A Small Madness

by Dianne Touchell

  ‘Okay,’ Michael said. He didn’t care. What his father didn’t know was that Michael had dropped his after-school activities weeks ago. He spent those hours after school sitting under a tree on the school oval with Rose, talking about natural disasters and terrorist attacks. He had read somewhere that whenever there is a loss of life on a massive scale there are some people who use the opportunity as a cover for beginning a new life. They disappear, their remains are assumed pulverised, and they simply wander off to begin their new life with a brand new identity. Michael desperately wanted to be assumed pulverised.

  ‘Okay?’ His father slowly lowered the newspaper and looked intently at Michael over the top of his glasses. ‘Okay? Don’t you care about your after-school activities? Because if you don’t, I can think of something you do care about.’

  ‘I don’t think Michael meant—’

  ‘Shut up, Maureen!’

  Something happened then. Michael knew he wasn’t playing his father’s game by the rules. He was supposed to affect remorse and disappointment at the loss of these after-school privileges and then thank his father for giving him the opportunity to do better by graciously accepting his punishment. But Michael didn’t want to. He liked the risk of infuriating his father. He wanted to take control of something, of anything. So he said, ‘Take whatever you want, Dad. I don’t care. And don’t tell Mum to shut up.’ Michael said all this quietly but clearly, looking directly at his father. His father’s eyes popped open as if someone had smashed a plate behind him. Shock, followed by fury at being shocked.

  ‘I think you’re spending too much time with Rose,’ his father said, slowly standing up. ‘And I’ve heard she’s started smoking. Her lack of personal discipline is obviously a bad influence on you. You’re not to see Rose until after your exams. End of discussion.’

  His father began lowering himself back into his recliner just as Michael began to stand. For just a second Michael was struck by the comedy of it. It was as if he and his father were on a seesaw. Up, down, up, down. If he jumped off at the right time he could crack his father’s coccyx with so much force he’d feel it in his teeth.

  ‘No,’ Michael said, his heart thrashing like a kitten in a sack. ‘I’ll see Rose when I want to. I love her.’ He turned and was about to walk out of the room when his father started to laugh. A hard-edged, sour guffaw that hit Michael in the back of the throat like a swig of vinegar. This is it, Michael thought. This is the taste of being mocked.

  ‘You,’ his father managed to gulp out between breaths, ‘don’t even know what love is.’

  Michael lunged so quickly at his father that he managed to land one good punch before it was over. And it was over quickly. Michael’s father twisted Michael’s arm up behind his back, forced him facedown onto the carpet and pinioned him into position with a knee to the small of his back. His mother screamed. Tim bolted into the room. Michael could hear Tim pleading with their father to let him go; he could hear his mother crying; he could smell something burning. Had his mother left the iron facedown on a shirt again? Michael hoped it was one of his mother’s blouses burning. Dad always got so mad when she scorched one of his work shirts. He could feel his lungs burning – was that what he could smell? – as his father increased the pressure on his back. He was biting the inside of his cheek and he could taste the blood.

  Then it was over. His father was off him, staggering backwards. Michael rolled over onto his back, looked up at the ceiling and began to laugh. He laughed up at his father with such gusto that he sprayed blood from his mouth. From that angle his father just looked like an appalled old man. Michael had gotten off the seesaw at just the right moment.

  Michael realised that attracting attention through dissension was a mistake, even though he had lived off the adrenaline of laughing at his father for days after the incident. He recognised the madness within himself that Sunday. Recognised its little tap dance on his heart and on his tongue. But he couldn’t let it loose again.

  When Michael told Rose about it, she didn’t understand. She didn’t understand Michael’s joy at having bested his father, as he saw it, nor was she pleased at the shift this portended in Michael’s relationship with him. She wanted things to stay the same. The way they always had been. There was no reason why they shouldn’t.

