The Apology

by Ross Watkins

  ‘The very best and worst humanity can muster.’

  ‘But was there something particularly traumatic? Maybe all that immorality just builds up after a while?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s the job. It’s been going on for a while. He’s been disappearing from duties.’

  ‘You don’t think—’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘And that’s not meant to be an indictment on you.’

  ‘Perhaps best not to go there again tonight.’

  Adrian laughed. It could have been the joint or it could have been the company he was keeping.

  ‘How’s it going with Noo? The two of you aren’t talking?’

  ‘It’s not going well, I can tell you that much. But it started long before these allegations. People think that because she’s quiet she either doesn’t speak English well or she’s not as passionate as they are about stuff, but when she has a desire she certainly makes it clear – at least to me. And what she wants more than anything is simple, but complex at the same time. All she wants is another child, but it’s complex because of the reason why, and also because I’m against the idea.’

  Wendy pulled on the joint and blew the smoke towards the moon. ‘Do you think it’s a deal-breaker?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve tried talking her out of it, tried arguing that Tam’s enough for us, for the world – that the world doesn’t need another Pomeroy to help screw it up. But no luck. I even tried getting a dog, knowing full well that she’s not keen on pets because she doesn’t like the hair getting everywhere. But I read an article about the glut of animals at the local shelter and said we should take a look, help out. Tam got all excited about the idea so Noo bowed to the pressure. I knew it was an unfair substitute for what she really wanted – unfair for both the animal and Noo. Anyway, we drove to the shelter, and when we got there the dogs all barked and paraded at the front of their pens and we walked along and picked one – this terrier cross we named Cho. On the way home Noo held the dog in her lap and told me she’d eaten dog as a child, at her uncle’s restaurant in Hanoi. It was a delicacy, she said, then she laughed – laughed hard – and told Cho not to worry, that she didn’t like the taste anyway. I hadn’t heard her laugh that way for ages.’

  ‘That sounds like a happy thing.’

  ‘Yeah, it was. We all liked the dog and she took a liking to me most. We put her bed in front of the bookshelf in my study, and she’d scratch around and hang out with me at night while I marked exams. Then I was rubbing her belly with my foot one night when I felt a lump with my toe. I thought it was probably a cyst so we let it go for a while, just to see if it went away by itself. It stayed like that for ages, but then one day Noo called me at work and said Cho was having some kind of fit.’

  ‘Like a seizure?’

  ‘Yeah. Noo was flipping out. I told her to take it to the vet straight away, and she did, but that was pretty much the end of the line for dear little Cho.’

  ‘A tumour?’

  ‘More than one, actually.’

  ‘When was this? And why didn’t we hear about it?’

  ‘It was a couple of years ago. We only had her for about six months. Plus you guys are on Perth time.’

  ‘True. Sometimes it feels like a different continent over there.’

  Adrian nodded. ‘You want another?’ The joint was spent.

  ‘Definitely not. I’m the wife of a police officer with a short fuse, don’t you know?’

  ALEX

  After Adrian told him to cut out the crap that night in his car out the back of work, Akker tried to look for some new interest, some distraction. Marley was good for that. But he also made Akker aware of the tightrope he was walking.

  At school one day they were hanging in their usual lunch spot under the trees at the side of the oval. Mr Pomeroy walked past and nodded to the group of boys, and as soon as he turned his back Marley was up, grabbing his groin and moving his fistful up and down.

  ‘Come for some of this, eh, homo?’ he said to Mr Pomeroy’s back, but not so loud that he could actually hear. Anything for a response from his boys. ‘He is such a cocksucker, that guy,’ he said, turning back to them. ‘I heard he wants to suck yours, Akker,’ he said, wanking a fist into his open mouth, his tongue pushing against his cheek.

  His mates laughed and agreed, and Akker laughed too, suppressing the need to wince. He wondered if somehow he’d unknowingly let out a word or given a look that revealed his thoughts. He felt he might throw up right there on the grass, but Marley sat next to him and bumped him with his shoulder. ‘Just grilling ya, bro,’ he said. ‘Don’t cry about it.’ Then Akker told the boys about his dad going poofter-bashing, ages ago, about what they did to those two fags that night. This took some of the heat off, but Alex knew a word for what he was feeling: duplicity.

  Marley was new to the school that year and had edged his way into Akker’s social group with bravado and cocksureness. Akker didn’t mind. He recognised Marley’s brand of persuasion, and the guy often amused the boys with his antics. But out of everyone in the group Marley favoured Akker the most. They riled each other a lot. Akker liked it when Marley slung an arm around his neck and walked with him. He couldn’t say Marley turned him on, but he was attracted in some way to his sheer presence. Akker felt tougher around him, more capable. He felt empowered to push boundaries, to grab his dick and thrust it at the world. He was there by Marley’s side when he exercised his will on the more susceptible students – the younger ones, the geeky ones, the ones whose bodies were lagging behind. He laughed along with Marley at their misfortune, their idiocy, their otherness. Until one time Akker got ahead of himself and made an error, a game-changer which turned the tormenter’s gaze back towards him. This was to set in motion a machine Akker hadn’t contemplated.

