6
Matt’s rattling around in the kitchen when I arrive home.
‘Hi!’
‘Hi, yourself. Want a cuppa?’
‘Yeah, thanks.’
By now Matt knows how I like my coffee: white, strong, two sugars. I watch him potter about, getting out the mugs and pouring milk. He flicks a long honey-coloured strand of hair from his eyes.
‘Hmm,’ he says, studying my face. ‘You don’t look too good, anything wrong?’
‘No, not really. I’ve just come from seeing Freudie Babe.’
Matt places the mug in front of me and grins.
I like him a lot; I’m even starting to think of him as my best friend. Maybe one day I should tell him . . . He doesn’t talk all that much, especially when Amy’s with us, but he’s thoughtful, perceptive. I think we know each other pretty well now.
He blows on his coffee to cool it. ‘They always want to dig inside your brain, those doctors . . .’
‘Absolutely.’
‘You know, when Mum and Dad and Jenny were killed . . .’ He gulps. Those words are still hard to say. ‘Well, they took me to a shrink.’
I pet Persia as I wait for him to continue. Matt often pauses between sentences as if he needs to have some control over his thoughts. Or perhaps it is his feelings.
‘I suppose I wasn’t ready. Refused to say anything about the accident, about the funeral, how I felt. Didn’t say a single word.’
‘Good for you.’
‘Five sessions we sat there. The place had a really nice ceiling . . . and the patterns on the carpet were good too.’
‘So what did he say?’
‘Nothing much. Although it was a she, actually. Doctor Joy, can you believe?’
‘What a hoot!’
Matt’s face lights up. ‘Yeah. It was funny. Doctor Joy . . . man, was she hot! I tell you, it was very hard to concentrate on what she was saying. Let’s just say there were some big distractions . . .’
We both laugh. Then he sits in silence, thinking back to those days, maybe to his family. I watch his fingers – slender and elegant – stroke the side of his mug as he stares into space. We each took different roads to get here, but we’re still in the same place, owning the same kind of scars, feeling the same kind of hurt.
‘Feel like a hug?’ I say it softly. It surprises me as much as him.
‘A hug? Yeah, that sounds pretty good.’
There’s such a wistful look on his face that my heart clenches. I wrap myself around him. He holds me loosely, his arms looped around my back. There’s nothing passionate going on here – neither of us game enough to plunge into deeper water but there’s a closeness that I’ve rarely known. Matt doesn’t say anything, just keeps holding me. I wonder if I should reach my face up to his and kiss him. All I have to do is move a fraction of an inch . . . but I can’t.
‘We should clean the kitchen,’ I hear myself say over his shoulder. ‘It’s disgusting, all this junk.’
‘Um, yes.’ He breaks away from me. ‘Okay. I’ll help you.’
We carry on as if nothing has happened, but we know it has. My heart is going glump, glump, glump and I have to sit down.
Later, when he leaves for soccer training, I go back into my room, and put on my CD of Three Men and a Gun. I give myself a serve for being chicken. You idiot! So weak! But there will be another time for me and Matt – I have to believe that. I lie awake for ages before sleep claims me.
The front doorbell rings and I spring out of bed. It’s Jan. She comes around once a week to see how we’re coping and early on, when I moved in, she spent a lot of time with me, talking and chilling – really listening, especially one day when I was feeling particularly low. Other welfare people I’ve known were snobby or nosy or plain apathetic, but Jan breezes in exuding energy, always cheerful and seeming to be genuinely interested in us. Not like Marie who couldn’t care less. And Jan always brings something with her, not just her bright, friendly self, but a gift – sometimes a bunch of flowers, a home-cooked cake, some incense. She’s special.
Today Jan has news that makes her face light up. She’s taking long-service leave to travel overseas.
When she announces this, my hands begin to shake.
‘I’m going to India with my friend Nancy.’ She does a little hop as she says India. ‘I’ve wanted to go there ever since we studied the country at school. We’re backpacking for some of the way.’ She pulls out a map and points out the route she and her friend will be taking. I imagine her in baggy shorts and strong hiking boots with a bulging pack on her back – a million miles from care. And me.
