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.”
When I used to teach classes to beginning writers, it was good. It forced me to think back to the beginning to when I first put pen to paper. The thing is, every time we sit down and face the blank page, it’s the same. Every time we start a new piece of writing, we doubt that we can do it again. A new journey with no map – like setting off towards the horizon alone in a boat and the only thing another person can do to help is to wave from the shore.
So when I used to teach a creative writing class, I had to tell them the story all over again and remember that this is the first time my students are hearing it. I had to start at the very beginning.
First up, there’s the pen on the page. You need this intimate relationship between the pen and the paper to get the flow of words happening. A fountain pen is best because the ink flows quickly. We think faster than we can write. It needs to be a “fat” pen to avoid RSI.
Consider, too, your notebook. It is important. The pen and paper are your basic tools, your equipment, and they need to be with you at all times. Choose a notebook that allows you plenty of space to write big and loose. A plain cheap thick spiral notepad is good.
After that comes the typing up on the computer and printing out a hard copy. It’s a right and left brain thing. You engage the right side of the brain, the creative side when you put pen to paper, then bring in the left side, the analytic side, when you edit the print out as you settle back comfortably with a drink (a cup of tea, even) and read what you’ve written.
Patrick White said that writing is really like shitting; and then, reading the letters of Pushkin a little later, he found Pushkin said exactly the same thing. Writing is something you have to get out of you.
Whether writing a story or writing a blog, start writing, no matter what.
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.
A fantastic example of this writing advice is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.
Poignant and hilarious, threaded with compassion and, behind everything, the cataract of a thundering moral statement. – The Boston Globe
Kurt Vonnegut’s absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut’s) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.
Don’t let the ease of reading fool you – Vonnegut’s isn’t a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, “There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.”
Slaughterhouse-Five is not only Vonnegut’s most powerful book, it is also as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author’s experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut’s other works, but the book’s basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy – and humor. – Goodreads
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.”
Have a read of my prose poem, ‘The Backpack” first published in Quadrant Magazine. Hope you enjoy it.
The Backpack:
What can a man who meets you at the station and offers to carry your backpack mean to a woman traveling the world alone?
I was scared, like anyone who has no sense of direction. The journey was a series of stops and starts. Whether to use the Eurail pass or post it back home and ask the kids to get me a refund. Giovanni appeared one European winter, thick padded jacket, woolen beanie, scarf and gloves, tall and imposing, I’ll carry your bag.
I was small, the backpack the length of my spine, the zip-off bag on one shoulder, the daypack positioned in front like a nine-month baby bump. That evening, as we climbed the steps of the Corniche – the wind bitter across the Mediterranean, the metal stairs covered with slippery ice, the railing melting beneath my hand. Soon it would become my railway platform, my steps, and Giovanni my landlord.
We walked there in the crisp night air. My own place. It didn’t cost much. No-one yet knew I was here. I could ask Giovanni if I needed any help. I knew my children would be pleased I had a base. I didn’t want them to worry. It was the thing I wanted the most secretly, studying maps, absorbing travel books. To be safe, a desire whispered to the moon that moved behind my shoulder at night. If you guide me to a safe haven I promise to be happy. And the moon listened. I did my best.
The winter sky closed down and the spring began its flowering. I took photos and painted and rang the children every week. Watch your money, don’t talk to strangers, be careful walking at night – you know the drill. The pebbly beach, the weekend markets, it was all there for the exploring. A glimpse of the sea between terracotta roofs – a vision in turquoise. The cobbled streets could show which way to follow – and none of them wrong. A room at the top of the stairs – till June I stayed reading the English books Giovanni had left in the bookcase, shopping for food, telling my kids and friends they should come for a visit.
Where had the months gone? Almost two years on the road. Summer approached. The rents would go up and the tourists arrive. Time to move on. I could only take with me what I could carry on my back. A Jewish gypsy they said. One more step into the unknown. Pack up, give away what I couldn’t manage, but keep the palette knife and miniature easel. There was stuff happening back home. The boys were grown and earning a living. Their sister turned twenty-one. People were reinventing themselves all over the place then coming back home. A thousand train rides later, my mother nearly eighty. I won’t be around much longer, she cried.
His was a helping hand in a world that says, but what are you doing there? What are you doing?
This is an old one, but a good one. Tell Don’t Show.
