The Full Ridiculous

by Mark Lamprell

  Well, not anything apparently. Fuuuck.

  Wendy’s alarm goes and you hear her making the first in a series of expeditions to wake the kids. Soon the plumbing is thumping and bumping and the house crackles with cereal and toast and searches for missing bits of school uniform so you leave the dawn fretfulness in a dark corner to be worried over later.

  During the night your bitzer dog, Egg, has dragged Wendy’s cashmere coat off the sofa and made a nest out of it. Wendy frantically tries to brush away the magnetic hairs as Rosie complains that she has to leave now; she’s got an early morning tutorial. Wendy normally drops the kids at school on her way to work but you can see she’s getting frazzled so you pile Rosie and Declan into your car. (Juan remains asleep downstairs and will not emerge until midday. He’s having a ‘break’ from school and has applied for a job in a barbecue chicken shop.)

  Declan, hunched in the back seat, puts a cigarette to his lips and produces a lighter. You shoot him a look via the rearvision mirror but you don’t say anything because you don’t have the heart for a fight. He pauses defiantly and then puts the cigarette away. Rosie, mercifully, is in a good mood and hums away to her hip-hop with her headphones on. It occurs to you that not so long ago the car would have been filled with excited chatter anticipating the day’s events. You yearn for the time when Declan’s idea of a high was batting cricket balls to you in the backyard and Rosie could think of nothing more thrilling than somersaulting off your shoulders into the swimming pool. You shake your head and smile at the desperation of your nostalgia. Declan catches you doing this and decides you are laughing at him.

  ‘What?’ he asks.

  You drop Declan at Mount Karver first, then Rosie at Boomerang. It’s still early which means you’ll make it home before the traffic peaks. You can go jogging before you settle down to the day’s writing. You decide not to worry about the money today. The day is a blank canvas. You are a free man.

  5

  These are the events as best you can reconstruct them: as Frannie Prager is sliding the key into the ignition of her blue Toyota, you are tightening the laces on your decrepit joggers and Rosie is ducking out of her maths tutorial because she has left her calculator in her locker. She doesn’t make it to the locker room because she finds Ursula O’Brien sitting on the worn sandstone steps of the Year 9 home room with her arms drawn around her legs and her face buried in her knees.

  Rosie likes a drama as much as any fourteen-year-old girl so she sits next to Ursula and asks what’s wrong.

  ‘Nothing,’ replies Ursula which, of course, heightens Rosie’s interest.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘She’s such a bitch!’

  ‘Who?’

  And out, over an obstacle course of sniffles and sobs, tumbles the story.

  When Ursula saw Maddie Peacock this morning, she was on her way to put her name down for the French tour but Maddie told Ursula not to bother because after the meeting the other night when Rosie O’Dell asked if Ursula could come, Eva Pessites’ mother told Miss Crowden Clark that if Ursula came then Eva would not be going on the tour. Mrs Pessites considers Ursula not the type of girl she wants her daughter to be associating with.

  Until recently, Ursula and Eva were best friends. A murky incident involving a silver photo frame missing from Mrs Pessites’ gift shop led to the demise of the relationship. Ursula protested her innocence and everyone except Mrs Pessites suspected Eva Pessites was the real culprit but they were all too intimidated by Eva to say anything.

  Eva Pessites looks like a beautiful doll. Tumbling blonde ringlets frame her translucent face; spectacularly long (surgically transplanted?) dark lashes frame languid green eyes; bee-stung lips, grown suspiciously plumper since Year 7, frame gleaming tombstones of teeth. Some say Eva’s smile can be seen from space.

  The Pessites fortune comes from earth-moving equipment, not Mrs Pessites’ gift shop, which she runs for fun. The Pessites donate large sums to Boomerang. The weekly assembly is held in the Pessites Auditorium. Eva Pessites understands the power she holds and up until today no one has questioned it. Not out loud anyway.

  Filled with indignation, Rosie confronts Eva in the locker room. She knows better than to go straight for the jugular so she tells Eva how gorgeous her new watch is and adds, like it’s an afterthought, in a voice pitched slightly too high, ‘How come your mum barred Ursula from the French tour?’

