Cloudwish (7 page)

chapter 12

Once she was home
and waiting for the lift to groan its way down to pick her up in the ground floor lobby, she was hit by a half-formed worry lurching into uncomfortable focus. Billy was just like those billboard girls, wasn't he? Couldn't she see him up there in some Calvin Klein boxers? He wouldn't even need photoshopping. He looked unbelievably good in just his bike shorts. Wasn't he the most conforming version of blond Anglo male beauty she'd ever seen in real life? Had she internalised a paradigm she should be questioning or, better still, outright rejecting? Too late for a political light bulb moment now. Her imagination had signed on from the moment she first saw him without clearing it with her brain, and since then she'd become just as interested in whatever was brooding away under the surface as she was in the beautiful surface itself.

Unlocking the front door, she stepped right into double-uh-oh land.

Uh-oh number one: no smell of cooking; no sign of food preparation. Uh-oh number two: neat stacks of cut-out garments still sitting in taped plastic bags on the kitchen bench.

She had hoped they'd prevent it this year, but maybe not, maybe they'd hit a speed bump that was too high and rolled backwards.

When Dr Chin had confirmed the post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis, he'd gone through the treatment in detail: antidepressants and therapy. But because her mother had stopped feeling well, got careless with the tablet taking, and had not increased the dose as she'd been instructed to . . . here they were again.

She could see why the worst time for her mother each year coincided with the anniversary of the boat journey from Vietnam, and how the PTSD had become a monster, ready to burst forth each year, still ravenous. But she also imagined that whatever her mother had witnessed, whatever she'd experienced, was with her every day. Every morning when she woke. Every evening when she tried to sleep. What did she see? Vân Ước longed to know, and at the same time half-hoped never to know. She wondered if the nightmares of her imagination came close to her parents' experience.

Under the doctor's direction, and with her father's agreement, she had partly bossed and partly cajoled her mother into agreeing to attend group therapy with other women who'd made the journey. The conversation had gone something like:

‘Ma, Dr Chin says there's a group of women who meet and talk to each other about leaving Vietnam.'

‘Why would anyone want to do that?'

‘It's run by that social worker – you know Nh
Æ°
Mai? Who visits people here? And she brings families to homework club sometimes? You've met her. She's nice.'

‘Why is it her business to get everyone to talk about this? And why are you telling me?'

‘Because it might help you to go along. Dr Chin said you should go.'

‘I'm not going anywhere. I don't know these people.'

‘It could be that some of your friends will be there.'

‘My friends and I don't need to talk. We got out. And we got on with things.'

‘You didn't have any counselling when you arrived though, did you?'

‘Counselling?'

Vân Ước hadn't used quite the right word in Vietnamese. ‘You know what I mean – talking through your problems.' She was trying not to sound impatient or disrespectful.

‘Sounds like a waste of time. If you survive, your problems are gone.'

So many of her mother's family members had died, it was hard to argue: if you survived, your problems
were
gone. The most pressing one, anyway: how to stay alive.

But her mother had been going along to group therapy for a couple of months now and was, for her, pretty positive about it.

Vân Ước went quietly into her parents' room, in case her mother was asleep.

She wasn't sleeping. She was staring at the ceiling.

Sitting down lightly on the bed, Vân Ước took her mother's hand. ‘Mama? Are you okay?'

‘Vân Ước,
con
.'

Con
meant ‘child' but with overtones of something like ‘little
one'; it was an affectionate greeting, in any case, so she took courage.
‘Mama, you're not feeling well? I'm bringing in your tablets.'

‘Leave them. They don't work.'

‘Dr Chin told you – you have to keep taking them, and increase the dose to make sure they keep working. Today we'll start again. I'm making another appointment for you to see him. We're going to do what he says, and stick with these tablets.'

Her mother rolled her head away. ‘You treat me like a child.'

‘I'm trying to look after you well, like a mother, like you look after me.'

‘I don't need it. I am the mother.'

‘But you still need help sometimes.'

During exchanges like this, Vân Ước had to try to forget the frequent, imperious command
Do for me!
(read something, explain to someone, pay a bill, make a complaint, speak on the phone, give technical advice . . .) which didn't fit so well with
I am the mother
. Her mother never acknowledged these inconsistencies.

The expression on her face was mutinous. She was strong-willed. And that didn't change when she was unwell.

