A Small Madness

by Dianne Touchell

  Michael knew his father had been raised by a man who slowly drank himself to death for no other reason than he had a real taste for it. His mother had told him about the grandparents he had never met and why. She had told him how often Harold would find his stepfather sitting at the kitchen table, loved-up and urine-soaked, wanting to talk, or alternatively screaming and throwing things, occasionally slapping his mother. Harold didn’t want that for his own family. He decided the only way to survive the volatility of the world was to take the guesswork out of the equation by way of God’s law and household rules. Harold’s rules were simple and indisputable. He expected his sons to do as they were told. Harold lived by 1 Timothy 3:4 – he was one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity – and he called this love. He guided his family along an undeviating path of interaction with the world without worldliness. If his choices for his sons sometimes seemed harsh, or unforgiving of the natural circuitousness of childhood, it was not as a result of a lack of genuine care. It was simply that he did not trust the world or the people in it. He wanted to create something worthwhile and lasting for his two boys.

  ‘You have to remember, Michael,’ his mother had said. ‘In a world of storms you build shelters, you do not sit on the beach watching the clouds roll in. That’s how your father sees it. He is not an unkind man, so please do as he asks.’

  Sometimes Michael wondered if he might be selling his father short. But when he looked at Rose sitting opposite him, her fingers curling in towards his wrists, he knew this wasn’t the time to test the extent of his father’s charity.

  ‘I don’t think we should tell anyone,’ Rose said.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘But you just said—’

  ‘I just thought I should say that in case it was the right thing to say,’ Michael said.

  ‘Well, can you just say what you really feel from now on?’ Rose tried to curb her impatience. She continued quickly, the words blurted out as if racing a paralysis that would shut her up forever, ‘I’ve worked it out. We don’t tell anyone. No one could help us anyway. I can hide it. It’s not real.’

  Rose said it again inside her head, a counterpoint to the words coming out of her mouth: it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real. ‘Anything could happen. We could tell people and then it could just go away and everything would be ruined for nothing!’

  It could just go away, it could just go away, it could just go away.

  ‘These things go away all the time. You have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.’ Rose realised she was gripping Michael’s wrists so hard her knuckles were white. She could feel his pulse, much slower than her own. She hated that his heartbeat didn’t betray him. Was he even listening? ‘Michael! You have to promise me you won’t tell anyone!’

  ‘Okay,’ Michael said. He slowly pulled his wrists away from Rose. ‘What now?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing now.’ Rose stood up. She suddenly realised she was exhausted. Her bones ached. ‘I’m so tired my hair hurts,’ she added before walking away.

  Rose could smell everything. The open box of bicarb her mum had shoved in the back of the fridge wasn’t working. Every time Rose opened the door a tinny wave of asparagus stench wafted out and she was pretty sure there was an old banana in there somewhere. The lavender fabric softener her mum used sat in the back of her throat all day and made it hard to eat. The school gardener had spread fresh mulch: the combined tang of woodchips and zoo poo made her gag. The smell thing was affecting her mood too. It wasn’t the smells alone that bothered her; it was also the anticipation of coming across a smell that would set her off. Her dad’s ginger tea, brewed morning and night and usually a welcome and comforting aroma, made her scream shut up at him when he asked her if she was feeling unwell. Rose couldn’t understand the smell thing. It was like a superpower. It changed everything about her for seconds at a time. She would forget where she was and what she was doing in the grip of olfactory assault.

  Rose googled ‘miscarriage’ and found out it was also called ‘spontaneous abortion’. She found the term reassuring. All sorts of things caused spontaneous abortion. It happened a lot, too. The more Rose read, the more amazed she was that anyone actually carried to term. Sometimes the thing developed wrong and was rejected by the body, just pushed out as if it had never been there. Sometimes a bad shock or injury made it go away. Rose had been in a state of shock since she first discovered it, so maybe it was already gone. Just in case this thing was stronger than her own distress, Rose took the precaution of following one online warning very carefully. She discovered that some anti-inflammatory drugs can cause spontaneous abortion. Her fingers shook and she couldn’t focus for tears as she popped aspirin and ibuprofen out of their childproof blisters, swallowing handfuls of the bitter-tasting generic substitutes that her mother bought for budgeting reasons. Then she hastily deleted her browsing history.

