1001 Nights Cast

“Do you know,’ she says, her voice octaving up towards the kitchen ceiling, ‘Helen knows a psychiatrist who has thirty-two pianos!’

I look at her and massage my forehead. My mother is off on one, and it’s a doozy this time.

‘Thirty-two pianos!’ she shrieks. ‘I wonder how many of his patients can afford even one?’

From the next room I hear my father shuffle across the floor. The door closes stealthily behind him as he escapes to the upstairs toilet, where he will sit smoking his pipe until things have subsided.

She turns back to the sink, where she scrubs at a baking dish, venting her fury at the glued-on remains of tonight’s lasagne.

I am immobilised against the fridge, trying—as always—to weigh up whether it’s worth the effort to speak. She twists the syllables emerging from my mouth, prompting wild reactions I have no way of preparing for.

‘I was trying…’ I start to say, but she leaps on the sound before it is fully formed.

‘Bloody psychiatry is responsible for all the ills of the modern world!’

She rinses the dish then slams it onto the draining board. She doesn’t look at me.

I want out of this war, always conducted around appliances and food and what Helen or Maria or Dot thinks. While my sister, another casualty, sits in a ward somewhere, limp with forced medication and the futility that threatens to swallow her like a crouton.

Suddenly my mother is reaching out, I think to me, until I realise she wants the tea towel that hangs dry in my hand. She buries her face in it. I brush lamely at her shoulder. She shrugs me off, bends over the sink and sobs.

‘Your father’s given up. But that’s not good enough! I’m in mourning! I’m in mourning for my daughter.’

But her daughter’s not dead. And despite all evidence to the contrary, she doesn’t want to be. I know my sister wants life. She wants to regrow the skin that has been slowly, painstakingly stripped from her. She can’t seem to make herself bullet proof, and she can’t understand why the people wielding the guns always turn out to share her DNA.

‘Of course, the parents are always the villains in the piece! Nobody thinks of what I’m suffering.’

My mother wails. I back gingerly out of the room. There is nothing to say.

The TV is still on, news reports inaudible over the loud suffering coming from the kitchen. I turn the programme off, and head upstairs for the guestroom, with its display of photos I barely recognise anymore—the smiling children my sister and I have been.

As I pass the bathroom, the door is open and the light is on. My father stands in front of the mirror, wreathed in the smell of shit and pipe smoke.

‘Blossom, come in. I want to show you something.’

He is wearing an enormous padded jacket I have never seen before, ridiculous in this heat. He looks like a duvet with trouser legs and a face.

‘New coat, Papa?’

I try to sound casual. Insanity stalks slowly in my family, but when it is ready to pounce, the speed takes your breath away.

‘Quick,’ he whispers, still beckoning, ‘come in, come in. I don’t want your mother to see.’

He pulls me forward, reaches around behind me to close the door. I step back as far as I can. The backs of my knees press against the bath. My father is breathing rapidly and has broken into a light sheen on his balding temples.

‘Your mother’, he whispers, ‘she thinks I don’t know. She thinks I don’t care about your sister, what those bastards have done to her.’

A skewed smile forces itself to his lips.

‘But I am not quite so blind.’

All this time and he has never once spoken of my sister. Watching his TV, dodging my mother, practising his harmonica.

He seizes my elbow. The sweat on his head is building up, running off him under the fluorescent striplight.

‘I want to visit her.’

I say nothing. I wonder where this is heading. He looks at me quizzically, tipping his head to one side, wiping sweat from his face with his fingers.

‘Did you hear me, Blossom? I want to visit your sister.’

I pat reassuringly at the padding on his chest. He flinches, knocks my hand away.

‘Careful!’

The fabric is dull green, slippery synthetic. He must be dying of the heat. I try not to look concerned.

‘Sure, Papa. I’ll come with you.’

‘No!’

His voice is louder, jagged. He looks for a moment at the door, worried my mother has heard.

‘No, Blossom,’ he whispers. ‘This trip is for me and your mother only. You will arrange it.’

I shake my head. Nothing could induce me to leave my sister on her own with them.

All the muscles in my father’s face droop towards where he is unzipping the ludicrous parka. His expression follows the line of his hand, grimly down. He pulls the flaps of the coat aside, spreading like wings to invite me to nestle.

But it is not an invitation. Around his waist are strapped packets of flat plastic, with wires leading to what looks to be a detonator, though I’m no expert on these things. He is trying to keep his movements steady, but his hands tremble as he holds the jacket aside for me to see.

‘Papa, what are you doing?’

I am hushed. Even our breath could knock down walls, blow the roof off.

He looks at himself in the mirror.

‘They think I don’t know how to treat my family? They will see. This is their treatment. I have written them a prescription.’