Authors: Jessica Bell
I glare at the back of his head. If my eyes could emit an electric current I’m sure I’d render him unconscious. My nostrils flare as I clench down on the back of my jaw.
“Let me drink my coffee,” I reply in an indifferent tone despite how I feel. “And then I’ll do it.”
If I have to control my temper any longer I’m gonna need to smash a window.
Maybe I am going to turn out like my mother, after all. Maybe I’ll lose it, just like she did, like the day she hit herself over the head several times with a frying pan to make herself pass out—to escape reality—to “sleep through the shit.”
“Hurry up and drink it then. I can’t work with this mess around me. You know that.”
I clear my throat. I want to ask how he can live with Coco Pops scattered liked confetti around the kitchen, but not with the clothes hanging on the line where he can’t even see them. But I won’t.
Rise above, Melody, rise above.
“Er, sorry, but could you just put yourself in my shoes for a minute and try to realize that I need some time to chill out? Tessa is calmly playing on her own, the dog isn’t whining and whacking the glass doors with her filthy paws, and it’s Saturday—the day you promised I could have to myself. Remember?”
Alex exhales slowly from his nose, lips pressed together, and stomps out of the room and into the kitchen. I can hear him scrape the chairs on the floor as he pushes them under the table. He crashes crockery in the sink. The pantry squeaks as he swings it open and it slams shut with an elastic flick. He throws the pasta into the trash, then the pot in the sink. Something breaks. He yells, “Fuck!” I hang my head in my hands and wonder when the hell he is going to snap out of this.
What is going on? Is this some sort of mid-life crisis?
“Mummy, Mummy!” Tessa wails as she runs into the lounge with tears streaming down her cheeks. “She’s ugly! Look, Francis is ugly!”
“Oh honey,” I look at the doll. It looks like David Bowie on a bad hair day. “Let me help Daddy clean up a bit and then we’ll go and have a look for a new doll.” I take her left hand and massage her palm with my thumb. “Okay?”
Seemingly satisfied with this answer, she skips back to her room, to probably mutilate Francis even more.
“What does she need a new doll for?” Alex yells above his racket from the kitchen. “She has plenty.”
I get up and walk to the kitchen doorway, chanting in my head to stay calm. There must be
something
going on with Alex that he isn’t telling me. Can this temperamental behavior seriously stem from what happened yesterday morning? All I was doing was voicing what I want out of life. How is that a crime?
“She was giving it a makeover and now she doesn’t like the way it looks,” I say, picking at a fingernail, as if I’m having a casual conversation with Heather at a café.
“Don’t. Buy. Her. A new doll. She should to
learn
to take
care
of her stuff. If you buy her a new one, she’ll never value anything,” Alex growls as he shakes a breakfast bowl in my face.
I lean backward and frown, looking for the gentle twinkle that is usually in his eyes no matter what mood he is in. But I can’t see anything except my fishbowl reflection in their watery sheen. They’re like double-glazed windows. You can see through them, but you can’t hear what’s happening on the other side.
“Sorry,” he whispers, stepping back a little. He looks at the bowl in his hand, as if he has no idea how it got there, before putting it in the cupboard.
I move toward the sink to help him with the dishes, but he raises his hand like a policeman directing traffic.
“I’ll do it. You have your, er, ‘day off.’ ”
I pull out a chair and sit at the kitchen table. I crush a runaway Coco Pop with my right index finger, and then lick it off. Alex is right about the doll. I know he’s right. But I also remember how I felt when I destroyed my Barbie dolls as a kid—when I turned them into punk goddesses, with a pair of blunt nail scissors, green food dye, and a purple glitter pen.
“Alex, I did the same thing as a child. I know how it feels to regret experimenting with my toys and then realizing I liked them better the way they were. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to argue about it.” I put my hands in the pockets of my robe, not knowing what to do with them on the table top.
“Fine. Do whatever you like. But if you’re gonna buy bullshit, use your own money,” he says putting on the rubber dishwashing gloves.
“And why wouldn’t I? And
why
is that even an
issue
?” I retort, craning my neck.
Alex doesn’t respond.
“Alex. We need to talk about yesterday morning.”
