Cathexis

by Clay, Josie

  “Minky, you can't sleep forever” your dad says. I know this of course, but I also know myself and in sleep, the grown-up inside me is pre-chewing the indigestible, so I sleep. I want my mum.

  I know now, no matter how much something is essential to you, no matter how much you want it, need it, crave it, no matter how many games you play, how many things you count, how ever long you hold your breath or how many times and how many ways in which you hurt yourself, however you beat the clock, however much you analyse, weigh up, incant, repeat, invest, quantify, calculate, punish yourself – it will never make it so. It will make no difference, none whatsoever.

  I've known this all along, cognitive dissonance, but now it is proven. I'm free because I have lost the game once and for all. No need ever again to rein in chaos with constructs. There is no pattern, no riddle to solve, no strategy, no trick - trivial triumphs solve nothing. There is no epiphany – other than this.

  Where is that cat? Should I be at work? I go downstairs and your dad is at the kitchen table.

  “Have you seen Prudence?” But he just looks at me. “The cat” I say.

  “Oh” he says, “no”. So I shake some crunchies into her bowl. Where is she? Looking out the window that the wisteria has almost obscured.

  “Minette” he says, “please sit down”. So I do and there on the table is the picture of us in the snow. The forest of you inside me, charred stumps. Poor Nils, your ghost in his eyes, swollen and edged red. He's asking me what happened, so I tell him about the swimming and how I tried to find you. I recalled white stars and my hand goes to the plastic oblong glueing my frown. All this after I'd promised to look after you. I can't look at his eyes any more because both he and I have no-one now. So I go back to bed, where my grown-up will drip feed me bad wisdom, before I get washed away.

  I wake up, hogtied, and I can't, I just can't.

  I wake up and M8 is here. “Hello Motherfucker” I say.

  “Hello, M8” she says, not playing the game. “I'm so sorry M8” she says.

  I close my eyes and go to sleep. I dream you are trying to get my attention, but it's just a car alarm outside. Thirsty, I go to the bathroom and drink from the tap, having the notion that I'll climb into the bath and sleep. The razor which shaves your legs, the horrid scrunchie which ties back your hair when you don't want to get it wet. When I wake up, there's a blanket on me, but it's dark now, so I go back to bed, me and the street lamp.

  “Minette, Minette” your dad is touching my shoulder. “Wake up”. I don't want to but he keeps on. “Wake up, Minky”. Isn't it funny he calls me Minky? I crinkle my eyes and look at him with my mouth open, he's grown a beard. “She's gone” he says and I remember that Hall and Oates song, the ferocious empathy I had with it as a child. I'd listen to it over and over again on a tape I recorded from the radio, spurting out tragic, barbed tears and I cry for the first time over you. Your dad cries too and gives me his handkerchief.

  He says I need to eat something because I've been asleep for six days. But I can't eat, I'm full of stone. He's brought me tea in your Moomintroll cup, he's not to know. Not wanting to be a problem, I drink the tea and when he tells me to get dressed and come downstairs, I do as he says.

  “Where have you been?” Scooping up Prudence, I bury my face in her fur and pressing my ear to her kindly snicker, she kisses my lips. He's made me scrambled eggs on toast. He tells me you died of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, sudden cardiac death, like your mum (I already know this), and how until well into your twenties they'd subjected you to tests, electrocardiograms, echo something and exercises, but they concluded you were fine. I could have told him about the lethal birthday present, but I didn't think I could bear what I'd see in his eyes. I expect all would be revealed; instead of testing to see why you were alive, they must have tested to see why you were not.

  He says he has to go back to Sweden and shows me a sort of canister, which you are in. He will row out and sprinkle you in the sound. He asks if I want to go with him and I say no thank you. He gives me your star necklace, which I put on. He says Björn will be in touch; he is your executor and I have to sign stuff. I don't have to worry about money he says, because you've left me everything apart from your Trust Fund which goes to Björn's kids. You have given me your houses, your car and everything else ...everything but the girl.

