| Waiting
by Lorna Fraser
The woman over the road was painting her front door green. I saw her this
morning when I was trying to press my overall with the wonky iron. It
either goes too hot, a burning smell like singed hair, or not warm at
all, leaving me with stubborn creases and a sense of familiar crumpled
inability.
I had a door with that shade of green once. In a street much brighter
and bigger than this mean line of tired brick terraces. He chose the colour,
a richer, shinier mirror of the grass in front of the twin bay windows.
He called it the lawn. His pride and joy, perfect edges, dark and pale,
straight precise lines. Keep off the grass.
That woman, I don’t know her name. This street is a foreign place
to me. She only has one window downstairs and one up above. Dirty yellow
lace hides her cluttered tasteless room from prying eyes.
They sell lots of Polish food in tins with weird letters and garish colours
in the shop at the end of the road. I might as well speak a different
language. No one knows me here.
She’ll need two or three coats of that green if she wants to obliterate
the tired old brown wood. She should have prepped more. He would have
spent days rubbing it down, smoothing it off. He doesn’t tolerate
imperfection.
I have to iron on the table, a gate-leg is what they call it, with both
of the towels laid out as padding. There’s no ironing board here.
There’s not a lot really, a bed, single, that table, a hard chair,
a sink and two electric rings. Oh and a cupboard that houses the toilet
and the smallest shower cubicle ever. If I just want a wash I have to
use the sink. To be honest I prefer that because that mould creeping up
the cubicle’s grey tiles is too disgusting to contemplate. I say
grey but they were white once, cheap and cracked. How many bits of others’
bodies are encased in that mould? No, don’t think about that. It
could be worse. It was worse.
I wonder where Christine is?
Anyway that woman was painting her door green when I put on my crinkly
beige overall, the iron never did heat up, and I went to work. The shift
passed. I cleaned up toilets, mopped up messes, dished out cups of tea
and cake. Yes I did wash my hands. I know about infections and I don’t
want to be the one who passes on that final life-sucking bug to some poor
old dear. There are thirty of them in the home and only two of them men.
A pair of dribbling, dithering useless old sods! One day he’ll be
frail and foolish. All his power will be gone then, when he has to depend
on some stranger to wipe his bottom. The food is rubbish, bland pulp overcooked
to accommodate toothless mouths. But I get lunch, I get my fill, make
it the main meal. Tea and toast, maybe a boiled egg, is fine at night
for me.
I wonder what Christine is eating? I hope she doesn’t get fat like
all those Americans you see on TV. Not the film stars, who are generally
anorexic but the normal people, the ones who go to Disneyland. They queue
for rides with enormous buckets of popcorn and vats of coke in their pudgy
hands.
That woman was still at her door when I walked back up the street tonight.
She must be on the second coat. I could speak to her, say how lucky she
is with the weather to get on with such a job. Not like last summer, all
that rain we had remember? So much wetness, it put people in a bad mood.
He was vile. The smallest thing could make him snap. I did so many things
wrong then. I couldn’t begin to tell you what, sometimes didn’t
even know myself. At least not until I’d done it, then the message
was clear enough. That glint of steel in his eye, the snaking pulsing
vein in his temple, the clenched fists; the lunge forward. Well you know
the rest.
I could ask her if she has a daughter too. Would that be presumptuous?
But she does look a bit lonely. Is that sadness or concentration on her
face as she strokes the brush up and down the panels? I’ve never
seen a man come in or out that house. Maybe she’s a widow. She looks
like a widow. And if there was a man, a husband or a son, well they would
be painting the door.
Oh now, is that sexist of me? I bet Christine would say it was. She’d
go, “Mum stop being so old fashioned!” in that voice of frustrated
exasperation that she does.
I could speak to the woman; offer to help her on the final coat.
“I’ve got a daughter,” I would say, “She’s
at University, except well she’s not at the moment being summer
and all.”
