The Mystery of Right and Wrong

by Wayne Johnston

  but one that any boy could get?

  Are all my girls presumed to be

  the apples of a rotten tree?

  You call us weekly on the phone;

  you barely have a word for Mom

  and then you say, “Put Daddy on.”

  I take you on the phone upstairs,

  where I can close and lock the doors.

  You write us seven times a week—

  you’d rather write to me than speak

  to me, so I seldom write you back—

  it’s perseverance that I lack.

  And Carm will be the next to leave.

  It won’t be long—I will not grieve

  the next departure from my house;

  she’ll leave as quiet as a mouse

  some night when everyone’s asleep,

  the blackest of my four black sheep.

  Then Bethany and Rachel, too,

  will leave the way that daughters do.

  WADE

  The road to Gloria and Max’s place wound through the rocky hills just inland from the Apostles—twelve headlands with visage-like cliffs that faced the open Atlantic south of Table Mountain. The road was unlit and treacherous, a steep slope on one side and jagged out-jutting cliffs on the other. The house, the only one that was occupied of dozens newly built along the coast, was a sea-overlooking mansion of three storeys, almost all of it made of glass. There was a gatehouse with a white sentry inside it with a rifle slung over one arm. When he saw us, he gave us a perfunctory wave and raised a black-and-white-striped horizontal wooden beam.

  Gloria’s husband, Max Dekker, met us at the door. He was in his mid-fifties, very tall and distinguished-looking, even though he was dressed in a black bathrobe and black slippers. “Baby sister,” Max said as they hugged. When Rachel introduced us, he shook my hand firmly and waved us into the kitchen, where we found Gloria, who, as Rachel had told me on the drive along the coast, was the only one of the van Hout sisters who refused to wear homemade clothes as a child. She was fully made up, in a white bathrobe and white slippers, which she’d accessorized with expensive-looking earrings, as well as a gold watch and a necklace of what I guessed were not fake pearls.

  “You’re Wade,” she said as she gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She wore a perfume that smelled faintly of vanilla, and her hair looked as if she had just come from a salon, thick, lustrous, swept back from her forehead and her temples. She was taller than Rachel, bustier, fit but soft.

  She stepped back, put her hand on my shirt and, to my amazement, rubbed my chest. “Mmmm, nice pecs,” she said.

  I shot a glance at Rachel, who frowned and looked away.

  “If Gloria sucked a peck of pickled dicks,” Max said, looking straight at me, “how many pecks of pickled dicks would Gloria have sucked?”

  “The answer,” Gloria said, “is one. I’m old-fashioned that way, Wade, and almost every other way, though someone may have told you different. You look familiar. I used to work for Air Canada. I may have served you on a flight.”

  “I’d never been on an airplane until we flew here,” I said.

  “Hij moet grappen,” Max said, laughing.

  “He says you must be kidding,” Gloria said, and laughed too.

  “No,” I said. “I mean it. The flight to London was my first time on a plane.”

  “Where have you been living?” Max said without a trace of a smile. “Under a rock?”

  “On one, actually. I’ve never been anywhere but Newfoundland.”

  “Oh my God, that’s so cute,” Gloria said. She turned to her sister. “And he’s so gorgeous. How did you find him, Rachel?”

  “If you follow a turnip truck long enough, something useful is bound to fall off,” Max said, winking at me.

  “I bet you do whatever Rachel tells you to, don’t you, Wade?”

  “He’s not a dog,” Rachel said.

  “I know exactly what he is. Never on a plane before. All his life on an island. Bigger than Robben Island, but still. His first time. He’ll never forget. Ik herriner me mijn eerste keer. I hope you know how to make proper use of him, Rachel.”

  As if it had just occurred to her that she had yet to greet Rachel, Gloria took her in a fervent hug, shutting her eyes as she stamped her neck with kisses the way Rachel often did to me. “Oh my God, it’s so good to see you back home. I missed you so much, sweetie.”