‘What about when
I
am a doctor?' Vân Ước asked, mentally crossing her fingers for peddling the family dream when she had no intention of making good on it.

Aha. The wedge. Her mother was smiling.

‘If you work hard enough. Study hard. We will be so proud of our daughter. You will live in a big house, in Kew.'

‘And I will make people well?'

‘You will have a waiting room full of people who come to be cured.'

‘And I will expect all my patients to take their tablets that I carefully prescribe for them.'

Her mother's lips were firmly closed again.

‘Won't I? Mama, think about it – you know it's true.'

‘Maybe.'

‘So . . .'

‘So you will be better than Dr Chin. You will only prescribe the tablets that work.'

‘These tablets will work, if you just keep taking them. No skipping a day. You won't feel better straightaway after the dose changes. Remember him explaining that to us?'

‘They want our money for tablets that don't even work.'

‘They just work in a different, slower way. And then they make you feel better for a long time.
But only if you keep taking them
.' Vân Ước got up to leave.

‘You and Daddy will do the sewing today.'

Great, that would poke a big hole into homework time. So apparently some time-wasting was permissible. Just nothing fun. Hanging out with Jess: no. Slave labour: yes. But her mother looked sad and ashamed; Vân Ước didn't have the heart to let her annoyance show.

‘We can do it. And I'll ring and cancel for the rest of the week. You just rest.'

She went out into the hallway, took a deep breath in order not to scream, went into the bathroom and saw her own face in the mirrored cabinet. Worried. And pissed off. She'd have to get dinner organised, too. She fished around the narrow shelves and found the right box. Fortunately her mother was too tight with money to chuck stuff out once she'd paid for it. Vân Ước checked the dose, popped two white pills out, filled a glass of water and closed the cabinet door. She checked her reflection again, removed worried, removed pissed off, put on confident, added a touch of positive, and headed back into the bedroom.

chapter 13

The common room was
a new privilege, just for years eleven and twelve. Each year level had its own room, in different buildings, and people used them to have lunch in if the weather was bad, or as a place to hang out in a spare period; some people – the ones with a high noise tolerance – even worked in there. They were allowed to play music and there was a massive noticeboard where people could post ‘appropriate' material.

School had tried to make the common room feel like a relaxing retreat. They'd even used the word ‘chill' in the literature, which was unfortunate. Sofas and comfy chairs and coffee tables had been donated by students' parents, creating a mismatched informality. A kettle, a microwave oven, a fridge and a sandwich press made for more comforting food options than the usual lunchbox fare.

The room overlooked a small garden area, a dead-end wedge created when the new library building (the Redmond Information and Technology Centre) was connected to one of the old buildings, and it had a low-grade background smell of instant noodles and bananas, which wasn't unpleasant, but which, over time, they would no doubt come to associate with the stressful work requirements of the year.

The one thing that no one liked about the common room was that it had a CCTV security camera in one corner of the ceiling. Cameras were dotted all over the school, but it seemed like an invasion to have one right inside this particular room.

Pippa, whose older sisters had all gone through the school, always had the scoop on the whys, wherefores and deep history. She said, ‘They had no choice – it was just a smokers' den before the camera went in. I guess they were worried they'd be sued for passive smoking injury.'

Vân Ước had to steel herself to go into the common room. She wouldn't have bothered if it hadn't been for the CCTV camera. Her scholarship was for general excellence, and that had a community component. Imagine if someone checked through the footage and noticed that she never went into the most community-specific space that the school had created for her year level. On one hand it was ridiculous to think that anyone had the time to waste on a check like that. On the other hand, why not play it safe? She was used to jumping through hoops that were put in front of her.

The room didn't feel like hers in any way. It was a distillation of the exclusion she expected to feel, a concentration of the in-ness of various friendship groups. Worse than walking out into the playground glare of unpopularity, here you had to walk through a doorway. All eyes flicked up upon each entry. People were greeted with enthusiasm. Room was made for them to sit down. Or, in cases like hers, eyes flicked down again, and the silence screamed in her ears. It wasn't that she minded it particularly, but she did mind other people witnessing it. And she dreaded teachers getting wind of it, and maybe finding awful, inventive ways for her to join in more effectively. She had decided her strategy would be to make a cup of tea – BYO teabags – and sit down and pretend to study, or really study if it were at all possible.

