Stuff
Abi Wyatt
Abi Wyatt
I have finished breakfast and am halfway down my second cup of coffee. Restless, distracted, unable to think clearly, I am gripped by that unease that, over time, I have learned to associate with all kinds of doctoring. Cervical smears, mammograms, psychiatrists, blood tests and lasers have all at some time loomed large. This morning, though there is no such engagement to explain it, I cannot dispel my anxiety. It is ten o'clock. I am alone in the kitchen. I hear the house tick. My right forefinger swirls a pattern in the dust on the scrubbed pine table where earlier I scraped and buttered the toast I afterwards hardly touched. Instead, I smoked two cigarettes. My allowance is five but I cheat. Outside the window, a fat thrush is struggling to master a worm. Half of him is still buried in the damp lawn but he is being stretched thin. I am suddenly taken back to a morning like this one, blue and yellow and windy, when my schoolgirl self traversed the playground, sick with apprehension, dawdling her way to Nanny Weaver’s mouse-hole flat. Together we would visit the dental surgery where I would have a tooth extracted. Afterwards, she would take me home on a number 328 bus. At the age of nineteen, afflicted by sum disease, my mother had all her teeth out, a procedure which instilled in her a dread of dentistry. Nevertheless, as my teeth and I grew, her feelings of guilt grew also: she determined to put aside her weakness for my tender sake. It turned out badly. I bit the receptionist; then I locked myself, screaming, in the lavatory. My mother cried, I cried. Later, I was sick in the street. This morning, though, the source of my pain is not in my teeth; every joint in my body is set in concrete and every muscle aches. It is painful to walk – to bend my legs I grit my teeth and concentrate – and an hour ago it hurt so much to struggle into my pants that I gave up entirely on the idea of socks. It is early in March but I am out of step in open-toed sandals. Cold feet, but no buckles, laces or straps. This is my life. This is ME. No pun is intended. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. After two years of illness, diagnosis felt like a gift. Still, I met with ignorance and misunderstanding; sometimes, even cruelty. In fact, that first winter, my whole life darkened and shrank. Something valuable that I have learned: If you can, be ill in summer. Painful things will trouble you less when the weather is warm. But aching or not, today is the day I must clear out the garage. Only two weeks to go so the inside stuff is already packed and stacked. Outside, though, tells a different story: the crumbling privy-cum-garden shed leaks rusted tools, cracked pots, and pale, moistureless compost while the double garage overflows with the junk and refuse of years. There are cardboard boxes, damp and limp and still sealed with parcel tape; they date back to when we arrived here eight years ago. We were a family then. Now I wander, dazed and alone, through a landscape of domestic disaster. I must classify and clear this mess, dispose of it cleanly and responsibly. This is another aspect of my husband’s perfidy: let us call it emotional fly-tipping. Slumped at the table directly in front of the window, what I am most aware of is the Edwardian bird-bath I paid too much for in the days when we still went together to auctions. The gardens that frame it are ‘delightfully mature’; their location is ‘strangely peaceful’. The agent spoke gently: he understood I wanted to stay. I slide my elbows along the grain of the wood and allow my upper body to follow. If I crane to the right, I can see the garage with its heavy, peeling doors. I meant to re-paint them but I never did. Now the new people will do it. New brooms, sweeping clean. A promise and a lick. By an effort of will I am back in the present. I consider the rusty padlock. I wonder if, after all, I have the strength to go on. So often we overcome a smaller obstacle to find ourselves confronted by a greater one. Marriages or garages, the principle is the same. I know, of course, that there are some things out there I have no hope of lifting: an industrial drill, a gearbox or two, at least three engine blocks. But what troubles me more than these are things I dare not face. This is not the first occasion I have thought about the padlock. Many times I have turned my back and opened a bottle of wine. Then the telephone snaps the thread of my thoughts. I am tempted to ignore it but it rings and rings with monotonous insistence until I give in. Too long seated, I have to struggle to my feet, my progress is stiff-legged and awkward. At the far end of the kitchen, on the chessboard of tiles, the old-fashioned handset squats and broods like a picture-book toad. My voice is flat: except for my mother, I do not get many phone calls. Two or three times a week, she will ask: Are you ok? But this isn’t my mother. It’s a man I don’t know. He asks to speak to my husband. He is arch. He is ‘unable to divulge’ the reason for his call. The silence is followed by a drawn-out sigh as I prepare for this invasion. Once it used to happen a lot; now, it takes me by surprise. ‘I am afraid,’ I begin’ – I enunciate carefully to avoid the need to repeat myself. ‘I’m afraid I cannot help you. My husband has not lived here for some years.’ Then I change tone: I am clipped and curt. I want to end this quickly. ‘If he owes you money, my advice is this: don’t hold your breath.’ Anger drives me out of the house and into the garden. Despite the brightness of the sun, I shiver from the cold. The wind comes from the north; pokes its icy fingers up the rolled-up sleeves of his sweater. I have been wearing this garment as long as he has been gone. Once, it was his favourite; he left it behind because he found a flaw at the neckline. When I first put it on, I could smell him on it: I wore it all that day. He was fond of clothes: when he disappeared, he had seventy-seven shirts. There would have been more but, when I discovered the horse-faced, straw-haired florist, I went a bit mad and burned quite a lot of his stuff. I built a bonfire in the middle of the car lot, while his salesmen stood by and said nothing. They could have said a great deal, of course. One of them offered me tea. Then they watched, exchanging looks as I poured on half a can of petrol. From time to time, they searched the distance for the quick, dark speck of his car. I am cold. I need to get out of this wind; thankfully, the padlock yields easily. Over the winter, though, the doors have dropped so I have to summon all my strength. I pull and pull as, inch by inch, they open with a scrape and a groan. Sweating and nauseous, I stare into the dark. Once he worked here, late into the night, building and painting his cars, the ones he would race and crash on tracks all over the country. Often, I went with him, numb from the cold, eating little, sleeping less. Then we drove home through the long Sunday nights while I thought about my classes the next morning. It moves me to stand blinking in that dark place where I used to bring him tea and biscuits. He liked to paint my name beneath his number, luminous in shocking pink. His racing colours were black and white. 263 was his number. The trophies he won meant nothing to him but he shone in the winner's parade. I remember the accident at Hednesford: they said that he was lucky. I was at home that weekend; too much marking to get done. I have wondered since if he was really alone. Was that the reason he discharged himself? They cut him out but then he stopped breathing and had to be revived. He fractured six ribs and his right collar bone – and badly sprained his left wrist – and yet, the next day, he drove the truck three hundred miles in eight hours. When I helped him into the bath he was black and blue all over. He said he stopped at Plymouth for Kentucky. Who changed gear? Behind me the wind catches door. It rasps against the gravel. The noise reminds me that my business here will not go away. I square my shoulders and brace my back against the pain that presses down on me. My eyes adjust to the dust and gloom. I measure my task. © Abi Wyatt All Rights Reserved millionstories.net |
| We like this story because: It builds up a picture of a life lost to the past. The future seems way off and too much to contemplate, but within the story there is a thread of humour that lends hope. |
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