49. Noah
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
NOAH
RECOMMENDED LISTENING ‘HOUSE OF PAIN’ BY FASTER PUSSYCAT
I walk down the stairs of the house I own in a daze. A part of me still can’t believe this happened. I met Queenie’s oppressor. We fought so badly, so bitterly it’s irredeemable.
This night was meant to mark the beginning of my life with the woman I am in love with. Now, everything’s over.
Definitively.
Damagingly.
Because, of course, we aren’t meant to be together.
I created all of these…these dreams in my head because I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I wasn’t alone when I was with her so I mistakenly, foolishly, stupidly assumed she felt the same about me, about us too.
When she was thinking the worst of me.
I shake my head. I tear open the shirt and it falls to the floor of the small storage room that still has a few of my things. Most of my stuff is in the bedroom she’s in. The bedroom she thinks I gave her because I wanted her to owe me. To fix her.
When it was because…because…I put a hand on the wall. And take a deep breath. It ripples up and down my back. I can’t see clearly because I have… fuck… tears in my eyes.
I close them and will the tears back.
When I have beat them back, I pick a smelly muscle tee shirt from an end table and wear it mechanically.
Under the tee shirt, over the small end table, I spy the wooden box I’d stashed here all those weeks ago. I didn’t look for it anymore because I carried my mother’s pookah shell necklace safely in my kit bag in a velvet drawstring pouch.
I pick it up. The wooden markings on the box are mere scratches now. I walk out of the room slowly, with the box in my hand. I sit down on the couch and stare at it, playing certain scenes in my head.
I’m seven, with a gap-toothed smile. Mum walks on a beach during a summer storm, finding the shells for my lucky charm necklace. She is in a blue dress with daisies on them, it sticks to her thin body.
I’m nine. It’s my birthday. Mum kisses me goodnight, tells me she loves me. She’ll always love me. Dad watches me from the doorway. I feel loved. Safe. Taken care of.
I’m twelve. Mum holds my hand when she tells me the news of her diagnosis. She’s dry-eyed. Strong. Stubborn. “I’ll beat it,” she says. “I’ll be the one to beat it.” I believe her. I don’t understand what cancer is, not yet.
Mum hugs me again. And watches a match I play from the stands. She can’t breathe properly and she’s wearing a large flowing scarf. She started losing hair last week. Her pride helps me win the match with my first little league century.
I am twelve again . Asleep near mum’s bed. But I can’t hear her heart beating. When the nurse comes and shakes her awake, her hand slides down from my head. I wait for her to wake up. I tell her, “Mum, please…please wake up. We have to watch the World Cup Finals.”
But I know it. I sense it in the cold of her hands. Her stiff body.
She won’t wake up. She won’t ever wake up again. She’s gone. Leaving me.
And I’ll be alone. Like I have always been. Always will be.
The knowledge sits on my twenty-four-year-old chest, my back, my head, my neck…a heavy boulder made of unfulfilled dreams, unspoken wishes, and unmade bargains.
I throw the box away. It bounces harmlessly on the rug and rolls to a stop, the contents spilling open.
I go down on my knees, my vision blurred and hazy, gather the box. Putting all the things back inside.
I sense Queenie’s presence before I see her. I’ve become attuned to her now. Like osmosis. Like love. I know where she is before she’s there.
She picks up a black satin scrunchie. “That’s mine.”
“Yeah. Keep it.” My words are hoarse, my throat is dry. Closing up from the effort to not cry.
“Where did it come from?” Queenie looks at the box in my hands. “Did you…” She takes a breath. “Did you take my scrunchie?”
I shrug. And close the box gently. It’s old and worn. I have to treat it with care.
“I’m sorry. About before,” she begins uncertainly. “I didn’t mean it. I swear, I didn’t mean it.”
“But you did.” I sit cross-legged on the floor. “You meant it.” I look up at her.
She’s a few feet away. But the distance between us is untraversable. I can’t reach her anymore. She might as well be in Melbourne, half a world away from me.
Queenie shakes her head and sinks down to the floor in front of me. “I did not mean it. It was a terrible thing to say. I was hurt and confused, and I lashed out at you, and I did not mean it. I’m sorry.” She tries to take my hand. “Will you please just listen to me for a minute?”
This time, I pull away. I don’t want her touching me. I am alone. I’m always alone.
