The Mistake

by Wendy James

  ‘Haven’t been around before.’

  For some reason she isn’t in the least put out by his unresponsiveness, his apparent lack of interest.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Here and there. Mostly there.’ Another indrawn breath.

  ‘Sweet.’ She holds out her hand for the joint. He hesitates a moment then bypasses her outstretched fingers – easier to push it between her eager lips.

  Five minutes later they are in the bathroom, fucking. She offers her mouth first but he says no, he doesn’t want that, pushes her up against the bathroom door. All or nothing.

  Assia knocks once, calls out, her voice tentative, slurry. ‘Han? Are you in there? You okay? Hannah?’

  She smothers his grunts with her hand, manages to gasp out between thrusts that she’s okay, that she doesn’t give a flying fuck if Assia leaves, that she should go if she wants to, just go. Ignores Assia’s urgent reminder that she can’t leave on her own – she’s staying at Hannah’s place.

  It’s fast, unprotected, noisy – the door banging and banging, the boy moaning loudly, then shouting out – but Hannah’s beyond worrying, doesn’t care who hears, her hands caught in his tangled hair, breathing in his sweet, slightly woolly, boy smell. She just wants this hard uncommunicative boy; he is all she wants, and all she can see for the moment. This is not her first time, far from it, but it’s the first time she’s ever felt any real desire, the first time she’s really seen the point, the first time it’s felt the way she’d imagined it’s meant to feel.

  After that first night she worries that, for him anyway, it’d been a casual hook-up, nothing more. And ordinarily she’d be happy enough with that – he isn’t her type, really, or not the sort of guy most Grammar girls would be seen dead with, not the sort of guy she’d really want to take home to meet her parents. He was a full-on townie, it was clear just from looking at him – his clothes, his dreads, even his crooked teeth were clear evidence of this (no popped-collar polo shirt, no boat shoes, no long shorts, no short back and sides, no sign of ten thousand dollar orthodontics, either). But his dark skin put him in another category altogether.

  Ordinarily, she’d have cooled down pretty rapidly herself and dumped him – if not by word, then by omission. It was relatively easy – she’d been on either side of the equation often enough and had perfected her technique. There was the ‘walk past and look the other way’ scenario, or the ‘look through’, which was vaguely more humiliating (hey, I sucked your dick, douchebag – don’t pretend you can’t remember me!), or better yet, the ‘ignore all texts and Facebook chats’. Then there was the awkward ‘let’s just be friends’ conversation, which she had experienced herself most recently with an old friend from primary school whose regret was so overwhelming that he’d been oblivious to her eagerness (thank fuck!) at their next coldly sober meeting.

  She has never really been into anything other than the most casual of relationships before, and definitely isn’t interested in the old-married-couple scenarios that she’s seen some of her friends with long-term boyfriends get sucked into. In the stark sunshine of sobriety the boys she’d been with had transformed back into their pumpkin selves: undersized and pimply, lacking any particular wit or presence. But this guy, Wesley, for some reason she’s more intrigued than usual. Even after a few surreptitious meetings – which mostly involve driving out to the dam, parking and fooling around in his car – she still can’t work out what it is that she likes about him. He’s not particularly quick or clever – in fact he doesn’t even speak that much. He’s assured enough – but doesn’t have the gloss of privilege and entitlement that most of the boys she’s grown up with exude. It’s a quieter sort of confidence, without the swagger; a confidence built up from experience rather than expectations and connections. It’s like his looks. He is good-looking, but he’s not an arse about it, and though his body’s good – well muscled, hard – it’s no big deal, and somehow real, as if developed through solid labour and not as a result of hours of pumping and preening. Right now, when everything else around her is spinning out of control, Wesley is someone to hold on to, someone to hold her down.

  14

  Angus is over it quickly enough: over Jodie, over the idea of the two of them, their romance. The way any boy would be. Oh, it was fun, and he was right into her at first, for say, the first six months, when all it involved was occasional visits to her place, a party here and there, a movie, a picnic during the long break between the end of school and the beginning of uni. All done pretty much on the sly, not mentioning their meetings to his mother, avoiding hers.

