Short Stories

The Palm-Reader

Written: December 2020

I don’t know. I actually don’t know.

She looked at me as she quietly acknowledged her failings. I was incredulous and yet I felt a sense of pity as I watched her shaky hands trace the lines on my palm. I wondered if I was one of the unreadable few. Years of complex genes mixed with too much hand lotion. I peered closer at my hand.

She’d been recommended. Fail safe. Everything had happened to my colleague as she had predicted (or read) from her palm. My colleague had received a mysterious gift, her mother had been hospitalised and a bird had appeared at her back door. I was one of the sceptics. Laughed with the others as we listened and waited for our meeting to commence.

Truly. It all happened.

She dropped her eyes as she said this. As though she was uttering something momentous. The meeting could wait.

I’ll do it if you do it.

We all agreed to go and see Rose. Rose the soothsayer, clairvoyant and part time bus driver. I wondered if she could predict accidents or difficult customers on her daily run.

I decided to go last. Watching to see what state the others came out of her dining room. We waited silently and excitedly on her bamboo lounge suite.

Why are you whispering?

Someone started giggling. And then we all were.

As each emerged, they held the same grave expression, as though touched by something other-worldly. We were only allowed one question. Mine had been decided many years ago.

Don’t worry, you’ll find the ONE.

Mum had consoled me after my first kiss went nowhere and I was heart-broken.

Rose didn’t understand me at first when I asked who I would be matched with.

As in life partner. No, not perfect match, just matched with. The ONE.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Hummed a little. I couldn’t catch the tune. She began rubbing my palm. But nothing. According to the soothsayer. It was as though her powers had run out. Flat batteries. I stood and left the room. Annoyed and somewhat vindicated. I checked my palm outside in the daylight. There were definitely lines there. Intersecting, twisting, trailing folds that had been passed down by generations of women who had loved, lost and never loved. Women who had followed, led and found truths in the known and unknown.

That night, at home, I looked at my childhood sweetheart snoozing on the edge of the sofa and wondered if I had already found the ONE.

He opened his eyes and smiled. One of those drowsy smiles that sits halfway between the dream world and real world.

Hello. I didn’t hear you come in. How did you go? Is the future looking good?

Three Seconds

Written: February 2021

Three seconds. That’s all Trevor had to do to prove himself. A gasp. A few bubbles. Then back down. Three seconds with his mouth above the water. His mate, instantly suspicious, questioned the timing. Trevor did it again while others from the school watched. Their mouths agape, quivering in the aqua blue sea. Then they turned, flicked their yellow tails and swam towards the northern coastline of Magnetic Island. Trevor and his friends were considered the troublemakers and the risk takers at the back.

His father was part of the small committee that headed up the school of Yellowtail Fusilier fish. He had stopped checking up on his uncouth son who consistently flouted the rules. Trevor was the one most likely to swim outside of the Marine National Park and be caught by a visiting fisherman with a rod and little experience of fish regulations.

His mother, on the other hand, was a follower and tried valiantly to keep within the fast-moving pack. Considered a daydreamer by others, she often got distracted by the colours and shapes of the flowery coral. And once, to her immense shame, her husband had to turn the school around so that he could rescue her from the pincers of a passing crab.

Trevor felt victorious. Three seconds had not been attempted, let alone achieved, by anyone in the school. Not since Bobby had tried to swim through the tunnel of tentacles, had anyone taken such a risk. Bobby’s side fin had never grown back, and he spent his last days being pushed around by the others on the edges of the school.

Having his father validate Trevor’s bravery meant more than his mate’s flick of approval. He wondered what he’d need to do to have the leader’s committee swim around him with excitement.

A week after his three second success, Trevor’s mother went missing. The school was frantic. They quivered and flickered like shiny pieces of foil caught in spears of sunlight. Their tails like a field of yellow flowers waving in the breeze. Trevor’s father led the charge to find her. This time Trevor stayed focussed and with the group. His mate by his side. The news spread quickly amongst the rival schools of fish and others joined the search.

It was her tail that Trevor glimpsed first. Lying on the cloudy ocean bed. Her head caught under a deep blue coloured coral. He tried to pull her out using his fins to get momentum, but it was too dangerous. The school swam around and over and onwards. Not long afterwards, Trevor’s father invited him to join the committee. Trevor didn’t need to take risks anymore. And the three second record remained.

Marvellous

Written: March 2021

‘That’s where I called you from.’ She points to the red phone box in the crumpled, faded photo.

‘When?’

‘When I was hitch-hiking.’

‘When you needed more money.’

She puts the photo back into the dusty photo album and throws it on the op shop pile.

‘Don’t do that,’ I say, but she’s walking away from me. Like she always does when she’s annoyed with my truthfulness. Penetrating her world of re-imagined history and fantasy. I continue to look through the old boxes. This is tiring and boring. I find my old marble collection and a few Dolly magazines. They all go into the op shop pile.

