Head Over Heels

by Felicity Price

  How about we meet next week or the week after?

  From the padded cell in the loony bin

  Liz

  I emailed her right back with the dates I was free and immediately felt better, delighted I wasn’t the only one feeling that way.

  Moments later, I felt like I was right in the loony bin along with her when Tracey put a call through from Ted Philips, the poo-pond man.

  ‘There’s been a bit of a problem,’ he said.

  ‘You mean you’re not getting any funding interest?’

  ‘Well, while Phil says he’s won a few Brownie points — excuse the pun — for backing an environmental cause, so far no one wants to associate their name with a sewage initiative. But we haven’t given up. I’m actually phoning about another problem.’ There was a pause.

  ‘So, what is it?’

  ‘There have been some issues with the converter — you know, the pressure-cooker thing I told you about.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ I said fearfully. I’d only had one experience with a pressure cooker and it was not a good one. The entire contents — a rather stunning preparation containing chick peas and root vegetables — had ended up splattered across the ceiling and kitchen walls looking like a very bad postmodernist painting.

  ‘Well, it malfunctioned overnight and there was a bit of an explosion.’

  ‘A bit of an explosion?’ I hoped he wasn’t about to tell me what I feared to hear: that the shit had literally hit the fan.

  ‘Yes. The sludge has gone everywhere and I’m worried the neighbours might notice the smell.’

  ‘The neighbours? But they’re a long way away.’

  ‘I know. But the pong is pretty powerful. This could ruin our resource consent for getting the big plant built next year.’

  ‘You’re darn right it could, Ted. People don’t take too kindly to having the very identifiable odour of human waste wafting in their living-room windows. Is there anything you can do to stop the smell?’

  ‘It’s too late for that. I didn’t find out about it until this morning. I could smell it when I drove through the gate and I knew immediately that something was wrong. I shut everything off, of course, and did my best to contain it, but the damage had already been done.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, knowing full well that trouble lay ahead. My mind started running through the options for getting him and his project out of the crap. ‘First of all, you’d better go see the neighbours and apologise. You need to be able to explain what went wrong and reassure them somehow it won’t happen again. That’s assuming it won’t happen again, of course?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think so. I’ve isolated the malfunction. It was a faulty temperature gauge …’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘Well, I’m as sure as I can be. I’ve got another gauge being installed right now and the technician assures me it’s one hundred per cent good.’

  ‘Okay, so you can tell them that, and apologise profusely. Are there many neighbours?’

  ‘Five. We’re out in the country here, mostly. There aren’t that many houses.’

  ‘Then you need to start getting around all of them and calming them down before they ring up the media,’ I continued. ‘I’ll draft up something just in case the media do get wind of it …’

  Ted laughed at the double entendre, relieving the tension. I smiled briefly and ploughed on, checking with him he knew what to say when he went to see the neighbours and how to say it. ‘And Ted, please change out of those overalls you usually wear.’

  ‘Yeah? What should I wear then?’

  We discussed his limited wardrobe and agreed on a clean pair of jeans and a checked work-shirt, with his usual padded sleeveless jacket over the top. At least he might look vaguely respectable for a man who specialised in stirring up poo.

  Chapter 29

  The rest of the afternoon flew by, with Ted checking in with me after every visit, and I arrived home without the faintest idea of what to cook for dinner. Dad greeted me in the hallway in a bit of a fluster, puffing and looking red-faced and anxious.

  ‘What’s the matter, Dad? You look like you’ve run a half marathon.’

  ‘Och, I’m fine, lassie,’ he said between puffs. ‘Just been hurrying inside from the shed, that’s all. I heard the car and wanted to be here to greet you.’

  Well, that sounded a bit odd. Dad never rushed to greet me as a rule. He was usually asleep in front of the telly at this hour, waiting for the dinner fairy to come home and feed him. But I had other things on my mind so I let it pass.

  ‘Is Adam home? Or Charlotte?’

  He didn’t know, he said, which seemed even odder. Even in the narrow little world he had begun to inhabit, he was usually aware if either of his grandchildren were around. I called out their names. Silence, save for the excited pitter-patter of Tigger feet skidding to a halt in front of me. I ran upstairs and the pitter-patter followed. Adam was in his room, head bobbing between the two computer screens he now used. I’d warned him he was beginning to look like he was running a call centre but he didn’t seem to care.

  ‘Hi Adam.’

  He grunted, giving only a cursory nod in my direction.

  ‘Have you fed Tigger?’

  There was another grunt, accompanied by a shake of the head.

  ‘Where’s your homework then?’

  He picked up an exercise book and textbook that had been languishing on the floor.

  ‘Well, please get on with it.’

  I stood and watched while he went through the motions of opening the book in front of him, amid much sighing.

  ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on you. I’m just going to change.’

  He grunted again and I departed, leaving the door wide open so I could spy on him from the hallway.

  Sure enough, on my return he was playing on his computer again.

  ‘Come on, that’s enough. I said …’

  ‘But I am doing my homework, Mum. I have to write it down and the teacher said it’s fine if I type it and print it off from the computer. My writing’s so bad it probably saves him hours trying to decipher it.’

