There is a man sitting in a blue Honda at the traffic lights of Swan Street and Hoddle who does not want his windows washed. I watch him raise his arms and shake his head when the window washer advances toward his car. The window washer chooses to ignore the driver, instead, he raises and points the Pump water bottle at the Honda’s windscreen. He squeezes, the bottle collapses, and soap covers the driver’s vision. The driver is outraged by this advance, I watch his complexion die vermillion from all the yelling. He bangs his hand against the window three times, loud enough to make me think it has injured him. All of this plays out in front of me like a mostly silent film. The window washer takes out his one and only utensil and begins working on the glass with his long, thin arms. He reveals the world unevenly to the driver with a wide grin that reveals several missing teeth. The driver continues to shake his head, though this time in defeat with his chin pressed to his chest. I watch him hoist his body from the seat and rummage through his pockets for coins to give to the window washer who, at this moment, looks unequivocally elated.
Saturday night is couples’ night, I decide on a train snaking into the city. They’re everywhere, in all the shapes and all the sizes. I am sitting on a fold-out bench intended for the expecting, disabled, or very old. I have been anticipating that someone belonging to one of these categories will board the train at any moment and so, I have been sitting halfheartedly on the edge of the seat, ready to stand up and collect my things. In this way, I recognise I should simply opt to stand, that I would be more comfortable learning on the carriage doors, but I don’t. Directly opposite me is an interlaced couple who have similar outfits on. The couple is unapologetic in letting everyone else on the carriage know they adore one another. The greatest point of their sameness manifests in the pants they wear, specifically: where their shin becomes their thigh, or their thigh becomes their shin. At this intersection, there are big round skin-coloured holes, four of them, poking out at me. I told The Man I needed a few days that are my own, days in which we do not know what the other is doing. Though all the displays of affection around me this evening leave me pining for him. I feel the train breaks kick in, and my centre of gravity shift at the same time a voice declares this train is arriving at Flinders Street. I let myself sink into the seat for the first time before finally standing up. Looking at the four interlaced knees, feeling my body drenched in desire the way it is, I realise this is exactly the feeling I wanted our time apart to arouse in me.
The young waitress who took my order takes her lunch break at the table next to me. When she sits down with her apron off, I find myself rearranging my relationship to her, I notice her features in a way I had not before. She is all amber and freckles and her great height coupled with her thin frame makes her seem a little out of proportion, one might say gangly. Her plate has, among other things, two thick slices of bread on it, which have not been toasted. The raw bread makes me think she is either an unfussy person or lazy. The way she eats implies she is naturally slender -blessed with a fast metabolism. She expresses dread over tomorrow, the 3rd of October. She has enjoyed her school holidays and is not looking forward to the final term of exams, or the return to early mornings. She explains that she likes dogs better than cats because she senses they really need her. She deliberates over the seasons only to decide that she prefers summer. However, there are some parts of winter she loves, but these parts involve her being inside not out in winter’s harsh elements. This leads her to her next point about baths, which she regards as better than showers. As she speaks, I think about when I was this age, which feels both recent and, at the very same time, completely intangible. I recognise it is a green and blissful time when intersubjectivity is veiled and the feeling of world, which you feel you are in the centre of, is small. At the end of her meal, the young waitress asks for an extra spicy chai latte and steps into the doorway to call someone, reminding them they must pick her up at 3.
I need conjunctivitis medication for my son, a woman in a floor-length down puffer jacket declares to the pharmacist. The pharmacist has a pre-pubescent complexion and seems far too young to be issuing us medication. He asks the woman about the symptoms, and she backtracks too far in telling the pharmacist that the boy stayed at his fathers’ over the weekend, and she suspects he caught it from his father’s girlfriend’s child, who isn’t very clean. They still co-sleep, I mean, really, I can’t understand what he sees in her, she says, sighing. The pharmacist’s mouth is hanging slightly open as if he is waiting for a gap in which to interject and bring them back to the symptoms. He does this in such an elegant way I get the impression this is a routine part of his job and begin to feel bad I ever doubted him. What were two people has now become a small line. It’s 12.47 pm, a Tuesday, and almost all of us, I imagine, are using whatever time afforded to us by our employers to re-fuel, to instead stand here in line in the rear of this chemist to correct an ailment or perhaps the ailment of someone we love. The pharmacist is swift in retrieving the medication, handing it to the woman, and declaring, Next. I step off the ‘wait-here’-feet, painted on the ground in cobalt blue, to tell the pharmacist, as quietly as possible, about my own bodily malfunction.
