Contrition

by Sheldon, Deborah;

  A slow creep of dread crawled along John’s spine. “Wait, what…?”

  “It was a game initially. He called it ‘Like-Unlike’. We used to have baths together. Playing Like-Unlike meant pointing out where we were similar and where we were different. We had to touch each other’s different places.”

  Breathless, his stomach heavy and churning, John groped for the mattress and sat down next to her. When she laid an icy hand on his leg, he didn’t pull away. She didn’t speak for a long time. The cigarette burned down between her fingers. Gently, he took the butt from her and dropped it in the ashtray.

  She said, “I was twelve when Lyle fucked me.”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “December 28th, 1979. The summer break between Grade Six and Year Seven.”

  John saw again that first day of high school, Meredith with her platinum-blonde hair worn in a bob, her regal stance with one hand on her hip, those model-thin limbs. And Lyle sidling over with his schoolbag full of cigarette packets: Winnie red or blue? If you want menthol, you’re a poofter, and I can’t stand poofters. Anyhow have a Winfield.

  “Mum and Dad had gone out to dinner,” she was saying. “It was their wedding anniversary. They figured we were old enough to be left by ourselves. We did it on a beanbag in the rumpus room.”

  John felt sick. The beanbags—both red vinyl, he could see them still—in the Berg-Olsen rumpus room where John would later have his sleepovers, he and Lyle watching movies on the VCR, smoking on the patio in the middle of the night, doing homework together, bitching about teachers, talking about girls.

  His guts turned over. Staggering, he reached the toilet just in time. He vomited so forcefully that it seemed his innards would heave out of his mouth.

  18

  At last, John stopped retching. He became aware that Meredith was rubbing his back as if to comfort him. He spat into the bowl, wiped the back of his hand over his lips.

  “I’m sorry,” she was saying, over and over.

  “For what?”

  “For what happened with Lyle.”

  He straightened up, flushed the toilet and moved to the sink. As he washed his hands and mouth, he watched her in the mirror. She had a pleading, terrified look in her eyes.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

  “Yes, it was.”

  “For God’s sake, Lyle raped you.”

  She shook her head. “I liked it just as much as him. We did it for years.”

  John buried his face in a towel. She touched his shoulder. He wrenched away and dropped the towel to the floor.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  He pushed past her and hurried out of the room. A beer. Good Christ almighty, he needed a beer right this instant. She followed him.

  “I thought you hated him,” John said.

  “I did.”

  “But you rooted him anyway.”

  “Look, I know it doesn’t make sense.”

  He flung open the refrigerator door. “Nothing about you makes sense, Merry. You do my fucking head in.”

  As he floundered about for a stubby, he knocked over the tomato sauce bottle, the mustard jar. He tried to straighten them but his shaking hand couldn’t manage. Giving up, he shoved the sauce and mustard to the back of the shelf so they wouldn’t fall out, and he shut the door. Meredith took the stubby from him and opened it. He snatched it back and drank most of the beer in a couple of gulps.

  “Do you want a cigarette?” she said. “I can fetch one for you.”

  “Leave me alone. I need to get my head straight.”

  He sat at the kitchen table and lit a smoke. She took a seat opposite and stared at him with that same kicked-dog look in her eyes, a look he couldn’t bear. He concentrated on finishing the stubby and the cigarette. His stomach kept flip-flopping. Every time he tried to organise his thoughts, his mind became nothing but a bright, over-exposed wasteland. Could he be in shock? Maybe. Probably. Certainly. He stood up to get another drink. Meredith leapt to her feet too.

  “Don’t hate me,” she said.

  “Go away.”

  “Everything changed once you became my boyfriend, I swear.”

  “Fuck off, would you?” he said, grabbing a beer. “I can’t hear myself think.”

  “After you and I made love, I told Lyle I wouldn’t do it with him anymore. That’s why we argued on the day he disappeared.”

