My insides knotted around the rock inside my chest, remembering how I’d glared at her with disgust.
Perhaps I’d been too hard on her. Perhaps Mum had killed herself because of me.
Nausea churned my stomach at the thought.
Please let it not be our fight that killed you, Mum. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll never look at you like that again. I promise.
Somebody knocked on the front door. It was a soft knock, as though the person hoped we wouldn’t answer.
Dad stood up and rubbed his face with his palms.
“Stay here, Rubes, please,” he said, when I finally peeled myself from the heater and made a move to escape the room. “I can’t do this on my own. Mrs. Simich called the funeral home for us—her nephew is the director—and it might be him.”
My phone vibrated in the back pocket of my jeans.
Martin: Be there in 5.
Martin, thank God, the only person I wanted to see right now. And at least this time the message wasn’t blank. For a second I wondered how he knew, but I was stupid to wonder. Donny Vale was a small town where news travelled over fences and across the streets faster than a leaf in the whispering wind. Everyone would know about Mum by now. Our family would be the talk of the town. Mum would hate it. She always liked to give off the appearance of ‘happy families’ to the public. If she was tired or depressed, she only ever showed us. Martin must have accidentally sent that blank message earlier when he’d found out. Knowing my best friend, he would have spent forever trying to craft the right message for the situation, deleting and rewriting the text until he gave up in frustration and accidentally sent a blank one.
With a shiver I recalled Mrs. Patfield’s tears. She’d known. And she had said ‘sorry.’ Not sorry in the condolence kind of way, but as though she herself was responsible for Mum’s death. But that was just not possible. I was pretty certain Mum didn’t even know the woman.
“Come in,” Dad croaked.
I shoved the phone back in my pocket and wondered if I should make a lunge for the couch or stay where I was before the funeral director or sympathetic visitor came in. Maybe if I was seated they wouldn’t try to smother me with hugs. Or perhaps Martin had arrived already. I could only hope. Maybe we could lock ourselves up in my bedroom and pretend none of this was happening. Maybe I could fool myself into believing Mum had gone away to visit friends in the city for a night. Even running away with Derek would have sufficed. Anything was better than those blood stains, and the pain of knowing she chose death over us.
“I’m so sorry, Jeremy,” said a deep, gravelly voice. It was a voice I instantly recognised, a voice that I suddenly hated.
“Don’t let him in, Dad,” I said, coming to the door, my eyes fixed on the frayed straw welcome mat so that I wouldn’t have to look at our neighbour’s face.
“Rubes, love, I understand you’re upset—” Dad started to say.
“It’s okay,” Derek said, cutting Dad off. “I’ll leave it for a bit.”
I shook my head and finally met his tearful eyes, deep brown eyes that I used to write about in my diary four years ago when I was thirteen and suffering an older man crush.
“Don’t bother coming back,” I said in a low, stranger’s voice. “You’ve done enough.”
Dad’s face reddened and his eyes widened in shock. “Rubes,” he whispered in quiet outrage. “What’s gotten into you?”
My eyes shot from Dad to Derek and back to Dad again, my sweaty hands gripping the corner of the smooth, cool wall beside me for support. I shook my head.
“How can you not know?” I asked Dad through my teeth.
“Know what?” Dad asked, his green eyes wide and trusting, his rusty brows raised, and it was then I realised he was as innocent as Jay in all of this and that I was the only one in our family who had known about Mum’s affair. The only one who could have done or said something to change things before Mum had decided she’d had enough of all the lies and the deception. Now Dad was going to lose Mum all over again, for the second time in one day, and it was my fault as much as Derek’s.
“Nothing,” I muttered before I turned and ran down the hallway towards my room. Derek called after me, his voice weak and faraway, like he was drowning and I was a human lifeboat.
