Under Rose-Tainted Skies

by Louise Gornall

‘You don’t look very sick,’ the guy says as I scrawl my name in thick black letters. It doesn’t fit neatly on the little dotted line. My nails find a scab on my wrist and start picking as his eyes saunter down my scantily clad frame, lingering on my legs.

  ‘How grossly inappropriate of you to notice,’ I reply, fighting hard to keep my voice even.

  I’m not surprised by his comment. It’s not the first time I’ve heard it. I mean, I’m pasty, sallow, reasonably tall at five foot six, and my mom would say as thin as a rake. Social Convention dictates that I must deny being pretty, but I am . . . pretty. It’s one of the only things I have that makes me feel normal. Of course, I pervert that normality by embracing my looks. I’m supposed to pretend that I’ve never noticed my face. I see it happen on The Hub all the time: a person tells someone else that they’re pretty, and they deny all knowledge, refute the compliment into oblivion, but hell-to-the-no am I ever doing that. This is mine, one of the only things about me that I actually like. I own it. And Social Convention will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands before I ever give it up.

  The thing is, Helping Hands has a roster of housebound clients who are all on the far side of sixty. And most are undergoing some pretty intense treatments. As far as looking sick goes, people generally think I don’t. I have what Dr Reeves calls an invisible illness.

  ‘Much feistier than the norm,’ Helping Hands Guy tells me. I steady myself against the countertop, moving as slowly as I would if he were a lion and I were a lamb. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to respond, so I say nothing. He doesn’t seem to mind. ‘Cool pictures.’ He nods in the direction of the two art nouveau prints hanging on the wall at the other side of the room.

  ‘Thank you.’ I’m trying not to be hostile. It’s hard. His personal comments are still circulating, and my mind has started asking questions that I can’t answer.

  ‘You paint them?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’ The pictures are originals. Given to my grandma the Christmas before she died by the artist himself, Franz Muto. He’s not much of a big deal . . . yet. He’s hoping that’ll happen the day after he dies. My gran talked about Franz all the time. I know I could elaborate on my sharp response, tell Helping Hands Guy half a dozen stories about these particular pieces of art, but my brain is too busy trying to work out what he’s still doing here. I’m fixated on the idea that he’s waiting for a tip. Trying to work out how much. Considering what will happen if he’s not waiting for that and finds the suggestion offensive. ‘Yeah. Anyway. Good talk.’ He rolls his eyes at me. ‘I’ll see myself out.’ Helping Hands Guy flicks his eyebrows once, and with that, he leaves.

  Wait.

  My eyes dart around the room like ping-pong balls.

  Wait.

  Countertop: clear.

  Kitchen island: clear.

  Floor: clear.

  Where are my groceries?

  ‘Wait!’

  Panic turns my dart to the front door into a tangled stumble of lanky limbs. I thwack my hip on a chair and stub my toe on the skirting board.

  Alas, it’s all in vain. I fling the door open just in time to see Helping Hands Guy pull his truck away from the kerb. The grocery bags lined up against the side of my house make a brief appearance in my peripheral vision. ‘Wait!’ I scream, but my voice is drowned out by the sound of maggot rock music blasting from his stereo. And then he’s down the road, around the corner.

  Gone.

  ‘Wait,’ I whisper to the wind.

  You might think that now that sustenance has been thrown into the mix, my debilitating agoraphobia will take a back seat to my survival instincts. You’d be wrong.

  I reach for the phone, stab in the number for Helping Hands, jaw clenched so tight it’s a wonder my teeth don’t shatter. It’s 6.05. I already know no one will pick up because their office shuts at six on Sundays, but I plough on through because panic is a vast, solid mass inhabiting my mind and there is no room for common sense. I dig a nail into my thigh and scratch until I feel a sting.

  The phone rings twice before an automated voice apologizes and tells me I should call back at 7.00 a.m. tomorrow. I slam the phone down, making the vase of fresh flowers on the end table shudder, only to pick the phone back up again, sense still AWOL.

  Dr Reeves gave me her number six months ago, after our first appointment. She said it was for emergencies. I’ve never used it, mostly because I have trouble deciphering what your average Joe considers an emergency.

  My thumb hovers above the number two button. We have her on speed dial.

