The Life You Choose and That Chose You

by Figment Publishing

  From a distance came the low sound of the horn from the paper factory. It penetrated the forest, the call to mark the end of the day.

  My grandparents made a strange pair

  of Liver birds—days spent alone-together

  watching mornings tick into afternoons

  tock into evenings. She would jerk

  her head in his direction and caw-caw

  some shiny piece of news she'd gleaned

  from New Idea or Who, suspecting

  he would ignore her if only he could

  hear her. He would study the classifieds,

  folding and re-folding

  the broadsheet until he could hold

  it taut, angle it to catch the best light.

  I wonder how each saw the other—eyes

  cloudy with cataracts, myopic with years.

  At three o'clock, he would unfold the paper

  and slap it against his thigh. He would turn

  on the telly, hand Grandma the remote, cover

  his fine mottled crown with his old newsboy

  cap and head for the door.

  ‘You're off then’—‘I'm off then'

  Scouser accents waning.

  Our newlywed Liver birds

  await their first hatchling,

  dread the goose-steps in Poland

  and King George's call.

  And the story goes: ‘Two months later

  and three weeks too soon

  I'm ironing his dungarees—your

  Granddad's not His Majesty's—

  when the man from the War Office

  raps on our door.’ Caught

  toast-in-hand trousers-down

  our Ordinary Seaman is escorted

  to Devonport. The female Liver bird,

  her bronze wings spread and ready,

  scans England's north coast

  for her seaman's safe return. And he does,

  six years two months eight days

  and a second hatchling later, conceived

  while on shore leave

  though not strictly routine.

  When Granddad died in his eighty-ninth year

  things changed. Grandma moved

  into The Marion and Granddad

  moved in with us. I put his urn on the shelf

  among some family photos—though next

  to no-one in particular. And at three o'clock

  when my two spaniels spontaneously

  combust and head for the door

  I fancy they hear him—

  ‘I'm off then'—getting on with it

  as if nothing has changed,

  as if he now waits for her.

  It's 2 am when I realise that Pixel is dead. Peering into the corners of the pantry, I wonder why the fuck there is so much fucking tuna. Except I stop thinking after the second fuck, because by then I already know.

  We ran out of cat food months back—around the same time you broke up with me and I discovered that the local supermarket sold cans of tuna for 99 cents. I stocked up for the hard times ahead, and both Pixel's diet and mine took a turn for the worse. I don't even know why I had the cat. She was your idea. But as you shoved your shirts and shoes in a sports bag and walked out the door, you never even looked twice at that tabby doing her best to tangle between your ankles. Left us both, miserable creatures, crying on the carpet. Instead of banding together, Pixel's and my relationship turned to one of bitterness and petty blame games. For weeks we skulked around the house, snorting and sighing at each other when one of us finished off the milk or claimed the good side of the couch. Or maybe it was just her sinus infection, which I only really noticed when she was shitty at me. People talk about owners looking like their pets, which I'd always dismissed as sentimental and sad—and besides, I was never an animal lover. But after you left I began to see all the ways you looked like Pixel. Your flat face and heavy sloping eyes. The stubborn whiskers that grew out of your cheeks. On the bad days I could hardly look at her.

  Things had been deteriorating between Pixel and me for weeks—until, well, I guess until I stopped feeding her.

  Fuck.

  Being a bad person always makes me feel unclean. That oily-skinned, sweaty-palmed, sour-breath feeling of dirty deeds.

  I take a long bath and put on a faded black T-shirt to show I am in mourning. I brush my teeth with water because the toothpaste has all dried up, and pretend not to notice your toothbrush by the sink, or its boyish, fraying bristles. I blot inky clumps of mascara from my eyes and remove the flaky traces of nail polish from my toes.

  I repaint them that boring pink colour that nobody ever notices.