“No,” I’d tell her, “She’s in America, working
at a summer camp for under-privileged kids.”
Oh wait, was it privileged kids? Rich or poor, I can’t remember.
And how is she going to tell me? She doesn’t know where I am. I
left too soon, in the end. Years and years of waiting for the right moment
to go and I went and timed it wrong.
“I’ll phone you mum once I get there, tell you my number,
my address, no point in email since dad won’t let you on the computer.”
He says I’m too stupid to work it. He says I’m too stupid
for a lot of things. I got her right, didn’t I? She’ll be
okay. But she won’t know that I’ve gone. When she phones,
he could tell her but he won’t. That would be too easy. He’s
smart, he knows if he doesn’t tell her then when I don’t call
back, when I don’t write and the weeks go by, she’ll be worried.
She’ll think that I don’t care, that I’m mad at her
for going all that way, so far apart. So you see now, how smart he is
because now he’s got us both hurting. I could go back.
The woman is finished now. She’s gathering her paint pot and brushes.
I’m sitting by the window on the hard chair. I have newspaper folded
under one leg because it wobbles. I don’t want her to stop. I want
to keep watching her run her brush up and down the door in smooth measured
strokes; a peaceful, silent rhythm. Yes, it’s definitely the exact
same green, even though the light is different here. Her door is in evening
shade, ours always got the western sun. Our door opened onto a wide hall,
white walls, wooden floors and stairs leading upwards to closed bedrooms,
private space, no visitors allowed.
The last time, I didn’t slam the door. I didn’t release years
of pent up force. I didn’t try to rip it off its shiny brass hinges.
I pulled it closed very slowly. Each creeping moment to its fit with the
frame was counted down, a second closer to the final point of no return.
The lock clicked into place, a soft whisper of farewell with only a hint
of reproach.
Do you think he eats eggs for his tea? What happens now if he overcooks
his steak, who will he blame? I suppose it’s still my fault. Guilty
in absentia!
The woman’s gone inside; the street is empty. This is the hour when
everyone is eating tea then settling down to watch Corrie on the telly,
dishes drying in the rack, kitchens all tidied up. I don’t have
a television here. I don’t have a lot, a suitcase of clothes, half
a packet of cornflakes, some UHT milk, a loaf of wholemeal bread, slightly
stale, and four eggs. This place doesn’t even have a fridge. So
if the summer is going to be as hot as they say, I will have a few problems.
I bet it’s hot where Christine is, Carolina or Florida? I can’t
remember. Imagine getting on a plane and flying over the ocean, walking
over melting tarmac with the sun burning on the back of my neck. I could
go and find her. Imagine that! What would she say?
“Mum what a surprise, it’s great to see you, let’s spend
the summer together here in America.”
I miss her. I don’t feel hungry tonight. How soon is too early to
go to bed, to crawl between scratchy sheets, close my eyes and sleep and
sleep till daylight comes again? I need to rinse out my tights, my last
pair, they should be dry enough by morning.
I don’t think I like that green door. It’s making me think
too much about what I left behind. It’s making me think about him.
I will not go back.
I could say to that woman, “Excuse me, your door is upsetting me.
It reminds me of a woman I don’t want to be.”
She might say, “Of course, I understand, I had one of those husbands
too.”
We would form a bond, a friendship of strangers and she would change it,
paint the door red.
Red is Christine’s colour. When she was ten she had shiny patent
shoes, scarlet like out of a fairy tale, with a strap across fastened
by a little button. Wore them till her feet rebelled, spurting forward
a size.
Red is a good colour, a happy shade of strength and hope. I can wait for
that colour. She’s not gone forever. She has to go back to University
in September. I know where that is. I’ll find her then.
I spent too many years waiting behind a green door. It held me prisoner,
sucked the joy from me. What are two months more? It’s nothing really
is it, to look at that green door every day, then I can leave and find
her. Start my again life, again. Maybe I’ll speak to that woman
tomorrow. It’s only another day.
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