Rotten Peaches Read online

  I walk back to my hotel as fast as I can and when I get there, I head straight for the bar. I consider going to my room but I don’t trust myself to be alone. I might smash the mirror, destroy the room, break the chairs, and behave badly. I have a temper. A bad one. My rages were the only thing my father admonished me about when I was a child. I would scream like a banshee and I threw things, breaking whatever I could lay my hands on.

  Betty would wait for my rage to subside, and then would slip silently into the room, a dustpan and broom in hand. When I was a teenager and filled with the blinding rage, I used a blade on my arms and leges and I scored cuts, nothing neat, a mishmash of angry marks, not deep mind you, but still, a frenzied attack that momentarily eased my demons. I wore long sleeves for a while. As I grew older, I learned to turn my anger inward, and I became depressed instead.

  And that old familiar anger surges through my blood now. I won’t self-harm, but I’m craving an act of violence and destruction. However, achieving infamy as the self-help author who turned her room upside down in a fit of temper would not be judicious. No, best to stay out of my own way until I calmed down.

  I climb onto a tall barstool with relief. I order a bottle of Boekenhoutskloof Cabernet Sauvignon 2012. At least the bar has good South African wines.

  I study my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. My skin is a dark putty colour, a colour I hate, and the thick TV makeup exaggerates the uncooked sausage tone. Man, I look old. Betty used to tell me that angry never makes for pretty, and she was right. And the whole world saw me: puce-faced and fuming. But let’s not forget that I won.

  I grab a napkin and wipe my face roughly, pausing to down a glass of wine and pour another. “Tough day?” the bartender asks and I ignore him and focus on my drink.

  I polish off a second glass and my composure tiptoes back. My phone continues to chirp and buzz and everybody and their brother message me. The whole world chimes in, but there is still nothing from Dirk. And the rest of the world can wait until I’m good and ready to say what needs to be said.

  I can’t stop thinking about that man, James Ray, that sleazy man, trying to ride on the coattails of my fame with his claim to be my family. How foolish to think I had shaken him off. I had been a little surprised that he had slunk off into the shadows so quickly, but for the life of me, I never expected him to pull a stunt like this.

  I sit at the bar and finish the bottle in short order. My anger recedes. I can go to my room, tear off these godforsaken scratchy pantyhose, tie them in a knot, and throw them away. I will close the blinds, order another bottle of wine, and drink until I pass out.

  I get up, unsteady on my heels and I concentrate on grabbing my handbag. I sling it over my shoulder, and the world wobbles a bit. I turn to leave and who do I see but that con man, James Ray, sitting alone in an alcove booth. He is watching me. How long he has been there? I lean on the stool that is still warm from my bottom and I stare straight back at him.

  I do not move.

  5. LEONIE

  SITTING ON THE BED IN MY HOTEL ROOM, I watch the TV in horror. My poor JayRay. My poor baby. Once that bitch got going about flesh and blood, she made it sound like he was a mangy, scavenging dog and I could hardly bear to watch. He wasn’t so much sidelined as discarded like garbage. He’ll be devastated. All his hopes destroyed, with nothing left but the dead ashes of a dream.

  I’m not sure if I should rush off and try to find him or leave him be for a while. I know he will have followed Bernice back to her hotel and I scramble through my texts to find where she’s staying. I decide that I have to find him. I grab my purse and walk quickly to Bernice’s hotel.

  I wrench the bar room door open and stop short. A standoff is in play between Bernice and JayRay. Bernice is at the bar. She looks wobbly and half-cut while JayRay is sitting at a booth and he’s slicing her with a chainsaw look.

  I don’t move, neither does Bernice, and JayRay keeps his radar glare locked in place.

  “Sorry, excuse me, pardon me,” a hefty man wheezes past me and breaks the spell. I march over to JayRay’s booth and slide in next to him. Now both of us are staring Bernice down.

  Bernice hooks her purse over her arm, picks up her coat, and makes her way across the room. I was right; she’s liberally drunk. She walks straight past us and I can’t help myself. “Hey,” I call out. “You. Bitch. Who died and made you the queen?”

