The Mystery of Right and Wrong

by Wayne Johnston

  “Well,” Bethany said, “you’ll have to put together the world’s fastest perfect wedding, because May 17 is the big day.”

  “Bethany,” Myra said. She turned and smiled at Clive as if asking him for support, but he looked at the floor.

  “Now, now,” Hans said. “May 17 next year it is, then.”

  Everyone looked at Bethany. She rubbed the front of her sweater in slow circles. “Well,” she said, “by May 17 of next year, it will be too late to have a proper wedding.”

  “What?” Myra said to Bethany, who smiled.

  “Yup,” she said. “I’m pregnant. For those of you who might not be inclined to take my word for it, Clive was with me when the doctor at Groote Schuur confirmed it.”

  Peter and Theresa stared at their son. “Is this true?” Theresa said. Clive nodded as if, even so, he wasn’t sure if it was true. I wasn’t sure, given what Bethany had done, and said and unsaid, in the past few weeks. I looked at Rachel. Her mouth was partway open, her eyes darting about.

  “The two of you haven’t been alone together long enough to kiss,” Rachel said at last.

  “Oh yes we have,” Bethany said. “Clive came by when Mom and Dad went out without me.”

  “Clive, you dirty dog,” Fritz said.

  “Oh, but you see, but you see, it’s perfectly all right,” Hans said. “There’s nothing wrong with it as long as you’re engaged.”

  “But they may not have been engaged when they did the deed that did the deed,” Fritz said.

  As if he hadn’t spoken, Myra said, “Peter and Theresa, isn’t this wonderful—a double surprise!”

  Peter, Theresa and Hans all but leapt to their feet. Clive managed to hoist himself off the sofa and take the hand Bethany held out to him. I felt a flash of panic. Right up until she was taken to hospital. If what she’d said about Hans was true…I reached for Rachel’s hand, but she pulled it away, her eyes fixed on her father, whom, I feared, she was about to confront. I grabbed her hand then and held tight.

  * * *

  —

  “The baby might be his,” I said as we were driving home. “That’s what you were thinking.”

  “He wouldn’t be that stupid,” she said.

  “Accidents happen.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that the baby might be his, all right? I have to write tonight. A lot. Just giving you the heads-up.”

  RACHEL

  I tried to make sense of what Bethany had said. Clive had been dropping by when Mom and Dad were out—starting when? Since the first party, when she said she was eager to avoid him, so eager that she asked us to run interference between him and her? Before that? If they had been having secret assignations at our parents’ house, it could only have been because she asked him to or, Clive being Clive, told him to, perhaps in the hope of getting pregnant so that the question of what she should do with her life would be irrevocably answered—she would marry Clive and have a baby. Had she changed her mind and hoped that an overdose would abort the baby if it didn’t kill her? Possibly. More likely, she didn’t know she was pregnant when she took the pills, which she did because she hadn’t, as she hoped she would, felt relieved, unburdened or purposeful when she decided to marry a man she didn’t love. Giving in to our parents’ notion of an ideal life did not make her feel better. Life with Clive made life seem unendurable. Until she found out she was pregnant. Why else had she accused Dad of those things and Mom of turning a blind eye to them, and then said she’d been mistaken, if not for the sake of the baby?

  She recanted all of it when she found out she was pregnant. And one of the few unassailably true things in her life—the fact of a child that was hers—restored her conviction that the best thing to do was start a family with the only man who would have her. She was still pregnant, despite her overdose, and the wedding was not only back in play but needed to be soon. I thought of how, according to her, Mom and Dad had reacted to being accused. I thought of how they acted when she announced that she was pregnant. Half the people in that room knew what she had accused Dad of and yet acted as if she had never said a word against him.

  I really wouldn’t have blamed Wade if he had walked away. Most men would have done so already. I knew that if he wanted to leave, he would. He would work up the nerve, because he was not like Clive. He didn’t need my permission to break my heart as I had once broken his. He wasn’t a lamb that I was leading to the slaughter.

  WADE

  “I think we should tell Gloria and Max about Bethany’s accusations,” Rachel said a couple of days later. “I’d like to see how Gloria reacts.”

  “You said she’d take your parents’ side.”

  “She probably will, but it’s possible she won’t. She might not be able to help herself if I confront her out of the blue.”

  * * *

  —

  They were out by the pool, Gloria topless in a deck chair and Max fussing over something on the barbecue.

  Rachel wasted no time getting down to business. She walked over to Gloria and said, “When Bethany was in the hospital, she told us that Dad has been doing things to her for years, ever since she can remember and right up till the present.”

  “Well, well,” Max said in a kind of what-else-is-new tone.

  “Yes,” Gloria said, “well, well.”

  “I must have known you were coming,” Max said. “I put on too many burgers. How do you like yours?”

  “Jesus,” Rachel said, “did either one of you hear what I just said?”

  Gloria stood, removed her sunglasses and tugged on her bikini bottom, snapping it into place.

