On July

We are on ‘holidays’. They are seldom marvellous. They lack any form of deviation, other than what cuisine we might cook for dinner on any given evening. I have not seen T all holidays, not properly, because of Blaire, Serena, Nate and Chuck. He walks around the house X O X O’ing the walls. I say one horrible thing out loud but the headphones he is wearing cancel the meaning out. He doesn’t know how loud he chews, not really. This time last year, I say, we were in Vietnam.

Our days consist of driving to a market that is open; these change. We take turns tapping our bankcards for vegetables, herbs and meat. On days like today, a Monday, no market is open. On days like today we have soup, or take away, or sardines on toast. Monday’s are slow and I try my best not to drink any wine.

We pretend we are in Vietnam by way of getting in the car and driving to Victoria Street. It’s the mix of harsh and jovial, of pork and fish, of salty and sweet. I wait outside because it is T’s turn and preoccupy myself with the pavement. There is a red lighter, an inverted baggy, miscellaneous plastic, and the butts of more cigarettes than I can count. Two tradies in front of T are changing the way the roll is supposed to be, bodies accumulate outside the store. I watch T handle our food tenderly, he is gentle in placing a warm paper bag in my hands and I am made to see how he, like me, regards all of this as more than merely fuel.

I call Mum, my brother answers. He says it’s so dire at home that when him, Dad and Mum all place there licked knife next to their licked fork to mark dinner having come to it’s inevitable end, they immediately begin discussing what they will have for dinner the next night, the dinner of twenty-four empty hours away from where they sit.

In the mirror I spend time studying how much my right breast has grown exponentially overnight. I read online that the breasts are the first place weight gain manifests on the female body. I chew on both sides and sleep on my back but the right one continues to grow, so much so the left is almost cast in shadow. I have been considering sticking a needle in it and wonder if someone might deem this self-harm. I’m on the fence.

I consume whole books like short stories, they are fleeting and I am distracted. I break up the day with savoury snacks I once upon a time would have called a meal. Come nighttime, my body is swollen from tea. I have to get up to empty my bladder often.

Our friends visit by way of requiring lunch. They order sandwiches from the deli then eat them upstairs. On these occasions, I draw the blinds. Sicilian Nic kisses me on the cheek when he leaves one Thursday. Fifteen minutes later he sends me a text that he is getting a test on his way home. He has a tickle in his throat. We are not worried. Not in the slightest.

I make a soup, which takes me all day. When my sister has it with the nice goats cheese I didn’t pay for, she says it is delicious. This, is a victory.

From the kitchen, I look down our small corridor to see T’s face clouded by steam. He is watching GG while eating his daily bowl of two minute noodles. He is muted to the outside world and slurps loudly, though today, I do not mind. I watch him get too much of the hot noodle in his mouth, his expression collapses in effort to handle it. I laugh and wonder if this is shadenfraude again, or maybe, just love.

Before driving, we revise our reason two times, which is that T has picked me up from work. Why, I ask. Because I have time and because it is safer, he recites. At the other end a man is holding the hand of his daughter, they’re on foot, looking for teddy bears in windows. I watch her find one and walk the driveway of my parent’s home, a bottle of white-wine concealed in my coat.

After dinner, a Thai curry with plenty of roti, I say I feel like a whiskey sour but we are out of eggs. An old friend who lives nearby walks them to our door because there is time, so much that I have three whisky sours on a Wednesday in July,

In the bungalow, it is morning. Through the blind-less doors the fog is snow-town heavy, it hangs to nearly lick the grass. I think to the town, Harrietville, where you step out of the car and can taste the clouds. I hear birds talking their morse code and wonder what is being said. I spot their silhouettes in the stark fig.

T’s erection is hard in my hand. My breasts are bed-warm. Our breaths are like steam trains colliding. Afterwards, I notice the fog is inside the room. I speak just to watch the words come out of my mouth; something about floating, then breakfast.

