Lessons in Letting Go Read online

  Understandably, my mother baulked at my request for enough wool to finger-knit a volleyball net and I was instead pilfering little scraps from art classes and from cupboards at home. I became furtive and obsessed, scrabbling for any bits I could, regardless of length, colour or quality. It was hard, slow work and after a month I had only managed to make a line of knitting that stretched twice across the lounge-room floor. It would have taken five hundred times that amount to make a volleyball net. Miserable, I gave up. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t cut out to be a martyr, I didn’t have the sticking power. I put the finger-knitting in a cupboard. One day, I would return to it. One day, I would set things right again.

  What had started as an attempt to right a wrong had now turned into something far more irrational. I was a child; I believed in fairies and dragons and princesses and witches. I believed in happily-ever-–afters and now, after the little girl in Waltons, I’d started to believe that if I threw away my stuff, I’d never be able to fix the things I’d broken. It didn’t matter if the stuff in question had nothing to do with the thing I’d damaged or hurt or wrecked in the first place—I simply, magically, believed that if I kept it all I would never have to experience sadness, regret or guilt again.

  Everything went into the cupboard after that. Broken dolls, old pencil cases, posters and stamps and stickers still in their packaging. I kept Christmas presents I had barely touched, thinking I would play with them one day and allay the guilt I felt on account of all the poor children who had nothing. I kept a lidless toy teapot because throwing it out would have forced me to accept that I’d lost the lid and it was never coming back. When the cupboard was full, I started on a drawer. I carefully stacked away all my birthday cards, the stubs of pencils, bits of eraser, lone buttons and broken necklaces. When the drawer was filled, I found another and another, and then I used the wardrobe and under my bed and the spare room and then the tops of dressers and drawers and desks. It started when I was eight and it never, ever stopped.

  Chapter Two

  Still, life was far from dire; I had a best friend. Her name was Katie and she was a free spirit, skipping through life with lopsided pigtails and a crooked grin. I ran panting and sweating along behind her, worried that my dress might get dirty, that my shoes might get ruined or that I might step on an ant and ruin an entire insect community’s reason for existing. Katie just laughed and ran. She was fearless in the face of regret. With her red hair, freckles and novelty socks, she was partly my best friend and partly my god.

  Katie and her family had moved to our town because of her father’s job and although Katie had originally been an outsider, it didn’t really count as she’d arrived when we were all too young to realise the importance of her foreignness. I am sure it had been different for her parents. A strict protocol came into play whenever there were new people in our town. First, you sat back, watched and listened. There was no initial contact. Instead, you would ask the shopkeepers what the new person was like, you would check out what they bought in the supermarket, you would talk to their work colleagues, you would find out what church they attended and how often. You would find out whether they were Top Pub or Bottom Pub folk. Eventually, after fifty or sixty years, someone would approach them on the street and call them by their first name.

  Katie’s father never went to the pub at all. This was unheard of in my world. Until I met Katie, I had no idea there were people like her family, people who had chosen to live their own lives, heedless of the need to fit in. When I first met them, I didn’t know whether to be awestruck or to report them to the police. For a start, they were the only people I’d come across who didn’t mind unexpected visitors. This was shocking. One of our biggest social rules was that no one dropped in unannounced. You couldn’t just knock on someone’s back door and yoo-–hoo your way into their kitchen. What if they were cleaning the stove? How were you supposed to carry on a civilised conversation with someone when their head was in the oven and you were conversing with their apron-covered arse? The casual drop-in was only acceptable if you were absolute best friends, sisters or, in some circumstances, a spouse. Everyone else rang, arranged it at church, or met on neutral territory, such as a fête or funeral.

  In our house, unannounced visitors were our greatest fear. Growing up I assumed we were the only house that had to do last-minute cleaning before visitors arrived. That assumption was based on the fact that every other house I knew was showroom-tidy when we went to visit. It never occurred to me that everyone else might be exactly the same as us, running around the house at ten o’clock the night before, cleaning and shoving things in cupboards and under beds. Country people are house proud. Gleaming silver, polished furniture and starched doilies are part of what makes us who we are; it’s a tradition that connects us to each other and to our past. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does make it hard to have company.

