The New Girl (Downside)

by S. L. Grey

  The girl lifted her hand halfway, then went into the house. The driver limped back to shut the gates. That must be Danish. What did Mother call him? The ‘tame brown’? What the hell did that mean? He was a pitiful figure, but although he had some sort of crippling disease that made him skewed and lopsided, and though his head was swollen to double the normal size, in some way he was more recognisable and less strange than the woman and the girl. Maybe he was South African; that might explain it.

  After his day’s work Ryan grabbed the loaf of bread and tin of jam from his makeshift nightstand and headed through into the kitchen, pleased to remember the route. He was quickly finding his bearings in the house. It was beginning to feel, if not like home, like a plush furnished apartment hotel. Space, privacy and comfort. And a wad of hundreds stashed in his backpack. After all the shit of the last week, he’d landed with his bum in the butter, to be honest. A song came into his head. I gotta feelin’ something something.

  He tapped out the tune on the counter top as he slotted two pieces of bread into a toaster and pushed the slide down. It didn’t seem to respond so he followed the power cord out of the machine and crouched down under the counter to trace it to an electrical socket.

  That tonight’s gonna be a something something.

  He was hungry. He was looking forward to his toast. He realised he hadn’t eaten anything since the morning.

  He was still searching for a socket when he heard the click of heels entering the kitchen.

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ he said, and then looked up as she approached. It wasn’t Mother; it was the girl. He’d never seen her out of her school uniform and she was dressed in a discomforting outfit of vintage dress and high heels that were both too big for her, and a straw hat, as if she was in one of those old French paintings of riverside picnickers. She was dressed like a small copy of a picture of a woman.

  In this get-up, another girl perhaps would just be playing the fool, expecting to be laughed at, but this girl was not playing. That milk-pale skin was flawless and her grey eyes burnt through him. He was hot where her stare landed.

  ‘Hello, mister,’ she said and he realised he’d never heard her voice before. It was deep and rich and sombre, not the voice a young girl should be using. The spacious, hard-surfaced kitchen was the perfect auditorium and the space between them vibrated with the sound. It grabbed his guts. ‘I am Jane. How’re you doin’?’ She held out her hand like her mother had. A strange little girl playing at being grown-up? Or what?

  ‘I’m Ryan,’ he said, emerging at last from under the counter and standing up straight. His heart was beating in his groin. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from hers. The toast limpened in the disconnected machine and Ryan pressed his hands to his brow. A thundering pain was starting up in his head.

  ‘Danish took me scouting this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Do you want to see what I got?’

  Ryan glanced around him. ‘Uh, okay.’

  She raised her left hand, which she’d been holding clamped to her side, extended it to him and opened it slowly, proudly.

  There was some sort of insectoid mess smeared over her palm, spiky shards and yellow-green entrails trickling over her pale wrist. A very meaty locust, probably, which she had crushed in her eager grasp.

  ‘It’s a burd,’ she said, pronouncing the word like a foreign term.

  ‘No, it’s a—’

  ‘It flies in the sky.’ She stretched her smudged palm to the ceiling, looked up to it and grinned – that same animal snarl baring miskept teeth, but this close he could see the unguarded delight in her face.

  ‘It’s pretty,’ he said.

  As soon as he got back to his room he had tried Karin again. This time, instead of flicking off, it went to voicemail. He thought quickly. ‘Listen, Karin. I’m in the hospital. I... I had an accident. Please tell Alice that I’m okay and that I love her. That’s all I wanted to say.’ He thought he’d sounded convincing. A critically injured man trying to make amends. He needed Alice to call him, and if a little white lie was going to make that happen, it was all for a good cause.

  But now it’s Sunday afternoon and she hasn’t called, and neither has Karin phoned back. Either Karin didn’t buy his lie, or she just doesn’t care. He doesn’t give a shit about her either. But what about Alice? Did Karin even tell her? And if she did, what does it mean? Could it really be over with Alice?

  For the tenth time today, Ryan feels eyes on his back. Jane’s down there, he knows. As he hauled the cleaning equipment out of the store this morning, she trailed him ten metres back, slipping between columns and behind bushes, just as she has since Friday afternoon, as if she’s playing some private game of spies. He looks down over his shoulder and, yes, there she is, gazing up at him from a slashed thicket, as still as one of the concrete statues. Her grey eyes burn into him and his skull pounds.

  It’s not right, her being left to wander this building site all alone. The way she mooches about after him reminds Ryan of Alice when she was much younger, maybe four or five, testing her independence but at the same time always safe in the orbit of her father, glancing across every now and then for acknowledgment that she was protected and loved.

  He’s seen just how isolated and alone Jane feels at the school among those rich and cliquey kids; he’s seen the void she drags around with her, but it makes him sad that here in her house, which can only feel like a hotel to her – a temporary stop, not a real, loving home – she looks just as alone and lost. What is it with these people who have kids and don’t even love them? You need a fucking aptitude test to open a bank account or buy a cellphone, but you need no qualifications to prove that you can love a child. It’s just wrong.

  Wouldn’t it be equally wrong for him to just leave her here, without at least showing her that she deserves love?

