by PJ Mayhem
About half an hour into our park outing, Catherine announces she needs to phone Brian and moves away. She’s been prickly all day even for her—her texts about the time and place to meet were bordering on hostile. From where I’m playing with Sammy and Sonja I can see her pacing up and down the path that leads through the park. The latest model iPhone is firm against her ear. The tension in her face could be straining to hear or stress, I can’t tell.
‘For God’s sake, Brian, you should have thought about that sooner!’ she screams.
Definitely stress.
‘Sammy, I hear GI’s retired.’ The thought comes miraculously to mind in my desperation to distract the children from their mother.
‘I know, Aunty Fee, that was weeks ago.’
Of course he knew.
‘Well, that’s it then,’ Catherine declares, marching over.
My throat constricts and I feel like I’m going to vomit. What is she doing? Is she just going to blurt out their crisis in front of the children?
‘We’re not going to be able to go skiing in New Zealand with the other families during the holidays.’
‘Skiing in New Zealand! Seriously, Catherine, I thought something really awful was happening.’
‘It is awful! All the other school families we’re friends with are going. We’ll be ostracised as paupers. Sammy and Sonja won’t have any friends, no one will want to play with them. It’s a complete disaster. Not to mention the humiliation.’
And they call me dramatic.
I slip immediately into solutions mode. ‘Maybe Sammy and Sonja could each go with one of their friends? Then you’d only have to afford the stuff for them.’
‘Oh yes, that’s a great suggestion, Fiona. Looking like we have to put our children into care and they’re off on some charity holiday.’
I think I liked her better when she was being Mother Teresa.
‘What? Why are we going into care?’ Sonja screams.
‘Now look what you’ve done, Fiona.’
‘Oh for Buddha’s sake! It’s Kismet! Call me Kismet! That’s who I am, so get over it. And you created this situation, not me.’ My anger kick starts an internal emergency generator and I discover energy I didn’t think I had anymore. Lionel’s non-censoring is really coming to the fore.
‘Oh, get a real problem!’ Catherine screams as though hers is.
Yep, definitely liked her better when she was being all Mother Teresa but I don’t bite back. Compassion—even for Catherine, I remind myself.
I massage my temples. All this hostility has made my head hurt. Actually, it’s been hurting for weeks but this has made it worse.
31
I’m like a rubber ball, bouncing from practitioner to practitioner, trying to find an answer to something I can’t explain.
‘It’s so beautiful, they welcome you with a song,’ Megan had said dreamily at Enlightenment Day when she told me about Charisma, her past-life therapist, and his wife, Crystal.
The three of us are sitting on the floor of their lounge room, Charisma and Crystal with their legs crossed perfectly in lotus position on saffron-coloured cushions, me more like an oversized kindergartener, trying my best to behave. Being badly serenaded by Frankie is one thing but being strummed at on an out-of-tune guitar by these two, in their matching rainbow tie-dyed cheesecloth with their home-penned lyrics is something else. I feel like I’ve landed in the middle of a church youth group camp—they’ll probably sing ‘Kumbaya’ next.
Charisma stops strumming and puts the guitar down, a welcome relief, though short lived. He stands, raises his head, indicating for me to do the same, then takes both my hands in his.
He looks deeply into my eyes. ‘I think you’re ready.’ He leads me into the meditation room. ‘Can you feel the energy?’
He’s still holding my hand as I lower myself onto another saffron cushion. I’m careful to choose the one closest to the door. There’s something just slightly creepy about him. What if this is one of those free-love hippie scenarios?
Charisma explains how he’ll take me through a meditation that will lead me into my past-life regression. I close my eyes and he begins.
‘Allow yourself to relax into the comfortable embrace of this experience, knowing that in this lifetime you are safe, safe to journey through that which has come before this incarnation no matter—’
‘Charisma! Charisssmmmaaaa! Come here. I need you for a minute.’ Crystal’s voice cuts through the beginning of my meditation like a chainsaw. Gone is all trace of her gentle, calming manner. She sounds possessed.
