The Reasons I Won't Be Coming, Page 5

  There are friendships in which neither person gets to finish a sentence because both of them are so completely attuned to the other that they will finish each other’s thoughts. We have never been like this. To know each other this well, there has to be a level of trust that we had not reached. When we met, I was more or less in the fetal position inside my suit; but by the time of my terminal discovery, I had made great progress, at least by my own standards. What was I to think of a memo from Walker to you containing some trivial commercial alchemy that, a week later, you parroted first thing one frosty morning as if it were your own? Why would you do this? Why the pretense?

  My mouth was dry. I felt as one does when one is on the verge of becoming aware of something unbearable, something from which one never recovers. I didn’t know what to do. It was about nine by then. I hadn’t eaten anything. There was no sound but the ubiquitous hum of a large building, probably the lights, the occasional fax coming in and Atherton’s muffled voice making what I assumed was an overseas call. I was breathing at a rate consistent with running but I was seated, still looking at the screen. I went to turn it off but it wouldn’t go blank. I kept hitting the wrong button. I tried to reach you on the telephone but I couldn’t. It was not because I didn’t know what I would say. Not knowing what to say has never stopped me before. I could not call you. I was unable to. The first time I dialled I got the wrong number, a child’s voice. “My mother can’t talk to you.” The second time, an older woman spoke on an answering machine. I became very alarmed. This was a nightmare. Checking my address book, I was reassured to see that I was not misremembering your telephone number. But when I went to redial it I found that I still couldn’t. I kept misdialling. There was a numbness down my left side. I went shakily along the passage to the darkened tea room. I had to have a glass of water. I needed to talk to someone. I thought it was you. Your answering machine came on when I tried again and you will remember an almost percussive voice from an arid mouth asking, “Where are you?”

  Mrs. Dowager is talking quietly to someone by the side of the stage. I can’t make out whether it’s a man or a woman. An elderly man is onstage now. He is speaking from a lectern. I wasn’t paying attention when he was introduced and it isn’t clear to me whether he is a retired politician or a war veteran. It has been too long. You have been gone too long. From the corner of my eye it appears your sister is asleep. I am tempted to wake her. There is a coarse ache at the back of my eyes. The formerly important older man seems to like being onstage. He has drifted to one of everyone’s favorite topics, law and order, and he touches a raw nerve with the audience.

  Should I say something to your sister? Someone should go to look for you. I have no idea how long you have been gone now but it is unacceptably long, unacceptable to both of us. What’s your sister’s name? I don’t remember. I just remember how different the two of you are.

  The man’s voice does not have to grate, does not have to cause a pulsating pain in the back of my head, but it does. It carves a wedge in my consciousness. His voice itself is an offense. Then there are his words. It has come to this, ladies and gentlemen and students. It has come to where we do not feel safe in our own community, in our streets, in our homes. I don’t want to spoil the splendor of this wonderful family evening here at this proud educational institution, but let me just say this: We really do need more rigorous law enforcement. I know you would all agree. I get up to look for you.

  What was I hoping for? What do we ever hope for, and isn’t it fortunate how innocent we are in hoping for it? Sunlight suddenly hits the earth, warming it till something grows, something we had not thought about, had not thought possible but now see and see it to be beautiful. The weather is unexpectedly balmy. We quicken our step and the smallest thing excites us. Your smile, have I mentioned it? It can awaken a tenderness in me that had lain dormant for a longer time than I can measure. We are in quiet agreement on all that matters. Everything is quiet and warm. We are not afraid to close our eyes, and while there is nothing at all contrived about this moment, we have been waiting for it all our lives. We close our eyes together. No one is offering advice: there is no need. We lie together on the cool dry grass, partially entwined and gently breathing in our own felicity. Do you remember? We lay on the cool dry grass and it was as if it were before the fall. Can you remember?