“I have to know this. I just have to,” I ask her unevenly. Because this question keeps roaming in my head. Circling like a vulture over a still-dying carcass.
“What?”
“Did you…” I swallow. Firm up my voice. “Did you consent to have sex with me because you thought you owed me?”
“NO!” Her denial is instantaneous. Anguished.
I look at her then. She’s in tears. Floods of them. And I want to brush them away. It’s what I always do. I’m good at it. But she thinks it’s because I want to control her. Control everything. So, I let her cry. Her sobs batter my bruised heart to shreds.
“When I said…” Queenie swallows too. Wipes at her cheeks and tries again. “You have to understand. I am not like you.”
“I know you’re not like me. You’re better than me in every possible way.”
“I’m a waitress at a fucking diner. You’re a millionaire who’s been given a contract to play one of the most elite sports in the world,” she reminds me.
“Does it always come down to money with you?”
“That’s not what I was…I meant, you have risen from your failures. You haven’t let them define you. You’ve used them to make your mark in the world. Noah, you’re inspiration personified. I’m…”
“I’m an addict who struggles with sobriety every single day,” I tell her calmly. I show her my hand then. My fingers have a slight tremor. “See that? It’s because I want to take oxy or a shot of tequila because this is too real, too fucking much. I’m the bastard who personally squandered his chance at glory and playing for the country. So don’t tell me I’m a fucking inspiration.”
“But you are,” she argues back.
Queenie crawls over to me. And takes my limp fingers in hers. This time I don’t push her away. I don’t have the strength to.
“Just because you want something doesn’t mean you’ll give in to it. You’re a strong, stalwart man, Noah.”
“I gave into you.” My mouth twists. “I made you give into me. I pushed you and blackmailed you –”
“It was coercion,” she defends me. “And you needed to stay at camp.”
“But it’s not what you said just now. Do you not remember your own words?” I ask her politely.
“I’m sorry,” Queenie stresses. “ I’ll be sorry all my life if you just let me apologize. Please, just listen to me. Please.”
I raise dull eyes to her.
She wipes more tears away. “When I saw him…Professor Washington…”
“Veronica Washington,” I murmur, as another piece of the mystery falls into place. “Veronica’s his daughter?” I now understand the animosity between Veronica and Queenie.
What had Teddy Durham said: She doesn’t like the girl in the video…Queenie? Like, really doesn’t like her.
Queenie nods. “Yeah. She heard the rumors around school. She thought I was…I was…trying to trap her dad. Destroy his reputation.” Queenie closes her eyes and wraps one arm around her stomach. “She’s spent a lot of time and effort trying to break me.”
“Because she doesn’t know the truth.”
She shakes her head. “Obviously not. Like that fucker is going to tell her the truth.”
“I’m sorry.” They are inadequate words. But I offer them anyway.
She shakes her head. Rejecting them. Rejecting me.
I don’t expect any less now. I know the truth now. I see everything clearly now.
“Can I just talk for a minute? Will you listen?”
I nod. I suppose I owe her civility. “I’ll listen.”
Queenie tells me everything. Every sordid horrible thing that happened to Dolly. Then to her.
I get sickened by the picture she paints. Of a clannish community that supported and enabled a Pillar of Community at the cost of two, young, innocent girls and their truths.
“Fuck,” I breathe when she ends. Anger is a living, breathing dragon inside me now. It wants out.
I clench my mom’s keepsake box harder. Some of the splinters dig into my palms. I relish the pain.
“When I saw him again, I went back to that moment, Noah. I relived it all again. I…I saw myself as I really was. Weak. Powerless.” My brave Queenie nails me with a heartbreaking look. “Helpless.”
“And then you started talking about taking care of me and protecting me and I just…”
“You thought I was him? That asshole?” I am incredulous.
She shakes her head. I’m a little pacified she doesn’t think so low of me. At the least. “No! Fuck no. You’ve always believed in the future. You’re here at this camp, doing everything you can so you can have a shot at it.”
“So can you,” I remind her tiredly.
She shakes her head. Again. So fast. “I’m not just stuck at that office door, Noah. I’m trapped there,” she whispers. “I’m trapped in that moment. Where I believed him. Where he was right. Because he is a powerful, authoritative, privileged man. I am no one.”
