The Pause

by John Larkin

  As I’m sitting here basking lizard-like in the sun with time stopped, my mind wanders and I start fantasising about all the punishments I could dish out to The Kraken. It’s clear what I have to do. I have to slay her. Only then will things return to normal and Lisa and I can be together again.

  I couldn’t kill her outright, of course. I just don’t have murder in me. The guilt demons would haunt me for the rest of my life. I have to be cleverer than that. Do something that will lead to The Kraken’s demise but leave me only indirectly responsible at worst. Maybe as she’s walking up the street with her groceries I could leap out from behind a tree dressed as Death, a ninja warrior or Ronald McDonald. Something that will startle the old bat enough to leap out of her shoes and hopefully give her a chest-bursting heart attack. Or maybe I could somehow tie a steak around her neck or baste her in mutton sauce and set a bunch of pit bulls on her. Or maybe I could get some killer bees and somehow dress her as a bear and –

  ‘Hello, Declan.’ My meds-induced homicidal fantasies are interrupted by the sudden arrival of Kate.

  ‘Declan’? She hasn’t called me that in years. I’m either ‘douche’, ‘douchebag’ or ‘loser’, depending on her mood or whether or not I’ve kidnapped her Build-A-Bear or My Little Pony and hidden them for ransom. ‘Declan’? Obviously she’s been prepped to tread on eggshells around me. It’ll be fun seeing how long it lasts. I give her five minutes tops.

  ‘Where are Mum and Dad?’ I ask, as Kate begins surveying my new environment.

  ‘It’s nice here,’ she says. ‘I like the fish.’ She’s referring to the oceanarium wall on the far side of the courtyard which has been painted by either an artist or a patient or perhaps someone who was both.

  ‘Mum and Dad?’ I remind Kate.

  ‘What about them?’ says Kate, who has the same sort of attention span as the very fish she’s staring at.

  ‘Where are they?’ I sigh. ‘Or did you drive here by yourself?’

  ‘Are you nuts?’ Kate kind of cringes when she remembers where I am. ‘Er, Mum’s talking to the doctor and Dad’s getting coffee.’

  In a minute she’ll either start counting the fish, or else complain about their anatomical inaccuracies. The fun part will be to keep interrupting her so that she’ll have to begin counting all over again.

  ‘Do you reckon this was painted from memory, or did someone take a photo and bring it in? And this one’s fin looks weird.’ Some poor artist has barely managed to keep death at bay by painting this picture and all Kate can do is complain about a lopsided fin.

  ‘Kate. You do realise that this is a psycho ward?’

  ‘Yeah, I know that. So?’

  ‘It’s just that you’d better be careful or they mightn’t let you out. There’s a padded cell at the end of the corridor with your name on it.’

  ‘Shut up, douche!’

  I check my watch. Two minutes forty.

  Mum comes in all smiles and carrying a green recycling bag stuffed full of books and clothes. She’s obviously heard or decided that I’m going to be in here for a while.

  ‘Hello, darling. Sleep well?’

  ‘Like a log.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘A log?’ says Kate.

  ‘Yeah. Woke up in the middle of a forest covered in wombat poo.’

  Kate turns away from the seascape. ‘Really?’ Sometimes Kate is about as much use as an ashtray on a hang-glider.

  ‘Oh, Kate,’ sighs Mum. ‘Go and see where your father’s got to.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says brightly. She loves being given things to do. Probably keeps her mind from eating itself. Kate will probably end up curing cancer or coming up with a unified theory of the universe, but when Dad told her the joke about how Irish astronauts had landed safely on the sun because they went at night, she believed him. She even told her teacher and the rest of her year-two class the names of the two astronauts: Pat MaGroin and Phil Macavity. Dad felt so bad he went up to school and apologised personally to the teacher.

  ‘You’d better drop breadcrumbs behind you,’ I suggest to Kate as she starts to leave. ‘Or you’ll never find your way back.’

  ‘Dec,’ chastises Mum gently.

  ‘I don’t have any breadcrumbs,’ says Kate.

  I look at her and shake my head. ‘Yeah. That’s the only thing wrong with that plan.’

