Francis Sullivan
written by: Sean O’Leary
Sullivan picked up the phone, almost put it straight back down, but then went ahead.
“Hello.”
“Hey, Eddie, it’s me, Sullivan.”
“Sullivan. Jesus. How long has it been?”
“I think eight years, three months, and two weeks.”
“I heard you were in a mental institution. A couple of times.”
A beat, silence, then,
“No, well, technically yes, but no. It was a psych ward, not an institution. A few times.”
“And, you’re better?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you staying?”
“My sister owns a flat in St Kilda, and it was available so…I do pay rent. It belongs to her and her husband, her family. She has two kids now. Hey, what about tomorrow? We meet at Borsch Vodka and Tears on Chapel St, outside table at say 10AM?”
“Listen, I’m married. I have two kids of my own. I’ll have to organise my parents to look after the kids, they’re both pre-school age. I work at home. I’m a house husband, so, um, I can be there but no partying, Fran. No joints in the car. Not a quick drink; just coffee.”
“See you at ten, Eddie.”
Those eight years and three months ago, Sullivan had left Melbourne feeling pretty good. His troubles started in Sydney. He’d had a break-up a few months before leaving, but it was a clean break. He had been managing a video store in Prahran, and he loved films, and the store he worked in was known for its amazing collection. People came to it from all over to get that special film they’d been searching for. He started work at 1PM and finished at 10PM, and then he went out and partied. Eddie was his best friend. They spent all-nighters together, pre, during, and post girlfriends. Sullivan was a party monster. The video store closed. The owner sold the building, and the new owner wanted to do something else with it. The lease finished.
Sullivan thought he’d make the leap to Sydney. He’d been there on holiday and always loved it, and he’d promised himself to live there one day. A thousand miles from Melbourne down the Hume Highway. He tried to convince Eddie to come with him, but Eddie had felt it was good timing Sullivan was leaving. He had deferred the last year of an Architecture Degree, and now was the time to get serious again and finish the degree. With Sullivan gone, there would be no distractions. Sullivan was wild. He had a massive constitution when it came to alcohol and drugs; good-time drugs. E and marijuana, no powders, and plenty of Corona and Bourbon.
Sullivan bought a car. A red Volkswagen Passat, station wagon. He didn’t know anyone in Sydney. He had no leads for jobs and didn’t know where he was going to live. He arrived on a Thursday and stayed in a motel on Darlinghurst Road in Kings Cross. Back then, Kings Cross was full of junkies and strip clubs and all-night bars and cafés, and it was loud, neon-lit, garish, and trouble. Sullivan didn’t like it. He liked the Sydney of Bondi and beaches, or the Leichhardt café strip. It was cheap in Kings Cross. He mostly stayed in his room. On Saturday, he bought the Sydney paper and found an ad for a small bedsit in Leichhardt. It was a simple matter. He shook hands with the old Italian man who owned the property. The front part of the property was a double-storey house split into four small units. He was in a garden bedsit, and it was small, but he had a double hot plate and a fridge, and he hung up his clothes in the closet and put his underwear and t-shirts in a drawer. Now he could begin to enjoy the city and relax. He went out to do some shopping.
He found a supermarket, but when he was walking down the aisle, he felt odd. Anxious. Years later, he identified this moment as the beginning of it. He felt his forehead, there was sweat there, and he felt a little hot. Maybe I have the flu, he thought. He’d taken a list with him, but now all he wanted to do was get out of the supermarket and go home and close the door. There was a rising panic in him. He took some breaths and tried to laugh it off. He forced himself to buy bread and margarine and rushed home and went to bed for the afternoon and slept like he’d taken a sleeping pill. When he woke up, he wondered whether he’d been drugged. Where had he eaten, taken a drink, but there was no way. He didn’t like this feeling at all. When he woke up the next day, it was gone, and he forgot about it for a while. He applied for a job with a Telco doing directory assistance. He found out a week later he had the job.
