"Just let go, darling, that's the boy. Drop it down," and he did. Almost burnt the palm off his hand; he went around with a thick bandage for weeks, so my trick backfired. He got all the attention and care.
When I was younger, I took great pleasure in showing him all my cuts and bruises, describing carefully where they came from. Even other people's pain made him wince.
He said to my body he thought was dying, "He never hit Mum. Never hurt her. I was the big man. I was the one who copped it. I never told her the whole story, either. I don't know, Stevie. It scares me, sometimes. Do I have the potential to commit violence like that? Am I the one he passed it on to?"
I didn't tell him he needn't fear. That I was the one.
Peter said, "I only ever wanted the world to be a better place. But I couldn't always do the right thing. God, Stevie. It should have been me. I'm the one who should have stayed trapped in the house. I should have found what you found in the back yard."
I thought, "Why didn't you ever say you knew what I was finding? Weak bastard. Why didn't you share it with me? But I never felt trapped. I felt free, released. I felt I could do anything, that there was no law for me, no punishment. He told me so many things. Some things I knew; some I didn't. I knew that they never locked the doors at his lectures, and that no one ever tried them. That made him feel good about himself; people trusted him.
He said, "I never had parties at our place cos of Dad. I was scared of him, Stevie. You weren't; you loved him. You didn't see. You saw what I had, though. You saw my future. You said one day, "You can tell a lot about people. You listen to people. I just remember their faces." It was one of the only nice things you ever said to me. It got me thinking. Sometimes, if I was feeling like a failure, I'd remember what you said, your face, and that you believed in me. Maria would die if she knew it was you, the most, who inspired me. Not her. Fuck her. He never hit Mum. But it hurt her when he hit me, especially when I was whacked for her, or for you. He never hit women."
Peter was dreaming. He had a fantasy world, this is what should have happened, where he had an excuse for being bitter. It didn't happen.
"Women are special glass creatures, handle with care, fragile," he said. His words a balloon. "God, Stevie. Why were you such a smart kid, but so dumb at the same time? That time you were angry at Mum and me, cos you thought we were laughing? We were crying, Stevie. God, bawling. You never had to cry like that. And another thing. About your eighteenth. We didn't want the garden dug up, because we knew what he had buried there. And we were scared for you, also, Stevie. Because you didn't have many friends. Not enough to fill the laundry, let alone the back yard. And neither of us could stand to see you there waiting for your friends to show. Then you started digging, after Mum died, and maybe I hoped you'd find out and ask me some questions. Ask questions of somebody, do something. But you never did. I thought you'd deal with it, but nothing happened. Did I dream it all? Did I make it up? Or don't you care what our father was?"
Words, words, words. He said, "My throat is sore. I've worn it sore from talking. I know Dougie tried to talk to you, tell you about how Dad died. But he said you didn't want to hear that Dad was deliberately careless that day. Dad feared discovery. I don't know what Dougie knows. That's why he hung around Mum so much. He wanted to comfort her. Tell her it wasn't her fault. She knew that. It wasn't her fault. I didn't think suicide ran in the family. At least you don't pretend to die a hero. You're true. But you couldn't see what he was like. You don't know what it was like, Steve," Peter said. "I know you felt unloved, because he didn't hit you. But who needs that sort of love? I know you thought you had to suffer to be loved. I know that; it's why I've forgiven you so many times."
He was talking about me in the past tense. He wanted me gone.
I flicked open my eyes. My timing was perfect.
"Peter?" I said.
He nearly fell off his chair, and the nurses surrounded me before we could speak.
I wouldn't hurt anyone through violence or slight. That was my promise. But as time went on, I forgot the circumstances of my promise. As people do. Some women forget the pain of childbirth and have another, someone's husband doesn't die and they forget they said they'd give up their lover. Everyone does it. Not just me.
I didn't die.
I got my Granny card this year. Handwriting not too bad:
Hello darling, hope all is well
– but no plane ticket. If they want me alive that much, why don't they get me up there to look after them?