  He is fascinated at first by her freedom. He has never met a girl – or anyone, really – whose family (not quite working-class – almost underclass, he guesses) show so little interest in her whereabouts, her achievements, her doings. Jodie’s mother is like some television caricature of a typical Australian barmaid, but without the clichéd big-heartedness: small, sharp, her face coarsely red from too much sun, lines deeply etched around her eyes, her mouth with its cat’s-bum smokers’ lips, her eyebrows plucked into virtual non-existence, her hair big, her tits even bigger, her accent bursting at the seams. He barely exchanges a word with her, though – once he manages to persuade Jodie that he couldn’t care less about the squalor, her idiot brothers – he spends days and even nights in their home. Mrs Evans – ‘call me Jeannie, love’ – is always on her way out when he is on his way in. He wonders vaguely if she is a whore; she has the sort of tired prettiness that he associates with ageing tarts, but who would want to sleep with her now? Jeannie’s dislike of Jodie is obvious, even on so casual an acquaintance. Their communications are limited to absolute practicalities, but Jodie’s mother can make the most innocuous inquiry – so, you’re going to the movies are you, or, off on another picnic, eh? – sound like a sneer, an insult. She is polite enough to Angus during their infrequent meetings, always asks after his mother, who she’s had the pleasure of meeting at some ‘posh do’ she’d waitressed at years before. ‘I always remember that Mrs Garrow likes her whisky neat,’ she observes somewhat suspiciously, and as she repeats this at their every encounter, Angus is sure that he is meant to infer that his mother is a closet alcoholic.

  He has been warned, by Jodie herself and several well-meaning and other less well-meaning friends, that the brothers are not exactly high achievers, or the most respectable members of Milton society. But even so he is unprepared for the reality. The eldest, Jason, at the tender age of twenty-one is already a full-on crim with a record for break and enters, assault, theft – he’s done time, and seems bent on doing more. At the moment he is back living at home, accorded full man-of-the-house status. In an attempt to assert his authority, he initially made some threats of violence against Angus, but his mother, aware of Angus’s background, his family’s reputation, has quickly scotched this. So his visits are tolerated, if not encouraged, by Jason – from time to time Angus is even privileged to receive a grunt of greeting, and once the offer of a beer. ‘If you’re gonna come around and root me little sister, you oughta have a drink with a bloke,’ had been his charming invitation, one that Jodie had declined on his behalf.

  The youngest brother, Shane, is a moron; there is no other word for it. He spends his days in front of the TV, smoking, eating chips, drinking Coke and in the afternoons beer, running errands for his bully brother when ordered. He has no occupation, no friends; his appearance is not endearing – with a front tooth missing and others rotting, a face cratered with acne, the beginnings of a small beer belly. He speaks with a stammer, is incoherent and virtually unintelligible. Other than providing physical evidence of God’s intransigent lack of fairness when it comes to handing out looks, intelligence, usefulness, there is no reason for his being on the earth, so far as Angus can see. But of all the family – if they could be regarded as forming such a unit – Shane is the only one who appears to treat Jodie with even halfway civility; at least he isn’t, or doesn’t seem to be, malicious. And J
odie treats him if not with affection then with some attempt at sisterly concern – providing him with a nutritious meal now and then, encouraging him to bathe, washing his clothes occasionally, attempting to curtail the endless drinking.

  Thus confronted with her family (and he thanks God that the father – by all accounts a nasty bastard – took off long ago), Angus’s admiration for Jodie only increases. How did a girl like her spring from such unaccommodating, possibly toxic soil; and how did she thrive, blossom? Very few people, he thinks, really know what hardships she’s faced, what challenges. Her scholarship to Grammar is remarkable, but is perhaps less remarkable than her highly cultivated demeanour. Though he has always been aware that she is, in some intrinsic but indefinable way, very different to most of the girls of his acquaintance, he had never – how could he? – expected this background of extreme disadvantage, of squalor.

