The Pause (4 page)

I toss a couple of things (wallet, novel, keys) into my backpack and tell Mum that I'm going to catch up with Chris. Mum thinks this is an excellent idea as it will take my mind off … things. I wish she hadn't said anything about ‘… things' (especially with the gap), because now I'm thinking about ‘… things' again and my screaming nerve endings are just about ready to rupture and bleed permanent insanity into my system.

Had I known that this would be the last time I would ever see my family, I might have made a bit more of an effort. Dad and Kate are still out the back, raking leaves, cleaning the pool, being inseparable, so I don't even say goodbye
to them. The last thing I said to Dad was that he should go and fuck a tuna. I said next to nothing to Kate, apart from knocking back her offer to play Uno. These are the last memories of me they will carry around for the rest of their lives. They deserve better. They all do. I wish I'd known what was coming. About the destruction and devastation I was about to leave in my wake. But how could anyone in my condition know what lay ahead? And that's the thing I realise now that I'm here in nowhere or whatever this place is. It
was
a condition. A condition that slowly crept up on me and took over my sanity, my logic. A condition that with time, help and medication, I would have gotten through. After some time I would have started cutting back the meds, the trips to the psychiatrist, the outpatient group therapy, and moved on with my life as Lisa would have started moving on with hers. I would have truly begun healing. Lisa and I would have eventually emailed or Skyped and she would have come back in a few years' time, even if just for a holiday, and we would have seen each other again. We might have even dated. We probably would have more than dated. Because no matter how psychotic and controlling you are, you can't go around beating a nineteen/twenty-year-old, not unless you want them to start fighting back.

But I didn't give it a chance because the agony was too much, my nerve endings had ruptured, my sense of logic and scale had vanished. It was too much because I had no reference point. I called it quits on an impulse when all I had to do was ride it out until it had passed. And pass it would. Mum said the sun would eventually shine on me again. But I didn't believe her. It didn't seem possible. I just assumed she was speaking in platitudes. Telling me what I wanted to hear. I was seventeen. I didn't have the experience. I thought I would be stuck with this agony forever. But I just had the wrong mixture of chemicals whirring around in my brain. But how was I to know? How was I to know?
How was I to know?
My mind was broken. And when your mind breaks you need help. External help. Because the thing you rely on most to get you through the screaming darkness is the very thing that's broken. And that's where and why it all falls apart.

When your mind cracks and your nerve endings are rupturing, it's weird how grey everything looks, even on the most perfect days. There isn't a cloud in the sky as I step outside and make my way down to the village, but as I'm walking through the park, the day simply couldn't be any
darker. Even though it did nothing to me, I punch a tree in retaliation as I walk past. Unless the tree has feelings, it hurt me more than it did the tree.

Despite a gentle breeze, the temperature is already nudging thirty when I slide into a booth at Ciao Latte across the road from the train station. I look down at my painful, rapidly swelling hand. That's the only way I know that any of this is real. The pain. Bad as it is, my damaged hand is nothing compared to my ruptured nerve endings and broken mind. God knows why I've come here. It certainly isn't to meet Chris or Maaaate. I don't want to see them. I don't want to see anyone. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to be anywhere. I just want this to stop. I want it to end. I think I'm doing it to torture myself. That's the only way I could explain it. I was proud of my mind before it broke. Now I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Although after that night when I met The Kraken I was banned from helping Lisa with her homework again, Lisa started informing (not asking) The Kraken that she would be catching up with friends after school because that's what every other year-ten girl in Australia did (even good
tang wah
girls), and what's more, these catch-ups just wouldn't be to study but to hang out. And furthermore, if The Kraken didn't like it then she could get down on her knees and kiss Lisa's butt. Though
I'm pretty sure Lisa omitted this last bit from her side of the debate. Lisa of course was a shameful, good-for-nothing disgrace to the family. Lisa was beaten regularly, whenever she arrived home late from ‘catching up with friends', but she didn't care. Her new-found freedom was worth it and she assured me that the day was rapidly approaching when she would fight back.

I order a coffee, my third of the morning – not exactly good for my already screaming nerve endings – and think about the first time we met up here. It was the day after our
To Kill a Mockingbird
moment on the train and about a week before Lisa tested the water by inviting me over to study.

I buy Lisa a Tim Tam chiller and the first thing she wants to know is why we call Maaaate ‘Mate'. Nothing about Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Atticus Finch or racial prejudice in America's Deep South (or Australia's public transport network), and I'd mashed out some study on all of them the night before. Instead she wants to know about Maaaate.
Maaaate?

‘It's not “Mate”,' I reply. ‘It's “Maaaate”.' I hit the extra ‘a's, making it sound deep and guttural.

‘Maaaate,' says Lisa, mimicking me as best she can.

