Bloodletting (14 page)

But it had come at a price, with very high stress levels. It had taken him ten years to find a way to deal with them without cigarettes and alcohol, as so many others in his industry did. He had rediscovered sport.

And he’d discovered Melissa. Instead of cocktail parties and gallery openings, she liked barbeques and pubs; instead of designer clothes, she was happy in jeans. Her attitude had rubbed off on Archie.

We weren’t close now, but he was happy for me to stay as long as I needed to.

Even after a week the urge to hurt myself faded, and the flashes of violence went through my mind only occasionally—and they seemed to appear out of habit more than anything else. As a result they were less threatening. Similarly, the desire to constantly check locks, which had intensified when I lived alone and had no-one to hide it from, now receded.To go back to check the front door two or three times was nothing. It wasn’t like the period just before I left Melbourne, when I would have to go back eight or ten times, after each time, getting downstairs and thinking, did I imagine checking or did I do it? I’d then go upstairs, check again and get downstairs, only to have the same thought again.

Even my food phobias became less of an issue.

In all, I began to feel close to normal again.

Archie’s flatmate, Carol, was friendly and outgoing. She was always keen for a coffee or a chat and it wasn’t long before she asked about my arm. I was taken aback but I appreciated her directness and told her the truth.Well, not at first—at first I gave her the bizarre ice-skating accident story, but it was clear she didn’t believe me. So I told her what had really happened, but not the details, and not about the nightmare of the recurring thoughts.These were things I couldn’t talk about, not to ordinary people. Not to people I liked or cared about.

She wasn’t shocked. Or if she was, she didn’t show it. Instead she made me promise to ask her for help if I ever needed it. I promised, knowing that even if things did get bad, I wouldn’t. It didn’t work like that, not for me, not any more.

As I didn’t want to go back on the dole, and now had some useful skills, I visited an employment agency.They looked at my resumé, asked me to take a typing test, and then said they’d be happy to put me on their books for temporary secretarial work.Was I happy to start on Monday? I’d had an interview for a real job, a permanent job, the previous week, but didn’t feel confident about it, so I took up their offer.

Catching the 8.15 am train into town and turning up to work in a suit, my only suit, felt ridiculous. I was used to being able to wear jeans and boots. As I was a temp, no-one expected much from me, which was a good thing as I didn’t actually know what a secretary did. Emily suggested that I just look in some of the files, and use old letters as templates. It would be easy, she said.

I spent three days sitting at a desk outside the chief legal counsel’s office. The phone rang occasionally, he drafted a few emails to me, and I typed a few letters. Mostly I read a book. Nobody seemed to mind—or rather, nobody seemed to notice. I clearly didn’t matter; I was invisible.After working at the magazine it was a shock,and when, on the final day, I had a call from one of the state’s largest universities offering me a job, I accepted without a second thought.

It sounded fun. I’d be working on campus, writing, editing, proofreading and doing some design work. And, if what my new bosses had been wearing at the interview was any indication,I wouldn’t have to invest in a new wardrobe. It would also give me time to get myself together, while I thought about what I really wanted to do. And could do.

I was worried that perhaps I just didn’t have the stamina for a demanding job.

For the first few months, things went well. I worked, went out with my new colleagues, caught up with my old friends, and generally didn’t push myself too hard. I felt, in fact, as though I were on holiday.

And then I did something foolish.

It had been over two years since I’d been involved with anyone.After Christian, I’d lost my nerve, and, as things had become more difficult, I’d lost interest in having a relationship at all. It was enough to have to cope alone.

With Alex it was easy. Too easy. He hadn’t changed and neither had I: he still didn’t want a relationship with me, just sex, and he still wanted to keep it a secret. I was still prepared to go along with this. We had both worked out, finally, that we weren’t good for each other, indeed that we brought out the worst in each other, but this didn’t matter.The familiarity did.

Around the same time, I was waiting for a train one day when Ibumped into someone who I’d been at university with some years before. Kelly was house hunting, and as I was doing the same—having realised that I couldn’t stay at my brother’s indefinitely—we decided to find somewhere together.

