Peeling the Onion

by Wendy Orr

  'No; I really want to. It's just—I liked the competition in karate; I really liked knowing I was best; winning.'

  Luke unbuckles his seat belt, leans over and kisses me, long and sweet. 'Who won that?' he asks.

  'What?’

  'Not everything good's a competition,' he says smugly, and starts the car.

  CHAPTER 15

  You don't exactly know me—I'm the driver of the car that hit yours last January. Trevor Jones.'

  The phone slips out of my hand.

  'I guess it's a bit late,' he goes on, 'but I thought maybe I should apologise—you don't know how bad I feel. I have nightmares about it.'

  My voice comes out in a croak, a cross between a whisper and a cry. 'So do I.'

  This seems to encourage him. Doesn't he realise that he's my nightmare? He picks up speed, 'I went to see this psychologist . . . anyway, I figured I might get over it if I met you. If you felt you could.'

  This is too much! It's not fair; it's way too much! 'I don't know.' Damn, I'm crying again, and he'll be able to tell. I don't want him to know but I can't talk, my voice is gulpy. And I'm remembering how I felt last time I saw him; just talking to him now and I'm shaking, heart pounding, cold and sick to my stomach. But I don't have to take it. 'I don't think I can. I'm sorry.'

  'Oh. Yeah, okay, no worries. Can I leave you my number, in case you change your mind?'

  My brain's so numb I write the number down obediently, and don't tear it into tiny pieces until I've hung up.

  Trevor Jones wants me to solve his nightmares! What about me—I'm supposed to be the victim here! And maybe I used to think I was strong, but that's one thing the accident's taught me—I'm not nearly as strong as I thought. There are some things I just can't do, and this is one of them.

  'What an unbelievable bloody nerve!' Dad explodes. 'Let me speak to him next time he tries to harass you!'

  'He wasn't harassing me, Dad! He was trying to say he was sorry.'

  I think I've seen my father rant and rave more in the last nine months than in the whole rest of my life, but this time he's really lost it—watery eyes, pinched nostrils and his face fading from grey to white, as if all the blood is being syphoned off by hate.

  'Nearly a year later and he suddenly reckons he's sorry? Does he think a bunch of roses is going to fix what he did to you?' He slams out of the room.

  'Why can't Dad let me deal with my problems myself?'

  'He feels so helpless,' Mum says apologetically. 'Somehow as a parent you think you're always going to be able to protect your children.'

  'When he acts like that I feel as if I'm supposed to protect him!

  He looked like he was going to have a heart attack!'

  Luckily Jen phones before war breaks out between Mum and me as well. She listens more calmly than Dad.

  'It might be good,' she says cautiously. 'Talk about facing your fears! But you'd want to be feeling pretty together to start with or you could just freak out—or knowing you, freeze out—so busy making sure you didn't get hurt that you wouldn't feel anything at all and the whole thing would be wasted.'

  What can you say to a friend who knows you that well?

  'But if you could do it, it'd be an incredibly powerful experience.'

  'To tell you the truth, Jen, I've had about enough powerful experiences lately.'

  She ignores that. 'I know you're not religious, but forgiving might be a very healing thing to do—you might get more out of it than he does.'

  'I've tried bargaining; it doesn't work. There's no one up there handing out happy face stickers for every good deed.'

  'Okay; so it's more complicated than that—but it's not as simple as you think either.'

  I figure Luke will agree with Jenny. But my clear-eyed, philosophical, what's-the-worst-that-can-happen man is afraid for me and almost as angry as my father. 'It'd be different if you'd decided you needed to face him,' he keeps saying. 'Why should you sort out his nightmares?'

  We're sitting on the bench in the back garden, as close as two people can sit, with his arm around me and my hand resting on his thigh. Funny how comforting it is to touch each other, even when we're not being passionate. And it lets you know what's being said beneath the words, as if another layer of meaning seeps through our bodies and straight to our hearts, so that when I say I don't think I could handle it and Luke adds, 'You've been through enough!' the other level is saying that it's time to forget all this junk from the past and just get on with our lives. But there's another layer even below that, a sad, desperate layer where we both know that Jenny's right and no matter how horrible it is, I've got to deal with that stuff if I'm ever going to be free of it.

  But not right now. Right now there's the kaleidoscope of tulips swaying in the breeze, the stubbled line of Luke's jaw and the warm fresh smell of him when I bury my head in his shoulder. The past can wait till I'm ready.

  The last trace of yellow has disappeared from my breasts. If I stand naked in front of my mirror now I see a tall slim girl with small, neat white boobs and slightly bony hips—not 'Sun and Surf' material, but nothing to be ashamed of. I don't think anyone who happened to see them would scream in horror any more.

  'We've got to talk about next year,' Luke says, as we go out the back gate and down the path to the river. A shiver runs through me; he sounds so solemn, the words so ominous—and feeling the tremor, he squeezes my hand gently and pulls me closer to his side. 'Idiot. It's nothing bad.'

  But it is. He's decided to do massage therapy. It's a part-time course in Melbourne for thirty months.

