Drifting

Elle Atack
Aug 25, 2017 · 11 min read
A Melbourne winter. CC. Source: http://bit.ly/2wMxXw3

It was too warm in the office.

Each morning it hit her just the same, a sauna after the biting July winds that curled through Melbourne’s maze of laneways. She was sweating already, short of breath from the mere exertion of dealing with peak-hour transport. As she shed her layers, a wild beast unburdening itself of its thick winter coat, she bitterly reflected that hibernation would be far preferable to humanity’s inadequate methods of battling the chill.

She was reaching up to hang her coat on one of the available metal hooks when she noticed it. With the warmth of her body now exposed, she caught a potent whiff of cologne and body odour — not her own — mingled with her flowery perfume. Her skin crawled. Her body felt like something dirty and distant, trapped by this alien scent that clung so steadfastly to her pores. One shower had not been enough, inevitably, but it was all she’d had time for in her morning scramble.

With perhaps unnecessary fervour, she coated herself in a dense spray of deodorant, stuffing the can brusquely back into her too-small locker before hurrying to her desk, eyes low. The same friendly faces bleated their usual greetings as she passed -‘’Morning, Abby!’ — and she managed to force her rubbery mouth into a reciprocal smile. The air was thick with familiar murmured complaints and fragments of gossip, echoes of all that had been said before. It truly was a marvel the way this place remained resolutely unchanged, even as the world beyond it crumbled. Rather than providing any sense of relief or comfort, the familiarity sickened her, bile catching at the back of her throat.

Once safely ensconced in the relative privacy of her cubicle, she downed a couple of pills and chugged a bottle of water, drowning out the taste. She’d barely slept and could already feel the early pulse of a headache developing in her temples. The day loomed long ahead of her.

****

The workday passed slowly. Her role required little mental exertion but far too much patience for stupidity, something she was sorely lacking. Her cubicle was inopportunely situated amongst a particularly doltish collection of her co-workers, and it was an effort not to succumb to eye-rolling as she caught snippets of the puerile conversation around her.

The makeup of the department was typical of any low-level office in the country, a mosaic of the Australian urban working class. The management team was dominated by middle-aged men and women with permanently furrowed brows, mostly well-intentioned but largely dispassionate and disillusioned with their career paths. A number of older women sat together by the toilets, each with deeply lined faces and hacking, bronchitis-fuelled coughs, their desks covered with trashy tabloids. Most had been working there longer than memory could recall and were content just to pay their bills. At the other extreme were the flashy young men who swaggered through the office, bossing others around, thinking far more of themselves than they ought and drawing scorn from those around them. The cubicles by the windows were largely occupied by part-timers — students and mums — including a collection of international students who took their jobs as seriously as they did their studies.

Though each type bored Abby more than the next, in her interactions with the various office characters she was routinely confronted with the burning humiliation of her recent, extensive period of unemployment. How was it that such uninspired and inept individuals could be gainfully employed when she and so many of her friends — university educated, intelligent, willing and able — struggled for months on end with constant rejection? There was no controlling the bitter resentment and indignation that bubbled within her as she contemplated the seemingly arbitrary nature of employment opportunities.

She knew from friends who’d found themselves proper, well-paying jobs that this phenomenon was not unique to unskilled positions like her own. Nousha, a uni friend who now worked in the public service, constantly complained of the shockingly low level of competence in her department. Even Daniel, her oldest school friend and a high-flying and hard-partying financial consultant, was critical of the laziness and ineptitude he saw in many of his colleagues. Yet Abby — who’d always excelled in her studies, who was fluent in three languages and had an almost photographic memory — was stuck doing work that would drive a monkey mad with boredom, and earning pennies for it.

She was more capable than half the office staff put together, and she knew it. Still, anxiety gnawed at her stomach and threatened to overwhelm her whenever she thought about her future. She sensed in some deeper part of herself that she was a lost cause, unemployable. Though she had a job now, opportunities for advancement were minimal. The prospect of once more finding herself trapped in the dark, inescapable pit of unemployment brought on fits of panic so powerful they shut off her brain and blurred her senses. Every wrong step or minor mistake she made at work was enough to trigger an almost physical sickness, an iron fist clenched over her gut.

