The Full Ridiculous

by Mark Lamprell

  You look at Juan’s mother and wonder whether to tell her about her son’s new tattoo. You decide not to because:

  (a) she’ll find out soon enough, and

  (b) right now she’s filled to capacity with doom and gloom.

  It wouldn’t be like adding another straw to break the camel’s back. It would be like dropping a steel girder on the camel from a great height.

  24

  You’ve come so often to the psychiatrist’s office that his receptionist calls you Mike and you call her Em. This must mean you are pretty close because even Wendy still calls you Michael. Em is in her early thirties and saving to go travelling in Europe with her boyfriend, Anton. Anton still lives at home with his parents and Em is trying to lever him out of his comfort zone.

  Em tells you all this stuff and more, much more, while you are pretending to read the glossy magazines that are actually in-date in the waiting room. You know all about Em’s life, Anton’s life, her mum, Jen, her sister, Anna, her previous boss, Derek-the-dentist (she was a dental nurse until boredom struck and she decided to explore psychiatry, quote unquote) and a whole host of other friends and family. Sometimes you have to wait up to twenty minutes to see Doctor Maurice. You can learn a lot about a person in twenty minutes.

  You don’t like to be rude and tell Em to shut up and download her shit on some other sucker because you don’t like to be rude. Also because she might switch your prescription with a menopausal madwoman’s and suddenly you’ll be growing man-boobs. You were almost fifteen kilos overweight at your most recent weigh-in. Man-boobs are the last thing you need.

  This week Doctor Maurice wants to explore previous traumatic events in your life. He tried to do this before but you’ve always baulked at the idea, essentially because you feel your cup runneth over with current traumas. But Doctor Maurice persists, insisting that it is essential to your recovery. He thinks the trauma of the accident has triggered the memory of previous traumas, and because you have not resolved your feelings about them you are unable to move on and deal with this one. There’s a logic to it, you suppose, so you consent to go ‘exploring’ with him.

  First stop is your adoption. He has tried to go here before but you think it’s a mistake. You do not think of your adoption as a trauma. Quite the opposite: you think of it as a magnificent piece of luck. You point out that you are not the only one who feels lucky to be part of your family. You have discussed this with both of your sisters on a number of occasions; you all feel the great good fortune of being parented by your particular parents. Your mother has been dead for three years, your father has been dead for thirty. But you can still feel their love raining down on you every day. What can possibly be traumatic about that?

  You suddenly realise that you are raising your voice at Doctor Maurice but you’re glad so you don’t apologise.

  He gives you a tight little smile and presses on. ‘That’s all true but the fact remains that your birth mother abandoned you.’

  ‘She didn’t abandon me. She gave me to a good family because she wasn’t in a position to take care of me herself.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not suggesting any negligence on her part or that it wasn’t the right thing to do. It was an incredibly courageous thing to do. But the fact remains that there was a point at which you were left. After your birth mother gave you up and before your mother collected you.’

  Oh sure. Blah blah blah. The whole discussion has just become way too look-at-me-I’m-an-abandoned-orphan for words. Even with your grand capacity for self-indulgence, you can’t go there. You tell him he’s off-course and it’s wasting your time. You ask him to move on or end the session early. It’s your first tiff and you win. You move on to your father’s death, which actually was traumatic, although what that has to do with falling apart after being run over by a car you’re not sure.

  Juan’s father relents and decides to allow Juan to come home, where the glittering fat-tyred Ford awaits in the six-car garage by the harbour. Juan finds you in the study and comes to tell you and thank you for having him. He’s very formal and shakes your hand and you give him a sort of half-hug. You wish him the best and tell him it has been a pleasure having him. You want to say more but the appropriate tone evades you and Juan terminates the exchange by thanking you very formally again and backing out of the study.

  In all the months that he has lived downstairs, you’ve never once glimpsed the real boy beyond his wall of fearful politeness. You‘ve never glimpsed the demons his mother has told you about. You want to go after him and tell him that he’s a good boy, that it’s okay to be flawed, that his future is in his own hands. But you don’t.