She returns with her arms full of packets of food that she’s found in the pantry. Some BBQ shapes. Best before 4 years ago. A packet of seaweed and some soba noodles from when mum was going through her ‘exotic cooking’ phase. And a packet of marshmallows. My sister rips it open, reaches inside and fills her mouth and cheeks with white sugary clouds.

‘Eew. Aren’t they old?’ I cringe.

‘Marshmallows never go out of date,’ she smiles. The sponges of white sugar replace her teeth like bad dentistry work. I start to laugh.

‘And then there’s these,’ she says, dragging me to the kitchen. The top shelf has at least twenty jars of pickles. Neatly labelled with gingham fabric on top. When mum was going through her ‘home cooking stall at the market’ phase.

‘I didn’t always ask you for money.’ My sister doesn’t make eye contact.

‘Sometimes you did,’ I respond.

‘Remember when you came to meet me over there?’

‘Yes. And we stayed in that dodgy backpacker’s by the sea,’ I say.

‘And you fell in love with that fat Scottish guy.’

‘No, I didn’t!’

‘Yes, you did!’

I grab a handful of shrivelled cornflakes from a container in the pantry and throw them at her.

‘I didn’t!’

She reaches in and pulls out some weetbix bricks and flings them at me.

‘Breakfast basher,’ I say.

‘Cereal killer,’ she replies.

‘The real estate agent is coming later in the week,’ I remind her as I start to pick the dried pieces from the floor and my hair.

We resume our sorting tasks in different rooms, creating piles of things for keeping and throwing. My sister appears again with the same photo of the phone box near the sea.

‘You know, I really missed you and mum when I was over there.’

‘She was extremely proud of you,’ I respond.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I told her that you’d married a rich Duke.’

‘Well, that was a lie!’ she retorts.

‘And you know what she said?’

‘Marvellous!’ we say it together and then fall about laughing.

‘Marvellous!’ we repeat Mum’s favourite word.

Storm

Written: June 2021

So here we were. All seven of us. Ready to storm the Thompson’s fence, three doors down from Maurice’s place and on the odd side of the street. This was motion in the planning. A lot of planning. And thickshakes.

For every meeting, crouching, squatting and sitting cross-legged in Maurice’s mum’s old garden shed, we were allowed three things. A thickshake each. A turn at being the president. A hold of Joseph’s transformer that his uncle had brought back from the USA. Maurice’s mum would often sweep past, trying to spy on our meetings. Her delicate perfume wafting into our tiny space past the wedged rotting door.

Jennifer was the last president before the strike on the Thompson’s. She sat, like a true leader, higher than the rest of us. Her golden glow mesmerising us into silence. Jimmy to my left, thick as honey, but with the loudest whistle in the whole of the school. Maurice behind, all soft and doughy, as he finished our left-over thickshakes and talked incessantly, except in our meetings, of aliens found in the desert. Gabby sat on my right, silent and still, the focus of any living creature that made its way into the garden shed. Benjamin was at the back, squatting in the shadows, razor-sharp and well researched. He had access to torches and tools, borrowed from his dad’s garage, and knew all about how to approach the fence at night. And then there was me, wearing the heart-shaped necklace that mum had given me in hospital, just before she passed away.

We were a great team and planned well. The meetings, and our action plans, were our focus for the long drawn-out summer holidays.

The Thompson family had only recently moved to the town. They had two kids, two dogs and a lot of money. Everyone was talking about them and how they had escaped from a hostage situation somewhere in the east. Everyone talked about their choice of clothes and car. The girl was two years older than me and her brother had only just started riding a bicycle without a trainer wheel. We watched them from afar. And when Jimmy’s dog, Memphis, went missing, we knew that it had been taken by the family. Jimmy thought he’d seen the girl with Memphis, but he wasn’t sure. Jennifer said she’d heard a dog whining during the day when the family had bundled their own two dogs into the car and driven away. We weren’t sure why they would take Jimmy’s dog, but we knew that there was something suspicious going on. Our meetings planned breaking in to their yard to retrieve the stolen pet.

So here we were. All seven of us. Torches in hand and fear in our hearts. It was night and about to rain. A huge storm in fact. We huddled together as the rain began to pelt down. Benjamin told us to remember the plan. Gabby had already dropped her torch when the thunder crashed nearby. 

Virtual Coffee

Written: July 2021

‘I can prove it to you,’ she says.

‘It’s subjective,’ I retort.

‘It will always be better,’ she flings back at me. She’s confident now.

This is ridiculous and silly, I quickly text her.

We’ve multiple platforms open now. Video on WhatsApp combined with text messages and Facebook messenger. Attachments fly around and land on our screens in front of us.

‘How in the hell can we even compete when you’re there and I’m here?’ I challenge.

My sister is caught not only on my screen, but also in a frightening limbo awaiting a generous government and a flight home. Our conversations have moved from the thoughtful to the sublime as there is less and less to talk about (that we haven’t already covered multiple times).

Now we’re talking our addictions, namely coffee. Her freedom curtailed, she’s obsessed with the tiniest things in her waking hours. She’s claiming that plunger coffee is much better than coffee from a machine. She has both in her tiny New York apartment. Of course. Practising law over there was always going to bring the perks.