It was almost paradoxical the way in which Abby managed to be so supremely arrogant, all the while nursing such profound insecurities within herself. She wondered if maybe this wasn’t a prerequisite for arrogance, this persistent self-doubt. All she knew for certain was that at her core she was a disturbing fusion of the two.

****

The wind was fierce as she barrelled her way home from the train station, scarf snug around her face. Her cheeks bore the brunt of the chill; by the time she was home they glowed a bright fuchsia, a startling contrast to her alabaster skin when she finally unwrapped herself in front of her bedroom mirror. As she threw her coat onto the unmade bed and sank down next to it in exhaustion, her hand brushed against a torn condom wrapper.

Naturally, she thought.

Picking it up, she held it gently between her forefinger and thumb and examined the silky plastic, thumbing it absentmindedly. Her eyes fell on the two used condoms that spread like candle wax on the carpet at the foot of the bed, just out of reach of her toes. It had been too much to hope her one night stand would bother to tidy up on his way out.

Abby had long ago given up on expecting anything more from men than the lingering scent they left behind, a funk that seeped into both her bed sheets and her skin. Her experiences as an adult had only served to affirm the resolution she’d made at a young age: men were not to be relied on. If her absent father hadn’t done enough to enforce this belief on his own, the volatile relationships her mother pursued in his absence had done the job.

The only man Abby had ever trusted was her brother, Lucas, who’d pissed off to the other side of the world when she was fourteen and never come back. He’d lived the life of a nomad for a few years: following in their father’s footsteps, bouncing from country to country with nothing to his name but his passport, a Kathmandu backpack, and a little sister back home waiting for him. Just as her mother had done before her, Abby dutifully collected the postcards he sent, artefacts of a bigger and better world than the one she knew, and anticipated his return. A decade on and she was recipient only of his sunny family Christmas cards and the occasional grainy Skype call. Her brother had succeeded at becoming the family man their own father had never managed to be; it had been a simple process of casting off the lousy bloodline he’d been shackled with from birth.

Abby found it difficult to foresee any similar turnaround on the horizon for herself. Over the last few years she’d embraced the junkie lifestyle, wearing the label like a badge of honour: she could still detect the subtle masculine musk that clung to her flesh as she wriggled out of her work clothes and under the covers. Her habit wasn’t drugs or parties, though she saw their appeal and enjoyed the occasional roll when it came her way. What she craved she found only in the muscled bodies of strange men, encountered on apps or at bars, plus the odd drug-fuelled hook-up when she joined her friend Daniel for a night out.

It was hard to identify what drew her to these situations exactly — the thrill of the unknown, the faint sense of danger and the pure carnal hunger were all considerably alluring. Recently, though, she’d developed a suspicion that what she lusted after most was the sense of shame and regret, the self-loathing that consumed her after every encounter. She’d learned at a young age that hating yourself was a powerful drug.

As she rested her head on her flat pillow, the dull pulse of the morning now a heavy drumming in her skull, she heard the tell-tale vibration of her phone in her jeans pocket on the floor. She awkwardly manoeuvred herself to the edge of the bed and, making sure to keep as much of her body as possible under the protective warmth of the doona, reached her fingers out to grab it. As she rolled back into the bed, phone in hand, Abby took in the name on the screen.

Elaine.

Her head throbbed painfully.

****

Elaine was a walking fucking cliché, and Abby couldn’t stand it.

If she was honest with herself, a part of her found some small thrill in it, the sob story: the alcoholic, emotionally unstable mother who couldn’t keep her shit together to save her life, who’d finally got herself into rehab (with Abby’s help) only to run off with a heroin addict. It had become part of her perception of herself, her very identity: Hi, I’m Abby, and my mum’s a train wreck.

Still, an even larger part of her thought her mother ridiculously dull, predictable in her endless drama. And there was always drama. In her teens, Abby had believed Elaine a victim, blundering from one terrible relationship into another and attracting trouble wherever she went like some kind of perverse magnet. When Abby had moved out of home at eighteen her mother had married the first bloke that came along to fill the void: a vindictive bastard who’d beaten the shit out of her. With difficulty, Abby had managed to pry her mother away from her abusive ex, but Elaine had since taken every opportunity to manipulate her daughter for her own gain. She’d call Abby asking for money, for lifts across town late at night, and even for bail on the two occasions she’d wound up in jail — once for driving drunk and without a licence, another time for punching the ex-girlfriend of a lover.

