All That I Remember About Dean Cola

By Tania Chandler

The boys from back home stand beside the bed, watching her bleed onto the white sheet. ‘He only said to scare her,’ one of them says.

Sidney is happily married to her firefighter husband and thinking about having a child, but her life has been marred by psychotic breakdowns. Haunted by memories of Dean Cola — the teenage crush who is an essential piece of the puzzle that is her past — she returns to the town where she grew up. Something unthinkable happened there, but is she strong enough to face it?

A compelling portrait of mental illness, memory, and the ways that the years when we ‘come of age’ can be twisted into trauma.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribe Publications
• Release date: Jun 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781925307887

Tania Chandler

Tania Chandler is a Melbourne-based writer, writing teacher, and editor. All That I Remember About Dean Cola is her third novel.

Book preview

Contents

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Epigraph

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Acknowledgements

ALL THAT I REMEMBER

ABOUT DEAN COLA

Tania Chandler is a Melbourne-based writer, writing teacher, and editor. All That I Remember About Dean Cola is her third novel.

Scribe Publications

18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia

Published by Scribe 2021

Copyright © Tania Chandler 2021

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Scribe acknowledges Australia’s First Nations peoples as the traditional owners and custodians of this country, and we pay our respects to their elders, past and present.

978 1 922310 50 7 (paperback)

978 1 925307 88 7 (ebook)

Catalogue records for this book are available from the National Library of Australia.

scribepublications.com.au

For my daughters, Paige and Jaime

‘We both step and do not step in the same rivers.

We are and are not.’

— Heraclitus

THE PAC King storage box was the first thing I noticed when I walked into the bedroom. It was next to the bed, dust motes twinkling above it in a lazy sunray. It looked as though it had seen better times, been shoved in a shed or cupboard. The crusty masking tape came away easily, as if it had been peeled off and re-stuck. The smell from the box reminded me of back home, of the house on Broken River Road.

Inside — underneath old magazines, a leather-bound copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and exercise books half-filled with Year 10 study notes and declarations of love for Jon Bon Jovi — was my old high-school textbook Handbook of Art. I opened it, and a piece of paper with a scraggly fringe fell out. It must have been torn from a spiral-bound notebook. A poem.

The poem had been part of a diary. On the back was an entry dated Friday 5 May 1989. Day-to-day commentary: how many calories were in her breakfast, who had sat next to whom on the school bus, what to wear to tonight’s party, which she was going to with Dean. Jeans or the red dress Mum made?

Strange that I’d penned it in third person.

Dean. Dean Cola. A boy from back home. His family had owned the hardware shop on the main drag. I remembered settling on the red dress that night.

I sat on the bed and traced a fingertip along the lines of backwards-slanting handwriting that reached towards circles instead of dots on i’s. Hard to believe I was ever sixteen, my hands smooth, capable of holding a pen at length without pain.

FOR DEAN

Down the stairs with so many stars lit bright

I walked with you until you were sober

In the Hedera helix green & white

Don’t you remember how I held you tight

& didn’t let you fall as we stumbled

Down the stairs with so many stars lit bright

When you crash through the morning harsh & light

Do you remember how they played our song

In the Hedera helix green & white

If only again the fire —

‘Dinner’s nearly ready.’ Christos startled me, his frame, in a Metropolitan Fire Brigade uniform, overfilling the doorway.

I folded the poem and slid it back into the Handbook of Art. ‘Where did this box come from?’

‘The storage unit. Took everything out ’cause we’ve got room now.’ He was chewing a piece of meat or something, a tea towel flung over his shoulder.

‘Are there any more of these boxes?’ I tapped the faded crown-and-sceptre logo on the side. My grandfather had been a storeman at the Pac King warehouse.

‘No, just that one.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, why? What’s in there?’

‘Nothing.’ I returned the Handbook of Art to the box, my cheeks burning. ‘Just some old stuff.’

‘Want me to put it in the attic?’

‘No. I will.’ I slapped the flaps shut.

