The Slap

  Anouk knew she was right. She remembered Terry before his conversion, his wit and boyish charm, but also the violence that seemed to lie just beneath his jovial, egalitarian demeanour, the aggro that would surface whenever he got drunk. His open, friendly face was inexorably falling to dissipation and fat, there was always the toxic smell of grog emanating from his body. She had been amazed by the different man who had shaken her hand years later at a dinner at Hector’s and Aish’s house. He had not yet taken on his new Muslim name but he had converted and was studying Arabic and his new faith. His eyes and skin were clear, he had gained weight, filled out. He was calm, as though he had finally found repose. She had never thought him a happy man, but he looked content then. Truth be told, the lacerating awareness of her country’s racial history and her own prejudices had made her assume that he would never be happy, that he would always be aggro. That he would die aggro—aggro and young. She grinned at a blasphemous thought, one that she knew she could never share with Rosie: he had been young and aggro and now he was pious and boring.

  Instead she nodded. ‘It’s true. But can we not talk about religion? I thought God had died just before my ninth birthday but it seems that was not the case. I hate being proved wrong. Let’s talk about something else.’

  Jim was still glancing over at her. She was glad to be a woman, drinking, flirting, having fun.

  Rosie laughed. ‘Done. No God talk. It’s just that she’s been such a help to me. I think we’re going to be friends.’

  ‘Who?’

  Anouk, distracted by the flirtatious game she and Jim were playing, had lost track of the conversation. Was this muddle-headedness also a curse of pregnancy?

  ‘Shamira,’ replied Rosie, stealing a glance at Aisha and then quickly looking away. They’ve talked about this already. Anouk felt a piercing jolt of adolescent jealousy.

  ‘How is she being a help?’

  ‘She’s been such a rock. With this business of Hugo being bashed.’ I will not go there, I will play dumb.

  ‘We’ve charged Hector’s cousin with assault.’ Rosie could not bring herself to look at Anouk.

  ‘Rosie, don’t do this.’

  ‘Gary’s determined.’

  Anouk, in frustration, glared at Aisha. ‘You say something to her.’

  ‘It’s Rosie’s choice,’ Aisha answered firmly.

  ‘Then I’m going to be a witness for Harry and Sandi.’

  Rosie swung around. ‘You saw that bastard bash Hugo.’

  ‘I saw Harry slap Hugo. And I saw that Hugo deserved it.’

  ‘No one deserves to be hit, let alone a child.’

  ‘That’s just a platitude, a new age bullshit platitude. You need to teach a child discipline and sometimes that discipline has to be physical. That’s how we learn what is acceptable and what is not.’

  Rosie was furious. ‘Just shut it, Anouk. You have no right to say what you are saying.’

  Because I’m not a mother? She nearly said it, she had to choke back on the words: I’m pregnant. She must not raise her voice, she must state her argument calmly.

  ‘My point is not about your son. My point is a general one. We’re raising a generation of moral imbeciles, kids who have no sense of responsibility.’

  ‘You do not teach children responsibility by bashing them.’

  ‘Harry did not bash Hugo.’

  ‘He hit him. He assaulted him. That’s illegal.’

  Anouk exploded. ‘That’s crap. Maybe he shouldn’t have slapped Hugo but what he did was not a crime. We all wanted to slap him at that moment. You’re going to fuck up Harry and Sandi’s lives just because Gary has it in his head that he was done wrong and because Gary always has to be the victim.’

  Anouk wasn’t shouting but she was loud, dogged, her tone urgent. She was aware that Jim and Tony had fallen silent at the next table but she did not care. She wanted her words to be knives, to hurt Rosie. She felt as if she had never detested anything in her life with more passion than her friend’s self-righteous conviction.

  ‘Or is it that he’s bored? Is that it, Rosie? Gary’s bored and he wants some drama in his life?’

  Rosie was quietly sobbing. ‘You have no right. You have no right.’

  ‘Hugo’s problem is not that Harry slapped him. Hugo’s problem is that neither you nor Gary had the control over your child to stop him acting like a brat.’

