Room Empty

by Sarah Mussi

  And I don’t know what to eat first. And it all looks so much. How can I possibly eat everything on my plate?

  But I’m going to try.

  I’m going to try to get well now.

  My mother wants me to eat.

  Fletcher needs me, and if I can get well, if I can keep my end of the bargain, then I can leave here. I will find him. I will help him. I will.

  So I pull a bit of bread off the side of the bun. I open the foil wrapper on the butter. I shave a sliver of butter away from the little pat and spread it over the bread.

  And I find that I can easily open my mouth and put it inside!

  Oh, the taste of the butter!

  It spreads like a sunset inside my mouth, over my tongue in a golden glow. The bread has a soft, rich, gooey flavour, and I’m totally amazed at the awesomeness of it.

  I pick up the fork. I ladle up some cheese sauce with a slice of courgette snuggled into it. I balance it on the prongs of the fork and my mouth is open again, ready.

  I’ve never been able to open my mouth like this before. Everybody must be watching. The universe must see: I can open my mouth!

  And now I’m eating cheesy courgette with pasta. My mouth is exploding, like all the fireworks in the universe have been let off inside my taste buds. Suddenly it’s not hard to swallow. This must surely be a miracle.

  And I’m doing this for me, because I was loved. I’m doing this because I keep my word. Because I’m keeping my deal with my lovely, awesome, kind recovery buddy. Because I know that somewhere out there on the streets, Fletcher hopes that I will.

  Because I believe in a world that believes in me.

  Because I am normal.

  And the whole world won’t starve because I’m eating. I look up from the cheesy pasta, and everyone is eating. Tears well up in my eyes and roll down my face and plop into the grated carrot and I don’t mind. I’m going to eat my tears, eat my sadness and then it will all be gone for ever.

  And as I lift the fork again to taste some of the coleslaw, a voice beside me says, ‘Can I join you?’

  I look up, and it’s the girl who has replaced Carmen. She looks very thin. I know that look. There’s nothing on her tray apart from a glass of water and some lettuce. She drags at the chair opposite me and sits down.

  I’m tempted to say, ‘What strategy are you playing? Do you think that by watching me eat you’ll be happy? Do you think that my every mouthful makes you better or more lovable?’

  And I want to tell her that it doesn’t. That the only thing that can help her to recover is finding out why she doesn’t want to.

  The only thing that will make her happy is knowing, deep inside, that she’s worth it.

  I know she’d like to eat everything on my plate. I know she’s fainting inside with the longing of it.

  But today is my day and I’m going to eat it. I’m going to eat my lunch, everything on my plate, and I’m not going to binge it out afterwards.

  I smile at her.

  ‘I’m looking for my recovery buddy,’ she says.

  I nod. It’s one of the hardest parts when you’re new in the programme, the whole recovery buddy thing.

  ‘Who have they assigned you to?’ I ask.

  She doesn’t answer. She pushes the salad leaf around her plate.

  And suddenly I understand.

  Fletcher has been erased.

  Fletcher does not exist any more.

  Fletcher is gone.

  I am her recovery buddy.

  53

  I finish my meal. I have to. That’s the deal. I feel bloated and huge and it hurts. But I do it.

  Then I have to get out of the refectory.

  Fletcher is my recovery buddy.

  Not her.

  I want to support this new girl, but she can’t be my recovery buddy. Not yet anyway. It’s like being on a plane during an emergency – I have to put my oxygen mask on first.

  Then on Fletcher.

  NOBODY CAN EVER, EVER, EVER REPLACE FLETCHER.

  Because I love him.

  Unconditionally.

  Unlimited liability.

  And I’m feeling its sting for the first time.

  But can love be exclusive? Unconditional love is for everyone, isn’t it? It’s such a strange concept. I look at the girl, Alice Munro. Do I love her at all? It’s too weird. I wish I could do for her what Fletcher tried to do for me. But I can’t.

  I need saving.

  He needs saving.

  But so does she.

  That’s a true dilemma.