Challenge accepted, I post, along with a thesis I’ve found online about the damage to ground beans and flavour that coffee presses can cause. She’s not convinced and sets a date for our contest.

We need the same kind of milk, I text later, knowing it’s the middle of the night over there and she won’t get this until later the next day.

I find an electrical store that’s open on the public holiday. There’s a huge sale but not for coffee machines. I buy a mid-range machine, the kind that makes you feel like a barista but without having to do too much work. It’s not unlike the one my sister has in her apartment, but way cheaper.

I line everything up on the kitchen bench, coffee press and new machine, so that my phone can capture the action and prove that it’s actually happening. She’s got half the space but seems to make it look more like an Instagram image than a practical working area. For a moment I forget that she’s not actually here with me, jostling for space, shoving, laughing, reaching around me, teasing. I imagine mum sitting nearby, calling for us to hurry up and make her damn coffee, with a proud chuckle. She loves that we love.

The coffees are made and we sip them carefully, in sight of each other. We describe the flavours with elaborate adjectives and metaphors and sip again. She wants a spittoon, to make it official. I reminder her that we need to ingest the caffeine – else what would be the true benefit of this challenge, besides ongoing bragging rights. In the end, she wins. I let her win. She knows it too. But I can at least go outside and finish my coffee in the sunshine and then walk to my local cafe.

Dessert-ed

Written: August 2021

Valerie knew it then. As soon as the flan stuck to the sides of the tin. It had never not worked out. This recipe was tried and true, and more reliable than her previous and current husband. She knew then that the evening was destined for disaster.

The invitation had come via the wife of her husband’s boss. Verbal only. Valerie had just returned a couple of items at the check out because of a declined card.

(Hasn’t his pay come through yet?)

Then Janette was there. Behind her. Waving. Looking over done and over cooked.

(Aren’t tanning beds banned?)

The evening, Janette confirmed, was going to be a casual shared dinner. A thank you to the senior managers for another year of making ends meet. Valerie offered to bring something sweet. It seemed the right thing to do. And she had the perfect dessert in mind.

She pushed the edges of the flan together and covered the top and sides with too much icing sugar. The kitchen was coated in fine white dust like a stonemason’s workshop.

(Hopefully the flan isn’t heavy.)

Valerie was painting colour on her lips when her husband came home. What happened to your mouth, he scoffed, as she wiped another shade of lipstick into a tissue.

(Didn’t you say, once, that you loved this on me?)

As they left the house for the dinner, Valerie realised that she still had her slippers on. She handed him the flan and went back to squeeze her feet into those purple stilettos that she’d been saving for a special occasion.

The boss’s house wasn’t quite as grand as she had expected. Janette led her straight to the kitchen where she made room on the counter for the crumbling flan, next to a brightly coloured and decadent looking trifle. Made by Susie, Janette noted, who’d come especially, straight from her dying father’s hospital bed.

(For this?)

Valerie’s feet were already aching as she shifted her weight from one side to another. She was keen to go to the living room and sit down. The men were in there. Laughter floated out of the room.

(What can possibly be that funny?)

Just before dinner, Janette’s husband insisted on thanking everyone by name for coming. Valerie’s husband squeezed her hand (in a non-romantic way) when she was welcomed as Malerie. She smiled and raised her glass to toast thanks.

(Does he know that his fly is undone?)

By the time the flan came out, most of the table were arguing or at least raising their voices. No one noticed the deconstructed dessert sitting uncomfortably beside the ostentatious trifle.

Valerie waited silently, whilst politics and religion whipped everyone into a frenzy. She remembered later the moment when her husband lost his job. Only, it wasn’t official until the following week.

She eventually threw the flan tin away. She just couldn’t clean it properly.

Shut Away

Written: September 2021

The fear has abated. It’s just routine now.

Wake up. Wait your turn for a shower. Then wait for the toilet.

Wash your dishes in the sink. Open your book.

At least there’s a clock here.

And a calendar.

It’s been nearly two months in this basement. Three high windows let in a tiny slither of light and a sharp breath of air.

After the tears and anger and despair, we’re just getting on with it.

Small things are important. The packet of biscuits found in the bottom of the food box. Anzac. My favourite. Reading the last page of my book. Slamming it shut with triumph. A spider and her tiny babies watch us from the corner of the ceiling. Like them, we are caught in the web of our own making.

I long for the past though. I ache to get my fingernails dirty in the earth that sustains and produces fresh food from its body. I desire to immerse my skin deep into the cool salty water of the ocean and taste the sea on my tongue for days. I want to feel the wind flick my hair into my eyes and into the sky like clothes flapping on a line. I need to lean in to the crackle and danger of a glowing fire as it threatens to burn me with its sharp lick.

Here I have my loves. My partner. My two children. But there are others who are not here. They stay in a holding pattern in my mind. Like old photographs. Neither getting younger nor ageing. I wonder what words I will utter first when I see them. When we eventually meet again.

