Chapter 17
Unlike the window-decorating competition, the gingerbread-house thing is a new tradition that the neighbours are desperately trying to make happen.
This is apparently the second year. There is a fine line between close-knit community and weird cult that makes up rituals to stop its members from ever looking to the outside world, and I think the gingerbread-house competition might be on the wrong side of that line.
Mum strolls into the living room, her arms stacked high with what I assume are supplies. There are plastic bags full of packets of lollies, and trays that must contain pre-baked gingerbread. She huffs and puffs until Olivia gets out of her seat.
‘Can I give you a hand?’ I ask.
‘Well someone should,’ Mum replies, offloading a couple of items.
‘You can always ask, you know,’ I say.
‘I shouldn’t have to ask.’
‘That is an insane approach to life. People can’t read your mind.’
‘Thank you for calling me insane, Nora. It makes me feel thrilled with my choice to continue to house, clothe and feed you well into adulthood.’
I bite back the urge to remind Mum I did not ask to be born, because I played that card too many times as a child, and I let Olivia help her.
I join Maeve with her animals, which she is busy lining back up now that her own mum has moved away.
I dare not join in, so instead cycle through the animal noises, making her laugh by pretending the lion says moo.
By the time Mum and Olivia are ready to leave, the lion must have mooed one hundred and fifty times.
Luke is staying behind with Dad to help him with the lawn.
The grass that was mowed three whole days ago.
‘It’s more of a girls’ day anyway, I believe,’ Mum announces, not allowing their choice to have any impact. It has become her choice now.
At the Masons’, the split does lean more heavily towards women, but there are plenty of dads, brothers and sons there too.
I am tempted to point this out, but make the rare choice to keep this observation to myself.
Some might call that growth. I make a note in ‘my weird brain’ to tell Dr Montague, hoping I will become her favourite patient, if I am not already, which is a healthy goal for a person to have with their psychologist, I think.
Not entirely sure what I should be doing, I decide to take a turn around the garden, because what fun is all this inter-personal drama if I can’t at least pretend I reside in a Jane Austen book every once in a while?
It is one of those gardens that is not allowed to behave like a garden.
Every edge meticulously trimmed, every plant pruned back to what it must have looked like when it was first planted, to avoid it creeping too close to another, with an aggressive amount of tan bark chips smothering any undergrowth and marking the separation in definitive terms. I would not be surprised if the flora was all secretly hoping for an apocalypse so as to reclaim the spaces in between.
They are being kept under an oppressive regime and I feel sad for them, never allowed to grow how they wish.
These are the things I think about to avoid the other stuff.
‘Hey, Rah.’
And of course, there he is. With the amount of forced proximity, this very much could be an Austen novel. I am a Mr Collins who is delusional enough to imagine herself an Anne Elliot.
‘Hey, Fran,’ I say, turning to face him, trying not to feel anything.
‘I was hoping you would be here.’
He looks hesitant, and I do my best not to think about how his tongue was in my mouth less than twenty-four hours ago. Unsuccessful, I am feeling everything, focusing on nothing else.
‘I was hoping not to be,’ I reply.
‘It’s a bit of a strange one, isn’t it?’
‘Very Stepford Wives, or Real Housewives, I can’t quite tell.’
He laughs, which is the only reason I said it in the first place. To bring him joy, to bring me joy. Selfish. Wicked. Tricksy. False.
‘What did you say?’ Fran is now watching me, amusement on his face.
‘What?’
‘Did you just quote Gollum from Lord of the Rings?’
‘What? No. Did I?’
‘You did.’
Excellent. I am thrilled my mouth decided to say aloud the mortifying movie quote that just sprang to mind amidst a chaotic tangle of thoughts. And of course he recognised it, because it is a line from one of his favourite movies. Perfect. Echolalia, when I catch you.
‘Let’s pretend that didn’t happen,’ I say, covering my face with my hands. The same face he held in his hands last night while he was –
‘I didn’t hear a thing. Anyway, I actually wanted to apologise,’ he begins, and I start to shake my head.
