A Small Madness

by Dianne Touchell

  ‘So,’ his dad said, hot on the tail of amen, ‘how are we? What we been doing? Who we been seeing?’

  His dad had been using that line to open dinnertime conversation for as long as Michael could remember. Michael was usually one of the first to jump in, but tonight he didn’t think he could speak without something coming out of him that he couldn’t control. Like tears. Like this dinner plate hurled across the room.

  Tim always had a lot to say about how he was, what he’d been doing and who he’d been seeing. He was good, really good thanks. He’d been studying hard but having to cut back on some extracurricular activities just to make sure he was on track for exams. He was seeing his mates regularly, playing squash and cricket on campus, organising a student union protest against college fee hikes, and thinking of signing up for archery, just because it was something he had never tried and it might be a good way to unwind and what do you think, Dad?

  Dad thought it was a great idea as long as it didn’t interfere with Tim’s responsibilities at home and at church. Had Tim forgotten he was supervising at the youth camp in the holidays and had three weeks of serving sacrament coming up? No, Tim hadn’t. Tim didn’t forget his responsibilities. Or rather, when Tim forgot his responsibilities, he dodged detection.

  ‘Michael?’

  Everyone looking at him. Mouth full of food. Breathing through his nose. Michael suddenly felt raw. He was sure his skin had turned to tissue and every nerve ending twitched from exposure. This was a new and extraordinary sensation. Did it show? Had he dragged the smell of trouble back from Rose’s bedroom? He could smell it. Could everyone else?

  ‘Michael, I asked you how your day was,’ his dad said. Squeak of knives on china. Everyone breathing, smelling.

  ‘Good, yeah, good.’

  ‘You look tired, darling,’ his mother said.

  And she said it smiling at him. The same smile she gave him first thing in the morning and when she put dinner in front of him at night and when he vacuumed for her. She didn’t know. It didn’t show. None of them knew. He just looked tired.

  ‘Am a bit.’

  ‘Just keep at it, son. These are the most important exams of your life. Entry scores are everything these days, and medicine is competitive. And if there’s anything we can do to help, you just let us know. You seem anxious. You’ve got to get a handle on that. Ask Timmo. He knows.’ His dad said this, elbow on table, his knife waggling back and forth in the air like a metronome in six-eight. Michael nodded in time with the beat.

  ‘Dad, it’s only May. He’s got months before exams,’ Tim said.

  ‘Months that will fly,’ Dad replied quickly. ‘This is the year. The big year. Michael knows that.’

  ‘Michael’s doing fine,’ his mum said. It was a statement of fact. Michael’s mum had always had the ability to bring things into being simply by stating them. Her reality didn’t always correspond with everyone else’s; however, her idealism had such an undemanding veracity that people had a tendency to just go along with whatever she believed. There was something childlike about her optimism. It brooked no resistance.

  Michael’s doing fine. He even believed it himself for just a moment.

  ‘I’m not saying he isn’t,’ his dad said, pausing to swallow and look around the table at each one of them. ‘He just doesn’t want to let himself down.’

  Let himself down. He just doesn’t want to let himself down. The words struck Michael in the torso like a fist. He was in a vacuum with his father’s voice. Each paternal syllable rolled around inside him like the reflex to vomit.

  ‘Impossible,’ Michael’s mum said matter-of-factly.

  Impossible: caution converted to good cheer. It was impossible for Michael to let himself down. It was impossible for Michael to let anyone down. His mother had decreed it. Again, for just a second, an involuntary bubble of fresh belief in his own promise pierced him. In that second he thought about telling them all about his ‘A’ in today’s maths test, beating his own record in the hundred-metre hurdles, being nominated as editor of the yearbook. He thought about asking Timmo to pass that potato gratin he loved so much and scraping all the baked cheese off the sides of the dish like he usually did. He thought about asking his dad to take him driving after dinner because he still had a bank of hours to work up for his logbook and he always enjoyed that one-on-one time with his dad. He thought about all of this, all of the things he would do on any other night, for just a second. But it wasn’t a normal night and when he excused himself from the dinner table it was with a head full of things he might never say or do again.

