The Truth & Addy Loest

by Kim Kelly

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked him.

  He grunted again: ‘Headache.’

  Well, derr. She asked him: ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘No.’ After a hundred years, he added: ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll call Dad,’ she said; she had to call him before she could no longer function. Her knees were juddering with the full weight of the day: discovering the depths of their father’s pain; possibly beginning what might be a serious attempt at writing something; pissing off probably the best guy she would ever meet; and her brother evading a catastrophic brain injury. All of it shattering, confusing: too much. Addy clutched the iron bar at the end of the bed, asking Nick by some remote, auto-recall: ‘Is there anything you want me to tell him?’

  ‘Just don’t tell him I passed out.’ Nick sounded worried himself; she guessed he’d had a scare as well, this impenetrable fortress that was her brother. He’d been so out of it, even when he was conscious he’d been incoherent, slurring words, but he was all right now. Yes, she looked and looked at him, to test the truth: he was all right now.

  She nodded. ‘I’ll just tell him we got a precautionary X-ray.’

  Nick attempted to nod too, but that only hurt him more, and he grunted yet again: ‘Fuck this.’

  ‘Why did you go to the hospital?’ the interrogation began. ‘What happened, Adrianna? Tell me the truth.’

  ‘He just had a bad knock, that’s all. You’ll see for yourself on Sunday. Please don’t worry, Daddy.’

  ‘Put him on the phone – I want to talk to him.’

  ‘He’s not here. He’s – ah …’ Fuck! ‘He’s talking to the doctor.’

  ‘What’s he talking to the doctor about?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ she just about hissed into the phone, trying to keep her voice down, as several nurses went about their business around her.

  ‘Adrianna, are you not telling me something?’

  ‘No! Please, Dad.’ Have another beer and go to bed. ‘It’s been a long night. You know what it’s like, waiting around.’ Waiting around for Nick to have X-rays had been a family leisure activity since 1979.

  ‘Yes, I do. And if you aren’t telling me the truth, you know I will find out from Max.’

  I doubt that very much. ‘I am telling you the truth. You will see for yourself on Sunday. I have to go now – I’m using the nurses’ phone.’

  ‘Don’t you use that tone of voice with me.’

  What tone of voice might that be? Barely supressed hysteria I learned straight from you? ‘Daddy, please – I have to go.’

  ‘Tell Nick to call me – tonight. I don’t care how late.’

  ‘I will.’ The day crashed hard into her now, smashing over her shoulders, and she told him the most basic truth of her heart: ‘I love you, Dad.’

  ‘What? What are you saying that for?’ Her father didn’t know this language; it didn’t feature in the usual Loest family argot. ‘If you have bad news to tell me, I want to hear it now.’

  Her heart imploded and sank through the linoleum beneath her feet: ‘There’s no bad news, Dad. It’s just something people say to other people they love.’ It’s just fricken normal. OH, DAD!

  Grunt: ‘All right. You know I love you as well, Sprout. It’s a permanent fact. You don’t go around saying it all the time without causing people to wonder what the fuss is about.’

  ‘Okay, Dad.’ I’ll never say it again, I promise. Love is too upsetting. Whoa, ain’t that the truth of truths. ‘I really have to go.’

  ‘Addy, I —’

  ‘Bye, Dad, see you Sunday.’ She hung up.

  On a wave of guilt, she returned to Nick, and by the time she got there she was such a wreck, so crushed and crumpled, she wasn’t even aware she’d begun to cry, until her brother said: ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  She turned away from him, trying to force it back down.

  ‘Addy?’

  ‘Hm.’ Breathe. She leant against the end of the bed.

  She heard her brother sit up. ‘Did Dad lose his shit?’

  ‘Not too badly,’ she told the curtain, regaining control of her emotions, if control was what this could be called.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ he asked her, carefully.

  ‘I’m not crying,’ she said, on reflex. She supposed he didn’t really want to know, but only wanted her to stop. She wanted to stop. She told him: ‘I’m just so sick of lying all the time. I’m sick of not being able to have an honest conversation with Dad about anything. I’m sick of holding things in. It’s fucking me up.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ The grunt was sardonic, but a trace of weary sadness in those words made her turn around.

