Deleted Scenes for Lovers

by Tracey Slaughter

  He will take her on one of their last outings to buy her an eternity ring. They will have to plan for days. He will clean out their handy carrybag. He will pack its zip pockets with tissues, with inhalers, with a brolly, with mints, with personals and spare plastic sealable bags just in case. He will polish their good shoes, re-trim their comfort soles and leave them on newsprint to dry beside the cat’s dish. He will flip through the bus timetable to decide the best route. He will have her arm through his all the way, a shivery company. He’ll love it, down to its irregular pulse. When they’ve clambered on the bus, he’ll have gotten the money wrong, the driver tutting and the queue groaning behind them. He’ll tap her wrist where the bone is a fierce knob of blue with a message of Not to worry, not long. When they reach the shop where he’s scrimped to let her pick whatever her heart is set on, there will be another couple ahead at the counter. They will watch them, with arms in a doddery link, the gleam of the merchandise like stars on the scrubbed film of their shoes. The couple will linger over their purchase, then head out through the bleep of the storefront, not noticing the selves they have rushed through.

  She will make him jealous one summer. One of his friends will watch her too closely, tour her movements in the overheated bach, notice the sunburn flex on her collarbone, the peel of her soles from the sandy rented linoleum. She will bend too low to wedge in the tent-pegs, skip too brightly through the taut cord trails. She will bend too low to offer him the can-opener. She will bend too low to pass him his plastic plate, to tong it with a blackened steak, a flop of potato salad. She will bend too low to swing up the children into the greasy cradle of her breasts. Her hair will be pinned off-centre, the ends of it bleaching in the day-long salt. She will not just wade, but hand him the kids and dive out, sluicing with her thighs for deep water. The haul of her torso out the tideline when she returns will be heavy and sated and relaxed, the stretchmarks swimming down into her bikini like secrets, porous and quicksilver. She will make him jealous. She will want to. Tunes will tick around the turntable they prop by the washline, black grooves curling in the sun, and she will dance, on the balls of her feet on the buffalo grass. His best mate will pass her a drink. The ice will clink in the yellow glass tumbler as her hips shift. Her toenails will be painted. There will be jokes about parties where keys are traded, and he will want to kill someone. He will kick the chillybin instead, waking the tentful of grizzly children. And only she will know why. And smile.

  He will win the prize for Best Hat! on Hat Day! (the staff will use exclamation marks for everything). They will take his photo, propped in his chair with a red plastic plate that they’ve filled with a ring of fiddly iced things baked into frills he can’t handle. He will grimace and dribble at the flash. They will pin it to the noticeboard, Winner: Best Hat!, above the poster of the kitten clinging to the rope which reads You gotta hang in there!, below the flyer requesting that residents only use their buzzer when in genuine distress. They will wheel him to room 17. He will balance where they leave him on the left side of the bed, trying to unhook his toes from his slip-ons. It will take concentration. It will take swear words. The sight of his toenails, yellow and cracked, will not seem like much of a blasted reward. He will sponge at the drool on his spencer. He will tilt the bed back, careful to thumb the right button and not nudge the alarm again by mistake (Oh, you naughty man!). He will look at her photo on the locker, where she’s pressed under glass in her white dress, her hair crop-dusted to a bell-curve, stiff and dark below the gap he’s found under her veil, the space he’s shivered to, lifted. He will still feel it, the scratchy gauze of her crown and its delicate, snagging trims, the warm tremor of her breath as he burrows through its trail, I now pronounce you. He will look at her photo. But he will not talk to her. He will not tell her about the fussy cakes he can’t pick free from their corrugated paper, the froggy flop of the humiliating hat. All that mess they’d perched on his skull, all that eyesore of beads and daft bloody ribbons: he will thank his stars she wasn’t here to see that. He will get himself settled. He will use the button (for god’s sake, hit the right one) to steer his bed back and blot out the neighbours, the jerked tide of walking frames, painstaking and squeaky in the hall. He will think of making his way into her, all fingers and thumbs through the silvery see-through stuff that spills at her head, of reaching for the outline of smile he has to blink through, her still face washed in a haze of silky light, waiting in the layers of veil like a ghost he’s always known would come.

