The Slap

  ‘Mum,’ he cried out. ‘Mum.’ His mother’s footsteps thundered down their narrow corridor. She burst into the bathroom. He held out his arms, the empty jar in one hand, his mobile phone in the other.

  She made him vomit, bent him over the tub, her fingers forced down his throat. He resisted, gagged, then chucked, thin bile running down his chin and his mother’s fingers. His body convulsed and lumps of half-digested toast, pills, more bile flew onto the enamel, splattering across the bathtub. He was grateful for his mother’s calm. Now that he knew that he did not want to die, he feared the poison he had taken. She drove fast, but she drove carefully, all the way to Epping Hospital, cursing every red light, cursing the politicians who had sold the old hospital he had been born into, the one that had been just around the corner from their house. She stroked his head from time to time, asking him to describe exactly how he was feeling, what he was experiencing, whether he had begun to feel any numbness or pain. What he did feel was an astonishing peace, an awareness of the complex structure of light and of sound. His mother weaved and overtook the traffic on Spring Street.

  ‘Honey,’ she said to him, as the car turned onto the long stretch of the highway. ‘I am so sorry I slapped you. I will never do that again.’

  ‘It’s alright.’ And it was.

  ‘I’ve never hit you before, have I?’

  ‘Just once or twice.’

  ‘No.’ She was sure, vehement. ‘I smacked you a few times, when you were a young pup.’ He nodded, he realised this was important to her. ‘I smacked you once when you were about to put your hand into a candle flame. I remember once smacking your bottom when you were rude too your nan. But I never hit you. I never did that.’

  It was true. It was important to her and that made it true. He grimaced. He could taste the foul residue of bile on his tongue. He placed his hand over his stomach.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ his mother counselled, her eyes straight ahead on the road. ‘Nearly there.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mum.’ He was. He really was.

  ‘Rich, I love you. I am so proud of who you are.’ Her voice was cracking, her stained yellow fingers gripping the wheel, her pink nail polish chipped. She blew her nose. ‘But what you did to Hector and what you did to Aisha and to Connie, that’s fucked, mate.’ She glanced over at him. ‘You know that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hector’s a married man, baby. He loves Aisha. He can never love you.’

  No. He released his hand from over his stomach. There was no pain, not yet. He’d be fine. He’d be alright.

  ‘Hector doesn’t even know who I am.’ He closed his eyes, the wind was pushing hard against his face. Warm; no, hot. It was comforting. ‘I think I’m in love with Nick.’

  There. He’d said it.

  His mother took his hand and squeezed tight. Her hand was wet, oily with sweat.

  ‘Oh, baby,’ she whispered, lifting his hand and kissing it. ‘Oh, my sweet baby boy.’ The car screeched into the entrance to emergency. ‘You’ll fall in love with other men and many men will fall in love with you.’

  She dropped his hand and the car came to a sudden stop. She had illegally parked and a young nurse, smoking a cigarette, tried to wave them away. His mother ignored the woman.

  The last thing he said to her before they pumped his stomach was, ‘Mum, I wish you wouldn’t smoke.’

  He awoke to a too-bright white room. The light hurt; he had to close his eyes, and it seemed to take an eternity to open them again. He did, carefully, taking in the room, the world around him. He felt woozy, and dropped his head to the side. His mother was sitting on a chair, reading New Idea. Someone took hold of his hand. With effort he forced his head to turn to the other side. Connie was standing beside his bed.

  ‘Hi.’ His mouth was dry, tasting awful, of metal and chemicals, and could not seem to make the right movements to allow the sound to escape. The word, when it finally reached his ears, sounded like nonsense, one of the words those weird Christians made up when they were speaking in tongues. But it was a sound. His mother rushed to the bed.

  It took a few minutes but he gradually broke through the punishing, sluggish after-effects of the anaesthetic. He gratefully slurped at the glass of water his mother offered him, not minding the liquid sliding down his lips and chin. He took in the room again, this time aware that across from him was an elderly man watching the TV screen above his bed, that there was another bed next to him but whoever was in it had chosen to draw the curtain. He asked his mother if he could be alone with Connie.

  ‘I’ll go grab myself a coffee. Do you want anything?’

