Bonkers

by Michelle Holman

  Sherry looked through the kitchen doorway again at her mother. Last Christmas Jill Jackson had finally managed to give up smoking after twenty-five years. Sherry and Lisa had nagged her about stopping for ever, but it was only when Lisa, sensing that their mother was wavering, came home with a packet of cigarettes and began smoking herself that their mother finally gave in and kicked the habit.

  ‘You’re a lousy smoker,’ Sherry had told Lisa after watching her cough and splutter her way through a cigarette, and wondered why she hadn’t thought of it herself.

  ‘You mean there’s such a thing as a good one?’ Lisa gasped, eyes watering because of the smoke.

  Sherry couldn’t help but admire Lisa’s tactics. Lisa knew her mother wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of her smoking. Not surprisingly, Jill had been outraged. ‘How could you be so stupid? Damaging your health!’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ Lisa insisted as she lit a fresh cigarette from the burned-down butt of the last one. She was wearing an old pair of their grandmother’s gloves to stop her fingers being stained by nicotine. ‘You think living with Nicotine Jill hasn’t done something to my lungs?’ She slapped the palm of one hand dramatically against her chest. ‘Believe me, inside here is twenty-five years’ worth of your nicotine. I figured I’d cut the middle man out.’

  Sherry thought that was a really low blow—their mother always smoked outside the house wearing a guilty expression on her face, like a junkie getting a fix.

  ‘Sher, I don’t know how long I can keep this up,’ Lisa complained after only four cigarettes. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  Thankfully their mother gave in before Lisa was halfway through the packet. Sherry, Ben and Brian had all made bets on how long she’d hold out. Ben had won. ‘If you or me had tried it, I would’ve given much longer odds,’ he explained. ‘But you know what Mum and Dad are like about Lisa.’

  Sherry smiled. They’d all been protective of Lisa, who’d been born almost two months premature. Sherry was old enough to remember seeing Lisa in plaster as a baby after the surgery to correct her club foot. In Sherry’s opinion, the endometriosis had been the final straw, leaving Lisa curled in a ball in agony on her bed most months.

  It had never seemed fair.

  Both Sherry and Ben were so healthy they hardly ever even caught a cold. They were both tall and strong, while Lisa, who was the middle child, was only five feet two and fragile in appearance. A favourite family story was the one about the day Ben started school. Lisa, who was two years older, had towed Ben into his classroom by the hand and introduced him to his new teacher, saying solemnly, ‘Mrs Davies, this is my little brother, Ben. He’s just starting school today and he’s a bit shy.’

  Mrs Davies had repeated the story to Jill Jackson, describing how tiny, elfin Lisa with her mop of blonde curls and blue-grey eyes had scarcely reached her ‘little’ brother’s shoulder. ‘But I didn’t dare laugh at her,’ she told Jill. ‘She was deadly serious.’

  That story summed Lisa up so well, Sherry thought forlornly. She might have been small and not always in the best of health, but she had more guts than just about anybody Sherry knew. She wouldn’t give in if she thought something wasn’t right, which was why their mother had known to surrender the fight over her smoking. It made Sherry feel bitter that Lisa’s death had sent Jill straight back to her old habit. Lisa would have been so disappointed.

  Not that Sherry blamed her mother. Hell, they were all trying to find something to ease the pain of losing Lisa—if there was anything that could take away the pain. Their father hid in his garden pretending to work on his plants, but often when Sherry went to find him he was sitting on the wooden bench beneath the five-finger tree staring at nothing, a pair of pruning shears forgotten in his hand and an expression of such complete and utter desolation on his face that Sherry wanted to cry. Brian Jackson had aged dramatically since Lisa’s death, and both Sherry and Ben worried about how frail he looked, which was one of the reasons Sherry backed down about calling the phone company.

  ‘Did you see the pictures the school sent us?’ Brian asked. ‘The children did them for Lisa.’

  ‘No.’ Sherry tried to smile. ‘I’ll have a look at them before I go.’

