Closed, Stranger

by Kate de Goldi

  And since when did Dee write anything other than a shopping list?

  ‘Hello darling,’ she said, giving me the usual half-bright, half-hopeful smile, shutting her book. It was a foolscap notebook with unlined pages; the cover was lilac and green with painted pansies and straw-coloured leaves and a white dove carrying a heart in its beak. Very femme, very Dee-ish, I thought, pouring cereal, wondering how to start my spiel.

  ‘You’re up early.’ Early for me, she meant; it was ten o’clock.

  ‘What’s that?’ I pointed a spoon at her notebook.

  ‘Just a journal,’ she said.

  Just a journal? ‘The secret diary of Dee Jackson, aged forty-three and a half?’

  ‘Forty-two and a half, thank you.’

  ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘Dreams, reflections, everyday stuff. And don’t look at me as if keeping a journal is beyond the likes of me. I like it. It’s Sue’s idea, she said it was a good therapy tool.’

  Sue was the counsellor.

  ‘And anyway, for your information, I’m thinking of changing my name.’

  Excuse me?

  ‘Going back to Summers. What do you think?’

  I didn’t think. Couldn’t. Couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Close your mouth, Max.’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ she said, opening up her journal. I could see she’d filled nearly half of it. ‘I’m deadly serious.’

  ‘Dee, I need to talk to you —’

  ‘Good,’ said Dee, surprising me yet again. ‘You need to talk. You need to heal—’

  —a Sue piece of wisdom, if ever I heard one—

  ‘—you could talk to Sue, you know,’ said Dee, as if I’d spoken aloud. ‘If you want to. If it felt more comfortable.’

  ‘Dee, could you stop talking like a fucking therapy text book and listen to me!’

  ‘Don’t swear,’ she said, automatically. ‘Sorry. Go on.’ She pressed her lips together.

  ‘It’s about Christmas — not the meaning of life, okay?’

  ‘Oh, good,’ she said. ‘I want to talk about Christmas, too—’

  ‘I’m not doing Christmas, Dee—’

  ‘No, me neither. I didn’t think you’d want to,’ she said, talking quickly so I couldn’t interrupt. ‘I know you hate it, I hate it too, I’m sick to death of it, totally sick to death — all that fuss, the endless decorating, the cooking, the stress—

  ‘Thank God,’ she said, ‘thank God I can finally say: Enough.’

  Excuse me?

  She was going away. She was going away by herself. For ten days. Leon could stay on in Hamilton, or he could come back and stay with Martin and Gilly. Whatever he liked. It was not, she insisted, an elaborate scheme to make life difficult for the old man. Turned out she’d talked about it to him — knock me down with a feather — and he was fine, just fine. They wanted me to stay with them. They certainly didn’t want me to be here, alone. Christmas was too much for them this year too. They’d keep it low-key.

  I was so stunned by this turn of events I went back to bed. Call me perverse, but it suddenly seemed woefully un-maternal of Dee to abandon the festive season so radically, to up and go away for the entire Christmas period, and to pack me off to the old man and Gilly’s, consign me to a house dominated by a six-week-old baby. As for Dee going away for that long by herself, it was so utterly unlikely I could barely get my head around it.

  But she hadn’t finished serving up unlikely scenarios. Later that morning she came into my bedroom and told me that, to be absolutely honest, the place she was going wasn’t actually a farm-stay. It was on a farm, yes — beautiful environment, swimming in rivers, bush walks, blah, blah — but the hosts were, well, they were therapists. They ran a nine-day course, spiritual contemplation, personal growth, life goals, etc, etc.

  Well, what do you say when your mother is behaving so out of character it’s virtually a medical emergency? I just stared at her and wondered what on earth might come next.

  ‘Knock me down with a doobie,’ said Westie, when I reported the whole circus. ‘Sounds like a cult, Doctor. Sounds like Dee’s going to be offering herself to some guru, some woman-eating messiah.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, eyes wide, ‘there’s a career option: woman-eating messiah. Rich woman-eating messiah.’