Then Gary showed up back in the street. Gary, who used to offer me his hard pink pencil when I was just a kid, eighteen. Who thought he'd be my father or my lover and was neither. He and his wife had split up, and she'd got the house. But I'd heard she'd died, and now he was back. Uglier than ever.
He had bad teeth, yellow, with the front top two tilting in, as some do. When I went out to get my mail, he recognised me immediately.
"Well, who would have thought? Little Stevie. All grown up, ay?"
I looked at him with different eyes, now. He was a hated person. Much hated. I wondered what would happen when he died?
at thirty-two
"Truth or Dare?" I said. "Truth or dare, truth or dare, truth or dare?" I loved that game. It always gave me the thrill of the illicit, even as an adult.
Gary stared at me. His eyes were bulging with over-indulgence. I had fed him a creamy, fatty, gassy meal; he licked the plate and asked for more. I poured wine into his glass, watched as he drank it down, down, down, down.
"More?" I said.
"What else have you got?" he said. He winked at me. He couldn't believe his luck. He was trying to pretend things like this happened all the time. He still couldn't believe I'd let him in; he'd been trying since I was eighteen. Since my mother died.
"Tell me about your day," I said. I wanted detail; I wanted to know who he had slighted. It's a difficult question – most people don't notice those they've slighted.
He loved to talk, this man, and he thought he had the storyteller's knack. I taped it; I like to tape their last story.
"In detail," I said. He was surprised; very rarely did people want to listen to that sort of personal material.
"I woke up, farted," he said. He looked at me, wanting me to laugh, but I just nodded. Nodded again to get him started.
"Had a shower."
"Did you go to the toilet first?"
"Nah, pissed in the shower. Blew my nose, farted, came out, housemate says, 'Couldn't you let me go first if you're going to be that disgusting?' He says it every morning; I always set my alarm to make it up before him."
"What happened to your wife?"
"She left me. Couldn't keep up with my demands." He winked at me, the arsehole.
"So what else did you do today?"
"Got my car going – always takes a while."
"What do the neighbours think of that?"
"What do you think of it?"
I pinched him.
"They hate me, mate. So I leave it running for a while, just to piss them off."
"What about breakfast?" I shivered.
"Stopped off at Macca's. Couldn't make my mind up in the queue but, hey, it's a free country. The food was shit, but it's fast and cheap, so that's okay. I got to work early, like to be on board before the others, gives me time to settle before all the shit starts to come down. Had a coffee, read the paper, then I get my first call of the day." His voice changed, became harsher, took on a whining twang I guessed was his work voice.
"This fucking wanker from upstairs thinks we're all here to serve him. Like there's no one else in the building. He says, 'Gary, I need you to get an envelope to blah blah', right, way over the other side of town, right, and he wants it there now! Fuck! What am I, a magician? So I go, 'Look, mate, we're talking peak hour, we're talking double rates. Traffic. I can't promise you a thing.' So he goes, 'Look, mate, I'll take it myself,' and he fuckin' did. Hops in his fuckin' beemer and drives it there himself. It was a fuckin' laugh."
I moved closer to him, as if his words were interesting. They were only interesting because I could see the slights; his room was going to have to be the size of a football stadium. He filled a ninety-minute tape with this vomit, pausing only to drink the wine and eat the sweets I brought out for him.
"And then I came here," he said. He had arrived late, with no wine, from the pub. He had not showered. I was slighted by his behaviour; there's no doubt. I couldn't stop it; at least I would know what that shiver meant, when he died. I'd be in his dark room.
I said, "Do you want to play Truth or Dare?"
"That sounds good," he said. His imagination was so poor he could not guess what might happen. He was a strange little man, thought he was eccentric because he wore a silver earring, a leaf of a pot plant.
"Me first," I said. "Truth or dare?"
"Truth."
"Okay. Do you want to have sex with me?"
"Yes. My turn. Do you want to have sex with me?"
"No. Have you ever masturbated?"
He didn't answer. It had been a double whammy.
"You have to answer."
"No."
"The game is called Truth or Dare. If you lose, you have to pay a forfeit."
"Like what?"
"Like losing a finger." I sliced down with the bread knife. I missed deliberately.