  Liv told Rose that the smell thing was a symptom of pregnancy. Rose told her it couldn’t be, because she wasn’t pregnant anymore. Rose was beginning to find Liv clingy and overinvested. She told Liv to go and make some other friends. She told Liv to get herself a boyfriend.

  Liv’s mother had a saying: no good deed goes unpunished. She was a woman never surprised by ingratitude, discourtesy or the unpredictable behaviour of the human species. With such low expectations of the world, Liv’s mother was a woman very rarely disappointed and very often highly amused.

  She was chuckling now. ‘So Rosie is knocked-up and now she wants nothing to do with you,’ she said.

  ‘Well, she says she’s not pregnant anymore.’

  ‘But you’re still on the outer?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You tried to help her, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not really,’ Liv said. She suddenly felt the need to examine and justify every interaction of the past few weeks. She had a feeling she hadn’t helped enough. ‘Well, I just listened to her, you know?’ Liv wondered if she really had listened. ‘I bought the test for her. I just mainly sort of . . . listened.’

  ‘Just mainly sort of, huh?’

  ‘She hasn’t given me a reason for treating me like shit or anything, Mum. She said I should get other friends, get myself a boyfriend or something.’

  ‘A boyfriend, huh? Because the boyfriend thing worked out so well for her.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’ Liv had never been without Rose. When Liv saw Rose now she felt a bit choked: no one had ever told her that grief was like trying to swallow a fat watermelon whole and she had a feeling she had picked out the watermelon all by herself by not holding Rose’s hand this time when she peed herself. What bothered Liv even more was Rose seemed to be enjoying this withdrawal from the friendship. She seemed extremely happy.

  ‘Stay out of it,’ her mum said.

  ‘Should I tell someone?’

  ‘Tell someone what? You said she wasn’t pregnant anymore.’

  ‘Can that happen?’ Liv asked. ‘I mean . . . does it happen often?’

  ‘Not often enough,’ her mum said with a quiet laugh. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on with Rose. Maybe she is and maybe she isn’t. Doesn’t matter. You know something about her that she doesn’t want to be true. Every time she sees you, even if you never speak of it, she’ll hear what frightens her most clanging like a bloody bell.’

  ‘That’s stupid.’

  ‘That’s people. Stay out of it.’

  Stay out of it. Stay out of it. Stay out of it. Liv said it to herself over and over and then over again, waiting for some internal verification, that click of instruction shifting over to common sense. She thought she might be able to coach herself into believing it if she said it often enough. Friendships end all the time for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they end for no reason at all. This one had an ending that was hogtied to a beginning, a beginning Liv knew about.

  When Liv passed Rose at school, Rose laughed too loud. She gripped Michael too flamboyantly. She
linked arms with other girls too ferociously. Every exaggerated joy Rose staged and performed for Liv felt like a drive-by shooting. Liv began to get angry. She was paying a high price for unwanted knowledge. Liv was in the toilets when she heard them talking about her. She was accustomed to hearing other girls talk about her in the toilets and would usually wander from her cubicle and nonchalantly present herself to the jury of her peers with a well-chosen digital gesture and a smart mouth. But this time Liv heard a voice among the others that stopped her cold. Rose.

  ‘You’re well rid of her. I mean really, Rose. What’d you two fight about anyway?’ It was Tiffany Cross, otherwise known as ‘Blonde Ambition’ and often referred to by teachers as a ‘good example’.

  ‘Nothing really,’ said Rose. ‘We just grew apart.’ Her vowels distorted in a way Liv recognised immediately: Rose applying lip gloss. ‘And we’re not kids anymore, you know? She’s not going anywhere. She’s got no plans for the future.’

