Nine Perfect Strangers

Lars didn’t know he was going to say it until he said it.

Since he’d been back home the dirty-faced little dark-haired boy with Ray's hazel eyes kept materialising just as he drifted off to sleep, and suddenly, irritatingly, he’d be wide awake with the exact same thought in his head, like a brand-new revelation every time: the kid didn’t want to show him something terrible from his past. He wanted to show him something wonderful in his future.

What a load of nonsense, he kept telling himself. I’m not a different person. That was just drugs. I’ve taken drugs before. That was a hallucination, not a goddamn epiphany.

But now Ray stood at the pantry putting away groceries, all those protein shakes, and Lars heard the words coming out of his mouth: ‘I’ve been thinking about the baby idea.’

He saw Ray’s hand stop. A can of tinned tomatoes poised midair. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t move or turn around.

‘Maybe we could give it a shot,’ Lars said. ‘Maybe.’ He felt sick. If Ray turned around right now, if he threw his arms around him, if he looked at him with all that love and happiness and need in his eyes, Lars would vomit, he would definitely vomit.

But Ray knew him too well.

He didn’t turn around. He slowly put the can of tomatoes down. ‘Okay,’ he said, as if it were neither here nor there to him.

‘We’ll talk about it later,’ said Lars, with a firm knuckle rap on the granite benchtop, which kind of hurt.

‘Yep,’ said Ray.

A little while later, when Lars came back into the house to retrieve his sunglasses after saying he was going out to the shops, he heard the unmistakable sound of a six-foot man jumping up and down on the spot while shrieking into the phone to someone who was presumably his sister: ‘Oh my God, oh my God, you’re never going to believe what just happened!’

Lars stopped for a moment, his sunglasses in his hand, and smiled, before he headed back outside into the sunshine.

Five weeks later

There was a documentary about the history of Australian Rules football on TV. Frances watched the whole thing. It was actually fascinating.

She called Tony. ‘I just watched a whole hour of television about your sport!’

‘Frances?’ He sounded like he was puffing.

‘I’ve just been doing push-ups,’ he said.

‘I can do ten in a row now,’ said Frances. ‘How many can you do?’

‘A hundred,’ said Tony.

‘Show-off,’ said Frances.

Six weeks later

Napoleon sat in the waiting room of a psychiatrist he’d been referred to by his GP. It had taken him six weeks to get the first available appointment. That’s the mental health crisis problem right there, he thought.

Since returning from Tranquillum House, he’d been surviving: teaching, cooking, talking to his wife and daughter, running his support group. It was amazing to him that everyone treated him as if he were just the same. It reminded him of the blocked-ears feeling after a flight, except all his senses, not just his hearing, felt muted. His voice seemed to echo in his ears. The sky was leached of colour. He did nothing that he wasn’t obliged to do because the effort of existence exhausted him. He slept whenever he could. Getting up each morning was like moving his limbs through thick mud.

‘Everything okay?’ Heather sometimes said to him.

‘All good,’ said Napoleon.

Heather was different after their time at Tranquillum House. Not happier exactly, but calmer. She had joined a tai chi class in the park down the road. She was the only one under the age of seventy. Heather had never been the sort of woman to have girlfriends, but for some reason she fitted right in to this elderly circle.

‘They make me laugh,’ she said. ‘And they don’t demand anything from me.’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Zoe. ‘They demand lots of you!’ It was true that Heather seemed to be spending a lot of time driving her elderly new friends to and fro from doctors’ appointments and picking up prescriptions for them.

Zoe had a new part-time job. She seemed busy and distracted with her university course. Napoleon kept a careful eye on her, but she was good, she was fine. One morning, a week or so after they’d got back from the retreat, he stopped by her bathroom door and overheard a beautiful sound he hadn’t heard in three years: his daughter singing off-key in the shower.

‘Mr Marconi?’ said a short blonde woman who reminded him a little of Frances Welty. ‘I’m Allison.’