  So those first months are made exciting by their clandestine nature, the slightly tense and uncertain air of their every meeting, the combination of his mother’s disapproval, the scornful indifference of hers. But soon enough, around the time he is getting ready to head off to university, Angus starts to feel cramped, constrained. Begins to look at other girls. To wonder what it might be like to have someone lighter, someone brighter around. There is nothing that he doesn’t like about Jodie – it isn’t that simple – he hasn’t gone off her entirely, not exactly, but he finds himself occasionally wishing for some variety. Fantasising about girls with brown eyes, dark skin, curly hair; about redheads, with downy freckled skin, large breasts. An Italian girl, maybe, or a cool Swede. Even an older woman, married, a mother, going down on him, or a whore, a one-night stand – a series of one-night stands. He begins dreaming about, then wanting that freedom, though he has no idea how such a smorgasbord of sexual delight could ever be made available to him. He wants to go off to uni free, unshackled; his mates are in his ear bagging him, telling him to piss her off, man; what did he think he was doing, was he gunna marry her? Why didn’t he book himself into a nursing home, like, now? And he is planning to dump her – without regret and almost without compunction – has a speech worked out, an opportunity arranged. But then, just days before he is due to leave, his mother makes his release impossible.

  He has driven down to Milton to pick up Jodie; they are to head out first for a picnic (their code for a fuck) down at the Washpool – a currently half-empty waterhole in the MacDonald National Park. But Jodie isn’t home. She’s gone for a walk, Shane offers, his expression oddly malicious.

  ‘A walk? But she knew I was coming.’

  ‘Yeah. She probably did, mate. I bet she spends half her life waiting for you to come. Ha. But your old lady turned up about an hour ago – and they had some kind of barney.’ Shane gives a burp, turns back to the blaring screen.

  ‘My old lady?’ Angus feels his stomach turn suddenly; the blood rushes to his face. ‘What do you mean my old lady? Shane? Was my mother here?’

  ‘Yeah, man. Your mum, your mother – whatever it is you call her. I call mine an old bag.’ He gives a sudden high-pitched chuckle. ‘Anyway, this was a fussy lookin’ old chook with a pruny face. Drives a big red Mercedes. That’s your old lady isn’t it? Thought it was one of them seventh day witnesses at first – standing out there with a face on her like the world was about to end – and I was gunna tell her to piss off, but then she asked for Jodes.’ He gives a lunatic grin and rubs his gut. ‘Jodes went outside with her, and then the next thing, Jodes comes back in here crying and I hear the car drive off. Sounds good, but,’ he adds reflectively. ‘Them big Mercedes. It’s a V8 is it, mate?’

  ‘A what?’ Angus is feeling worse and worse; he leans against the wall, suddenly finding it hard to stay upright. He can feel bile rising in his throat, his heart pounding in his ears. He wants desperately to run back outside, get in his car and drive away, fast, but knows that he will have to find Jodie first, find out what has happened. ‘So then what? Did Jodie go again? Do you know where? Did she tell you where she was going?’ His voice is shrill, quavering. He swallows, closes his eyes briefly, breathes deeply, wills himself to be calm.

  ‘I dunno. She just run out. Maybe she went down the river. There’s that old willow with the rope.’

  ‘The willow? Where’s this willow?’ He can’t quite explain to himself the feeling of urgency – he needs to see Jodie, before … before what? The idiot is unbearably slow. ‘Come on, mate. Tell me where it is.’ Angus steps towards him, can feel rage welling up along with the fear, thinks he would like to do further damage to the moron’s smile.

  ‘Yeah, okay, Angus. I’m just thinking, mate. The best way to explain. You know. No need to get your knickers in a knot. Okay, if you go back towards the highway, then go down Russell Street, and then head straight down to the river from the little park there. You know the one – right on the river. Where that kid got raped last year? Well – the willow’s in that park there. It’s real big. You can’t miss it.’

  Angus slams out of the house, runs to the car and drives back down the highway as if his life depends on it. He heads across the park – brown, dreary, the climbing frames rusted, swing chains seatless, the lawn scorched, most of it dust, desolate – and there is Jodie, crouching beneath a giant willow, down on the riverbank. The tree is huge and twisted, but too old now to bear the weight of children; a frayed rope dangles with sinister intent above the dried riverbed. Jodie’s eyes are puffy, her face red, but she smiles when she sees him striding purposefully toward her, her expression so expectant, so full of love, of tenderness, of relief.

