Sterile

A monolougue from a mother in her house

Sterile

 

Firstly the kitchen; wipe the tops down, and then the dishes; then the microwave, then clean the fridge till it sparkles; then the bathroom. It has to be kitchen first then bathroom second. I can handle things as long those two rooms are clean. In the bathroom I unhook the shower curtains, immerse them in the bath with a mixture of boiling water, thick bleach, and lime-scale remover, and leave to soak while I cream clean the taps and the wash basin, clean the glass on the walls, and scrub the toilet.

            After cleaning the kitchen and bathroom I want to create more space. So I move suitcases, canvases and frames from the cupboard under the stairs into the attic. In the attic I have to make space between the black bags full of my old clothes that I wore at university. I’m saving them for when my daughter is old enough, and big enough to fit into. She would look so pretty in the dresses I bought from all the charity shopping and bargain hunting I did in second hand retro stores in the east end and Camden town. I altered most of them to give them a personal touch a flowery yoke here, ruffle a sleeve there. She is going to look so beautiful. Like a little princess. I’ll help her with her make –up and show her pictures of me wearing the clothes out in bars and clubs or on holiday with her father.

            Sometimes I spend too much time in the attic. I really love to rummage through. Each bag tells a story, evokes a memory. A dress with a princess line takes me back to when my daughter’s father and I first met at a family function. The night was clear. Stars filled the sky and he swept me off my feet with funny quips about my beauty and a bi-cycle he once had, the connection between the two still bewilders me, but that’s what I loved about him. He was so random. Like when he asked me to marry him over a soft 99 from a pink ice cream van in Green Park.

            I dig into another black bag and reveal a pair of khaki culottes with a thin cream pin stripe. I remember I was wearing them when he said that we should try something a bit more low brow; to try and understand what working class people did for leisure. We went to Margate and wandered around the sea front in the blustery cold. I didn’t see any working class people there enjoying themselves; just the odd elderly couple walking a dog. We ate fish and chips from the wrapper. Vinegar soaked the wrapper and the chips fell out of the bottom. They were warm and soft and very palatable and I was very disheartened when I looked down to see that my newly manicured feet were covered in soggy potato slugs. I took a couple of steps before I noticed and so some of them mashed up in the gaps between my toes. He found this very amusing and told me to cheer up and see the lighter side of life. He told me that I only seemed to be happy when I was sad. I didn’t think so. So I challenged him to a game of crazy golf. I saw the course by the bowling green earlier, and thought that it looked like fun.

            We bought our little raffle tickets and the council worker in the booth passed through two golf putters, one bright aluminous orange ball and one white ball. The first hole was the Windmill; I was finding this very exiting. A competitive streak runs through my veins. I think it comes from my father’s side. He played rugby for his county before he had a knee injury that ruined his career. So I placed my ball down on the yellow spot. The playing surface was a spongy green concrete, I think it was trying to replicate grass I suppose, but I don’t understand why it tries to do this as I haven’t seen many golf courses with a windmill stuck in the middle of the fairway. Perhaps they should do this; it may make the real game more interesting. What’s that saying “A game of golf is nothing but a good walk ruined.”

Anyway I placed the ball down, and stood up straight. This was the first time I had held a club never mind hit ball so my daughter’s father told me to be gentle, and careful, this was putting, he told me it wasn’t like when they hit the ball at the beginning. I didn’t have to give it a big swing. He held me gently around my waist; I could feel his cold breath on my neck. It sent goose bumps to the tops of my arms. He felt safe. I knew he would make a good father. Then he rocked my arms forward and backward like a pendulum. Forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards. I understood. He stepped a pace back and let me free of his stabling grip. I swung the golf club backwards and I felt it hit something. Then a scream and I turned to see him standing there holding his face. I dropped the putter to the floor and took his hands away from his face and his eyeball was resting in the palm of his hand attached by the optic nerve. I threw up over my feet. I couldn’t tell what chips I digested and which ones I’d lost from the paper wrapping.

 

Its warm in the attic, I feel safe the chalky smell of the insulation reminds me of my father. He loved the attic. His model railway and village was located up there. He replicated the village he lived in, and would spend hours painting little fences, or making sheep from cotton wool and felt. His glasses would peer over the valleys like an omnipresent force, controlling his version. He wished that he had more control of his real life, but no matter how many times I tried to explain that it wasn’t his fault what happened to my mother, he still blamed himself for not being there.

            The space under the stairs could now store the knitting that’s cluttering up the spare-room. My daughter wouldn’t be happy; I know that she would prefer the spare room with its view of the back garden; overlooking the shed and the boat that her father bought but never used. It makes a great focal point though, Chenille and Coleus trailing over the pale washed out sky blue port side like brushes of blood.

 

Two months after he bought that boat for a romantic trip around the coast, we were sitting in the IVF clinic. It was our last chance. We had decided to try for a baby during a trip to Paris. We loved it there he was a beautiful painter, subtle feminine colours very reminiscent of Vuillard, Bonnard or even Gwen John. We would stroll around the Louvre and the tiny galleries in Montmartre. Paris was our city, so cosmopolitan. We’d sit in cafés watching the world go by, drinking good wine and smoking cigarettes, discussing post-modernism and its effect on the new wave of British artists. He was so passionate. On this trip though we started to see things differently, the wine and cigarettes, turned into coffee and cake, and we started noticing young families and prams. Both of us were intelligent individuals and knew what was happening. My clock was ticking and he always said that he didn’t want to be an old father like his. We sat outside the Sancerre on Rue de Abbesses and decided on those hard wooden chairs that when we returned home we’d start trying.

            I sometimes wonder why we didn’t start trying in our hotel room.

In the clinic the orange plastic chairs made my bum feel as uncomfortable as the atmosphere between us. I tried breaking the ice commenting on the fake Degas on the waiting room wall. It always used to cause a reaction in him. He hated Degas; too perverted, too staged. But he just sat there silently. He lost his caviller attitude I thought since he took that graphics job.

His respirations were so quiet that I could hear the water cooler in the corner bubbling like a mud bath. Blub, Glug, Blub. We sat and sat, the second hand clicked around and I hoped and hoped that the eggs had been successfully frozen.

He left me a month later, saying that he couldn’t take my behaviour anymore, that it was unnerving and bridging on the obsessive. He thought I was sick and sad and “no matter how hard I try to get through to you, to try and connect” he pleaded grabbing at my silk blouse around my breast, “to get some reality drummed back into your brain…” well he looked mad, not me, banging his head with his fist.

 

I push the culottes frantically into the bin bag and make my way back down the stairs. I walk into my daughter’s room. Look around at all her toys, pick up a brown cuddly bear, still perfect no fur rubbed off from night-time cuddles. Span the mobile above the cot that we laboured over. It dingled, the clown’s arms and legs star jumped on strings, and backed out of the door to return to stir the shower curtains in the bath-tub. I let the plug out of the bath and stare at the water around the hole as a little whirlpool appears, until the bath sounds greedy like I imagine my daughter to sound when she sups the end of the juice from a carton. Her face tightly pulled into her head, and then Blaaaaaaaaaah, a big breath of air would fire out of her mouth. חPuff, the magic dragon lived by the sea and frolicked in the autumn mist in  a land called Honah Lee.ח