Contrition Page 3

  “Can you hear me?” he said.

  No, she wasn’t looking at the fence. He followed her downcast gaze. On the windowsill lay the corpse of a fly, on its back, legs knitted together.

  “Meredith,” he said. “I’ve found us a new home.”

  Her head turned, slowly and mechanically, and her lashless eyes looked up. The blank expression told him she would likely not remember what he said, that he would need to remind her again later. The dark circles beneath her eyes resembled bruises. Her thin lips were chapped.

  “You’ll love it,” he continued. “The place has three bedrooms. You’ve got the two at the front, side by side. Mine is at the back, separate with its own en suite. You’ll have the main bathroom to yourself. How does that sound?”

  John sucked on the stubby and waited.

  After a while, Meredith blinked. Her gaze roamed over his face, lingering on the fleshy parts, the tip of his nose, his earlobes. Such close inspection made him edgy. He took a couple of plates from the cup­board.

  “I bought us lunch, see?” he said. “Now here’s my other bit of good news. You remember, a few years ago, that shopping centre with the bakery I liked?”

  “The Swiss bakery?” she muttered, frowning.

  “Yep, that one. From Saturday, it’s going to be our shopping centre again. We’re going back to an old stomping ground. Our house is built on its own block, so we won’t be living cheek-by-jowl with the neighbours.” He put a meat pie on each plate. “Speaking of which, Mrs Dwight asked me again about Angel.”

  A glitter passed over Meredith’s eyes. She lifted a bony hand and raked fingers through her hair. The dry, colourless tufts sat out in a stiff halo.

  “Angel the Siamese?” she said, and laughed, a hollow sound. “That fucking arsehole?”

  John shrugged. “Aw, come on, he wasn’t that bad.”

  “He used to shit in our yard.”

  “So what? I cleaned it up, not you.”

  Meredith stared again at the fly on the sill. “What did you tell Mrs Dwight?”

  “That if she made up a ‘missing cat’ poster, I’d photocopy it for her.”

  Meredith’s smile was a robotic twitch of the lips.

  “And stop opening the front blinds,” he said. “She’s seen you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “We’re moving on Saturday. Can you do me a favour? Don’t write any more notes to the Kapoors.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that.”

  “Please,” he said. “For me?”

  “I want to take each bird and drown it.”

  “We’ll be gone from here soon. Look, they want to call the cops.”

  “I would fill a pint glass with water,” she intoned, her voice dreamy and soft. “One after another, I would put in a bird, head-first, and hold my hand over the top so it couldn’t get out.”

  John’s grip tightened on the stubby.

  Meredith rested her fingernails on the strip of bench-top surrounding the sink and began to run them across the laminate in slow, meditative circles. For some reason, she always kept her nails long and in good condition. She allowed the rest of her to go to hell, but not her fingernails. It was a quirk that John did not like, another reason why he always fitted a bolt to the inside of his bedroom door.

  He finished his drink. “You can start packing if you like.”

  “I’ve started already. There’s a box of things on my bed.”

  And it would be the same box of things, he knew. Trinkets from high school: text books, strips of photo-booth snapshots with girlfriends long forgotten, report cards, diaries cataloguing old crushes. It was the same box she carried from one rental place to another. He doubted she had ever unpacked it. Not even once.

  “Eat your lunch,” he said. “You might want to put it in the microwave.”

  Meredith picked up the plate and retired to her hobby room. John blew out a long, hard breath and ate a mouthful of meat pie. It was cold but he kept eating anyway. Tomorrow, if he happened to look in the kitchen bin, he would see Meredith’s pie, intact, without a single bite taken from it.

  3

  After finishing lunch, John wiped his greasy fingers on his jeans and headed into Meredith’s bedroom to retrieve her box of memorabilia.

  The utilitarian room had a bed, side table, lamp, and nothing else. When they had first started living together, John had tried to give her the kind of bedroom he thought a woman might like: a mirror and dressing table, a silver brush and comb set, framed prints on the walls, a fussy valance. Meredith had hated it. She preferred to live like a nun who had taken a vow of poverty. No, he thought, as he carried the memorabilia box to the kitchen table, Meredith lived as if she were still institutionalised.