  Eva pauses, her eyes narrow. Other girls stop to look at her. She turns back to her locker and takes her time closing it. For a while it seems she has cut Rosie dead, leaving her question adrift in the ether. But Eva is enraged. She flicks a smile at Rosie, ‘How the fuck would I know?’ she says breezily. ‘I’m not my fucking mother, am I?’

  Her admiring audience titters and Eva turns and heads out of the locker room.

  Rosie calls after her, ‘But you could have stopped her.’

  Eva stops dead and looks at Rosie like she’s inspecting a dog turd. ‘So? Who cares?

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You should mind your own business.’

  ‘It is my business.’

  ‘Is not.’

  ‘It is if my friend can’t come on the tour.’

  ‘Ursula O’Brien is not your friend.

  ‘Is too.’

  ‘She hates you.’

  ‘No, she hates you, Eva, but that’s no reason for her not to come on the tour. Not until your mother stuck her big nose in it.’

  Eva is a second-generation Albanian and, although Rosie cannot know this, her mother had a prominent nose before surgery corrected it. Thinking on her feet, Eva decides to misinterpret Rosie’s comment as a racist jibe about proboscisly endowed Albanians and go for the outraged immigrant angle. She counters that Rosie is a ‘skanky skip’ (skip meaning someone who is several generations Australian). What Rosie’s Irish Catholic and Lithuanian Jewish grandparents would make of all this, no one can say but Rosie is so infuriated by the sudden disintegration of the argument that her synapses explode. ‘Piss off, you dumb bitch!’ she blurts uninventively.

  ‘Racist slut!’ Eva proclaims as she glides away in triumph.

  Rosie, slipping further behind in the originality stakes, fires a final projectile at Eva. ‘Suck my dick!’

  Once again, Eva stops. Once again, she turns. A sea of girls parts, opening a path between Rosie and Eva. ‘Why don’t you go suck your black boyfriend’s cock, slut!’

  Some of the girls snigger.

  A crimson wave roars into Rosie’s head and she charges forward. Eva also charges forward and thrusts her textbooks into Rosie’s chest. Rosie lets fly with a great gob of spit which lands with spectacular accuracy in Eva’s open mouth. Eva emits a howl of horror and, spitting compulsively, grabs Rosie’s ear. Rosie slaps her hand across the side of Eva’s head. Eva crumples to the ground, screaming like her legs have been amputated without anaesthetic.

  Rosie sees that Eva is already amplifying the extent of her injuries as part of a strategy to have Rosie nailed as the unprovoked perpetrator of this attack. Rosie no longer gives a flying fuck. She draws back her right foot, intent on shutting down Eva’s left kidney, just as Mrs Millington comes sailing round the corner in her signature tartan skirt, red cheeks blazing.

  6

  You wake up. Or not. Where are you? Banks of fluorescents swirl overhead. An institution. You are in some kind of institution. You’re ill, trapped in a night terror dream. Wake up! No, you are awake. Shapes. People? Wendy and that doctor, the Indian one, and other doctors. Fresh Face looks frightened. They’re staring at you.

  You feel like you’ve died but the Indian doctor tells you that you passed out. You had a little fit and you passed out. It’s probably a reaction to having things put in your veins. Some people get it. Not to worry too much. They’ll keep an eye on you.

  Wendy looks sick. She kisses your hand. You close your eyes.

  Who’s shouting? Why does there have to be shouting? That Indian girl. Indira bloody Gandhi. She wants som
eone to open their eyes. You. She wants you to open your eyes. You don’t want to but you open them to shut her up. Bossy doctor. Questions. Blah blah questions and you answer blah blah. And you feel…

  the feeling…

  the feeling of…floating.

  You are floating.

  You are

  You’re thirsty. Parched. Water. You open your eyes to find Wendy sitting next to you. She smiles. You try to say water but your lips stick together. You push your tongue through the sticky stuff on your lips and rub it back and forth. Your lips are sore. So sore.

