Read Online Creepy and Maud by Dianne Touchell - Free Book Online

these giggles, which only ended up producing giggle-suppression snorts. When people started to look, Dad leaned over and hissed, ‘Shut the hell up,’ which sort of made her worse. I was fascinated by the whole thing because it remains, to this day, one of the only times I have ever seen my mother laugh. Our family were not invited to the annual Christmas party at Antoine’s house that year. I think I was the only one who had some compassion for my mum that day. Death is a little bit funny, after all. Isn’t it?
     
    So there she is, Maud, standing in the window. Telling me her nanna is dead. Exposing herself. Coming out from behind Thomas the Tank Engine to share something. Something I assume is painful. And what do I do? I default to Fluffy and post-mortem spasm and tongue and before I know what’s happening Ifeel my shoulders bouncing and my face shaking and I am laughing. I am laughing big. Not just a titter. Not a simple chuckle that with distance could be misinterpreted as the facial contortions of shared sorrow. I’m laughing my fucking head off and I can’t stop. Maud’s just watching me, expressionless, pulling out her hair.
     

FOURTEEN

    Not only do I not know what’s going on, I wouldn’t know what to do about it if I did.
    —George Carlin

    All the girls at school have Pandora bracelets. Or the cheaper imitations. It has become the newest obsession, replacing things like violence and eating disorders at the top of the list. You see the girls sitting in little groups at lunchtime, all bent over each other, wrists extended, heads tweaked coquettishly to the side, stroking each other’s bracelets and making sexy noises at one another. I know about all this because I watch them. I was walking along the school verandah behind Caitlin Cooper (good name for a loved pet there) when her Pandora bracelet broke. There was no warning beforea dozen or so charms and beads hit the concrete, ping, ping, ping; they skidded everywhere. Caitlin actually wailed and her entire pack dropped to the ground as if responding to a volley of gunfire. The girls crawled along on their hands and knees, rescuing the trinkets, barking at the approaching foot traffic to stay back. It was as if little pieces of Caitlin herself had broken off and rolled away. A tiny solid gold apple charm, complete with minuscule stem and leaf, ended up resting against my foot. I picked it up and pocketed it before walking away.
     
    Here’s the thing—it was little pieces of Caitlin herself breaking off. Apparently, these charms are symbolic. The little apple? Caitlin wants to be a teacher one day. Get it? Apple for the teacher? Isn’t that so precious you just want to vomit? By the way, those girls are back there again today, still looking for that little gold apple.
     
    Carl Jung reckons that symbols are signs of things that can’t be made clear. If we are so consumed with protecting the bits of us that could break off and roll away at any given moment, then it makes sense that we have symbols to represent us. Symbols for others and symbols for ourselves. Do we, therefore, symbolically display our agendas? Like a monkey presenting its red arse when it’s ready for a date? Of course, that raises an even more interesting question. If something can’tbe made clear, how do you assign it a symbol? Isn’t its essential obscurity a symbol in and of itself?
     
    I think about this while rolling the little gold apple around in my palm. I also think there is every possibility that Carl Jung was just full of shit. However, there can be no denying we humans are a phlegmatic lot. Introspection being actively discouraged since birth, it makes perfect sense that we should eventually choose tattoos or loud cars with big exhaust pipes or boob jobs or Pandora bracelets to define ourselves. And why not? All honesty is relative.
     
    I expected a whooshing slam of Thomas the Tank Engine curtains after our last interaction. I do feel bad about laughing at Maud.