  He’s managed to ignore her plight so far, as much as he loathes doing so. He’d love to show her that there’s good in the world, but he’s been mindful all weekend of how his rashness with Tess forced him to move before he was ready.

  It would be a mistake, another part of him mentions quietly through the screaming in his brain. He should just go.

  Jane looks up at him curiously from within a bower of peach trees, and he imagines he sees pleading in her icy eyes. He remembers how she fingered his blood when it dropped on her head last week at school, how he thought about a stabbed animal. He shouldn’t have anything to do with her. He should just leave.

  Sometimes she disappears. At these times he gets the sense that she’s vanished into the entrails of the house. Her paleness makes him think of a subterranean creature, like the mole-people her parents must be intending to entertain in the windowless new wing. In all the occupied rooms there’s that plastic smell underlaid by a pervasive dank smell of earth as if this is all a facade for show while the family lives in a hole in the ground somewhere. When she’s not out trailing him in the garden, he can imagine the girl huddling in the dark underneath the couches, hiding her pale body in a fort before the exposure of her next week at school.

  But she always reappears, materialising like a flash of danger in his peripheral vision just as he’s feeling at ease, sending a warm spike into his guts. The ripping pulse she causes behind his eyes has become familiar.

  Now she half raises her hand again and yells, ‘Let’s get outta here!’

  He can survive this. He mustn’t do anything stupid.

  His phone trills in his pocket. It’s such an unfamiliar sound to him that at first he thinks it’s a bird until it kicks into the full rendition of Britney Spears’ first hit, something Alice chose for him.

  He puts the phone to his ear, glancing towards where he saw the girl. She’s gone, and he’s relieved. For some reason, he can’t keep his daughter and the new girl in his mind at the same time.

  ‘Daddy?’

  ‘Alice, sweetheart.’ Ryan remembers to keep his voice down, to sound injured. He walks deeper into the thicket, finds a dark place out of sight.
r />   ‘Are you all right, Daddy?’

  ‘I’m okay, love. Thanks for calling.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I...’

  ‘Are you going to get better?’

  ‘I think so... Yes. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Mom didn’t tell me until now. She doesn’t believe you. She says—’

  A hadeda ibis clatters out of the undergrowth and blares away, squawking to its companion.

  Silence.

  ‘Alice?’

  ‘I can’t fucking believe it, Daddy! You are lying! You’re not in the hospital!’

  ‘Wait. It’s... I’m... There’s a garden here.’

  ‘She was right. You’re lying!’

  The call ends.

  Ryan slumps down against a tree trunk, scraping his back as he goes. That was his last play, and he’s fucked it up completely. Goddamn fucking hadedas.

  He searches his phone for the last number received but it’s listed as unknown.

  An SMS comes in.

  he texts back.

 

  Ryan switches off his phone and pulls out the SIM card. Even if it was a trap, they won’t have been able to trace his location from that short call, surely. He thinks of the police crawling around Bedford Centre. He’s safer here than anywhere else for now. He’ll hide right here in the house until he can make a plan. The appliances here, for one thing, are worth something. He wouldn’t be able to carry much, but what if he steals Danish’s car? Come to think of it, these people won’t have a bank account. Whatever business they’re in, they’ll have plenty of cash on the premises. ‘Heed the notices,’ Mother warned him. Of course. Upstairs. They must keep it all there.

  He rushes towards the house, but is halted by a deep instinct of self-preservation. Wait! Think! You do not want to be caught stealing from the home of a Serbian mafia leader.

  He forces himself to stop, breathe. Tomorrow’s Monday. Danish will take the girl to school. He’ll have to wait until the right time, act normal until then. He does not want to get caught.

  Chapter 17

  TARA

  Tara awoke yesterday morning so weighted down with loss that she found it hard to breathe. She refused the mug of rooibos and honey Stephen brought her, blocked out his voice when he tried to convince her she was overreacting; that Baby Tommy was nothing more than vinyl and paint, just a doll – a thing that could easily be replaced. She numbly let him attend to her blistered palm, glad of the sting when he smothered it in Betadine and bandaged it up. She deserved to suffer. How could she have been so stupid?

  She spent the rest of Sunday cocooned in their bedroom, the curtains drawn, drifting in and out of a sweaty, troubled sleep. That evening, ignoring Stephen’s entreaties to join him in the lounge, she slipped into the kitchen and fished Baby Tommy’s warped head out of the kitchen bin where Stephen had carelessly thrown it. She wrapped it in tissue paper, slunk upstairs to her sanctuary and carefully placed it in Baby Paul’s drawer, unsure what else to do with it.

  This morning – Monday – she’s feeling slightly better. Stronger. Even feels a smidgen of shame. Really, why is she taking this so hard? It’s almost as if she’s mourning the loss of a child – as if Baby Tommy was actually a living breathing entity. She has to snap out of it. Stephen’s right. All Tommy is – was – is a doll. A thing. A nothing. A commodity.

