Game Theory

by Barry Jonsberg

  Here’s the point.

  Half a million may have been there. But, after the event, maybe twenty million claimed to be there. Woodstock was so awe-inspiring, millions of people lied just to bask in reflected glory.

  I would love to lie and say I was there when Summerlee gave up her job at the supermarket. Maybe in a few years I will. Perhaps there will be thousands of us, sitting at dinner tables, or in shady corners of bars, saying, Hell yes, I was there when Summerlee Delaware gave up her job. I remember it like it was yesterday . . .

  Gutless was there. By some cool cosmic coincidence, he happened to be doing a little shopping when Summerlee breezed into the supermarket on Monday afternoon. Even more remarkable, he was close enough to the customer service desk to catch the whole exchange. Gutless is already a legend in my book. This just confirmed his status. This is what he told me:

  ‘I was browsing the stationery section, looking for a cheap calculator, if you must know, when I happened to glance up as Summerlee entered the store. She caught my eye and I waved but she cut me dead, like always. She was wearing her uniform. You know, that pink thing with red beading and that crap logo on the back and on the front pocket. Makes you look like you’re wearing a fucking condom. Anyway, she walks past me and picks up a bottle of Coke from one of those refrigerated displays close to the checkouts. They put those things there, so when you get bored queuing, you think you might as well have a drink, so you buy one. Same with the chocolate bars and the women’s magazines and . . .’

  ‘Yeah, Gutless,’ I said. ‘I’m aware of chainstores’ marketing strategies. You were saying?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Well, I thought then that there was something different about your sister. Nothing I could put my finger on, but her eyes were kinda hard, you know, and her mouth this thin slit. I mean, I’d seen her working there before and she always looked monumentally pissed off, but this was different. Like she had a purpose. So, I get back to browsing ’cause it’s not like there was anything dramatic going on, you know? Just picking up a bottle of Coke, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘Gutless, have you been rehearsing this?’

  ‘Whaddya mean?’

  ‘It’s like you’re doing the slow build-up thing, man. It’s a cheap narrative ploy.’

  ‘Yeah well, fuck you, Jamie. You wanna hear this or not?’

  I made a circular motion with my hand and smiled. Of course I wanted to hear it. But I also wanted Gutless to know that I knew he was stringing me along.

  Gutless gave me a hard stare, but continued. ‘So she goes to the customer service area where the supervisor is flickin’ through this ledger and looking mega important. I have to say, she does seem like a real bitch. She’s got a mouth like a cat’s ringpiece, for one thing. All puckered, like a smile would split her face in two.’

  ‘You talking about the supervisor or Summerlee?’

  ‘Yeah, well, both, come to think about it. But I mean the supervisor. And Summerlee kinda slinks up, you know? Sort of embarrassed and worried. And the supervisor, she keeps on flickin’ through the ledger, ignoring your sister, letting her hang. So Summerlee coughs and still the supervisor ignores her. Eventually, she closes the book and gives your sister the long, hard glare routine as if she’s a pile of dog shit someone’s just stuck under her nose. Her mouth gets even more puckered. I thought her face might turn itself inside out, the way she was going.’

  I laughed. I liked the idea of someone’s face turning inside out. Gutless is pretty crap at English. He’s not interested. But with observations like that, he could do okay if he just made more effort. I sounded like a teacher, so I put the idea to one side. Gutless was in full flow, anyway.

  ‘And then she says, all snotty, “Good of you to join us, Summerlee. And only . . .”, she glances at her watch, “. . . twenty minutes late for your shift.” And Summerlee keeps her head down. She’s swishing the Coke bottle in her hand and looking all . . . sheep-like’

  ‘Sheepish.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The word you’re looking for is “sheepish”.’

  Gutless frowned. ‘What-fuckin-ever, man,’ he said. ‘So. The supervisor glances around, checking she’s got an audience, you know? And then she lets rip. Tells Summer she’s on thin ice, that if she doesn’t want the job she can leave, there’s plenty of people who can replace her, she’s unprofessional and the store values customer service and Summerlee is lousy at customer service and they’ve had complaints and this is her last chance. Tellya. Rips her a new arsehole. And the supervisor’s enjoying herself. You can tell. I mean, what a turd. Customers had stopped to listen and then the supervisor finishes with, “So what have you got to say for yourself, young lady?” and Summer looks up. Her hands are behind her back, swishing that Coke bottle back and forth.’