  Someone comes to pick Juan up. Bernadette, you presume. She doesn’t come in. She just honks the horn and Juan runs off down the path with a small backpack of belongings. Rosie waves from the front porch. When she comes inside you ask her how she feels.

  ‘Relieved,’ she says.

  You ruminate over her answer as she goes into the kitchen and makes a chocolate milk. Have you been doing her any favours, allowing her boyfriend to live downstairs for so many months? Did taking the boy into your home merely enable him to disconnect from his family, leaving his girlfriend—your daughter—as his only real go-to person? And isn’t that a huge responsibility for any fourteen-year-old?

  No wonder she’s relieved. You idiot.

  Finally you get a small break with your book. An influential director agrees to an interview. This is important because other directors will follow and once you have a few key directors the movie stars will follow too. You’ve had a limited response to your grovelling letters via managers and publicists but you hope that this interview might be the tipping point.

  You agree to meet in a local café, which you choose, a fair schlep from the beachfront home where the director lives but apparently close to his mum’s house where he grew up. He’s having dinner with his elderly mum and will ‘swing by’ the café for a couple of hours beforehand.

  It all sounds wonderfully casual until you’re waiting for him to arrive in the café and realise how horribly ordinary it is. It’s spotlessly clean and unambiguously bourgeois. Clearly nothing interesting has ever happened in this café. It’s not funky or bohemian or quirky. Someone may have died here, of boredom, but that is all. Why did you suggest here of all places?

  You are seized by the idea that your boring choice of venue will reflect poorly on you and your book. Boring Michael O’Dell and his boring book. You remind yourself that the director has grown up in the area, that he will be expecting the kind of place where a decaf café latte is still regarded as slightly exotic, which is exactly what this place is. You calm yourself by checking your pad and pen and spare pen; all working. You make a prat of yourself by speaking into the mic of your small digital recorder. ‘Testing, testing.’ You play it back. ‘Testing, testing,’ a tinny voice says back to you. All good.

  The director arrives, disconcertingly accompanied by an attractive young woman whom he introduces without elaboration as Dana. Dana explains that she’s his PA and not to mind her—she’ll just sit over there. Dana sits two tables away and you begin the interview.

  Despite the fact that he is wearing rock-star sunglasses, the thing that strikes you about this guy is his flesh-on-bone humanity. He’s just a person who can’t believe how lucky he is that he gets to direct movies for a living. You share a laugh about his uncomplicated middle-class roots and his lack of appropriate artistic angst. Chatting about the nearby suburb where he grew up, he riffs poetically about rampaging through the bush as a kid, roaming free in a world where he could disappear on a bike after breakfast and stay out till dinnertime without a single soul checking where he was.

  It’s all perfectly innocuous but you feel this cold sweat creeping across your skin. You excuse yourself and go to the bathroom where you give your bloated reflection a stern talking-to. Everything depends on this—not just the book but also your career, your financial future, your house, your kids’ educa
tion (well, Rosie’s anyway), and probably your marriage. You cannot expect Wendy to carry the load as she has been doing.

  It’s time to get with the program, answer the call to arms, step up to the plate.

  What the fuck are you doing?

  You splash cold water on your face and feel your heart beating in your chest so fast that you think you might be having a heart attack.

  It’s not a heart attack. It’s a panic attack. Calm down. That’s all you have to do.

  You look in the mirror. Your usually pink Celtic complexion is a strange greeny-white. Maybe it’s the fluorescent light. You look at the ceiling; nup, no fluorescent light.

  Splash more water on your face! your inner voice shouts at you, so you splash more water on your face. You check the mirror again and all the colours fade from your vision and you’re looking at yourself in black and white. You notice a funny kind of whooshing feeling from the top of your head as the blood seems to drain from your brain. You realise you are going to faint so you sit on the tiled floor and then lie down so that your face touches the cool tiles.

