The Full Ridiculous (6 page)

But you
always
leap, jerking your legs in a reflex that sends hot spurs of pain spearing through your swollen left thigh. You wake in agony, writhing on the bed. After the initial horror, you almost like it. Your waking hours are unequivocally occupied; there is no room in your schedule to angst over your book or panic over your impending financial doom or worry about your children. There is only pain.

Four and a half days after you are run down by Frannie Prager’s blue Toyota and two days after the Victory at Boomerang, you wake from the Dream to realise that your sister Tess is sitting in the room. She frowns, says, ‘Hello,’ and lifts the sweaty fringe of hair plastered onto your forehead. She is right next to you, touching you, but so far away you cannot speak to her. Ingrid’s daughter, Mel, hovers in the doorway, frowning. You drift back into the darkness.

Across town, parents and pupils applaud as a burgundy velvet curtain lowers on the Boomerang school choir. The girls have completed another successful annual recital, centre stage of the city’s town hall, a late-nineteenth-century sandstone stab at colonial grandeur.

Rosie is not present, of course, because of her suspension. Also because she would ‘rather gargle cat vomit than join a choir’. Some of Rosie’s friends, however, are choristers and they huddle together to discuss the latest turn of events in the Eva–Rosie scandal. Later they report every detail of the evening to Rosie who reports it to Wendy who tells you.

Eva has made her first appearance since her big ordeal, sitting in the audience looking pale and brave, too weak to applaud with any vigour. The class is divided: half in support of Rosie and half in support of Eva.

Rosie’s little gang have discussed it and decided to be nice to Eva, but only to her face. Maddie Peacock has already been on a reconnaissance mission to check out Eva’s new diamond pendant (‘Hey Eva, hope you’re feeling better’) and is midway through a report on the number, size and shape of the diamonds when a young man approaches. He is impeccably groomed, with gold skin and floppy hair. The girls recognise him as Eva’s sixteen-year-old brother, Perry.

Perry pops his head into the circle of girls as if he has a special secret to share. ‘If any of you bitches does anything to my sister, you’ll pay. You might be standing on the station and a hand will push you in front of the train. Or waiting at the lights and end up under a truck. Or coming out of the movies and have your brains bashed in. You won’t see anyone coming but we’ll get you.’

A shaken Ursula O’Brien immediately reports the incident to her parents. Having experienced the full force of the Pessites’ displeasure during the photo frame debacle, the O’Briens barely raised a voice in protest over Mrs Pessites’ abortive attempt to exclude Ursula from the French tour. Back home over a cup of tea, they convince themselves that appalling Perry is merely making idle threats. They remind Ursula how painful things can get when blown out of proportion. Concluding that the best course of action is to do nothing, they pack Ursula off to bed. She brushes her teeth with her stomach churning, feeling like she wants to cry.

On her way to school, Maddie Peacock waits for the train with her friends. Chatting happily, she notices Eva Pessites standing on the opposite platform, surrounded by her acolytes. Eva is laughing and pointing in Maddie’s direction. Maddie looks around to see what the joke is. Then she looks down. She can’t believe it. She’s wearing her pyjama pants and suddenly everyone on the crowded platform notices. Maddie feels a hand shove her from behind. She stumbles forward, trips over her school bag and tumbles onto the cold steel tracks just as the train roars into the station.

Screaming in terror, Maddie wakes and writhes inconsolably in her stepmother’s arms. Maddie had decided to withhold the Perry Pessites story as a punishment for not being allowed to have a Big Mac before the recital, but now it spews out with terrifying velocity.

In the morning, Maddie’s stepmother calls Maddie’s father, who is on a business trip in New York. Maddie’s father briefs his lawyer. The lawyer fires off an email to the school.

The email arrives at 11pm and is opened the next morning by Christina Bowden’s devoted secretary, Judy, who prints it out and rushes it to the teachers’ lounge wearing her
here’s trouble
smile-frown. The headmistress has almost finished a touch-base breakfast with the science teachers when a hard copy of the email slips onto her lap. She scans it, finishes her gently risqué anecdote about frictionless pucks, and reschedules her morning. By recess she has questioned all the girls involved and by lunch George Pessites is sitting in her office, apoplectic with rage.

