Flip flop

Flip flop

by Gillian Fox

 

The snow had arrived late this year. Towards the end of February, when a few brave flowers had begun to reveal their colours to the strengthening sun only to be engulfed in a sudden cover of white. Winter’s final act.

At Christmas it had been mild, yet again. I had wrapped myself up in scarves and fake fur hats that perfectly accessorised the season, if not the temperature. Photos of me from then show me pink-cheeked and smiling. Cold, but happy; festive, like a smiling ice-skater who carries the scent of cinnamon with her wherever she goes. Part Judy Garland at the winters ball, part Caucasian eskimo.

The photos didn’t show that my cheeks were pink from heat. I had spent most of December steaming slowly from beneath my many layers, less festive goddess, more boil-in-the-bag rice.

I wasn’t happy either. I could feel him slipping away from me. My fingers curved around his arm like a vice, white knuckled as I tried to cling onto him. I was mad about him. Madder than I had been about Matt or Joe, even Harry. I tried to contain it, curb all my natural instincts, but I failed again. I was left, overheated and inappropriately dressed with a pile of presents that had no one to open them. They sat, beautifully wrapped, judging me from beneath my perfect tree.

I burned them in the wood burner on New Years Eve. Just me and Boo warming ourselves on the ashes of my mistakes. All that was left was one small beribboned box. Aftershave.

I couldn’t bring myself to ditch it in the wheelie bin, casually discarded among the empty prosecco bottles and the turkey carcass, instead I buried it in the garden in a spot close to my “soon to be returning” rhubarb.

It may have been the gin, but I wanted to use my hands. I wore the rubber gloves my cleaner keeps beside the sink. Their pink rubberiness protecting my nails from the mud, but still allowing me to feel the earth between my fingers as I buried my desires for his scent.

If the snow had fallen that night perhaps it would’ve all ended somewhat differently. Instead it remained dark, drizzly and aggressively mild. The ground soft. Pliable.

Now the snow is here. Two months late but thick and crunchy, exploding with each step I take, like the world is carpeted in bubble wrap. A final desperate push, like my own white knuckles, clinging. Holding. Trying to delay the inevitable springtime.

Life seemed all white knuckles and tight grips. The desperate cling of humanity to something, anything, familiar. The cling to the expected, the cling to the normal, the cling to the lie. The softness had long gone, all that remained was hard. Frozen.

It seemed to me, as I brooded beneath blankets, laptop balanced on my knees, phone within grasp, fingers moving up and down incessantly, that the lost scent of hope had permeated into my home. Snaking its way through the shallow grave and my UPVC French doors.

Lost hope smells bad. And it gets into everything. Curdled dreams in my curtains, rotting plans in the porch, the stink of failure that the Febreze of casual lovers could not expel.

Why not him? Why not me?

Had he not felt it too? The surge as we stood close to each other. The flip flop of the stomach as we ate together. I know he must have. The ring had disappeared along with the onion tart, still two courses to go. Thigh against thigh. Darting eyes. The always yes to more wine had become the always yes to everything.

She came here once. After it was all over. Just before New Years Eve, on one of those nothing days that stretch out in a fog of too much cheese and awkward familial encounters.

Did I know where he had gone? No, I answered honestly. I didn’t know where he had gone.

All that remained of him was the emails, the messages. And that final one. Business-like. Efficient. Cold. Sent ten days before, on Christmas jumper day.

I did not know where he had gone.

All that remained was the scent of what we had lost.

Lingering still.

 

Gillian Fox – Dec 2018

 

The shoebox

The shoebox

The damn sun was shining brightly again. Mocking my misery, reaching behind the curtains early in the mornings, making the birds sing joyfully and children nearby play and scream together all day long. What was the point in living in Britain if, when you needed it to be grey and miserable, it mocked you with Sun. Where was the weeping rain? The howling wind? Gone, like everything else, departed, to leave me alone with the hateful Sun and sun worshippers.

I rolled over, trying to block out the morning rays; trying and failing to find a cool spot on my bed. I glanced at my bedside clock and was surprised to see it was already past ten; I could’ve sworn it was before seven.

Not that it mattered. If I could I would’ve slept until six, woke for food and returned to bed. I remained hopeful that one day I might not wake for a whole week. God, I’m so tired. I’ve had over twelve hours of sleep and I feel like a…no don’t compare it. Just shut up.

I opened the windows wide, unable to cope with the stale, hot air anymore. For a split second it brought relief, a breeze blew in, making the curtains flutter and my face feel glad. Then came the sounds of a warm Saturday morning in Suburbia. Lawnmowers, gentle hammering, adult laughter and the children. Shrieking, laughing, screaming, crying; making the most out of this warm June Saturday.