  I had developed a taste for your electronic mail, particularly your correspondence with Walker. You may have noticed, I don’t see how you could not have, but I was often agitated and irritable. An increasing proportion of my remarks were of a kind that would burn or corrode organic tissue. I was shaking more. Grabbing a coffee from the tea room, I would stop off at Atherton’s room and make small talk for longer than I ever had before, leaning in his doorway with a new familiarity. He must have been a bit surprised. There are no pictures of his wife or kids on his desk. Atherton hates small talk. So do I.

  What distinguishes Atherton from everybody else is not that he is so perceptive but that everybody else is so uncritical. Atherton is unbewitched by the cult of managerialism. I do not really know him and I have to imagine what his marriage is like or what he does on weekends. Is he in the garden, is he perhaps sanding down a hardwood cabinet of his own making, playing golf somewhere or reading Montaigne by the French windows in the chair his father left him? Perhaps, wearing corduroy pants and a checked shirt, he is shifting the furniture in the lounge room while his wife, one hand to her chin, tries to imagine some other configuration. The kettle boils and he makes a pot of coffee, finely ground, rich aroma, the kind he likes. On the other side of the window, his children are leaping over what was once a pile of leaves. It was a pile he had collected. He pours the coffee into two large blue mugs his wife had bought a couple of years earlier at a fair in the country. Perhaps there is still something of the little girl in her. He has always liked that about her. We really don’t know much about Atherton. But he is going, too, isn’t he? He will have to go.

  I have no idea where you are, but you have no need to hide anymore.

  Although we can never know all that there is about anyone, I know enough now. Migraine laps at the back of my eyes. Even though the corridors of the school are in almost complete darkness, there is a burning light behind my face. I call your name and hear your voice come back at me. It is a child’s voice coming from the distance. This is not really dialogue but, stumbling as I am into the walls of your old school, it is the best we can do. Or is it? Can we do better? Walker says we can do better.

  What would have happened had I not had your password? What would you have told me and when? I have been of so much use to you. A smart-arse, observant, alienated, subversive type like me, it was likely I would be of use. But you didn’t quite know just how much you would call on me till your husband left you. This made things a bit sticky, even for you, and now you are hiding. But the game is up and sooner or later I will find you. It’s a small world after all. It was extremely unprofessional of you to provide even an idiot like me with access to your private correspondence. Who knows what I might find out? I could discover what you earn, something we have never discussed precisely, never put a figure on, although this would not really be at all embarrassing for you. But I might learn who it is that pays you. This is far more damaging, especially since we are not, after all, employed by the same company. My company pays someone else for your services. Then that company pays you. You are, in the naked light of day, a consultant, and your work is just about complete. When you leave, so will Atherton and I and many more. It was all a performance.

  From the auditorium I can hear the distant sound of a cannon or a kettledrum. A small student orchestra plays cabaret music. At least, that’s what it sounds like. Berlin in the twenties: on it goes. Weimar revisited. But when the Reichstag finally burns this time it will be on pay TV. This night is forever, or at least that part of forever that you experience when everything else is on hold and there is no one above us to press Play. I have no idea where I’m going.
There is no place I can think of that you are likely to be. So the darkness is appropriate. But it won’t calm the nausea. It feels like gastric juices coursing through my eustachian tubes, seeping into my eyes. The cannon is in my head. It is fuel to the fire behind my face, licking at my ears from the inside. I want to be rid of my tongue. My movement is staccato, out of time with the cannon. I grip the handle of one locker after another to keep upright. If I do this long enough, will I touch a locker that was yours? What have you done? Downsizing is the current panacea, and you had been hired to advise on its implementation. Why can’t I hate you for it? I had something to tell you.

