All That I Remember About Dean Cola

by Tania Chandler

  Christos seemed to grow bigger — like a giant bird fluffing up his feathers during mating season — when you came back. You were slurring your words and spilling your beer. You took my hand and said we needed to talk. The wolves whistled and made lewd comments as you led me across the backyard, towards the house. Christos’s gaze burned my back.

  There must have been some partygoers inside the D’Angelos’ house, and I would have still been able to hear the music, but, in my mind’s eye, it is empty and quiet. I think the floor was tiled and the walls were beige. I remember a rubber plant in a pot and some white flowers — you would have known what they were called — in a vase on a table. I loved you, Dean Cola, so much.

  Contrasting the conservative decor were three primary-coloured bedroom doors: blue, yellow, and red. Green must have been upstairs. There was a scratch, or perhaps a brush-hair trapped, in the paintwork above the brass handle on the red door.

  This is where I raised my hand during hypnotherapy, indicating that I didn’t want to go any further. If I were to go through that door, I couldn’t love you anymore.

  CHRISTOS HAD gone for a jog. Sidney glanced at the time on her phone — 7.15 pm. She had at least forty-five minutes, although his runs were getting shorter lately. She didn’t bother locking the attic door, left her handbag hanging on the handle.

  She took the Handbook of Art from the Pac King box, and turned to the back. The Poem wasn’t there. Her pulse accelerated as she checked the front of the book, fanned the pages, and shook it by its spine. The Poem did not fall out. She rummaged through the insides of the box, and between the magazines and exercise books. Not there.

  She was a duck — calm on the surface — checking the Handbook again, rationally. It had to be there. She took a deep breath. And threw the book against the wall.

  A puff of pale-yellow dust made her sneeze as she tipped the contents of the box onto the floor. She dropped to her knees and rifled through them, duck-paddling madly. No Poem. She searched through the bags of clothes, strewing them across the room. Not there. With a guttural cry, she upended the tub of Christmas decorations. No. The Poem was gone. It was fucking gone.

 

  She sucked in air, making more low, animal-like noises. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her hands hurt. The Heaviness filled her body. The room’s outlines ran like pastels in rain. She crawled across the floor, made it to her handbag. Valium. Two, swallowed dry. Lying on her stomach, she hyperventilated into her hands, excruciating. The mess around her melted.

 

  Dean Cola, Dean Cola, Dean Cola.

  At a bar at the Folies-Bergère, Sidney pulls a beer for Coke. He leans across Manet’s bottles of crème de menthe, champagne, and beer; the bowl of oranges; and the flowers in a glass.

  He grips her arm and asks if she remembers.

  Remembers what? She shakes her head.

  A deliveryman rumbles a new beer keg towards the cellar trapdoor behind the bar. Coke says something else, but Sidney can’t hear over the noise. It was important and she yells at him to repeat it. He walks away. She follows him to the door, stops, turns back.

  The bar has gone. Faye and Nan are smoking cigarettes, sunbaking topless on plastic banana lounges at Broken River Road. Sidney needs to phone Coke to ask him what he said. She goes inside the house to look for the Chanel address book Auntie Stella had given her. The flywire door bangs behind her. She searches cupboards and drawers and shelves.

  ‘Mum, have you seen my address book?’ she calls through the door.

  Faye is blowing smoke rings into the air; the smoke mingles with the yellow dust stirred up by a passing truck. ‘Who are you?’ she says.

  ‘Sid. Sid? Sidney!’

  A hand stroked her brow. She opened her eyes. Hairy tree-trunk thighs, muscles bulging against running shorts — Christos kneeling beside her.

  ‘Are you all right? What happened?’

  For a beat, she thought she was still at Broken River Road. The dust settled and she sat up, shimmied on her bum away from Christos. Her back hit the wall. ‘How dare you go through my things!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You took it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Took what?’

  She lifted her chin; he knew exactly what she was talking about. And she could read his expression: Hide the matches; call the CAT team.

  ‘It’s all right, Sid.’ He stood up; he had to hunch in here. ‘I might just give Aimi a call.’

  Ha! She knew it.

  ‘Have you been taking your meds?’

  ‘I’m fine, Chris. Sorry, I was just looking for a work document, an editorial report the new manager’s asked for.’ She stood and held his hands. ‘You haven’t seen it, have you?’

  He eyed her warily. ‘No. Why would it be up here?’

  His hunched and twisted stance, and the way the bare-bulb light hit the angles of his face, made him look like Quasimodo, the black-and-white movie version. ‘Sorry. The new manager’s a ballbreaker, so I started to panic when I couldn’t find it, and …’ She bent down and picked up a strip of tinsel. Perhaps, while she was down here, a blow job might calm the situation? No — since she hadn’t done that for him in years, it would probably arouse more suspicion than desire.

  ‘Where did all these books come from?’ he said, as if he didn’t know.

  ‘I was about to throw them out.’ She shoved them into the Pac King box, apologising again.

  Christos helped her pack away the clothes and decorations.

  ‘I have to ring Mum.’

  ‘What?’ Christos straightened up and bumped his head on the slanted ceiling.

