They stood quietly on either side for a moment. Then Michael reached forward and eased the shower curtain back, the rings clack, clack, clacking against one another, a sound a bird might make. Tim was sitting on the toilet lid staring at the shower curtain then staring at Michael as he was revealed. The sudden rattling of the bathroom doorhandle shocked them both back into immediate reality.
‘Out of there now,’ their father hollered, palm slapping the doorframe. ‘Michael, I want to talk to you.’
Neither Michael nor Tim answered. It suddenly seemed very unimportant that their father was cross, ranting, waiting.
Michael said, ‘I’m so hungry.’
Tim looked at him incredulously, then said, ‘Where did you . . .’
‘In that bit of bush near her place. What am I going to do?’
Tim couldn’t quite hold on to everything Michael had told him. He battled disbelief, all the while being sure of Michael’s veracity. Tim thought fast. What was there to do now? Hadn’t it all been done? And wasn’t he now, in Michael’s telling of it, an accessory after the fact if he maintained the secret too? He wondered why he wasn’t angry. He waited, but anger never hit. Michael’s face was frozen with a rime of desperation as tangible as the towel he now gripped under his chin.
Tim said, ‘You do nothing. You haven’t really done anything anyway. Just clean up, right?’
Michael didn’t answer.
Tim snapped his fingers a couple of times in Michael’s face. ‘Right?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Right. She hid it, she did it. You just got rid of it.’
Michael stepped out of the shower and started drying off, started to feel, for the first time in months, a sort of release.
Tim continued, ‘You have to stop seeing her. Don’t break up with her now. Just cool it, slowly. See her less and less. Put some distance there. Then put a lot of distance there.’
‘I love her,’ Michael said.
‘Yeah, well, I’ve loved every girl I’ve slept with . . . for a while. If you tell anyone now, you’re screwed. And if the shit ever does hit the fan, you need to be telling your side away from her. You didn’t even know she was knocked-up, right? You thought she was sleeping around. You didn’t know what she was going to ask you to do when you went over there.’ Tim was talking fast now, feeling Michael’s escape from this glide into place like a bolt lock sliding home. ‘You don’t tell anyone. You don’t talk about it with her. You forget about it. You haven’t really done anything wrong. She has. You’re not responsible for her choices. Do you get it?’
‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘Well, think about this instead: if you tell, your life is over. Be smart.’ Tim realised he was gripping Michael by the upper arms. He scooped up Michael’s dirty clothes and shoes from the bathroom floor and moved to the door.
‘I’ll take care of these,’ he said. ‘And we’ll never talk about it again either.’ Tim eased the bathroom door open, just a crack, anticipating being met by a trebuchet of his father’s displeasure. He was surprised and relieved to find the hallway clear. Harold had retreated, temporarily at least.
Michael looked at himself in the mirror after Tim had left. Although his eyes were a bit swollen and he was pale, he didn’t look any different. He hadn’t really looked at himself for weeks. Nothing showed. Not a thing. He was so hungry.
Rose walked quietly into the house. The front door was sticky and the rubbing of door against frame was usually concluded with a short, sharp thud. She pushed with her shoulder, anchoring the door’s movement with gentle reverse pressure on the doorhandle. When it finally landed flush she didn’t turn the deadlock. It always made a clack that echoed and she wasn’t ready to announce herself.
It wasn’t until Rose was in her bedroom that her mother called out to her. Just the usual greeting and the usual assumption about lateness. ‘You been to Michael’s for dinner?’ From the kitchen. Her mother was in the kitchen.
Rose called out, ‘Yes!’ A small pause, then, ‘I’m going to shower!’
As soon as Rose entered the bathroom the smell and taste of bleach stung her. Every sense was suddenly, vibrantly alive. Her skin crackled with it. She quickly opened the bathroom window and lit the scented candles her mother kept on the ledge at the end of the bath. She started the shower running and let the steam build up, then punched holes in it with shots of the lemon verbena flyspray her mother kept under the sink because she couldn’t stand the daddy-long-legs that always seemed to find their way into the bathtub. Then Rose undressed and got into the shower. She slid down the wall and sat in the bottom of the recess feeling the stench of bleach draining away. She sat there for a long time.