The train is uncharacteristically full of people in non-casual attire this morning. At Balaclava Station, I recognise the voice making announcements is the same bucktoothed woman who has manned the station since I was in high school. She is as enthusiastic as ever in wishing us all a happy Oaks Day. I try and make myself as small as possible as I squeeze into an empty seat among three cramped bodies. The couple sitting opposite me both have glasses hanging over their face and discuss something quietly under a shared breath. The way the couple both lean in and hold one another up makes me feel good about this train and the city it is moving through. It occurs to me that The Man is presently waking up in Bologna with nothing on his plate except to eat lunch and then dinner. When I get stuck on the disparity of our situations, I remind myself this is the second last Saturday I will spend at the library for a long time, and I ought to be grateful I have a reason to be stuck at the library at all. The couple does not seem to care for my staring and so, I do not stop. I spend the entire duration of the journey colouring in their lives only to stand up and walk away, acknowledging I will probably never encounter them again. I fill a small bag of mostly red lollies at the Sugar Station next to the barriers. That will be $9.90, the boy leaning on the counter says. I look to the scale in disbelief, then to the boy. He shrugs. You like the heavy ones, he says.
The City Library will be closing in twenty minutes, a recorded voice announces. I look up and around the quiet study area to see who is perturbed by this announcement today. Three people check their mobile phones. One person looks as I did this time several weeks ago when I learned the City Library closes prematurely on a Saturday. I pack down slowly, preparing myself to walk to the State Library to study for two hours more before calling it a day. As I walk, I cannot deny the explicit desire for a glass of wine. There is a bar underneath the State Library I have always found endearing, whose happy hour we used to abuse. I fall into a dim corner inside and order a glass of riesling from the man with the soft Irish voice. There is a woman staring at me from across the room who I cannot place. At one point we lock eyes, and she stands and approaches my table. Sorry but this is just crazy; it’s us, from this morning, she says gesticulating towards a man who is remaining seated. It’s only now I register they both wear glasses. What are the chances, she says. All the bars in the city, can you believe it? She is elated, maybe a little inebriated, and insists I join them. Maybe they will buy my drink, I reason and gather my things. The couple tells me they are from Mount Martha and are in town for the day to celebrate their anniversary. They reminisce on a comedy act they have just seen like an inside joke I cannot understand. I finish my drink quickly, explaining I have somewhere to be, which I do not, and leave. At the train station, the boy from the sugar station is now a young woman who commands her phone from behind a large scale. I call Em to pass the nine minutes until my train arrives, dragging my feet slowly down the platform while she speaks. I come to a stop next to three intoxicated women sitting on the platform’s floor. They bear no resemblance to the women of seven hours ago. They are hungry and barefoot, hair fascinators awry, savouring what looks like potato cakes or sausage rolls.
There is a crumpled man hovering around my table at the library this afternoon who has an exhaustion about him. After several aimless laps around the room, he approaches the librarian’s desk. Excuse me, do you stock audiobooks? the man says. The librarian maintains her gaze on the screen. After several clicks, she looks up to address him only to nod and point to the corner of the room I am occupying. He turns and stares blankly in my direction. The librarian clicks the mouse several times more and hoists herself up to guide him to the audiobooks. Is it for yourself? The librarian asks. She seems irritated as if this is not part of her job description. The man pulls his fingers through his hair and tells her no. He pauses and winces in such a way that I wonder if something irritating might be caught in his eye. It’s for my wife, she is in palliative care, he says. The librarian grows taller from this disclosure and moves with a new sense of purpose to point out the specific shelves she is referring to. As the man is about to ask for something, advice, I think, the phone rings. The librarian seems relieved and performs something that resembles an awkward courtesy to the man before disappearing. I consider the degree that has brought me to the library today and the clinical psychologist who is really just a professional in bearing witness to other people’s suffering. I watch the man pull a few of the spines, glancing up and down the small blurbs too quickly to discern their nature. He looks around a lot, flipping the plastic books in his hands. That one is great, I interrupt, pointing to a shelf second from the bottom. He looks up, a little stunned, and I realise he was, up until now, indifferent to my sitting here. He moves out of the way, and I guide him with the words warm, hot, and cold to the spine I am referring to. He plucks the plastic spine from the shelf like a piece of Jenga. I think I would like to listen to that, maybe, if I were dying, I do not say. The man thanks me and tucks it in his armpit. Before he leaves, he sits down at the table next to me to briefly read newspaper headlines for today, the 3rd of November.