  ‘Anouk, that’s enough.’ Aisha was livid.

  It was enough. She had nothing more to say. She had wanted to say these things to Rosie for a long time, but there was no pleasure or satisfaction in saying them. She felt guilty and wretched at seeing the effect her words had on her friends.

  Aisha was holding Rosie’s hand. ‘You don’t have the right to say any of that, Anouk. Rosie is right.’ Aisha’s tone was icy, her eyes were black steel. ‘You aren’t very interested in our children, we know that and we can deal with that. You don’t like babies and you don’t like talk about babies and children. You’ve made that clear over the years and we’ve respected that. But don’t then assume that you can start being an authority now.’ Aisha was struggling to hold back her own tears, her voice was shaky. ‘Harry didn’t have any right to hit Hugo. Yes, maybe we all felt like slapping him at that moment but the point is no other adult did. We exercised self-control, which is what makes us different from children. We didn’t slap him because we knew that was the wrong thing to do.’

  No, some of us didn’t because we were too scared. But Anouk was tired. She was not prepared to argue further. This is why I will not have this baby, she said to herself, why I am going to have the abortion. I don’t want to become like either of you. I’m not on your side, not in this. This is not the only way to be a parent but it is the only way this world now allows. And to do it my way would be an exhausting struggle and maybe I could do it but I couldn’t do anything else. Anouk realised that she was repeatedly clenching and unclenching her fists. There was silence at their table, made more insistent by the buzz of the now crowded beer-garden, all the drunken laughter and conversation. She knew that the women were waiting for her to fill the silence, to renew their camaraderie, to make them all feel safe again. It had always been this way. It came to Anouk with the force of a revelation. She was the risk taker, the cool one, the glamorous one. She had the actor boyfriend, the high-powered job. She was not a mother, she was not a spouse. She was different and they must have always seen her as different. Even Aish.

  Anouk stood, leaned across the table and kissed Rosie’s brow.

  ‘Darling, I’m sorry,’ she said simply. ‘I agree. He had no right.’

  Rosie smiled tearily. ‘Thank you.’

  Aisha gripped Anouk’s hand and looked straight at her. I’m sorry too, she mouthed. Carefully, Anouk wrested her hand free and lit a cigarette. Aisha furtively, guiltily, took one from the packet and this made Anouk and Rosie suddenly snigger.

  Aisha ignored them.

  ‘Has it struck you that smoking is the new adultery?’ Anouk whispered with a wink to Rosie.

  ‘That’s what Gary says,’ Rosie answered and Anouk let that pass without comment.

  Aisha changed the subject. ‘So what did you want to speak to us about? You said on the phone you wanted our advice.’

  I wanted your advice, thought Anouk, but instead said, ‘I’m thinking of quitting the job. I want to see if I’ve got it in me to write the novel I’ve always bloody talked about and have kept putting off.’

  Rosie and Aish squealed as if they were girls again. They were overjoyed for her.

  ‘Of course you should,’ said Aisha. ‘We’ve been wondering how long it would take for you to make this decision.’

  ‘You’ve got to,’ agreed Rosie. ‘You’ve just got to. And you can, Anouk.’

  ‘I know,’ and she finished the sentence with the words that the others did not dare speak. ‘I don’t have children to worry about.’

  Rosie poked her tongue out at her. She had been forgiven. ‘Gary’s in th
e same head space. He’s talking about painting again.’

  Anouk and Aisha shared a quick, covert glance. There was no similarity between her creative ambition and Gary’s. He had no discipline, no talent. The idea that he was a painter was a joke to them.

  ‘Let’s get another bottle.’

  They proceeded to get riotously drunk. Later that night, Anouk got home and rushed to the toilet where she threw up, again and again, something that she had not done for over twenty years. She drained her body of everything, of the food and the wine, and it seemed to her that she was expelling her child with every retch.

  The next morning Rhys came over before she awoke and she rose to the smells of eggs and bacon being fried. She ran to the bathroom and vomited again.

  ‘You must have got hammered last night.’ He was kneeling beside her, wiping her brow.