  We have to talk.

  Rose had been sending the text all morning. Over and over. Sent items; forward; add recipient; Michael. And each time she sent it, and received no response, she got angrier and angrier. She liked the anger: it blocked out everything else. Rose had never felt this kind of anger. It was a squeeze-your-eyes-shut-to-stop-yourself-moaning kind of anger.

  She had seen Michael today several times. They passed each other on the way to class, they stood in parallel canteen lines at lunchtime, they sat diagonally opposite each other at laptops in the library. Rose had never seen him concentrate as hard as he did on that laptop. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the discipline it took to refuse to look at her for a full forty minutes and she took the snub like a bullet. She sent the text again and watched him reflexively touch his pocket when his phone vibrated against him. And so her rage increased until she had to leave the library, afraid she might lean across and slam the computer screen down onto his fingers.

  She wished she hadn’t told him. Liv had been right. What had she imagined his reaction would be?

  ‘Have you ever stopped to think he might be just as scared as you are right now, Rosie?’ Liv asked.

  ‘What?’ Rose looked up, caught Liv’s eye, and looked down again. She knew she dropped her eyes too quickly and she knew Liv would read into it. They were sitting on the lawn, cross-legged, facing one another, books in their laps. They were supposed to be studying. Mrs Hensler thought it would be a good idea to sit out in the sunshine on such a beautiful day. Rose would have been just as happy in a darkened room.

  Liv leaned forward and tugged Rose’s hair.

  ‘You told him, right?’ She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘You told him and now he’s acting like you loaned him money.’

  ‘What makes you think I told him?’

  ‘The roses and engagement ring?’ Liv whispered. Their heads were so close together her breath moved a wisp of Rose’s hair. Rose moved away, just a smidgen, just a stiffening of the spine to increase the distance between them.

  ‘Well, he’s not sitting with you,’ Liv continued, ‘and he hasn’t talked to you all day.’

  ‘He won’t even look at me,’ Rose muttered. She was beginning to feel sick. She thought she might have been sitting in the sun for too long – then she remembered.

  ‘He what?’ Liv asked.

  ‘He won’t look at me!’ Rose spat.

  Heads all around them popped up, startled meerkats sniffing the wind.

  ‘Okay, settle down. Everyone is looking at you now.’

  Not everyone.

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you know what you’re going to do yet?’

  Rose studied her own lap. She felt vague and bewildered.

  Liv became tritely specific. ‘Are you going to get an abortion?’

  Rose looked up then. She had heard the question from a long way away, as if she were eavesdropping on a bad phone line. And she asked, ‘Do you think he still loves me?’

  Liv had no choice but to be honest. ‘I don’t think anyone would put this much effort into avoiding you unless they loved you a great deal.’ She had trouble saying it. A boy had never avoided her out of love, or intimidation, or pain of losing something well-valued in the burn of proximity.

  ‘Listen, Livvie, can you promise that you won’t tell anyone? I mean, really promise?�
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  ‘Stupid question,’ Liv said. Then, ‘Do you know how pregnant you are? You know, how many weeks?’

  ‘Not really. I mean, no.’

  ‘Well, don’t you think you should find out?’

  Rose felt confused for a second or two. She didn’t want to know how pregnant she was. She didn’t want things to get that real that fast. All she could think about was Michael. If she could get him to look at her just once, she felt as if she could stop time, even send it spinning backwards, watch it unravel, come apart, spill away.

  ‘Rose, you need to know how pregnant you are so you can think about . . . you know.’ Liv wasn’t sure Rose knew at all. ‘You can’t, you know . . . get rid of it if you’re too far along.’ Liv finished the sentence quickly, unsure if she had even been heard.