  I mean, there is next to no food in this house and Mom won’t be back until Tuesday. Plus, there’s this whole countywide bear warning since a couple of trash cans were wrecked during the small hours one night last week. We’ve been double-bagging our garbage as a precaution. All that food out there, sweltering in the sun. It’s basically an invitation. This is an emergency. It is.

  I hit the button and am greeted by voicemail.

  Damn it. I slam the phone down for a second time, abuse that it somehow survives intact.

  Then I start pacing. Up and down the hall, chewing more holes in the side of my mouth and tearing strips off my nails.

  Pace. Chew. Pace. Chew.

  I stop, steal a glance through the window and out on to the porch, where I can see the three brown paper bags. A packet of luncheon meat is starting to sweat; a carton of eggs is no doubt boiling in the still-blistering heat. Even in the early evening, the California sun is merciless.

  A buffet of smells permeating the air, calling out to a bunch of ravenous brown bears.

  I have to get the bags.

  I march over to the linen closet. I need clothes, something longer. Something that will cover my legs. Something that will cover me, hide me, make me feel less exposed. I grab the first mass of wool I find and pull it over my head. It drops all the way down past my knees. Perfect. I shudder in the warmth of it.

  There’s a reason the whole imagine-your-audience-in-their-underwear thing works. It makes the speaker, the possessor of clothes, feel like the strongest one in the room. There’s a vulnerability that comes from showing skin.

  The sweater is one of Mom’s eighties throwback knits that she keeps handy for laundry days and lazy days. It feels like iron filings scratching against my skin. Two giant teddy bears flashing serial-killer smiles are embroidered on the front.

  I grab the broom from the closet and head back over to the door.

  Just like fishing, I think as I kneel on the floor and stretch the broom towards the bags. Except I’ve never been fishing, so I have no idea what that’s like.

  Hard, if it’s anything like this. I lie on the floor inside, manipulating the space so only my arms are exposed to the fresh air. I have trouble hooking the broom head around the bags. And when I do hook one, the bag is too heavy to drag.

  I lose my grip on the brush handle for the trillionth time and it clatters to the ground. A whimper escapes my lips as I look hopelessly at the grocery bags: boulders, refusing to budge.

  ‘Do you need some help?’ I’m drenched in shadow, and boots with steel toecaps take three steps on to the porch.

  Three steps.

  That’s awkward. He leaves his back leg trailing behind. I wish he would bring it forward and make it four steps even. My eye twitches.

  ‘Can I help?’ I can’t look up to see who’s talking to me because anxiety has my chin stapled to my chest, but when I flick my eyes left I can see his reflection in the window. It’s New Boy from next door. He has dimples, and a mop of shaggy dark hair falls casually over his left eye.

  His feet meet, four steps, and my focus is free, running wild like a liberated stallion.

  ‘No. No, thank you.’ In context, this might be the dumbest thing I have ever said. ‘I mean . . .’ Deep breath. ‘I mean . . .’ What do I mean? I feel flushed, like I’ve just dipped my face in the centre of the sun.

  Another breath as I stand up, back up, and steady myself against the door fram
e. I straighten my sweater, pulling it down and trying to cover everything above the soles of my feet. No amount of hugging my torso can hide the two giant teddies.

  I can feel his eyes on me. Probably curious about my attire. Definitely confused as to why I’m fishing for grocery bags on my front porch.

  ‘Could you please pass me those bags?’ I talk to my feet, suddenly wishing I’d painted my toenails when I’d planned to last night.

  ‘Sure,’ he says. I lift my eyes a little, discover jeans ripped at the knees and a belt with a Superman buckle. My lips pull into a slight smile. Superman is my favourite superhero.

  ‘You need me to carry them inside?’

  ‘That’s okay.’ I snatch the bags from his hands and pull them tight against my chest. A wave of relief washes over me, and I feel my shoulders slump.

  ‘Thank you. Really. Thank you.’ There’s way too much gratitude in my tone, but I can’t rein it in.

  ‘No worries,’ he replies. If he has questions, he doesn’t ask them, at least not out loud.

  A thousand years of silence pass between us. Cotton mouth sets in. My fingers find the seam of one of the bags and pick at it.