  With the full weight of my body, I push open the door to what can only be the girls’ toilets, slam my palm against the wall looking for the light switch. Nothing. The wall is cold. I can slam it all I like. It will not answer. The room is dark. I call your name. My voice is a gasp of air pushed over bark, a sickly afterthought from my neck. Do I really think you are in here? Now? Ever? I push open the door to each cubicle. There are five of them. They don’t all swing back with equal force. I can’t see them but I feel the difference in the movement of the air each time. The hinges squeal differently, individually. This is their moment. They won’t share it. I am good at this, repeating it. I am getting to recognize them by their sound. I try your name a couple of times for no reason at all until I stumble and hit one side of a cubicle wall. On my knees now, I vomit. The floor is damp. The cannon pounds inside me but I vomit arhythmically. My tongue is in the way. My nostrils are clogged and I rest my head on the toilet bowl. Do you know this one? I hear nothing for the crashing inside me. I will cry here till I bleed.

  My breathing arrests me once I am empty. This is the worst it has ever been. I raise myself up and flush the toilet. My knees are sore and damp. I am hot. The floor is damp everywhere. The cleaners must have mopped the floor here not long ago. I can hear the soles of my shoes rejecting the moisture. I go to wash my face in the trough. I had something to tell you. Don’t you want to know what it is? The mop sits inside the bucket on the draining board beside a whole lot of plastic cups. Did you use these? I can hear the street, people. The tap is on. Water escapes hurriedly, dying for air. Furious. Never seen a trough before. I am wet, my face and hair, my chest, through my shirt. I shudder and lose balance. The mop is out of the bucket and both are on the floor with me. It crashes down. I lie there. It is dark. The left side has shut down again. I am numb there. How long will I lie here? I don’t know. I was looking for you.

  The door is kicked open. I hear the crack of a shoe against the wood. The light is on. I squint. It is a woman, a uniformed policewoman. I can’t imagine what it is she sees looking down at me. I am ridiculous on the floor. She could be watching me die. They want to check, to do a scan. They want to check for a shape on my brain which would too easily explain everything. The policewoman wants to know what I am doing here. She draws her gun and requests backup on a two-way radio attached to her lapel. I am unable to speak and she is scared. Go on, shoot. I have no answers. She will have to wait for the scan like everybody else. Can barely say it anyway: a possible glioblastoma. The suspect has a name. No need for backup. I wanted to tell you. This is what they’re looking for. Perhaps it will show up on my screen, when I’m more proficient with the terminal. Are you going to shoot or not?

  It’s clear—we’re—going to get along.

  They give you coffee in the police caravan whether you ask for it or not. It’s their way of apologizing to the potential suspects for the recent spate of police shootings. It would be better if they shot you. I am shivering. They don’t let me see myself. She starts asking me questions. I’m good at the early ones: name, address. What am I doing here? It is your niece’s speech night? I don’t know her name. What are her parents’ names? I don’t know, met them tonight for the first time. Can’t remember. What year is the girl in? Eleven or twelve. I make it up. No, I have never been here before, of course not. Why “Of course”? You idiots! Are you really drawing a salary to suspect me? Ask me something sensible and I will do my best. They do. She has neglected to close the caravan door. The carnival is over. I hear people talking. That’s what I want to know, too: Where is she now? Where are you?

  I hear voices, women’s voices and their laughter. Through the crack in the door I can see people passing; they come in waves, in bunches. They look in as they pass. They look at me. I see you with a group of girls. They are in school uniform and have ribbons in their hair. I hear them laughing. You look in at me through the gap in the door. We look at each other. Your face is blank. Say something. Tell them why I’m here. Tell me. But you don’t say anything. You are wearing the school uniform. Only it is not you. It is your niece. She looks so like you, much more than like her mother. I call out your name to her but she walks on. It was her speech night and all went well. Her friends adore her. The world’s at her feet, starting with me. I have never heard her speak. A policeman slams closed the caravan door. He frowns. They must be joking with all of this. I have the right to remain silent. He feels obliged to mention it.

