Kitchen Sink Drama

by Paul Connolly

  Therapy

  ANDY’S mum suggested he see a therapist, on account of what happened at school. The therapist, Annabelle, recommended he keep a journal to help manage his anxiety. ‘Anxiety? What anxiety?’ he said. ‘Interesting,’ she mused. Andy was pleased to have interested Annabelle; she seemed nice. Later, Annabelle yawned. She apologised profusely. ‘A long day. It’s not you.’ This pleased Andy, too; interesting and not boring. Afterwards, his waiting father put his arm across Andy’s shoulder. The air outside was cool, the sky apricot. Andy sighed contentedly. ‘Don’t worry, mate, it’ll all be okay,’ his dad said. Worry? Andy thought. Who’s worried?

  Home Alone

  A rare alignment of the stars saw Rudy with the house to himself. After ordering in Thai, he settled on the couch with wine and chocolate. As he grasped the TV remote, a frisson of pleasure electrified him. Excitedly, he began scrolling through various streaming services for the perfect film. But what was perfect for such a moment? The minutes passed. Spoiled for choice and wracked by indecision, Rudy began to get increasingly agitated. Then frantic. Eventually it was too late to start a film, so he briefly hate-watched commercial TV before going to bed, red-hot with existential angst.

  Dinner for Two

  TALKING about it later, nestled in bed, Ewan and Kira acknowledged they hadn’t seen it coming. One minute they’d been revelling in a rare dinner out without kids; the next, the air between them had shifted, becoming heavy and charged. Through clenched teeth, familiar grievances were aired, old sores picked, accusations made. Between gulps of wine, they trampled each other in their rush to the moral high ground. By the time their mains arrived, the damage had been done, with only the clinking of their cutlery and the laughter of their fellow diners breaking the pained silence.

  Lovesick

  THE moment Ashanti was introduced to the office, Ben knew he was stuffed. And every day his crush deepened. Like a vision, she was, and bloody lovely, too: kind, funny, smart as a whip. None of those things himself, Ben knew that it would not only be pointless to ask her out but that it would shatter any illusion that she might say yes if he did. So he loved her from afar, and tried as best he could to enjoy the sick feeling in the pit of his gut, to interpret it as the essence of being alive.

  Connection

  MOST Sunday mornings, Ivy washed her car in her driveway. And most Sunday mornings, her reclusive old neighbour, fetching his newspaper, would gesture to his car and quip, ‘You do mine too, ja?’ ‘Ha!’ she’d say, as he returned indoors. One day, however, inspired to generosity by the bluest of skies, Ivy did just that. Then she polished the old man’s sedan until it caught the sun like a mirror. Later that day, she found a warm, tea towel-wrapped package and note on her doorstep, and discovered that the man’s name was Gustav. That he was a wonderful cook was but an added bonus.

  Leverage

  KITTY had long ago tired of her mother Lynn’s unsolicited advice and Old Testament moralising. So when Orlando was offered a job in Singapore and begged Kitty to come, Lynn’s insistence that she not throw her life away on ‘a shifty flash in the pan’, whom Kitty had known barely five months, sealed the deal. But twelve weeks into her new life, Orlando told her he’d met someone else. Distraught and adrift, Kitty would have returned home immediately but for the lifetime of leverage it would give her mother. No, she’d have to stick it out a while yet.

  The Magic of Christmas

  IT was Christmas Eve, and while her husband and children slept, Angela was frantically—pathologically, Shane would say—trying to make the house magical for the next morning. Inside was done, but outside! It had to look like Santa’s reindeer had been. She made hoof prints from potatoes, carved and dipped in soil; she knocked over pot plants; and she chewed carrots the kids had left out. But it needed more. Reindeer poo! But how? Mud? Dirt? Papier-mâché? They’d see through it. Finally, desperate, exhausted, there was only one thing for it. She began unbuckling her belt…

  Core Strength

  FOR months, Selina had been making cutting comments about her body. ‘Am I getting fat?’ she’d regularly ask Noah, grabbing at her flesh. Paralysed by indecision, Noah would just stare at her until she tired of his silence and retreated, grumbling. Her self-criticisms continued, however, and Noah, lamenting his disengagement, silently vowed to help. Selina was preparing dinner when he gave her the gift. The ease with which she tore the weight-loss book in half led Noah to surmise that her core strength, at least, was good. He’d mention this later, he decided, at a better time.

  Fathers’ Group

  FOR three years Kieran had been enthusiastically attending a fathers’ group, held monthly at a carefully chosen pub. ‘What do you talk about?’ his wife, Leigh, asked more than once. ‘This and that,’ he’d say. ‘Kids ’n’ stuff.’ To be fair, they did talk about their kids a little—particularly in their shell-shocked early days—but Kieran could barely remember these kids’ names now. The truth was, apart from forays into sport, politics and TV series, mostly they just took the piss. Sometimes, however, they simply drank their boutique brews and savoured the hops, malt and a deep, satisfying silence.

  Summer Rain

  THE laundry was half-dry by the time Beth finished hanging the load. Soon after, she and the kids, red-cheeked from their walk, were under a street umbrella, slurping gelati. They smelled the change before it hit. Then leaves skittered and fat raindrops burst like overripe fruit on parked cars.The bitumen steamed as the rain intensified. ‘Mum, the laundry!’ Sadie said. Beth halted their mad rush home after a block. ‘Fuck it!’ she said defiantly, the kids wide-eyed, thrilled. Instead, clothes clinging, they gambolled home in the deluge, colour returning to a washed-out world.