‘You feeling all right?’

I nodded.

‘Mum brought over some baked lamb and potatoes. I’m just heating it up.’

‘Won’t be a sec.’

Dean Cola. I had a sense of his body more than a picture of his face: tall, not solid, but substantial — he’d have had to watch his weight when he got older. We had a story, but my mind was too medication-sludgy to recall it now. And we must have had a song.

Children’s after-school voices were petering out down on the street. I looked around the unfamiliar room. The button-back armchair in the corner was still encased in plastic wrapping. The bed was militarily made with white sheets — it was too hot for the rose-patterned doona folded neatly at the bottom. Timber bedside cupboards, blinds, and a ceiling fan. Braided rug. Christos had tried to interpret my taste in furnishings, but it looked like a colonial-reproductions showroom reflected in the mirror-doored wardrobe.

Christos was bustling around downstairs in the kitchen, clinking cutlery. I opened the box again and searched for the diary from which the poem had been torn, but it wasn’t in there. There was another box. Somewhere.

THE MORNING sun felt like happiness on my back as I weeded my bonsai trees. They’d gone a little feral while I’d been in hospital. They were lucky to be alive, Christos had said. Lucky because they’d been knocked about in the moving van during transit from our old flat to our new townhouse. Lucky was Christos’s favourite word. Lucky the neighbours had heard the smoke alarm going off in the old deaf bloke’s house on the weekend. Lucky the fireys had made it to the Footscray family’s unit within seven minutes after a candle set the place ablaze last Christmas. Very lucky the wind direction had changed when it did at the massive Greenworld garden-centre fire he’d fought a few months ago. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Pruning and trimming with the small tools tortured my hands, but I became so engrossed in my trees that I forgot the pain. Christos hadn’t watered them enough and the poor things were so thirsty — I saturated their soil until water ran out through the drainage holes, along the metal bench, and onto the porch.

I didn’t hear Christos come out the back door. He kissed my neck, eclipsing the sunlight. ‘Mmm, good to see you’re feeling better,’ he said, coffee-and-toothpaste breath. ‘Maybe we should start trying again. Now that things are getting back to normal.’

We’d started ‘trying’ not long before my latest trip to hospital. Before things got abnormal.

‘I could call in sick.’ He affected a cough. ‘And maybe we could go back to bed.’ He kissed me again.

‘I have to get ready for work.’

‘Work! You’re not going back yet.’ He coughed for real.

‘I emailed Lester and Dee, and Dee said they’re expecting me in today.’

‘But —’

‘I was unwell, but now I’m recovered.’ I turned to face him. ‘And I’m going back to work.’

‘Want me to come with you?’

I shook my head.

‘I could make some time, you know, just to be there and support you.’

‘It’s OK.’

‘Have you told your doctor?’

‘No.’

‘How’re you getting there?’

‘Train.’

‘I’ll drive you.’

‘I’m fine, Chris.’ We both looked at my hand pincing the trimming shears absently. I packed them and the rest of the tools away, and pulled my gardening gloves off.

Sunbeams striped the generic English-garden painting on the bedroom wall. I closed the blind, and chose a cream shirt and charcoal skirt from the wardrobe. The shirt gaped across my breasts and I struggled to zip the skirt. I’d gone up from a size eight to a twelve since being back on the meds. I found my selection of first-knuckle-to-elbow gloves folded in the top drawer. Pulling on a pair, I looked in the mirror. ‘Chris!’ No answer. I walked to the door and called down the stairs. ‘Where are my gym clothes?’ I’d go after work.

‘Bottom wardrobe drawer.’

I took an anti-mad pill and an anti-sad pill. I glanced over my shoulder and also popped an anti-baby pill from the pack hidden in a deep pocket of my handbag.

ON AUTOPILOT — muscle memory — in through the revolving doors of the Anpat-Enlaw building, a nod to the reception staff, a swipe of my security pass at the bank of lifts. At level ten, another swipe of my pass allowed me entrance to the Learning Online Centre.

