a mutt, mandarins, a corpse and a runaway

This is a story that hasn't won anything, but a story that I love. It's based on the novel that I'm currently working on and was one of the earlier iterations of the storyline. Enjoy!

...

I think the pretending was easier when you didn’t matter to me. We’d swim and we’d talk of mundane things, and it was always like this and nothing else.

But time has a funny way with making people matter to you.

We stand bare-foot in the cool grass of my backyard. It’s only the two of us in the watery afternoon shadow of the house, the house my life and all its tragedy happened in. You’re here now with me and it’s different.

Your hands estuaries on my shoulders.

My past brimming against my back, sweeping into your fingertips.

The day brilliant and quiet.

I think it’s time someone knows. I’ve been burning with this for too long. And it’s you. It’s always had to be you.

So I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you about my mother.

...

She was taller than me, with different coloured hair and the same coloured eyes, and a face sucked dry by age and discontent. It was a face that was broken in and well-ridden, worked hard into a lean slate of muscle and bone. There was no room for smiles on a face like that.

I knew little about how she started, and who she was before us. She grew up out west, on a property, though what they farmed or sold I couldn’t tell you. She never talked much of it. Just of the land, a sea of red soil that never seemed to end, and towns built of tin and gold money. I never met her parents, or my grandparents. They are ghosts, like much of her past.

She met my dad when she was twenty-one and broke, living in a drug house in Western Sydney. They sold meth, ice, the hard stuff. The stuff that fucks you up, and does a good job of it.

They met on a train, and how all good love stories start:

With nothing but eyes – eyes and cautious looks. Childish and movie-like.

She was lovely once. Long blonde hair, thick like honey, and eyes full of ocean. Arms and legs speckled by sun. In old photos, the life seemed to sing from her, suspiciously endless. She poured it all so naively into her cheeks and mouth. If only she’d saved a little of it for us.

So, she was beautiful, but a long time ago. The kind of beautiful people paint and write songs about.

But then again, I feel like all sad people were beautiful once.

...

The tragedies come good and true in my life. They’re reliable, and always around the corner.

I was loved less than many things – than my brother, than good wine, than mandarins. And, eventually, a dog.

My mother was as untouchable as the sun, and as unreadable as the sea.

My father tried, and loved quietly, but was often gone.

But then there was Maggie. There was always, perfectly, Maggie.

...

She was tan and white and grey and roan, a proper mutt. A genetic mess. Like when someone slams their hands onto piano keys, and they wring out in a scream of noise and incorrectness. You can hear in it those keys were never meant to be played together. For Maggie, none of her looked like it was meant to exist. Everything about her was odd. One of her ears hung strangely, in a permanent crease, and she had eyes of two different colours: one blue, one brown. And she had these strange, scruffy eyebrows that went grey when she was older, and a tongue that wouldn’t stay in her mouth, no matter how many times you put it back in.

But before we knew her, before the eyes were ours and the tongue familiar, she was a stranger on our street. She came partway through September, just as the weather was starting to warm up. My brother saw her first.

There she was, lying by our fence, watching the trees.

Tongue out. Eyes half-closed.

She looked as if she’d been there forever.

We didn’t spare her much of a look as we passed through into the backyard. We’d sometimes get strays out this way, or wild dogs looking for a meal. But she asked for nothing. It’s like we weren’t even there.

She stayed for a week, hardly moving. Or at least we never saw her move. She became a part of the landscape. The grey and white and red in her coat became the gravel, the sand, the mud. Her face the moon, always faraway and looking on. Four days in we left a bowl of old pasta by the gate, but she didn’t touch it. She just sat and watched. The Watcher. Old and broken but happy in it. It’s as if she’d decided to die, and she’d do it quietly and on her own terms.

On the seventh day, I paused by the gate. I watched her as she watched the ocean through the scrub. The pasta sat beside her still, untouched, gathering flies. There was the quiet, the song of the bush and the nearby sea. I opened the gate slowly, with purpose, the creak a hiccup in the silence, and I held it there. White paint under my hands, flaking, lathered in old salt and sucked dry by the sun.

Hey, dog, I said.

It’s then she looked at me. Infinite. A thousand years old. This dog was smarter than I’d ever be, and we both knew it.

