Eloquent Silence (19 page)

Then to the video store, where, after much to-ing and fro-ing and changing of minds we finally decided on Supergirl. At least that was one problem solved.

Off we went to two more small shops situated in the same shopping center as the video store. One was shut. The other had no bread rolls.

Hurrying back to the car through the rain, Mork, who was in charge of Supergirl, tripped and fell headlong onto the bitumen. A grazed knee and a broken heart took place, while Supergirl went flying out of her case and onto the road.

I cuddled him and told him to be brave, that we would be home as soon as we could buy some bread rolls, rescued Supergirl and helped him to his feet.

Giving him my one and only grubby tissue, I told him to hold it against his knee until we got home.

Fastening them into their seatbelts as quickly as I could, I was by this time, cold, wet and nervously wrecked. I was still hurrying to get on with the bread roll business as quickly as possible to get the children into the warmth of the house.

Mork: ‘Ma, I can’t get this tissue up the leg of my jeans.’

Mindy: ‘Ma, my finger hurts where the duck bit it.’

Ma: ‘Never mind. Be brave. We’ll be home in a jiffy and I’ll fix everything up.’

Another corner shop to try. Rain was pouring down by this time and both children were suffering much pain so I told them,

‘Look, I’m just going into the shop. I’ll be where you can see me all the time and I’ll only be two seconds, right?
I’ll lock the car and if anyone comes up to the door, don’t open it. Okay?’

At last in Bridge Street, my frantic quest was rewarded and I found a packet of bread rolls. Off we went, post haste.

‘Straight into the bath with some antiseptic in it, Mork, honey,’ I told him as I ran a hot bath.

Mork limped into the bathroom looking in a state of sad disrepair.

Mindy sat on the couch, the picture of abject sorrow, her finger wrapped in tissues and cradled in the crook of her arm.

‘Ma, my finger still hurts. Can I have Supergirl on now?’

‘Not yet, Mindy, sweetie,’ I told her distractedly. ‘Wait until your brother’s out of the bath and I see to your finger, then we’ll all watch Supergirl together.’

Mork, from the bath : ‘Ma, I’m hungry.’

‘Just bathe your knee with the face washer and then give yourself a good bath and I’ll be with you shortly. I’ll start the hot dogs going.’

I wheel around and spin off towards the kitchen, lips set in  a line as straight as a piece of string.

‘Ma, I hate hot dogs,’ Mindy informed my retreating back mournfully.

‘I don’t like that sort of bread rolls, Ma,’ Mork called from the bathroom. ‘I like the square ones.’

‘They’re all bread, Mork. All made from the same sort of bread, just shaped differently.’

I throw the saveloys into the saucepan, the rolls into the oven and fly back to the bathroom. Investigation of the knee showed only a small amount of grazing, thanks to the thickness of his jeans.

Mindy from the couch: ‘Ma, my finger’s still hurting. Can I have Supergirl now?’ This almost finishes on a wail.

Ma: ‘Not yet, love. Your brother’s still in the bath. Can you wait until we’re ready and we’ll all sit down together?’

Finally dried and pajama-clad, Mork sat on the couch and waited for his knee to be bandaged. I went to locate a bandage.

Mindy: ‘Ma, can I have my bath now?’

Ma: ‘Shortly, dear. Coming. I just have to bandage Mork’s knee and have a look what’s happening to our dinner.’

Once the injured knee was bandaged and Mindy was having her antiseptic bath to recover from the duck bite, I ran to get the rolls out of the oven.

As I flew by, Mork said, ‘Ma, can I watch Supergirl now?’

Ma: ‘Not yet, Mork. I’m afraid you have to wait for your sister and your tea.’

Mindy, from the bath: ‘Ma, can we have sausage rolls? I hate hot dogs.’

Finally, with Mindy out of the bath, dressed and the maimed finger band-aided, the hot dogs were ready to go.

Mindy sat at one end of the couch with her other hand supporting her wounded arm as she propped it up to ease the pain.

Mork sat at the other end, injured leg propped up on the coffee table.

I produced the hot dogs. Supergirl, unimpaired by her previous disastrous flight and fall, began to do whatever it is she does best.

We settled back. The evening was being rounded off nicely. We were quite cheered up with the proceedings.

