The Flask

by Nicky Singer

  Clem’s candle is dead.

  Clem again. Why Clem? The monsters laugh, just like they did in the garage when Clem got all spattered with Si’s blood.

  I hear myself gasp, but Mum just says, “Oh, bother. Let’s try that again.”

  She places Richie’s candle on the rack and relights Clem’s from Dad’s. It burns brightly, innocently.

  “There,” she says. “God bless and look after them all.”

  But I don’t think He will.

  All of a sudden, I don’t think He Gives a Monkeys.

  When we get back home, Mum organises fresh clothes for herself and Si makes some sort of ragout with the vegetables. By the time we sit down to eat it’s about 3 p.m.

  I sit at the table, but even though it’s late, I’m not hungry – and it’s not the fact that it’s a plate of vegetables. I quite like vegetables. It’s about what happened in the church, it’s about playing the Pavement Crack Game and losing.

  “I’m not hungry,” I say.

  “Eat,” says Si.

  So I do. It feels like a kind of giving-in. Afterwards, while Mum and I wash up, Si goes off in the car to get more petrol for the return journey to the hospital.

  Mum has been home less than three hours and soon she will be gone again, who knows for how long.

  “Mum…” I say.

  “Yes, Jess?”

  “Do you know anyone in Aunt Edie’s life called Rob?”

  “Rob?” says Mum. “Rob who?”

  So I tell her about Aunt Edie’s music ‘For Rob’.

  “Must have been someone really important,” I say.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because of the music. Because of what she wrote.”

  Mum pauses. “No, sorry, doesn’t mean anything to me. Why don’t you ask Gran?”

  And I say I will, but I won’t, of course, because whatever Gran knows, she’s not telling.

  There’s a silence and then Mum says, “Do you want to know why I really came home today, Jess?”

  “Vegetables?” I offer.

  Mum laughs. “Of course not. And not for the church or the clothes either. I came home to see you.”

  “I know. You said.”

  “Did I?” She looks at me quizzically.

  “At the hospital.”

  “Yes. I suppose I did. But no one but you would have noticed, Jess. You’re a really special person, you know that?”

  I shrug.

  “And sensitive. And sometimes…”

  I wait.

  “Sometimes I’m a bit like that too. I can tell what people are saying when they’re not saying things.”

  This would be a muddle in anyone else’s mouth, but I know exactly what Mum means.

  “What am I not saying?” I ask.

  Mum puts her head on one side. “You tell me.”

  So many things. Where to begin? The flask, the worry about the babies, the Pavement Crack Game, the monsters coming closer. Zoe.

  Zoe.

  Zoe.

  “Zoe,” I say.

  “Go on,” says Mum.

  Then I think maybe Si hasn’t gone to get petrol (why couldn’t he get petrol on the journey back?). I think he’s gone to give Mum and me Some Space.

  “I don’t think Zoe likes me any more.”

  “Oh? And why do you say that?”

  I don’t tell her it might be because I shouted at her about livers and slammed the phone down on her, deliberately cutting the cord between us. I say, “I think she’d rather be with Paddy.”

  Mum takes my hand and I let her. “People can like more than one person at a time, you know,” she says. “Like just because I have two more children now, doesn’t mean I love you any less, Jess. Not at all.”

  Ha. I bet she’s glad she’s had an opportunity to work that into the conversation. Still – I like hearing it. It gives me the same sort of feeling I had when I was tiny and had a fever and she put a cool hand on my forehead.

  “Human beings,” she continues, “they – we – have an infinite capacity for love.”

  “But Zoe,” I begin again, “she used to come here all the time. Come around. Bound straight in. Barely knocked. You’d have thought she lived here. And now,” I pause lamely, “she doesn’t.”

  Mum takes a breath and I prepare myself for Something Adult.

  “Jess,” she says, “you and Zoe may just be growing apart. You’ve known her since you were in kindergarten. When people get older, they find different parts of themselves. What used to be a good fit, might not be such a good fit as you grow up, develop your interests. Find out who you really are.” She pauses. “And that’s OK, Jess.”