Alex tsks and shrugs. I glare at his back as he fills the kitchen sink with suds.
“Fine,” I say. “Have it your way.” I get up and walk down the corridor to get dressed.
“Take your keys,” Alex calls, “I might not be here when you get back.”
I pause, balancing myself with one hand against the corridor wall, staring at an oil stain on the carpet. “Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Where out?”
“Just out.”
Seven
In a department store called Jumbo, the aroma of plastic purity reminds me of all the toys my parents could never afford to buy me as a child; when I would look over at the girl next to me in class, holding a ‘Li’l Miss Make-up” for show-and-tell, and I’d be there with the matchstick man my father helped me glue together over the weekend.
The scent of brand new calms me like a quaff of vodka as Tessa and I stroll down the aisle of stuffed toys. I drag my fingers over a row of toddler-sized zebras like a schoolboy bouncing his hand along a stranger’s picket fence. The fluffy material used nowadays seems a lot softer than when I was a kid. My teddy bear felt like a heavy woolen sweater. But these feel like they’re made from kitten fur.
“Mummy, I want
that
doll,” Tessa says, standing on her tiptoes when we reach the shelf displaying a vast array of porcelain dolls. She points to the biggest, most frilly, and through my eyes, the most
breakable
doll on the shelf. My body stiffens when I see the price:
89
Euros!
Saliva spawns behind my molars like water through a squirt gun. Do I let myself make decisions based on my mood now? If I wasn’t angry at Alex would I be averse to such a large purchase, or would I buy it with the enthusiasm Tessa craves?
“Honey, you, er, don’t want that doll,” I say, holding a closed fist to my lips as if about to cough.
“Yes, I doo-
o-o
!” Tessa replies jiggling about on the spot like wobbling jelly on speed.
“Of course you don’t.” I manage a tight-lipped smile and flick my head in some sort of attempt at a shake.
“I do!” Tessa puts her hands on her hips and looks at me as if she is saying,
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mummy. How would you know what I want and don’t want?
”
“I’ll tell you why you don’t want it. ’Cause our Doggy is going to like this doll too, and because it is too big to fit in your toy drawer, we’ll have to keep it on the shelf. You know what that means don’t you?”
“No.” Tessa shakes her head, hands still on hips, and narrows her eyes like she’s performing in a pantomime and addressing someone in the back row of the audience. An acute urge to put my foot down without any further discussion and say, “Too bad, take a small doll or no doll at all,” sends needle-and-pin-like adrenaline through my limbs. I swallow and massage the bridge of my nose.
Please don’t make this day harder than it already is.
I kneel down to Tessa’s eye level. “It means that Doggy will eat her. You don’t want this poor doll to die, do you?” The image of my mother pulling the head off Lissy, my one and only life-sized baby doll, when I was five, flashes before me like a shorting lamppost in heavy rain.
“No,” Tessa whispers, pouting her lips in thought.
“Okay, then. If you don’t want this beautiful doll to die, you’re going to have to leave her in the shop and choose another doll that will fit in your toy drawer, okay?’
Tessa frowns, then smiles like she has just caught onto the fact that I’m talking nonsense. She responds with another no and this time she sounds more sure of herself.
“No?” I ask, almost touching my chin to my chest and raising my brow.
“I’m not a silly duffer anymore, Mummy. I’m four. I’m big. Dolls can’t die! That’s silly.” She snorts as if it’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard. “If Doggy eats her, we can just come here again and get another one!’
I visualize Alex shaking his head and finger in my face.
I told you so.
“Well,
noooo
. You can’t just get a new one, honey,” I say, trying to sound rational and in control. “Today is a special day. If this doll breaks, I will decide when you can get a new one …
if
you will get a new one. Deal?”
Did I just agree to buy the doll?
Tessa scrunches up her nose, looks at the ceiling for a few seconds, puts her dainty right hand out to shake, and nods, “Deal.”
When we arrive home, Tessa runs around the entire apartment looking for Alex to show off her new doll. But he’s gone.
“Where’s Papa?” she asks, with a hint of desperation in her voice.
