A Small Madness

by Dianne Touchell

  Rose got into the bed, fully dressed. She began taking her clothes off under the covers. She didn’t know why but it seemed like the right thing to do. Michael touching things was different to him seeing things and she didn’t want him to change his mind. On the beach she hadn’t even taken off her T-shirt or bra. She had trouble getting her bra undone now, lying on her back with her arms buckled beneath her. Eventually she had to sit up, covers gripped under her arms so nothing showed, to unhook it. She dropped all her clothes on the floor beside the bed except for her knickers. She noticed they were damp. She quickly wiped herself with them and then shoved them down the side of the bed that was against the wall. Just as she realised the condoms were on the other side of the room in the bookcase, Michael took one out of his jeans pocket and put it on the bedside table. He took his clothes off in front of her, quickly, and then climbed into the bed.

  They stayed in that position for a while, lying next to each other, necessarily squished together because the bed was a single. Then Michael turned on his side. He looked at Rose’s profile, watched her eyes scurry a bit under not-quite-closed lids, watched her lick her lips, watched the live flesh at the corner of her eye – then he reached out and touched it, that jumping nerve that was so endearing. Rose turned her face to him then and he began to trace a line down her face, her chin, her neck. Then he pulled the covers down so he could see her. Rose found the embarrassment peculiarly exciting.

  It was different this time. There wasn’t the same resistance. He didn’t have to push as hard to get inside her. He rested on his elbows so he could watch her face. Her eyes were open. She was moving with him and he found himself making noises he’d never made before. Then Rose slipped her hand between their bodies and began touching herself. Michael was stunned motionless when she did it. She closed her eyes and lifted herself against him to reconnect their bellies. It was an instinctual shove of her hips, but for just a moment Michael didn’t recognise her. For less than a second, less time than it takes for a synapse to fire, Rose had all the control.

  When it was over they had to peel themselves apart like sheets of cling wrap. Michael turned to look at Rose’s profile again. The twitch was gone and she was crying. When he asked her if she was okay she said, ‘I never thought I could be just myself with anyone.’

  Michael didn’t know what she meant but he lifted her hand and kissed her sweat-slicked palm. Then she said, ‘Mum’ll be home in a bit. You’d better get going.’

  Rose stayed in the bed after Michael had dressed and left. She didn’t see him out because she didn’t want to have to get up naked. She knew she wasn’t particularly attractive; she was the sum of a few good characteristics and she was reasonably content with this. Her mother had told her from a young age that she would never be a really pretty girl, but that she did have good child-bearing hips. Roomy, her mum called it. So she’d stayed in bed and watched Michael dress. He wasn’t shy of his nakedness the way Rose was. He was confident – tall and lean, with eyes as brown and flecked as her mother’s tiger’s-eye dress ring. Before he left he leaned down and kissed her firmly on the mouth, pressing her lips into her teeth.

  As soon as he was gone she rummaged for her secreted knickers and found they had dropped down under the bed. She noticed the sheet was wet under her and she could feel something dripping out of her. That’s when she noticed the condom was missing from the bedside table. Michael must have slipped it back into his pocket before he left.

  Being a child whose privacy was well respected, Rose knew she didn’t have to immediately worry about the sheets. Besides, she liked the smell. She pulled her covers up, plumped her pillows, and headed for the bathroom. She knew she had time to shower and dry the recess before her mum got home. She’d shower again after dinner so her mum didn’t notice any change in routine. Not that it really mattered. There was no way her mum was going to realise she had just had sex. Again. Roomy girls don’t have sex in their bedrooms after school. Roomy girls marry because they can’t get sex in their bedrooms after school.

  Rose’s mother’s name was Violet. It was an old-fashioned name and she had always felt self-conscious about it. When her only child was born she had decided to keep with the floral theme, and old-fashioned names seemed to be making a comeback, so she chose the name Rose. Her husband, whose idea it was to have a child, acquiesced.