  It happened in the change rooms after a game of soccer for physical education class. The boys were showering and Akker was one of the last in. ‘Hurry up, you guys!’ he yelled. ‘Stop hogging the showers.’

  ‘You can come in here,’ Marley said over the hiss of showers. ‘As long as you don’t mind getting shamed by my huge one.’ Some of the guys laughed.

  The boys all showered in underpants, but when Akker opened the cubicle door he saw Marley standing under the running water completely naked. Akker latched the door and, as he took his own clothes off, couldn’t help glancing at Marley with his eyes closed under the stream of water. Akker removed his underpants too.

  ‘Hurry up, it’s freezing out here,’ he said.

  ‘Just get under and I’ll get out,’ Marley said.

  So he did. But Marley didn’t get out, not right away. And as they stood there, Akker touched him – it could have been an accidental brush with the side of his hand. When Marley didn’t react he did it again, and this time his intentions couldn’t be denied.

  What followed was a rush. Marley swore and said he was being a fag – that only a fag would do something like that. Akker denied it but it didn’t make any difference: Marley was all over it. Akker couldn’t remember the exact words he used. Marley shouted and grabbed his towel and clothes, then opened the cubicle door to leave Akker exposed as the rest of the guys, drawn by the commotion, looked in and laughed at Akker, dripping in the stall with a shrinking hard-on.

  ‘Look at the homo,’ Marley yelled. ‘He’s a fucken homo!’

  *

  The fight on the oval happened not long after. Marley continued targeting Akker and news of the shower incident quickly spread. Akker was sick with anxiety, so he stayed home when his mother allowed it. Some days he just wagged. Then, the night of the fight with Marley, Akker wrote the third story for Adrian, and into that story he funnelled all the frustrations he’d experienced not only over the past weeks and months, but ever since he’d first laid eyes on the teacher. Ever since Adrian had first expressed belief in him.

  When Akker
sent that final story, he knew that he was broken. And that there was only one way to fix himself – to fix this situation. Deflection. He had to gain their sympathy, not their mockery. Otherwise, he didn’t know how he could cope.

  *

  Then came the meeting with Mr H and his parents, with his father getting furious, saying the teacher would pay, and his mother saying ‘my boy, my boy’ over and over. Then word got around fast, especially after the police came to school and pulled students and teachers out of class for interviews.

  At first people were supportive, saying how brave he was in speaking out against sexual abuse, that it must have taken guts to come forward, and that Adrian Pomeroy would get what he deserved once they carted him off to prison – because everyone knew what they did to people like him in prison. Akker basked in this. Partly because he was being lauded, but also because it suppressed the stray stones of guilt rumbling around his mind. He was recognised as the victim, and so he was able to wrest back some degree of control.

  But after only a few days this feeling of control was revoked. It began with graffiti on the wall of the toilet near the English block: Akker Bowman is a fucken liar. Then a message scrawled on the seat at the bus stop: Eat shit Akker you dog. And it didn’t stop there. Online, his social media accounts were hammered with posts, some championing him, others suspicious of the allegations. Once the trolling really kicked into gear, he deleted his accounts. But the final point was made loud and clear when his name and mobile phone number were written in thick black marker on the wall of the change rooms. It had been scrubbed off by the next day but the damage was done, and he received about a dozen text and voice messages saying what a piece of shit mofo hoaxer he was, that his prank wasn’t funny and he was ruining other people’s lives for some fucking power fantasy, and that everyone knew he was a closet gay. These people didn’t know what had led to the allegations in the first place, though he doubted this would ever truly be known. He wasn’t even sure he wanted the full story to be told, regardless of what his school motto advocated.

  There was one voice message of support from someone he didn’t recognise, but it didn’t matter. He destroyed his sim card. The fact was, his anonymous supporter had it wrong and the vast majority were right. He’d been the biggest dog of all time, and what made his stomach turn the most was the thought of Adrian enduring his own tirade of abuse. No doubt his marriage was being ripped in two and his son was crying because he didn’t understand why.

  Akker thought more than once about going to the house again, one last time – to make sure Adrian was okay, to glimpse the wreckage he’d tolled, to comprehend the ramifications. Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance things weren’t as bad as he thought. Maybe Adrian and his family were hanging tight. Maybe the police would find insufficient evidence and the case would be dismissed. All would be okay. All would be sweet and they could each go on with their lives …

  But of all his fantasies he knew this to be the most elaborate and least credible. No. There was no return, no reverse gear on this machine, so there was only one thing within his power to do. Even though it would not make things go back to the way they were, this decision would at least allow him to start putting things right. This decision would be his final act of love. This final act would be his apology.

  *

  Akker stood in the middle of a maths lesson. His chair scraped the floor.

  ‘Where might you be off to, Mr Bowman?’ the teacher asked, but Akker ignored him and walked to the front of the room and out the door. Boys in the class were making some kind of noise but he didn’t care anymore – not about them and not about the traps lurking elsewhere on the school grounds. They could all go fuck themselves.

