Utterly drained, Wendy closes the front door and looks into the living room to find you gently rocking Rosie in your arms. In other circumstances this might strike her as a charming if unorthodox portrait of a father with an oversized daughter in his lap. But the rocking is eerily mechanical and Rosie’s eyes are squeezed shut. ‘MakeitstopDaddymakeitstop, MakeitstopDaddymakeitstop, MakeitstopDaddymakeitstop,’ she says. ‘MakeitstopDaddymakeitstop, Makeitstop Daddymakeitstop, MakeitstopDaddymakeitstop…’
Wendy moves quickly to the kitchen, opens a kitchen cupboard and cries quietly into the door. She wonders whether to break them up, her crazy husband and her mad daughter, but decides to let them be.
Eventually Rosie falls asleep and Wendy lifts her from your arms. She does not notice the weight of her almost-grown daughter as she carries her to bed. The calamity battering at her domestic ramparts is all consuming. Details that would once have preoccupied her—‘Argh! You’re too heavy for me to carry; you’re a big girl now’—don’t even register.
Wendy returns to the living room to find you still rocking back and forth to the same strange mechanical rhythm. She tells you that it’s frightening her, but you don’t even hear her.
Only when your wife kneels in front of you and puts her hands on your knees do you see her. You look down at her face that is blurred with tears and snot.
‘Please,’ she begs softly, ‘Stop. You’re scaring me.’
But you don’t stop. You say, ‘This isn’t about you.’
You don’t mean this in a nasty way but it comes out like that and, horribly, the exchange disintegrates into a brief but vicious fight. As is often the way with this genre of domestic drama, the tragedy climaxes in an absurdly comedic moment as you hiss at Wendy in a silly Gollum voice, ‘Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone…’
You sit in silence for a while with Wendy crumpled at your feet. She says matter-of-factly that she can’t leave you alone because she’s worried that you will kill yourself. And as usual she’s kind of right. You don’t want to kill yourself but oblivion seems a seductive option. If you could just slip away into nothingness…
… if you could just slip away.
‘Annie,’ you announce with sudden certainty. ‘Get Annie.’
‘Annie?’ says Wendy, surprised.
Annie has been Wendy’s best friend since they met at school in Year 7. The bond deepened between them when they turned thirteen and both fell in love with the same beret-wearing boy, who attended a private Steiner school just down the road from their school.
Both girls took to staying on the morning bus two stops past their school with the sole objective of breathing the same air as Beret Boy. When Beret Boy disembarked, the girls would also disembark, then cross the road and catch another bus back to school. They never actually spoke to him but remained ever-hopeful that he might notice them, which, apparently, he never did.
With an iron-willed persistence that would come as no surprise to anyone who encountered their older selves, young Annie and Wendy convinced their respective parents that a Steiner education was critical to their intellectual development. They both changed schools and ended up a class below Beret Boy, who continued to act as if he didn’t notice they existed because, of course, he didn’t.
When they tell you this story years later at university you ask what happened to Beret Boy.
They both stop and think for a moment and shrug.
‘But don’t you want to know?’ you press them.
‘Nup,’ says Annie.
‘Not really,’ says Wendy.
‘So you have no interest in the fate of someone who shaped your educational destiny and changed the course of your lives forever?’ you ask.
Both consider the froth on their cappuccinos. They look up at you and simultaneously answer, ‘Nope.’
You ask for Annie to come and sit with you because, in no particular order:
(a) Your wife is worn out. You have worn her out.
(b) Annie lives around the corner and although she’s a single mum her three boys are old enough to be left, particularly if she’s just around the corner at your place.
(c) Annie is kind and dependable. There is not a crazy, neurotic, judgmental bone in her body. And she’s solid. Tonight, if you are not going to slip into the abyss, you need to anchor yourself to someone solid.
Tonight, if you are not going to slip into the abyss, you need to anchor yourself to someone solid.