  “I missed you, too,” Rachel said.

  “Are you, you know—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You finally have something to distract you from you know what,” Gloria said, turning her eyes on me again.

  Leaving Rachel, she took hold of my arm with both hands and led me to the counter. “Max bought up all the overripe bananas in the store today and has been busy making banana daiquiris. He’s made enough for a hundred people.”

  “Pay no attention to Gloria,” Max said. “She can’t count to a hundred. Her brains are in her boobs.” He turned away from the kitchen counter and appraised Rachel. “I think you’ve filled out a bit since you misplaced your virginity. Not knocked up, I hope.”

  “No,” Rachel said. “We invented a way of avoiding that.”

  Max chuckled. “Well, as long as Wade keeps up the vaginal inoculations, you’ll be just fine.”

  “Stop it, Max,” Gloria said, laughing and flashing a flirtatious glance at me.

  They went on talking like that about us and about each other and about anyone who came up in conversation. I found it more and more difficult to feign amusement, and Rachel did not even go through the motions of pretending to. It felt like Gloria and Max were following a script from which, even when they were alone, they did not depart.

  A large bowl of freckled bananas sat beside a blender on the kitchen counter, along with an empty white rum bottle.

  We stood about in the kitchen, Rachel and I with our backs to the counter as Max fed us daiquiri after daiquiri. They were very good and quickly went to my head. Gloria, who was teetotal, sipped from what she called a virgin daiquiri. “I’ll never see the point of drinking. Max says that women who don’t drink don’t enjoy sex as much, but I am living proof that Max is wrong. I wore him out this afternoon. The poor dear, doesn’t he look tired?”

  Trying to change the subject, I told them about what had happened as we were running along the seawall.

  “My God, how awful,” Gloria said, but Max laughed. “Duelling screwdrivers,” he said. “You could make a novel out of that, Wade. There are people who have lived in South Africa all their lives who have never stumbled onto something like that. They must have known a Canadian was coming.”

  “You poor things,” Gloria said. “More daiquiris, Max.”

  He topped us up.

  “Want to know a secret?” Gloria said, meeting my change of subject with another. “Max has malaria. He’ll have it forever. He gets a fever at the same time every month and he’s completely out of it for five days. He has pals at SAA who cover for him. They arrange his schedule so that he’s never flying when he has what we call his period. I have to work during my period, but Max gets time off. Mind you, he’s delirious, but still…”

  “The worst you could do is spill a drink on someone,” Max said. “Me, I would crash a plane.”

  Gloria laughed.

  “Are you sure this fever won’t just pop up some other time of month while you’re flying a plane full of passengers?” I said.

  Max grinned. “My doctor tells me it won’t, and so far he’s right.”

  I could think of no reply.

  “We’re going out tonight,” Rachel suddenly announced.

  “Out?” Gloria said. “I can’t believe you have the energy to go out after such a long flight. And you’ve had too much to drink to drive.”

  “We can tak
e a taxi.”

  “They’re young, they want to go dancing,” Max said. “The kind you do standing up.”

  “Well,” Gloria said, “I’m young too, and if it was twenty-four hours since I had sex, I know what my first priority would be.”

  “It’s because of what we saw along the seawall,” Rachel said. “We’re kind of restless.”

  “Max will drive you, won’t you, Max?” Gloria said.

  “Sure,” Max said. “I’m drunker than they are but I know the road better. And I know where all the strip clubs are. That’s how I met Gloria. Just kidding. I’ll drive you, but you have to find your own way back.”

  “Rachel,” Gloria said, “let me give you some money for the return taxi.”

  “You don’t have to,” Rachel said, but Gloria was already digging in her purse.

  We endured more of Max as he drove us downtown. After he had driven away, Rachel, her arms at her sides, banged her forehead on my chest. I forced a laugh and put my arms around her. “I think we can expect the Kama Sutra for Christmas,” she said.

  “It’s just talk,” I said, trying to sound unfazed so she wouldn’t be more upset.