  ‘And she’s a slut.’ Holly Darrow, who Liv knew for a fact offered blow jobs at parties after a few Vodka Cruisers. But these girls didn’t consider blow jobs to be sex. From the laughter that followed, Liv guessed there were about five of them. She recognised Rose’s laugh. Studied the pulse of it for any sign of coercion, anything to suggest Rose wasn’t really joining in. But she was. Liv wanted to step out from behind the door, slap Rose’s face, ask Holly about the calluses on her knees . . . but she couldn’t.

  ‘That’s harsh, Holly.’ Liv had to squeeze her eyes shut when she heard Tiffany patronisingly defend her. ‘Liv is just . . . limited. Right, Rose?’

  ‘All I know is that I have to think about my future,’ Rose said. ‘And be with my real friends now. I’m not going to be around next year anyway. I’m going to study acting and do something with my life. Liv just drags me down. I can’t stand it anymore.’

  ‘Like I said, Rosie, well rid of her.’ The last thing Liv heard over the washing of hands and brushing of hair was enthusiastic questioning of Rose about which drama schools she was going to audition for.

  Liv waited in those toilets for three hours. She skipped all her classes, waiting in the toilets knowing that Rose would eventually have to pee. She knew these were the toilets Rose went into, the same toilets every time even if her classes were on the other side of the campus. She even knew which cubicle Rose used. So Liv waited.

  When Rose finally walked in, Liv was sitting on the toilet floor next to a row of basins. Rose had never seen Liv looking like this. Liv was picking nail polish off her toenails, one leg tucked right up to her shoulder, the other crooked towards her. Liv unfolded herself quickly and stood up looking angry, her face a tight whitewash. Rose considered turning around and walking out again, but the situation was a test. If she could continue to withhold, if she could breathe through the missing of Liv just as she did a sickening waft of ginger tea, without revealing anything, then the play would continue.

  Rose set her face.

  ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Liv hadn’t meant to start this way. She had rehearsed an approach that was reasonable and non-confrontational. She had imagined a reignition of their alliance based on eye contact alone. She was, however, completely unprepared for Rose’s cold stare and small smile. The sort of smile you give someone you don’t know and accidentally get too close to on a crowded bus. There would be no copacetic crumbling of barriers.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Rose said, brushing past Liv to get into the toilet cubicle.

  ‘Yes, you do.’ Liv suddenly found herself staring indignantly at, and speaking desperately to, a closed toilet door. Panic set in. Just a little bit, but enough to set a trill in her stomach and make her swallow hard.

  ‘Why are you ignoring me?’ Liv continued. ‘I haven’t told anyone anything. I’m not going to tell anyone anything. What did I do to you? Tell me what I did to you!’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rose said, from behind the door.

  ‘Yes, you do!’ Liv said, kicking the door. ‘This is bullshit! Talk to me!’

  Liv was on the verge of tears. She swung her leg forward to kick the door again just as Rose unlocked it. The door flew inwards, rebounding hard against the inner wall of the cubicle. A rush of air slammed Rose in the chest as she caught the door in her hand. In that moment, the shock of almost being hit by the door stripped Rose’s face. Liv saw it. For just a second Rose’s eyes were recognisable. But it didn’t last. The vulnerability Liv saw in Rose’s eyes was shut down with a resolve that was palpable.

  Rose pushed past Liv and walked out. She was deleting her browsing history, and Liv was a part of that.

  Liv sat on the floor of the toilets until the lunch bell sounded. Then she got up and went home.

  Michael had never thought much about time, because he had always believed he had all the time in the world. But he was beginning to think about it now. In physics they learned about Einstein’s theory of relativity, a theory which Michael clung to with increasing desperation as another season clicked into place without word or warning. There was no gentle shift from mild to cold days. Winter fell in on the year like a kick in the heart, changing everything and nothing. If time wasn’t real, if it were truly relative to the position of the observer of its passing, then why did it feel as if the air was being squeezed from the small vestibule of time Michael and Rose had left?

