White Lady (9 page)

Still hot? Man! What’s in his ciggies? I chuckle to myself.

I gaze into the sky, shade my face from the sun shining through a gap in the clouds, and smile.

Huh. He actually likes me.

To celebrate, I pop another pill.

Chapter 24

Nash: Just pockets of air.

I stare at the e-mail. Clenching my jaw. Wondering why the
fuck
now? Not a word. Not a single word from Celeste. And all of a sudden, she wants to “have a catch-up chat?” On the home phone? Why couldn’t she just call in the first place? Why go to the trouble of e-mailing me to say that? We didn’t “chat” when we were married.

I scowl at my computer and take a bite out of my nectarine. Juice drips into my beard. I wipe it on my forearm, then my forearm onto my thigh, and jiggle my leg up and down.

Agenda.

I nod at my screen as if it were offering me advice. She’s preparing me for something. I know the manipulative drill. How could I forget? Do all women pretend to be nice only when they want something? I haven’t noticed Sonia do it. Mia does. But she’s a teenager. That’s expected.

My shoulders and neck are sore from sleeping pushed up against the wall. Sonia sleeps like a starfish. I stand up and stretch my arms to the ceiling while keeping my eyes on the screen. As if staring at it is somehow going to give me all the answers.

I look around the staff room. It’s still early. Empty. Should be about nine p.m. in LA about now. Should I just get this out of the way and call her myself? Maybe catching her off guard might elicit the real reason she wants to chat. Without cushioning anything. Less time to prepare. Also using the school’s phone will save me the cost. There’s no way I’m going to tell her to log in to Skype. I reckon she’ll stall. Then teachers will start coming in and it will be too late. It’s always too late.

I rest my half-eaten nectarine on a serviette and rub my hands on my thighs. I pick up the phone. The cold, lightweight plastic hums in my hand. I break out in a sweat when I bring the receiver to my ear. The dial tone seems louder than usual. I check it’s not on speakerphone and dial Celeste’s number. Know it by heart from all the times I called and hung up when the separation was fresh.

Karter answers the phone.

“Hi,” I croak, and clear my throat. “It’s Nash. Is Celeste there?”

Karter groans. “I know who you are. I’d recognize your accent from a hundred miles away.”

Likewise, Hitler.

Just as I’m about to reply, something muffles in the phone, as if Karter is pushing the receiver into his chest when he calls for Celeste. I can
just
make out Celeste’s fake surprised “Oh?” in the background. Karter is probably glaring at her as if she’s going to somehow give me a blow job through the phone.

Tosser.

“Hello, Nash. What a pleasant surprise. How are you?”

I scratch my beard, glance towards the entrance of the staff room to make sure I’m still alone. “Celeste. Don’t.”

“Hmm, oh, that’s fabulous. Yeah, I’m fine, thanks. Is there something I can help you with?”

“I would’ve thought, after a lifetime of pretending, that you’d do yourself a favour and find someone you could be yourself with,” I snap and loosen my jaw. I’ve just noticed it’s clenched.

“I see.” Celeste sighs. I can practically hear her lip twitch and nostrils flare.

“Look. What do you want? What was that e-mail all about?”

Silence.

I pick up a biro and stab it into my corkboard. It doesn’t go in far enough and drops to my desk with a clack.

“I see. Okay. Well, let me have a think. I could have something prepared for you in a couple of days. Would that work for you? What’s your deadline?”

“So you’re keeping stuff from Karter as well? I should’ve fucking known.”

Celeste clears her throat. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to.” Her voice is a little shaky, but probably only enough for me to recognize.

“For fuck’s sake, C. Whatever it is, you’d better spit it out. You’ve caused Mia and me enough grief as it is. What. Do. You. Want?”

“Okay, Nash. That shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll send you an e-mail with all the details on how to get started. It’s not a complicated procedure.”

“No. No, you won’t. You tell me what’s going on
now
. Figure something out.”

Silence.

I bring a fist to my mouth and bite it. This whole thing makes me want to scream. I need a session with the punching bag in the gym.