  When we got back to their place later that night, we found a note from Max on the kitchen counter, telling us that he had opened all the windows because it was so hot outside and asking us to leave our door open so that there would be a cross-breeze.

  The next morning, hungover, we woke to the sound of them loudly having sex just down the hall.

  “Oh, my frigging family,” Rachel said, covering her ears with her pillow.

  “So much for the cross-breeze,” I said, as Gloria gasped loudly, over and over. The gasping turned to a kind of screeching, interrupted by loud moans.

  “My God,” Rachel said, “at least I know when to bury my face in a pillow.” I laughed, but I found myself aroused and rolled over onto her. As our bedsprings began to creak, we heard Gloria laugh, then begin to moan again. “My God,” Rachel whispered, “synchronized screwing?”

  A little later, we joined them in the kitchen for breakfast. Gloria, dressed in the white bathrobe from the day before, walked up to Rachel, put her hands on her shoulders and began to examine her face.

  “What are you doing?” Rachel said.

  “I’m checking for razor rash.” Then she came over to me and told me to examine her face for razor rash. “What do you think, Wade?” Gloria said. “Which one of us wins, Rachel or me?”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Max said. He examined Gloria and Rachel, rubbing their cheeks with his hands. “I think Rachel wins,” he said, “but it’s pretty close.”

  “That’s because you’re an old man,” Gloria said. “You can’t keep up with Wade.” Max laughed.

  “Show Wade your tan, Glore.”

  “I had a four-day layover in Bermuda,” Gloria said. “I spent every minute on the beach.” I thought she would pull her bathrobe up above her knees, but she untied the belt and pulled the robe wide to show me every inch of her front. Except for the parts that had been protected by her bikini, she was, indeed, deeply tanned. She stood there, facing me, looking down at her body as if to see how her tan was holding up, rubbing her belly with her fingers, her large breasts shaking slightly with every movement she made. She gave me a frank, wanton smile, then covered up as if to say that it had somehow slipped her mind that she was naked.

  “That’s a very nice suntan,” I managed to say.

  Max laughed. “Watch this guy, Gloria,” he said. “He might make a move on you.” As our eyes met, Gloria’s smile vanished as if she had seen something in my expression that she didn’t like.

  “Jesus, Gloria,” Rachel said. “Enough, enough, enough. Does it never stop? We tell you we saw two people stab each other to death—never mind. I give up. I do. You win, Gloria. There is nothing worthwhile in the world but sex. Let’s hear some more about this never-ending fuck fest you call a marriage, this ongoing orgy you call a life.”

  “Rachel,” I said, and she looked stricken as Gloria ran from the kitchen, crying.

  “I’m sorry, Max,” Rachel said. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper. I’m sorry.”

  “She’ll forget,” Max said. “You know she never holds a grudge.”

  “We’ll stay at a hotel until our apartment is ready,” Rachel said.

  “You don’t have to,” Max said, “but I know that you’ll insist even though you’d likely be murdered in the kind of place you could afford. Let me chip in something so that you and your sister live to fight another day.”

  “Thank you,” Rachel said before I could decline his offer.

  * * *

  —

  “She never holds a grudge,” Rachel said when we were in the car. “I’m completely in the right but I go away with those words ringing in my ears.”

  “We did take his money.”

  “Yes,” Rachel said. “I feel like an extortionist, but we need it. Did I go too far?”

  “Maybe a little? She’s just putting on a show. They both are.”

  “I’ll tell her I’m sorry.”

  “I wish—”

  “I know,” she interrupted. “I know you do. It won’t always be like this. When your books make us rich, we’ll look back at this and laugh.”

  * * *

  —

  Our apartment was the upper storey of a duplex, small but immaculately kept, fully outfitted with furniture and appliances that looked brand-new. “God,” I said. “This would cost ten times as much back home.” Rachel went about inspecting it, nodding approvingly. There was daily maid service—we simply had to be out of the house every day between two and three in the afternoon when a maid would come by. From the window in our bedroom, we could see the scree of boulders at the foot of Table Mountain.

