by Kay Kerr
‘Change is a constant in life, so there’s reliability in it that way. It can be fun too,’ she said, and I told her I couldn’t remember a time when change was fun. She promised to show me how. We talked more about you, Rudy, and she said you sound like the kind of person who ‘marches to the beat of your own tambourine’, which I don’t think is the real saying but also I think she’s right. She also told me a story about her last boyfriend, Charlie. They met at a party last year, thrown by a girl from her old band. It was in an old wooden Queenslander, and they had both been filling up their drinks in the kitchen when they caught eyes. Aggie said he was hot in that undernourished grungy kind of way, which sounds like no one I know. Anyway, Charlie teased her for her colourful polka-dot dress. He said she looked like a child at a birthday party, and they both laughed. He told her his band was playing later that night, and to hang around for it. She did, and they weren’t really that good, and then she and Charlie kissed. She said he was a sloppy kisser, but acted like he was doing her a favour. They went back to his house that night and slept together but didn’t ‘sleep together’ if you know what I mean. And then when they did ‘sleep together’ the next week, he said he was working on himself right now, and that maybe they should just keep things casual because he didn’t want to hurt her. She was hurt, but she kept things casual, and then a guy from art school asked her out. Charlie said of course she was his girlfriend, and to tell the other guy to fuck off. So they were boyfriend and girlfriend for a month or so, and he would get drunk and turn up at her house if he was in the neighbourhood, and he would forget to call her back. She finally broke up with him and he called her every day for two weeks. He wrote her horrible poems and cried when she told him to leave her alone. I told her it sounded very confusing. She said it was simple.
‘He wasn’t upset about losing me, he was sad because he’d never been dumped before and it bruised his ego. He was a waster and a user and exactly what I needed at that time to wake me up. Now I don’t wait around for things to get better, I make things better myself,’ she said.
It gave me something to think about, like maybe there’s a chance I could start to make things better for myself too.
All in all, it was a really good day. There are things I don’t think I can make better, Rudy, like you not being here, but there are some things I can. It’s really got me thinking. I don’t know what it means that working at Robins gave me my first good day. I don’t think it’s supposed to be like that. Then again, lots of things are not how they are supposed to be, and that doesn’t change the fact that they are, does it.
I miss you.
Love, Erin
1 September
Dear Rudy,
Hoo boy, do I have a story for you. Even as it was happening, I thought ‘this will make a funny story to tell Rudy’, and that cheered me up a bit. Has anything ever made you think of me like that? Actually, wait, don’t answer that. If it’s harsh and terrible I might not be able to handle it, not after the day I’ve had.
I went for my driver’s licence today. It’s the first day of spring so I thought that would be a good time to give it a shot. It’s not a thing I’m superstitious about or anything, but I thought it couldn’t hurt, and it was the first appointment available, anyway. I know you got yours on the first go because Dad keeps saying ‘Rudy passed his test on the first go’. But I’m not you, Rudy, and I think Dad was reminded of that today. He doesn’t say much, so when he says something like ‘Rudy passed his test on the first go’, it means he is really proud about it. It’s like when he tells his boss ‘Erin got straight A’s on her last report’ and I know he is happy I’m smart. I’m glad I’m smart to give him something to be happy about with me, because he hasn’t mentioned my autism diagnosis since the day I came home from that doctor and Mum told him all about it. He said it was ‘rubbish’, like he didn’t want to believe that a child of his could have anything ‘wrong’ with them. When it’s in black and white like that there are not a lot of places to hide.
So Mum drove me to the transport centre and pulled into a parking space right in front of the office entry as if she was the one taking the test. Maybe she thought they might be watching her from inside, or maybe they would judge my driving ability based on the parent who brought me in. Anyway she seemed very nervous and she smiled at me in a way I haven’t seen before. She wished me luck and went off to get a coffee at The Roast around the corner. When she threw the keys over the bonnet somehow I managed to catch them. I thought it was a good sign. I had been practising the hard parts of the driving test in particular, which are:
Parallel parks
Hill starts
Three-point turns.
