The Full Ridiculous

by Mark Lamprell

  A surge of panic dries your mouth. You get up and pour yourself a glass of water at the gleaming new stainless-steel double-bowled kitchen sink. You look into the frosty blackness of the freshly glazed kitchen window, fully expecting a monster to lunge at you. Instead the terrible secret flashes its ugly truth once again: The good part of your life is over. The bad part has begun.

  At midnight you drive home and park outside the neighbours’. Wrapped up against an icy wind, Wendy checks the house while you stay in the car, feeling frightened and foolish, ready to make a getaway. Your brave wife establishes that no one is lurking in the bushes waiting to pounce and arrest you.

  You go inside, shivering.

  Egg leaps and wags a joyous greeting. You inquire whether he has anything to report. ‘Woof,’ he says, but does not elaborate.

  Shelley Mainwaring surprises you by looking exactly as you pictured her. She’s a short, slim woman with close-cropped brown hair and buoyant breasts that make you wonder whether they’ve been surgically enhanced. She’s wearing a mushroom-coloured outfit with a pencil skirt that ends just below her knees. You have no idea whether this is fashionable or not but it suits her, in an I’m-smart-and-bossy-but-haven’t-given-up-on-sexy kind of way.

  You can see that Wendy likes and trusts this woman so you decide to trust your wife’s impeccable taste and trust her too. Shelley explains that Constable Johnstone is no doubt trying to justify his overreaction on the day of the gun incident by making things appear more serious than they are. She says that your biggest mistake was nominating yourself as the responsible adult. Constable Johnstone has decided you are responsible for everything that happened, whether it happened with your knowledge or not.

  Shelley says the best thing to do is supply the police with a signed statement so they can see you were just a concerned dad helping your son with a school project. She asks you to tell her what happened on the day of filming prior to the arrival of the police. She starts to guide you with a few simple questions. You try to answer but you’re so rattled that you leap through the story to what you believe is the salient bit: you neither own nor supplied the firearm! Declan borrowed the gun from his old primary school mate, Dan. Dan’s dad purchased the gun as a gift in Hong Kong. Dan’s dad didn’t declare it to Customs because he thought it was a toy. When Declan came home with the gun the night before the shoot, you gave it little more than a cursory glance because it was a toy.

  As you offer this information, you find yourself stammering for the first time in your life. Your tongue catches on words like t-t-toy. You talk so fast that phrases crash into one another in little collisions: ‘Dansdad purshasedthegun asag-g-gift.’

  Wendy gives you a what’s-going-on look. You take a deep breath and try to slow down. Your hands are shaking. You try to stop them but you can’t. You tell yourself it’s only the slightest tremor; no one will notice. But you see that Shelley has noticed.

  And then she does the worst thing she could possibly do: she’s kind to you. She asks gently if you’d like to take a short break. You feel tears spring to your eyes and once again you curse your emotional incontinence. You ask for the toilets and make your escape.

  In the toilets, you fight those unmanly tears with great gasps of angry air. Eventually you can breathe normally and are able to return.

  During your absence, Wendy has told Shelley about your accident. Shelley says she can see that you are stressed and that this is perfectly understandable but wonders whether your reaction has been exacerbated by the recent trauma of your car accident. She asks if you’ve heard of post-traumatic stress disorder.

  You can see where this is going so you tell her, yeah, you’ve read plenty about post-traumatic stress disorder in relation to the troops returning from Afghanistan and you’d be embarrassed to compare your lot with theirs. The modulated vehemence in your reply dissuades Shelley from pursuing the matter any further.

  You wait while Shelley drafts a version of your statement. In no time at all you are reading about the incident as you related it to her. You notice how it has been crafted not to implicate any other individual—not Declan, not Dan, not Dan’s dad—while shouting via subtext, ‘It’s not Michael O’Dell’s fault! It’s got nothing to do with Michael O’Dell!’