  I thought I knew how this was going to end. I mean, I know my sister. And it’s not a good idea to keep on smacking a live hand grenade with a sledgehammer. The end result is guaranteed to be ugly.

  ‘And Summer mumbles something. “What did you say?” says the supervisor. So your sister speaks louder. “I said fuck you, Miss Abbott.” There’s this stunned silence. “What?” says the supervisor. “Sorry, you deaf bitch,” says Summer. She really raises her voice now. She’s yelling. “I said, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. You can take your job and shove it up your arse. You can . . .”’ Gutless waved his hand around. ‘Hell, man, I can’t remember all she said. But she didn’t repeat herself once and it was awesome. Some of the things she told her to do were . . . oh, man. But the best thing was the supervisor’s face. Stunned mullet. This can’t be happening. By this time the whole store’s frozen. There’s not even any canned music going on. Just Summer’s voice getting louder and louder and the supervisor’s face getting redder and redder. It was beautiful, man. When she finally finished, a couple of us started to clap, it was that good. Turns out your sister wasn’t finished. She unscrews the cap of the Coke bottle.’ Gutless smiled. He was reliving the scene and bathing in its glory. ‘And all this Coke comes bursting out. She’d been shaking it for ages, so it was like a bomb waiting to go off. Goes all over the supervisor. Drenches her, man. Hair is dripping with the shit. And still the Coke keeps coming. Tellya, man. I nearly pissed myself laughing.’ I laughed myself. This is not behaviour I normally approve of, but sometimes you don’t have any choice but to immerse yourself in the moment. I could see Summerlee, loaded with the bullet of information that she was a multi-millionaire and therefore immune to anyone’s crap. Emancipated, her finger on the trigger and without a care in the world. Payback. Hell, I don’t have anyone I hate, but if I was loaded I’d probably start looking for someone to fit the bill. Summerlee. What a flawed masterpiece.

  ‘So, this woman is, like, standing there with Coke and shit dripping from her hair and face and Summerlee holds out her hand, slaps some coins down on the counter. “Four dollars,” she says. “For the Coke. On the grounds I’ve quit this shitty job, I’ll forget about the employee discount. But you really should get someone to mop up this mess, you know.” And she walks out.’

  ‘Wish I’d been there,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Gutless. ‘She sorta ruined it though, right at the end. She’s out the store and then she turns back. “Fuck the lot of youse,” she yells. Tellya, man. I wish she hadn’t done that. It sort of fucked up everything that had gone before.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘That’s Summerlee for you. She can take something perfect and then screw it up at the last moment.’

  Gutless nodded sagely. I meant it, though. Summerlee was destructive. It was embedded in her nature. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but admire what she’d achieved.

  There was no doubt about it. Nothing became her in her job like the leaving of it.

  None of us in the family saw or heard from Summerlee that entire week. She didn’t pick up her phone and we had no idea whether that was because she recognised our numbers and ignored the calls or because she was too trashed to be
able to speak.

  But we heard of her.

  The television news was splashing her story around and she was being interviewed right, left and centre. The local paper made her the front page headline. Mum and Dad heard her on local radio. It was clear Summer was loving the attention, and maybe a psychologist would have found the reasons obvious. It was equally clear she hadn’t just ignored Mum’s advice about avoiding publicity, she was actively courting it. We watched a news report on the Thursday evening and maybe the viewers would mistake that slightly glazed look in her eyes as stunned excitement. I could tell she was stoned out of her gourd.

  After the report finished – Summer even implied she was thinking about charitable works, for Christ’s sake – Mum pressed the remote and the screen went black. We sat in silence for a moment.

  ‘I’ve got a very bad feeling about all this,’ said Mum. ‘She is simply not mature enough to deal with such a huge amount of money. I worry about what it will do to her.’