Wouldn’t you know it, I ended up with Cowgirl Glenda as my examiner, just like everyone warned me I would. She was wearing the boots and the checked shirt tucked in and even one of those little necktie things that probably have a very specific name but I don’t know what it is. I half-expected her to have some kind of American accent, but she just sounded Australian. We used Mum’s car for the test because it’s cheaper than renting one from the Transport Department, but it doesn’t have air-conditioning so I think maybe that was a bad call. Cowgirl Glenda looked hot with her top button done up, and she already had sweat patches under her arms and little beads just above her top lip before she got into the car. I think maybe if I’d had air-conditioning she might have been easier on me after what happened next.
It’s hard to think about how I’m going to tell this story, because I guess there’s my version and Cowgirl Glenda’s version and they are very different. Dr Lim says it’s important to consider how others might see my actions, but it’s hard enough to know how I see them sometimes. And they feel different in the moment from how they do later.
Cowgirl Glenda instructed me to ‘Head out to Bloomfield Street and take a left’. She spoke in a voice that was raspy and sort of mean. I reversed the car and drove through the car park as slow as I could. It would have been frustrating to fail my test because I was going over the ten-kilometre speed limit in the Transport Department car park. Once I was out on the main street, Cowgirl Glenda barked, ‘Change lanes now.’
I hardly had time to indicate, shoulder check and get into the right lane before we reached the first roundabout, but I managed to make it. I don’t know why, but Cowgirl Glenda seemed to enjoy waiting until the last minute to tell me any time I needed to change lanes. When Mum is giving me lessons she always gives me plenty of notice and speaks in a calm voice, saying things like: ‘And at the end of this street we’re going to take a left—it’s a little while off but you’ll see it when we pass the petrol station.’ Mum would make a much better driving examiner than Cowgirl Glenda.
We drove through town and down to Cleveland Point, which was quite easy and a scenic drive. Cowgirl Glenda was furiously making notes on her clipboard, but I was concentrating too hard to have a chance to peek.
When she told me to head towards the train station I knew straight away we were going to the roundabout that causes so many people to fail their test. My stomach was queasy and I kept doing shoulder checks, even when I wasn’t changing lanes. I think I probably lost points for that, not that it mattered in the end. When we reached the roundabout there was one car in front of us, and all of a sudden Cowgirl Glenda barked, ‘Straight ahead.’
I questioned her, to make sure she really meant straight ahead. I had never seen anyone drive straight ahead at a roundabout before. But she said, ‘Yes, straight ahead,’ and to go because there was a gap in the traffic. So I put my foot on the accelerator and drove straight ahead. We both flew a little bit out of our seats as we hit the side of the roundabout, me more than her, and we went up and over. Some of the plants growing in the roundabout centre flew up and got stuck in the windscreen wipers. As we came down the other side I dodged cars making their way around, and looked over to see Cowgirl Glenda clutching the door and her seat-belt, with a bad look on her face. A really bad look.
She screamed at me to pull over. Her face was red and her hands were shaking. ‘The test is over,’ she said in a voice I think she was hoping sounded calm, but didn’t sound calm at all. Voices that are trying to sound calm when they aren’t are actually more stressful than panicked voices, in case you’re wondering. So if you’re panicked, just be panicked is what I’m saying. Now that I think about it, if you’re anything just be that thing. Pretending to be something else is confusing and time wasting in the long run.
I asked if we were going to do parallel parking and Cowgirl Glenda looked at me and raised her eyebrows in the way Mum does when she is putting on mascara. She didn’t hold back.
‘You endangered my life, broke more road rules than I can count and you destroyed public property. You, young lady, should never be behind the wheel again.’
Then it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. I tried to get a bit more of an explanation, but her face told me she was not interested in what I had to say, so I got out of the car and swapped seats with her. She drove us back to the transport centre in silence.
