Sex Crimes (26 page)

‘Mrs Proudfoot,’ he said holding out a hand to me.

‘Sally,’ I quickly corrected him.

‘Sally,’ he smiled. ‘You must be very proud of Abbie’s performance tonight. She did a wonderful job. I’m just so disappointed that she won’t be back next year for
Evita
. I had her cast in the lead. In my head, I could see her taking that role to great heights.’

‘Sorry,’ Abigail shrugged. ‘But Mum and I discussed it and I’ve got a few plans so…’

‘We’ll be losing the school’s greatest talent,’ he whispered to me and winked.

Be still my heart, I swear to God, my tummy did a little somersault when he winked at me. I was putting forward my best assets, if you know what I mean, and yet he seemed reluctant to connect. I can tell when a guy is interested. It oozes off him like steam. I can smell it and you know what? There was nothing. Nada. Not a shiver of lust. I’m not bragging but I am an attractive woman. I look after myself. Go to the gym. Have a little work done here and there. But this guy was not even window shopping. It seemed obvious to me at the time that he was gay. That had to be it.

‘So who will play Evita, then?’ Abbie asked.

‘I’m not supposed to tell you Abigail, but seeing as you’re no longer a student, having officially graduated, I guess I can let you in on it.’

I watched as he leaned in toward my daughter and whispered in her ear. It was the way he touched her lower back as he closed in her, the way his head bent toward her, his hair touching hers. I could feel the tingle just watching. He hadn’t been interested in me because Abigail was there and she was like a ripe peach compared to me.

It hurt. Just for a few seconds. But it was a reality check. My daughter was taking the baton from her old mother. She was the princess to my Queen and her time had come. She was everything that I once was. Pert, perky, full of juice and hope and potential.

‘Lola Kelly,’ I heard him say.

I watched the body language and actually wondered if there hadn’t already been something pass between them.

On the way home, I asked Abigail outright.

‘Oh, God Mum, noooooo!’ she replied, pulling a face but then laughed. ‘It’s not like he hasn’t put it out there. He once hassled me to give him a back massage after rehearsals and I did and he was pushing back against my body.’

‘Oh my God,’ I looked across at her, aghast. ‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing,’ she said flatly. ‘It was just lame. It wasn’t serious. People would have laughed at me if I’d complained about something as stupid as that and then there would be no way I would have got the Roxy role in Chicago.’

‘What a creep,’ I said. ‘Is that the same teacher….?’

‘That Libby once made a complaint about?’ she said, finishing my question for me. ‘Yeah…and she copped heaps from some of the kids about it.’

‘Why???’ I asked shocked and totally freaked out that the kids would not rally around someone brave enough to stand up to this creep. ‘He should be sacked, the pervert. He’s a spunk sure, but he’s a teacher and that’s creepy.’

‘He’s alright. He’s just a bit of a perve. He’s just like all the other boys and male teachers and likes to ogle and sometimes get a brush up but he’s harmless. It’s not really a big deal.’

‘What did Libby say he did?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t take much notice of it when all the gossip was going around.’

‘She said he’d told her she’d have to give him a blow job if she wanted the role of Velma in
Chicago,
because there was someone else better than her going for the role. He was giving her a shoulder rub before a dance lesson when he asked.’

‘Is that true?’ I frowned, gripping the steering wheel.

‘I didn’t really believe her, she’s a bit of a drama queen and then she came out and said she’d made it up and then with all this…I don’t know.’ Abigail looked out the window and then back at me. ‘But I reckon she probably made it up…although…’

‘Although…what….?’ I asked. ‘He didn’t ask you to do that did he? To get the role of Roxy?’

‘Nah, I had that role in the bag. No-one came close to taking that one away from me but…’ she shifted uncomfortably in the seat. ‘I’ve heard a few other rumours about him and the casting couch.’

‘Well, it’s a good thing you’ve left the school,’ I said. ‘For all the bloody school fees I pay! I expect the teachers to teach not to seduce the students. Bloody disgraceful.’

And I left it at that. Really, he hadn’t propositioned my daughter although I didn’t like the way he was looking at her back at the function. Libby O’Neil probably had made that nonsense up. She had form.

