Please Don't Hug Me

by Kay Kerr

  We worked all day at Robins together, Aggie and I, and Aggie talked for most of the time. She has another gig coming up, and she’s worried she is not going to finish work in time to get there, and she’s got an assignment due, and there’s a girl in one of her classes who is bugging her, and she thinks this boy on her campus is hot but she doesn’t want to know any more about him in case he turns out to be a loser, and she likes the mystery. Her younger sister is driving her wild. Oh, and she’s really into ginger at the moment. Ginger in her juice, and ginger tea, and those ginger lollies you suck on to stop you from getting carsick. They’re actually pretty good. Even if you’re not carsick. She talked a lot about herself, which I liked, but she also listened.

  She listened when I talked about Mitch and how he’s not answering my calls, and she listened when I talked about Dee and how we’re maybe not going to always be around each other. She listened when I talked about Dr Lim and you and September and Aunt Cath. She smiled her big smile when I told her about ordering bugs, because she loves bugs.

  She’s going to come to your thing next week, even though she doesn’t know you. I think she feels like she knows you because I talk about you, just like I feel like I know her sisters even though I’ve never met them. You’ll like her Rudy. Even if you never get to know her.

  Love, Erin

  20 September

  Dear Rudy,

  I’ve decided I’ve got six more days of writing you letters like this. It’s a new rule. That brings us right up to the day. One year on. Six days. That’s nothing. That’s less time than you spent doing your vow of silence in year seven to protest against the rise in tuckshop prices. You’ve always been an activist, haven’t you. I want to fill these six days with complete nonsense, I want to tell you about the dreams I’m having and the lunch I eat and the silly things Ollie comes out with. I want things to be normal. And I don’t mean normal as in ‘normal’, like, the thing I am not. I mean our normal. I want to watch serial-killer shows with you and argue over what really happened. I want you to tell me I’m being dramatic and I want Mum to tell us to stop arguing. I want to swap you my extra chop for your extra mashed potato. I miss our normal in a way I didn’t think would be possible.

  School was as normal as could be expected today, although people are starting to act pretty weird around me again. Not as weird as they did last year when it all happened, but close enough to make me want to wag school for the rest of the month. Mrs Walsh said I could have extra time on the exam prep quiz, but she did it in such an exaggerated way it made me feel like she wanted to be seen as being considerate, rather than actually being it. Mr Sharp put his hand on my shoulder at the start of the day and made a big deal of telling me he was there to talk if I needed anything, and it was so over the top it sounded like he was offering me drugs. I considered testing how far he was willing to go with the offer, but I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to ask for. I should have tried asking him for money. I wish I’d thought of that at the time.

  Dee is treating me like I’m made of glass. She is doing her best, and she is doing enough. I just wish things were different and she didn’t feel like she had to do that. She is shielding me from the pointier parts of Pointy Kathy, though, and that’s about the only part of this I’m enjoying. Pointy Kathy made a comment about my hair today, I guess because it’s long and flat and not really something I style or do anything with, and Dee looked her straight in the eyes and said, ‘Fuck off, Kathy. You don’t always have to be such a raging bitch, you know.’ I can’t imagine having the guts to say that to Pointy Kathy, but Dee is made of stronger stuff, I suppose. She was incredible.

  Anyway, I feel like closing my eyes now and giving my brain a rest. I will try to write to you again tomorrow.

  Love, Erin

  22 September

  Dear Rudy,

  Yesterday didn’t feel normal enough to write about, so I’m writing about today instead. I’m reading The Great Gatsby again, for probably the twentieth time, and I’ve decided I hate them all. It’s a new feeling for me. When I first read it I thought Gatsby was tragic and Nick was sad and Daisy was lonely. I wanted Gatsby and Daisy to run away together, and I wanted Nick to end up with Jordan. Why did I think like that? They’re awful, self-centred, over-indulgent childish people, the whole lot of them. I used to want everything tied up neatly with a little bow, I guess, happily-ever-afters and Disney princesses and all of that. It’s all a bit rubbish. Not everyone finishes school and gets a job they love and marries a person they love, or anyone at all. It’s not a given that we get this big, beautiful, wonderful life. It’s not even a given that we get a whole life to live. That sounds obvious, but I’d never really contemplated the fact that I might die before I’m old. Even after everything that happened I never thought about it until I finished Gatsby this time around. Anyway, the person I feel most sorry for is George Wilson, and I used to think he was the bad guy. Isn’t that strange?