  They’ll get on the bus. She’ll be first, because she’s older. A couple of years, but big deal enough to mean she gets to move to the back. But he’ll sit sideways, as long as no other bugger nicks the seat next to him, so he can see her. He’ll watch the way her jaw moves as she stares out the window, the crimps along the chinbone that look like sad thoughts. He’ll watch the way her fingernails drift to the zits on her forehead, poke around in the hairline spray of pores. The way the slots between buttons on her white shirt bulge wide, let him peek bra-lace, grubby, overloaded. He’ll watch what she reads, the way she pinches books off the other kids if she finishes her own, speeds through pages with no trace of needing to spew from the bus jump-starting the words. He’ll watch the lazy hunch she’s mastered, the coolest pose he’s ever seen, the slouch of her trunk dead low in the seat with her knees slid up the metal in front of her, spine like a hammock, book on her belly, tongue-tip tapping her top teeth as she reads. He’ll think she’s the one. The flicker of boob-lace, the spread of text on her pelvis, the untied shoelace she always seems to sport—these things are evidence. But once he goes up to her, full of certainty, to tell her so, she’ll stare hard back at him. As if, she’ll blurt. Then smile. As if.

  how to leave your family

  1.

  Drive to the shops with three children, boy and two girls. Load kids, car hot, voices and hands sticky, car seats bulging and scalding, seatbelts whining to cut damp skin too tight. Lean in bodily, lumber, one foot left on gravel, head stuck in their wriggly haze. Smell urine-jelly bloating a nappy, grazed and glitter-sprayed legs, the heated crush of cheese and banana bumping inside a lunchbox. Almost smile, until you get kicked in the face, a toenail (dirty) nicking your cheek as kids chant, Did not, yes you did, did not, yes you (foot jolt, violent and final) DID! Hear your voice explaining, tired: We don’t hit, and we don’t kick (snickering, more kicks). Give up. Plug in last belt, a who-cares click. Reverse. Clamber. Scrape clip through scalp and out of hair in climb from back seat: stand and run hand along skull.

  Look down into the hairclip: gaping and cheap, tooth and claw. Useless. Throw it into the gutter (Mum!). Drive streets. Did not, yes she did. Not. Yes she—(kick).

  Park: put face on wheel for a moment. Feel hot vinyl through hair, ridge of string and small pulse coming from cut kicked open on cheekbone. Turn to look at children. One still wet from kindy water-play, one with lipstick and snot smeared up face. Last one barefoot. Almost say, For the thousandth time, will you please put something on your feet, you know we don’t go into shops without our shoes on. But close mouth, stare down at littered car, at the dirty glinting twitch of feet. Turn and twist down the rear-vision mirror to check face. Stroke the damage, a small raised welt in freckles gathering scab. Black smudges on eyelids from heat, lick thumb then try to rub clean. Shrug, pull out keys. Turn back to kids, murmur, Hop out then, but use look that scares them. Look that goes through them, eyes with no mother in head.

  Unbuckle kids. Wait for kids to get out. Wait longer, sun on cars like blade after blade. Get kids through carpark, drag, herd. Crouch when son stubs toe, flick tar from blood, kiss, but say, Well, what can you expect? Grab girl dancing in path of reverse lights. Give backing driver small hand-sign, Sorry, puckered half-smile: feel untidy, spineless, wifely. Get the bird in return, which kids mimic, fingers stabbing with hoots at the sky. Drag kids harder. See red eyes of blue-haired women passing you, heads tilting, sniffing in conference. Mutter: The world is full of nanas and bitches.
Feel clever, acid, charged for a minute. Then wonder which one you are.

  Try to get youngest into trolley. Dancing stops, howling begins. Try again. Give handbag to oldest to hold, shout when he mimes All Black pass with it. Get grip on small girl’s arm, close fingers, feel bite of wedding ring. Lean in, hissing. Get more screams. Pull on small body, launch it into trolley, drive chubby legs down through gaps in steel. Push ahead as if small girl invisible, not thrashing. Point out TV screen looking down over screams, see her red face uncurl suddenly.

  Stand lost in aisles for several seconds trying to remember list. What did you want? What are you here for? Fail.

  Feel it building now, slow motion: loneliness.

  Loneliness.

