‘That will be so awful. Ranger has to live forever, I think. There’s no other option.’
‘I agree.’
‘I think I am going to run out of steam sooner than the average person,’ I said, casually trying to put into words what I had felt since I was a child and very much wanted him to know.
‘Run out of steam? Like die young?’
‘Maybe. I feel like I’m working twice as hard for half the outcome, so that has got to catch up with me eventually. Like my heart will just give out, or something.’
‘Don’t say that.’
And so I did not say any more, because Fran needed to believe I was a person who could live a long life with minimal effort, and though it had become increasingly obvious that was not true, I wanted to let him enjoy the unknowing a little longer.
Later, as we sat on smooth river rocks listening to the waterfall, I felt brave enough to try again.
‘You know how people say, “omg lol I don’t know what I’m doing,” but they mean it in a chill way?’ I asked.
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, I feel like that, except not chill. I profoundly don’t know what I am doing, like, all the time.’
Fran cracked up though I was not trying to be funny.
‘What do you mean?’ he eventually asked, and his voice was soft like his laugh. Like water. Like light.
‘It’s just . . . all moving too fast. I feel like I’m sprinting to keep up.’
‘I think I get it. Do you ever get to catch up?’
‘Rarely. It’s like, mental space I need. Where nothing is happening, and no one is around to ask anything of me. Then I can actually understand what all of it means – my thoughts and feelings and what has happened to me and what is happening to everyone around me. But most of the time I’m just in the whirlwind and everything is there, I suppose, but there is no chance of seeing it clearly.’
We stayed sitting there in silence and Fran seemed like he was taking it all in, trying to understand. He tried very hard to understand me, for longer than I deserved.
‘It’s okay to take more time,’ he eventually said.
I held those words in my heart, allowing them to curdle into something they were never meant to be. And the next day, I was gone again.
22
Christmas Eve night
Elsie begins folding napkins with the force of a jet engine when we arrive home from seeing the lights. Those poor napkins; they are the collateral damage of emotions they are not even capable of feeling. Luke heads to bed without saying a word, for free. Olivia may have single-handedly changed the trajectory of our entire family dynamic, or perhaps it was a team effort. Hooray, team sister.
‘Night,’ Olivia whispers, wobbling as she tries to carry her sleeping child to bed on unstable legs.
I shadow her with my arms outstretched until she reaches her room, giving me a strange look as she closes the door. My heart rate starts to quicken as I realise it will just be me and Mum left up. Walking back up the hall, I plan out what words I am going to say to her to wrap up the evening and head to bed. From the darkness, I see Elsie illuminated by the hanging pendant light in the kitchen. She looks tired. She looks worn. She looks fragile, almost.
‘You’re welcome to stop standing there and give me a hand,’ she says, the first indication that she is aware I am hovering at the edge of the room.
‘Sure,’ I reply, too tired to take the bait or react to her reactivity.
‘I’m just doing an envelope fold this year; it’s too late to be fussing with anything else.’
I watch as Elsie tucks the corners of the striped linen in her hands, making the perfect pocket in which to slide the good silverware. This is her version of failing, the lesser napkin fold. It is hard to narrow the divide between complete mental overwhelm and the lesser napkin fold. She catches me staring, and smiles softly.
‘Do you remember that night?’ I ask. ‘Where you were so angry you grabbed me by my face?’
‘Which night?’ she replies.
