5. In the Garden of Crazy

‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with a woman being independent and focusing on herself and her goals,’ I say sharply.

‘Certainly not,’ Connor agrees, ‘But that’s not what you’re doing, is it? I perceive your closure to the prospect of a male companion as a defense mechanism and a coping strategy. I’ve seen it happen to many patients after relationship trauma. They feel like they opened themselves up, loosened control of themselves enough to trust another person and it just left them feeling alone and betrayed. Naturally, they’re not quite as open to the thought of losing control to another person anytime soon.’

Oh yeah, Connor’s a licensed psychologist. Even better, he specializes in relationship therapy for couples—basically, people on the brink of divorce, or people who have been cheated on, or people who can’t coordinate their weird sexual fetishes. He had insisted I come to his clinic after David left me, assuring me that talking about it would help. But I didn’t want to fucking talk about it. I wanted to deal with my break up the proper way: by digging a hole and curling up in it like a mole, with a bottle of Bacardi and twenty tubs of Quality Street.

‘Well, anyway,’ Becca says brightly, attempting to lighten the conversation, ‘I’ve organized a welcome home party at the Barley Arms next Friday so all the people you abandoned a year ago can finally see you again.’

‘Wonderful,’ I say sarcastically, ‘I’m sure everyone will have lots of pleasant things to say to me. Don’t invite my mum.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ says Becca, ‘Of course I have to invite your mum. I’m also going to invite Thomas. You never know, you might like him.’

‘Thomas in fitness?’ I confirm.

They both ignore me and we drive in silence for the rest of the way to my new flat which is just around the corner.

My new flat mate’s name is Melody Wetzel. I had found her ad on SpareRoom when my stay in New York was coming to a close and the thought of moving back in with Mum and Dad made me want to drink ant poison. It was in a decent area in Vauxhall, affordable and only a fifteen minute bus ride to the Hamilton Gallery of Contemporary Art where I had been lucky enough to score a job thanks to the amount of ridiculous looking art my father bought on a regular basis.

Melody opens the door dressed in a skin tight pink tank top and what I initially think is underwear but clearly, in her eyes, also functions as shorts.  She’s about 5’5” and has an extremely tiny frame. I can’t tell if it’s the result of an eating disorder or a crack addiction. With my luck it would be a combination of both and I’d have a real winner on my hands.

I also notice that her boobs are a little too big for her annie-gone-rexic figure. At first I figure they’re fake, like my Louis Vuitton bag, but after seeing her at a variety of different angles I can confidently conclude that she is wearing two, if not three, padded bras. There is just something funky about the elliptical shape of those things.  But, hey, who am I to judge?

‘You must be Natasha,’ she says, pulling at her badly dyed blonde hair. Her voice isn’t near as nasal as I had imagined it would be and is even a little cigarette-raspy. I must admit I’m pleasantly surprised. I nod and she opens the door wider to let in Becca and Connor with my bags.

‘Your room is that way,’ she goes on, pointing to the door at the end of a small corridor.

We make our way into my new bedroom and just as with Melody’s voice, I am pleasantly surprised by it.

‘It’s tiny,’ Becca whispers to Connor as though I’m not two meters away from her.

‘It’s fine,’ I reply, motioning for them to lay down my bags. The ad had said the room would come fully furnished which apparently meant it would come with a bed and a bookshelf. However, that works for me. I had just spent the last year living in a convent and sleeping on a very questionable cot so this is like a castle.

Melody appears in the doorway with a lollipop in her mouth, and popping it out loudly says, ‘I’d like to show you around when you have a moment.’

I follow her out and she directs me into the kitchen. ‘I pretty much have everything you need if you want to cook. Silverware is in this drawer, pots and pans are underneath. Cleaning stuff is under the sink,’ she says, turning the tap on and off again as she passes it, ‘This is the dry food cupboard,’ she pulls it open, ‘I have this little thing about the food cupboard staying organized so come here and look.’

I move over and nervously peer inside, half expecting there to be a storage of body parts in jars. Thankfully there are just normal things, like cereals and soups.

‘You see the cans?’ Melody asks, her expression quite serious.

I do see the cans. I see them, indeed. They are neurotically stacked, tallest in the back all the way down to shortest in the front. There are exactly four cans in each row, all of the same product and brand, all identically facing forward. She picks up a baby can of baked beans from the front row and holds it out to me.