And so she stood. With effort, but little worry. She didn’t look at me twice as she headed into the yard.

We kept her under the house for almost a month without anyone knowing. We had a house on stilts for the rain and the summer, and no one’d go under there, not ever. So she was our secret.

The first afternoon we washed her with detergent and she didn’t protest, but she didn’t enjoy it either. My brother and I stood with muddy feet and rolled-up shorts by the back with the hose on full-blast, his hands around her hips to stop her from getting away. Soap and fingers and mud. The silt flooded from her like a disease, the detergent running brown and speckled.

As soon as the water was off she shook the rest of it onto us, earning a splutter of curses from my brother. I just laughed. She trotted back under the house, found a patch of dirt, and started to roll in it.

He threw his shoe at her.

Again, all I could do was laugh.

Like I said, we lasted a month before anyone found her. It was Dad, on the weekend, digging around for an old tyre-patching kit. The front wheel of the Hilux had blown on the way back from town. He was hot and irritated and rolling in it. Flies hung like a solar system around his burning face, and it all happened in an instant.

Us, at our father’s backs, as his hand went for the door.

His stunned silence at the straw-filled burlap bag, and Nan’s china with water and leftover soup.

And Maggie, ever so cool, meeting the raging sun of his face with a smile.

His anger was a wall at first, the kind you can beat your fists on but never get past. There were threats of no television, no dessert for a month. And Maggie, behind us all, panting along with his words.

It all melted away with Mum. She was the end to him, always. When she saw Maggie that evening and her arms opened and the coldness fell from her like summer’s leaves, years of pain and distance swept away in a moment, he folded as easily as a bad hand of poker cards. Every part of him crumpled in that hallway. I saw it happen; in his face and in his shoulders and most noticeably his eyes, for which in a moment he was a boy, not a man, willing for anything to let her love again, even if it wasn’t him.

So that was that. There was no discussion, no ceremony. She was there, suddenly, quietly, as if she’d always been.

And as I watched my mother’s arms around the dog, long and pale and thin, the skin dripping from her bones, I realised I’d been usurped in the hierarchy of love by something that couldn’t even talk.

By a dog, with little energy other than just to exist.

The irony of it almost made me laugh.

...

My brother and I collected marbles for a period of our childhood. We didn’t play often, but we relished in the art of trading and compromise. We’d find them wherever we could – it started with our father’s own childhood collection, which we scavenged quickly; we then moved to the second-hand store in town, which housed all sorts of old and useless things, of which marbles were included.

The place was miserable in all facets, but most notably in colour, or the lack thereof. Like almost everything second-hand, time had sucked the life from most things in the store, and so the place had a permanently faded feeling, like you were stepping back in time whenever you passed through the front threshold. It all sagged and gaped and hung, drooped and hunched, stunk and waited. It was crammed-tight with crap no one else wanted, and carried a musty kind of human-smell, probably from all the crusty leather jackets in the back corner. The lady who owned the place was just as ancient and drained. I remember my brother telling me once that if you unravelled the entirety of the human circulatory system, you could wrap it around the world almost four times. Well, I think if you unravelled all the dips and tucks and rivers in her old, papery skin, you’d get at least that.

The place was tired, and unhidden in it.

It smelt of death and loss, and bad decisions.

But we loved it.

We’d dig through records and chipped stainless-steel mugs painted with old-Australia farming scenes, between yellowed paperback novels and hand-me-down china, for any marbles we could find. I think the old lady knew we were looking, too, and it became a game. Every weekend there’d be new marbles in odd places. It was a never-ending Easter Egg hunt.

Sometimes we’d take Maggie with us and tie her up with a piece of old rope by the front porch, where she’d sit with her tongue flopping out one side of her mouth and watch cars pass and the day roll slowly on. Sometimes she’d lap at the old ice-cream container full of water we’d leave beside her, but other times she’d just watch.

Back home we’d sit on the porch and trade and look up at the colours through the sunlight. Exchanges would be made and treasures would swap hands. The Watcher behind us, still, happy.

She died only four years later.

We found her on the porch coming home from school. She just looked asleep, at first, but the closer we got the more we realised that something wasn’t right.

The angle of her head, as if she were looking up.

The stillness of her chest.