After seeing a number of places that were good enough, if not perfect, and that I would have settled for, she found us one that was great. It was a renovated art deco unit in a security building, close to the harbour.

I’m not fundamentally lazy but I don’t much like housework. Cleanliness is certainly important, but there’s no need for obsessiveness about it. My childhood had been spent watching my mother constantly vacuuming and cleaning.A bench with crumbs on it was the enemy. It didn’t matter whether it was hers or someone else’s.When I’d lived in Sydney previously, I had let things slip a little from time to time. Sometimes, it was just too much to empty ashtrays, do the washing up or make the bed.

Sometimes it was more than that.

Early one morning, when I was going out with Patrick, my mother had arrived at my flat, unannounced. I was alone but unprepared. I had planned to tidy things a little, as I knew that the mess would upset her, but she was early.

She looked around, plainly appalled and I suggested that I took a quick shower.We could then go out for breakfast, there was no need to stay in the flat.

‘I’ll just pick up a few things for you while you do that,’ she said.

I asked her not to, and promised that I’d just be a minute.Why didn’t she just sit down on the sofa and read a magazine?

‘No, no, I’d like to help,’ she said, lifting up a towel from the bedroom floor.

‘No . . .’ I said, but it was too late.

Underneath the towel was a used condom.

Kelly, my new flatmate, reminded me of my mother. She cleaned and polished and tidied incessantly. Twice a week, while she was in the shower, she’d clean the tiles and polish the screen. I was always amazed that she didn’t react to the bleach.The vacuum came out, it seemed, daily. And she cooked proper meals. As she was power-walking home from work, she’d call me on the mobile, ask what I’d like for dinner and would collect the ingredients from the supermarket. If people came over, there would be at least three courses.

In many ways Kelly was terrific to live with, and more than once I thought, this is what it must have been like to have a wife in the 1950s.

I did feel guilty about not doing my share of work, but we had different standards. I, for instance, refused to clean a surface that wasn’t dirty, and I wasn’t what she considered a good cook.

Ultimately though, the problem had nothing to do with household chores.

Kelly was a leggy, glamorous blonde. She spent money on her hair, her make-up, her clothes, her tan. And she knew she looked good.

When Alex dropped in,she’d flirt openly with him.Admittedly,she didn’t know about our arrangement, but that didn’t make it any easier to watch. Even this I could have tolerated though, if she hadn’t misrepresented me.

It hadn’t occurred to her that just because we’d both been to private schools, and the same university college, that we didn’t think the same way or believe in the same things. Perhaps, when we were eighteen, we had been similar, but not anymore. I wasn’t a Country Road-wearing Liberal voter, and hadn’t been for a long time, not since I discovered what it was like to have no money. I didn’t care what kind of car a person drove, and, shockingly, I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to get married. Kelly had a good job, a good group of friends and was now ready for a good husband.

I think it was her certainty that really upset me. She felt that this was her right. Of course someone would want her, someone she loved. How could they not?

One evening, Kelly introduced me to a friend of hers, Jason. He was a journalist, outspoken, entertaining and friendly.When he asked me out I couldn’t think of a reason to say no. I was sick of Alex’s halfhearted attitude, and knew that it would have to end again sooner or later. It was a change to be in a position of control for once.

Jason and I started seeing each other regularly but I felt like the consolation prize. Kelly admitted she’d turned him down. By seeing me, he still got to see her—and she made sure he did. She’d tease him by lying supine on the couch in tiny shorts or wandering through the house in nothing but bathers, on the pretence of collecting a towel from the balcony.

It had taken me years to come to terms with the way my own body looked,and I didn’t need this.Try as I might, it was hard to ignore the way Jason’s eyes swivelled in the direction of her thighs. But I didn’t say anything, not wanting to reveal my own insecurities.

Then I had an irregular Pap smear: I was told that I had a virus that was making the cells in my cervix mutate and these cells had to be removed. I was overcome with fear and guilt.Was this, I wondered, punishment for my promiscuity in the past? Had I brought it on myself?

