Post by Marion on Jan 31, 2015 20:58:57 GMT 7
Thirst
Maeve arrives late at the Bayshore Function Hall, hot and fuddled in her black taffeta dress. Drifting around the condo grounds in the tropical sun like an actor on the wrong set, she’d circled various paddling pools with pale, marvellously intact children in them, mothers and maids at the poolside, bent over their smartphones. She’s banned herself from thinking these past days, focuses on her senses instead, the one thing that seems to keep her safe. Buttermilk scent of spider lilies. A gecko’s ge-ge-ge-ge-geck. The rhythmical thuds of the tennis court thunder in her chest. How can anyone want to exercise in this midday heat? Then again, she thinks, maybe that’s exactly what you have to do – whatever the time of day. Get yourself into sweat bands and bang bang bang on till you forgive or forget.
Once she enters the lobby, ice air washes over Maeve like a blessing. She’s made it this far, she’ll do her part. But before she braves the Function Hall, she finds her attention absorbed by a giant cactus mounted on a slab of marble. I THIRST NOT reads a plaque at its foot. It seems a bizarre object to place in a residential function hall lobby, yet there is something comforting in the taut green globe, prick-studded on the outside, presumably all flesh and juice inside. Presumably plastic? In any case, the claim rings true, the cactus never lacks. Maeve is about to prod one of the its waxy-looking grooves when the image of Anabel’s delicate rib-cage breaks through her mental defence line. A delicate row of bones outlined by her white tank top the morning of the power cut.
*****
It had been Anabel’s 11th birthday and Siam Reap was sweltering, the air dense and sticky as molasses. No fans or air-con units worked in their hotel. On the streets, under a vortex of powerless cables, tuk tuk drivers were asleep on their passenger benches. Nobody seemed willing to go anywhere, not even to the temples. Since the electrical water pump had stopped, the hotel staff brought bowls of water to the third floor for the three of them to wash in – Anabel, her mother Vera, and Maeve, adopted as ‘amazing auntie’ for the duration of the Cambodia trip. Maeve and Vera had met during Drama & Theatre days in Trinity College and bumped into each other again recently at a Formula One party in Singapore. Assuring each other they hated the races but loved the champagne, they’d gotten swept into an almost-all-nighter. They’d fallen in love again with the static crackle that built in the air between and around them. Soon after, Maeve was baffled to find Vera none-type-cast as mother to a wiry, thoughtful girl. She seemed tenser than she’d known her, all that heightened energy cast about her only child like electric discharges.
Small white petals had swirled in the bath water like specks of froth – a birthday greeting? An omen? Anabel in her tight-fitting, high-waisted denim shorts and camisole let Maeve braid her hair and asked her to put the little buds in. She stuck out her tongue at the mirror, looking bridal and boyish all at once.
‘Two peas in a pod,’ Vera smiled uncertainly at them in the mirror. And yes, there was a resemblance, the narrow, drooping shoulders, that flaxen tone of hair. Vera – herself all dark curls and curves – whipped a roomy white blouse from a hanger. ‘Here, petal, perfect birthday style.’
‘Can’t I go like this?’ Anabel had protested. It’s like the Sahara out there.’
Vera had forced the thin cotton tunic over Anabel’s head, making the little flower heads fall down.
‘Mum, what’s wrong with you?’
*****
Just then, Maeve feels a hand between her shoulder blades. Her own hands are resting on the cool marble plinth beneath the cactus.
‘Hey Maeve, you’re late. You OK?’
She winces, shaking off the spell of memories she’d been holding at bay all this time. She knows who it is without turning around. Jezz reliably turns up at the heart of any good party and now takes up space at the epicentre of everybody’s grief.
‘Not sure when I’ll be OK again.’ She shakes off his hand. ‘Is everyone else already in there?’
‘Yeah, yeah, we’re about to watch my tribute to Anabel. And I just got my camera shit together upstairs. You’ll be doing the video message, right?’ he turns Maeve around gently, pulling her by the wrist.
Jezz is Filipino-American, has a film degree from UCLA and an obsession with turning everything into footage. It seems almost odd he isn’t filming her right now. Maybe he is. His sheer bulk surprises Maeve once again, the long dark hair sleeked back into a pony-tail over his muscular neck. His face is broken by shock and looks wan against a multi-colour tie-dyed shirt.
‘Is this even really happening?’ she hears herself say.
‘Wasn’t in the script alright,’ Jezz runs the back of his hand over red raw eyes. ‘I’ll go in with you. Brought some liquid lunch?’