  He left his bag behind but none of that mattered. He made his way past the front administration building to the gate, where he turned and stuck his finger up at whoever might’ve been watching, at the school itself. He walked out the gate knowing he wouldn’t be back. Not ever.

  Then he ran.

  He snatched at thoughts as he sped along. He thought of the way Shannon now looked at him – as though her big brother had become prey, helpless and fragile. She’d stopped teasing him, joking with him, being affectionate. Then there was his mother, who heaped on the affection, touching his hair and chest and back as though she could somehow reclaim him from what he had become, her eyes and the etched shape of her mouth speaking of the wound. She hadn’t cried when she was around him, not since the meeting with Mr H, but he heard her at night in her bed. And then there was his father, whose rage bucked beneath his skin. This knowledge had not set them free, nor was this knowledge a mere blemish. This knowledge was trauma.

  Akker thought of these things as he ran along the street away from the school and towards the first person he wanted to reach out to. The flat wasn’t all that far. He arrived after twenty minutes or so, out of breath on the doorstep.

  ‘Dad, are you home?’

  Danny opened the door and Alex rushed into his arms.

  ‘Mate, what’s going on? What’s happened?’

  But Alex didn’t reply. He couldn’t utter a word. Not yet. First, he needed to use his father’s phone.

  ADRIAN

  When a six-year-old boy is being coerced behind a closed door, he is capable of suspecting that what he is doing is wrong. So is the other one, the older one, although he probably knows better, should know better. Perhaps he doesn’t, though. What then? Who is to blame? Who is at fault? Can fault even be attributed? The six-year-old boy doesn’t know to ask these questions. These ideas are beyond his education, his cognitive development. But not beyond his experience. And so begins the conspiracy of words and actions. Whole lives pass under the conspiracy’s veil. Until, at last, one of those boys asks how the veil will be finally lifted. How? How on earth?

  *

  Adrian woke on his parents’ lounge just before six. Tam was asleep beside him, curled between him and the backrest, head on Adrian’s chest. Late spring breathed through the curtains. The morning was too formative for anyone else in the house to be up, especially after last night’s finale. He knew the repercussions of the evening were yet to play out – with his brother, with Wendy coming back reeking of pot, and the bruises still there in the air from riling piss talk. He’d realised when they pulled up in the driveway that he’d completely forgotten about the ice cream, and was kind of glad that this detail, the supposed purpose of why he and Wendy had taken off in the first place, was a distant taste on everyone’s lips.

  But none of that was a concern for him right then. There was a decided calm to the morning, an assuredness in the filtered light and yet-to-come urban noise – stifled yawns, boiling kettles, teaspoons in cereal bowls, passing traffic. None of those impositions. Just his boy on his chest, ear to his heart, the only one to know its rhythm. And Adrian knew then that he loved his son like nothing else in the world, and it would always be so. That neither Akker nor Noel could bring a halt to such knowing. That there were certain things which couldn’t be touched.

  He edged himself off the lounge, placed Tam’s head on a cushion, spread the long blanket along his body and smoothed it with a hand. In the kitchen he prised open the fridge door and took a guzzle of milk. When he closed the fridge he noticed on its door a photo he hadn’t seen for a long time, but realised immediately how deeply its 1980s shapes and colours were embossed on his consciousness. He realised also the irony of the photo as a surface, a framed moment: that the two boys showing their happiest faces were masking something else entirely.

  But Glenda knew none of that, of course, and here it was, magnetised to the fridge door like a trophy of the past. On another day he might have taken the photo and put a match to it, although he knew his mother would ask questions; if Noel had got his predisposition to policing from a genetic source, it was certainly her. But this was a day to let sleeping dogs lie.

  Adrian collected his keys and walle
t from the bench and went back to the lounge room to kiss his son’s forehead. He then left.

  He was convinced he wasn’t running away: he knew he no longer had a place there, and that his wife’s needs took priority. The thought of her waking to him in the house, coming from the spare room to eye him with her best attempt at downplaying her disappointment, was neither endearing nor reassuring. He figured it less confusing for the boy and his mother if he left. Rafiq was right – Noo needed space. As did he.

  He got into his mother’s car, started it and peeled away for home.

  There were few cars on the road. This part of Sydney was only rousing, while nearby Parramatta was no doubt already abuzz with delivery trucks and small-business owners. But Adrian cruised, taking the backstreets through suburbs where families like his eked out their living, suffering with drama and tragedy, asking questions and finding few answers. Sometimes there were celebrations worth shouting for. Small triumphs. Victories. Coups. Little things to celebrate and be thankful for. This was his Sydney. These were the families whose kids he had once taken joy in teaching. Trying to convince them of the value of language, of imagination. Sharing their achievements. Kids going some place – moving forward. With pride and articulation. Finding the best words to express aspects of themselves and the world they know. These were successes worth striving for. This was something to believe in on a good morning.

  *

  Adrian was home for a couple of hours before some unexpected guests arrived. He’d made coffee and toast, then sorted through his novels in the study only to find the school library’s copy of John Cheever, which he’d forgotten he’d borrowed that day, back with Akker in the quiet study zone. He thought of this, picked it from the shelf, then sat at the front porch table and read.