said I am good at relationships. But chucking someone at the altar, that would be a first, even for me. Still, as long as you are happy …’ He peers at one of the walls of the model house. He holds it straight up, then upside down, then sideways. He abstractedly scratches the C and D tattoo on his right shoulder, then grunts and rummages in his petite toolbox.
‘Happiness is overrated.’ I examine my hands, my customary clipped nails buffed and polished with transparent nail polish by an auntie for the wedding. ‘Can you think of times in your life when you’ve been truly happy?’
‘Are you saying you can’t?’ Federico says, shovelling through the toolbox, picking up and discarding tools. ‘That is truly tragic, chica.’
A vision arises in my mind. A vision of being chased up and down the house by my sister Rose. Giggling helplessly, hiding in cupboards, behind curtains, under chairs and tables, getting tickled till I was upside down and inside out. The helpless giggles, the cries of ‘Rose, stop! Rose, stop!’ ringing in my ears. Rose’s face, leaning in, checking to see if I was okay, if I really wanted her to stop. I never did, not really. And she would go at it again, and I would run shrieking through the house. Yes, I want to say, yes, I can remember a time in my life when I was truly happy. I can still feel it in my body so it must have been real. It’s just that it was a long time ago and I was a different person then. I pick up a cushion and try to push it into my eyes. These are unnecessary memories. I don’t need them and I don’t want them. I can’t have them.
‘Everyone has the capacity for happiness,’ Federico says. ‘Now take what you did to Simon—’
‘Can we talk about something else?’ I say through the cushion.
Why can’t people talk about something, anything, else? I close my eyes but Simon’s face seems to be imprinted on the insides of my eyelids because I can see him even when I shut them tight. And he doesn’t look stubborn like he did in my dream. He looks something else, something I’d never seen until yesterday, until the afternoon of our wedding when I told him I couldn’t be with him any more. He had looked like he couldn’t understand what I was saying. He had looked lost.
‘Bad karma to leave someone at the altar. And if you’ve done it, at least tell him why.’
‘Seriously, Federico, drop it.’
‘Avoidance helps no one, chica.’
I emerge from my cushion and snap. ‘I know you like playing the therapist. But how come we never talk about you? Why don’t you look at why your relationships don’t work? What are you afraid of?’
Federico has gone through four boyfriends in the last year. He is with someone he cares about now, but they always seem to be at odds. If I can change the subject, throw it back in his face, maybe he’ll leave me alone. Maybe I’ll feel like I’m not the only broken one.
He shrugs, picks a buff he likes and starts shaving the wall to even it out. ‘I don’t push people away. I’m not intentionally cruel.’
I grind my teeth. ‘I am not – maybe your boyfriends don’t like that you act like you’re straight,’ I snap.
There is silence. Not much changes in Federico’s face. There’s a slight shift, a clicking of his jaw, but not much else.
I want to claw my tongue out. I want to sit up and slap my face a few times. What is the matter with me? It’s like words spring out of my mouth and I have no control over them.
‘Sorry. Okay? Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’ I have the stupid impulse to ask, Do you still like me? Please say you still like me. But I never say things like that, and I don’t say it now. Even though I could do with some people liking me right about now.
Finally, after many suspended moments, Federico moves, he reaches out a hand. The four walls of Federico’s model house are standing up together. He takes one down and starts cutting out a square shape to make a window. He can’t quite get the four sides to be the same length, so the window is getting bigger and bigger. I watch him at this task for a while. He is no longer talking to me. In fact, he’s acting like I’m not here. I sigh and leave him to it.
Outside our house there is a lonely patio on which people rarely sit. Sitting there bears the risk of being sociable, so everyone avoids it, and this works perfectly for me. Sometimes I leave a pair of smelly socks there to drive the point home. I go down to it now and sit down heavily on the swing, hugging my knees to myself. I can’t tell if I never want to see Simon’s face again or if all I want is for him to come walking up to the house right now. A tinny twang-twang-twang is coming from the ground-floor flat. Our downstairs neighbour Phil (who is a teacher in training) wants to join a mariachi band and Federico is teaching him the vihuela. I clamp my hands over my ears. There are workmen digging outside the park across the road. They’ve been there for weeks, and the local residents are complaining to the council about how the noise is bad for their children. This has to be the noisiest street in the world. I stare into the distance.
My neighbour Earl rides past on his mobility scooter. Earl’s mobility scooter is the Cecil Turtle of vehicles. It is so slow that I can say hello, pop inside, put the kettle on, make my vanilla Rooibos chai, pop back out, drink the entire mugful and say goodbye to him as he rides out of sight. When he sees me this morning he does a double-take. Yup, I’m still here. I’m not on my way to my blissful new life with Simon.
‘To get somewhere, you have to leave the house, Rilla!’ Earl calls as he slo-mos past.
I curl my mouth. ‘I’ve always been better at staying put, Earl. That’s the problem.’
His snowy shock of hair blows gently in the breeze as he glides past.
That’s when I notice that I have a text message. 20 mins, it says.
For a moment, I’m paralysed. I stare at it like I can’t understand the words.
It is from my cousin Jharna. It was sent eighteen minutes ago. This means I have two minutes before the GIF arrives. I run inside and fling myself up the stairs and all the way up to my room in the attic. I barricade myself, I wedge the dresser inside the closed door, I place a dozen or so books on top of the dresser. I sit down on the stripy sofa-chair, cover myself with the duvet and squeeze my eyes shut. The GIF is on its way.
Two minutes after I disappear inside my room, my parents, an auntie and an uncle, and Jharna turn up. Federico lets them in. I can hear them downstairs in the living room. Well, that’s just fine. They can sit and chat with Federico for as long as they like. There’s absolutely no reason I need to leave my room. I will read a book. I pick one up from on top of my dresser and stare at the words. It is one of my books for my MA thesis: Roland Barthes saying something about love, something about how we meet millions of people in our life, but out of these we only truly love one. I snap the book shut. One out of millions! His arithmetic is clearly all wrong, that’s the problem with Barthes. How can anyone find love if faced with such odds? The man is a kook!
I look at the clock on the wall. I spring up off the chair, crouch on the floor and put my ear down to it. The odd thing is that the GIF has been there for
