Scars

I open my mouth and yell. The long blade whips up to my face, through one cheek and out the other. Horrified, she lets go and stumbles away. The door slams.

I gurgle blood, reach up to pull it out, but realise this is too good a chance to miss. I grab my phone from the kitchen bench, ignore the pain, press selfie, hold it up. It needs more. I gurgle blood out of my lips. It runs down my chin in thick channels, pours onto my white T-shirt. I almost smile but it hurts too much. I hold the button down so it takes hundreds of shots. Closer, further away, angles, sideways, down, up, straight on.

I put the phone down. Find a couple of clean face washers, a clean towel and a towel robe belt in the bathroom. I hold the towel under my face to catch blood while I grab a belt from the bedroom. I sit back on the bathroom tile floor.  Blood drips everywhere. The cool tiles feel good.

Fuck it. I hold the towel under my chin again and get up and grab the phone from the kitchen bench. Set it to video, stand it on the toilet seat, press start. Sit on the cold floor again. Look straight at the camera.

Slowly I pull the knife out. Is it sick that I hold my tongue against the blade’s cold face and feel it slide out of my mouth? It’s some distraction from the shrieking pain. Blood floods my mouth, pours down my cheeks. I nudge a face washer inside each cheek, groaning, then wrap the towel over my head and belt it on vertically. I tie the robe belt horizontally, under my nose and above my ears. It’s hard to get pressure against the wounds but it’s the best I can do.

Does it hurt? Of course it fucking hurts. It sears, rips, screams with pain. I just thank my household gods that I yelled at her so she missed my teeth and only nicked my tongue.

I rinse my hands, squat down in front of the camera and mumble “Going to hospital” through my gob full of bloody cloth. Turn the vid off. Tik Tok here we come.

…

She was what some people would call volatile. I don’t care what your childhood was like, just leave it at the door. You want to get it out of your system? Buy a punching bag.

I called the cops on her once before. That didn’t work out well. I woke up with my feet shackled to the bed frame, a rope tight around my neck and a gag in my mouth. You know what a door sausage is? A few feet of material like a big sausage filled with little, heavy beads. You shove it against a door to keep out the drafts. Or you use it as a cudgel and give your boyfriend (friend?) a right thumping. You avoid his balls. You don’t want to mess with his testosterone supply because there’s something in that for you. He finds it hard though to explain the bruises on every other part of his body to the doctor who straps him up for the broken ribs.

I never thought it would come to knives. I mean, most aspects of our short time together were fun – she danced like a demon, was energetic and generous where a healthy young person wants their partner to be, she praised my pizza-making skills - I have few others, and she refused drugs and alcohol ‘because they make me crazy’. I didn’t laugh out loud when she said that, which proves I can be sensitive and considerate when the occasion demands.

 The final problem arose because my mother has no common sense. She doesn’t like Meredith and thinks I can do better. Like… I know!...but… She keeps suggesting other women I might like to date.

“I don’t do dates Maggie.”

“Why not just try? You’re not committed to Meredith are you?”

“Well, committed is not a word I like to bring up in conversation with her.”

That went right over Maggie’s head.

“Oh good. Look, her name’s Roxana. I’ll get her to give you a call. She’s in my naked yoga class.”

“Oh god Maggie, I wish you wouldn’t talk about that.”

“She’s got a lovely body. Unlike mine ravaged by giving birth to fat-headed sons.” 

I hung up. Mothers who grew up in hippy communes can be seriously lacking in social empathy.

So Roxana calls when Meredith is at my place. I have a ‘place’. It’s more like a shed out the back of a bad dude’s place but it’s cheap and I give Derrick an alibi any time he needs one. Bed, sofa, TV, kitchen sink and bench, stove, bathroom.

Meredith doesn’t let me answer my phone when we’re together.

“Hello, Jake’s phone.

“Oh, hi Roxana, this is Meredith. Jake told me you might call. You know his mother I believe, the deep-fried turkey?

“Did you want to speak to Jake? He’s right here. No, I’m not his girlfriend. He just takes advantage of me until he can find something better. He’d throw me out with the trash if he could but his shovel isn’t big enough if you know what I mean.

