Pilgrimage (29 page)

“I told her I didn't want a child and she had to choose me or the baby. We terminated the pregnancy. No, I guess I did it, really. I forced her and it killed her to do it. I thought that, after that, maybe we could return to the way things used to be. But that wasn't going to happen. She could never look at me the same way again after that. I couldn't escape the feeling that, even if we bounced back, we'd just have to go through it again. So I left.”

Roland didn't want to tell the next part. He swallowed hard, drank his water and sucked on his cigarette. But try as he might to push the memories away, his mind dragged him back to those final days.

He could still hear Violet crying the night after the abortion. It was so clear in his mind, she could have been sobbing there in Mal’s kitchen with him. While she cried, Roland stood listening outside the bedroom door, trying to find the right words to say. There must be
something
he could do to make it all go away, if only he was a better man. He couldn't find the words on his own so he walked to the kitchen, opened the cupboard and found the unopened bottle of scotch he'd been given for his last birthday. One small drink was all he wanted but, one drink later, it suddenly felt right to have another. After the fourth glass, the pain didn't seem so real any more. The sobbing sounded like it was so far away it might not even be real. Then everything was dark until the next morning. Violet gently nudged him and he awoke on the kitchen floor. Her eyes were red but there was no emotion in her expression.

“Aren't you going to work?” she asked.

“It's Saturday.” Roland's mouth felt as if it was growing fur.

“Oh,” was all Violet said in answer.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm going out for a while.”

“Where?”

“I don't know.”

“Okay.” Roland didn't ask why she was going out so early or where she was going in the tracksuit she'd been sleeping in. He just watched her walk out and then pulled himself to his feet. He took a long shameful look at the empty scotch bottle and then pushed it aside. At the end of the bench were Violet's keys and purse. He pushed them aside too and stumbled to his bed. After that, every conversation went the same way. Life had lost meaning and they'd lost interest in each other. Everything became hollow. He couldn't take it, so he ran away and never looked back.

Now that the pain had become inescapable, like an iron maiden around his heart, the memories began to disappear back into the shadowy places of the mind where unwanted memories are kept. His throat felt like sandpaper and his eyes stung. Something inside him, something he couldn't name, something between his gut and his heart, ached. He swallowed and wished he'd had a drink. For a second he thought he was going to cry but when he wiped his eyes on his sleeve, they were bone dry. He was glad. Tears were useless. There'd been too many tears already. Tears never helped. That dead Roland who lived with Violet cried a lot for a while. That dead Roland would be crying now. But the living, breathing, still-slightly-drunk Roland never cried. That Roland had been born in the Armidale pubs, every night of every week. Tears were useless to that Roland. Every problem could be dealt with in one of two ways: You can punch them until they go away or you can drink until they go away.

That's how life worked.

But his gut still ached. He hadn't wanted a drink so much since he left Armidale.

“You want a refill?” Mal stood up and took his glass to the sink.

Roland shook his head. He looked up from the floor at his dead cigarette and lit another.

“You ever see her again?”

“No. I just couldn't handle the guilt. I might as well have killed her. It would have been easier if I killed her. Then, at least, I wouldn't have had to look at her every day.”

“So where did you go?”

“One day I didn't go home. I just got on a train that would take me as far away from Sydney as I could. That's how I ended up in Armidale, working a different job every couple of months just to keep the liquor cabinet stocked. No easy task, I tell you.”

“You didn't speak to her? No calls or notes?”

“No. I found out a few days afterwards that she had filed a missing person report. The police found me by tracking my credit card. I told them I wasn't going back. I hoped that would be the end of it.”

“Was it?”

“No.” Roland set his cigarette down on the floor and sipped his water. The water washed the nicotine taste down his throat and left his mouth feeling fresh and clean. He put the cigarette back in his mouth and breathed deep. That felt better.

“She came to see you?” Mal asked.

“
She
never came to see me. She was probably happy I was gone. She deserved a lot better.”

“But somebody did?”

“Yeah, some of our old friends did. One by one they made the journey north to try and talk some sense into me and bring me back. The first one was a guy named Lachlan I'd worked with in Sydney. We were close. He was probably the best friend I ever had. He said he'd convinced my boss not to fire me and that I was officially on leave for health reasons. Then he said that Violet wanted me to come back home. He told me he'd never seen her so sad in his life and all she'd done for days was cry. But she was like that before I left. Not as bad as he'd made it sound, but he was probably exaggerating. Lachlan spent a day in Armidale trying to convince me and, for a second, I really thought about going back.”

“Why didn't you?”

“I found some sense in a bottle of vodka. There's no reason for me to go back.” Roland sipped his drink. The icy water was sobering. He hated it.

“Do you find all the answers to hard decisions in vodka?” Mal asked.

“Sometimes I find them in scotch.”

“Anybody else visit you?”

“Yeah. Lachlan came back a couple of times. Once a week for about two months. The last time he came back he told me I'd been fired. I was glad. He never said anything about Violet after the first time, though. He gave up, eventually.

“There were others, too, like I said. Frank, Dominic, Lewis - all came to visit me once for a few hours and then left. I didn't hear from them a second time. Violet's sister even came to visit me before the last time Lachlan visited. I expected her to be a lot angrier than she was. She said she was only there because she was passing through Armidale on her way north for a holiday. She had a coffee in my apartment, asked if I was going to go home and if there was anything she could do to convince me. Then she said she was sorry and she left.”

