Have a read of my prose poem, ‘When the New Boyfriend Nearly Died’ first published in Quadrant Magazine. The poem is included in my second poetry collection titled ‘Flat White, One Sugar‘, released this month by Ginninderra Press.
Hope you enjoy it.
When the New Boyfriend Nearly Died:
In the hospital’s public toilet, your face pleads back at you, white and worried. Far as you know, your new boyfriend had a heart attack while bouncing between your child-bearing hips. Too much of a strain. It’s not your fault. When he was admitted to Emergency you didn’t know if you’d ever see him again.
After five hours of waiting, you ask the receptionist if you can go in. When she asks you, you can’t pronounce his Polish surname. You spell out the letters. She considers you through the gap in the partition. You tell her you’re his new girlfriend. So you’re the one, she must be thinking before pressing the red button that lets you in.
He is lying in bed, a canula in his arm. His eyes are closed. You sit in a chair beside him and hold his hand. This would never have happened if it weren’t for you. Nurses and doctors hurry past clutching clipboards.
Don’t die on me, you plead.
If he dies, what you will miss are his text messages of love, the thwack of his body, and the pots of Japanese tea you shared. In bed you’d sip from tiny ceramic mugs.
You make a mental list of your strengths and weaknesses: you’re good at hedonistic pleasures, bad at Cryptics, bad at lonely Sundays, good at making new friends, bad at staying in touch, good at making loose-leaf tea after sex with an addict, good at falling for men who can’t stop swallowing uppers and downers. Good at loving your new boyfriend who took too many pills and now you’re worried he’ll die. Are you dreaming, or did he just squeeze your hand?
Have a read of my poem ‘Jogger At My Heels’ first published in The Canberra Times. It is one of the poems in my second poetry collection, ‘Flat White, One Sugar’ due for release by Ginninderra Press this year. 51 new poems by me, 21 illustrations by my granddaughter, Natasha Sommer, a graduate of The National Art School.
Have a read of my short story, ‘Painstaking Progress’, first published in Quadrant Magazine.
I hope you enjoy it.
Painstaking Progress:
I’m imagining a cloudy autumn morning. There’s a room. Half office, half bedroom. Not too large and not too small. The windows of the room face east and look out towards the ocean across the expanse of a green gully.
I picture a woman sitting on a bed with pillows behind her back. The windows are open. Perhaps it is Saturday morning. On the bedside table is a mug of tea and a photograph of the woman’s daughter on her wedding day.
The wind begins to stir the big trees outside and the morning haze is beginning to move and for a short moment the sun lightens the carpet and heavy dark wood furniture. The shadows of the curtains’ curves darken the floor, almost invisible to the woman on the bed. The morning sun lightens the CD player, the alarm clock, the piles of books stacked on the revolving Victorian bookcase.
She looks out at the water and at the triangle of beach. Sometimes it seems that nothing much changes out there, although on some days the waves break close to shore and at other times further out to sea. She can see it all from the bed, even at night time. The bed faces the beach and the ocean, and so does the desk. The room is like standing at the rail of a ship.
On the radio: ‘Waves, to me, are a reason to live,’ says the surfer. ‘When you see the roar, the jaws, there is nothing that touches it on the face of the earth.’
In June the twilight begins in the afternoon. The days close in on me, here in this room. The infinite possibilities in the sky and the sea and the possibility of nothing.
What is this writing life? It tears me to pieces every day.
Still no rain.
During a cool night, the drought continuing, my night mare is that I am stuck in a narrow laneway unable to turn back. I get out of the car to attempt to turn it with my bare hands. But when I turn around to pick the car up, it has disappeared. I took my eyes off it for one second and it disappeared. Gone in that second that I lost sight of it. The desperation descends on me.
I snap on the bedside light just before the dawn. Dawn through the gorge. Leaves slight in a breeze, the dark green of the Date Palms. This shy light is flashing a start to the day. In fifteen minutes the gorge will come alight in all its subtleties, water flowing across rocks, white butterflies.
Two paragraphs – and half the morning gone.
The driest May in over seventy years.
She’d been relieved when he left the room, so probably it’s already ending. But she isn’t sure. She pays close attention to the surroundings, to the people in tracksuits trudging through the sand on the beach, the noise of the traffic up the hill, the static that immerses the room. He glances at her. At first he looks at her as though he expects her to speak, but she doesn’t. So he says, Don’t worry, we’ll get through it. Then is silent. She doesn’t answer. She could reassure him, could say, Yes, that’s right, it’s a small thing, we’ll get through it. She says nothing.
He’d said he hates being lonely. She said she’s lonely, horribly lonely. He said: It’s a horrible thing loneliness.
Every day my father experienced a deep melancholy about living. Sometimes it lasted, sometimes it would vanish with the night. I had a father so desperate with sadness that sometimes even life’s surprises, those very special moments, couldn’t make him forget it. It happened every day. It would come on very suddenly. At a given moment every day the melancholy would make its appearance. And after that would follow the struggle to go on, to sleep, to do anything, or sometimes the anger, just the anger, and then the despair.
In the dream I was sleeping in a motel. I saw Father, like a floppy puppet with a wooden head, sitting on the far side of a room. He had strings attached to his hollow body and was unable to speak. The intensity of my grief woke me. I sat up on the big bed and I was by a lake, the sounds of a party under the window. Headlights bounced off the bridge and into the room through the thick curtains of the motel room. A small fridge clicked in the corner. I had been crying and the bones in my chest and in my cheeks were collapsed. I kicked the sheet off, curled around a pillow and stayed like that for the rest of the night. I became aware again of the powerful wind over on the beach and the waves curling and breaking and disappearing into the cold sand all the way along the Central Coast.
Today the sea is twice the depth of blue as the blue of the sky. The clouds change shape as I watch, drifting south, melting and thinning. At the end of the day their edges will be circled with pink.
When Tom came to visit the first time I was pleased he arrived in time to see the brief pink light on the gully. From the balcony where we ate we looked out over the round bowl of the gorge, ringed with blocks of apartments and filled with cypress and palm trees. Branches like whips; leaves every shade of green you can imagine. Rosellas and cockatoos. We heard the flock of kookaburras at dawn.
Then there’s the click of the front door. He walks in. His hair is tumbled, his lips stained with sunburn; she tells him he looks like he’s had a good time down at the beach and what a good arrangement it is turning out to be. He has something to tell her. Would she like a cup of tea first? He is going in to the kitchen to make one for himself.
No, no thanks. She’s had one already. But help yourself and then tell me what happened. He opens the door out on to the balcony, hangs his wetsuit on the railing. She watches him. Little by little he reemerges, becomes agreeable to her again.
Wait till you hear this, he says. Wait till you hear this story!