What does it mean exactly? It means don’t tell us about loneliness (or any of those complex words like dishonesty, secrecy, jealousy, obsession, regret, death, injustice, etc) show us what loneliness is. We will read what you’ve written and feel the bite of loneliness.
Don’t tell us what to feel. Show us the situation, and that feeling will be triggered in us.
When you take your child to school on their first day you may find yourself teary and relieved at the same time. Put into words what you see: the child’s face, the wave at the gate, the other mothers saying their goodbyes, another child coming up to take your son by the hand. We will get what you’re trying to say without you telling us directly.
The how-to-write books tell us to use our senses when we write stories: sight, sound, smell, touch. Writing from the senses is a good way to penetrate your story and make friends with it. Don’t tell us about something, drop deep, enter the story and take us with you.
What about you? Do you consciously bring the senses into your creative writing?
Have a read of my short story, “Tom”, first published in Quadrant Magazine. “Tom” is one of the self-contained chapters in my novel-in-stories, “The Crystal Ballroom” (Ginninderra Press). “The Crystal Ballroom”: stories of love and loss in the singles dance scene.
Tom:
May Ling steps across the skipping rope. I’m waiting for her with her baby brother, outside the school hall, but she hasn’t seen me yet. Every Thursday when she finishes her Hip Hop class I hang about with the other mothers and grandmothers and carers. It’s a routine I enjoy—walking up here with the baby in the stroller and then chatting with May Ling as we walk home.
May Ling is my son’s daughter. She has straight black hair and brown almond eyes, slim legs and tiny hands. Her hands are artistic: she draws beautiful pictures. In her black strappy shoes and blue-and-white school dress that falls below her knees, she looks very grown-up.
The park is on the bend of the road that leads to the school. There is a sandpit, swings, slippery dip, climbing chains and a rocking horse. We put our things down on one of the wooden benches on the perimeter of the park and sit in the shade of the trees. I unpack the afternoon tea: three apples, two bottles of water, rice crackers, sultana biscuits, peanut butter sandwiches.
The other mothers and carers come over and start up a conversation. What beautiful children. How old are they? What nationality?
‘Their mother is Chinese,’ I explain.
Some women are envious; they wish their own mothers would mind the children when they go to work or play golf.
I’ve got the bucket and spades and the plastic rakes hanging off one of the handles of the stroller ready for the sandpit. I keep them in the boot of the car between visits. Also in the boot is the collapsible stroller, the picnic blanket, the extra booster seat, the beach chair and the Cancer Council tent all folded up tight in its blue bag. I’m prepared for all possibilities.
When we leave the park we stop outside the rose garden of the RSL club so May Ling can pick a flower to take home to her mummy. Sometimes we sing a song from The Wizard of Oz. Today May Ling is chanting, Where’s my daddy? Where’s my daddy? I’d said to her that he might drive past and give her a lift like he’d done once before.
Ingrid said she’s surprised that with all his qualifications he can’t get a job. I said he doesn’t want any job. It has to be the right job, even if it takes him six months—yet again—to find it.
Last week I was standing in the kitchen at his house and he was rinsing the plates on the bench and stacking them into the dishwasher. I told him that May Ling had asked if mummy and daddy were getting a divorce. He laughed and said he would have to tell her to stop telling me things. ‘Don’t stop her from talking to me,’ I said. ‘Everyone fights. I told her that.’
After dinner and when it’s time for him to go upstairs to run a bath, I say my goodbyes. I am not allowed to go up because they all get in the bath together. He gives me a couple of chocolates from out of the fridge to eat on my way home before kissing me on the cheek at the front door.
‘Drive carefully, Sofia,’ he calls out as I head towards the car.
When I’d told him about the split-up with Tom he’d said he could never understand what on earth I’d seen in the man.
Doctor Ross had said that a lot of people continue in a relationship because they don’t want to go through the pain of breaking up. ‘In six months time you won’t feel a thing,’ he said in an effort to reassure me.
I shrugged. ‘The grandchildren won’t be pleased.’
‘Grandma’s broken up with her surfie boyfriend.’ he joked.
*
A seagull, wings flapping calmly and evenly, passes this place where I sit. It’s a crescent-shaped bay on the harbour where a man and a woman walk hand in hand along the beach, their dog running ahead. Tiny ripples on the water drift gently towards the shore.
