My Bed is a Blackhole

by Hadley Wickham

  ‘Hi,’ I uttered awkwardly as I stood up to allow Josie to wrap me in a hug. Pulling away from me she tried not to seem too concerned but Josie was an awful liar, in both words and body language. It was good to see that hadn’t changed.

  ‘You look tired,’ she politely observed. All I could do was manage a sheepish smile.

  ‘Yeah, I look awful. I was up all night finishing my final assignment and only had about two hours sleep, worth it though because the assignments all done and now it’s only exams to worry about.’ I surprised even myself with the amount of enthusiasm I managed to force-feed into that lie and I tried not to let the shock show on my face. It did its job though, Josie’s look of concern could now anchor itself to some fanciful cause and she sat down, allowing me to do the same.

  ‘You need to give yourself a break, girl,’ she scolded, and I smiled politely again.

  ‘It’s not that bad, like I said it’s almost over.’

  It was the semester we were talking about.

  Josie was dressed in her work uniform: black pencil skirt, stockings and a blue polo shirt. It made her look older than her twenty years. I could imagine her slipping unnoticed through the middle-aged lunch crowds in Fremantle, blending seamlessly with the other receptionists whose worldly concerns fit snugly in the 7 to 9:30pm time-slot on evening TV. It felt wrong to lump Josie in with that lot, she was far more interesting than all of them put together but you couldn’t deny she did a wonderful job of fitting in. Maybe she could teach me a thing or two. In high school, when we’d managed to get absence notes to go into town for lunch, our uniforms had made us stand out like radioactive rods of indigo. We’d felt out-of-place when lining up alongside the irritated professionals for coffee. Josie had always clutched our notes so tightly they’d mushed together in her little fist, her fingers leaving dents in the otherwise neat little roll of white paper. This roll of paper was Josie’s life-line. Whenever some snooty teenage waitress on her gap-year had asked to see our notes Josie would shove them in her face, pointing aggressively at the neat little signature of the school receptionist so she nearly tore through the page. You could hear her screaming internally, “Look! That’s a signature. We are within rights to be here!” I’d always thought she’d make a good lawyer, until I’d realised that law students were the opposite of decent human beings. Mel and I always allowed her to lead us back to school five minutes early; allowing Josie to keep time made her relax and enjoy going out with us, as her friends we didn’t want her to dread our company. I suddenly felt even worse about my relationship with Mel and Josie. Josie was talking about something. I hadn’t been paying attention but luckily she wasn’t hard to interpret. Josie’s world revolved around work and family. At this point in time this meant incessant details about her one-year-old nephew, Alistair, who’d just learnt how to walk. I was ambivalent towards children. I didn’t like them, nor did I dislike them. Like everything else in my life, if they behaved according to the rules of my little glass world they were tolerated and all those rules required was that they remain totally invisible.

  ‘He’s getting so big now, you’re going to have to come and see him,’ she said and I snapped out of my lull, smiling to let her know I’d been paying attention.

  ‘Oh I’d love too. I’ll come over when my exams are done,’ I breathed and Josie’s smile tightened. She knew I didn’t mean it and honestly I was too tired to care.

  ‘So, still liking psychology? How many more years have you got to go?’ Josie’s attempt to include me in the conversation annoyed me. It wasn’t the fact that she already knew the answer to the question, it was because I couldn’t believe she had a legitimate interest in my life. I mean if I didn’t, why would anyone else?

  ‘Yeah it’s good, really interesting, and if I pass these exams I’ll be nearly half-way through,’ I informed, and Josie’s head nodded. The cup of coffee she’d bought was now empty and she’d begun to peel off the corrugated cardboard cover. We were running out of things to say and the atmosphere was becoming considerably uncomfortable.

  ‘So…’ Josie stalled, at first I thought her hesitation was because she didn’t know what to say. It took me a moment to realise she knew exactly what she wanted to say, she just didn’t quite know how to say it.

  ‘Are you still thinking about doing the photography minor?’ Josie’s question surprised me, mostly because I was amazed she recalled my far-fetched high school fantasy of becoming a landscape photographer. It took me less than six months to become disillusioned with it, the stunning result of my mother’s wonderfully passive-aggressive concerns about my future career. Her favourite line to begin conversation with was: “Any booms in the photography sector lately?” After that line had lost its humour, and its ability to reduce me to a mess of frustrated tears, I’d accepted that photography might not be the way to go. In all reality I’d probably end up broke and hating the sight of my camera. Though quite honestly I found it impossible to hate something as much as I did psychology, at least I was genuinely passionate about photography. Or at least I used to be.