Apprehension tied a knot in my gut as I navigated the maze of workstation partitions. Arj, the graphic designer who never spoke to anybody, was eating cereal in the tearoom, and that was comforting, somehow. I waved; he nodded.

In the editors’ pod, my workspace was decorated with balloons. But something was wrong: Lester’s chair was empty, and his PC had been updated to a new Apple computer. His Leunig cartoons had been replaced with photos of cats. My armpits started to drip; an itch teased the inside of my left ear, in a place I could never reach. A woman with short salt-and-pepper hair was hunched over the computer at the spare desk we kept clear for temps during busy times. Senior editors Dee and Dave whooped when they saw me; co-workers from adjacent pods appeared and welcomed me back with hugs that I tried to sidestep. I did not like being touched. The salt-and-pepper-haired woman stood and introduced herself as Myffy, the new part-time editorial assistant. The knot in my gut tightened. ‘Where’s Lester?’ I said.

‘He resigned while you were … away,’ said Dee.

‘But …’

‘Tell you about it later,’ Dee whispered as a fifty-something woman waddled into the pod — porky body sausaged in a royal-blue pantsuit; burgundy hair; a slash of dry red lipstick across a frugal smile.

‘Sidney!’ Pantsuit placed her Penguin Classics mug (Great Expectations) on Lester’s desk, her eyes taking in my gloves. She hesitated, and then shook my hand as though I had a contagious disease. The feeling was mutual. ‘Lovely to meet you at last. Ros Hartman, the new editorial manager.’ Her voice was muddy — somebody who consumed too many dairy products. ‘There’ve been a few changes while you’ve been away.’

Clearly I’d lost more time down the rabbit hole than I thought. My inner ear itched again as Ros told me to take it easy this morning, check the intranet and my email. And then, when I was ready, I could start a copyedit on some Certificate III training materials.

‘I usually do the proofreading.’

Ros looked down at my gloves again.

‘I can copyedit, but it involves more typing so …’

‘Myffy’s been doing all the proofing. You’ll need to acquaint yourself with the new style guide. We’re now using spaced ens instead of un-spaced ems as textual dashes. And Lester was rather lax with the distinction between which and that.’

‘Yes, we decided it was an outdated —’

‘So I’ve updated the guide to reflect my strict stance on it. A which without parentheses is like fingernails on a blackboard for me.’ Ros shivered.

Instinct told me to turn and run. I nodded and smiled.

‘And I’ve tidied up our file system and database. What a mess. I don’t know what Lester was thinking.’ Ros shook her head. ‘We’re no longer using the R or S drives. All files for editorial are in the W drive. Except the ones we prepare for the DTPs — they go in F.’

I sat, turned on my computer, and stared at the screen while Ros droned on.

My computer was asking for my password. Blank. I tried my date of birth. Wrong. Postcode. Wrong. Maiden name. Wrong. I rubbed my face, fighting the urge to scratch my ear like a dog with fleas. Christos was right: I shouldn’t have started back today.

Dee swivelled her chair around and asked if I was OK.

My mouth was dry; I couldn’t swallow. ‘I can’t remember my password.’

‘Have you got it written down somewhere?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘No worries. I’ll give IT a call and they’ll reset it for you.’

‘Let’s go have a cup of tea first,’ Dave said.

‘You always have the best ideas, Dave,’ said Dee.

In the tearoom, Dee flopped a teabag into her ‘Editors do it with style’ mug, and held it under the instant-boiled-water tap. I found my mug with the Supergirl ‘S’ at the back of the cupboard, and made some Earl Grey.

‘What happened with Lester?’ I asked.

‘Surprise!’ Dave called as he entered the tearoom.

I jumped and spilled tea on my hand. I always carried spare gloves in my handbag for small accidents like this.

‘So great to have you back, Sidney.’ Dave placed a cardboard box on the island bench and lifted the lid. Chocolate mud cake. The editors gathered around, sipping tea. They licked their lips and echoed Dave’s sentiments as he served the cake on white Ikea plates.

