A Man Melting

by Craig Cliff

  Instead of thinking what a silly bitch she was, I visualised her giving her grandchildren presents for no particular reason, which is another of Paul’s techniques. This worked a treat and I went back to scrutinising the reds until I heard this almighty crash.

  The day Laura killed the hitchhiker began like so many other days that month — with an argument. First there were the fridge magnets spelling out YOU SNORED AGAIN, to which she replied DO NOT. As her one-time fiancé, Carl, was opening the fridge to get the milk for his Coco Pops, he said, ‘Do too,’ while pretending to cough. She said something about grown men who eat Coco Pops. He said something about grown women who wear giraffe slippers. Voices were raised. Ears were blocked. Books were thrown end over end to minimise drag and increase the chance they’d hit their targets. A vase containing yesterday’s apology was knocked over.

  As she stormed out of the house, dressed for work but still in her giraffe slippers, he called out, ‘Don’t do anything stupid!’

  It was not a warning, an indication of concern. It was another snide comment, the implication being she would do something stupid. That everything she did was stupid.

  As she turned the ignition of her Mazda, she realised she couldn’t go to work giraffe-slippered (or barefoot), and more than that, she did not want to go to work at all.

  Drive, the giraffe slippers said in unison. None of this A-to-B bollocks. Drive the open road with your window down.

  After fifteen minutes on the open road, steady at a hundred and five — the perfect wind-in-your-hair speed — she saw a hitchhiker.

  The existence of a hitchhiker on the roadside normally repelled Laura — her foot would press a little harder on the accelerator, her eyes a little more intent on the road ahead. She’d heard the horror stories. She didn’t want to end up in a ditch covered in cum and scratches.

  Specks of rain appeared on her windscreen. He’ll be getting wet, she thought.

  Carl: Don’t do anything stupid.

  Giraffe slippers: Do something stupid.

  Whether it was the right giraffe slipper or her actual foot, she eased off the accelerator, giving her time to appraise the hitchhiker. Early twenties. Not wearing a hooded sweatshirt or baseball cap. The carriage of a kid with strict parents who wouldn’t permit slouching or elbows on the dinner table.

  She crawled past, all windows up and locks down, and saw his clean-shaven face, his uncreased chinos.

  She came to a stop fifty metres past him, popped the locks and waited.

  When he crouched into the frame of the open window, she asked, ‘Where are you going?’ like she did this all the time.

  ‘Mot. Are you heading that way?’

  It struck Laura that she wasn’t heading anywhere. Motueka was only fifty kilometres away — she had the time and fuel to make it there, sneak home around midday to grab her shoes then spin her boss the plumbing emergency story she had always wanted to use but never had.

  The rain was falling harder now, the splotches joining together on the windscreen.

  ‘Looks like you saved me,’ the hitchhiker said.

  Laura nodded.

  Ask his name, the giraffe slippers whispered.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Lennon.’

  ‘Is that spelt like the Beatle or the Communist?’ she asked. Today she was the sort of person who asked questions like this. Who flirted with young, clean-cut hitchhikers.

  Shiraz and riesling ran together on the dull yellow linoleum of the supermarket. The stupid woman was facing me, at the margin of the white and red wine sections. She had been coming back up the aisle — the offending shopping basket still stuck out from her arm at a forty-five-degree angle. She looked down at her ankles, more interested in the splashes of red and darker tan on her stockings than the stain creeping outwards from her, or the fragments of half a dozen shattered bottles. Somehow there were no splotches on her whiter-than-white dress.

  She bent down and wiped her stockings with her free hand, lifted the hem of her dress and tiptoed through the puddle to the dry lino. As she passed me, I heard her say, ‘Now I’m going to smell like wine at work.’

  I ran through all the tools Paul has given me to figure out what I should say to this clumsy, churlish bitch-woman, but she had already pushed through the crowd of onlookers at the end of the aisle and was gone.

  Gone.