  Load trolley anyway, can after bright can, random, clanging. Thud in some flour, some oily packs of eat-within-one-day meat and on-special bread. Pull sticks of stiff bread from fists of children using them as swords, replace on shelf. Mentally poke tongue at nanas/bitches. Stop. Realise you haven’t been adding. Stare in, trying to calculate price. Stare in harder. Remove things children have slipped into trolley when your back was turned. Ignore whines. Walk on.

  Walk back. Pull coins out of pocket, wet-eyed dancer out of trolley. Send all three kids with coins to play on ride-on trucks at corner of supermarket. Quietly, and don’t lose each other. Watch them run away, instantly spread through space. Clacking pink beads, a slight trail of toe-blood, and loud, long, tongue-thick, falling-behind shrieks. An empty aisle, grid on grid of silence. Think: That could be the last time I see them. A stupid, chilled, guilty thing to think.

  Turn. At the end of the next aisle, see the boy-man stocking the shelves. Man, boy. Wheel towards him. Roll towards him and see his green smock pull at the thick bulb of shoulder, lift up from his low-cut baggy jeans. Shut your eyes but then open them to the same scene, his skin, a strong, hard margin. He holds the stretch, his big hands spread on the box, his booted heels tilting, a black belt edging down hips. See that rise of triangular muscle, sculpted down from his bony hips to the apex of penis hidden below his buckle. Think of it, think of it suddenly: that hot, covert softness. Think of licking it awake.

  Stand in the supermarket, soaked in longing. Feel like desire has hit your body from a distance, cosmic and cold, like a swan’s tough wing. Like locusts, clicking and jointed and screeching, a plague, exploding on your skin. Like stars.

  You’re so dramatic. Crisp, evil stars.

  Think the worst word you can think under these circumstances. Think: Fate.

  Stare at him as he stares back at you. Stare at him, still, as the box he’s holding overbalances, slides in an arc past his spine. Watch, watch the bombing of cans, their glossy shrapnel, their rolling, chaotic light. Then turn, as he crouches, still watching you, callous, erotic, uncertain. Get straight to the checkout.

  2.

  Get home. Ring husband at office. Say you went to the shops but the kids were shit so you missed some stuff. Could he go get it after work? Start to give him a list, then hear his sigh, the one he gives like he’s run a long way and had to carry you. Hold onto the phone in the silence. Feel its plastic shell warm up with your sweat. Feel it bed down the dirty, raw print on your cheek. Almost smile when your husband says nothing, when he hands you a licence to turn around. Say in your best snarl, your teeth-bared voice: Fine, fine don’t bother, then. Almost smile, when the last thing you hear him say before you slam down the phone is, Hopeless. Well, I don’t know how long you can go on being like this. Being so hopeless.

  Feel hopeless all the way back through the streets. Hopeless, hopeless like you could keep on driving. See yourself doing it: merging and sliding pointlessly, endlessly, through the streets, no signals or lights to mark you, just loose coils of directionless rolling, the kids falling into their own hopeless curls of hunger and nightmare in the back seat. How long can you go on like this? Feel yourself answering, deep in your body, a gargle of blood, answering him.

  3.

  Pull up outside the playground instead. Unstrap the kids and watch them splash through the bark, hitting the frames with star jumps. Watch their thin limbs grapple and hunch, stand here and let them scare you. Think: Where do they get it, the force of their joy, the electric, animal grasp of it? Follow them as they call, all three, Mum, watch me, watch this, Mum, look at me. Have your hands ready, outstretched and trembling beneath them, as if you could break any fall. Feel it, feel the aura of their bodies as they buck and swing, feel their knuckles’ squealing grip, the sound of their waists and kneebones orbiting bar after bar, their hair spilled, their small teeth radiant.

  Rock everything about them inside you. Think you could live in this echo of their delight, tasting it all in negative. Think you could just sit down here, tired, so tired, and breathe in their distant particles. Breathe in the dust of their vivid life as it rises from their limbs’ sheer blast.

  Shiver, and think you might just survive on their residue.

  Then turn and see him, the young man, the boy from the supermarket, under the old wooden jungle gym. Watch him un-crouch, a slow, deliberate ooze of movement, then see him step, out of the damp fort’s shadow, exhaling smoke. Old, knowing smoke. Watch him flick down the relic of cigarette. Watch his hip flex as he crushes it.