His eyes are large and open, nothing hidden. His hair curly and untamed. His white cotton tee shirt sticks to him, his thongs flecked with sand. His hands large and firm, although his voice is unsure, with a note of expectancy.
In late March I’d asked my aunt at the Montefore Home for memories of Father. ‘Your father!’ she’d said. ‘I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you about your grandparents. What I know. You ask the questions and I’ll try and give the answers.’
We were sitting at a round table in the cafeteria eating smoked salmon sandwiches and drinking tea when she said something that shocked me. She’d looked into her empty cup and then looked up at me. I’d started to stand up, but she’d motioned me down. She wasn’t finished. This aunt, almost bent double with the hump on her back who moved with the aid of a walking frame.
‘I felt very sorry for your mother,’ she said. ‘I think your mother’s life really improved after your father died.’
‘So what did you write this morning?’ Tom says.
‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’
He puts the mug onto a coaster and sits at the foot of the bed and looks at her.
‘Well, I’ve got something for you. Wait till you hear this.’ He takes a sip from his drink.
She gets up and turns the radio off, then gets back into the bed.
‘It’s an amazing story.’ he says. ‘It could be an idea for you, you know, something you might use,’ he laughs and moistens his lips. ‘The first thing was, I got up when it was light enough, at first light, and thought, I wonder what the swells doing. I’ll walk down to Tamarama and have a look. It was up enough so I thought, I won’t walk over to Bronte to check the swell out there, I’ll walk back up the stairs, get into my wetsuit and risk it, just go in, because I wanted to go in.’
She makes an approving noise and nods encouragement.
‘So I came back and got into my wetsuit and walked all the way back down and headed over to Bronte,’ he continues. ‘Sorry – I forgot a part there – there’s a bit of a side story. As I was going back up the stairs there was a bloke, surfer fella, went down with a blue Aloha surf board. Now remember that bit, Sof. Oh yeah, I thought. I wonder where he’s going. So I got into my wetsuit and locked the car and off I went down to Bronte. As I was walking along with my surfboard and this bloke with a goatee drove past and gave me a bit of a look. He looked at me and I looked at him wondering, What’s he looking at?’
Tom picks up his mug and looks across at her.
‘Remember that, Sofia,’ he says. ‘That bloke. That’s two fellas I’ve seen this morning.’
He laughs at what he can see is her impatience.
‘Getting closer, Sof. I’m getting closer. Then I ran. I was really stoked. Good waves, the swell was pretty good. It was much better this morning than it looked last night. So I ran down to the southern end of the beach because there’s a bit of a channel there near the rocks and you can have a go. A bit easier to get in. And I was sitting there on the sand. I was pretty tired. I’d run up those stairs and back down to the beach. So I’m doing a few stretches and then a lady came up. Starts talking to me. Said, Oh yeah the waves look all right this morning and said, Oh yeah, and Okay, and then, Have a good day. She’d had a bit of a chat and then she’d walked off. So then I was just about to walk in. No. No. Hang on. I was standing up doing some stretches and I looked out and the bloke was out there by himself. The one with the blue board.
‘He’d come in. And then he’s yelling out to me. Hey! Hey! Mate, mate! And so I thought, What’s going on here? What’s going on? He was the only one out there and I was going to be the second one. So I go over and that’s when this other bloke that I’d seen in the car appears on the beach. He was standing there too about to go in.’
‘It’s incest,’ a friend said, stirring sugar into her latte as the day closed down. ‘Except he’s not related to you.’
‘So this guy with the blue board came over,’ continues Tom, ‘and says, Mate there’s a big shark out there and look at the size of the bite mark on my board.
‘A bite mark on the board. I’d say it was that big,’ he says with wide hands. ‘The shark bit the whole nose off his board. He said he’d pushed the board into the shark.
‘The other bloke who’d looked at me in his car said, What will we do? I don’t think we’ll go in here, I said. And then one of the clubby guys came down and said, Oh – because all three of us were standing there looking at this guy show us his board. I said to him, Could you get the rubber ducky out and scare the shark off for us?
‘He said, Oh no. I can’t do that. And I wouldn’t recommend you go out there. And then he said, Well, enter at your own risk.
‘So then, Justin, the bloke in the car with the goatee said, Come on. Let’s go in. We’re umming and arring. He said, I might go in close and I said, I don’t think so. Because it’s pretty deep in close. So then, this bloke took off, the bloke with the blue board and showed everyone on the beach.
‘So is that a good story for you darling? Did I tell it well? Did I?’
‘Yes, Tom.’
‘You sent me out as shark bait!’
Sofia smiles and leans back on the pillows and pulls the sheet up under her chin.
She’d said: I want you to stop spending money on me. Stop buying me things. I don’t like it. He looked at her in surprise, asked, If that’s what you want, I won’t do it. I listen to what you tell me. Is that what you want? She said it was. He started to suffer here in this room, for the first time. He said he’d go home now if that’s what she wanted. She’d let him say it.
It’s on a family holiday at the beach. We’re together, him and us, his children. I’m five years old. My father is in the middle of the picture. I recognize the big grin on his face, the way he’s smiling, the way he waits for the moment to be over. His fixed grin, a certain tidiness to his dress, by his impenetrable expression. I can tell it’s hot, that he’s weary, that he’s anxious.
It’s sunrise over the water through the palm trees. The empty beach. Living by the sea, watching and waiting. Trying to find a way to connect the pieces.
She met Tom at a party she’d gone to alone, and then he danced with her, held her closer, asked where she lived. She didn’t often go to parties.
She wishes she could remember what they did that first day. She remembers sending him down the steps to look at the swell when he first woke up. ‘Have you got a pair of thongs I can wear,’ he said. They laughed when she showed him hers that would barely cover half his foot.
You settle into a comforting routine. Just the two of you. Get up early and look out at the swell. You show your granddaughter, four year old May Ling, his photo.
‘I’m not saying I don’t like him,’ she says. ‘But I don’t like his hair.’
‘What’s wrong with his hair?’
‘It’s curly,’ she frowns.
‘But I thought you liked curly hair. You told me I’m lucky because I’ve got curly hair.’
‘But not curly hair on a boy!’
The tables are occupied outside Café Q at Bronte, the blue and white awning is down. There is a spare seat on the lounge just inside the front door and I cross to it. The parking policewoman is kept busy checking the parking meters and writing tickets. The other regulars are here, the ones who come at this time of the day. The woman with the baby. And there’s the little white dog she ties up to the post box outside. It’s like sitting in a giant lounge room at this place. The waitress takes the baby outside to play with the buttons of the public phone. People get up from their seats and stand on the pavement watching for the white sprouts of water. Whales out to sea today.
Meanwhile the sky has turned into a light translucent grey above the pink glow of the setting sun. The sea darker out towards the east. Four spiked- headed palm trees, their trunks encircled in knots.