Prahran pool is quiet despite the holiday heat. It is Christmas eve, after all, The Man says placing down a towel. I stare at him blankly wondering if I had really said this out loud. Or were we now achieving telepathy? The image of the couple, the pair with the shared breath, strikes me at this moment. What is it? The Man says. I remember once asking him if he thought I was vague and the way he replied no, but you are often preoccupied. Preoccupied with all of this, I think, as I lay down to write about our interaction at the back of a book. Behind us, up against the fence, a lanky mother and daughter occupy two enormous towels. The two bear a strong resemblance and seldom interact. The mother instead complains to someone through ear pod headphones about several unsolicited guests who are going to ruin Christmas. When the young woman finally warms up enough to make her way to the pool edge, I see that she is all gaps, and I must actively stop myself from staring. I turn to The Man to share my shock, but he is absorbed in his book and indifferent to the girl. Her body is consistent with the kind of eating pathology I studied in second-year psychology. I do my best to feign indifference when the girl returns to her towel. Despite having finished the phone call some ten minutes ago, the mother is still wearing the earpods as if they are as much a part of her as the cartilage they rest in. Nice? The mother says lowering her magazine halfway. The girl scrunches up her face and complains the water has a funny flavour to it, a bad taste, don’t you think? The mother lowers the magazine completely, so her arms fall by her side. For the first time since we sat down, I observe the mother look at her daughter properly.
A man on the other end of the line advises me he has been referred to the practice. Though, prior to booking, he would like to provide me with an honest synopsis of what has occurred so far. He uses these words, honest synopsis, exactly. I agree, tell him I will phone them back with some options, and hang up. The document appears in the inbox half a minute after we end our call. The honest synopsis is a four-page, size 10-font document that reads a lot like a screenplay. I only get as far as the first significant breakup when the narrator turned twenty-four years old because my phone rings. It is a woman this time wanting to make an appointment for her daughter, who is 17 years old. When I ask about the daughter’s presentation, the mother says she is over-exercising and, she suspects, throwing up her food. My mind fills with the gaps, which seem to be getting bigger every day longer I spend on intake. I swivel my chair so it faces the brick wall rather than the computer as I will not be needing it for this phone call. I take a deep breath and tell the woman, unfortunately, we cannot see her daughter. Not only is there a six-month wait for eating disorder services, but we require clients under the age of eighteen to have first tried family-based therapy. She is eighteen in February, the mother asserts. Can you put her on the waitlist for then? Before I can place her on any kind of waitlist, I will need a record that family-based therapy has been attempted, I say, flinching. We require six months minimum, I add. The mother tells me that she has called every place in a twenty-kilometer radius. Please, please put us on the waitlist, she says. I let go of my bottom lip to tell her I am sorry, but it is practice policy and out of my hands, which are becoming increasingly clammier as our phone call goes on. I sink into the chair and lower the phone to make her yelling smaller. She is afraid, I reason to myself as I run my tongue along the indent in my bottom lip.
I am standing in The Man’s shade. My temple is resting on his shoulder blade while I look at all the people in the water, at all the arms making triangles. I turn and rest the other temple and look to the grass, which is full of humans half-clothed and reposed. He turns around to face me and shrugs. Why do they call it boxing day, I wonder. We move in and around the crowd and settle for somewhere awkward but away, at least, from those obnoxious enough to be playing loud music out of poor-quality devices. Where is Jonno? A man lying on a towel yells towards a stocky, muscular woman walking our way. The woman shrugs and looks away as if she is trying to overt her gaze from the sun, which is high and oppressive behind her. He says it’s too hot, she says. The woman throws down her stuff and makes a point of swivelling the conversation somewhere else. An hour passes in which I re-read the same two sentences of my book. I spend most of the hour trying to welcome the music and regulate the explicit anger circulating through my body. I turn, tummy up, to rest on my elbows, and return to the stocky woman who is distributing what looks to be turkey rolls to the others. I am pleased to learn the conversation has returned to Jonno. I can’t remember the last time we woke up and had a coffee or shared breakfast together, she says. The group of four falls silent and the woman looks away again, this time it works to exaggerate her profile and her quivering lip. Her friends remain silent and inert, though I can see from the discomfort on their faces that they know what she needs, which is for someone to reach out and touch her. At the end of the day, this is all we all need, I reason.
Yellow Days 