Short Story (May 10)

They started out slow. There was time to notice things.

The way his jersey smelled of petrol from the garage, the coffee taste of his kiss, the schoolboy roll of his shoulders, the blue black of his nails, the missing tooth.

She liked the missing tooth.

She liked how it broke the symmetry of him. Lopsided him. She had time to think that the missing tooth made him strange, someone you couldn’t ever know. He said he had lost it falling off his motorbike in Featherston, the tooth. She had imagined him careering, the bike wheels flashing and his skin scraping the gravelled road. And she had time to feel how that must have felt. How her heart squeezed itself dry for a minute. She had her own face pressed into the road. Her own body all contorted like a broken toy.

He told her a lot of stuff in those days and she would shape the pictures he made. She had time to feel herself getting lost in him. That’s how it was then.

Slow as sleepwalking.

He’d tell her about growing up with his mum in Masterton. How his mum had lovers but she would lie about them and how he would see them shinning down the drainpipe from her bedroom or creeping down the garden path, shoes in hand, when the light was mauve. How he would go to school hungry on the days his mum slept in. She had time to notice the angry white of his nostrils when he spoke. The dart of his head. And she would feel a pounding in her own chest as if all his hurt has seeped into her.

She had time to notice the sweet stab in her heart when he touched her. The pain would surge up into her throat. Stop her from breathing. His hands were always rough from the garage. She liked that he never said much when they made love. Never bothered to ask how it was for her. His body was always cool and quick as an otter.

And every time he was a stranger.

Sometimes she would look into his face and there would be a new shadow on his cheek A new shape to his jaw.

She liked him being strange.

And then he was sharing her flat. She had lived there for two years above the vegetable shop with the smell of rotting cabbage. But the smell was only bad in the summer when she couldn’t keep the window shut. Mostly she had liked the flat. She had liked the way the walls molded around her like a skin. How everything she owned slipped into all the spaces. Her tee shirts, her underwear, her shoes all had places to belong. All the pots and pans in her kitchen knew where they should be. All her trinkets lay neat and compact in their proper places. In those days she had time to notice how good that had felt. It was knowing that the toothbrush had a special place next to the toothpaste and that they both fitted perfectly into the tooth mug that helped her get by.

She didn’t remember inviting him.

He was just there in her bed one morning, his arms spread out enormously over her pillow showing the spider-leg hair of his armpit. She looked at his closed eyes and his half open mouth all innocent as a baby. She sensed how the smell of him had taken over all the other smells in the room. She had time to notice a completely new feeling somewhere in her gut.

But she let the feeling pass.

Maybe that was when things started to speed up.

He told her he was saving up to get them a better place. He said they would have a nice kitchen with a proper cooker. He knew a man who could get stuff cheap. One day he would take her out, maybe to Valentine’s and she could choose whatever she wanted from the menu. She liked it when he said these things. He would sit with his arms crossed behind his head and his legs spread apart and he was a boy with a plastic crown and she would want to laugh.

In the mornings she would make him a cup of tea. She always left the flat before he did and in the nights when she got home he was always there. She stopped noticing the way his clothes were always strewn over the bedroom floor. The way his empty lager cans were piled up by the sofa. She would just find herself picking things up and putting them back in their places. He would say ‘I’m sorry love, I’ll clear that up later’ and she would hear herself saying ‘That’s OK, it doesn’t take a minute’.

He said he had stopped working at the garage because they weren’t paying him enough money. They didn’t appreciate him, he said. He wanted his own business where he could make the decisions. He was going to the bank to get things sorted. She said she thought this was a good idea. She said she thought he deserved better treatment.

She barely noticed him taking the twenty dollars from her purse and saying he would pay her back at the end of the week. It was just money. In any case, she had started feeling a bit tired.

Careless.

She needed to get to bed.

Things started go missing from her room. The gold pendant that her dad bought her before he left for Melbourne. The jade brooch she got for her twenty-first. It probably didn’t matter. She didn’t wear them much and the brooch had a broken clasp. She thought she might say something to him. Ask him if he had seen them. But he had started coming home later and smelling of vodka. Sometimes his nostrils would go white. When this happened, she would start tidying the place up. Moving the cushions from one place to another, straightening the rug. She would hear him yelling at her.

But moving fast kept everything quiet.

In the tea break, she told her best friend, Tina, that they were very physical, sometimes three times a night. Tina laughed like a kid and she found herself describing how they did it. This way. That way. Details that she could barely remember. Laughing made her feel good. But was she lying? Was that last night’s lovemaking or the time before? She had been feeling a noise in her ears like static. Maybe she would go and see Doctor Phillips.

She started leaving her purse in her locker at work because he was taking the rent money. On the days when he couldn’t find the purse he would pace around the house looking for stuff. The floorboards would rattle like an earthquake and she would straighten her clothes in the wardrobe and line up her shoes until they were in a perfect row. Once, she felt his hands squeeze around her neck really tight. She tried to call out but she couldn’t find her breath.

Then he kissed her full on the mouth.

She forgot that she had been afraid.

One night she came home and all the crockery had gone from the kitchen. There were no saucepans or frying pans to cook with. She felt a lump form in her throat but quickly swallowed it down. She would ask him why he had taken them. But maybe not tonight. It was weird to see everything so bare and it made her notice the grease stains on the empty shelves. She started cleaning madly with the metal scourer. It felt good to see her own hands moving backwards and forwards so quickly and the brown circles disappearing like a magic trick.

There was a sick feeling in her stomach. Or was she just imagining it?

She started to wonder about the things that had gone missing. Had there been a red casserole dish? A set of blue bowls? Everything had gone blurry somehow. Mainly, she needed to get these stains up.

Working at the supermarket made her feel a lot better. You could get your thoughts in order at the till. People would talk, you would answer. Another customer. Another till receipt. “Have a nice day”. During the tea break, Tina had told her to get herself ‘seen to’ because it she was acting strange. There were circles under her eyes. She needed some stress pills. But the day had flashed by and there had been no time for the Doctor’s.

By the time he came home that night, everything was as clean as a pin. During her cleaning and tidying, she had noticed that the drawers in her chest were empty. She had felt a scream in her mouth but quickly silenced it. Luckily, she was wearing her supermarket blouse and apron that meant that she could turn up for work the next day.

Everything in the house was gone except for the cleaning things.

Even the lampshades had disappeared. Her hands and arms were shaking with the effort of scrubbing. Everything was clean and bare as a church vestry. There was no more she could do.

He said something to her when he walked through the door, but she couldn’t quite catch it. Did he say her name? She heard herself saying ‘You took my things. Why did you take my things?’ But she couldn’t be sure that he heard her. Now she couldn’t be sure she had said it. There was a racing in her ears like waves crashing against rocks. Then she felt her body being swung around and she was facing him. She was seeing everything now in a series of fast frames.

The trickle of saliva on his chin.

The bloodshot of his eyes.

The opening and closing of his mouth.

The lift of his chest.

The arm pulling back.

She felt a blow to her face but it happened so quickly there was no pain. She just felt herself fall to the floor. Heard the crack of her skull as it hit the marble fireplace.

The noise in her ears had gone and she heard a blessed silence like the sea when the wind has died. She felt her body standing. Her heart had stopped its racing and was slowing to a stop. She felt her limbs move like liquid across the floor. There was no effort, just the sensation of being moved along.

She had time to notice the yellow light of the naked bulb above. The neon shop sign through the kitchen window. His face florid and wet. The missing tooth as he wailed her name. She had time to notice herself moving as she walked through the open door, down the concrete steps, past the graffiti, and into the blackness of the night.

She was herself outside herself.

There was no hurry.