  A young New World employee, one side of his white shirt untucked, came towards me from the other end of the aisle. He stopped at the edge of the spill which separated us.

  ‘Are you all right, ma’am?’

  ‘I didn’t knock these over,’ I said.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m not to feel guilty about secondary or tertiary things.’

  The boy — he must have been in his late teens — shrugged, and retreated up the aisle. He returned pushing a mop and bucket on wheels with one hand and carrying a sealed twin-pack of Tuffy paper towels in the other.

  ‘Do you want to help?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, surprising myself. ‘Yes, I would like to help clean up this accident.’

  He shrugged again and ripped into the plastic packaging of the paper towels a little too vigorously — one of the rolls came spilling out and landed in the middle of the crimson and gold puddle.

  He looked up at me. It was a look I am beginning to get in supermarkets. At the checkout when the olives won’t scan. At the deli when the last of the coleslaw doesn’t fill my specified container. The What should I do? look.

  ‘Just leave it,’ I said. ‘Let it suck from the centre.’

  Another Language

  When I was seven I asked my grandfather why he was always so quiet, and he said, ‘Because I am always sad.’

  I asked, ‘Why are you always sad?’

  ‘Because I always miss Yugoslavia.’

  I was alone in the lounge with Dedo, which is what I called my grandfather, because it was just me and Dad visiting this time. Mum stayed home to look after Daniel, my baby brother, who was sick. Dad was with Baba, which is what I call my grandmother, still at the dining room table, even though they had stopped eating a long time ago.

  ‘Dedo,’ I asked, ‘why did you leave Yugoslavia?’

  He growled a little, as he sometimes did to Baba when she made him wash up before lunch. ‘Because of my stutter,’ he finally said, and placed his hands on the armrests of his La-Z-boy.

  I knew what stuttering was because when I saw Open All Hours for the first time I asked my dad, ‘What’s wrong with that man?’, pointing at the shopkeeper, Mr Arkwright.

  ‘You don’t stutter,’ I told my grandfather.

  ‘I do in Serbian,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  He nodded, and went back to being sad and quiet.

  All week at school I thought about whether a person could stutter in one language and not in another. I tried to get close to Marcus Collins, because he was the only kid at school who stuttered, but it was hard because it wasn’t cool to be seen with M-m-marcus. Three lunchtimes in a row I sat near enough to him and Ricky Wong so I could overhear their conversations, but they never spoke in another language.

  On Thursday after school I decided to follow Marcus Collins and talk to him when no one else was around. This happened sooner than I expected, in the alleyway between Rutland Place and Milson Lane, only a few hundred metres from the school gates. Marcus was running his fingers along the corrugated iron fence and making a br-br-br-br noise, so he didn’t hear me catch up to him.

  ‘Do you speak another language?’ I asked when the corrugated iron ran out.

  Marcus jumped a little. When he turned around, he looked surprised, like no one had ever spoken to him on the way home before. He didn’t talk for a while, although it looked like he was about to try. ‘Nnno,’ he finally said, which wasn’t really a stutter; it sounded as if the word weighed a hundred kgs and he had to heave it out of his mouth and push it all the way to my ears.

  ‘Bummer,�
�� I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want to know if you would stutter in another language. What about Maori?’

  ‘What about M-maori?’

  ‘Say kia ora.’

  ‘Kia ora.’

  ‘You didn’t stutter!’

  ‘I don’t always stutter,’ Marcus said, proving his point with a stutterless sentence.

  ‘Oh. Why don’t you say something longer in Maori?’

  ‘Like what?’

  I thought for a moment, then asked, ‘What about the haka?’

  ‘You mean ka mate, k-ka mate?’ It was only a small slip but his face sank.

  ‘You stuttered!’ I was excited by my discovery, but Marcus must have decided I was doing this to tease him.

  ‘I’m going home,’ he said and walked off.

  So Marcus stutters in Maori too, I thought, and walked back up the alleyway because my house was in the opposite direction.