When she finally emerged from the bathroom her mother was standing on the other side of the door.
‘Mum!’ Rose snapped back into herself with the fright of her mother’s unexpected proximity.
‘Did you clean the bathroom today?’
‘What?’
‘Did you clean the bathroom today.’ Statement this time, rather than question.
‘No, I . . .’ Rose was suddenly angered by the challenge. Except her mother didn’t look at all challenging, she just looked sad. Rose considered saying it then, saying it into her mother’s sad face so redolent of a fear she had no right to feel. Rose imagined the words coming out, imagined those words smelling of suspicious bleach and insect poison. Michael cleaned the bathroom because I bled in there and then we buried it. But she couldn’t do it. Rose had worked so hard at this and now, finally, everything could go back to normal. The time for telling was past. So she said, ‘Yes.’
She pushed past her mother and headed down the hall to her room. As she shut the door she heard her mother call after her, ‘Don’t use so much bleach next time.’
It wasn’t until Rose was back in her room, leaning against the closed door, that she noticed the gym bag on the end of her bed. She didn’t even remember carrying it in with her. She couldn’t remember when Michael had given it to her. She didn’t know why he hadn’t taken it with him and gotten rid of it. Rose took the bag and shoved it under her bed, against the wall. It was the last thing she was capable of doing. Her limbs were shaking. She was incredibly thirsty. She remembered Michael telling her to drink lots of water but all she wanted to do was sleep. As she went to lie down on the bed she noticed a dark, slightly tacky stain on the sheet and knew it would have seeped through to the mattress beneath. Rose fingered it a little. It was still damp. She lay on top of it, feeling its slight coolness crawl onto her bare thigh, imagining her own weight pushing it further and further into the mattress until it was undetectable.
Michael’s phone screen cast an arc of light bigger and brighter than anything Rose had ever seen before. He was swinging it wildly from tree to tree and she had trouble keeping up. She stumbled several times and tried to call out to him to slow down, to stop, but her voice wouldn’t carry a sound and he ran on, oblivious. The trees were ghost-ashen and full of uneasy movement – every flash of light that scoured them was like an eager eye in a game of statues. Rose knew each tree used its moment of darkness to skulk towards her and she understood now that Michael was protecting her with his light, keeping the onslaught back with every sweep of illumination. So she struggled on, following his pallid luminescence, feeling colder and colder the deeper and further they went. And before she knew it, she was standing in that light on the edge of a deep chasm, her bare feet bruised and bloodied, balancing precariously on the edge, her toes hooked into the soft dirt for purchase. And she had a full and terrible knowledge of how she had gotten there. Michael was digging this crater in their sphere of light and then she was too – squeezing earth in her fingers, tossing the clods behind her to prevent the advance of the darkened trees. Michael looked up at her and said, ‘We’re almost there,’ and she knew she had to jump into the hole they had prepared but it was very deep and she was frightened. She hesitated only a moment and then stepped forward into airless
ness. She couldn’t fill her lungs, and she was falling and falling and when she felt the first thunk of backfill, cold against her dank skin, she woke up with a scream in her throat and her mouth feeling as if it was full of dirt.
Rose wasn’t sure if she had made any noise. She was sitting upright, her arms outstretched behind her, elbows locked. It took her some time to orient herself, to crawl out of the dream. Her mouth was parched and she felt sogginess between her legs. How long had she been sleeping? Had she really slept?
With effort, Rose managed to ease her arms out of the rigor mortis of nightmare and reach across to turn on her light. She grabbed her phone: three a.m. There was a calendar alert on the screen: Lit Exam Today 10.00AM. Rose knew she had to get up to go to the toilet but her phone listed in and out of focus, a watery mirage, and the floor seemed a long way away. So thirsty. There was an old can of Red Bull on the night stand. She leaned across and managed to pincer it with thumb and forefinger. When she lifted it to her mouth the taste of her dream rushed to the back of her throat, along with an old, wet cigarette filter. Rose spat and coughed until she retched.