In the school holidays, I took May Ling to my niece’s house to play with her two children. Over a cup of tea I asked my niece for memories of her grandfather, my father. I told her I’d spoken to the aunt in the Monteforie Home and that I wanted to find these things out before everyone died.
‘A lot of them are dead already,’ she said. ‘I only know they were Russian.’
‘Russia and Poland. Your great grandmother was Polish. She was Ben Gurion’s cousin, first cousin.’
‘That’s really something!’
She told me she remembered him being sick most of the time. ‘Once I got to an age that I could remember things. I remember him as being sick, but he was quite a large presence really and I remember him in the big chair and he’d have trouble getting up and I’d often help pull him up. I really don’t have memories of him though. I remember the night he died and his funeral. It was at night. I was in bed and got up and realized that Mum and Dad were in the “grown up” lounge room and Dad went to the hospital and they’d actually said “that was it” because he’d been in hospital for awhile and I went back to my room and closed the door. I had photos of all my school friends on the back of the door and they all fell off. It was the spookiest thing. I didn’t slam the door or anything. I remember the sound of the photos fluttering to the floor.’
The clouds stretch across the sky and move south.
Tom rubbed her shoulder a little. It doesn’t really matter so much, does it, darling? Sometimes he massaged her feet and she would keep on reading. This time she pulled her feet out of his hands. He looked out at the dark blue afternoon sweltering on the sea, and sighed heavily and said he felt dreadful for upsetting her.
You have Sunday breakfasts. At the table next to you three young men talk about Rugby while eating poached eggs on toast. This cove at Clovelly that is protected from the ocean swells by the rocks. Iridescent green underside of flippers, bare-chested swimmers. Pigeons watch from the cement. Snorkellers looking for sightings of blue gropers and cuttlefish among the wildlife in this eastern beach. The occasional Port Jackson shark.
A plane flies through the low hanging cloud over the cliffs. A woman by the rocks on a stone bench pats the shoulder of the man beside her in a friendly loving manner. The man’s head, with its peaked white hat, scans the horizon.
The waves brush and break over the rocks that almost enclose the cove. Boys in flippers, snorkels and short wetsuits with heads down looking for the family of gropers. Another man ducks his head down into the sea, fills his goggles with water, then empties them. With head down he floats towards the steps.
‘There’s no need to be self-conscious,’ Tom had said in the early morning light. ‘There’s no need to be. It’s the person inside that’s important.’
Through the open door the same cool wind is breaking up the sea into chunks of moving white caps over there towards the horizon. Beside an upright and steady television aerial, down there near the beach, a palm tree sways in the breeze.
You find a photograph of your daughter when she was thirty. She’s on the balcony with her own daughter. She’s wearing a pale pink t-shirt and pearl earrings and her skin looks smooth and brown. Her smile is happy and bright. That’s not how she sees herself though, that attitude of someone happy in the moment.
He asks you questions about your family.
‘What about your father?’ he says. ‘What did he do? What was he like?’
‘My father was not an educated man,’ you say. ‘Although he was well read. He was the eldest in a working class family and he left school at the age of 8. He was a self-made businessman.’
‘I remember him as being very pale,’ she continued before deciding we needed more tea. ‘Very white hands. The translucent nails. Can’t say I knew much about his personality. Only his physicality. It’s very sad. Awful.’
Tom has strong muscled legs and large biceps. His arms grip so hard you have trouble releasing them and you can feel how tired they must get from all the paddling. In his new thongs he looks brown and taut. He is very proud of his ability in the water and is ready for any emergency between the waves. Several times a week he practices his maneuvers, conditions permitting.
‘You have fun with me don’t you?’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll get through it. Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.’
When your brother rings to see how you are, you say, ‘I had a good weekend with Tom.’
‘You mean your little surfie handbag!’ he exclaims.
‘Make sure he doesn’t get your money,’ your sister had warned.
‘What’s his name again?’ your eldest son said. ‘I keep forgetting his name.’
‘What do you expect me to say?’ said your daughter. ‘What do you want me
to say?’
On the radio: ‘It’s really a beautiful day. I think God’s out there having a swim.’
‘What did your parents say?’ you ask Tom.
‘Dad said, Go for it son. Mum said, Toy boy.’
‘We used to go to visit every weekend,’ she said. ‘On, I think, a Sunday afternoon. We’d go and visit them and he had his bedroom and he had an organ in there. And he turned the organ on for us while the grownups chatted. And I remember his bed, his space, the smells of his room. Not a nasty smell. You know, there was the smell of the books. It wasn’t a weak smell. It was quite hard really. A sharp smell. A sharpish smell. Not a horrible smell. Not a bad smell. I remember his pill box next to the bed. It’s the first time I’d seen one of those pill boxes that had the times of the day on it. And his little boxy room. And Nana had the gorgeous gilt bedroom you know, and this huge bed and it was like Arcadia to a little girl. And then he had a single bed. I couldn’t imagine such a large man in that bed.’
‘Papa’s room.’ She stumbled on the word, the name she used to call him, barely able to remember. ‘I can’t remember us playing in Nana’s room,’ she added.
Last night at the Sushi Train at Bondi Junction a friend said, ‘I chatted to a man while waiting in the queue at MBF this morning. An older German man. He was so interesting. I found his stories of Germany fascinating. There are stories everywhere,’ she added with a rising inflection in her voice and an arching of her eyebrows.
But how to tell them?
She mixed soy sauce into the wasabi paste. ‘So you don’t think you could love someone your own age?’
‘Love someone at any age.’
‘You don’t love him?’
‘The other day he said to me, You’re well-educated and intelligent. Sometimes I wonder what you see in me.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said what he wanted to hear. I said, You’re so handsome and such a good lover. I didn’t talk about my ambivalence.’
And the funeral? I said, reminding her that I was in South America when he died.
‘Such a big step in the recovery process is the funeral,’ she consoled me. ‘We lived in Bulkara Road and that steep driveway and there were stairs and everyone used to just go up and down the driveway instead of using the stairs. Nana was standing at the bottom of the stairs saying, “I can’t go. I can’t go. I’m not going.” Of course she went,’ she added softly.
‘And I wore …… odd shoes! Which I didn’t discover until later. Mum decided we were too young to go to the Crematorium so we went to the funeral – which I have no memory of now – I can’t remember where it was – funny. I remember going in the car and then Mum sent us home with a friend of hers. When we got to the friend’s house she gave us lunch and I realized my shoes didn’t match. My sister and I had two similar pairs of white shoes with little heels on them and I’d grabbed one of her shoes.’
‘I heard he died trying to pull all the tubes out.’