  In class I wanted to put my hand up and say that as part of the discussion, but of course I didn’t because talking in class is like volunteering for slow torture. Why would I do it? So instead I sat quietly and listened to Jessica Rabbit’s interpretation of the book as a tragic love story. She said Daisy and Gatsby were star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet, and I rolled my eyes as if I hadn’t thought that too up until this year. It’s like I read what I wanted to read, until one day I woke up and read the words for what they were, and everything changed.

  Love, Erin

  24 September

  Dear Rudy,

  I thought I had two more days, but it turns out today was the day. I hate the feeling of working towards a particular time or date and then suddenly having the thing happen ahead of schedule. It’s disorientating. It puts me in a spin. It was like the time Dad flew to New Zealand for that funeral. We got all ready to pick him up at 7 pm and just when we were about to leave for the airport, Mum checked the flight information and found out he’d landed early. He was already there, waiting for us, and we were an hour away. I hated that. That’s what Tom did today bringing it all up; he put me in a spin. To be fair, he was in more than a spin himself when he rocked up this afternoon, soaking wet from the rain like he’d run here all the way from Wellington Point. I didn’t actually get a chance to ask him if that’s what he did.

  I’m trying to remember the first time I met Tom, like the first time he came over after school. It must have been when you were in year eight, because I know you were hanging out together a lot from really early on. He was quieter than Damo and Matt, but just as much of a charmer. What did Mum call him? Her adopted son, or something like that. I got the feeling she would have swapped him for me if she’d had the chance. He always cleared his plate and washed up after himself. I was barely functioning on any level then. I’m sure Mum will feel the same about Tom after today. He had himself so worked up over something so small, like Amy and her working late. Still, I haven’t worked up the courage to tell Mum why he came round. I will, but maybe I’ll wait a week or so. She has enough on.

  The thing is, Rudy, as soon as I write it down, it’s done. This whole thing. And I’m not really ready to give it up. I want to hold onto the last little thing I have. I’m squeezing it so tight, like I’ll squeeze the life right out of it. But it doesn’t matter, because your life was gone before I started squeezing. Before I realised you were something I had needed to hold tight. So it’s out now and I guess I’ve got to face it.

  Tom thought he had a bombshell on his hands. He couldn’t get it out and his voice was shaking. He was supposed to have been with you that night. He stopped returning your messages and calls, went for a Tinder hookup and never bothered to get back to you until it was too late. By the time he texted you back, you were gone. Tom is broken with it, the guilt of not showing up, the guilt of imagining you alone in that dark water. He is sure it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been with you, or if he’d just returned your calls. Just about everyone who knew you could feel that w
ay about something though; I know I certainly have.

  I like to think if I’d been there I would have been able to help somehow, to prevent the thing that has already happened that no one can prevent now no matter how hard they think about it. But there isn’t a universe that exists in which I would have been there with you. Not one.

  Tom wanted forgiveness today I think; he wanted me to say ‘it’s okay.’ I didn’t say that. I didn’t say much. I don’t want him to nosedive his own life because of this one thing, but I don’t want him to go on living like normal after it either. I want him to learn. I want everyone to learn. I want them to care more. I want them to care for each other more. It was an electric shock, hearing him say the words, ‘I should have been there the night Rudy died.’ I can’t describe the noise that came out of my mouth when he said it, but it was somewhere between a scream and a hiccup. I can’t quite believe it even happened, but then I’ve spent too long not quite believing the things that happened actually happened, so I need to get my head out of my arse, don’t I. I can hear you saying those words to me, giving me that exact advice as though the reason for the advice hasn’t cancelled out any chance of you being around to give it to me.