  He grabbed another beer and sat down.

  Yep, as he had guessed, it was the same box of junk that Meredith had somehow kept with her since high school.

  Top of the pile happened to be her paperback copy of Oliver Twist. John smiled at the cover’s anachronistic inclusion: preserved under a layer of transparent Contact adhesive, Meredith had pared and set amongst Fagin and his pickpockets a magazine clipping of Mark Hamill dressed as Luke Skywalker. In the still shot from the 1977 film, the actor, positioned next to the Artful Dodger, stared out from the book’s cover, his youthful face eager and wide-eyed.

  John put down the beer and picked up the book.

  It felt cool and smooth. The yellowing pages smelled musty.

  He opened the cover. The spine made a small cracking sound. Meredith Berg-Olsen 7C was written on the title page in a round, girlish hand. Year Seven had been…when? 1980. He quickly did the maths: thirty-six years ago, already.

  Meredith, aged twelve, had loved Mark Hamill.

  She had not been in John’s class in Year Seven, but according to gossip, she constantly doodled the actor’s name in her notebooks, replacing the dot over the ‘i’ in ‘Hamill’ with a love heart. Most of the boys fancied her, including John. How could they not? She was gorgeous. But Christ, so aloof. Some of the boys, aggravated by her ennui, her lack of reciprocal interest in them, tried to harass, tease or bully her. It never worked. She never cared. The boys had snickered amongst themselves anyway, claiming their hollow victories.

  1980…

  John saw Meredith for the first time on day one of high school.

  Mum dropped him at the gate. He did not know a soul.

  The hot February sun beat down on him. The stiff collar of his uniform shirt irritated his neck, the tie felt like a noose. Alone, wishing himself invisible or dead, John stood at the designated assembly area outside the gymnasium, stomach churning, palms sweating, and watched the other children chat, laugh and goof off in their groups, hating them all for their innate sense of belonging. Each group emanated an invisible force field. Just thinking about approaching anybody made his mouth go dry.

  Across the quadrangle, he noticed a girl.

  The sight of her fascinated him at once. Her platinum hair in a blunt bob, her rail-thin frame and pale legs, that regal aura of sophistication, the cool way she stood with one hand on her hip, everything about her, in fact, crawled into John’s belly and started to burn. The singing in his blood did not make sense. His pre-pubescent cock stirred. He kept watching her. She never smiled. The other girls around her giggled and flounced and gazed, searching for an audience, but not her. She did not give a solitary goddamn. Falling in love felt like losing his breath.

  And then a boy with blonde wiry hair stepped up to him.

  Fearful, John moved away. No good. The boy stepped closer. Tall and thin, the boy did not look like a bully, yet you could never tell. The boy’s eyes were sunken and ringed with dark circles as if he had not slept. John tensed.

  “G’day,” the boy said, with an upwards jerk of his chin. “Red or blue?”

  “Huh?�
� John said.

  “Winnie red or blue? If you want menthol, you’re a poofter, and I can’t stand poofters.” The boy looked around, as if wary of being caught, and held apart the straps of his schoolbag to yawn open the zipper. Inside were packets of cigarettes with either red or blue designs. Quickly, the boy gathered the straps and shouldered the bag. “Anyhow have a Winfield,” he said, and winked.

  John felt lost for words.

  The boy said, “Two bucks a pack, fifteen cents per dart, so yeah, it’s cheaper by the pack, no discounts, no credit.” The boy waited, then gave an impatient sigh. “Come on, dopey. Wake up. You’re a smoker, aren’t you?”

  John had never touched a cigarette. In lieu of a home-made lunch, however, Mum had given him a two-dollar note to use at the canteen.

  “No worries,” John said, reaching into his pocket. “Give me a pack of red.”

