Peeling the Onion

by Wendy Orr

  She means it. It's me I'm not so sure of.

  'One more thing,' she adds, as I'm getting ready to go. 'There are two ways of crossing a chasm: you can walk a tightrope without looking down—you tried that, and it didn't work. It never really does. The other way is to work your way down and up the other side—but you've got to get to the bottom first.'

  Is there anywhere further down to go?

  'But you're going to make it,' she adds. 'It mightn't be exactly the way you planned, but you'll make it.'

  'An un-birthday present,' Luke announces, and pulls a walking stick from behind his back.

  I'm nearly over my fantasy of my stick being neon—but this one really is. It's been painted white and then completely covered with red and black designs that look like Chinese characters.

  'They are'—and he starts pointing them out—'yin-yang, Tai Chi, peace, strength, love. They're the only ones I know—I had to repeat them a few times.'

  'Does it glow in the dark too?'

  'Of course. But the siren's optional.'

  'And you painted it for me?'

  'I just thought—hey, if you're going to use something all the time it should express your personality. If you've got it, flaunt it.'

  'I don't think anyone ever said that about walking sticks!' But I look at it again, each character so finely drawn, the total geometric effect of the red/black alternation. I stroke it gently, turning it over and over in my hands—it must have taken hours. 'It's fantastic—thanks.' The memory of the last time I thanked him hangs in the air between us; I look away, forcing myself to stay in my chair, and tell him Laura's theory about the chasm. 'I can't believe I have to feel even worse before I can get better!'—trying to make it sound like a joke; hearing the panic in my voice—she's got to be wrong, because it's impossible to feel worse than I do now.

  'Maybe she just meant that you have to let yourself open up and be honest about how you're really feeling,' says Luke, and his face is so sad and tender that something twists inside me as if I'd kissed him again after all.

  The rest of the family have all gone to see Laura now, one after the other. 'Nothing to be ashamed of,' Dad says, 'something like this has to affect all of us.'

  Bronny comes home from school hyper with news; I haven't seen her this excited since Dad gave her the stethoscope. Vinita's cousin Rajiv has come to stay; Vinita has to move in with her little sister Charleeni, so that Rajiv can have her bedroom, but Vinita doesn't mind because he's so cool.

  'He's from Bondi! That's a really big city and Vinita said he couldn't sleep at first because it was so quiet here.'

  'Bombay?' Dad suggests, but it's Bronwyn's story—she gives him a scathing look and goes on with a list of the presents he's brought from the exotic bazaars of Bondi: a real sari for Vinita—and her mum's going to teach her how to wear it, and she might let Bronwyn have a go, but not to bring it home.

  Slightly surprised to discover that our house has grown a second storey, I climb a flight of wooden stairs. At the top is a room with a half-open door. Sun is streaming in the window, the wallpaper is a riot of extravagant trees and birds; I understand that it's going to be my new room and I want to go in.

  Mrs Hervey is on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor in front of the open door with an old-fashioned scrubbing brush, lots of water and suds. 'Soon as it's all cleaned out,' she says cheerily, 'you can go inside.' My hair is too long, too much trouble, too much the old me—and it's coming off today. Mario wants to know how I want it; I tell him to do what he likes. He goes on asking till I glance around the room and choose a poster of a soulful-looking girl with dark hair cut in straggly layers. 'Maybe not quite so wispy,' he says, gazing critically at my head in the mirror. 'Your face is too strong.'

  My face is a liar.

  'You've got beautiful hair,' he adds, disappointed that I don't care more. 'You could probably sell it to a wig-maker if you wanted.'

  'No!' No more bits of me are for sale!

  He gathers up a huge swathe of it in one hand, brandishing an old-fashioned cut-throat razor in the other. One slip and I won't have to worry about my promise. 'Ready?' and he slashes—three strokes and a lifetime of hair is gone.

  Trimming and shaping takes longer, freeing my ears, shaving up the back of my neck. The hair that's left is a sleeker, darker blonde; the girl that looks back from the mirror looks older—more mature. I like it. In spite of the scars under her eye and mouth, I almost like her. I almost feel good as I pay at reception and start out to meet Mum.

