Am I Right or Am I Right?

by Barry Jonsberg

  “Sorry. I just want to get this right. Instead of going to work—the best place, I’d imagine, to carry out your undercover role—you’d throw a sickie to meet up with 007. He’d hand you a two-way radio receiver pen, give you a pair of shoes with laser-controlled missiles, and maybe wire your underwear. Am I getting warm?”

  That got the Fridge to her feet. She didn’t look pleased.

  “How dare you, Calma? How dare you be so rude? You resent me. Maybe you’ve got reason. But there’s no excuse for cheap jibes at the expense of someone you don’t even know.”

  “Oh, I know him, Mum. I know all about him.”

  “How?” demanded the Fridge. “How do you know about him?” It was a good question, so I ignored it.

  “He’s a slimeball, Mum. He’s a disgusting chauvinist who undresses you with his eyes. I know that from my own experience. But I also know he is abusive toward Vanessa. His own daughter.”

  “What?” The Fridge was shocked to her frosty core. She stopped in the middle of pulling out another cigarette and stared at me. The anger had been wiped from her face. Now there was incomprehension. “What do you mean?”

  “You want me to define abuse?”

  “How do you know? Has Vanessa told you this?”

  It was my turn to be shifty.

  “I just know, all right?”

  “Has Vanessa told you?”

  “I’ve seen the marks.”

  “Has she told you her father has abused her?”

  I’ll give her that. The Fridge would make a good cross-examination lawyer. I decided to go with withering scorn.

  “Of course not. Do you really think she’s going to go around talking about it? That’s not the way it happens, Mum. It’s something kept secret, even from your best friend. But just because the shame is too great to admit doesn’t mean it isn’t going on. I know, Mum. I know.”

  “And what evidence do you have?”

  “More than you’ve got for the great casino heist!” I was struggling and I knew it. The phone rang but we ignored it. “Look, Mum. You know as well as I do that sometimes you don’t have firm evidence—no smoking gun, no fingerprints or DNA samples—but you know inside what’s the truth. Trust me on this. Please. The guy is poison. He’s hurting Vanessa. I’m sure of it.”

  The Fridge lit another cigarette. Her hands were trembling as she took a drag, but when she spoke her voice was surprisingly strong and steady.

  “Thanks, Calma, but I don’t need a sermon on trust from someone who is ridiculing everything I’m saying. I’ll tell you what, though. I won’t undermine you. In fact, I’ll acknowledge that it is valid to trust your instincts if you’ll acknowledge mine. Sometimes, despite ‘feelings,’ the absence of evidence might indicate someone is innocent. What do you think?”

  “Him or me, Mum. Do you trust him or me?”

  “That’s cheap and unfair. This has nothing to do with Mike. The question you are asking is do I trust your feelings or mine?”

  I waved my hands around helplessly. I hate finding myself in an argument where I’m being outmaneuvered. It doesn’t happen often.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “So which is it?”

  She laughed and I almost hated her for it.

  “You’ll learn one thing in time, Calma,” she said. “You have to trust yourself, because if you can’t, then you might as well give up on everything.”

  “You’re wrong about him.”

  “It’s possible. But I can’t accept it just because you say it.”

  “It’ll end in tears.”

  The Fridge placed the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. She seemed, suddenly, very tired.

  “It normally does, Calma. It normally does.”

  The phone continued to ring in the background.

  Chapter 24

  Many miserable returns

  The clock flicked over to midnight. I watched, fascinated, as it ticked off the minutes, relentlessly, remorselessly. Nothing could stop it. Even if I turned off the power, time would click by nonetheless, taking me step by step into the future. I stared at the glowing green digits, divided by a pulsing colon, and realized another year had turned over.

  Seventeen.

  There was no excitement in the word and I wondered why. Then a zero flickered and was destroyed by the appearance of a one. It felt like a countdown, my life flicking on and on while I lay on my side, powerless to prevent it.

  Happy birthday to you,

  Happy birthday to you,

  You look like a monkey

  And you smell like one, too.