  ‘Water?’ Wendy reaches for a plastic decanter and pours water into a vessel that smells of your childhood lunchbox. She holds it to your lips and you guzzle it like a man who’s spent forty days and forty nights in the desert. Some of it goes down the wrong way and you splutter and gurgle, which draws the attention of your Indian doctor. She says she likes your colour and you almost tell her you like hers.

  Wendy and the doctor discuss your condition as if you’re not there. The doctor feels confident he’s going to be fine. It takes a moment to realise that he is you. You’re going to be fine. According to her. She even wants you to try walking.

  ‘So soon?’ asks Wendy, a little shocked.

  ‘With crutches,’ says the doctor.

  You sit up and the world seems to drop away from you and you say, ‘Whoa.’ Wendy shoots a look at the doctor, who nods and smiles and beckons you forward. You launch yourself upright on one crutch then the other. You lurch forward, a single step on your good leg, and despite the painkillers you feel the horrible throb of your bad leg. Thrusting your awkward crutches before you, you stagger across the cold linoleum floor like a newly hatched stick insect.

  ‘Good,’ lies the doctor.

  While you’re up she hands you a little plastic cylinder and asks for a urine sample but tells you not to lock the toilet door in case you pass out again. You manage to provide her with half a canister of liquid gold without pissing on your fingers, and gratefully make your way back to bed where you flop, exhausted.

  You remember the kids again and ask Wendy what’s happening with them. She says she couldn’t get on to either of them but has left messages at their schools. You know Wendy wouldn’t lie to you but it seems odd that she didn’t get to speak to one of them at least. Oddly odd. Oddity. Oddingtonoplometry.

  A huge horrible wave of pain wakes you but you feel—oddly—rested. How long have you been here? How many days have passed like this?

  Wendy tells you the accident happened five hours ago. Five hours. How can that be? It seems like five months. You’ve lived through so much, survived so much. You’re the discombobulated robot on that old sci-fi show—this does not compute, this does not compute.

  The doctor says you can go home and you feel like you’ve jumped from episode three to episode thirty-six. Wendy starts to protest but you stop her because you know if you go home you won’t die. People get better at home. People die in hospitals.

  A silent orderly wheels you out to the car park but does not stay to help Wendy fold your errant left leg into the car. After three painful attempts, you shoo her off and lower yourself onto the passenger seat. You swing your right leg into the car then use it to lever yourself upwards towards the roof. Writhing maniacally, you manage to bump and drag your aching left leg inside before you collapse back into the seat. You sit there groaning in pain but nonetheless proud of your achievement. You pull the lever at the side of the seat to slide it further back. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong lever; the seat-back drops away and you plummet backwards, finding yourself staring at a roof again.

  Wendy tries not to laugh. You are upset and angry but simultaneously aware of your responsibility not to take things too seriously given your miraculous escape from death. You lie there for a while, looking at the broken switch on the roof light before you say, ‘Well at least things can’t get much worse than this.’ You will often recall this statement in the year to come and reflect upon your cluelessness.

  7

  Wendy drives you home from hospital. You feel like you’re on drugs. Not the massive doses of painkillers that are coursing through your body but recreational drugs that turn the sky an impossibly vivid blue. Cars wind down the highway ahead of you like a glittering string of jewels. Wendy, driving next to you, smells beautiful, is beauty.

  The world is so splendidly splendid you want to gather it in your arms and gobble it all up. You smile. Wendy smiles at your smile. You cannot begin to explain the deep peace you are experiencing so you just blink at her like a sleepy lizard, like a lizard-God. Godlike.

  The car crunches into your gravel driveway and you wake. You look up at your little wooden house settled in its untamed garden and feel enormously grateful for the enoughness of your life: a partner you still want, children in good health with all their fingers and toes, two cars, three bedrooms, taps with running water.

  You just turn on the tap and the water comes! And electricity! And appliances!

  How many people get to live like this? You live in the top—what?—ten per cent? of the world’s privileged. How fucking lucky is that? How lucky are you!

  Dizzy with gratitude, you almost topple backwards so Wendy takes your arm and leads you up the front steps. Egg leaps at you joyfully and you want to hug him but you poke him away from your bad leg with your crutches. The house feels cool and smells uniquely O’Dell—a barely discernible but distinct combination of wet dog, apple-scented washing powder, dirty socks and freshly cut grass.