We wake up properly, put on pants, only to sit down again. The leather is cold from overnight lows. They have a coffee machine now, not the percolator I grew up with. I watch Mum busy herself with tidying while it warms up. A blanket is spread over this body. I am tired from sleeping in a bed I am not used to. I study a stain on the couches’ arm. I convinced her to buy this set of Danish couches and have always thought I would inherit them. Who did this? I ask.

Mum is hopping on the spot, giggling in pain over her bare feet on the charcoal slate. I notice her toenails are chipped with red polish and know she has performed this advance of beauty on herself. The image of my mother pursuing femininity inspires a surge of affection in me, like witnessing a youthful tomboy putting on makeup for the very first time. We are so much the same, I do not say. Instead, I stand to pat her head and tell her again she ought to go grey.

The living room is littered with wine glasses with a few fingers of liquid left and beer bottles empty but for a sip. A habit of T’s, I say, watching her hold one up the window. I sift through the teabags. I come across one I have never seen before. It’s a Liver Tea, above it is Liver Tablets. I fill up a tall glass of cold water from a sink that smells like wine.

I pluck a coffee table book from the middle of the pile. The Slim Aarons one I will never tire of browsing. This one is Slim Aarons Poolside. In my lap is a two page glossy poolside straight out of the Tuscan countryside. Everyone is topless and seductive looking. I think about how I cannot wait to lie this body down with the abandonment of a sunbather.

My brother appears in the doorway. Fifty-eight minutes until the dimmi shop opens! he exclaims. His body even paler than my own. His boxes have unfortunate holes in them. He looks like a whisky sour. What did we do before the plague? I say.

You should read it, Mum says. I flinch as something is thrown in my direction. The book lands in my lap and my body responds the way it is known to respond to New Book Smell. If I were see-through my heart would have a visible glow. The book is Olive Kitterage, a past pulitzer winner and my late grandmother’s most loved text.

I cook my first risotto, of prawn and pea, well. The wine makes me fluent with the pans. It’s a late dinner with no leftovers.

I had a naughty dream last night, T says. Oh yeh, I say. He goes on to tell me he had sex with a teacher he always had a crush on. He laughs. I join in, though half-heartedly. I am thinking of the dream workshop I did last week as part of my residency. I recorded one thing in my notebook throughout the duration of this workshop and this was that dreams are really a dance of the repressed.

I dream of all kinds of things, flavours, places. Though, I always end up back in this living room. The giraffe-like crane has abandoned our window frame. The apartment building is nearly finished. Soon, people with a robust salary will move in. We wonder if they will see us doing all the things we do from this bed.

We cook Daisy a lasagna, three mini ones because we don’t have a proper vessel. We decant the wine and clink them together. After her third glass Daisy tells me a secret.

What is happening in Gossip Girl, I ask T over his screen. He never looks engrossed. Get’s headaches from the screen in his hand and the screen on his lap going at the one time. Same, same, really, they all broke up then got together with different people, he says.

It is Monday. We make fish tacos to celebrate the second half of winter. I stand by the heater to eat mine, flathead falls through the grates.

I finish Olive Kitterage in four days. And for four days after dream of my grandma, lucid and smiling. Mum gives me the sequel, Olive Again. But I am still recovering from the calamity of the first, I tell her.

T asks me if I ever think about how I will die. I am scrubbing English Breakfast off an enamel mug I found under the bed. I shrug as if to say, not really but what I really mean is, yes, I suppose I do.

We hop in the car to visit pretend-Vietnam. But it’s a Sunday and the line, to our dismay, is snaking. As of tomorrow it is no longer holidays. T stocks up on noodles. I even buy myself a sesame-based packet for seven dollars. When we arrive home and I place them in the everything-cupboard, I know I will never get around to eating mine.

We agree that the rolls today are well executed. They are not too saucy and the bread, oven-fresh in my hands, makes my jaw clench in perfect tension. The sun, while weak, is out. We eat the well-executed rolls from T’s open boot down a side street in not quite Vietnam, not quite anywhere.

Illustration by Sophie Dickinson @sophie_dickinson