  The dream had been a sign. If she didn’t have The Poem, she needed that address book.

  He rubbed his head. ‘It’s been too long. You know she’ll upset you, like she always used to.’

  ‘People change.’

  ‘It’s a bad idea, Sid.’

  ‘I really want to talk to her.’

  ‘You need to have a good think about that first.’ He placed a hand on her arm. ‘And make sure I’m there to support you when you call.’

  ‘CHRISTOS CALLED me.’ Aimi looked over her glasses. ‘He’s worried about you. Said you were upset, accused him of taking something of yours.’

  Sidney laughed it off, told the missing-work-document story.

  ‘Christos also mentioned he’d spoken to your manager and she said you’ve been acting erratically.’

  ‘That’s not true. She brought in her friend to replace me.’ She’d received an email, with forms attached, from Ros Hartman informing of her downgrade from part-time to casual employment. Apparently, there was a sudden drought of editing work at LOC, but Ros would let her know when something came up. ‘She’s trying to get rid of us all.’

  ‘Have you been taking your medications?’

  Taking them from their packaging every day and flushing them down the toilet. ‘Yes.’

  ‘If that’s the case, I think we need to adjust the doses.’

  ‘I told you,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘I was just looking for a work document.’

  Aimi nodded.

  ‘You see, this is the worst thing about having a so-called “mental illness”. I’m never allowed to get upset.’ She stood and paced the room. ‘If I ever feel angry, I’m disruptive, noncompliant, paranoid …’

  ‘I understand how you’re feeling —’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I think it might be a good idea to increase your dose of Olanzapine.’

  ‘You haven’t been listening!’ Play the game, Sid, play the game. Duck not snail. Aimi and Christos couldn’t make her take the meds — she’d already won. Or had they guessed? And were secretly adding it to her food?
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  She took a deep breath, exhaled, and sat down, smiling. ‘OK.’

  ‘When was the last time you showered, Sidney?’

  ‘This morning.’ She knew that, because time had been a little arbitrary the past few days, or weeks, so she’d created reminders in her phone’s calendar for things such as washing. But she’d been wearing the same jeans — the only ones that still fitted — for a week.

  ‘Have you been hearing voices?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any urges to burn things?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any suicidal thoughts?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And what about pregnancy?’

  ‘That was a stupid idea.’

  Aimi frowned. ‘Are you worried about passing on your illness? It doesn’t always happen.’

  ‘That and a million other reasons that are terrifying. How could I take care of another human being? Ridiculous. Christos’s idea.’ She lowered her voice. ‘My body.’

  ‘I think you need to talk to Christos about how you feel.’

  She nodded.

  ‘If you like, you could bring him in and we could discuss it together.’

 

  She pretended to dislike her sessions with Aimi, but Aimi was a worthy opponent, and this was a safe space. Christos might contaminate it.

  ‘Have a think about it,’ Aimi said. ‘Christos also said you contacted your mother.’

  ‘Left a message on her answering machine, but she hasn’t called back.’

  ‘She doesn’t have a mobile phone?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘It’s been a long time since you’ve spoken, hasn’t it?’

  Maybe five years? Closer to ten. Probably fifteen. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why have you decided to make contact now?’

  She remembered the dream — the sign — and pictured her address book and diary standing next to each other on a shelf in her old bedroom, which she’d painted black, at Broken River Road. No, lying together in one of Pop’s Pac King boxes in her cupboard where monsters had lived when she was little. The cover of the address book was quilted black leather with two white Chanel C’s. She couldn’t remember what the diary had looked like — spiral-bound, but a hard cover or one of those cheap yellow ones from the supermarket? Both books were in her bedroom, somewhere, definitely. She mouthed the words: Dean Cola lives in there.

  ‘Pardon?’ Aimi said.

  ‘I just think enough time’s gone by. Time for a reconciliation.’

  ‘That sounds positive. Would you like to talk about your mother?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Have you been doing any more writing?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  She shook her head. Aimi’s skin looked so smooth. What would it be like to kiss her? Sidney had never had sex with a woman. It might be nice. Soft. She’d never had sex (not really) with anybody except Christos.

  ‘Have you remembered anything more about Dean Cola?’

  Her heart missed a beat, she shifted in her seat. ‘I had a drink after work the other night. There was a man at the pub who reminded me of one of our old friends from back home. Well, not really a friend, but … I think it was another cue. And then there was a man standing at the bar …’

  Aimi frowned. ‘You shouldn’t be mixing alcohol with your medications.’

  Sidney sighed and looked at the clock. Meet me under the clock. Was that a song or a book? Or a movie?

  ‘What do you think Dean Cola represents for you?’

  She thought for a moment, sat back in the chair. ‘Just a teenage crush.’

  Aimi tilted her head, not buying it.

  ‘I don’t know. Youth, hope … Maybe freedom?’ She shrugged. ‘A reflection.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean by that.’