Tom seemed calm at first, after I said what must have disappointed him, but then he became withdrawn and went into the bathroom. He cleaned his teeth and then came back out. He pulled the sheets back on the bed. He got in and appeared to fall asleep straight away.
‘Good night,’ I said to his back.
‘I thought I said goodnight,’ he said, turning towards me.
‘Goodnight,’ I said kissing him on the cheek.
He turned away again.
I can see now that Tom felt out of his depth at my younger son’s wedding and I feel remorse for hurting him.
Ingrid had counseled: ‘His mother probably said to him, “I told you she’d drop you after the wedding”.’
A row of tall dark cypress trees shield the beach from the road. On one of the wooden bench chairs by the water sits a woman dressed all in black.
‘What’s your mother like?’ I asked.
‘She sits in a corner and does what she’s told,’ he said. ‘I sat up with her last night and we watched a movie. What do you think of that?’
‘I think it’s dreadful—dreadful that you’re still living there with your parents.’
‘It’s very difficult for me. Very difficult. It’s the money.’
‘What do you want from him?’ his mother said to me, unable to hide the hatred in her voice, when I’d called that one time.
I told Tom what his mother said.
He wanted to say to her: ‘Are you pleased—are you pleased now? Have you got what you want?’
So now I am back to how things had been before, alone at nights, and as though he had never existed.
In the school holidays May Ling usually stays for a day or two at my place. One day recently she came running up the steps carrying a drawing and a poster of a horse. I came out to meet her, wiping my hands on the chequered tea-towel. I’m sure my face was flushed from the heat. May Ling’s floral skirt was almost to her ankles as she kicked off her shoes at the back door. I said to her that she looked as pretty as a picture.
‘Do you have the photos? The ones of daddy when he was a baby? I’ve been waiting all day to see the photos.’
‘Yes, yes. Come on in and we’ll get out the album.’
The last of the sun’s light slanted through the blinds as we sat side by side turning the pages. ‘You don’t look anything like you used to look,’ she said.
‘It was a long time ago,’ I sighed. ‘My hair is not the same. Poppy looks very different too, don’t you think?’
She shook her head. ‘No. He looks the same to me. Poppy looks the same.’
‘It must be my hairstyle.’
‘Why did you and Poppy divorce?’
‘I got married too young. I was only a teenager.’
‘Did you have a fight?’
I didn’t answer so she moved the conversation on to the split up with Tom. She’s let me know several times that she’s upset about it and can’t understand why it’s happened.
‘And what about you and Tom and your divorce?’ she asked, rolling her eyes upward. ‘Or whatever you call it. The divorce that isn’t a divorce. Did you have a fight?’
‘Yes, I told you before.’
‘What about?’
‘It was about a couple of things.’
‘What did you fight about?’
‘I told you one of the things.’
‘I’ve forgotten. What things?’
‘It’s very hard to tell you because you’re only six years old and you mightn’t understand.’
‘Tell me and I’ll tell you if I understand.’
‘Well it’s hard to say exactly. Like, can you put into words why you didn’t like that teacher at school, except that she expected too much of you?’
‘Yes. She asked us to draw our favourite place. I said, Port Stephens is my favourite place but I don’t know how to draw it. She said, Just do it, and didn’t give me any help. Miss McDonald used to help us do things. Not, Do this, Do that. So, there I’ve said it. It’s your turn now.’
I was uncomfortable having this conversation with May Ling. Her father has warned me that she will persist and persist and persist until she gets the answers and the more you try to escape her questions the more she persists. May Ling is not like other six-year-olds. Her parents treat her as an equal and she appears to be very mature. She knows I met Tom at a dance. It was a ‘meet your match’ dance and you had to choose a name for yourself from the name cards laid out at the front door when you arrived. Like Batman and Robin, Bec and Lleyton. You chose a card and had to find your matching partner. He selected Tarzan and I chose Jane.
‘Well, I told you the bit about the photo,’ I said.
‘What photo?’
‘When I saw the photo in his wallet. It was a rude picture.’
‘A bare bottom?’
‘No, the top half.’
‘Of a friend?’
‘No. He cut the photo out of a magazine.’
‘Who was she?’
‘No-one he knew. Just someone he’d cut out of a magazine. There was no photo of his sons or of me.’
‘I don’t think that’s so bad,’ she said. ‘What else happened? You said there were two things?’