  ‘Anyway.’ He clears his throat. ‘We just moved in next door. Mom insisted I come over and say hi, assure you I don’t drive a motorcycle or play the drums, that sort of thing.’ He laughs. I like the way it sounds. ‘You know how parents are.’

  ‘Yeah. Parents.’ I force a laugh too, and it comes out as a snort. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alien. Or looked more alien. Hair still wet from my shower, pale, shoulders hunched, gangly legs twisting inwards. I wish he would leave. My heart keeps missing beats.

  ‘It’s Luke, by the way.’ He holds out his hand, retracts it when I clutch the brown bags tighter. There’s a silver ring on his middle finger, and my eyes are drawn to it like magnets. It’s gaudy. Thick and bedazzled with diamanté. It might be a football ring, which is kind of confusing because he seems a little too emo to be jock.

  And then I am lost. My crazy mind forgets he’s in front of me and starts trying to figure out if emo and jock can coexist inside the same skeleton. I feel my face crumple.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Mental slap. I clear my throat, decide against trying to pigeonhole him.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you, Luke.’

  ‘It’s nice to meet you too . . .’ He pauses. Nothing happens again for the longest time, until I realize I’ve missed the most basic of social cues. Talking to boys is much harder than it looks on TV.

  ‘Norah,’ I bark when it finally hits me. ‘My name is Norah.’

  ‘Well, Norah, I’m here to assure you that I don’t play the drums.’

  Say something redeeming.

  ‘Pity. I hope it’s okay that I do. Really loud. Mostly on Sunday mornings.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘No.’ I smile. I don’t know if he’s smiling back, but I’m kind of hoping he is.

  ‘You’re funny.’

  ‘It’s both a blessing and a curse.’ I definitely hear him scoff a laugh.

  ‘So, I guess I’ll see you around, Neighbour.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ I lie. He leaves, and I slither back into the safety of my house.

  ‘Whoa.’ I exhale.

  Something warm fizzes like seltzer in my stomach as I watch him through the window, drifting down my driveway.

  The grocery-bag debacle and an overabundance of human contact has straight up sucked out all my energy. It takes a lot of battery power to keep your mind and muscles on high alert like that, so I drag my burnt-out body to bed. I collapse on my mattress, and, like a cotton cloud, it swallows me.

  The hours roll on by as I watch soap opera reruns. I don’t sleep. Oh no. That would be way too simple.

  Instead my brain turns to porridge. My eyes mindlessly follow the characters moving around the TV screen, even after they’ve lost definition and morphed into brightly coloured blobs.

  The moon crashes back to earth, and the sun assails the sky.

  I’m watching threads of bright yellow light forcing their way through the cracks in my curtains when my phone rings. Through gritty eyes I see Mom’s ID flashing on the screen. It’s 6.00 a.m.

  ‘Norah, honey?’ Mom’s voice, soft and sweet, comes over the other end of the phone. I’m barely conscious, but my brain, always firing on full, catches the faint wail of a foghorn buried beneath the sound of calm.

  Something is wrong. This is the same tone she used when I came home from my first day in second grade and she told me Thumper, my poor pet rabbit, had succumbed to a stroke.

  ‘Mom, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Did you get any sleep?’ Small talk. That’s it. All the signs point to tragedy.

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘Some.’

  I count out the following fifteen seconds of silence in my head.

  ‘Mom. Is something wrong?’

  ‘Don’t freak out,’ she says, and my heart charges. Like someone just zapped a million volts through my body, I sit upright. My free hand grips my sheets. A vocal tic rolls up my chest, pushed by pressure, until it flops from my mouth and I moan like Frankenstein’s monster.

  ‘Hey. Come on,’ Mom says, her tinkling-bell tone now reinforced with sheets of steel. ‘Take some deep breaths or you’re going to pass out.’

  ‘Tell me what’s happened.’

  ‘Remember perspective? You’re talking to me right now so it can’t be that bad, right?’ she says.

  ‘Mom.’

  ‘Everything is okay, baby, I promise.’

  ‘Mom!’

  ‘There was a small collision.’

  My mind morphs into those giant, foamy waves you see in disaster movies smashing hard against rocks.

  ‘Norah, listen to me.’

  I can’t.