  A few hours later Shelley calls you at home to let you know that she has personally delivered the statement to the police station. The cops have indicated that it may not be sufficient and you may be required for further questioning. You ask Shelley how this will play out. She doesn’t know. But she signs off with the following advice: in the unlikely (she stresses unlikely as if it’s going to comfort you) event that the police try to arrest you again, surrender peacefully but do not make any statement until she is in the room with you.

  You thank her politely while your other, inner voice screams, Arrest? Are you fucking kidding me?

  Wendy slumps at the kitchen table doing the accounts, tapping away at a spreadsheet on her laptop, occasionally pausing to consult a large pile of unpaid bills. Hearing you enter the room, she picks up a bill and hands it to you. You read it. It’s from Mainwaring, Pollard and Van Der Smagt. For Shelley’s legal services. For $2800.

  ‘What? I thought we were getting mates’ rates!’

  ‘These are mates’ rates. I think.’

  ‘We can’t afford that!’

  ‘We have to pay it.’

  ‘How are we going to pay the mortgage then?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to figure out.’

  You sit down next to your wife. You stare at each other, waiting for a solution to materialise in the anxious air between you. You know you should be grateful that you do not live in a war zone and that your children have all their fingers and toes but all you can think is Why me? Why this extra little kick in the head? Like I haven’t had enough kicks in the head lately.

  ‘When’s the mortgage due?’

  ‘Wednesday.’ ‘Shit.’

  ‘I’m going to call Mum. Ask her for a loan. Just to get us through this next payment.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s good. But it’s not a solution.’

  ‘No.’

  You are impotent and inadequate, your inner voice tells you. The least you could do is get a job stocking supermarket shelves.

  ‘We need to think about selling the house,’ Wendy says.

  You know what it costs her to say this so matter-of-factly and you feel a part of your soul collapsing. All you can do is nod. ‘We can’t do anything now,’ she adds. ‘Let’s try and hang on till Declan finishes his exams. We’ll get some estate agents through to have a look after the exams. And let’s not tell the kids. God, we mustn’t let the kids find out.’

  Down the back of your garden the lawn leads to a large sandstone platform about the size of a small room. A huge tree reaches over it, casting fractured shadows over its brown carpet of fallen leaves. Resting against the trunk is a rotting timber bench, orphaned from an outdoor setting you bought when there was money spare to spend on such things.

  You lower yourself onto the bench. It groans under your weight, threatening, as usual, to collapse. Although you suppose that one day it will, you are inured to its complaints and take no notice. You stare across the decaying paling fence at the densely vegetated valley beyond. If all the shrubs and palms were cleared away, you would see hundreds of houses on quarter-acre blocks stretching away before you, but even in the depths of winter the garden is so abundant that you cannot see your neighbour’s roof. It’s dark and damp and quiet here.

  Someone takes your hand. You assume that it’s Wendy but turn to discover Rosie sitting next to you. She is observing you. She sees that you are broken. You wonder if this is that moment, the moment when the child realises that the parent is human, flawed, fallible, scrambling like everyone else to make sense of the unmakesensible.

  You are no longer big, strong, dependable Daddy. Daddy who puts a roof over our heads and brings home money for food and clothes. Daddy who fixes things and makes thi
ngs better. Daddy who knows best.

  Oh, who are you kidding? You never were.

  Rosie lifts your hand to her lips and kisses it. It’s an impossibly tender gesture, one of forgiveness, you hope, for all that you have failed to do. Both of you know better than to try and form words, so you sit in silence. You sit in silence until the sky washes orange and mauve and tiny insects hatch from the rotting leaves, biting your ankles.

  Rosie slaps her arm. ‘Let’s go in,’ she says, and you follow her up the yard.

  18

  It’s Sunday night, 9.40pm. Five blocks north of your house, a group of teenagers straggle home from the shops where they’ve managed to procure an assortment of beer and alco-pop beverages. Most likely they’ve spent the evening in the tiny triangle of park near the train station, hiding behind the azalea bushes where they can drink without being disturbed.