  Connie shook her head. He just wanted water. He doubted he would ever feel like eating again.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  It must hurt, for there was a numbness that seemed to affect the whole of his abdomen, as if his body had been separated in two; like one of those old-fashioned cartoons, where those bumbling coyotes or cats had their torsos flattened to a sheet by a falling boulder or because they had been wrung through a mangle. He winced and nodded.

  Connie pulled back the sheet, kicked off her runners and got in next to him in the bed. He realised that he was wearing a white smock, that he was naked underneath it. Connie pulled the sheet back. The old man across from them looked shocked, then, grinning, turned his head back to the TV. Richie’s memory returned, a sudden flood. He thought of Hector and of Rosie and Gary, of Aisha and his mother, the nightmare in the office and he winced again, this hurting much more than any physical pain.

  ‘I’m so sorry I said anything to Rosie. I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘He didn’t rape me.’ Connie was whispering, her chin nearly to her chest, contrite. ‘That’s not what happened.’

  ‘Okay.’ He rolled his tongue on his cracked bottom lip, wanting moisture. But his tongue too was dry.

  ‘I’m sorry I lied.’

  He struggled for recollection. Which lie was she referring to? The truth seemed indecipherable. Maybe one day she would tell him the truth but that was not what mattered. He shifted in his bed, a pain shot through his back. He wanted her to forgive him for betraying her to the adults.

  ‘How’s Aisha?’

  ‘She’s so cool.’ Connie’s voice was full of admiration. ‘She’s so fucking cool. She’s not angry at you at all. She’s furious at Gary and Rosie. Particularly Rosie.’ Connie’s tone hardened. ‘And so am I.’

  ‘It’s not their fault.’

  ‘Yes it is.’ She was unforgiving. ‘They didn’t give a fuck about me, did they? If they did they would have come to me first. They just wanted to hurt Aish. They’re fucked,’ she spat out. ‘Fucked.’

  But what about Hugo? He didn’t want Hugo to think that any of this had anything to do with him. That would be what Hugo would be thinking. Richie was sure of it. He was sure of it because Hugo was a lot like him.

  ‘How’s Hector?’ He said it in a tiny, scared voice. Does he hate me?

  Connie smiled at him, tickled him under his nipple where he was sensitive, raising a laugh.

  ‘Your boyfriend?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘He doesn’t know.’

  ‘Oh.’ His body seemed to sink back into the bed, finally released, finally free.

  ‘Aish isn’t going to say a word to him. She doesn’t think he needs to know.’ Connie looked dazed, a little perplexed. ‘You know, I don’t think she would have believed it was true even if I wasn’t there. I don’t think it would have mattered what you said.’ His friend’s eyes widened, they looked enormous. ‘She just loves him. She just knows he wouldn’t do those awful things.’ Her bottom lip quivered. ‘And she trusts me. She wouldn’t believe it of me.’

  Lucky, lucky, Hector. Richie thought with sadness, and with relief. Some people walked away clean. That was a lesson he was learning. He was exhausted, confused. So what was the truth of what happened between Hector and Connie? Truth was this supposedly sacred thing, this thing that everyone—teachers, his m
um, everyone—seemed to believe was important, that must be respected above all else. But the truth did not seem to matter here, not to Connie. Maybe not to anyone. Certainly, at this moment, not to himself.

  ‘I’m tired,’ he whispered. Let’s not talk, let’s just lay here together.

  Connie wriggled and dug out something from her back jean pocket. It was a small envelope. She handed it to Richie, who opened it. A ticket to the Big Day Out slipped out.

  ‘It’s from me and Ali. It’s an early birthday present.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Wow,’ mimicked Connie. ‘Wow.’

  ‘Get out of that bed!’

  A fat, mean-looking nurse, her arms full of bedding, had popped her head through the door. Connie obediently jumped straight off the bed. The nurse shook her head and walked back down the corridor.

  The two teenagers started giggling, which turned into laughter. Richie had to force himself to stop. It hurt too much to laugh.