  I scrape the yellow crusty remains of Thai takeaway into the bin, and pile the plate on a stack of dishes. Murky dishwater lingers in the sink and sleepy detergent bubbles blink. Strange substances have begun to ooze and creep over bowl edges and form oily pools in coffee cups—a situation which I resolve out loud to deal with. Soon.

  Room corners are heaped with dark mounds of dirty clothing, the hallway littered with underpants, crumpled work shirts, your left tennis shoe. Neighbours have complained about my washing machine, its heavy grunting, the way it makes walls shake and scares sleeping children when I put it on in the middle of the night. Fuck them, I think, this is serious.

  I separate blacks from whites, whites from colours, fur from—

  Oh, fuck.

  Buried with her head in an old T-shirt is the cat. I guess she must have crawled into the laundry to die.

  I don't know quite what to do then. I bundle her up in the T-shirt but then think that I actually rather like that shirt and so undress her. I gather some old newspaper and try again. She's a stiff and awkward cat-shape, and I never was that good at wrapping.

  If I had a garden I would have buried her there, but not all of us have that luxury, so I carry her down the fire-exit stairwell and out to the back alley where the trash cans loiter late at night. I place her in the one marked 7B.

  I feel like I should say a few words, and start with ‘Dear Pixel’, but my voice comes out weird and echoey in the alleyway and I get a bit embarrassed, so I stop.

  RIP Pix.

  When I get back upstairs, the apartment seems empty and too fucking tidy.

  Time for a cigarette.

  From the verandah, seven stories high, you can smell the nighttime, its blurry blue-to-blackness shrouding the city, shadowy where it meets the neon glow from skyscrapers and train stations. If you'd seen me there, cigarette slowly burning, bony knees tucked up to my chin, looking out over the city, you would have thought, Oh, she's thinking. But I'm not. I mean, there are thoughts in my head, but I'm not thinking.

  I'm too tired to think.

  Extinguishing my cigarette on the cactus (shrivelled yellow butts on each of its top spikes like a blonde perm), I wander back inside. It's 5 am and I feel the familiar swell of nausea as I think about going to bed. Bits from the carpet stick to my bare feet as I make the slow, sad walk towards my bedroom—dried-up rice, toenail clippings and kitty litter.

  I once read that the average adult takes seven minutes to fall asleep.

  Lying on my bed, I stare up at the peeling ceiling, stained in concentric circles of yellow and brown—a souvenir from heavy rain last winter. My sheets have that musty fart smell that comes from never changing the bed—tangling between thighs, as my arms drape over the mattress edge. The slow ceiling fan slices the thick, humid air into a never-ending spiral spinning slowly through the room. Round and round. My mind circles. The people and objects of my day morph and magnify. They linger in the late-night air—after midnight and before dawn, that hollow time. When time slows and ceilings are further away.

  I think about Pixel and the way she died—with her legs in the air like a joke. I remember once being told that if an owner passes away alone in their apartment, dogs will die by their side but cats will eat them right up. I wonder if Pixel thought of me in her last moments of life. Whether she curled up in my old T-shirt ou
t of love or spite. I think about whether or not the fungus plantation in my kitchen sink is toxic, and if people would laugh when they heard I'd died from dirty dishes.

  I think about the people I've spoken to today. The Asian grocer who smiles even when there is nothing to smile about. The pimply teenager from the video shop who calls weekly about my overdue mini-series. The widow who collects the rent. Then I think about the actual words I've spoken. I break them down to sounds and syllables; spell them in long and unbroken streams, letters floating across the blank backs of eyelids. I wonder how to explain to the grocer why there is a ‘k’ in front of knife.

  Staring into the thin, black air, I wonder why when we say ‘the stars are out’ we speak of things that can be seen, of bright, white light. But when we say ‘the lights are out’ we speak of nothing things. Of darkness.