  All I could manage was a stupid rhyme. A silly chant from primary school. No, I didn’t feel excitement. I felt sad. Even as I watched another digit clocking up, I knew I was bathing in self-pity. The trouble was, it felt good. I clung to it like a birthday present.

  Eventually I fell asleep. I don’t know if I dreamed, but when I woke my head felt thick and woolly. The morning hadn’t brought any answers. But it had brought an idea. Even as the Fridge bustled into my bedroom with a cooked breakfast, a card, and forced cheeriness, I turned the idea round and examined it from every possible angle. It didn’t shine. It didn’t glitter with hope. The more I looked at it, the duller it seemed. But it was the only idea I had.

  The Fridge explained that she would hand over my present at the restaurant, a small Thai place on the riverfront. She had booked for four people, which came as a relief. I’d had this horrible feeling she’d been planning to unveil the slimeball over the beef massaman and tom yum goong. True, it would have given me the opportunity for a few choice words.

  Waiter: Can I interest you in the phat prik sod?

  Calma: I doubt it. But bring him over anyway, will you?

  But on balance, I wasn’t prepared to sit there all evening, head down, while Nessa’s dad leered at us and inhaled rice noodles. I wouldn’t have gone. Maybe the Fridge realized that and felt it was a confrontation best avoided. Whatever. I was to meet her there at seven. She would go straight to the restaurant from work. I’d tell Vanessa and Jason the arrangements.

  I turned down the offer of a lift to school, claiming it was the perfect day for a bracing walk. It was a sign of the Fridge’s distraction that she swallowed this. She drove off to destinations unknown and I walked in the opposite direction. And I don’t mean the opposite direction from the Fridge. I mean the opposite direction from school. The time had come to put my idea to the test. I didn’t hold out any great hopes, but fate had crapped in my back pocket—it was my only chance.

  When I eventually arrived at school, about ten minutes before lunch, prospects had brightened. No guarantees, mind, but the whole thing had gone much better than I had dared hope. Now all I could do was wait.

  There was no point trying to catch the last ten minutes of class, so I hung around the canteen, waiting for Vanessa. This took time, since she doesn’t exactly race from class. Some species of amoebae could give her a head start in the hundred-yard dash and still ooze over the line first. But she finally turned up and I explained the evening’s arrangements while she eroded yet another banana. There was barely time to get through this simple procedure before the warning bell rang for afternoon classes and we wandered over to the English block.

  What a lesson! We discussed the poetry of Dylan Thomas, the roly-poly Welshman with the pickled liver of an alcoholic and the voice of an angel. If you never read another poem in your entire life, read “Fern Hill.” It uses words in ways I’d never dreamed possible. It’s language you can taste and feel. The ending brought a sharp swell of tears, an absurd mixture of happiness and pain. Quite literally, it took my breath away. I was still in my seat minutes after the lesson ended, my jaw scraping the desk, when Miss Moss came and sat opposite me. I had a study period next, so I wasn’t in any hurry, and she must have had a free period too because there weren’t any boys with sloping foreheads and non-opposable thumbs gibbering at the windows. I was hoping she wouldn’t bring up my own attempts at poetry, which in
comparison seemed pathetic, stale, and lifeless.

  She didn’t. She sat, head inclined, as if gathering her thoughts. I tried to blink back my absurd tears.

  “Calma,” she said finally, “I thought you’d want to know. I’m leaving the school at the end of term. I’ve been offered a job at another school and I can’t afford to turn it down.”

  The tears I’d been trying to keep at bay returned with reinforcements. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Miss Moss was leaving. I’d anticipated it. Nonetheless, the news hit me like a fist. I hung my head, and my eyes sought the poem, but the print was too blurry to read.

  “I’m sorry,” she continued. “If it’s any consolation, the only reason I’ve even given any thought to staying on here is because of you. I’ll miss you, Calma. It’s not often you get a student who loves English like you do. And you have real talent. But I’ve got to make a living and there’s no guarantee of permanent work here.”