  ‘That I did,’ she groaned ruefully as he helped her back into bed. ‘Sorry, Rhysbo, I’ve got no appetite.’

  ‘You girls can drink us guys under the table.’

  No we can’t, she wanted to answer, not because we’re women but because we are no longer twenty-five. It takes days for us to recover. She thought about saying, Rhys I’m going to have a baby. Will you take time out of your career to help me raise it while I write my novel? She looked at him as he reclined alongside her. He’d probably say yes. He’d probably be happy to do it and wouldn’t start resenting her till years later.

  She tickled his nose. ‘Aish asked me last night if you could sign some photos for Connie and Richie.’

  ‘Are they her kids?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘You smoke way too much pot.’ God, she did sound like a mother. ‘Aisha’s children are called Adam and Melissa. Which I’ve told you a dozen times. Connie was the teenage blonde girl at the barbecue, a cute kid, a nice girl. Remember?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Richie was her boyfriend.’

  ‘Yeah?’ The hint of doubt in Rhys’s voice intrigued her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just thought he was gay.’

  Gay? She thought it preposterous. Richie was just a normal, boring kid.

  ‘My God, you are vain.’

  Rhys looked wounded. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just a feeling I got.’ He looked up at her, teasingly. ‘My generation has got a good gaydar, you know, not like you uptight old baby-boomers.’

  This made her laugh. ‘Watch it, I’m not that old. Anyway, I don’t think it’s true, but just in case, get them both a photo of you topless. Unless your gaydar is telling you the girl’s a dyke?’

  He rose, laughing as well, and headed to her kitchen. She heard him put on a coffee. She threw the sheets off her and looked down at her stomach. It was flat, it seemed impossible that life was commencing inside there. Rhys and I would make great parents for a gay kid, she mused, they’d be lucky to have us. She patted her stomach. But that’s only one chance in ten, kiddo, and only one chance in twenty if the God-botherers are right. I just don’t like the odds, she whispered to her belly.

  She went to the clinic on her own. She returned on her own. The taxi driver was a Serb and he was a grandfather. He was delighted that she could remember a few Yugoslav words from her time in Zagreb and he made her promise that one day she would visit Belgrade. He was a gentleman and seeing that she was pale and unsteady, he walked her to the door. Inside her apartment she glanced at a photocopy the nurse had given her on things not to do after a termination. She scrunched up the sheet and flung it in the bin. She found that she could not stop thinking of the taxi driver she had insulted the week before. She stripped, slipped on her robe and switched on the television. She could not forget his face. She muted the volume, rang the taxi service and waited for a human voice. She gave the details of the fare and asked if she could have the address of the driver. The woman on the other end sounded stern.

  ‘We can’t give you those details. Do you have his plate number?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you wish to make a complaint?’

  ‘God no, I want to send him an apology. I’m afraid I was terribly rude to him and he did not deserve it.’

  The woman’s voice softened. ‘I’m sure you weren’t rude.’

  ‘No, I’m sure I was.’

  There was a pause and then the woman said that she would make enquiries, she would get an apology to the driver. Anouk gave as many details of the fare as she could—the time, the date, the pick-up, the destination—and when she was finished, she asked shyly, ‘Will you make sure he gets my apology?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Do you want my name?’

  ‘No,’ the woman replied firmly. ‘That’s not important.’

  She slept soundly and awoke with her head pounding and what felt like a laceration in her abdomen. She could not bear the thought of breakfast or of a shower. She slipped on a pair of track-pants and a shirt and she rang Rhys. She left a message on his phone for him to come over that night. She turned on the computer, put on a coffee and sat down at her desk. She wrote her letter of resignation quickly and efficiently: she said all she wanted to say in four lines. She then opened up another Word document. She looked at the terminal screen. The cursor blinked. She sipped her coffee and lit a cigarette. The cursor was still blinking.

  ‘Well, fucking write then,’ she said out loud.

  So she began to write.