  She stops and turns around. She looks at us for a moment and then she comes up to our table and eases into the booth and faces us. “Okay, fine. Here I am. What do you want? Money? Is that it?”

  “I wondered about you my whole life,” JayRay says quietly and he isn’t smiling. He actually looks classy when he isn’t smiling, although I’ve never told him that. When he grins, you can’t help but see a guy on the make — that kind of beauty has to be asking for something in return. When his face is still, he’s believable as an honest, sincere guy.

  Bernice is taken aback by this quiet new charm, this guy without a play in hand. Her shoulders relax slightly and her fingers stop their frantic cuticle digging. “Wondered what? What did you hear anyway?” Her accent is like cheddar and raw onions.

  “Dad often talked about you. He felt bad for leaving you. He didn’t know what else to do.”

  “So he divorces my mother when I am six months old, marries some new woman in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, gets her pregnant, hightails it to Canada, and then we never hear from him again. He takes his new wife and starts a brand new family, and you and your brothers and sisters are set while he leaves my mother high and dry. And I’m supposed to be happy he talked about me? Tough takkies if you ask me.”

  Brothers and sisters? JayRay told me he was an only child. I want to extrapolate the truth from him, but I acknowledge that the timing isn’t great and I’ll have to wait.

  “Have a drink with us,” JayRay says quietly, keeping his believable sincere face in place. “Please don’t rush off. Hear what I have to say.”

  Bernice hesitates and she looks at me. Unlike JayRay, my game face is my smile and I slap it on now, not too much, somewhat shy, even apologetic. “I apologize for shouting at you,” I say to her. “Please stay.”

  My plea works and the waiter comes to take our orders.

  “A cappuccino,” Bernice says and JayRay follows suit. I order a bottle of red wine.

  “So now, what next?” Bernice asks. “What do you want to talk about?”

  JayRay shrugs. “You. Do you have any kids? Are you married?”

  Bernice shakes her head and I know that JayRay has the answers already.

  “She had a dog called Snoopy when she was a kid,” he told me after our first night together. “Like how unoriginal is that? A beagle. You would have thought that as a future bestselling author, she would have shown more imagination. And a cat named Fluffy. Her mother died from ovarian cancer when she was thirty-eight, and her adopted father died eight years ago, and he left her everything.”

  “What’s everything?” I asked.

  “Millions. A mansion in Johannesburg, where she lives, although she grew up on a farm several hours north west of Johannesburg. They’ve still got the place. Imagine us, living on a farm in Africa.”

  “Wasn’t there a movie like that? It rings some bells: I Had a Farm in Africa, that type of shit?”

  JayRay shrugged. “No idea.”

  “How are we going to get this farm?” I asked. “What kind of farm anyway?”

  “Sheep. I think. The last reference I found for it online said it was sheep. Sheep are easy to manage. We’d figure it out.”

  “And if you piss her off on the show, how do you plan on worming your way into her life?”

  “You know me,” he had said confidently and yes, I did, and right now, sitting in a shiny upscale bar in Vegas, with the sound of slot machines clanging in the background, he’s got Bernice exactly whe
re he wants her. But I’ve got no idea where he’ll take it from here.

  “I won’t discuss my private life,” Bernice says and she is firm. “Tell me about you.”

  I turn to JayRay enquiringly. Dollars to doughnuts this story will be different from anything he’s told me.

  JayRay sighs and looks at his hands and I lean forward and wait. “I was born in Johannesburg, like you.”

  Liar! You were born in Halifax!

  “My father brought me to Canada for a better life, a safer life. My mother was raped at knifepoint by three thieves and my father never forgave himself. They came into the house one day when she was alone and he blamed himself because he worked with one of the guys, a mechanic. Of course, the police never caught him, they were as dirty as he was.”

  Bernice nods, her face expressionless. She’s sobered up pretty quickly although she’s barely touched her coffee.

  “My mother never recovered,” JayRay continues. “She was scarred for life. She got pregnant and she didn’t know if the baby was from the rape or from my father, and she carried that child, me, for nine months not knowing.”

  Bernice takes a sip of her coffee and doesn’t say a word.