  She’s saying things, but I can only hear the sound of squealing brakes and crunching metal. ‘Are you—’ I cut her off while she’s mid-rant about some dick driver who ran a red light and ploughed straight into the side of her ancient Ford Capri. ‘Are you okay?’

  I stumble out of bed. Like I’m trapped in the middle of a tornado, spinning, trying to find a glass of water, trying to find a paper bag, trying to find my bearings, which I’m pretty sure are whizzing around my room independently of my body.

  ‘A little scratched up. But the doctors are taking great care of me.’

  ‘You’re in hospital?’

  That’s bad. Hospitals are for sick people. This is bad.

  My brain shuts down; my muscles stop working. My legs crumble beneath me, and my knees slam into the floor.

  ‘Norah. Norah, what was that bang? Talk to me.’

  I crawl along the carpet, all breathless and sweating like the chick trying to escape a psycho in a horror movie. I squeeze myself into the small space between my bed and dresser where I turtle up, put my head in my lap, and try to space my breathing. My fingers find an old, flaking scab on my knee and pick it until it bleeds. I need the sting to bring me back, force me to relax, but it doesn’t.

  ‘Sweetie, listen to me. I’m fine. I. Am. Fine.’

  I cannot compute ‘I’m fine’. Hospitals are for sick people.

  ‘Mom,’ I say through bursts of sobs. Tears roll over my lips. I get splash-back every time I blow out a breath.

  ‘Have I ever lied to you?’ she asks.

  I don’t answer. She’s trying to overthrow the anxiety with facts.

  ‘Norah. Have. I. Ever. Lied. To. You? Answer me.’

  ‘No.’ I have to listen now. It’s been said. It’s out there. An alternative thread of logic that I can’t ignore. Sometimes I imagine my mind is an arena, and there’s a droid in there, stomping around, looking all high and mighty, fending off anything logical that tries to invade its space. But then, every now and again, common sense sneaks in. It too is a droid. It carries a sword to cut things down.

  ‘Trust me now, okay? It’s nothing serious,’ Mom says, overenunciating every word.
‘I’m all right. You’re all right. We’re all right. Say it with me.’ She begins the reassurance spiel again, but my lips aren’t quite ready to make real sentences.

  She chants the words three times before I find my voice and join in. The heel of my hand drums against the side of my head, trying to make the words stick.

  ‘I’m all right. You’re all right. We’re all right.’ I sound like I’ve been swigging liquor for a solid week.

  ‘Baby, it’s going to be okay. I’m going to be home soon. The doctors just want to keep me for a few days, a week, tops.’ A small collision. They don’t keep you in the hospital for a whole week following a small collision. They turned my gran out after only six days, and she’d had a fricking heart attack. There’s more to this.

  ‘Are you hurt bad? You can be honest with me. I can handle it,’ I lie.

  ‘Nah, baby. I promise. They’re just being thorough, probably taking advantage of my insurance.’

  She’s not going to tell me why they want her to stay in so long. She’s trying to protect me. I may never know the full extent of her injuries, and while I’m 100 per cent certain this will save my sanity in the long term, right now it sends me into a spin.

  My breath hitches. This can’t be happening.

  I wince and let my body sink lower. Pressing my back against the drawers, I bring my knees up to my chest and hug them tight. I like how sturdy the wood feels against my back. I like how small I feel squashed against the floor.

  ‘Norah,’ she snaps; it feels like a sharp slap. ‘Listen to me. We’re not freaking out about this, right?’ I nod. Pointless because she can’t see me. ‘I’m safe here. You’re safe there, like always. You don’t have to leave the house. You don’t have to do anything but sit tight and make believe this conference is lasting a little longer than expected. You’re all right. Say it back to me?’

  Mom refuses to hang up the phone until she can hear steadiness in my voice. I’m not so selfish that I can’t fake it and let her get back to her sickbed. She’s tired. I can tell by the croak that starts to punctuate her words.

  ‘Dr Reeves is going to come over today, okay?’ she says. ‘Just to make sure you’re all right. You’re not alone, Norah. We wouldn’t leave you alone, okay?’ I hum, let her know I’m listening, but between me and myself, I can barely understand a word she’s saying. She tells me she loves me and that we’ll talk later.