  And freeze, face to face with a slight, pale, nervous-looking guy in his early twenties. My stomach cramps as if I've been kicked, sweat suddenly pours down my face and every bit of my body is screaming at me to get away.

  'Come on through, Trevor,' Laura calls from down the hall—and as the blind panic pushes me out into the fresh air, I understand.

  Mum, reading in the car, leans to push the door open for me, her comment on my hair broken off mid-word as she sees my face. 'You look like you've seen a ghost!'

  'Trevor Jones.'

  'Oh, Anna.' Her voice breaks as she drops her book to hug me. 'My poor baby. Let's get you home.'

  I'm shaking; I think I might be sick. I don't just want to go home, I want to go to bed with a hot water bottle and a cuddle.

  'How did you recognise him?' she asks suddenly. 'You didn't regain consciousness till you were in the ambulance.'

  Maybe fear has its own memory, stronger than thought. Maybe his face is carved into some hidden pain part of my mind.

  'You must have seen him in the car, before it hit,' she suggests, 'and so you remember that even though you've lost the actual impact.'

  It's the best explanation either of us can think of.

  But I still need to go to bed. Thank God the kids are at school and that it was Mum who took me for my haircut after English; I don't want to be alone and I don't want to be brave.

  She sits down on the bed beside me, holding my hand. 'It's a small town—it was bound to happen sooner or later.'

  'I know, I've been dreading it—and I know it's best to get it over with,' but I'm crying, crying like a baby, and as I roll onto my front to muffle the tears in my pillow, Mum rubs my back in the same way.

  'Come on,' she croons, stroking gently, soothingly; 'come on, you'll be all right.'

  And I know I'm here on my bed with my mother comforting me, but now I'm somewhere else as well... 'I'm choking!'

  'How do you mean?' Mum asks, gently massaging my left shoulder.

  'I'm choking! Like I can't swallow.'

  She goes on rubbing quietly. 'Just feel it,' she says. 'It might help.'

  'It's the seat belt,' I say, and now I can see the me that isn't in my bedroom, the me that's strapped into the seat and the people running around outside the car, panicky. Hayden is there, and another man, white-faced, the man I've just seen. They're rocking the car, 'with a jemmy,' I tell her, 'trying to get the door off,' and as the pitching gets more violent I grab the side of the bed so I don't roll off it and Mum tells me to stay with it, it'll be okay.

  Then the rocking stops, changes to a spiralling inside my head, as if my brain is a two-dimensional disc, a frisbee spinning inside my body. And the body in the car is floppy—

  'Floppy?' Mum asks.

  'The stuffing's come out.' Now I see the black tube leading from the floppy body up out through the car roof and I'm slipping into it.

  'Mum, I don't want to die!' But I go on up the black tube; it's tight, squeezy and I don't belong in it. 'I don't want to be here!' Now the body is gone; dissolved into a formless black mass, and all of me is in the tunnel.

  'I'm not supposed to be here,' I repeat.

  'Where do you want to be?'

  'With the people. Outside the car. With Hayden.' Another fear. My body's losing control; I'm going to wet my pants, oh God, worse, please no. Please not that.

  Mum's voice is an anchor, a reminder that the story's already happened and that it had a happy ending. 'W
hat's happening now?'

  I can't answer. I'm still in the tube. I'm nearly at the end, I can see the light ahead—brilliant, brighter than sunshine, clear and golden—and my head is ready to pop out of the tunnel and into its glow . . . Suddenly I'm slipping down, like a rush of water released from a dam, a relief that's so sweet it tears at my insides. 'I'm going back into the body . . . I'm there.'

  And I know that this is the point where the nightmares begin, the clawing through unconsciousness, fighting the blackness that threatens to swallow me—the blackness that's death. But I don't have to go through that again—I'm back on my own bed with Mum beside me and her arms around me.

  I'm shaking, shaking all over, so hard the bed is trembling too, my heels drumming a tune of fear on the bedspread. 'Oh my baby,' Mum says, 'it's okay, you're okay.' She covers me with a blanket, rubs my hands and feet, and cuddles me. She's crying and shaking a little too.