  I lifted my head and brushed impatiently at the corner of one eye. It was ridiculous to spout like this.

  “Why not?” I said.

  She cupped her face in her hands, elbows fixed on my desk. I looked her in the eyes and there was sadness there.

  “The only option here is another ten-week contract. Even then, assuming I get one, there’s nothing to say I’ll be teaching English. To be honest, the prospect of teaching IT or drama to a bunch of Year Nine boys full of testosterone doesn’t appeal. This is what I love, Calma. Teaching English.” She nodded toward the poetry book on my desk. “And I’ve been given a wonderful opportunity. Sanderson has offered me a full-time, permanent post. In English. I can’t turn it down.”

  I closed the book slowly and reached for my bag. Never let it be said that Calma Harrison doesn’t know the right way to behave, that she can’t see the big picture. Although I felt like something had dropped beneath me, my voice was surprisingly strong and even.

  “I’d be disappointed if you even thought about staying, Miss Moss,” I said. “You are, by a long way, the best English teacher I’ve ever known. To stay here would be like asking Van Gogh to paint by numbers or Ian Thorpe to wear floaties. The only thing that surprises me is that you weren’t snapped up long before this.”

  Miss Moss smiled and touched me gently on the arm.

  “Calma, you’re a remarkable student and a remarkable young lady. Promise to keep in touch. I want to help you in your studies, your poetry. We can’t let that slip away.”

  I stood up and slung my bag over a shoulder. My smile wasn’t even forced.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You don’t get rid of me that easily.”

  Bloody oath, I thought as I left the classroom. No way. I was ready for a change. Nearly five years at the school and it hadn’t got better in all that time. Not really. The only thing that worried me was whether I could insist, when I enrolled at Sanderson next term, that they put me in Miss Moss’s English class.

  Jason sounded strange when I rang him after school to let him know the arrangements for my birthday bash. Even though I don’t have a wealth of experience in matters of the heart, I understood the nature of the problem. And I couldn’t blame him. When he wished me a happy birthday, it was with a brittle edge of insincerity, as if what he really wanted to say was, Eat excrement and die, you bald loser. I knew I would have to build bridges with Jason. When I considered it from his point of view, I realized I would have been frosty as well. So many incidents, so many dramatic episodes in our short relationship, and had I explained any of them? Not one. I hadn’t even returned his calls after the flight from the Fridge’s love nest. He deserved answers and I vowed I’d give them to him. I was lucky he didn’t chuck me there and then. But he didn’t. He told me he would pick me up at six-thirty and then we’d collect Nessa.

  Maybe after the meal we’d have a chance to talk.

  At least I had some time to think about it as I showered. I kneaded my scalp into a foamy lather, idly wondering how much money I was saving the Fridge on shampoo and conditioner. When it came time to towel off, I noticed my head was left with little speckles of red lint where the material had caught. I wiped off the condensation from the mirror and looked more closely. My hair was growing back. True, I was still bankrupt in the flowing locks department, but there was a dark stubble all over. My head was turning into Velcro. I brushed off the snagged fibers and went to work on my makeup.

  I was ready by six and, if I say so myself, fairly resplendent. I’d gone for discreet glasses (I was tired of eyeballs that felt as though they’d been marinated in household bleach), black cargo pants, and a black cotton blouse. Chic, I thought. Plus, if my country needed me, I could be parachuted behind enemy lines to assassinate a tin-pot dictator without having to change. As the evening turned out, I’d have probably had more fun doing that.

  Jason arrived right on time and I did my best to be upbeat and charming. He kissed me on the cheek (not a good sign—it was one of those air kisses Hollywood stars have perfected) and told me I’d get my present at the restaurant. I toyed with the idea of having a brief word then—you know, a quick apology and a promise that all would be revealed later on—but he was back in the car before I could open my mouth.