Fuck.

“I mean it, Celeste,” I say through gritted teeth.

Her breath quickens.

“I’ll call you back,” she whispers and hangs up.

“Fuck!” I bang my fist on the desk. When I look up, Sonia is standing beside me.

“Shit. Sonia. Sorry.”

“Not a problem. Sounds like your morning is as bad as mine.”

I stand and cup my hands over Sonia’s cheeks in an attempt to relax myself. “What’s wrong?” I say. A tear rolls down her cheek, and she glances towards the entrance.

“It’s Mick. I think he is into something illegal.”

“What do you mean? Drugs?”

Sonia gently removes my hands from her face and shakes her head. She swallows, looks at her shoes, and pinches the skin between her eyes.

“Worse. Nash, I think he is selling stolen weapons.”

“Guns?” I say a little too loudly, craning my neck.

Sonia frowns and whispers, “No, no—”

My mobile phone rings. I glare at it. Cover my mouth and nose with my right hand and breathe into it like an oxygen mask.

“I have to get this. I’m sorry.”

“Should I leave you alone?” Sonia asks with a forgiving yet sad smile on her face.

“Nah. Nah. Here.” I roll an absent teacher’s seat next to my desk and gesture for Sonia to sit while I pick up the phone.

Sonia sits and pulls a tissue out of her handbag.

“Yeah?” I sigh.

“It’s me.”

“Alone now?”

“Yes,” Celeste says, half whispering. “Barely.”

“Get on with it then.”

“Okay.” It sounds like Celeste is holding her breath.

“Jesus Chri—”

“Mia’s not yours.”

I glance at Sonia as she blows her nose. “What?”

“She was the result of an assault.” Celeste bursts into tears. The sound becomes a little quieter as if she’s moved away from the receiver.

“What?” I repeat so quietly I can hardly hear it in my own head.

“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t keep it from you anymore. It was burning a hole in my heart. You deserve the truth. Mia deserves the truth.”

“You—you—”

“I’m sorry.” Celeste blubbers like a child. “Can you not tell her yet? I’d like to visit. I think she should hear it straight from me.”

“Excuse me?” I roar, kicking my dustbin. “You can’t expect me to—”

“Please!” Celeste wails. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to—” She hangs up.

I hold the receiver in front of my face. Stare at the beeping plastic like it’s an object I’ve never seen before in my life. Sonia goes quiet and rests her hand on my knee. I turn to face her, swallow a buildup of saliva, dizzy, like I’m being held upside down by my ankles.

“Nash? What’s the matter? You have gone really pale.”

I drop the phone.

And throw up on the floor.

I can’t look Sonia in the face. Her eyes are all slanty. Her mouth thin and therapist-like. I hold back the tears. Just. But if I look her in the eye, I’ll be a total goner—and a high school parking lot is not the place to lose control of my emotions. Especially since I’m a PE teacher. A
male
PE teacher. And students are storming out of the building like a wild stampede. They’ll target my vulnerability as if it’s a piece of meat.

I roll two cigarettes on the roof of my car, put one in my mouth, lean my back against the driver’s side, and light up. I offer the other one to Sonia with a swift flick of my hand. Corner eye contact. Glancing at the ground. Gravel. Dark grey. Rock hard with pockets of air.

Just like me.

Sonia looks around her, shifts her weight from foot to foot, shakes her head. I shrug. Put the cig behind my ear.

Usually, I wouldn’t let the kids see me smoke. But right now I couldn’t give a shit if they saw. As long as I’m not crying and looking like a pussy. Fingers crossed the principal doesn’t decide to leave on time today.

“Are you going to be okay?” Sonia half-whispers, resting her hand lightly on my inner elbow. “Is there anything I can do?”

I jerk my arm away. Sonia retracts her hand. I can sense the confusion on her face, but I can’t let her touch me. It’ll trigger the tears. I
have
to avoid the tears. I sniff and stare in the opposite direction. Sonia swallows, crosses her arms, and looks at the ground. Or her feet. Or the back tyre of my car. I can’t tell which.