  Lisa’s losing battle with endometriosis had become so bad in the last three years that little by little it had taken over her life. As the pain steadily worsened each month, she eventually avoided any relationship that might become sexual. Sherry was pretty certain that the last man Lisa had slept with was Dillon Taylor. Lisa used to joke with Sherry about her celibate state. ‘I think my fanny has probably got a sign on it saying “condemned”.’

  Sherry had once again been overcome with guilt. Here she was, fit as a fiddle, hardly suffering so much as a tummy-ache when she got her period, and actively disliking kids, while Lisa suffered horribly most months and would have made a great mother. It just wasn’t right.

  Like it wasn’t right that Linda Brogan had survived and was about to go home with her rich, surgeon husband. Sherry had kept tabs on Linda through her police contacts. The thought of what that woman had done ate away at her. She knew the Brogans lived in one of the houses high on the cliffs overlooking the beach. The Jackson house was only a five-minute drive away.

  Ben had warned her to back off. ‘Mum and Dad have enough to deal with at the moment without you doing something stupid, Sherry.’

  ‘I’d just like to see her face-to-face and tell her exactly what she’s done to us,’ Sherry replied bitterly. ‘I want her to suffer for it.’

  Ben, who had always been the pacifist in the family, shook his head. ‘What makes you so sure she hasn’t already, Sherry?’

  ‘She’s alive! Lisa’s dead!’

  Ben nodded. ‘That’s right. She has to live with what she did for the rest of her life.’

  ‘How can you always be so fucking forgiving, Ben?’ Sherry demanded angrily. ‘Don’t you hate Linda Brogan?’

  ‘Of course I do!’ he yelled, making Sherry jump. She was the yeller in the family, not Ben. ‘I couldn’t trust myself not to strangle her if we were in the same room.’

  They carefully avoided one another’s eyes, embarrassed and shaken by the exchange.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do for Lisa now, Sherry,’ Ben continued more quietly, placing a hand on Sherry’s shoulder when she winced. ‘It’s Mum and Dad who need us now. Let the justice system go after Linda Brogan.’

  Sherry didn’t answer him. She didn’t want to admit that Lisa hadn’t given way at the roundabout and would probably be blamed for the accident. Instead she wound her long, strong arms around his back and hugged him tight. Ben hugged her back, a troubled expression on his face. He knew his big sister wouldn’t let it drop.

  Sherry carried a cup of tea through to the dining room and placed it by her mother’s elbow. She thought tea was vastly overrated. She’d spent the week following Lisa’s death having well-meaning people force-feed her the stuff, only to find herself leaping for the tea caddy whenever a fresh outbreak of emotion seemed imminent from anybody in the near vicinity.

  Her mother didn’t appear to have noticed the cup of tea.

  ‘Cup of tea, Mum.’

  Jill smiled brightly. ‘Thanks, love.’ She didn’t so much as glance at the steaming brown liquid in her favourite rose-decorated teacup on the table beside her.

  Sherry wondered what her mother would say if she suggested they go to a wine bar and get pissed instead. Or maybe she should just start spiking the tea? It couldn’t be any worse than the combination of cigarettes and sleeping tablets her mother existed on at the moment.

  ‘The stonemason called,’ Jill said, reaching for a fresh cigarette.

  Sherry went behind the table and opened another window.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ Jill apologized as she sucked smoke into her lungs.

  ‘That’s alright,’ Sherry replied and wondered why she was lying. Her mother was going to smoke herself right into a hole next to Lisa if she
wasn’t careful. Her stomach clenched at the thought of her sister in the cold, hard ground at the cemetery. She and Ben had been sure Lisa would have wanted to be cremated, but their mother and father couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Sherry realized her mother was still talking and turned back towards the table. ‘Pardon, Mum?’

  ‘I said, the stonemason phoned to say the headstone is ready,’ Jill repeated. ‘We can have it laid next week.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sherry replied lethargically, ‘that’s good.’

  Like Lisa would have given a damn.

  She sighed. It was important for her mum and dad. They visited the cemetery several times a week. It had become a pilgrimage for them. Sherry had never gone back after the funeral, although she knew Ben sometimes went.

  ‘It’s a lovely stone,’ Jill continued. ‘Beautiful marble. And we picked out that lovely picture of Lisa on the beach last Christmas—you know the one I mean?’

