FICTION
Alice had noticed some outdoor benches on one of the balconies
on their way up the stairs with their backpacks. Cushions of snow
piled up 20 centimetres thick on them. She had stopped to rest and
had thought,maybe by spring we’ll be sitting out there for breakfast.
It was only February. Winter had barely begun.
By early March, Stefan had found himself the chief maintenance
man for the hostel. Dick, the owner, had big plans to turn the other
side of the building into little apartments. He’d taken a shine to
Stefan and his courteous but direct German
ways and they often went out bargain
hunting for cheap materials in the afternoons
and didn’t make it home for dinner.
Alice worked the office downstairs,
which meant greeting new hostel guests
and keeping the coffee pot on the boil.
Stefan would fix the washing machines
down in the laundry and bomb regularly for
inner-city roaches. Alice would make bowls
of popcorn and take them to the two
television rooms; one down in the
basement, the other on the top floor. She
would clean the sheets and make sure
everyone had what they wanted. Once a
fortnight she’d spend the day at Smiley’s, the laundromat on 6th
Street, where she washed all the blankets, drank Mountain Dew
and sat around watching music videos on the TV in the corner.
When she found out she was pregnant, she went straight to
Smiley’s. She had no blankets to wash but she sat on the bench
and felt the damp warmth from the driers waft towards her and the
familiar hum of 75 washing machines vibrating. That day she drank
Miller Lite and said hi to the few people she knew.
When Stefan found her, she was crouched in the corner with
her hands across her knees. She was talking with another woman
and laughing with her head back.
“Alice?” he said looking around him. “Have you been
here all day?”
She turned at the mention of her name. “Hi, darling,” she said.
“Hey, this is Winnie.” She pointed to the other woman.
“Hi,” they both said together.
“I was just telling Winnie here the Aussie expression for
‘knocked up’.” Both women laughed. Stefan frowned. Winnie,
still laughing, said, “Up the bloody duff, mate,” in a terrible
Australian accent.
Alice raised her bottle.Up the fucking duff.
Alice and Stefan went out for a meal a few days later to
celebrate at an expensive little place around the corner from the
hostel. And, when they got back to the little room they rented for
almost nothing, he got down on one knee and asked her to be his
wife. On the way home they had walked under a clear sky and
could see the stars. There hadn’t been snow for a few days.
When Alice woke the next morning, she couldn’t remember
what she’d eaten the night before, or the colour of the carpet. It wasonly when she glanced across at the green dress flung on the back
of the chair that she remembered what she’d been wearing.
The day she told Stefan she didn’t want to have a baby was the
day the city was struck by hailstones the size of her fist. They had just
finished eating a huge stuffed jacket potato left over from a few
evenings before. Stefan had said, “Do you think this has spoiled?”
Alice was about to reply when the building resounded with a sonic
clatter that lasted four seconds. When they both reached the sash
window to look out, Alice thought, nothing’s
changed here. The streets were solid white ice.
The road, usually wet-black even during the
heaviest of snowfalls, was not even visible. No
car, no garden was left uncovered. Alice
wondered what the result would have been if
she had stepped outside just at the moment of
the crash.
“I want an abortion,” she said, both their
hands placed on the windowsill as they looked
down at the scene.
At precisely that moment, Stefan said,
“God no!”
Alice never knew if he had exclaimed this
because of what she had said, or the sudden
shock of the record hail fall that damaged the city that day.
She was woken again by the voices from below. A friendly card
game had turned into a heated argument. Alice heard so many
different accents mingled together, she couldn’t unpick Liverpudlian
from French, or Australian from Middle American.
She opened her eyes just enough to see outside to the slowly
falling dusk; the most beautiful time of day in a polluted city. Dusk.
She loved that word. Its connotations of pinks and oranges – and
bleeding reds. They all combined to provide a backdrop more
lovely than the ocean sunsets she knew well from home.
Alice remembered crawling into her mother’s bed when she
was a child. When it was just the two of them. She kicked in her
sleep and her mother bruised easily. Sometimes they went for
weeks like that, sleeping side by side. Other times Alice would
call out from her end of the house... “Mummy, Mum...” Over and
over until she heard, “Yes?” “Can I come and sleep in your bed?
I’ve had a bad dream.” “Yes. Don’t kick me.”
The first night after Alice had moved out from home, she cried
to herself quietly under the covers, because she’d left her mother
alone in the big family house. Through the haze she felt
a quickening of panic and held her breath.
But Stefan always came back.He’s only gone for dinner.
After a few seconds she breathed out once again.
He doesn’t know I stand at that window every afternoon,
sometimes feeling the melted snow falling from the gutter above,
and, if I lean out, sometimes catching the rays of sun as they filter
through a stray cloud. Sometimes during thunderstorms I watch
the lightning on the far horizon and imagine angry, black
tornadoes sweeping across towards me and carrying me off. >92
“She even
stoppedDRINKING
COFFEE
in case
it affected
the BABY”