Like it Matters

by David Cornwell

  I sat down and I was still looking at that mouth, and I got a flash-memory of this guy I worked with once who used to do something similar when he was really angry

  And then—before I even had a chance to say anything and suss the vibe—

  That old fucker threw his whole mug of coffee straight into my lap.

  I had jeans on but it still fucking burned, I could feel it burning the end of my dick and everything. I jumped up and I shouted and I felt it running hot down my legs, all the way down to my ankles. I wanted to swear, or hit him, or just grab my coffee and chuck the mug at his head—

  But I looked over at Charlotte and she had this pleading, pleading look on her face

  And I looked at him and he was shaking—

  And I don’t know how I did it but I breathed, two deep breaths, and all I said was, “Can I put these pants in a washing machine?”

  She ran off and got a towel and I wrapped it around my waist, and then for about the next hour I sat on a chair in the laundry room and watched the washing machine while they had a huge fight in a room on the other side of the house. The worst part was, in amongst all the clothes in there, my boxers and my jeans as well as some other stuff her dad wanted to do, I saw a loose cigarette get shredded to pieces, and a fucking fifty-rand note probably getting ruined—stuff that’d been in my jeans and it was too late to stop it now. All I could picture was the tobacco getting into his shirt pockets and causing a scene.

  When the load was finished the machine made a noise and I turned the taps off, and soon after she came back into the room. She’d tied her hair up all neatly. I could see she’d been crying. I told her about the cigarette in the washing machine and she just smiled and shrugged her shoulders. The fifty-rand note tore pretty much as soon as I touched it.

  We put the clothes in the tumble dryer, and she twisted a dial that started ticking on its way back. She pushed another button and the old thing came to life, loud and sputtering, sounding a bit like a generator. “Okay, just another forty minutes,” she said.

  Till what? I thought.

  What happens when the pants are dry and you have to go home, Ed?

  In the kitchen, we sat on high chairs and drank tea. I had to be careful with how I crossed my legs and folded the towel if I didn’t want to just sit there with my balls hanging out.

  We sat there, and neither of us said a thing. I didn’t mind it, but I didn’t want her to think I was having a bad time or I didn’t want to be around her or anything like that, so I said, “You don’t have like a crossword or a pack of cards or something?”

  “Doubt it,” she said.

  “Some drugs squirrelled away somewhere?”

  She didn’t laugh.

  “No,” she said. “I have been trying, actually.”

  It looked like she was going to move, or get up or something, so I put my hand on her arm and I said, “Sorry. Me too. I promise, I’ve actually been good. Months now.”

  She stared at me for a bit, but then she said, “Do you like photo albums? We’ve got enough of those.”

  We went back through to the lounge. It’d got a bit lighter in there, the daylight was pressing against the curtains, leaking in wherever it could. I noticed a little table set up in the corner—an antique thing with a bevelled stand and three claw feet. On the table was a random collection of dusty, pretty things: a pack of Edward Hopper coasters, an evil eye, a quill and a mostly empty bottle of purple ink, a jaw harp, some tarot cards, a small statue of some kind of tree done in iron and wire and precious stones. I was about to pick up the pack of coasters and look through them but then I felt her hand on my arm. Softly, I heard her say, “No, please don’t touch anything.”

  She told me to sit on one of the couches and then she went over to a cabinet near the window and unlocked it and opened it up. Dark as it was, I could see that the only things inside the cabinet—a tall thing, with about six or seven shelves—were photo albums. And they weren’t neat in there, they were all over the place. You just knew they were the only things in the room that ever got touched. She grabbed a couple from the top of the cabinet and then she bent down and took one plain white album from a shelf of plain white albums near the bottom. “Want to bring yourself outside?” she said, and headed to the front door.

  The way the daylight hit me when I got to the doorway, the way it stung my eyes and put spots in them, made me think of the couple of times in my life I’d hung out in a smokehouse. Both times were at this semi-abandoned place somewhere between Rosebank and Athlone, and all of a sudden—smiling up at a cloud and blinking away the spots, watching her move across the lawn to the oak tree—the comparison made me feel so good, so proud, like in the grand scheme things were definitely getting better

  Who cares that her dad pantsed you and you’re walking around in a beach towel?

  I met her at the tree. The thing was so big it had like four trunks. There was a bench knocked up between two of them and we sat down.

  She put one of the albums on her lap. Then she looked past me, sort of over my shoulder, checking out the house, and she put her hand in my hair and kissed me. As rough and ardent as the night before. That was her thing—she kissed like she might never get another one.

  I broke it off, saying, “No, maybe don’t.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Well, firstly, your dad would murder me. Or he’d come rushing out with some tea or something to throw in my face. And secondly,” I said, and I looked down at my crotch, “I’m kind of in a towel.” She laughed. “And we’re kind of out on the street here. It’d be a pretty depraved sight.”

  She laughed some more. “Okay, then you have to hold my hand.”

  “Deal.”

  “Do you really want to look at photos?”

  “Ja,” I said. “I really do.”