"All right, yes. Have you."
"Of course. Have you ever had sex with a man?"
"No fuckin' way. Have you?"
"Of course."
"Had sex with women?"
"That wasn't the question. Truth or dare?" I knew he wasn't enjoying truth. He didn't answer me. I lost patience.
"Truth or dare?" I said. "Truth or dare? Truth or dare?" I shouted it in his face.
"Dare."
"I dare you to strip naked." He did that, so arrogant he forgot how vile his body was.
"I dare
you
to strip naked." I did that, and he forgot my earlier truth. He grabbed me.
"I dare you to let me put handcuffs on you," I said, and didn't he love that.
I handcuffed him, led him to the kitchen. I had tied the noose before he arrived, and it hung from the old gas pipes running across the ceiling. I knew these pipes were strong; Peter and I used them as monkey bars when we were kids, and I'd done it since, racing lovers across the ceiling for favours.
I thought the pipes would hold.
"Stand on the chair," I said. His short, fat penis quivered, lifted. He climbed onto the chair. I tied his feet without asking.
"Steph, what're you doing?"
"Steve. It's Steve," I said. I climbed another chair behind him, stroked his white dimpled thighs on the way up.
"Oh, yeah," he said. "Go, Steph."
I placed the noose around his neck and tightened it. He tried to look up but was dizzy; he stumbled and could not steady himself.
"Falling," he said. I moved my chair away and sat watching as he tried to stand steady; the noose tightened, the chair tipped back and fell away.
"I want you to remember what you see, because we're going to do this again and again until you do," I said.
His eyes bulged; he couldn't talk, his tongue was thick. His body shook and wriggled like a fat fish which had never seen daylight.
I watched his eyes, looking for something, listened for the bowel movement. Once he'd released all his shit and piss, it'd be too late to bring him back.
He morse-coded me with his batting eyelids.
"All right," I said. "You don't like it so much."
I pushed the chair back under his feet. He scrabbled with his toes. He coughed, breath rasping in his throat. He sucked in the air like it was water.
I gave him a glass of vodka. He swallowed it slowly, not closing his lips between sips.
"Thanks," he said. He watched every move, his limbs shivering and twitching. He nodded at me.
"Where've you been?" I said.
"When?" he said.
"Just then. Were you here? Was it black?"
He closed his eyes, remembering. "I was very cold. And I didn't know how I got away from you." He flicked his eyes open, scared I was offended.
"You didn't," I said. "It was cold."
"And it was dark. I was walking and I felt really light, my feet weren't flat, I was young again." He looked down at his fat, white body. A tear spilled from one eye. "I was young. And I walked, I knew where to go. I don't know why. I just walked and it slowly got lighter and lighter. I could smell a familiar smell."
He began to cry.
"Shit? Was it shit and mothballs?" I spoke too quickly; I felt my heart beat in my throat. I couldn't breathe.
He looked at me in astonishment. He couldn't believe I knew it; he looked at me with worship.
"Tell me what you know. Tell me everything," he said.
That made me feel good; it made me feel as if I was powerful, very powerful. I was a monarch. I was the queen of knowledge. The room made me feel that way; the feeling is addictive.
That's what should have happened. This is what did happen:
He looked at me like I was weird. It was okay for me to strip him naked, almost kill him, and he likes it. Mention something which comes out of everyone's asshole, and he thinks I'm sick.
He said, "I only smelt nice things. I smelt Dad's special soap. He kept it in a leather box in his drawer. It was very expensive and no one else was allowed to touch it. He had sensitive skin. He was a delicate man."
"I don't care."
"I could smell his soap, and it was getting lighter. I was on a conveyor belt, moving somewhere. It was like I'd polished off a bottle of vodka. I couldn't feel the pain in my wrist or my neck. Then a face came into my mind. My grandson."
"You've got a grandson?"
"Yeah. Oliver. He's only one. I'm not that old," he said. He was still thinking about sex with me, gross old man.
"So your grandson called to you?"