  He had to see the hospital psychologist before he could be discharged. The man, in his early forties with a thick Ned Kelly beard, had sparkling eyes that reminded Richie of Nate in Six Feet Under. The man was forthright. He wanted to know why Richie had wanted to kill himself. The boy struggled to find words. It all seemed too hard to explain. Maybe this was what Connie understood, that the truth did not always have words. What was important was that feeling that had been so potent straight after he had taken the pills. He had not wanted to die. That was important, maybe the only thing that mattered. The man was waiting expectantly. He was sincere, warm, a nice guy. Richie didn’t want to disappoint him. He told him that he had wanted to die because he was having trouble coming to terms with his sexuality. It wasn’t true but it was exactly the right thing to say. The man eagerly leaned forward and began to talk about the rich diversity of sexuality, how being gay was normal, that human culture was a broad church. Richie nodded, trying to look interested. He was a nice guy. He talked exactly like one of the good teachers. A little too earnestly. The man wrote down a few numbers for him, the emergency counselling number at the hospital, the number for the gay and lesbian switchboard. Richie pocketed the numbers, thanking the guy, and meaning it. He was only trying to help. But Richie was glad when the session was over. The psychologist signed a form and Richie joined his mother in the waiting room. He was free to go home.

  On Tuesday afternoon they all got their results. His ENTER score was 75.3. He was not going to Melbourne Uni. He could probably get into Deakin, maybe RMIT, on second-round offers. Connie got 98.7. She’d get into Vet Science. Nick got 93.2. It was a brilliant score but not good enough for Medicine. Richie had rung his mum with the news, who had cried, said she was proud of him, and then he had walked around with his results to Nick. His friend’s parents had both left their jobs to come home and celebrate with their son. Mr Cercic had poured his son and Richie a whisky, shouting out repeatedly that Nick was the first Cercic to get to university. But Nick was morose, disappointed with himself.

  ‘I’ll probably do Science at Melbourne,’ he said glumly. Then he brightened. ‘I’ll work really hard, get a good score and apply to transfer into Medicine the year after.’

  Nick looked across at him expectantly.

  ‘Sure,’ said Richie, ‘of course you will.’

  Nick’s face fell again. ‘I’ll be in debt forever.’

  Richie shrugged his shoulders. ‘What do you care? The world’s going to end before we have to pay it back.’

  They got a little tipsy with Mr Cercic and then the boys took the train into town. They met Connie and Ali, Lenin and Jenna and Tina at the Irish pub. No one was asking for ID that afternoon, they all got in. Ali had got 57.8. That was enough for the mechanical engineering course he wanted to do at TAFE. Jenna wasn’t sure what she was going to do. She and Tina had just scraped through, as had Lenin. That was all he wanted. For years he had wanted to be a cabinetmaker and had a promise of an apprenticeship from a Yugo who ran a small workshop in Reservoir. The man had demanded that Lenin get his VCE before he would take him on. Lenin seemed the happiest of them all. Richie was glad he had passed but he realised that everything was about to change. He and Nick would not be seeing each other every day. Jenna received an upset call from Tara who had failed. The others went quiet as they listened to the girl’s despair on the phone. The girls decided to go and look after her, and Ali, Lenin, Nick and Richie got sodden drunk. In the taxi home, squeezed in between Lenin and Nick, he fell asleep for a moment, jerking awake at Lenin’s laugh: he had fallen asleep on the boy’s shoulder. Lenin had a musty locker-room stink, of underarms and football, acrid but arousing; the deodorant could not mask it. He raised himself groggily, and apologised.

  ‘S’alright,’ said Lenin, winking.

  That night, as he tumbled fully clothed into bed, Richie fell asleep wanting to hold on to that smell, to not let it go.

  On the morning of the Big Day Out he was so excited that he got out of bed before the alarm. He spent an hour deciding what to wear, putting on and taking off every single item of clothing he owned. He decided against a button-up shirt because all of his looked too daggy. But every single one of his T-shirts seemed wrong. Finally, he asked his mother for her old Pink Floyd top. It was ripped at the left shoulder, long-sleeved, a little tight around his chest—maybe the swimming was finally paying off—and the cartoonish logo of an elongated screaming man was faded to a ghostly impression; but he liked the look of it on him, and it was cool without being too cool. Richie protested when his mother entered the bathroom and pushed two twenty-dollar notes into his back pocket.

