A Small Madness

by Dianne Touchell

  ‘Okay,’ Rose replied.

  Liv suggested they go to a movie. It wasn’t unusual to go to the movies on a sleepover night but Liv hoped she wasn’t sounding too strident in her enthusiasm for the outing. She knew it would fill two hours with something other than continued conversation and she knew they could talk about the movie afterwards. That was at least four hours for Liv to perfect her best non-perturbed face and tone without the distraction of Rose crapping on about the loveliness of her fucking sex life. Liv was jealous and she hated herself for it.

  Rose didn’t immediately realise it but she was watching the calendar. She was watching the calendar the way you watch a spider in the corner of a room you can’t leave. Each day that passed was a spider leg twitching, a pedipalp shifting, and Rose went about her day with eyes relentlessly trained on that spider, so preoccupied with the passing time that ordinary considerations such as bathing and eating became ruthless irritations.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Rose, are you going to wash your hair this week?’ Liv had said, and Michael had asked her if she was feeling okay.

  Initially she hadn’t thought anything of it when she missed her period. The time came and went and although her lack of bleeding registered, she wasn’t concerned. Sometimes she did skip a month. Sometimes it was so light she could get by with toilet paper alone.

  Another month came and went, but still she didn’t panic. Her breasts were tender, which always happened before her period started. So she waited. There was some spotting in her knickers at one time, which excited her so much she washed her hair and shaved her legs, but she cried in the shower while she did so.

  Eventually the spider began crawling up her arm. She knew she had to find out. She used her student diary. She put dots on the pages where she had and where she should have. She added it up in her head and then she counted the individual days, touching each page of the diary with the ball of a pen so slick with ink that it skidded on some pages and left a small mark: amputated spider’s legs pressed flat into the time which had passed. Rose hated these gel ink pens. They were messy and sometimes the ball got stuck and important things became difficult to read. She could never go back over the patchy bits with gel ink pens either. They just left a wet mark that somehow always transferred to the heel of her hand. When she had finished counting, she counted again. Then she googled ‘My period is 61 days late’.

  Rose was relieved by the results. There were lots of people who were very late for all sorts of reasons. Stress and anxiety, sudden weight loss, recent illness, change in medication, change in routine – Rose had no idea her body was so fragile and unpredictable in its functioning. However, all the Google forums did advise a trip to the gynaecologist to check things out. Just to be safe. Rose didn’t have a gynaecologist. She had an ordinary doctor. The ordinary doctor was her mum’s domain, though. Her mum took her to the ordinary doctor when she had tonsillitis, when she broke her finger playing softball, when she had the flu that turned out to be just a bad cold. Rose didn’t know if she could see the ordinary doctor without him telling her mum and dad. She didn’t even have his phone number to make an appointment. Rose started to text Liv, then put her phone down.

  It was a short walk to the pharmacy. There were two near Rose’s house, each in opposite directions. Rose set off for the one which was slightly further away, the one rarely frequented by her mum. The one in the run-down shopping centre with a car park that was usually full of boys with lewd graphics on their T-shirts and skateboards under their arms that they slammed down in front of security guards powerless to enforce the ‘No Skateboarding’ signage. It was these boys who prevented Rose’s mother from patronising this particular pharmacy even though it was larger and better stocked.

  Rose had to walk past a large, protected swathe of bushland that bordered the main road in order to get there. This bush was famous for being the probable disposal site for a local woman who had been missing for three years. Rose couldn’t walk past without thinking about her. All the businesses in the area had had pictures of the woman up in their windows, including the pharmacy Rose was walking to now. Police in white jumpsuits had scoured that bushland for days on end, digging holes and shifting logs and eagerly trailing the skinny bottoms of wet-nosed cadaver dogs. Still, the woman had never been found. The police used the toilets in the petrol station across the road for days on end during that search and Rose’s mother had driven out of her way to use a different one because of it.