I’m used to the lack of privacy. There’s a door to the bathroom but we’ve stopped closing it. Our nakedness and body sounds are absent of shame or modesty. However, at night in our tumbled bed, in our shared space, my partner and I move carefully and quietly. Arms and knees and earlobes connecting.

My children have opened to a new form of learning, enquiring minds that leap the pages of books. I’m relieved that we have boxes and boxes of material. These absorbing tales and stories have never before been touched or imagined by them. I see their smiles and watch their eyes gaze at new worlds between the words. In that very moment, they are gone from this basement and this time. They are away.

My partner is drawing. No longer the things he sees in the physical world, but those that exist in his thoughts and memories. He spends most of his days scribbling on an enormous white pad. A mad genius and a gentle, kind soul.

We count the days and we wait. The knock on the door will let us know we are free. Free to leave this space and walk outside.

The fear has abated. It’s just life now.

100 Fruit Trees

Written: October 2021

“Here! Here! Pull over here!” Nan raises her voice beyond its usual rasp.

Jake pushes hard on the brake pedal and the car skids to the side. I look at him with judgement and he looks back with pride. Nan’s seatbelt is tight across her chest.

We’ve been driving across a rough, pock-marked, dirt track for what seems like hours. I carefully open my door. I’m surprised to hear nothing, not even birds. Not even wind. Nan refuses Jake’s hand of assistance and struggles silently out of the back door. She marches off into the spindly scrub. I’m sure I can hear a snake sliding across the curled dead leaves behind her.

Jake holds back, pretending to check the tyres and a new scratch on the side of the car. I step gingerly over random rocks that blend into the soil and follow her. Nan has disappeared, become part of the twisted trees that protect and guard. I wade into an ocean of vegetation and it soon surrounds me like a deep bottomless sea. A thin yellow ribbon flaps against a crooked branch of a tree and I imagine that someone has left a trail for us to follow. Hopefully they are gone now. The colour of the foliage has changed, less mangled brown and now a pale purple pigment flushed with deep greens and soft grey. Photo worthy. And certainly, Instagram worthy.

I give my loudest and best cooee. Nan responds like an echo.

I see her crumpled outline and stand beside her. The two of us connected across years and bloodlines.

“Here it is. I knew it wasn’t too far,” she says.

She’s gazing approvingly at a large orchid of tall trees, heavy with lemons, oranges, colourful citrus, smooth apricots and dark berries. Branches aching with heavy fruit. The trees of tales and family history. Nan has been talking about this for years and now that I’m in front of this landscape of ingenuity and madness, I’m not sure whether to gasp or cry. The strong trees stand in defiance within the scrub. Proudly different and yet beautifully synchronised with the colours and shapes of the bush. Nan places her hand on a knarled trunk with its tentacle like roots that reach down and through the earth to family and spirits beyond this place.

“My father planted 100 fruit trees here. Nature embraces and provides, that’s what he used to say. He wanted to live a good life on this land.” Her voice is choked with emotion. I know these words and this tale. This is the story that’s been told and retold, around the family dinner table, outdoor firepits and childhood bedtimes. At weddings and birthday celebrations. This is the story that binds me to my past. I hold her hand, afraid to let go. Afraid she might decide to stay here.

“Enough now,” she says as though her father is directing from the bed where his last words were uttered to the prison chaplain. Her face is stoic and still. She wipes her eyes from under the rim of her glasses.

Nan’s dress has deep pockets, but not for fruit. She pulls out a small silver flask and splashes liquid onto the base of the nearest trunk and into her mouth. I too take a gulp. My throat and nasal passage burn with whisky fumes.

We fill my backpack with warm fragrant fruit and return carefully through the bush to Jake, asleep in the driver’s seat of the car. Nan’s breathing is heavy, focused on her mission. After the boot is filled with the fruit and a selection of collected leaves, she sits inside the car, exhausted. Jake finds her a water bottle, but Nan refuses his offer of a drink.

The drive home is celebratory. Jake tunes into a radio station that plays classic hits and we all sing loudly and badly, filling the car with lyrics of love and longing and broken hearts. Nan’s voice is clear and strong.

The Fork in the Road

Written: March 2022

I loved that car. Really loved it. Named it. Talked to it. Parked it out of the sun and rain. I planned road trips that would take me away from this place. So, when I sat at my sheepskin covered wheel, at the give way sign, fork in mouth in the middle of my overdue lunch, I certainly wasn’t expecting what was to soon follow. To me and my car.

I’d stopped at this intersection at least one hundred times. But this was a first. Usually, I’d be munching left-overs at my desk, but I’d sneakily driven back home to pull the morning’s forgotten items out of the fridge.

‘Sal won’t even miss me,’ I said to my distracted colleague as I picked up my bag from under my desk.

I had started eating as soon as I returned to my car. Careful not to drop anything on my shirt, the floor or down the side of the seat. The hardest place to retrieve food scraps. Balancing the tub on my lap, lid placed upside down on the floor, bamboo fork in mouth, I waited at the intersection for the traffic to thin out. 