  The boy laughed. “I knew it.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That you’d smoke reds, like me.” Clapping a hand on John’s shoulder, the boy said, “Pleased to meet ya. I’m Lyle Berg-Olsen.”

  “John Penrose.”

  “Johnno, hey?” Lyle shoved at him playfully. “Fucken hell, mate, we’d better be in the same class.”

  And they were. They became friends.

  Best friends.

  Lyle had a never-ending supply of cigarettes because he nicked them from his family’s milk bar. John and Lyle spent every lunch-time sitting behind the pine trees that lined the oval, practising their smoke rings, trialling the different ways that a Real Man might hold a cigarette—cupped inside a curled hand, pinched between forefinger and thumb, dangled from one side of the mouth—while the other kids left them alone. Was it John’s social awkwardness? Lyle’s penchant for sarcasm and condescension? Probably both. So what? John did not want or need any other friends.

  Soon after they became inseparable, John realised that Lyle’s twin happened to be Meredith.

  The sophisticated, mysterious, beautiful Meredith Berg-Olsen.

  Whenever John visited their house, she appeared only in glimpses: a ghost on the stairs, a phantom leaving the kitchen, a vision crossing a window as he and Lyle shot hoops outside in the driveway. She ignored John at school too. Fair enough. As a dork, he had no right to expect her attention.

  And then, out of nowhere, Meredith spoke to him.

  It was in 1983, the summer of Year Ten at the close of final term. By that time, Meredith had long outgrown her infatuation with Mark Hamill. She was still willowy but had developed mesmerising curves. John had changed too. After turning sixteen, he had grown to over six feet, his shoulders widening, his body becoming gangly, a smattering of hair and pimples sprouting on his chin. Like most other weekends, John was staying over at Lyle’s place. On this particular night, they had watched Mad Max on video after everyone else had gone to bed. Their sleeping bags were side by side in the rumpus room. Lyle had begun snoring as soon as the lights turned out. But John could not sleep. At about two in the morning, he crept past Lyle and went to the back yard.

  It was a warm night, full moon, the air sharp with the scent of a distant bushfire. He sat in a chair at the outdoor setting. Lighting a Winnie Red, he relaxed, listening to the shrill of nearby cicadas and the occasional rattle of leaves as possums leapt between trees. He was not sure what he would do over the summer holidays. Perhaps get a part-time job at Macca’s and start saving for a car.

  “Got a spare durry?”

  Startled, John turned in his chair. Meredith stood by the open back door.

  Barefoot, she wore a robe over baby-doll pyjamas, her hair mussed. He could not remember her ever looking at him before. A warm flush spread across his face. Self-conscious, naked except for footy shorts, he picked up and fumbled with the cigarette packet. Meredith crossed the patio towards him, eyes shining, as if his discomfort amused her.

  He shook a few cigarettes to the front of the pack and offered the Winnies. She took one. But oh, not with her fingers, oh no; she leaned over from the waist, the pyjama top falling away slightly to reveal the hollows of perfect collarbones and a hint of small breasts, and took one of the cigarettes between her teeth.

  His cock stiffened.

  As she sat back in the nearest chair, she drowsily blinked, pale lashes fanning against pale skin. Unlike the other girls, Meredith shunned makeup. Against the whiteness of her hair and skin, her irises shone an intense shade of blue.

  She met his gaze.

  Pinned, he stared back. His stomach dropped away.

  With a half-smile, she waggled the cigarette between her teeth at him.

  “Oh, shit, sorry,” John said, and blushed again.

  Reaching out with the lighter, he lit the smoke for her.

  How surreal. It felt like a movie moment. Any second now, she would toss the cigarette, take his face in her hands and kiss him. He would smell her and feel her tongue in his mouth. Taste her. She would murmur his name, press against him.

  But none of that happened.

  She drew on the cigarette, puckered her lips to blow out a thin stream of smoke, and said, “I fucking hate my brother. How come you like him so much?”