  ‘I’d love to disagree,’ said Dad. ‘But I’m with you. I think there are troubles ahead.’

  I was surprised. Mum and Dad never normally criticised any of us if a sibling was around.

  Dad turned out to be right on the money about troubles. None of us, however, had the slightest hint just how devastating those troubles would turn out to be.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mum shook me awake. It had been so long since anyone had had to do that, that I jerked upright, my heart hammering.

  ‘What the hell?’ I croaked. I was completely disorientated. My bedroom was in full darkness, for one thing, and Mum was nothing more than a looming bulk against the black. All those buried tales of monsters coming to get you in the night momentarily resurfaced. For a second I was five years old again. I sat up further. My eyes were sticky and I was conscious I was naked beneath the sheets. I pulled them up instinctively, rubbed my eyes with one distracted hand.

  ‘Wake up,’ said Mum.

  ‘I’m awake,’ I muttered, though that was not entirely true. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s your sister.’

  I thought at first she meant Phoebe. That she was ill, had to be rushed to the hospital or something. I reached over to my bedside lamp. The green numerals on my alarm clock flashed over to three-thirty. Saturday morning at three-thirty. I turned on the light and ran a hand through my hair, kept the sheets firmly in place with the other. Mum resolved from monster-in-the-cupboard to Mum, hair akimbo and face taut with anxiety. A different kind of monster.

  ‘What is it?’ I repeated.

  ‘She’s been arrested.’

  Even then it took a second or two to make the connection. Phoebe had been arrested? What had she done, stolen another kid’s peanut-butter sandwich? My brain started working again. Summerlee.

  ‘What’s she done?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Mum. ‘We’ve just had a call from the police station. We need to get down there now, so get dressed.’ She stomped out of my room, not exactly slamming the door behind her, but not being too gentle either. I swung my legs out of bed and searched for my clothes on the floor. I brought my T-shirt up to my nose and took a sniff. A bit smelly, but it would do.

  Dad was standing by his bedroom door when I came out. He clutched the belt of his dressing gown, nervously tightening and untightening it. Maybe it was a substitute for Summerlee’s neck. I tried a smile and so did he. Neither came out well.

  ‘Summer, huh?’ I said and shrugged in a kind of ‘what-can-you-do?’ way. No one could ever accuse me of being at my verbal best at gone three in the morning.

  ‘I just hope it’s drunkenness,’ said Dad. ‘Drunk and disorderly, something like that.’

  I nodded. Was it my imagination or was his hair turning greyer and thinner by the day? Can a daughter do that to you, like a virus sapping your strength, eating away unseen?

  ‘We’ll bring her home, Dad,’ I said and this time he nodded.

  I turned to the stairs and remembered that time when Mum had put Summerlee’s lunch box back in the fridge, the day when Summer blew up and refused to go to school. I experienced that profound sense of sadness all over again. And it occurred to me that maybe, over the years, Mum had been given no option other than to be strong, that all the women in my family were tough and Dad and I were content to let it be that way. I shook my head and padded down the stairs.

  Mum was pacing, jingling car keys in her hand. I thought about asking if I had time for a piece of toast, but the expression on her face convinced me it wouldn’t be wise. I grabbed my runners from beside the front door and stuck my feet into them, but didn’t bother tying the laces. Within two minutes of my rude awakening I was in the passenger seat of the car, barrelling through the night and encased in threatening silence. I kneaded my eye sockets with the balls of my palms and blinked furiously.

  ‘You’ve got no idea what she’s done?’ I asked. The silence was too brooding. It demanded I break it.

  ‘Arrested, that’s all I know,’ replied Mum. ‘The police officer gave no details. I suppose we’ll find out when we get there.’

  Maybe it wasn’t surprising that my brain was not at its sharpest. Being woken at three-thirty in the morning probably does that to you. But it was only now that an obvious question occurred to me.

  ‘Mum?’

  She adjusted the rear-view mirror slightly.

  ‘What am I doing here?’ I continued. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to keep you company. But . . . I’m just not sure what good you think I’ll be.’

  ‘She’s your sister.’