  But Fletcher is my first and best recovery buddy. I’m not healed enough to help Alice yet. I’m not healed enough to help anyone apart from Fletcher.

  I need oxygen. I need to think. I need fresh air. I tried so hard. I need to breathe.

  I leave Alice. I step out of the back door of the centre. I walk across the short terrace. Down two steps to our honeysuckle, compost corner. I can still taste the thick, cheesy clinginess of the lasagne. Suddenly I feel sick. I feel like vomiting.

  I can’t do this.

  It’s too much.

  I turn to go back to the centre. I stop myself. Solve the dilemma. I take a deep breath. Stay with yourself. Unconditional love is just that. Unconditional. Stay by the honeysuckle. Fletcher would tell you to. Stay in the dilemma. One day at a time. You must recover. You must complete the programme. You will not betray your mother’s love.

  You will not let her down.

  Or Fletcher.

  You need to get stronger.

  Or yourself.

  I pause. The sick giddy feeling passes. I won’t go back inside. I will recover.

  I stand there as frail as a piece of tissue blowing in the wind. I clutch hold of the wall. I will stay here. I will stay true.

  And like the answer to a prayer, my phone rings.

  The name flashes up.

  Fletch.

  ‘Hello,’ I whisper.

  I can’t believe it. It’s a reward. It’s a reprieve. It’s like a shooting star in the cosmos.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I didn’t mean those things.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ he says.

  I don’t say, ‘But I’m glad we quarrelled. I mean, I’m not glad, but because we quarrelled I understood. I’ve remembered everything.’

  But I want to say that.

  ‘I’m on the streets.’ He laughs.

  ‘Why, Fletcher?’ I say.

  ‘I’m not going back over that again,’ he says.

  Of course he’s not going over it again. He’s on the streets.

  I have no idea what it’s like being on the streets.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s just a street, like any other street – and I’m just thinking about using all the time. I need to find money.’

  ‘Can’t we try again?’

  Laughter. ‘Yeah, course, find me a new recovery centre?’

  ‘What happens now?’ I ask.

  ‘Have you got any money you could lend me?’ he says.

  I have nothing, absolutely nothing.

  Wrong.

  I have got some money. I could lend it to him. But not if it’s just going to go up his nose.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he says. ‘I haven’t eaten since I left the centre.’

  I laugh and I don’t laugh. At least I have eaten.

  ‘Will you come and talk to me?’ I ask. ‘I have things to say.’

  ‘I’m not allowed to visit and you know that,’ he says.

  ‘We could meet at the bottom of the garden,’ I say. ‘I’m standing here right now.’

  ‘Meet and do what?’ he says.

  ‘Talk,’ I say.

  ‘So now you want to talk! When it’s far too late to say anything worth saying.’ He laughs.

  I want to shout out: BUT I UNDERSTAND NOW. I WANT TO RECOVER. I want to tell you.

  I stop myself. I swallow the words. I don’t want to reel him back into saving me. I want to be there for him.

>   ‘Look, can you meet me or not?’

  ‘If they find us talking then you’ll be chucked out too,’ says Fletcher. ‘Are you really willing to risk that?’

  ‘It’s not about them any more,’ I say. ‘It’s not about their rules. You’re my recovery buddy and I need to tell you things.’

  I don’t know any other way of reaching out to him.

  ‘OK,’ he says finally.

  ‘You’ll meet me then?’ I say.

  ‘Where?’ he says.

  ‘Here at the bottom of the garden. Meet me tonight after supper, about 8:30, after it gets dark. I’ll bring you food. I’ll be waiting.’

  54

  At the bottom of the garden, by the wall where the honeysuckle grows, I wait for Fletcher.

  Why is it that in the evening, after rain, everything smells so much more powerful? I’m almost in the locked room.

  I’m holding a curtain around me. I think it’s a curtain. I don’t want to see the body of my mother slumped across the doorway. But the perfume of honeysuckle won’t let me be. And I can hear the sounds of planks banging together. The squeal of the iron gates of the timber yard.