‘If you eat something from one of these cans,’ she says without flinching, ‘Like these baked beans, for instance, make sure you immediately buy a replacement or let me know so I can pick one up on my way home from wherever I am. It’s really important to me that the cans look like they do right now at all times.’

I stare at her for a long time not knowing how I’m supposed to react. Is this some sort of new flatmate prank? Every inch of me wants to think so—in no way do I want to accept that I am about to live with a can-stacking psycho. But she seems so serious...

‘I know it’s a little weird,’ she says with a small laugh, ‘But we all have our little ticks, right?’

Um… A little tick is something like needing the toilet seat to be put down. I’m not even sure what this can thing is. I’m still in a state of processing it when she goes ahead and throws the magnet rule on me too.

‘The magnets on the fridge are all in their proper place so please don’t move any of them.’

I turn, expecting the magnets to also be stacked in a hierarchy of size but instead find them scattered carelessly all over the place. I laugh, beginning to believe it really is a joke and Melody shoots me a sour look.

‘I’m serious,’ she snaps, ‘Please don’t move any.’

‘But how would you even know?’ I ask, trying to hide my amusement, ‘There’s no order there.’

‘Yes, there is,’ Melody retorts, ‘I know exactly where each magnet’s proper place is.’

I stare at her. ‘Try me,’ she says, turning around, ‘Move one of the magnets, only one, and I’ll put it back where it’s suppose to be.’

I can’t believe this is really my life. But with no other option, I move toward the fridge and examine the cluster of random magnets. There has to be at least fifty of them on there. After a good look I choose a magnet of the queen of hearts, memorizing its place between a dentist’s phone number and Prince Charles’ head shot. I hand it to Melody and without a moment’s hesitation she whisks around and pins it exactly where I had taken it from.

‘Shit,’ I say out loud without meaning to.

‘I told you,’ she replies proudly.

But being impressed with her memorization psychosis isn’t why I had let the ‘shit’ slip. It slipped because that was the moment I realized this isn’t a joke, and there is a good possibility she’ll cut me up in my sleep with a machete and then organize my body parts in alphabetical order.

Perfect.

She follows me out of the kitchen, turning the tap on and off again as she passes it, yet another ‘little tick’, and stands in my doorway popping the lollipop in and out while watching us unpack my things. And she doesn’t even offer to help. Sometimes I can’t believe the situations I land myself in. 

‘You have lovely hair,’ she tells me, still not leaving the door frame, ‘My mum does hair. She’s really quite good, you know. Comes over all the time to do my hair. So if you ever want her to do yours, I’m sure she will. You know, free of charge.’

I touch my hair protectively. ‘That would be great,’ I lie.

Never in a million years would I let the woman who spawned Melody Wetzel come near my neatly layered, freshly dyed hair. I can tell she’s about to keep speaking so I’m silently thankful when I hear David Bowie start singing from inside my bag. I hold up a finger.

‘My phone, sorry,’ I say but get distracted from answering it when Melody puts her fingers to her ears and pushes her lobes in and out multiple times. Even Becca and Connor stop to watch her, both wearing similarly confused expressions.

‘You okay?’ I ask when she brings her hands back down.

‘You can’t have that song as your ringtone,’ she says flatly, ‘I can’t listen to it.’

I catch Becca’s eye and see her hiding a smirk. ‘Why not?’ I ask.

‘I have this thing,’ Melody sighs, throwing her hands up, ‘Whenever I hear that song I have to press my ears shut in eight sets of eight. I know, I know. It’s a little weird. It started when my dad married my stepmum, Gretzla. She’s this slutty mail-order Russian thing, half my dad’s age and I absolutely hate her. At their wedding I had to watch my sixty year old father bumping and grinding on her—she’s maybe five years older than me—to that song. It was disgusting, okay? It made me a little upset and ever since then I’ve had to do the eight sets of eight on my ears or else I get the visual image of that night in my head.’

I’m speechless. She’s like Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction but in real life.

‘Are there any other songs Natasha should be made aware of?’ asks Connor and I know he's half serious.

‘Yeah, ‘Apologize’ by One Republic.’

I almost laugh out loud. ‘What’s the story behind that one?’

‘I don’t know, okay,’ Melody cries and flees.

I consider changing my ringtone to ‘Loser’ by Beck. Looking at my life, it seems more appropriate anyway.