  ‘No, it would add another six months to my degree and I’m not willing to waste $5,000 on a minor that won’t get me anywhere,’ I lamely explained. Josie didn’t appear to like my answer.

  ‘But you were so good! You were so excited about it,’ she reminded and I began to resent her presence even more. Jesus, Josie, it was one thing being around you, you don’t need to make it worse reminding me of how I used to be; can’t you see that hurts? Well no you can’t, can you? I apologise for the stupid question. Meeting Josie had been a mistake. Reminding me of the past wasn’t bringing Miranda back; it was just making me sad and angry.

  ‘I reckon you should do it,’ Josie continued. She’d stopped shredding her coffee cup and looked at me so I was forced to bring my eyes up to meet hers.

  ‘I don’t know… I’m not sure I could even combine my degree like that; the minor would be under a Bachelor of Arts, I’m doing a Bachelor of Psychology,’ I explained.

  ‘Well have you inquired?’

  The only explanation for Josie’s eagerness I could think of was that she had some inkling of the Blackhole; if not the Blackhole itself, then at least the presence of something that was sucking everything from me. I shook my head; I hadn’t enquired. To be honest I’d never really considered it. I didn’t even know if you could do photography at Murdoch.

  ‘You really should,’ Josie added my name at the end of that sentence, as if uttering it made her argument all the more sincere but it sounded odd as it popped off her tongue. ‘If you wanted to ask now I could even come with you, I’ve got… crap! I’ve got about two minutes left before I really should head back to work.’ I genuinely laughed; that meant she had about seven minutes. Josie joined in my laughter with her own quiet chuckle; I’d forgotten how my real laugh sounded. I’d spent so long pretending to laugh with everyone that I’d forgotten how delightfully awful my real laugh was. It sounded like I was either having an asthma attack or choking on something. If I wasn’t smiling I’m sure someone would run over and belt me on the back to make me cough up whatever was stuck in my throat: “It’s okay, it’s just happiness”.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll email the student centre tonight and enquire. There’s probably going to be a long wait if we go now.’

  Josie couldn’t hide her relief and she scrunched up the remnants of her coffee cup as she stood up, waiting expectantly for me to get to my feet. Wrapping me in a goodbye hug she pulled back. ‘Promise you’ll text me with what they say?’ she asked and I nodded.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Well I should probably get going then. I’ll talk to you later though, okay?’ Josie said as she fished for her car keys in her handbag. ‘Don’t be a stranger, alright?’ she added before she turned and walked purposefully away. Josie wouldn’t calm down until she was sitting back behind her desk; oddly Josie only enjoyed her lunch-b
reak once it was over.

  “Don’t be a stranger?” It was strange to hear her say that. It wasn’t because I’d never heard her say that to anyone before, but because maybe she realised I was a stranger. Could she really see I was trying to be Miranda? Or my fog-clouded perception of her? Had I really become a stranger?

  Christ.

  Meeting Josie really had been a good idea because I’d realised that I could no longer see her or Mel, at least not while I was like this. It wasn’t exactly going to be hard to escape them; just avoiding an obligatory coffee meeting every six months. Logically that was the right thing to do. It wasn’t fair on any of us to keep up with it and frankly it was rather insulting to their intelligence. I was still their friend, even if I wouldn’t let them be mine, and because of that fact I remained irrationally protective. Right now I needed to protect them from this horrible stained person who was being sucked into nothingness by a Blackhole. I couldn’t risk it latching onto them. I liked to think that made me admirable. It was a whole lot easier than confronting the reality; I was no longer their friend.

  ***

  Josie had left me standing in the middle of the food hall which had begun to heave with the lunch rush of starved students and bored academics. I had no desire to spend longer than necessary in the choking aroma of frying oil and kebab meat so I picked up my bag and fought my way out against the incoming flood of bodies. My phone vibrated again in my hand. Jesus, I was popular today; it was Abby asking if I had checked whether our assignment marks had been released yet. Her question frustrated me; it was stupid. Abby was perfectly capable of answering it herself and I resolved to replying to her while I was on the bus home, the wait would be punishment for her idiocy. I hadn’t realised how tired I was, the adrenaline rush from my lunch with Josie was wearing off and I felt as though my body was made of wax. Looking back I half expected to see small pieces of myself dripping along the pavement as I walked, but all I saw were other students with their heads bent down into their phones, exactly like me. Turning my head back around, I stopped short and unwillingly jumped; a pair of feet were standing directly in front of me and hearing the voice attached I realised who it was before looking up.

  ‘Made you jump,’ it said.

  ‘Anyone would if they saw you looking at them,’ I replied.

  The voice’s mouth dropped in faux shock before sliding back into a heartbreakingly beautiful smile.