  Italophilia

  HE once started each day with tea in front of the TV. Since returning from Italy, though, Niall favoured espresso and the online La Gazzetta dello Sport. With legs crossed (and his sockless ankles exposed), he’d theatrically pronounce footballer’s names—‘Chiellini!’, ‘Immobile!’—before riding his new Vespa to work, the jacket of his tailored Italian suit flapping behind him. For lunch, ‘un panino e acqua frizzante, per favore’. Poppy found Niall’s behaviour ridiculous but in spite of herself she blushed at his evening greeting; ‘Ciao, bella,’ he’d croon, before retiring outside for an aperitivo. Kookaburras cackled from the trees.

  Little Universes

  IT wasn’t just that Marianne always had her head buried in a book, Clive grumbled, but that she continued to bring them home when the place was overflowing with the bloody things. Their (her) bookshelves were packed like Tetris bricks, and stalagmites of paperbacks grew on tables, chairs, floorboards. Marianne’s bedside table—home to her considerable ‘To Be Read’ pile—scarcely had room for a tea mug. Yet still Marianne wanted more, dreamily turning over bookshops, libraries, op shops and garage sales for typeset touchstones and life preservers; little universes in which she could lose (and maybe even find) herself.

  Special Occasions

  TO the frustration of her family, Beverly reserved many things ‘for good’: the china dinner set, for instance; select items from her wardrobe; an ancient bottle of single malt. Even the small sitting room she meticulously decorated was off limits. ‘Keeping it free for the Queen’s visit?’ her husband Des always joked. A week after Beverly’s funeral, Des and his three adult daughters, emboldened by grief, cut loose. With Des squeezed into Beverly’s sable coat, they stormed the sitting room, uncapped the whisky, and ate pizza off the china. It brought them much less pleasure than they’d hoped.

  The Ladder

  ASSAILED by guilt and unable to sleep, Rhys was relieved at the distraction of the sudden storm. Glancing at Yasmin, whom he hadn’t yet told, he went to check on the kids, only to see rainwater running down the hallway wall. Pulling a raincoat over his nakedness, he went outside, the wind and rain buffeting his plastic shroud and legs. Having elongated the ladder, the barefoot Rhys climbed until, on tiptoes, he could just reach the blocked downpipe
. As his fingers grasped a handful of sodden debris, the ladder wobbled, and it struck him that falling would have its upside.

  Slippers

  ERIN had been beguiled by William’s vitality. A raconteur and bon vivant, he could command a room like a general. But gradually, he began to retreat. Adventures were shelved, invitations declined, oratories dried up. There were moments when, like solar flares, his old self emerged, but these served only as reminders of loss. Depression? If only. William was simply happy to decline into a slippered life. Erin, as miserable as a tethered kite, had no choice but to leave. It cut her deeply, but not as deeply as the unsettling thought that William may barely notice she’d gone.

  Wishful Thinker

  WHAT Wendy most loved about Jim was his optimism. ‘It’s just my forehead growing,’ he joked when he started losing his hair. ‘Something else will come up,’ he said, when he got retrenched from his job. ‘More for you to love!’ he quipped when he began packing on the pounds. Then there was the time, soon after that, when Wendy told him she was going away for a ‘platonic weekend’ with her former boyfriend, Logan, back in town after his divorce. ‘Always nice to catch up with old friends, isn’t it,’ Jim said, weeping silently in his typically optimistic way.

  Saturday Afternoon

  SLUMPED on the couch, Wayne looked disapprovingly at the scimitar of gut erupting between his T-shirt and jeans. Whilst ironing, his wife Amanda caught her reflection and was startled by her floppy triceps, exact replicas of her mum’s dreaded bingo wings. Upstairs, young Jai stood shirtless, bending this way and that, looking for evidence of a six-pack. Down the hall his sister, Kaitlyn, dressing to go out, self-consciously stuffed tissues inside her bra. Outside, meanwhile, Brutus lay on the grass and licked his testicles, the afternoon sun bestowing its warmth and blessing along his fat, hairy flanks.

  Acknowledgments

  These oddball stories—born out of a writing exercise—weren’t meant to see the light of day. But my family, their earliest readers, encouraged me to loose their chains. First to take them in was Monthly editor Nick Feik who published six in October 2016. Cheers, Nick. Incredibly, Good Weekend editor Katrina Strickland then decided, gamely, to publish them in a weekly column, and enhance them with Jim Pavlidis’ vivid illustrations. Thank you, Katrina (and Jim, and the entire GW team), for your faith and continuing support. Finally, to Jane Pearson and Emily Booth, how fortunate I am to have you, and Text Publishing, in my corner.

  Paul Connolly is a journalist, writer and university tutor. His work has appeared in the Monthly, the Guardian, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sun-Herald and Qantas magazine, among many other publications. Paul lives in Melbourne with his family. paulconnolly.net.au

  Jim Pavlidis is a painter and illustrator. His work has won several awards and is held in the Australian National Gallery, state libraries of Victoria and New South Wales, Geelong Gallery, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Jim is an artist with the Age.

  jimpavlidis.com

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House, 22 William Street, Melbourne Victoria 3000, Australia

  Copyright © Text Paul Connolly, 2020

  Copyright © Illustrations Jim Pavlidis, 2020

  The moral right of Paul Connolly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  Published by The Text Publishing Company, 2020

  Book design by Jessica Horrocks

  Typeset by Rachel Aitken

  ISBN: 9781922330307 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781925923728 (ebook)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

  * * *

  Ninety-eight of the one hundred pieces in this collection have been previously published in Good Weekend. Six of these were first published in the Monthly. And two pieces—‘X’ and ‘Badgering the Witness’—appear here for the first time.