‘How about we go out to a club?’ I asked. ‘To celebrate. I know Tony on the door at The Dungeon. We can have a drink and a dance?’

‘Will they let me in?’ she asked.

‘Well, you don’t look almost seventeen and Tony will turn a blind eye. I feel like letting my hair down.’

‘Sure,’ she giggled.

And so my daughter and I went on a girls night out into the wee hours to celebrate her graduation from high-school. And I watched that night as the new Proudfoot stepped into my very tall stilettos and turned heads wherever she went. I pushed aside the jealousy because I was happy for her. The class and grace and beauty that she possessed promised her a life of golden opportunities and I was going to see that she got offered every last one of them. She was everything I had wanted to be.

***

5.

Casey O’Neil

‘I’ve had enough! If I stay, I’ll die!’ I screamed at him. ‘I’m so close to killing myself.’

He, of course, looked mildly amused by my hysteria. I swear I could have buried an ice-pick in his chest and that man would barely let out a whimper. 

‘I just don’t have the energy to fight with you anymore,’ he sighed and left the house.

Off to work for another day at the University, leering at all the young things in their low-slung jeans and midriff tops. I can’t believe I loved him once. He’s got the emotional capacity of a Mexican walking fish. I have wondered year after year whether he isn’t sitting somewhere on the autism spectrum or suffering from some undiagnosed condition that results in stunted relationships with other human beings. How the hell had he even managed to seduce that nineteen year old Megan woman, was beyond me. With his bad dress sense, questionable personal hygiene and way of communicating that made you constantly wonder if he was even listening to you.

For so many years I thought that knowing more about the affair might have been therapeutic. If I’d been able to put a face to the unknown woman. Now that I know who she is and can study that face, it just makes me feel even worse. I was expecting her to be prettier. I’d asked him when it happened if she’d been more attractive than me, more intelligent than me. He’d said ‘not particularly’ which is an expression he attaches to the most questions.
Maybe, kind of, sort of, indubitably, I imagine so, if you think so
and
if I must.
These pepper and hold together Tom’s vocal contributions to other people’s queries. He is insipid, limp and lacklustre. He is spineless, weak and lily-livered.

‘I won’t be here when you get home!’ I shouted out the open front door.

He waved over his head as he made his way to the car in the driveway.

‘Good-bye then,’ came his response.

I watched the Citroen as it eased back down the driveway. Tom looked to the left and to the right but he did not look back at me.

I choked back my pain. Even then, even then as the last tiny dying ember was extinguished, I had hoped that he might change or beg me for forgiveness or tell me that he couldn’t live without me.

But he didn’t.

I asked him once whether he would do it again, the affair I mean, knowing how much hurt and pain he caused, and he said ‘probably’. When questioned further he went into some rationale about how he was the product of his life and that being the man that he was, faced with the  ‘student’ who was the sum of her life and the girl that she was, the attraction would be almost impossible to resist. How did that make me feel? How do you think?

From that time on I felt like I was sleeping in an unlocked car in Harlem. You know what I mean? I lived in a state of constant terror. When would the next impossible temptation come along? When he told me that he would never ever do it again because there would never ever again be another like her, he might as well have torn out my heart and dissected it into tiny pieces on his desk in the den.

What surprised me the most was that he had the affair in the first place. Tom was not what you might call hot-blooded in the bedroom. He was a gentle, attentive lover, coming at the job like someone who is determined to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘T’. He was methodical but kind enough to make sure that I always found pleasure in our love-making. We barely had sex after that student wedged herself between us. We tried for a while at the insistence of some terrible marriage counsellor but in end, we just gave up. I was so tense and couldn’t relax so never enjoyed myself. He was like a robot and I couldn’t get the idea of him doing the same thing to some nineteen year old while I was juggling part-time work with a toddler at home.

