The Petty Details of So-And-So's Life by Camilla Gibb Read Free Book Online Page A

crusts out of the boxes and eating them for breakfast: a scavenger in search of familial debris. The foraging was necessary, because with Oliver retreating, Elaine, too, despite her presence, was becoming just as remote and inaccessible. It was as if they’d each taken on new lovers, and forgotten about all that came before and between: their children, reminders of themselves and the mess they’d managed to create together.
    The first time Emma and Blue really understood the seriousness of Elaine’s drinking problem was when she tumbled down the stairs one late afternoon and ended up with a face full of splinters.
    â€œLiving this close to the States seems to have driven her bonkers,” Oliver had said, having just entered the house for what seemed like the first time in months. He’d responded to Blue’s desperate cry that Mum had cracked open her skull. Oliver heaved Elaine up off the floor and carried her to the couch and then went straight back out to the garage, leaving Emma and Blue staring helplessly at their scratched and bruised mother.
    â€œPour me a Scotch, sweetie,” she said, gesturing to Emma. “It’ll help take away some of the pain,” she winced, running her fingers over her face.
    â€œMum?” Blue asked with a frightened look in his eyes.
    â€œWhat is it, sweetie?”
    â€œWhy does Dad sleep in the garage?”
    â€œBecause he’s an
eccentric
, Llewellyn, that’s why,” she said, unable to hide her irritation.
    That was generous on her part. She would have liked to have said: Because he’s a lazy, self-absorbed bastard and he’s losing his fucking mind. As time went on, she simply drank deeper and stopped referring to him. When she was forced to acknowledge the existence of the man at the end of the garden in some way, she called him “your father,” as if to deny any association with her.
    After spending months in the garage thinking about his inventions, Oliver had still failed to get the voice-activated circular saw, or any of his other ideas, past the paper stage. No one could see how desperate he was becoming. If he failed as an inventor, he was finished. Paralysed by lack of progress, he was spending much of the day masturbatingcompulsively in his camp cot. He’d stopped taking garden hose showers and his hair had turned completely grey. He pissed in a bucket, and defecated at night in the flower bed, covering up his fecal lumps as instinctively as a cat—anything to avoid contact with Elaine.
    He was sure he repulsed her, and so he became repulsive. He was certain that she was determined to see him fail. And he was bound to fail: she, like his parents, expected things from him that he’d just never be able to deliver. It was no wonder. He’d constructed the entire idea of a life on the basis of promises, but he’d forget what he’d pledged as soon as the wind changed the direction of his mood. The whole idea of life consequently and constantly changed. He would decide they should all go and live on a desert island, and he would drive them through cruel waters on a leaky boat to get to some weedy shore where, as soon as they’d reluctantly disembarked, he’d tell them he was off to find a better island. Oliver the adventurer: explorer, inventor. Oliver the adventurer: sociopath, madman.
    â€œYou’re all right, Oliver,” he would tell himself. “You’re just a man who marches to the beat of his own drum. A genius. Bound to be misunderstood.” He repeated such things to himself, likening himself to assorted fearless eccentrics of history, while he paced around his place of exile.
    In his less resilient moments, Oliver would sink down with his head in his hands, lamenting the truth that he’d failed as a husband and a father. Then he’d quickly slap himself out of tears and start wondering why they were all hounding him. Their voices travelled through the back