  ‘What’s your worst right now?’ she asked him, and she scrounged up a laugh for her own least unspeakable offering. ‘I’ve dropped out of law.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He gave her a pained smile: ‘You’ll never beat mine.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ She gave him the same pained smile in return. ‘Come on, then, what is it?’

  He paused for a long, wary moment, as if he was checking she was in fact his sister; finally, he said: ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No.’ She absolutely didn’t; couldn’t think of a single thing number-one favourite progeny would be hiding from their father, apart from present circumstances. The words ‘anabolic steroids’ flitted through her head, but she dismissed that idea almost instantly: Nick prided himself on reaching peak physique through his punishing training regime and vitamin beer. Besides, while he might have been a spoilt, arrogant arse, he’d never been a cheat. Maybe he’d failed one of his uni subjects, or all of them? Or he’d lost his part-time job at the gym? None of that would be any big deal, though, not for him. She said: ‘Haven’t got the foggiest.’

  He frowned, grunted at the actual pain that gave him, and then he asked her: ‘You’ve never wondered why I haven’t had a girlfriend in the last four years?’

  ‘No.’ She smirked, and as much at herself: she hadn’t had a proper boyfriend, either – ever. She said to Nick: ‘I’ve only supposed your natural charm has been keeping them away.’

  ‘Yeah, hilarious.’ Nick sighed heavily. ‘You’re the smartest person I know, Addy, but you’re so thick sometimes.’

  She frowned now, still not understanding what he was trying to tell her.

  He said simply: ‘Dave.’

  ‘Dave,’ she repeated his name and even then it took her several seconds to work it out. ‘Oh?’ she said at the first inkling, a vision of him quietly fretting in the waiting room where she’d left him. ‘Oh. Oh. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

  ‘Probably.’ Nick sounded matter-of-fact, but she could virtually feel his heart charging as he laid it out: ‘It’s been nearly a year. It’s good. It’s very fucken good. Would you like to have to tell Dad that, though? And no, I’m not going to. I’m only telling you because – fuck. Every day, day after day, I think I’ll blow apart from not being able to say anything or let anything show.’ He pointed at his face: ‘It’s worse than this. A lot worse.’

  ‘Fuck.’ That was the sound of all Addy’s wonder. Her brother was gay? Almost a decade’s worth of increasing distance suddenly made sense. He had a boyfriend? At the first pass, that cut her through with envy: Nick was a bigger freak than she was, in so many ways, and even he could manage to sustain a relationship with a nice guy – indeed, they were living together. But at the second pass, fear rushed at her: fear for him. That kind of love had only been decriminalised last year – not that the New South Wales police were overly interested in upholding the law, as gay men were regularly bashed, even killed, their attackers never brought to any justice. Some right-wing lunatic legislators wanted to have homosexuals charged with manslaughter for the spread of AIDS; gay sex was still illegal in half the country. Nazis would have sent her brother to the gas chambers. This was a big deal. A very big deal. At the slightest hint of anything like this getting out, there would be no way Nick would make the Commonwealth Games
team. Oh, Nicky. She wanted to hug him, except the Loests didn’t do things like that, either. She wanted to reassure him that their dad would never know, no one would ever know, not from her, not until Nick was ready, and when he was ready, she’d stand by him for all she was worth. But all that came out of her mouth was: ‘Fuck.’ Mostly because she’d run out of other words today; this was one life-changing revelation too many; she said it again: ‘Fuck.’

  Just as the curtain swished open: ‘Right, then, Mr Loest, is it?’ A tall, silver-haired man appeared, white-coated and impeccable pronunciation of the surname. He regarded Nick with undisguised approval as he said: ‘You are a specimen, aren’t you. I’m Doctor Ackerman, and I’ve had another look at your X-rays. Good news is, you’re fine to go home. Bad news is, you have a slight hairline fracture to the cheekbone, and given the seriousness of the concussion, you will need to keep clear of the gloves for a little while. Any further significant dizziness or worsening of the headache, don’t hesitate to come back in, or see your GP. I’d strongly recommend you have your GP write you a referral to …’

  Addy couldn’t keep hold of the conversation; all she could hear was ‘Dr Ackerman’, and the withering remains of her last ‘fuck’ hanging in the air. She was looking at Dan forty years on, same crinkled, twinkling smile; same gentle affability.

