At the deli, Daisy is standing behind the bar with her leg suspended on the beer keg. At first, she looks delighted to see me. She maps the box in my hands, and I watch this delight quickly fall off her face. She is looking for a see-through brown paper bag. I tell her sorry, but the only doughnuts they had left were the kind filled with jam. She looks devastated as if the doughnut shop being out of plain doughnuts is the worst thing to have ever happened to her. Part of me hopes it is for I adore Daisy. She looks at the box again, then at me. I tell her I am making Minestrone, which, according to the vendor who sold me the healthy kale, means Big Soup.
Upstairs, I set out all the ingredients like one would set out the pieces of a puzzle before embarking on it. I am not sure which combination of potato, bean and pasta the soup should have. The recipe says it is up to me. I return downstairs to pose this question to Em who has all the culinary and non-culinary answers. I ask Em questions before I type them into search engines. Things about medications and cooking times and bleeding during sex. Em has left to pick up her child, so I put the question to Daisy who answers beans and potato matter-of-factly. I say this to myself three times and think it sounds right. I’m going to Coles for stock, I say to Daisy who is bringing in the deli’s outside furniture early.
A dinner party is proposed. I’ve got new neighbours, Em says, and they’re much more relaxed. I test the latch of the shelter in her kitchen. There is a thick, visible layer of cobweb at the first and second step and I have to wonder if the police really did show up, would I have the courage to stand down there quietly. It doesn’t come to that. All it comes to is a lot of food and alcohol and cigarettes. I go to bed afraid of the morning, of hurting. Overnight, I dream heavily from all the drippy cheese.
When I wake, it is to the smell of truffle and butter and smoke. A man rubs my back. I decide to give in and let him seduce me. The feeling is reminiscent of being underwater. Afterwards, he uses one of my new towels to clean up and a part of me flinches when the material makes contact with my skin. While checkerboard-pretty, they are synthetic and cheap feeling. The towels don’t absorb liquid so much as spread it around the place: today, my stomach. I watch it turn shiny in the half-light of nine-thirty this morning.
There is nothing glamorous about the mirror’s reflection. I fog it up by way of a long hot shower. I get stuck on my arms, the weight of them. My stomach repels the falling water. The matt is always soggy when I step out these days. My eyes catch the saline drops. I know how today will go. The starts of many thoughts will fire, though none will reach a destination. No insights. Just questions. Plenty of worry. Already I am considering dinner: Thai takeout or a roast? Then, chicken or lamb? I haven’t exercised in days. My breasts, particularly the right, feel swollen and foreign.
Look away, Em said yesterday evening as she slid half a log of butter followed by another quarter. I watched it lose form and turn golden in the black pan. I could feel it in the air, then my body, when I took a deep breath in. This only makes me wonder just how many things I might right now be indifferent to. Then, out of nowhere, I recall my dream, the one bought on from the drippy cheese. I recall drinking smooth vodka martinis that didn’t get me drunk. I had twelve.
The dinner party becomes breakfast, one of deli sandwiches. But how does that work, I ask. The man puts down his sandwich, finishes what is in his mouth and wipes a brown paper napkin across his mouth, which comes away visibly darker. He returns his posture straight after having leant quite forward to have his head dangle over the tray, which has caught fallen lettuce, pickle and pecorino. He goes on to explain the physics of removing rust from an object. Will, sitting next to him, listens with the kind of intent I do not possess. Will nods between bites and even offers the occasional comment in relevant vocabulary. No matter how hard I try to focus on the words coming out of his mouth, I cannot link them into a coherent sentence. Alcohol is not conducive to good, clear thinking in the same way cigarettes do not allow one to feel alive in her skin. How many times will I have to realise this over?
I stare at him, nodding at the wrong times while I wonder off. To where? To the angle of his jaw and the fit of his jumper; the pattern of disease all over the bamboo; to university next week and Christmas this year and dinner tonight. I keep trying to catch up, listen, understand but it only makes matters worse, only pulls me further away from the table, which is wobbly from a missing screw. Sweat gathers. A breeze removes the leaves from a tree behind me like a shotgun. One becomes caught in my hair. I lift a Virgin Mary to my lips tentatively, the glass is heavy, and the salt rim is aggressive. Why did I think this was a good idea? Will then paraphrases what he has just heard, to which the man exclaims, Exactly! And returns leaning forward to lift the sandwich to his mouth. I stare at them both blankly as if, with the conclusion of the conversation, I have been returned to my body.