  I am tired and I don’t know if I did the right thing with Tom today. I should have done more. I’ll have to tell Mum and Dad. I don’t think they will react too badly, unless they’re in a space where they want someone to blame. Mum was obsessed with finding people to blame at the start. The boat owner, for leaving the keys in the boat, the water police, for taking so long to respond to the report of a stolen boat, your teachers, for letting you disengage. The list was long. If Tom had told us this last year, right after it happened, I could hear Mum telling Aunt Cath, ‘Rudy shouldn’t have been alone. His friend left him.’ She would have taken comfort in that.

  I think it’s because deep down she feels as though she is the one to blame. She was giving you a hard time about your future and you lost your shit, threw a carrot at her face and left the house. That was the last time she saw you. She holds it against herself. Hell, she holds it against carrots and futures and kitchens. Dad won’t say a lot. He never does. I think this has to be my last letter, Rudy. There doesn’t seem like much point in going on.

  I love you. I miss you.

  Erin

  26 September

  Dear Rudy,

  It turns out I have more to say. Maybe it’s just this one letter, or maybe there’s more. But after today, I’ve got a lot to get off my chest. To start, I wish there were more definitive rules about hugging. There should be a single set of laws—universal policies, non-negotiable and strictly enforced. Immediate family: hugging is okay. Friends: hugs approved if you’ve known each other for at least a year. Friends of friends, work colleagues, distant relations or first introductions: hugging prohibited under any circumstances. If you don’t know a person, how do you know you want to share physical intimacy with them? I think a lot about hugging and in what situations it is going to be expected or thrust upon me. Today was one of the worst. Sometimes in new settings it is all I can think about—is this person going to hug me? Should I start backing away now to demonstrate my aversion to physical restriction, or should I go on the offensive and hug them first to get it out of the way? I’m the queen of the ‘should we hug?’ tango and the ‘one-arm, but bodies far away from each other’ hug. There is just too much pressure and uncertainty. And I reached my hug quota for the entire year today.

  I woke up this morning thinking a lot about that day last year. The worst day. When Mum got the phone call, Dad was out, and she screamed that scream that sounded like she had tapped into the pain of every person on earth. The memory of that morning has been part of my life every day since, and I think it always will be. When I’m feeling happy, it pops into my head to remind me not to be, and when I’m sad it makes itself right at home. I remember how I felt, lying in my room afterwards. The bed was hard and the pillows lumpy, as though they had decided not to comfort me at a time I needed comfort more than air. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t seem to get there. I was overwhelmed, but not in the kind of way that makes me cry. I just kept thinking, ‘why aren’t I crying?’ I hate that I didn’t cry when I heard about your death. Someone better, bigger, would have cried. Someone more worthy would howl and scream and roar. I was frozen, trapped, spinning and lost. Words, thoughts and feelings had exited my body and a shell was left sitting on my bed like a robot waiting to be rebooted. I thought about whether or not I’d have to go to school, and what was for breakfast. I thought about the Real Housewives finale, and whether I had any clean socks. My mind seemed to know I needed to ease myself into this moment slowly—too fast and I might die too. So I circled around it, touching it to see how much it hurt, and then backing away until I caught my breath enough to try again.

  I thought about Ollie. He was too young to lose his best big brother. He didn’t get enough of you in his skin, in his blood like I did. I got sixteen years of your mannerisms, quirks, words and bad habits. That day I remember wanting to do something. Desperately, I wanted to do something. But I didn’t know what. It was like there was something really important that I should do but I couldn’t find what it was.

  Today I cried. I cried really hard. I cried like I wish I’d cried when I found out you had died. It’s taken me a whole year to face the idea that you’re actually gone, and now I feel like it’s just happened. I’ve got a year’s worth of crying to do, so I’ll be crying for a while.

  Your memorial was nice, much nicer than your funeral. Or maybe not nicer, but definitely more like you. I read a summary of your life that Mum had written, but I was angry by the time it came to the end. It made it sound like you had lived a whole life, when you weren’t even halfway through. I wanted people to know there’s nothing poetic about your death. It’s all bullshit and it’s not right. It will never be right. Then, as I was standing at the podium, in front of our whole family and all our friends, I said something I didn’t mean to but also I really meant.