‘Forgive me.’ Charisma slips out the door.
From what I can understand from Crystal’s screaming and Charisma’s attempts to sooth her, something or someone has escaped. Oh Buddha above—I do need to be more careful with my thoughts. Maybe I’ve manifested a sex-slave scenario. I should have never come into a room alone with a man dressed in cheesecloth, let alone a room with Sacred Sexuality brochures lying on the floor next to the meditation cushions, which I’ve only just seen. Despite Frankie’s amusingly out-of-tune rendition of The Police’s ‘Message in a Bottle’ the other week, he wasn’t Sting. I couldn’t image myself let alone Frankie in a blissed-out crowd of tantra types—dancing the divine, learning what he can do to my jade pavilion with his heavenly dragon stem that will make our inner flutes sing.
‘Here, kitty, kitty.’ Charisma’s calling alleviates my sex-slave scenario concerns. Still, I’m definitely going to add ‘Does not think attending Sacred Sexuality Workshops is a good idea’ to my What I Want and Need in My Next Male Love Relationship list when I get home.
There’s scuffling outside—quite a lot of it—followed by a strangled meow.
Charisma returns, small scratches on the inside of his arms and cat hair covering his top. ‘Apologies. We’re minding our neighbour’s prize Burmese. He escaped and was on the balcony ledge. I’m allergic but Crystal couldn’t cope by herself.’
Charisma’s sneezing, snuffling and scratching make it difficult for me to find the flow of my meditation but eventually I find my past-life path. I retrace until I am an advisor in a Chinese court, serving an emperor.
‘Charisssmmmaaaa!’ Crystal screeches again just as I am about to ask for an explanation of why I feel so connected to Frankie. Both Charisma and I can tell that the bloody Houdini of cats has escaped again.
‘I’m sorry,’ Charisma says. ‘Maybe we should make a time when we’re not cat-minding. I don’t know why he’s doing this; he’s never done it before. It’s like he’s set on throwing himself from the balcony. I think I need to give him some reiki, draw in some universal love energy to calm him down.’
‘I’ll give you a call,’ I lie. Suicidal Houdini cats and tantra definitely aren’t good signs.
‘No one was ever a housewife or an office worker or an accountant or council worker,’ Stephanie says when I meet her on Saturday afternoon and tell her about my past life in the Chinese Emperor’s court.
She has a point. When I think about it, I’ve never heard of anyone’s past-life regression bringing up something boringly ordinary. And even if she didn’t, I wouldn’t be taking her to task on it now. I’ve only told her as an amusing distraction; I knew she wouldn’t take it seriously and I’m happy to let her make fun of it.
When she’d taken a call from James, it was obvious just how badly she isn’t coping. She was all mushy and deferring to him. She hadn’t yelled at him once! Then I’d watched her gaze dance around the room, trying to run from the tears as she’d told me of her mum. ‘They’re saying she hasn’t got very long. Three months maybe, max. I always thought she’d be around till I was oldish and grey and she was older and greyer,’ Stephanie says, off past lives and back to those cut short.
I stir my coffee clockwise then anti-clockwise and watch the latte art swill into muddy milk, trying to think of something comforting to say. ‘Miracles happen.’ People say it all the time but it sounds so twee and you might as well be saying, ‘Oh wel
l, there’s no hope then—best you get praying.’ Besides, I’m sure Stephanie’s reaction would be much the same if I suggested her mother consider crystal healing: she’d probably lean across the table and strangle me. I know there’s nothing I can say that will make it better. I can’t fix it, words can’t fix it.
I lean over and take Stephanie’s shaking hand. Her chin quivers.
‘We think that life goes on forever, that tragedy only happens to other people, that other people’s mothers die young or things happen to other people’s families but not to your own. But you know what, Kismet? It does, it can happen to us.’
It’s more than grief with Stephanie, I realise. This is the first thing that’s ever happened to her that she didn’t have planned behind the doors of the Advent calendar of her life and she has no control over it. For Stephanie, that must be nearly as terrifying as facing her mother’s death.