  ‘Douchebag!’ snaps Kate as she heads off to look for Dad.

  ‘And don’t step on any cracks in the tiles,’ I call after her. ‘Or you’ll have to come back and start again.’

  ‘Why do you have to wind her up so much, Dec?’

  ‘Because it’s fun.’

  Mum raises her eyebrows. ‘She could say one or two things about you right now, you know.’

  ‘Yeah. But you’ve drilled her not to. And it’s killing her.’

  Mum comes around behind me and kisses the top of my sun-drenched hair. ‘Oh, you’re nice and warm. You did sleep well?’

  ‘Yeah. Had a little help.’

  ‘We all need help at times.’ Mum comes around and sits next to me. She holds my hand. There’s no one else around so it’s okay. ‘Do you want to talk about it? Before they get here.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘It might help.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand it.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Better than yesterday. Well, a bit anyway. The pain’s not as bad.’

  ‘Do you understand what it would have done to us had you …’ She trails off. It’s just too big. ‘You have to know when to ask for help. I couldn’t have survived if you’d …’

  I shrug. ‘I didn’t know I needed help.’

  Mum wipes her eyes. How could I have not realised that this is what it would have done to her, to Kate, to Dad? But that’s the thing when your mind cracks. You don’t know that it’s cracked, because the very thing that lets you know that you have a cracked mind is the very thing that’s cracked.

  ‘Your dad’s sorry about yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘No, Dec, he really is. He wants to take you fishing.’

  We’ve never gone fishing in our lives. ‘Fishing?’

  ‘I know, but let him. It’s his way of dealing with it.’

  I look at the seascape opposite. I have a psycho moment and so now marine life has to die. Hardly seems fair. I don’t know why we just don’t wander off into the wilderness Lord-of-the-Flies style and slaughter a goat or kill a pig.

  ‘Was it just Lisa or was it … the other stuff with –’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I interrupt, because I don’t want to hear her name. ‘Can we leave it?’

  I knew that Mum would eventually want to open that particular can of worms when I’d prefer to let sleeping dogs (or worms) lie. She still carries the guilt with what happened with Aunt Mary, but she has to let it go. I have. Or I thought I had.

  ‘I need to know, Dec.’

  ‘She’s dead, Mum. She can’t get any deader. Just let it go!’

  ‘If I could have taken your place …’

  ‘Enough, Mum. Jeez. You’re supposed to be cheering me up, not workshopping crap about that psycho.’

  ‘Don’t call her that, Declan. She was sick. That’s why she did what she did.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll call her ‘the fucking nut job’, then. That better?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dec. I’m so sorry. I should have known. She always had a vile temper. You told us that she used to hit you.’

  ‘Mum! I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘But you have to. The doctor said you’ve bottled it up.’

  ‘How does he know?’

  ‘You blame me, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. You couldn’t have known that she –’

  ‘You do. And you’re right. I’m the one who left you alone with her that day. I could have taken the day off –’

  ‘Stop it, Mum!’

  Never have I been more pleased to see Dad and
Kate. Mum was seriously about to go off on one. And I don’t need that. Whatever skeletons remain in that particular closet have long since turned to dust and are best left undisturbed.

  ‘Hey, Declan, what’s happening?’ says Dad, trying to act casual.

  ‘We’re going paragliding this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ says Kate. ‘Can I come?’

  ‘He’s not serious, Kate,’ says Dad. He looks over at me to check. ‘You’re not serious, are you, Dec?’

  I give him a look.

  Dad gets to work on his tray of coffees. ‘So that’s a skim cap decaf for the love of my life.’ He hands Mum her coffee and plants a kiss on her cheek. I can’t imagine what they got up to last night after they made up. Actually, I really don’t want to.

  ‘A hazelnut latte for the big fella.’ Dad’s voice bellows around the courtyard like the grunt of a mating bull.

  ‘Keep it down a bit, Dad.’

  ‘Why?’ he says. ‘Is a hazelnut latte too girly for the hospital?’

  ‘No, but you are.’ It’s the worst comeback in the history of comebacks but, hey, I’m drugged up to the back teeth. ‘Seriously, the loonies need their sleep.’