A man. A stranger. Opened my passenger door and sat next to me.

‘Drive,’ he barked.

Well, of course. I was behind the wheel. I was in my car. What else was I to do? Run? I bit down hard on the fork.

‘Left!’ he ordered.

I turned the car into the main road. Salad dressing leaked between my thighs. I was too scared to look at his face, but I watched his hand hover over the gear stick, as though he was going to take control. He already had.

His hand was covered in chalky dust, like he’d been digging in a gravel pit or sanding wood. The smallest details cling to you as fear pumps your heart.

‘Stop here!’

I pulled over and he reached across and grabbed the steering wheel. His big hand sinking into the wool.

‘Get out.’

I wished later that it was me who had spoken those words. That I could have screamed or stabbed my fork into his eye. But I didn’t. I obeyed.

He drove away. Smashing my dreams. Taking my car. Leaving me standing with oil staining my pants. Fork still in my mouth.

I loved that car.

Some Enchanted Evening

Written: March 2022

The last in is a pair of shoes. My best pair. Hardly worn. Laces only tied a few times. Then my father’s leather belt is strapped tightly around the borrowed suitcase. His belt a lucky charm, I hope. He wore it every day after he was married and I had to stop my grieving mother putting it in his grave. It’s function now is more important than holding up his worker pants.

My father’s younger brother picks me up in his hiccuping car. He can only take me part of the way. He’s fearful of what will happen on the other side of town.

I look for my friend when I arrive at the airport. A whole city has crushed desperately into the sticky departure area. Children wail. Old women faint. Men rail. The world is ending outside.

I clutch my papers in defiance more than confidence. My escape has been long-promised but never verified. When I chose to help them, I turned my back on my family and tradition.

So did she.

I think I see her hair. I’m certain I catch a glimpse. I know she’s here. Somewhere amidst the ensuing storm inside this place. I’m shuffled along by the force and energy of the people around me. Wide-eyed and pathetically hopeful.

She’s standing against the far wall of the airport under a torn poster of our leader. I hear myself humming. Maybe it’s the stress. Maybe it’s the lucky charm. Maybe this is just a dream. I recall Frank Sinatra’s ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ playing on her precious record player in her tiny apartment. And I mumble ‘across a crowded room…and fly to her side and make her your own…’ I’m almost there. At her side. But as I get closer, she’s whisked away by a fierce armed man wearing a face covering. She fights and twists and yells.

She sees me across this crowded room. We look through the humidity, dirt and madness and watch our future getting dragged away. I call out, but my voice can’t compete with the roar of fear and panic that encircles us.

Then she’s gone.

I make it to the departure gate alone and numbly hand over my papers. We’re escorted across the tarmac. I hold my suitcase close to my body and only look back as the door of the enormous whale-like plane starts to close. The frightened little boy next to me clings to the end of my father’s belt.

And we’re away.

The Transaction

Written: September 2022

‘Eight hundred and fifty.’

‘Six hundred.’

‘At least seven hundred.’

‘Let’s be serious. These old girls are not worth that much.’

‘Alright, six hundred and fifty.’

I watched the bartering from the safety of my father’s shed. Deep and dark and lined with the boards from trees that would never again populate his property. He had been reduced to this humiliating state of being. Selling most of his beloved camels to pay debts and cover supplies to keep the two of us from having to move back to the city. Or worse, me having to move back to live with my mother and my angry step-sister.

My father’s camels weren’t worth the cunning hand that reached towards him. This man had no intention of keeping or caring for them. A mere transaction to be further transacted. They haggled further. I watched Emily and Ethel brush against my father’s back as he pleaded their value and the others nearby. They had known no other life but this.

My mother always said that he loved them more than any of us. And for a while I believed it to be true. Until the accident. I learnt that my father was the person you wanted to have beside you when things went wrong. He was the calm in the storm. The reassuring voice in an emergency.

I had followed his instructions carefully. One hand on the strap and the other on the saddle. Then aloft. Riding my first camel was hard but exhilarating. My father would notice me now. He’d be proud of my ability. Although ahead on Clara, he was aware of me behind, riding just like him. A long legged shadow.

My camel bolted sideways when the snake appeared. I was holding on. I remember that. I told my father that. But then I couldn’t, and I fell. Awkwardly, quickly, prophetically, like a discarded toy. I didn’t feel her hooves pummel my legs as she looped back.

My mother said the house wasn’t fit for a boy and a newly acquired wheelchair. My father insisted he would modify it for me. The ultimate sign of love, I thought. She moved out not long afterwards. I soon realised that I could never be the son my father really needed, but he kept breeding and looking after his camels while looking after me.

He walked back towards the shed, slivers of pride falling from him with every slow step. The deal was done. He’d bought some time, as well as enough supplies to keep us going.

A dust storm was coming. He pushed me down the ramp and into the house. I sat beside the window and watched the sky slowly become the colour of the earth.