  He asks me if I want to go to stay with him in Sweden. What's the point? I eat the egg off the toast for his benefit.

  Chapter 2

  Two minutes or so had passed since the end of the bed dipped, responding to a weight more significant than the cat's. Besides, Prudence was on Dale's pillow, curled up like schtreimal. It was her, but I kept my eyes shut because implications for my sanity lay in that soft depression.

  Motionless, patiently awaiting my decision. Her presence in passive persuasion convinced my left brain what my right had accepted from the start. I opened my eyes.

  “Hi Minky”. She was wearing her skirt and white vest.

  “Hi baby”. Wanting to hug her, but paralysed. “Where have you been?” I said. She continued to smile and three blue orbs, like bubbles, danced around her head, silvering her corkscrews. Teeth and snow-blind eyes ultra violet. Her face gathered gravitas and I knew I was in for a telling off.

  “Minky, listen to me”. Her silky voice crackled static. “I want you to do something for me”.

  “Anything” I said.

  “I don't like it when you're all skinny like this, I want you to eat properly and take care of yourself”.

  I managed a nod. “Promise me”.

  “I promise” I said and she glowed a satisfied rose colour.

  “Dale?”

  “Yes, Mink”.

  “Did I kill you?”

  “No, silly”, she smiled and another Dale within her, for there were several it seemed, began to push out that deep stone against stone laugh, which rose into bells, while she carried on talking.

  “It was an unfortunate combination of me being jävla dum and a dodgy gene on chromosome 14. It wasn't your fault Minky”.

  “Dale?”

  “Yes, Mink”.

  “I don't know where to put myself, how can I get through this?”

  .

  Her dear hands, which lay on her lap drew back across the duvet and moved into the air as if throwing a snowball. “Swim” she said, “swim”, her arms describing crawl, head tilting towards me, puffing out her cheeks, googling her eyes in comedy effort. I laughed like a child; trust her to be a funny ghost.

  “You said you'd never leave me”.

  “I won't” she said. “I'll always be with you”.

  I began to cry. Standing up, she flowed towards me and sat down wrapping me in her arms, infusing me with that same old incense, my face in her ozone hair. “I'll always love you” she said. “Always, no matter what you do, wherever you go. I'll never leave you”.

  In the morning my face squelching in the pillow, my crusted eyes turned to the sky, where the street light stuttered off in abeyance.

  A dignified shadow of a man. I wondered if the salvaged props still held from the last time he'd caved in. It may have helped knowing the landscape, but I doubted it as he hugged me goodbye. Having a miniature version of his wife must have given him solace then, a reason. But I had no such comfort and neither did he now. The cab spirited him away. Nils, head bowed, his daughter's dust in a flask on his knee.

  Glad to be alone because I could put my plan into action, or rather non-action. Aware that I had generated the vision of Dale, until I reviewed what she'd said. 'Jävla dum' - I'd never heard that before and when I googled it, found it meant fucking stupid or words to that effect. I could have guessed its meaning, but if asked what fucking stupid was in Swedish, I wouldn't have known. And as for the chromosome stuff...

  “Dale! Dale!” Roaming the rooms, shouting for you. Prudence trailing, calling in her language.

  As far as I could see I had no option other than to kill myself, not actively but through
neglect ; the difference between stamping on a tender plant and leaving it out in the frost. She wouldn't go if she saw I was in danger, returning to berate me, keeping an eye on me. In any case, I could do little more than drink alcohol and roll cigarettes, food didn't enter the equation. I know I'd promised, but then so had she.

  Unfortunately, my friends had other ideas; on some rota, dropping by, bringing me stuff, holding me while I cried on their shoulders. I was pretty sure they were on suicide watch.

  I'd gone from sleeping around the clock to barely at all, plagued by dreams. Dale's stricken face sucked into darkness, hand extended just out of reach. Or bobbing bloated on the bottom, fish nibbling her spiralling hair, like sea kelp ...seek help.

