Lessons in Letting Go (5 page)

LEVEL 6:
To the untrained eye, these houses may not look much worse than the average, slightly untidy suburban home. Just don’t open the cupboards or try to put something in the boot of their car. These people have been known to fill their saucepans and casserole dishes with old letters and postcards, pop the lids back on and shove them in a cupboard. The bookshelves contain not only books but paperwork, folders, boxes, ornaments and novelty coffee mugs. There are throws placed over desks and occasional tables to camouflage the piles of paperwork hidden underneath. Opening a cupboard normally involves using a free hand to stop everything falling out. There is a room that no one goes into and no one talks about.

LEVEL 7:
One or more family members have had to move out or die to make room for the stuff. Most rooms in the house are unusable and moving around or sitting down involves shifting things. Even the dining chairs are piled with an assortment of crap and the tablecloth is spread in such a fashion as to hide it. There are rusting and broken bits of things in the yard. There is no hiding this amount of stuff and even the neighbours can tell that a hoarder lives next door.

LEVEL 8:
As above but add cats.

LEVEL 9:
These people have never thrown out anything that might be used again. There is used tin foil, egg cartons, old tins, broken televisions and drawers full of string. Every surface is covered. Often these people have lived through the Depression or were incredibly poor at some point in their lives.

LEVEL 10:
These are the people you see on TV. These are the people that either make you feel better about yourself because you are not them, or they petrify you because you are scared you are going to become them.

I carefully reread my scale and looked around my flat. When I had been living with Thomas I was hovering around the lower reaches of Level Five. Now, with everything out in the open, I realised I was scarily close to leaping straight up to a fully fledged Level Seven. I rubbed the back of my neck. I had thought the list would comfort me. Instead, it was giving me heart palpitations.

This spurred me into a kind of panicky action. I made a wall out of the boxes to separate the open-plan lounge and kitchen, threw a rug over the top and convinced myself I was interior decorating. I promised myself that one day I would go through all my photographs and put them in albums, that I would go through the garbage bag of stamps, soak the paper off them and put them in order and that I would go through the little suitcase of moth-eaten doll’s clothes, wash and mend them and give them to charity. Then I sat down on the insect-riddled carpet and cried. I avoided the grief of ending a long-term relationship and instead sobbed over a box of unlabelled video tapes.

As time went on, things got slightly better. Adam would visit and fuelled by champagne, we would hammer together bookshelves and a weird little bathroom cabinet that was missing one side. We bought side tables and chests and baskets and eventually we found enough room on the floor to carve a path from the bedroom through the lounge and into the kitchen. Adam thought we’d made a good start. I didn’t dare tell him this was as good as it was going to get.

At night I would go to bed and listen to the drug lords either partying or fighting. Sometimes the security door would buzz in the early hours of the morning and after ten minutes of no one answering, I would fly out of bed and let in some obviously high kid and yell at him all the way to his door. They probably thought they lived next door to a dragon who wore Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas.

In the evenings I would waste my time rearranging and re-stacking piles of god-knows-what, trying to find the magical configuration that would enable me to feel like I was in control. The fear of doing something I might later regret overruled any desire to throw something out. If I threw out an old placemat, I might all of a sudden find myself completely unmoored from my past. If I threw out a cardigan my mother had given to me for my twenty-third birthday, I might destroy the family bond that held us to each other. We don’t call our possessions ‘belongings’ for nothing and without Thomas beside me it felt like my belongings were the only things holding me together.

I tried very hard not to reminisce about how different the place I had lived in with him had been. Our flat had been almost new, with an air conditioner and enormous balcony. It had wooden venetian blinds and polished floorboards. It even had its own entrance, separate to the rest of the apartments, and I never tired of climbing up our little terracotta-tiled staircase, opening the big front gate and stepping onto our decking. We had everything we needed in our little flat: we had new crockery and stainless-steel saucepans, we had a new quilt and fresh linen, we had just the right amount of towels and all of our clothes fitted into the enormous wardrobe with ease. In the house of horrors I now called home, even the blinds were so old they were filled with holes. The blue evening light would shine through them, leaving spooky spots on the walls. It was like living in an eighties music clip.

