There was silence.
‘There, do you feel better? Am I prettier now?’ she asked, breathless.
The shopkeeper didn’t smile.
But she did.
The woman stood at the kitchen window of her hillside home on the hot July morning. This spot gave her a wonderful bird’s-eye view of the glistening, rushing Great Rift Valley River that separated the low hills of the Gorse Mountain Range. It was so named due to the rich yellow pea flowers that lit up the landscape when in full bloom. Despite their beauty, the bush was a mass of prickles and pines to protect them from the harsh winters, but their wonderful coconut aroma more than made up for their thorns. She warmed her hands on a cup of coffee and breathed out happily, contented. Then she glanced at the cottage on the hillside directly across the river and then she felt her body go rigid again and her chest tightened. It was this cottage that tainted her view and which was the true thorn in the side of the mountain.
Behind her, her family were engaged in lively morning conversation while they ate their cereal and debated how to spend their weekend. She tuned them out and reached for her pair of binoculars, which were sitting by the herb flower box on the windowsill. As she held them to her eyes the scent of rosemary wafted by her nostrils. It had the effect of calming her, which she knew she needed before feasting her eyes on her neighbour.
‘Don’t do it?’ her husband Tony sang in a warning tone.
‘She’s doing it,’ her daughter Tina sang in response.
‘Uh oh,’ her son Terry said, ducking to hide behind a cereal box.
The woman studied the cottage across the rift and sighed. Tony shoved bacon into his mouth, amused.
‘What now?’ he grinned, crunching on the bacon. ‘New window boxes? Their apple tree has grown bigger than yours?’
The children chuckled.
‘They don’t have an apple tree,’ she grumbled.
‘Oh well then that’s one up for us then,’ he teased.
‘We don’t have an apple tree,’ she said.
‘Then we should get one,’ he replied good-naturedly.
‘He got a new car,’ she said.
He stopped chewing the bacon. He stood and grabbed the binoculars from her. It was his turn to be laughed at by the kids. He looked through the lenses in silence.
‘Lucky bastard,’ he finally said.
‘How can they afford that?’ the woman asked. ‘You’d swear they were in the Hollywood Hills and not some poky-sized cottage on the worst side of the mountain.’
‘Miaow,’ Tina teased.
‘He got a promotion,’ Terry said, peeking up over the cereal box. ‘I heard yesterday.’
They left a respectful silence. Tony’s bone of contention with his job was that he had been in the same position for the past fifteen years without a promotion. Everybody seemed to be speeding up, overtaking him, and leaving him far behind, though the fact that he didn’t apply himself seemed to pass him by completely. He felt he deserved his promotions for the years of his life he spent there, and didn’t recognize the need to earn it.
‘Doesn’t bother me,’ he said, though no one believed him. He handed the binoculars back to his wife.
The woman resumed spying on the cottage across the rift.
‘I think they’re getting an extension,’ she said suddenly.
‘What makes you think that?’ Tony asked, grumpy now.
‘I can see the builders.’
‘Let me see,’ he said, taking the binoculars from her.
He watched. ‘That’s Bob Sanderson. He’ll charge them a fortune, and then it will probably blow down in a storm.’
‘Shouldn’t you tell them that?’ she asked, pretending she was concerned but secretly happy to take the wind out of their sails in any way possible.
The woman and Tony looked at each other, guiltily.
‘It’s none of our business what they do with their lives,’ he replied, sitting down at the table again.
They continued eating their breakfast in silence. Tony opened the newspaper. The kids scrolled through their phones, bored.
The woman looked toward the window again and though she couldn’t see the cottage from this angle she was picturing it in her head, imagining them all inside. Smug as can be. Her with her easel and paint sitting outside most days being artsy fartsy.
‘Jake made the swim team,’ Tina said to her brother, eyes still down on her phone.
The woman threw her daughter an angry look.