  ‘Yeah, Mum. I know the one,’ Sherry replied quietly.

  ‘I think she would have liked it.’ Jill nodded to herself.

  She would have hated it, Sherry thought savagely. She would have hated all of it.

  A large, white pickup truck pulled up at the front of the house. Ben climbed out, closely followed by his fiancée Brenda. Sherry rolled her eyes. That was all they needed—a visit from Ms Glum. She and Lisa had never liked Brenda much because she was miserable and miserly, and had changed their little brother from being a happy-go-lucky, fit extrovert into an overweight, serious worrier. The previous year, Lisa had caught Brenda in the two-dollar shop buying Ben’s birthday present, and relations had been strained between them ever since.

  It was Brenda’s preoccupation with vegetarianism that had turned the sisters against the entire movement. Sherry had started calling her a herbivore and the name had stuck. Brenda was the only person Sherry knew who could take something fun and find a reason why it shouldn’t be done and, even worse, ruin it for everybody else. She’d spent the previous Christmas sitting at the dinner table with a disapproving expression on her miserable face at the truckloads of barbecued meat everybody around her was shovelling down their gobs with joyful abandon, Ben included. Brenda had partied with two lettuce leaves and a cherry tomato for company.

  ‘You’re in trouble tonight, Benny boy!’ Sherry had warned her brother with a meaningful look at Brenda, who sat hunched in her seat on the deck nursing the same glass of white wine she’d been given on arrival.

  ‘Aw, she’s alright!’ Ben protested, leaping as usual to Brenda’s defence.

  Sherry stared at him in puzzlement, wondering for the thousandth time just what it was Ben saw in the woman. But that was Ben: saviour of lost causes and underdogs.

  Brenda had come into her own when she had helped plan Lisa’s funeral. She had positively glowed and come up with some really lovely ideas. It was Brenda who thought of giving all the adults a helium balloon to let go of as the hearse departed from the church and the children bubbles to blow. Sherry’s throat still clogged every time she remembered the sight of all those balloons and bubbles soaring off into the deep-blue sky. It was probably the only thing Lisa would have liked.

  Brenda had slipped back into her old ways since then. Sherry suspected what really pissed Brenda off was her inability to get Ben and his family to feel sorry for her any more. Compared with Lisa’s death, her problems were a mere blip on their collective horizon. Poor Brenda had been upstaged by a dead woman and she didn’t like it. Sherry wished she could tell Lisa, just so they could laugh about it.

  As she watched through the window, Ben opened the front gate and came up the pathway to the house, pausing to chat to their father who was doing some pruning. With a jolt, Sherry realized that all Brian did these days was prune old and dying vegetation. As far as she knew, he hadn’t even bothered to put down spring bulbs, which he did every autumn regular as clockwork. She looked at his greying head and felt a tug of fear; he looked so old and frail.

  Ben came into the house like a breath of warm, fresh air, his arms thrown wide to dispense hugs and comfort. He had the same blue-grey eyes as Lisa and their mother, but dark hair like Sherry. Brenda trailed behind him, her mouth pinched and her eyes watchful.

  ‘How’re you, PC Plod?’ Ben asked as he smothered Sherry against his chest.

  She gave a token squirm of protest before snuggling against him and saying, ‘Shite.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear.’ He cupped her face in his hands and waggled her head from side to side. ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘In the throne room.’

  Ben sighed. The dining room had been given the name since their mother spent every waking hour at the table smoking and drinking tea. At first she had lain on her bed staring at the ceiling, until Ben had managed to prise her out of the bedroom. Sherry thought it was about time they kick-started Jill into action again, but suspected they would soon run out of rooms.

  ‘You really shouldn’t make fun of her,’ Brenda piped up sanctimoniously. ‘She might hear you.’

  Ben ignored her, which cheered Sherry up immeasurably. She had noticed it happening more and more often since the funeral. Once again she wished Lisa were here to see it. When Ben walked into the dining room to speak to their mother, Sherry turned to Brenda and said pleasantly, ‘Brenda?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why don’t you stick your finger up your arse and spin on it?’

  Brenda’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.

  Sherry smiled and sauntered into the dining room feeling sooo much better. Maybe Brenda did have her uses after all.