  A middle-aged woman from Norway who was a visiting professor of mathematics at the University of Cape Town lived on the ground floor. “Dr. Angstrom,” read a brass nameplate on the door of her apartment. She would be, for us, the ideal neighbour, as quiet as if she was incapable of making noise. She never had guests and almost never was at home except to sleep.

  Rachel walked to the window and looked out. “Things will get better. There’s more to this place than you’ve seen so far, more than anyone can find in books and newspapers. Or on walks along the seawall.”

  RACHEL

  Once we were settled in the apartment, I took Wade on a tour of my South African childhood, starting with Sunny Way Preparatory School, then the Rustenburg Junior School for girls. We visited Rustenburg while school was in session, walking about the playground surrounded by girls who ignored us as if grown-up visitors were commonplace. The school uniform hadn’t changed since I left in 1969—a cornflower blue tunic and tam, black shoes and white socks. I tried to imagine a foursome of these girls sailing away from home forever on the Edinburgh Castle as my sisters and I had, Canada their final destination. I couldn’t believe I’d gone to school there. It was as if I was remembering someone else’s life. “It makes me feel kind of sad,” I said.

  “Time sick,” Wade said. “It’s not quite the same as homesick.”

  I nodded. But I was really feeling nostalgia for a life I’d never had. I wiped a tear away, but laughed when I saw how concerned he looked. “I’m just being silly,” I said.

  From Rustenburg, we went to Westerford, where I’d gone to high school in 1975, when we’d been back to Cape Town for Dad’s sabbatical. Older, much more subdued girls hung about on the playground in small groups, their expressions ironic, detached, aloof, as if they knew exactly where they were headed after Westerford, which they had already outgrown. The uniform was also the same as the one I had worn—a maroon plaid tunic and a boater hat with ribbons of maroon and gold, just like the one that was on the dresser in our apartment, one of my few school souvenirs. Wade had taken a liking to it in St. J
ohn’s and suggested that we bring it with us.

  “I was not happy here,” I said. “I just wanted the year to be over so I could get back to Canada and my boyfriend.”

  “You had a boyfriend at thirteen?” I said.

  “No,” I said. “I just thought I did. His name was Jeff and I worshipped him from afar. But he wasn’t the reason I was unhappy here. I was the Anne Frank fruitcake and I wasn’t sure we’d ever leave. I thought I’d be stuck in South Africa forever. I thought Mom and Dad might have sold the house on Freshwater Road to pay for the trip. I was terrified that Dad would get a job at the University of Cape Town. I was alone a lot. Bethany had stayed in Canada, at Dalhousie. She was fifteen—another grade skipper, like me—and only came to visit at Christmas, and Gloria was in Quebec at Laval. I was stuck with Carmen and Fritz. Carmen had only just met him but she was already spending some nights in his house on the Flats. I woke up in their house a lot of weekend mornings having no idea how I got there.”

  * * *

  —

  As we toured, Wade asked me the names of flowers, plants and trees and, almost always, I drew a blank. “I’ve seen them a thousand times,” I said, “but I don’t know what they’re called. I should know. I’m a terrible guide, aren’t I? You know the name of everything that grows in Newfoundland.”

  “Only because not much grows there,” Wade said. I laughed.

  “I know one version of South Africa’s history,” I said. “The Boers who settled the cape before the Bantu even found it, the Great Trek. Most of it’s not true. But the true history—well, I only know bits and pieces. The true history of South Africa isn’t easy to find in South Africa.”

  The effects of it were easy to find, though. I wished that I could hide them from him. Everywhere—on benches, the gates of swimming pools and beaches, the doors of public bathrooms, train cars and restaurants—there were signs that read “Blanke” or “Nie-Blanke,” Afrikaans for “White” and “Non-White.” Wade said he doubted that he would ever get used to seeing them or having to abide by them.