  John froze. His hand tightened reflexively around the stubby. This is what he’d been waiting for, after all these years. Some kind of explanation. He closed the fridge and sat at the table.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  She tapped a cigarette from the packet. As she lit it, he noticed the crusts of dried blood beneath her fingernails. Tiger’s blood. The cat’s dismembered and half-eaten corpse was sitting in a pot in the next room. The muscles of John’s legs tensed. Don’t get complacent, he warned himself. She may be crying, but perhaps they could be crocodile tears. Keep your guard up.

  Meredith blew a steady stream of smoke at the ceiling.

  “I’m waiting,” he said.

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Tell me what happened on Sunday October 19th, 1985.”

  “Okay.” She sat opposite him and gazed at the table. “We had an early breakfast, like normal. Mum and Dad went to see Little Nana at the nursing home. They did that every Sunday before church. That’s when Lyle and I used to…do it. I told him that day, no, I had a boyfriend and wanted to be faithful. I told him I’d never do it with him again.”

  “What happened?”

  “He slapped me.”

  “Then what?”

  “He called me a dirty whore. Said I needed his permission to sleep with anybody else, and he wouldn’t ever give it.”

  Sweating, John wiped at his lip, took a drink of beer. How could he reconcile this version of Lyle with his own? Lyle had been his best friend, his only friend, a top bloke, the kind of bloke that John had wished himself to be.

  “He punched me in the belly,” she continued, “and called me a cheater.”

  “A cheater?”

  “Fucking weird, right? Like I was his wife or something.”

  John’s stomach roiled. He put his hand over his mouth, fighting the urge to retch. Meredith tapped the cigarette against the ashtray until the flaming tip fell out. John picked up the lighter. She put the cigarette stump to her lips and he relit it.

  “What happened when you told him your boyfriend was me?” John said.

  “He freaked out. Started crying. Called me a traitor. Said I’d stolen the one person he cared about in the whole world.”

  Tears pricked John’s eyes. “He said that? Exactly those words?”

  She nodded. “He loved you.”

  “He did?”

  “More than anybody else.”

  “Oh, God.” John rubbed at his temples. “Oh, dear God.”

  He saw himself packing the dirt, one handful at a time, around Lyle’s blank and waxy face, remembered Lyle’s half-open eye that had stared, unfocused, into the far reaches of infinity. John’s body shook and the maddening urge to rip out his hair tore through him. Instead, he ground his teeth. His foot jittered against the floor.

  “He told me he would break us up,” Meredith went on. “That he would tell you I’d been fucking him. You’d be so disgusted you’d never speak to me again. Guess what I said?” She waited. “John?”

  “What?”

  “Guess what I said to him.”

  John gave a weak shrug. “No idea.”

  “That if you found out, you’d never speak to him again either.”

  Would that have been true? If John had known the truth about his best friend and the love of his life, how would he have reacted? His mind went blank, snap, a tripped fuse. He drank
his beer instead. Crisp, fizzy and bitter on his tongue, it became a flowering warmth in his stomach. Glorious. A few more stubbies, and he would get the buzz, the relaxation, the feeling that things were okay in the world.

  Nate Rossi came to mind, slurping his spilled whisky off the bench in that dingy caravan. John’s heart cramped into a ball. Nate, he thought, I shouldn’t have judged you, mate. Sometimes, life offers poor bastards like us plenty of reasons to drink. Too many reasons. You’re an alky, Nate. Guess what? Me, too.

  I’m an alcoholic.

  It was an invigorating kind of relief to admit it to himself, like exhaling a long-held breath.

  “I begged Lyle not to tell,” Meredith was saying.

  “Huh?”

  “John, are you even listening?”

  “Yeah, you begged him not to tell. What did he do?”

  “Kept hitting me. In places where clothes would hide the bruises. My belly, my back, my chest.” She crushed out her cigarette and sat in silence. At last, fidgeting, picking at her fingernails, she said, “Well? Say something. What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tears spilled onto his cheeks. He stood and walked over to the window. The sun shone over the back yard, the sparse lawn, the broken-down fence, the ruins of his vegie patch. Everything was ruined. His whole life. Ruined.