How dare they threaten him with legal action when it was his daughter who was beaten up! How dare they!

Christina Bowden allows him to spin around her office like an exploding Catherine wheel. When he is spent, the headmistress explains that the Peacocks are not threatening to sue Mr Pessites—they are threatening to sue the school for failing to protect their daughter from assault.

‘But Perry didn’t touch them. And anyway he’s just sticking up for his sister,’ he replies, abandoning rage to experiment with hurt and bewilderment.

Christina is about to launch into an exploration of the ethics of his son’s behaviour but thinks better of it. Instead she explains that Perry’s threats can indeed be legally interpreted as a form of assault but that, regardless of this, Mr Pessites must see that this atmosphere of hatred and revenge cannot be tolerated in a school professing to embrace Christian values. George Pessites is appropriately chastened by the mention of Our Lord and after inspecting a model of the new gymnasium he heads off, promising to ‘lay down the law’ to his kids.

On the way home George smiles to himself and says, ‘On ya Perry,’ to the luxury leather interior of his special edition Porsche, just as a Subaru hatchback stops dead in front of him. He slams on the brakes but it’s too late.

As air bags explode around him, George Pessites calculates that his three-hundred-thousand-dollar car will be off the road for at least two weeks. He’ll be driving around in some crap loaner all because Christina Bowden called him up to school. All because Perry put some little bitches in their place. All because the little bitches were giving Eva a hard time. All because one little bitch in particular punched his Eva and called her names. What was her name? Ruthie? Rosie?

The tow-truck driver drops George outside a row of expensively renovated neo-Federation shops where Mr Pessites enters his wife’s emporium—
All Gifts Great and Small
—to get the keys to her Audi when, as fortune would have it, he meets Constable Lance Johnstone.

Constable Johnstone is tall and thin with once-carrot hair that is fading to a dull brown. He has been a member of the police force for just over ten years. He joined in his late twenties after a number of unsuccessful attempts at various careers in sales. Selling life insurance was a little too esoteric for Lance so he moved on to selling objects—cars, kitchens, appliances—but never found his niche until the store where he was working was held up one day. He got talking to the cop who arrived long after a young man of Middle Eastern appearance absconded with just over a thousand dollars cash and seven laptops, and discovered that he wanted to become a police officer.

Lance signed up, filled with hope and ambition. Finally on the right path, he secretly dreamed that he would be promoted to commissioner in record time. But today, on the wrong side of forty, Lance remains a constable for reasons that elude him. He is a disappointed man who consoles himself with the small compensations that being a member of the police force afford him.

Mrs Pessites never fails to compensate Constable Johnstone with a twenty-five per cent discount on any of his purchases from
All Gifts Great and Small
. When wrapping his selected gift she often slips in another gift of greater value than the one he has purchased. Today, for example, an eighteen-dollar (marked down from $24.99) pewter mug purchased for his great-nephew’s christening has been supplemented with a sterling silver baby rattle normally retailing for $49.99 but included gratis. He knows it’s Mrs Pessites’ way of thanking him for his service to the public and he is graciously accepting her wrapped-and-ribboned offering when George Pessites walks through the door.

Constable Johnstone almost wets himself. George is very rich and owns lots of really big trucks. For a sweet second the constable is as giddy as a teenager but collects himself and adjusts his gun belt with appropriate gravitas. When George Pessites says, ‘Hello Lance,’ Lance can’t believe that amongst all the important information George carries around in his brain, he has bothered to remember his, Lance’s, name. It’s quite a compliment and the constable is more than a little chuffed until he remembers that he is wearing a name tag.

After an exchange of pleasantries, George asks Lance to join him for a drink in the pub; there’s a matter he’d like to discuss. Lance declines with a gesture that he hopes strikes the perfect balance between respect and firmness, explaining, like it’s a unique and saintly attribute, that he never drinks when he’s on duty.

George says, ‘Then have a lemonade,’ and heads out the door, certain that Constable Lance Johnstone is right behind him.