‘I didn’t know he had an operation. The children weren’t told. I remember the hospital, going there, walking through the courtyard. I don’t remember being in a room with him. Sick! Isn’t that funny?’
‘He asked me if he’d been a good father and did he marry the wrong woman?’
‘That’s why I think that I remember Nana saying, I don’t want to go to the funeral, it’s too upsetting. I always thought they were at war. I remember thinking, but he didn’t like you.’ She paused and looked at me, put her hand on mine. ‘Life’s not that simple though.’
Is there anything else you can remember?
‘I remember him being proud that I was smart.’ she said laughing at herself. ‘I remember it being a big thing for him. Which is sort of an old European thing.’
Tom’s skin is amazingly soft. A thin body, but strong in muscle tone. He’s almost hairless. Perhaps he’s weak, possibly too malleable, definitely vulnerable. She looks him in the face. Looks into his eyes. He touches her. Touches the softest parts of her, caresses her.
He is reticent to mix with the people she knows. He is just a boat builder, after all, and they may not take him seriously. Also, they might laugh at the way he speaks. They might laugh because this is the eastern suburbs of Sydney.
He does not consider himself to be intelligent, witty or articulate.
Sofia breathes in the salt air and remembers the taste of warm salt water on his skin. She pauses to watch as another wave rears up from the deep. A lone surfer out on the point. As she walks the surfer drops down the face of a big left-hander. He paddles into the path of the wave. Another wave and he’s kicking hard to mount it, rises to his feet before leaning into his first turn.
‘An around the house cutback is when you go out on to the face of the wave away from the pocket and turn back in to the whitewash and then rebound off the whitewash and back around,’ Tom said. ‘You’re really doing a cutback into a backhand re-entry off the foam. Two maneuvers in one. It’s a good point scoring maneuver, the one I use the most.’
‘Ask May Ling if she wants to come down for milk and cookies,’ my niece called out to her son.
‘And I have a memory of him at the Shabbas table and us crowding around him,’ she said. ‘But I think that memory comes from a photo, not from the real thing. How old was I when he died? He was very sick at my Batmitzvah. I would have been thirteen. He came out of hospital for my Batmitzvah and he came up to the Bima and I said, Can I put my arms around you? And I caught that he was wearing some sort of support thing under his shirt. I don’t know what it was and then I started to cry uncontrollably and everyone thought I was crying because it was my Batmitzvah, but I was crying because I felt that Papa was “not right”. And then he went back to the hospital and he didn’t come to the party. He’d made a huge effort to come to the Shule. You don’t remember, you don’t think about things at that age. I’d forgotten that memory and it came up. I remember thinking he was in a lot of pain and he struggled to be there.’
‘What do you do when you’re not working?’ Sofia asked Tom. ‘You’ve asked me that before,’ he’d said. ‘Not a great deal.’
‘I remember going to Nana’s house and the photos of her from before and I thought she looked just so glamorous. And going to Dad’s factory and he was working with Papa and they had a wall of stuff they’d brought back from other countries – he’d gone to Japan and brought things back and thinking he was Superman. Flying to other countries. But of course I’ve inherited Dad’s view of the world so I know that Dad, ‘the genius’, went into the family business and worked for his father for years and never really wanted to. Life was not what Dad wanted it to be – or was unable to accept what his life was – put it that way. I remember now, at the Minion at Nana’s house, Dad ….. I think he’d probably been drinking …. he was very emotional. He said if he hadn’t sold the business that his father would never had died and that he had all these regrets and on the one hand he wished he’d never been in the business and then on the other hand he wished he’d held on to the business. I think a doctor told Dad that Papa had nothing to live for because the business had gone.’
‘I heard him say that in hospital. I said to him there are so many things you can do now.’
My neice laughed bitterly, then said wistfully, ‘Yeah. All those grandchildren. I’m so proud of my children. Lovely family. That’s what’s important.’
‘Look at that,’ says the waiter looking out at the sea. ‘It’s coming from the east. You can never pick it this time of the year can you?’
He taps me on the arms, ‘Are you parked down the road?’
‘No. I’m on foot.’
I blow on the surface of the coffee, but it is still too hot.
A former heroine addict is being interviewed on the radio: ‘I was solemn, angry and unhappy,’ he says. ‘Determined to destroy myself. The heroin alleviated doubt, unease, discomfort.’
‘What was it like afterwards?’ asks the interviewer.
‘You feel very empty afterwards. I bottomed out. You have to decide, Do you want to live or do you want to die? It was a deep character flaw with me.’
On the radio: ‘Dangerous surf conditions with the time at five past nine.’
Have a read of my short story, ‘Around the World In Fifty Steps’. It was my first publication, back in 2001 when I’d just graduated with an MA in Professional Writing from the University of Technology Sydney. A heady time to see my name in a prestigious literary journal like Overland (progressive culture since 1954). I’d written the story originally as a synopsis for a book. Although the book never did find a publisher, I was very happy that the synopsis was published as a short story. Not bad for a high school dropout.
Around the World in Fifty Steps:
Joanna lives in a Sydney suburb with her two sons. It’s 1992 and Australia is in recession.
“I’m sick of licking arse in a service industry,” she says of her marketing business. “And I’m fed up with financial insecurity, the feast or famine of too many projects or not enough and chasing new business and getting clients to pay their bills.”
“I’m thinking of renting the house out and travelling,” she tells her grown up sons after reading “The Pitter Patter of Thirty-Year-Old Feet” in the Sydney Morning Herald.
“You’re ready to leave home are you mum?” said one son.
“Why don’t you just go on a long holiday instead,” said the other.
“I want a new beginning, a change of career, a new home, a community of people, an intimate relationship with a significant other, that sort of thing.”
“You could always get yourself a dog,” suggests a friend.
Her son moves out when she puts his rent up.
“Are you going to wait till he buys a new house for cash before you ask for a decent rent?” her mother had said.
“I’ve decided to go and live with Dad for a change,” says the other son.
“I’ll be away for six to twelve months,” Joanna says as she throws her client files on the rubbish tip.
She spends the spring in Italy. The summer in England, Scotland and Ireland, the autumn walking the gorge country of the Ardeche in France.
In the winter she rents a studio apartment in Villefranche on the French Riviera. The studio belongs to a friend of a friend so she’s able to get it at a good price. She works as a casual deck hand on one of the luxury cruisers in dry dock for maintenance. “The first thing I want you to do,” says her boss when she arrives at work on the first day, “is blitz the tender.” After a backbreaking morning of hard physical work cleaning the small run-about she goes to lunch. She orders a salad nicoise and a coffee and realises her lunch will cost her a morning’s pay.
A young and handsome French man who lives in Paris but comes to Villefranche to visit his grandmother most weekends, pursues her. Joanna comes to realise that French men love and cherish women as much as they appreciate good food.