  'That's three years!' I feel as if my world has ended; I can't even remember the claustrophobia that swamped me when Hayden wanted to stay in Yarralong next year; now all I want is for Luke to do the same thing. 'Are we breaking up?' So that's why it's called breaking up, because it tears you in two, shatters your heart and mind and body into tiny pieces.

  'I won't go if it means that,' he says, pulling me down to sit on the ground beside him, and I'm staring into the river without seeing anything but he's cupping my face in his hands, turning me gently round to face him. 'I love you, Anna! But I've got to get on with the rest of my life too. And since I've met you I've started to believe that maybe I could accomplish something more than a few hours in your mum's nursery.'

  'What about taking me to physio?'—which I meant to be a joke, but he answers the desperation and the unsaid words, which are not about going to physio, but the time in between school and appointments, when we used to have coffee and talk, except now we skip the coffee and sometimes the talk.

  'It's part-time,' he says, 'I'll only be away three days a week. And it's just a year till you'll be down there too.'

  I'm snatched up in a wave of bitterness, hurled down and swamped by it. It's not just a year of my life that's been stolen, but a year of Luke's—because instead of being at uni, together in Melbourne . . .

  'We mightn't have been together,' he says quietly. 'If all this hadn't happened we mightn't ever have met again.'

  'We would have!' I don't know which is worse—thinking that we wouldn't have met, or being grateful to the accident.

  We're lying on the bank now, his arm under me; my neck's cramping but I'm discussing the future with the man I want to spend it with and I'm not in the mood for pain to interrupt. But Luke sees, and starts to gently massage the corner between my right shoulder and neck. The rigid muscles begin to melt under his fingers. 'That's so good . . . are you doing massage therapy because of me?'

  'Not for you. Though it's got to be a bonus if I can help your pain, because I love you, and I can't be happy when you're hurting.' The word 'love' twists through me, warm as his fingers; powerful, sexy little word.

  'I'd hate it if you were just doing it because of me.'

  'But it probably is partly because of you. That's just the way it is; you can't come into somebody's life without changing it—what's happened to you has got to affect me. And I might never have known how good it is, using my
hands to help someone, if I hadn't known you.'

  As long as he remembers where the person's pain is. Right now those magic hands seem to be having trouble finding my neck—and this place is not exactly private. Any minute now Dad and the kids could appear, exercising their well-trained Ben. 'You'd better not use your hands on anyone else the way you do on me!' I try to push him away, and am filled with such a wave of tenderness that I can't, clinging to him instead, feeling the warmth of his body flood into me as he buries his head against my throat.

  I can't believe it's the end of school already; two more sessions of tutors and then exams after that.

  Martin's off to the Canary Islands next week, to bring a boat back to Sydney for someone whose lifetime dream of sailing from England to Australia sent him to the edge of a nervous breakdown.

  'It's something you can't describe—that combination of mind-numbing boredom and fatigue, occasional terror and the unbelievable, empty loneliness when you're out of sight of land,' Martin explains. 'At least this guy was smart enough to swallow his pride and admit he's strictly a weekend, coastal sailor—better than ending up insane or dead, which I'd say were his options.'

  His manuscript has gone to a publisher. It was interesting—especially the bits where he actually wrote his story instead of a how-to-sail manual. I don't know if I'd like the fear and loneliness but he seems to have found his own ways to conquer them.

  And he thinks I'm well prepared for the exam next week. I got a B- in the mid-terms, and he thinks I should do better in the final; I'll definitely do Lit next year. Besides, people in books are always dealing with some momentous problem—the difference with real life is that they usually solve it. If I read enough maybe I'll eventually get a clue to my own.

  Maths still isn't so easy. The deferred mid-term was a C and the best Lisa's hoping for the final is that I'll add a plus to it.

  'My dad thought maybe I could do accounting and go into business with him,' I tell her, mostly to see her reaction.

  'Sweet,' she says dismissively. 'Let's face it—the only thing accounting has in its favour, as far as you're concerned, is that you can sit down to do it. I think you can find a better reason than that for your aim in life.'

  Speaking of aims in life, she's going back to full-time teaching next year. 'So I won't be able to do any tutoring—I just couldn't have Becky minded again in the evening after being in care all day.'

  'What happens if you want to go out for fun?'

  She grimaces. 'I'll worry about that if it happens. It hasn't exactly been a problem this year—hey, don't look so worried! Becky's the best thing in my life; did I tell you she's crawling? Oh, look what I just happen to have . . . '

  A picture of a baby, wearing nothing but a look of intense concentration, crawling after a bright patchwork ball. Unbelievable how six months have changed a passive baby in a pram to this busy, complete little person.

  'You know,' Lisa confides, 'people say there's no such thing as an accidental pregnancy—well, I'm here to tell you there is. We used contraception—and by the time I realised I was pregnant it was too late for an abortion. God, I was angry—I thought my world had ended! You know, I was twenty-six, I loved my work—I was just tossing up whether to do a masters or an exchange year in England; babies were definitely not on my list! But once I had her, none of that mattered—it's not even making the best of things, I really love being a mother. Amazing how life turns out sometimes.'

