, “and I don’t have to be anywhere until I pick her up at three-thirty. I bought a roast chicken and some salad for lunch. Still want to spend the day together?”

  “Oh, you bet.”

  Their shared laughter sounded excited yet embarrassed, like a couple of flustered school kids.

  “Let me finish mowing,” he said, “and then I’ll wash up. Give me a half-hour?”

  “Okay,” she said, with that coquettish look on her face again. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Hopefully either nude or in lingerie, John thought, and winked.

  She winked and laughed again, tossing back her long brown hair.

  Heart flying, John raced across the street, roared the mower into life, and hurried and bumped it over the last few metres of yard. Without bothering to empty the catcher, he stowed the mower in the carport and hurried into the house. He didn’t stop to check Meredith’s whereabouts. In the shower, he washed fast and thoroughly with plenty of shampoo and soap, wanting to smell nice.

  Too late, he remembered he should have first trimmed his pubic hair.

  What if Donna wanted him to wear a condom? Now his pubes would snag.

  Damn.

  Indecision froze him.

  If he trimmed after this shower, he’d need another shower to get rid of stray hairs. Already, Donna was probably waiting for him in bed, naked and wet, and his half-mast cock didn’t want him to dilly-dally. Aw, so what about body hair? He kept lathering and then stopped. A shorter bush would also make his cock appear longer. His hand went to the taps, ready to turn them off… Hang on, where were the nail scissors? Could he even remember the last time he saw them? He wasn’t about to use the giant pair of kitchen scissors for fear of cutting himself—

  Oh, for Christ’s sake, forget the bloody pubes.

  John rinsed and turned off the taps.

  For the first time, it occurred to him that he was nervous.

  Yes, nervous.

  He hadn’t been with a woman for a long time.

  Three years ago, give or take, he had visited a brothel. The bungalow had seemed homely from the outside. Inside, however, were red walls and red nylon curtains and dusty peacock feathers, with a cheap water fountain burbling in the waiting room and a cathode-tube TV showing porn on VCR. Contrary to expectations, his prostitute was middle-aged, puffy-faced, and distracted. She looked like someone’s mum working the window of a school canteen. They went into a room with a bed. Her ordinariness threw him off and killed his erection. He didn’t know how to behave. What do you want, darlin’? Her forced gaiety telegraphed so many disappointments: a shitty divorce, back pain, a problem child, bills to pay. He wanted to leave. Awkwardly, he decided on a hand job. She jerked him off quickly with expert skill, but he’d had to close his eyes against her indifference, against her faraway gaze as she had contemplated the framed Monet print on the wall.

  And before that…

  …a one-night stand at a party, some drunk and dark-haired woman. Angela? Angelica? A nose piercing, a sleeve tattoo; he couldn’t remember her face. In the laundry, wedged between the washing machine and the closed door… She’d sucked him off, he recalled, making a strange little gargling noise every time she ducked her head—urgh, urgh, urgh—and there had been a basket of dirty clothes on the bench, Taylor Swift’s “Today Was a Fairytale” blaring from the speakers in the back yard.

  Before that, a few other wham-bams, but he’d been too pissed to remember many details. He’d rooted a few of them in the back seat of his car.

  And before that, Cheryl, who had worked as a clerk at the same carpet factory in Devonport as John. She had been thirty-something with freckled skin and a halo of bright, curly red hair. They had fucked, perhaps, a couple of dozen times. You don’t love me, she had accused that last time, sitting up in bed and sniffing back tears, attacking him with torrents of words, hours of words, while he had lain there, numb, trying to figure out why the argument had started in the first place. Finally, he had said, not knowing if it were true, just to shut her up, All right, fine, I don’t love you, and Cheryl had got dressed and left. After that, he had entered the factory via the roller-door instead of the office because he couldn’t bear to see her face and he felt empty inside. In retrospect, he figured he had loved her after all. Perhaps Cheryl should have been the woman he’d married. They should have bought a house together, had kids, John should have become a plumber, but oh, what was the point in rehashing every single goddamned mistake when life held so many? It was exhausting, to hell with it…

  Before Cheryl, he had lost his virginity to Meredith.

  Yet mixed in with that memory was Lyle’s death the very next day. That dirty whore. When I found out what she’d done with you, I gave her a manners lesson. Oh, you better believe it. I gave her a manners lesson she’ll never forget…

  STOP.

  Shivering, John leaned his palms against the shower tiles, heart racing.

  Torture, this was torture, he had to stop torturing himself, over and over.

  What’s done is done.

  Straightening up, he took a deep, steadying breath. Forget the past. He had something important to worry about right now. Could he remember how to make love? Surely, yes, like riding a bicycle, a man never forgets how to please a woman.

  Stepping from the shower, John grabbed a towel and dried himself roughly. Don’t think about it, he admonished. Once a man thinks too much about his erection, it fails to happen, especially if the man is middle-aged. John began to hum, a little tunelessly. Don’t think about it.