  Angus feels the nausea return; the urge to run becomes even more compulsive. He can sense his future taking shape, feels it harden and then solidify around him. He straightens his shoulders, stands tall. He makes himself smile back widely, reassuringly, keeps walking steadily towards her.

  15

  It is a Saturday morning, and Jodie has abandoned any pretence at studying, despite an English essay discussing aspects of filial love in King Lear being due first thing Monday morning. Instead she has been preparing for a picnic at the Washpool with Angus. This requires considerable effort: a long soak in the bath, legs and underarms shaved smoothly, her body moisturised all over with some musky lotion she’d picked up cheap at the local pharmacy, hair washed and conditioned, then put in curlers while it dries to give her naturally straight hair some body (she couldn’t quite bring herself to spend her hard-earned savings on the perms that are currently all the rage at Grammar). She chose her outfit carefully the night before – a short short denim skirt she’d bought only the previous week at the Arding Jean Emporium (size eight, down from a ten; she’s done it, finally), and a cute striped cotton top she’d remodelled herself from a man’s business shirt bought at Vinnies. She’s left the actual dressing and the make-up until the last half hour, wanting to be as fresh as possible, to avoid creases, stains, runs in her mascara.

  She can make her preparations in peace. Her mother was out all night and Jodie knows from past experience that she isn’t likely to arrive home until late afternoon, just in time to get ready for her next shift. She’ll be tired and hung-over, the pouches under her eyes dark, her expression sour, her temper rancid. Jodie is glad she has plans to be elsewhere; even during relatively short visits home – with maybe only time for a shower, a change of clothes, a bottle of beer – her mother is likely to wreak havoc, disrupt any plans Jodie’s made, create a scene. Her elder brother too is absent, so she can get ready without his teasing, doesn’t have to find something to wedge the bathroom door shut to short-circuit Jason’s barging in and out – the key was lost years ago, and she’s had to fill the keyhole with plasticine to stop him peering in at her. There is only Shane, and at least he is predictable, not interested in her movements, happy to loll in front of the television, watching cartoons, the midday movies. He is unlikely to even ask her where she’s going or notice who she’s going with.

  She’s just finishing off her left leg, making satisfyingl
y neat strips in the froth, going carefully over her knee and midway up her thigh, stopping at the precise point where the fuzz of hair seems, almost magically, to disappear, when Shane calls out to her from just outside the room.

  ‘Jode. There’s someone here. A lady.’ The knob twists back and forth, but he stays outside.

  ‘Well, who is it, Shane? Didn’t you ask? Tell her Mum won’t be back till late.’

  ‘But she says she wants you, Jodie.’

  ‘Who is it?’ She leans over to grab a towel, resigned.

  ‘I think it’s his mum. Your boyfriend fella. What’s-is-name. Angus. She came in that big car, the Mercedes – the red one you showed me that time.’ His voice has lost its customary slowness, is almost snapping with excitement.

  ‘Mrs Garrow?’ Jodie’s foot slips on the curve of the bath, she clutches at the shower tap to steady herself.

  ‘That’s her. That’s the one.’

  ‘Tell her …’ Her own voice cracks, fizzes, disappears. She takes a long breath. ‘Tell her I’ll just be a minute.’

  Mrs Garrow stands waiting, smoking a cigarette, outside on the nature strip, facing away from the house. She turns – a small, slender, well-dressed matron, her ash-grey hair tightly permed, clutching a shiny Glo-mesh handbag – as Jodie makes her way down the grassed-over brick path. She knows Angus’s mother by sight, has seen her at various school events, and around town, and knows who she is, but they have never met. She is sure that Mrs Garrow has never seen her, wonders how she knew where to find her, what she’s expecting. What she wants.

  ‘Well, you took your time, Jodie.’ Her voice is cool, the smile cursory.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Garrow.’ Jodie doesn’t bother smiling. She walks to the gate, but doesn’t go all the way through, remains on her side of the fence.