“Good!” I say. “By which I mean, obviously, entirely unproductive. But on the way here I had the most comforting thought: I’m one day closer to knowing what I’m going to do with my life.”
Paul gulps down a couple of inches of beer, belches tenderly onto the back of his hand. “Sounds encouraging. So, what, have you narrowed it down to an industry?”
“No: what I mean is, even though mentally I’m no clearer, I’m still technically closer.”
“What? How do you figure that one?”
“Well, I can’t be any further away, can I? Time doesn’t go backward,” I say.
He laughs. “Yeah, but — and I’m sure this won’t be the case, but in theory—you might never work out what you want to do. You might just settle for something like last time, or take a corporate job for the big salary. I stress: theoretically.”
“Okay, but…even if I do that, either way I’ll have made a decision, and thus will know what I’m doing.” My eyeballs are burning: I haven’t blinked in a while. “So either way I’m one day closer. Right? I’ll drink to that!” I tilt my beer in for a “cheers.”
“Yeah…I mean, I guess…” he says, clinking without feeling. “In the same way we’re all one day closer to death.”
Saturday morning
This park is full of twentysomethings heading to brunch, the price of which will make their visiting parents (who struggle to keep up with their offspring’s strides) triple-check the bill, but remain insistent that This Is Their Treat as they reach for their wallets.
Groceries
Luke and I are in the Co-op buying dinner. We’ve been here for twenty minutes, done three circuits of the shop. It’s part of a new two-pronged initiative: to expand our culinary horizons and cook at home more.
“What do you want?” Luke says, not for the first time.
“Anything,” I say. “You tell me.”
“What are the options again?”
“Limitless!” I say. “Imagine a dish and I’ll cook it.”
“Pasta, then,” says Luke.
“Except pasta. I already said I don’t want pasta. But anything else, you choose.”
“Pizza,” he suggests, and I wrinkle my forehead.
“I thought we said we’d try new things. Go wild, be creative.”
He says, “I give up. You decide.”
I pick up an eggplant and put it in the basket.
“With what?” Luke asks at my shoulder.
“Please. Don’t. I’m shopping on the spot here. I need a bit of space.” Extending my arm, I sweep him away.
Without a word he goes and stands by the flower buckets at the automatic doors, watching my every move. I pick up some tomatoes, some cheese, some chicken, put back the eggplant, pick up a cabbage, a pepper, put back the cabbage, put back the cheese, and then abandon the basket in the toiletries aisle and the two of us slope off to get takeaway.
Crosswalk
You don’t get to wave me across; the law says you should stop, and I don’t have to thank you.
End matter
As a kid, I watched a lot of videos. If I was on my own, I would keep watching after the film had finished, past all the credits to when the screen went blue, right up to the point where auto-rewind kicked in, certain I’d be rewarded with some special private message for persevering where no one else would. With books, I’d read from cover to cover — acknowledgments, lists of titles from the same publisher, the forms to fill out for overseas orders.
I think about these things while I have the very last of the bran flakes for breakfast: cereal dust, which suits me just fine. It thickens the milk and makes a nice paste: porridge without the effort. I wonder if this commitment to the dregs is something that should be celebrated, or if it means I have trouble moving on, letting go.
Job description
Words like “maestro” and “superstar,” twinned with “administrator” and “volunteer.”
Body politics
“Whenever I’m naked, you seem to see it as an invitation,” I say to Luke, who has helped himself to a handful of breast as I undress for bed. “I wonder why you think that’s okay.”
“I’m sorry that you feel that way,” says Luke, kissing me now. “Maybe it’s because I only ever see you naked when we have sex? Anyway, I see it more as an opportunity.”
“Oh,” I say, “so it’s my fault we don’t have enough sex? If I was naked more often, would that help?”
“I never said that,” says Luke, but after a pause he adds, “It would be an interesting experiment.”
Pillow talk
“You’re beautiful,” Luke whispers — as though to remind, or convince, himself.
Reaching out
I ring Grandma with the express intention of undercutting her claim that I “don’t help out.” I’ve decided to become her confidante: I’ll invigorate her with youth and liberalism, and in return she’ll impart homespun wisdom and teach me how to really cook — elixir-like stocks, the fluffiest sponge cakes — bequeathing me her kitchen utensils when she dies many years hence, at peace and fulfilled.
“Yes?” she says, answering the phone after barely one ring.
“It’s Claire…” I’m caught off guard by her speed, “your granddaughter. Flannery,” I add, throwing a hand up at my idiocy.
“Yes. What can I do for you?”
“Is this a bad time?”
“No.” She sounds insulted at the very suggestion she’d ever be less than ready for anything.
“Good! So…how are you?”
“Fine. Claire, is something the matter?”
I wish I’d prepped myself for this, written down a few conversation points, the way I used to when calling boys in my teens. “No, not at all. I was only…”—there’s a pause while I flail for a topic—“wanting to…uh, ask your advice about something.”
“Oh?”
“It’s a gardening question.”
“Oh.”
I tell her about the buddleia and the conflicting information I’ve read.
“We had one of those years back: it came bursting through the back wall. The ‘bastard buddleia’ we called it,” she says.
“Really? What did you do?”
“What didn’t I do! Let’s see — I tried cutting it back with shears, but that only made it worse. Went at it with an ax. Poison.”
“Wow,” I say. “And did anything work?”
“Yes: we moved house. I fell pregnant with your mother and we needed more space. Left it for the new owners to worry about. But it was, I suppose, quite pretty in its way — in the right place, they can be lovely, you know.”
“Yeah, I’ve grown quite attached to ours.”
“Well, and you might find actually that it’s holding everything together. Give it a tug and the whole building crumbles!” She cackles. “After the war, they were everywhere — sprang up in the rubble overnight. Rather like a poultice on a wound, I always thought. Nature’s balm.”
I take this rare poeticism as my cue to move things up a gear on the confidante front.
“It must have really changed the way you looked at life. Going through the war, I mean. Made you think about how fleeting our time on earth is.” She’s quiet; I fear she’s nodded off. “Grandma? Hello?”