Though she is
already sitting up when he himself awakes, he recognises her eyes as unseeing,
merely open.
It is with only the
slightest movement of her head that she briefly engages him in her attention,
so absolutely lost in her thought as to barely comprehend his own
consciousness, distracted enough that when he finally speaks
Skunk (Elvis
voice): What’s shakin’, baby?
she again only
looks slowly round at him before returning to whatever forms her point of
focus, far past the confine of that hotel bedroom wall at which she seems to
stare.
Her voice when it
comes sounds as something she has had to push out through layers of impediment:
ache1:
It’s weird, when I was when I was really young there was always this moment
when...
sighing
ache1:
..whenever I got anything new, and it didn’t matter if it was a present or if I
bought it for myself...
Brother Skunk suddenly
feels himself beset by a new tiredness.
ache1:
..but, uh, on the, on the day, on the actual day, as much as I loved
whatever it was, if I loved it that is, it wasn’t until the next day,
the following morning, that I fully understood what I had, the the, the
importance of it, or the newness of it, ahm, I don’t know, I don’t know, but...
trailing off,
disappointed in her inability to express that which she wants him to know.
Skunk: I think I
ache1 (not
interrupting as such, rather simply unaware he had begun to speak): One time I
had this, I’d bought it for myself, this little umbrella, like a toy umbrella.
I think ah, I think it, it must have been raining for a few days, and, and my
mum had an umbrella, Dad had his own umbrella though I don’t think my sister
did yet, which actually, that might have had something to do with it actually
laughs
ache1:
and I really wanted one for me
remembering now as
if this is the first time she’s given it any thought since
ache1:
because ahm, because, because it seemed to me then like the most impossibly
grown-up thing to have, and even though what I ended up getting was probably
just a toy, it was still... an umbrella! An umbrella!
One of her hands
emerges from the sheets to touch her face.
ache1:
So when I did finally get it, it was...
she looks round at
him
ache1:
..it was...
before again
visibly losing focus
ache1:
..and then the next day, that was when, it was only then I really understood
that I had my umbrella.
Pause.
ache1:
And that’s when it stopped raining.
In his expectation
of her doing likewise Skunk laughs, only to stop quickly when she does not.
ache1: I
probably had that umbrella for a month or more before it rained again. Every
morning I was watching the weather forecast on the tv just... hoping. I must
have driven my parents-
She pulls a little
at her hair.
ache1:
But even without the rain, for a long time that umbrella was my favourite,
favourite thing...
reaching out and
gently tapping at the top of her E.T. doll’s flaking vinyl head
ache1:
Well, until this little fucker came along.
Lacking those years
requisite for nostalgia, still she finds herself mourning the loss of something
she was never granted opportunity to appreciate, her hands inside her pyjama
top, fingers gently tracing her belly’s tender welts as if she can already
determine the nascent accumulation within.