‘He was a lot younger.’
‘You could have said your birthday came before his.’
‘Well what do you think would be a good reason?’
‘If he found another girlfriend.’
Outside a van rounded the bend of the road and disappeared down the hill with a swooshing sound. After a pause I said: ‘I remember now why we split up. The problem was that I didn’t love him and he said he loved me.’
She frowned. ‘Well, let’s play a game. One of us is Tom and the other one is you and we have the fight.’
‘No, darling. Let’s go upstairs and have a story. It’s late. It’s already past your bedtime.’
‘Let’s do it, Sofia. I’ll be Tom.’ She scowled at me her brows knitted in a triangle. ‘Oh Sofia,’ she pleaded.
‘If you go to bed now I’ll let you choose the story or otherwise I’ll chose it.’
She crossed her arms with a ‘Humph’. Then, ‘Well show me how you used to dance with Tom. You said that’s where you met him.
Taking her hand I said, ‘Come on, darling.’
We went up to her bedroom and she looked through her bookcase carefully for the appropriate story. No Dr Seuss or The Little Mermaid tonight. Instead she decided on Beauty and the Beast: the story of a man who is unable to love someone, so he’s turned into an ugly beast.
*
It was dark in the lounge room, but I didn’t open the shutters. I didn’t feel anything in particular, no hate, no repugnance. I had agreed that he could come when he asked the previous evening. I paid close attention to the sounds, to the light, to the noises in the
park next door that had enveloped the room. He looked at me stretched out on the couch expecting me to speak. I didn’t look him in the face. Didn’t look at him at all.
‘You’ll see,’ he said. ‘It will be better this time. Things will be better.’
He removed my shoes, threw them on the floor. ‘So you’ll give me another chance?’
He knelt beside me. Didn’t say any more that he loves me. Said, ‘It’s a comfort to know we’ll keep seeing each other.’
I didn’t answer.
‘That’s all I want,’ he said. ‘Just to know I’m going to see you.’
He unzipped my jeans.
‘You know it will end again,’ I said.
‘Not too soon though. Will it?’
Slowly. Slow, patient. With my eyes shut. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m prepared to take the risk,’ he said. ‘I want to. I don’t want to not see you again.’
I stroked his hair.
He pulled off his T-shirt. Undressed himself.
A seagull, wings flapping gently and evenly passes this place where I sit. He skirts the line of the beach between water and sand and finally comes to rest on the top rung of the railing that defines the path to the beach.
‘Sex is good for you,’ the female doctor had said, moving back to her desk. It was a routine examination.
‘Us women need the testosterone,’ she added with a little smile.
I’d wanted to end it again, it must have been for the fifth time. After the phone call I felt angry and wanted to tell him not to come. I was letting him visit against my will, since I was still angry. The next night and for several nights after that I wanted to tell him not to come. He’s conducted himself in a way that disgusted me. He denied he’d had a couple of drinks and said he was tired, that no, he hadn’t been drinking, he was just tired.
I was silent at first, after he said what repulsed me, but then he sensed my lack of warmth and said he’d call again before the weekend. He asked who I was going out to dinner with and I say it was a married couple, some friends who had invited other friends of mine but I didn’t want to include him in the invitation because he’d feel uncomfortable with these people and this would make me ill at ease too. He could come on the Friday.
‘You were waiting for him to grow up, but he hasn’t,’ Dr Ross had said forcefully, with intention, as was his way. ‘It won’t work. You’ll get bored with him again. You don’t like the uncertainty. You’re in control in this relationship. You’re the adult. He’s the child. It’s your call—your choice. I just try to give you support.’
*
The wind blows from the south. The waves soften at their edges. May Ling is playing in the sand with her red bucket. She’s looking for schools of fish to catch, the white plastic ice cream container full of shells and sand and seaweed. Her small fingers rearrange the pieces of her collection. A seaplane labours against the wind, not quite balanced between sea and clouds.
‘May Ling,’ I call out. ‘Look at the seaplane.’
She looks up through the brim of her black eyelashes then walks up towards me.
‘Look what I’ve got,’ she says, opening her fingers.
‘What sugar plum?’
‘Shells.’
‘Have you ever collected shells before?’
‘No.’ She puts them into the plastic container filled with seawater and sand. ‘A fish tank,’ she says proudly.
‘Do you like this beach?’
