Chapter Eleven
“My name is Edwin Joseph Turner. I am thirty-seven years old, and today I am going to kill myself.
You might think this is a foolish thing to do. After all, God gave me a life to live, and I’m honor bound to live it as best I can, right? But you see, I can’t do that. I can’t live a good life. I am intrinsically evil.
I first knew I was evil when I was about six years old. We had gone to visit family in Adelaide, and my cousin had received the board game Monopoly for Christmas. At six years old, I had no idea how to play Monopoly, however the myriad of shiny pieces, houses and hotels, and cards and—best of all—lots and lots of money had my childish head in a spin. I decided that I needed the game much more than my cousin did. So, I took it, and hid it amongst my clothes in our suitcase.
I can’t tell you how excited stealing Charlie’s board game made me. It was as if I’d taken hold of an electrical wire and let it buzz through me. It felt so good, I wet my pants. At least, that’s what I thought it was at the time. With hindsight, I wonder if it was my very first sexual experience.
Of course, I got caught. My mother fussed around in our suitcase all the time, and it wasn’t like I’d hidden the game very well. I was made to give it back, with a profound apology to my cousin, and with all my aunts and uncles looking on, maximizing my shame. And it was shameful. I felt the worst of remorse. After all, I knew it was wrong. We were a god-fearing family, and one of the first commandments they pushed down our throats was, “Thou shalt not steal.” My mother was distraught for days afterward, and my father gave me the hiding of a lifetime. I vowed never to steal another thing in my entire life.
Only, I kept getting flashbacks of just how good it felt to take something that wasn’t mine. It was like a low-grade fever, constantly burning at the bottom of my gut. Tempting me. Like hell existed inside me, just waiting for a moment to turn up the temperature and bring me to boiling point.
It wasn’t even six months later when I hit that boiling point again. I was in the store, with mother, bored out of my mind as she did whatever it is women do in stores. Pretending not to look at the same dress seven times before she finally decided to go on and buy it.
I saw a notepad. A small one, not more than four inches long. And suddenly, that desire burned as bright as hellfire, and I had to have it.
Just an aside - there was paper and pencils aplenty for me at home. And this wasn’t any special notepad - just a little, spiral bound one. But in that moment, in that instant, there was nothing in the world I needed more than that notepad. And I was going to have it.
My heart in my mouth, I pretended nonchalance as I sidled up to the shelf, and surreptitiously slid the note pad up my sleeve.
I expected alarms to sound, people to shout. I expected old man Fredrick, the store owner, to come over and grab my ear and haul me to where my mother was still humming over the dress.
But amazingly, none of that happened. No one noticed.
I succeeded.
And again, that excitement, that feeling of euphoria and joy filled me.
At least, for a short time.
The following day, I was miserable. I was horrified by my actions. I was going to hell, no two ways about it. Sadness and guilt descended on me, leaving me listless and constantly crying. My parents were beside themselves. They couldn’t work out what was wrong with me. The doctor also had no idea - I was perfectly healthy in every way, except I couldn’t stop crying.
I hid that notepad away in the back of a drawer and vowed never to look at it again. It’s probably still there, I don’t know. But once the evidence of my crime was out of sight, I slowly started to recover my humor. I could pretend it hadn’t happened.
The heat came upon me at varying intervals, sometimes I could go nearly a year without stealing something, and other times it was merely weeks in between. Each time, I burned for the item I decided to steal, tried everything I could to convince myself that I didn’t want it, and that I didn’t want to steal it, but without fail, I would creep into the store (or the room, if it belonged to someone else) and palm it. By the time I reached adolescence, I knew I could increase the pleasure by going home and masturbating myself. But the grief, the self-disgust and the fear of being caught always shrouded me shortly afterwards, and I loathed myself again.
As soon as I was legally able, I tried to drown my problem with alcohol, and then with various drugs. It was the sixties, I was at university getting excellent results in my chemical engineering degree—despite my drinking and drug-taking—and I really hoped I had found a way to curb my impulses. Then I met her.
Candice was a firebrand - long, straight red hair, huge blue-grey eyes that looked on everything with curiosity, and lips that I wanted to kiss the moment I laid eyes on them. She had transferred into the Uni from Melbourne and was in my chemical engineering classes. We were all in awe of her. The only woman in amongst dozens and dozens of men. Yet she didn’t seem to have any problem dealing with us all—even though she was often the butt of all kinds of crude jokes.
“Won’t you come light my Bunsen Burner, Candy?” one guy would shout across the lab, and then another would take up the refrain, ”She sure could light my fire,” “Those hands can handle my test tube any day,” “The only chemical reactions you should be making are the ones where you have my babies.”