Both children agreed that they were yummy hot dogs and that we’d had a lovely afternoon out. My spirit flickered high like a flame dancing in the breeze—I had succeeded in being an adequate grandmother and had not lost my granddaughter to an attacking duck or my grandson to a fatal fall.

‘We’ll have to do this every weekend or at least every second weekend, Ma,’ said Mork.

‘Good grief, yes,’ replied Ma, blowing through her nostrils like a nervous horse. ‘The end of a perfect day.’

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O
ne a.m: I am suddenly awake and spring out of bed in a state of panic. Something has bitten me on the middle of the back, thrusting me into consciousness and wide-eyed fright. Searching the bed, I cannot find the culprit. My back is stinging painfully and I recall the red back spider sitting on the arm of my recliner chair the previous day. I prepare to die, afraid to go back to sleep in case I miss the moment of my passing. That would be a shame.

6a.m: Eating cornflakes and reading the mail, I find myself the victim of an excruciating bite under the foot. On looking down I discover a green ant rolling around the floor, obviously in its death throes. After helping it on its way I recall that I have lived through the night and not expired after the 1 a.m. bite. The pain in my foot feels exactly the same as the 1a.m. pain in my back and I remind myself to ring the pest exterminator during his working hours.

7a.m: I spread the washing on the laundry room floor, setting aside my white bowls clothes to be washed separately by hand as I have no other whites to go in the machine. The phone rings and while I’m talking, my affable, good-natured husband, with his heart in the right place, puts the white clothes in with the second load of washing that contains many colored clothes. Thus my bowls clothes proceed to turn red from the color running out of my new maroon shorts and top.

I return from the phone call and rescue my bowls clothes from the murky water, washing them in clean water, with blue, soap and bleach. They look fine as I hang them out to dry.

I take two panamax as a restorative measure, gritting my teeth and grinning kindly at my well-meaning but puzzled husband who has figured out that he has done the wrong thing. I give a polite, artificial laugh which is not at all the way I’m feeling.

8 a.m.  When exposed to the sunlight, the bowls clothes have splotches of maroon every which way. I begin to cry softly, but change my mind and repeat the former  procedure while mouthing a stream of consciousness. This time I am certain the clothes are rescued.

Things go rapidly downhill from here.

After hanging the clothes on the line with a resolute jaw, I return to the laundry. Water is seeping out from under the washing machine at a rate of knots. There seems no way we can find the source of the trouble until the machine has been bled dry. It continues to ooze on regardless while I frantically switch the controls to ‘Pump.’

Beetle-browed, I finish the laundry by hand, wringing items out while the water continues to flow around my feet and then drizzle to a stop at last, thankfully. The laundry room does not have a drainage hole that the two bathrooms have so I have to keep placing towels across the doorway into the house until the stream ceases.

10 a.m: My husband, (a study in charm following the T-shirt incident), and I participate in much discussion regarding the need, cost and brand of a new machine. With the thing finally having given up dribbling, we drag it outside, lift it and turn it upside down. The small overflow hose has come loose and is replaced in a twinkle.

After washing the floor I slip on the still wet tiles, my nether regions colliding painfully with the slippery surface, my hair hanging in my tear-filled eyes. I massage my nether regions, wondering why I got out of bed that morning.

My girlfriend rings, saying she has discovered she has a major heart problem. The nerves in her heart are not functioning properly. This is bad news indeed. After commiserating with her I continue with my day, which looks very unpromising indeed, to put it mildly. I am beginning to suffer from a sense of displacement and feel my expression must be trancelike. For a time, I manage to regain my composure but this is not destined to last long.

The sight of another red back spider on the kitchen bench reminds me that we need an appointment with the exterminator. On phoning, his wife tells me he is not available for several weeks. I must remain un-exterminated and put up with the consequences.

I search for the source of the spiders but am unable to track them down.

11 a.m: I have purchased two attractive wine decanters to take alternately to my mother in the nursing home. I pour wine into one through a funnel, paying little attention to the wine and more to my girlfriend’s sad and sorry phone call, my ruined bowls T-shirt and my headache.

Suddenly at my feet there is a huge and widening pool of red wine that has flowed down the cupboard and spread over it like a veil of blood, staining it a beautiful sunset red. Red is the color of the day.