  From behind, Meredith’s arms closed about his waist. She was cold, as if made from clay.

  “Don’t cry,” she whispered. “It’s all right. I love you, John. I love you.”

  He turned around. For the first time in thirty years, he held her in his arms. He closed his eyes. Her hair smelled fruity, like the shampoo he bought for her, yet there was a faint odour of rot beneath it. She rubbed her face against his shoulder, over and over as if drying her own tears, and the sleeve of his t-shirt rolled up. Her icy lips pressed against his bicep in a gentle kiss.

  An endless vista of burnt orange soil appeared.

  Surprised, John looked around.

  There was grevillea, mulga and bloodwood trees. Wildflowers, daisies and mulla mulla formed a patchy blanket over the dunes. A rocky outcrop sat on the horizon. Stars were beginning to glow in the cloudless twilit sky, a billion of them, a trillion, each one as bright and clear as the tip of a soldering iron. The sounds of the desert came to him. Trilling cicadas. The call of hidden birds. He recognised a few: cockatoos, fairy wrens, zebra finches.

  God, it was beautiful. His heart swelled.

  A breeze rustled the leaves of nearby bloodwood trees, their barks shining red in the fading light. Spellbound, he walked between the flowers and shrubs. He ran his palms over the soft tickle of blooms. A flock of budgerigars, chirping and squawking, flew overhead. He looked up but the birds were already gone. The stars were brighter still, turning above him in a mesmerising swirl.

  He had always wanted to visit the most lonely areas of the outback. Now he was here. It was more amazing than he had ever imagined. He looked behind him. The desert landscape stretched away as far as he could see. A twinge of anxiety fluttered in his chest.

  Where was his car?

  He tried to remember. Had he driven here? Taken a bus, a plane? He looked down at himself. Barefoot, in tracksuit pants and t-shirt. What the hell was he doing here? Alone, no water, no food, no transport. He must be dreaming.

  With effort, he wrenched open his eyes.

  He was standing by the window in his kitchen. Snarling noises…Meredith. She had hold of his arm. Blood ran from bite marks on his left bicep. She sank her teeth into him again and shook her head like a terrier with a rat. He tried to cry out. The glittering stars overhead bore down. The desert soil felt as silky as talcum powder between his toes. He tried to run. To where, to where?

  And what for?

  He couldn’t recall.

  A couple of butterflies zigzagged past, twirling and wheeling together in an intricate dance through the blossoms. The breeze caressed his skin and made him drowsy. For a moment, he lost himself. He considered lying down amongst the wildflowers. The small, white petals of the grevillea plants smelled like honey and caramel. Yes, a nap would be perfect. He knelt down, stopped. A familiar riffle of anxiety had moved through him. Now he remembered: something was wrong. What was it? He looked about, saw his bare feet. Turned, realised there was no car. How had he got here? The honey and caramel scents made him so tired… No, wait, he was dreaming. He clenched his fists and willed his eyelids to open. The red and gold of the sunset flickered, stuttered.

  Back in his kitchen, Meredith was gnawing at the crook of his elbow.

  He swung his arm with all his strength. She fell away and skidded across the tiles in an ungainly scramble of long, emaciated limbs.

  “What the fuck?” he shouted, gaping down at his torn and bleeding arm. The bite marks resembled pairs of waxing and waning moons, facing each other. “Jesus, Merry, what the actual fuck?”

  She sat up, her face bloodied and tear-streaked. “We deserve to be together.”

  “Like a pair of zombies? You want me to be like you?”

  “There’s no other way. Please, John.” She began to weep. “Please.”

  He ran to the kitchen sink. Turning on the taps full bore, he thrust his arm under the pummel of water. The run-off swirled red. Yet the wounds didn’t hurt. This frightened him more than anything else. He remembered Meredith’s account of Sebastian’s attack: You want to know the funny thing? It didn’t hurt until the very last bite: the fifty-second bite. Then all the bites hurt at once, and they hurt like hell.