  Now, snapping out of his reverie, John stood up from the kitchen table and threw Meredith’s copy of Oliver Twist back in to the box. Luke Skywalker gazed earnestly past his shoulder. I fucking hate my brother. How come you like him so much? John reached for the stubby and knocked it over. Shit. Beer suds slopped onto the floor. He grabbed a tea towel and began to wipe up the mess.

  How come you like him so much?

  This was the problem with reminiscing, he thought, as he scrubbed the tiles. It leads you into deadfalls. He had to stop thinking about the past. Wasn’t the recurring nightmare bad enough? Did he have to remind himself of Lyle when awake too?

  “I heard a noise.”

  He glanced up. Meredith stood in the hallway, her face blank and drawn.

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “I knocked over my beer.”

  She noticed the box on the table and approached. Tentatively, she reached out for Oliver Twist. With a slight frown, she rubbed at the cover with her long, manicured thumbnail. He took the book away from her and returned it to the box.

  “I’ll start packing today,” he said. “No time like the present.”

  Dazed, Meredith raked fingers through her hair. “Packing? Are we moving?”

  “Yeah, remember? Back near that bakery I used to like.”

  “The Swiss bakery?”

  “Yep. We’re moving this weekend. You’ve got a bathroom all to yourself. And no common walls, okay? I’m at the back of the house, you’re at the front.”

  Unexpectedly, she clutched at his hand and smiled.

  His heart gave a little hop.

  Most of the time, Meredith’s eyes were watery and faded. However, when she allowed herself a genuine smile, like now, her eyes lit up from within and became the blue of hydrangea petals, the sky on a warm day; the delicate lightness of a mill-pond in summer. John wanted to tell her these things but did not have the words.

  “I’ll like our new house, won’t I?” she said.

  “Yeah, course you will. You’ll love it.”

  She dropped his hand and began to sort, absent-mindedly, through the box of memorabilia. John watched the churn of its contents: school reports; envelopes of photographs developed from rolls of film; birthday cards; a pair of knitted fingerless gloves (which she had worn every winter despite the frequent detentions for disobeying the uniform rules); school diaries. Meredith plucked out an envelope of photographs and opened the flap.

  “Leave it,” John said.

  “Leave it?” She hesitated, and then slitted her eyes. “Fuck you.”

  “No, come on. What’s done is done.”

  She took out the photographs. At first, she studied each on
e carefully. Sighing, John got himself another beer and sat at the kitchen table, waiting for her inevitable reaction. After a minute, she began flipping through the photographs, faster and faster.

  “I don’t recognise anybody,” she said, voice rising. “Who are they?”

  John held out his hand. “Stop. Give ’em here. Grab a chair and we’ll go through them together. Okay?”

  She obeyed. He recognised the photographs at once: their Year Eleven trip to Central Australia. A lump rose in his throat. His mouth twitched into a grim smile.

  “What is it?” Meredith said. “What do you see?”

  “You.” He held up a photograph. “That’s you, right there, sitting on the camel.”

  John had taken the snap with Meredith’s camera. Just moments before John clicked the shutter, the camel had been sitting on the red dusty ground with its legs tucked under it, and Meredith had climbed into the seat with the help of the tour guide. The photograph captured the animal in its clumsy process of standing up. Its back legs were straight, its front legs still folded at the knees. Tipped forward on the seat, clinging to the seat’s handrail and captured mid-shriek, was seventeen-year old Meredith, wearing jeans, white sneakers and a blue v-neck jumper. It had been cold in the Outback, despite the desert and clear skies, John remembered.

  “That’s me?” Meredith said, smiling uncertainly. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “But I look terrified. Why am I terrified?”

  “I guess you were afraid of falling off.”

  She began to nod. “Yes. That’s why. Yes, I was afraid of falling off.”

  John took the photograph from her. She let it slip from her fingers without resistance. Every time they prepared to move house, Meredith rediscovered this memorabilia box, and made him go through these photographs with her. She always picked the same packet too. Was she feigning her memory blanks? How else could she pick the same packet every single time? One look at her confused face, however, told him that her amnesia was genuine.