She didn’t know what made her do it. She had no clear recollection of sliding her phone screen to that particular contact. But suddenly there was the voice on the other end, tinny and feeble with sleep. Rose began to cry when she heard it.
‘Hello? Hello? Jesus Christ, what fucking time is it?’
Rose couldn’t respond. She listened to the muted sounds of movement, imagining Liv struggling with bed covers, trying to sit up, leaning on that dodgy elbow she’d dislocated playing hockey in primary school. They’d had to call an ambulance and everything. Rose remembered Liv couldn’t feel her hand when it happened; she had been terrified by that lack of feeling.
Then, ‘Rose? Rosie?’
Rose didn’t remember falling asleep.
Liv walked into Rose’s bedroom and closed the door behind her. Rose was sitting in her underwear on the edge of her bed.
‘So, your mum says I’m to make sure you get moving because you have an exam today. She’s on her way to work. Passed her in the driveway. She thinks you might not be feeling well. Are you feeling unwell, Rose? I hope so. I’d like you to be feeling unwell on an exam day. Is that why you called me last night? Oh, excuse me, this morning? At three fucking a.m.?’
Liv had spent the previous four hours getting angry. The anger came fast. She hadn’t heard from Rose in months and resented the fact that the minute Rose had woken her with a phone call she had involuntarily reverted to the two emotions she had spent those months rejecting: worry and love. She was angry that having been thrown away she found herself still clinging to remnants of someone she hardly even recognised anymore.
‘Liv? Can you get me a drink of water, please?’
‘It stinks in here. And it’s so fucking dark.’ Liv strode to the window and yanked the blind so hard it retracted with the speed and clatter of a slot machine. She looked down at Rose. Then she said, ‘Oh fuck.’
Rose was the colour of newspaper. She was shaking. Her hands rested on her knees, palms up, fingers slightly crooked. There was blood on them. Liv bolted to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. She ran back so fast she skidded on the hall rug and slammed her shoulder into the wall. Rose didn’t respond to the water Liv held in front of her. She seemed to be looking at it but when Liv knelt down she realised Rose’s eyes were rolled ever-so-slightly back in her head. Liv pressed the bottle to Rose’s lips and tipped. She couldn’t tell how much went in Rose’s mouth. A lot spilled down her chest but she was sure she saw a swallow. She tipped again and this time Rose swallowed more.
‘I’ve been thirsty,’ Rose said, and then slowly tilted forward until she slid to her knees on the floor, landing with the grace of a cat on Liv’s chest.
‘Oh fuck.’
Liv eased Rose onto the floor and grabbed her phone. It slipped out of her grasp. She realised her own hands were bloodied and quickly wiped them on the edge of Rose’s bed before making the call.
‘Oh fuck, oh fuck . . .’
‘Hello?’
‘. . . oh fuck, oh fuck . . . Mum?’
‘Livvie? Is that you?’
‘Please come. Please come to Rose’s. Oh fuck, Mum.’
‘Jesus, baby. I’m still in bed. What’s going on?’
‘Please come to Rose’s, Mum. She . . . she . . .’
‘Tell me what’s wrong – now!’
‘I just need you.’
‘On my way.’
When Liv’s mother pulled into the driveway, Liv was waiting for her on the front steps. She had been running back and forth between Rose’s bedroom and the front steps of the house for the past twenty minutes. She imagined her action, some action, any action, could both speed up time and create a bubble of it that could never be pricked. To keep moving in this immediate moment became more and more senseless and more and more essential. So she ran. And then she ran to the door of her mother’s car, yanked it open and began pulling on her mother’s clothes before the seatbelt was even disengaged.
‘Jesus Christ, is that your blood?’
‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, Mum.’
‘Is that your blood?’
It was only then that Liv realised she had blood on her clothes.
