Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon (100 books to read in a lifetime txt) 📕

future with me knotted firmly in it, but I barely hear him. Back here in Pahang, kicking my feet uselessly and never getting out again. Nursing Ammuma. Having Tom and his wife round for coffee; having Peony around for ever. Having nothing else but a copy of my resignation letter and some maths textbooks I won’t understand any more.

‘I’m not staying,’ I interrupt. ‘I still have to go to KL.’

He blinks. ‘You’re still going back?’

Yes, I tell him, I’m going back to my life, to category theory and proofs and things that stay where they’re put. To Anwar, to Sangeeta, to Deepak with his middle-of-the-night calls and his angry wife. Even if all I end up with is a lifetime of evening classes and quarrelsome silences down the phone line, at least I’ll have come out ahead.

‘Oh.’ He sounds – disappointed. Perhaps Tom was hoping I’d rescue him too, somehow. Run away with him, like Bonnie and Clyde, while Peony and Alice shake their fists in a rear-view mirror. A nurse walks past at the end of the corridor with bobbed hair and strong, bony ankles in white stockings. She takes down something from an alcove and the air fills with splash and the clinking of spoons in medicine bottles.

‘Well,’ Tom gives himself a shake, like a dog after rain. ‘Of course, of course.’ He doesn’t say of course what. ‘We’ll still get her a nurse. And Karthika’s there. Of course …’

Of course, again. At least Karthika can be relied upon, he implies, as if any woman wants that. He stares gloomily down the corridor, with his hands in his pockets like every doctor on TV. It looks false, it looks like he’s playing dress-up in a white coat and a middle-aged body.

‘You can’t send her home,’ I say. ‘She needs to see someone. A psychiatrist, or a psychologist or something …’

‘You don’t want her to be discharged?’ He looks incredulous.

‘No! Look, it’s not that – oh, forget it.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Listen, you’ve been taking her to Kampung Ulu, right?’

Tom looks guilty at that. Jumpy. ‘Who told you –’ he starts, but I interrupt.

‘Well, she thinks she’s seeing Francesca there. My mother. My dead mother, remember? Ammuma thinks Francesca’s in Kampung Ulu.’

Tom stares at me. ‘Durga,’ he says, slowly. ‘Listen. I take her there every month, so she can drop off donations for the left-behinds. Toys and things. Mother Agnes says there’s a whole crowd of kids up in those mountain villages.’

‘Ammuma thinks one of those girls is Francesca,’ I insist. ‘Her baby one, she said. Reincarnated, or a ghost or – or – I don’t know. Agnes told her some pack of lies and now Ammuma really believes it.’

He gives me a look. ‘She’s just going outstation to help a few left-behind kids. It’s nice. It’s normal.’

‘She doesn’t do normal,’ I snap. She doesn’t do nice either. ‘Look, she told me. Just now, she said it was Francesca out there. She said it was her baby one –’

‘And would she tell a psychiatrist?’

There’s a silence.

‘No,’ I admit. Ammuma might be losing her mind, but she’s doing it in a way that’s thoroughly Ammuma. She’ll be practical about it, when she finally does succumb. Demanding. A hands-off, keep-your-distance madness, that’s what she’ll go in for.

‘So,’ Tom says, ‘you’re the only one who says it. You’ve no proof at all.’

‘I don’t need proof. She’s Ammuma; I know her.’

We face each other for a second, squabbling over Ammuma like two cats with a bone. A pair of nurses brush past, rubbing their eyes. Tangled hair, clutching cups of coffee and smelling of a sleepless night.

‘So what do you want me to do?’ Tom asks brusquely. ‘You think she’s hallucinating, so we should just lock her up in here? Like Mrs Selva?’

He rubs a hand through his hair, leaving it bristling with static. ‘No friends, no visitors – because you won’t come, will you, you haven’t for ten years – nothing but a card from some charity every Christmas? “All on Ward Three, Lipis Hospital”, that’s what Mrs Selva’s cards say.’

His words snag on a memory, like fish spiked by a river hook. All on Ward Three, Lipis Hospital, Pahang, Malaysia, THE WORLD.

‘Wait … Tom, hold on – stop talking, shut up, OK – let me show you. Ammuma wrote Francesca’s name. In the autograph book, the one from your fireworks bag. Here …’

Tom raises his eyebrows. He folds his arms, watching me as I tug the autograph book out of my pocket. It’s wedged into a seam, and the fabric twists above my thighs. Tom looks down – a sizzle of a glance – and I feel cold air on my skin. The book looks more battered than before, and the paper’s gluey. It clings to my fingers with a jackfruit stickiness.

‘What …’ Tom stares at it, then frowns in recognition. ‘Where did you find that?’

‘In your bag, the fireworks bag. You were bringing it to her.’

‘Mary-Auntie took that book to Kampung Ulu a few months ago,’ he says, each word careful and clear. ‘It must have fallen out in the car on the way there. I found it last week, under the back seat, when I was with – when I was with a friend.’

With a friend. Strong-legged Alice, no doubt, or Karthika with her sleeves rolled high, or even the bobbed-haired nurse mixing up her innocent medicines. I shove the thought out of my mind.

‘Ammuma wrote Francesca’s name in the book,’ I say again. ‘This wasn’t for a left-behind. It was for my mother.’

I lean over him to point at the inside cover. I can feel his warmth against me, heating as durian in this frigid air.

He barely even looks down. ‘So she scribbled a few pictures in a book. That doesn’t mean anything.’

I stop, my fingers spidering over the pages. ‘What pictures?’

‘In the book.’ He taps it impatiently. ‘I ripped the pages by accident and found the drawings. She must have stuck the thing together with