Entice

Written: December 2022

They walk past her window every day and then walk past again. Twice. Rushing. Focused. On phones. Carrying bags. Silent commuters. They never come inside. Inside where the spice leaps from the pan and into the ancient world of her kitchen. Oksana hovers quietly at the door. The morning’s labours resting in the back of the empty restaurant.

Her grown up sons want her to stop. Hang up her apron and rest. She suspects they care more about the money that would fill their pockets after the sale of this place. Her oldest has already sold his father’s beloved mandolin. To help pay for the mortgage, he said. Oksana cried for days after that. More tears than when her nice husband died.

She’s tried hard to entice the customers. Cutting photographs from magazines and covering the front windows with images of rice and vegetables that look a little like the dishes that come from her kitchen. But still, no one stops.

Another day darkens to evening as though under a lid of a giant saucepan. Oksana fills containers with the sauces and dishes she hasn’t sold and donates them to the soup kitchen two doors down. They are grateful as ever. Hopefully not too spicy, jokes one of the staff.

Oksana carefully climbs the stairs to her flat above the restaurant. The radio brings her country to the lounge room as she tries to complete the puzzle, on the coffee table, left by her husband. Two pieces today. Not bad.

There’s a man outside the restaurant window when Oksana comes down the next morning. He taps on the glass. She waves her hand as though to say, not open, but he’s persistent. People walk hurriedly past. He hovers though. Waits. So she opens the door. She makes him tea. Her finest brew. He walks around the restaurant. Smiling. Asking about the paintings. The tablecloths. She makes him steamed rice with peppery tomato. The dish her sons no longer request. He tells her the restaurant is perfect for his company’s TV show. She gives him her son’s phone number. They can talk business. Then he’s gone. Closing the door carefully and stepping onto the windy pavement.

Oksana is excited. She’s going to be famous. Maybe some of her family on the other side of the world will see her restaurant on TV and understand why she hasn’t ever returned home. She mops the floors and dusts the picture frames. She grounds spices and makes the most succulent chicken dish she’s ever made. No one comes in. Her son arrives at the end of the day. He wants to talk to her.

Mum no, he says. It’s not a TV show like you think. It’s a show about bad restaurants. It’s a show where they laugh at how terrible you are. I’m not terrible, she says. You never have customers, he replies. One day, she sighs. He stays to help her fill the containers of food to take to the soup kitchen.

Missing

Written: October 2023

‘But why does he do that?”

‘Oh god, Soph, he’s been looking through those binoculars for a long time.’

‘But why? What’s out there?’

‘I dunno.’

Jacob sat on the tiny balcony above them. He didn’t want to go down and talk to Auntie Soph. She was always touching his hair and telling him to be good for his mum. He opened his notebook and wrote at the top of the page ’17,520 hours since Dad went missing’. Underneath this heading he noted the things that had appeared across the lens of his looking glass:

two pigeons

a blue balloon

Marcie on her bike

one white Ford ute

Mrs Velasquez in the garden

no sign of Dad

After the word ‘ute’ his pencil broke, so he had to find another. A blue crayon under his bed had to suffice.

‘Jacob! Are you coming down?’

He put the binoculars and the book under his pillow and closed the balcony door.

Soph was in the middle of another protracted story about unrequited love or ‘url’ as she called it. Jacob’s mum poured her another cup of peppermint tea, ‘perfect for bloating and issues with love’. Jacob stood next to their table on the half-finished patio.

‘There you are,’ said Soph mid-sentence, ruffling his hair.

‘Love, don’t touch these. Adults only,’ said Jacob’s mum, moving the brownies to the edge of the table.

‘Is there anything to eat?’ he asked.

‘Inside, fruit bowl.’

He rolled his eyes and gave her that look. Just like Gareth used to. That look. Jacob slouched inside and opened the pantry door. There was never anything interesting in this cupboard.

‘Mum, can I go to the shop?’ he called out.

‘No.’

He moved the tins around and out of order. Just to mess with his mum’s mind before returning to the table. Soph again stopped telling her story when he sat down.

‘Love is blind,’ Jacob’s mum said with a reassuring pat on her sister’s arm.

‘How can love be blind?’ asked Jacob.

Both women laughed.

‘You’ll know one day,’ said Soph.

The wind blew the clothes on the line in front of them. The week’s washing dancing in their back yard.

‘You need to upscale your undies. Get some sexy lacy ones.’

‘Soph. Not in front of Jacob.’

‘Worked for me.’

‘Well, apparently it hasn’t.’

They both took a sip of their tea and reset.

‘Hey Jacob, what’s with the binoculars?’ Soph asked.

‘Nothing much.’

‘What are you looking for?’ she went on.

‘Just looking at stuff.’

Jacob shifted in his seat.

‘It’s all good,’ said his mum.

‘Are ya birdwatching?’ Soph continued.

‘Not really.’

‘Leave him, Soph.’

Jacob stood up to go inside.

‘I’m looking for Dad. That’s what I’m doing.’

‘Love, we’ve talked about this,’ Jacob’s mum said as the two women looked carefully at each other.