She shops at the markets, paints and reads and falls in love with the light and the colours of the south of France.
“I’m able to live contentedly alone without a regular job, without a car, without speaking the language,” she writes to her friends back home.
In the summer she moves on again before the tourist masses arrive and the rent goes up.
She gives away to her new friends in Villefranche all the things that won’t now fit in her backpack but keeps her paint brushes and pallet knife.
On the Greek island of Skyros she joins a group of landscape artists led by a famous English painter.
“My purpose in leading this group is to help everyone find their own unique style,” says the woman.
Joanna spends the autumn in London meeting with other artists from the island and the woman becomes her mentor and they meet for a cup of tea every week and talk about the isolation of being an artist as well as many other things.
“It’s important to stop and regenerate before the creative battery runs flat,” she says.
Joanna paints every day and goes out with an English man named Clive.
“Your painting is vivid and alive,” says the famous English artist. “I’ll write you a letter of introduction to my contacts in Australia when you’re ready to exhibit this collection.”
Clive has a strong face with chiselled square cheekbones. Dark brown eyes and dark hair that falls in a square fringe on his forehead. His fingers are long and sensitive for playing the piano.
“What are you doing there?” her mother asks on the phone from across the ocean.
“I’m painting,” says Joanna.
“But what are you doing?”
“My mother is like a poisonous gas that can cross from one side of the world to the other,” Joanna says.
Joanna dreams about her sons every night and Clive tells her she cries in her sleep.
She yearns for the bright Australian light and for the sound of the ocean.
She returns to Australia for her eldest son’s wedding.
In Sydney, Joanna supplements her income from the house rental by getting a job as a casual for a clothing company. She unpacks boxes and steampresses the garments. Her back, neck and shoulders ache and she suspects she’s getting RSI from the steampresser.
Clive rings to say he’s coming to visit her.
In preparation for his arrival she moves all her furniture out of storage and rents a small place near the beach hoping that he’ll love it in Australia and decide to stay.
Two weeks before his arrival Clive rings to say he’s not coming and Joanna finds out through a friend that he’s met someone else and is moving in with her.
She tears up his photos and throws his Christmas present at the wall.
Joanna stops painting.
She reflects on the past and all that she’s lost.
I thought when love for you died, I should die. It’s dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on. Rupert Brooke.
Joanna stays in bed most days but still feels so tired that she can only remain vertical for four hours in any twenty-four hour period.
The phone stops ringing.
She rehearses her own death by going to the edge of the cliff.
From the edge she sketches the waves breaking on rocks, the lone seagull on the shore at the water’s edge.
At home she fills in the drawing, blending black charcoal and white pastel reminding herself the darkest hour is before the dawn.
And, after winter spring always comes.
Joanna sells the house where she lived with her children and spends half the money on a home unit overlooking the ocean and the rest of the money on Australian shares.
Her new home faces the east and she can smell the salt from the ocean.
“It takes twenty years to be a successful artist,” echoes in her mind.
On a new canvas she drags the colours of the sunrise across the blank white space.
Have a read of my short story, ‘Towards the End’, first published in Quadrant Magazine. ‘Towards the End’ is one of the tales in my collection, ‘Stories from Bondi‘ (Ginninderra Press).
I hope you enjoy it.
Towards the End:
He leaned back on the chrome chair, stretched his legs out under the square black table and placed his mobile phone in front of him. He looked over to the counter at the back of the cafe at the cakes and muffins on display and the Italian biscuits in jars. He turned back to the glass windows and wondered if he had the guts to tell her today. He wanted to. By Christ he wanted to. He straightened up, his elbows on the table, his hands clasped together in front of his face. There’d been some good times, that’s for sure. But what the heck. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.
The sliding glass door clanked open and Anny walked in. He looked over at her, first from the rear as she closed the door and then as she approached, her face flushed, her dark hair flying back from her shoulders. Not bad looking. A bit on the heavy side but not a bad looker all the same. Yes, there’d been some good times. Especially in the sack.
Anny removed her sunglasses as she walked over and he looked into the bright green of her eyes as she bent down and kissed him on the cheek. He felt the moisture on her face as her skin touched his.
She took off her sunshade and hung it on the back of the chair and sat down.
You’ll never guess what happened, she said.
What?
I’m still so angry I can hardly speak. She pushed her hair away from her forehead as she dabbed at the sweat with a serviette.
What happened?
This man, she said. This dreadful man. Anny used her fingers to wipe the moisture from under her eyes. I was walking along the cliff path from Bondi to Bronte, like I usually do, minding my own business, when I heard a jogger behind me.
Nothing unusual about that.
So I moved further to the left to let him pass.
Yeah. That’s the rules, keep to the left.
He must have been about to pass on the inside because next moment I heard a thud and there he was picking himself up from the side of the track.
Anny stopped talking as the waitress approached with notepad and pen.
A spaghetti marinara for me, said Daniel smiling at the waitress. And a coffee.
How do you like your coffee?
He grinned at her. Hot and black, thanks.
Anny turned away from him and squinted at the blackboard. I’ll have the Greek salad and a decaf skimmed cap. And a glass of water, please.
And I’ll have an orange juice as well, said Daniel.
Daniel’s eyes followed her as she walked towards the kitchen. Then his mobile buzzed from the table. He picked it up and held it to his ear.
Yep, he said. I can give them a ballpark figure, but that’s about it. Just a ballpark. Yeah, okay then. Here’s his number. Daniel opened the front of the phone and pressed a button. 0413 501 583, he said. He put the phone back on the table its antennae sticking out towards Anny. I hate it when people say things like that, he said.
What?
Oh nothing. Just the usual crap. They all think they can get something for nothing.
Daniel’s pasta arrived first and he began to eat. He sucked in a spaghetti tail and then impatiently cut some of the pasta with his knife. He dispensed with the knife and continued to eat with his fork. He scooped up the marinara with its splayed-like prongs.
So what happened? he said as he sucked in a loose strand of spaghetti, catching its long skinny tail with his fork.
He must have caught his foot on the edge between the footpath and the grass. I was about to say ‘are you all right’ when he roared out at me ‘it’s all your fault you know’. ‘I was keeping to the left’ I said. He ignored me and ran on, red shiny shorts flapping. How dare he speak to me like that. ‘Asshole’ I called out after him. He gave me the finger up sign and kept running. I was furious.
Daniel didn’t answer as he waited for the waitress to place a plate of salad in front of Anny. He blew on his pasta before placing another mouthful towards the back of his tongue, his thin lips closing over the fork.
When I reached Bronte, said Anny. This man had finished his circuit and was on his way back. We recognised each other and he started telling me off about which side of the path I could walk on. ‘Don’t tell me where to walk mate’ I hissed. That’s when he stopped jogging and moved towards me. I thought he was going to punch me.