  ‘Dedo, do you really stutter in Serbian?’ I asked my grandfather when we visited the next weekend.

  He nodded.

  ‘Say something in Serbian.’

  ‘You won’t understand. How will you know if I stutter?’

  I looked around for someone to help. It was just me and Dad visiting again, even though Dad promised Daniel was better. He was in the kitchen helping Baba do the dishes and it was just me in the lounge kneeling in front of Dedo’s La-Z-boy.

  ‘Do you stutter in other languages?’ I asked.

  ‘I only know English.’

  ‘And Serbian,’ I added.

  ‘Yes, and Serbian.’

  I desperately wanted him to tell me a story like my other grandfather, my mum’s dad, but Dad’s dad never seemed interested in stories.

  ‘Did you learn English at school?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you found out you didn’t stutter in English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you moved to New Zealand because we speak English here?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You must have stuttered pretty bad if it made you move.’

  My grandfather said nothing.

  ‘But you miss Yugoslavia,’ I said.

  My grandfather said nothing.

  On the way home from Baba and Dedo’s house, I asked my dad why Dedo never told stories.

  ‘I guess he doesn’t like stories.’

  ‘Everyone likes stories,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe he only knows sad ones.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, and thought about how my grandfather must have been the Marcus Collins of his school, and how this would make me sad.

  The next week at school I decided to be nicer to Marcus Collins. At first Marcus was worried that I was setting him up so I could make him stutter, but when I talked about cricket and Malaysian sun bears, he decided I was okay. I actually ate lunch with him and Ricky Wong on Tuesday.

  Ricky Wong hung out with Marcus because he sniffed everything before he ate it. Back in the new entrants he ate a sandwich which had been in the bottom of Joanna Richardson’s school bag since kindergarten and got really sick. So now he sniffed everything and no one except Marcus would be his friend.

  Ricky said I should go to choir with them on Friday lunchtime, and I said okay because I wanted to see if Marcus stuttered when he sang.

  On Friday, Mrs Green, who ran the choir, stood at the door to the school hall greeting everyone as they came in.

  ‘James,’ she said with a big smile when she saw me. I was surprised she knew my name because she taught standard three and I didn’t have any older brothers or sisters she could know, but then she said, ‘Marcus told me you were coming.’ Mrs Green smiled at Marcus and he smiled back.

  As we entered the hall, the older kids all said hi to Marcus, and one even offered him some Rashuns. It was like he was a celebrity. I thought maybe it was because a lot of the other kids in the choir looked like losers and nerds while Marcus looked normal, he just had trouble speaking. He even got to stand in the middle of the back row when we sang. Mrs Green told me to stand on the end of the second row. We started off singing ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ and I had to look at the overhead projector to read the lyrics so I couldn’t watch Marcus to see if he was stuttering. In the middle of the song, Mrs Green lowered her hands to her knees and everyone else started humming, and Marcus sang by himself about burning down love.

  He was so good at singing it made everyone smile, which made it hard to keep humming.

  After choir I said, ‘You don’t stutter when you sing!’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s so cool.’

  ‘I wish I didn’t stutter at all.’

  ‘You should live in a musical,’ I said, and thought of my grandfather. Moving to New Zealand would have been like coming to live in a musical for him. Except he was sad and quiet. I thought, what’s the point in moving somewhere you can talk without stuttering if you aren’t going to talk?

  Just me and Dad went to Baba and Dedo’s again that Saturday. I forgot to even ask why Mum wasn’t coming.

  When Dad was out inspecting Baba’s herb garden, I asked Dedo, ‘Do you stutter when you sing?’

  ‘I don’t sing,’ he said.

  ‘What about when you had to sing at school, like for Christmas assemblies?’

  ‘We didn’t sing at school.’

  That seemed weird to me.

  ‘I made friends with this kid at school who stutters but he can sing like an angel. No stutters!’

  My grandfather nodded.

  When we got in the car to go home, I asked my dad, ‘Do you think Dedo regrets leaving Yugoslavia?’