She shrugs. ‘It’s not too bad.’
She walks back to the water’s edge, tiptoeing between the rocks and the flotsam and jetsam that the waves have left on the shore, skipping across the moss-covered stones.
‘Sofia , can you come in with me?’ she calls out. ‘Come into the water and help me catch some fish.’
There is the sound of the waves lapping the shore. Butterflies—mostly turquoise and black—more colour than the birds, flit between the branches and flap in front of the harbour. The sea plane finishes its circling and lands not far from the beach.
‘There’s something so wonderful about watching the waves,’ Tom had said. ‘Especially when you’ve just been out there, and come back in. Afterwards I always like to just sit on the sand and watch the waves.’
May Ling comes back up to where I sit under a tree on the grass. ‘I’m hungry,’ she says. ‘Did you bring anything to eat?’
I reach for the cooler bag and unzip it. ‘What would you like?’
May Ling looks in at the food and frowns. ‘Is that all?’
She reaches for a small carton of apple juice and sips quickly on the straw before handing it back.
‘Isn’t it any good?’
She smirks. ‘It tastes off.’ She turns around and walks back towards the sea.
‘It tastes fine to me,’ I call out.
She yells from the water’s edge: ‘Sof, can you come in?’
The water is all green and slippery shimmering in the sunlight.
*
Yesterday I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant after a visit to the gym. It was not unusual for me to be there at that time, no more unusual than all the other people sitting alone on bar stools as the small containers of food did their revolutions. Jason, a friend I hadn’t seen for a long time was manipulating his chopsticks with great intensity. He was greying, confident, but struggling to attract patients to his new psychology practice.
‘They can see value in spending money on a massage,’ he complained, ‘but not in a visit to someone like me.’
After we talked about our work and our families and our lives in general under the glare of the fluorescent light, he raised his eyebrows and gave his opinion on the relationship with Tom.
‘I have to be honest. I feel very angry. If it was a man in the same situation people would say, dirty old man. But for a woman it’s okay. Someone that age has a prick that’s ready morning, noon and night. I’m more interested in a mature woman—someone I can really talk to. I’m not interested in young women. They might have great bodies but that doesn’t do it for me.’
*
‘What do you think, Sofia, do they look okay? Is this what you’d imagined I’d wear to the beach—Sofia? Do I look all right? Is this what you’d imagined me wearing when you said we’d go for a swim this weekend?’
‘I hadn’t imagined you on the beach,’ my irritated voice had answered from the bed. ‘I hadn’t thought about what you’d be wearing on the beach.’
He’d been preening himself from side to side in front of the mirror opposite the sun-drenched rosy pink chaise lounge—pale against the warm tones; but when he walked back towards the mirror, he turned bronze again from head to foot, in his shiny black swimmers. His fine body hair covered his legs and arms.
‘Usually I don’t wear a costume under my wetsuit,’ he said, ‘so I bought these Speedos and a pair of board shorts. Which ones do you think I should wear to the beach?’
‘You can wear both. Wear the Speedos under the board shorts.’
He was standing in front of the sliding mirrored doors that framed the wardrobe opposite two windows, looking at the reflection of a very boyish, very attractive figure, not very tall or very small, with blonde loose curly hair like that of a cherub. He pulled on the cord of his swimming costume, puffed out his hard freckled chest, curved like a suit of armour; and the whites of his hazel eyes and his white regular teeth glowed through the apricot warmth of the room.
‘It’s fine, Tom,’ I reassured him. ‘They look fine. You haven’t got any white marks from the wetsuit. Either costume looks fine. Whatever you feel comfortable in. You can wear whatever you want.’
He grinned. ‘I’ve never owned a pair of Speedos. I’ve watched blokes on the beach in their Speedos walking up from the water.’
‘It’s fine.’
He laughed to himself, unable to disguise the pride in his voice: ‘They call these swimming costumes budgie smugglers. That’s what they’re called now.’
‘Ingrid’s eyes will pop out of her head when she sees you at Nielson Park today.’
Tom, motionless in front of his own image, laughed again to himself. ‘I know so well not to wear the wrong thing when I’m with you.’
*
‘I thought you were using your head instead of …’ Ingrid said, unable to hold back the intensity of her disapproval. She had been showing me the latest photos of her new dog. She is very happy with Skippy and has said that he is good company and that he sleeps on her bed.