  Jason Lind, the Boomerang dad who warned you about the Pessites, is having a secret smoke in his front garden when a few of the tipsy teens pass his gate, arguing. A tall boy in a blue beanie turns on another in a red windcheater and punches him on the arm. Red Windcheater goes to retaliate but trips and falls in the gutter. Blue Beanie laughs and runs across the road where he collects a slap from Pretty Blonde teetering in high heels. There’s yelling and shouting and more running across the road.

  It’s a busy road, Jason’s road, a minor arterial that stretches from the highway south to a major arterial. It’s only two lanes but even at this time on Sunday night there’s a trickle of traffic. Jason worries. With three girls of his own (all watching telly inside, thank God), he knows that the combination of dark night, drunk teens and fast cars can lead somewhere bad. Jason wonders whether he shouldn’t give the cops a friendly call, make sure these kids get home safe and sound. Jason hears a bottle break. That settles it.

  Jason goes inside, washes his face and gargles minty mouthwash so Polly and the kids won’t smell the smoke. He calls the local police station. While he’s on the phone, Polly smells smoke on Jason’s shirtsleeve and institutes a search for his hidden cigarettes. She’ll never find them—they’re in a zip-lock bag in the spare tyre well of their station wagon—but that won’t stop her from spending the rest of the evening trying and tsking.

  Seven blocks south of your house, Rosie and Juan are hurrying home. It’s 9.51pm, a school day tomorrow, and their curfew is 10pm. They’ve been watching a DVD at Rosie’s friend’s house. Mimi and Rosie were best buddies in primary school and, although they attend different high schools, the friendship has prospered. Mimi’s parents, Andrea and Phillip von Trotsenberger, are stalwarts of the local community and it comforts you to think Rosie is in their sphere of influence. You know either Phillip or Andrea will have sent Rosie on her way at 9.40pm precisely, allowing for the seventeen minutes it takes to walk from their house to yours.

  Simultaneously, Rosie and Juan notice a police wagon driving towards them. Rosie feels a rush of dread and resentment.

  ‘Shit,’ says Juan quietly. He’s done nothing wrong but his dark skin, multiple piercings and buzz haircut are a walking proclamation of guilt. Rosie has reported often and with indignation how Juan is regarded with suspicion by anyone in charge of anything—shopkeepers, stationmasters, cinema attendants, policemen. She is appalled by the racism she constantly witnesses in his presence. Juan, sadly, is used to it. Which is not the same thing as being comfortable with it.

  The police wagon passes and Juan exhales a puff of warm white air that punctuates the cold night. Rosie releases the grip she has on his forearm, only then realising that she has grabbed him in the first place.

  Suddenly there’s a burst of red from the wagon’s brake lights. It stops and begins to reverse. Somewhere in the limbic core of Juan’s brain, his flight or fight response kicks in. Juan chooses flight and runs. The police wagon skids to a halt and two officers fly out. One grabs Rosie by the arm while the other chases Juan down a driveway. By the time the cop reaches the back fence, Juan is long gone; he’s three gardens away leaping fences, pumping with enough adrenaline to keeping him running for another thirty-five minutes; he’ll eventually stop four suburbs away.

  On the footpath, Rosie demands to be released. The cop lets her go. This guy is young and handsome in a predictable movie-star kind of way and his badge identifies him as Sergeant Matt Vass. Matt wants to know why Juan took flight.

  Rosie offers the furious and simple explanation, ‘Because you freaked him out!’ She demands to know what they’ve done wrong.

  Matt Vass is beginning to suspect that Rosie has done nothing wrong. He can’t smell alcohol on her breath and she’s behaving in a coherent if aggressive manner. He asks her a few questions to establish that she’s not part of the drunken teen group who’ve been running into the traffic and breaking bottles further up the street. Clearly she’s not.

  Matt’s partner returns huffing and puffing and Matt tells Rosie to wait there while they have a quick chat. Rosie says she has a ten o’clock curfew, she’s not waiting, she’s going home. Matt tells her to wait there and goes to talk to his partner. Rosie starts to walk away. Matt grabs her arm. Rosie tries to wrest it away. Matt’s partner grabs Rosie’s other arm. Rosie struggles. Matt tells her to calm down. Rosie screams. A porch light comes on and a neighbour rushes out to see what’s going on.

