Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

One night I spilled coffee on my bed. It was coffee, I swear, that soaked through the sheets and seeped into the mattress, but it looked like urine. I thought: Anouk will think it is urine. I tore the sheets off my bed and hid them. I went to the cupboard for clean sheets. There were none there.

Where did all the sheets go?

I asked Dad.

“Outside,” he said.

We didn’t have an outside. We lived in an apartment. I puzzled over this mystery awhile before arriving at a frightening conclusion. I went to check. I opened the curtains. There was no outside world. What I saw was sheets; he had hung them over the windows from the outside, maybe as a white flapping shield to hide us from prying eyes. But no, they weren’t white. They weren’t a shield either. They were a sign. There was something written on the other side of the sheets, in red. The words “Fucking Bitch.”

This was bad. I knew this was bad.

I took down the sheets and hid them with the others, the ones with urine on them. Shit, I wrote that, didn’t I? OK. I admit it. It was urine (it is not attention-seeking that makes children wet their beds, but fear of their parents).

Just so you know, you don’t have to be religious to pray. Prayer is not so much an article of faith anymore as it is something that is culturally inherited from film and television, like kissing in the rain. I prayed for my father’s recovery as a child actor might pray: on my knees, palms locked, head bowed, eyes closed. I went so far as to light a candle for him, not in a church- you can take hypocrisy only so far- but in the kitchen late one night, when his nocturnal rumblings had reached a fever pitch. I hoped the candle would unwrap whatever it was that bound him so tight.

Anouk was in the kitchen with me, cleaning it from top to bottom, muttering that she wanted to be not only paid but praised, and, citing mouse poo and cockroach nests as evidence, she implied that by cleaning the kitchen she was saving our lives.

Dad was stretched out on the couch with his hands covering his face.

She stopped cleaning and stood in the doorway. Dad could feel her staring at him and pressed the palms of his hands harder into his eyes.

“What the fuck is going on with you, Martin?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you want me to tell you?”

“God, no.”

“You’re wallowing in self-pity, that’s what I think. You’re frustrated, OK. Your aspirations are unfulfilled. You think you’re this special person who deserves special treatment, only you’re just starting to see that no one in the whole wide world agrees with you. And to make matters worse, your brother is celebrated like the god you think you are, and that’s finally dropped you in this kind of bottomless pit of depression where all these dark thoughts are gnawing at you, feeding on each other. Paranoia, persecution complex, probably impotence too, I don’t know. But let me tell you. You have to do something about this before you do something you’ll regret.”

It was as excruciating as watching someone light a firecracker, then peer over it thinking it’s a dud. Only Dad wasn’t a dud.

“Stop bad-mouthing my soul, you meddlesome bitch!”

“Listen to me, Martin. Anyone else would get the hell out of here. But someone has to talk some sense into you. And besides, you’re scaring the kid.”

“He’s OK.”

“He’s not OK. He’s pissing his bed!”

Dad lifted his head over the top of the couch so all I could see was his receding hairline.

“Jasper, come here.”

I went over to the hairline.

“Haven’t you ever been depressed?” Dad asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re always so calm. It’s a façade, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

“Tell me, what gnaws at you, Jasper?”

“You do!” I shouted, and ran to my room. What I didn’t yet understand was that Dad’s unhinged state had the potential to send me down the same precarious path.

Soon after that evening, Anouk took me to the Royal Easter Show to cheer me up. After the rides and the fairy floss and the show bags, we wandered over to see the judging of livestock. While staring at cattle, I suddenly pretended to be suffering from a bout of chronic disequilibrium, a new pastime of mine that involved bumping into people, stumbling, falling into shop displays, that kind of thing.

“What’s wrong?” she shrieked, grabbing me by the shoulders.

“I don’t know.”

Her hands clasped mine. “You’re shaking!”

It’s true, I was. The world was reeling, my legs bending like straw. My whole body was vibrating out of control. I’d worked myself into such a lather, the fabricated illness had taken over, and for a minute I forgot there was nothing wrong with me.

“Help me!” I screamed. A crowd of spectators rushed over, including some officials from the show. They hovered over me, gawking (in a real emergency, a thousand eyes pressing against your skull isn’t actually that helpful).

“Give him some air!” a voice cried.

“He’s having a fit!” exclaimed another.

I felt bewildered and nauseated. Tears rolled down my face. Then all of a sudden I remembered I was only playing around. My body relaxed, and the nausea was replaced by a fear of discovery. The eyes had moved a couple of feet back, but the force of their gaze was undiminished. Anouk was holding me in her arms. I felt ridiculous.

“Get off me!” I screamed, pushing her away. I returned to the cattle. They were being judged by a panel of leathery-looking folk in Akubra hats. I leaned over the fence. I heard Anouk whispering frantically behind me, but I refused to look. After a minute she joined me.

“You OK now?” she asked.

My answer wasn’t audible. We stood side by side, in silence. A minute later a brown cow with a white stain on his back won first prize for being the juiciest-looking steak in the paddock. We all applauded as if there were nothing absurd about applauding cows.

“You and your father are quite a pair,” Anouk said. “I’m ready to go as soon as you are.”

I felt terrible. What was I doing? So what if his head was an empty seashell in which you could hear the torment of the sea? What did that have to do with my mental well-being? His gestures had become crazy birds banging into windows. Did that mean mine needed to be too?

A couple of weeks later, Dad and I drove Anouk to the airport. She was going for a few months to be massaged on a beach in Bali. Just before she went through the departure gate, she took me aside and said, “I feel a little guilty leaving you at the moment. Your dad’s about to fall off the edge.”

I think she wanted me to say, “No, we’ll be fine. You go enjoy yourself.”

“Please don’t go,” I said.

Then she went anyway, and a week later he fell off the edge.

Dad went through his monthlong cycle of crying, pacing, screaming, watching me sleep, and shoplifting, though suddenly all within a week. Then it was compressed further and he ran through the whole cycle in a day, each stage taking about an hour. Then he went through the cycle in an hour, sighing and groaning and muttering and stealing (from the corner newsstand) in a blaze of tears, running home and tearing off his clothes and pacing naked in the apartment, his body looking like spare parts assembled in a hurry.

Eddie came banging on the door. “Why hasn’t your dad been coming into work? Is he sick?”

“You might say that.”

“Can I see him?”

Eddie went into the bedroom and closed the door. After half an hour, he came out scratching his neck as though Dad had given him a rash and said, “Jesus. When did this all start?”

I don’t know. A month ago? A year?