  None of these rules existed at Katie’s house. Not only were unexpected visitors never a problem, cleaning was never a problem either. It didn’t matter to them that there were unwashed dishes in the sink, undusted ornaments on the mantelpiece and toys on the front lawn. It was shocking, exotic and somewhat unnerving. Walking into their house was like accidentally seeing them nude.

  Katie’s house had one sitting room at the front which was relatively tidy and then a bunch of unkempt rooms that were adventures on a Narnia-like scale. They even had a chook shed and an out-of-control passionfruit vine that we picked the fruit from in summer. We were allowed to cook in the kitchen unsupervised. We would boil tins of condensed milk, forgetting about them until they exploded. I don’t remember ever getting into trouble. I also don’t remember ever cleaning up the mess.

  Katie’s bedroom was nothing like mine. It was messy like mine, but it was the mess of living. Clothes and well-loved toys and dress-ups littered her room. My room was full of broken and half-finished things, long-forgotten craft projects, domino sets missing half the dominoes and deflated balloons. Whenever my poor, exasperated mother insisted that I clean up, I would listlessly move things around, incapable of making a decision to throw something out. I just kept rearranging things and carefully finding hidey-holes for them in the already full cupboards and wardrobes. I was an eight-year-old curator of crap.

  Katie was completely different. She would play with things and then throw them out when their usefulness had passed. I couldn’t do that at home. For god’s sake, I didn’t want to do that at home. But at Katie’s house I could. The first time I ripped up one of her old skirts to make a curtain for a cubby-house window, I was a goner. I was wound up so tightly that I came undone with the centrifugal force of a small tornado. I spun through Katie’s lounge room, slightly breathless and high-pitched. ‘Can I touch this?’ ‘Can we cook this?’ ‘Can I throw this over the fence and listen to next-door’s dog rip it up?’ I forgot that I needed redemption. At Katie’s house, I discovered I could be temporarily unburdened from my conscience.

  With all that freedom, I had no choice but to become a tyrant.

  It was in Katie’s caravan that I finally pushed things too far. Katie’s younger brother had a best friend called Craig and often the four of us would play together. We had sleepovers in the caravan, all curled up in our sleeping bags, pretending we were in the outback or on the run from kidnappers. I loved that caravan so much that sometimes I would sneak out to it on my own. Entering it was like climbing into a magical wardrobe, or up a magical tree—normal rules didn’t exist in there. Maybe that’s why I chose it as the scene of my crime.

  At the age of six, Craig was a slight and gentle boy. Once, yipped up on the freedom of Katie’s house, I had chased him around a piano until he collapsed. That’s the kind of thing I could do when I was there. In the same way animals flee to safer ground just before a natural disaster, Craig would often disappear whenever I came near. It just made me chase him harder.

  Even though he was two years younger than me, I wanted to kiss Craig. Kissing a boy seemed like the most
reckless thing I could do. (It still does.) How I was supposed to go about it, however, was a mystery to me. From what I had observed, girls did not do the kissing; we waited until a boy kissed us. That did not appeal to me at all as it left me open to random advances. The white-haired boy who had helped me when my parka zipper got stuck might turn out to be fine boyfriend material, but the boy who wet himself whenever he saw sawdust definitely would not. I couldn’t leave these things to chance and besides, Craig didn’t seem like he was going to kiss me of his own volition. If I wanted this to happen, I was going to have to do it myself. Like a lame gazelle wandering into lion territory, Craig never stood a chance.

  Our first (and last) kiss was in Katie’s caravan. I had lured him there with the promise of showing him something. I had not thought through what the ‘something’ was but I had hoped that as soon as we got into the caravan it would come to me. Craig followed warily. As luck would have it, there was a Rod Stewart cassette near the tape player and I used that as my ruse. As Rod’s husky voice crooned out ‘Sailing’, I swung around, knocked Craig down onto the bed and planted one on his lips. He was too stunned to fight back.