‘Would you like a cuppa?’ I offer, aching for her to stay longer. ‘I’d love to hear more about your trip.’
My hands continue to tremble. As I pour the milk, it splatters onto the sink. ‘Damn! Sorry!’ I drop the cup. It splinters across the floor and hot tea splashes everywhere.
Diving to pick up the broken shards, I wipe a tear from my cheek. Jan sees it.
‘Are you all right, Soph?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ I manage to smile. ‘Just clumsy.’
When the mess is cleared and a new cup is poured, we sit on the back porch and eat the zucchini and raisin cake I made yesterday. Jan is full of the trip and her plans, her long friendship with Nancy, another trip in the future, possibly to Europe. She has no idea how it hurts me.
‘Well, my love,’ she says some time later, ‘I could easily spend hours sitting here with you, but –’ She stands and stretches. ‘I really have to get back to work.’
I smile, but obviously not all that convincingly, because Jan peers at me with concern. ‘You’ll be fine with my replacement, won’t you, Soph?’
‘Of course.’ I wave a finger at her, keeping up the jolly act. ‘But don’t you be gone for too long, will you? I might miss you.’
My voice betrays me as I say that. It cracks. Just a little, but enough for Jan to notice.
‘Silly thing. I’m coming back, you know.’
‘You better.’
At the front door she hugs me and I feel like they are Arlene’s arms around me; Arlene who promised she would always be there for me.
When Jan has gone, I wander around the house, rearranging ornaments, adjusting pictures on walls, and tidying up. I feel adrift. I need to touch familiar objects. I wish I had someone to talk to, to keep me together, but Amy’s away for the day and Matt’s late home. My stomach’s twisted and knotted. I’m happy for Jan and her well-deserved vacation, but I hate the thought of her being gone and maybe never coming back. Sure, she said she would, but what else could she say? I’ll miss her so much.
I’m in the bathroom. Thoughts and feelings of again being abandoned are spinning in my head. Round and round. Out of control. Why do people always leave me? Why did my mother leave? Arlene? Dutch? Everyone I have ever cared for. Gone.
In the mirror I watch as I drop my sarong to the floor and survey my milk-white breasts with their pale, strawberry-pink nipples. This body in front of me belongs to someone else. All I have is a mind, mobbed with volcanic, insane thoughts that need to be tamed. There is only one way to do this. The razor.
The blade rests its silver-sharp edge on my flesh, on the soft inside of my forearm near old, faint scars. Inside my head the jumble intensifies. Images surface. Dutch stroking my head for the last time. My hand clasped in his. Arlene smothering my neck with kisses, soft yet indelible. Then she is leaving too. Waving goodbye from a taxi window.
And now the blade is pressing, slicing into the skin. Leaving a thin crimson trail. Pearls of blood. And I am watching, detached. My mind is moving into a place of peace. Peace without pain.
The hand flicks in all directions, creating roads that intersect. Roads long and definite that lead to nowhere. Roads like my life. Without beginning. Without destination.
There. It’s done.
I stare in the mirror at the trails, mesmerised as they swell into claret-red, beaded strings. A stranger stares back at me. Her arms are cut and she’s bleeding.
We keep watching one another, savouring these brief moments of freedom. She and I are connected by the cuts.
Finally I step out of the dream state. The world is real again and there’s a stinging sensation. It’s a pain more bearable than having to deal with the chaos in my mind. Even if only for a short time, my anxiety is gone. I’m in control.
Dabbing the blood, I watch it soak into the tissue, spreading. Then I dress in clean clothes and wind a handkerchief around my arm to hide my secret.
In my room I sit with eyes closed and focus on the pain, listen to the breeze outside slapping a bush against the window. When my mind is settled, the crazy thoughts banished, I go into the kitchen for a mug of warm milk and a slice of cake, before heading off to clean the house.