  Rose knew that. She knew a time would come when it would take over all the hollows inside her and become a real thing. But there was nowhere for her to go. No one she could go to who could stop time chewing at her raw edges. She felt faint with the fear of it.

  Michael had to avoid her. The need to avoid her was as urgent and irrepressible as a sneeze. He knew he couldn’t do it forever. He knew it was unrealistic, unfair and infantile but he did it just the same. He even made sure that she was watching him when he read her text message, and then shoved his phone back into his pocket with a force and finality that made her face cave in with fury. It gave him some relief to do so.

  Ryan and Sam made the assumption that Michael had had a fight with Rose. They didn’t ask many questions. They figured that if he wanted to talk, he would.

  Ryan hoped he wouldn’t want to. He thought Rose wasn’t good enough for Michael anyway. She wasn’t even that pretty. Even that slut bestie of hers was more attractive.

  Sam made the obligatory derisive enquiry, referencing how honoured they were that Michael would deign to spend a lunch break with them at all. But neither Ryan nor Sam pushed for information.

  Michael didn’t blame them. He didn’t want to know personal stuff about them. Problems and fears and pain were off limits. Even a problem presented in the guise of irony was suspect in this group. The possibility of discomforting others kept them all focused on shared externals. Sometimes they laughed about the well-publicised predicaments of people outside their own group: that one got caught shoplifting; she was on drugs; he brought a knife to school; that one’s dad was in jail. But the talk was large and hearty, jovial, cautionary tales to make them feel better about their own small stuff. Their own unshared stuff. To bring any such crisis into their inner circle would be seen as a betrayal. Michael was sure he would not be forgiven for it, and what’s more, his predicament would probably become one of those well-publicised cautionary tales by the end of the day.

  He wondered if Rose had told her mum. He supposed not. Surely her mum would go straight to his mum. What then? His dad. Tim. Friends at church and friends at school. Shock and disappointment and anger and change. Everything changing. The future changing irrevocably in an instant.

  No, not in an instant. Perhaps instantaneous change would be easier to deal with. This would be a change that skulked and shimmied over a long time, torturous and unpredictable as evolution. Life would become volatile and random, change stacked upon change over weeks, months, years.

  Could they get rid of it? Michael knew people did that all the time, but he had no idea how they went about it. She’d have to go to a doctor. Was that kind of thing confidential? She was only seventeen. Would the doctor have to tell her mum (his mum, his dad, Tim, friends at church and friends at school)? Did you have to pay for it? Michael had some money. He knew Rose had some money too. Did you have to stay in hospital for something like that? How would they explain that to her parents? She couldn’t go to hospital without them knowing. Maybe you could get it done in a chair, like getting your wisdom teeth out. Michael had had his wisdom teeth out in a chair and that was major surgery. They might be able to pull it off if it could be done in a chair. How hard could it be? This tiny thing, just a lump of cells, a clot, a smudge of tissue deep up inside her, unstable and vulnerable. Surely removing it couldn’t be more complicated than picking your nose.

  He had to talk to her. They had to get this thing settled.

  Meet after school in skate park. Need to talk.

  Rose had got to the park before him. Michael saw her sitting on the picnic table, waiting, as he approached. It made him uncomfortable, this watching of his approach. He became conscious of his gait, the set of his shoulders, the heat in his chest. And he became conscious of her. For the first time since all of this began, he became conscious of her. He cared about her. He had forgotten that.

  ‘You bastard!’ He didn’t see it coming. Rose launched herself off the table and swung. She had never hit anyone in her life, so it was a paltry attack. Michael ducked, but not before Rose had managed to dig her fingernails into his scalp. She pulled away hard, her hand cobwebbed with a lattice of Michael’s hair.

  ‘Are you fucking mad?’ Michael hissed, staggering backwards. He had meant to scream it but his breath was gone.

