The Flask

by Nicky Singer

  And I see where she’s going with this and I want to follow, I want to expand outward and embrace the whole world with my calm, warm bones of light. But if your bones are made of glass, you can’t do that. You’re all hard and fragile and have no give in you at all.

  “Let your loving kindness,” says Lalitavajri, “flow over all those on islands and those on continents, on babies being born and people dying…”

  But nothing flows out of me except this one thought: Why has Lalitavajri yoked these babies and these dead people together? And why is she talking about babies and death at the precise moment when I’m thinking about the death of my friendship with Zoe? As if she knows something, if she knows what I know, that they’re interconnected, that if one dies the other dies. Make her stop talking about babies and death! Then I think maybe it’s me that’s joining everything so bitterly together, me sitting here all crunched up with my mouthful of glass.

  And I realise there’s no space around my heart any more. It’s all gone very tight. Just like my hands. My hands are clenching so tight there is no nest any more.

  I’ve crushed it, crushed it to nothing.

  So what’s happened to the breath?

  It’s back in the flask. It looks weak, feeble. My mind was so full of hate I didn’t notice how I squeezed it out and now it lies shivering and defeated right at the bottom of the glass. It reminds me of the candle in the church, how the flame guttered just before it died.

  So I know something bad’s happened even before Gran’s car arrives. Before I see her face – grey and panicked.

  “It’s Clem,” I say, as I climb into the front seat beside her. “It’s Clem, isn’t it?”

  “How do you know?” she says. “How can you know that!”

  “Your face,” I lie.

  “He’s taken another dip,” Gran says.

  She makes no attempt to stall, to hide things. So it must be worse than I thought. It must be terrible.

  “What does it mean?” I can hear my voice all high and tight.

  “They’re going to have to bring the operation forward.”

  “To when?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!”

  “Yes.”

  “But what about the rehearsal, the practice op, where…?” Where they learn how not to pick the wrong socket spanner.

  “There isn’t going to be time for that,” says Gran.

  Of course, I blame myself, for all that absence of metta. What if I’d have loved everyone, loved Zoe, kept myself warm and open? It wouldn’t have happened, would it? It’s all my fault.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m really sorry.”

  No reply.

  “Why don’t you scream at me? Yell?”

  Silence.

  “Why don’t you howl? What’s happened to your big black howls?”

  I’d prefer the black howls, horrible as they were, anything would be better than this shivering, dying, guttering, nearly ended flame.

  I remember how I held the howling black flask close to my body and how I rocked and gave it warmth and it seemed to make a difference. I hold the flask close again, glass to skin. It makes no difference at all.

  It just feels cold.

  I feel cold.

  Really cold.

  How can you have a cold flame?

  Because the flame is dying.

  “Do you think Rob would want you to be behaving like this?” I shout at the flask.

  No reply.

  “And who is Rob, anyway?”

  No reply.

  Everything is colder. I don’t know if it’s my head, my heart or the weather.

  I find myself at the piano. What’s happened to my new song with the lion thread? I haven’t heard a single note of it for days. Maybe I haven’t been listening properly, or maybe everything that’s been going on with the babies and Zoe and the hate has blocked my ears.

  I put my hands on the keys, but my fingers are frozen, there is no more music in them than there is in my head. You cannot force a song, it comes in when it’s ready. Surely I, of all people, know that?

  I shut the lid of the piano.

  One long night before the twins’ operation.

  How will I be able to sleep?

  “Here,” says Gran. “I’ve made you some hot milk.”

  I watch the hot milk going cold, just like everything else.

  “Get into bed,” says Gran.

  I get into bed holding the flask. I think perhaps I shouldn’t take my eyes off it for a second. But then there’s never anything new to see, only the cold, hopeless, guttering thing.

  “Why don’t you make the seed fish swim?” I cry. “Just one. For me. So I know you’re still there. So I know Clem’s still there. Please. Please!”

  No reply.

  No reply!

  “I hate you, hate you, hate you.”

  But actually it’s me I hate. Because no matter how many times I go over it in my head, try to convince myself that it could just be a coincidence, that this new dip has nothing to do with me the way the first howling dip had nothing to do with me, I can’t let myself off the hook. I’d never heard of the word metta before this afternoon, now it seems the only thing that matters. Loving kindness. I mean, if you have a row with a friend, you think it’s just to do with the two of you, don’t you? But what if (I’m thinking this looking at the guttering flame), when any one of us is angry or hurt, then the whole sum of human happiness goes down? What then? If we’re all connected, all in this together (which is, I think, what Lalitavajri was saying), then how we behave every minute of every day – that must matter too.

  This is a late-night conversation I’m having with myself, and I know I’m tired and I might not be thinking too straight, but the bottom line is this: to help Clem, I feel I have to do something about the way things are with me and Zoe.

  Right Now.

  Then I remember that I did try – I went to her house, right? And she brushed me off. No, no, she just said she was busy and…

  Think metta. Think loving kindness. Try again. Never give up.

  An idea comes to me. I get out of bed, pull my dressing gown about me, and because I’m still shivering, add my duvet and go to sit at the desk.

  The bureau.

