She doesn’t say anything about where we are going. I might as well be blindfolded. I catch the sweetish scent of alcohol on her breath as we wait on the bridge for the temporary lights to change.
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Might have been.’
‘You shouldn’t drink and drive.’
‘No shit!’ She shakes her head. ‘I didn’t know that. Thanks for telling me.’
I settle back in my seat and hope we don’t have far to go. Nothing happens. There are no police sirens. She drives more carefully, if anything, but I’m relieved when she takes the turning into the Meadow Crofts development and I know we are going to her place.
She has a bottle ready on a tray, together with lime and salt.
‘I don’t like tequila,’ I say.
‘It’s not tequila,’ she says. ‘It’s mescal.’ She shows me the scorpion in the bottom of the bottle, shaking it, making it float about, like it’s swimming in there. ‘It is the best and only the best is good enough. Drink up.’
We are sitting on the floor in the living room. I pass on the next round but she pours herself another. And another. She puts down the bottle, nearly missing the edge of the smoked-glass table. She did have a bit of a head start, but she seems to be getting really pissed. More than I’ve ever seen her. Mescal is strong stuff. She doesn’t slur her words. The way she speaks, all her movements become slower, more deliberate, and she’s very careful, like she doesn’t like to lose control. She never talks about her past, other boys, the men she’s had. She rarely talks about herself at all. The less she says, the more I want to know about her. I decide now’s my opportunity.
I go into the kitchen to get a beer, play for time, think about how to approach her.
The fridge is stacked with champagne bottles and the table is covered with shopping bags, the glossy, expensive kind, like she’s just come back from a spending spree.
I turn to find her standing in the doorway.
‘That one is for you.’ She points to a dark green bag, marked Ralph Lauren. ‘It’s a shirt to replace the one you spilt ketchup down. I had to guess the size.’
I take the shirt out of the packing. It’s a pink and white striped button down. Not what I’d wear normally, but I’m touched that she thought of me.
‘Hey, thanks!’
‘Try it on.’
‘Now?’ I follow her back into the lounge.
‘Of course, now. No point in buying things if you aren’t going to wear them.’
I do as she says. It fits perfectly.
‘Let me see,’ she says, moving me round like I’m a mannequin. ‘Looks good.’
‘How come you can afford all this?’ I ask her as I finish buttoning the shirt.
‘She left me money and Trevor gave me more. Plus I’ve got a credit card.’
‘What about your dad? Do you ever see him?’
‘My dad, my real dad, the one who is not called Trevor? No. I don’t see him because he’s dead. He shot himself,’ she says after a pause. ‘We have that much in common.’
I choke on my beer. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What I said. He’s dead.’
‘No, not that.’ I put the bottle down. ‘What you said about my dad. Having that in common. My dad was killed in an accident. He was a soldier, out on exercise. They were using live rounds. It was an accident,’ I repeat. ‘What makes you think it wasn’t?’
‘I dunno. I just thought. . .’ Her eyes are unfocused, distracted. All that mescal is getting to her. ‘Maybe it was something Martha said –’
‘But it’s not true, so why should she say it?’
‘I don’t know.’ She tips the bottle. ‘Almost empty.’
She gets up to go and get more, but I pull her back down again.
‘No.’ I take the bottle from her. ‘Not until you tell me. How do you know?’
She pulls away and goes to the kitchen.
She comes back with another bottle ‘Want some?’ I shake my head. ‘Please yourself.’ She pours herself a shot and knocks it back. ‘Dead’s dead. You just have to accept it. My dad went out one day and never came back. He got into the car, drove to a wood and shot himself.’
She’s quiet, staring into space, as if revisiting that time, going back to that place.
‘That’s terrible,’ I say into the silence. ‘A terrible thing to happen but that’s not what happened to my dad. His was an accident.’
‘Oh,’ she looks at me, eyes heavy. ‘How do you know?’
‘It’s what I was told.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Not very old. Three.’
‘There!’ She sits up. ‘You’ve got it right there. They lied to you. They’d have lied to me, too, if I hadn’t been old enough to see through it. People don’t like the truth. They translate it into something easier for everyone to accept.’
My turn to be quiet. Everything I’d ever believed. Everything I’d ever been told. She’s rocking my world. I reach for the mescal bottle and take a swig. Little things come together in my mind. A word here, a word there. Hushed conversations I wasn’t supposed to hear. The more I think about it, the more I know what she is saying is true.
Just when I think it can’t get worse, it does.
‘But how do you know?’ I ask. ‘When it’s something I didn’t know myself. How do you know?’ It can’t be from Martha. I’m pretty sure she knows as much as I do.
‘It was Rob,’ she says it quickly, as if she wants to get this over. ‘Rob told me.’
‘But how . . .’
‘There’s something you ought to know.’
Then she tells me what really happened at Martha’s party.
I leave in the cold, early morning. I don’t know if it’s the mescal, or what she’s told me, but my face feels stiff, like a mask. I feel disarticulated, as if my arms and legs don’t belong to my body. I can’t feel my feet but I manage to put one in front of the other. I’ve got plenty to think about on the long walk home.