The terrible, obvious absence of her tongue.

The shock came to my knees, and they buckled beneath me as my brother tried to grab me from under the arms. His fingers gripping, holding, pulling me into him. I didn’t cry until we were closer, until we could see her fully. And then I sobbed. I sobbed into a scream.

In death, she’d shit herself.

Wide-eyed, quiet, covered in it.

It’s all I could see. And I knew. I knew suddenly, painfully.

Because there were marbles. So many marbles.

...

Mum coped badly with Maggie’s death.

It was another thing I’d done wrong. Something else she could pin to me, a reason to hate me.

It was easy to blame a child who never said anything, who never fought back.

Marbles were banned from the house. Any glimmer of coloured light and she was a firestorm of rage, throwing things. She grew worse with the years, and she found new ways to ruin me. The worst was the fruit: the mandarins. They were here favourite. Even when they were dry and shrivelled with age, she’d sit out the front of the house and peel them with her fingernails, leaving spirals of orange rind in piles next to the smouldering ashtray. The air stunk of cigarettes and citrus. I’d come home and she’d be there, watching, fingers picking away until it was under her nails and she couldn’t scrub the smell out. And then she’d slurp it from her fingers, sticky, sweet juice dripping down her hands coloured with ash, watching my back disappear into the house and saying nothing. Whenever I’d done something wrong, she’d leave piles of mandarin skin hidden in my room, so that I’d know as soon as I came home, because I could smell it.

She did things to my head. I don’t know whether she meant to. I think if I try to figure that out it’ll just make it worse, so I don’t. I just don’t buy mandarins, and every time I smell them, I have to stop myself from running.

...

I’d be lying if I said it started out bad.

The first memories of my mother come slowly, and in pieces:

A breath, warm and damp, into my neck.

With a laugh and a kiss.

Fingers along my shoulders, light as snow.

Everything soft and faraway.

She left slowly, too.

In her hands, which began to prickle at my babyish reaching.

In her eyes, which grew colder and distant.

In her hair, which she cut off one day in the kitchen with a pair of fabric scissors.

She hadn’t sewn anything in a while. The house was empty aside from me, filled only with the heat and smells of the afternoon. The windows were shuttered closed, the place stuffy and choked with light and stale air. The wood was hot under my bare feet. And I emerged into the kitchen to see her, shrouded in thick, gold light, her face absent and turned towards the window. The scissors lay neatly in her lap. Her hair, limp and scattered at her feet, lay grey and blonde and dead colours in-between. What was left of it hung angry and broken around her ears. Maybe she was crying. I never saw her face.

She took a long time to leave us fully. But when she did, she left loudly. She left as loudly as anyone could.

...

Between the leaving, things were okay.

Summers down at the beach.

Canisters of strong cordial and orange quarters.

Full of sand and good memories.

A mother, a father, a brother, and a dog - before she died, that was - we were five. Sun-brown and happy and persistent in it. Five in a fibro house that swung and moved with the day, boiled in the morning and emptied of heat at night. A house full of sounds. Dog feet and our feet and Saturday morning cartoons.

Sundays at my mother’s feet, curled and simple, enjoying the buttery late-morning sun. Her fingers in my hair, absent but there, winding and unwinding and making little braids while she turned pages of an old book. Thoughtless, unintentional fingers that were the favourite part of my day. I remember lying so still, terrified that movement would disturb her, quieten her fingers.

Even when the summer storms rolled through, blowing rain and hail and sea spit horizontally at the house, we’d sit with the lights off and play board games by candlelight. Mugs of milky tea at our feet and an open packet of Scotch Fingers. Toes almost touching. Whispers of grins and eyes caught in the changing fire light, we were all disjointed parts making a bigger whole.

But even then, there were cracks.

The fights, deliberate in their quietness – for us – but something we could still hear.

Her crying, like a leaking tap, so unbearably silent and empty.

Her anger, which grew and mounted the nights with a suddenness that shocked us all.

The mind games.

The mandarins.

But there were always the Sundays. They stayed untouched. I’m not religious, but a part of me always held onto the hope God had listened, and on His Holy Day, he had kept her for us. It was smallest, most wonderful gift. My mother, as I remembered her, with her fingers in my hair and each breath something I could feel, with my head in her lap and against her stomach. A rocking I could fall asleep to, but never dared to. To close my eyes was to forget. To lose these moments, important as anything.