  “I’m going for a swim,” she said. She turned around, dropped her glasses on the chair, walked to the edge of the pool and dove in. She swam near the bottom, her body a blur, and surfaced at the other end; facing away from us, she put her forearms on the edge of the pool and stayed that way for several minutes, her chin resting on her arms.

  “Gloria,” Rachel shouted. Gloria pushed away from the edge of the pool and swam back toward us, again underwater, then climbed the ladder, emerging inch by inch, eyes closed, hair matted to her head, water dripping from every part of her. She dried herself with the towel that Max tossed at her, smoothed her hair back from her forehead, her breasts rising and falling. It was as if she was presenting her body to us as proof that Bethany’s accusations were untrue.

  She put her hands on her hips, water pooling around her feet, and addressed Rachel. “Over the years, Bethany has accused Dad of a lot of things. Not to his face. Not to anyone but me, as far as I know.”

  “What things?” Rachel said.

  “Well, let’s see. Where to begin. She said he plagiarized parts of his master’s thesis. Told lies about other professors to the deans at the University of Cape Town and in Newfoundland. She said he left Cape Town, we all left Cape Town, because he had no other choice. That’s what she said. No other choice. She wouldn’t explain what she meant. Then, two weeks after she said that, she told me she’d been joking. Joking. She’s been telling lies for years about just about everything. She told me Dad wasn’t really a member of the Dutch Resistance. Two weeks later, she told me she was kidding, that she had made it up. She’s the pathological liar, not him. I used to get upset with her for making up lies about Dad, even if it was just for fun. All she ever said was never mind. ‘Never mind, Gloria, it doesn’t matter.’ I knew she was nuts long before any doctor said she was. She knows what I think of her, so now she’s moved on to telling lies to you. Don’t believe a word she says.”

  “It’s not her fault,” Max said. “She can’t help it. No one goes crazy on purpose.”

  “Well,” Gloria said, “now she’s gone crazy at Clive’s expense.”

  “Clive would never have been laid in his life if not for Bethany,” Max said.

  “I’m just giving you fair warning,” Gloria said to Rachel.


  “But when Bethany was in hospital,” Rachel said, “Theresa told Clive that, years ago, before we moved to Canada, there was a complaint made against Dad at the University of Cape Town. She said a woman claimed that he had done something to her daughter, one of his students, but she later withdrew the complaint.”

  “What does that prove?” Gloria said. “Who knows what that mother and daughter were up to?”

  “Planning a lawsuit would be my guess,” Max said. “There may have been a settlement out of court. Settlements are not admissions of guilt.”

  Gloria threw her towel aside, put her sunglasses back on and lay on the deck chair again. “Wade, you should write a book about Bethany. Anorexia in Africa. Millions of people on this continent are starving. She has all the food she needs. Courtesy of Dad. And what does she do with it? She feeds it to stray dogs.”

  “Because she’s anorexic,” Rachel said, smacking her thigh with frustration. “It’s a struggle every day. Even when she eats, she’s keeping one step ahead of revulsion. I believe her when she says that no one but another anorexic understands what it’s like. Getting food into you, keeping it down. For you, it’s an effortless pleasure, one of many. You have all the food you need, courtesy of Max, a sugar daddy who is twice your age.”

  Gloria stood again, her breasts bobbing, and once more put her hands on her hips. Max was pushing burgers about on the barbecue as if he hadn’t heard a word that Rachel said. Before Gloria could start in on her, Rachel began to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Gloria,” she said. “I just don’t know what to do about Bethany. Pregnant? Do you think someone in her state will survive a pregnancy?”

  “I don’t know.” Gloria picked up her bikini top and put it on. “I don’t know anything when it comes to kids. Maybe Bethany thinks a kid is exactly what she needs to get her head straight. Maybe she’s right. Maybe Mom’s right, and it’s what all four of us need. Max doesn’t want kids. He thinks that my body would never be the same if I had one.”

  “It wouldn’t,” Max said. “Especially a certain part of it. My first wife was never the same.”

  “What do you think about kids, Rachel?” Gloria said, glancing at me.

  “I think you should remind Max that his body hasn’t been the same since he was thirty, which was twenty-five years ago,” Rachel said.

  “Touché,” Max said.

  “Anyway,” Gloria said, “I wouldn’t mind adopting, say, a six-year-old girl. I mean, I want a girl, and there’s no guarantee I’ll get one the old-fashioned way, and I wouldn’t mind skipping all those sleepless nights and the toilet training and the diapers. I’m not sure I’d have the patience for it. And maybe Max is right. It would be my loss too.”

  Max stacked a plate with hamburgers.

  “I’m not hungry,” Gloria said.

  “Me neither,” Rachel said.

  “Then let’s pop inside for a drink,” Max said. “I can reheat these later.”

  We went inside, and Rachel and I waited in the kitchen while Gloria and Max changed into dry clothes, Rachel silent and sullen-looking as she leaned against the countertop.