“What was she sorry for?” Mal set his glass and a cigarette butt up on the bench. “Keep talking, I'm listening.” He began searching through cupboards.

“I asked her the same thing.” Roland went on. “She said she was just sorry for me. Sorry in general. I was sorry too. So I found some more vodka and drank until I couldn't even remember what sorry meant. I went to work the next day still drunk but that was okay because the site I was working was closed. It was Sunday. I figured it must have been the weekend and didn't go back for the next two days. That was how I lost that job and, soon after, I'd lost the last of all my old friends, too.”

“That's a busy week.”

“I was glad when they stopped showing up. Once I knew Lachlan was never coming back, I was able to forget about my wife and Sydney once and for all.”

“You managed to forget a whole major city? That's impressive.”

“Well, here I am talking about this shit, again.” Roland puffed the last few embers out of his cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs as long as he could before coughing it out. Malcolm sat down again with a box of chocolate chip biscuits.

“Hungry?”

Roland shook his head. “I guess I didn't do so well at forgetting it, after all. Some things just can't be done.”

“But you got your way, in the end. Isn't that what matters?” Mal asked.

“Don't do that.” Roland said.

“What?”

“Don't fucking patronise me. I just told you about how I managed to ruin every friendship I had, destroy my marriage and drive my wife into depression. I've got no home or job or family. I know that I've fucked it all up and I have nothing. So don't sit there being sarcastic and try to tell me what's wrong with my life! I know what's wrong with my life. It's my life! Just because I try and ignore what a waste it is, doesn't mean I don't know.”

Shouting made Roland feel sick again. Hearing it out loud always made him angrier. He thought he should be sad but he was just pissed off. If he was this angry with anybody else he would have beaten the shit out of them. But he couldn't do that to himself.

Or could he? That's exactly what he'd been doing these last few years. He couldn't physically beat himself so he drank himself into sick stupors and poisoned his body as often as he could. That was his punishment. It's what he deserved.

Roland reached for his glass, hoping for scotch, remembering it was water and finding it empty. He'd already finished it. Shit.

“You want some more water?” Mal asked.

“No.”

“Well, I do.”

“I guess I'll have some water, too.” Roland shrugged and tried to roll his glass across the floor. It veered off into a corner, where Mal picked it up. “I mean you're up there already.”

“Sure.” Mal filled both glasses and sat down beside Roland. “Do you know what I find most interesting?”

“What?”

“You still call her your wife. She's not your ex-wife; she's not a bad memory or a woman you used to know. You still think of her as your wife.”

“Well, legally she is.”

“Legally, sure. But most people, when they leave their spouse without a word for years at a time, change the language. But you still think of her like you're living as a married couple.”

“So?”

“So … you tell me.” Mal shrugged and took a drink.

“I never really wanted to go. I didn't want to leave Violet. But she didn't seem much like Violet at the time. I guess I'm not much like I was, either. It was like living with a stranger – A really sad, quiet stranger. I hoped Violet would come back but she never did. I moved on.”

“Do you think about her?”

“I try not to.”

“But do you?”

“Sometimes.” Roland shrugged. “Less as time goes on. You make one mistake and then you make a whole lot more mistakes and soon you've got so many mistakes to kick yourself over, that you can pick and choose what you feel bad about at any given time.”

“What would you say to her if you did see her?” Mal took his cigarettes out again, put one in his mouth and offered the pack to Roland.

Roland nodded. “Why? Do you know her? Are you going to take me back to Sydney to see her?”

“I don't know her.” Mal tossed the pack to Roland. “And I'm not taking you anywhere you don't ask me to take you. I'm just wondering.”

“I don't know. I guess I should say sorry. God knows I've got a shit-load to be sorry for. I don't think I could say anything else. There aren't enough sorries for what I've done so there's no way I could talk about anything else.”

“What about your friends?”

“Nothing. They're all just memories, now. Except maybe Lachlan. I think I'd say thank you to Lachlan. He really tried to help me when nobody else really cared.” Roland stared at the pack of cigarettes for a while. The little white paper sticks stared back at him from the brown paper box. Were they punishment to? He'd been smoking for years but since he left Violet, he'd embraced the habit like there was no tomorrow. He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that it was killing him. He knew he'd regret it. Maybe that was the point. Or maybe it just felt good. Roland couldn't be sure.

“You don't think the others that came to see you cared?” Mal asked.

“I don't know. It doesn't matter, anyway. I'm never going to see them again.”

“I guess not. Don't you get lonely?”

“Never. I'm not a hermit. I spent plenty of time with people in Armidale. There were all the pub regulars, the guys I worked construction with and the Indian guy who worked the desk at the motel. I spend plenty of time with people.”

“How many of them were your friends?”

“None. Have you met me?” Roland force-smiled and tried to laugh. He couldn't even manage a fake one. His life wasn't funny, just pathetic. “Nobody wants to be friends with me. That suited me fine, too. More scotch for me.”

“That
suited
you fine? What about now?”

The question forced Roland to think of Griffith again. Had that stupid kid been his friend? There didn't seem to be any doubt to Griffith, but Roland wasn't sure. He liked the kid enough, most of the time, but he hardly knew him. The more he did get to know Griffith, the less he liked him. He was a preachy bastard but as small and scared as he always was, he sure did stand up to the biggest, meanest S.O.Bs he met.

“You ask a lot of questions,” Roland said.

“You've got interesting answers.”

“Not for this one.”

“Do you know where you want to go, yet?”

“Bed, I think.”

“How about a shower, first? A real one. I'll even get you a towel.”