‘That sucks,’ I replied, in my best Chipmunks voice, which wasn’t as good, but we still laughed again.
We sat in the comfort of one another and talked about books and animals and TV shows until Mum called us up for dinner. Olivia was at a friend’s house and Luke was working late – he cleaned dishes at the big hotel with the beer garden on the other side of the mountain. Maybe he was also saving for a car. So it was just Mum and Dad and Fran and me. Usually that meant meals pre-plated and minimal clean-up, but having a guest had motivated Mum to set the table in a fancy way. There were napkins and a water jug, and the vase of dahlias sat in the middle. I don’t remember exactly how the dinner went, but I remember the table and I remember Fran’s smiling face as he sat down, like he had arrived at his destination. Going over the good memories – ones like this – helps me hold them in place. I can see myself in these scenes, so the task is to pinpoint the moment I start to disappear.
4
Lunch is a many-plated affair. We eat out on the deck for the breeze, and Mum’s table setting has ascended to a new level. There are cloth napkins and multiple vessels filled with flowers and a bowl of pine cones, for some reason. I am sure Mum saw it in a magazine and thought it looked chic. And it is notnotchic. Dad sits at the head of the table, while Mum serves us our plates and Olivia pours deep glasses of chilled white wine. I have not been drinking since I left Melbourne, but since no one asked, now seems a fine time to start again. At least, just for the week. Substances get a bad rap, I think. Sometimes they are the only things that keep us going. She hands me mine and I take a long sip. My brain thanks me for the sedation, cool and refreshing as it is.
‘Nora, darling, I thought you were going to nap before lunch. You look wrecked, you poor love,’ Mum says.
‘I am okay, this is just my face.’
‘Oh, you know I didn’t mean anything like that. I just care about you, dear.’
‘That’s very considerate,’ I reply, smiling wide, doing my best to mirror Elsie’s light tone.
She makes a face to communicate that either I failed, or she is not a fan of receiving the energy she dishes out. She hands me a plate; there is chicken and potato salad and normal salad and something with a lot of beetroot. I won’t eat half of it and Mum knows this, but the serving of it all is important to her. She often opines on how much is ‘too much’ to be eating, but ‘too little’ also exists as a negative. I have already been admonished for not eating the strawberries she got in especially for me before they turned squishy and rotten. It is precarious; I must eat just the right amount in order to avoid insulting anyone. And while keeping these theoretical volumes in mind, I must also assess how texture and mood can play their parts in my stomach’s propensity for random vomiting. It is a delicate dance of expectation management and regurgitation regulation.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘Did you know your sister is vegan now?’ Mum asks, motioning her glass towards Olivia so I will note the lack of chicken on her plate.
‘Cool,’ I reply, racking my brain for a way to steer this conversation to something more substantial than my sister’s eating habits. ‘So, you have dietary requirements, Olivia. That’s a bit like me. Did you know one of the things I learned during my hospital stay is that my fussy eating has a name? And it is actually quite common for autistic –’
‘Nora,’ Mum interjects, her tone ever so slightly sharp. She may as well be screaming for how it lands in my body. ‘Let your sister settle in, now, okay? She’s had a long flight.’
‘It’s fine,’ Olivia replies, her gaze on me, signalling that she might want to hear what I have to say.
‘That’s got to help with the waistline,’ Mum says, her tone righted but her volume turned up.
‘My eating disorder?’ I ask, confused, curbed, thrown off course.
‘Being vegan,’ Mum replies, her eyes on Olivia, her head tilted to indicate exactly who is to speak next.
‘I did a cleanse to lose the weight, but yeah it does help, as long as I don’t fill my diet with too much processed stuff,’ she replies, still watching me, though more hesitant now.
‘Well –’ I start.
‘A cleanse is a great way to speed things up, I’ve always said that,’ Mum says, raising her glass.
I may not always be able to understand implications, or read the room, but it is clear my cue is to stop talking about hospital, and eating disorders, and autism. I mustn’t kill the vibe. It would be best, probably, if I stayed entirely quiet for the remainder of the meal. Olivia smiles at me and returns her eyes to her plate. Another time, then. Elsie has a plan for this moment, and that plan is a pleasant lunch with her newly returned daughter. I take a longer drink from my glass and try to flatten the fizzle of resentment.
Talking about this stuff is hard anyway, and being quiet is quite easy. I have learned from the best. Dad is slicing every single thing on his plate into tiny pieces, enjoying his apparent dome of silence in peace. I have always admired his ability to stay out of the emotional fray, but right now I feel a seed of annoyance starting to take root – why is there an ongoing assumption that he will not engage? It self-fulfils. The same framework that assumes he is out, keeps me in, disallowing me vulnerability but forcing participation in chit-chat, and it is starting to feel as though this is more of a gendered scheme than an individual aptitude. Much like school, the rules are different; the whole game is fixed. If I am not allowed to talk about real things, I want my own dome, thank you very much. Small talk should not be thrust upon me against my will. In lieu of any such respite, I stab my fork into the slab of chicken breast on my plate and begin to eat it like a toffee apple. Might as well. Plain roast chicken is a safe food, something I can rely upon. Yum, yum, yum.
‘Nora!’ Mum exclaims.
‘Mmm?’
‘Table manners, come on now.’
Safely moved on from any risk of emotional honesty, we are back to correcting, it seems. I look around, as though trying to find something. Where are these lost table manners she speaks of? When I cannot locate them, gone forever as they must be, I shrug and continue eating the chicken. It is delicious, if a little dry. Mum has a special Jamie Oliver recipe where she shoves a lemon up the chicken’s arse – only it is not the arse, it is the cavity, and somehow that, and the word ‘cavity’, makes it so much worse a prospect. Better not to think about it too much, for puke-related reasons. Better to eat as fast as humanly possible in order to get back to my room. I suppose that is the closest I have to a dome of my own. There is limited time before the dam of social pressure breaks and drowns me. Looking at the faces looking at me makes my body wilt. I am not even chewing at this point. Enough, I am done. Dad is still slicing when my plate is clear. This feels like an accomplishment, my first of the day, or second if you count the walk. Mum is busy talking to Olivia about a man who also volunteers at the op shop that she finds particularly irksome.
‘He’s probably a little bit on the spectrum, actually.’
My ears prick up, and I try to smooth them back down, though it is nigh on impossible, because this is another new pattern I have detected in my time back home. Elsie now ends a lot of stories this way, punctuating the list of her subject’s moral failings – too rude, too blunt, too selfish, too weird, too arrogant. I never know how to respond, or whether she is even looking for a reaction from me at all. Perhaps, if I am generous in my interpretation, she is trying to indicate that she isawareof autistic traits, like she is in tune and up to speed these days, after missing them earlier on. But all I ever hear is, ‘I think this monster is just like you.’
‘Well, thanks for lunch, Mum. It was great. I might go have that nap, try to fix my face,’ I say.
‘Oh come on, stay,’ Olivia says. ‘I want to hear how you’ve been. Tell me about hospital; I’ve got a friend who –’