  I didn’t believe him for a minute. There was only one woman he was interested in — and, as far as I knew, she didn’t have much money. The harem had been non-existent since Vicky’s arrival; he’d dropped right out of our old social scene then, and hadn’t re-entered after her departure. Far as I knew, Westie was celibate and solitary. Like me. We were solitary together, monkish, silently dedicated to lost loves. He carried on with the same old stuff, though, the flesh-studded conversations, the lecherous references. But I’d lost my taste for Westie’s lewd commentaries, his pitiless eye.

  I left him early that day and went for a slow, stoned, agonising solo run around the back of the airport. My knee was improving slowly, after the enforced rest and treatment, but my body felt very elderly, whinging with the effort.

  Like all the other armchair psychologists in my life — the old man, Gilly, sundry friends of Dee’s who gave unasked-for advice by telephone — Dee was thrilled at my starting to exercise again. When I came in that day, hot and bad-tempered, she reached up and kissed my sweaty cheek, gave me a squeeze.

  ‘This is good,’ she said, ‘really good. It’s good that you’re getting back to your old interests—’

  Sure: dope, deadliness, despair—

  ‘It’ll take time’ she said. ‘Healing’s all about time.’

  ‘Shut up, Dee,’ I said. I decided I hated her new therapeutic vocabulary, her busy, optimistic, self-realising view of life. The old gin-swilling, spending-spree Dee might have had her disadvantages but at least she was a devil you could know and ignore.

  ‘There’s no fucking healing, it’s totally depressing. I’m reduced to running like a spastic.’

  ‘Don’t swear,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, all right, I won’t swear and that’ll make everything nice and better, won’t it?’

  ‘Are you mad with me for going away?’ she asked quietly. ‘Do you feel I’m abandoning you?’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ That was too much. ‘Drop the psychoanalytical shit, Dee, before I really go crazy.’

  ‘Do you feel like you’re going crazy?’ she said, her face wreathed with concern.

  ‘Dee! Shut up!’

  We stood there in the kitchen, eyeballing each other for several seconds. Dee blinked first.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she said. ‘Sorry. You know me, I get carried away. But I’m concerned about you, Max, it’s been so hard for you.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said, wanting only to lie down, not talk, not think about why life was continually making itself over; why it was that you had to deal with seismic upheavals on such a regular basis, changed circumstances, changed personalities, good times ripped away, the so-called reliable features of your life as solid as sand.

  ‘I just want things to be … something,’ I said, beyond sense.

  ‘What?’ said Dee.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said, going off to my bedroom, to my bed and blank ceiling, the most predictable things I knew.

  There are only two things to say about Christmas that year.

  One, it was mercifully quiet. On Christmas Day we drank and ate and opened presents but no relatives showed their faces, no one sang carols or wore paper hats or cried. In the afternoon we slept, the old man and Gilly worn out with parenting on such a grand scale, Leon and I worn out with food and wine. God knows what wore the baby out, unless it was some precocious inkling of life’s full horror.

  We stayed at the Hagley apartment for ten days. Leon spent most of his time playing with Julia or taking her for walks in the park. He didn’t seem to care how a twelve-year-old boy pushing a pram looked to the rest of the world. He was heavily into brotherhoo
d; he liked dressing the baby, bathing her, waving things in front of her little squashed nose.

  I dangled my fingers in front of her once or twice, I rocked her bassinet helpfully if she cried, but mostly I ignored her. I was concentrating on fitness rehabilitation. I ran around the park every day, a few times with Westie, whose neck was better and who, irritatingly, didn’t seem to have lost much condition at all. He pulled well ahead of me each time on the South Park leg and would be leaning on the drinking fountain in the Gardens when I pulled up, panting, destroyed. I asked him if he’d been training in secret but he just laughed, said — and I quote —Doctor, it would take more than a mere car accident to puncture the condition of such a perfect physical specimen as myself.

  End of quote.

  A mere car accident. It wasn’t the first time in the history of our friendship that Westie had rendered me speechless, but those words were something else, a constant staccato in my head for days after that run. I brooded on them, I kept every last wounding syllable fresh and sharp, stored up for a time I knew was coming, some significant moment that was running full speed towards me and Westie.