We all had our challenges with family but Stephanie was right, you did just take it for granted that they’d always be there. I knew this wasn’t about me, still I couldn’t miss the message that it was another reminder not to keep hitting the snooze button on life.
32
I smell a rat—a dying rat. And so my week begins.
I tear around my kitchen with the fervour of a sniffer dog at a dance party, poking my nose into every nook, cranny and cupboard to rule out other possible explanations for the stench. Nothing. It could be the entire troupe of Riverdancing rats dead up there, from the power of the pong emanating from the thin layer between my place and the one above.
Someone must have Ratsaked them.
I’d really grown quite fond of them being there. Their middle-of-the-night scurrying had become comforting, because no matter what thoughts I had in the darkness, I didn’t ever feel alone.
I reach for a Kleenex. I can’t say if it’s the rat homicide or still feeling nauseous, tired and headachy whenever I’m not distracted from my life that is sending tears trickling down my cheeks.
I wade through Monday and the days that follow as though they’re wet concrete.
On Thursday night I catch up with Jane.
‘Sorry I’m late.’ I know Jane isn’t happy from the texts we’d exchanged. I was already on the back foot as I’d had to ask her to change from Bar Monk. I’m too brittle for a full-on noisy environment and I really just needed to go somewhere quiet that was easy for us to get to.
‘Fuck, Kiz, you look like shit,’ Jane says.
‘Not you too. Everyone’s saying that.’ More tears spike at my eyes as we hug. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I can barely keep it together.
‘With good reason. You really don’t look good, like unwell not good, not simply a bad hair day.’
‘I’m just tired and my life is one long bad hair day lately. Enough about me. Can you tell me who the big name in music you did the mural for was yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You know if it was John Farnham I’m not going to speak to you ever again.’ My words come out flat. I’ve lost my spark and I’m also trying too hard to be how I used to be, when I know nothing ever stays the same—well, almost nothing.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Jane says, changing the subject. ‘We’re here months later and the only thing that’s changed is you’re the one running late and you look like—well, I won’t say it again.’
‘I know, time just goes so fast.’
‘I’m not even going to blame Frankie. I’m not saying he’s not a fuckwit but one look at you and it’s obvious your problems are well beyond a man. Even during the worst of times I’ve never seen you like this.’
‘Can’t we talk about something else? Something fun, like what’s happening with you. How are things progressing with Baby Jane?’
‘No, this is serious, Kiz. I want you to promise me you’ll do something: go to the doctor and get yourself checked out. You must have loads of holidays banked up. Take advantage and take a break, I say.’
I promise to see a doctor then and again as we say goodbye, which makes Jane happy. I just don’t promise when.
The next day begins with what has to be the most painful meeting of my life. I struggle to stay awake as Broomstick babbles on, praising her compliance strategy as though it will save the world from war and starvation. Perhaps it’s just an accumulation of all the meetings lately and I’ve hit a toxic level of Boring Meeting Syndrome. We’re about to enter the third hour, so I wouldn’t be surprised. Sitting here listening to her go on really is the last thing I want to be doing. I’m so over compliance that I don’t care whether we’re moving towards it, strategically prioritising it or fraudulently filling out paperwork and manufacturing documents to look like we’re achieving it.
‘Well, that shouldn’t matter as most students wouldn’t know if a lecturer is good or not.’ Broomstick’s jowls flap as she scoffs at ‘Point 8: Monitoring Student Satisfaction’.
‘We do need to ensure some level of student satisfaction.’ I try to keep the murderous venom from my voice. Didn’t she get that students pay her inflated salary? (Desmond wasn’t backward in telling any of us what they paid her—sometimes I wonder if dealing with confidential information is really a job he should have.)
‘Fiona, we’re not running a party,’ she snaps.
Oh for Buddha’s sake! Like anyone would have invited her if we were.
