Fiction

Maybe we will become that couple on the boat docked a few meters offshore. I can see them now, dancing. I don’t hear any music so I close my eyes, but all I hear is the lapping of the waves. I know they are older than we are because I spoke to them on the beach earlier. The man said our children and grandchildren let us escape for the month of February. The woman laughed and said we love the boat, and then she adjusted her sun hat. They are sleeping on their boat for three weeks, and tonight they are dancing.

What about the younger woman and the older man who live in the fancy house with the view and the abstract art? They are parents of a friend and they never seem to have any problems. I know they do, everyone does, but you know what I mean when I say that. The man is eighty-five and the woman is sixty-one. Some people gossip about the age difference but those people aren’t happy. We could become them, even though we are the same age. We could sell our house and buy something with a view. You can take up painting because I have no interest in that. I will take a Vietnamese cooking class and make spring rolls for our friends. You will pinch my bottom and I will throw my head back and say there he goes again.

Or we could be the man from work and the wife he sees every other weekend. They are happy apart, he says. She is studying medicine and learning to stay awake for thirty hours straight. I could stay up all night saving lives, and you could text me pep talks and finally learn Spanish. We could have things we forget to tell each other.

There is also the lesbian couple with the two children, one from each womb. They have tattoos and go to farmers markets on Saturdays. Two different markets because one has better tomatoes. We met them at a birthing class. I had to hold ice in my hand for one minute and you rubbed my back and asked me what I wanted to hear. After I said I want to hear it’s just ice so you can drop it, the pregnant one whispered, I want to tell her I’m never doing this again. The four of us laughed and I noticed their tongue piercings. They run a babysitting co-op and volunteer at the Jewish film festival. We could be like that.

You could get fit and make soft-boiled eggs, and I could get fat and read science fiction. Our nights would be perfect. We would watch the same shows, listen to the same music, and tell our children the same jokes.  Everyone would look at us and say we could be just like them.

Nothing matters except the little things and we have all of those.

The first weird thing is that I was in the bath at all. It was summer in Perth. But the sky was overcast and it was drizzling.

The second weird thing is that, upon close examination of my arms and legs, I discovered tiny clumps of sunscreen in every wrinkle and fold, even in the small creases on my knuckles and the sides of my kneecaps. This shouldn’t have been a shock, given that I purchased this lotion from a pharmacist who said this brand was especially thick as it was originally created “for burn victims who spend loads of time in the sun.” I thought this was an unusual way to sell something, to mention burn victims that is, but what can I say, it worked.

After my bath, I put on my sundress with pockets and small pleats, and googled “exfoliating brush.” I found one with 44 positive reviews including a comment that declared, in all caps, I CAN REACH MY BACK. One week later, a rectangular package arrived from a shop in Sydney, and that night I stood in the shower and vigorously scrubbed my entire body. As I watched flakes of dead skin and old sunscreen wash down the drain, I felt happy because I was fixing something. Goodbye old me.

Attached to the end of the brush was a rope loop. I stuck an adhesive hook next to the towel rack and hung up my new toy. It looked like a prickly oar.

In the morning, I spotted one long, blond hair hanging from its bristles. My husband has coarse black hair, and my daughters are brunettes. I am gray. Holding the hair, I walked to the living room and said to my husband, hey look what I found in my exfoliating brush. He was playing guitar and was annoyed by the interruption. It’s my mistress, he said with a straight face. She’s been exfoliating in our bathroom. I’m serious, I said, don’t you think that’s weird. He shrugged his shoulders and strummed the theme from the X-Files.

The next day I found a small black pebble, and the day after that, a single blade of green grass. Come on, I begged him, this is weird. Stuff keeps appearing in my exfoliating brush. Every time you say exfoliating brush, he said as he laced up his sneakers, you sound like an old lady.

One morning it was a tiny yellow feather and another, a white petal. The day the dishwasher broke it was a perfectly round shell with a swirled pattern, and the morning after they canceled the fireworks due to a plane crash, I found a piece of pink yarn. Each of these surprises I plucked from the brush and deposited in a brown canvas pouch I got for free at a trade show. I stopped telling my husband about all this because he was completely disinterested which angered me to no end. You might think he was playing a trick but that is not his sort of thing.