  It was not quite as romantic as I had imagined it would be. Mainly because, unbeknownst to me, he was eating a black jellybean and when I kissed him, he choked a little bit and black stuff oozed from his mouth. For one brief, confusing moment, I thought I had struck oil.

  After that, I announced to everyone who would listen that Craig and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. Our lips had touched in a caravan and according to my books that meant we were practically married. As often happens with young love, however, our romance didn’t last long. In fact, it only lasted until he found out that I was telling everyone he was my boyfriend. In hindsight, I can see that it was never going to work. There was not only the age difference to contend with, but we also wanted different things out of life. I was into My Little Pony, he liked Skeletor, I wanted to grow up to be an aerobics instructor, he wanted to eat Clag. Also, if I had stopped to think about it at the time, I would have realised he was just not ready for a serious, committed relationship. Probably because he was six.

  It was an ugly break-up. I didn’t know back then that it was best to walk away from these things, to saunter off with your head held high and your dignity intact. I was eight, I lacked subtlety, diplomacy and consideration. I lacked restraint. I called Craig a poo breath. He called me a bag of sick-up. I called him a blood blister. He called me a wart face. I called him a virgin. Being called a virgin should not have caused offence to a six-year-old—in fact, it should have been considered a good thing—but at that age when you don’t know what a word means, you assume the worst. I called him a virgin, he cried and that was the last I saw of him. I didn’t care, he had spurned me; disappearing was the least he could do. Unlike the little Waltons girl, Craig deserved all he got.

  I didn’t see him again until many years later, when we were both adults. It was at a birthday party in Melbourne and I recognised him immediately. He was unmistakably Craig; he looked exactly the same except taller and less frightened. I hesitated, worried that he might not remember me or, worse, that he would. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me and I gulped down a glass of champagne and went over. I tapped him lightly on the shoulder and as he turned he grinned, then immediately reminded me of the time I had accosted him in a caravan. Then he told me he was gay.

  Even though I knew it was illogical, a small voice in the back of my head whispered, ‘You turned Craig gay.’

  As Craig laughingly recounted every gory detail of that caravan assault, I thought back to the little Waltons girl and inwardly marvelled at my idiocy. You spend your life trying to make up for a crime you think you’ve committed and, in the end, it turns out you’re guilty of something else entirely.

  Chapter Three

  I had moved to Melbourne a few years before my reunion with Craig, leaving my childhood behind, hidden in cupboards, wardrobes and drawers. Coming from such a small country town, it took the entire length of my university degree to settle in and, needless to say, when I first arrived my terror was so intense that I was virtually vibrating. There were more people in my art history class than had been in my entire high school.

  I had spent a year in Albury–Wodonga before moving to Melbourne, trying to acclimatise to living away from home. I had loved it. Now that I was almost a grown-up, Albury–Wodonga was the perfect size for a country girl spreading her wings. I had thrived there. I’d made new friends, I’d been invited to parties, I’d even kissed a couple of boys without having to concuss them first or lock them in caravans. But Melbourne was different. Melbourne was unfathomably huge. I regressed instantly.

  I spent my first year going straight to class then scurrying back to my dorm, where I would eat ice-cream from the bucket and listen to old-time radio because it reminded me of home. I was too scared to find a new hairdresser, so I let my permed hair grow out until the straight part reached my ears and the bottom half remained curly. (I looked like a cocker spaniel.)

  I wandered around in a pair of purple leggings and a hand-knitted jumper and I was always surprised when people figured out I was from the country without my even mentioning it. It seemed that I was destined to never fit into the city.

  Maybe this was the way it was always going to be, I thought. After all, I’d been in Melbourne on my own once before and things had not gone well that time either.