  4.

  Tell yourself all the things that are wrong with this: that he’s moving across to blur the image of you and your beautiful children, moving across the picture you’d almost taken of you as a happy mother, moving across like a luminous burn dissolving your face on a photo’s surface, moving in to seal the light from the lens like the warm, glowing block of someone’s thumb.

  5.

  Him: I wouldn’t have thought you’d had kids.

  You: Three.

  Him: I can count.

  You: Can you count the years on my face?

  Him: Can you count the studs on my jeans? I’ll let you count them with your teeth if you like.

  You: Fuck off, little boy. I can’t believe you.

  (Pause.)

  You, again: But give me a smoke. Before you go.

  Him: You don’t smoke.

  You: People change their minds.

  Him: I’m counting on it.

  (Pause.)

  Him, again: I’ll give you three. One for each kid.

  (Inhale—him, you, him. Exhale—you. You. You.)

  6.

  Retreat. Withdraw. Fall back. Exit.

  Descend from the surface of your face as your husband reaches to touch it. Tell each nerve to contract against his investigating hand.

  Fail. Receive the brush of his gentle coarse thumb over the cut on your cheekbone. Hear the vibration in his query through your hair, Where did you go getting this?

  Swallow as he mutters, I’m sorry. Revoke. Turn and shuffle around your kitchen, unpacking the supermarket bags, the items of truce he’s carried home, against his better judgement. Make a gesture, an It doesn’t matter sign, a motion of split love and futility, a shrug only your husband can read, part of the body language of marriage, private and useless. Repent. Nest in your husband, suddenly nest in him, hard, with ribs and head. Remember the feel of the boy’s finger hovering over the same location. The rush of gravity into the tiny wound, the voltage of his suspended fingerprint.

  Catch sight of your eldest daughter, watching you in her father’s arms, just as she was the one to watch you at the playground. Distant, suspicious, thin. The spitting image of you.

  7.

  Climb into the unmade bed. Know you should take comfort from these sheets, this sour, familiar hollow. Take nothing but notice of knots in your torso. Stay rigid, almost unbreathing, beside the man who married you, and feel it, like snake upon snake, the loop and ripple of snakes exploring your heart chambers.

  Get up to a child’s cry.

  Get up to a child’s cry.

  Get up to a child’s cry.

  Call I’m coming, Mummy’s coming, I’m here, coming. Take a few stumbled, off-centre steps. Look down:
find that the dark hall floor is laced with toilet paper, long white strings. A child has pulled it from a dozy midnight piss back into their clothes, their bed. Feel it around your ankles, a drift of scratches, dry, ludicrous, domestic. Gather it, absurdly like wrapping paper, like a prank but dazzling gift in your hands. Laugh. Laugh out loud in the dark hall at yourself.

  8.

  Sit in the tyre-swing hooked to the old fort. Rock on heels, scuff there, childless, thinking. The tyre is a gutter for rain and garbage. Listen, smell it, black mulch leaving a hollow clunk and slop as you turn.

  Kick, circle, drift. Leaving and staying: let the words evolve, let them detonate, slowly, in your mind. Think them through until even the sound of the words feels like enough to tip you. One way or another. This way, home, over, back, out.

  And find yourself thinking other words: contentment, atavism. Feel this last, a strange hiss of word, its rhythm, its lure winding through others. This word rising in your mind when you think of the sloping muscle, the smoke escaping through the teeth of the boy. Lean your body back, rigid, use it as a wing, the black mulch echoing you. Think this word until its complexity, its pollution, is all you can feel.

  For the thousandth time, you’re so dramatic.

  The boy has carved an image into the fort. It is you, obscene, cut open. It is him, too, a cartoon, a tattoo, limbs splintered through you, his phone number gouged in a cleft. Let your fingers run through it. Think: Your children will play here, run through the tunnels where you are only graffiti. Cry for a while. Hang for a while.

  Dig your feet round till the ropes lock and plait you a cage. Stiffen in it, creaking. Then let the ground skid away from your feet. Fall through the playground in dirty circles.

  When the wheel stops, make yourself chant it: Staying. Staying or leaving.

  Did not, yes she did, she did not, did.