  I said, ‘Mitch, you’re dumped.’

  At that moment I didn’t see Mitch, even though I knew he was there, but I heard Aggie. She was sitting at the front next to Dee and she tried to make her snort laugh sound like a cough. I didn’t mean to say something that wasn’t about you, Rudy, but I think you would have liked the thing I said that wasn’t about you. You probably would have laughed and not even worried about making it sound like a cough. I sat down with Aggie and Dee, and Mum shot me a look that wasn’t angry. Then she got up and told her story about the day you were born.

  When it was all over I noticed Mitch wasn’t there anymore. I didn’t get a chance to speak to Dee or Aggie because I was being aggressively hugged by every distant relation I didn’t know I had, but I saw them and that was enough.

  I’m glad today is over now, Rudy. I miss you.

  Love, Erin

  5 October

  Dear Rudy,

  There’s something in the back of my throat. I can’t feel it when I sleep, or in those few moments as I’m waking before I remember what happened. All the rest of the time, though, it’s like dread, or a pulsating, spinning, black hole that sucks life out of every good moment. It makes it hard to swallow. It makes it hard to breathe. I don’t know if it will ever go away, but when I woke up this morning, it felt smaller. And I felt my whole body exhale.

  Maybe these letters are helping, like Dr Lim said they would, or maybe they are completely pointless because you don’t exist anymore to read them. Sometimes I think of you as somewhere far away, maybe Japan, because I know you always wanted to go there. But you’re not in Japan, are you Rudy. You’re in a little ceramic jar in Mum and Dad’s wardrobe and that’s it, forever. I’m mad about it, because it’s so wrong, and permanent, and out of my control. And I’m sad, of course; I’m still doing heaps of crying. But all of those feelings are starting to exist a little better along with my other feelings, like my school stress and social exhaustion and enjoyment of work. I do
n’t have to keep them locked away as much; they’ve lost a bit of their nuclear power.

  It’s like we’ve all been bracing ourselves, waiting for the impact of ‘one year on’. We’ve done a summer without you, a Christmas, all of our birthdays, a winter. It’s harder in some ways, because I’m starting to forget tiny details that I want to remember forever, like how you liked your tea. It was black, strong, but was it one sugar or two? I don’t know. I change my mind about it all the time. I bet you never thought you’d miss out on so much. That’s the most upsetting thing, I think, all of the things you’ll miss: my graduation, weddings, babies, Ollie’s whole life, basically.

  One day we’ll reach a point where you’ll have been dead for longer than you were ever alive, and that is unacceptable. You are supposed to be the one who helps me through the hard stuff. You’re supposed to babysit my kids when I need a break. You are supposed to be alive. You’re two years older than me so it’s acceptable for you to eventually be dead before me, but I’m supposed to be so old by that point that I can deal it. I would have coping tools by then. I would be able to look at your life and say it was ‘well lived’. Instead it’s always going to be ‘cut short’.

  I went to the jetty to take a look this morning. I walked all the way there. Mum had taken Ollie to soccer training and Dad was mowing the lawn. I can’t stand the sound of the mower, but that wasn’t the real reason I went. It felt important to be where you breathed your last breath, where you were taken from us. I imagined the darkness and the feeling of panic. They have fixed the jetty, by the way. It’s like it had never been knocked into the water by a one-million-dollar stolen boat at all. I thought about you splashing desperately, and I thought about you being still. I thought it would bring me some kind of feeling, peace or acceptance or something. All I could think was that it was an uneventful place to die, pretty grubby and not really that nice. It’s not as if you planned it, but still. If onlys will wreck my head if I focus on them too much. If only you’d found a way out of the water. If only you hadn’t come up with the idea of taking someone’s boat in the first place. If only you were less intoxicated. If only there’d been an early-morning jogger or a dog walker or a cyclist… If only things weren’t how they are, I guess. But I can’t change anything, so what is the point of thinking about that?