  “It’s not OK,” I say solidly.

  “I don’t mean it doesn’t hurt, it can leave a hole…”

  A hole?

  “But in that space,” continues Mum, “new things can come, new friends.”

  But I don’t want any new friends. I just want Zoe, my mirror image, my better, bolder other half. And suddenly Zoe seems to me like Richie, she seems zesty big. And I’m the smaller, weaker twin; I’m Clem, clinging to her for dear life.

  “Why do they have to cut them apart?” I exclaim then. “Why can’t they just let the twins stay together for ever and ever?”

  Mum raises an eyebrow. “Maybe they’ll have a better life apart.”

  “They won’t,” I cry.

  Mum still has my hands in hers. Very gently she begins to stroke my fingers. “Maybe together…” she says, “maybe together…” she repeats, “they might just… suffocate each other.”

  This is what usually happens on my Easter Day. In the morning, Mum makes me an Easter nest. The nest always contains one large hollow chocolate egg, numerous loose tiny sugar-coated speckled ones, a couple of chocolate ducks in golden foil and – sometimes – a box of flat little bunnies eating flat chocolate carrots. Mum puts all the goodies into a plastic bag and then hides them: they might be buried in the ironing pile, hung behind a coat in the front porch, locked in the Christmas trunk.

  “She’s a bit old for an Easter nest, isn’t she?” Si said last year.

  And the previous year.

  And the year before that.

  But the nest still comes. Except this year Si has driven Mum back to the hospital so there is no nest. Plonked in the middle of the kitchen table is an oversized chocolate rabbit. Not hidden at all.

  “Happy Easter,” Gran says.

  In the afternoon of an Easter Sunday, at four o’clock precisely, teatime, Zoe always comes. She even knocks on the door, so I actually have to open it to her.

  “Surprise,” she says.

  Only it isn’t, because she’s come every year since her mum brought her when she was four. She brings what she brought that first ever time – a Cadbury’s creme egg – and she says what she said that first ever time: I gots it for you special. And I say, Specialsmeschal (I don’t really know why I say that) and then, in return, I give her a Kinder Egg with the orange-and-white foil wrapping and the little plastic toy inside and she says: Specialsmeschal, and then we hug and laugh and eat the chocolate and make the stupid toy (it’s usually a tank), but of course it isn’t about the chocolate or the toy and we both know that.

  I start clock-watching at 3 p.m. The second hand of the kitchen clock ticks impossibly slowly. Every minute takes approximately two weeks. I listen for the sound of footsteps (running, bounding, enthusiastic footsteps) in the cul-de-sac. There aren’t any, but I tell myself that that’s because it’s early, three-quarters of an hour early, half an hour early, ten minutes early. I don’t go to look out of the window, not even at four o’clock. Not at 4.05. Or 4.10. Or 4.15. At 4.20 I accept it’s over. Our friendship. It really is. And it doesn’t matter how long I sit stubbornly watching the clock (I’m still there at half-past five), it won’t make any difference.

  I can feel the Kinder Egg in my pocket going all hot and sweaty, probably because I keep touching it, I keep squishing at it, to check it’s still ther
e, to check I’ve kept my part of the bargain. By six o’clock the egg is mainly mush.

  Gran watches me watching the clock.

  “What’s going on?” she says.

  “Zoe didn’t come,” I say.

  “It’s Easter,” says Gran. “Why would she?”

  “She always comes on Easter Sunday.”

  “Probably got family over,” says Gran. “Or gone out somewhere. Maybe she’ll come later.”

  But she won’t. I know she won’t. The only time her family ever went away for Easter she told me, told me weeks in advance.

  “You could always ring her,” says Gran.

  But I’d just hear the rip of the surgeon’s knife again.

  When I wake the following day, there is a light frost on the windowpane and everything in the world seems colder. There is no news from the hospital.

  “No news is good news,” says Gran.

  There is no news from Zoe.

  Which is not good news.

  The breath is on the window sill, looking out.

  “What do you want? What are you waiting for?”