  ‘Oh, go on,’ she complained, backing away from him, ‘just go and enjoy yourself.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He tousled his hair, wanting it to look nonchalantly unkempt but not to lose any of its sculptured form; he leered into the mirror, inspecting his teeth for any goobies or cereal caught between them.

  His mother was watching him. ‘You look good.’ She sat on the rim of the bath. She kept opening and closing her mouth, as if she couldn’t get words out. She cleared her throat and suddenly barked out, ‘Are you going to take drugs?’

  He looked at her reflection in the mirror. She looked small, a little afraid. Slowly, he nodded.

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Weed, I guess.’

  ‘What else?’

  He shrugged. ‘Stuff.’

  ‘What stuff ?’

  ‘Speed. Maybe an E.’

  ‘Oh, baby.’ She began to reach out to him then abruptly withdrew her hand. ‘I guess you’re all grown up.’

  He eyed her reflection warily. Was she pissed off with him?

  She stood up and kissed him quickly on the cheek. ‘Just be careful. ’ She stopped at the door. ‘I heard on the radio there’s going to be sniffer dogs. Better put your gear up your arse.’

  Up his arse? Yuck. Disgusting.

  He heard her chortling in the hallway. ‘You’ll be alright. They’re not going to be busting anyone for one or two pills.’

  Fine, fine, fine. Just shut up. Enough.

  He took one last look in the mirror, flattened a mutinous, stubborn lock of hair that kept flopping over his left eye, and switched off the bathroom light. He was ready. He was ready for the day.

  He glanced at his phone. He had an hour before he was due at Connie’s. On impulse he took the tram into Clifton Hill. He wanted to see Hugo. He thought about the boy’s parents and cringed at the wretched memory of the last time he’d seen them all. It was enough to make him turn back. But he didn’t—he wanted to see Hugo. He decided against ringing the house first. Rosie and Gary might well choose to ignore the phone and he would feel pathetic leaving a message on the machine, knowing that they could be listening to him. He couldn’t do it. He was shaking with nerves as he pushed past their gate. He walked up to the front porch. He took a breath and began counting to fifteen, just to fifteen, and then knocked. He heard Hugo running up the corridor. The boy opened the door and stared up at Richie. His f
ace broke out into an enormous grin.

  ‘Richie,’ he screamed. Hugo hugged tight around his legs, so tight that the older boy thought he would fall over. Richie steadied himself against the door and then picked up the excited child. He was still standing outside, on the porch. He ignored Hugo’s animated babble and looked down the dark corridor. Rows of cardboard boxes were neatly stacked against one wall; and then Rosie appeared, in the kitchen doorway, half-shrouded in the darkness.

  Richie swallowed, lowered the boy, and attempted a smile. ‘Hey,’ he mumbled, shit-scared.

  The woman emerged into the light, started running, fell on him and wrapped her arms around him. She gripped hold of him so tightly, with such desperate force, that he thought she would squeeze the very life out of him.

  They were leaving. A workmate of Gary’s had started a job on a project at Hepburn Springs, the renovation of the spa complex, and had managed to score some work for Gary as well. They had rented a house in Daylesford for a year, Rosie explained, her excitable chatter so similar to Hugo’s, and she was looking forward to leaving the city, to starting Hugo in a country school, to Gary doing more painting. As she was talking, Gary walked into the kitchen. He lit a cigarette, sat down, nodding at Richie but saying nothing. Hugo was sitting on the boy’s lap, occasionally interrupting his mother’s monologue. Richie listened but he had to struggle to concentrate on the meaning of Rosie’s words. There was a buzzing in his head. He kept glancing up to the film poster on their kitchen wall. The man in the poster looked like a better-looking Gary and the woman like a less-beautiful Rosie. He was conscious of the unsmiling man sitting across from him. He couldn’t meet Gary’s eyes. He felt scrutinised, spotlit. He quickly gulped down his tea. ‘I have to go.’

  Rosie’s face fell in disappointment, but quickly brightened. ‘You’ll have to come and stay.’ Hugo was nodding wildly. ‘You will, won’t you?’