Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

“It’s a lie!”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

“You’re not from the Board of Education.”

Mrs. Gravy walked up and peered at me as if I were an illusion. I looked for a wedding ring on her finger and saw nothing but naked wedges of flesh. I stood and walked to the door. The thought of money’s being the only thing in heaven and earth to bring Mrs. Gravy joy was so depressing to me, I almost didn’t visit the third Sydney millionaire, but seeing as I had nothing else to do, I leaned my back against the school lockers, a long row of vertical coffins, and opened up the file.

Miss Caroline Potts, the file said.

I don’t remember many instances of gasping like they do in the movies, but then fiction has a habit of making the real world seem made up. People gasp. It’s no lie. And I gasped on seeing that name, with all its connotations and implications. Connotations: My brother’s death. Frustrated desire. Satisfied desire. Loss. Regret. Bad luck. Missed opportunities. Implications: She had divorced or been widowed from her Russian husband. She was not lost in Europe. She had been living in Sydney, maybe for years.

Christ!

These thoughts did not come in any order but arrived simultaneously- I couldn’t hear where one ended and another began. They all spoke over each other, like a large family at a dinner table. Of course, reason told me that there could be up to twenty or thirty Caroline Pottses living minutes from each other at any given time, as it’s not as unusual a name as Prudence Bloodhungry or Heavenly Shovelbottom. Had Eddie thought it was one of the other Caroline Pottses? I refused to believe it was anyone other than she, because in moments of personal crisis you find out what you believe, and it turned out that I believed in something after all, and it’s that I am a ball of string and life is a cat’s paw toying with me. How could it be otherwise? Go! a voice screamed. Go!

In the taxi on the way, I read the file over a dozen times. Eddie wasn’t very thorough. All it said was: Caroline Potts 44 Librarian. Mother of Terrence Beletsky, age 16. Mother! And her son’s name: Terrence. Terry. Crap! That took the wind out of my sails. She had named her son after Terry. As if the bastard didn’t have enough accolades!

Just incredible!

Caroline lived in one of those buildings that hadn’t an intercom system, so you could wander unrestricted right up the shit-colored stairwell, right up to the apartment door. I reached 4A without having thought too much about which would be the greater shock, seeing me or learning that in less than a week’s time she was going to be a million dollars richer. I knocked impatiently, and immediately we launched into our old habit of screaming excitedly at each other.

“Who is it?”

“Me!”

“Me who?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you!”

“Marty!” she screamed, and that threw me off balance, the fact that after all these years she so swiftly recognized my voice.

She opened the door and I gasped again. Nature had barely laid a finger on her. Then I saw that that wasn’t entirely accurate- Nature had given her a bigger bottom and longer boobs, and her face was slightly wider, and her hair wasn’t what you would call in good order, but she was still beautiful, she had the same light behind her eyes. Looking at her, I felt as if all the years since Paris had not really happened, that the past eighteen years were like an absurdly long afternoon.

“Oh my God, look at you!” she said.

“I’m old!”

“Not at all. You have the same face!”

“No I don’t!”

“Wait. You’re right! Your ear’s new!”

“I had some skin grafts done!”

“Wonderful!”

“And I’m losing my hair!”

“Well, I have a fat arse!”

“You still look beautiful!”

“You’re not just saying that?”

“No!”

“I saw your name on the news!”

“Why didn’t you come see me?”

“I wanted to! But after all these years, I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me! Besides, I saw a photo of you with a woman’s arms around you and she’s young and beautiful!”

“That’s Anouk!”

“Not your wife?”

“Not even my girlfriend. She’s our housekeeper! What about your husband?”

“We divorced! I just assumed you were still in Europe!”

“I thought the same!”

“And hey- we were supposed to meet in Paris a year after that night in the hotel! Remember?”

“I was here! In Australia! Don’t tell me you went!”

“I did, actually!”

“Oh my God!”

“I couldn’t believe when I saw Terry’s name! People are talking about him again! Then I saw it was you! What’s this nonsense you’re involved in?”

“It’s not nonsense!”

“You’re going to make every person in Australia a millionaire!”

“You’re right! It is nonsense!”

“What made you think of doing such a silly thing?”

“I don’t know!” I said. “Wait! You’re one of them!”

“Martin!”

“I’m serious! That’s why I came!”

“You rigged it!”

“I didn’t! I didn’t pick the names!”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely!”

“What am I going to do with a million dollars?”

“Wait! It says in my file here you have a son! Where is he?”

“He’s dead.” Those two words that escaped her mouth sounded as if they had come from a different place. She bit her lip and her eyes filled up. I could see her thoughts like subtitles on her face. Can I talk about this now? I tried to make things easier for her by guessing, so she wouldn’t have to tell me the whole sad story. Let’s see- teenagers die in only three ways: suicide, drunk driving, peanut allergy. Which was it?

“Drunk driving,” I said, and watched as her face whitened and she gave an almost imperceptible nod. We stood silent for a long moment, not quite ready to put the memory back in its jar. Grief is a strange entity in a reunion.

I felt sick that I had never known her son. I still loved her, and I imagined I would have loved her child too.

She stepped forward and wiped tears from my eyes with her sleeve. I didn’t know I’d been crying.

She made a sad sound, like from a tiny flute. The next minute we were hugging, with our hips, and I found sanctuary in her embrace and a cozier sanctuary in her bed. Lying in each other’s arms afterward, we set about confiding our secrets and in this way found a method of falsifying history- by ignoring it. We focused only on the present; I confided my plan to run for parliament and bring about a total transformation of society in the shortest possible time before I was overcome by cancer, and Caroline spoke of her dead son.

Is the mother of a dead child still a mother? There are words for widow and orphan, but not for the parent of a dead kid.

Hours passed. We made love a second time. It was agreed that we were no longer young and fresh, we both had telltale signs of wear and tear, but we were confident that we had been ruined by our personal tragedies in an adorable way- that our sagging faces and bodies wore our heartaches well. We decided we would never be apart again, and since no one knew of our connection, no one would make a fuss and think the drawing was rigged, and we would keep our relationship a secret until after the millionaires’ dinner, when we would get married in a small, private ceremony in the middle of my labyrinth. In short, it was a productive afternoon.

If you were in Australia and you weren’t watching TV the night the names of the millionaires were announced, it was because your eyes had been ripped out by vandals or you were dead. Caroline, Mrs. Gravy, Deng, and the rest of the millionaires became instant celebrities.