  Rose was also becoming antsy about the fact that she and Michael weren’t having sex as often. The last time they had tried, Michael had noticed the tight swelling above her pubis. It was firm and obvious when Rose was naked and Michael had run his fingers across it until Rose had slapped his hand away. Then she had cried.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ was the only thing he could think to say and that sounded hopeless and insincere. Rose had rolled onto her side away from Michael and sobbed, ‘You don’t understand,’ which was, Michael had to admit, perfectly accurate.

  Rose wanted sex all the time now and even insisted on Michael using a condom which Michael told her was like closing the barn door after the horse bolted which made Rose cry even more because she didn’t know what it meant.

  Michael got up and dressed, watching Rose’s shoulders twitch and shake. He couldn’t get close to her for the very same reason she needed the closeness so badly. Neither of them knew what it meant. Rose eventually sat up, leaky eyed, and lit a cigarette.

  ‘You’re smoking in the house?’ Michael was appalled. ‘Your mum will smell it. You’ll get busted.’

  ‘She smells it.’ Rose inhaled deeply and used the heel of her hand to wipe a smear of mucous from her upper lip. ‘She pretends she can’t smell it and I pretend I don’t smoke. Works for everyone.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘Dad smells what Mum tells him he smells. When he’s around, that is.’

  Michael sat on the edge of the bed. He took the cigarette gently from Rose’s fingers and dropped it into a half-empty can of Red Bull on the bedside table. ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘I know. I love you too.’

  When Rose was caught smoking by Miss Douglas on the first day of the last term, she found herself in the unhappy position of being the one giving comfort. Rose had been in Miss Douglas’s English class three years prior and liked her enormously. Rose had had great potential. Miss Douglas had said so. Several times. So when Miss Douglas sidled around the Volkswagen bug Rose was squatting behind, and saw Rose on her haunches mid-drag, her face collapsed into a disappointment that hit Rose like a backhander.

  ‘Not you, Rose. Anyone but you.’

  Rose didn’t stand up quickly in a flurry of guilty fidget, as might have been expected. Her lack of urgency made Miss Douglas slump against the side of the car and drop her bottom lip just enough to make Rose think she might cry. Rose took another long drag before slowly standing up, limbs unfolding like a stick insect, and flicking her butt into the underbrush.

  ‘It’s all right, Miss Douglas,’ she said, each word in a robe of smoke. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Get in there and stand on that thing or you’ll start a fire. Then come with me.’

  They sat opposite each other in an empty classroom, Miss Douglas all fretful disappointment and Rose just a bit confused as to the fuss. Rose liked this room. It was the one the drama department used for read-throughs. It was a little darker today, blinds closed fast against the promise of unseasonal heat, ceiling fans fluttering the corners of school production posters, whiteboard blushing blue from erratic erasures. It was like a stage. Womb-quiet, just the faraway hum of students at lunch like an audience in pre-curtain anticipation. Miss Douglas and Rose the mummers, just travelling through briefly and only to entertain each other. Rose wondered if she could get out of this chair and sit on the floor instead. She felt more comfortable closer to the ground these days. Middle of the night Olive sat here on the floor, huggin’ this and howling. A grownup woman, howling over a silly old kewpie doll. That’s Olive for yer!

  ‘There’ll have to be a letter home to your parents. That’s procedure. But what I’m most concerned about, Ros
e, is that this just isn’t like you.’ Miss Douglas waited for Rose to confirm the incongruity.

  Rose felt she had to give her something, so she smiled the smile of someone choosing the emotion most likely to placate. She imagined herself holding out an icecream to a small sad child.

  ‘It’s all right, Miss Douglas.’

  ‘No Rose, it’s not all right. Something’s not right.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant exactly,’ Rose said, leaning forward slightly to confirm her commitment to the business at hand. ‘I know I shouldn’t have been smoking. I don’t even know why I was. I won’t do it again. Really.’

  ‘I hope not, Rose. It’s just not like you.’