That’s your new mantra as you rock back and forth on the couch until at some point you realise that Annie is sitting next to you, holding your hand, while Egg is at your feet.
You sit this way all night, in and out of states of conscious and unconscious despair so dark and terrible that you intermittently startle awake, whimpering. Each time you wake Annie is there. She squeezes your hand, holding you in life. Egg is there too.
In the grim abyss, you hear a dim but certain pulse:
I am life, it beats.
You are life, it beats.
We are the same thing. I will not let you go. You will not be extinguished.
Early next morning, Wendy takes Rosie to the clinic at St Jude’s where the pretty young psychologist always says she’s doing fine. Wendy insists on being in the session to make sure Rosie relates every detail of the previous night’s episode. Rosie tells all, a strangely dispassionate narrator. The psychologist takes it in and asks Rosie how she feels about it.
‘Fine,’ she answers.
Wendy turns to Rosie, astonished.
Rosie snaps, ‘What? Don’t you want me to be fine?’
Wendy’s eyes fill with tears. Rosie’s bottom lip quivers. She starts to cry. There’s nothing restrained or delicate about her ugly, eyes-scrunched, heart-rending howl. Wendy puts her arms around her daughter and pulls her close. Rosie collapses into her mother’s embrace and they sob together.
By 11am Rosie is home in bed, telling an unconvinced Annie that she is feeling a lot better. Meanwhile, you are sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch, floating on a medicated cloud of numb. Wendy is back on duty, relating your police-wagon escapades to Doctor Maurice O’Connell.
Despite her harrowing morning, your wife has managed to pull some strings and locate a shrink who has agreed to see you immediately. He has injected you with something to reduce your anxiety, diagnosed you with post-traumatic stress disorder, prescribed antidepressants and assured you that in the next couple of weeks the clouds will start to lift, all before you can say ticketyboo.
Your first session is over and Doctor Maurice ushers you out into the waiting room where Wendy sits on a minimalist Italian leather couch flicking through a magazine. It is only then that you realise she must have left you alone with Doctor O’Connell. Before she looks up you scan the room, with its high ceilings, recessed lighting, elaborate ceiling rose, exclusive designer furniture and palette of colours that some marketing team has spent days naming Driftwood, Dry Bone and Chocolate Drizzle. Everything tells you that you are probably inside an expensively restored nineteenth-century terrace house, somewhere in the inner city.
When you go outside the streetscape confirms your diagnosis. How the hell did you drive all the way into the city centre without noticing where you were going? Luckily the haze of drugs does not encourage you to probe any further. It does not occur to you to enquire how you can afford to pay a shrink who can afford such fancy real estate because the answer would make you crazier than you already are.
19
You are in the study trying to write about the proliferation of visual effects companies in the early 2000s, when you smell your socks burning. You switch off the bar heater at your feet and wiggle your hot toes, feeling a pang of guilt about the unnecessary expense, especially since the weather is warming. Wendy is having even more trouble juggling bills now that you are paying for a shrink, and you’re equal parts ashamed and grateful that she is keeping the details of your financial floundering to herself.
You hear the front doo
r open and Wendy greet Declan. Your wife is upbeat and warm but a sudden change in her tone tells you something is up. You hear her coolly inquiring where your son has been, whom he has been with, and whether he intends to do any homework. You strain to hear Declan’s response but all that comes is the usual mumble.
You hear Declan head down the hall to his room and then Wendy appears at the study door.
‘He’s stoned.’
‘You sure?’
‘Pupils the size of saucers and he stinks of it.’
‘Shit.’
‘I can’t believe he’s started again.’
‘Maybe it’s a one-off. Things have been pretty stressy around here.’
‘That would be the understatement of the century.’
You see a plan of action form on Wendy’s face and she disappears down the hall, where she passes Declan. She tries to make eye contact with him but he suspects his eyes have already betrayed him and is careful not to look at her again.
‘Where are you going?’ she interrogates.