  Same message for Addy, from every corner and crack of the universe: Fucken idiot.

  She had almost fallen asleep in the back of Dave’s comfortable sedan, slouching on the armrest of the door as they drove her home to Flower Street.

  ‘They’ll have some tinned tomatoes at the petrol station – I’ll make some minestrone, yeah?’ Dave suggested, and Nick replied, ‘Yeah, that’d be good.’ He was being looked after; this was beautiful; it was also oddly devastating, for Addy.

  ‘Which house is it, Add?’ her brother asked her; he didn’t even know where she lived. Why would he? She’d never invited him over.

  ‘Just past that next streetlight,’ she said, ‘on the left.’

  Dave pulled the car slowly over to the kerb, but she didn’t want to get out; she wanted to stay with Nick, curl up tight and tiny on the seat of one of the rowing machines at his house. She’d be safe there; looked after. She couldn’t ask anything like that of him, though; she wouldn’t intrude on his life; it wasn’t her place, after so long … She reached around the front seat of the car and touched his shoulder instead; she said: ‘I’ve missed you.’

  He touched the back of her hand: ‘Missed you too, Sprout. See you Sunday.’

  ‘Probably see you on the train.’ I love you. ‘Thanks for the lift, Dave.’

  And she was out on the street, a thin mist mizzling through the dimness, chasing her into the house. Down the hall, all was dark and quiet; she turned on the tall black lamp by the brown couch; all was tidy, too. There’d been no one round tonight, obviously. The house was so lonely, Addy was so lonely, not even No Name appeared.

  I should be walking into this house with Dan, putting on the kettle.

  You screwed that up comprehensively, didn’t you.

  Yes, I did.

  She heard the soft but insistent creak of bedsprings overhead: Roz and Kendall Drummer Boy.

  For God’s sake. Please.

  She went into the kitchen to wait it out; found Roz’s cigarettes on the bench by the stove and helped herself to one. There were two bottles of grog there as well, a half-empty flask of vodka and a ruby port, uncorked but only a glass or so down. Port wine wasn’t a favourite, always gave her a sinus inflammation, yet it was preferable to vodka, the smell of which alone was enough to make her want to chuck. She glugged a good portion of the port into a coffee cup, and near skulled it down, shivering and gagging as she did so; the instant warmth seemed worth it, though. She felt all her muscles slacken and chorus as one: Thank you. A fuzzy, mellow buzz enfolded her – enough to knock her out, she hoped.

  Upstairs, the shagging had blessedly ceased, and she drifted bedways now, too. She undressed, hung up her frock, avoided any glimpse of herself in the mirror, throwing her cosiest nightgown over her head: pretty Pollyanna rosebuds with a frill circling the neck. She took one of her small notebooks from her bedside chest, climbed under her quilt and began to write under the light of her little red lamp:

  Dear lovely Dan,

  I don’t know how to apologise for the fuck-up I am, and I don’t know how I’m going to fix all that’s wrong with me. But I would like another chance, please, to at least make amends for being so rude to you, and to show you that I really am very fond

  She broke off there: Fond? Who are you writing to? Mr Darcy? She tore off the page, intending to toss it, then changed her mind, folding it under her pillow instead.

  Maybe, she thought, the apology could burrow into her brain as she slept, and find her some better words for the morning.

  GARDEN-VARIETY

  ACTS OF MISOGYNY

  BLERT, BLERT, BLERT. She slept right through until the alarm went off, a dreamless sleep through which her only sense of the world beyond was a certainty that the ruby port had not been a good idea. Irrefutable on waking. The back of her nose throbbed as though someone had been in there with a pickaxe; her eyes screamed, ‘No!’ on opening.

  But Nick will be feeling much worse, was the thought that got her out from under the quilt, to get herself together for work. But Nick is probably having breakfast in bed, made by someone who loves him, was the thought that brought all her heartache back, all its suffocating layers. Dan is not going to want to hear from me – don’t annoy him further by writing to him. Just leave it – and him – alone.