  Violet hadn’t ever been sure she wanted children, but she had been told that the moment the midwife laid that slippery, wrinkled infant on her chest she would fall in love. So she waited, for forty weeks, to fall in love. When the moment arrived, she found that she actually fell in fear. Rose was the colour of saffron and her skin was dry and peeling and she seemed too fragile, for all her bawling strength. Violet stroked the fine down on her infant’s ears and thought to herself: this is how I started. And so she feared. No one knew, of course. Violet filled her eyes with tears and made the appropriate noises at the appropriate times, and everyone was pleased.

  Violet’s love grew as Rose herself grew. They were friends. They played together, ate together, bathed together and slept together. Rose’s father was often away and even when he was at home he would give up his position in the marital bed to his daughter if Violet requested it. He thought their closeness charming, and never felt excluded. He encouraged it, referring to his wife and daughter as ‘his girls’. He only once approached his wife about the possibility of having another child. He came away disappointed.

  Just hours after Michael left, Rose’s family had a rare dinner together. Her father, Terry, was home for two weeks, soon to be gone for another six. He had lived this nomadic routine for so long that Rose considered him more a visitor than a father. He was a nice man who arrived unexpectedly – it always seemed unexpected even though the date was clearly marked on the calendar in the kitchen – with gifts and stories and hands that were cracked and webbed with dark lines of work grime.

  He was telling a story now, his words whistling on his breath the way they did when he’d been without a cigarette for a few days – he wasn’t allowed to smoke when he was at home.

  ‘. . . and I swear that guy is solar powered. Something kicks in at sunrise. But after dark you can’t get a word out of him!’ He laughed then, nodding and shaking his head like a balloon on a stick. His girls smiled and ate. A short silence ensued during which the smiling continued. Then he said, ‘How ’bout I take my girls out to lunch tomorrow?’

  ‘Rose has school, Terry. And I have work.’

  ‘So, you both play hooky for a day! Come on, it’ll be fun.’

  ‘I have a play rehearsal after school, too,’ Rose said quietly. Ordinarily Rose was the first one to support her father’s slapdash ideas. But she wanted to see Michael tomorrow.

  ‘Oh,’ her father said.

  Rose registered his disappointment and felt slightly irritated.

  He tried again. ‘But you’re the star, aren’t you, Rose? Can’t you be all artistic and moody and miss one rehearsal? Come on!’ Terry leaned across and elbowed his daughter playfully.

  ‘Terry,’ Violet said. There was a pause before she continued. ‘We can’t just drop everything to entertain you. Rose has things to do. Important things. Maybe on the weekend we can all do something together.’

  ‘You said that last weekend,’ Terry responded.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’ For just a moment, Rose felt the push-pull of being responsible for both of their feelings. It was a tiring ache that followed her about regularly.

  ‘Don’t apologise, Rose,’ Violet said. ‘You’re not responsible for your father’s feelings.’

  Rose heard the unsaid caveat: you are responsible for mine.

  Violet wanted for Rose all of the things she felt she herself had missed out on. So she pushed Rose. Rose was smart, if not particularly attractive, and had talents, all sorts of talents. Violet was sure of it. It was just a matter of finding the right one. So began years of ballet, callisthenics, gymnastics, drama, piano lessons, anything that captured V
iolet’s imagination. Rose attended every lesson and event with mediocre success and unrelenting anxiety. Yet despite her clumsy foray into dance, for which her body was not built, and piano, for which her fingers were too short, a strange and welcome phenomenon occurred. As Rose performed, Violet’s fear lessened.

  By the time Rose was a teenager, she was aware that maintaining the externals was absolutely vital to happiness. She understood, with an alacrity often observed in uncomforted children, that when you are sad there is nothing for it but to pretend otherwise. Rose had spent her lifetime watching her mother absorb arrows as if she not only refused to display negative emotion but was incapable of actually processing it. Rose remembered a time when she had been bitten by a dog while riding her bike home from school. As her mother tended the wound she looked up at her daughter’s hot, wet face and said, ‘You’re not crying, Rose. You’re not crying.’ Years later Rose realised this was far from a lack of compassion. It was her mother’s way of coping with a frighteningly unpredictable world. And so Rose acted for her mother, the one aptitude discovered among a myriad of childhood activities. Rose realised she could easily pretend to be someone else. She was always in the school plays. She got used to walking around pretending to be someone else. ‘Put on that happy face, darling,’ her mother would say. ‘A happy face reflects a happy home.’