11

Wendy is at work, Declan is at school and Rosie is still at home, talking to Juan downstairs. Listening to the rumble of their voices below, you are slumped at the dining table in front of a cold bowl of uneaten porridge when you remember a doctor’s appointment. You are not supposed to drive because you are still on crutches but you can think of no other way to get there so you hobble down to the car.

As you manoeuvre yourself into the old Volvo, it occurs to you that you should really move the appointment to another time when Wendy is available to drive you. Trouble is, it’s hard to get an appointment with the good doctor because he’s popular because he’s a good doctor.

You need to see him because something has started to happen to you, almost on a daily basis: a kind of despair descends and paralyses you, sometimes for an hour or two, sometimes longer. You feel it like a chemical wash emanating from some mysterious point at the top of your head and soaking your brain until you can no longer function.

Mostly you can sleep it off—after an hour or so in bed you wake and are able to carry on—but sometimes it lasts all day until the next morning when you wake feeling slightly disappointed that you are still alive. This cannot continue: you have books to write, a family to support. You have every faith the good doctor will help put things right.
Who knows? It could be something as simple as a vitamin deficiency.

Fortunately the Volvo is an automatic so you park your swollen left leg to the side and operate the brake and accelerator in the usual way. As you crunch out of the gravel driveway, you’re feeling light-headed and a little guilty for driving in such a state but you tell yourself it’s only up the hill, and you drive—well, like a Volvo driver—practically crawling all the way to the car park next to the doctor’s surgery.

You writhe and hump and hoist yourself out of the car and are attempting to extract your crutches from the back seat when you hear a voice say, ‘What happened to you?’ You turn to see one of the dads from Boomerang. You can’t remember his name but you know he lives nearby. You’ve spent the odd Saturday morning with him chatting on the sidelines while Rosie and his big-boned blonde daughter play soccer. He’s visiting the doctor too so he escorts you inside.

The waiting room is full except for two empty seats so you wedge yourselves in with the snuffling, coughing hordes and throw hateful glances at the reception Nazi who has gleefully informed you that the doctor is running at least half an hour late. What’s-his-name asks hushed questions about your accident, which you answer in a voice likewise lowered, as if you’re talking in a library. If the point of this is privacy you are wasting your time because everyone in the tiny room can hear you.

Half an hour later the name
Jason
pops into your head.
What’s-his-name has a name. Jason.
You mentally raise your fist in a victory salute and proceed to overcompensate by inserting ‘Jason’ into every sentence you utter. Just as the conversation is flagging, Jason asks how Rosie is going. He does this in a voice so quiet you have to lip-read.

So he knows
, you think.
Of course he fucking knows! The whole school knows.

Jason uses phrases like ‘storm in a teacup’ to let you know he’s on your side. Then he does something oddly intimate: he puts his hand on your forearm and moves in close enough to kiss you. In a tiny whisper of minty breath he says, ‘Be careful of those Pessites.’

‘What do you mean?’ you whisper.

‘They can be…vindictive.’

‘Vindictive? How? You mean they’d hurt Rosie?’

‘Not physically.’

‘Then how?’

‘They might use their influence…’

‘How? With the school? I don’t think Christina Bowden can be influenced.’

‘No, not the school…’

‘Then…?’

‘I-I don’t know. All I’m saying is, be careful.’

A bewildered-looking woman whom you recognise as one of the other doctors appears and calls Mr Lind.
Lind
,
that’s it
. Jason Lind gets up and heads out. He pauses at the doorway to give you a reassuring nod, leaving you to ruminate for another fifteen minutes before Doctor David Wilson appears with his thatch of prematurely white hair and calls out your name.

Stray hairs from Egg float permanently through the atmosphere of the O’Dell household so when Wendy decides to multitask and paint her nails while stirring bolognese sauce and talking on the phone to her mother, she is unperturbed by the discovery of not one but two dog hairs drying into the pearl pink enamel of her left index finger. She informs her mother of the crisis, hangs up promising to call back, removes the errant hairs and ruined polish, reapplies fresh enamel, stirs the bolognese, and is about to dial her mother’s number when the phone rings. She scoops it up and cradles the old-fashioned receiver between her shoulder and her ear, expecting to resume the conversation about her brother’s irresponsible attitude towards money, only it’s not her mother.