  ‘All right, you win. But I’m going to be watching you. You spend far too much time on the internet and gaming and I’m going to try to be a better parent and limit it.’

  He looked at me, horrified.

  ‘Nobody else’s mother limits time on the computer,’ he said. ‘In fact, most of them think it’s good that we’re doing something useful and staying off the streets.’

  I heard the back door bang; Charlotte must be home.

  I refrained from telling Adam I’d much rather he spent a bit of time outside, on the streets or otherwise, instead of closeted away in his room whenever he wasn’t at school.

  ‘Well, I’m going to be keeping a closer eye on you. I promised that teacher I would.’

  He groaned and went back to his book. I watched him for a moment or two then went downstairs to find something in the freezer to cook for dinner. I suspect Adam put his book away again the moment I left, but I reckoned that, short of standing over him with a Taser, there was only so much you could do to police a teenage boy.

  I could hear Charlotte throwing her bicycle helmet and bag on the kitchen floor as I came through the door.

  ‘Hi honey, how’s …’ I got no further because at that moment she flung herself into my arms and burst into loud, shaking sobs.

  ‘Goodness, what’s the matter? Is it the baby? Have you …?’

  The sobbing got even louder. I looked for signs of blood, of a miscarriage, of something else wrong with her. Nothing.

  ‘It’s him,’ she wept. ‘He’s such an evil, double-crossing, two-timing bastard, I wish I could kill him … and her.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Yes, I want to kill them both. And I thought she was my fri-eeeeend.’ She trailed off into more sobbing.

  ‘Who? What’s she done?’

  ‘Justine. She’s in my art history class. The class that Pe
ter takes.’ She spat out his name as if it were poison.

  Did I detect a change in her attitude? Filled with hope, I disentangled myself from her limpet-like grasp and stood back a little to look at her. It wasn’t a pretty sight. My usually super-cool daughter was a mess — her eyes red from crying, her hair flat from her helmet, her cheeks blotchy and streaked with rivulets of mascara.

  ‘Come on, honey, let’s go sit down in the lounge and you can tell me all about it. I’ll get you some water.’

  I negotiated around the bag and bike helmet to get a glass and fill it with water, then took it to her in the darkened lounge, where she was quivering pathetically on the couch. I turned on the light but she shrank from it so I switched it off again and sat next to her, putting my arm round her consolingly.

  It was a while before she spoke as she struggled to bring her tears under control. At last she said, ‘I should have seen it coming.’

  ‘What, honey? What should you have seen coming?’

  ‘The pair of them, Justine and Peter. I should have known she was up to something, the way she smirked every time she saw me.’

  ‘And why would she do that?’

  ‘Because she was seeing him, of course.’ She turned to me, her eyes bright with righteous indignation. ‘She stole him off me!’

  ‘But how do you know …’

  ‘Because I saw them having coffee together in the student café.’

  ‘But there’s nothing untoward in that, surely? I mean, it’s just a cup of coffee.’

  ‘I could tell. It was the way he started with me too, just a cup of coffee in the student café. And I watched them leave together, heading off towards his secret apartment …’

  ‘What? He has an apartment on campus to lure young students into?’

  She looked shocked, as if she had just realised the implication of this. Then she shrugged. ‘Pretty much. Just across the road.’

  ‘But he might not have actually taken her there.’

  ‘Oh, he did. No doubt about it.’ She looked embarrassed for a minute. ‘I followed them.’

  I smiled. ‘Good on you.’

  ‘He did exactly what he did with me. He went into the apartment building first while she walked off around the corner, then she came back five minutes later and entered using the key he’d given her.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  I felt like shaking her for being so gullible and walking right into the tarantula’s trap, but it was too late now. It was the smug little Justine who needed to be warned. ‘Does Justine know he got you pregnant?’

  ‘No way! I haven’t told anyone at uni. And now I never will.’ She started crying again, more softly this time.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Because there isn’t going to be a baby. I’d rather die than have Peter’s baby.’ She spat out his name with utter contempt.

  ‘Oh. You’re sure about that?’

  ‘You bet I’m sure.’ She turned to me. ‘Will you come with me when I go see the doctor about getting rid of it? I don’t think I can do it on my own.’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  She looked at me gratefully and patted my hand. ‘Thanks Mum.’ She sat up straight, blew her nose on one of the tissuesI’d brought over and took a large gulp of water. ‘I feel a lot better now that I’ve said I want to get rid of it. I didn’t think I’d be able to.’

  ‘You’re very brave, Charlotte. But we’ll have to get a move on. There isn’t too much time.’

  ‘I know.’ She put down the soggy tissues and looked businesslike, as if she was formulating an action plan. ‘I’ll phone and make an appointment first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

  ‘Just be there for me, Mum, that’s all. And don’t tell Dad.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No, I mean it. You mustn’t tell Dad. He’d kill me.’

  It wasn’t hard to agree. I didn’t think I could cope with Steve’s fury on top of everything else.

