Olivia laughs at this and disappears from the doorway. I pull myself out of bed, both anxious and aware of how ridiculous I am being about having lunch with my family. My body is reacting as though I am being hunted for sport. It is fine; nothing will happen and then the day will end and I will sink back into my swamp of re-emerging memories and newfound context, and get back to work wading my way through.
At the wedding, we had canapes on the lawn while the happy couple had their photographs taken together and then with their happy parents and happy grandparents and happy siblings. Cleo was talking to me a little, but I knew this was only because I had nobody else to stand with.
‘Can I get you a water?’ she asked, making faces at me for drinking the free drinks she had used to lure me there in the first place.
‘Fuck off, Cleo,’ I replied.
Later, I missed the bride and groom’s entrance into the reception, which I did not know was a thing, and the first dance, which I did, because I had found some new friends to talk to in the smoking area. It was the prettiest DOSA I had ever been in – elegant and exclusive, hidden behind a hedge and with its own floral arrangement. Amanda had paid for a floral arrangement for the smoking section; I could not be mad about that. The older men I was with had to be the least liked uncles or husbands of the mother of the bride’s friends. They were insignificant add-ons, as was I.
‘She was one of those mouthy birds, though – not like you, hey, love?’ one of them, at one point, said to me with a laugh.
I smiled and nodded, imagining my cigarette was his face as I twisted it into the ashtray. This was my cue to go back inside.
There is no clearer sign that a group is in the midst of talking about you than the hush that falls as you approach. Or perhaps that is just my self-absorption. Either way, it is awkward vibes as I am last to take my seat at the table on the balcony, everyone staring. Avert your eyes, please, family, as I attempt to keep my body attached.
‘Christmas cracker?’ Dad asks, holding one out to Mum.
‘Should we not say grace first?’ Grandma asks, in what I assume is an attempt to make Dad appear gauche.
‘We’d love that, Sue. Go ahead,’ Dad replies, which is the funniest he has ever been.
My cackling laughter is, however, not appreciated. Mum gives me a look, pulls the cracker, places the pink paper crown on her head and then bows it in prayer in such smooth succession it seems choreographed. I would be impressed, if the minor explosive had not spiked my heart rate and taken all of my focus. Perhaps someone in this family will actually have a heart attack this holiday season and Mum can finally be satisfied.
‘Dear God, we thank you for this beautiful meal, for this family, and for all of the blessings you have bestowed upon us this year. We pray you continue to bless us, to bring health to Chris, happiness to Elsie, the tidings of new life to Luke, a worthy partner who will stick with Olivia, a more secure life to little Maeve, and a cure for our dear Nora, who we all knew to be such a bright and beautiful child. May she be able to be that way again. With love and joy we pray, amen.’
There is a pause as everyone digests the individual and collective insults wrapped up in that prayer. My instinct is first to laugh again, but it does not take long for the rage to hit. That is the problem with finally holding the key; it might open the door but it certainly won’t be able to force others through it if they do not want to see the truth on the other side. I feel frozen, cogs overburdened and momentarily unable to turn, as Dad carves the ham and Mum starts to serve salads onto everyone’s plates. I stay that way, glitching, as Mum holds her hand out for my plate, as Olivia tells me to pass my plate, as Luke snatches the plate from in front of me in frustration.
When I got back to my seat at the reception table, Cleo had a hard look in her eyes.
‘Your entrée is cold,’ she whispered.
‘That’s okay, I don’t like prawns.’
I opted for the house white and some people-watching, though my vision had started to replicate itself, which did not necessarily feel like a bad thing. The kaleidoscope of human behaviour at this wedding, the first wedding I had attended as an adult, was endlessly fascinating. Aunties were fussing to get photos of their grown children looking their best, while little kids were running amuck in pretty dresses and untucked shirts, stopping only to fuel themselves with unbridled access to the lolly buffet. Elderly guests had either come alive or gone to sleep in a corner. I hoped to one day find myself in the former category, though I could not actually imagine reaching that age, or having a family line that would necessitate my attendance at weddings for those two generations below mine. My memory of the main course, dessert, and cake-cutting is patchy, due to alcohol rather than repression, but after a while we were all bodies on a dancefloor, doing the Nutbush and the Time Warp and the Macarena and the limbo until it was almost time to go home for the night. I had by that stage lost my shoes and my bag. And then I lost my mind.