  The cool tiles feel wonderfully soothing. Wonderfully. You close your eyes, just for a minute.

  The next thing you know Dana is shaking you gently by your shoulder. You open your eyes.

  Oh, the horror, the horror.

  Your shirt has risen up over your belly and you pull it back down to conceal the roll of fat bulging over the waistband of your too-tight jeans. You sit up and quickly make up a story that you must be getting the flu. You tell her you’re okay now and please not to tell her boss—you’d really appreciate it if you could just go back out and get on with the interview. You ask her what the time is and whether you’ve been gone long. As if to answer this question the director pops his head around the door to see if everything is okay.

  Great. Let’s all have a party in the bathroom, shall we?

  He helps you to your feet and has you sitting back down at the table in no time. He orders a glass of iced water and insists that Dana drop you home—you can easily reschedule the interview for another time, he says. You know this last part is not true because in two days he is leaving for Los Angeles where he will be shooting a film for the better part of a year. You try to protest and assure him that you’re okay to continue but in your heart you know you have fucked this up. He says, smiling warmly, that you are clearly unwell and terminates the interview. For a moment you consider whether you should just beg for a second chance but decide against it, not because you are too proud, but because it’s poor strategy to sound that desperate.

  Dana carries your pad, pens and tape recorder to her car while you shuffle behind her like an invalid. The director farewells you in the car park and tells you to take care of yourself. By the time Dana has driven you the five minutes down the hill back to your house, you hate yourself deeply.

  You stagger in the door and Wendy calls chirpily from the kitchen, ‘You’re back early. How did it go?’

  You walk into the kitchen and she takes one look at you and says flatly, ‘Oh my God, you’re green.’

  ‘It didn’t go too well,’ you say.

  ‘Oh bummer,’ she says, as if you’ve just told her you spilled a drop of coffee on your white shirt. She kisses you on the cheek and heads towards the door, all dressed up in a sharp suit and stilettos.

  ‘Where are you going?’ you call after her.

  ‘That thing at the school,’ she calls back and you hear the front door slam.

  What thing at the school? you ask yourself.

  And then you remember.

  After weeks of negotiations and at least three cancellations, Wendy is going to Mount Karver for the meeting in the headmaster’s office to ‘discuss’ the gun incident with the cops and Ignatius Quinn.

  And that’s why she has breezed out the door: to convince you that there’s nothing to worry about even though you know she is probably shitting bricks of worry right now.

  Your wife is a hero and you know that you should stop and give thanks but all you feel is shame. Shame and anxiety. Oh, you’re anxious all right. You’re plenty anxious. You’re an anxiety-ridden-self-indulgent-useless-no-good-piece-of-worthless-shit-weak-as-piss-pussy.

  25

  The traffic is unusually heavy for this time of evening, making Wendy ten minutes late by the time she swings into the Mount Karver gates, kicking herself because she wanted to have some time alone with the headmaster before the police arrived. To make matters worse, there’s a Parents and Friends fundraiser on and every available park in the school grounds is taken. Except for a spot with a sign saying, ‘Reserved for School Matron.’

  The matron runs the school infirmary with the compassionless efficiency you’d expect from Adolf Hitler’s sister. She and Wendy detest each other, ever since a row about Declan being sent back to class after breaking two ribs in Year 7. It gives Wendy no small amount of pleasure to pull the car into the matron’s space thinking, Just you try me, Bitch Face.

  Wendy works up a light sweat hurrying to the imposing administration building and is slightly out of breath by the time Elsie Schmetterling greets her at the door to the outer office, waving her inside and whispering, ‘They’re all in there! They’re all in there!’ Wendy ducks into the ladies, checks her makeup and pats her perspiration down with some light powder. She returns, looking composed and formidable despite the fact that she is a bundle of nerves.