  On New Year’s Day he arrived round in his new car. He’d been working over the public holiday period, night-shift security and day-time supervision of the irrigation system at the warehouse, the location of which he hugged close to his chest, a little Westie forfeit, since I’d declined to work with him. He was the man in charge for two months, while Nick Cyprian did business up north.

  As far as Liz and Dave knew, their boy, their prodigal, the one they didn’t push or probe too vigorously in case he upped and spat in their face again, their number one son had a job with a security alarm systems company.

  I saw him pull up outside the front entrance. I was sitting at the window staring out at the greenness, the heat haze, the made-to-order summer’s day marking the entrance of a glorious new year. I didn’t like beautiful days anymore; I didn’t like settled, untroubled weather, the hour upon hour of windless warmth, the shimmering summer leaves, the rich sunsets. They were a rebuke, an insult. I wanted the dead skies and bare branches of winter, the fetid air, the dragging cold.

  Westie’s mood, on the other hand, was irrepressibly buoyant. He was pleased as hell with his new wheels; they had grunt, they had style, but best of all, they might even realise a decent resale return, should the need arise. The ownership papers were in his name; he could cash this babe in whenever he wanted — for which, read: extra readies for the off-shore mission.

  I ran my eye over the car, trying not to think about the vehicle it was replacing, the car that had finished up stoved, battered, doorless, written-off; the car that had been the object of four tow companies’ interest only — what? — thirteen weeks ago.

  ‘The mills of insurance grind fast, Doctor,’ I said, staring at the shiny paintwork, the intact doors.

  ‘Haven’t read that one, Doctor. Get in, I want to show you something.’

  ‘Can’t—’

  ‘Yes, you can, c’mon, you’re not doing anything — I’ve got a lovely New Year’s present for you.’

  I got in, like a good Doctor, and he started across town, eastwards, taking our old route to Scarborough. The streets were quiet, the heat visible in the distance, but the car was cool.

  ‘Air-conditioning, Doctor,’ said Westie, showing me all the buttons — ‘stereo, four-speed windscreen — Jap import—’

  ‘Where’re we going?’ I asked, wanting very much not to go up the hills.

  ‘Surprise,’ said Westie, but by the time he’d turned south and started winding through the old industrial parts of Sydenham I guessed the destination.

  ‘Business headquarters,’ I said, relieved we weren’t making for Scarborough or the Bellbird. We hadn’t breached those haunts for three months and when we did, if we did, I wanted to be good and prepared. I didn’t want to be captive, I didn’t want Westie at the wheel.

  The warehouse was in a cluster of buildings — perfect camouflage, Westie said. They were old Railways buildings, unused for years until some enterprising developer bought them up, weatherproofed them, flicked them on. Now they were in the hands of Nick’s landlord.

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘the blind guy.’

  ‘Yeah, but he can read his power bill. He did read his power bill — high as the sky, because of the lights — and he came looking for Nick. Turned out he didn’t care. As long as he gets his rent on the button he sees nothing, hears nothing—’

  ‘And keeps his mouth closed.’

  ‘Same for you, Doc.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  I watched him unlock the bolt on the massive double doors. He had a big key ring with a dozen keys of varying sizes which he attached sometimes to the belt of his jeans, though only two of the keys were for functioning doors — the outer doors and another smaller door somewhere inside.

  ‘Authenticity,’ he told me, winking. ‘Gives Liz and Dave a thrill.’

  It was so typical of Westie to do the complete role, to go for dramatic props in whatever new phase he was in. In his various sports phases he’d always had every last bit of gear and a subtle personality adjustment, virtually a change of posture. In his religious period it had been another reinvention, and a different series of props — crucifix, a Good News Bible, some Christian rock CDs, for God’s sake. He even managed to dress a bit like Cliff Richard without anyone — including me — taking the piss out of him.

  Nothing changed, I thought, getting a whiff of that chest-tightening sensation, that short-of-breath feeling. He should have been a joke with that bunch of keys jingling at his hips — but I wasn’t laughing.