‘That's better,' I concede, ‘but try to make it sound more like a dog growling.'

‘
Maaaaaaaaaate
,' says Lisa, slightly overdoing it and possibly damaging her vocal chords.

‘Now you're getting it.'

‘Which brings us back to my original question.'

‘It's from those beer ads. The ones where the father and son-in-law get locked in the sauna. All they can say when they get out is, “Maaaate”. It's kind of a westie thing and Maaaate's from there, so it kind of stuck. Or we stuck it to him.'

‘Do
you
have a nickname?'

‘I'd tell you but I'd have to kill you.'

She takes a sip of her chiller. ‘Sounds like it might be worth it.'

‘It's “Toke”,' I say. ‘And if you can guess why, I'll give you my firstborn, Rumpelstiltskin-style.'

She thinks for a moment and then admits defeat.

‘At the end of year seven I went to a maths camp with Chris and Maaaate.'

Lisa bursts out laughing. ‘You went to a maths camp? Why?'

‘I thought it might be fun.'

‘And was it?'

‘No. It was about as interesting as it sounds. Anyway, I was the only …' I trail off. I'm not going to call myself a non-Asian, Anglo, whitey
or skip. I've entered a political-correctness minefield and I don't know where to tread. ‘I was the only … European.'

‘European?' she says. ‘You're European?'

‘Yeah. Italian, Irish.'

But she's just playing with me. ‘Ah,' she says. ‘Token whitey.'

I smile at her. Cute, bookish and smart. I don't want to give her my firstborn; I want her to bear it, and my second, third …

‘So what about you,' I say. ‘Do you have a nickname?'

‘I do,' she replies. ‘But it sounds better in Cantonese.'

‘What's it in English?'

‘Well, loosely translated, it means: shameful, ungrateful, nasty, worthless, useless, good-for-nothing little bitch.'

‘I think I'll stick with “Lisa”, if that's okay with you.'

‘Whatever's easier.'

I laugh at this point. I seriously laugh out loud. And I see that beneath the bookish exterior, Lisa has a subtle, dry sense of humour and if it turns out she likes art-house movies and indie music as well, I just might have to ask her to marry me this afternoon.

After that we kind of become inseparable. Well, we do for about fifteen minutes on a school morning and half an hour in the afternoons. And when she kisses me (
she
kisses
me
) in her parents' house for the first time, I become a walking cliché. We hold hands every morning walking along the station platform as I float along beside her. She has one hand in mine, fingers interlocked, while in the other she's generally holding the latest poem I'd written the night before. If Chris or Maaaate get hold of my poetry – and it gets back to school – I'll be forced to commit ritual seppuku out of sheer embarrassment. I even try my hand at haikus, if you can believe it, creating, in seventeen syllables, a pictorial symbiosis of a cherry-tree leaf in autumn and Lisa's stunning good looks. Some of my haikus even make sense. Well, they do to me. And all of a sudden pop songs of the type peddled by the sort of boy bands that shouldn't be allowed out in public, at least without adult supervision, start to reveal their greater hidden depth and I get them. I understand them. I truly do. Naturally I baulk at logging onto iTunes during this period for fear of what I might inadvertently buy. I have enough of my former self lurking within the confines of my mind to know that any potential crimes involving music downloads will be pounced on by Chris and Maaaate and the sordid details will be plastered about school the
following Monday. That I find subtext in the music of vacuous boy bands should tell you all you need to know about my state of mind at that point. Which, when all is said and done, was a damn sight better than the state of mind I ended up with.

Lisa is a member of a Christian Crusaders group, which she dutifully attends weekly. It doesn't take much convincing for me to put aside my existential leanings and join her brethren for Friday evening worship and games.

It takes us a while but we work out that although Lisa has to
go
to the Crusaders meetings and be collected afterwards, the bit in between – the actual attending bit, the crusading – is optional. Around pick-up time, her father would park his car down the road and, with a couple of beers under his belt, generally doze off. All Lisa needed to do was to climb in the car around crusading knock-off time and no one would be any the wiser. So we use this time to jump onto a train to the megamall to go to the movies, ice-skate or hang out at Max Brenner.

But as is the way when you're crazy in love, you don't always think things through. Eventually, questions regarding Lisa's ongoing absence from Friday-night Crusaders were bound to be asked. The answers to which The Kraken wasn't particularly going to like. Eventually there was going to be hell to pay – in this life and possibly the next.

I can only imagine the horrible sound of the
swish
of bamboo through the air and the
thwack
of it on raw skin, when Lisa arrived home from ‘Crusaders' six months into our relationship to find The Kraken lying in wait, arms folded and foot tapping like a dog with a serious flea problem. Apparently The Kraken had been tipped off by Reverend Tong, the youth minister, when Lisa hadn't turned up yet again.