“Sorry.” I face her, but focus on the tiny dark freckle to the left of her mouth. “Not now. Smoke with me?”

I remove the second cigarette from my ear and offer it to her again. Sonia snatches it, purses it between her lips, and leans forwards for me to light it with the end of mine. She shakes her head, stares towards the school gate.

We stand here. In the silence of our synced exhale. Watching the crowd of students leave the school grounds and hoard outside the fish ’n’ chip shop across the road.

Sonia slips one hand behind her back and taps her fingers on the car door.

“Are you going to tell her?”

I drop my shoulders, fill my cheeks with air, and let it out slowly with a trickle of smoke. “Should I?”

Sonia pushes her fringe out of her face with the hand holding the cigarette. “I don’t know. Do you want to?”

Student voices fill the grounds with ambivalent noise. Car doors open and close, engines roll, gravel grinds as wheels roll towards the comfort of their own homes.

I laugh. Inhale the sweetness of autumn. “What do you reckon?”

Sonia elbows me in the side and juts her chin towards the school gate. I lower my gaze. Mia is approaching with a hippie-looking somebody I have never seen her with before. As far as I can tell, my expression doesn’t change.

“Aren’t you going to offer her a lift?”

“She doesn’t like to ride with me anymore.”

“Since when?”

“Couple weeks. Best I don’t ask, I reckon.”

“Right.” The tone in Sonia’s voice sounds cynical.

“Please, don’t.” This time I look her right in the eyes. I can see my reflection, the hazy sun light filling my backdrop like a white sheet.

“I’m not.” Sonia looks away. Towards Mia. I look too. The hippie girl starts massaging the back of Mia’s neck. They lean against the fence on the outside, and Mia hunches her shoulders as if the massage is too rough, then moves away. The hippy girl puts her hands on her hips. Mia pulls the waist of her pants up and her T-shirt over her hip flab. She yells something, flings her arms around. The silence of that yell from a distance is disconcerting.

Maybe it’s just a new friend. A tiff. As simple as that.

“Well¬—” I open my car door and butt my cigarette out in the ashtray by the gear stick. “I’ll head home.”

When I reemerge from the car, Sonia is gone.

Chapter 25

Sonia

There is a plastic toy truck embedded in my back lawn, disintegrating, slowly sinking from years of weather. Every day for the past fifteen years I have kept reminding myself to dig it up and throw it away. But every day I purposely neglect it.

On the back porch, I stand over the bloodstain, so I can pretend, for a moment, it does not exist. I unfasten the hair clip holding my inarticulate twist together, looking at the truck and the overgrown grass surrounding it, the part I always mow around. The teaspoon wind chime Mick made for me when he was a child preaches melancholic memories in the lukewarm breeze.

Today is the day I let go of the boy and welcome the man—regardless of the man he has become.

I kick off my shoes and cross the lawn to the aluminum shed. Inside, I search for where Ibrahim hid the shovel and gardening gloves. I find the shovel leaning upright against a huge bag of “fertilizer.” It’s been sealed with staples across the top, but the gloves are nowhere to be seen. Maybe Ibrahim took them. Maybe he is sentimental.

I roll up my shirtsleeves, then spear the shovel into the dirt surrounding the toy truck, and make four large dents in the earth. In the fourth dent, I pry up the truck just enough for me to jerk it out with my hands. Dirt embeds itself below my nails. I pull hard and almost tumble backwards as it comes loose from my overenthusiastic yank.

I hold the truck out in front of me. The bottom half of it is still bright red and yellow, the wheels clogged with mud. The top part has faded into a pale shade of orange.

Maybe that’s all it is. Maybe Mick’s just fading on the surface.

“My truck.”

I look up at the sound of the fly wire squeaking, still holding the truck in front of me. Mick hovers at the back door. But he won’t step onto the porch. He very rarely comes out here anymore.

“Why?” Mick frowns.

I run the truck to the dark-green street bin by the back fence. The snap of the closing lid echoes in my ears.