The Denier (At the Barbecue)

Abe lounged in the bed, the duvet tucked up between his bare legs, and listened to Elsie taking her pills in the bathroom.

‘Don’t forget your new one,’ he called through.

She came to the door, wrapped in his navy robe. She smiled and shook her day-by-day pill case. ‘It’s already in.’

‘Why are you wearing my dressing gown?’

‘Mine’s in the wash.’ She turned back into the bathroom. She was up to five pills per day now, to Abe’s three. This concerned him, then concerned him double, for showing a symptom of Unphased Medication Suspicion; treatable, to be sure, but with a few side effects. None of his current medication gave any adverse effects, and he could drink on them, sweet relief. Mick, who was coming later, was on Blockadorol for his protoaudio-hallucinatory tendency, which may have been no more than tinnitus, but you did wrong to take a chance on that. So he couldn’t imbibe.

Elsie padded wetly back into the bedroom. She looked lovely with her freshly washed hair combed back and the skin on her neck glistening.

‘I’d better get moving to the market,’ Abe said, ‘I’m going to get the biggest rack of ribs they have.’

‘I’ll get Samuel up and look in on Rachel.’

A thrill ran up from the soles of Abe’s feet. Just looking in was fine, it wasn’t like before the new pill, when the dismal signs of Child-checking Illness has started in Elsie, during in the few weeks after Rachel’s birth. The child had been premature, four precious weeks of gestation missed, like jet-lag time slippage; she came out disorientated and with fluid in the lungs. The time in the incubator, a plastic inverted prison that kept the parents out, worried Elsie. Her checking up was deemed as overly anxious by Dr Lomas, and the pill was prescribed. The dark gathering around her eyes was fading; Elsie was pretty much all levelled out. In a way, today’s party was a celebration of this. It was also an excuse to get Rog round. Rog was Elsie’s brother; long since the edgy sheep of the family. He provoked arguments with his playing devil’s advocate, he was critical and unsympathetic. On the other hand, he was merry and good company. Plus, Rog had a new girlfriend, and Elsie very much wanted to meet her.

‘She’s medication free,’ Rog had told Elsie on the phone.

‘Really? A perfectly-adjusted human being? Genetically and mentally clean? Those people freak me out a little,’ confessed Elsie.

‘It’s not that. Tessa’s a pill-denier.’

‘No F-ing way!’ (Swearing was all but prevented by Elsie’s tablet for Ungraded Elatism.) ‘Well, bring her over. I’d love to pick her grey matter.’ Elsie almost said cook her grey matter, after a stupid childhood joke between her and her brother but thought he wouldn’t remember. Especially with his treatment for Borderline Gender Confusion, which worked by repressing memories of his casual bow-wearing and go in high heels as a boy. So it was set. Elsie would have a pill-free person in her house, the first adult in many years. The only other would be little Rachel, only five months and thankfully born without any genetic traits that needed early intervention. Samuel, aged six now, was already on a couple of pills, one being the fairly generic, among boys anyway, treatment for Pre-Anger Syndrome, which held off any grumpy tantrums and, his teacher said, really kept him focused.

Also coming to the barbecue would be Mick and Sandy, childless and both on medication for Reproductive Anxiety Condition; and Leia and Riz, with their toddler Oona. She had been screened using amniocentesis, and found to have the Instant Vulnerability trait, so had been on monthly injections since birth to guard against overly demonstrative outbreaks. Running through the side gate into the garden, Oona brought forth a bottle of wine and Leia followed her with a bowl of limp salad.

‘Hi!’

‘Hi!’

‘Hi Oona!’

‘Hmm.’

Abe was fiddling with coals and a bottle of flammable something. Elsie was using her fingertips to rub olive oil into chops, after the fashion she’d seen on TV.

Abe handed out lemonades. He plucked a sprig of mint from the plant in the border and ceremonially placed it in the top of Riz’s glass.

‘We’ve got a pill-denier coming,’ Abe said conspiratorially. Riz bent towards him.

‘No.’

They were interrupted by Mick and Sandy’s arrival.

‘Hi!’

‘Hi!’

‘Hi!’

‘Hi.’

All so breezy and gleaming, well-adjusted, the end-point of the long creep of diagnosis, the medicalisation of the human emotional range.

‘How’s your week Mick?’

‘Great. We demolished Du Pont Court at last.’

‘You pressed the button?’

‘That’s right,’ he said proudly.

‘Boys and toys,’ said Sandy, flouncing off to play badminton with Samuel and Oona. Was it a performance? An effort to show the pills were working, a self-fulfilling cure perhaps.

The chops, ribs, sweetcorn and so forth were charring away when Tessa and Rog arrived. Tessa walked in first, without Rog, a move Abe immediately, and in spite of himself, saw as evidence of antisocial controversial maladjustment. She wore a bright, floral summer dress with narrow straps, which on one side frequently fell down to encircle her upper arm; the other women eyed this distrustfully. Her dark hair had streaks of grey, her small dark eyes slipped mischievous, moving glances all over the garden, taking in the barbecue pit, the tablecloth, the swing seat, the conservatory. She wore no make-up.

Elsie approached her first, the keen hostess and one most attracted to the unusual. At the Tate Modern, which now had to rely on retrospectives in the absence of new modern art, when Abe and she were first dating, she had spent the longest time with the Cremaster Cycle films.

‘My brother ditched you already?’

‘He’s parking, hope you don’t mind I came ahead.’

