and tickle your new baby. You stroll through the park on sunny days with the pram, and turn as your wife calls, ‘Look at the camera!’ You gaze into the lens of the camera like a stranger. The distant, pleasant smile of someone who has unburdened himself.
Your old friend Isobel hands me a photo you sent her. The photograph lies in my palm and I stare at your smiling face.
Once we used to give each other gifts. Doodles and notes, like children at school. Souvenirs from every place you or I had visited. Soon we had collected china cows, plastic money boxes, engraved spoons, bits of polished stone, kitsch postcards that we never sent to anyone, cups with stupid messages written on the outside. Souvenirs that signified everything, that meant nothing. Now you send photographs to everyone
but me.
Remember the last time you spoke to me? I had already smashed up my life and I was starting on yours. You were so generous I cleaned you out fast. All that was left was small change. You walked into the room as I prised the rubber stopper from the pineapple money box where you kept gold coins. One of the coins rolled under the couch and I grovelled on the carpet with my face jammed against the skirting board trying to
reach it.
‘That’s enough,’ you said. ‘Don’t steal my last dollar.’
I understand how wrong I was. I regret those times. I gave up that life. What else can I do? Have you shed our past so well there is no trace of me left in you?
I examine the photographs and I try to find messages in your expression, or in the pattern of toys and household goods in the background. I almost expect to see a shadow in the picture, a shell, like the carapace shed by a cicada on a paling fence. But each picture is in perfect focus–a tightly framed shot of your life without me.
The Last Visit
My sister Georgie tells me she’s coming to visit. I haven’t heard from her in three years. My first thought is, What does she want? My second thought is, She can’t have it.
The café tables are packed so tight the waiter has to rise on his toes to pass between the customers. He eases his buttocks past my head and delivers plates heaped with egg and bacon to three men at the table beside us. They raise forkfuls to their mouths as they eye off Georgie. She’s always had this effect. She is a double D cup. I stare at the men and they look quickly back at their plates. Everyone sees me and knows. Everyone except my sister.
‘Anyway, Georgie, have to head off,’ I say. ‘Heard a friend of mine’s sick, so I’m going to visit her.’
‘Do you want me to come? When will I see you?’ she asks and I put her off by saying we’ll go to the movies together before she leaves. I’m still thinking, What does she want?
I drop my sister at her friend’s house where she’s staying and go back to work. Joe’s waiting for me on the corner.
‘What the fuck are you wearing?’ he asks.
‘I’m about to change,’ I say, and I strip off my cardigan and duck behind the fence to change my skirt and stockings. The strip of mouldy concrete between the fence and the flats reeks of piss and vomit and I hop around trying to make sure my bare feet never touch the ground.
‘Did you hear Cherie’s sick?’ I ask Joe when I come out with my pretend clothes stuffed into my shoulder bag.
‘Cherie’s on the way out,’ he says.
‘What do you mean “on the way out”?’ I say, but Joe shrugs and heads off down the road.
For the rest of the day I keep thinking about what he said and I sit and smoke cigarettes on my corner and chat a bit to the girls hanging around on the corner opposite and take a couple of jobs, just quickies to the beach carpark and back. Every now and then I shiver.
That night, I go round to Cherie’s flat. No one answers my knock but the door swings open when I push it. The place stinks. Two cats sit on the kitchen table lashing their tails and further inside, in the bedroom, I can hear Cherie moaning.
She’s
Your old friend Isobel hands me a photo you sent her. The photograph lies in my palm and I stare at your smiling face.
Once we used to give each other gifts. Doodles and notes, like children at school. Souvenirs from every place you or I had visited. Soon we had collected china cows, plastic money boxes, engraved spoons, bits of polished stone, kitsch postcards that we never sent to anyone, cups with stupid messages written on the outside. Souvenirs that signified everything, that meant nothing. Now you send photographs to everyone
but me.
Remember the last time you spoke to me? I had already smashed up my life and I was starting on yours. You were so generous I cleaned you out fast. All that was left was small change. You walked into the room as I prised the rubber stopper from the pineapple money box where you kept gold coins. One of the coins rolled under the couch and I grovelled on the carpet with my face jammed against the skirting board trying to
reach it.
‘That’s enough,’ you said. ‘Don’t steal my last dollar.’
I understand how wrong I was. I regret those times. I gave up that life. What else can I do? Have you shed our past so well there is no trace of me left in you?
I examine the photographs and I try to find messages in your expression, or in the pattern of toys and household goods in the background. I almost expect to see a shadow in the picture, a shell, like the carapace shed by a cicada on a paling fence. But each picture is in perfect focus–a tightly framed shot of your life without me.
The Last Visit
My sister Georgie tells me she’s coming to visit. I haven’t heard from her in three years. My first thought is, What does she want? My second thought is, She can’t have it.
The café tables are packed so tight the waiter has to rise on his toes to pass between the customers. He eases his buttocks past my head and delivers plates heaped with egg and bacon to three men at the table beside us. They raise forkfuls to their mouths as they eye off Georgie. She’s always had this effect. She is a double D cup. I stare at the men and they look quickly back at their plates. Everyone sees me and knows. Everyone except my sister.
‘Anyway, Georgie, have to head off,’ I say. ‘Heard a friend of mine’s sick, so I’m going to visit her.’
‘Do you want me to come? When will I see you?’ she asks and I put her off by saying we’ll go to the movies together before she leaves. I’m still thinking, What does she want?
I drop my sister at her friend’s house where she’s staying and go back to work. Joe’s waiting for me on the corner.
‘What the fuck are you wearing?’ he asks.
‘I’m about to change,’ I say, and I strip off my cardigan and duck behind the fence to change my skirt and stockings. The strip of mouldy concrete between the fence and the flats reeks of piss and vomit and I hop around trying to make sure my bare feet never touch the ground.
‘Did you hear Cherie’s sick?’ I ask Joe when I come out with my pretend clothes stuffed into my shoulder bag.
‘Cherie’s on the way out,’ he says.
‘What do you mean “on the way out”?’ I say, but Joe shrugs and heads off down the road.
For the rest of the day I keep thinking about what he said and I sit and smoke cigarettes on my corner and chat a bit to the girls hanging around on the corner opposite and take a couple of jobs, just quickies to the beach carpark and back. Every now and then I shiver.
That night, I go round to Cherie’s flat. No one answers my knock but the door swings open when I push it. The place stinks. Two cats sit on the kitchen table lashing their tails and further inside, in the bedroom, I can hear Cherie moaning.
She’s
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