Nine-thirty becomes twelve. I walk out the deli’s front door before they can plead with me to jump on for a short while. Outside, on the street, people are drinking from plastic cups while they wait for Daisy to call out their name. On Saturdays, when I am in charge of taking and filling orders like Daisy is today, I am reminded of the fact that I am just one small body in a world of really very many. This is perhaps the greatest flaw of living alone and by this I mean the false notion of one’s own significance. It is very important to be reminded of the others, the many, many others. Out the deli, on the street, I feel myself un-tense. The whole sole of each foot presses again the ground from the weight of my body as if when I was standing in the deli, I was defying gravity with my body tensed the way it was.
Close to his house, we stop for popcorn at a Wholefoods store, which he tells me he has a membership for. The Wholefoods is empty except for a young woman behind the register reading the fine print of what looks to be an essential oil. As well as a pregnant woman in flattering blue denim overalls who has achieved with her hair one of those high messy buns I have never been able to. The Wholefoods shopping experience is far less jarring than the commercial supermarket in my area. Not only because of the smaller scale but also the visual experience of the shelves whose products are composed of natural and calm colours, as well as materials that are not assaulting to look at. I stand in front of the non-assaulting varieties of popcorn thinking about everything but popped corn.
At his house, I unthaw in shower number two. It’s a small clean cubicle with a large square head hanging directly in the middle. This makes it arduous to stand under and enjoy if you are trying to keep your hair dry like I am. I prod my distended belly. I swallowed the kombucha from the Wholefoods so quickly I didn’t have time to experience its flavour. The bottle, still in my bag, calls it passionfruit. I hate kombucha, but I drink it all the time. I would like to be the kind of person who eats a passionfruit and drinks a tall glass of cold water. But the fact is my abdomen is distended and there is five dollars less in his bank account. I was surprised when he said he considers me a woman rather than the girl I often feel like. I am now unsure how this conversation came about.
He lends me warm, soft clothes, which smell familiar and foreign at once. The clothes make my body, for the first time today, feel small. It is this small swimming feeling that is the reason I used to wear the gape-y sacks I used to wear like a safe and familiar uniform. While I do not reach for them anymore, I cannot bring myself to throw them out. I ascend the stairs and the first thing I notice is the perky vitality of his plants. There is one, on a platform halfway up the atrium, that looks just like one in my bedroom and nothing at all like the one in my bedroom. There is water boiling and a heater blowing warm air around the place.
I sink into a velvet couch, whose colour I get stuck trying to name. The end of a bruise? I say. A scab, he replies. Yes, I smile and run my hand along it, so velvet licks my arm. Then he skates off to get something to dunk in our teas as well as lemonade for scones, which are apparently quick and fluffy. He is a capable skater, a sturdy person. Later he will teach me how to dunk a Maltomilk without it breaking off into the mug. It has something to do with the second-rate law of inertia, he will tell me. I am alone in his house and take in the view from the elevated upstairs only to realise this is a view I am starting to become accustomed to.
When he drops me back at the deli’s front door, it is a non-deli day. It is my first time returning to Richmond since several Tier One sites have been identified in the area. Aside from a small bundle of people belonging to a news van parked out the front of the supermarket, there are seldom people out and about. A week of heavy rain is brewing and turning this patch of the world quite dark for eleven thirty in the morning. The hairdresser chairs are empty; the Thai place is still only open for take away; even the tailor with the long business hours where I direct my parcels has drawn their blinds. I kiss the man with the abandonment of a teenager and feel glad to be alone and no longer processing alcohol.
Then, Daisy calls desiring lunch, specifically, a bowl of Big Soup. She tells me she is fifteen minutes away. I prepare two meals: mine a breakfast and hers a lunch. Her partner calls to say he is in line for a COVID test. So is Em’s partner. It’s getting closer, I say looking outside. I haven’t seen a hot air balloon in weeks. Daisy says she is starving. I stand up and adjust the heat until my walls are dripping with Big Soup. I watch her create a tall mountain of pecorino in the soup’s centre. It doesn’t hold, instead it sinks to the bottom, so she creates another. I think about the Titanic and how I might like to watch it soon. While Daisy slurps, I tell her if I had delayed going to the supermarket for the stock that has made the Big Soup, even by as little as fifteen minutes, I would be in isolation for the next fourteen days. This is delicious, Daisy says. She looks happy and relaxed as if all this is not illegal.
Yellow Days 