Repeat After Me

Chapter 42

Asten and I were still holding hands, when the march arrived at Flinders Street Station.

'Shall we go down to the Yarra?' he suggested.

'Sure.'

We crossed over the forecourt at Federation Square and down the ochre-coloured sandstone steps towards the Yarra River. Asten was quiet and solemn. I wondered if the protest had had a profound effect on him – seeing all those people of all colours and all ages, equally outraged, equally supportive, equally pushing for change. We walked silently for a while, before sitting on a wooden bench seat beside the river.

'You okay?' I asked.

'Alicia has been admitted to a psychiatric ward.'

'What happened?'

'I tried leaving her again,' Asten said. He cleared his throat. 'I told her it was over, our relationship was toxic, we'd be better off without each other. It was all the same old stuff. But then, she started coughing, and she coughed so much, she began vomiting. I was telling her to stop it. Her lips were turning blue, so I called an ambulance. She calmed down when they arrived, but she told them she had a runny nose and sore throat and she was having difficulty breathing. So they said she had to get tested for COVID. And then, because I'd been with her, I had to get tested too. And I was saying, 'she's faking it, she's fine,' because I knew that all she wanted was to be put in three day's quarantine with me. And it got so ugly, I'm telling you. I said, 'look at her health record, she's got mental health issues,' and the paramedic said, 'we have to take this seriously.' They took us to the hospital to get tested. We were there for hours, in this cold corridor, with Alicia carrying on and crying and coughing. She should win an academy award. Everyone who passed, looked at me like I was some perpetrator, because I'm the guy and it's always the guy causing trouble in this #metoo environment. One nurse in a hazmat suit stopped and knelt before Alicia, who was sobbing, and asked 'you okay, love?' She looked at me with such venom in her eyes. She didn't know that it was me who was being tormented.' Asten paused, and drew his feet up from the ground and folded them under his knees, so that he was sitting cross-legged on the bench.

'2020, hey?' he said. 'This year is so screwed. What do you think they're going to make first, the 2020 movie or the vaccine?'

'Probably the movie,' I said.

'I reckon too.'

'You going to be okay?' I asked.

'Yeah, I guess.'

'I wish there was something I could do,' I said.

Asten twisted some hair behind his ear between his thumb and forefinger. 'Thank you, you do plenty just by being here,' he said. 'I'm sorry you have to hear all this dysfunction. I'm sorry it's so complicated.'

'I'm sorry for you,' I said and I meant it. 'How long will she be in the ward for?'

'It's usually a couple of weeks.'

'Do you visit her?'

'Yeah, usually I'd visit her a few times.'

'What about this time?'

'I'll visit her,' he said, picking up another piece of hair and twisting it again. 'I'd be a bastard if I didn't.'

Strangely, even though I knew he was trapped, even though I knew that he would flee if he could, there was a part of me that felt jealous of Alicia. Asten would visit her in her psychiatric ward. He would kiss her hello. He'd ask her how she was going. He'd pour her a glass of water. He'd speak gently and tenderly to her. He'd hold her hand. He'd tell her everything would be all right.

And me? I couldn't even tell my parents about him. He couldn't visit me at home. We couldn't kiss. We weren't meant to speak affectionately with each other. We were unclassified. We were a wayward morse code between two people who were keen on each other, but couldn't technically say i-like-you, I-want-to-be-with-you. Our communication was intercepted. Our affections short circuited. We'd be cruel to pursue this, despite finding ourselves on the same frequency.

I stared out at the Yarra River yearning for closeness and distance simultaneously. I realised there's no insurance policy for love damage and the longer I remained in this unclassified position, the more damaged I was feeling. How could I feel envious of a girl in a psychiatric ward? This feeling was driving me crazy. I wanted to unpeel my skin and clutch my fingers around that feeling and yank it out of me. Envy felt gross. Trying to build something with Asten was like trying to put together flat pack furniture with assembly instructions in Dutch. And I'd misplaced the allen key to unscrew this relationship.

He leant forward, 'I need you to know, Ivy, that if I could, I would be with you. Only you. When I'm with you, I feel happiness, I feel optimistic, I feel like there's so many possibilities with you, that we are full of possibilities.' He placed his fingers on my wrist and stroked my hand.

'I'm not into dysfunction,' I said. 'I'm not into messiness.'

'I know that,' he replied. 'That's why I'm trying to clean all this up. I don't want messiness either.' He smiled, and it felt like looking into a mirrorball, uplifting and exciting, like I wanted to break out into improv dance moves. 'We really get each other,' Asten said. 'All good things are worth waiting for. Tell me you're not going anywhere?'

'I'm not going anywhere,' I said, as if I were repeating some lines on a propaganda poster. I didn't know if I believed in them. Nothing made sense. Yet I wanted to believe. More than anything, I wanted to believe.