‘No,’ Maeve checks for the cranberry juice in her handbag, ‘not today.’ She focuses on the sheer luxury of the air-con gliding down her neck and into the cinches of the tight, unbreathing fabric – her only decent black dress.
*****
‘Were we supposed to wear black or rainbow?’ Maeve marvels under her breath once she and Jezz have entered the Function Room. She eyes the seated circle of twenty-odd mothers, friends, children, most of them in crazily coloured outfits, making polite conversation.
‘Didn’t anyone tell you?’ Jezz sounds sincerely surprised. ‘We thought since there’s no immediate family present, we’d keep things nice and – bright.’
There are homemade cookies on a side-table, bowlfuls of glistening grapes, barbecued Chinese pork. Maeve pours herself some juice and white wine for Jezz from a condensation-pricked bottle and they sit down in the back part of the room. There are so many unfamiliar faces. And yet their glances scald Maeve, as if they can identify some blemish, her stigma of being too close to the core of loss.
‘Thank you all very much for coming, I’m Judy, Anabel’s Singapore godmother,’ a buxom lady in a lemon cocktail dress now addresses the room. She looks practical, unfussed, like the kind of lady who could manage anything from a space station to a burlesque troupe.
‘A painful occasion brings us together.’ Judy continues. ‘We are half a world away from the actual event of Anabel’s funeral in County Wicklow. Yet the presence of everyone in this room,’ she glances around with a wistful glow suffusing her apple cheeks, ‘is a great gesture. Thanks so much to Jezz for hosting us –’
‘Yeah, and thanks for all the flowers and stuff,’ Jezz cuts in, rising from his seat. ‘We can’t display them here, condo rules. But you’ll see them upstairs in my place when you do the video, apartment two twelve – make sure you all come up and record your message –’ his voice grows doughy, ‘– for the family. Meanwhile, I put together a short movie in memory of Anabel.’ His shoulders slump. He fumbles with the remote. ‘Bloody hell,’ he yelps suddenly, then straightens up again looking searchingly around at his mourning guests, most of whom are averting their eyes. ‘I was bloody teaching her to fish two weeks ago.’
A vacuum of sorrow sucks all sounds out of the room now – except for the whirring of the air con. Then, the plasma screen comes on and ‘Hey Jude’, the score set to Jezz’s video starts playing. Lights are being switched off, Maeve feels her fists clenching. The screen shows 8-year-old Anabel riding on a banana boat. The boat seems to plough the waves at the exact rhythm of John Lennon singing Remember to let her into your heart.
Jezz sinks back into the chair beside Maeve, mumbles ‘How fucked up is this?’ and drops his head into his hands.
Maeve is having something of an out-of-body experience. It’s as if she is levitating two inches above her chair and has nothing to do with the person who sits on it.
‘What were the two of you even thinking?’ he mumbles into his palms, unaware of the blade his words plunge into her. If she weren’t turning into a flippin’ yogi, she’d have to kill him for it. Instead, she lets a few moments pass, then pronounces gently from her elevated plane:
‘Accidents happen, nothing we can do.’
Jezz lifts his head out of his hands, ‘I’m not blaming you for boozing with her mother, if that’s what you think. Not my style, Maeve. Just, kids and adventure sports don’t gel in a third world country, is all I’m saying.’
‘You have every right to think so,’ she manages to respond with an effective tone of finality.
They sit in silence while the video goes on to show Anabel with her halo of blonde curls in a succession of school uniforms. Eventually, Jezz leans in closer to Maeve, hesitates, then asks:
‘Still haven’t had any – contact?’
Maeve lets her silence answer the question.
‘Well. I got some shocking news for ya so,’ he breathes into her ear.
‘Please, not now,’ Maeve closes her eyes and focuses on the musk and menthol scent of Jezz’s shaving cream.
*****
The tug-of-war had continued out on Lake Tonle Sap. Once the three of them were seated in a roofed motorboat, Vera sprayed and rubbed successive layers of sunscreen onto Anabel and made her wear the oversized life-jacket (It smells and nobody else is wearing one!). As they entered an otherworld of floating villages, floating markets, floating orphanages, Anabel got told how to frame pictures with her new Cannon, how to put the cap back onto the lens after every shot. The captain’s smudge-faced little daughter was on board beside him and stared back at them, sucking the seeds out of a lotus head, never making a sound. Anabel, equally silent, ignored her mother and snapped shots of the little girl and of a local boy on another boat holding up a pet-snake – ‘Take photo two dollars, Miss!’ After the horror of the crocodile farm and getting eaten alive by clouds of tiny mosquitoes, they decided to return to shore and crammed into their tuk tuk with flattened spirits – hardly thrilled to head back into soupy Siam Reap.
