The Problem With Crazy

by Lauren McKellar

  “What do you want to know?” Her voice was softer this time.

  “About my dad,” I replied. I knew you weren’t supposed to give too much away to fortune-tellers. If you told them everything, they’d predict based on information you’d given them.

  “Your father … He is … he is sick,” the woman said. She didn’t meet my eyes, shuffling her hands. They never seemed to stop, those hands. They constantly fiddled and tidied, a flurry of activity.

  “Yes.” My voice was as minute as a grain of sand.

  “Something with … something with his head.” It didn’t seem like the words were coming to her as she spoke them. The way she looked at me, licking her lips, made me feel like she knew exactly what she was talking about—she just didn’t want to say it.

  “There are very tough times ahead for your family,” the woman said, slowly shaping each word. “It will be a tricky year.”

  “How tricky?”

  Gypsy Rose raised her painted on eyebrows at me and I immediately returned my gaze to the cards on the table. Her look spoke volumes; more than I needed to know.

  “Do you have any siblings?” she asked, again breaking the silence. I shook my head.

  “Will the sickness—will it get me, too?” The words came out, and I choked back a sob. I prayed to the gypsy gods that I wouldn’t start to cry, not here in a ramshackle studio set in an alley with a cranky old fortune-teller.

  “It will affect your whole family,” the woman eventually replied. She leaned over to the bookshelf and pulled down a box of tissues from the third shelf, placing them to the side of the table next to me. “No one in your family will be the same.”

  So, was I going to get it, or wasn’t I? Did she mean I was going to be affected because Dad was sick? Or affected infected? And what did she mean, tricky? Obviously it was tricky. My dad coming home would be tricky. My dad having an incurable disease was freaking impossible.

  The heat in the building got too much, the air too thick to fit in my lungs. I had to get out of there, fast.

  Now.

  “Look, thanks for your time.” I pushed my chair back from the table and stood up, wiping my eyes with the palm of my hand. “How much?”

  “You don’t want to stay and hear the rest of your reading?” the woman asked. “We haven’t spoken of your career, or your money.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I shook my head. “Just—just how much, please.”

  Gypsy Rose stood up and walked toward me. For a weird second, I thought she was going to try and hug me. Instead, she just lifted the thick, black curtain, and gestured for me to go through.

  I walked outside into the bright, unnatural light and immediately felt better. It was going to be fine. Maybe “tricky” would be learning to live away from home. Maybe the doctors would figure out a cure for Dad’s disease, and I wouldn’t even need to worry about him, or getting tested myself.

  “Thirty dollars, please,” the woman said. Out here in the light, she looked a whole lot less foreboding than she had in her room. Her shirt had threads loose from the seams, and a tiny stain marred the shoulder. The wrinkles creasing around her face and neck were much deeper, and her eyes a lot more tired.

  She wasn’t mystic at all; just a middle-aged woman, trying to earn some cash.

  I placed my two twenties on the counter and turned and walked away. I figured she could probably use a tip.

  My pace was quick, and I all but flew past the remaining bars and shops. When I got to the hotel, I swiped my room card for entry and headed for the emergency exit. I wanted to sweat. I powered up the stairs two by two, a stitch stabbing into my side, until I got to the thirtieth floor, where I stopped and marched down the corridor to our suite.

  One swipe with my hotel key card and the door was open. I tapped out a quick text to let Stacey know I was back, and then threw my phone on the sofa. I charged into the bedroom, curled up in a ball on the big, white quilt and hugged my knees to my chest, taking deep breaths and staring out at the lights, the stars and the ocean as the world went in and out with the tide beneath me.

  I didn’t move from that spot, not for eight hours. Even when Stacey came home, presumably with her surfer-boy, and proceeded to have a way too noisy make-out session in the room next to mine.

  In the midst of all this life, there was me.

  Chapter Ten

  MUM WAS waiting to meet us at the airport. As soon as I saw her curly auburn hair bobbing and weaving amongst all the other people waiting to board, I knew something was wrong.