  Walking the tightrope of happy home dinner table discomfort, however, seemed particularly tiring this evening. As Rose chartered the annoying silence that always followed Violet’s parenting and Terry’s sulking, she buoyed herself for the reparative save with, ‘Definitely this weekend, Dad. Right, Mum? We’ll do something together.’

  ‘You could invite Michael,’ Violet said.

  ‘Yes,’ Rose said.

  ‘That’d be great, love,’ Terry said.

  And Rose held her happy face right through the rest of dinner, her brain a snow globe with thoughts of the weight of Michael’s torso sticking to hers. She had never thought she could be just herself with anyone.

  Liv was the place Rose first put her happy face down. Her safe place. Liv was different from her other friends. She seemed to be able to see into Rose, deep down into her thoughts. Liv never judged. Liv just didn’t care what people thought. In fact, Liv said life was just too damn short to bother trying to please other people, a concept Rose found both diabolical and unbelievably attractive. Rose imagined the honesty she shared with Liv was how home should be. Liv and her mum sometimes yelled at each other and slammed doors and said fuck but then, always, squeezed each other tight with kisses and forgiveness. Rose had been in Liv’s house and seen it.

  Rose was spending the weekend with Liv. Rose loved Liv’s house and she loved staying there. It was a house full of debris – always clean where it mattered but strewn with books and newspapers, elegant curios and chipped figurines, threadbare throw rugs and worn cushions, chess sets, doll’s houses and pot plants. It was the sort of mess Rose’s mum wouldn’t tolerate in her own house but would describe as quaint and eccentric in someone else’s – and then wash her hands vigorously when she got home. Rose found the muddle comforting. Even though she visited regularly, she always knew that if she looked closely enough, if she wandered slowly enough, she would see something different. Some new bauble Liv’s mum fancied from the op shop opposite the bus stop, or some long-forgotten treasure recovered from beneath something and given premium display space until it was eventually covered again.

  Liv’s bedroom was tiny. The other rooms of the house sort of spilled into it. There were old cups and saucers filled with jewellery, condiment jars crusted with wax from candle stubs, a stack of fusty smelling board games, and a rocking horse – no mane, eye missing – that had been rescued from a verge-side before it was carted off to a landfill. There was no desk or study area. Liv lived on her big double bed. Her laptop lived on her pillow, the charger cord wrapped around one bedpost like a garland, snaking across the only windowsill and connected to a power point with suspicious burn marks on the loose face plate. Rose had often wondered if a mere jiggle of the plug would short out the entire house.

  Liv and Rose had slept in that big double bed together since they were children. Rose liked it that way. She liked the weight and warmth of Liv next to her. It was like being in her mother’s bed. In Liv’s bed Rose felt comforted.

  They sat cross-legged on the bed with two bags of corn chips, a jar of guacamole the consistency of Vaseline and a plate of soggy, microwave-heated party pies. Liv’s mum’s cooking was sparse and of dubious quality, so they filled up on the sort of stuff never imagined in Rose’s kitchen. They’d probably have toasted sandwiches later.

  ‘So.’ Liv dragged a finger across her lips and pushed a glob of dip onto her tongue. ‘Not seen much of you lately. Who have you been doing?’

  It was Liv’s standard opening to any conversation. Rose hesitated and picked up a pie. She slowly peeled the pastry top off and began scraping out the stagnant layer of greasy meat substitute with a corn chip. She hesitated too long. Rose usually rattled off a list of the ugliest boys in school – as well as a couple of smarmy teachers – in response to this question, which inevitably ended with Liv butting in with ‘I’ve had that one!’ and a descent into hysterical laughter.