It was Maeve who spotted the Glory Horse Ranch sign en route across the parched countryside: ‘Weren’t you a bit of a legend with the horses back home, Anabel?’ The birthday girl squealed, Vera clenched her teeth, Maeve pulled the driver by the sleeve and gestured for him to turn off the main road – ‘My treat!’ The sun was getting low and palm trees studded the dry paddy fields around them like charred torches. Vera squinted into the stubbly fields with widened pupils, gripping the back of the seat – Maeve put her hand on Vera’s arm:
‘Just let her have fun.’
The horses were clearly good breeds, their well-groomed coats gleamed white and amber and gold, dust specks danced up around stomping hoofs. A sunset ride was just getting under way and the three ladies were rushed through the legal forms. The ranch staff were Australian, competent. Used to charming moneyed clients. They found a helmet that fit and helped Anabel onto what looked like a small white thoroughbred, eagerly crunching his bite. They took to each other in an instant – Anabel beamed at them, looking more like 16-year-old, back straight, shoulders relaxed, tugging at the reigns. Maeve and Vera watched the little troop ride off from the veranda and ordered long island iced teas, which came out quickly and perfectly cold – a miracle. The world lost its edge. They ordered more. Drum beats rolled across the dry fields and the night fell like cool silk around them.
*****
The sound of ripping makes Maeve open her eyes again, somebody is pulling open the vertical blinds to let in the light of day. A faint headache is nursing above her temples. The final caption on the screen reads: Anabel Sullivan, 2004-2015 – A voice we loved is still. After a few awkward seconds, the video jumps back to the beginning – to snapshots of a plum-blue newborn. Jezz mutes the sound, but lets the video run on. [...]
Hi there, and thanks for reading along. The story will continue for another 1,000 words or so, capturing a further plot reveal or two and the moment when Maeve faces up to her emotions and records her condolence message to Vera, but haven't written that out yet. The cactus will figure again at the end, too. I am struggling with the timing and placement of essential backstory reveals and the integration of flashbacks into the story of the wake on the present time level. Does the switching back and forth work or is it cofusing/annyoing? Are the Cambodian scenes too long? What would you cut? Anything that needs fleshing out more?
Any other comments welcome too!
Again, many thanks for reading, I'll definitely return the favour,
Marion
Maeve arrives late at the Bayshore Function Hall, hot and fuddled in her black taffeta dress. Drifting around the condo grounds in the tropical sun like an actor on the wrong set, she’d circled various paddling pools with pale, marvellously intact children in them, mothers and maids at the poolside, bent over their smartphones. She’s banned herself from thinking these past days, focuses on her senses instead, the one thing that seems to keep her safe. Buttermilk scent of spider lilies. A gecko’s ge-ge-ge-ge-geck. The rhythmical thuds of the tennis court thunder in her chest. How can anyone want to exercise in this midday heat? Then again, she thinks, maybe that’s exactly what you have to do – whatever the time of day. Get yourself into sweat bands and bang bang bang on till you forgive or forget.
Once she enters the lobby, ice air washes over Maeve like a blessing. She’s made it this far, she’ll do her part. But before she braves the Function Hall, she finds her attention absorbed by a giant cactus mounted on a slab of marble. I THIRST NOT reads a plaque at its foot. It seems a bizarre object to place in a residential function hall lobby, yet there is something comforting in the taut green globe, prick-studded on the outside, presumably all flesh and juice inside. Presumably plastic? In any case, the claim rings true, the cactus never lacks. Maeve is about to prod one of the its waxy-looking grooves when the image of Anabel’s delicate rib-cage breaks through her mental defence line. A delicate row of bones outlined by her white tank top the morning of the power cut.
*****
It had been Anabel’s 11th birthday and Siam Reap was sweltering, the air dense and sticky as molasses. No fans or air-con units worked in their hotel. On the streets, under a vortex of powerless cables, tuk tuk drivers were asleep on their passenger benches. Nobody seemed willing to go anywhere, not even to the temples. Since the electrical water pump had stopped, the hotel staff brought bowls of water to the third floor for the three of them to wash in – Anabel, her mother Vera, and Maeve, adopted as ‘amazing auntie’ for the duration of the Cambodia trip. Maeve and Vera had met during Drama & Theatre days in Trinity College and bumped into each other again recently at a Formula One party in Singapore. Assuring each other they hated the races but loved the champagne, they’d gotten swept into an almost-all-nighter. They’d fallen in love again with the static crackle that built in the air between and around them. Soon after, Maeve was baffled to find Vera none-type-cast as mother to a wiry, thoughtful girl. She seemed tenser than she’d known her, all that heightened energy cast about her only child like electric discharges.