***
Eddie saw him sitting on a bench seat outside Borsch Vodka and Tears, and he hesitated for a moment. He was taken aback by how much his friend had aged; the bloated face. Sullivan was sporting a crew cut and sitting straight-backed, sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette. Eddie smiled and kept walking and stood in front of Sullivan, who took a moment to register who it was and then said,
“Eddie, so good to see you.” Sullivan stood up and came around the table, and hugged Eddie tightly. It was so un-Sullivan-like, Eddie wondered whether he was drunk or stoned, but he saw tears in his old friend’s eyes, and he instinctively said,
“Hey Franny, it’s alright. I know you’ve had a rough time.” Sullivan had sounded so normal on the phone. Was he alright?
There were dark circles under Sullivan’s eyes, and he said,
“I get a little emotional these days when good things happen to me. Don’t worry, you can’t catch it; it’s not contagious. They both sit down, and Sullivan lights another cigarette, offers the pack to Eddie.
“No, Fran, I gave up.” Sullivan smiles; his friend looks good. His clothes look expensive; maybe he shops right here on fashionable Chapel St. Sullivan has a pension, but he chooses clothes wisely in Op Shops. Eddie pushes the ashtray around; Sullivan takes a long drag, and the end of the cigarette burns bright red, and he almost crushes it between his nicotine-stained fingers.
“We had some good times, didn’t we Fran,” Eddie says. “The best of times.” And they both look at each other and laugh softly, building to louder and then uproarious. Now Eddie wipes a tear away, but it’s only from the laughter.
“Did you marry anyone I know, Eddie?”
“No, her name’s Celia. She sorted me out. Put me on the straight and narrow, mostly. I’m a cliché Fran, saved by a good woman. Hang on, I have a photo of her and the kids.” He shows it to Fran, and he nods.
“Two girls, nice, very nice, Eddie. Beautiful, I’m glad for you. You get your degree?”
“Yeah, I work for a small firm and they allow me to work from home. I only get a small amount done during the day with the girls at home, but Celia takes over when she gets home.”
“Where do you live? Ah, don’t worry. I won’t come knocking.”
“No, you’re welcome, but a call first, Fran. Young kids and…”
“I said, don’t worry.”
“We live in Sandringham; we all love the beach.” Another silence. Both thinking about what they used to be, what they used to get up to together. It hovered over the top of both of them, and finally, Eddie asked
“What happened, Fran?”
“I had a breakdown, at least that’s what they thought, that’s what they told me initially, but I couldn’t understand it. A breakdown from what. I was normal, happy. Then it came back, it was depression, manic depression, maybe schizophrenia. I was high as a kite or lower than low. I take a combination of drugs now. I get paranoid sometimes, but I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.
***
Sullivan started work at the call centre and began to meet people, and he went out partying and found a girl he liked. She was two years older than he, and he fell madly in love with her. They moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Darlinghurst. Sullivan was happy, but then that feeling came back again and again, and he started to be suspicious of his girl, Helen. He watched her when she made him coffee or prepared food, and he couldn’t tell anyone about it. He had deep fears of going out and kept calling in sick for work, and Helen couldn’t understand why. One day, feeling anxious and a little terrified of the world, he got into an argument in a convenience store and started smashing up the place, pushing over shelves and yelling and screaming at people, and they called the police. They took him to the lock-up, and he freaked out until finally they found someone to talk to him and calm him down. They put him into a hospital in Rozelle, the psych ward. They released him three weeks later on a community treatment order. He had to report to a case manager twice a week. Helen left him.
***
Why didn’t you come back to Melbourne sooner, Fran?”