I used to love the summer. The feel of the warm sun on my bare shoulders, trips to the beach, the smell of a barbeque and the impossible to resist lure of a water fight followed by a nice glass of wine when peace returned and the day began to cool. Now it is just more hateful hours left to fill.

When it all first happened people said that Christmas would be the worst, or birthdays, or those other days. But the thing about summer is that the days are so long, the days are just waiting to be filled, by families, by friends, by life. At least at Christmas time there are more good films on and the sun disappears by tea time. It suits me, not as well as January suits me but still.

Yes, I remember when my heart used to be all summer; full of hope, light, warmth. But it is easy to have a heart full of summer when you have never really known anything else. Now my heart is pure January; cold, bleak, dark, full of dashed hopes and inhospitable to life. I wonder sometimes how it is possible that I have woken up well over 1000 times since that day; where does the will to survive even come from?

And why does everyone not have it?

There aren’t even any ‘significant’ dates in this despised time that stretches on for months without end. My clever one arrived in the Autumn, and she departed a few weeks before Santa visited her for a seventh time. Matt left in the summer but I do not grieve for him. That felt more like a reward; a gift for surviving for so long. I didn’t want to live with a spectator to my grief; he should have been a participant.

Downstairs I sat in the relative darkness and coolness of the front room. Leaving the blinds and curtains shut; the dust danced in front of the windows that couldn’t keep out all of the light of this summertime morning. On the coffee table stood three birthday cards, one from my Mum and Dad, one from my older brother (remembered, bought and written by his wife) and one from a colleague I hadn’t yet managed to shake off.

When it first happened she was the one to organise meals for us, delivered to our door every day for three weeks by a variety of friends, colleagues and neighbours. She sent us big supermarket deliveries and always remembered birthdays and other days. She would send cards with thoughtful messages, letting me know that she was still here for me. I hated to receive them and yet I lived in fear of her ever stopping. It has been over five years now, you can’t fault that commitment.

Yesterday was my 41^st birthday. I only seem to remember when the cards show up and my Mum calls me.  I feel older than she is. I feel older than everyone. This is what it does to you; this worst loss of all, ages you past a point where the numbers cease to matter. I have always being here and I have always being lost in pain.

It is a strange thing to be older than your parents. To know they will never know or understand you. To see how little they know of life. Of course it’s not just them; the numbers of our years continue to confer meaning to most. Forty one.  I should be saving for school trips abroad, moaning about blazers and worrying about boyfriends and smart phones. I should be reminiscing about Matt and I’s trip to New York for my fortieth.

I should.

But life, or should I say death, intervened.  And they ceased to matter. What is forty, what is forty one? Meaningless signs and labels for the people on the outside.

And yet, today, I remember when the numbers did matter. I remember sobbing onto Matt’s shoulder the day before I turned 30, devastated that we still had no baby; three weeks later I was pregnant. I remember holding a tiny baby in my arms as I opened cards in bed the following year. I remember getting a new bike with a toddler seat and riding up and down the street in my pyjama’s as the babe laughed and laughed, enjoying the ride.

I stood up and went to the under stairs cupboard, pulling out boxes and bags full of rubbish, searching for that elusive box I hadn’t touched in years. I don’t know why I suddenly wanted it, after years of ignoring its siren call. I guess I wanted to remember a time when my age mattered, when I was young, when I had my summertime heart and knew nothing of the dark horrors people can live with.

There it was, underneath an old box of monopoly, the old boot box, taped up in a fit of rage one week after we buried her.  I pulled it out and carried it like I first held her in my arms in the hospital bed. I brought it to the dark, cool front room and sat it on the coffee table, sweeping aside my three sad, little cards.

For a moment I just looked at it, hearing the echo of myself,

“Suppose my Mum dies and this is the last card I ever get from her? Suppose you die? I can’t throw them away.”

I hear Matt’s laughter again, as he ruffled my hair and held me close, kissing my forehead.

I smile at my lost innocence, if only it had been one of them. The future reality would never have even occurred to me, except in the dead of night, waking from some terrible nightmare. I shook my head and pulled off the sticky tape. For a second I thought I could smell her.

I stopped short of pulling off the lid of the box. Breathing in the phantom smell deeply, almost able to imagine she might just come down the stairs any second now. The smell departed, all was stale, dank and dusty. No one ever was heard on the stairs apart from malevolent ghosts and my own insubstantial footfall.