Small white petals had swirled in the bath water like specks of froth – a birthday greeting? An omen? Anabel in her tight-fitting, high-waisted denim shorts and camisole let Maeve braid her hair and asked her to put the little buds in. She stuck out her tongue at the mirror, looking bridal and boyish all at once.
‘Two peas in a pod,’ Vera smiled uncertainly at them in the mirror. And yes, there was a resemblance, the narrow, drooping shoulders, that flaxen tone of hair. Vera – herself all dark curls and curves – whipped a roomy white blouse from a hanger. ‘Here, petal, perfect birthday style.’
‘Can’t I go like this?’ Anabel had protested. It’s like the Sahara out there.’
Vera had forced the thin cotton tunic over Anabel’s head, making the little flower heads fall down.
‘Mum, what’s wrong with you?’
*****
Just then, Maeve feels a hand between her shoulder blades. Her own hands are resting on the cool marble plinth beneath the cactus.
‘Hey Maeve, you’re late. You OK?’
She winces, shaking off the spell of memories she’d been holding at bay all this time. She knows who it is without turning around. Jezz reliably turns up at the heart of any good party and now takes up space at the epicentre of everybody’s grief.
‘Not sure when I’ll be OK again.’ She shakes off his hand. ‘Is everyone else already in there?’
‘Yeah, yeah, we’re about to watch my tribute to Anabel. And I just got my camera shit together upstairs. You’ll be doing the video message, right?’ he turns Maeve around gently, pulling her by the wrist.
Jezz is Filipino-American, has a film degree from UCLA and an obsession with turning everything into footage. It seems almost odd he isn’t filming her right now. Maybe he is. His sheer bulk surprises Maeve once again, the long dark hair sleeked back into a pony-tail over his muscular neck. His face is broken by shock and looks wan against a multi-colour tie-dyed shirt.
‘Is this even really happening?’ she hears herself say.
‘Wasn’t in the script alright,’ Jezz runs the back of his hand over red raw eyes. ‘I’ll go in with you. Brought some liquid lunch?’
‘No,’ Maeve checks for the cranberry juice in her handbag, ‘not today.’ She focuses on the sheer luxury of the air-con gliding down her neck and into the cinches of the tight, unbreathing fabric – her only decent black dress.
*****
‘Were we supposed to wear black or rainbow?’ Maeve marvels under her breath once she and Jezz have entered the Function Room. She eyes the seated circle of twenty-odd mothers, friends, children, most of them in crazily coloured outfits, making polite conversation.
‘Didn’t anyone tell you?’ Jezz sounds sincerely surprised. ‘We thought since there’s no immediate family present, we’d keep things nice and – bright.’
There are homemade cookies on a side-table, bowlfuls of glistening grapes, barbecued Chinese pork. Maeve pours herself some juice and white wine for Jezz from a condensation-pricked bottle and they sit down in the back part of the room. There are so many unfamiliar faces. And yet their glances scald Maeve, as if they can identify some blemish, her stigma of being too close to the core of loss.
‘Thank you all very much for coming, I’m Judy, Anabel’s Singapore godmother,’ a buxom lady in a lemon cocktail dress now addresses the room. She looks practical, unfussed, like the kind of lady who could manage anything from a space station to a burlesque troupe.
‘A painful occasion brings us together.’ Judy continues. ‘We are half a world away from the actual event of Anabel’s funeral in County Wicklow. Yet the presence of everyone in this room,’ she glances around with a wistful glow suffusing her apple cheeks, ‘is a great gesture. Thanks so much to Jezz for hosting us –’
‘Yeah, and thanks for all the flowers and stuff,’ Jezz cuts in, rising from his seat. ‘We can’t display them here, condo rules. But you’ll see them upstairs in my place when you do the video, apartment two twelve – make sure you all come up and record your message –’ his voice grows doughy, ‘– for the family. Meanwhile, I put together a short movie in memory of Anabel.’ His shoulders slump. He fumbles with the remote. ‘Bloody hell,’ he yelps suddenly, then straightens up again looking searchingly around at his mourning guests, most of whom are averting their eyes. ‘I was bloody teaching her to fish two weeks ago.’
A vacuum of sorrow sucks all sounds out of the room now – except for the whirring of the air con. Then, the plasma screen comes on and ‘Hey Jude’, the score set to Jezz’s video starts playing. Lights are being switched off, Maeve feels her fists clenching. The screen shows 8-year-old Anabel riding on a banana boat. The boat seems to plough the waves at the exact rhythm of John Lennon singing Remember to let her into your heart.