‘No.’ Liv grappled at her mother, incapable of standing still. ‘No. Rose’s.’
Once inside Liv’s mother brought a kind of steely efficiency to the situation that was unrecognisable to Liv. And that’s what she called it: a situation. She said, ‘This is quite a situation, this is quite a situation,’ with a droll curl of her mouth and cool, quick-moving hands that calmed both girls almost immediately. She issued instructions without asking too many questions. Together Liv and her mother successfully manoeuvred Rose into the front seat of the car, Liv’s mother shoving a rolled-up towel between Rose’s legs before slamming the door and saying, ‘Let’s get this situation off the boil, shall we?’
Liv was about to climb into the back seat when her mother grabbed her upper arm and said, ‘Where’s the baby?’
Liv stared at her mother blankly. That bubble of time precariously held aloft by all of the preceding madness gently touched down and burst like a squeezed fig.
‘Don’t know,’ she responded.
‘You stay here,’ her mother ordered. ‘Clean yourself up. Take those clothes off and get into something of Rose’s. Make yourself a cup of tea. You look like shit.’ She opened her car door and was about to climb in when she turned and added, ‘Where’s her mother?’
Liv waited for five hours and while she waited, while she hovered somewhere between the fear and weariness that is peculiar to waiting for what you think will be bad news, she cleaned. She cleaned Rose’s bedroom floor until her hands were scalded by hot water. She washed the bed frame and the walls where she found bloody handprints. She felt an overwhelming need to get rid of the smell. Blood didn’t bother her. She had peeled bloodied shirts off her mother before, while gently compressing the nose haemorrhages that seemed to be the exit strategy of most of her mum’s boyfriends.
She stuffed everything that needed to be washed into the corner of the laundry, behind the door. And then she waited some more. She thought about calling Michael but she had deleted his number from her phone. She thought about how Rose’s skin had been the texture of a ghost gum, how her eyes had rolled in her head. Liv thought about how she had stayed out of it and how she should never have punished Rose’s rejection of her by staying out of it until she was washing blood off the floorboards.
Her mother returned just after midday.
‘Rose had an emergency D&C. She had a partially retained placenta and was in hypovolaemic shock,’ she said heavily.
‘Did you take her to a hospital?’ Liv asked. She didn’t know what hypovolaemic shock was.
‘No,’ her mother replied, ‘I performed the procedure myself and she’s now in the boot of our car. Jesus!’ She dropped into a chair and closed her eyes. ‘
You did the right thing, Liv.’
Liv wasn’t sure exactly what she had done right. ‘Okay,’ she replied. ‘I did the right thing by staying out of it?’
‘Yes, by staying out of it and getting back in when you did.’
Liv wasn’t sure about that but her mother lived her life by staying out of things. She said you didn’t get hurt that way. She said if you wanted people to mind their own business then you minded your own first.
Liv asked, ‘Is she coming home now?’ It sounded a ridiculous thing to ask. Would her mother have taken Rose to the hospital and then left her to get a bus home? As soon as Liv thought about it, she realised it was a distinct possibility.
‘No. She’ll be in the hospital overnight. Intravenous fluids.’
Then it happened: that sudden dissipation of stress hormones so necessary to making any trauma look like just-a-situation for as long as it takes to survive it. Liv began to cry.
‘You can stop that now,’ her mother said, standing up and pulling Liv to her feet by the shoulders. ‘You really can, Livvie. It’s all okay. Now let’s go home. I gave the hospital her mum’s name but I’m sure a courtesy call to old, crazy Violet is the etiquette here.’
Rose told the doctors she had miscarried and accidentally flushed the bits that came out down the toilet. Now her mother sat beside the hospital bed, her hand barely resting on top of her daughter’s.
Violet had no frame of reference for this so she simply sat, quietly looking down at the blanket stretched over Rose’s slightly crooked knees, her head snapping up at the sound of every passer-by, watching for those who slowed by the ward door, watching for those who might know. A furtive surveillance, avoiding eyes.
A Small Madness Page 10