  No reply.

  Everything seems suspended, waiting.

  “Haven’t you got anything to do?” asks Gran.

  “Yes,” I say. “I have.”

  I go to the local shop and buy a new Kinder Egg. The sight of the white-and-orange foil brings a lump to my throat. Why is it always Zoe’s responsibility to come to my house? Overnight, I have re-examined my friendship. I have noticed that, for years and years, Zoe has been the visitor and I have been the visited.

  Why?

  Am I some queen that it’s me who sits in state to receive her? Or is it just that she’s so full of life – so full of Zoe – that she’s made all the running, and I’ve just stood by, watching? Waiting. What’s wrong with me? Friendship is a two-way street – or it should be. I have decided that I will go to Zoe’s house and give her my small gift.

  Zoe’s car is in her drive, the family is at home. I go up to the front door, press the bell and listen to the two-tone ring.

  Ding-dong.

  Like my heart.

  Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong.

  Someone comes to the door, I see the shadow on the other side of the glass, they pause to peek through the spyhole. I half-hope it’s Zoe’s mother, she’ll greet me with a smile.

  It isn’t Zoe’s mother. It’s Zoe.

  “Hi,” she says, not aggressive, but not really friendly either, somewhere between wary and neutral. It makes me feel confused, as if whatever I say it isn’t going to be the right thing. So I say nothing.

  “You all right?” she says. She keeps the door not quite open far enough for me to come in. So, of course, I don’t go in. I stand in my big silence. If it were her at my door, she’d just bound in.

  “Happy Easter,” I say at last. It doesn’t sound that happy, but it doesn’t sound ironic either.

  “Sorry about yesterday…” she begins.

  “Doesn’t matter at all,” I say, far too fast. “I’m sorry about the phone thing.”

  “Hmm,” she says.

  I go on standing.

  “I was going to come around yesterday,” she adds, “only…” She trails off.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I say again, as if that will make it more likely. “We were busy too.” I try a little smile.

  She shrugs, embarrassed.

  “Zoe?”

  “Yes?”

  I’m getting an idea; it’s coming in very sudden and important. “I want you to do something, do something for me. Will you, Zoe? Please.” There’s a certain desperation in my voice.

  “What?” she says, curious but flat.

  “I want to go to the Buddhist Centre again,” I tell her. “I want to go there with you.”

  “Huh?”

  “Do a meditation like Lalitavajri offered.”

  “Why?”

  Because things melt away in that Shrine Room, I think. Because it’s a place where you seem to be able to say things without words, where there are smiles like incense, where my friend Zoe looked at me with hope and longing and I swore never to let that friendship die.

  “Please, Zoe,” I say.

  “Well…”

  “It’s Tuesday. It’s always Tuesday. That’s what Lalitavajri said. Tomorrow. Come with me, Zoe.”

  “Sorry,” says Zoe. “I can’t.”

  Can’t or won’t?

  “I’m busy.” She shrugs.

  I shouldn’t push it, I should leave it right there, but I plough on through the humiliation. “Oh – doing something nice?”

  “Cinema. We’re going to a film. It’s all arranged.”

  And I don’t ask her who the we is because I already know.

  Her.

  And Paddy.

  “Right. OK, see you some other time then.”

  When I arrive home, I realise the Kinder Egg is still in my pocket. As for the hole Mum talked about – it’s now a chasm.

  In the night I dream about the Shrine Room. Across the golden belly of the Buddha there are little seed fish. When the Buddha breathes, the seed fish swim. I wake with a stubborn golden hope inside me. At least I still have the flask.

  I take it out.

  “I promised you, didn’t I?”

  No reply.

  Bit like Zoe.

  To Gran I say, “We have to go back to the Buddhist Centre. You know, for the project. Zo’s… um, having her hair cut first, so she’ll meet us there. Can you take me for eleven-thirty?”

  Gran huffs and puffs, but as it’s school work, she has to agree. I make sure we arrive early.

  “Zoe will be here in a jiff, you can leave me, it’s fine.”

