Page 17 of How Much Wine Will Fix My Broken Heart?
Alas, New York.You must go there Gracie, it’s the best place on the planet,Tom had said. He had hyped it up so much, even leaving me a list of things to do and places to eat. But for all its magic and familiarity, my whole trip there was a catalogue of disasters.
‘Well, it started when I got my phone stolen and then I got run over by a rollerblader in Central Park.’
‘Was that when you flattened that pigeon?’ Doug pulls a face.
I nod. I’d thought pigeons had better reflexes than that but I was wrong. We ended up having to hide said pigeon in a bush so it wouldn’t scare young children. The blood flowed out of me in rivulets, so much so I fainted.
‘Anyways, I needed stitches on my leg so Uncle Doug looked after me.’
He accompanied me to an emergency room (my insurance documents in a folder, colour-coded of course) and they stitched me up and gave me some other medicine. I say some other medicine because, to this day, I still don’t know what it was and am convinced I downed some tablets in a cup meant for someone else. Someone in a coma perhaps because, an hour after leaving that hospital, I was high as a fucking kite.
‘That doesn’t sound too bad. I got stitches after I fell off my scooter,’ Isaac says, locating a knobbly scar on his chin. The problem is the story just devolves. As those drugs seemed to perk me up, I begged Doug to take me out that evening. He made some calls and, an hour later, his then girlfriend showed up with a range of dayglo fishnet rave gear and a list of places to go. Do I remember said party? Sort of. I remember music with no words, someone making me a glowstick necklace and the fishnet element being super draughty. I recall trying to snog Doug but I’m not even sure I made contact – I may have even snogged his ear, thinking it was his mouth.
I hold back these details from the children.
‘Well, the day after, I then ate a hot dog but it was from an unlicensed vendor and I got very sick.’
‘How bad?’ Isaac asks, suddenly fascinated.
‘Very bad,’ I say, not really knowing if I need to tell a seven-year-old that I had to send Doug to an Old Navy to buy me all new underwear. In fact, so bad, I put a hand to my mouth and clench a little to relive the memory. I think it was recompense for all the times I’d lectured Tom as he travelled through the more tropical parts of the Southern hemisphere and refused to take his malaria medicine. And there was me in the most developed country in the world, on the floor of Doug’s flat throwing up through my nose.
This is why I will always owe Doug. I was only supposed to be in New York for six weeks and I spent four of those ill. Too fearful and traumatised to leave the apartment after that, I stayed inside, we binge-watched about six different shows and Doug even sourced Marmite for me to have with some super-nice bagels. He knew that on top of all of the hell the universe had chosen to dump on me in that precise moment, there was grief swimming in my soul and I needed to have the space to just wrap myself up in a duvet and recover.
Doug beams at me through the call. You were there. You, my sir, are a gem of a mate.
The moment is felt less by Isaac, though, whose interest in my New York stories has now waned, and he proceeds to wander around my bedroom. He’s one of those kids who’s constantly moving, like he’s dancing to a song we all can’t hear, a funky song at that. ‘Eccentric’, I think is the word. He also has quite a bushel of hair, like something you’d see on the mane of a horse. Cleo is seemingly fascinated by him, though, and I get it. She could have invited over some real boring Betty, some kid whose most exciting news is that they once went down a slide backwards. This kind of kid is interesting to her. Someone who’s full of questions, someone who’s taken my tea towels to make capes. Oi, I was going to fold them later. That was my evening’s fun. Doug watches them in bemusement. I hope this Isaac is like a Doug to you, Cleo. I watch as they speed around my room.
‘Do you have more Hula Hoops?’ Isaac asks.
‘You had a lot of Hula Hoops before…’
‘He is a guest, Grace Face…’ Cleo adds. I give her a look.
‘You’ll turn into a Hula Hoop.’
‘Hasn’t happened yet…’ Isaac says, confidently throwing a disco-pose-style lunge to the middle of the room. He’s wearing sweatbands on each wrist, isn’t he? He hasn’t procured those from my house. It’s a look. Cleo gazes over at him adoringly.
‘Can you see my house from your window?’ he asks, pulling at my curtains.
‘Ummm, no. You live the other side of…’
‘Who’s he?’ Isaac asks, pointing to Tom’s photo. How is he moving so quickly? Did we give him Coke? Speed?
‘That’s Tom.’
‘He was married to my mum,’ Cleo adds.
‘And my best mate…’ Doug adds from the screen.
‘He looks fun.’
‘He was fun.’
‘Wasbecause you divorced or because he’s dead? If you still have a picture of someone you divorced by your bed then you need to move on.’
Wow, this kid.
‘He passed away.’