  ‘Declan,’ chides Mum. ‘Don’t call them that.’

  ‘“Us”, Mum,’ I say. ‘“Us”. I’m one of them, remember?’

  ‘Double espresso for moi,’ continues Dad, ‘because if I was any more manly I’d grow hair on my teeth.’ And everyone within earshot rolls their eyes.

  ‘And a soy-milk hot chocolate for Katie Bear.’

  ‘Because allowing Kate access to caffeine would be like giving the Duracell rabbit rocket fuel.’

  ‘Shut up, douchebag.’

  ‘Do you even know what a douchebag is?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s you.’

  ‘Stop it, you two,’ pleads Mum. ‘For God’s sake, give it a rest.’

  Dad looks around the courtyard and nods. ‘This is okay, isn’t it, Dec?’

  I shrug. ‘Best nuthouse I’ve ever been in.’

  ‘I mean, it’s nicer than the hospital your Aunt Mary was in, God rest her soul.’ He appears thoughtful for a moment. Mum looks at me and I shake my head.

  ‘Mum tell you we’re going fishing?’

  ‘Yep,’ I say. ‘I can hardly wait.’

  ‘Dec,’ whispers Mum. ‘Come on.’ Dad is still surveying the courtyard so he didn’t detect the sarcasm.

  I take a sip of coffee. ‘Can I bring a book?’

  Mum sighs but smiles. She squeezes my knee, happy I’ve made a concession.

  ‘Bring as many as you like,’ he says. ‘But it’s deep-sea fishing. We’re going to be heading out from the Central Coast. Out into the deep. The wild blue yonder.’ I don’t know if he’s taking the piss or if he’s serious.

  ‘Maybe if you spot a white whale,’ I say, ‘you could turn into Captain A-hole.’

  ‘Captain A-hole?’ says Kate while Mum snorts with laughter.

  ‘Don’t be a Moby Dickhead,’ says Dad, and he immediately bursts out laughing at his own cleverness.

  Kate didn’t get the whole A-hole/Ahab thing, but she thinks Dad warning me about being a dickhead is the funniest thing she’s ever heard. Meanwhile Mum and I, on team Dec, are still laughing at my A-hole joke. Pretty soon we’re all at it. We haven’t laughed this much in years. At least not at the same time and at the same joke. It’s usually me and Mum laughing at something Kate’s said or something Dad’s done involving a structural wall and some sort of power tool. But now we’re all in on it. We’re practically rolling around on the floor. And if it wasn’t for my being in a psycho hospital having come within a whisker of splattering myself beneath a train, then it would have been a real Instagram moment.

  I approach the house stealthily, like a ninja. I even reach for the imaginary sword that isn’t sheathed on my back. One wrong move. One error of judgement. One twig crack and the game will be up and I’ll be one hundred and forty dollars out of pocket. Why couldn’t I have fallen in love with a girl who doesn’t have The Kraken as a mother? But we don’t choose who we fall in love with any more than we can choose our sexuality, our parents, our Gods, how long we’ll live, and, I suppose, our friends. Stuff like that’s beyond our control. You just have to go with it.

  Maybe the fear of getting caught is part of the thrill. Maybe Lisa and I are star-crossed lovers, without the ability to speak Italian. Well, I do. A bit.

  If Juliet or Lisa had a mobile phone (or rather, had a mobile phone that she was actually allowed to use) then things might have turned out differently for both of them. But Juliet was prevented from owning a mobile phone because she lived in the Elizabethan age when technology basically sucked (well, that plus the added fact that she didn’t actually exist). And Lisa? Well, Lisa lives in Forest Place where her mother basically sucks. So I travel back to the troglodyte days of Romeo and throw a small rock at Lisa’s bedroom window. When nothing happens I try again. And again. When nothing continues to happen, I scoop up a handful of gravel and hurl it at the window. In times of yore, Juliet would have appeared backlit on the balcony and Romeo would have started banging on about the light being soft and it breaking from the window and Juliet being the sun and everything. The story would have undoubtedly lost some of its appeal had the Capulets’ front porch light gone on and Juliet’s mother appeared on the doorstep, her hair Medusa-ed up in rollers while she yelled, ‘Who’s out there?’

