Forgetting Foster Read Online Free Page B

back and climb that jacaranda, just to get away for a little while, and sometimes he’d see his dad watching out the kitchen window, his stare rasping just like his footfall.
    Foster’s feelings were tangling him up. No one was explaining to him how he should be feeling and he didn’t understand the feeling that was bothering him now. He’d see his dad standing in that crooked way of his at the kitchen window and his pulse would clang like a screw in a tin can. When that first Sunday came and went without pancakes and shortbread, Mumdidn’t explain at all, just poured Saturday cereal into a bowl for him and rubbed the top of his head. Foster suddenly recognised the thing that rolled over him and made him feel sick. It was this: Dad was going away somewhere all on his own. And Foster was already missing him.

post-its and pills
    Dad eventually had to drop back to part-time work. It was a type of stress leave, apparently. Foster asked Mum what Dad was stressed about but she danced around the question in a way familiar to Foster – he was getting used to having questions answered in great detail that turned out to provide no answer at all. Dad could work from home now, Mum said. Work fewer hours, work in his pyjamas if he wanted to. Mum said this last bit with a bright smile, as if it was meant to be a fine joke, but Foster found the idea of Dad not putting on a suit the last straw. It made him cross. Foster knew all about last straws. It was Mum’s way of putting a full stop at the end of something, of declaring her refusal to entertain another moment of whatever it was that was creatingthe straws in the first place. So when Foster said with genuine indignation ‘Well, that would be the last straw’, expecting Mum to share in his crossness, he was instead humiliated to find himself being laughed at.
    Foster was pleased that at least Dad was still dressing for the doctor. They all went with him to the appointment, despite Dad’s protestations about being treated like a child. Foster wasn’t allowed to go into the little room where the doctor did his examining. He had to wait in the ugly waiting room that always seemed to have one dead fish in the tank in the corner. He waited a long time, long enough for the room to get really full. He had to start breathing through his mouth because of the sweet-sweaty smell of too many sick bodies pressed together like paper dolls. He wished he had asked to wait in the car.
    There was no talking in the car on the way home. Foster rolled his window down and filled his cheeks with fresh outside air until Mum snapped at him to put the window back up. ‘It’s too cold,’ she said.
    When they got home Mum and Dad went to the kitchen to talk. It was quiet talk at first but Foster had worked out that if he himself stayed really quiet he became invisible. Either that or his parents thoughthe couldn’t hear them. So he waited, and sure enough the volume began to rise. It seemed Dad had come back from the doctor with pills that frustrated him even more. Foster heard Dad say, ‘I’m not depressed!’
    ‘You are, Malcolm. I can see it.’
    ‘If I’m depressed it’s because I can’t work out why I’m having trouble concentrating. Why I can’t remember things! I’ve worked with numbers all my life and suddenly Excel looks like goddamn abstract art to me. That’s justifiable, reasonable grounds for depression. There’s no pill for a rational human response, is there! Why aren’t they looking at what’s causing this. Treating the symptom won’t get me back to work, will it!’
    It wasn’t a question. Dad never asked questions when he was using his work voice, and he was using his work voice on Mum now.
    ‘Just try them for a little while, please, Malcolm,’ Mum said. ‘The doctor said in a few weeks you’ll feel better. So much better.’ It was a plea. Foster had a feeling Mum was pleading her own case, her own need to feel better, rather than Dad’s. Mum didn’t cope well