  ‘No! You are! Remember? Mad at me? Angry at me? Remember?’ Rose lurched back and forth in front of him, tottering on the balls of her feet, standing her ground while wanting to run. She had more to say, she had rehearsed it all, but now the moment was here all she could do was stand there, pitching like a dinghy in the wind, making a strange mewling sound to stop herself from crying.

  Michael took a step forward. Then another. Then he sat on the bench, rested his elbows on the table, and slowly placed his head in his hands. Without looking up, he said, ‘Remember the play?’

  When Rose didn’t answer he continued, ‘I just thought of Seventeenth Doll and how good you were in it. I never liked plays before I saw you in that one. Thought they were stupid. Boring. They mostly are. But not that one.’

  ‘You came to every performance.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Michael said. ‘I did.’ He slowly dragged his face through his hands then, catching his bottom lip with his fingertips, revealing the thick pink flesh on the inside. Rose sat heavily opposite him and stretched her hands across the table between them. Michael dropped his hands on top of hers.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I mean, are you all right?’ Rose said, pointing gingerly towards Michael’s head.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Michael pulled strands of his own hair from between Rose’s fingers. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Me too.’

  He looked at her then. He hadn’t noticed how pale she was. Like she had the flu, or hadn’t been sleeping.

  Rose turned her hands over so that their palms were touching. ‘I was good in that play, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  Rose asked again. ‘I was good, wasn’t I? Michael, do you think I’m a good actor?’

  ‘Yes, Rosie, you’re a really good actor.’

  Rose squeezed Michael’s hands before saying, ‘How good are you?’

  Rose remembered Summer of the Seventeenth Doll too. On opening night she’d had a virus, or food poisoning, or something that made her weak and nauseous and sweaty, but she hadn’t told anyone. She’d had to be sick in the toilets twice before she went on stage and once when she was in the wings. She’d had to vomit into a towel that time. Liv had gotten rid of it for her. Rose had no idea where that towel ended up, but she never saw it again. And it was all because of Louise Wright. Louise believed, with a vehemence that convinced complete strangers, that she was going to be the next Nicole Kidman. In fact, she acted as if she already was. The shock of not being cast in the play that year kept her home from school for a week. Her mother had even complained to the principal, the consequence of which was Louise being cast as Rose’s understudy in the role of Olive. She would come to cast rehearsals dressed for a red carpet and overact all over the place, like a dog marking its territory. She argued with the director, criticised her fellow actors mercilessly, and dis
played an uncomfortable level of delight when Rose got a cold sore a week before curtain. Louise Wright managed to demonstrate exactly why no one wanted to work with her. Ergo, when Rose got sick on opening night, she hid it. And she hid it well. There was no way she was going to allow Louise Wright to step in. Apart from the fact that Rose hated her, she knew she’d need a shoehorn to get Louise back out of the role for the rest of the run. Rose felt terrible that whole night. But apart from Liv, no one knew. It was simply a matter of wanting to play the part more than wanting to give in to the virus.

  Rose was learning about viruses in Biology. Virus: a submicroscopic particle of a nucleic acid surrounded by protein that can only replicate within a host cell. They only function inside the cells of another living thing. A virus is a parasite. Viruses are not considered to be independent living things. And they can be flushed out.

  ‘We should tell someone.’ Even as Michael said it he wasn’t sure he believed it. Telling someone else, anyone else, would be an extension of the shame and he was stretched to capacity as it was.

  His parents had always been there for him. They loved him. He didn’t doubt that. But isn’t love based on belief? And isn’t belief just expectations all dressed up for opening night? This was his last year of school; the opening night of the rest of his life was only months away. His mum and dad had bought and paid for their expectations. What happens when someone loses that? What happens when someone stops believing in you? And even if his father could get past the initial shock and regret, wouldn’t it still be there, that germ of disillusionment, feeding on the insides of his love for Michael, just as much a virus as this thing inside of Rose?