  Raving and haggard, fear and pity in my friends' eyes, M8 got the doctor, prescribing Valium which I took to enthusiastically; a heavy blanket hug: 'there, there, rest my child'. And I slept, untroubled in the padded shell of an oyster beside a cold pearl.

  Cross-legged on the Persian rug in a shard of morning sun, moving my glass, whisky and ashtray into the gold as it crept imperceptibly across the floor. By mid-afternoon it was gone and so was I. This was the shape of my day. Why don't you come? Just look at me.

  In the evening I lit a candle, popped a pill and watched the flame till my lids dropped. Come to me baby. Startled to consciousness by the urgent whoop of the Hilux's alarm, candle wax pooled, the flame scoring its way through a magazine, batting it out with my bare hands ...you are here.

  The familiar handbrake crank of the delivery van. Tove had shown me how to order my weekly shop online and get repeat prescriptions, negating the need to venture outside at all. It must be three months now, October time. My goods invariably Prudence food, coffee, whisky, baked beans, apples and tobacco. How was I still alive? When will you come? Time to cry again, but interrupted by the rattling letterbox. Good timing actually, nearly out of whisky. His amorphous form in the stained glass, stooping and standing, the carrier bags rustled.

  Do you remember when you were going to the shops and I asked if you wanted to take the bag for life? 'Why Minky' you said, 'is that a proposal?' We laughed till it hurt.

  Waiting until he'd completed his bowing and scraping, catching sight of myself in the hall mirror: mad fat eyes with a feral squint, bubonic skin, blotched with scabs which I picked absently, hair like greasy cardboard, armpits reassuringly sour. The van drove off and I opened the door a crack. “Shit”. The bags lined up on the path and not in the porch where they should be. Fucking cretin!

  Darting out like some kind of creature enticed by bait, picking up two bags with difficulty, my strength all gone, feeling observed. Pausing to nail the direction, scuttling in and returning. Across the road behind a transit van, someone pulled back like a sniper, I'm sure of it. No matter, all my bags safely in the hall, closing and bolting the door. 'Paranoid'.

  Thankfully my friends had been visiting less frequently, presuming I suppose I'd cried out the shock and was now in the 'dealing with it' phase, texting me instead.

  'How are you doing? x'

  'Don't worry' I'd reply, 'am still here x'

  The days suddenly got shorter, the street light and me clocking on at four in the afternoon, often taking the long night shift together, knocking off at sunrise. You're like Father Christmas, aren't you baby; if my eyes are open you don't come. It's only on waking I know you've been, leaving your presence (did you see what I did there?). I sense you've touched me, the smell of fir trees and spice and the imprint of your eyes, exciting like tinsel, yours in such a sensual place. Elation then shame. I'm sorry I'm breaking my promise, but Dale, I'm dying for you.

  I've actually opened some post, the protraction of condolence finally drying up. But the black walnut my heart has become is kicking up. The doctor wants to see me and won't give me any more pills till he has. Checking my store, I've got enough for a while. I'll be dead soon anyway.

  I'm now exactly seven months older than you and to mark that fact, I'm going to drink myself to oblivion. I heard you in my head 'at least use a glass' and then I ate a Ryvita because you told me to line my stomach, bossy today. My inertia, starting to disgust me. As a punishment I took Eviga Ögenblick from the shelf and perused our old happiness. Drinking and sobbing, I traced your beautiful face with my finger, brazen secrets passing between us. The pain wretched, tormenting, batting me about like a half dead shrew. “Dale, I don't know where to put myself”. Whining at your image, which began to animate, the breeze taking your curls, the white noise of the sea and whimper of a gull. You turned to the real me, curbing your corkscrews with your hand. 'Swim' you said. I blinked stupidly and the photo was normal. “Come back please”.