Really?
I was a bit scared I can tell you, but I braced myself. That’s when he said ‘you’ve got some chip on your shoulder because you’re fat and ugly’. I laughed at him because it sounded so ridiculous and as far as that was concerned it proved my point. What an asshole. Just thinking about it makes me angry.
Daniel turned away from her. He couldn’t tell her now. Not after that. He looked out the window to the truck parked across the road. ‘Dean’s Premium Natural Fruit Juice: the way it should be’ emblazoned on the side. The way it should be. That’s a bit of a joke. Well I know this is the way it shouldn’t be. He couldn’t get Louise out of his head.. That last time – her tight white t-shirt over those tight little breasts – leaning over her plate. Eating that huge roll. The sight of her opening her mouth so wide he thought the sides of her lips would crack. Stuffing it in she was. Later at her place when he couldn’t wait. Coming up behind her as she cleaned her teeth. Ramming it in.
He tore the crusty white Italian bread into small pieces and used it to mop up the remains of the sauce and wiped the red sauce from the corner of his mouth. He reached for his glass and sucked up the remains of his orange juice through a yellowed straw, then burped. He put the glass down, his broad hand wrapped around the grooved surface and leaned across the table. He looked into Anny’s face.
I have to go.
Go where?
I’ll pay the bill.
What’s wrong?
I want to make a move on that Elizabeth Bay deal.
He stood up, his keys dangling from the loop at the back of his trousers, his rubber soled shoes silent as he headed towards the door. Only the sound of his keys and then the bang of the door.
Outside he pulled out his mobile and dialed.
I’m leaving now honey, he said. I’ll be there in a few minutes.
In the cafe Anny watched from the window. She sighed, stood up slowly and then walked over to the cake counter. He’s a workaholic that bloke.
I’ll have a slice of that chocolate mud cake and a cappuccino, she said to the girl behind the register.
Have a read of my short story, ‘Aunt Helen’ first published in Quadrant Magazine. ‘Aunt Helen’ is one of the stories in my collection, ‘Stories from Bondi‘ (Ginninderra Press).
I hope you enjoy it.
Aunt Helen:
Although she loved her nieces and nephews, it was when she turned thirty-nine that driving young children around in her car seemed to make her nervous—a tightening in the stomach. “Aunty Helen, would you like to take Naomi to see The Muppets? Are you free?” Always these requests from one of her sisters looking tired and desperate—one of her younger siblings, they used to be so close—and Helen would force herself to make the effort to be the good aunty. The responsibility of passengers in her car always made her anxious. She was anxious about one thing or the other most of the time, but wanted to appear selfless and generous-spirited. Her availability, or non-availability, was noted, itemised, either in her favour, or against her. She didn’t want to be labelled self-obsessed. She had entered an era when the nicest thing a person could say to her was, “You’re a fabulous aunty. The kids love you.”
My short story, ‘At the Festival’ was first published in Quadrant Magazine. It is one of the stories in my collection ‘Stories from Bondi‘ (Ginninderra Press): “The strength of Libby Sommer’s work is its engagement with the contemporary mores and sexual manners of urban Australian life.” – Amanda Lohrey, Patrick White award winner.
Have a read of ‘At the Festival’. Hope you enjoy it.
At the Festival:
It was six o’clock in the evening when she finally passed the wind turbines. There, at last, stood Lake George, where long-woolled sheep grazed the field and to the west the Brindabella mountain range was coloured grey and pink by the setting sun. On she drove along an ink-black strip of road where, on either side, tall green-grey eucalypts had formed a welcoming archway. The way flattened out then curved into a narrow empty road. Not one person did she see, not one building, just a handful of brown-bellied cows and later a group of kangaroos standing formidable and still in the headlights. The turn for Watson wasn’t clearly sign-posted but she felt confident in turning east along the row of liquid ambers in autumn bloom that took her to the cabins.
Twice on the journey she had pulled into a service station and shut her eyes and briefly rested but now, as she neared Canberra, she felt wide awake and full of energy. Even the dark length of road which progressed flatly to Reception seemed to hold the promise of a new beginning. She sensed the towering, protective presence of the mountain range, the forested hills and, further on, just past the turnoff, the clear, pleasant thump of music coming from the festival.
The receptionist gave her a key, and eagerly she drove further on to cabin number five. Inside, the room was renovated: the two single beds replaced by a double. The same compact kitchenette set into one end of the room but a new television secured to the wall by a multidirectional wall bracket. In between, on the bare linoleum floor, stood a small table laminated with melamine and two matching chairs. She set her keys and mobile on the table and reached for the electric jug for tea.
After filling the kettle with water from the hand basin in the bathroom, she pressed the remote to turn on the heating, then threw the slippery embroidered cushions from the bed into a corner of the room. Just between the curtains the row of early winter azaleas was quivering brightly under the security lights. She showered, lay down and reached for her Kindle and read the first page of a Katherine Mansfield story. It seemed like an engrossing tale but when she reached the end of the page she felt her eyelids closing, and reluctantly she turned out the light, although she knew that she had all day tomorrow, to work, to read and to walk along the Federal Highway to the festival.
When she woke, she grabbed at the tail of a flimsy dream—a feeling, like a wisp of gossamer—dissipating like the touch of a soap bubble; her sleep had been short and annoyingly elusive. She turned the kettle on and hung her clothes on the wooden hangers on the rack. She had brought little: a Kindle downloaded with books, a small esky of groceries. There was the laptop and several creased bits of paper on which notes were written with arrows and numbered inserts in between the typed paragraphs.
The sky was a calm blue lined with clouds. Up at the festival the Poets’ Breakfast would be underway already. She felt impatient to get there to collect her wrist band and program, although she also felt she could lie there on the big bed for days, reading and working, seeing no one. She was thinking about her work, and wondering how she would begin when her mobile alerted her to a text message. For several minutes the woman sat there not looking at the phone. She reached out not so much to read the message as to move past this distraction.
There was a vacancy after all for the Poetry Workshop.
When she put the phone down she turned on the heater again and returned to the Mansfield story. It had no plot or tight dramatic structure. The story followed a character as she prepared to hold a dinner party, sharing her anticipation and her disillusionment when things didn’t quite go to plan. At the end of the evening she realises her husband is having an affair.
Something about this story now put the woman in mind of how she had been at another point in her life, when she was contemplating moving in with a man who said he wanted her to live with him, a man she loved, but who had never said he loved her, as though the saying of it would bind him to her, or hide the fact that he didn’t.