It was clear to Abby now that her mother was less a magnet than a tornado, feeding on the chaos she wrought around her. Elaine thrived on spectacle, was prone to dramatics and could turn any situation into a calamity. Abby had done all she could to keep her at arm’s length for the last two years.

Now, nursing her pounding head, Abby stared mindlessly at the name glowing on her screen, breaking the letters down into parts that dissolved into nonsense before her. Eventually the call cut out, her voicemail taking over, and she realised she’d been holding her breath. When the phone started to ring again moments later she couldn’t distinguish its vibrations from the droning inside her head, but with a rush of adrenaline she found herself swiping right to accept the call and holding the phone silently to her ear.

‘Abby?’ A sniff. ‘You there, Hun?’ Her mother’s voice sounded tinny and mechanical through the phone.

Abby remained silent, letting her ragged breathing speak for her.

‘Ab, please, you’ve gotta help me.’ Even with the low call quality, she could tell Elaine’s voice was thick and wet with emotion. ‘I just need a place to stay, just for a week or so. You have to come get me, Abs.’

I don’t have to do anything. The thought calmed her.

‘Abby, what the fuck. Are you even fucking listening to me?’

She broke her silence. ‘I can’t, Mum. I have a lot of stuff on at the moment.’

‘I know you’re busy, babe, and you know I totally respect that. But I can’t stay here. Ray’s started using again; he’s gone and got himself arrested. I don’t wanna be here when he gets back. Bring the car; we can grab all my stuff.’

Abby’s insides were cold. The words that spilled from her mouth seemed far removed from her. ‘Mum, I can’t just come and get all your stuff. I don’t have room for it.’

‘It’s fine, babe, we’ll just leave it in the car. I’ll find something to do with it.’

‘No.’

Elaine’s sharp intake of breath signalled that her internal switch had been flicked; it never took much for her to transform from the begging, loving, desperate mother into a self-pitying, bitter bitch.

‘Fuck you, Abby. You think I want to be calling my daughter, begging her to rescue me? Look at you; acting all high and mighty like this is all my fucking fault. You don’t have a clue. You don’t know what my life is like.’

The words rang with the echoes of every argument the women had shared in the years since Abby had left home. Abby closed her eyes.

You’re the one who left the rehab I fought so hard to get you into just to shack up with your junkie boyfriend. She wished her lips would form the words.

‘Look, Mum, if you’re really worried, call 000.’

She hung up as her mother spat venom down the line.

****

Calls from Elaine always threw Abby off course in a way she could neither predict nor control. She’d find herself wound up into such a state of bitterness — tinged, inescapably, with guilt — that nothing but unbridled bouts of screaming and destruction could ease the tension within her. Often her mood would be out of whack for days, even weeks afterwards, and her anxiety at work would swell to unmanageable levels. It was during these periods that she lusted most intensely after the vulgar thrill of a strange body in her bed.

And so Abby was surprised to find as she sank back into the pillows that her mind was quiet, almost serene. Her chest, rather than bursting with resentment, seemed lighter. She felt unburdened. Elaine would do what Elaine always did, and she would blame Abby for the chaos that ensued. It didn’t matter. That was her mother’s life, not hers.

Reflecting on the day’s anxieties, she smiled. Yes, it was true that she had an entry-level job, that she was underpaid and broke, that she had no idea what she was doing with her life. But she was also twenty four years old. When it came down to it, she was working, she could pay her rent, and most importantly, she could find another job. Abby knew in her very marrow that she was smart; smarter than Elaine had ever been, even before the alcohol soaked through to her brain. She was capable, competent, and young. Above all, she had time.

What she wouldn’t do was allow the self-pity and depression she had come to recognise within herself steer her along the same toxic course as her mother. Just as Lucas had risen above the poor choices of their father, so too could Abby forge a life for herself that bore no resemblance to Elaine’s.

She closed her eyes. The ache in her temples had dulled and her body felt light on the mattress. Abby’s nights normally saw her dwelling in a claustrophobic, insomnia-induced limbo, but she felt herself now drifting easily across the border of consciousness. As sleep took hold, visions of her future played out on the screen of her mind; bright, exciting, and ill-defined.

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