  He rolled deodorant in his armpits, sprinkled talcum powder on his balls. Just a little talc, mind you, and none on the cock in case Donna felt like going down.

  Don’t think about it.

  Take your time, he reminded himself.

  Foreplay, foreplay, foreplay: that’s all a woman really wants.

  And if his cock betrayed him, he still had fingers and a tongue, right?

  He hummed and brushed his teeth and hummed and shaved his face and hummed and splashed aftershave and hummed and dressed and hummed and kept on humming as he combed his hair, precisely and methodically, humming and humming.

  Striding along the hallway, he hesitated, turned back and went to the kitchen. From the fridge, he took a six-pack. The digital clock on the microwave read 9.53 a.m. A little early for beer o’clock, but that would depend on Donna. She seemed to enjoy her tipple. And maybe they’d both want a bracer or two beforehand.

  He shut the fridge door. A surge of anxiety flooded through him as he remembered his paunch. He prodded it experimentally with his fingers, squeezing at the soft roll of fat. When was the last time a woman had seen him naked? Not the prostitute; he had merely opened his trousers. The one-night stands? Since he’d rooted most of them in cars, probably not. Oh no, Cheryl? But Cheryl had been…how many years ago? He quickly did the maths. Twenty-five years.

  Was it a quarte
r of a century since he’d last stood naked before a woman?

  Christ, a quarter fucking century?

  “You’re meant to be mowing the lawns.”

  John spun around. Meredith stood nearby, supporting herself with one hand on the kitchen bench. She wore a baggy grey t-shirt, the one with the London Tube logo and the words MIND THE GAP. An inside joke, apparently. He had never been to London. A long time ago, the t-shirt had been on sale at a local Kmart, and he had bought it for her. The sleeves almost reached her elbows. He could see her silvery scars along the inside of her forearms, crescent moons facing each other, one set after another, in a line to the wrist. Nate’s words came back: These weirdos were members of the same cult, but with bite-mark scars instead of tattoos… Like a sign. Some kind of pagan shit that other members could recognise on sight…

  “Morning,” he said, and picked up the six-pack. “Well, I’m off.”

  “You’re meant to be mowing the lawns.”

  He pulled his mouth into a semblance of a smile. “I’ll be back around half-three. If you get hungry, there’s lamb chops left over in the fridge.”

  “You’re meant to be mowing the lawns.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll finish the back yard before dinner.”

  He picked up the beers and headed down the hall towards the front door. Meredith trailed behind, her footsteps stumbling. He could hear her dry palms rasping along the wall as she steadied herself. The sound gave him the willies.

  Snatching the keys off the hook, he said, “Okay, see you soon.”

  “You’re meant to be mowing the lawns.”

  His shoulders tightened. “What’s with your sudden interest in gardening?”

  Slowly, he turned and looked at her, scrutinising her, his breath held. Wan and blank-faced, she stared back with empty eyes, keeping herself motionless as if she, too, were holding her breath. She was still, so very still.

  “Are you all right?” he said. “Merry, are you feeling okay?”

  She whispered, “You’re meant to be mowing the lawns.”

  Taking one hand off the wall, she reached out as if to touch him.

  He ducked out of the house and slammed the door behind him. For a few seconds, he hesitated on the porch.

  Get a grip.

  He allowed the fresh air and the warm spring sunshine to flush away his pensive mood. The sight of the clinker-brick shithole pushed aside dark thoughts of Meredith. As he hurried up Donna’s driveway, he started to wonder what she might be wearing. A negligee? Crotchless knickers? A silky dressing gown with bare skin underneath?

  He knocked. The door opened almost immediately.

  There stood Donna, dressed as she had been for the school run, in blue jeans and flannelette shirt. Damn, she looked sexy. He grinned.

  “Come on in,” she said, opening the door wider and stepping back. With a laugh, she added, “The water’s fine.”

  12

  He followed her into the kitchen.

  “I don’t normally start drinking this early,” she said, “but c’est la vie, right?”

  “What?”

  Donna went to the refrigerator. “It’s French. It means who the hell cares, or live life how you want, something like that.” She took out a wine bottle and showed him the label. “Voila. See? I told you I’d keep it for a special occasion.”

  With a jolt, he recognised the chardonnay he had bought for her. He felt himself blush. So he qualified as a ‘special occasion’. Shit, he could get used to this.

  He took the bottle from her. “Allow me,” he said, and unscrewed the cap.

  “Why, thank you, kind sir.”

  She took a glass from a cupboard. He poured the wine. Then he took one of his beer stubbies and opened it. They each lifted their drink, ready to clink them in a toast, but their eyes met instead. For a few moments, they stared at each other. John wondered if his pupils were as dilated as hers. Probably, yes. He could smell her perfume, something musky like sandalwood. His fingertips tingled. He couldn’t wait to put his hands on her. God, he could hardly wait.

  “To us,” Donna said, and touched her glass to his stubby.

  “Yeah, sweet. To us.”

  They both took a sip.