  Rose realised that she didn’t appear to be who she was anymore and that this was far more disquieting to Miss Douglas than the cigarette itself. Rose had forced a perception shift on Miss Douglas and all that was required was for Rose to reassure this teacher that she, Rose, was indeed who she was, this anomalous incident notwithstanding.

  ‘You don’t look well either, Rose. You’ve lost weight, you’re pale . . .’

  ‘I have a virus in me.’ Rose heard herself interrupt a little more shrilly than she had intended and had to smile because it was funny.

  ‘What sort of virus?’

  ‘The sort that makes me thin and pale?’ Rose immediately regretted saying it. Miss Douglas looked hurt. She was trying to help. ‘Miss Douglas, I’m sorry. I’ve been a bit sick, and exams and stuff are . . .’ She trailed off. It occurred to Rose that she was going to have to be more careful. She was going to have to find the balance between vigilantly fighting the virus and not drawing attention to herself. Like being in the school play. She would stand before the crowd, footlights warming her toes, as the audience’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and saw not her but the character represented by her chosen costume. The character embedded in Rose, the costume permeating her skin, her fiction soaking right down to her organs. Deep into her, even to the virus. People see but they do not see.

  ‘Rose, is there anything you want to talk about?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want to talk to someone else?’

  ‘No.’

  Miss Douglas leaned back then and looked around the room. She herself remembered the pressures of final exams. This was a time for students to go a bit crazy. And stress-related illness was not uncommon. Still, something didn’t feel right here. ‘When’s your guidance counsellor interview?’

  ‘This week. Wednesday, I think.’

  ‘Okay.’ Miss Douglas stood then. ‘You need to take care of yourself, Rose. You need to get rid of this virus and start thinking about your future. And a letter will be going home to your parents about this. That’s all.’

  Rose recognised, with gratitude, the dismissal. When she got to the door she laid her hands on it because it felt cool and said, ‘I’m too old for lolly walking-sticks and hair ribbons. I’m blind to what I want to be.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  When Rose stepped onto the verandah, the heat hit her. Liv was sitting on a bench just outside. They didn’t speak.

  Rose always brought the mail in after school for her parents.

  Rose had been looking forward to the interview with the guidance counsellor. She needed application information for drama school. She wouldn’t be applying immediately. She knew she would have to work for a while, put some money aside, and maybe buy a car, but she wanted to be prepared and the anticipation of that preparation made her feel happier than she had in weeks. She was surprised to see Miss Douglas coming out of the office just before she, herself, was due to go in. She smiled, warmly, genuinely, at Miss Douglas. Miss Douglas touched her on the shoulder as she walked past.

  When Rose was seated in front of the counsellor she launched immediately into her plans. She found herself distracted by the fact that the counsellor kept scratching her own armpit, but Rose was determined to get all the information she needed. The counsellor began rummaging for pamphlets and contact information while Rose outlined her two-year plan.

  ‘I’ll work for a while, of course, and take drama classes. But my main goal is to be prepared for auditions by this time next year.’

  ‘It’s good to see someone who has a real plan, Rose.’ Sigh. ‘Here is all the information about the schools you’re interested in. Entrance criteria, course information. That sort of thing. And you’re not finding the last term stressful at all?’

  Rose didn’t respond immediately. She suddenly felt unfocused and had to pull herself back into the room and resettle her edges.

  ‘Rose? Are you having any trouble with your last term?’

  ‘No, no, not at all. I’m just excited.’

  ‘Well, good. That’s good.’ Scratch. ‘Come back if you need anything else. Okay?’

  Rose bumped into Tiffany and Holly on the way to her next class and they shrieked with excitement as she showed them the school brochures. She linked arms with Holly as she walked past Liv.

  Liv waited for Michael in the skate park after school. She knew he got off the bus and walked across the park to get home. She cut the last two classes of the day just to make sure she got there before him. It wasn’t cold but she found herself crawling with goose flesh.