Before telling her I was back with Tom again I’d said I had something say, but please don’t pass judgment. She spat the words at me.
‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘That’s not the motivation. It’s for the companionship.’ ‘Companionship? You can have that with girlfriends. Tom has no conversation.’
‘But he’s easy to be with. It’s nice to go out for a meal or to the movies.’
‘Movies are good. You don’t talk and there’s something going on.’ She sipped her latte then added, ‘He’s not the answer.’
‘There is no answer. It’s the loneliness. I can’t stand the loneliness.’
She nodded then sat more upright in her chair. ‘We’re all different. It’s a long way for him to travel though.’
‘Three hours either way.’
‘Must be worth his while.’
‘It might last a week, a month, a year, who knows. If you get the big C diagnosis you could be dead in a few weeks.’
She shrugged. ‘We all make our decisions. That’s why I bought my little
Skippy.’ She put his puppy photos back into her handbag.
The ocean must be calm today. No energetic crashing coming from the direction of the sea. This morning I’m inside protected from the heat behind heavy curtains. I can’t see the water.
‘Messenger boy.’ he’d laughed, referring to himself, on an overcast Saturday morning, after he’s brought me a cup of tea in bed and was about to go up the road to buy the newspaper.
‘Having you just completes my life,’ he said when he finished reading the sports pages. ‘I can’t think of anything nicer than sitting on the bed with you on a morning like this. After the weekend I’m going to go back feeling so good. Thank you so much.’
He stretched himself out on the chaise lounge that was under the window next to the bed and said: ‘Everyone’s got someone. Why shouldn’t we? Who cares what anyone else thinks? It’s between you and me.’
‘What did your parents say when you said you’re coming to Sydney this weekend?’
He grinned. ‘Nothing. When I said goodbye Dad said to Mum, Just let him go.’
‘Did your mother say something?’
‘No.’
‘How do you feel about your parents going away for two months on Monday?’
‘Okay.’
‘Last time you were worried before they went away. But you know now how to use the washing machine.’
‘I’ve got it all written down. I’ve got it written it in a book.’
*
‘What’s the resolution of the story?’ May Ling asks, sprinkling grated cheese on her pasta.
‘How do you know these things?’ I say. ‘Who tells you?’
‘At school.’
‘In First Class at school they teach you about the resolution of a story?’
‘In the library. What is the problem that starts the story?’
‘Do you know what resolution means?
‘It means how things turn out in the end.’
I look to my son and daughter-in-law: ‘What will they teach them in Year Twelve if they learn this in First Class already?’
‘You haven’t answered me,’ interrupts May Ling. ‘I’m listening,’ she says with a hand to her ear.
‘It’s very hard for me to explain these things to you,’ I say yet again.
‘What are the complexities of the story?’ she asks.
I turn to my son for help.
‘The story is about a woman who is looking for love,’ he says to his daughter.
‘There are many kinds of love,’ I apologise. ‘Not just between a man and a woman. Love for children … grandchildren.’
A quiet still morning. Water trickles down through the rocks after last night’s rain. Several different bird calls in the gully. Intermittent hammering in the unit above. The large heavy curtains barely parted to keep out the eastern heat, but open enough to see the leaves of a tree rustling in the morning sea breeze that blows across my feet.
Tom and I had stood at the window and looked through the bare branches and realized that now we could see all the way to the horizon at Bondi. The ridge blocked the line of the horizon but we could see the clouds that hung just above it. We’d loved watching the sky.
‘I’ve seen the sky looking like this before,’ he’d said, putting his arm around my waist.
‘What do you mean?’
‘So still. A winter sky.’
At the back door before he left he said: ‘So you think there’s still heat in the furnace?’
I’d laughed and nodded.
‘That’s what the expression is, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t heard it. Heat in the fire? It probably feels like a furnace to you.’
‘It works well being casual like this,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to deal with each others problems.’
I asked Ingrid what she thought he meant by that. She said it was probably something he’d heard someone else say.
‘I’ve been thinking about it—wondering what he meant.’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘He didn’t mean anything. He just says things that he hears other people say.’
‘I’m very proud to be seen with you,’ he’d said. ‘A younger man with an older woman. I’m not ashamed to be seen with you.’
Now, I sit by the water until the sun goes down. Then walk back home.
Libby Sommer, Author 