  She looked at her hands and cleared her throat. ‘But it’s also like a terrible accident. Like something you can only look at out of the corner of your eye, and perhaps if you don’t see it properly, you can’t know for sure that it’s really there.’ It was easier to understand now she was off her meds, but still too complicated to explain to Aimi. Do you remember? Don’t you remember? The shame of how she could still see Dean reflected in a good light, while, at the same time, from the corner of her eye, see him and those other boys in the shadows at Sandro D’Angelo’s party. And hear, with her hands over her ears, what all her peers from that time said about her, about Dean. Do you remember the light? Don’t you remember the shadows. Don’t you. Don’t! She wanted to slap her thoughts away, or slap Aimi for making her think them, but instead rubbed her face. ‘I think Dean Cola represents an alternative reality. A better reality.’

  ‘Was that something you thought at the time? Or do you still think that now?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. ‘At the time, I think all I wanted was to not be like my mother.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to do some writing about your mother before our next session?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘So, we’re just going to increase your Olanzapine to fifteen milligrams.’ Aimi printed a new prescription.

  MY MOTHER

  I blamed my mother — her behaviour — for being the catalyst of my illness. I don’t really believe that anymore. Things can’t have been easy for her. A single mother. Ill daughter. Shit-kicker job at the department store. And then she had to care for Nan and Pop when they moved into Broken River Road.

  Mum used to make clothes for me. Not only because we couldn’t afford them, but also she liked to sew. When I was ten, Auntie Stella had taken me to see Flashdance at the cinema, and I’d dreamt of being a dancer. Mum made me an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt dress like Jennifer Beals’s, but white because they didn’t have any grey jersey material at the haberdashery shop. I nagged for dance lessons, but Mum never got around to organising any. I taught myself routines by watching the Flashdance video over and over on the VCR Auntie Stella and Uncle Colin had bought for us. I was good, obsessive anyway, but Mum never had time to watch, and nobody else ever saw.

  A couple of years later, when my music tastes changed, I unpicked the pink Flashdance embroidered across the sweatdress-cum-T-shirt, and my routine morphed into freestyle dancing to KISS records. There was a song, ‘Shandi’, with a line about tonight having to last them forever and ever. I spent a lot of time contemplating what that meant. I should have asked Mum; she would have known very well. It was only one night — or afternoon or whatever — with my dad.

  And the red dress Mum made — did she ever wonder what happened to that?

  I remember being scared a lot at night-time, especially when I first started hearing Voices. Mum let me sleep in bed with her. Sometimes, when she’d had too much to drink, she called me names, or hit me. She denied all that. My illness was a scapegoat; she could pretend that I made things up or didn’t remember correctly. I did lose sections of my short-term memory due to the electroconvulsive therapy she consented to, but most of my long-term memory is intact. As intact as anybody’s, I imagine. I remember almost everything as it really happened, alongside things that could never have happened. I know what she did to me just as well as I know there were no monsters in the cupboard at Broken River Road, and Jesus didn’t live in the door.

  I suppose there were many reasons (aside from my mother) why my mind broke, or maybe no reason at all. I’ve seen reports from my first time in hospital. The severe reactions I had to the meds. The muscle spasms. My tongue swollen and sticking out. My neck twisted around so far it was like my head was stuck on backwards. They had to inject another drug to counteract the side effects of the first. One report
said I hit my head against the wall and rocked in the corner while I cried for my mother.

  She pretended not to remember the nursing pads I had to put into my bras because the meds made me lactate. Or the rapid weight gain — I was so skinny, and then I blew up like a balloon. I was left with stretch marks all over my skin.

  I don’t hate her anymore for putting me in there. But I was so young. And it was so scary — there were some crazy-crazy, not just depressed-crazy, people in there. There must have been some other way to help me.

  I think Mum knew what happened to the red dress, what happened at Sandro D’Angelo’s party, and said nothing. She didn’t want anybody to know. She blamed me too. That’s why she exaggerated my illness and put me in hospital that first time.

  Memory is like a camera — flashbulb moments illuminated while the rest remains in darkness. There are parts of my memory that are neither lucid nor dim. They are simply closed off because of trauma — packed away in my mind in a box marked ‘DO NOT OPEN’. Time is stretchy, like a rubber band; I can go forward, but only so far before being yanked back. I know that if I ever really want to move on — break the rubber band — I will have to open the box. I have tried, with my previous psychiatrist, but ended up back in hospital. Whether or not remembering was the reason, I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’ll ever be strong enough to try again. Sometimes, I lift the flaps on the box a crack, and peek. Inside, there’s something else too, buried deeper, even worse than what’s on the other side of the red bedroom door at Sandro D’Angelo’s house.

  It’s not summer, or even autumn — it’s a winter night. A country road. Driving with Dean Cola. Not in the Cola Hardware pick-up truck, a different car. We must have seen each other again after the night he came into the pub where I used to work (that was two years after Sandro D’Angelo’s party). This is the part of the memory I must have saved inaccurately, changed or distorted — I would have been in hospital after the Broken River Road fire, and Christos and I were engaged. In the memory, I am driving — also impossible as I didn’t have a driver’s licence. Perhaps it is not a memory, but a dream I had sometime long ago.