Published in An Aitiúil Anthology, October 2023
Steam curls high from the kettle, spreading over the window in waves and blurring the view. All you can make out are the last few blood and yellow leaves, shivering and resilient. The cat is on the windowsill, impatient and pixelated. You open the door. He slides through like smoke. Leave it open, you think. Let the sounds in, and the music.
Rain has left the bench looking varnished, long pools collected in the marrow of its ribs. He insisted on buying it, said that he’d sit there all summer, and you notice its corners and how they rise, peeling and stippled like hay. Water spills over the lip of a pot on your stove, hissing accusingly, and the noise of it snaps you from it all; the rain, and his bench, and him. They are probably hard boiled now. You had put on two, muscle memory. Didn’t he get a boiled egg on his birthday, and hadn’t you carried on this familial tradition just so he could find some part of home there in your bones.
His egg can go in the fridge for lunch.
The kitchen table smells of grease and lops when you lean on it. How have you only just noticed? You always had a good eye, he said; one that darts, or flashes, or zips. You saw his odd socks, and his tired skin, and he’d say that you see too much, and you would blame it on your fast eyes. You haven’t been watching things that closely recently, though. Aren’t the daffodil bulbs still in the boot of your car? you think. And the first frost has been, pulling the sodden soil together, huddled and conker hard. Surely it tiptoed. It made no sound, there was no notice period.
And has the wallpaper lurched past kitsch, too? Migrated into some uglier, neglected thing? You look around the room, pausing at porcelain bowls and the motley wall tiles cut in rough, irregular shapes that accidentally tessellate. It must have been popular at some stage, at some beautiful precipice when functionality was no more important than those other, looser things. Things that felt exotic, like coming from Latin American, or being left-handed. You run your finger over their glaze and hold it up to the window. An arc of grease rests on your fingertip like a toupee. The tiles are an ice-cream; they are mint, and honeycomb, and vanilla, and you think of him again, curved over a colour fan with a gentle fizz of paint on his face and lacquer-voiced podcasts filling the silence of the room. He chose them, remember? All this, decay, it is his fault, not yours. Timeless, he had said. You start to prepare food, but your hands feel clumsy, —as though they have swollen, and won’t fit into your pockets.
Outside, the concrete slabs are slick and rain darkened. Puddles have collected in the crooked ones, reflecting the dull wall of clouds overhead. A strip of tarp you had nailed onto the shed roof has torn and it is waving joyfully, like a flag. With a plate of food in one hand, you run a dish cloth over the bench before sitting down. As you eat, light peeks through the clouds in thin cables. It is quiet and you suck the air down into your chest in greedy gulps. Those first few months were soundless too, before the other houses were rented to Margaret that works a nightshift and Teddy with the unfortunate back condition. Now it is horrible, and loud, and full as a river, but back then you could bathe in the sunshine of each other and say the small words. Your blood would simmer then with the knowing that this road, and the next one over, and all of the building site gardens and half-finished buildings were yours and his, and that was enough.
Rods of electricity run down your legs at the thought, and you want to run away. Instead, you hold, and sit and slide your fists, clenched and tough like marble, down your thighs to soften the panicking tendons. It hasn’t been this bad in ages. Could be hormonal. Or maybe it’s that the prayer-silent winter is now sitting squat on your windowsill, draining the colours and heat from your house.
Seasonally affected décor, you think, smirking.
Your blood dilutes at the thought. The vibrato of your chest tapers and runs smooth. And wouldn’t those colours bounce and glow if it were July? Things look better in the sunshine, don’t they? Cool water pours over you. Your thoughts ease, and shrink, and thaw. It’s okay, you think, nothing was missed. Your eyes are still fast.
*
There is a mouse in the porch. The cat has unpixellated and left it as a gift, or a trophy, or a punishment. You ignore the stomach sick sweat of being seen in your dressing gown to crane over it, all goose pimples and pride, on the cold porch tile. It looks beautiful, in a way. Nut brown with a splash of white across its still, dead, belly. It has bubbles for eyes, glassy and berry red. You think about taking a photograph of it but stop yourself. He would have said that was gratuitous. Instead, you sweep it into a plastic bag and thank the cat for being loyal.
You dress quickly. Despite what bus posters and nameless, smiling heads on television are saying, you are sticking to dark colours and winter can go fuck itself. Anyway, there is nothing delicate about seasons, no playfulness, or nuance. They are numbers, battered into rows. Seven, by four, and then by twelve. There is no music.
There is a scarf on the coat hook, some featherweight armour for the wide greyness. Before leaving, you twist it around your body and tie it into a French knot. You notice that the swelling in your hands has subsided. You slide one into a pocket then, making sure you have your key.
David O'Neill 