She took it silently, her long hair scraped back into a pony tail, her protective glasses making her look even more adorable. The lecturers didn’t do anything. So eventually, I got up the nerve to tell those guys to shut up.
What a day that was. I got a black eye for my trouble and was labeled a feminist - a filthy word. But I also got a smile from Candy, and a conversation with her that lunch break.
“Why did you do it?”
I was seated under a tree regretting my decision, my eye slowly puffing up, along with my lip. It was painful to open my mouth, so I had given up on eating my sandwich. I was smoking a cigarette, though. The smoke helped to settle my thoughts, to bring me back down to earth. I was just starting to berate myself for my misplaced chivalry when she came to sit beside me, knees up even though she was wearing a knee-high skirt. I caught a glimpse of white panties as she sat and felt a familiar twitch in my groin.
But I only shrugged. “They shouldn’t treat you like that.”
“I don’t need your protection.”
“I know. But it doesn’t hurt to have a friend.”
“Friend?” She squinted at me.
“Yeah, friend.” I was blushing by now because she was staring at me. “You know, someone you hang out with and talk to, and who defends you when someone else decides to mess with you?”
“I know what a friend is,” she replied with asperity. “I just didn’t expect to find any here.”
I could understand. She was a woman interfering in a man’s world. Most of them resented her presence. Not me. I don’t know why. It wasn’t like I wanted women taking our jobs. I was certainly not a feminist - women had a place in the home, the same as men had their place out in the world. But she was so determined, and so good at what she did - it seemed only right that she should be allowed to do her best, same as all the rest of us.
I shrugged again. “Not all of us are Neanderthals.”
“No. Just most of you.”
“You don’t make friends by insulting them, you know.”
She chuckled, a throaty gurgle that made something in my belly flop around. I was seized with the desire to roll her onto the grass and cover her face in kisses. I didn’t, of course. That would hardly have been conducive to the friendship I was offering.
“Okay,” she said, thrusting out her hand for me to shake. “Friends.”
“Friends.” Our handshake looked prim, but in that moment, both of us knew. She gasped and looked down at our clasped hands, my heart beat an erratic tattoo as I felt the electricity buzz between us. It was love. Or lust that turned into love. I’m still not sure I believe in love at first touch.
We were inseparable during university. Since we were studying the same course, we were pretty much in the same classes all day, and then in each other’s bed all night. We would smoke and drink and argue endlessly over the scientific and mathematical problems our professors set us, with our arguments almost always culminating in loud, vigorous and sometimes violent sex. She enjoyed the rough play, enough that our roommates at university complained - first to us and then to the authorities, who threatened to kick us out for our lewd behavior. We smiled and nodded and said we would be good, then totally ignored the cautions. Eventually they made the problem go away by assigning us a room together.
She got the benefit of my pilfering as well - the sex was always amazing right after I’d stolen something. I never told her what I did, though. I couldn’t. She would be disappointed.
Then Candy fell pregnant. I offered to marry her. She said no. She said she would get an abortion. I was terrified. I’d heard about the things they did to girls to get the baby out of there, and I pleaded with her not to do that. I didn’t want to lose her to some backyard butcher with a modified clothes hanger. But she was adamant. She didn’t want the baby. She wanted her career.
At twenty years old, you never really think straight. I thought we could just continue how we were, juggling taking care of the baby and the rest of our university studies, then I’d go get a high-powered job and things would be perfect. Luckily, Candy was little more practical than I. She knew the baby would destroy every one of her dreams, and the greater part of mine as well. She got the abortion—one day when I was off doing something else with my friends—and that was that.
Did I resent her for doing it? Sometimes. It was my baby as much as it was hers. And no matter how many times she told me it wasn’t even a baby yet, it didn’t even have a brain, I still felt guilty that we had created this little life and then not let it live. Candy insisted it was her body and her choice, but I still felt guilty. Cradling her as she screamed through severe stomach cramps, I felt guilty. Holding her as she cried out the hormonal changes, I felt guilty. And then, when she recovered sufficiently, and we had our first tentative sex, I felt guilty.
To combat my guilt, I increased the amount of stealing I did. I know, it makes no sense, since afterward I would be left feeling guiltier than ever. But it made sense at the time. I brought home useless things - boxes of tissues, odd kitchen appliances, baby clothes… all of which were shoved in the back of a cupboard.
We graduated. Candy got better marks than me. Yet I got a job straight out of university, and she struggled for months. In the end she took on a typist’s job in a pool at an engineering firm. She hated it. Hated that she had worked so hard only to be thwarted by the men at the top who couldn’t believe such a tiny, lovely woman could possibly have all that knowledge in her pretty little head. Thwarted by their belief that as soon as she married, she would leave to look after her husband and children. It drove her crazy, all the assumptions.