Yesterday I got up early to write a condolence letter to my old boss who had recently lost her husband. I didn’t like this woman much, but had a fond memory of her husband from a company Christmas party that I thought I might share with her. When I went to the bathroom I checked the brush out of habit, and there, tucked in the middle of the bristles was a small folded piece of white paper. I sat on the edge of the bathtub and opened it. Written in blue cursive was the following:

Dear Margaret,

I was very sorry to learn of Stan’s passing. I enjoyed meeting him at our company Christmas party and wanted to share something he whispered to me as you were making your toast that night. You were thanking the board of directors and making a joke about term limits. He leaned over to me and said, “Isn’t she amazing? I am the luckiest guy in the world.” I was very touched by his sincerity and thought I would pass on that remark to you, during what I imagine to be a very difficult time.

Thinking of you,

Ruth

I walked this tiny note to my desk and copied it word for word onto my engraved stationery. Then I refolded it and added it to my canvas pouch. As I drank tea and watched the sun rise over my neighbor’s house, I silently thanked the exfoliating brush for providing this perfect condolence letter to my old boss.

This morning the brush was gone. I looked under the sink, behind the tub, and in the shower. The adhesive hook now looked out of place. I peeled it off the wall and tossed it in the bin. I slathered myself with sunscreen and went to the beach.

What if today I announced to my children that from now on I would call them different names? The younger one would be Helen, and the older one would be, say, Hazel. They would now be sisters with the same first initial, more matchy-matchy, I would tell them. Beautiful new names for beautiful children, I would say.

Of course, being nine and eleven, they would reject this notion. They would cry and say they don’t understand. I would assure them this is how it must be, that their old names were temporary, stand-ins for their real ones. I had already taken care of the paperwork. I would love them just as much. Nothing else would change.

Helen and Hazel would grow older, and see each other a few times a year, sometimes with a partner, sometimes on their own. One of them would have a job that requires travel, and the other would share a house with three friends and two dogs. One would fracture her ankle skiing, and the other would research home remedies. One would host Thanksgiving, and the other would be a vegetarian for five years until one night after a comedy show she’d try a bite of her friend’s hamburger and decide to eat meat again, “just once a week, not even.” Helen and Hazel would be very different from one another, and would joke that they might not be friends if they weren’t sisters. One would give the other a photo of the two of them on a hiking trail, taken by a stranger. The frame would have been ordered online. It would be made of wood and the engraving would say, Best Friends.

Sometimes, on the phone, or at a café that serves hot chocolate with pink marshmallows and tiny spoons, Helen and Hazel would talk about their childhood, about the time one of them burned her hand making quesadillas, or the time one of them got stuck in a tree. They’d wonder what happened to old friends, and that doll, the one with the fabric belly and the little black boots that always went missing. They’d talk about the birthday party with the boy who wouldn’t stop crying and The Night Of The Big Fight. They’d remember sparklers, baking soda volcanoes, periods, school exams, scary movies, and flashlights under sheets. One of them would ask, “What was that teacher’s name?” and the other would erupt into a fit of giggles, “Mr. Langley! Mr. Langley!”

Sometimes, usually preceded by a pause in the conversation, one of them would bring up the name change. Why do you think Mom did that? Who does that? Helen and Hazel would talk about their old names, remember learning to spell them, and recall magnetic letters and laminated placemats. They would wonder how their lives would be different with their old names, or what else might have been taken from them. Saying their old names aloud, they would feel naughty and exhilarated. They would feel like they were talking about other people, two girls that used to exist but no longer do.

“The scratch is getting better.”

“That’s good.”

She’s got a three-inch swollen line on her left cheek. The cat.

“I really cleaned it. Got all the blood off. Used an alcohol swab and everything.”

“That’s good.”

“I kind of like it. It gives me character. I’m like Omar.”

“As long as it’s not permanent.” He takes a warm biscuit from the baking sheet she pulled out of the oven five minutes ago and puts it on a plate.

“What if it were?”

“Were what?”

“Permanent. What if I look like this forever?”

“I’d have to completely rethink our marriage.” He smiles.

“Jam?”

“No.” He is scrambling eggs in a bowl.

****

That night she has a dream. She is walking through the bush and a branch hits her in the face. She wakes up. The cat is at the foot of her bed. “See what you’ve done?” she whispers to the cat.

The cat says, “Maybe you should put some cream on that.”

“I don’t want to get up.”

“I’ll get it.” The cat stretches, jumps off the bed, and scampers to the bathroom. She hears him fiddling around in the cabinet, muttering to himself. He runs back, jumps up next to her and deposits a tube of hydrocortisone on her chest.

“Thank you,” she says.

“It’s the least I can do.”

****

The next day, the scrape on her cheek is a faint line. The cream has worked. Her husband tells her she is beautiful. They go to the movies. In the dark, she touches her cheek and decides to leave him. She will not be taking the cat.