  Liv leaned across and gave Rose’s hair a tug. It was something she had done to get Rose’s attention since they were kids. Rose had a weakness for contemplation comas: it had been labeled everything from ADD to plain laziness by the school. Liv didn’t know what it was exactly; all she knew was that when Rose was preoccupied with something big she looked like a juggler on tippy-toes.

  ‘What is it?’ Liv said.

  ‘Michael.’ Rose didn’t know what she was going to say next. She hadn’t even really been sure she was going to mention his name until she did.

  ‘Oh no! You two haven’t broken up, have you?’

  ‘Michael and I—’

  ‘Have broken up! Jesus—’

  ‘Michael and I decided to—’

  ‘—although of course, he is now free . . .’ Liv continued, spitting a sharp shrapnel of corn chip back into the jar of dip. She laughed and snorted at the same time before saying, ‘Kidding, of course. I don’t go out with anyone if there’s no chance of a fuck, and as we well know Michael doesn’t—’

  ‘Have sex.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Liv countered.

  ‘No! Are you listening to me? Michael and I decided to have sex!’ It was a blurt. Rose went hot and red with the exertion and relief of it. Liv looked confused for a moment. Then she gave one of those back-of-the-throat laughs, a raw cadence of scepticism and, Rose thought, annoyance.

  ‘Liar,’ Liv said.

  Rose didn’t respond.

  ‘You’re saying that to screw with me.’

  Rose felt the crook of her eye begin to tremble but still said nothing.

  ‘Rosie?’

  Rose proceeded to fill her now empty pastry shell with the sweet, green Vaseline she so loved eating when she was here. Then she took a bite and looked Liv straight in the eye. That also confused Liv. Rose didn’t look people straight in the eye. She remembered Rose telling her it was one of the things Michael’s father didn’t like about her when she first met his parents. Shyness can so often be mistaken for disdain. And this particular look in the eye was more than engagement, it was a demand. Rose had taken control of Liv’s cynicism like a cat with its paw on a mouse’s tail. Liv noticed her shrapnel of chip floating in Rose’s pie.

  ‘Did you use a condom?’

  ‘Yes. Well . . . no, not the first two times.’

  ‘Not the . . .’ Liv took a moment to gather in this information: she felt like she was herding butterflies in her head. She swallowed and began again. ‘Not the first two times. How many times have you done it?’ she asked. Liv never felt uncomfortable talking about sex. She and Rose talked about sex a lot: how much sex Liv was having, why Rose refused to have sex until she was married. Liv couldn’t understand her own uneasiness. It
surprised and distracted her.

  Rose was becoming uneasy herself. This was not the reaction she had expected from Liv. She had expected Liv to be jumping up and down on the bed by now.

  ‘What’s wrong, Livvie?’ she asked. ‘I thought you’d be happy for me.’

  ‘I am. I am. How many times have you done it?’

  ‘Ummm.’ Rose closed her eyes and smiled. ‘Lots.’

  ‘Lots.’ Liv knew she had to throw Rose a bone so she leaned forward and put her palms on Rose’s knees. She smiled and said, ‘I am happy for you. I am. So what was it like? Tell me everything.’

  Rose thought about it then, as she often did. She thought about the way it made her feel when Michael gently eased her legs apart with his knee. She thought about the way he looked at her, chin resting on her belly, knowing when he kissed her again she would be able to taste herself. She thought about his hand on the back of her neck, pulling her close to kiss her forehead. All the small unquantifiable details that meant nothing and everything. What could she tell Liv? That Michael had put a vine around her heart and pulled it so tight that blood only reached her extremities when he was standing next to her? Instead she said, ‘It’s sort of private. And nice.’ Rose shook her head and giggled. ‘Not just nice. It’s lovely. He’s going to marry me one day.’

  ‘Oh, is he?’ Liv jumped off the bed and left the room. She returned a few seconds later and threw a box of condoms into Rose’s lap. ‘They’re from Mum’s room. She lets me take them whenever I want. Now make sure you use them. Every time.’ She pulled Rose closer and planted a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Okay?’