  CHAPTER 13

  I don't know why I made up something like that!' 'You know perfectly well you did not make that up! Something happened to you that was just too much—no wonder you didn't want to remember! But I guess it's been niggling away at the back of your mind, and when you saw Trevor Jones you couldn't hold it back any longer.'

  'Maybe.' I'm still crying, just the occasional tear, it's okay. 'How do you know so much about it?'

  'I read the books Lynda lent you,' she says dryly. 'As well as a fair bit of thinking—and talking to Laura.'

  'Did you know she was seeing Trevor Jones?'

  'No! She keeps everything completely confidential. Just a coincidence that we both chose her.'

  'Do you think I'll have to go through that again if something else reminds me?'

  'Not from what I've read. The theory is that now you know what your subconscious has been dealing with, you can do what you like with it.'

  Do what I like with it. It's a funny way to look at dying, even a mini-dying, but it's good.

  'Mum—if the doctors are right I'm never going to be fit enough to do karate again. Or teach phys ed.'

  She wipes away tears, flicking them abstractedly across her cheeks with a finger. 'I know.'

  'You don't think I'm giving up—letting you down?'

  The tears are too strong now to be wiped with one finger. 'Letting us down! Darling, we're proud of the way you've fought this, this terrible thing that we'd have given anything—anything at all—for you not to have gone through. But now . . . it's not giving up, it's confronting the truth . . . and right now that's not only the most courageous thing, it's the only way you're going to move ahead.'

  'I really liked karate, Mum.'

  'I know. And maybe nothing will ever take its place. But the real waste would be to be so fixated on karate that you never tried anything else that you could manage.'

  'There'll never be anything that's the challenge karate was.'

  'I think your life is enough of a challenge—a more restful hobby mightn't be all bad!'

  I smile at that. Mum's still crying. 'At least Mario came up with the perfect job—growing my hair for wigs!' I must still be crying too because now I'm laughing and it sounds hysterical. 'Good thing you've got a year to come up with something better.'

  She sits a while longer, her hand on my shoulder, till we've both blown our noses a few times and the tears have stopped.

  'I guess I should go. Luke will be wondering what's happened to me.'

  'He won't mind. Luke's good.'

  'He is. I'm glad you've noticed.'

  The memory of that kiss is suddenly so strong that I know I'll blush if I ask her what she means. I put it away to think about when I'm alone.

  She's hesitating; there's something important she wants to say. 'That promise you made me . . . now that you know how hard you fought to stay alive, aren't you glad you didn't waste it?'

  She's right. The worst of this whole thing has been the total powerlessness, being controlled by my broken body—its pain, its X-rays, diagnoses and bad news doctors. But I was the one who decided to stay alive. And if I won that fight, losing some of the smaller ones doesn't seem so bad. Throwing in the big one now would have been really stupid.

  Mum drags Dad out for a long walk as soon as he gets home, sneaking out without dog and kids. I guess this afternoon was a bit heavy for her too.

  And for Dad, once he's heard it all. He's very quiet and looks pale, goes straight from the garden to his office and shuts himself in for an hour, reappearing suddenly to give me a hug. 'Thanks for coming back,' he says.

  'Wow!' Jenny exclaims. 'That's creepy.'

  My throat is dry. It hasn't been an easy phone call, even to her.

  'And you could see what was happening around the car?'

  'Not while I was actually in the tunnel—then I was just concentrating on not wanting to be there. But before . . . I know how strange it sounds, Jen, but I could see the people running around outside, looking in the windows—and I hated them staring at the poor body when there was nothing she could do about it.'

  'Why do you keep saying "the body" ? It was you, wasn't it?'

  'I guess so . . . it was my body, but it wasn't me. I wasn't in it.'

  'I'm just trying to think what you'd be saying if something like this had happened to me.'

  'Okay; I'd try to get you to be logical and work out a scientific explanation—but I don't want that now. It's just there—I don't need it explained.'

  'When you were in the tunnel and said you were supposed to be with Hayden—do you think that's why you're so determined to stick with him?'

  'Maybe. It's a pretty powerful sign, isn't it?'