  Dreaming of school, the bell ringing home time, where I didn't want to go. “No” I said, turning from the metallic bleat, which was the ‘phone, stabbing at my head which spun like the world. A moist mess on my chest, acid cracked throat, getting to my feet to shut off the poisonous noise which stopped abruptly. Breathing shallow so as not to wake my guts, the ‘phone started again. “Shut up!” I roared, covering my ears, scaring Prudence. But it didn't so I had to pick it up. Nils. Apparently it would be Christmas soon, inviting me to spend it with him. My stomach capsized.

  “No thank you” I said.

  “How are you coping Minette?” I guess my sobs answered that one.

  Chapter 3

  Shit, shit, shit, shaking the empty pill bottle upside down. Had I tried it last night? I just won't fucking die, will I. But a more pressing problem; a racing panic as my only option coalesced before me, streets and people. I'd have to go outside.

  OK, Minnie Bracewell, washed and dressed, trembling hands unable to grasp the tweezers, let alone pluck the whiskers. Some rancid foundation to cover my scabs, an undertaker's touch. It was only when I looked out to reccy the street I saw the snow, a thick covering. Surprised because cold isn't silent; it makes a sound like grief, the echo of a hammer blow, metal on metal. Good though - less traffic and less people at the doctor's. The surgery was in Green Lanes, from when I was with Max. I hadn’t been for 16 years.

  Boots weird on my feet. Here we go, setting off down the garden path, gingerly geriatric, scoping out hand holds and treacherous cambers. Rehearsing my spiel to Dr Amwar . I must appear sane and composed, yet anxious enough to merit medication. Christmas can be stressful, I reasoned, just a little help over the festive period, boots sloshing in dirty doilies. A burnt out building in Heather Road, cadaverous, black ribs, a fine house now derelict. Due for demolition the notice said. It gave me comfort to see other things beyond repair.

  Overheating in the waiting room, willing the pen which he held in one hand to meet the prescription he waved in the other, while blithely talking to the receptionist.

  “Thank you” I said. Nearly there Minnie, negotiating the rusty granules on the disability ramp supposed to aid traction. Easing myself into the chair for old people, awaiting the pharmacist's call. “Mrs Breakwell?” Near enough. “That'll be seven twenty five please”.

  Mouth open, imbecilic. “Sorry?” I stammered.

  “That's seven pounds twenty five for the prescription”. Eyes owlish through glasses as if she'd suddenly seen me. Money, I'd totally forgotten, and all that I'd been holding together began to unravel. Throat constricting, lips cooing around stunted words. I looked around for a solution (dismissing the lifeboat shaped charity box). Unable to find one, I brought my hands to my face and rocked in utter defeat.

  “Are you alright?” she said. The bell tinkle at the door announced another spectator to my coming apart. The hair products beside me on which I was now fixating swayed in a seasick fashion. 'Frizzease', too many Zs, making me nauseous. 'Frizzeaze', too many Zs like a wasp nest bed. Zs, swarming, buzzing black zigzags. “No” shutting my eyes and clapping my ears, stinging tears. I couldn't see the edges, I would never see the edge of all this. “Go away”.

  Then soft, cool material on my hands, calm like Dale. A dark tumbling mountain “Dale?” A cr
imson causeway, impossible not to smile when saying my name, black, serious branches over green pools. Two sets of hands over my ears, leaving my filmy eyes alone to extrapolate from this diorama, Nancy.

  Pulling my hands to my lap, enfolding them in kid gloves, squatting before me.

  “What's the matter, Minette? What is it?”

  Her voice slicing through the miasma.

  “I forgot to bring money for my prescription”.

  “Don't worry” she said, “I'll get it”.

  Squinting at the printout to see what she'd purchased. I guess she was entitled. “Come” she said, linking her arm with mine. Crunching along Palladian Road, more in line with me in her high heeled boots. A snowball fizzed past our heads, stirring in me an old, protective rankle which quickly curled up like a toothless guard dog. Sebastian yapping happy at the window. Two coffees on the breakfast bar. Last time I'd sat on this tall stool, Dale was by my side.