  The airport was a simple train ride from our place. Stacey and I had travelled this route together hundreds of times when we went shopping in the city, or to support Dave and the boys at their gigs. So why was my mother waiting for us in the lounge as soon as we stepped off the plane?

  “Kate, isn’t that—” Stacey started.

  “Uh-huh.”

  We lugged our carry-ons over to her and stopped, waiting as she threw her arms around first me, then Stacey, a huge smile plastered on her face.

  “Girls! How was it? You look tired. Are you tired? Do you need a hand with any of your bags?” Mum asked. She was a whirlwind, fast words and even faster hand gestures as she went to try to relieve both of us of our various belongings. I ended up relinquishing my black cardigan to her, more to give her something to do than anything else. Her nervous energy was sucking me dry.

  “We’re fine, Mum.” I tried to muster up a smile, but I knew my eyes weren’t in it. “How come you came to pick us up?”

  “I … I thought it was a nice thing to do.” Mum’s hurt showed as her eyes tugged downwards. She started walking a little ahead of us, taking tiny but rapid steps in her taupe, heeled shoes. I stood still, my brow furrowed.

  “It was lovely of you, Deb.” Stacey elbowed me in the side, jolting me to life. Gosh, what was wrong with me? Had I forgotten how to act normal?

  “Here, I’ll take that,” I said, and pathetically grabbed the sweater back from Mum’s hands in an effort to try and help. She resisted, and we ended up having this weird tug-of-war in the airport, obstructing the thoroughfare as we pulled at each side of the cardigan.

  “Sorry, you can take it,” I muttered and let go, falling in behind her again.

  “What is wrong with you?” Stacey hissed in my ear. I shrugged, mouthing the words “I’m trying” at her, before catching up with Mum once more.

  The three of us walked in silence, all the way from the terminal to the car park. It wasn’t a short walk, either: thirteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds, according to my phone stopwatch. I don’t know why I decided to time it. It just seemed like a good idea. To calculate a given time, so I knew what to expect in life. Knew exactly how long it would take.

  When we reached Mum’s car, Stacey and I threw our bags in the back and piled in, me in the front playing shotgun. Mum joined us and turned the motor, sitting in silence a few minutes as she waited for the car to heat up.

  “I’m sorry to hear about … about everything, Deb,” Stacey said. It felt weird, hearing someone bring it up. It made it more real, somehow, even more real than when I’d told Stacey myself.

  “Thanks, Stacey,” Mum replied. I noticed her knuckles get a little whiter as her grip on the steering wheel tightened. She backed out of the space, not waiting another second to leave the airport.

  We spent most of the hour-and-a-half trip home in weird bursts of extremely high energy chatter then silence, Stacey attempting to fill the gaps quickly and then letting them empty as she realised her audience was less than receptive.

  She was in the middle of a story about how we made our own meals every night when we pulled into her driveway and Mum cut her off.

  “Wow, sounds like you had a great trip. See you soon.” She smiled. Her eyes were vacant, as was her mind. You could tell. Mum never cut people off. Not even when they were giving a play-by-play of how they and her daughter made tacos.

  “Okay. Bye, Deb. See ya, Kate.” Stacey reached aroun
d the seat and gave me an awkward hug before jumping out of the car. She ran around the back and retrieved her bag, then waved gaily as we drove off.

  The car was silent. The radio was off. The only noise was the subtle hum of traffic outside, and inside, the hiss of the air conditioner and the sound of Mum’s heavy breathing.

  That.

  Was.

  It.

  “When we made tacos, Stacey didn’t use normal beans,” I broke the quiet. “She used refried instead of kidney. Gross.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they weren’t that bad.” Mum chuckled.

  “They were pretty disgusting. I even told her, and she was all ‘That’s how my family always makes it’.” I laughed. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t even a second cousin twice removed from funny. I just needed to try and make my mum smile, needed to make her be present and try to forget about whatever was on her mind.