"No, no, he doesn't talk yet. He's only one. I just thought of him. I thought about him heading off to school, in his uniform. I didn't see any of my own kids going. My wife held it over me. She said it made her the best parent, because she had shared all the details of their lives. Fucking bitch."
I said, "You didn't see what I see? Smell it? You open your eyes and you are in a cold, dark room. You can see figures, people and they smell like shit. You smell mothballs as well. You hear clicking noises, click click." I clicked my teeth near his cheek. "And their fingernails are long and sharp. You know them, but only just, and they bend over you, parting your legs, fingers cold as marble probing, squeezing, scratching. Someone bites out your clitoris. Spits it down. Rats would chew it if there were rats. And you see your brother but he doesn't help you. Then someone brings you back to life."
He shook his head. "God, I didn't see that! I didn't see what you see. I swear!"
He made me so angry I sent him back to the room forever.
"Are you going to let me hang you again?" I said.
He laughed. "Forget it."
"I'll suck you off while you're hanging." He smiled then. I wondered how long he'd been dreaming of having his cock sucked. "I'll only tie it loosely," I said. I strung him up and kicked the chair away. He stretched his fingers towards me, dreaming now of killing me. I took a packet of chips into the lounge room and turned the TV on loud. It was an action movie, so-called, lots of screaming noise, drum music. When it was over I cut him down and buried him in the backyard. I was glad of my medical training, if only to know how to control the death when I needed it controlled.
I felt a bit sorry for making the people suffer, but I remembered a lesson Dad taught me; he told a story about two little boys playing in the sandpit, and one was happy because the sand was wet and he could make perfect castles with his new bucket and spade, and the other one was sad because he didn't have a bucket and his pants were getting wet. Dad said that feelings rarely match because people never do, even when they are doing the same thing.
So even if I tried to make these people happy they wouldn't be so.
Human life is so dreadful. To fear death more than to crave knowledge is weak. We are stopped still because people are not willing to die to learn.
I find that need to know, to see, is like a tight shirt, a childhood favourite worn seeking comfort. But I cannot face my own dark room again. I want to see those of others.
People gossiped when Gary disappeared and they thought I was weird for not joining in.
I could have told them a couple of intimate details which would turn their tongues blue. I nearly did, once. Mentioned his job, some dull detail.
"I didn't know where he worked. How well did you know him, Stevie?"
"He used to tell everyone about it."
"No, he didn't," and the fucking idiot went squealing up the street. Did
you
know where he worked? Did you?
I saw my future, while I was waiting to see Gary's room. I knew things other people didn't know. I was in control. I became a grief counsellor at work, talking to them about things beneath. I'm sure it helped. The chief nurse didn't like me because the patients asked for me, not her.
"You're an enrolled nurse. You're not qualified.
She had no idea how qualified I was.
"Assisted Deaths" dropped as people become fearful of death.
Ced admired me, the things I said. He didn't mind sharing the limelight; they all loved him. Kind, funny, philosophical, everything people want in a near-death carer.
I spoke to them, told them the truth.
I said, "The last time I died, I did not see my father in the room. I saw the old lady I had failed to give a seat to and the sandwich maker I had not thanked. I did not think these people were dead. I did not see how that was logical. I thought they must wait for me to die without dying themselves. When you dream, you are not in control. This is what the room is like." Ms 16, there with an inherited blood disease, sitting up with lipstick on to try to look pretty.
"I think often about that place. Their caresses, their worship. I remember the way they touch me. It gives me a slightly sickened feeling, just a cold hole in the pit of my stomach. They touch me with such desperation, such need. I feel great power over them, these people who mean nothing to me. What happens when you die? The world ends. There was some face I didn't remember, then realised I had seen him at a job interview, I had beaten him for a job. Not my fault his life was over, but I lied about my experience. Who doesn't? It was almost a thrill, to be in the room, to be queen. The smell seems worse, though, on each visit. More powerful; there are more of them. And that clicking, and I can't talk, even when I recognise people, see the shopper whose place I took in the queue, see the librarian who opened the book I sneezed into. Your husband beats you? That is not a slight. You can hate him for that. You will not be in his room."