Terry sighed. ‘I know, I was there remember?’ He’d lost his appetite now, he swirled his cereal around with his spoon, reliving yesterday’s heartbreak as they huddled around the notice board to read the names who’d made it through. ‘He’s probably over there running around the garden in his red Speedos just to annoy me.’
‘Now that I’d like to see,’ Tina said, carrying her bowl to the sink. She couldn’t help herself. She picked up the binoculars. She gasped.
‘Is he in his Speedos for real?’ Terry asked, sitting up.
‘Why the hell is Jacob Kowalski’s car in Sally’s drive?’ she shrieked, frightening the cat, who leapt up from where he’d been lazing in the ray of sunlight.
‘Tina!’ her dad roared. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, slamming the binoculars down.
‘She has a thing for Jacob,’ the woman said quietly.
Tony, surprised at first, then angry, took a moment to process his teenage daughter’s human feelings.
‘I’m sure this Jacob guy is a jerk,’ he said, eventually.
‘He’s not.’
‘Good morning everybody,’ the woman’s mother, Tabitha, said, arriving into the kitchen in her dressing gown.
‘Morning Nanny Tabby,’ Tina said, giving her a hug.
‘She has arisen. We were just about to call the funeral parlour,’ Tony said, and the woman rolled her eyes.
‘I’ve been awake since six a.m., I was just resting my eyes,’ Nanny Tabby said, annoyed. ‘I’m going to finish the garden today, darling. What do you think? The rosebush needs seeing to.’
‘You did that on Monday.’
‘It still needs work.’ She looked around the table at the miserable bunch. ‘What’s wrong with you lot this morning?’ When she received grunts in response she narrowed her eyes suspiciously and turned to the kitchen window. Her eyes landed on the binoculars. Just as she suspected. ‘Honestly, you’ve all got to stop this nonsense.’ She turned to her daughter, ‘See what you’re encouraging! This spying is ridiculous! It does nothing but leave you all miserable and unappreciative of what you have.’
‘It’s not spying,’ the woman defended herself, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. ‘Anyway, it’s impossible not to look, they’re always pushing everything in our face, what are we supposed to do?’
Nanny Tabby frowned. Their neighbour was hardly pushing anything in their face, across the river on the side of another mountain.
‘You all need to remember how fortunate you are. To have each other. To have this wonderful home. Remember all your blessings. You need to stop comparing your lives with those of others. Especially them. It’s outrageous and it’s eating you all up on the inside, rotting your hearts, causing arguments and upset.’
They lowered their heads in shame.
‘Mark my word, they’re probably looking over here and thinking the very same thing as you are. The grass is always greener on the other side,’ she said moving toward the teapot.
‘Their grass does look greener,’ Tina said, pouting.
Granny Tabby laughed. ‘It’s just an expression, dear.’
‘Seriously. Have none of you noticed?’ Tina asked, looking around. ‘Their grass is greener.’
They all scrambled to their feet and hurried to the window, Granny Tabby included. Suddenly, what she had never noticed before became glaringly obvious. They didn’t need the binoculars to see that the grass on the acres surrounding the cottage was far greener than any othe
r patch on the mountain.
They bundled outside to the garden.
‘Maybe we get more sun,’ Tony said, squinting as he looked up to examine the light. ‘Our grass is scorched from the sun.’
‘The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, we both get the same sun,’ Granny Tabby snapped viciously, in a tone none of them had ever heard her use before. ‘I’m out in this garden every day, tending to it. I water it every week. Their grass can’t be greener. It’s impossible!’ her voice rose.
They began arguing among themselves and the row continued until they stormed off in different directions, taking their anger, their jealousy and rage with them until they compared themselves to everyone, until they were holding themselves up against everybody else in the world, barometers of what other people had versus what they didn’t have.
Across Rift Valley, the woman noticed the entire family come out of their house and onto their lawn. She heard them bickering, even from here, the wind carrying their hateful words across to her.
