Read Online The Full Ridiculous by Mark Lamprell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mark Lamprell
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You’re so angry, you don’t even notice that you’re not using your crutches as you limp outside and down the perilous sandstone steps to the side of the house where you keep the bins. You hurl the pencil case into the trash and slam the lid.
Three hours later, you are in the study with your left leg elevated because your thigh has swollen to twice its normal size again and is aching like buggery. You curse yourself for attempting to abandon your crutches too soon and interpret your incapacity as a sign that you should try to focus on some writing. That’s what you are pretending to yourself that you’re doing when you hear Declan come home. He calls out, ‘Hey,’ and goes to his room.
You listen intently for anomalies in the usual soundscape of bumps and thumps, anything to indicate that he has registered the absence of the pencil case. Surely if he’d noticed you’d hear the telltale sounds of a frantic search—drawers groaning, doors creaking, the dull thud of objects piling up on the bed—but there is nothing.
Does this mean he hasn’t noticed? Or is he canny enough not to let you know? Should you march-hobble in there and interrogate him? Should you act alone, right here, right now? Or wait for Wendy and plan a strategy? Should you call her at work? Is that fair? Why are you asking yourself all these questions?
You wonder what happened to the old you—the guy who would have known what to do and then done it.
Wendy sits at the kitchen table, bent over with her head between her knees, hyperventilating. You get her a brown paper bag to breathe into and her breathing slows. You have bombarded her with too much information. Wendy is a super-coper but even super-copers stop coping sometimes. You wait until the colour returns to her face and make her a cup of tea. Then you both retire to your bedroom and, in lowered voices, talk.
You agree not to say anything about the drugs until Declan reacts to their absence. You pretend that this is a valid non-confrontational strategy but you are both avoiding the horrible fight,
(a) because neither of you has the stomach for it, and
(b) because a horrible fight might reveal a terrible truth far worse than the Declan-minding-drugs story that you have both decided to embrace.
A voice way, way in the back of your head calls, ‘Why don’t you find out? Why don’t you just confront him?’ But you shush it away as Wendy read-whispers Declan’s poems aloud.
Wendy thinks the poems were written during Declan’s earlier dope-smoking phase and that they do not necessarily reflect his current state of mind. Nevertheless she decides to investigate by initiating a chat with him. She finds Declan in the living room watching a re-run of The Simpsons, with dead eyes and his mouth slightly open, so that he looks as if he’s been lobotomised.
Wendy sits casually on the sofa next to him. Suddenly he guffaws at something Homer says. Wendy wisely waits for a commercial break and tries to engage him in conversation. His responses are polite but monosyllabic. She plugs away until the programming resumes and he turns and looks at her. ‘Mum, what do you want?’
‘I want to know if you’re okay .’
He looks at her as if she’s certifiable. ‘Yeeaaah, ’course.’
Wendy sits there for a while watching him watch television. Spying from the kitchen, you can see her deciding whether to have another go at interaction but eventually she sighs, rubs her knees, and retreats. You both head back to the bedroom where Wendy hatches another brilliant plan: a father-son chat.
You explain that you’re weirdly fragile; you don’t know whether you’d weep or shout at him but either of these reactions would be unhelpful, destructive even. Wendy says she’s fragile too and wouldn’t it be nice if we could put our kids in the deep freeze until we all felt like dealing with them. You know she’s been doing the lion’s share since the accident and you know she’s only provoking
You’re so angry, you don’t even notice that you’re not using your crutches as you limp outside and down the perilous sandstone steps to the side of the house where you keep the bins. You hurl the pencil case into the trash and slam the lid.
Three hours later, you are in the study with your left leg elevated because your thigh has swollen to twice its normal size again and is aching like buggery. You curse yourself for attempting to abandon your crutches too soon and interpret your incapacity as a sign that you should try to focus on some writing. That’s what you are pretending to yourself that you’re doing when you hear Declan come home. He calls out, ‘Hey,’ and goes to his room.
You listen intently for anomalies in the usual soundscape of bumps and thumps, anything to indicate that he has registered the absence of the pencil case. Surely if he’d noticed you’d hear the telltale sounds of a frantic search—drawers groaning, doors creaking, the dull thud of objects piling up on the bed—but there is nothing.
Does this mean he hasn’t noticed? Or is he canny enough not to let you know? Should you march-hobble in there and interrogate him? Should you act alone, right here, right now? Or wait for Wendy and plan a strategy? Should you call her at work? Is that fair? Why are you asking yourself all these questions?
You wonder what happened to the old you—the guy who would have known what to do and then done it.
Wendy sits at the kitchen table, bent over with her head between her knees, hyperventilating. You get her a brown paper bag to breathe into and her breathing slows. You have bombarded her with too much information. Wendy is a super-coper but even super-copers stop coping sometimes. You wait until the colour returns to her face and make her a cup of tea. Then you both retire to your bedroom and, in lowered voices, talk.
You agree not to say anything about the drugs until Declan reacts to their absence. You pretend that this is a valid non-confrontational strategy but you are both avoiding the horrible fight,
(a) because neither of you has the stomach for it, and
(b) because a horrible fight might reveal a terrible truth far worse than the Declan-minding-drugs story that you have both decided to embrace.
A voice way, way in the back of your head calls, ‘Why don’t you find out? Why don’t you just confront him?’ But you shush it away as Wendy read-whispers Declan’s poems aloud.
Wendy thinks the poems were written during Declan’s earlier dope-smoking phase and that they do not necessarily reflect his current state of mind. Nevertheless she decides to investigate by initiating a chat with him. She finds Declan in the living room watching a re-run of The Simpsons, with dead eyes and his mouth slightly open, so that he looks as if he’s been lobotomised.
Wendy sits casually on the sofa next to him. Suddenly he guffaws at something Homer says. Wendy wisely waits for a commercial break and tries to engage him in conversation. His responses are polite but monosyllabic. She plugs away until the programming resumes and he turns and looks at her. ‘Mum, what do you want?’
‘I want to know if you’re okay .’
He looks at her as if she’s certifiable. ‘Yeeaaah, ’course.’
Wendy sits there for a while watching him watch television. Spying from the kitchen, you can see her deciding whether to have another go at interaction but eventually she sighs, rubs her knees, and retreats. You both head back to the bedroom where Wendy hatches another brilliant plan: a father-son chat.
You explain that you’re weirdly fragile; you don’t know whether you’d weep or shout at him but either of these reactions would be unhelpful, destructive even. Wendy says she’s fragile too and wouldn’t it be nice if we could put our kids in the deep freeze until we all felt like dealing with them. You know she’s been doing the lion’s share since the accident and you know she’s only provoking
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