‘Can I come and have a look?’ said Soph.

Jacob was confused.

‘Through your binoculars. Maybe I can help.’

Soph and Jacob went inside together.

The New Decade

Written: February 2024

She squeezed it, watching the skin around the pimple get redder before it burst like a tiny explosion on her chin. She wasn’t too old for skin eruptions, it turned out. Being 40 meant that some things fell thankfully into the wastepaper basket of the past, but others, like this pesky pimple, followed her gleefully into her new decade – including her name.

‘Annie is a seven year old girl’s name!’ she had whined earlier, tossing the spinach around her dinner plate like she was weeding.

‘I know, but alternatively Anne is so Green Gables,’ her oldest friend added with a smirk.

‘I guess at least my first name’s not Pool or Town…’

Annie’s bestie roared with laughter. That was the most wonderful thing. Ever. A friend with a laugh that made passersby smile.

‘Admittedly, Annie Hall is a name that is kind of stuck in the 70s,’ she added once she’d recovered.

‘More wine?’ Annie asked, wringing the last drip from the bottle.

‘Nah. I’m driving.’

‘What? We just drank half a bottle each!’

‘Tomorrow. I’m driving to the hills tomorrow. Don’t need a headache as well.’

‘How is your mum, by the way?’ Annie asked, feeling guilty that this hadn’t been their first topic of conversation.

‘A shadow. She’s so thin and so tired….’

Annie reached across the table. They gripped each other’s hands as though they were crossing that flooded river again, both frightened ten year olds.

‘I’m sure she’ll leap out of bed when you get there,’ Annie consoled.

‘Yes. She’ll rush around and try and make cups of tea.’

‘Do you think we’ll be like that. One day?’

‘I’m like that now! Except I’m not thin!’

They laughed. A short-lived laugh that was reserved for irony and fear. 40 was like that. Ironic and fearful.

‘Let me go to the bathroom and then we’ll work out whether we go straight to dessert or just head home,’ Annie said pushing her chair back.

The bathroom was at the back of the restaurant, down a few steps. Annie was grateful for the handrail. She was humming when she came out of the cubicle and glanced at her older face in the mirror as she washed her hands. The pimple sat on her chin like a small custard pie. How embarrassing. As she finished squeezing it, a younger woman opened the door and strode confidently in. She smiled a knowing smile of discretion and pity. After she disappeared into the cubicle, Annie began to cry. Quietly, pathetically, like so many times before at work when she felt overwhelmed and useless.

When she returned to the table, her friend was watching her, beaming.

‘You look amazing. I can’t believe we’re 40. You’ll never get old and weak. You’re like your movie namesake – and she lives on forever.’

‘Back at you Tiffany,’ Annie said triumphantly as they grabbed their coats, waved at the barman and left.

Why she couldn’t ride

Written: March 2024

It was blue, her bruise, like a lightning bolt had struck the side of her leg. She wailed and her brother ran. Her bike lay crumpled on its side, broken like a wounded animal.

Jay had campaigned long and hard to council to get his street fixed. He argued that it only needed a patch here and there. Fill in those potholes. It was dangerous, he claimed, for Auntie Steph in her motorised wheelchair, and now his daughter. Teetering on the edge of another milestone. No trainer wheels.

‘Were you going too fast? Did your bike misbehave?’ he asked as he dragged the bicycle back up the driveway.

‘No’ she mumbled, limping inside and not making eye contact with anyone or anything.

Her brother leaned against the kitchen counter drinking the left-over coke from last night’s meal deal.

She lay on her bed. Her leg throbbing. Things would never be the same again.

——

‘What do you mean you can’t ride a bike?’

This first date was going nowhere. The spark she saw in his eyes on the website must have been a graphic design trick. She immediately regretted telling him.

‘I never learnt properly.’

‘Wow. I just assumed….’

‘Well, you shouldn’t.’ She felt defensive now. His judgement of her as an adult was based on something that happened a long time ago.

‘What’s something that not many people know about you?’ she returned fire with his question.

‘I still can’t get over the bike thing. Exercise bikes too?’

She laughed. It was a get-me-outta-here laugh. Not ironic and not relaxed. Right on queue her bestie phoned. She’d been instructed to wait 30 minutes, then call. This was the escape plan that they’d hatched in case she needed to exit quickly. She apologized and explained to him that her mother had gone into hospital. She had to go.

Don’t fee you have to leave as well,’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t follow. And he didn’t.

—–

She searched again online, this time for something useful. Bike-riding lessons. Most were all for kids, who’d just progressed from trainer wheels. Except one.

‘It’s just like riding a bike!’ the instructor said, but no one responded to his joke.

There were five students in the class. Two middle-aged women, one teenage boy, an elderly man and her. It was excruciating but exciting. She tried not to think about that pothole or her brother smirking.

They went around the room and stated to the group why they wanted to learn. The middle-aged women were friends and in their country women weren’t taught to ride. The boy had a footy injury and riding was therapy. The old man wanted to practise riding from his campsite into town, especially now he wasn’t allowed to have a drivers licence. She just wanted to revisit the past. Rewrite it somehow.