  If I listen carefully, I can even hear the sound of men’s voices talking, the repeated revving of an engine far away. I pull the curtain tighter, but the scent of honeysuckle stays.

  ‘Dani?’

  He came.

  I don’t know what I was thinking. A part of me believed he wouldn’t come. Perhaps I hoped too much that he would. I’ve learned in life that when you want something too much, you must prepare for the pain.

  ‘Dani?’ he says again.

  A rush and the flood, and I realize just how much I do want him here. How lonely I’ve been since yesterday morning.

  ‘Fletch?’ I whisper.

  There’s a real, warm, full-bodied rustling overhead, and the noise of breaking and cracking. A hole appears in the honeysuckle as its trailers are stretched and snapped back. Then a dark anorak, a pale face and legs kicking through the undergrowth. Nothing like the Alien. Here beside me, pulling leaves out of his hair, is a real live Fletcher.

  For some stupid reason I want to throw my arms around him. I start towards him. I see the same feeling fireworking in him. He takes a step. We both stop. I put my hands behind my back. Then in my pockets.

  I forget about the food. I remember about the food. I go back to the bench and pick up the plastic bag with the banana and a bread roll and a leg of chicken in foil. I feel shy. I hold it out. This is weird. I try to remember if I have ever given food to anyone without scoring a point. And I realize this is a very first.

  ‘You said you were hungry,’ I say.

  Fletcher sits down on the bench, tears open the foil. ‘Thanks,’ he says, his mouth full.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Um,’ he says. He nods his head.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I say.

  I search his face. It’s still the same old him. He’s trying to stay clean. Brave Fletcher. He hasn’t used yet.

  Fletcher swallows, wipes the crumbs from around his mouth with his sleeve and pulls a smile that is a goddamn awful fake smile.

  There’s still a chance we can recover.

  ‘Take it one goddamn day at a time,’ Fletcher says.

  ‘Please,’ I say. ‘We don’t have a lot of time.’

  Fletcher sighs. ‘I know, but it hurts to be real with you.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I ask.

  I want to tell him about the third person in the room. I want to ask him to help me to find out who it was. I want to return to those days. I want to see my mother’s face. Those evenings. When we were detectives. On the case. Together. Discovering about ourselves. Unravelling the most important mystery of all: who we are. When I didn’t know how much I needed him. If only he would help me now. He could go to the room – he’s free from the rehab now.

  I catch myself – free? On the streets? But we could be a team again. We could. It would be all about me, but I wouldn’t have to be so alone.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says.

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ he says.

  I understand. It’s not about just stopping using. It’s about that empty hole inside. It’s about shutting down that voice which says: You’re shit. You’re nothing. What will happen? You’re a loser. You have nowhere to live. You’re hopeless. You’ll die. You’re broken. Terrible things will happen to you. You can never recover. Never. Never. It will be awful. Everybody hates you. Where are your friends? And it talks so quickly. And pours such poison into your ear, every waking moment, that it’s no good just saying, Think positive.

  If only.

  It won’t give you the space to.

  I try a different way. ‘OK, tell me about the hole.’

  For a moment he looks puzzled, then he sighs. ‘It started so long ago. I can’t even remember how young I was.

  ‘But here is one memory. My earliest. I guess I must have been very young. I think I’d soiled myself. I remember being uncomfortable and crying. I was hungry too. I remember always being hungry. My mum had probably been drinking, although I didn’t know about drinking then. All I knew was that she could be in a happy mood, a wild mood, and then she slept and after she woke up she’d be in a black mood.

  ‘Later I realized it was best not to talk to her then. To hide. Stay clear. Shut myself away. That time, I remember her telling me to shut up. I didn’t know how to. She got really mad. She said, “If you don’t shut up I’m going to put you in a cooking pot and boil you and eat you.” That made me cry more. It terrified me. She got down a huge pan, a really old style one – when I see pans like that now, I start trembling. She grabbed me. She pinched me. She sat me on the chopping board. She pushed her face right up against mine and said, “I’m going to boil you. I’m going to eat you.” I was screaming and screaming.

