Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

“No, I just came up for Eve’s funeral. I’m staying at her place, sorting out her stuff.”

Ah. I’ve seen her naked.

We are serenaded by Eros Ramazotti singing ‘L’Aurora’ on the crackly speakers.

“I’m surprised she’s never mentioned you to me. You two must have been close – I mean – if she trusted you with sorting out her things.”

“It just kind of fell to me to do. We weren’t that close,” she says.

“Oh.” There is a lull. I try to think of something else to say, but she beats me to it.

“We were sisters.”

Sisters? Eve never talked about a sister.

“Let me guess,” Denise says wryly, “She never mentioned a sister.”

“No, she didn’t,” I say, “but to be honest she never talked about any of her family. The lot at the funeral could have been rent-a-crowd for all I know.”

Denise’s lips stutter a smile.

“When she left home, she didn’t look back. She cut off her family completely.”

“But Eve’s not like that,” I say, “Not the Eve I know. Knew.”

“There were things… that happened. I don’t blame her for leaving. It’s a small town. Not a lot happens, but when things do, there’s nowhere to hide.”

“What things?”

“It’s not really for me to say.”

I can tell that she doesn’t want to talk about it and I don’t push her. Not yet.

“So you’re a small-town girl?”

“Yip,” she says, nodding, not offering any more details.

“Do you want to come to my place for a cappuccino?” I ask.

“Why? Are the cappuccinos here bad?”

I lean in to her. “Foul. Blinding. The worst you’ll ever taste.”

When she doesn’t agree straight away I say, “I, on the other hand, make extraordinary cappuccinos. And I live just up the road.”

It’s one of my dating rules: always ask a woman in on the first date. Even if she turns you down she will know you want her.

Iwake up in bed knowing that something is different. I don’t have a headache and my mind is clear. I don’t feel like staying in bed all day or jumping in front of a bus, which is unusual. And nice.

I stretch out and my hand touches warm skin. It moans.

I open my eyes and see Denise’s long dark hair splayed over the white pillow.

God.

I remember the night before with a shiver deep inside my body. The sexual equivalent of someone walking over my grave.

I look at her tattoo, close up. Leaves, curlicues and hooks. A climbing rose with no blooms. It reminds me of the thorny branches that strangle the castle in the story of Sleeping Beauty. The prince has to fight his way through the dangerous weed to wake his princess.

I smile at the irony. I’m the one who needs rescuing.

I realise that I may never see this woman again so I decide to ignore one of my most important rules and make her breakfast. For the first time in a long while I feel hungry. On the way to the kitchen I fantasize about creamy scrambled eggs, gravadlax with dill and sour cream on toasted rye.

When I see the state of the kitchen my fantasies instantly grow mould.

Where is Francina? Instead of infecting myself with some rare strain of bacteria poisoning, I decide to nip out for the breakfasts. I call ahead the order in whispers and leave a note for Denise telling her to stay where she is, and she will be rewarded. I can’t believe that one night with a beautiful woman has made such a difference to my state of mind. Here I am doing a breakfast run at seven in the morning when yesterday it took me an hour and the promise of a pre-noon cocktail to get me out of bed.

I could take the easy route and say that it was the fabulous sex but I know it’s not true. Denise has something I need.

A young lip-glossed waitress is standing outside the glass doors of the café with my takeaway in her hands. She looks at me with Bambi eyes and warns me that the coffees are hot. As if her warning is not enough, the text on the paper cup reads CAUTION: CONTENTS MAY BE EXTREMELY HOT. I find this a little unnecessary. Surely if someone has the linguistic capacity to order takeaway coffee they will also understand that coffee is made with boiling water?

The fresh morning air is cool on my cheeks. Everything seems brighter. I reach the house and let myself in. Balancing my swag and a smile I go straight to the bedroom where I find a stark, empty bed. Unmade. After checking the bathroom, guest loo, study, all the bedrooms, the garden, the drained pool, I realise that she has gone.

I sink down on the Chesterfield in the lounge and flick on the flat screen. Greased-up wrestlers throw each other around and break chairs on one another’s heads.

I hope she doesn’t regret it. I hope she didn’t wake up with that one-night-stand-pure-dread feeling.

I unpack a croissant and pull it apart. Shove my fingers into its soft, warm centre, and rip it out. Swallow it down.

I didn’t get her number.

I leave the coffee for a while. Couldn’t bear the shame of scalding my mouth after all those warnings.

A peroxided box cut bounces a curly mop off the side of the ring. I shove the last of the croissant into my mouth and chew without tasting it.

She must feel guilty about Eve. Hell, I feel guilty about Eve. She’s not dead a week and I’m boning her backwater sister. And I’d love to say that she would understand, but I doubt she would.

My curiosity about her past, their past, makes me feel itchy inside.

I empty her coffee down the drain, like an addict, and wonder if I’ll ever see her again.

I decide to spend the day cleaning the kitchen. I don’t know the last time I actually did the dishes. Francina is my domestic fairy godmother. I can imagine that when I’m not looking, she swishes her sjambok and the dirt is magicked away. Where the hell is she? If I didn’t need her so damn much I would fire her. Okay, that’s not true. She knows I would never, could never. I have a tender feeling towards the old girl. Maybe this is why she has left: to teach me a lesson. To appreciate what I have. To show that there won’t always be someone around to pick up the pieces. But somehow I doubt it. Francina has never been one for pontificating. She isn’t answering her phone and the cops have turned up nothing. I miss her. I miss her chubby ankles resting on my kitchen table. I eat a rusk in her honour, off a side plate like she’s taught me. I put on bright yellow plastic gloves that smell like vanilla and fill the sink with hot water and detergent before I remember that I have a dishwasher. I wash everything in the sink anyway, thinking that it will be cathartic. The warmth and the bubbles soothe me. I look out of the window and see that the garden is lush and filled with summer. Inca lilies, arums, cats’ tails all jostle for the sun. The branches of a huge vintage pink rosebush are heavy with blooms. I feel like I went to sleep in winter and woke up now amidst all this life and pollination and colour.

I end up washing everything in sight, picking up empty bottles, sweeping up all the ash and broken glass, scrubbing the porcelain floor, shining all the brushed aluminium I can lay my hands on. After I’m finished it looks more like a scrub room in a hospital than a kitchen.

When there is nothing else to sanitise I decide to go for another jog. Get the old heart pumping again. The last run seemed to do me good. I put on the gear from two days before and head out; Sylvia’s voice chimes in: “You’ve run one kilometre.”

I try to stick to quiet roads where there aren’t a lot of cars to run you over. I like the peace of a run, the way it allows me to get to that mental limbo where thoughts and ideas just flood in one after the other. Nothing practical: that all just disappears as I go into autopilot. It’s one of my favourite feelings. I’m not getting there today though, I am too unfit. I do actually have to think about the distracting trivial things. Like holes in the road, and breathing. My lungs are tightly stitched leather.