‘One foot in front of the other. Look just ahead of yourself.’ His instructions were clear but her feelings weren’t. The blue bike he selected for her had better behave.

Timely

Written: April 2024

What time do you call this?

I roll my eyes as I sidle past Dad.

My inside voice says, go look at the clock.

It ticks away above the mantle like it’s always done. The heartbeat of the house.
He’s become much more possessive and demanding since I turned 16. It’s like a number that’s flicked a switch inside him causing him to step up his Dad-ness.
I know he’s pulled in a number of directions trying to be my Mum too.

The thing is, she wouldn’t have interrogated me like this. She would have waited until I had shampoo in my eyes or I was almost asleep before talking about what a girl my age should and shouldn’t be doing.

I had written a number of letters to her over the years. Posted them in various letter boxes around town. They had all arrived back at our house, kindly re-delivered by our local postie, one of Dad’s mates, from the train station where I’d sent them. That was the last place I had seen her.

I won’t be gone long, she’d said that day, handing me her favourite woollen scarf.
You’ll need this. Winter’s not far away.

Then the train was gone. I used her scarf to mop up my tears on the way home.

Dad didn’t say much from the driver’s seat.

The thing is, she has been gone long. A really long time.

Now he’s demanding to know where I’ve been after school and why I’m getting home at midnight. Sonja’s mum says that I should go easy on him. She sometimes sends a plate of leftovers for me to take home. Dad pretends he’s grateful, but when he turns his back, he’s grimacing.

Most times he has that look on his face when I saunter past, between him and the TV, to go out. Sometimes I deliberately wear my shortest skirt just to rile him. It’s like there’s a huge thunder cloud sitting over our house. I escape to the sunshine of my friends and their fun parents.

Sonja once offered to find my mum with me.

Let’s get on that train and go to the city.

But where in the city? I say.

I dunno, she says. To the clock shop?

I’d told her about Mum’s promise to buy me a watch for my tenth birthday.

We’ll go to the shop together so you can pick one out.

The day I turned ten, six months after she’d caught that train, Dad gave me a new desk and a green wooden chair.

For my homework, he said. And your letters.

Those letters I had written that had all been returned, painfully, to our house and to him.

Now I sit in my room, sulking, following his reprimand about my late arrival home. I wait for him to go into his bedroom, then I sneak past to the ticking clock in the living room. I take it off the shelf, put it under my pillow then lay down, trying not to think of her.

Sudoku seduction

Written: June 2024

He’s there again. Sitting quietly, legs crossed casually, working on a Sudoku puzzle. He looks up this time and smiles at Nat as though he knows her. This is only the third time she’s seen him. Three weeks in a row and only now he smiles.

Late bloomer, she thinks.

She wants to offer to help him with his puzzle as his pen hovers over the page for at least 30-45 seconds. Nat stuffs all of her dirty clothes into the machine and counts the coins in her hand before laying them in the coin draw and flicking the switch. This laundromat has seen better days, but so too has Nat. Less spare change this week and definitely no coins for the coke machine. Last week she didn’t need to throw her whites in with her colours. Fortunately, her uniform is dark anyway, so it will be her tennis socks and underwear. And as she doesn’t play tennis, Nat is resigned to making the colour-bleed sacrifice.

She almost calls out a random number for him to add to his Sudoku plan but holds back as he stands to remove his washing from the machine next to him. He opens the dryer with such grace, Nat imagines he could be a dancer. His limbs long and lean.

She accidentally knocks her empty washing basket off the edge of the shared table and he moves quickly to pick it up, smiling at her in the process.

‘Thanks,’ she says awkwardly.

‘How is the Sudoku going?’ she continues. She really wants to ask if he is in fact a dancer.

‘Not as good as usual’ he replies like he’s commenting on the weather.

‘It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack sometimes,’ Nat laughs, embarrassed at her pathetic attempt to be interesting.

He drops some coins into the dryer and the noise provides a reprieve. Then he sits and opens his puzzle book. Nat hovers for a moment before sitting and staring aimlessly at the clothes spinning. She wonders about another angle of approach.

‘Do you have a strategy?’ she offers.

‘Strategy?’

‘With your puzzle.’

‘Actually, I do.’ Nat moves a little closer as he holds the page up with his pen in the air.

‘Always start with 8,’ he says leaning slightly towards her.

‘Eight,’ she repeats as though it’s the most important thing he’s said all morning.

He demonstrates and all she can think about is the way his hand cradles the pen and that his eight is drawn as two separate circles touching lightly. She’s mesmerised until the dryer stops and he goes over to take out his clothes.

As he walks past her to leave, he smiles again.

‘Next week?’ he says and walks through the door.

She notices one of his shirts under the table. She runs to pick it up and sees his name stitched onto the pocket.

‘You forgot this, Jar!’ she calls him back.

‘It’s Raj actually,’ he smiles, inverting the shirt to show her.