So before class, on this hot and thundery Wednesday, a week into term, she made her second visit to the common room. Disturbing sounds of occupation and hilarity were bubbling into the corridor. Fun? It wasn't much past eight am. A couple of lengths of the corridor, arm-swinging and deep-breathing, and she dived in. Not a splashy dive from a height, more like entering already underwater and hoping not to be noticed. But rather than being able to make her way inconspicuously to the kettle bench, she was immediately pounced on by Billy. Not physically – he was standing at the most centrally located coffee table in the middle of a Jenga battle with Vincent.

He called from the door, ‘Vân Ước, come over here.'

She froze.

‘Vân Ước!'

The whole room was quiet. Billy's friends looked at him like,
What? Why the sudden interest in her
? They were as mystified as she was. Her couple of scholarship cronies shrank as deeply into their seats as possible, hoping not to be called on for any impossible rescues.

Billy looked around. ‘Hey, I like the silence – finally some attention. Because I've got an announcement . . .' He turned a slow circle, making sure everyone was looking at him.

Might she actually throw up, right here, right now? Please, no. Her eyes flicked around nervously. Where was someone like Lou when you needed her?

Billy continued, ‘Vincent Linus Cronin is about to eat a dick.' He looked at the Jenga tower with complete concentration, slowly pulled out a rod without causing the structure to crash, and roared with satisfaction. Vincent was sweating – they really took it this seriously? He removed the next rod. The tower remained standing.

‘And that was his undoing . . .' Billy looked around for her again. ‘Vân Ước, come over and help me – I need physics expertise for my final move.'

Billy's friends – and particularly Holly – were again doing a double take. She walked over to the game and stood nearby. What was she going to do? Withhold a Jenga opinion?

‘Thank you!' said Billy. ‘I'm thinking this one.' He pointed to a rod down towards the base layer. Vân Ước did a quick assessment of the structure and nodded. It was the one she'd choose.

It was as though one of her weird Billy dreams had come to life: Billy noticing her. Billy talking to her. Billy wanting her opinion. Everyone seeing that Billy liked her.

Billy extracted the rod. And again, the structure held.

‘You're fucked now, buddy,' he said to Vincent, who clearly agreed, admitting defeat in a sour smirk.

Vincent pulled a rod out and the edifice went smashing down over the coffee table, spilling onto the floor. Billy stretched both arms up, triumphant. He punched his own chest. ‘Jenga king,' he yelled. People laughed, rolled their eyes. Everyone was used to his hyper-exuberance. He turned to Vân Ước, punching the air and chanting, ‘I am the Jenga king. I am the JENGA KING.'

She flinched; it was as though he was about to charge through her, but instead he picked her up, spun around in a circle, put her down again, and continued his lap of triumph around the common room. He stacked two chairs on the table closest to the CCTV camera, climbed up them and said into the camera: ‘I AM JENGA in this school!'

‘Dude, there's no audio,' said Ben.

‘Then they can READ MY LIPS,' Billy shouted into the camera before jumping down, chairs crashing behind him.

By now everyone was laughing – except Vân Ước. She couldn't decide whether fury or mortification would win the day. Whatever Billy Gardiner's game was, and however she fitted into it, she wasn't available to be picked up and put down like a doll. She forgot about her cup of tea and walked out.

When Billy called out to her she was striding through the car park near the science block and still angry.

The morning's rain had eased, but it was warm and thundery still; lightning arced and flicked across the mauve-clouded sky.

He caught up to her. ‘Why'd you run off? You brought me good luck.'

‘Why are you following me around? Why are you speaking to me out of the blue like this?' she asked him.

‘Why wouldn't I?'

‘Because you never have before. You didn't even seem to know who I was until last week.'

‘So, call me stupid. I know who you are now.'

‘Good, then you can leave me alone now.'

A fork of lightning flashed bright white nearby, and between them, right onto the bonnet of Dr Fraser's silver hybrid, a bird fell with a thud, dead, its tiny bundle of entrails exploded out, a thread of smoke rising in a spiral from its broken chest.

‘SHIIIIIT!' said Billy. ‘Wow. How cool is that?'

She couldn't believe her ears. He thought it was
cool
that a small bird got electrocuted right in front of them? Just great. She had a psychopath following her around.