If there was one thing the editors at LOC liked more than tea, it was cake. I eyed them as they scoffed it — about 500 calories, ten teaspoons of sugar and thirty grams of fat — and sucked crumbs off their fingers. My stomach growled. The meds made me want cake — anything sweet. I fought the meds, eating only half a small slice, slowly with a spoon.

‘CHRISTOS TOLD me you went back to work,’ said Aimi Asada, my new psychiatrist. ‘How did that go?’

‘Fine.’ I wondered if Aimi ironed her black hair while she was ironing her immaculate clothes.

‘It would’ve been nice for you to have had a little more time out for recuperation. Recharging physical and emotional energy is part of the healing process.’ Aimi’s voice was as gentle as the orange blossom in her fragrance. The soft downlighting reflected on her cheekbones, as if she had applied some wonder cosmetic, but I suspected she didn’t wear any make-up aside from a touch of lip gloss.

‘Have you been hearing any voices?’

‘No.’ The meds had banished Voices. I missed them.

‘Any urges to burn things?’ Aimi reached for the tumbler of water on her carved-mahogany desk. Hand-creamed skin, neat buffed nails.

I looked at my gloved hands folded in my lap. ‘No.’

‘What is it about fire, do you think, that attracts you?’

I shrugged.

She waited, got nothing, placed her water back on its coaster, and asked how my medication was going.

‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about going off the meds.’

Aimi adjusted her glasses, did her best empathetic expression with a knit in her serene forehead. ‘Does the dulling of the libido bother you?’

I almost laughed.

‘Or the creativity?’

‘I’m a corporate editor. It’s not exactly creative.’

‘Your hospital report says you were reading poetry and talking about writing a memoir. Do you remember that?’

‘A novel, not a memoir.’

She smiled and nodded. ‘When medication is working and you feel better, it can be tempting to stop taking it.’

‘I don’t feel better. I’m exhausted all the time, and I’m so fat I can barely move.’

‘Have you spoken with your GP about a healthy eating and exercise plan?’

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps you’d like a referral to a dietician?’

‘Perhaps I’d like to cease the meds.’

Aimi removed her glasses and polished the lenses with a cloth from a shiny black case. ‘People with conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes have to take medication on an ongoing basis to prevent symptoms from coming back. It’s the same with mental illness.’

The reason I felt ill was because of the meds. ‘I might need the antidepressants but not the antipsychotics.’

‘If you stop the antipsychotics, you will have a relapse of symptoms.’

I frowned and crossed my arms.

‘We recommend medication be taken for at least a year or two after recovering from a first psychotic episode.’

One-size-fits-all for everybody. Straight from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Aimi returned her glasses to her face. ‘But this wasn’t your first episode.’

Touché. I took a deep breath and sat up straighter in my comfy chair. ‘I’ve been hospitalised three times in twenty-one years.’

‘There’ve been several other times when you’ve been unwell.’

‘The first time in hospital, they didn’t even say psychosis. They didn’t know what was wrong with me. I’ve seen the report. The second time was when I burned my hands at Broken River Road — who wouldn’t have been psychotic? I was only eighteen.’

‘That must have been very traumatic.’

‘And the last time,’ my face felt hot, ‘I don’t even know what happened.’

‘It’s OK to feel upset, Sidney.’

I pressed my lips together and looked at the painting on the wall: an abstract seascape with white mat board and black frame.

‘About a third of people have one psychotic episode and it’s never a problem again. Another third have one or two more episodes. And for the final third, like you, it’s episodic — a lifelong problem. You know that.’

I looked back at her, bristling at the word problem. And what about the ones who didn’t recover, who never returned from the tea party? Which fraction of the pie chart did they fit into?

‘Think of it as like driving a car.’ Aimi rolled a white pen that some medical rep must have given her — I couldn’t catch the brand name — back and forth on the edge of her desk. ‘If you have a crash, the medication is your seatbelt.’ She pushed the pen off her desk. It landed on the red section of the tapestry rug.