I felt the tears begin to prick my eyes. They rarely did now. For a second I dithered over the box, knowing that I could put it away again, the tears would disappear and I could stay in my own shoebox, taped up and hidden away.

But the untaped box had a strong siren call. I lifted the lid again.

There they were six years of cards and drawings, well not all of them. I struggle to think of all the drawings I would take from the ever expanding piles to sneak into the recycling box. Worse still were the ones I would just screw up and chuck into the bin; whilst doing a frantic tidy round before people who never really mattered anyway came for dinner.

But here before me were the special ones. The things I had known that I would always want; the creations I had imagined poring over with a glass of wine and a box of tissues when she left for university. God, there are so many unanswered questions.

What would she have studied? Would she have married? How would she have looked at ten? Twenty? Thirty? Forty one? People said I shouldn’t torture myself with the unanswered questions; they said it was a pointless activity. They said, it wasn’t meant to be.

People don’t realise how cruel they can be. How can anyone say that her life wasn’t meant to be?  Some people can be so very stupid. Like the idiot I used to know who said I should be thankful that I was ok. That I should be grateful that I survived what killed my daughter.

If I could have anything it would be that she was alive and that I had died. But life is not that kind. Life is a cruel bitch who lets you think that you are winning only to destroy you completely as you approach the podium. Trust me. It happens. I’m just trying to prepare you for the inevitable.

I realise that I cannot deal with the shoebox alone, so although it is still morning I go into the fridge for a bottle of wine and open it. I miss the sound of corks being pulled out of bottles, but I do like the ease of screw tops. Matt always opened the wine so I’m glad to be able to open the wine myself. I just miss the cathartic pop sometimes.

Back in the front room with the bottle and glass I settle on the floor next to the shoebox and begin to unpack things, lay them out around me, until I am the pupil in the centre of a giant eyeball and the Iris is all the colours; made up of rainbows and unicorns and Mummy and Daddy; all together with her, eating Ice cream.

There is glitter, of course, there is always glitter. I pick up one particular picture of an ice-skating penguin and as I lift it I am anointed again with the silvery, icy sparkle. My cross legged lap is all sparkle and the carpet is now glinting at me, mischievously, like she is briefly resurrected and hiding, giggling, just behind the sofa or under the stairs.

I drop the penguin back on the floor. Then return to the box, pulling out more of these papery daggers that are piercing me more deeply with each glance. I keep pulling them out until the whole of the lounge floor is covered in these papers, except for where I sit, cross legged in the centre of it all, reaching for more carpet space.

Is every Mummy a muse for their six year old? I feature in a lot of these. Animals, cake, ice-cream and the three of us; these things were her recurring themes.

I feel the wave coming for a split second before it engulfs me. The world turns black, and I gasp, feeling like there is no air to take in. Who are all these invisible people standing on my chest, kicking me in the back? How is it that this pain can still be so raw? So physical, that I am left prostate on the floor, howling, lost in darkness as the high summer sun beats down on me?

When I feel that there is nothing left inside of me I sit up. There are some serious creases in the artwork now and I feel like an absolute idiot. The glittery penguin is almost entirely bald and one of the unicorns has a rip half way through it. I smooth it down and put it back in its box.

I start collecting the pictures back together, making a neat and smooth pile; taking my time to study each one in its entirety. I enjoy it.

I find myself putting to one side the pictures she did of just the two of us.

The box is reluctant to return to the under stairs cupboard, so instead I find it a new home; high up on the bookshelf in the lounge. Next to the Green Knowe stories we were starting to read. Inside I christen that shelf as the friendly ghost section.

The smaller pile of drawings I lay out in front of me again. At the park, in the garden, at the beach, on the train; each one gets a small, normal name; artistic evidence of our small normal life.  For the first time I remember and feel pain but also something else, something a bit like sustenance.

Yes, our small, normal life and its glittery, colourful record is feeding me like a chicken dinner. I smile at the record; at the glorious evidence of love that is working its painful magic on me. I smile and cry together, feeling the love strengthen me, build me up; begin to patch up the damage it had inflicted upon me.

I remember.

I stand. Pause for a moment as my legs recover from their emotional battering, and walk to the window. I pull open the blinds, for the first time in months, years, I pull them open in full and the light comes pouring in.

I stand at the window ‘Up the hill’ held loosely in my hand. I unlock the windows and push them open.

It’s already a scorcher.

It’s a day to get out. Pull on my shorts and my boots. Pack a bag.

Find the wind.

Learn to do this again somehow, if I can.

Live.

 

The end