  But I got an instantly weird feeling from the photo album. I knew something was very off, even if I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. The first thing I thought, just from the opening pages or whatever, was that her dad, or whoever’d taken most of the photos in there, just couldn’t use a camera for shit. I could barely see what was going on in any of the frames, everyone was blurry. There were some shots that were so overexposed they looked like close-ups of burning lightbulbs. But she kept turning the pages, and then every once in a while she’d stop on a photo, one where you could actually see what the point of it was, and she’d tell me about those ones—

  And I got it, I worked it out—

  It wasn’t just that he was bad with the camera, what was weird about it was that he must’ve albumed every fucking photo he ever took.

  She paged quite quickly through the album, and it was strange but if I glazed my eyes and looked loosely at the pages, it was like I could see it all as a sort of wash—this blurry montage of a kind of life in this country I could imagine pretty well. They spent a lot of time at the beach, they went camping, she had her birthdays at the Wimpy, they traded cars a lot and always looked delighted with the new one, whenever any of them got new clothes the camera came out

  And then all of a sudden the fact that most of the photos in there were duds wasn’t a problem anymore, it was part of it—actually, it made it perfect. I was squeezing her hand and I think I wanted to tell her I loved her, I felt protective and nostalgic about this childhood she’d had and I was going to do something about it, kiss her or something

  But then she said, “Ha, finally. I knew it was this album. Here’s the cat I had for a while.”

  “Cool. What’s going on over here?” I said, pointing at one of the pages.

  “What’s it look like?”

  “Well, it looks like the cat’s wearing a cape.”

  “Hey? That was Pumpkin’s cape. I made it.”

  “The cat wore a cape?”

  “Ja.”

  “Shame.”

  “Please, man, she loved it. Look at her.”

  “What happened to Pumpkin?”

  “My mom was allergic. We only had
her for a couple of months.”

  “That sucks,” I said.

  Then, even though I was sure I knew already, I guess I needed to witness it and I asked her, “What’s the deal with the white albums? I saw there was a whole stack of them there in the cupboard.”

  “These,” she said, and she brought the white one into her lap, “these were like a project me and my dad did together. Well, mostly it was him, but I helped.”

  And obviously it was just pages and pages of portraits of her mom, except this time most of them were good photos, and if it was a really good photo, you’d get twelve of the same one staring back at you from a double-page. She was gorgeous. She had country-singer hair—pulled back and bouffant and dark, almost red, the colour of sun shining through a bottle of Coke

  And while Charlotte kept turning the pages, I was fixating on that face, not just because she was beautiful, but because there was something else, something dark there. In every picture, you could see her trying more or less to hide it, but there it was—this interrupted absence, these impatient eyes, almost like she blamed the camera for bringing her back from somewhere far away and so much better.

  Then Charlotte turned the page again and there was a spread of dark photos, clean shapes backlit by gold-green light, a silhouette in the middle. It looked like someone praying in an ancient temple, but then I recognised it was the lounge, that was probably the morning sun on the curtains, that was her mom, naked, in these poses that were much more like yoga than porn.

  “Woah, sorry,” I said, and I looked away.

  She laughed and closed the album.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “She took those herself, with a timer. We never knew about them. I’m sure she’s delighted you got a look.”

  Before I could stop myself I blurted out, “So she’s gone, hey?”

  “She left. A week after I turned nine.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  I sort of just gave her my hand, and nodded.

  “Mozambique,” she said. “She ran off there with some guy.”

  “Wow.”

  “Ja. I remember my dad showing me on the map—it was so far away. It felt like she’d died. But then soon after that, I got this idea that one day I’d show up at her door there and we’d live together again, like the first big idea about my life I’d ever had, you know? I don’t think I’ve had another one since.

  “And my dad,” she went on, “he wasn’t crazy before all that, I promise. The beard, right? That’s a mourning beard, it started the day she left. The god stuff, that happened, that wasn’t just there. And me too. I also wasn’t always like this, Ed. You know what it’s like to be young, and feel fucked up? And everyone else wants to get older but you’re going home to your dad and he’s losing the fucking plot right in front of your eyes, and all you can wonder is how old—how old till that happens to me?”

  Jesus, I thought.

  We’re like the same person.

  “Hey, don’t cry,” I said.

  She was playing with the bracelet on my wrist. “It’s so sad though.”

  “What?”

  “This, man, these photos, that room in there. This, what happened to us when she left.”

  “Ja, it is,” I said. “But what’s sadder? For thirteen years of my life, my dad and I didn’t have a photo album in the house. Then one night we had visitors and they made us feel bad about it, so we got one and we got a camera and we went out of town two weekends in a row to try do something that was worth taking pictures of. Then we had to wait two weeks till we could afford to print the film and then when the photos came out, Jesus, we were both so disappointed I don’t think we ever touched the camera or spoke about the album again. Went back to never going anywhere on the weekends.”

  “What happened to your mom?”

  “Charlotte,” I said. “This is the point. The point is I’m not scared of you.”

  “What if you should be?”