  How many times had she bitten him? He checked his injured arm. Seven. He checked his other arm. Nothing. He wrenched up the legs of his tracksuit pants. Nothing. Thank Christ. Only seven bites, not the dreaded fifty-two. He was safe, wasn’t he? Or was he?

  “Have you infected me?” he yelled. “Am I infected?”

  Meredith, kneeling on the tiles, had both hands clasped together as if in prayer. “I’m trying to do what’s best for us both,” she said. “Try to understand. It’s not so bad. I swear, John, I swear. It’s not so bad.”

  “Fuck that. Get away from me.”

  He turned off the taps and grabbed the Dettol from the cupboard. Opening the cap, he held his arm in the sink and poured the whole bottle of antiseptic over his wounds, staining his skin dark brown. The Dettol didn’t sting. Had her bite killed his nerve endings? He prodded at his torn flesh with a forefinger. Nothing.

  “Why is it numb?” he said. “Why can’t I feel anything?”

  “It’s the saliva. It has some kind of anaesthetic. At least, that’s my theory. Like the bite from a leech.”

  He shuddered. Good God, a leech…

  “Will my arm get better?” he said.

  “Sure. No big deal.”

  Goddamn her flippant tone of voice, as if he were over-reacting, as if these bites were nothing to worry about. He grabbed a tea towel from the rail. Wrapping it around the wounds, he secured it with one of the rubber bands he kept in a jar by the fridge. The tea towel turned wet with blood.

  Meredith got up from the floor. Gangly arms and gangly legs, face as sharp as a hatchet, dead-white skin. She had stopped crying. Her gaze was intent, unblinking, guarded. She lowered her head, tensed her shoulders. John grabbed the cleaver from the knife block and held it out.

  “Really?” she said, and tutted. “Come on. Don’t be so dramatic.”

  Her moods were changing so fast he couldn’t keep track, couldn’t predict her behaviour. He realised he was breathing fast and heavy. He was scared. Scared out of his mind. And angry, confused.

  Meredith sat at the table. He put the cleaver on the bench.

  “Pass me the smokes,” he said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Chuck me the goddamned smokes.”


  She threw the packet. He caught it. She hurled the lighter at his head, and he caught that too. He lit a cigarette and took a beer from the fridge. The tea towel was soaked. He covered it with another tea towel, using a half-dozen rubber bands to keep the material in place. Maybe the rubber bands would staunch the bleeding. Maybe he needed medical help. Stitches. A tetanus shot. Meredith was an animal, wasn’t she?

  He drew on his cigarette. She regarded him, scowling, eyebrows knitted.

  “Why did you bite me?” he said.

  “I told you already. I’m not sharing you again.”

  “This is about Donna?”

  Meredith curled her lip.

  “You and me aren’t an item,” he said. “We have, literally, nothing to do with each other. And you’re jealous? I don’t get it. What do you care?”

  “If I wouldn’t share you with my own fucking brother, there’s no way I’m sharing you with that dirty whore.” She began to chuckle but it was a hollow, joyless sound. “Lyle thought he could win? Hah. Well, I sure taught him a lesson, didn’t I? And I’ll teach her too, if it comes to that, believe me.”

  John forgot about his arm and the beer. “What are you talking about?”

  “Donna, naturally. Ugh, you’re such a dickhead.”

  “No, I mean about Lyle.”

  “Huh?”

  “You taught him a lesson. What lesson, Merry?”

  She looked puzzled, lost, her face going slack. He thought she might slip away into a fugue state. But no. Her eyes narrowed in concentration, then opened so wide that the whites showed all the way around. She clapped a hand to her mouth.

  “Oh, fuck,” she said. “Oh, no.”

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  She put her hands in her hair. “I don’t like this. I don’t like remem­bering.”

  “Neither do I. Now tell me what you meant. How did you teach him a lesson?”

  She shook her head, over and over. When she stopped at last, she gazed at John in wonder, as if seeing him for the first time. Then she began to laugh. It was a wild and crazy screeching, a cackling, like a witch. Holy shit. John’s fingers inched across the bench towards the cleaver. Just in case, just in case.