I trudged up the stairs on that, the last day of my life with Tom and knew that I would miss the house more than him. To be honest, I’d miss the house more than Elizabeth as well. The house I had renovated and decorated to suit me, it was a reflection of the inner me. It was what I aspired to be. Fine-lined, neat, ordered, comfortable and serene. Unfortunately the same could not be said of the other people who lived in the house. There was Tom with his creased clothes and stained coffee cups. His den which looked like a library had vomited itself up after a bad curry. Elizabeth walked around as if the world had given her a particularly heavy burden which of course it hadn’t. She only ever had the best. The best paediatrician, the best child-care, the best food, the best education. Academic role models in parents who believed in hard work and no free rides. We treated her as an adult from early on, teaching her responsibility and respect and she had such great raw talent for music and theatre. And then somewhere along the line she just jumped onto the runaway train that has become her life.

I would miss the house.

‘What are you doing?’ my daughter demanded from the top of the landing.

I stopped on the bottom stair after taking the already packed suitcase from my upstairs wardrobe.

‘Leaving,’ I sighed.

‘Another book fair?’ she snarled.

‘No,
Libby
,’ I said turning to look at her. ‘I’ve taken a job in London.’

I decided to call her Libby. That was the name she had given herself. Her preferred moniker. It was cheaper than Elizabeth and that girl with her swollen belly and snarl was cheaper than the daughter I had once loved.

‘In London, England?’ she baulked.

‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘I fly out today. For good.’

She glared, her floppy fringe falling over her face. She blew at it fiercely so that it flapped.

‘You’re serious?’

‘Deadly,’ I said, chin set firmly.

‘What about me? What about the baby?’ she demanded.

‘Frankly my dear,’ I said with a fake southern drawl. ‘I don’t give a damn.’

‘You can’t….’ she blubbered. ‘You can’t just abandon Dad and me. You can’t.’

‘I can and I am. You two selfish people can deal with the outcome of your own miserable mistakes yourself. I’m done with the both of you. Him with his affair that tore the family apart on the one side and you with your evil plot to take out the slut he slept with, on other side. You won, Libby,’ I said coldly. ‘You and your father won and you’ve finally extinguished the last vestige of care or concern I had for either of you.’

‘What the fuck!?’ she screamed.

‘That sort of language totally becomes you,’ I smirked.

‘You can’t abandon your own child!’ she said and I thought I might have seen some real tears.’

‘I did love you, Libby, once,’ I told her. ‘You were a beautiful child. So bright and so full of joy. But after that affair, I think you sensed how your father had betrayed us and you became quieter. You sulked more often when you didn’t get your own way and you totally withdrew from your father.’

She took slow steps toward me, speaking in a dull voice.

‘But he didn’t betray me, mother. He betrayed
you.’

‘No,
us
, Libby,’ I corrected her.

‘You became so obsessed with the need to punish Dad, that you painted him to me as a monster. I was three,’ she screamed down at me. ‘You, mother ,
you
, made me terrified of him. From the way you went on I thought he had killed a student. For so many years, I thought my father had murdered a young girl!’ 

Libby’s green eyes were as dark as a rain-forest, her lashes wet and blinking fast.

‘Do you know what it’s like to sleep in the next room to a father who might murder you in your sleep?’ she came face to face with me. ‘When  you told me in detail about the sexual affair, I was relieved but so angry and I realised then that he had murdered someone. You! And I also realised that sex and the misuse of it was a worse crime than murder. It was that powerful. It had the power to destroy lives. To kill people….here!’ She banged at her chest, pointing to her heart.

‘You’re a clever girl,’ I replied frankly. ‘It’s not my fault if you misunderstood and created odd distorted fantasies in your head. I think you
do
have a personality disorder.’

‘Are you really going to London, or are you just testing me?’ she asked, suspiciously.

‘I’m going,’ I nodded. ‘Good-bye Libby. Good luck with your baby. You’re going to need it.’

I heard the horn of the taxi outside.

‘I called a cab,’ I explained.

‘Please don’t go, Mum,’ she looked at me with those big quizzical eyes. ‘Please.’

It was a younger Libby’s voice. The little Elizabeth that I had once known and loved. But it was too late. This vile, sexually perverse, pregnant, swearing, punk on my staircase was Libby. Libby. Libby likes to fibby. The whole world knew her as a lying, messed up little whore and I wanted none of it. This was not my creation. She was all her father. Her own obsession with his affair had led her to become, not like me, not like the strong wife who soldiers on, but the girl, the wanton, the husband stealing bitch.