I continued to steal things - stationery from work, other people’s equipment… I can’t have been fun to live with - I spent all my time either on a salivating high, thinking about taking something, or in the constant state of arousal following the deed, or in the throes of guilt for being the evil, wicked, hell-bound fiend that I was.
In 1968, when we were twenty-five, we got married. I like to think that she loved me enough that she was prepared to give up her career to support mine, but I know it wasn’t that. She couldn’t bear working as a typist, in a pool of gossiping, backbiting women. Marriage was a good way out of that environment for her. Not exactly the greatest basis for marriage, but we had been together for eight or nine years by then, and marriage was expected. I encouraged her to get out of the house, to find things to do other than just be a housewife. She was never cut out for that. But the opportunities available to women were all the same kinds of things - knitting groups, charities, they just weren’t for her.
Then she discovered community theater.
Dear lord, she turned into a different person. Cheerful all the time, excited by life, eager to learn her lines, and get in front of that audience. For the next ten years, she buried herself in it. Costumes, sets, props, acting, directing, writing, singing (even though she had a dreadful voice, lord love her), she did it all. Even took some classes in on-stage fighting. She would help with the administration of the club as well - suddenly her typing skills were well regarded as she typed up the monthly newsletter, ran it through the mimeograph machine, and then posted it out to all members.
These past ten years, when she has been involved with theater, have been some of the darkest of my life. Toward the beginning of her involvement, I stayed away as much as possible, only attending a show when she was in it. I would sit in the darkened audience and marvel at this person who I knew, but who, in those moments on stage, I didn’t know at all.
I started to get to know the other theater people and I was eventually suckered in to do some work on the sets. I’m not sure why - chemical engineers are hardly well known for being able to wield a hammer or screwdriver. Still, even my pathetic efforts were rewarded with much thanks, so I was happy to help - the only problem being all the things laying around that I could easily steal.
I stole props and timber and costumes and makeup - much of the stuff I stole I took back - it was easy to put things back when everyone was distracted by what was happening on stage. There started to be jokes of a theater ghost. I laughed along, my heart aching that it was me causing the headaches for these people, who had become my friends.
But the straw that broke the camels back happened only a few weeks ago.
They were looking for an old, lace handkerchief for a show they were doing, a really fancy, old-fashioned looking one - the script called for a ‘wisp of lace’. They put out a call, and an old lady came back with what really was a wisp of lace - very delicate, very finely crocheted lace. It was perfect for the show. She was hesitant to lend it - family heirloom that it was. Candy worked her charm on the lady, promising that it would be taken good care of, and that it would be returned to her the instant the show finished. That she would get a big thank you in the program, and her name be mentioned. The old lady agreed to lend it to the theater for the duration of the show.
That handkerchief became an obsession with me. I wanted it. I had to have it. Every time I came into the theater, it was there, almost throbbing at me, a haze of light around it. Candy joked that I stared at it so much, she thought I was going to eat it.
I tried to stay away from the theater, but I had obligations - walls had to be built and painted, sets prepared. I tried to forget the handkerchief, but it was always there, a temptation that I couldn’t resist.
So, I took it. And hid it with the rest of my ill-gotten gains.
We ransacked the theater to try to find it when it couldn’t be found. Candy was frantic - she had promised the old lady she would look after it and return it to her in person. I, of course, joined in the search, knowing full well it wouldn’t be found. The guilt lay heavily on me, as I watched Candy sobbing, entreating everyone to look harder, to return it if they’d taken it, no questions would be asked. She just needed it back.
I can’t give it to her. It would only start an avalanche that I can’t control - if I give her one thing, I’d have to show her my entire stash, my thirty-year collection. Her disappointment will be more than I can bear.
I don’t know how to stop myself. With this last theft, I’ve hurt the one I love the most, and while I am guilty, I have no intention of fixing things with her. That makes me an unbelievably bad person, the villain in this piece.
I can only think of one way to stop myself. And that’s by ending my life.
Know that I am sane, and calm as I do this - it’s actually a great relief to be able to finally end this. Without having seen Candy’s tears, without the knowledge that I can’t fix it any other way, I don’t think I would have had the strength to do so. But I can’t hurt her again. Even though I know I would if the circumstances allowed. Which is why I must do this. It’s a roundabout kind of argument, but it makes sense to me.
I hope everyone I’ve stolen from can find it in their hearts to forgive me - all the way from my cousin, through all the shopkeepers I’ve pilfered from over the years, friends, co-workers, and my theater companions, and most of all, Candy. I love you, Candice Turner. You’ve always been the light of my life.
Edwin Turner
12 March 1980