‘Having a shower.’ His articulation is unusually precise.
Declan disappears into the bathroom and Wendy heads into his bedroom where she executes a full search-and-recovery operation. It doesn’t take her long to discover another home-made bong hidden under the bed.
Every now and then the ancient tree-fern that towers over your swimming pool is overcome by the urge to reproduce. It showers the world with tiny brown spores that clog the pool filter and layer the windowsills with a veil of dirty gold dust.
Today the French doors are open in an attempt to capture some late winter sun, and the spores venture inside. They settle on the honey-coloured timber of the kitchen table. With his hair still dripping from the shower, Declan uses a single finger to sweep the fine film of spores into little brown piles along the table-top. Wendy asks him to look at her. He looks up.
Wendy tells him that she wouldn’t mind so much if the dope just made him giggly and gave him the munchies. But we all know (she says, nodding to include you) that is not the case. ‘The dope makes you depressed, Declan. Dangerously depressed.’
You have chosen not to sit with Wendy and Declan but to hover by the kitchen sink where you nod as Wendy speaks. You are like one of those nodding toy dogs in the rear windows of cars. Your articulated head bobs back and forth as you witness the proceedings through the smog of your medication.
Declan listens to his mother, compliant and defeated. He’s still a little stoned and knows better than to argue with her when he’s not at full capacity. He reminds you for all the world of a floppy doll; you could arrange his limbs in any configuration you liked and they would remain that way until you decided to rearrange them.
Wendy is unusually frank with Declan. She tells him that the family is disintegrating and that she cannot cope with him smoking pot. He promises to stop.
‘Promise me.’
‘I promise.’
They are the only words he utters and when he says them, the smog clears. You see that the kid is completely overwhelmed. He doesn’t need anyone to tell him his family is disintegrating; he knows. All the certainties of childhood have abandoned him—and at the worst possible time. Just as he is facing his final exams and preparing for the next great leap forward—to university and beyond—a chasm has opened up in front of him. And, because of your inability to cope with the unfortunate events that have befallen you, you have flooded the chasm with chaos.
You’re looking at Wendy as she’s holding your newborn son in her arms. Her face is sweaty and deathly pale but she emanates an intoxicating combination of exhaustion and jubilation.
It’s been a long, hard labour: twenty hours of intense contractions because the baby is facing the wrong way and pressing against her spine; a show of muddy mucus that indicates the baby is in distress, shitting himself inside the womb; a slowing foetal heart rate; preparations for an emergency Caesarean abandoned when the foetal heart rate suddenly ceases; a child ripped from his mother with what looks like a giant pair of barbecue tongs; a silent, bluish baby; his mother calling out, ‘Why isn’t he crying? Why isn’t he crying?’ as the doctors huddle over him in a corner; and eventually, blessedly, the furious scream of a pinking newborn.
That glorious howling sweeps the trauma away. You are filled with the inestimable joy of watching your son. Wendy looks up at you with a wicked grin. ‘So this perfect little person has arrived and now we get to fuck him up.’
A release valve opens, laughter bubbles from both of you and washes over your tiny boy. A quip delivered flippantly, it nonetheless feels profoundly true.
You see Rosie dancing up the gravel drive, executing pirouettes, waving a white envelope above her head. Juan laughs and claps and tries to snatch the envelope but she whips it away from him, leaping and twirling. Egg joins in the fun, barking and running in circles. From your position at the bedroom window, you find that the muscles of your face have arranged themselves into a smile, which must mean, of course, that you are happy.
The envelope contains a letter that, for once, praise the Lord, brings some good news: Rosie has been shortlisted for next year’s intake into Mount Karver. Rosie and her parents have been invited to an interview with the headmaster. If she gets in—which she probably will because Declan is already there—she will leave Boomerang and make a fresh start for her final three years of schooling.