  There were only five months left until exams.

  There were only five months left until.

  When Michael tried to talk to Rose about it she simply said, ‘Five months left until what?’

  It didn’t help that ‘preparation’ had become the raison d’être of the scheduled school day either, heightening Michael’s already hair-trigger sensitivity to the fact that he and Rose had other things they needed to prepare for. There was unscheduled testing, mock exam papers, discussion of study procedures and relaxation techniques. Career advisors and guidance counsellors worked their way through the student body with group meetings and individual appointments to ascertain who should be removed from the roll prior to commencement of exams: those who weren’t going to pass were given alternative paths for their own good and the good of the school. No need to pull down the campus average by allowing no-hopers to screw up the curve. At least that’s how Tim described it.

  ‘They’ll clear out the plebs,’ he had said at dinner one night.

  ‘Oh Tim,’ his mother countered, ‘I’m sure that’s not true. I’m sure everyone is given an equal chance to succeed.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with getting shot of the hoi polloi,’ Harold said. ‘Natural selection, right, Michael?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The fact is, weeding out occurs throughout life. You only get a certain number of chances. You don’t waste them.’ Metronome knife. Swig of water.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right,’ his mum said.

  ‘What about mistakes?’ Michael didn’t understand why he was suddenly angry with his dad. He loved his dad, respected him, feared him. His dad had been his divinity since he was a little boy. He could remember sitting in church fingering the buttons on his dad’s suit jacket, pinching mints from the stash in his dad’s pocket, believing God smelled just the way his dad did, and that God probably had the same jacket buttons and deep pockets. It gave him great comfort to give God his father’s face and even when he came to the understanding that it wasn’t his own father tapping into and answering his silent prayers at night he was still grateful for that early childhood misconception. It had never occurred to him that his father could be wrong about anything. Even now the possibility made Michael extremely uncomfortable.

  ‘Mistakes? Don’t make ’em!’ Tim said it with a mouthful of food and then laughed just hard enough to spit a piece of ham steak back onto his plate.

  ‘Michael asks a good question and it’s nice to hear from him,’ his dad said, making reference to Michael’s consistent and increasingly doleful silence at family meals.

  When h
is dad didn’t continue Michael said it again, ‘What about mistakes, Dad?’

  ‘What do you think about mistakes, Michael?’

  This was one of his dad’s favourite manoeuvres. He would take a question and redirect it at the enquirer so that they were obliged to respond in a way that pleased him. Michael had always thought of it as shrewd and instructive. Tonight he saw it as dexterous and controlling. Realisation of his own judgement about the move distressed him more than his father’s use of the strategy. So he simply said, ‘I don’t know, Dad. I suppose I’m not very well-equipped to deal with mistakes.’

  ‘Then I’ve failed you,’ his dad responded, carefully placing his knife and fork onto his plate and tenting his fingers beneath his chin. ‘This disappoints me.’

  A strained silence ensued. Michael knew what his father required and that, in itself, made him angrier. His father wanted reassurance. Tim breathed slowly and loudly through his nose, warranting a sideways glance from Dad. His mother stopped eating.

  ‘You haven’t failed me,’ Michael acquiesced.

  His father immediately picked up his cutlery.

  His mother resumed eating.

  ‘I didn’t believe so, but I would want you to be honest,’ his dad said. ‘As for what I think,’ – and here he paused to chew and swallow and clear his throat, and place his knife and fork side by side on his plate as he always did when he was going to use his hands to speak. The chink of stainless steel on china rang like a bell. – ‘I think there are degrees of error and that error has to be disciplined. These students being winnowed out before exams are reaping what they sowed. They either didn’t work hard enough or have not shown the requisite commitment to deserve further help.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Tim.

  ‘I’m not finished yet!’ his dad snapped. But it seemed he had lost his train of thought because he did finish then, with this, ‘Degrees of error, Michael. Opportunity is fragile.’