  ‘He didn’t have a lot of choice.’

  ‘Was his stutter really that bad?’

  ‘What stutter?’

  ‘When he spoke Serbian.’

  ‘Dedo doesn’t stutter when he speaks Serbian. He speaks it fluently.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means he speaks it like I speak English. It’s his first language.’

  ‘Yeah, but English is Marcus Collins’s first language and he stutters, but he can sing like an angel.’

  ‘Dedo doesn’t stutter. He speaks to Baba all the time in Serbian. He spoke Serbian at home when I was a child.’

  ‘But Dedo said he left Yugoslavia because he stuttered so much.’

  ‘Oh,’ Dad said.

  ‘Oh, what?’

  Dad flicked on the indicators to turn left out of Baba and Dedo’s street, and we waited there for ages, even though there were no cars coming. Finally we pulled onto Ruahine Street and he said, ‘Dedo had to leave Yugoslavia because of the Ustaše.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The people that wanted to kill Serbs like Dedo. During World War Two.’

  ‘But why would anyone want to kill Dedo?’

  Dad took a deep breath, and said, ‘I don’t really understand.’

  ‘So Dedo doesn’t stutter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did he lie to me?’

  ‘He doesn’t talk about his life back then with anyone, not like Baba does.’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘Sure, ask her about the spring dances she went to as a girl, or the way her mother plaited her hair, and she’ll talk for hours. But Dedo,’ he said and took off his glasses even though we were still driving, just passing the hospital, ‘he’s my dad and he doesn’t even talk to me about the past, y’know?’

  ‘But why did Dedo lie?’

  Dad sighed and put his glasses back on and I sat with my arms crossed the rest of the way home.

  When we arrived, Mum was sitting at the kitchen table flicking through a recipe book. I asked if Daniel was asleep and she said yes.

  ‘Can I sit beside his cot and wait until he wakes up?’

  ‘What are you up to, mister?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  Mum looked at Dad, who said, ‘It’s okay, Anne,’ but there was a tiny stutter in his voice, l
ike my mother’s name was made of corrugated iron. He swept me up into his arms even though I wasn’t a baby anymore and carried me into Daniel’s room.

  We both sat there watching my baby brother sleep for a long time, until Dad asked, ‘Do you remember when Asterix died?’

  Asterix was the kitten I got for my fifth birthday, but it had asthma so bad it had to be put down after one month.

  ‘Of course I remember,’ I said.

  ‘And do you remember how, when we told you Mummy was pregnant with Daniel, you said it was better not to tell the baby about Asterix because it would just make it sad?’

  I didn’t remember saying this exactly, but I nodded.

  ‘Dedo was just protecting you.’

  I had almost forgotten about Dedo lying to me, but this reminded me and I felt angry again.

  ‘I don’t need protecting,’ I told him.

  My father put his hand on my head, as he sometimes did in the supermarket to steer me away from the lolly aisle, but this time he didn’t steer me, he just left his hand there.

  ‘Should I tell Daniel about Asterix, do you think?’ I asked my dad.

  ‘Maybe you should tell Dedo.’

  Daniel rolled over onto his back and his face went red and I could tell he was about to cry because I had watched him sleep before. For some reason Dad didn’t try to shush him. We just let him cry. When Mum said something from the doorway, I kept watching Daniel. When Dad turned to explain, his hand, still on my head like an octopus, turned me as well.

  Give Me Bread and

  Call Me Stupid

  When Bembe Hernandez realised his recruitment agent was stalking him, he wasn’t sure what to think. He had never been the subject of a crush before, had never even had a woman approach him at a bar or a note passed to him in class saying someone’s friend liked him. That his recruitment agent, a young local named Lindsey, would fancy him — an idiom he had picked up since moving to Edinburgh — flushed Bembe with a feeling he could only guess was orgullo. Pride. But he had a girlfriend (with whom he had made the first move, and the second, and the third) and he wasn’t looking to trade Rosa in.