  You stagger down the hall and haul your enormous aching leg into bed. As Wendy fusses in distant rooms, you become aware of other areas of pain, a symphony of minor and major chords playing through your body. You are mega-alert, alive to every note and nuance, things terrible and splendid. And now you are aware of something. You are aware that something is coming.

  You are waiting.

  What are you waiting for?

  An epiphany!

  In a flash you realise that there is a grand purpose to being run over by the blue Toyota. You are going to Learn Something. The Universe has a Lesson it wants to teach you. At some point over the next days or weeks, Knowledge will be revealed to you.

  You are at the beginning of a Hero Journey. You have been Called to Adventure. And although you have no idea what the journey entails or where it will take you, you feel honoured, thrilled to the core that you have been Chosen.

  In your mind you fast-forward to a little café where you sit opposite Frannie Prager, laughing about how unevolved you both were before the fates threw you together and set you on that ridiculous, rocky path to glory those many eons ago.

  Rosie bursts through the door and throws her arms around you. Her school uniform smells of stale bread.

  ‘Daddy!’ she cries.

  ‘Mind his leg,’ says Wendy and you realise she is sitting on the bed next to you and you wonder how long she’s been there.

  Rosie’s distress eases as she sees you are in one piece and her story tumbles out: Mrs Rich, the art teacher, found her and told her you had been hit by a car.

  ‘Found you where?’ says Wendy, leaping in from left field.

  ‘At the bus stop,’ says Rosie, tackled before she can make her run.

  ‘Why were you at the bus stop?’

  ‘I ran away from school.’

  ‘Why?’

  Rosie zigzags through the big beats of the narrative with little regard for traditional story structure. The salient points appear to be these:

  (a) Mean mother tries to exclude girl from trip.

  (b) Mean daughter supports mean mother.

  (c) Rosie outraged.

  (d) Rosie confronts mean daughter.

  (e) Untoward language employed by both parties.

  (f) Rosie accused of racist jibes.

  (g) Rosie employs physical violence.

  (h) Rosie in deep shit.

  The phone rings. No one in your household likes talking on the phone (even Rosie, who r
arely engages in the typical adolescent telephonic marathon) but, for some inexplicable reason, Wendy answers it.

  It’s the headmistress. Principal is too benign a word for the woman in charge of an institution like Boomerang. Christina Bowden, however, isn’t exactly the scary Margaret Thatcher protégé one might expect. Holding degrees from three European universities, she’s an accomplished academic with the aura of someone both absorbed and completed by her vocation.

  She tells Wendy she’s heard about your accident and apologises for burdening the family with further troubles. She asks if Rosie has briefed you on the day’s events. You hear Wendy straining to keep things light, using expressions like ‘spirited conflict’ and ‘colourful vernacular’ but Christina Bowden isn’t buying it.

  She tells Wendy that she is still investigating the incident but that she is shocked by the reports she is receiving. In all her years at Boomerang she has never heard such accounts of physical assault. She reminds Wendy that Boomerang does not tolerate violence, that assault is an expellable offence. She feels it’s only fair to warn us that things are not looking good for Rosie. She calls a meeting for the following afternoon but Wendy begs a day’s reprieve, citing your lack of mobility.

  Wendy hangs up, dumps the handset on the bed next to you and debriefs. Rosie retreats downstairs in floods of tears. You can hear Juan murmuring condolences as Wendy paces the room, white-faced.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ she says to the window.

  You know exactly what to do. You have all the answers because you are Mr Indestructible. ‘Write a letter,’ you say. Wendy is the best letter writer this side of the equator. ‘I’ll help,’ you add, knowing she won’t need it.

  The phone rings again and you answer it because you have all the answers.

  ‘Is Rosie there?’ a female voice asks.

  ‘Yes, who can I say is calling?’

  Then the person hangs up. Which is irritating because it’s rude, and unsettling because the voice belonged to an adult, not a bad-mannered contemporary of Rosie’s.