Once, when she was getting ready for bed, she had stood at the mirror in her cotton nightgown brushing her hair and had sensed him watching her from behind. She was fatter then, and in her forties. He didn’t say anything but she sensed he didn’t like the look of her at that moment. Perhaps it was the practical night wear he didn’t like; or was it that he’d prefer her to wear something more seductive, briefer, more enticing?
She thought of him now as she looked out the window to the azaleas.
‘If you move in, I would not want you to make a claim on my money,’ he had said. ‘I want what I have to go to my children.’
His family, she had known, would always come first.
Now she felt a strong urge to write but told herself it was not something she could do, because she needed to get to the workshop on time. She would just be warming up when she would have to leave and the telling of the story would be interrupted and she would have to put her pen down. She did not like stopping once she was underway.
She cleaned up the breakfast dishes then hurried up the road by the liquid ambers to the Federal Highway. The path beside the road was overhung with trees. She put her hand on top of her head to protect herself from swooping birds.
When she found the workshop venue, she sat on a chair by the wall with the others as the last session packed up their musical instruments and left. When the Poetry tutor set up at a table they pulled their chairs around. She was a short middle-aged woman in a spotted dress and woollen cardigan.
‘Welcome everyone,’ she said handing out pieces of paper and blocks of ruled pages for those who needed them. ‘Move your chairs in closer. We’re only a small group.’
The tutor spoke to them about syllables, matching metre, the rhythm of poems. ‘You can get inspiration for your poems anywhere,’ she said. ‘A news report on the radio. A conversation with someone. Some people need a quiet place to write, and others can work in front of the television.’
*
She hadn’t really noticed him at the workshop, he must have been one of the people who had hung back, didn’t move their chairs in. But when she saw him again, outside the big marquee where the Bush Poets vs All-Other-Kinds-of-Poets debate was about to begin, she recognised his face. He walked up to her and smiled hello.
‘Do you write much poetry?’ His tone indicated he was respectful of people who devoted themselves to the written word.
‘A little,’ she said. ‘And you? Do you write?’
‘No, no,’ he said dismissively. ‘But I like going to poetry readings.’
At the end of the session in the marquee, when she saw him waiting in the aisle on the other side of the big tent, she rose from her seat and moved slowly across the fake grass floor in his direction. He stood there as she progressed to the exit until their paths crossed. His hair was thick and white and across his back, secured by thick straps, hung a slim and contoured cyclists’ backpack.
‘Hello again,’ she said.
‘Feel like a coffee?’ he asked.
‘Sounds good to me,’ she nodded.
‘Which place do you like to go to here?’
‘Whichever one has the shortest queue.’
‘Let’s try next door then.’
He stood in line to order their coffees and suggested she find somewhere for them to sit. ‘How about a slice of cake to share?’ he said. ‘They bake some good tucker here.’ He pointed to the end of the counter. ‘What about that coconut cake?’
‘Looks nice.’
He brought over the drinks and the cake and placed them on the table between them. He used a plastic spoon to cut the slice in half.
I don’t usually eat sugary things like this, she reminded herself. But it wasn’t something she’d expected, to be sitting here with a man.
He began telling her about his experiences at the yearly festival and how he liked coming each day to the Poets Breakfast the best to listen to people recite poems and tell long yarns. He’d been a regular since the death of his wife.
‘Why don’t you meet me here tomorrow?’ he said.
‘The breakfast is a bit early for me,’ she said. ‘But I’ll try and get myself up here in time.’ She wondered at that moment if she should be interrupting her morning work routine to join him. She would feel obliged to proceed in that direction rather than in the direction of where the work may take her.
*
Back at the cabin, she made herself a light dinner of tuna and avocado on toast, and ate at the table. When the dishes were rinsed and put away, she turned on the heater and lay on the bed and saw again the woman in the Katherine Mansfield story and the blissful happiness this character had felt preparing to spend the evening with friends who were soon to arrive for a dinner party. Is she blissfully happy because she is in denial about her husband’s affair? Or is she simply happy without that subconscious knowledge of betrayal? She took up her Kindle and began to closely read every last sentence again. As it turned out, the woman, on finding out about her husband’s affair, resigns herself to a life of loneliness.
She lay back and looked through the window and thought about the man with the backpack. Beyond the window was a darkening sky, and a thickly forested hill.
‘I am fifty-five years old,’ she said, her voice sounding stupid and shrill in the austere room.
*
The next morning she got up early, showered and dressed quickly. She looked at herself in the mirror, brushed her hair until it shone, then picked up her jacket and walked back along the road to the festival gates. Out over the hills a thick mist wound its way between the peaks, a soft belt of white embracing the contours of the valley. The shuttle bus that would travel from the Main Ticket Office to the Entertainment Zone was waiting.
‘Slam the door behind you love,’ said the driver when she climbed in.
As the bus circled the main campground she looked out at the people still asleep in their cars and vans, some in the pre-erected Rent-A-Tents, others under canvas beside their cars, their washing strung up on the support ropes: towels, t-shirts, shorts.
The woman beside her pointed out the window. ‘Look. There are the smalls,’ she laughed.
It was cold when she stepped off the bus. Never had she seen the place so quiet, so empty of people and music—the grassed areas and the wide gravel avenues all deserted—although the food stalls were opening their shutters. She wondered what time the place would come to life again and where she could get a hot drink.
The thing was, she really should be back at the cabin working at her desk. She could quickly walk to one of the gates, hop on a shuttle bus and return to the room. Instead, she stopped at one of the rectangular Water Stations to fill her paraben-free bottle. A volunteer, in distinguishing bright yellow vest, was using a hose to refill the dispenser.
‘Is it plain tap water?’ she asked.
‘Clean Canberra water,’ he said proudly.
‘The same as in the Ladies?’
‘Yes. Pure water, but a better atmosphere.’
She laughed, then looked around and saw a bearded man in moleskins, singlet top and akubra hat boiling water in huge vats over a roaring fire. Awkwardly, she stepped over the logs to a table set up with Billy Tea and toasted damper for sale.
She sat there at the fire and kicked at the earth beneath her feet as the golden line of the sunrise made its way above the line of trees. She found herself relaxing into the moment as warmth spread down and over her face and neck and into her shoulders. This, she said to herself, is where she should be, at this moment, in her life.
On the branch of a tree a large-beaked bird purposefully surveyed the terrain, his head moving rapidly from left to right before he hopped to another branch. He was not a pretty bird, ink black feathers, and what looked like a white mask circling his eyes, as if he’d donned a Zorro cape before he’d flown out of the house. He flew down to the edge of the gravel path where it merged with the grass, oblivious to the pigeons already scratching in the dust. He pecked at the road, then stopped, loosened his wings, and swooped back up to his eyrie in the tree.