  Yet the memory of his little melted head plopping onto the kitchen tiles still makes her ache. She’s read several articles discussing the psychology behind Reborning, but she’s never thought of herself as one of those women who yearn so desperately for a baby that they start treating their Reborns as living beings. Women who take their dolls out for walks in strollers, burp them, dress them in fresh clothes and nappies every day, even go so far as to buy devices to insert in their chests that ape the sound of a heartbeat.

  She pictures Stephen and Martin standing around a tiny grave in the back yard behind the plunge pool while she sobs next to them in a black lace dress and veil. Jesus, she thinks. Maybe she has finally lost it, after all.

  Her phone beeps again. Yesterday evening she finally sent a message to Batiss: She received a slew of replies but in her grief-stricken state she hadn’t mustered the energy to read them. But she can’t ignore Batiss forever. She snatches the phone from the side table, scrolls through the messages.

 

 

 

 

 

  And then, simply: <>

  Fuck this, Tara thinks. She doesn’t need this. Not after the week she’s had. Not after all that business with Martin, her concerns about Jane, and Duvenhage’s bombshell about Raymond Scheider Primary. Sure, she needs the cash, but what can she do? She can hardly deliver Baby Tommy as is, can she? Not even an eccentric like Batiss will want a baby with a charred, misshapen head. She sends back: She’s married to a lawyer, after all. If Batiss causes any trouble, she can always hand the matter over to Stephen. And if he finds out that she lied about the amount she’s been paid, well, she’ll cross that bridge when she comes to it. Not that she really cares what Stephen thinks. Not any more.

  The phone beeps again, and Tara turns it off without reading the message.

  There’s a light tap on the door and Martin enters the room. She couldn’t believe it when Stephen told her he’d decided not to return home with his mother. She’s spent months listening to Martin boast that everything from the food to the furniture is better at Olivia’s house.

  The pre-Encounters Martin, that is.

  Martin carefully places a steaming mug next to her phone. ‘Brought you a cup of coffee, Tara.’

  Add that to the list of things she never thought she’d see Martin doing. Incredible. She sits up, takes a sip. Just the right amount of sugar. How does he know how she has her coffee? She makes herself smile. ‘Morning.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your baby,’ he says.

  Tara takes another sip of coffee to hide her expression. ‘Thanks. Hey, why didn’t you want to go home with Olivia?’

  Martin shrugs. ‘Just didn’t.’ He still looks tired, the rims of his eyes are red, the skin on his face is looser as if he’s losing weight. He scuffs a foot over the carpet. ‘Tara, it’s Encounters tonight. Please can I go?’

  Ah, Tara thinks. So there is a motive behind this behaviour, after all. ‘It’s not up to me, Martin. What does your dad say?’

  Martin scowls. ‘He says I can go if Mom says it’s okay.’

  Typical Stephen, Tara thinks. Passing the buck. ‘Did you ask her?’

  ‘Ja. She says she’ll think about it. Please, Tara,’ Martin whines. ‘Can you talk to Dad? They’re going to install one of us tonight and—’

  ‘Hang on, they’re going to what?’ He must mean induct or something, got the word wrong.

  ‘Please Tara. Everyone else is going. It isn’t fair if I don’t go.’

  ‘What’s all this?’ Stephen says from the doorway in a forced cheery voice. ‘Family conference?’

  ‘Can I go to Encounters tonight, Dad?’

  ‘Sorry, my boy. Your mother said no.’

  ‘She said she’d think about it.’

  ‘Just spoken to her. The answer’s no.’

  ‘Aw please, Dad. I can stay in aftercare till it’s time to go.’

  He’s thought of everything, Tara realises. She’s really curious now. What the hell can possibly go on at these meetings?

  ‘Sorry, my bo
y. I won’t be able to pick you up anyway. I have a late meeting again.’

  ‘I can fetch him,’ Tara finds herself saying.

  ‘Really? But I thought you said Encounters was—’

  ‘It’s fine.’ If she arrives a few minutes early to pick him up, then she’ll be able to see for herself what it’s all about. And she’s not immune to the satisfying prospect of defying Olivia.

  Martin slumps with relief. ‘Thanks, Tara.’

  ‘Go get your stuff together,’ Stephen says. ‘We’re leaving in five minutes.’

  Martin whoops and races out.

  Stephen frowns down at her. ‘What the hell was that about? I thought you said that Encounters stuff was what set Martin off in the first place?’

  She shrugs. ‘Maybe I was wrong.’

  ‘How’s your hand this morning?’

  ‘I’ll live.’ Which is more than can be said for Baby Tommy. The thought makes her crumple inside again. ‘You want me to call the school, tell them you won’t be in today?’

  Tara thinks about spending the day alone with the ruins of Baby Tommy’s head. Can’t face it. ‘No. I want to go,’ Tara says. ‘Do me good to be out of the house.’ The library will distract her. Besides, she wants to see how Jane is today. And if Duvenhage has told Clara about what happened at Raymond Scheider, well, so what?

  ‘That’s my baby.’ Stephen reaches out to stroke her hair.

  She pushes his hand away. ‘Don’t call me baby. You haven’t called me that in months. Why start now?’

  Stephen recoils, frowns down at her, opens his mouth to say something, then thinks better of it. He’s trying, Tara knows. But far as she’s concerned, it’s too little too late.