I refuse to let Broomstick know she’s getting to me, so I close my eyes and take a deep breath, drawing in all the strength and haughtiness I can muster. I roll my shoulders back, sit tall and, with all the outward calmness of Amethyst leading a meditation, say, ‘I didn’t say we were, Dr Raynard, but it is a private college, a business, so we rely on students—’
She cuts me off with a scowl and her bitter words come at me like bullets, ‘And your qualifications to speak on that are, Fiona? If you look to the agenda you’ll note that you are only here for administrative and procedural reference.’
Higher ground, I remind myself and take another deep breath.
As the meeting moves on, the pleasure she takes in any opportunity to humiliate or degrade me is obvious. She may as well be licking her finger and stroking a point in the air with each put-down.
This is an excellent opportunity to practise getting used to dealing with confrontation and not censoring myself. If I wasn’t dragging the last of my strength up from the bottom of the barrel to keep it together and not humiliate myself by letting Broomstick know she’s humiliating me, I might have been grateful for the opportunity and whatever lesson Spirit was trying to teach me here. But the reality is that I feel far more like walking out, especially when she pulls a face at me after I agree with a comment she makes.
It isn’t a good day to be robbed of my workday sliver of sanity—my lunchtime trip to the gym—but with only fifteen minutes’ respite until we’re due back in the meeting, all I have time for is to run down and see Bing.
‘You won’t believe what that old bitch said to me,’ I say and laugh. Turning it into an amusing anecdote will help—it always does.
‘What?’ Bing looks up as I pace by the counter. ‘Oh Mei Mei, what’s wrong?’
I touch my face and realise there are trails of tears down my cheeks so fine that I hadn’t known they were there.
Bing puts down my cup, comes around the counter and forces me to stand still as he wraps his arms around me.
I dissolve, I knew I would, tears soaking the shoulder of his shirt as I take heaving sobs. Broomstick’s abuse is really just the icing on the freaking untenable cake. I feel like I can no longer breathe, I’ve got no life anymore, I can no longer even hope to muster the energy to complete a job application and I can’t quite get over the disappointment of how those ‘perfect jobs’ became so hopeless at the interviews. I feel trapped and I have no idea what I’m going to do or how I’m ever going to escape.
That’s what I’d tell one of my Spiritual Support Pit Crew but it’s Bing who’s hugging me—I’d never say any of that to anyone
I didn’t pay.
‘Kill me now! Broomstick’s a fucking bitch,’ I say instead, laughing to stop the tears.
‘I kill her now! Anyone that upset my Mei Mei is a goner.’ Bing turns his hand into a pistol, making shooting actions. Bing likes to think he knows people, but it’s just a tough-guy fantasy he entertains. The truth is he’s about as bad boy as Bau Bau having a tantrum in his bassinet.
By Sunday I’ve moved beyond Broomstick.
‘Is it an all-female gym you go to, Fiona?’ Frankie asks as I stand at the counter of PGGG.
I give an inner scoff. My world is filled with too many women as it is. It’s a bit off the middle of the road but I’m hoping he might be writhing internally with jealousy at the thought of me on the gym floor with other men. ‘No, it’s called Definition.’ I don’t know how it is that Frankie and I even started talking about our exercise routines.
‘That’s a great name for a gym.’
Two more items for my mental list of Endearing Things About Frankie—‘animated’ and ‘likes words’.
He fills me in on his preferred exercise routine. A wave of concern about whether I’d be able to keep up with him flies up my thighs at his mention of spin classes. The only time I tried one, I thought I was going to die in any of three ways: as a sweat spot on the uncomfortably pointy little bike seat or of a heart attack or heat stroke. Not that I’ll mention that to Frankie. I’ll deal with any stamina issues in my own way, should—Goddess willing—the chance ever arrive.
Despite my concerns, the intimacy level of this interaction is quite good, very good in fact: an overall 8 out of 10.
Mutual Smiling: 8.5—I really do like the way his smile crinkles his eyes.
Conversation: 8—Free-flowing and a good deal of personal information shared but not earth-shatteringly exciting or romantic, although a big leap beyond our previous efforts, so I gave an extra point for that.