My family’s faces begin to warp. I can see Mum’s tight mouth making a razor-sharp line across her face, and Dad’s eyes won’t stop moving around and around and around. It makes me want to tear off my skin and leap from the side of the balcony, or the mountain. My breathing becomes louder – the more noise it makes, the less effective it seems to become. At my core I am spinning, the inner self rapidly gaining speed; this windstorm no longer able to remain contained. My chair falls backwards as I stand, and the faces of my family tell me they view the fallen chair as an act of aggression on my behalf. I have declared war on Christmas with my panic and lack of spatial awareness.
Righting the chair back onto its legs does nothing to dim the headlights and I want to bare my teeth. How dare they accept that perception of us, of me. How dare they allow such contempt to be so thinly masked in goodwill. If it is aggression they are after, I know exactly what to offer. I was always the most devoted child performer when it came to putting on the Christmas show. Being the MOST in this moment is effortless. The remaining uncarved half of Mum’s ham is sizing me up from the centre of the table and an impulse enters my head like a dare. I could drop-kick it. Having never drop-kicked so much as a beachball in my life, it seems both entirely plausible and completely ridiculous. My hands grab the carcass of hot meat from the tray and my mind exits stage left. It happens in slow motion and I watch from above. Nora holds the ham steady and brings her foot back. She is committed. Perhaps she should be committed. She drops it and swings her leg towards it like she is taking a kick from the penalty line.
‘Fuuuuuuck.’
Somebody could have warned me of the physics behind this wild impulse, the weight of the ham, the likelihood I would snap a toe. A ham is fucking heavy, and it is not a football or a soccer ball or any kind of ball at all. It thuds from my toes to the floor like a severed head, and my foot is screaming, my hands covered in greasy oil and ooze. Mum looks like a gothic painting, and I want to cover her with a sheet. The energy that my body needed to expel has been trapped in my foot and my mind and the godforsaken ham. I grab it from the floor, the warm glaze now smeared across the wooden decking, transforming it into a murder scene, and I march back through the house. This time I don’t take any chances; I get as close as I can to my target before letting the lump of meat leave my hands. It hits its target and I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. The sound of shattering glass calls action on my supporting characters, and they crowd around the now broken and jagged stained-glass window in the entryway with mouths agape.
I remained on the wedding dancefloor far longer than I had the energy for, not having enough left to be able to make the transition away. Words came down from the ceiling, over the music like the voice of God.
‘Before we send the happy couple off into the night, we have one more surprise for them, organised by the wedding party,’ somebody announced through a crackling speaker.
We moved like cattle to the veranda of the homestead, gathering on the nearby lawn for the final event. And then there were gunshots, or so it seemed. The sky lit up, a Disney ending to the fairy-tale day, but the noise and the pyrotechnics caused my addled brain to backfire, and fear flooded every inch of me. Jumping backwards, I stumbled when I tried to steady myself and found a small child in my way. I shoved them aside. The excited faces of so many people I did not know warped my perception of what was happening, like the moment in a horror movie when every face in a crowd becomes that of a monster. I pushed past them all, a spooked horse in a storm, ready to bolt.
These are the parts I can see now, but in the moment all I felt was terror. My flight response had been activated, and once my body was moving it was a runaway train, never going back, you know? I ran and ran and ran. I ran for my worthless life.
I may not have managed to drop-kick the ham, but throwing it through the round window has much the same effect. It releases something, blood-lets my rage.
‘What the fuck did you do that for?’ Luke asks, standing behind me, hiding his own anger inside a cold laugh.
My heaving breaths do not allow space for a response, but when I see Dad wrap his arm around Mum’s shoulder as though they have just witnessed a car crash, I want to smash more than one small, circular window. I want to smash every single piece of glass in this home, down to the stemware in the cupboard and the mirrors on the car. And when I cannot stand their glares for a second longer, I run. Out the front door, slipping my way down the stairs in the pouring rain.
Back in my room, I rest my focus wherever my eyes land, tearing down every single thing that is not nailed onto my walls, and then work up to the things that are. Nothing here is unbreakable. I cry for the things I cannot replace, photos of pets and belongings that are no longer with me and artwork I could not recreate if I tried, even as I tear each one to shreds. Annihilation is the aim, and after I have finished on the walls, I pull the sheets from my bed and the clothing from its hangers in the wardrobe. When the floor is no longer visible under the mountain of debris, I collapse into the pile of destruction, wet and hot and tired, and sob until my body gives out. I fall asleep – a protective response from a body waging war against a mind.