  At 10.14pm on Sunday night, you’re watching TV in the living room, sitting in the old painted cane chairs that look as if they belong in someone else’s beach house. You can’t remember when they appeared and you suppose they are Wendy’s attempt at bohemian chic, but privately you think they look like junkshop refuse. Nonetheless, they’re a lot more comfortable than sitting on the floor so you keep your interior design opinions to your interior.

  Also, you don’t care.

  And you don’t care that you don’t care. You have absolutely no interest in what you think. For the last few days you’ve been bobbing around once more in your swamp of self-loathing. You find yourself so useless and pointless that it would take your breath away if you weren’t already so bored by yourself that you couldn’t be bothered making the effort of a disbelieving gasp.

  The doorbell rings. You assume it’s Rosie and Juan returning a little past curfew but who gives a flying fuck. If Wendy does, she can deal with it. ‘It’s open,’ you call out. The doorbell rings again. You listen to see if Wendy is coming to answer it. She isn’t. Irritated, you lift yourself out of the cane chair and open the front door.

  A policeman is standing there.

  It’s after 10pm on Sunday night and a policeman is standing at your front door. Both Declan and Rosie are out. You are immediately certain that one of them is dead. Your soul shatters. You’re a dead man waiting for a policeman to tell you what you already know.

  Sergeant Matt Vass tries to explain what is happening but something about the big blond bloke he’s talking to tells him it’s not really registering.

  The cop seems to be telling you that he has Rosie in the back of the police wagon. He says she is refusing to get out; she keeps screaming that her poor family have been through enough. She is demanding to be taken to prison.

  This makes no sense, which, of course, makes perfect sense because nothing in your life makes sense anymore. You accompany the cop down to his wagon where his partner opens the rear doors to reveal Rosie clinging to the metal grid, wild-eyed.

  And that’s the last thing you remember, for a while anyway.

  Twelve hours later, after you have been medicated and are sitting in the psychiatrist’s office, Wendy will relate a version of your lost minutes as reported to her by Sergeant Vass.

  According to the sergeant, you climb into the back of the wagon and calmly ask Rosie to get out. Rosie, who appears to be transfixed by demons from another dimension, does not respond. You ask again. Again she does not respond.

  You do not ask a third time. Instead, you try to pry sobbing Rosie’s lovely fingers from the slim bars of the metal grid that encases the rear of the wagon.
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  She won’t let go.

  So you howl like a wounded animal and slam your hands on the metal cage of the wagon with such ferocity that your palms bleed. Startled by this inexplicable turn of events, Matt Vass grabs your hands and drags you out of the wagon. You do not resist but continue to howl.

  Wendy hears the howling and races outside to see what on earth is going on.

  The next thing you remember, you are back inside and two young cops are using all their strength to push you down into the cane chair where you sit, broken.

  Matt Vass takes Wendy outside to the cold concrete veranda and asks, with a lowered voice, if there are any domestic violence issues he should be aware of. Wendy sees where he is heading and feels a surge of panic. As lucidly as possible, she tries to explain the series of unfortunate events that have led to this moment. She tries to strip the desperation out of her voice but she can’t.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Matt Vass asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you safe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re safe?’

  On it goes, with Wendy reassuring him that she and Rosie are not captive in the lair of a domestic monster.

  ‘I really should report this incident,’ says Matt.

  ‘Please don’t. It’s not how it looks. Please don’t.’

  A combination of experience and instinct tells Matt Vass that Wendy is not bound to silence by terror nor is she trying to conceal some dark truth from him. He agrees to let the matter rest but not before he gives her a card with his contact details and extracts a promise that she will call him should the need arise.

  He asks one final time, ‘And you’re sure you’re okay?’ Then he heads down the sandstone steps that lead to the gravel driveway where his partner waits patiently by the police wagon.