  ‘I’d be insulted if it wasn’t you who’d said it.’ Doug smirked and I grinned.

  ‘Should I be flattered then?’ I asked, and he let out a short bark of a laugh.

  ‘Yeah.’ He turned and sidled next to me so we were walking abreast.

  ‘Have you had lunch?’ Doug asked, and I shook my head.

  ‘No, did you want to grab something?’ I replied and he nodded.

  ‘Yeah, I was going to ask if you wanted to come back to mine and have lunch. We could get some study done for health and wellbeing too. Oh, have you checked your marks yet?’

  I shook my head. In truth I hated when people asked about my grades. It wasn’t just to protect myself when I had done poorly; it I was the same when I had done brilliantly. The only person whose opinion I valued on my grades was my own, and I was never satisfied. Very few people understood that amount of expectation, or the crushing guilt along with it and I felt rather self-conscious when I did try to explain it to people. It really did reveal how neurotic I could be.

  ‘Oh sorry, you don’t have to tell me what you got if you don’t want.’ Doug spoke softly, his voice sounded as though he was worried he’d upset me.

  ‘No! I honestly don’t know. Last time I checked was at 11 and they weren’t up,’ I said to reassure him, smiling as an insurance policy. Doug’s smile responded, cracking unwillingly from relief and he relaxed again.

  ‘Well they’re up now,’ he announced and my frustration towards Abby intensified; her text was a very passive aggressive inquiry as to how I’d done, it would seem.

  ‘Did you want to go to the library so you can check?’ Doug asked politely, and I shook my head.

  ‘Not really, my stomach’s eating itself so I don’t really care, and I can tell you already: I’ve done badly.’

  Doug laughed at the statement which I hadn’t meant to be funny. ‘Like it’s possible for you to do badly.’

  I did my best to make the smile that appeared unwillingly on my face appear modest. Stop grinning like an idiot. ‘Oh, I assure you it is possible.’ I tried to make the words reflect the reality of my concern. Doug didn’t notice.

  ‘Okay. I hope you realise how terrible you are at lying,’ he said and felt a rush. Darling, you have no idea.

  ***

  Doug lived a fifteen minutes’ walk from Murdoch, his house separated from the campus only by a retirement village and modest sporting oval. I’d envy his proximity had I not a Blackhole in my bed; living in Fremantle and a consequent thirty-minute bus ride away made the commute a legitimate consideration when deciding whether or not to come appear for classes. The day was overcast, the light from the cloud-haloed sun unable to cast anything more than a thin white light on the world. We walked slowly down the footpath stained from bore water, Doug’s presence meant that the tight knot of panic in my chest had vanished completely and I wasn’t in a hurry to have it return. I found myself telling Doug about my lunch with Josie as we walked. I hadn’t meant too, but the horrible feeling she had left me with had made me anxious and Doug was the only person who could help with that. Surprisingly I found myself being quite honest with him. I even told him about my previous aspirations to be a photographer and he had rather taken to the idea, considering he hadn’t shut up about it for the past five minutes.

  ‘I hadn’t realised you liked photography that much,’ he admitted and that statement made me shrink a little. I hated the fact I hadn’t told Doug. I hated the fact he didn’t know Miranda; that I, instead of her, was the person he’d met and called his friend. I hated the fact he didn’t know the real me and I hated the Blackhole. Yet I allowed him to keep on talking, call it my pitiful compensation for neglecting to mention that part of myself to him. Doug’s level of excitement did serve a useful purpose though; it gave me a good idea about my own feelings on the matter and I found myself genuinely excited about the potential photography minor. Not even the long hike up the hill that Doug’s house sat atop of dampened what tiny amount of positivity I had.

  Doug still lived with his parents, though that was perfectly understandable. His dad, Patrick, was an insurance lawyer and his mum, Sylvia, a retired doctor, so their house was nice, and when I say “nice” I mean very nice. My first visit I’d had to double-check the letterbox to ensure I was at the right place because quite literally, the house resembled a 19th-century castle. I say “resembled” as there was obvious authenticity errors. It was far too small to be an actual castle and it appeared as far too symmetrical. Though I couldn’t really judge; I’d never seen a real 19th-century castle. Yet from what I’d seen in pictures the bricks of a proper castle were supposed to bulge outwards, like their insides were being pushed out as they were mushed under the weight of the structure. Doug’s parents had got the brick colour right, the oddly comforting shade of dirty smoke, but the walls were perfectly straight. It made the house look almost like a drawing. A sweeping crescent driveway and immense hedge of green shrubbery which rose three metres into the air did nothing to detract from the theatricality of it all and I loved it. Doug was conditionally immune to the novel charm of his impressive home and strode ahead of me to unlock the front door while I hung back, craning my head back to the sky so I could feel the walls looming over me. Hearing the lock turn, I brought my head down and caught Doug smirking at me.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked and I grinned widely.