She quickly ducked down behind a gorse bush and spied as they stared across the river in her direction, faces twisted with displeasure, hands on their hips and hands lifted to their foreheads like visors. She felt like a child playing hide and seek, her chest heaved up and down, as her heart pounded nervously. She giggled, then blocked her mouth with her gloved hand to stifle the sound, knowing that they couldn’t possibly hear her from all the way over there, but afraid anyway.
Ever since the day she and her family had developed the dilapidated cottage and moved in, she had seen their faces pushed up against the window, binoculars to their eyes. Her husband had discovered them when he was surveying the spectacular view with his binoculars and they knew they were being watched all through the construction, to the day they’d moved in.
Every single morning since, she’d felt their eyes on her. She’d felt uncomfortable in her new home for a long time, but she had more important things to worry about in her life; the money they’d sunk into developing the derelict cottage, her son’s chronic asthma that they’d used swimming to help him overcome, her daughter’s heartbreak at leaving her first love behind, hearing her daughter cry herself to sleep, up until recently when she’d met the sweet Jacob boy who’d come by that morning. Then there was her husband’s recent promotion, which kept him away longer than anticipated, leaving her alone here on the side of the mountain. It was good for him, even though he was exhausted, and it meant she had more time to spend on her paintings, but they were more difficult to sell here, and half of them had been destroyed by the leak from their bath that the builders had been out to check that morning. She had borrowed her sister’s car while she was away on holiday, just so she wouldn’t feel so isolated, so she could come and go as she pleased.
It was painting that always helped her to escape and it was when she was painting one morning, out in the garden, captivated by the bright yellow gorse against the green that had given her the big idea. She was tired of her neighbours staring, their judgemental eyes on her and her family, startled by their irrational jealousy and constant comparison of their lives to hers. And so she’d sent out a message of her own.
The pack on her back was heavy and weighed her down. She wore a facemask, goggles, heavy gloves and protective clothing so they probably wouldn’t even have recognized her if she hadn’t dived behind a bush when they gathered on their front lawn. She had risen early with the birds and spent the morning walking the acres around her home, taking her time to spray her land with two coats. She had nothing to lie about to her family when they returned, she had been painting, perhaps just not the canvas as they knew it. All it had taken was Epsom salt for magnesium, fertilizer, green food colouring, water and a spray wand to make a healthy green paint.
She liked her life, she did her best to remedy her problems and count her blessings, she didn’t care what went on behind her neighbours’ walls, but she did enjoy this one task. No matter what they thought of her, her actions, her words, the way that she composed herself meant that her grass would always be greener on her side of the Rift.
It was the way she got out of bed. Still half-asleep, she wavered and had to reach out to the nightstand to stay upright. She snagged her finger on the corner, catching the skin and tearing it. A little more awake but flustered by all that was on her mind, she went from her bedroom to the bathroom, to her wardrobe, to the children’s bedrooms, downstairs to the kitchen, around and around in circles making breakfast and school lunches, opening and closing the fridge thirty-five times to retrieve and replace, drawers, cupboards, schoolbags, upstairs; children’s wardrobes, downstairs; coats, bags, hair, lice spray, keys and out the door. It was when her son stood staring at her in the hallway of the house, frozen, stunned, as if in a comatose state that she finally stopped.
‘What’s wrong, honey?’ she asked.
‘Mummy. You’ve got no arm.’
It was true. Her right arm was missing. She was holding her keys in her left hand and wondered how long it had been missing, how long she had been doing her morning chores without realizing she’d lost an arm. There was a thread of skin from her shoulder and a long line leading through the rooms of the house. Her son ran around picking it up as though playing a game. Skin bundled in his arms so high she could just see his brown eyes with giraffe-like lashes peeking out at her as she retrieved her arm from his arms.
‘Thank you, sweetheart.’
‘What are we going to do?’ he asked.
‘We don’t have time to fix it, you’ll be late for school and I have to go to work. I’ll deal with it later.’ She chose a larger coat and bundled the skin of her right arm into the coat.
‘You’re like a scarecrow,’ her son giggled, helping her pad out the arm of the coat to make it appear normal.