To think I had once thought he was the most fascinating and beautiful guy on the planet. The guy with the cool vintage car who let me and Martin help him tinker around with the engine and sometimes polish the chrome. The guy who’d played in a band that had opened the same Big Day Out concert Nirvana had played at when he was in his late teens. He’d backpacked around the world and seen it all. I’d even started decorating my room in exotic multi-cultural themes because of his wild travel stories. He was the guru of everything. Well, at least I’d thought he was. Until he decided that Mum was his muse.
God, what on earth had Mum been thinking?
I shook my head. I’ll never know now.
The thought hit me like a punch to the stomach.
I’d never see Mum again, never speak to her, and never have the conversations I’d dreamed we would one day share when she finally became happy again, the kind where we discussed our favourite books and movies, or the boys I liked, or my ambitions to travel to every corner of the globe. I’d never get to admit to her how, for most of my life, I’d secretly wished to have been born with her beauty, her fragile, golden beauty that made everyone who knew her, including me, want to sweep her into their arms and look after her, even though she was a grown woman.
Passing Jay’s room, I was tempted to go in there and gently wake him so that I could press his small body against my chest and feel the rapid beat of his tiny heart. But I thought better of it. Let him have his happy dreams. Why wake him and drag him into the horribly bleak new reality of life without a mother.
Instead I rested my forehead against the white-washed wooden door and warmed myself with the image of my little brother curled up in the corner of his cot, his soft toy in the shape of a train wedged beneath his chin.
After a few minutes I pushed myself off Jay’s door and headed to my room, making myself angry again by thinking about Derek. He had such nerve coming over to see my dad.
The front doorbell rang again and I slammed my bedroom door so hard my dressing table trembled, causing my porcelain musical-carousel to turn a fraction and tinkle out three notes before it silenced. Luckily Jay was a sound sleeper and didn’t stir.
Goosebumps prickled my arms as I stared at the hand painted horses. Mum had given the carousel to me for my fifth birthday and each time I gave my room a geographical facelift, I just couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it or put it away, even though it completely clashed with my current theme of Egypt.
It was the one item in my room that would bring a smile to Mum’s face whenever she used to come in, which was occasional if ever. Maybe she’d smiled because she remembered the way we were when she brought me that carousel, all giggles and hugs. It was a year later, not long after I had turned six, that she stopped being happy. I wasn’t sure why and I guess I’d never know now.
Somebody knocked on my bedroom door.
“Just leave me for a bit,” I said before throwing myself face down onto my bed and pressing my old stuffed pig against my neck. It smelt faintly of chocolate and sour milk from a spill years ago.
“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure,” said a voice at the door, a voice I’d known since I was six years old.
Sighing with relief, I rolled onto my back. Martin was here, and he was greeting me with movie quotes, just like always, as though today was just an ordinary day. Everything was going to be okay, at least okay for now.
“Death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it,” I said in response to his quote.
“All Quiet on the Western Front, good comeback,” he said from behind the door.
“Come in, Dumbledore,” I said, referencing his Harry Potter quote, before tossing Piggy as
ide and sitting up to rest my back against the wooden bedhead.
Martin stepped in and closed the door behind him. With his golden hair and cheery disposition, Martin brought the sun with him wherever he went. But right now, it was hard to look at him. His eyes were red and he kept shaking his head as he walked towards me, making my chest constrict even tighter than it already was. I didn’t want his pity-eyes. I wanted to lose myself in stupid movie quote talk and just pretend.
“Rubes…”
“Don’t say anything,” I said, raising a palm and keeping my head down. “I just want to talk crap, okay?”
Martin sighed but said nothing.
After a long silence I looked up.
He met my eyes and swallowed thickly. “Okay, whatever you want.” He opened his backpack and took out some DVDs, all the while watching me out the corner of his eye. “I brought these from work in case you can’t sleep tonight, or maybe you want to watch one now…if that’s what you feel like doing. But if not, then…” he paused, shook his head and then shoved the DVDs back into his bag. “Sorry. It was a dumb idea.”