The decanter has a hole the size of pinhead amongst its attractive folds of blown glass. I quickly transfer the funnel to the other decanter and hope for the best. It doesn’t leak. Gratitude doesn’t describe it.

My husband enters the kitchen, notes the ocean of red wine and asks what the devil’s going on. I look at him with hundred-year-old eyes and do not reply to his cavalier question, carrying on about my business in my own fatalistic way, finally able to use my calm voice and be reasonable as I tell him what has happened. My lips are stiff as if I have had a dose of Novocain and I feel as if I am looking at myself from a high corner of the room. Out of my body as well as out of my head.

While rushing to the laundry for cleaning cloths to mop the mess up, I collide with the kitchen bar, the corner of which is just below shoulder height, removing two inches of skin from above my breast. I jump around making a few comments and in passing the bookcase, hit my shin, causing my comments to grow even more acerbic. Hobbling pathetically, I find a cloth and limp back to finish mopping up the kitchen.

After recovering, another fifteen minutes of cleaning up has to be endured, but the cupboard door still carries a faint tinge of red. A pale, dribbly red. This is a new house. That is a new cupboard which will remain forever faintly red as opposed to the original white.

I rush off to do Meals on Wheels, a study in momentum, trying to keep my hobbling to a minimum and not cause concern to any of the precious old darlings we will take meals to.

Midday: While drinking my banana smoothie I experience an excruciating pain in right upper molar, not for the first time. I think the tooth is abscessed. The dentist’s receptionist informs me on the phone that the first available appointment is in three month’s time. I find myself strangely devoid of emotion, considering the fact that none of the other dentists in town are taking new patients and I will be long dead from blood poisoning in three months time. I conclude hollowly that there must be other dentists in some nearby town that will take a new patient within a month or so.

Hypothetically speaking, how long does it take to succumb to blood poisoning? Just a rough estimate will do.

1 p.m. My husband brought the washing in while I was away at Meals on Wheels. He delivers to me my bowls shirt that has dried with red bands around the neck and sleeves where they’re not supposed to be.

Apparently this is the result of all the free radical dye collected from the bottom points of the shirt as it hung upside down on the line.

Again I go through the routine of bleach, blue and soap while trying to remain civil to the perpetrator of this miserable deed. I have to face the unpalatable truth that I will be wearing a technicolor T-shirt where it is not meant to be technicolor for the balance of my bowling life.

I tell a passing neighbor about the saga of my husband putting the mixed load of washing in the machine and the trouble that it has caused to my predominantly white shirt.

‘I always wash my whites and coloreds separately,’ she informs me, looking at me as though I am some kind of dim-witted cretin who does not know how to sort her whites from her colors.

Well, duh, I think to myself. Did you get the point of my story, lady? Obviously not.

She plunges into a description of what has gone wrong with her own day, but I cannot summon the interest to listen and tell her I have to go as I am wanted on the phone.

I nod coldly in response to my husband’s cheer-up efforts, experiencing a kind of wariness, knowing he has read my mind and must realize what his fate will be. There is no point harping on his future or lack of it. Thinking very contradictory things about him, I collect my thoughts and err on the side of bringing something positive into our day.

I mix up the batter for our favorite lemon poppy seed muffins. They have been in the oven for three minutes when the power goes out. Holding up my hands in an appeal to Heaven, one thought transcends everything—Botheration!

On Monday the electrician was supposed to send his underling to measure the house for air-conditioning but rumor has it he has absconded with his paramour, a cute little dumpling from the local service station.  The electrician, that is, not the underling, and chaos reigns at the shop. It is Thursday. I cannot say Yea or Nay to the rumor of his escape but I remain un-airconditioned.

3 p.m. My house is half as clean as I would like it to be but house cleaning is not my favorite activity. Deciding to sweep through, I begin at the front door. While making a swipe with the broom to get under the Baker’s Stand, I knock pot plant, pedestal and all to the floor. Dirt, plant, broken pot and pedestal go hither and yon. I am dismayed and say so, feeling I would like nothing more than to burst into a wild paroxysm of inconsolable weeping. I don’t seem to be capable of carrying out even the simplest motor task.