  ‘ “There’s only one way you can save yourself and that is to SHUT UP,” she said.’

  I can feel Fletcher’s terror even now, so many years later.

  ‘She took a jug and filled it at the sink. She poured the water into the cauldron. She got out some salt and pepper and sprinkled it all over me. She even chopped up a carrot and threw it into the water. I can still hear the knife thudding through the carrot right beside me. I sat there covered in salt and pepper, and I learned to shut up.

  ‘After that, when she told me to do anything, I did it straight away. There were other things . . .’ His voice trails off.

  I understand: the damage was done. I don’t have anything to say. I’m not sure that even Judith, with all her psychotherapeutic training, or Tony, with all his prison years of twelve-step programmes, can undo that kind of damage.

  ‘I didn’t have a choice back then,’ says Fletcher. ‘I didn’t have a dad. And if my mum wasn’t there, I didn’t know what would happen to me.

  ‘She used to tell me that if she got ill and died, they would take me away. She told me they’d take me away and put me in a big hole in the ground. That I’d feel the earth all around me until I couldn’t breathe. And then they’d put more earth over my head and stamp the soil flat, and that would be the end of me.

  ‘Sometimes she’d say that she’d give me away to them anyway, even if I did do what she wanted, or that one day I might wake up and she would just be gone. Gone away. Gone off to live her life, without a child to take care of, without any responsibilities. She’d say that I had spoilt it all for her. What was she supposed to do with a baby to look after? How could she get a job? Or go out and have fun?’

  I want to ask Fletcher to forgive his mother. But I’m finding that hard.

  ‘She made me into her slave. I tried to do everything right. I tried to cheer her up, and raced down to the corner and bought her alcohol, and fixed her tea when she had a headache, and listened to all her stories about how she could’ve been somebody, how she was born to be great, and how it was all my fault, because if she hadn�
��t had a baby she would’ve been rich and famous somewhere, somehow.’

  ‘She was sick,’ I say. ‘Let it go.’

  ‘There wasn’t any me left,’ says Fletcher. ‘I just poured myself into her. I was there because she needed me to be there. I don’t think I even remembered who I was most of the time. And I was terrified that she would die or abandon me, and then I would be nothing. I would have nothing. And the hole inside me grew and grew into a deep black bottomless pit. That threatened to suck me in.

  ‘I tried so hard to keep her alive,’ he says. ‘I begged her to go and find help from someone. But she got so angry if I tried to suggest there was anything wrong with her. Once I saved up some coins and went out and bought a pretty dress for her. I thought it was pretty. I was only about nine, I guess. I bought it from a charity shop. I remember exactly how much it was: ninety-five pence. I bought it because she was always complaining she couldn’t go out and have a life, because she had nothing to wear, because all the money went on feeding me. I thought if she went out and found some friends it would help her. She might be happier. I wanted her to be happy. I didn’t know anything about dress sizes, but I thought it looked big enough to fit her. But when I gave her the dress she flew into a rage. She accused me of terrible things. She said, “A nasty old dress from a charity shop – what kind of child are you? Do you want your mother to look like a tramp?”

  ‘She said a lot of things. I’ve forgotten them. I got used to doing that – not hearing stuff. But I felt it. That’s strange, isn’t it? I felt her anger, like blows inside my chest, yet I don’t remember what she said.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say any of this at Circle Time?’ I ask, but I know why. Who wants to talk about all that in front of Judith?

  Fletcher shrugs. ‘It would have sounded disloyal. I loved my mum. And if Judith had asked me one more time, “How does that make you feel?”, I think I might have punched her.’

  I laugh.

  ‘But it feels good to tell you,’ he says.

  55

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he says.

  ‘It was, partly,’ I say. ‘I should’ve tried harder.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ he says. ‘I was doing my old stuff, trying to take care of you, and not taking care of myself. I was terrified.’