  HARRY

  Harry stood on the verandah, naked except for his Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and his black Lycra Speedos, looking over on the flat calm waters of Port Phillip Bay. The setting sun painted the horizon in swirls of red and orange and the spires and flat-topped skyscrapers of Melbourne were just visible through the late afternoon smog that sat over the city. Harry’s body glistened from the suntan lotion and sweat; the day was still scorching hot and there had been no breeze since the early morning. He could smell the meat that Sandi was sizzling in the kitchen and he rubbed his hand over his stomach, anticipating dinner. Cars were crawling slowly, bumper to bumper, along Beach Road. Fuck you, losers. Harry smiled to himself. From his newly finished verandah he had a clear view below to the sand and water. Four young girls in thin strips of bikinis were showering in the park. They had pert adolescent tits, they were blonde and lithe. Grinning, he pushed his crotch hard against the dark tinted glass of the balcony wall. He breathed long and hard, his eyes still focused on the girls below, who were now giggling and squealing, splashing water at each other. His penis lengthened and hardened, stretching against the Lycra. Slowly, he rocked back and forth against the glass. Come on, bitch, he mouthed to himself. One of the girls had bent over and he let out a small groan at glimpsing her full, toned buttocks. Wouldn’t you want my cock up that hole, you little whore.

  He stepped back from the glass. The girls were now drying off, collecting their towels and bags, but his interest had waned. He took one more look at the world below him, and then turned and dived into the pool. He smacked the water’s surface and entered the blissfully cold world beneath; he emerged for air, grinning. He dived once more beneath the surface and then rolled like the seals Rocco loved watching at the zoo. He turned on his back and stretched his limbs out over the water. ‘I am the king of the world!’ he shouted to the sky.

  ‘Is his majesty hungry?’

  Sandi was standing at the edge of the pool, her skin tanned a rich honey. She too was wearing a bikini, but whereas the girls’ swimsuits had seemed sluttish and vulgar, his wife seemed to him to be as exquisite as the elegant European models on the covers of the magazines she read. He had bought the bikini for her. The pearl-coloured fabric straps were held in place with small coils of gold. He looked up at her and regretted having wasted time fantasising over the cheap floozies on the beach. Sandi was a real woman. She was wearing one of his old denim work shirts over her bikini and she still managed to look spectacular. I am the king of the world, he repeated silently.

  ‘I’m famished.’

  ‘Then dinner is served, your
majesty.’

  The television was on in the kitchen and there was catastrophe on the screen. A bomb? An earthquake? A war? He didn’t fucking care, let the towelheads and the yids wipe themselves out. He punched a button on the remote control, found images of nature and colour on one of the cable stations, and turned down the volume. He poured wine for himself and for Sandi, lit a cigarette and sat on a stool watching her prepare the dressing for the salad.

  ‘Where’s Rocco?’

  ‘Watching tele in the lounge.’

  Harry belowed out his son’s name and waited for a response.

  ‘What?’ Rocco yelled back.

  ‘Get in here.’

  Rocco, as if in childish defiance of his parents’ ease with their near-naked bodies, was wearing track-pants, a baseball cap and an over-sized black T-shirt with some garish gangsta insignia on its front. He had his socks and runners on.

  ‘Aren’t you hot?’

  His son shrugged and carefully lifted himself onto the stool next to his father. ‘What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Chops.’

  ‘With chips?’

  ‘You eat too many chips,’ his mother warned.

  ‘You can never eat too many chips.’

  ‘Thanks for the support, your majesty.’

  Rocco, quizzical, was chewing on his bottom lip. Harry resisted the urge to tell him off. Rocco made himself ugly when he did that.

  ‘Why are you calling Dad “Your majesty”, Mum?’

  ‘Because I’m the king of this house.’

  Rocco stopped chewing at his lip and Harry playfully tweaked the boy’s earlobe. ‘And one day you will be king.’

  But Rocco had lost interest in the subject and instead swivelled around in his seat and stared at the television. He picked up the remote control and started switching channels.

  Sandi leaned across the bench and took the remote off him. ‘Leave it till after dinner. You watch too much television.’

  ‘You can never watch too much television.’

  Sandi’s exasperated face made both father and son laugh out loud in guilty, masculine complicity.