‘It’s really fine, let’s not.’
‘No, I knew that you were in a vulnerable place, and I should have been more careful about that. I’ve been sending mixed messages, when I need to show up for you as your friend.’
‘I think I have made it quite hard for you to be a friend to me,’ I reply.
‘I’ve made it hard on myself as well. I feel like I lose my mind every time I see you and forget how to act like a normal person.’
‘Welcome to the club. Lucky for you, we are accepting new members.’
‘Thank you, my precious,’ he says, laughing at his own joke.
I groan in horror. To be seen is to be humiliated on a near constant basis.
‘Tell me about hospital,’ he goes on, cautious as he pronounces the last word.
‘You want to hear about it? That would make you the first.’
‘I do. Your email made it sound intense.’
I nod, trying not to think too hard about my deranged attempt at reconciliation while still out of my actual mind.
I would re-enact all three Peter Jackson epics in full costume for the chance to unsend it, to repeal whatever glimpse he had of me at my worst. But instead, the only way out is through.
‘It was. They had me in one of those white straightjackets, Hannibal Lecter–style.’
‘Really?’
‘No.’
He laughs again, the only person who seems to appreciate when I am actually trying to be funny.
‘The ward was noisy – lots of people losing their minds in Melbourne, apparently. I saw a lot of doctors and talked about myself a fair bit, which I obviously loved. And someone did my laundry there, too.’
He does not laugh at this, aware of how not funny the situation had been.
‘Did it help?’ he asks, sitting on the wooden bench beside the flower bed, concern in his eyes.
I sit beside him and try my best to explain without betraying myself.
‘It didn’t, and it did. That is how I ended up with my autism diagnosis, and the extras, once we got through the other things the doctors thought it might be. When they sent me home, I had the worst dissociative episode I’ve ever had, so things felt like they got worse, until I came back here.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m still figuring it out. I’ve got a lot of work to do, but I am starting to feel a little bit closer to myself, whatever that means,’ I say, unwanted tears pushing their way out of my eyeballs against my will.
‘That’s good.’
He takes my hand in his, squeezing it in his lap like he has many times before.
‘What if we start over, both try to be better friends to one another from here on out?’ he suggests.
‘I would love that. Although, there is nothing that feels more impossible to me right now than starting things over with you, Fran.’
‘Oh, right.’
His grip on my hand loosens, and I squeeze his to make sure he is still there.
‘Part of this whole deal is revisiting old memories, just a constant stream of them, all the time. I can’t really control it, it’s exhausting.
I think it’s my brain’s way of realigning and starting to heal itself.
So that’s what I mean. A clean slate is kind of impossible for me right now.
But I would love us to be better friends to one another, me to you especially.
I will do my best not to cry or try to kiss you every time I see you.
That would be a good starting point, I am aware. ’
I say the last part while wiping away my tears.
‘Well, I mean, that’s . . .’
My phone starts to vibrate in my pocket. It is on silent because it is always on silent, but it is still a strange sensation because no one has phoned me in months. When I take it out, it is even stranger to see Luke’s name on my screen, because I do not think he has ever phoned me in our lives.
‘Hello? Why are you calling me? This is so weird,’ I start.
‘Nora, Dad has had a heart attack. We’re on our way to the hospital. You all need to get here, now.’
Everything begins to melt. There is this thing that happens when you get the bad phone call, where your brain runs a montage of every bad phone call you have ever had and you remember life is a tiny thing, really, strung together with a limited number of precious moments spaced out unevenly between bad phone calls.
And the bad phone calls are there to remind you to stop wasting so much bloody time.
I hang up without saying goodbye, like the world is in slow motion, like I am in a movie, like this is a climactic narrative shift where the score might start to swell.
Like, like, like – a way to jump out of my body and hide instead in my head, where I only have to think about my feelings, rather than actually feel them.
Because if I let myself feel right now, I would disintegrate.