I stopped believing in God when one Sunday, I crawled into bed alongside her. It was almost noon, but she was still mostly asleep, warm and soft with it. When I went to tuck my head against her, reaching, dreaming, she rolled a little and murmured, not today, Pippa. Mum’s tired.

So I lay and waited. After a long time, she reached for her book, but never me. I grew colder with the hours. Eventually, I took the stairs, dumb and blunted with hurt, and joined my brother on the living room floor to watch the cartoons. After a while, she emerged and ate her mandarins out by the front veranda, a palpable distance between her and the rest of the house.

Every Sunday, for months, I’d lie beside her and wait. Often she was still asleep, or sometimes she’d be crying. She’d push me away when I’d reach for her. The impossibly tall mountain of her back rose between us, impassable with words and touch, until finally I’d leave, and the day would pass slowly and without feeling.

Eventually, I stopped. Sunday would come and I’d lie in my own bed and try to forget what day it was until it stopped hurting so much. It was easier to care less when her anger started. Hot and raw and emerging from nowhere. She was unpredictable in it. Swinging wildly from broken unhappiness to pointless, untraceable rage. It was easier to resent her, then. To hate her.

So, that was how she started the leaving. The dying.

The sudden killing of our Sundays, the happiest thing in my life.

The emptying of the house, in pieces, of her, until she was almost gone.

We were a father, a brother, a girl and a corpse.

Suddenly, brutally, we were three.

...

The anger – at its worst – was impossible. It filled the house like a bad smell and rolled through each room roaring like thunder. You’d smell the citrus and it’d kick something good into you.

Reason was a weapon more than it was a solution. You’d only wind her tighter. The only way to survive was avoidance. To let her pass you by.

And so that’s what we did.

Three years of tiptoeing around her.

Two of hiding at any sound, any hint of rage.

One of leaving, just grabbing everything and going somewhere, anywhere, until the storm passed us by.

Eventually, it was too much for my brother. Piled high with ignorance, fatigue, and testosterone, he stopped ignoring her the day my world ended completely. She blew through the house in a flurry of screaming and flying plates. The shatter and rain of clay dust. Bitter, nasty words, fat with teeth and tongue, pouring from a mouth full of this strange, false hate.

From it all, he rose, solid and unrelenting.

She worked at him like the world had worked her face. She beat and he refused.

His silence swallowed her rage. She was almost done. You could see it in her face, in those mad, burning eyes, that we were almost there. At the edge of the clouds, the eye of the storm.

But our mother was always stubborn.

When she broke him, she did it easily, and with nothing but seven words:

You’ll be the reason I kill myself.

There’s only so much anyone can take.

Especially a son. A son and a boy in a man’s clothes.

...

He left like she did. Loudly.

All slamming doors and simmering silence and a bag stuffed hastily with clothes and odd things:

A photo frame.

One of the dog’s old toys.

An unwashed shirt of mine.

It was a house of madly moving parts. Doors flying with words. In all its years, the house hadn’t heard sound like this.

Outside, the roar of a car engine, of tyres along gravel, kicking up dust into the moonlight. The furious jolt of gears changing. My mother tearing down the stairs, throwing each of her shoes at the disappearing Holden, screaming wordlessly at the rear view mirror.

And then he was gone.

The quiet was louder than she’d ever been.

Then, we were only a father and a girl. She remained, but she was gone. She was as gone as he was.

Suddenly, and most painfully, we were two.

...

Time passes differently when you’re missing someone. There’s a constant feeling of waiting that never leaves. I’d look for him in the tree line. In the windows of our bedroom when I’d come home at night. I’d find his face in crowds, supermarkets, trains. He was my ghost, and he never left me.

She kept her word. Not long after he ran away, we found her hanging off the side of the bed with vomit running neatly down one side of her face. She’d been dead five hours when I found her.

There was a picture of him in her hand when she did it.

Nasty, right down to the very end.

And me, invisible even in death, still facing the mountain of her back.

And then I smelt them. I smelt them before I saw them.

A pile of fucking mandarins on the bedside table.