  Something else I didn't know till today is Becky's birthday—she was born on the 29th of January. I didn't ask what time.

  A couple of months ago I couldn't have handled it. Her life started as mine ended—melodramatic crap, but it's what I'd have thought. Even now I feel cold at the date—but I can't help thinking what a very busy day that was. God must have been humming—here comes Anna, no, too cranky, send her back; how about a little guilt for Trevor and Hayden, a baby for Lisa and a birthday for Becky—plus several million other people around the world dying, being born, losing their jobs and falling in love.

  Everyone's got an attack of busy-ness today. Bronwyn and Matt are digging up their bit of garden; Mum's sorting out the vegetable rack in the pantry, where something's died and gone to plant hell.

  'Yuck!' she exclaims, chucking a squishily rotten potato into the compost bucket.

  She's getting ruthless. Some rubbery carrots follow, and then an onion sprouting a tall green shoot.

  Matt grabs the onion. 'Don't throw it out!' he yells. 'We need it for our garden.'

  'Will it grow?' Bronwyn asks.

  'It already is,' Mum says. 'Just plant it and look after it.'

  'Have you thought about social work?' Jenny asks.

  'I don't think having problems automatically makes you good at sorting out other people's!'

  'But learning to cope might. You're good with people.'

  'Me?'

  'Don't be stupid! You act as if not being mobile means you don't have anything to offer—remember the night I thought I'd broken up with Costa?'

  'I didn't do anything!'

  'You kept me sane.'

  I'm sprawled on the lawn, gazing up at the sky and the waving branches of the silky oak, heavy with its dark seed pods; the bruised thyme below me scents the air. Picture of a young woman enjoying the spring sunshine—as long as you forget that what I actually meant to do was walk across the garden. It was okay until my foot got confused by a twig it thought was a log; it's not a very smart foot.

  But this isn't a bad place to lie, now I've got my breath back and checked that nothing's much sorer than usual. Pain's a funny thing anyway. It's still always there, somewhere between a nag and a scream—but suddenly I'm starting to beat it. I can't change what it does to my body, but it doesn't get down into me, into my soul, the way it used to. Maybe that's the difference between pain and suffering. If I never got any better than this, I could still survive.

  And I'm going to do more than survive—I'm starting to live! It's hard to see any difference from week to week now, but I'm stronger than I was last month. And after the exams I'm going to Melbourne for a new kind of physio Brian thinks might be useful. 'As long as you're not expecting miracles!' he warned—but I figure everything that helps is a bonus.

  Luke's going with me. It runs like a song in the back of my mind, behind everything else that's happening. Luke's going with me.

  Everyone's happy: Mum and Dad figure I'll be safe in the day because Luke won't let me fall off a tram or lie dead in the street, and the three suburbs between Lynda's and Luke's dad's will keep me safe at night. I'm happy because Luke's going to try and sort things out with his dad—and because we're having a holiday together in Melbourne and I don't think my dad's realised how much of each day I have left after physio.

  In the parallel universe I used to fantasise about, Trevor Jones stopped at the sign and a healthy Anna went on with her life. She'd have her black belt now and be gearing up for uni next year. But she wouldn't have Luke.

  I've dug deep into myself, because if there's any chance that the horrible theory is right and there's a part of me which likes being injured and stops me from getting better, I need to find it and deal with it. But all I've found so far is the part of me that likes being well—and if there's one thing all those doctors' appointments did for me, it's to say that sometimes the damage is real and there's no point pretending it's not there. Recovering slowly doesn't mean I wanted the accident to happen.

  So I'm not betraying myself by enjoying any good things that have happened because of it. I can learn and grow from the experience even if I don't believe it was part of some cosmic training scheme.

  'Remember what I tried to tell you about the river flowing around the rock?' Luke asks.

  'I've learned to flow?' I tease, shifting my weight against him so that my head's supported by his shoulder, staring at the real river flowing past us. I lift my walking stick across my knees and stroke the coloured figures. 'Tell me again what they say.'

 
'This is the chi; Tai Chi and yin yang; this one's strength.'

  'What are the ones on the handle—a whole row all the same?'

  '"Fire in the heart"—love.'

  'So when I hold the stick I'm holding love?'

  'Even when you're not.' And he grins that grin, the one where he looks down at me and my heart slips and I know why I love him.

  Love, he said, and strength. I stroke the handle once more when he leaves, and go in to the phone.

  'Trevor? It's Anna Duncan. I'll meet you at the psychologist's office next Friday at two.'

  Feel a bit trembly when I hang up; go back to my room and find the poem I wrote for Martin.

  The black version is wrong too—if there's nothing inside, it wouldn't hurt so much; there must be someone doing the crying. I write it one last time.

  I am

  peeling like an onion,

  shedding papery protection,

  and superficial skin—

  tearing, skinning, ripping off the layers—

  the firm and curving flesh

  of what onions used to be—

  Peeling onions makes me cry.

  Shrinking down to nothing,

  my shells are disappearing

  and there's nowhere left to hide.

  But under all the layers

  —a tiny green shoot sprouting—

  I'm growing from inside.