When I left, Thomas had given me his sofa, his coffee table, a load of kitchen stuff and our doona. Everywhere I looked, there he was. And where he wasn’t, there was some other reminder of a life lived years ago. Nothing looked like a life lived now. This wasn’t how I had expected it to be. Whenever I couldn’t stop myself thinking about it, my mind drifted to imagining Thomas on his own in our old flat and I wondered what it looked like now. Probably clean. And uncluttered. He had always liked new stuff. In a world without me, he would have sat at Level Three. Still, I wondered if he was now doing the same thing I was, wandering aimlessly around our old apartment, rearranging things and trying to pretend there was nothing missing.

I stared at the blue spots of light streaking through the blinds and onto the walls and imagined I really was living in a music clip after all:

Here is Corinne fondling an old pair of pants. Here is Thomas polishing his new car. Here is Corinne hiding seven years’ worth of junk under a rug she was given for her twenty-first birthday. Here is Thomas buying a new couch. Here is Corinne listening to her cassette tapes from high school. Here is Thomas buying a stainless-steel coffee maker and a copy of
Vogue Living
. Here are two people on their own, lying in different beds and dreaming of different stuff.

Chapter Five

Months after I had moved out, Thomas and I were still speaking every day, often leaving an awkward pause at the end of the conversation where we used to say ‘I love you’. Neither of us wanted to end the friendship and deep down, I was relieved. I couldn’t cope on my own just yet, I needed Thomas’ good sense and confidence to buoy me up. I didn’t feel guilty about it; he still needed me as well and it would have been cruel of me to cut him out of my life completely. Still, there were things I wasn’t telling him—like how truly hideous my new flat was. I knew it would only upset him. And besides, I had Adam to complain to about that.

‘Oh my god, Adam, if those junkies next door don’t shut the hell up, I am going to belt them to death with my rollerskates.’

I was huffing around the house after yet another sleepless night.

‘You still have rollerskates?’

Damn, now I’d put myself in it.

‘I found them last time I was home. I thought they might come in handy.’

‘For what?’ Adam sounded incredulous. ‘Are you going to re-create a Cliff Richard video clip? Can you even rollerskate?’

I wasn’t about to tell him that the skates were actually a child’s size seven and I couldn’t have fitted into them even if I’d chopped off my toes. They were sitting next to the couch, all red and white with teeny little wheels. They were too adorable to throw out.

‘That’s not the point, Adam.’

‘Then what is? No. Stop. Forget that. What are you doing this weekend? Do you want to go out somewhere?’

‘I can’t, I’m going to a birthday party with Thomas. It’s for his great-aunt.’ I fiddled with the telephone cord. ‘She doesn’t know we’ve broken up and it’s easier for Tom if she thinks we’re still together.’

There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

‘You do realise he’s your
ex
-boyfriend, don’t you?’

‘Adam, it’s not that simple.’

‘Yes it is! Let him go before he thinks you’re getting back together.’

‘He knows we’re not getting back together, he knows that, Adam.’

‘Really? Are you sure?’

Bloody hell. I toed the rollerskates. Thomas knew we weren’t getting back together; I’d made that clear. We were still friends because we needed each other. Or because I felt guilty for leaving him. Or because he felt bad for becoming distant in our relationship. Or because—oh god. I didn’t know. The truth was, I’d never been very good at understanding boys. I’d always missed the signs. Craig in the caravan and Thomas were just two of my disasters.

I looked down at the rollerskates again. When I really thought about it, they didn’t make me feel good, they made me feel a little bit guilty. The last time I’d worn them, Shane Doltrey had wound up in hospital.

I was eleven years old and in grade five in Corryong. The whole class was going to the skating rink in Albury–Wodonga and I had been beside myself.
Xanadu
was my favourite movie in the whole wide world and I had watched the closing skating spectacular so many times that the video tape was starting to stretch. I wanted to be Olivia Newton-John in her long flowing seventies frocks and off-the-shoulder shirts. I wanted Zeus as my father and I wanted—oh, how I wanted—to live in a rollerskating rink.

I had been given a pair of white lace-up boot rollerskates with red trim and red wheels for my eleventh birthday and I’d worn them so much that one of my legs had turned out on a weird angle and I couldn’t sit cross-legged anymore. I had skated up and down the concrete path to the clothesline for hours every day. I had put my skates on as soon as I got home from school and only took them off again when it was too dark to see where I was going. And yet I never got the hang of it. I couldn’t go backwards and I couldn’t stop unaided. I had to grab the Hills hoist on my way past, just before I ran out of concrete and hit the grass. I had no talent whatsoever. But I had enthusiasm: blind, avid, weirdly obsessive enthusiasm.