  The pharmacy was blasting its air con out onto the pavement so that crossing the threshold was like walking through a ghost. Rose browsed immediately near the door: deodorants, toothpaste, sanitary items. Moving forward and slightly to the left: vitamins, bandaids, denture adhesive, then a blood-pressure sleeve with an elderly man attached to it, struggling slightly as if he’d been detained by the equipment involuntarily. Rose turned to cross to the other side of the shop floor and was intercepted by a middle-aged woman with bleeding lipstick and a name tag which read ‘Robyn’.

  ‘Can I help you with something, dear?’

  ‘No. Thank you,’ Rose replied – and that’s when she saw them.

  Pregnancy tests.

  Behind the counter.

  Rose had never really looked around a pharmacy before but for some reason she had assumed that the only thing behind the counter would be prescription medicine. There were lots of things behind the counter that Rose knew you didn’t need a prescription for: headache pills, cough medicine, condoms, nicotine gum, pregnancy tests. Of course, she knew immediately why they were behind the counter: all the stuff most likely to be stolen by teenagers with either no money or too much shame, was out of reach.

  Robyn was still standing in front of Rose. Neither of them had moved. Rose had been prepared to buy a pregnancy test if she could have picked it from a shelf and presented it casually to a gum-smacking junior with bad manners. She had been prepared to steal one in the same circumstances. But suddenly, being in this pharmacy with bleeding-lip Robyn guarding the altar of sacred goods made Rose short of breath. So she said, ‘I just need a ChapStick.’

  Robyn immediately obliged by leading Rose to the point-of-sale items and presenting the options like a lip balm spokesmodel. Rose grabbed one, paid for it, and left, near to tears. During the walk back home, past the lewd boys, past the bushland full of secrets, past the petrol station that still had a yellowing ‘Have you seen this woman?’ poster, gummy with melting Blu-Tack, posted crookedly in the window, Rose realised there was only one person she could call. The only person she could trust within her circle of friends was the friend on the outside of it.

  She phoned Liv. ‘I need you to get me a pregnancy test.’

  Liv caught the bus to Rose’s straightaway. They decided to walk to the other pharmacy. It was closer and Rose couldn’t go back to where she’d just come from. It would draw too much attention to her. Liv walked into the pharmacy and straight up to the counter, past the people waiting for prescriptions, past the floor walker who looked disturbingly like ChapStick Robyn, and asked for a pregnancy test. Transaction complete, they walked home quickly. Despite the cool day, Rose could feel sweat-stench hardening on her body like varnish.

  ‘I don’t know how this could happen,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s see,’ Liv replied. ‘Did you share a toothbrush?’

  Rose started to cry then. She felt the exact same fear she had felt when her piano teacher had slapped her fingers with a ruler after she’d made a mistake. She felt the same humiliation she’d felt when her dance teacher told her she was shaped like a pear and needed to lose weight. And she heard the pitiless judgement in her mother’s rant about Susan Johnson, the teen-tart who’d ruined her life last year by having a baby and dropping out of school.

  Rose gripped Liv’s hand and held it the rest of the way home.

  When the little window on the little stick showed two bold pink lines, Rose had been wiping wee off her hand on the hem of her T-shirt. There was some running down the ins
ide of her thigh as well. She had gotten off the toilet too quickly, shaky and nauseous. Liv had been on the other side of the bathroom door barking, ‘Mid flow, mid flow,’ like a coxswain. When Rose had finally emerged she had given the stick to Liv because Liv had her hand out for it. Liv had marched back to Rose’s bedroom then, so Rose had followed.

  It was not going the way she had planned. She had expected Liv to tell her that everything would be all right. She had imagined Liv would feel what she herself was feeling and not hate her for it. She had anticipated being comforted by Liv during those three minutes of waiting for the little window on the little stick to reveal its secret. Instead Liv had flopped onto Rose’s bed and said, ‘Jesus Christ, Rose, it stinks of sex in here. Wash your fucking sheets.’