“I think he’s got some errands to run in town,” I say, hoping it’s a fact. I throw my handbag on the couch as if it reeks of garlic breath. “He’ll be back later.” I push paranoid thoughts to the side of my mind like Tessa pushes her vegetables to the side of her plate—at a psychologically tolerable distance from immediate view. Tessa replies with a little sigh and a forced pout.
“It’s okay, Mummy,” she nods. “I can go and play on my own.”
I watch her, jaw agape, skip down the corridor and close her bedroom door a little
too
hard. The door handle falls off. It lands on the carpet with a thud.
Great. Another thing to fix.
Rejection hits me like an unexpected fall. I flop onto the couch—listen to the distant dragging of Tessa’s toy drawer—stare at an old cigarette burn in the armrest, reminding myself that Alex isn’t really as selfish as he seems sometimes. I should cut him some slack. He quit smoking when I asked him to. He stopped inviting his cocaine-snorting best mate over to the house. He even promised to stop coming home drunk after his events. And he kept his word without a single complaint.
Silence endows the room with a lonesome hum and the echo of emptiness amplifies the quieter it gets. I need to make some noise; enough to bulldoze an exit into this dead-end alley, giving free reign to a new and undiscovered highway; to hear the bang of success fill a stadium like a thunderous bass drum beating the rhythm of risk.
What if I
am
offered the position in London? Would success really resonate as loud as I imagine it would? Can relocating to London really give me the opportunity to pursue everything I want?
It doesn’t feel like it anymore. What if my outburst of forged confidence yesterday morning really is the cause of Alex’s behavior today? And why won’t he talk about it? Why can’t we come to some sort of compromise?
As I walk past our bedroom to make myself a sandwich, I catch a glimpse of my black guitar case in the corner, collecting dust like wooden floorboards in a deserted weatherboard hut; abandoned like an old filing cabinet, storing years of written documentation I feel I ought to keep, but will never need to refer to again. How could I have left it sitting there, untouched, for the last
four
years?
If I pick it up now, will regret reach a boiling point? Or will the vibrating strings stab me like an adrenaline shot in the heart, reviving the passion that once pumped blood through my veins? Will one pluck me from life as I know it, with no option to turn back?
There is a line that separates reality from reality lost, and when I’m alone, I can see the line as clear and straight and taut as the strings on my guitar. Do I take this opportunity to step over it? Or will that first step plunge me into some other desperate version of my life that I’ll eventually want to escape? What if nothing will ever please me?
I walk into the bedroom and stare at my guitar case, propped up vertically against the wall. I run my forefinger along the top—the ridged black vinyl surface. A thick layer of dust renders my fingertip dark gray. I grab a pair of underwear from my drawer, dust the case off, and lay it flat on the bed. I unfasten the three chrome latches. They pop open, one by one. I lift the lid. I can see the reflection of my arm in its shiny jet-black body. Its stunning mother-of-pearl inlay still makes me giddy.
I used to admire my second-hand Maton acoustic as if it were a rare antique chair—contemplating its remarkable existence and all the generations of people who might have used it. And knowing that no matter how many times people might walk past the window it is displayed in, appreciating its beauty and its universal and durable function, it will one day be purchased again, find a new home, and will happily sacrifice its lull to forego another few more generations of use.
But this time I look at my guitar, and I’m afraid that if I don’t pick it up soon, I will
never
pick it up again. I fear that
I’ll
become a rare antique chair—but one that has been inaccurately valued and misguidedly put in the trash. But I’m also afraid to pick it up, because that will be the moment I rebuild my body around my soul—the moment when I know, there will be no turning back, and my life will never be the same. The beginning of a new beginning, or the beginning of the end?
I stare at it for a few moments longer, wishing I could get a handle on these feelings. If I were an outsider looking in, I’d probably want to slap myself in the face. Tell myself to “Get a grip,” that I’m being whiny, irrational, weak. “All words and no action.”
My mother was right.
I’m about to admit defeat and fling the guitar case shut—to close the lid on a world I once knew and try to forget it even existed, but when I hear Tessa singing, “Sugar pie, honey bunch …,” I stop. It’s our family song. Alex and I used to sing it to each other when Tessa was in my womb. I haven’t joined in since …