  Alone, dazed and aching, Addy washed, brushed, zipped up her uniform; she crept through the sleeping house and out the door. And it was blowing a gale out there: one of those Sydney winds whipped up off the ocean and funnelled through the streets at such velocity it hit the skin like it was carrying splinters of glass. Dodging an airborne cardboard box in the alley nearing Broadway, she decided to make a run for the bus stop, sprinting across six lanes of light early-Saturday traffic – just as a city-bound was pulling in. She made it – Phew. She paid the driver, and, still catching her breath, swung into the seat behind him.

  ‘Morning, gorgeous.’ A man across the aisle leaned towards her; a gravel-voice, a pervy weirdo of some sort. She heard him rustle a newspaper and shot a glance in his direction, only to check the threat, expecting him to be a sad old wino, but he wasn’t anything like that: she noticed his shoes were shiny, black leather business shoes, below navy trousers, all decent quality. A man on his way to work, too, maybe a retail manager, or some other weekend office-type guy. Being careful not to make eye contact, she didn’t look at his face. She turned the other way, as though she was looking out the window, except she was really looking over her shoulder, to make sure there were other passengers on the bus – and there were, about ten of them. She wasn’t alone with him, at least.

  But she screamed inside, her anger as immediate as it was useless: For fuck’s sake, I’m dressed like a tuckshop tea lady, sensible sandshoes, mouse-brown ponytail, and I look like I’m asking for your attention, do I? Fuck you.

  ‘Can’t take a compliment, eh?’ He gave her a nasty little laugh as if he’d heard her, and she heard the very real, very ordinary threat in that.

  She stared into the back of the bus driver’s head, where he sat within his compartment, and she balled her fists in preparation for getting off, silently promising the bastard beside her: If you try to touch my arse when I stand up, I will smash your hand away from me. Every unwanted touch she’d ever received came back to her: from dancefloors and crowded trains, and once even at work, when she was reaching up to stack a bunch of hula hoops – a man ran a finger up the back of her leg, a man with three little kids, walking on as if he hadn’t done any such thing. Such was the banality of evil. She wasn’t going to cop it this morning. Don’t you dare try it, Mr – don’t you fucken dare.

  He didn’t; she slipped off the bus a
t her stop, back out into the gale. But the damage had been done. The very worst of this damage had been done a long time ago – seventeen months and twenty-three days ago, to be precise. As she ran across the lights towards Town Hall Variety now, she touched the tail of an understanding, the dragon’s tail of her terror, under all the terrors that made up her anxiety, before it roared away. The flash of memory: his hand tearing at her underwear; his breath on the back of her neck.

  No!

  You invited him.

  No one invites that.

  You did.

  No!

  She couldn’t let her mind go there, into that locked box; she didn’t have time, anyway – she had to find an anti-histamine for her sinuses, before she was due in at work. It didn’t matter, it really didn’t matter, she told herself as she scanned the shelves of the chemist next door. It wasn’t as though he’d beaten her up. It wasn’t as though she’d been killed. Like her grandmother; like thousands and thousands of other less fortunate women. Addy supposed she’d just outrun it one day, leave it behind her forever. This strategy wasn’t working, though, was it.

  ‘That’s two dollars ninety-nine, please.’ The girl at the counter gave her the first fake smile of the day, and Addy gave no further thought to the basest failings of man.

  She’d accidentally bought the tablets containing pseudoephedrine, and while her sinus headache vanished within minutes, she spent the next five hours speeding. The slightness of her person meant that it never took a great deal of any pharmaceutical for Addy to feel the effects, and in this instance she’d also accidentally given herself double the dose recommended for men. It wasn’t an unpleasant effect, and it certainly made the morning go faster; a busy morning it was, too, despite the weather. How many pointless, stupid blue gnomes can people want to buy? Fourteen of them, she counted, making their way down to the ground-floor cash registers, with the usual run of plastic construction sets and grotesquely tizzy fashion dolls – all before lunch. On her break, she forced herself to eat a curried egg sandwich in the staffroom, though she wasn’t hungry; and then, idly flicking through a pointless, stupid gossip magazine, its letters’ page weeping and whining over bad perms and hubby’s bad breath, she began to come back down; down and down she came – with a thump.