Sitting there, watching the bird do battle with the pigeons for tiny treasures, she’d thought of her work. The mug of tea was hot and satisfying, the treacle spread thickly on the damper. While she savoured the smoky bread and the sweet orange-coloured treat, a part of her mind was also pre-occupied with meeting up again with the man with the backpack. She wondered, for a moment, what colour his eyes were, exactly how tall was he? Tall, but how tall?
At eight thirty she walked down the path past the Circus tent towards the Poets Breakfast marquee. She paused at the entry looking for him. She stood there a moment then made her way to sit down beside him.
*
On the Sunday, after a week of spending each day together at the festival, attending events and sharing stories of their lives over coffees and cake and beers and takeaway meals, she couldn’t see him at their usual meeting place, so waited just outside the tent. When she glanced around and saw the back of a tall man with a contoured backpack enter the marquee, accompanied by a woman, she wasn’t sure if it was him at first. She waited in a spot where she couldn’t be seen as they sat down side by side. She watched as the woman took a health bar out of her handbag, bite into it, then give him the other half. Her hand rested on his thigh.
So, he wasn’t single after all. What a stupid mistake she’d made. She stood there watching the two of them, feeling angry, with him and with herself. Had she learnt nothing? A woman of her age. What had she expected? What had she wanted from this man?
It was late when she returned to the cabin. A whole week had passed her by but there she found herself, back at the desk, looking out at the hedge of azaleas. There was a highway out there, a mountain range and forested hills standing erect and dignified. She thought of the Katherine Mansfield’s character, Bertha who was deceived by her husband. She thought of the tall man and how he’d divided the slice of cake to share with her that first day, and began to imagine the life he must have with the woman. There was a power point located under the table, she plugged her laptop in and turned it on. Not until she typed in her password and heard the ‘ready’ chime did she realise she was struggling to control the shaking of her fingers over the keyboard.
Canberra Folk Festival, she typed, and the date. She thought of the woman’s hand on the man’s thigh, and for no reason her breath caught in her chest. She wanted to say what it was like when he’d introduced his partner and how he’d invited her to join them for coffee.
‘This is Elaine,’ he’d said. ‘She had nothing to do today.’ He’d said the words with apology in his tone. Was it an apology?
She’d stood in line beside him to place their coffee order and had insisted on paying her own way this time. Elaine waited at the table. When they’d returned with the drinks she’d noticed Elaine had removed the man’s small cyclists’ bag from the chair between them and relocated him beside herself at the end.
And then Elaine’s questioning: Why have you come all this way? Where are your friends? You did come to the festival with friends didn’t you?
Several times as she typed she thought of the Bertha character who’d resigned herself to a life of loneliness. At one point she stopped and looked at the moon’s position in the sky. When she glanced up again the moon was concealed behind a thick layer of cloud. By this time, her central character was following part of the Tour de France route on his new lightweight bicycle. She went over the paragraph where his bike strikes a curb near Chamonix in the French Alps—his body limp and unconscious on the road—and realised her back was aching. When she got up she felt stiff but satisfied. She looked out at the moonlight now hitting the hedge of azaleas and anticipated a good night’s sleep. As she turned the kettle on, she lengthened her spine and was planning his months ahead in the Geneva hospital, and his slow and very painful road to recovery.
Have a read of my prose poem, ‘Tell Me What Happened On New Year’s Eve’, first published in Quadrant Magazine. Hope you enjoy it.
Tell Me What Happened On New Year’s Eve:
I’d looked out the top-floor hospital window towards Coogee to the night sky lit by fireworks and saw the miserable face of the moon and thought that I’d never felt as detached from life as at that moment. At the same time, I realised that I probably felt so despicable due to the weeks spent lying in hospital and the excruciatingly slow and painful road to recovery. By sheer force of will, I stopped looking at the dark mirror of the moon. No one could have told me how much the distant celebrations, the sound of the explosions and the changing shapes and colours of the fireworks could jolt me into the present and away from the unbearable lethargy, the severed muscles and tendons and the nausea caused by the drugs and pain killers. Was it that I could sense, without glancing up again, that clouds were making their way across the moon and that made me realise: how would it be to feel this would be your last new year?
Have a read of my flash fiction, ‘It’s Pot Luck When You Move Into A Unit’. My story was the winning entry in the UTS Alumni Short Short Story Competition and was first published in UTS Writers Connect.
It’s Pot Luck When You Move Into A Unit:
A nice quiet weekend? the woman downstairs said. What do you mean? I said, through the open back door, a bag of rubbish in each hand. She smoothed her ironing on the board and said, They weren’t around over the weekend—with the baby. She looked happy. I’m lucky living on the top floor, I said. She nodded towards the other side of the building. Jim isn’t so lucky—he’s got the woman upstairs, she said, When he plays the piano and she thumps on the floor. She put the iron back on its stand. She’s heavy-footed, that woman. Bang, bang, bang. I hear her coming down the stairs every morning at six, and the slam of the front door.
That night the wind knocked my vase off the window ledge. I lay awake wondering if the noise of the smash had woken up the people underneath—the ones whose barbecuing sends smoke and disgusting meat smells into my unit. Nothing clings to your furniture like the stink from last week’s burnt fat. Sorry about the crash, I muttered to the floor, It was the wind.
Have a read of my micro-fiction, ‘Undulations’, first published in Quadrant Magazine.
Undulations:
So we’re sitting in Melbourne in a vegan restaurant reminiscing about our school days spent mucking-up in the back row and Jane (her hair still red, short and frizzy, like childhood) remembers daring me to ask our fourth-grade Geography teacher how to spell ‘undulations’. What? “Because I wanted to write her a message,” Jane says. “An unsigned message saying, ‘The way you run your hands over your boobs to demonstrate undulations is disgusting,’ but didn’t know how to spell it. So I told you that if you were my friend, you’d ask her. You know how she always said to speak up if we couldn’t spell something? For some reason she wrote the word down on a piece of paper, rather than on the blackboard. Maybe she thought you couldn’t see properly from our eyrie. So you got back to your desk and passed it to me under the chair. I wrote in my best handwriting, ‘Your demonstrations of undulations are gross,’ blotted it carefully, and placed it furtively on her table after the recess bell had cleared the room. When we filed in after lunch, I saw her open it up.” Jane taps me on the arm enthusiastically. “What happened then?” I say. “Was she angry? Did she think it was me? Did I get punished?” How forgetful was I? Jane had mastered the art of getting the ink from the inkwell to the pen nib to the paper—no ugly blotches—her cursive as good as a professional engraver’s. Even after all this time, she still prefers a fountain pen and has a proclivity for setting wrongs right. “She threw the chalk in the bin, reached for her cardigan and draped it over her shoulders,” Jane says, grinning. “Yes, that’s what happened. And she didn’t demonstrate undulating landscapes on herself or on any of us ever again.”
Libby Sommer, Author 