| Michelle Vlatkovic
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| Iron Cove Maggie swallowed him whole. "Kiss me again Peter. Come over to me on the rug." Her dark curls bobbed about her pretty face as she moved towards him. Her blue eyes full of voluptuous sadness. "They shall all be here soon and I shall have to share you." The boys piled out of the Kombi, followed by their girlfriends carrying picnic hampers and eskies. While Peter and his mates played cricket between two garbage bins, the girls lay about on rugs talking about mohairs and flicking through the latest issue of ‘New Musical Express.’ It fell into place so simply, Maggie having to move from her terrace in Annandale and Peter wanting to leave home. They carted discarded tables and lounge chairs up the stairs from the street into the flat. Over the years, the flat became cluttered with artefacts of their partnership. Maggie organised and reordered existence with polka dot butter plates and lady lamps; while Peter’s record collection burgeoned with finds from local garage sales. They still spent days in the park. The park near Rozelle hospital they liked best, but they went alone. He told her about before; when he felt freest on the highway. Peter spoke of long weekends with his mates, surfing and fishing, exploring their pimply existentialism. The one speaker sound system would play Joy Division in the darkness as the Kombi purred over Mooney Money Bridge, almost home. Sunburnt, exhausted with sand between their toes before another week began and parents started to ask again, "What were they going to do with their lives? How many job applications would they write this week?" * * * * * * * Maggie struggled to the stop cord. Victoria Road was melting beneath the 501 bus; she dripped towards the doors. The asphalt blistered as she headed to the pool, happy to have left complaining clients and late couriers at the office. Change dropped in the slot and she pushed through the turnstile. She hired a kick board before changing; then headed down the steep descent to the pool. The best spot away from the tiers of cement was a strip of grass, two by four beach towels wide, next to the harbour. Towel and belongings planted. She dived into the water. Half salt and half chlorine, the deep end dropped off twelve watery feet. Ropes divided lanes for fast and slow lap swimming. She pushed off on the left of the slow lane with the kick board. Up one way and then down the other side, board on her chest, lap after lap. After ten laps she got out. Lying on her towel, the afternoon sun evaporated excess drips and she began to doze. Peter pulled a curl. "Hi." She rolled over. "What’s for dinner?" He frowned. "How was your day?" She screwed up her nose. "Shithouse. Yours?" "Same." "You going in?" "Na." He didn’t like pool water much. They reached the top of the stairs. He asked which way she’d like to walk home. They could walk by the water or go across the park and along the back streets. "Let’s go via Iron Cove." In the middle of the bay was a deserted island where wedding photographers took snapshots of happy brides and grooms on weekends. Maggie and Peter strolled towards the bridge, a steel artery, leading into the city. "You know, I just don’t know how much of my life is a convenience," he said. She grabbed his hand. "What do you mean? Am I a convenience?" "No. I didn’t mean that." He looked out over the water. "Peter you can’t say something like that and not explain it." "Sorry. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just been another long boring day, I guess." For Maggie, the bus stop, fish and chip shop and the bottle shop were convenient. A litre of long life for when you ran out of fresh milk, that was convenient. White goods and the tangerine Torana made life easier, they were convenient. The remark began to dig and burrow, tunnelling into the interior of their relationship. In the weeks that followed, Maggie tried to extract this worm by focussing on its perpetrator. Suggesting a councillor, asking Peter if he wanted to leave, offering to leave herself. She demanded he isolate his dissatisfaction. Peter was unable to identify anything specific. * * * * * * * His shirt stuck to his back, limp with sweat. The sun gone. The mugginess about to be swallowed by dropping air pressure; he hoped they would make it home before the sky opened. He met her at the entrance to the pool. "Had a good day?" She didn’t answer. He moved towards her and she stepped back from him. "We need to hurry to beat the storm." Maggie said nothing. She kept pace with him walking along the gravel path. The breeze blew in their faces as they approached the bridge. Beneath it, she stopped. "Peter we’ve got to talk." He looked at the steel pylons overhead. She turned to him. "I’ve been thinking about what you said." He didn’t have any more to say than what he said before. "It’s over. I can’t live with you any more." In two seconds he felt seven years dissolve to zero, zilch. His remark of no ill intention had grown into a huge mountain of dung. A surreal haze of disbelief and uncertainty clouded everything. He hoped she’d change her mind. A week later, Maggie got in the Torana with her belongings and the clouds burst. Angry, she ran away eight hundred kilometres erupting back into Sydney when the sky burned an apocalyptic orange that summer. An iron clamp shut her heart to possible vulnerability and any loving feeling. "A relationship is about responsibility and you didn’t take any. In fact, you don’t even know whether you lived with me simply out of convenience." "Maggie, that’s not true. I love you." He begged, but she refused his friendship. * * * * * * * At the park a father hummed, ‘It’s a small world,’ to a child in a pram. A cigarette behind his ear, he rubbed sun block into the toddler’s face. Maggie rolled across the blanket towards the magazine, irritated by the humming. The caption read, "Silence, nothingness, intimacy and invisibility all orchestrated with Zen precision." In the accompanying photograph, Peter didn’t look much different from when she last saw him. Imagining his opening: the smell of spilt wine, the sound of urgent chatter, his paintings on the wall. He stood before a large canvas of a plum pit lying on a swimming pool ledge. Someone asked how he knew someone else and Maggie’s name surfaced. For a second, he thought of Iron Cove, the blue public pool and their walks along the harbour foreshore. A football bounced onto the blanket. Maggie looked up. "Sorry," a boy said grabbing the ball and running back to his game. She had no idea what Peter really thought. She looked at his images on the page. This was his language, silent and stark. Back then, he unknowingly articulated what neither of them could see: that they had begun to stop questioning their existence as individuals. |
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