In Denial: A Relapse Story

Chapter 3
Chapter Three - Below The Surface

Chapter Description: Rachel spends her Saturday evening with her mother and goes on a stomach-turning journey.

It took Sheila all of two glasses of wine to bring up her favourite bugbear.

“I mean, you see these women now… you see they’re all dressed up like dollies. It’s dis-…” she paused for a second to accept a top up on her glass. “Thank you, dear. It’s disgraceful! A lot of fetishistic nonsense put out by that… by that snake oil salesman of a doctor.”

Rachel had grown up with an intimate knowledge of the ins and outs of all Dr Henry Gale’s supposed crimes. From releasing a biological weapon and covering it up to peddling misinformation to keep women submissive and even supposedly profiting from pornography of his “victims”: Rachel had it all drilled into her by her mother from a very young age. What proof existed was scant and informed primarily by the intuition of Sheila Buckland and her allies in the women’s movement. Still, it had left an indelible mark on Rachel.

“You know Adam would have you like that the moment you turned, don’t you?” Rachel felt her mother’s words cut her like a knife. “One flick of Henry Gale’s brainwash machine and poof: Adam will have you bumbling around in a nappy like a fucking idiot.”

The thought made Rachel feel sick. It was much like the revelation that Clara’s mother had relapsed, but this time more potent. Ever since she was a little girl, the sight of relapsed women caused Rachel to feel nauseous and even bring herself to vomit. What little control she could exercise over it, she tried, but even at the age of thirty-five she was vulnerable to sudden attacks of panic and sickness when she saw one. The thought alone could make her dizzy. Sheila knew all this about her daughter but it was her game, her entertainment, to see the culmination of a lifetime’s instillment of paranoia, hatred, and disgust at the mere thought of relapsing.

“Mum, that’s an awful thing to say. Adam is different,” Rachel stated with certainty. Internally, she was less certain.

“You think he’s different because he’s not, you know, some caveman ogling twenty year olds sucking their thumbs and pissing themselves. But, deep down, all men are dying to hold that over you. If it ever happens to you, you’d be better off here than with him.”

Was it “if” or was it “when”? Rachel didn’t want to know. The very idea was bad enough, let alone thinking she was inevitably going to end up a babbling adult baby at the whims of her secretly misogynistic husband or her callous crackpot mother. Left up to Sheila’s devices, Rachel would likely come out of the ordeal with a lisp, incontinence, and an oral fixation. That was what Dr Gale said, what all the helplines said, and what nearly every doctor the whole world over said as well. If they were all wrong, so be it.

“I suppose you’re one of the lucky ones, eh? Never relapsed, never got put in that position…”

“Lucky? I suppose so, yes. But you’re doomed to remember what people look like when they’re… like that. I remember the first time I ever saw one - it was-…”

“Mum, please. Enough with all this relapse shit,” Rachel said sternly. It was unlike her to admonish her mother, but she was sparing both of them the ordeal of scrubbing her sick off of the floor. “Can we talk about anything else?”

And so the mother and daughter spent the rest of the evening downing their wine, eating a takeaway pizza, and talking idly about work, their friends, and how there is nothing decent on television anymore. Well, at least Rachel attempted that last topic. Her mother had thrown away her “idiot box” years ago, though Rachel could never ascertain whether it was because of some femspiracist idea about interfering with women’s brainwaves or just a genuine dislike of the concept. The former was likelier: Sheila Buckland wasn’t exactly averse to appearing on television herself. Still, when the conversation turned that way, Sheila refused to countenance the subject. She complained of its vulgarity and told Rachel that she was only harming herself by watching it. “I bet Adam makes you, doesn’t he?” she slurred.

Rachel left just after 11pm, by which point she suspected that her mother had grown bored of her company. She rode the Underground home, the only one on her carriage for most of the way, but at Finsbury Park a woman about her mother’s age pushed a baby stroller onto the carriage. Rachel paid no mind at first, being as far away from them as possible, but soon the noises started. Quietly, the babbles began, then louder when the sound of the Piccadilly Line whirred and the train sped up. Rachel swayed with the train and then against it, feeling the vibrations underneath her feet and through the pole that she clung to for stability. She leaned her head against it and stared straight down to the source of the human noises that joined in the cacophony of the Tube. Curiosity got the best of her at that moment. When she focused her gaze, she saw the older woman was holding an adult-sized dummy in her hand and waving it about in the face of a woman no older than Rachel. She was fidgeting in her large pink pushchair and making sloppy hand gestures at her temporarily stolen soother, kicking her bootied feet lazily against the frame of her seat. Rachel watched, sick to her stomach, and even motioned to get up and get a closer look before the train came to a halt at the next stop. The sudden shake was the last straw: Rachel bent over, one hand still clinging to the pole beside her seat, and vomited a concoction of pizza sauce and red wine onto the moquette of the opposing row of seats. Thankfully, none but the older woman and her relapsed daughter (if that was indeed what she was) saw her. 

Regretfully, the older woman then started to walk over, pushchair in tow. Rachel looked up to see the relapser, her purple pacifier bobbing in her mouth and her eyes dumb and wide, getting closer and closer. The older woman reached out a spare hand, a pack of tissues in the palm, and gently spoke: “Oh my dear, please take these”. 

Rachel bolted for the doors and made it through to the platform before she vomited again. The older woman watched with a puzzled look on her face as the train pulled out of the station and disappeared off into the tunnels. The whirr of the Piccadilly Line briefly overwhelmed the sound of retching at the platform’s edge. She walked to the other end of the platform and placed her head in her hands to await the next train to come and take her along the last few stops of her journey. She needed to get back home as soon as humanly possible, to be back with Adam.

When she got to the front door, she gazed up at the pitch blackness beyond the windows of her house and remembered: Adam wasn’t there. Things like that proved to her that he was different to other men.

All they had known growing up was the old-fashioned male supremacy of previous generations, with women reduced to infantile creatures in need of protection and men proudly taking up the role as their defenders. It took an intelligent man, a man of strong willpower, to stand up and say “no, the women in my life are independent human beings”. Adam did that, sometimes verbatim when he witnessed how Rachel could be treated, and never apologised for making other, less progressive men uncomfortable. In part, that is why she married him: when it came down to it, despite her mother’s trepidations, she knew he would always respect her autonomy whether relapsed or not. 

And yet… deep down… a little part of her resented it. The part of her that her mother had shouted down throughout her childhood, the part of her that she thought had been exorcised like a demon all those years ago, was still there. Somewhere in the umbra of her heart, mind, or soul, a fraction of her being wished Adam would worry a bit more. As she laid down in anticipation of the hangover she would endure the next morning, with her makeup still on her face and her shoes still on her feet, she wanted him to be there to put her to bed and fetch her water. The last thing she thought about was him in Manchester, so far from her and yet so happy in his career. She imagined he would make a great father and wished him hopelessly to be beside her as she drifted off to sleep.

When she awoke on Sunday morning, a thin line of drool peaked out from the side of her mouth. It glistened like dew in the sunlight that peered between the halfheartedly drawn curtains. Drowsily, she turned away from the light and buried her face in the sofa cushions. Rachel felt the coldness of the dribble that had pooled around her mouth and pulled her face back so she could wipe it with her wrist. Her thumb grazed her right cheek before touching upon her lips. Without a thought, she gave it a kiss. 

At once, she felt the nausea rising in her once more.