Mum was leaning against a concrete pillar with a takeaway coffee in her hand when we pulled up. I guess because Cowgirl Glenda was driving, she figured out that I had failed.
‘What happened? Was it the parallel park?’ she asked.
If only. Cowgirl Glenda slammed the door, threw the keys across the bonnet, but this time I didn’t catch them, and she stormed inside the office without saying a word. I told Mum about how I went straight ahead at the roundabout because she told me to go straight ahead and how Cowgirl Glenda was pretending to be calm but really she wasn’t calm at all. Mum looked horrified and told me to wait in the car.
She followed Cowgirl Glenda into the office and I sat in the passenger seat and waited. She was inside for seven minutes before coming out looking very pleased with herself.
‘You’re going to re-sit the test next month with a different examiner,’ she said.
Mum explained that Cowgirl Glenda didn’t actually mean I should drive straight ahead over the roundabout. She meant to go around the roundabout and take the second exit, which was straight ahead from where we had begun. I don’t know why she didn’t just say that—‘Take the second exit’. It would have saved us both a lot of trouble. She’s the driving examiner; surely she should be better at giving instructions.
I’m sick of people not saying what they mean, and saying things they don’t mean and saying one thing with their eyes and another with their words. It’s hard to focus much on anything when there’s another level in my brain constantly running assessments on the social cues I might be missing. I know I say things that hurt people’s feelings when I’m having an outburst, but the things I say are true things, even if people don’t always want to hear the truth. I am glad I didn’t have an outburst though, and call Cowgirl Glenda a cowgirl, or push her or crash the car or anything. They might not have let me re-sit the test for no extra cost. I’m hoping Dr Lim might even see that as progress.
At dinner Mum kept reaching over the table to pat my arm, which was nice but it meant she blocked the salad bowl every time she did it. Dad mostly just ate his steak, but he said, ‘I didn’t get my licence until the second go,’ right as we were clearing the plates, which is the thing that made me feel the most better. Oliver was mostly just being Oliver, but he did run up and down the hallway with his Superman cape on and nothing else before his bath, I think because he knows it makes us all laugh. ‘Nudie-man, to the rescue,’ he shouted, as Mum shuffled him into the bathroom. I really wanted to get my licence before Schoolies, and maybe even to drive us down there, but I guess I still have time. It’s just a bit stressful when things don’t go to plan.
I’m not like you, Rudy. I don’t adapt easily. And things are definitely not going to plan. For starters, I’ve stopped imagining you’ll write back and started imagining you appearing back at the house one day. I’m imagining what I would say to you and what I would want you to say. Sorry would be a good start, Rudy. Sorry Erin for not taking more care. Sorry for messing everything up at a time you need consistency more than ever, sorry for leaving you to deal with Mum and Dad on your own, sorry for being so reckless. The first thing I would say would be hello, and after that I’d probably ask how you are. I think that would be a good place to start.
Love, Erin
3 September
Dear Rudy,
I don’t feel much like writing to you today. That’s probably not something I should put in my letter, but it’s the truth. These letters make me feel my feelings; they make me rip them open and poke around and ponder how I got one specific form of trauma or another in a way that I don’t always like.
I’m tired. I’m tired of school and the constant pressure of results, as though every minute not spent studying for final exams is a minute wasted, as though high school is the time for hard work and adulthood is the time for fun and not the other way around. I’m tired of being awake. I’d like to sleep in one of those flotation pods for a week. I’ve never done one and I don’t know which way they would go for me, complete bliss or total nightmare, but I like the idea of them. I feel like disconnecting, like zoning out. I think it’s a rest for my brain, but Dr Lim thinks it’s this big terrible thing and she starts scheduling lots of visits when I talk too much about it. Have you ever felt like that? It’s strange all the things I’ve discovered I want to ask you now that you’re not living in the bedroom next to mine.