“You’re not no one.”
“I am no one because it’s what I’ve become.” Shame coats her voice. Her tears. “And I don’t know how to be someone. And you deserve someone. Someone strong. Not weak. Not a coward or a failure. You deserve someone who doesn’t need you.”
“And you need me?” I ask her hopelessly.
“I always need you.” Queenie takes a jagged breath before continuing, “And you always come through for me. Don’t you see how unequal it makes us? If you keep fixing problems for me, how will I ever learn to fix them on my own? Who will I become in five, ten years?” She demands thickly. “A shadow. A non-person. The footnote to your brilliant and well-deserved career.”
“Is that how you see it?” Her words aren’t illogical. They just feel so.
Because in her head, we aren’t together. People who are together don’t feel the need to count and measure love and affection.
I’m alone in this regard too.
“What if I need you too?”
She smiles. “It’s not the same and you know it.”
“So, what? I should quit cricket?” I ask recklessly. “Stay here with you to prove how much I care about you?”
Queenie closes her eyes. Doesn’t answer me.
“You know, you’ve asked me so many times, why me…why me…why do you like me, why do you want me…and I’ve tried to answer you every time. I just realized,” I say slowly. “I never asked you why. Why me, Queenie?”
She continues staring at me. Makes no effort to wipe the tears on her lovely, luminescent face.
I try and memorize it. The golden eyes with no light in them, the rounds of her cheeks, the lushness of her lips, her perky and pointy nose…the curls I love to bury my hands in.
I nod at the scrunchie on her lap. “I came to the diner once in early April, the first week I landed here. It must have been eleven pm. I was on one of my clear my head drives, and I really needed some food.”
Queenie sucks in a breath.
“You were behind the bar. Your hips moved to Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit while you muttered about women’s femurs. Simon came into the bar and, without even asking him, you gave him a whole pie. He didn’t pay for it.” I don’t even need to close my eyes to picture her. “Your hair was in a fat plait. You tossed it to the back when it kept sliding to your shoulder.”
“I didn’t know…” Her mouth falls open. Her eyes widen.
“The scrunchie fell down with the force of your toss. You went to the kitchen afterward. You were the prettiest, kindest, most distracting woman. I kept it in the stupid hope I’d introduce myself by giving it to you.” My mouth twists. “But I never did because I was scared, you’d see through me.”
“I—” Queenie swallows.
“Then, like fate, I saw you at the party at Quigley, I followed you. I wanted to talk to you.” I smile sadly at her. “Tell you about the scrunchie. But you kissed me.”
Her lips part but no words come out.
“I wanted to say something after, but you started trash talking Aussie cricket. Then I gave you post-kiss consent and I…couldn’t. You were even prettier up close and near.”
“Then you asked me to kiss you at Mo’s,” I say the next words, true words, simply. “And you owned me. As much as cricket owns me.”
She cries again.
“And I spent all this time…all this time…trying to make you see that. Feel that. Trust that. Because I know I’m not enough.” I put a hand on my chest. “I am not worthy. I’m a fucked-up addict whose own dad doesn’t love him enough to want him. That’s why I never asked you why me.”
A hot tear chases down my cheek too. I wipe it away.
“Because you won’t want me if you were given a choice, will you?” I give her the first piece of my broken heart. “You told me I only fix things. But Queenie…” I give her the last piece. “Who will love me if I don’t make them? If I don’t do things for them to remind them, I am here?”
Another sob spills out of her. I feel its answering echo in my brutalized soul.
I get up. Slowly. My bones creak like I’ve played a ninety-over test match innings. But this match, I lost before the first ball was bowled.
“All I know of love is need, Queenie.” She looks stricken when I say it. “To be needed is to be loved. Maybe I need to ask you, would you want me if you didn’t need me. But we both already know the answer to that, don’t we?” I attempt a small smile. It feels artificial to me.
I hold my keepsake box in my hand. It doesn’t contain the memory of her anymore. Maybe it’s for the best.
People leave. People leave me. It’s what always happens. Holding onto them is not a good idea. It’s certainly not healthy, is it?
“The agreement…”
“The agreement’s over, Queenie.” I tell her what she needs to hear. Maybe what she’s always needed to hear. “You’re free of me.”
And I walk out of the house that had become a home because it had Queenie in it.