“Mum and dad died a year after I arrived in Sydney when I was sick. They died within a couple of weeks of each other. It rocked me, and Cheryl, my sister, had a young family to look after here in Melbourne. I got caught up in the mental health industry and couldn’t get out of it. You get a reputation, just like a criminal. They had me on this community treatment order, so I had to report to a mental health community centre and see a case manager, and they wouldn’t cut me loose. Every time they let me go, I stuffed up. I was angry because I didn’t know what was wrong with me. The psych wards were scary. Trying to figure out which doctors and nurses you could trust. I did some crazy stuff, but I think…I think I’m alright now, they somehow, through trial and error, found the right medication for me.”
“That’s quite a story, Fran.”
“I had no advocate, Eddie. No-one to plead my case but I’m out of it now.”
“Any side effects of the meds?”
“No, not really. I gain weight easily. You would have noticed that, but were too polite to comment. I was always a vain bastard, so it irks me quite a lot. I try to get by on cigarettes and coffee to keep the weight down. Oh, and I used to take this stuff, Stelazine, little blue pills, I was shaking like a leaf some days. Awful stuff, glad to be off it.”
“Hey Fran, remember the night we saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, they played the Prince of Wales on Fitzroy St. It was supposed to be a secret gig and they played under a pseudonym and you and me rocked up thinking we were seeing some new band and then there’s fucking Nick Cave on stage killing it with Deanna. What a night!”
“No, it wasn’t the Prince of Wales,” Sullivan says, “it was the Crystal Ballroom. We met Anna and Gemma, those two indie rock babes. Great girls they were!” And Eddie sees Sullivan smile, and he laughs, and for a moment, they’re back there, when life was grand for both of them. And Eddie looks again at his friend and feels incredibly sorry for him. That at thirty-three, he’s in a way, washed up. And as if to confirm it, he asks Sullivan,
“How do you get by for money, Fran?”
“I get the disability pension. I tried to go back to work, but it was to…ah, too much, let’s leave it at that. Please don’t feel sorry for me, Eddie, anything but that.”
“No, of course not.”
“I’m a published writer, Eddie.”
“You Fran…I… what sort of stuff?”
“Poetry, some short stories.”
“Anything I might have seen?”
“Do you read literary magazines?”
“No… Can you bring some over if you come and visit?”
“Sure, it’s not such a stretch for you, is it, me writing poetry. I always loved song lyrics. Do you know my favourite song?” And before Eddie can answer, he says,
“The Sunnyboys, Happy Man. Jeremy Oxley, the lead singer, has schizophrenia, by the way. It’s the lyrics and the way he sings it, like I don’t know. I can’t put it into words.”
“You always came alive when you talked about books and music.”
“But you’re the creative one, an architect. Any buildings that I may see, that you’ve helped design, um, built?”
“I’ll show you when you come around.”
“That’d be nice, Eddie.”
“I have to go, Fran. Pick up the kids.”
“What are their names?”
“Francis and Belle,” Eddie says, smiling.
Eddie drives to his parents’ place and picks up the kids, and takes them home. His wife is at home, and she asks him,
“How did it go?”
“It was a bit sad. He looks older, drained. He’s had a pretty tough time of it. I feel a little guilty about losing contact with him. We went to school together; he was my closest friend.”
“Do you still like him?”
“A couple of times he did some things, made some movements, spoke in a certain way, a facial expression so that I could see my old friend in there, the happy, vibrant guy.”
“Are you going to see him again?”
“Yeah, I am, but you have to understand. He was this wild, vivacious guy; full of bravado. He’s quieter, more reserved, but a nicer person. Gentle. He cried when he saw me. He’s a little sad, but I love him. He writes poetry now, got published. It’s almost like making a new friend, albeit one who is a little messed up.”
Sullivan puts the key in the lock and opens the door to his tiny bedsit flat. Puts the kettle on and makes a cup of tea, lights a cigarette, so glad to have seen his old friend. Eddie called his daughter, Francis. Oh, he saw the pity in Eddie’s eyes, but he saw his friend too. Sullivan is so glad to be back in Melbourne. Feeling better. Out of Sydney; out of the system. No more psych wards; no community orders; no case managers. Home.
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