  It wasn’t an answer. It was a statement of fact. And then, suddenly, I realised. Mum didn’t want me there to offer assistance. She wanted me to witness. This is what happens when you screw up, Jamie. There are consequences to your actions and those consequences can be terrible. A prison cell. Humiliation. Pain and suffering for your family. Watch all this carefully. Learn. And never, never do to me what your sister has done. It was unfair, but understandable. In a way, I was being punished for Summer’s crimes, whatever they were. Like finding a pile of crap in the kitchen and rubbing a dog’s nose in it. Any dog, not necessarily the culprit. This is what transgression smells like. This is the odour of judgement. Inhale. And be scared.

  Then again, I was nothing like Summerlee and Mum knew I would never deliberately get in trouble with the law. So maybe it was a different kind of punishment. Maybe I was being forced to think about all those occasions when I could have helped Mum out, but didn’t. This is the world I’ve always had to deal with, Jamie. Now you know how it feels. If that was the case, then I wasn’t the only person who should have been in the car. Dad also abdicated responsibility; how many times had he put up sandbags against a rising tide of troubles and let Mum do the baling when it all spilled over?

  The beauty of game theory is that it makes you constantly examine how other people might react to situations, but it’s also a pain in the arse for the same reason. It was the middle of the night, I was tired and these thoughts buzzed round in my head, offering possibilities but skirting insight.

  I wound down the car window and let the cool night air bathe me. It smelled of rain.

  Mum found a parking space outside the cop shop. The station was brightly lit, curiously welcoming in a way. Come on in. It’s nice and warm and safe in here. Mum walked quickly, purpose in her paces, and I trailed a couple of metres behind. I hadn’t tied my shoelaces in the car and I worried I’d trip myself up. The waiting area was spartan: a few straight-backed chairs against the walls, a reception desk that was deserted. Someone had made an effort to brighten up the walls by fixing posters at intervals. Helplines. Something about Neighbourhood Watch. There weren’t even any magazines to while away the time, but I guess a police station is not a doctor’s waiting room. Car thieves reading Motoring Weekly. Mum went straight to the desk and pinged one of those old-fashioned bells that have a button on the top. The sound echoed through the building, but no one came. You could steal these cha
irs, I thought, and make a clean getaway. Mum muttered and jingled the car keys again. Summerlee was somewhere here, and that was a strange, disturbing thought. It was difficult to imagine cells behind those neat doors, places with bars and the taste of hopelessness. Much easier to imagine neat cubicles where people peered at computer screens and ate takeaway sandwiches at their desks.

  Mum was about to ring the bell again when a burly officer in uniform appeared as if from nowhere. He was wiping his face with the side of a hand, possibly brushing crumbs away. He had a cardboard cup of what looked like coffee in his other hand.

  ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ he said to Mum. ‘How can I help you?’ ‘I’m Janet Delaware. I believe you have my daughter, Summerlee, here.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the cop. ‘We certainly do. Please take a seat, Ms Delaware. The arresting officer will be right with you.’ He picked up a phone on the desk and pressed a button. Mum stood for a moment as if unsure whether to follow the instruction or attempt to listen in to the conversation. In the end, she turned away and sat down beneath a poster publicising a twenty-four-hour drug support line. Almost immediately she started jingling her car keys. It made an annoying sound. I sat next to her and took the opportunity to tie my laces. I wondered if someone had taken Summerlee’s away, assuming she had any. Didn’t they do that so you couldn’t hang yourself in your cell? I sat forward, forearms on my thighs, and inspected the grouting between the floor tiles. It had once been grey, but now it was black.

  They kept me and Mum waiting for forty-five minutes. I suppose it’s not unreasonable. Perhaps the guy was off somewhere interrogating a suspect or filling out forms. Wasn’t that the way it was in TV shows, the endless form-filling a barrier to catching the baddies? But I couldn’t help concluding it was insensitive. Summer was eighteen. Yeah, an adult. But still eighteen. And her mum was there, not knowing whether she had dropped litter in the street or caved someone’s head in with a hammer. Forty-five minutes of agonising speculation was excessive. Mum never stopped the key jingling, but she didn’t say a word.