  The place where Aunt Edie sat writing her private letters, letters from her secret heart. I fold down the desk lid and find some paper and a black ballpoint pen. Letters, I think, are not like texts – soz. SOZ cll me – which can be brushed aside like flies. They’re more than that, deeper. You can say things in a letter that sometimes you can’t say face to face.

  But what should I say?

  Dear Zoe, I write.

  Dear, dear, dearest Zoe.

  Please feel free to go to a film with anyone you like. Not that you need my permission. You don’t, of course. You’re a free agent, you just do whatever you want, with whoever you want, whenever you want…

  I break off. I’m laying it on too thick, making it sound as if she’s doing all the taking and I’m doing all the giving. I screw the paper up, start again.

  Dear Zoe,

  You’re wonderful. You’re amazing. I love everything about you. I think I even loved you when you were four and wore that stupid vest with the pink rose on it. Wore it over the top of your jumper! So bold, so funny. Did I ever tell you that I asked my mum for a vest with a rose on? And she bought me one. Though I only ever wore mine under my jumper…

  I stop again. I don’t care whether you come or not. Just don’t get heavy with me. This is heavy, isn’t it? This is pressure too, this says: you have to love me as much as I love you; you have to remember how frail I am compared with you; you need to protect me. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Heavy, heavy, heavy. Sad, sad, sad. Did Aunt Edie have this trouble with her letters? I screw up a second piece of paper.

  Dear Zoe, I begin for the third time. Beside me on the desk, the flame in the flask is still guttering.

  I’m sorry. Sometimes my heart’s
all in a mess. Sometimes I say the wrong things. Want the wrong things.

  Forgive me?

  Love you.

  Jess.

  Then I add some kisses.

  xxxxxxxxxx

  I notice how the kisses look like a daisy chain and think that maybe this is the right letter to send, or at least a good-enough letter, so I fold it in three and sticky tape it down (as I don’t have any envelopes) and write her name in bold on the front.

  ZOE.

  Life.

  I look at the flask again. Still guttering. I wrote the letter to change things with the flask and it hasn’t. But it has changed something in me.

  I feel lighter, more positive.

  I rearrange the duvet from clothing to bedcover and climb into bed.

  In the morning I will post this letter in at Zoe’s door. I won’t ring the doorbell, I won’t make a big deal about it, she’ll just find it when she finds it. I am calmer now, as you are when you stop shouting and begin to do something about a problem. I hold the flask close for a moment.

  “You’ll be all right,” I whisper. “You’ll see. I’ll find a way. You’ll be all right.”

  Then I sleep.

  I wake with a start, a muscle in my leg spasming. I kick out, knock the flask (which is somehow still in my hands), grab it back, look. No change. The flame fluttering – weak and low.

  Then I wonder how, in the dark of night, I can see the flask so clearly? Which is when I realise it’s not dark at all. My room is full of strange white light. It’s also very quiet, like someone threw a blanket over the whole world. I get up. As I peel back the duvet, I feel goosebumps flash up my arm. By the time I get to the window, I’m hugging myself, arms clasped tight, for warmth, for security. Then through the crack in the curtains I see it.

  It’s snowing.

  The huge hush is four or five inches of snow. I unclasp my arms and open the curtains wide. The sight is astonishing. Snow – at Easter! The world I see from my window is not the one I went to bed with. The snow covers everything: cars and houses and trees so that the view is just one landscape of white – everything joined – yes everything joined up together, because of the snow.

  “Is this it? The next part of the journey?”

  No reply.

  I’m going to go out in the snow, although it’s deep in the middle of the night. I can’t not be part of this world where white earth meets white sky. I dress as quickly and as quietly as I can, tuck the flask, and also the letter, into my pocket and tiptoe downstairs.

  I’m glad that I’m so practised with cracks and creaks and floorboards; waking Gran is not part of my plan. I take gloves and a scarf from the chest in the hall and my coat and wellingtons from the porch. What to do about a door key? There are keys in the kitchen, but the kitchen is directly under Gran’s bedroom. I decide just to leave the door on the latch.

  Then I step out into the joined-up world.

  The sky is white-blue, in some places completely white, as white as the earth, which is why it’s so bright, why there seems to be hardly any darkness at all. The snow itself has eased, it is very light now, just a few flurries, though it must have been snowing really heavily for hours.

  The hush is extraordinary, nothing seems to be moving except for me, so I hear every sound I make as though it is amplified a thousand times. The crunch of my own footsteps in the deep new snow, and the in-out of my own breath which crystallises in a small cloud of warmth in front of my chill mouth.

  I see how deep my feet go, maybe it’s not four or five inches, maybe it’s only three or four, but seeing my footprints, where there are no others, makes them seem significant. The map of my journey.

  All along the cul-de-sac are street lights that look very orange against the white white snow. It’s only a matter of moments before I arrive at Zoe’s house, me the midnight postman. I think of her tucked up in bed knowing nothing about what’s going on in this bright new world, but she will know. I watch my prints come up to her door. Her letter box is the low sort, so I have to kneel to push the letter in.