  It was still called the skate park even though the cement bowl that had once been used for that purpose had long since been filled in and grassed over, and was now just a dimple in the earth covered with recycled rubber matting and a swing set. There were a couple of brick barbeques near the perimeter that no one ever used and two enormous trees that had been cordoned off with caution tape after they’d been ringbarked. The city was trying to save them. There had been articles in the local paper about tree doctors performing emergency grafts in order to pull the trees back from the brink. The caution tape made the park look like a crime scene. Liv and Rose used to come to the skate park regularly to see if the trees were healing.

  Michael didn’t see Liv immediately when he got off the bus. As usual, when one is not expecting to see the unexpected, his attention was selectively drawn to only those things which were familiar to him. The playground with the dark, spongy surface Michael thought must have looked like a giant thumbprint from space; the barbeques that were now just altars to bird shit; the caution tape barricading the trees he and Ryan had ringbarked last summer for a bet. Liv was sitting at the same picnic table Rose had been on the day she slapped him. When Michael saw her, he felt a rush of deja vu quickly followed by the urge to turn and walk in the other direction. He was suddenly and utterly fraught but, despite the desire not to, found himself moving steadily towards her.

  He’d decided to walk straight past Liv, when she climbed off the table, intercepting him with, ‘Mind if we have a chat?’

  Michael did mind. He minded a great deal. His lip curled. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to talk to you about Rose.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’

  Michael was walking past her when she said, ‘I know she’s pregnant. She says she’s not, but I know she is.’ And when Michael didn’t stop, ‘I told my mum.’

  Michael stopped then and he turned to face Liv. He didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not, but either way he was rapidly feeling a loss of control in this situation. He dropped his backpack and took a step towards her before saying again, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to know what you’re going to do about it. She’s making herself sick. She won’t talk to me. I thought maybe . . .’

  ‘You thought maybe what?’

  ‘I thought maybe you could talk to her for me. I want to help.’

  Michael laughed. A drop-stitch of breaths hard with sarcasm.

  ‘Let me bring you up to speed,’ he said. ‘You don’t know shit. And even if you did no one would believe a word you said. You’re just a sad slag dumped by the only friend you ever had. No one else talks to you, do they? Not even your boyfriends, before, during or after. Especially after.’
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  Liv had never really spoken to Michael before. They had shared insignificant banter on occasion, and exchanged nods and smiles in the hallway when he was with Rose. She had made certain assumptions about him because Rose loved him and she loved Rose. But now she was suddenly dizzy with adrenaline and when she tried to swallow she had no spit. Michael was stepping away from her and picking up his backpack. Liv rushed forward and without really thinking shoved him in the back before saying, ‘What the fuck?’

  He staggered forward but didn’t lose his balance. Liv was short-winded by the exertion and making small noises as she exhaled.

  ‘You . . . you . . .’

  ‘I what?’ he bawled. He turned to face her, moved closer to her, and dropped his voice to a hoarse monotone. ‘She’s not pregnant. She’s not sick. She’s not your business.’ Michael looked at Liv carefully. He looked in her startled eyes and then traced the perimeter of her face with his own. She was much smaller than he had thought. How was his perception of her so screwed? He’d thought she was taller than this, had more meat on her bones. But she was tiny. She must have put a lot of mettle into that shove.

  Then Liv said, ‘Rose is my friend,’ in a croaky, exhausted kind of way and Michael knew he was back in control of this conversation.

  ‘You are not Rose’s friend. You are a dirty little parasite with daddy issues. And you can tell that white-trash mother of yours anything you want. Just try and get her between tokes.’ Michael didn’t turn from Liv straightaway. He held her gaze, surprised to find her holding his. Then, unexpectedly, Liv moved in. Michael couldn’t explain it, but that tall, well-muscled perception of Liv that Michael saw flounced so thoroughly by his vilification suddenly returned, moved in behind her eyes even as he watched them. It would have been imperceptible from across a room, even from arms-length. A small hardening, a tiny self-satisfied turn of the mouth, and her palm resting flat against his chest. Michael didn’t even realise she had reached out to touch him until the touch had landed.