  I lie in bed and think about you lying in bed. I think about your heavy mouth breathing and the things you used to say in the night. The way I never knew if you were sleep-talking or just thinking your thoughts out loud. I pull your pillow closer, stained a musty-yellow from where your head used to rest. Sometimes, when you were sleeping, I'd put my hand over your mouth so that you couldn't breathe and hold it there in the dark until I'd feel my face swell and my stomach beat and my hands tremble until I could bear it no longer and I'd swear you must be dead. Then I'd take it off and wait for the deep grumbling of your breathing.

  Watch as you came back to life and remember why I loved you all over again.

  I'm woken from a dizzy half-sleep by the phone ringing. Ode to Joy—the death march I have assigned to my mother's landline. I let it ring out.

  ‘Ness?’

  She does that every time, despite the fact I live alone.

  ‘Vanessa, I know you're there.’ She waits.

  I lie motionless in bed, as though even the slightest movement might give me away.

  Defeated, she sighs dramatically into the receiver, and says that she was just ringing to remind me about the appointment she made for me in that therapy group. ‘You know, the one that worked miracles for Miranda after Simon left her for that woman from their yoga class. Couldn't sleep a wink. Had a devastating impact on her career, apparently the publishing house is having to take out all kinds of loans…’ She trails off and I can see her taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes the way she does.

  ‘Oh, Noodles…’—a nickname I've resented ever since the third grade when my arms grew disproportionally longer than the rest of my body—'have you tried exercising? Don't you have some friends you could go and see? Call up Jen, you always liked her…Ness?’ She sighs again, but this is a real one. A puff of small, sad air.

  ‘Look, just take care of yourself, and promise me you'll go to—’

  The machine cuts her off.

  I roll over and pull the doona over my head.

  No fucking way. Not a chance in hell.

  The hall is far too large for the small group assembled. There is too much air. My sandals broke on the way to the meeting and now slap against the wooden floor, making me conscious of the way I walk, which my mother once told me was more like a stumble or a slow fall. Dark-haired heads turn to stare, and I try to look confident and even a little bit short-sighted as I approach the gathering.

  The group shuffles to make room for me in the circle, chairs grunting against the wooden floor. I take a seat between a large woman dressed entirely in shades of purple and a man who looks like my old history teacher.

  ‘YoujustmissedtheNameGame!’ a large, pink-skinned woman beams. She has a smile like the sudden thrusting open of curtains, making insomniacs flinch and shrink into their chairs. The therapist, I presume.

  Everyone goes around the circle and repeats their Adjective, Name.

  Gaunt faces with rumpled hair and odd socks. Like some sort of freak show—each with their own special act.

  It doesn't take long for me to realise these guys are pros: with their nervous habits, the clothing that doesn't quite fit, the sleepless sighs collecting in their chests, swollen and heavy, and the stories that hint at something brooding just beneath the surface. They really have their characters down pat.

  Pleasant Pauline wrings her bony hands in deep, slow circles as she talks about her father. The bags under her eyes match her shadowy hairline, stained purple-grey by hair dye. Caring Carl speaks pensively about the pressures of inner-city living—his oily hair pulled into a low bun, Dungeons and Dragons style. He lifts his tired eyes to watch the ends of his unfinished sentences float off into the empty space like smoke.

  A petite woman named Debra recites a heart-rending monologue of a disintegrated marriage. She doesn't cry, appears to notice she has fallen below the mark, and excuses herself for the bathroom, only to return with a wet face.

  As the others speak I begin to get nervous that my character is lacking: with my wilted floral dress, my ridiculous pink toenails teetering over the edge of my sandals.

  I'm caught rubbing off my lip gloss with a bus ticket when the therapist says my name. It's my turn.

  She asks me about my week, and before I can stop myself I'm telling the group about how it's been a bit shitty because I found my cat dead in my apartment. I expect her to ask me how I feel about that, but instead she asks what I did with the body, which catches me off guard. Like she knew all along I was that kind of person.

  ‘I threw it in the bin,’ I say, and the silence that follows makes me feel like I need to take a shower. The therapist says ‘O’ and then ‘K’ and writes something in her notebook.