  Have I ever loved you? Yes, before there was reason, and still later, when there was none, even though, as it turned out, the best thing about us was the person I would have become had you been as I had cast you. I am broken now, feeling the wind on my skin till it pushes my bones to mock me, when there is no wind. I am burnt dry by the sun till the feeling is gone on one side, when there is no sun. They tell me these are the symptoms. Your betrayal is as clear to me now as our Swedish vodka, but I cannot allow you to be so far removed from the person I thought you were that I am unable to love you. You see, I realized something when you came along. It was not a realization that pays. It would be of no interest to Walker and it has no tax implications for anyone. But I realized that I needed to love you. It defined me, and if you did not exist I would have had to invent you, minus the betrayal. But perhaps that is all of you, the sine qua non of you.

  So why is it later than you think so much more often than not? They will not give me a mirror but I see from my forearms, my wrists and hands that my skin is the color of wet ash. This place is not known as a war zone. It is the leafy suburb in which you and your sister were educated. Your father sent you here and then went about his business. This is your community. It has become a war zone for me and soon everyone will know.

  I sit by the wall in a police caravan, a good night’s work for someone. My feet, our feet, are sore and we have only travelled one day in our new school shoes. But we have travelled that same day over and over and over, only without ever noticing it. We fill our day, our one repeated day, with distractions, clothes, cars, orgasms, a job. A job for Atherton, for me. You will sleep and live the day again and again. But remember the cool dry grass. That’s what I had to tell you.

  THE REASONS I WON’T BE COMING

  People seldom have a genuinely clear understanding of probate. They are full of misconceptions about it. I’ve grown accustomed to this. It doesn’t surprise me anymore. It shouldn’t after twenty-four years with the Office of Probate in what is now called the Department of Justice. Maggie says people are afraid of it. She says that since they associate it with death in some way and don’t really understand it in the first place, they’re afraid of it. People are afraid of what they don’t understand. Maggie often says this. She’s angry with these people. I’ve told her that most people don’t understand most things. She says that most people are afraid of most things. Maggie is a social worker by training but she works for the Department of Treasury now.

  The topic arises when people ask me what I do. Maggie and I look at each other and then I start at the beginning, with the basics of probate. The Supreme Court grants a certificate to the effect that the will of a certain deceased person has been proved and registered in the court and that administration of the deceased’s effects has been granted to the executor proving the will. Maggie says I’ve lost them by this stage. We never get to what I actually do.

  We
must have known the Gibsons for almost thirty years. Maggie thinks it’s more. I actually prefer Fran to Brian, but whenever we’re out with them there’s always that preliminary stage where Maggie talks to Fran and Brian talks to me. It’s there right after the hellos. It can take up to half an hour. Brian starts off with the state of his business, which he then links to the economy. He owns a news agency. He quotes figures and talks about trends, both in his business and in the economy generally. He goes through phases. A while ago he seemed very fond of the trade-weighted index. More recently it was the current account deficit and microeconomic reform, which he wants to introduce in his news agency. He puts his arm around my shoulders and talks earnestly about the fundamentals which are or aren’t in place (I can never remember) and about our major trading partners.

  This preliminary stage usually ends with Brian attracting the attention of Maggie and Fran, and then, with a mischievous grin, he asks what I do, again. He has a very loud laugh. Maggie thinks it’s more than thirty years.

  They have been our good friends for a long time. Maggie and Fran used to work together before Maggie went to the Treasury. They were really there for us when we lost Sarah. That’s when you see what people are like. Brian wouldn’t go home. He said he didn’t think it was good for us to be on our own and we never were. He said he would keep the media away and he did. If it wasn’t Brian and Fran or Maggie’s parents, it was the police. We seemed to be constantly putting the kettle on. The police were really terrific. We don’t blame them. Maggie says blame is useless. Some things are unsolvable. They worked long and hard on the case. Some have become close personal friends of ours. I don’t think the public really appreciates the work they do. When they started the Neighborhood Watch in our area we were one of the first to join.