  Ben was standing over their mother, her cigarettes and lighter in his hand. ‘Enough, Mum.’

  ‘What?’ she quavered, her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘You know what,’ Ben replied firmly, waving the packet of cigarettes in front of her face. ‘Lisa would be ashamed of you.’

  Jill looked shocked. She’d become accustomed to being handled with kid gloves and Ben was the last person she would have expected to play the heavy with her. Sherry, yes, but not her kind, easy-going son. The mention of Lisa’s name made her tears spill over. ‘I…I can’t help it! I know I shouldn’t but…but it…helps.’

  Ben lowered his bulky frame into a chair beside her, and Sherry found herself wondering with concern just when he had begun to pack on so much weight. ‘Mum, you have to start doing things again,’ he insisted, his gaze unwavering.

  ‘But—’

  ‘No buts about it, Mum. It’s been a month now; Sherry and the neighbours can’t do the shopping and cook dinner forever. You have responsibilities.’ He placed a gentle hand on the back of Jill’s neck. ‘You’ve still got Dad.’ He paused. ‘And us.’

  Jill pressed her palms against the tabletop and gulped. ‘It’s…so…hard.’

  ‘I know,’ Ben said softly and glanced at Sherry, who was leaning against the doorframe between the kitchen and dining room, her face as pale as the white linen cloth spread on the table. ‘ We know.’

  ‘She was my baby,’ Jill whispered brokenly. ‘I feel like somebody has cut off a part of me. I feel crippled.’

  Ben gathered her into his arms.

  Sherry looked at her brother with renewed respect. Since Lisa had died, she’d seen a side of him she’d never known existed. Thank God, somebody had finally taken the bull by the horns and told the truth, and for once it didn’t have to be her. She should have been braver and done it. After all, she was the eldest. She could almost hear Lisa snorting at that piece of logic.

  Her mind returned to the nagging issue of Linda Brogan. She would be living right around the corner soon. Right within reach. Sherry couldn’t leave the idea alone.

  She had to see Linda Brogan.

  She had to.

  9

  The day finally came for Lisa to leave the hospital and go home with Dan Brogan. Despite his regular evening visits, Lisa knew about as much about him now as she had the night she’d woken up to find him sitting at the bottom of
her bed. She would have struggled to describe Dan if anybody had asked her.

  The best she could have come up with was:

  (a) Reliable. The few times he had missed his evening visit he had phoned to apologize.

  (b) Kind. She’d drenched him in tears and snot on at least two separate occasions.

  (c) Patient. He’d put up with all her mood swings and confusion without batting an eyelid, and tried to remember to call her Lisa.

  (d) Distant as the moon.

  Lisa thought it pretty much summed up a typical patient-doctor relationship, and she’d come to realize that that was exactly the way Dan treated her—as a patient. It was very odd, considering she was supposed to be his wife and that Linda Brogan was an extremely beautiful woman. Even cooped up on the ward with a limited amount of contact with the outside world, Lisa had soon noticed the attention that Linda attracted, particularly from men. The first time a man saw Linda, he stared, and if he was young and cocky enough he then tried to strike up a conversation. The shy ones went red and retreated, or started mumbling if Lisa spoke to them.

  Lisa might have found it amusing to live as one of the Linda Brogans of the world for a day or a week. She’d have been a liar if she said it wasn’t a buzz to look in the mirror and see that drop-dead gorgeous face staring back at her. Even with greasy hair, a few spots and a bogie hanging out of one nostril, Linda Brogan would still have managed to look amazingly good.

  The cow.

  And owning such a spectacular set of breasts when she’d always been flat as a board had at first also seemed only fair to Lisa. After all, if she had to come back in the wrong body, it might as well be one with all the attributes she had missed out on the first time around. But within a few days, she’d had enough of their uncanny ability to get in the way. The sides of Linda’s boobs bumped against the sides of her arms, and if Lisa clamped her arms together the boobs retaliated by trying to launch themselves out of the front of her nightdress like a pair of mountaineers determined to summit. And there was no way she could go without a bra any more—at least not without stopping traffic or spiking herself in the nose with a nipple if she moved too fast.