  “When I was born, they did some tests and I was my father’s child. But my mother equated me with the rape and she hated me. She couldn’t bear to look at me or touch me. That’s why my father took us to Canada, to try to start fresh. My mother had two other children after me and she loved them. It was only me that she couldn’t stand.”

  Liar! You told me that your mother loved you more than anyone in the world! She told you that you could be anything you wanted and she bailed you out of jail for petty thievery, and she forgave you when you stole from her, and she let you break her heart over and over again.

  I’m not sure, anymore, if I do want to hear this version of his life but it’s too late to leave.

  “I was never close to my brothers and sisters. How could I be when they were loved in a way that was denied to me? But I know my father believed in me, he taught me everything I know.”

  Seriously? He must have taught you that from prison, eh? Your father’s a bank robber who shot up a bunch of innocent bystanders. He’s still in prison, no chance of parole.

  “He taught me to hunt and fish and work with machines and how to fight and stand up for myself. He had a tough life. Life in Canada’s no piece of cake, I’ll tell you that much. He struggled to put food on the table and he struggled to give us kids the things we needed. He worked two jobs and he encouraged us to go to school and make better lives for ourselves.”

  “A real upstanding guy,” Bernice comments and I pour myself a generous second glass of wine. JayRay’s annoying me with this line he’s working. I know he’ll have a reason for it, he always does, but, still, he should have looped me in. I’m an outsider watching him work and I don’t like the feeling at all. He must sense it because he leans back in the booth and slides his hand under the table, and he pretends he is rubbing his thigh meanwhile he’s caressing me. His touch loosens me up, regardless of my intentions to be standoffish.

  “I understand that he hurt you,” JayRay returns his hand to the table. He clasps his fists and looks earnest. “He often told me how much he regretted it. He wanted to get in touch with you and I know he tried but your mother wouldn’t let him.”

  Bernice studies her coffee as if it holds the secrets of her life.

  “Where is he now?” she asks.

  “He died.” JayRay is somber. “He was exhausted from working all day and then, later that night, he was working on a car, he was lying under it and it fell on him and crushed him.”

  Ah. It makes sense now. The sad story of a boy rejected by his mother, fatherless and alone, estranged from his siblings because of his mama’s prejudice towards her perceived rape baby. All elements that Bernice could relate to. Her mother died when she was young, her father loved her but he too was gone, and she has no other family. JayRay and Bernice. Two little peas in a tight little pod.

  “I got your emails, you know,” Bernice says. “I had no interest in meeting you. I still don’t care about you. You or your brother and sister.”

  “They don’t know about you,” JayRay adds quickly. “Dad only ever told me about you. I don’t even know if Mom knew and if she did, she never said.”

  “From what I heard, your mother knew, oh ja, for sure she did. Your mother knew that my mother was married to your father and still, she flirted with him, fell pregnant, and ripped him away from us. But from what my mother said, your father was no great loss. And I won the lottery with my stepdad. Just like I told the whole world, with you as my witness.” She pushes her coffee cup away from her. “After you kept emailing me, I had you looked into.”

  Her expression challenges JayRay and his face changes, hardly at all, but I see it. The sincere-guy-look melts around the edges and his eyes glint with anger as his jaw tightens. I sense more than see that he’s defensive and wary, as if he knows what’s coming. I brace myself.

  “You’re rubbish,” Bernice says. “And your father was rubbish before you. He’s in prison. You haven’t got any brothers or sisters. I’ve got no idea why you’d think I would care either way, but you just lie, it’s what you do. You open your mouth and lies come out. You were born in Halifax. Your mother’s a drunk and she lives off welfare and the pennies you send her. You’re a mommy’s boy who sells second-rate security courses at trade shows to people who don’t know any better. You ride on your good looks and what you think of as your charm. You’re scamming me right now, or at least you’re trying to, and I’ll tell you this much, if you so much as come near me again, I’ll put a lawyer onto you. Do not email me, do not call me, do not contact me again.” She eases out of the booth and puts on her jacket.

  “But,” JayRay starts to say, “I’ve got something big on you, you should know….”