  'Powerful sign, bull! You say you'd rather be down on the ground with Hayden than go on up the tunnel and die! It wasn't exactly a win-win situation!'

  'You think I was just talking about being outside the car?

  Like I was saying, "I'm supposed to be alive, like everybody else" ?'

  'I think if you'd had the dog and cat with you, you'd have said, "I'm supposed to be with Ben and Sally." Think about it.'

  So much to think about. I think I've reached the bottom of Laura's chasm—and I've survived. Maybe that was the miracle I was looking for.

  I'm even starting to believe the other thing she said—that once I reached the bottom I could start climbing up again. That I was going to make it.

  I'd really love to know what Luke thinks about all this.

  But a truckload of potting mix arrives at the nursery just as English finishes, so Luke's in a rush to drop me off and sort it out. And Mum wants to be home on my birthday so she's swapped him tomorrow for next Wednesday . . . I won't see him till Monday.

  Right now it seems a long time away.

  Stuff the potting mix!

  'Wine science,' I tell Hayden, dropping the careers handbook as he comes in. 'That wouldn't be bad. I could taste as much as I liked because everyone always thinks I'm drunk anyway.'

  But Hayden's wearing his solemn face and my joke doesn't crack it. 'I've been thinking about it too.'

  'Wine tasting?'

  'Anna, I'm trying to be serious! About next year . . . If you're still going to be in school, I don't know if I should go to Melbourne. I was thinking maybe I should stay here.'

  'I thought Yarralong TAFE didn't offer surveying!'

  He shrugs. 'I could get a job.'

  'Like what? And why? Your marks are okay.'

  'Why do you think? Because of you. I want to be here ...' Why aren't I feeling mushy? Why isn't this the most romantic thing that's ever happened to me?

  '... to look after you.'

  Waves of panic and claustrophobia wash over me—that's why! I've just started to sort myself out, I can't deal with this right now. I need some space, some time!

  A hyperactive eight-year-old charges between us and out to the garden, whirling a collar and leash over his head. 'Ben! Let's practise for school!'

  In one second flat, Ben's gone from a peacefully curled-up shape on the back verandah to a whirl of shri
lly barking excitement tearing round and round the garden. Every few laps he pauses to lick Matt's hand and his leash before dashing off again.

  'The teacher says he's very good,' Matt says proudly. 'He's all the way through Level 1 already!'

  'Level 1 must be enthusiasm,' I whisper. Hayden laughs at that, and by the time the noise calms down he has to go. He checks what time we're going out for dinner tomorrow, says he has some shopping to do and leaves.

  My panic's gone too, but the vague uneasiness stays. No more excuses; Jenny's right—I have to think about this relationship and why I want it so badly.

  The familiar images crowd into my mind; Hayden and me at training—watching him watching me; that last tournament, the incredible feeling of winning, of being a winner; Hayden cheering for me; kissing me . . . If you had to choose one moment for your life to be stuck on, that would be mine.

  Isn't that exactly what you're doing? asks a nasty little voice.

  But that's not all we have. We're more than one kiss, one incredible day. It's Hayden I'm in love with, not being a winner.

  It is?

  I'm starting to feel panicky again, but I've got to think this through. And push away the thought of Luke, of that other kiss. Sort out one thing at a time.

  'Can I go to Vinita's after Anna's opened her presents tomorrow?' Bronny asks.

  'Don't see why not,' Dad says, but we're all a bit surprised. The two of them normally spend Saturdays lying in wait for Hayden and thinking up witty things to say that will make him notice them.

  Mum's quicker than I am. 'And how's Rajiv settling in?'

  she asks.

  Bronwyn giggles.

  Looks like Hoyden's been dumped!

  Lynda phones in the evening to say an early happy birthday.

  'I've got some news too,' she says. 'I'm changing jobs.

  Guess where I'm going!'

  'Health food shop?'

  She laughs. 'I thought about it! You know how frustrated I get with conventional medicine. But in the end I figured that's what I know about . . . so I'm going to be part of a medical team setting up a new hospital in—your dad's going to freak out!—Mozambique. Their health services were pretty well destroyed during the war, and now they're trying to get things running again. And it's incredibly beautiful—tropical beaches, coconut palms ...'