  And then those three minutes were gone and Rose’s fear, no longer a mere possibility secreted in her blood, curled up in her gut like a tapeworm.

  ‘Are you going to tell Michael?’ Liv asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why of course? You don’t have to, you know. Ever thought that maybe you shouldn’t?’ Liv tugged Rose’s hair.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Rose asked. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Because you might not just be telling him. You don’t know who he’ll tell. You don’t know who the people he tells will tell. Michael’s a goddamn high school superstar and if you ruin all that then I have a feeling you’re the one who’ll come out smelling like shit.’ Liv paused before adding, ‘He has a future, Rosie.’

  ‘So do I.’

  Rose had plans. They were her plans, hers alone, independent of those she’d heard her parents discussing on the rare occasions they were in the same place at the same time. Her mother thought nursing was a good, sound career choice. Her father countered with something more corporate, such as advertising or commerce. Although Rose was present she had never been a part of these discussions; she was simply thrust at these possible futures in much the same manner she had been thrust at a gymnastics horse vault when she was eight. She had never been able to get herself over that thing. But Rose wanted to go to drama school, a far too dangerously unpredictable future for her mother to cope with. So Rose kept her plans to herself, fearful that if given voice they would be denied as surely as her dog-bite tears. Only Liv knew. And Michael. They had talked about Rose auditioning and perhaps even winning a scholarship to attend drama school.

  ‘I have plans, too,’ Rose reiterated. ‘I have a future.’ And Liv said, ‘Not anymore.’

  Rose told Michael the following day. She told him because she needed to. She needed someone to comfort her. Rose had expected that comfort from Liv, but had instead received a confusing combination of irritation and disappointment that seemed completely out of character for Liv. So she told Michael and waited for what she needed. He listened to her, like he always did, and managed during that first telling to hold her hand and keep the dread out of his face.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Are you sure? I mean, can’t you be wrong about this stuff? Make a mistake? Maybe we should get one of those tests from the chemist.’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘Where’d you get that?’

  ‘Liv got it,’ she said, and for just a second a flicker of distaste passed across his face. Not much, just a wrinkle of disapproval, which she saw and he felt. ‘You’re worried about Liv knowing? I needed help!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Michael said, but he let go of her hand and she burst into tears.

  Michael had never understood Rose’s attachment to Liv. Word around school was Liv had had more dicks in her than a Port-A-Potty at a construction site, and was equally clean. He thought she was a slut and as influence always runs contrary to best intentions he didn’t approve of Rose’s closeness with her. Ryan had more than once been lewdly suggestive about Rose simply because of her association with Liv. For just a moment, with this new knowledge resting like a fistful of gravel in his throat, he wondered if Rose had been with anyone else. It was a brief guilty whisper in the one part of his head not deadened by shock and was immediately followed by the sick rush of panic: he knew it was his.

  ‘Have you told anyone else? Because I think . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’

  They sat together on Rose’s bed, not saying anything at all and not taking full breaths for a long time. Ever since Rose had wee’d on that stick she’d felt like she hadn’t taken a full breath. She’d felt like she would never take a full breath again.

  Michael rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his chin to his chest. He could feel the pressure building in his eyeballs. His mouth gently filled with saliva and he let it pool at the back of his teeth. When Rose’s mum called out to him he couldn’t answer at first.

  ‘Michael, are you staying for dinner?’

  Was he staying for dinner? He often stayed for dinner. Tonight it wasn’t a good idea, though. He wasn’t sure he could swallow.

  ‘Um, no thanks. Not tonight.’ His voice sounded strange to him because he had replied through gritted teeth.

  ‘You’re not staying?’ Rose grabbed his wrist and found herself gaping imploringly at his ear because he wouldn’t turn to look at her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you angry with me?’ She already knew the answer and she felt herself growing angry in response.

  He didn’t say anything at first. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t stay for dinner, couldn’t speak.

  She repeated the question. ‘Are you angry with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Michael said, and walked out of the room.