“Well, what do you know Jake, she hung up.”

But Maggie doesn’t give up so easy. I have coffee with her every Saturday morning. She calls it my penance for ruining her life. I call it ‘I can’t be bothered fighting any more’.  We are sipping skinny lattés at an outside table when this stunning tall woman walks up and sits down.

“Hi Roxana,” Maggie chimes.

All I can think is I wish I had got into naked yoga. Maggie-free classes anyway. It’s all I can do not to stare.

We chat. I hope Meredith isn’t spying on us. Roxana is smart, funny, gorgeous. Why the hell she let Maggie talk her into this I have no idea. She looks at me with a mocking smile, clearly thinking to herself ‘Why am I here talking to this dead-beat and his batty mother?’

Soon she makes excuses and leaves with a wave. The memory of her walking away will be with me the rest of my life. The mesmerising movement of shapes and geometry, the blessed Euclidean rolling joy of the human form in its ineluctable perfection.

When I get home an hour or so later, Meredith – who has a key - is sitting on the floor by the sofa, mascara dribbling down her face, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels in her hand. I admire the theatricality with which she swoops it through the air, lifts it to her sweet, heavy lips and has a big mouthful, all the while looking at me with those desperately sad but accusing eyes. Those big, baleful eyes I fell for when I first helped her home close to dead drunk, put her to bed and slept on the floor.

I, my friend, am a good man. Confused, immature, directionless, all that. But I do my best not to hurt people. I scrape by with small jobs and deliveries of parcels the contents of which I don’t ask about. I asked Maggie for money once but she has reminded me of her generosity ever since. I haven’t asked again though I’ve been days without a meal. Some people grasp opportunities to make others feel small as if they were snacks they should eat every goddam day.

But anyway, Meredith on the floor, drunk, crying.

“She nice?” she accuses.

Oh god, she did spy on us.

“Maggie invited her,” I say. “She stayed a short while and left.”

“With your eyes glued to her ass.”

“I have always enjoyed watching nature shows.”

I realise pretty quickly that this might not improve the situation.

She jumps to her feet, lurches toward me. I sidestep and walk to the kitchen. She throws the Jack Daniels. It hits my arm. Not much force there in a drunk’s stumbling throw. I pick it up before too much glugs onto the vinyl.

“I hate you!” she slurs. “You want her.”

“Oh for god’s sake Meredith…”

She pulls out the cutlery drawer, grabs the long blade knife with the sharp end. That knife you always keep in the drawer in case someone breaks in and finds it on the benchtop and uses it. That precaution now being, clearly, obsolete.  

“If I can’t have you, she can’t have you!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, don’t be so FUCKING MELODRAMATIC!” I am angry, and I yell - and as I yell she lifts her hand in a flash of steel and it happens.

…

I ride my Royal Enfield to the hospital emergency department. It’s a Classic 350 Dark Stealth. I love it. I chain it up in the hospital carpark. People stare at me. They must think I have been in a gang war. So much blood. No-one will dare touch this machine. Oh how free of romantic connotations the truth so often is!

I explain to the medics that I slipped and fell onto a knife I was carrying. They don’t believe me but it’s too much trouble to challenge. They have plenty more wounds to heal and so little time. They drug me up and stitch me inside and out. I’ll be having Jell-O, ice cream and tepid coffee for weeks.

…

Meredith. Meredith. Jealousy and anger are a bad cocktail, especially when the ingredients are way too strong.  Should I stay or do I go? I play the Clash over and over as I flop on the sofa and wonder what’s next. My man Derrick knocks and opens the door – he never waits.

“Whoa dude? What the fuck happened to you?”

Suddenly I realise I have wasted hours not thinking up a better excuse than ‘my girlfriend got jealous and stuck a knife through my face’. Here is my one big chance to build a better rep than just the guy who does small jobs for Derrick.

“Grab a beer man. It’s quite a story. This big guy thought I’d taken his stash of weed…”

All the time I’m thinking ‘I didn’t say anything about Meredith on the video did I?’ I hope not. That vid is my door to the future.

…