  ‘Yeah. Seriously though I’m going to marry you for this house,’ I replied as I brushed past him and into the sky-light
lit hallway. Considering the dark exterior, once inside Doug’s home you found yourself momentarily disorientated. It was like Patrick and Sylvia couldn’t decide between a castle and a beach house when they were building so had picked the parts they liked best of both. While outside would have you thinking the interior would be all wood panelled walls and crimson carpet, in reality they were covered with sand-coloured floorboards and varying shades of yellow paint.

  ‘Doug?’ Hearing Sylvia’s voice I turned back to Doug.

  ‘She does know I’m here, right?’ I whispered and Doug smiled, nodding his head as we walked down the hall and into the kitchen.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ Doug replied and Sylvia looked up from the massive bowl of salad she was attempting to toss. Seeing me her face cracked into a wide grin and I was reminded once again where Doug’s smile came from.

  ‘Hello, pet,’ she said warmly, wiping her oil-covered hands on a tea towel before pulling me into a brisk hug.

  ‘You’re looking well,’ she lied, yet I didn’t mind; Sylvia Walton was perhaps the only person who actually made me think I didn’t look as bad I did.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said softly, ‘so do you. Thank you for having me over,’ I added and Sylvia waved her hand in the air dismissively.

  ‘Quite honestly you’re here for me more than my son,’ she admitted, and I smirked at Doug who rolled his eyes.

  Sylvia, much like her son, was one of the few people I liked more than I cared to admit, yet I could be biased by the knowledge that she liked me just as much as I did her. She was quite simply lovely; kind, elegant and wickedly clever – to have her approval was something anyone would be proud of. Sylvia was quite tall; she had broad shoulders and hips but a lithe figure and long, copper coloured hair. Doug and his older brother, Campbell, looked absolutely nothing like their mother. Aside from the breathtaking smile and bright blue eyes, Doug was the spitting image of Patrick, while Campbell was even less similar to Sylvia. It was only once you got to know Sylvia did you realise that her son’s lack of physical resemblance was compensated for in their character. Doug was exactly like Sylvia, something I’d never mentioned to him; mostly because Doug was well aware of how much I loved her. Their similarity in character made them highly entertaining when together, they knew exactly how to annoy each other and I’d moved past the initial awkwardness I’d felt when witnessing their bickering, now I actually enjoyed it. It reminded me of those sickly sweet family moments you saw in movies, the ones that made you immediately say “no family is like that”. Sylvia and Doug had made me lose that one tiny bit of pessimism from my dark little soul. Sylvia’s presence during lunch made it completely harmless and restricted Doug and I to parentally appropriate topics of conversation. At this point in our lives it was the terrifying prospect of what direction we would take after university. Oddly that was far more appealing than revealing what I was really thinking. The thing that terrified students about graduation was that after spending four years and $30,000 studying, you’d still be no closer to discovering what you wanted to do with your life than the day you first entered university. We worried that we’d be pigeon-holed by choices made as seventeen-year-olds, forced into a job we hated because we had no other option. We couldn’t go back to university, not with a HECS debt to pay off and you can only expect to live with your parents for so long before people start to consider you a failure. Doug had done the smart thing: realised in his first year that medicine wasn’t the degree for him and switched. I couldn’t help but resent him a little, I wished I was that confident in myself, or perhaps a little less afraid of disappointing people. I couldn’t say that my insistence on continuing with psychology was completely because of my parent’s pressure. I’m sure they wouldn’t take me switching majors that badly. I wasn’t completely deluded and thinking about switching to say, philosophy; the Blackhole didn’t rob me of my common sense. The reason I didn’t switch was because I was still holding onto that piece of Miranda who had loved the idea of being a psychologist (her back-up plan had photography not turned out). Sticking with psychology also made maintaining my appearance of normality easier, frantically changing my major every semester would be far to revealing of my chaotic internal state. So it must really say a lot when I admit I don’t mind talking about life after university. I think it was because I’d resigned myself to the fact that I’d never be happy, what did it matter if I was working in a field that made me want to lobotomise myself? If anything my life would continue as it did now, a torturous slide down until I reached the point where I’d have one of two options: either drag myself up from the Blackhole or fall into it, with a sharp drop and sudden stop if you catch my drift. It would be ungrateful for me not to realise that was the one good thing the Blackhole did for me; it drove me to complacency with how perfectly miserable my life would become. Oh, how grateful I was.