  So Gran leaves me.

  As I put my shoes on the rack in the porch and head up alone to the top floor, I wonder what I really hope to find here.

  I want the Shrine Room to be just as I remember it, but it isn’t. The previously spacious, empty floor is laid with neat rows of maroon mats, each with two small pouffe-like blue cushions. Through the skylight there’s no blue sky, no scudding clouds, only a uniform grey coldness. In front of the Buddha there is no eucalyptus. There are other flowers, but I wanted there to be eucalyptus and there isn’t.

  I hesitate and Lalitavajri, who is rearranging some candles, turns and sees me. At once she leaves what’s she’s doing and comes towards me.

  “It’s Jess, isn’t it?” she says.

  “Yes.” I feel surprisingly shy.

  “Have you come alone?”

  “No,” I say, because the flask is snug in my pocket. And then, seeing her scan the room, I realise what I’ve said so I add, “You’re here.”

  She smiles. “You’re a very thoughtful person, aren’t you, Jess?”

  I’m surprised at this. I’m always surprised when people notice me.

  Then she tells me to take a mat and make myself comfortable and not to worry that it’s my first time. I see how other people are sitting or kneeling on the little blue cushions and I kneel like that too.

  Then, keeping very still (and I wonder suddenly if Zoe could be this still), I cup my hands in front of me. I make a little nest in case the breath wants to be with me in this place.

  “You’ll be safe here,” I whisper.

  Lalitavajri goes to sit at the front of the room beside a golden bowl with a golden hammer. A few minutes later the whole room is full, maybe twenty or thirty people silently coming to sit or kneel on their cushions.

  Lalitavajri welcomes us all and then, in a soft, slow voice, she asks us all to be aware of our bodies, to feel the weight of them from the ground up.

  “Imagine,” she says, “awareness filling your body, like soft, warm light, penetrating your bones, your muscles.”

  Already my eyes are closed, I’ve shut them instinctively. I just want to be all wrapped up alone with the words which seem like spells.

  “Listen to the breath, the rising and the falling.”

  And I do listen
to my breath and I feel the movement of my ribcage, just as Lalitavajri says. And then, in my hands, I suddenly feel it there too. The fluttering of a butterfly wing.

  It has come.

  “Imagine where your heart is. Make a space around your heart.”

  But I think there’s a space around my heart already.

  “The metta bhavana,” Lalitavajri is saying now, “for those of you who are new here today, is about universal loving kindness. And loving kindness starts with ourselves. To love others, we must first love ourselves. So I ask you to wish yourself well. Say, ‘May I care for myself.’”

  This feels strange to me, and slightly selfish, so I can’t quite say the words even inside the quietness of my head.

  “Now, think of a close friend,” continues Lalitavajri. “Wish them well, hope for their happiness.”

  I wish she’d said not friend but relative, because I want to wish the babies well, I want them to have all the love in the world. But she said friend, so it’s Zoe who comes into my mind, Zoe dancing in the park and lying in the half-moon swing with me and looking at the sky. Only Zoe will probably never come with me to the park again.

  So I haven’t chosen anyone before Lalitavajri goes on. “Now, keeping yourself relaxed and open, hearing your own breath, turn your attention to a difficult person, an enemy.”

  And just before I tell myself I have no enemies, Zoe’s face comes again. Zoe telling Paddy mumbo jumbo about the twins, Zoe shutting me out with movies, Zoe saying, Since when were we joined at the hip? Zoe failing to come to my house on Easter Sunday with a small creme egg. Zoe going to the movies. With Paddy.

  “And noticing any resistance,” says Lalitavajri, “and not judging it, imagine this person well and happy.”

  I notice the resistance. I notice that my bones aren’t made of light any more. They’re made of glass.

  And I want to wish Zoe well, but right now I just can’t.

  Can’t.

  Can’t.

  I’m too busy.

  “Now,” says Lalitavajri, “move your metta, your loving kindness outwards. Let it take in everyone in this room and everyone in this town, everyone in this country, all those awake and all those asleep…”