Like, have you ever eaten sushi? I thought I wouldn’t like it because it is made of seaweed and seaweed is something I didn’t think I would want to eat, so I never tried it. For years I have lived my life thinking I hated sushi without even trying it. And then Aggie brought some into the shop today for us to share and I tried it and I loved it. I love sushi so much; it’s delicious. I tried raw salmon and snapper and one made with just avocado. She said her dad caught the snapper yesterday; you don’t get much fresher than that. You dip it in soy sauce, which comes in these cute containers shaped like little fish, and you add pickled ginger, which I love, and the whole thing is just a nice little ritual of preparing and eating perfectly bite-sized little portions. You can make it yourself at home like Aggie did, or you can go to a restaurant where little plates of sushi travel around on a miniature train and you just pick off the ones you want to eat. How cool is that? I think sushi is my new favourite food. You’d love it Rudy, you really would.
Tom came into the shop today. He said he needed a present for his mum, but then he left without buying anything so I guess he didn’t find what he was after. He seemed nervous; his energy was jumpy and I had to stop myself from asking him if he was all right too many times. People who are not all right don’t like to be asked if they are all right, or so I’ve picked up. He said he was all right. He said he wanted to talk to me, and then he talked about his work and his family and his girlfriend and the weather, so I guess he got to talk to me like he wanted. Aggie said, ‘There is something up with that guy,’ and when I told her he was your friend she just said, ‘Hmmm.’
I think I’ve maybe only told you about the parts of Aggie that have helped me, because she’s helping me so much. I don’t mean to do that though, I don’t mean to make her sound like she’s a fairy godmother or anything like that. So here are some other things about Aggie I learnt today that I’d like you to know.
She has two sisters—an older sister called Mary and a younger sister called Kirra. All of them are good singers, she says, and they used to perform together at festivals and shows. Mary has a baby now, so she doesn’t sing much except nursery rhymes and lullabies. Aggie says her niece Ava is a lucky girl. Kirra is in her first year of high school so she cares more about boys and parties than singing with her sister, Aggie says. Mary moved out with her husband two years ago, so Aggie and Kirra use her room to get ready in, and Mary still stays there when she comes to visit. I think I’d like a sister the way Aggie tells it. A sister is like a best friend who will never ditch you because you’re
quiet or you say the wrong thing.
Aggie used to busk a lot when she first started singing on her own, and she said she made more money doing that than at some of the gigs she has booked. I know I always try to give buskers some coins if I have any, because I think it’s so brave to stand in the middle of the street and make sounds you hope other people will enjoy.
Aggie’s trying to book more shows and maybe even go on tour. I’ve heard her singing around the shop, but I’d really like to see her perform. Her voice is like wind chimes, soft and familiar and blowing in the breeze. She has a lot of friends. There are always people dropping in to say hi. I can see why people want to be around her. She’s like the sun drawing people to the beach on a spring morning. She is really proud to be a Quandamooka woman and she is doing what she can to keep her culture alive and thriving.
Maybe I’ve picked the wrong things to tell you; maybe I should talk about what her parents are like or how she wants to drop out of uni, I don’t know. What makes something an important part of someone anyway? Shouldn’t that be their decision and not mine? I wish you could meet Aggie and decide for yourself which things are worth telling other people about her, and which are worth keeping for yourself. I’m not worried about you taking her anymore, she feels like she is my friend for real now.
Dee says I talk about Aggie like she’s perfect, and I don’t mean to do that. She’s just really good at being who she is, and she doesn’t seem to wonder about that at all. I wonder all the time. I wonder if I like the things I like, or dislike the things I dislike. I wonder if I have attributes that others would tell people about me, or if I’m so busy trying not to be embarrassed or have an outburst that I just soak up everyone else’s attributes hoping they will work for me. I don’t have any idea what people see when they see me, I guess because I don’t know what I see when I see myself. Does any of this make sense, Rudy? It’d be really good if we could talk about this in person, you know.