  This time, it was papaya daiquiris that were thrust at us. I felt like telling Gloria that even adopting a child would send Max off in search of another woman half his age.

  Three or four daiquiris later, the mood was lighter. Max and Gloria announced that they were going to bed and, before they could invite us to sleep over, Rachel said, “Wade and I are going to stay up for a bit, out there by the pool.”

  “Suit yourselves,” Gloria said. “You know where everything is.”

  We went out to the pool, refreshed daiquiris in hand, and stood staring at the water. I sat in a wooden deck chair, and Rachel sat sideways on my lap and laid her head against my chest. She was soon asleep.

  I tried to puzzle through what Gloria had said. Assuming she hadn’t made them all up, who could have made the series of accusations against her father that Bethany had repeated to Gloria? Maybe Bethany had spoken to Gloria because Rachel was too young and because she knew that, when Carmen was stoned, she would repeat everything to Hans and Myra, if only to piss them off and get Bethany in trouble. But who was Bethany’s informant? Plagiarizing his thesis, being forced to leave the University of Cape Town, which probably meant that he had been fired or had agreed to resign—and who would have told her that he had lied about taking part in the Dutch Resistance during the war?

  I wished that Rachel wasn’t too drunk to drive home, wished that I could just lie in my own bed and go to sleep. I shook her arm. “Let’s hit the hay,” I said.

  She nodded but patted her shoulder bag, which was on the ground beside the chair. “You go,” she said. “I’ve got both diaries in here.” I sighed as she got off my lap. “Don’t be mad, okay?” she said. I nodded.

  There was no wind. There were no lights on in the house, but the pool lights were still on. “I might be back if I can’t sleep,” I said. When I reached the door, I stopped and turned to see if Rachel was waiting to wave good night. But she was hunched over her book, writing in the dim light as if she was trying to get down every word that the four of us had said.

  From The Ballad of the Clan van Hout

  SPECIAL LOVE (1967)

  It’s time we spoke of Special Love,

  the greatest gift a girl can give,

  a gift that I give, just like you;

  remember, girls, that this is true.

  How fortunate your father is—

  remember well these words of his—

  to have not four, but five of you;

  girls give the gift, but women, too—

  you know by nature what to do,

  for Special Love is natural,

  the greatest of all miracles,

  that comes from God to you and me,

  the Holiest of Mysteries.

  But only certain families

  are chosen for this Mystery;

  God chose us for His family

  but swore us all to secrecy.

  Most families he doesn’t choose—

  that doesn’t mean He loves them less;

  we mustn’t question what he does

  for God is infinitely wise

  and knows what’s best for all of us.

  The ones who don’t have what we have

  have never heard of Special Love,

  so if you tell them, they’ll feel bad,

  and feeling bad will make them sad,

  and that will make God very mad.

  You mustn’t make God mad with you;

  you never know what God will do—

  he’s kind and gentle, like your dad,

  but even dads can get upset.

  (You haven’t seen me angry yet,

  and God gets angrier than that,

  a million times as much, I bet,

  so do what Daddy tells you to

  and God will not get mad with you.)

  There was a time when Love was new;

  you didn’t know what I’d been through

  or what I went through every day

  (girls, mind what I’m about to say).

  You girls had never been Without—

  you thought it like the Land of Hout—

  but I had suffered there for years,

  so lonely and unloved, my dears.

  You treated me with Special Love,

  the balm and salve of Special Love,

  and, very quickly, I improved.

  Remember that She Loved me too—

  it’s simply what you’re meant to do;

  that’s why God made you as you are,

  that’s why you have such lovely hair,

  and why you’re softer than boys are,

 
and why some parts are not like theirs,

  the special parts for Special Love

  that comes to us from God above.

  My girls, what’s right is always “wrong”;

  the “wrong” has been right all along.

  Keep that in mind when Rumours creep

  into your heads while you’re asleep.

  The Gossipers of History

  are out to get this family—

  they’re jealous of the love we have,

  they hate the thought of Special Love;

  they think that if they call it names,

  it might go back from where it came.

  They hate the thing they cannot have:

  the rebel Angels turned on God,

  who gave them Life and Paradise,

  but that was not enough for them—

  the Angels wanted to be Him.

  They couldn’t stand to think that One

  could be a greater Thing than them—

  that’s where the first great war began.

  Across the plains of Paradise,

  archangels came to God’s defence

  and Lucifer has ever since

  burned in the lake of fire

  that feeds the flames of his desire.

  He burns in hell because he tried

  to overturn the rule of God,

  and God continues to bestow

  nothing on the souls below,

  but on the souls who dwell above,

  he showers down his Special Love

  and bids us that we do the same,

  forever do it in His name.

  You are the Hens of Hans, you see,

  you are what God meant you to be:

  my angels, a lesser four

  than those who vanquished Lucifer,

  mere Cherubs but so dear to me—

  you love me so, and so does She.

  The beast we know as Claws von Snout,

  one of Lucifer’s Lieutenants,

  crawled out of the lake of fire,

  an archangel still entire,