‘Of course! Welcome! That’s my husband, Abe.’

He waved his tongs and went back to turning, toying, checking where the children were.

Elsie introduced the others and got Tessa a drink. ‘Wine, if it’s going!’ Rog burst through the gate, a cynical wave of sceptical energy, garrulous as a kick against his natural guardedness, hopeless with his status in the family, but now embracing it with what his and Elsie’s parents would no doubt call a reckless attention-seeking decision. He was always popping up in some faraway land, never married; he should have been on treatment for Commitment Aversion. He was on pills, ‘But only a couple,’ he would say. ‘They’re all pretty much the same molecule as it is,’ he would add offhandedly. He put his arm around Tessa’s waist and smiled at his sister. ‘Met everyone?’

‘Yes, except the children.’

‘Food’s up,’ yelled Abe. His forehead shone as he brought two big plates to the table, pushing salads and bread aside to plonk them down.

‘Dig in,’ he said, quietly soaking up the admiring noises.

‘Come and get a sausage,’ Elsie called at the children and Samuel slotted himself in, standing, at the gap between Tessa and Leia. He grabbed the ketchup bottle and squirted it at his hot dog; a bubble forced out a great glot of it onto Tessa’s leg. She immediately pressed her thigh with both hands, unconcerned at the mess, and put on a southern drawl.

‘You got me cowboy. Great shot kid. Tell … little … Rosie … to … be … good,’ she finished her improvised death scene with a prolonged groan, then slumped back in her chair.

Samuel looked around, uncertain of how he was supposed to respond. Abe, the peacemaker, started clapping his hands and Samuel gratefully laughed. The other grown-ups looked slightly perturbed.

‘Say you’re sorry,’ warned Elsie.

‘Sorry.’

‘Great food Abe!’ Rog changed the subject. The group listened politely to recipes for marinades being intoned, fact checking (‘Was it black mustard seeds or nigella seeds?’) throughout. Then they listened to Sandy and Mick share their issues finding a suitable kitchen fitter.

After they’d finished eating, Tessa played a version of badminton with Samuel where the aim was to his the shuttlecock as high into the air as possible. Rog was sitting on the swing seat with his sister, watching.

‘So things are good.’

‘Yes. Tessa is just so … liberated. You know, I’m thinking of joining her. Weaning myself off. All I’m on now is Zealess and something for Slipped Disc Paranoia.’

‘Zealess? Isn’t that for Improbable Religious Fervour?’

‘Yup, apparently.’

‘I didn’t know you even went to church,’ murmured Elsie.

‘It was only a few times. I think I got it because I got baptised.’

‘Wow .’

‘So what do you think?’

‘No medication? It is insane. Why is Tessa a denier anyway?’

‘Her dad was Ernst Pauli.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘He was the last great psychologist, before it all went so … medical and psychiatric. A talking cure man, through and through. I have some of his books actually, he has a lot of interesting stuff to say.’

Elsie wrinkled her nose. Samuel and Tessa were on the grass in heaps, giggling at their failed attempt to retrieve the shuttle from the pear tree. Abe was going for a broom. The others made daisy chains with Oona.

‘I thought that was all bunk.’

Tessa wandered over while Abe and Samuel tried to knock down the shuttlecock.

Elsie said, ‘Sounds like you’re going to lead my brother astray.’ She didn’t deliver it good-humouredly.

‘Astray?’

‘No pills.’

‘Rog, you told her? Well, I don’t mind. And he’d be doing himself a favour. Everyone on this generation of medication is subject to mind-control. Every little human foible has been catalogued, pathologised. Have you seen the size of DSM-15? It fills nine volumes! Nine! Let me guess, you are on, what, five or six different pills? It’s a joke! You are just a person. It makes people stultifying, uninterested, robotic.’

‘It makes the world safer, more peaceful,’ said Elsie, a little lamely.

‘It makes it boring. Are you medicating your kids too?’

‘Samuel, yes,’ said Elsie carefully.

‘Horrid. Brainwashing …’

‘That’s enough, I think,’ cut in Rog.

Elsie was staring at him furiously. She was insulted by him, not her. She was reminded why they rarely saw each other, why her mother would complain about him for hours on the phone, why his reputation preceded him. Rog looked at his sister, trying to mask his hurt. He sighed.

‘We better go.’

Tessa was quiet now. She wanted to rail against misunderstanding, unquestioning, against dulling drugs, disengagement, to just explain. But the cult of reason was deafened by its own dogma; her father had taught her that.

‘Bye.’

‘Bye!’

‘Oh, bye!’

‘Nice to meet you!’

Abe closed the gate behind them. The remaining adults congregated back at the table, some unspoken compulsion acting. Elsie blew out her cheeks.

‘Sorry about them, everyone. He’s always been a wildcard.’

Leia’s eyes were bright. ‘Are you kidding? She was fascinating.’ Leia’s day job was writing press releases for a major pharmaceutical company. ‘She needs so much medication! I’m not an expert, but I’d say for Heightened Argument Sensibility …’

Riz leaned forward and chipped in: ‘Ungraded Elatism, definitely. You saw that giggling?’

‘Potential Superegoism,’ suggested Sandy. ‘She walked in just like that.’

‘Unbounded Communicative Trait,’ added Mick.

‘Silent Psychosis.’

‘Personality Protocrisis.’

‘Insufficient Demureness.’

While the lampooning continued merrily, Elsie sat back in her chair and smiled; now they really had something interesting to talk about.