Jezz sinks back into the chair beside Maeve, mumbles ‘How fucked up is this?’ and drops his head into his hands.
Maeve is having something of an out-of-body experience. It’s as if she is levitating two inches above her chair and has nothing to do with the person who sits on it.
‘What were the two of you even thinking?’ he mumbles into his palms, unaware of the blade his words plunge into her. If she weren’t turning into a flippin’ yogi, she’d have to kill him for it. Instead, she lets a few moments pass, then pronounces gently from her elevated plane:
‘Accidents happen, nothing we can do.’
Jezz lifts his head out of his hands, ‘I’m not blaming you for boozing with her mother, if that’s what you think. Not my style, Maeve. Just, kids and adventure sports don’t gel in a third world country, is all I’m saying.’
‘You have every right to think so,’ she manages to respond with an effective tone of finality.
They sit in silence while the video goes on to show Anabel with her halo of blonde curls in a succession of school uniforms. Eventually, Jezz leans in closer to Maeve, hesitates, then asks:
‘Still haven’t had any – contact?’
Maeve lets her silence answer the question.
‘Well. I got some shocking news for ya so,’ he breathes into her ear.
‘Please, not now,’ Maeve closes her eyes and focuses on the musk and menthol scent of Jezz’s shaving cream.
*****
The tug-of-war had continued out on Lake Tonle Sap. Once the three of them were seated in a roofed motorboat, Vera sprayed and rubbed successive layers of sunscreen onto Anabel and made her wear the oversized life-jacket (It smells and nobody else is wearing one!). As they entered an otherworld of floating villages, floating markets, floating orphanages, Anabel got told how to frame pictures with her new Cannon, how to put the cap back onto the lens after every shot. The captain’s smudge-faced little daughter was on board beside him and stared back at them, sucking the seeds out of a lotus head, never making a sound. Anabel, equally silent, ignored her mother and snapped shots of the little girl and of a local boy on another boat holding up a pet-snake – ‘Take photo two dollars, Miss!’ After the horror of the crocodile farm and getting eaten alive by clouds of tiny mosquitoes, they decided to return to shore and crammed into their tuk tuk with flattened spirits – hardly thrilled to head back into soupy Siam Reap.
It was Maeve who spotted the Glory Horse Ranch sign en route across the parched countryside: ‘Weren’t you a bit of a legend with the horses back home, Anabel?’ The birthday girl squealed, Vera clenched her teeth, Maeve pulled the driver by the sleeve and gestured for him to turn off the main road – ‘My treat!’ The sun was getting low and palm trees studded the dry paddy fields around them like charred torches. Vera squinted into the stubbly fields with widened pupils, gripping the back of the seat – Maeve put her hand on Vera’s arm:
‘Just let her have fun.’
The horses were clearly good breeds, their well-groomed coats gleamed white and amber and gold, dust specks danced up around stomping hoofs. A sunset ride was just getting under way and the three ladies were rushed through the legal forms. The ranch staff were Australian, competent. Used to charming moneyed clients. They found a helmet that fit and helped Anabel onto what looked like a small white thoroughbred, eagerly crunching his bite. They took to each other in an instant – Anabel beamed at them, looking more like 16-year-old, back straight, shoulders relaxed, tugging at the reigns. Maeve and Vera watched the little troop ride off from the veranda and ordered long island iced teas, which came out quickly and perfectly cold – a miracle. The world lost its edge. They ordered more. Drum beats rolled across the dry fields and the night fell like cool silk around them.
*****
The sound of ripping makes Maeve open her eyes again, somebody is pulling open the vertical blinds to let in the light of day. A faint headache is nursing above her temples. The final caption on the screen reads: Anabel Sullivan, 2004-2015 – A voice we loved is still. After a few awkward seconds, the video jumps back to the beginning – to snapshots of a plum-blue newborn. Jezz mutes the sound, but lets the video run on. [...]
Hi there, and thanks for reading along. The story will continue for another 1,000 words or so, capturing a further plot reveal or two and the moment when Maeve faces up to her emotions and records her condolence message to Vera, but haven't written that out yet. The cactus will figure again at the end, too. I am struggling with the timing and placement of essential backstory reveals and the integration of flashbacks into the story of the wake on the present time level. Does the switching back and forth work or is it cofusing/annyoing? Are the Cambodian scenes too long? What would you cut? Anything that needs fleshing out more?
Any other comments welcome too!
Again, many thanks for reading, I'll definitely return the favour,
Marion