The kitchen air is
suffused with the consolidate smell of their cooking, humid with its steam, as
Brother Skunk and a final trimester ache1 prepare their evening
meal: along with the chicken there are onions, crushed garlic, and mixed herbs
now frying in the pan. Skunk stirs this mix intermittent with chopping carrots
and peppers while ache1 washes several mushrooms at the sink. A
saucepan boils with their pasta.
Other than whatever food he had bought and stored on his allotted shelves in the cupboards and fridge, there is nothing here that belongs to him: every plate, mug, glass, every item of cutlery owned in fact by his landlord and therefore rented.
Background noise seeps through indistinct from the television in the front room, and the worktop is already littered with several bright red Coca Cola bottlecaps (one of which, inverted, graces her vinyl E.T. doll like a tiny lopsided crown), Skunk here deferring to her sobriety as they close in on the endgame.
For her part she is quietly ruminative, stood holding onto her pregnant belly and considering her removal from, and the concomitant lack of any role in the ongoing continuum of her own family; the coming child to grow up without its grandparents, any grandparents.
Aggregated, it is a relatively short conversation expanded out to accommodate each fabricating of the other a phantom counterpoint with which to simultaneously engage, a sympathetic complement responding in exactly such a way as would move the exchange on through to their own determining of its desired conclusion.
ache1: It is entirely possible he’ll outlive my parents.
Skunk: And?
ache1: I’m just saying.
Skunk: But I thought you said you’d already resigned yourself to
ache1: Yeah, yeah I said.
pause
Skunk: It’s less possible he’ll outlive us.
ache1: ..and somehow I’m inclined to think that won’t ever actually matter.
pause, a dry laugh
ache1: The eventual, actual, and inevitable death of Elvis Presley.
scraping the now chopped mushrooms from off the board and into the frying pan.
Skunk: But don’t you want to move out of the hotel? At some point? It’s not like, I mean, it’s not like I’m exactly tied to here.
gesturing at their surroundings.
ache1: Ah, I, I mean yes yes of course, but this is, this is... this is what I know now. And I don’t
sighs
ache1: There’s still this sense that it would all still have to be... signed off.
struggling to grip the can opener onto the tin of chopped tomatoes, and then twisting, and twisting.
ache1: There is the, I mean, even if this all worked out, and somehow I did manage to show up back home, that might not, that might not
now voicing her biggest fear, that having grown so habituated to her absence they will not at all want her back, her re-appearance an unwelcome and surplus disruption to what they have come to accept as the stability of their ongoing wake.
For her.
Skunk: Of course they’ll want you back, why wouldn’t they want you back? We eh, we studied, there was a Robert Frost poem at school, the title of which I don’t remember, but the line was something like
the rhythm of the thing sacrificed to his attempt at getting each word in its correct order
Skunk: “Home is the place where when you go there they have to take you in”
ache1 (interrupting): Christ Skunk I don’t ah, I don’t want it to be some obligation, I want it to be because they want to, I want them to be damn near insane to see me, to know, to know that I’m still alive.
pause
ache1: ..and to meet you too as well, obviously, and antler.
pause, then spoken together
ache1: Y’know I wish your mum
Skunk: Maybe he’ll die
and again together
ache1: You go
Skunk: Sorry you go
followed by silence.
Skunk (finally): You want some cheese? I’ll grate some cheese for this.
pulling open the fridge, and then
Skunk: I I’ll get that in a second, need to pee first
exiting; she listens to his offkilter ascent of the stairs.
ache1 (starting to stir the food, cradling her pregnancy and singing): “There’s a place for us. Somewhere, a place for us.”
Her nose is bleeding.
Other than whatever food he had bought and stored on his allotted shelves in the cupboards and fridge, there is nothing here that belongs to him: every plate, mug, glass, every item of cutlery owned in fact by his landlord and therefore rented.
Background noise seeps through indistinct from the television in the front room, and the worktop is already littered with several bright red Coca Cola bottlecaps (one of which, inverted, graces her vinyl E.T. doll like a tiny lopsided crown), Skunk here deferring to her sobriety as they close in on the endgame.
For her part she is quietly ruminative, stood holding onto her pregnant belly and considering her removal from, and the concomitant lack of any role in the ongoing continuum of her own family; the coming child to grow up without its grandparents, any grandparents.
Aggregated, it is a relatively short conversation expanded out to accommodate each fabricating of the other a phantom counterpoint with which to simultaneously engage, a sympathetic complement responding in exactly such a way as would move the exchange on through to their own determining of its desired conclusion.
ache1: It is entirely possible he’ll outlive my parents.
Skunk: And?
ache1: I’m just saying.
Skunk: But I thought you said you’d already resigned yourself to
ache1: Yeah, yeah I said.
pause
Skunk: It’s less possible he’ll outlive us.
ache1: ..and somehow I’m inclined to think that won’t ever actually matter.
pause, a dry laugh
ache1: The eventual, actual, and inevitable death of Elvis Presley.
scraping the now chopped mushrooms from off the board and into the frying pan.
Skunk: But don’t you want to move out of the hotel? At some point? It’s not like, I mean, it’s not like I’m exactly tied to here.
gesturing at their surroundings.
ache1: Ah, I, I mean yes yes of course, but this is, this is... this is what I know now. And I don’t
sighs
ache1: There’s still this sense that it would all still have to be... signed off.
struggling to grip the can opener onto the tin of chopped tomatoes, and then twisting, and twisting.
ache1: There is the, I mean, even if this all worked out, and somehow I did manage to show up back home, that might not, that might not
now voicing her biggest fear, that having grown so habituated to her absence they will not at all want her back, her re-appearance an unwelcome and surplus disruption to what they have come to accept as the stability of their ongoing wake.
For her.
Skunk: Of course they’ll want you back, why wouldn’t they want you back? We eh, we studied, there was a Robert Frost poem at school, the title of which I don’t remember, but the line was something like
the rhythm of the thing sacrificed to his attempt at getting each word in its correct order
Skunk: “Home is the place where when you go there they have to take you in”
ache1 (interrupting): Christ Skunk I don’t ah, I don’t want it to be some obligation, I want it to be because they want to, I want them to be damn near insane to see me, to know, to know that I’m still alive.
pause
ache1: ..and to meet you too as well, obviously, and antler.
pause, then spoken together
ache1: Y’know I wish your mum
Skunk: Maybe he’ll die
and again together
ache1: You go
Skunk: Sorry you go
followed by silence.
Skunk (finally): You want some cheese? I’ll grate some cheese for this.
pulling open the fridge, and then
Skunk: I I’ll get that in a second, need to pee first
exiting; she listens to his offkilter ascent of the stairs.
ache1 (starting to stir the food, cradling her pregnancy and singing): “There’s a place for us. Somewhere, a place for us.”
Her nose is bleeding.
.