“What have you got?” My words came out crackly, at odds with the calm mask I’d forced upon my face. I patted the bed for him to sit, resisting the urge to hug him. Hugging Martin would undo me and make Mum being gone real.
Shrugging, he sat down. The bed squeaked beneath him and his light, wavy hair flopped over his hazel eyes while he rummaged through the bag. He smelled buttery, like the popcorn they sold at the video store.
“I don’t even know. I just grabbed whatever was at the top of the returns box and came here as quickly as I could.”
He spread them between his hands and chewed on his lower lip while he looked them over, but then suddenly shoved the bottom two back into his pack and got up off the bed, his eyes wide.
“What were those? Why’d you stick ’em back in your bag? Show me.” I asked, curious now, standing up and coming around to take them out of Martin’s pack.
He dodged my arm, twisting his body left and right each time I made a grab so that I missed.
“What’s your problem?” I asked, breathless now, as I lunged for the bag. He was really starting to annoy me. “Is it porn? Just show me!”
Martin stared down at me with raised brows and a forced grin. “After years of saying no you finally wanna watch porn with me?”
I rolled my eyes. He was trying to cheer me up but I just wanted to see the damn DVDs. We stopped our dance and stared at each other. My breath was coming out hard and fast and my throat was getting dangerously tight again. Maybe I was going to finally bawl. But I didn’t want to do it in front of Martin, or anybody for that matter.
I pressed the flat of my tongue against the roof of my mouth, hoping to stem the tears. Martin must have noticed my unease because he sighed and fished the stashed DVDs from his pack.
“Here then.”
“Weekend at Bernie’s and…” I studied the other one, “…and The Virgin Suicides?”
Martin let out a long sigh and hung his head. “I grabbed them from the returns box without looking. Sorry.”
As I peered up into his flushed face, I couldn’t resist the urge to smile, and then, the tightness in my chest gave way to a sudden choking sensation. For a second I thought the tears were finally coming, but it turned out I was laughing. The sound was so loud and so wrong that I slapped a hand across my mouth to stifle it in case Dad heard or little Jay woke up.
“I’m sorry,” I said between giggles, my head spinning like I was lacking oxygen. “I’m just…not normal…for laughing.”
Martin stared at me, his eyes wet and sad, not finding this funny at all. I wanted to explain myself, tell him I couldn’t help it, but just when I thought it had stopped, new laughter bubbled up my throat. I tried pinching myself, but the urge to laugh was still there so I punched myself in the stomach.
Ouch.
It worked.
“Ruby? What the hell are you doing?” Martin’s arms were all over the place, not on me, but in the air around me. He wanted to hug me, protect me—like he’d done for so many years already—but I stepped out of reach.
“I’m all right. The movies are fine, you know. I’m not some delicate flower, okay?” I said when I was finally calm enough to talk.
“I know, but…” Martin gazed down at me like I’d grown five noses. “But maybe these films aren’t right for right now. Like…” He shrugged and swallowed thickly and then said in a quiet voice, “I don’t know…I just don’t know anything anymore.”
The heart-squeezing tightness returned, but I breathed through it and wrapped my arms around myself, forcing my gaze to meet Martin’s after about a minute or so of heavy silence.
“Please be normal. I know nothing’s normal right now…” I swallowed down the thickness in my throat, “…but, just for tonight I don’t want to think about what’s happened. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and start the new life of the girl whose mum…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Sighing, I shook my head and stared at a random loose thread on my doona cover. “Is it weird that I feel nothing right now? I mean, I feel angry and stuff, but I haven’t cried yet.” I glanced up at Martin, searching his eyes for some kind of confirmation that I was not a monster.
Martin’s eyes grew shiny and his chin crumpled before he cleared his throat and moved to stare out of my open window.
“She only just died, Rubes, you’re in shock. We’re all in shock,” he said, his voice cracking. I watched Martin brush a hand across his cheek and my insides started to ache. He was hurting too. Since he was a little boy and first came around for a play he’d developed a sort of long-term crush on Mum. She used to ruffle his hair and peck his cheek whenever she saw him, which never failed to make him blush.