‘I don’t drive.’ I picked up the pen and handed it back to her.

‘Whether you’re the driver, or a passenger —’

‘Christos and I have been talking about getting pregnant, and I’m worried about the risk to a baby.’

Aimi smiled patiently, and then rattled off some risk and benefit stats.

‘Yes, I know all that, but there’ve been relatively few studies done, so we don’t really know. I couldn’t live with myself if …’ I bit my bottom lip.

‘We’ll review your medication later, sooner if you were to fall pregnant. For now, the benefits outweigh the risks.’ She was speaking slightly faster, a fissure of frustration in her composure. She clicked the button on her pen. ‘Can you rate your mood out of ten, where zero is as bad as it gets and ten is the best you’ve ever felt?’

Always a tricky question. Four, five at the most — not good, not bad. Work; my bonsai; sleeping a lot; afternoon tea with Christos’s mother, Sophia; routine sex with Christos; his firefighting stories. I blamed the flat line of banality on the medication, but it was probably just life, the same for everybody.

Aimi tapped a foot, ever so slightly, waiting while I thought about my answer.

Not too low (or she’d increase my antidepressant dose), not too high (or she’d sedate me). ‘Six.’

I looked up at the old train-station clock — possibly original — on the wall while Aimi printed my prescriptions.

On the way out, she handed me a brochure about psychotropic medication in pregnancy and lactation, with a woman smiling and cuddling a baby on the front. I dropped it into a bin on the street.

I PUFFED past the community garden and waved to the woman from the cleaning service carrying a pile of white towels into the townhouse on the corner. Christos had said a young professional couple lived there, but I hadn’t seen them yet.

I leaned on our green iron gate, catching my breath. The girl from next door was sitting on her front step, in her school dress and sweater, playing on her phone. I had seen her a few times — she was always rushing inside — but we’d never spoken. Our semi-detached townhouses were mirror images except mine was finished with red brickwork while hers was porridge-coloured render and missing a security-screen door.

She looked up, shading her eyes. Sunlight threaded gold through her auburn ponytail. ‘I’m just waiting for my mum.’

I nodded, underestimated the extra fat on my hips, and knocked into the rubbish bin inside the gate. Waddling up the steps, I remembered how Pop used to describe women with my physique: ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.

The kitchen was sparkling clean but smelled of cigarette smoke. A plate of almond biscuits sat on the bench. Sophia had been here. I plonked my handbag on the table and turned on the air conditioner.

Upstairs in the bedroom, I peeled off my gloves, changed into shorts and T-shirt, and opened the blind. The girl from next door was still sitting on her step. She must have been hot.

I pulled my gloves on again, went back out front, and called, ‘You can come over here and wait for your mum if you like.’

She considered her black Mary Janes before pocketing her phone and standing up. She ambled across, giant bag bending her forward like a wilting tulip.

Up closer, I could see a smattering of acne on her forehead, which she’d tried to cover with an orange-based concealer, now melting. She was a sliver shorter than I. Fourteen, maybe fifteen? ‘Hi, I’m Sidney.’

‘Like the city?’

‘No. With an i.’

She smiled as though she’d finally gotten a joke. ‘I’m Aubrey. A–U–B–R–E–Y. Both our parents were lazy and dumb and, like, just picked names off a map, but spelled them wrong.’

The meds had made my mind mush and it took a moment to work out what she meant. I laughed; I was the punchline she’d been waiting for.

Aubrey blushed and looked at her feet again. ‘Plus they’re both boys’ names. They must have wanted boys.’ She scuffed a toe. ‘Mum’s late home from work and I can’t find my key.’

‘Probably stuck in traffic. She’ll be here soon.’

Aubrey looked up. Big amber eyes. Eyes that would sometimes be resin brown, sometimes snake yellow, and sometimes almost green. Her right brow flickered; she was probably thinking the same thing I was — that you