  She didn’t even hear the front door open and close. He was leaving quietly; he didn’t want to draw attention to himself from her family, who liked and respected him and often let him stay for dinner. In that moment she was terrified. She could have chased him down and pushed him into oncoming traffic. Isn’t that why animals attack? Rose was sure she had read that somewhere, that animals attack when they are frightened or threatened. Yet Michael had slunk out of here as if she, herself, was the threat.

  ‘Rose, bring the towels in off the line and come set the table, please,’ her mum called from the kitchen. ‘Michael, you sure you don’t want to stay?’

  What should Rose tell Liv now? That she was right? That she shouldn’t have told Michael anything at all? Did she really tell him because she needed to, because he had a right to know? Or did she tell him because it suddenly occurred to her that Liv might be right about their respective futures and if Rose really was going down, she had no intention of going down alone?

  Rose brought the towels in off the line and set the table. The smell of whatever her mother had prepared was making her feel sick. All sorts of smells made her feel sick lately. She took her place at the table and listened while her mum pottered and chattered, watched her mum dollop a mound of steaming vegetables onto each dinner plate, watched and prayed it wasn’t fish she could smell, watched as a grey-looking fish fillet still awash in a slimy brown-butter pap was placed in front of her, watched it steam like wet rage, watched Michael getting angry, watched him not stay for fish and explanations, watched him leave, watched, watched, watched.

  ‘God, Rosie! Terry, Rosie’s sick!’

  Watched her mum’s mouth yelling the words to her dad who said things like ‘oh, love’, while helping her to her feet.

  She wondered what all the fuss was about and then realised she had vomited. Her fillet was sopping with something altogether different now, and when she stood up, vomit dripped from her in semi-solid curds, pooling at her feet.

  ‘She doesn’t look well,’ said Mum.

  ‘Time for bed, sweetheart,’ said Dad.

  ‘Shower first, I think,’ said Mum.

  ‘I’ll clean up here,’ said Dad.

  ‘Have you been feeling unwell, Rosie?’ said Mum.

  ‘Are you angry with me?’ said Rose.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mum.

  ‘Y
es,’ said Michael.

  Michael always appreciated the fact that the walk between his place and Rose’s was a short one. He could stay late at Rose’s and be home in five minutes. She could stay late at his place and it only took him five minutes to walk her home. When it was raining, his dad would drive her home and that only took one minute. For the first time he found himself wishing it was a longer walk. Five minutes was not enough time. Not enough time to set his face to its usual nonchalance, fix his voice to its usual casual pitch, and not enough time to snap his limbs out of the adrenaline rigor that threatened to choke his muscles and topple him into oncoming traffic.

  That seemed odd to him too. Traffic still moving. People still going about their business. Everything and everyone performing normally, as if nothing had changed. As if the world were as it had always been.

  Except it wasn’t.

  He had hoped that just this once he might make it to his bedroom undetected, if only to look at himself in the mirror and make sure nothing showed on his face. But Tim caught him in the hallway as usual and in the usual way.

  ‘Okay, what’s the difference between a mosquito and a blonde?’

  ‘Not interested,’ Michael said, pushing past his brother. Ten steps to go. Nine. Eight steps. Seven. Six. Close enough to reach out his hand and touch his bedroom door. Five. Four.

  ‘Boys! Dinner!’

  Dinner was the big event in Michael’s household. As Michael and Tim grew older and were home less and less, their father did insist that they make a concerted effort to be home for dinner. It was a testament to his parents’ approval of Rose that an invitation to eat at Rose’s was seen as an acceptable excuse to be absent from their own dinner table. Rose had even said grace at Michael’s dinner table, a privilege usually reserved for family members. But Rose wasn’t there tonight. Michael sat at the table, his face cramping from the effort to maintain a smile, praying hard and fast that his father wouldn’t make him say grace at the dinner table tonight. When his father nominated Tim, Michael wondered if that was to be his very last answered prayer. It made him sad, and it made him wish he had prayed for something else.