Sinking onto my bed, I rolled over and curled up into a tight ball, to match the tight knot inside of me. Staring out the window Martin stood in front of, I could see the scarlet tops of the rosebush that grew below the sill. It was getting dark outside, the sky a deep purple.
“I know. That’s what Dad said. But…” My heart thudded madly. “I’m worried that, I don’t know, that maybe I didn’t love her enough or something.” There. It was out now.
Martin came to sit beside me on the bed, rubbing his hands up and down his thighs—a nervous habit he’d had since I’d known him. “It’s the shock talking. Man, you idolised your mum.” He stopped rubbing his legs to tug at one of my long curls. “Remember that day you bleached your hair to look like her and it turned bright orange? Everyone at school called you Fanta.”
“Yeah…” I half smiled at the bad memory. “But something’s wrong. I feel…just angry, majorly angry. It’s weird.”
“Weird is normal in these situations,” Martin said softly before he shifted closer and whispered, “Come here.” In a swift but awkward movement, he drew me up and into his strong arms, arms that he’d spent the last six months building and sculpting at the request of his new girlfriend, Madeline.
“Wait, what…what are you doing?”
At first I struggled against him—though we were best mates it wasn’t like we hugged all the time, just birthdays and Christmas—but he held on tight and eventually, after only a few seconds, I gave in and collapsed against his chest. It felt weird but good. I wrapped my arms around his waist and twisted the thin fabric of his cotton work shirt between my fingers, losing myself in the warmth of his embrace. All I could think about was Mum, and what she had done. Had it hurt? Had she screamed and cried?
A strange, low groan rumbled in my throat.
“Don’t force yourself to feel anything, Rubes. Just process it when you can and if you can,” Martin said, rocking me gently. “I’m right here for you.” His last words came out gravelly, making my eyes sting.
After a few more minutes of listening to the rapid beat of Martin’s heart I wriggled my way out of his arms and sighed. “Let’s watch one of those movies now.”
“Bernie’s?” said Martin with a grin be
fore clearing his throat and wiping at the tears in his eyes.
I concentrated hard on the DVDs spread out on my doona cover. I’d seen Martin cry before, many times in the past, about silly things, but this was different.
“No, sicko,” I said, frowning before throwing my pink pig at him. “I was thinking this one.” From the middle of the pile I drew out Donnie Darko.
“Awesome choice,” he said, wincing while he spoke. “But I’m not so sure it’s the right choice for now.” I glared at him and he narrowed his gaze at the pig on the floor before looking back at me with wide eyes and raising his hands in submission. “Okay, okay! We’ll watch whatever you want, just don’t throw that freaky one eyed pig at me again. You know I used to have nightmares about that thing when I was a kid.”
“So that means you’re still having those nightmares?” I said, patting the top of his head.
“Ha, you’re funny.” Martin snatched my pillow and belted me over the head with it.
We snuggled beneath my Egyptian, pyramid-patterned doona. Halfway through the movie, Martin snuck into the kitchen and brought back some lemonade and chips. I ate and drank, but I was neither hungry nor thirsty and the food and drink went down without any taste.
Just as the end credits rolled, there came a knock at my door, jolting me out of my numb, nothingness state. I couldn’t believe that two hours had passed. It felt like we’d just put the movie on.
“Ruby, the funeral people are here,” called Dad’s voice from the other side of the door.
Martin gave my hand a squeeze, his eyes dark and shining in the dim light of the television.
“Mrs. Simich thinks it’s best to get started on the plans right away,” said Dad.
“I should go.” Martin leaped off the bed and collected up the empty chip packets and cups before opening the bedroom door and heading for the kitchen.
Throwing back the doona cover, I forced myself out of bed and into the hallway where my bleary eyed Dad awaited me.
Push Me, Pull Me Page 2