The trip to Albury–Wodonga was going to be brilliant. I had decided on my outfit a week in advance: my best pair of bubble-gum jeans and a lolly-pink cable-knit jumper. The most exciting part about it, however, was not the rollerskating at all, but the opportunity to spend the day trying to get the attention of Shane Doltrey. I loved Shane Doltrey. Everything I did, I did for Shane Doltrey. Does Shane like pink? Of course he does, I should wear the pink jumper. Does Shane like Billy Idol? Yes he does, and he hates the Village People. Best that I memorise all the words to ‘Mony Mony’ and make sure I don’t join in the actions to ‘YMCA’. Does Shane like rollerskating? Hard to tell. Perhaps I can teach him and he’ll be so impressed, he’ll fall in love with me in return. I stayed awake the whole night before we made the trip, wriggling with excitement and inventing all sorts of scenarios that would involve Shane asking me to marry him.

There were some difficulties to overcome in the planning for the big day. For a start, my last romantic encounter with him had not worked out well. I was still too forceful, I didn’t understand that romance requires a light touch. I thought if you loved a boy with force, you approached him with force. At that age, the standard way to convey affection was to pull the hair of the object you desired, or give them a punch in the arm or perhaps a kick under the table. Face-pulling and obscene gestures also worked well. I didn’t feel that any of those techniques would fully convey the depth of emotion I felt for Shane Doltrey. So instead of relying on something subtle, I borrowed a copy of a hardcover illustrated dictionary from the library and put it in my library bag. Then I waited for Shane Doltrey. When I saw him coming around the corner, I took my library bag and swung it like I was doing the hammer throw. I got him right in the side of his head. I was sure this would express how much I cared about him; I had gone to far more effort than the standard arm pinch or dead leg. Surprisingly, it didn’t provoke a marriage proposal, it provoked tears. I was confused, but not disheartened. This was merely the beginning of our little love game. I was laying foundations, and at least now I knew I had his attention. A day of rollerskating was going to clinch the deal.

The morning of the trip we all piled onto the school bus to drive the hour and a half to the city. I didn’t get to sit anywhere near Shane Doltrey. He was a back-of-the-bus kind of guy and I was strictly up the front near the teachers, mainly because I had a weird bladder infection that meant I needed to urinate frequently and we had to stop the bus so I could trot off to a public loo every once in a while. I’d made it as far as the middle of the bus on the last trip, but even that was pushing it. There was a hierarchy and there was no point trying to get around it. Of course, if Shane Doltrey and I got married, everything would change, I’d be able to sit where I liked. It would be exactly the same as when Diana married Prince Charles and went from being a child-care worker to rollerskating through Buckingham Palace. See? Even princesses rollerskated!

The first hour on the rink passed without incident. I skated around and I didn’t fall over. I even managed a passing resemblance to some backwards skating when I surreptitiously pushed myself off a wall and looked over my shoulder in the professional way I’d seen Gene Pitney do in
Xanadu
. But still, I couldn’t catch Shane’s attention. In fact, I hadn’t seen him on the rink at all. Perhaps he was sitting on the sidelines admiring me from afar. Obviously this wouldn’t do, so I got my best friend Leanne to convince Shane’s best friend Ben to tell Shane he should put on some skates and go out on the rink. When that didn’t work, I dobbed him in to Mrs Allan for not being a joiner and he was forced into it.

And then it happened. I could not have planned anything more perfect. Shane couldn’t skate! He was floundering around the edges, trying desperately to stay on his feet and flapping his hands, trying to find something on the wall to hold onto. I could teach him! I could teach him to skate and he would be so impressed he’d forget all about the illustrated dictionary head injury and he’d fall in love with me. But as I skated towards him, something must have frightened him, as he started moving quickly in the other direction. He moved in a way that sort of looked like dog-paddling on land, which wasn’t very effective but did mean I could make ground on him fast. Just as I got close enough to call out, he pushed out from the wall and careened into the centre of the rink, grabbing hold of a pylon covered in flashing lights. The pylon was very wide and he couldn’t get a very good grip on it and to his horror and my joy, his legs started slowly sliding in opposite directions, creating a sort of splits scenario which even a child as anatomically naïve as I was realised couldn’t be the most comfortable position for a boy to find himself in.