  Huh. Like there was any question.

  What was on her mind was Dad.

  And possibly me.

  We sat in silence until we pulled into our driveway. Mum switched off the engine, but didn’t get out of the car. One hand remained on the wheel, the other sat safely in her lap.

  I looked out the windscreen at our garage, and next to it, our red-brick house. So plain, so everyday—so suburban. Who knew that, inside, there was a man who was going to die? That we were battling a disease most people had never heard of?

  How did Dad fit into our lives, when he’d been absent for so long? How had she forgiven him, let him back in?

  It clicked inside my head, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle falling into place. You couldn’t care for people like Dad unless they were your immediate family.

  People like Dad.

  People like me.

  I swallowed, and pushed the feeling of bile back down my throat. Whether I had the disease or not, my whole life was about to change.

  Silence swallowed the car. I heard the sound of my steady breaths, Mum’s slightly quicker ones. White noise ate us up.

  “You’re going to need to get a job.”

  I flicked my eyes across to her.

  “I had a job. My boyfriend dumped me, and it ended. Remember?”

  “Yes, dear, but you’re not going to college, and I don’t want you just loafing around the house.” Mum sighed, staring down at the beige colour of her neatly pressed trousers. “I’m going to need you to help out and look after your father while I’m at work, then maybe do some part-time work yourself? This thing … it’s going to be expensive.”

  Wow. Mum had just become a single parent, financing two children.

  “It’s good you’re here, darling, not going on tour.”

  I took in a sharp breath, catching it at the back of my throat.

  “Oh, Kate, I didn’t mean—I’m sorry.” Mum pursed her lips and I felt a twinge of sympathy for her. This was her husband and her daughter. I wasn’t the only victim.

  “How did your counselling appointment go?”

  “Hated it.”

  “Kate.” I waited for her to continue, but no words were forthcoming. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel again, the veins in her wrists popping.

  “Kate,” Mum began. It was like she’d been holding her breath. Air exhaled out of her mouth quickly, her lips in an O shape. “I think, while you come to terms with it all, it’s best you continue to see someone.”

  “Right. Get a job, care for Dad and keep seeing a counsellor?”

  Mum nodded, her lips terse. I could see the little crow’s feet in the corner of her eyes. She’d never looked so tired, so old.

  “I don’t know how we’re going to do this.”

  I wanted to ask if we had to, but I couldn’t make myself say the words. If Mum could welcome him back and deal with me and my potential problems, surely so could I.

  “He’s been bad today.” Mum stared straight at the house in front of us.

  I let the words sink in. I studied them in my mind; ‘he’, referring to my father. ‘Been’ as in past tense, perhaps not relevant now. ‘Bad’ as in not good, negative. ‘Today’ as in … Well, I was really too stuck on ‘bad’ to care.

  “How bad?” My voice shook, even though I tried to control it.

  “Well, if ten is the highest,” Mum started, slowly, “I’d say a six? Seven?”

  I thought about what it could mean. Ten would have to be almost all-out gone, an intense display of forgetting faces, uncontrollable movement, and extremely slurred speech.

  What did that make a seven?

  “He’s just—he’s not saying sentences properly,” Mum explained, as if reading my thoughts. “And he fell over in the shower this morning. I took him to hospital, but—”

  “What? Is he okay?”

  “Kate, let me finish. He just cut himself on the razor, that’s all. He didn’t even need stitches. He’s back home now.”

  I processed the information, let it run through my brain on repeat. So this was not a good day.

  “Will there be good days and bad days?”

  “From what I understand, yes.” Mum nodded. “But we won’t know what day is which, until it happens.”

  We continued to sit there in silence, both of us staring at the house without a word. I didn’t want to go in. I didn’t want to see firsthand evidence of my dad acting like a different person again.

  “He is in there, right?”

  “Yes.”

  More silence.