  • • •

  It’s just as well I’ve got understanding business partners because the rest of the week was taken up with a flurry of appointments: seeing the doctor at the student health centre; then a specialist in a busy part of town where it was nigh on impossible to get a park; then another specialist whose chambers were right next to the hospital, making it even more impossible to get a park; and finally a shrink, who Charlotte had to convince she would suffer tremendous psychological and emotional harm if she had to keep the baby. I had to hand it to her, she did a great job, but I also got the impression the psychologist had heard it all before and was just going through the motions, which was fine by me. Whatever it took, I thought as I sat there listening to the fourth charade in three days.

  At last, Charlotte had the requisite pieces of paper that would ensure she could get the abortion she by now so desperately wanted. Just before we went to see the psychologist she confided in me that she’d confronted Peter after a tutorial that morning and asked him outright about Justine, and the fool had the vanity to admit it — to flaunt it, even, as if it was something to be proud of, and as if poor Charlotte should have seen it coming. He’d even had the effrontery to tell Charlotte he’d moved on because he couldn’t have anything to do with her after she got herself pregnant.

  ‘After I got myself pregnant?’ Charlotte said indignantly as she related the story to me. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Mum, but I always understood it took two to get pregnant. I wasn’t aware it was something I could manage all by myself!’

  ‘Indeed no,’ I said, ‘unless you’re using a Petri dish. And even then you need a little contribution from someone else.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I told him. I said he’d had as much to do with it as I did. But he said I couldn’t prove it. It could be anybody’s.’

  ‘How dare he!”

  ‘I know. I got mad at that too, so I slugged him.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘I did. I got him good too, right in the gonads.’

  ‘Charlotte!’ I was surprised to hear her talk like that. But at the same time I was immensely proud of her. ‘Good work!’

  She brightened, despite herself. ‘I know. It felt so much better seeing him doubled over in such pain. It’s nothing to what I’ve had to go through, but it helped. “Serves you right,” I told him and turned on my heel and walked away. I never want to see him again.’

  ‘But what will you do about your art history paper? Will you be able to carry on with the subject? You’ve been doing so well at it.’

  ‘I can’t get another lecturer but it doesn’t really matter now it’s so close to the end of term. There’s only another couple of weeks to go.’

  Chapter 30

  The round of doctor’s appointments was bad enough, but it was scant preparation for the trip to the clinic that was to follow a week after the appointment with the shrink. They seemed to have managed to streamline everything — in contrast to the rest of the health system, which was just as well considering the tight timeframe.

  I went along with her early that morning, almost as terrified as she was, especially when confronted by a lone protester, an elderly man waving a placard informing Charlotte that abortion kills infant life — as if she didn’t already know that. I felt like asking the nasty old man preying on all these scared young girls what would he know, since he’d never been in the position of being pregnant, but walked stiffly past instead, clutching Charlotte’s arm protectively.

  ‘What’s his problem?’ she asked when we’d reached the doorway to the clinic.

  ‘He’s an anti-abortionist. He thinks all women should have their babies, no matter what their circumstances or whichever form of lowlife fathered their offspring.’ I hustled her in and refrained from mentioning lecturers among the list of lowlife seed-sowers.

  In the brightly lit, somewhat clinical and thankfully empty waiting room, a kindly nurse gave Charlotte a glass of water and a small white tablet and wai
ted while she swallowed it. It was, she explained, to make her cervix dilate so they could get the foetus out.

  Then they took her through to the operating theatre and she was given a local anaesthetic. I could sense Charlotte was getting a bit tearful and held her hand tightly.

  While the numbness kicked in, the nurses erected a sort of tent arrangement over her abdomen so we couldn’t see what was going on, which suited me just fine. Then came the worst bit — a tiny sucking sound emitted by a suction tube. It was truly ghastly — a real test of a mother’s love and something I never want to go through ever again. I think I would rather have all my teeth pulled out without an anaesthetic than endure the agony of watching my daughter silently weeping as the tiny life form was removed from her womb.

  Getting her out of the operating theatre into recovery was a huge relief. I continued to hold her hand as she lay on the narrow stretcher bed exhausted, pale, anxious, teary-eyed.

  I would have done everything in my power to have prevented her having to go through this. My beautiful, hitherto innocent daughter, who used to bounce in the door from uni, ponytail swinging, full of the joy of living, should not be lying here looking so worldly-wise and weary of it all. It just wasn’t fair!

  If Peter had come by at that moment, I would cheerfully have shot him dead. Or tortured him mercilessly before shooting him dead. Or left him mutilated and beaten to die a slow and painful death.

  All these terrible thoughts were circling round and round in my mind as I watched her, wondering what emotions she must be feeling. I had no real comparison to make with anything that had happened to me. I had had a miscarriage many years ago, before I’d had Adam, and I recalled the immense sense of loss I’d felt when they’d had to empty out my womb. I’d grieved for weeks afterwards. I imagined Charlotte might feel grief too, for the loss of the baby she’d never know, the loss of her hopes and dreams, and even for the loss of that louche lounge-lizard she’d clearly been so enamoured of until it all went so horribly wrong.