  Bernice’s eyes widen and a look of fear crosses her face. She stoops down slightly, as if she’s going to listen to what JayRay has to say, but she shakes her head emphatically in a childish motion, and I half-expect her to stick her fingers in her ears.

  “Whatever it is, I don’t care. Got it? I don’t care what you know or what you think you know. Besides, you don’t know anything, because there isn’t anything to know.” She slings her purse over her shoulder and looks at me. “Such a loyal little puppy dog. I feel sorry for you.” She marches out and I notice she’s a lot steadier on her feet than when she first walked over to our table.

  JayRay rubs his temples in a way that he does when he is furious and I shouldn’t poke a stick at him but I can’t help myself. I don’t like the way Bernice made me feel.

  “Engage, qualify, present, and close. No so much, eh?” I say. “Good job, honey bunny.”

  JayRay looks at me and he clenches his fists. I can see that he wants to hit me, punch my face to a pulp, but he instead, he smashes the bottle of wine onto the table. Glass explodes everywhere, red wine floods the table cloth, and a piece of glass flies into the softness of my cheek and lodges deep, burning me. I touch it with shaking fingertips.

  “Look at what you made me do,” JayRay says. He peers at my face. “Hold still now.” He plucks the glass out and he’s not exactly gentle. He drops the shard on the table. “I’m going for a walk. Don’t follow me. And pay for this mess.”

  Wine puddles in my lap and blood trickles down my cheek. The waiter comes over with a mop and some rags. “I’m sorry,” I tell him.

  I edge out of the booth, mindful of glass in my lap. The manager rushes over with the bill and I pay him. “I can take you to our in-house doctor, if you like,” he says and I nod and follow him. I wonder if JayRay has scarred me for life.

  But I already know the answer to that.

  6. BERNICE

  I LEAVE THOSE TERRIBLE PEOPLE and take the elevator up to my room. I gnaw on a knuckle, thinking about
JayRay’s parting words. There’s no way he can know. I only found out by mistake when I had Dirk’s marriage and finances looked into. I wanted to know the truth out about his marriage. I hoped it was in a worse state than Dirk had let on and, affirmative, it was on the rocks big time. Haha, Dirk’s fine upstanding vrou was, herself, having an affair. And Dirk’s finances were none too shiny either. He gambled too much on his own racehorses, none of whom were winners.

  It was routine for me to investigate new boyfriends and random people who came into my life. Being born into money and making millions more, I was never sure who was befriending me on the basis of my sparkling and engaging personality, as it is not, or on the basis of my sparkling and engaging bank account.

  I’m a plain woman. All us girls want to be tall and slender and I’m tall, but I’m skinny and bony. Sexless. My hands, feet, and knees are too big. My bottom is flat, my waist is square, and I’ve got no boobs to speak of. I’m a long, tall box. I’m the antithesis of my beautiful model mother. Her sensuality glowed even when her hair was turbaned in a towel and she was swathed in a shapeless dressing gown. She was so beautiful she took my breath away. And I wasn’t alone. All she had to do was look at a person and they felt as if it they had been singled out for the most special kind of praise and love, and they never wanted that feeling to end. I watched it happen, time after time. Except that she never looked at me in that way. She never really looked at me at all.

  I studied my face for hours, examining the similarities and differences between us. I went so far as to cut up a picture of her and a picture of me and I put her nose next to mine, her mouth next to mine, her eyes next to mine. I was embarrassed when my father caught me, and he tried to assure me that I was lovely in my own way but we both knew he was lying.

  My features are oddly miniaturized in a big oval head. I have a large, high forehead, a tiny, pinched nose, and a small mouth with thin lips. As far as I can see, my only assets are my eyes, they are large and round. But they are too wide-set and too big, and they aren’t a definite colour. Are they blue? No, they are not. Are they brown? No, they are not brown either. Sparse eyelashes don’t help and neither does thin, ginger-coloured flyaway hair that frizzes like a cheap doll’s at every turn. I spend half my life straightening it and trying to make it bend to my will. And don’t forget the off-putting tendency of my complexion to flush the colour of raw meat when I’m anxious. If you add all of this to my ugly rages and depression, plus the fact that I have no sense of humour, the package is no great shakes.