Bright Burning Things(20)

‘What on earth do nuns know about the wanton wiles of the flesh?’ I throw at him.

‘Discipline, structure, order…’

He’s not joking. My heart speeds.

‘What was I thinking? Turn around now. Tommy needs to say goodbye to me.’

I see his little face, snot-caked and hot.

Pwomise, Yaya?

‘Lovely hibiscus,’ my father says.

Fuck’s sake. ‘Dad, he’s too little, he won’t understand. I shouldn’t have left without explaining this to him.’

‘Sonya, you’ll only make it worse. He’ll be fine.’

‘When you went silent, after Mum died, I wasn’t “fine”, much as you liked to convince yourself I was.’

‘This isn’t the same, Sonya.’ He sounds so tired. ‘The experts advised this would be the least traumatic way of doing it.’

Of course he consulted the ‘experts’. I breathe deeply, close my eyes and dive down to the depths. For a moment the sensation cancels out the buzzing noise in my head, my body softens, and I let my mind float. A space opens up: maybe he’s right, maybe it would cause more damage to go back now. Lots of children have to deal with sick parents having prolonged stays in hospitals. At least this one is coming back alive.

‘Sonya, are you with me?’ My father’s voice hooks me back up. ‘Are you with me on this?’

I let myself imagine this is my first day at boarding school, something I wished for as an only child after reading Malory Towers obsessively, with its depictions of midnight feasts and best-friend-ever-after pacts. I feel young and overly stimulated, like I’ve gorged on too many jelly beans at a birthday party where no one spoke to me. I have the shakes, something I’ve become pretty used to in recent months.

‘Cold?’ My father takes off his jacket, awkward in the small space, his elbows hitting off the roof of the car, and wraps it around my shoulders.

He gets out, opens my door, takes the bag out of the boot and leads the way. Where have you been, Dad? I’m being led to the sanatorium, the madhouse where they used to lock up wild women in this country not so long ago – when it was still a land of priests and patriarchy – women with hysteria, with desire, with too much of everything in their veins, women who incited and inflamed. Yup, that’s me! I almost start to skip. Where is my camera?

There’s a desk behind a glass frontage and a man discussing his medication for depression. This sight disrupts the female-only fantasies that were building in intensity, aggravating the winged creatures slumbering under my ribcage. The man seems embarrassed to be so exposed publicly. A woman with a clipboard walks towards us, shaking first my father’s hand, then mine. ‘You must be Sonya? Take a seat in the waiting room and we’ll get the nurse to have a chat when she’s free.’ My father nods at her as if he knows who she is and moves into a room with frayed, shiny corduroy couches and a TV on mute. There’s a big man enveloped in one of the couches, wearing pink pyjamas that are too small for him, his wrists poking through, his old duffel bag at his feet. He smiles, actively beams at us.

‘Hope you brought your PJs? I forgot we had to wear them for the first week, so they gave me these.’ He gestures to the faded, shrunk pink pyjamas. ‘They wouldn’t let me wear my tracksuit.’

Laughter shoots out of my mouth, airborne.

‘Sonya,’ my father says.

‘Sorry,’ I manage, before another wave of hysteria moves through me.

The man smiles. ‘Look at my big belly in these little dinky things.’ He pats his stomach, winks at me. ‘First time, darlin’?’

My father answers for me. ‘Is this place mixed? I thought it was segregated.’

‘Separate sleeping quarters. Otherwise mixed. This disease isn’t particularly fussy who it chooses. And I should know; this is my third visit.’

My father reflexively wipes the seat with his starched white handkerchief before sitting. I sense his mood shifting, see his judgement hanging in the air. Third visit: how could anyone be so weak-willed? A familiar surge of rebellion moves through me. Fuck him, with his patronising distancing ways. How have I let him back in like this? A familiar giddy breathlessness.

‘Sonya Moriarty?’

I get up, called to action, although I’m not sure whether I’ll follow directions.

My father stands, air-kisses me, cheek to cheek, eyes unfocused.

‘I’m proud of you, Sonya.’

That hurts. There have been so many times in my life when he could genuinely have been proud of me.

He walks away down the hall, holding himself carefully as if bits of him might break off.

The sight of his back sets up an ancient terror in me. I go off-script. No no no no no no no. I shout after him: ‘Dad?’

He doesn’t turn around.

‘Dad? This is a terrible idea. You know it is… Come back, Dad. Take me home. For Tommy…’

He has pushed through the front door. A hand on my arm, restraining me.

‘Time for your medical, Sonya.’





9


The ‘medical’, it turns out, is just a weigh-in, a blood pressure test and a chat with a nurse about my ‘habits’. No blood tests or urine samples, just a series of questions, rat-a-tat-tat. My instinct is to minimise, to convince this woman of my intelligence, my ability to manage myself, my father’s overly protective stance in all this. I wear my serious face, tell her I have been sober the last few days, that it really wasn’t that difficult. I don’t think I’m slurring; to my ear I am cut crystal, perhaps overly articulated.