  The ruse up, I have no choice other than to step out from behind my tree.

  ‘Oh, hi, Mrs Leong,’ I say so sheepishly that you could hack off one of my hind legs and serve it with mint sauce. ‘Is … er … is Lisa in?’

  ‘Why are you throwing rocks at the window?’ she says, not unreasonably.

  ‘Because I, er …’ There is absolutely no justifiable reason I can think of for throwing rocks at Lisa’s window. In the end I opt for honesty. ‘Because Lisa isn’t allowed to use her phone.’ It’s at this point I decide that we are going to buy her a new sim card.

  ‘I know Lisa is going out with you tonight,’ says The Kraken, hands on hips. ‘She told me.’

  ‘Oh, right. Er …’ Lisa had told me that she’d informed The Kraken that she was going to a Christian concert tonight, but I couldn’t remember if she told her that she was going with me, or with her crusading friends, or both. That’s the trouble with living a lie. You need a good memory.

  I approach the front porch half-expecting The Kraken to pull a crucifix from her pocket and for me to burst into flames. ‘Sorry about that.’ I gesture towards the window.

  ‘Lisa,’ yells The Kraken. ‘Declan’s here.’

  Lisa emerges from the house as gorgeous as ever. She’s wearing my look – jeans, black T-shirt and second-hand Vinnies jacket. Luckily I’ve opted for a white T-shirt tonight or we’d look a bit cheesy.

  ‘Ready?’ I say.

  ‘Yep,’ replies Lisa. She gives The Kraken a peck on the cheek and walks down the steps.

  ‘Goodnight, Mrs Leong,’ I say.

  We turn and head off down the path.

  ‘Declan,’ calls The Kraken.

  We both turn around.

  ‘I expect her home by eleven. Not one second later. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Leong,’ I say. No, Mrs Leong. Three bags full, Mrs Leong. What a total suck I’ve turned into.

  ‘One more thing,’ says The Kraken. ‘The next time you throw rocks at Lisa’s bedroom window so that she can sneak out to be with you, it’s probably best if you throw them at her window, not mine.’

  I acknowledge The Kraken’s wisdom with a nod.

  ‘You were throwing rocks at the window?’ says Lisa quietly. ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘I’ll tell you on the train,’ I say.

  Following the twenty-minute walk to the station, we get ourselves comfortable on the train and disappear into the couple bubble, my first experience of this phenomenon, where no one else exists apart from the two of us.

  Lisa snuggles into me.
‘You got the tickets?’

  ‘Yep.’ I pull them out of my pocket and look at them. ‘Slight problem. The concert doesn’t finish until eleven. Then we have to get a bus back to the station and a train home. Then there’s the walk to your place. We’ll have to leave early, I guess.’

  Lisa looks up at me and smiles.

  ‘Screw her,’ she says.

  ‘But she said you have to be back by eleven.’

  ‘She’s a whack job,’ says Lisa.

  ‘Your mum?’

  ‘Who else? I hadn’t realised just how nuts she was until I met your mum.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agree, ‘but my mum’s different. She gets it.’

  ‘She’s what a mother should be, Declan. She loves you but she doesn’t control you. She loves you unconditionally. Everything you do she doesn’t take as a reflection on her. What you do isn’t about her, it’s about you and she’s there to support you.’

  No matter what Lisa says, I know that my mum is pretty special.

  ‘But your mum seemed quite nice just now. She even had a bit of a joke with me about the window. She was okay. Better than last time anyway.’

  ‘Depends which way the wind’s blowing. Yes, she knows I’m going out with you tonight, but she also thinks we’re going out with a big Crusaders group. Everything I do with you is hidden by lies and deceit, and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of her. You know what she said to me when I told her that you were coming to the concert, too?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘She said, “The Devil has you now.” What sort of a fruitcake of a mother would condemn her daughter to hell because she’s going out with someone she disapproves of?’

  ‘She disapproves of me?’

  She shrugs her shoulders, but not very convincingly.