  We drove to Nessa’s in silence. The rush of air and the roar of the engine made conversation impossible and I didn’t feel he was in the right mood for my mouth pressed intimately against his ear. We parked in Nessa’s drive and I jumped out. Vanessa opened the door. I bobbed my head around her shoulder but couldn’t see her mum. I didn’t know if that was a good sign or not. Nessa looked stunning in a paisley caftan with matching headband. While I was slitting the throat of an imperial guard in the shadow-filled corner of a third-world palace, she could light candles for universal peace and sing “We Shall Overcome.” Jason, meanwhile, could do the stern-faced, uncommunicative role of government spokesperson.

  Nessa struggled under the weight of a gift-wrapped package of annoying dimensions—the sort that makes it impossible to guess what’s in it. She also told me that I wasn’t getting it until dinnertime. I know I should be more mature, but presents make me go all gooey with anticipation.

  As we drove over the river, water sparkled and flashed with the reflections of lights strung along the banks. People moved lazily in front of shops, cafés, and restaurants. Night-market stalls were being assembled and a couple of early buskers had taken up positions, tuning their guitars and arranging their open cases expectantly. A few stars gleamed above the palm trees and the air was sweet with spices. It was peaceful.

  From: Miss Moss

  To: Calma Harrison

  Subject: Villanelle

  * * *

  Calma,

  It’s time to try the villanelle form. This is a very rigid poetic structure and the basic rules are: sixteen or nineteen lines; iambic pentameter; four (or five) stanzas of three lines and a concluding four-line stanza; the first line of the poem is repeated as the final line of the second and fourth stanza; the third line of the poem is repeated as the final line of the third and (possibly) fifth stanza; the first and third lines come together as a final rhyming couplet; the rhyme scheme is aba aba aba aba abaa.

  Couldn’t be more straightforward!

  Don’t worry. It is a very difficult form and often used simply as an exercise in rhythm and rhyme. Very few villanelles are actually any good because the structure is so prescriptive. The magnificent exception to this is Dylan Thomas’s Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. Read it and weep!

  Good luck,

  Miss Moss

  Villanelle for Jason

  * * *

  Don’t think this silence speaks—that I don’t care

  For you, and draw dark shutters of the mind.

  Look in my eyes and read the message there.

  The spur is sharp, but not enough to dare

  Those words my tongue just cannot bear to find.

  Don’t think this silence speaks—that
I don’t care.

  I cannot tell you all, I cannot tear

  Up stillness by its roots, but stumble, blind.

  Look in my eyes and read the message there.

  I think you sense a rift beyond repair,

  And to our parting have become resigned—

  Don’t. Think! This silence speaks that I don’t care?

  That is absurd. Trust grows, in time (like hair!)

  And bald resentments will be left behind.

  Don’t think this silence speaks, that I don’t care—

  Look in my eyes and read the message there.

  Chapter 25

  Thai died

  The Fridge hadn’t arrived when we got to the restaurant, but the waiter showed us to our reserved table. Jason still sported a mouth like a cat’s bum, so I took charge of the drinks order. I went for the house chardonnay. Okay, I was still a year away from the legal drinking age, but it was my birthday, and anyway, the waiter’s eyes were so transfixed on my chest he wouldn’t have thought to ask for ID. Vanessa was in a good mood, because she ordered something like a tropical rainforest. I half expected David Attenborough to peep out over the rim of the glass, parting fronds and speaking in hushed tones. Jason had a beer.

  All well and good. But conversation wasn’t exactly zipping along. Nessa, as you know, wouldn’t have been out of place in a religious order bound by a vow of silence. She blinked occasionally over the foliage of her drink, doing a remarkable impersonation of a potted plant. Jason’s eyes slid all over the place but managed to avoid mine. We had the animation of three paving slabs. I went for a subtle icebreaker.

  “Come on, you buggers,” I said. “Give me presents.”

  But that didn’t work. Jason and Nessa refused to hand anything over until the Fridge deigned to make an appearance. They didn’t know her like I did. I just hoped they hadn’t got me anything perishable. My cheery gambit spurned, I opted for humility. Or maybe it was simple begging.