Declan enters and Rosie babbles the news at him and you brace yourself for his response. But he just grins at her and they high-five. Rosie throws her arms around him and he kisses the top of her head and tells her that she is going to love it. You silently bless your son and give thanks for his openheartedness. Wendy looks over at you and you see that her eyes are bright with tears.
Spring dawdles erratically into September: it’s warm, then cold, freezing for a morning, then hot for a week. In the garden, some plants burst into activity, others sleep late and wake confused. The peach tree outside your bedroom window begins to fruit while the peach at the letterbox is just starting to blossom. Your miniature American azaleas flower but their larger Japanese cousins remain shyly in bud. There’s not going to be a ta-da moment this year; it’s the botanical equivalent of every man for himself.
As Declan’s final exams draw closer, he seems to be studying less and less. Wendy initiates a program where he brings his books to the kitchen table and works under her watchful eye. Sometimes she joins him at the table, doing her own work.
Sometimes she prompts him as she prepares dinner. ‘Have you finished your maths revision?’ ‘What page are you on?’ ‘You’ve been on that page for a while, haven’t you?’
As the questions proceed, an ambience of general annoyance sets in. Declan is annoyed by the questions. Wendy is annoyed by having to ask them. But there is no question that Wendy must indeed ask the questions. Declan is capable of staring at a page for fifteen minutes without reading a word. They both know this but it doesn’t stop the situation from becoming unbearable.
Within a couple of weeks Declan is irritated by the mere sight of his mother and takes to avoiding her. Whenever she forces an interaction he answers in a bored monotone, which clearly hurts her feelings. You snap at him not to speak to his mother like that and Wendy snaps at you because you are not being helpful.
Your niece, Mel, is ten years older than Declan and he adores her. You all adore her because she enlivens your house with her funny stories and infectious laughter. Mel is a qualified teacher but is currently completing a PhD in psychology with the intention of becoming a school counsellor. She’s looking for part-time work until she graduates at the end of the year and so it seems the perfect solution to offer Mel a job as Declan’s tutor.
She comes each day as he arrives home from school. Together they complete the ritual of afternoon tea and then commence a couple of hours’ study before dinner. You hear them bantering as Mel asks pretty much the same questions that Wendy asked only days earlier. Only now there are peals of laughter and furti
ve giggles and long periods of silence while actual work is done.
‘Read that paragraph.’
‘I’ve read it.’
‘Okay. Turn the page and read the next one. And don’t you roll your eyes at me.’
Declan flicks Mel’s pen across the table. It clatters onto the floor. Mel punches him on the shoulder and tells him to pick it up. He holds her gaze, smirking, and then scrambles on the floor for longer than is necessary to retrieve the pen. He resurfaces and attempts to balance the pen on his nose. Mel removes the pen and points to the page. Declan reads. And so the miracle unfolds—Declan studies without resenting you for making him do it.
Mel has an inkling of your financial position and tries to refuse payment. She usually stays for dinner and attempts to mount a case that this is adequate compensation. You argybargy back and forth and eventually settle on an hourly rate that is far below what she is worth and far above what you can afford. Later, when you discuss this with Wendy, she remains strangely silent. When you press her she says, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to pay for it.’
You don’t know how you’re going to pay for it either, until Ingrid calls and says Mel has told her about coaching Declan. She says that she thinks it’s a great idea but she knows things can’t be easy financially. ‘So why don’t you borrow a few grand from your cashed-up big sister,’ she asks, ‘just to tide you over?’
You don’t even make a pretence of refusing. Knowing you’re feeling uncomfortable about it, though, Ingrid adds, ‘I know you’d do the same for me, kiddo.’ If she were standing in front of you, you would kiss her feet.
When you tell your architect friend Felipe about your niece’s daily sessions he accuses you of outsourcing your parenting responsibilities.
‘It’s your job to make sure your kid sits down and does his work,’ says Felipe, ‘not your niece’s.’
You suppose he’s right but you don’t care because it’s working. And anyway there’s something about Mel being your niece, about keeping it in the family, that makes it seem okay.
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