  I've never been that good with first impressions.

  ‘Right, so, Vanessa. Tell us a bit about your sleeping patterns. When did the troubles begin?’

  I decide to keep it simple.

  ‘Um, I haven't been able to sleep ever since my boyfriend left…’

  And in the echoey silence that follows, Insomnaic Ian sits up in his chair and says, ‘So you're here because you got dumped?’ Sarcastic bastard, trying to make me sound stupid. And it works.

  I feel the liquid swell of embarrassment beneath the skin on my chest and cheeks. A rash creeps up my neck. ‘It's not just that he left me, it's—’

  And all the things that it is clutter my mind. It's that I never got an explanation. It's the way he just walked out one Tuesday afternoon. It's the apartment and the cat and the mess, the fucking mess. It's me. It's me right now in this room with these people.

  ‘—it's all the things he left behind.’

  And so the therapist leans forward, folds her chubby hands and says, ‘Perhaps it's time to clean out all that stuff, Vanessa. Get it out of your life.’

  I look around the group and the group looks away—nibbling at fingernails and staring down at their shoes. Pleasant Pauline is nodding sympathetically and the history teacher guy is giving Insomniac Ian an amused look.

  I try to speak but words melt and fall away—thoughts turn to liquid, which dribbles out in mascara-smudged tears from the corners of my eyes.

  I close my mouth and push back my chair and walk out. With my sandals slapping against the floor like some slow, sad round of applause.

  The first thing I do when I get home is make myself a drink. As I pour cheap gin into a plastic cup, I notice the orange decomposing on the windowsill. Mouldy green. Soft bruises seeping a sticky-brown fluid.

  I remember you sitting on the kitchen stool the day you left, carving thick orange peel into an endless spiral. The sharp knife kissing your thumb as it went around and around. Calloused hands and citrus-smelling fingers, leaving a little on everything you touched. After you left, I kept the last orange in the bag.

  The sickly-sweet smell of rotting fruit makes me think of you.

  I think about what the therapist said, and before I can change my mind I pick up the mouldy orange, carry it to my room and put it in a cardboard box.

  As I walk out of my bedroom I see your bathrobe on the back of the door. After you left I hung it that way so that sometimes, in the
darkest part of the night, when I open my eyes just a crack, it looks like you are standing over me, watching me sleep. I take it off the hook and put it in the box too. I throw away those ugly pendants you used to buy me with the pink and purple stones that were meant to bring ‘good health’ and ‘prosperity’ and ‘protection’. I empty the shelf of all the cookbooks you collected when you went through that ‘Foods of the World’ stage and throw out the weed you kept in the bottom of the Weet-Bix box. From the cupboard underneath the basin I throw away your toothbrush and the funny-smelling cream you used for your eczema. The last thing I place in the box is the picture of you and me that I'd pretended not to notice for months, the one of us standing awkwardly beneath your parents’ pear tree. This seems significant.

  I take the biggest breath I have taken since you left and look down at the box at my feet.

  Our life together reduced to cookbooks and rotten fruit.

  Almost.

  It's early in the morning and I've beaten the garbage truck. I burrow my way through empty wine bottles, grimy takeaway boxes and sanitary pads wrapped in toilet paper.

  And then I find her.

  Covered in newspaper like a badly wrapped pass-the-parcel. When I pick her up she's warm, which gives me a shock and makes me think for a second that maybe she is alive. But when I see her face and the little bugs in the corners of her eyes I know that she is dead and that it was just the rubbish that kept her warm.

  I carry her upstairs and put her in the box with all the other objects. And then I put on my sneakers and walk to your house. Outside the night is growing thin and the mauve smoke of sunrise lingers over the city. I don't think, I just let my feet take me along the familiar route to the white wooden fence and the magnolia bushes that I have stood behind to watch you making eggs on toast before you leave for work. The streets are restless in the last moments of morning, when birds are ruffling their feathers on telephone lines and washing is crinkling in the early morning light.