I couldn’t tell perfect Kelly. Instead I began to avoid her. I wasn’t in the mood for upbeat conversations about her possible new boyfriends.

On top of this, I was bored at work. While the lack of pressure had at first been ideal, I now felt trapped. It wasn’t challenging. It wasn’t what I wanted to do.

Dr G was surprised to see me. It had been years since he’d advised me not to go to Adelaide. He was blunt. He wouldn’t treat me unless I agreed to take an antidepressant. He would look for one with as few side effects as possible, and start me on a very low dose. If it didn’t work, or I was uncomfortable, I could simply stop taking it—slowly.

I told him I didn’t want to take anything that hadn’t been properly tested. I was very nervous about taking anything at all, but if I had to compromise, then I wanted to be sure it was all right.

He laughed. He said he didn’t prescribe anything that hadn’t been properly tested. He then suggested Luvox, a Belgian drug in the same family as Prozac. I could begin taking it in the evenings. I was to see him again in a fortnight, when it should have started to kick in.

I went home,disappointed with myself.After a break of three years I was on antidepressants again. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even want to admit it to myself, but the alternative possibility of slipping down again didn’t bear thinking about.That night I took a quarter of a Luvox tablet. It was half what I’d been prescribed but I couldn’t take any more.

A week or so later, I was lying on my bed reading when I overheard Kelly on the phone. She was speaking to Carol, with whom she’d become friendly: I wasn’t sure what else they had in common, but they were certainly both tall and blonde.

‘No. No better. Actually, she’s bloody impossible. She’s difficult, moody, and I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.You know that I do everything around here. I cook. I clean. She should be grateful.’There was a pause. ‘I think there’s something going on though. I saw what looked like an X-ray envelope on her bed. She’s going out with Jason but I’m pretty sure she’s still sleeping with Alex. Do you think she might be pregnant?’

I couldn’t listen to any more. I threw down my book, grabbed my wallet, and walked past a shocked-looking Kelly through the sitting room to the front door. Perhaps she hadn’t realised I was there.

I returned after midnight, drunk and feeling slightly less upset. Emily had described Kelly as a ‘fucking cow’ enough times to take the sting away from the phone conversation I’d overheard.

The next morning I found a note. From time to time, we left notes for each other, about mundane things like phone messages or shopping list reminders. I thought perhaps the note was an apology. But no. It was an explanation.Apparently she didn’t understand my moodiness and didn’t know what to do about it.The truth was, she wrote, I frightened her.

I didn’t know what to think. I certainly frightened myself sometimes but didn’t realise that anyone else took any notice. None of my friends seemed to be frightened of me. I was the least confrontational person I knew. I didn’t yell, I didn’t throw things and I rarely even showed that Iwas angry. I couldn’t understand what she was talking about.Was it my scars? Did she think they meant I was violent? It didn’t occur to me then that she might have meant that she was frightened for me, not of me.

She’d said in a vague sort of way a few weeks previously that she was thinking about finding somewhere else to live.The birds outside her window were annoying her.At the time,I said nothing.The flat was in a great spot, had a reasonable rent, and was in walking distance of a lot of my friends. I didn’t want to leave.And her complaint sounded rather pathetic.

After her note, and the telephone conversation, her comment about moving came back to me. Perhaps she was right. It was time to move again.

While I was at work that day, I received a phone call. It was about a job I’d applied for.They wanted to interview me.Various people at the company already knew me from my previous job in Melbourne, and they thought I’d be just right for this one. It would involve dealing with a number of tricky people, including the media, and it would be long hours and demanding. Did I want to come in for a chat?

Of course I did.Emily lent me a pinstriped suit,and I wore a T-shirt underneath. As I walked into the building, I crossed my fingers. It sounded just right.

A week later, I resigned from my position at the university. This was slightly more difficult than I had planned. I’d accepted the new job, and had promised to start in two weeks. This was the minimum notice I was allowed to give, according to my contract. Unfortunately, celebrating my new job involved getting very drunk. I managed to catch the train into work the following day without throwing up, but couldn’t actually turn on my computer. Instead, I handed over my letter, dashed to the loo and went home to bed.