Behind the homestead, I ran to a demountable building that was being used as storage for wedding furnishings and locked myself inside. Smaller spaces always felt safer, and this was the smallest I could find. And maybe I stayed there for seconds, or maybe hours, sobbing, screaming my throat raw with the guttural noises of a person being put through a woodchipper, but however long it took I must have made enough of a commotion to bring people running, away from their fireworks display to the complete meltdown mental breakdown unravelling behind that door. A crowd gathered and several times I ignored whoever was knocking, only screaming louder to drown them out. It must have been an unsettling scene. Who invited this dramatic bitch, they probably thought, because Cleo was not with me and I really needed Cleo to contextualise my being there at the wedding in the first place and also the behaviour I was displaying, though she did not have context for it then, because I did not either.
By the time Cleo arrived, knocking and calling for me over and over until I unlocked the door, then pulling the door open and out of my hands when I did, an ambulance had already been called, I assume by some terrified and underpaid wait staff. I was at least contained, like a bird who had flown into a classroom, waiting for animal control. Ultimately not dangerous, but still able to cause enough chaos and alarm to derail their lesson (or in this instance, their night). People muttered, not so subtly I might add, about whether I was on drugs or suffering psychosis, as I was led out by paramedics into the emergency vehicle. I was sure it was a negative on the first point, but not as sure about the second. Let’s leave that to the professionals, thank you very much.
Cleo rode with me to hospital, and stayed by my bedside that first night. There was a lot of waiting, and beeping, and checking of my ‘vitals’. Important things, I guess. When it became clear that I would be staying longer, Cleo made it clear that things were ending between us.
‘This is too much for me,’ she said, with tears in her eyes.
If I were retelling this story to someone and wanting to appear sympathetic, I could easily make her the bad guy . . . The bad girl? Sounds sexy. No, I could tell a version of the story that focused on her abandoning her closest friend in the midst of a dire mental health episode. How callous, how cruel. But, in all honesty, she had probably made the choice to opt out before said episode, maybe somewhere around the time I told her to fuck off, or one of the many acts of casual indifference that had come prior to that. Death by a thousand selfish acts, the same way I had killed my relationship with Fran. And itwastoo much for her; it was too much for me as the person living it. I could not hold that against her, not when she had given me so much of her care up until that night.
24
Athrobbing headache soon wakes me, and I climb from the floor onto the bare mattress on my bed, pulling with me a sheet to use as a cocoon. Every part of me is drawn tight. It is a feat to exist in each second as it appears. Everything else will come later. And later comes. With a light knock, Mum lets herself into my room and sits on the side of my bed in silence. I am visited by the countless other times we have been situated like this over a lifetime, a million aftermaths. For someone usually so forthcoming with opinions and advice, she has never been one for salt in the wounds of these moments. She takes some deep, demonstrative breaths and strokes my arm, which flinches of its own accord.
‘Sorry,’ she says.
‘It’s fine,’ I reply.
‘Are you . . .’
‘Not really.’
‘No, I don’t suppose so,’ she says.
The air softens and I roll over to face her, not sure what to expect. She smiles a sad kind of smile, and folds her hands in her lap, watching me closely.
‘You know, I didn’t make it to my school formal,’ she says, a random segue if I ever heard one.
‘Oh, right. Why not?’
‘I had a fight with your gran.’
‘Did she stop you from going?’
‘No. I destroyed my dress, actually.’
‘Oh . . .’
‘She had made it for me, spent so many hours altering it so it fitted just right. It was baby blue, to bring out my eyes. The silk had cost a fortune.’
‘And you wrecked it?’ I lie there, swaddled in my sheet like a baby, listening to a story I have never heard before.
‘Yep, I shredded it with fabric scissors, and then ripped it apart right in front of her face.’
‘Wow.’
It is hard to imagine the version of Mum that could have caused such destruction.
‘I don’t even remember what we were fighting about,’ she says. ‘Something to do with my hair or my body or my face.’
‘Gran can be a bit . . .’
‘Yeah,’ she agrees. ‘Gran can definitely be a bit . . .’
‘And I suppose I can be a bit . . .’
‘And me,’ she says. ‘You get it from me, I’m afraid.’
This shocks me into an upright position, the acknowledgement that yes there is a thing, that no, it is not so far-fetched, or desolate, or imagined. We have breached the wall, and I want to take her hands and hold her here forever, never to go back to the other side again.
