Mabel and Wilson Smith lived in a small weatherboard house in the city. Wilson liked cooking pie and cake, and Mabel liked growing strawberries in their little garden out the front. The neighbours thought they were a quaint little couple, pottering around the house together. But there was something that the neighbours did not know.
It was a Thursday night, and Mabel was knitting a teapot cosy whilst Wilson cooked turkey pie for tea. They chattered together aimlessly; about the birth of a little boy down the street, about the council’s plans to open a community garden, and about going to the beach on the weekend. At half past six the oven timer went off and Wilson opened the oven door to receive the steaming pie within.
They ate in relative silence at the rectangular redwood table Wilson had bought for twenty dollars from a second hand store. Mabel’s glory box cutlery clinked quietly together as the couple ate, and the sun settled in red shadows on the kitchen window sill.
Mabel washed the dinner dishes, and Wilson dried, then stacked them neatly on the bench to be put away the following morning. Then they settled down on the worn leather couch in front of the television to watch the evening news.
At nine o’clock, the television was switched off and the front and back doors locked. Mabel put on her pale green night gown while Wilson brushed his teeth in front of a spotted bathroom mirror. They settled into bed together, with a respectful distance between them. The lilac curtains fluttered slightly in a warm summer breeze while the ceiling fan creaked with each rotation overhead. Mabel closed her eyes.
When she was sixteen, Mabel wore summer dresses and swam in the harbour and ate ice cream afterwards with her friends. They laughed as they strolled down the boardwalk, dresses dripping and clinging to their skin, leaving little drops of seawater in their wake. They’d toss their hair and cast admiring glances at boys who walked past, and giggled together afterwards. Mabel almost giggled as she remembered. The ceiling fan completed another painful, creaking rotation as drowsiness crept into her mind.
GRRRR-ERH!
Mabel jerked awake, her head snapping off the pillow. Wilson turned in his sleep beside her. She yawned irritably, and settled back down into the cream sheets, closing her eyes –
GRRRRRRR-ERH!
“Wilson!” Mabel muttered, prodding her husband in the side. He mumbled and readjusted his position. The breeze fluttered at the curtain like a trapped butterfly while the fan whined above. Mabel made herself comfortable, plumping the pillows and lying on her side. She brushed her hair out of her face and snuggled into the pillow. Her breathing became slower and deeper.
GRRRRRRR-ERH!
“Oh, Wilson!” Mabel exclaimed, throwing off the light sheet. The bed springs creaked as she slid her feet into her slippers, padded across the room and closed the bedroom door softly behind her.
She opened a cupboard in the hallway and retrieved a rough woollen blanket from the top shelf, then slowly shuffled into the lounge room where the television lay idle and silent and the first layer of the night’s dust was just beginning to settle. Mabel rearranged the cushions on the leather couch at one end and lay the blanket onto the cracked leather surface. Joints creaking, she lowered herself on to the couch and attempted to make herself comfortable. At half past nine by the luminous clock on the wall, she closed her eyes and cleared her mind from the busy thoughts that kept it awake. The sounds of cars and people in the city outside were drowned in sleep’s misty haze.
When Mabel was seventeen, she got her first job at a shop at the corner of Rhys Street and Pomegranate Avenue. They sold newspapers, chewing gum and bread, as well as hot meat pies in winter and plastic spinning tops for the children who came there after school to laze on the aluminium chairs. In the summer that Mabel started to work there, the shop introduced milkshakes to their customers, who seized the cool metal cups and red plastic straws with something like ecstasy in the burning afternoons.
Mabel was thrust into wakefulness by the itchiness of the woollen blanket. She’d never really been fond of them, even as child, but this one seemed particularly savage. The heat blowing through the cracks under the front door and the itchiness of the wool combined and created an unbearable discomfort.
Frustrated, Mabel clambered up from the couch and brushed her legs and arms from any stray wool fibres that might be clinging there.
Resignedly, she tip-toed past the kitchen and into the guest room. The door was painted seashell yellow, and inside, Mabel knew, was an ironbark bed with a firm mattress that would need airing, soft sheets that would need washing, and a working ceiling fan that needed dusting. She grumbled reluctantly as she turned the shiny brass door knob and stepped into the room.
The guest room was an appropriate distance from Wilson and Mabel’s bedroom. The sheets were as soft as young rose petals or a baby’s skin, and smelt like the expensive cleaning product that was reserved for this room. Mabel turned on the fan and it span silently above her as she settled into the bed.
When she was eighteen, Mabel met Wilson at the pub which she worked on at the weekends. He was a charming young man, but Mabel was unyielding, always remembering what her mother had told her about men who were nice to young girls.
Mabel turned over.
But he was persistent, and after a month of asking, Mabel accepted his offer to go to the cinema. They held hands in the half light.
She rearranged the pillows.
Mabel was only nineteen years old when Wilson asked for her hand in marriage and she accepted. Their wedding was held on the beach in swimmers and floaty dresses and sandals.
She tried sleeping with the blankets off, on, with the fan on high, low, medium. But sleep evaded her.
“Wilson,” Mabel growled for the third time as she tramped out of the immaculate guest room and down the hallway. Her husband’s snores grew louder as she approached the door and slipped into the familiar room.
Her side of the bed smelt like musty soap and warmth. She climbed back under the sheet and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the creaking of the ceiling fan and the sounds from outside and the snoring from Wilson. At twelve o’clock by the alarm on her bedside table, Mabel finally fell asleep.
A double snore filled the room.
YOU ARE READING
One Hundred Short Stories
Truyện Ngắn(But you and I both know in harmony that I will not get to one hundred)