  As I stand up again, I imagine her coming (bounding) downstairs in the morning, all excited about the snow, picking up the envelope, reading what I’ve written and just smiling, smiling at the world, at the words, at me. She has such a beautiful smile.

  I trot happily back down her path, thinking how even my footprints have joined me to her, my house to hers.

  I don’t go home. I have a second mission. I’m so wrapped up in my head that I almost fail to notice there’s someone else out in this night. Several doors down from Zoe’s there’s a young man I don’t recognise heaping snow outside his garage, shaping it into something, moulding it. I don’t want him to see me, I don’t want him to stop me, or chat, or ask me where I’m going, because I realise I don’t really want anyone in this world but me. I want it all for myself for a little while longer.

  But he’s too absorbed to notice anything, his head (rather like mine) is right inside whatever he is doing outside the garage in our joined-up cul-de-sac. So he lets me be and I let him be as I walk on, on towards the park.

  The street lights stop here, so it is a little darker, but not much. I pass some kind of large electricity junction box, which I must have passed a million times before and never noticed. I notice it now because, in the giant hush, it is humming.

  The park is a winter wonderland, better than any Christmas card I’ve ever seen, the trees dark shapes beneath their glittering coats of white, the odd winter pansy, yellow and purple, pushing its velvety head through the blanket of snow. I feel full of joy, as though I could run and laugh, but I don’t. I keep very quiet and still, at one with the landscape.

  I pass the playground, looking at the ledges of snow on the swings and slide, and on the half-moon place where Zoe and I have talked so many times, and on again to the bowling green, where the old men and the old women come out in the summer and play together with whispers and the soft clack of balls. The path to the bowling green is lit, though I’ve never noticed these lamps before. They are not lozenge shaped, like the street lights, but round like little yellow globes, like little worlds all of their own.

  Why have I chosen the bowling green?

  Because it’s gated off. Because the bench I have in mind is screened from the rest of the park. It is not a place you just pass, you have to choose to go there, go deliberately.

  I open the gate. No Dogs, it says. No Ball Games.

  I go straight to the bench and sweep all the snow from the left end of the bench towards the middle. I hear a rustling, which surprises me and I look up and the plant that screens the bowling green from the road turns out to be a palm tree. Or maybe not a palm tree (because how can there be a palm tree here?), but certainly a tree with long, spiky fronds which looks as if it belongs in warmer climes. The wind is rustling through the spikes, shivering them.

  Next I sweep all the snow from the right-hand side of the bench towards the middle. Now I have two mounds of snow, very little mounds, but the babies are very little, so it doesn’t matter. The two piles seem to be leaning towards each other. I start sculpting little arms and little hands, and bring the mounds closer in together so the space between the two gets smaller and smaller and then, all at once, there is no space between the mounds. The babies are joined.

  Then I start on the heads, only there really isn’t quite enough snow, so I have to pick up some from the green itself, and I forget that there is a ditch all around the bowling area, and I nearly fall, but I don’t quite and that feels good. I only take as much snow as fits into my cupped hands.

  I begin with Richie’s head, because Richie always seems to come first, and I take time to make Richie’s head strong and stable. Then I cup my hands once again and I take snow for Clem. I don’t intend to take less snow for him, but when I join the ball of snow to his chest it seems as if his head is smaller than Richie’s. It is also not so stable. I press it in around the neck, but still the head wobbles, leans, seems to want
to rest against his brother. I try to separate the heads.

  Joined chest, separate heads.

  But Clem resists me, he wants to lean against his brother. He’s only happy, only stable when their heads are touching, kissing. I think, fleetingly, how it would be if my head was leaning on Zoe’s shoulder, if she was supporting me.

  So I let Clem be, let Richie support him.

  Clem’s choice.

  How many other choices does my little brother have right now?

  Then I stand back, look at the snow babies clinging there together, and finally pull the flask from my pocket. What am I expecting? A sign, I suppose. I’m hoping that the little flame will be just slightly stronger, slightly brighter. What I’m not expecting is what I find: a globe of shining white. The surface of the glass dense but sparkling, like a frosted windowpane and inside… oh, inside. How can I describe it? It’s lit and fluttering and it looks like there are strips of paper floating there, thin pale strips, the colour paper would be if you could cut it from moonlight. It’s ghostly and beautiful and it makes me happier than I can say because I know where it belongs. It belongs at the heart of the snow babies.

  So I put it there, lean it just where the babies join, so that they can share. As the flask shimmers between them, I half-expect it to act like a real heart, and for the babies to get up off the bench and walk and dance and fly like they did in the Snowman film Zoe and I used to watch when we were five.

  They don’t, of course. It’s just my heart lifting, because I’ve finally made a difference. Posting the letter, building the snow babies; one or the other, both, I don’t know. But, instead of destroying something, crushing something up, as I did in the Shrine Room, I’ve begun to build, to create, add to the sum of human happiness.

  “Is that it?”

  No reply.

  Then, as I gaze, the flask tips slightly, responding to some unevenness in my packing of the snow probably, but it comes to rest more on Clem’s side, just under his arms, as though he was reaching for the flask, wanting it nearer. In this night of messages what can this be but a message?