  I had been fifteen and had wangled my way into doing work experience at a city radio station. Luckily, I had a second cousin who lived nearby and I was going to stay with him and his family. It should have been a chance to learn about the world and gain some desperately needed experience about living in it. Instead, I arrived at my cousin’s house with only one goal for the entire week: to make sure that no one realised I was from the country.

  My biggest problem was my country accent. I often replaced the word ‘yes’ with a sharp intake of breath. It was a habit I had picked up from my grandmother and her friends. If you agreed with someone and words seemed like too much of an effort, you simply gasped instead. If you strongly agreed, you might gasp twice in rapid succession. To the unaccustomed ear we probably sounded like we were choking. I had nightmares that if anyone in the city heard me doing this, they would point at me and start yelling, ‘Cow rooter!’ I practised saying ‘yeah’ and ‘cool’ and ‘yeah, cool’ and ‘cool, yeah’ under my breath for a whole week before I left.

  My second problem was wardrobe. (My mother had already refused to buy me a power suit like the ones Melanie Griffith wore in the movies.) I fossicked through my wardrobe and dragged out what I thought was my most cosmopolitan outfit. I started with a pair of grey, stretch-flannel culottes: a pair of pants so wide-legged that when you were standing with your legs together they looked like a skirt. Then, for reasons only my fifteen-year-old brain could possibly justify, I chose to team them with a hand-knitted jumper with a picture of a clown on the front. Looking back on it now, I doubt they even dressed Special Needs kids like that.

  I wore this ensemble to my first day of work experience. I was very nervous. I had arrived at my cousin’s house the night before and things had got off to a bad start. Wanting to prove what a worthy addition to their household I was going to be, I threw myself headlong into playing with my cousin’s seven-year-old daughter. We both played with her dolls, she showed me her sticker collection, we danced to her favourite cassette tape. We were getting along very well until I knocked out her front tooth. I still have a photo of this silken-haired little girl in a ruffled denim skirt and blue top, riding the stuffed horse that moments later I tripped over, sending it and her halfway across the room. Even then she probably would have landed unscathed if her face had not glanced off my elbow. I found the tooth underneath the coffee table, half buried in the shag pile. At least we had something to give the Tooth Fairy.

  The next morning, with mercurochrome covering the tooth-shaped divot in my elbow, I was standing at the entran
ce to a shopping centre the size of my entire town, somewhere in the middle of which was the radio station where I would be working. I set my face in what I hoped looked like a world-weary, urbanite expression and walked through its automatic doors.

  City people take it for granted but for country kids, coming to the city for the first time is quite overwhelming. There are all the buildings, the traffic and the people speaking in complete sentences to contend with, not to mention the loose-toothed children. These people working at their fancy easy-listening radio station probably all drove Porsches and spoke in nothing but rapid-fire wisecracks. They probably all had share portfolios and lived in condos. They probably hung out with famous people like Boz Scaggs.

  I was going to be spending my week with the station’s copywriter. It was the closest thing to show business I thought I could handle. I had not dared to apply for anything to do with actual performing; the idea of real actors and directors flipped my heart right over. I reasoned I would start in the background so that if I made a mess of it, I did not have as far to fall, and if I somehow managed to do all right, I wasn’t over-reaching myself. Some people are frightened of failure, others of success. I was frightened of both.

  I had my head down, concentrating hard on walking properly in my one-inch heels, so it was not until I was well inside the shopping centre that I noticed the escalator. I faltered. We didn’t have escalators in the country. We had stories about escalators though: stories about people getting minced by them. I looked around nervously for an elevator. The radio station was one floor down. Everyone I knew back home was well aware of the fact that if you did not jump off an escalator in time, you would get sucked into the grate at the bottom, go all the way around inside the machine and come back out the top looking like coleslaw. Hundreds of people had been injured on escalators, including, I had heard, a girl who had been scalped. Or something like that. Maybe she just caught her hair a little bit. Either way, it was a close call and not a story whose veracity I wanted to test with my own head.