  There was no comfort in our solidarity, no consolation knowing that my own mother didn’t want to see her husband just as much as I didn’t want to see my father.

  Five silent, drawn out minutes ticked by—again, as timed on my phone—and I decided to get out of the car. I felt stretched between relief that it was five minutes of avoided discomfort, and sadness that when my father did eventually die, I’d never get those five minutes back.

  I walked around the back and grabbed my luggage, swinging it over my shoulder and walked to the door. Mum followed close behind, house keys at the ready.

  She fussed with the keys and it took her three goes to get them in the lock correctly. The need for keys was odd, since Dad was home already. I guess maybe he wasn’t allowed out? Perhaps she’d been told by the doctor to lock up when she left, as if he no longer was capable of keeping the house secure while in his own company?

  Metal jingled, and I looked down. Mum had dropped the keys on the front doorstep. She could never hide it when she was nervous. Her body gave her away.

  Finally, the door swung open, and Mum stood to the left, allowing me to enter first.

  I walked inside, dropping my overnight bag next to the couch, and rushed into the kitchen. I wanted to get it over and done with, to rip open my Dad-shaped wound like I was taking a Band-Aid off, and see him at sixes or sevens.

  The kitchen was empty, a glass of half-finished orange juice on the counter. Mum was a shadow behind me.

  “Outside,” she whispered, pointing to the half-open screen door. We raced outside, like he was a toddler who’d escaped the fold. He was a full-grown man, for crying out loud. Surely he’d be fine.

  I scanned the yard, eyes running over the top of garden beds, the rose patch and the swing set.

  “He’s not here,” I breathed. I felt my heart start to race as the blood shot at my pulse. What if he’d fallen down again, like he had this morning? What if, right at this very moment, he was lying in a shattered pile of glass, bleeding his life away and unable to stop the flow?

  What if … what if he’d hurt himself on some of his old tools?

  I turned and raced toward the garage, my legs pounding over the cracked pavement. The cement was hard beneath my feet, my soles smarting on impact through my thin-soled flip-flops.

  Mum followed, hot on my heels, as if she’d had the thought just as I did. I reached the garage door and flung it wide-open, eyes rapidly scanning the dirty old room for signs of life.

  My eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the dark. I made out the sha
dows of toolboxes, bicycles, old surfboards, the ice chest …

  “Girls.”

  He was crouched down in the corner, sitting in a pile of dust. A grin stretched from cheek to cheek. Aside from the empty cans scattered around him, he looked normal. There was no blood, no limbs bent at an unnatural angle.

  But his leg was kicking, tiny jerks into space, just like the genetics counsellor had warned me about.

  Kick—pause—kick—pause—kick.

  Over and over and over.

  The air clawed at my throat, stopping me from breathing. My chest closed in, constricted.

  This wasn’t my father.

  I pushed past Mum and bolted out into the yard again until I was in the opposite corner. I was desperate for air, taking big, needy gulps of it. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do this. I jerked my foot out and kicked a paling on our brown wooden fence, as hard as I could.

  My toes curled up in pain and I hopped around, biting my lip and cursing. Even through my shoe, it hurt. It hurt so damn much.

  But at least this was a pain that was real.

  At least it wasn’t the pain churning inside of me, eating me alive slowly in its wishy-washy fashion. This pain was a release: short, sharp and loaded with hate. And it was sweet.

  I limped back inside and grabbed my bag, hauling it upstairs to my room where I started to unpack.

  I wondered if I’d be able to keep living like this thing didn’t really exist for much longer.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE NEXT morning I woke up and saw Mum had left a yellow Post-it note on my bedroom door. And one on top of my laptop. One on my phone, too. Apparently, she was really keen on me checking the note she’d left on the fridge.

  You know, for my first day of babysitting my father.

  Normally her OCD made me laugh, but today it made me feel queasy. How was I going to do this alone? I grabbed my phone and shot off a quick text to Stacey.

  Are you free today?