  “I promise,” I said, and just then I felt a bit like crying as well, “me on my own, Charlotte, that’s scary. The other night, I couldn’t sleep and you know what I was thinking? I can’t even remember how I got there but I was fucking begging fate, god, whatever, fucking begging life to contrive it so I’d catch a bullet that was meant for a child or a nurse or a teacher or something. I’ve been weird, Charlotte. This last little while’s been weird, I’m …” I looked at her square on. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like I need something.”

  “If I …”

  “Ja?” I said.

  Our faces were close together, we were talking softly all of a sudden.

  “If I pack a bag, can I come home with you?”

  “I’ll get my jeans out the tumble dryer while you’re busy.”

  She smiled. “They might still be a bit wet.”

  “Ag,” I said, “I can deal with itchy thighs. That’s not a problem.”

  She leaned in even closer, put her forehead against mine

  Almost whispered to me, “I’ll scratch them for you when we get home, I promise.”

  MAY

  YOU SHOULD’VE SEEN HER WITH THE CAROUSEL, she was amazing.

  Duade was delighted that she came to work with me. He kept winking at me when she wasn’t looking and giving me thumbs-ups behind her back, and then later, when he saw how good she was at drawing—while I was busy putting some scrawls on the sign so it’d say MAINTENANCE instead of MAINTINANCE—he sidled over and told me to marry her, no queshtion.

  The first time I moved out of Phil’s place, back when I was still fresh in Cape Town, I lived in a house with some people in Pinelands for a while, and one of them was this girl with dread-locks who played guitar and wrote her own songs. But besides her, even though I’d always wanted to, I’d never really hung out much with artists. Closest I got was selling them drugs.

  But you just had to watch Charlotte there at the carousel and you knew that’s what she was—she was an artist. She was wearing dungarees and she sat on her haunches in the long grass, you could see the dew creeping up the denim, all the way over her knees, but she had her sketch pad in her lap and her eyes just went between that and the model horse in front of her—

  Staring at it like the rest of the world was on mute, and the horse was singing just to her—the softest, most beautiful song.

  It only took her a couple of hours to finish all the sketches. She did ten different designs for the twenty horses. She showed me how she’d already planned out what colours they were going to be, and how some of them were going to be patchworks and some were going to have patterns—I had two favourites, this one in cream with handprints and stripes on its legs, like an Indian warhorse, and this other one that was going to be maroon with a turquoise mane and tail, and a big burned-orange sugar skull on its side.

  “So what do we do now?” I asked her.

  “We chip all the old paint off, then we paint the whole thing white. Like an undercoat.”

  “That doesn’t sound fun.”

  “Ja, it won’t be,” she said. “You have to work for the fun parts.”

  Just chipping the paint took the rest of the day—and it was kak work, maybe some of the worst I’ve ever done. It was so easy to hurt your hands with the scraper, and they’d bleed and then flakes of paint would get into the cuts and make them sting. And then you’d have to use the sandpaper, and the cuts would close up with dirt and your hands would throb and go red and start to look a bit unrecognisable. After an hour of it I told her to put her scraper down, her hands were too important, I’d do the rest.

  At about two o’clock I’d finished chipping all the horses and all the poles and some of the skirting at the bottom of the thing and I was lying flat on my back, with my hands dipped in ice-cream tubs full of water with some dish soap in it, my head in her lap, my eyelids red and warm in the sun—she’d been telling me about what was going on in the street but then she’d gone quiet and she’d put her fingers in my hair. I was nearly asleep

 
When I heard her say, “Ah, Jesus”—

  And I felt her fingernails go into my scalp.

  I saw him as soon as I sat up. But it wasn’t like her dad was coming for us or anything like that, he looked busy with something out on the street. He had a black plastic bag with him. He was carrying it around like a sack.

  “What’s he doing?” I said.

  “Probably a poster run.”

  “Huh?”

  “Ja, check, he hasn’t seen us. Hide me,” she said, and she pulled me on top of her.

  We kissed for a while and then when we sat up again he was gone.

  “Please tell me,” I said.

  She giggled. “You know those abortion posters? Those back-alley things that say CLEAN and SAFE and PAINFREE all over them? He rips them down.”

  I said, “What about the ones for penis cream? Or the ones that can bring your wife back or get you a new job?”

  “They all come down,” she said. “It’s all witchcraft to him.”

  I finished the scraping that day, that night I passed out on my bed on the couch with my fucking plate of supper right there on my chest.

  I know that’s what happened, because when I knocked it all over in the middle of the night I woke Charlotte up. Even though she’d been asleep, when she came through to the lounge she was laughing. “I knew that was going to happen,” she said. We kissed and I put my sore hands on her ribcage, on the skin—

  Just that, because I didn’t want to try touch too much and ruin it again—

  But just that and I was embarrassingly hard, and I think we were both still half fucked up on sleep and I thought maybe at last something was going to happen

  But then she just broke it off and went back to the room, told me she’d help clean up the plate in the morning. I cleaned it up right then to save my hands from having to jack off, and then when I went back to the couch, till I fell asleep, I imagined her ribcage like this enormous river valley, soft folds, long curved hills, I was lying there in grass like breathing velvet in a breeze that smelled like her hair …