  There were tiers of stacked cartons and barrels in the entrance to the warehouse, so that it looked, at a cursory glance, like some kind of storage facility; but within seconds the muggy greenhouse atmosphere became apparent, the smell of vegetable matter and soil and moisture in an enclosed space. Except there was no soil. It was just row upon row of huge dope plants in water-troughs. For a stretch the size of a tennis court all you could see was the eerie green of plants under powerful fluorescent lights.

  I could only whistle, low and long. It was an impressive sight, no doubt about it. And the irrigation system was even more jaw-dropping — elaborate plastic hosing wired to timers which set off spraying at staggered intervals.

  ‘Who installed it?’ I asked.

  ‘Mate of Nick’s. Twenty grand,’ said Westie. ‘The all-up investment.’

  I followed him as he wandered down the rows, surveying, tweaking a leaf here and there, crushing it, sniffing, like some grape-grower or orchardist.

  ‘Look at those heads, Doctor. Isn’t it a beautiful sight? Don’t you just want to get in there? Personally, I can’t bear the wait. But as we both know,’ he dropped his voice, leaned close to me so I could smell his tangy, male breath, ‘horticulture is all about patience. And weather, of course. Though we’ve dealt with that totally fucking brilliantly, wouldn’t you say?’

  I was ready to go by then, the warm, thickened air getting to me, closing up my throat. But Westie had a last flourish.

  ‘And this one,’ he said, stopping, delicately embracing the leafy spread of a well-headed plant on the end of the top row. ‘This is yours, Doctor. All your very own some time after early February when every last beauty is harvested and dried. Gratis, of course.’

  He had his arm out ready to slap my back. I swear his eyes were shining.

  ‘Enough for six months, I reckon, Doctor, so that when you’re holed up in this godforsaken city next winter, in need of serious diversion, you can roll a doobie and think of Uncle Westie.

  ‘Whereabouts unknown,’ he added, deadpan.

  I stared at the huge plant, its seeded heads stretching for the lights, suspended just out of reach. Quite a gift, really, by anyone’s standards.

  ‘Happy New Year, Doctor,’ said Westie, his voice loaded, it seemed to me, with a dozen meanings.

  It was that, finally, that did it, I think �
� that salutation. Happy New Year. It was the impossibility of it, for a start — a happy new year for Doctor Max? — and the challenge, the needling tone I thought I caught behind the innocuous words.

  But also — I admit it — the apology offered too. Buried somewhere in Westie’s promise of that plant was an attempt at atonement, maybe: a clumsy, groping, almost-apology for having driven the car that killed my girlfriend. That’s how I took it, anyway.

  But almost-sorry, even really-sorry — neither was ever going to be good enough for me, not by a very long way. And the thought of my miserable coming year — years — conducted completely solo while Westie swanned off to parts sunny and unknown, but really to find his happiness — that thought drove me crazy, finally; it seemed totally untenable. Unforgivable.

  I hated him.

  All the rage I’d lain on in the months since Meredith’s death, all the blame I knew was his by right, all the guilt I’d felt for her having been in the car reared up, overwhelmed me, stopped me cold and told me just one thing: that I hated him.

  I hated our friendship, too, its entire chaotic history. And I hated this latest grand, generous gesture with all its resonances which seemed to symbolise everything that had ever been between us — the unevenness, the roller-coaster unpredictability, the frustration and giddy glory, the ceaseless, competitive vying for position, the in-your-faceness and the other, deeper matters wreathed in silence.

  I suddenly couldn’t stand him calling the shots any more; I couldn’t bear him ignoring my bereavement even as he signalled a Westie-ish kind of sympathy; I couldn’t bear him ploughing on with his plans, complete with running-commentary, and disregarding my hollowed-out, no-prospect life, my story.

  I couldn’t bear our soiled, striving, battle-weary, insincere friendship, our slightly sick, compulsive interdependence, like that of prisoner and keeper, where the cold truth is never mentioned. The cold truth seemed unavoidable to me now, though I’d been resisting it for months. The cold truth was: I couldn’t bear him.