  Elsie swings open the door to the headmaster’s office and clears her throat. Wendy enters and begins the long walk across the Persian carpets, allowing three policemen in different uniforms to study her.

  They see a woman striding towards them in a tailored grey suit and some snappy red heels. Wendy feels the frisson she has created entering a room full of men and makes a mental note to use this to her advantage.

  The headmaster stands and says, ‘Mrs O’Dell,’ rather than ‘Ms Weinstein’. Wendy doesn’t bother to correct him. She shakes his hand and he makes the introductions. Wendy does not extend her hand to the others; she nods at each, restraining her natural warmth. If you were in the room right now it would occur to you that your wife is looking incredibly sexy.

  Constable Lance Johnstone makes a stupid joke about having met her before, which she ignores. He is scrubbed and polished within an inch of his life, wearing his best uniform, but there is still something third-rate about him.

  Superintendent Dieter Margan has a bald head and lots of shiny bits on his dark blue uniform. His manner and demeanour remind Wendy of Yul Brynner during his King and I days.

  The third guy is also in uniform. She doesn’t catch his rank but the headmaster explains that the darkly handsome Tony Haddad is in charge of gun licensing.

  Wendy sits in a wingback chair and crosses her legs. ‘So how can I help you gentlemen?’ she says like she’s a character in a Bond movie.

  After some brief umming and ahing, Ignatius Quinn explains that the superintendent has asked for an assurance that the police will be forewarned the next time a student undertakes any activity involving a replica firearm.

  ‘But now that we all know it’s illegal, the students won’t be using replica firearms,’ says Wendy, feigning restrained astonishment, ‘will they, Doctor Quinn?’

  ‘Quite right, Mrs O’Dell.’

  ‘Declan didn’t know he was using an illegal firearm, otherwise he wouldn’t have borrowed it. It was an innocent mistake, that’s all.’

  ‘But what about your husband, Mrs O’Dell?’ says Dieter Margan. ‘Surely he would have realised that it was a replica Glock?’

  Wendy looks baffled. ‘I’m sorry. Are you asking me whether Michael knew the toy gun was illegal?’ She calls it a toy gun rather than a replica Glock to provoke a response.

  It works.

  ‘Toy gun? Toy gun?’ splutters Lance Johnstone. The superintendent shoots a look that tells him to shut up but Lance doesn’t take the cue. ‘It’s hardly a toy gun.’

  ‘Well, I understand it fires potato pellets.
Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs O’Dell, it—’

  ‘Has anybody ever been killed by a potato pellet?’ interrupts Wendy.

  ‘It might take out your eye!’ declares Lance Johnstone.

  ‘Yes. If it had potato pellets in it. Did the gun have potato pellets in it when you confiscated it, Constable?’

  ‘Not at the time, no but—’

  ‘Then it was a harmless toy gun.’

  ‘Harmless? It wasn’t harmless! It’s a replica of a deadly weapon. A deadly weapon. You don’t seem to appreciate, Mrs O’Dell, that I would have shot the boy holding that gun. I would have shot the boy holding that gun!’

  And off he goes, just like he did that day outside the canteen. He launches into a rant, repeating the same stupid declaration. When Dieter Margan and Tony Haddad exchange a look, Wendy relaxes. She sees that they can see what a complete lunatic Constable Lance Johnstone really is.

  The headmaster stops the constable mid-stream. ‘Just hold on a minute, Constable. If you had shot the boy you saw holding that gun, neither you nor I would be here. I would have resigned for allowing a boy to be killed on my watch. And you would be facing manslaughter charges.’

  ‘Quite right, Headmaster,’ chimes in the superintendent, ‘quite right.’

  Lance Johnstone looks around the room bewildered, wondering what he has done wrong. His superiors hurriedly wrap up the meeting and bundle him out of the room. As they beat a retreat across the Persian carpets, Wendy inquires whether they are still considering arresting you.

  Superintendent Dieter Margan looks back at her, astonished. ‘Arrest your husband?’