  When they lowered their drinks to the kitchen bench, his nerves came back in a rush. His mouth went dry. Should he make a move? He had no fucking clue. It occurred to him he had no idea what to say, what to do, how to behave. Donna didn’t appear to notice. She put the remainder of her bottle and his stubbies into the fridge.

  “Come on,” she said, picking up her glass. “Let’s have a seat.”

  He trailed her to the lounge.

  Tiger lay curled in a ball on the couch where John usually sat. A flurry of unwelcome images about poor little Peaches and Meredith’s grisly hobby boxes whipped through John’s mind. Uneasily, he sat down next to Tiger. The cat didn’t even open its eyes. You dummy, John thought with a rise of irritation, Meredith could scoop you up and you wouldn’t even have enough sense to jump free before—

  “Tiger,” Donna called. She made a few kissing noises, but the cat kept dozing. “Oh, push him onto the floor if he’s a bother.”

  “No, there’s enough room.”

  Donna sat on the other couch. There was a vase of flowers adorning the coffee table: lavender roses, yellow gerberas, and sprigs of white baby’s-breath. He appreciated the romantic touch. If only the damned cat wasn’t here. Tiger reminded him of Meredith. The cat twitched an ear, lifted an eyelid and closed it again.

  “Do you keep Tiger inside at night?” John said.

  “Yeah, mostly.”

  “Not always?”

  “Well, sometimes he yowls and squalls to get out, so I let him. It means he can’t come back inside, not without me getting up, and nuts to that idea. We don’t have a cat-flap, you see. When we moved in, I asked the agent to ask the landlord for a cat-flap. No go. I offered to pay for it and everything, but the landlord didn’t want to butcher any of his doors. Fair enough, I guess. It’s his investment property.”

  “You’re renting. Me too.”

  “Ugh, it’s a pain, right? Graeme’s dragging out the sale of our house, keeping tenants in there until the market hits the high or so he tells me. He won’t drop the price. I can’t buy without my half. I’ve got Cassie and she’s only twelve. No full-time work for me until she’s at least sixteen.”

  “And Graeme knows all of this?”

  “Yep and doesn’t give a damn.”

  John snorted. “That’s pretty shitty.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Have you always been a waitress?”

  She sipped her wine. “I used to work in a bank.”

  “What was that like?”

  “About as boring as it sounds.”

  They both laughed. As if disturbed by the noise, Tiger moved around and stretched a leg. One paw came very near to John’s thigh. John edged away.

  “How long have you been divorced,” he said, “if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “A few years.”

  John pulled at his earlobe, scratched at his temple. “No boyfriends?”

  “None.” She offered a shy, one-sided smile. “Not yet, anyway.”

  They gazed at each other. John’s heel began to jitter against the floor.

  Donna took a gulp of wine. “Gee, this is delicious, by the way. I normally drink the cheap stuff in casks. You can really tell the difference.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, there’s a real depth of flavour.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” he said.

  “I’m glad you gave it to me.”

  Again, the loaded eye contact. Again, the dry mouth and sudden blanking of John’s mind. He made a rough calculation. Donna had been divorced for a few years, and her marriage must hav
e been rocky prior to the separation. Maybe Graeme hadn’t rooted her during their last few months together, give or take. And no boyfriends? Oh shit. No sex for maybe three, four years. That’s a lot of pressure. A lot of expectation.

  John’s cock shrivelled into a nervous little nub.

  When was the last time he had rooted a woman while sober? He ransacked his memory and came up with nothing that reassured him. Jesus, the house was so quiet. The only sounds were a faraway plane, the chittering of a parrot.

  The cat arched its back and yawned.

  John pointed his thumb at Tiger and said, “You should keep him in after dark.”

  “Not when he’s yowling, no way. Haven’t you got any animals at home?”

  John hesitated, shook his head.

  “Animals do what they want. You can’t control them. Not really. Oh, they might come when you call or put out some food, but they stay wild on the inside.”

  John tried his best to grin. Donna, seeming to notice his discomfort, smiled pleasantly, eagerly, almost desperately. It made him feel awful. Damn you, Meredith, he thought. Stop haunting me, stop jinxing me—

  “Is anything wrong?” Donna said.

  “Nah, it’s all good.” He drained the stubby. “I need another drink. Top-up?”

  “I’m right, thanks.”

  When he came back into the lounge, Donna said, “Tell me more about your job. What exactly does a plate mounter do?”

  She was being polite, he could tell. Shit, he was fucking things up. He pushed all thoughts of Meredith from his mind and took a seat.

  “The company prints flexible food packaging, like bread bags and chip packets,” he said, and then it occurred to him, in surprise and delight, that Donna had remembered his occupation, and he relaxed, smiled. “Every job has a set of plates. It’s my responsibility to get the plates ready for the printer.”

  “Wow, sounds tricky.”

  He paused, ready to trot out his familiar lie that taking the plates out of the machine and taping their edges was a skilled job that required intensive on-site training. Instead, he told the truth. “Nah, it’s not tricky. In fact, a monkey could do it.”