But by the time she had completed the school run and arrived at work she had forgotten about the unravelling. She hung up her coat on the old-fashioned coat hook, away from her boss’s dandruff covered wax jacket and went about her business. She tucked her spaghetti-like arm into her sweater, sat at her desk and powered up her computer. One-armed, she got on with the job at hand. Apart from one morning meeting in the conference room, she didn’t move from her desk. By 11 a.m. when she stopped for a morning coffee and cigarette, she realized that the man beside her was staring at her, the cigarette hanging from his fat lip.
‘Hello,’ she smiled pleasantly.
‘Are you okay? You seem to be … unravelling.’
‘Oh that. Yes, yes I am. I snagged my finger on the nightstand, that’s all. I’ll have it seen to later.’ She quickly inhaled the last of her cigarette and stamped it out. But it was difficult. Her right leg had unravelled without her noticing and with only one leg she had to hop on one foot to stamp out the cigarette. Still wondering when she had unravelled all the way down to her foot, she returned to the building and hopped up the stairway until she came to the source of the problem. It had gotten caught on her seat in the conference room. With both her arm and leg in a bundle clutched in her only remaining intact arm, she hopped to her desk. She sat down. And thought.
When you are a woman who has begun to unravel, it can be a confusing state. Her body was in ropy pieces around her and yet her thoughts were clear. Clearer, in fact. As though the unravelling of her was the making of her, because she suddenly knew exactly what she wanted to do. She could no longer sit at her desk in this unravelled state; it was unproductive and probably unprofessional. She grabbed her bag and her coat and bundled up her tangled body. She hopped into the lift without a word to anybody.
She called her older sister Dahlia and filled her in on the situation. Dahlia then told their youngest sister, Camellia. Safety in numbers. As she pulled over at Dahlia’s house, she saw Camellia standing outside alone.
Camellia opened the door and looked her up and down. ‘Oh dear. What happened?’
‘I snagged my finger on the nightstand, and didn’t notice until my arm was gone.’
Camellia gave this serious consideration and it was only then that the woman who had unravelled noticed that her sister was missing a piece from her head. A tiny hole above her forehead, jigsaw-puzzle shaped, a gaping hole that meant she could see straight through to the hydrangea bush behind her, like a keyhole through her head.
‘Are you okay? There’s a jigsaw-shaped hole in your head.’
‘I just lost a piece.’
‘Has this happened before?’
As she asked, another jigsaw-shaped piece of Camellia fell from her chest, near her heart, and more of the hydrangea bush behind her was visible. She bent down and picked it up, put it in her pocket.
‘I’m okay,’ she said absent-mindedly, ‘but she’s not.’
Camellia looked down at the ground and that’s when the woman who unravelled noticed a pool of something gooey beside her, nestled in and around a pretty pair of shoes and handbag.
‘Dahlia had a meltdown,’ Camellia explained.
‘Again?’
They watched the oozy mess that was their eldest sister with intrigue and concern.
‘Sorry, girls,’ the ooze said.
‘Maybe I could scoop her up and bring her with us.’
‘Good idea, we can’t leave her here. The kids’ buckets and spades are in the trunk, you could use those.’
Camellia went around the back of the car and retrieved the bucket and spade, while the woman who unravelled kept watch on the waxy plasma gooey remains of her sister. Moments later they were all in the car.
‘Sorry, girls,’ Dahlia’s voice sounded from the bucket in the back seat. ‘I just had one of those days. My head wouldn’t stop.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ the woman who unravelled said, driving. ‘I shouldn’t have called you and worried you about me, I know you’ve a lot on.’
‘Always call me when you need me. I’d rather be here,’ Dahlia said.
The two sisters in the front seats couldn’t help it, they started laughing.
‘Well, not exactly here,’ Dahlia laughed with them.
They chose a quiet cosy pub in the countryside. They moved to the snug and sat at a table before the fire, the wood crackling and spitting, warming them.
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