The Book of Love

The first time it happened was in the supermarket.

The cashier wasn’t as old as she had been, certainly wasn’t as frail, but there was something about the eyes, pale as winter sky.

She smiled.

I froze, while the world continued around me.

Outside, beyond gigantic glass panes feathered with frost, the storm grabbed whorls of fallen leaves, flung them into the halogen stares of the car park lamps where they danced like dead angels. Snow continued to fall, tentatively.

A woman pushing a buggy with two squabbling children was looking directly at me. I couldn’t read her expression from behind my own frosted pane. A sudden surge of memory blindsided me, like a man caught crossing a road in a snowstorm.

The feel of wet plastic, the smell of ice-cream, the terrorising pinch on the arm, the rasp of a scream in my young throat. Mum, turning on us both, her only scold a disappointed look which quieted my sister’s pique in a second. I looked at the intense white thumbprint just above my elbow, ringed with raging red, looked at mum and felt hot tears burst from me.

“Card number, darling.”

I slingshotted back into the moment, eyes brimming. I tried to focus.

Pale wintry eyes looked back at me, soft and smiling. “Enter your number on the pad, if you would, my darling.”

I couldn’t see the pad but trusted to my fingers and they did the job.

Picked up my bags. Headed for the exit.

By the time I reached the car, I couldn’t recall what I’d recalled, the memory had flown, or maybe it was trapped in the glaze of frozen tears on my cheek and evaporated when I turned up the heating.

-0000000-

That night, I banked the fire good and high. Soon I was pink, sweating with the heat yet it didn’t warm all of me. Couldn’t.

The cheque from the lawyer -$20,000 – sat on the mantelshelf, half-tucked behind a picture. It was all that was left of her. I’d been meaning to cash it, needed to cash it, in truth, but I was afraid. I wasn’t ready to close the book on her life, not just yet.

The groaning bookshelf in the hallway promised distraction but didn’t deliver anything. Just as well. I tend to think when I read, and right then I didn’t want to think, so I flicked on the TV and surfed instead through a mosaic of game shows and documentaries and reality shows and movies. Every show – every ad, even – was filled with families connecting, arguing, crying, loving. My finger hammered on the remote like a telegraph operator’s.

I hid in anime. Something about a dragon or a demon or a dragon that was a demon and terror in Tokyo or Kyoto, none of it mattered. The demon dragon turned inexplicably into a little boy or girl, and then there were zombies and a tower of fire and another demon came but then the little girl or little boy or little dragon demon missed his, her or its mommy and that was it. I dissolved all over again.

My finger jabbed the remote. The livid animation cut to black.

I reached for the bottle.

Gin.

Ugh. But it’ll do.

And then...

“Make me a gin and tonic, love. I have some ironing to do. You always make the best gin and tonics.”

I poured another slug of gin into the glass, overtopping it. I cursed, wiped the clear liquid from the tabletop onto the carpet then let the tears come. Bawling into my glass I drank and then drank and cried and drank some more as if it might keep the fire of memory alive. But eventually, the flame guttered, fizzled.

When I woke on the sofa, head thrumming, everything was a blur. I undressed in a blur, cleaned my teeth, maybe, tumbled blurrily into bed.

And cut to black.

-0000000-

In retrospect, the next day was the worst.

It started bright enough. I tidied the previous evening away, threw the empty gin bottle in the recycling, took my meds and resolved to be strong today. The sun was shining, my head was a little rough, but I’d get through it.

Today I wouldn’t think. I’d do. I pulled the 47-item ‘To Do’ list from the wall and studied it intently.

Tidy the office home workout clean the stove reorganise the cupboards do the laundry iron your shirts put up paintings practise the piano write six pages alphabetise the bookshelf mow the lawn paint the shed clear the garage it’s snowing doofus so stay indoors and clear the loft and dust the shelves and make the bed and

“Start with collar and cuffs, love, and remember to iron between the buttons.”

“Put some greaseproof paper down in the cupboards, easier to clean like that.”

“I’ve always wanted you to learn piano, I’m so happy you’re doing that.”

“Mind yourself on that ladder.”

They came and they came and they came and they wouldn’t stop coming. I couldn’t hear anything but her voice, see anything but her face.

After lunch – “make sure you’re eating properly” – I cleared out the bottom cupboard next to the fridge freezer. A little vodka. Some white rum someone had brought to a party, a million years ago. A can of IPA, tall one with a goblin on it. Some peach schnapps.

Who drinks peach schnapps?

Me, as it turns out.

I laid the greaseproof paper on the shelf where the bottles had been, retired to the couch, flicked on the TV. Poured.

“You’ve had a busy morning. You need to take care of yourself, relax sometimes.”

And drank. The peach schnapps went down frighteningly easily.

“I don’t like to hear you’re drinking. It worries me. But you know I always worry about you. You’ve always been so good to me. I don’t want you hurting yourself.”

Then the vodka.

Then the IPA.

Then the rum.

Then the toilet, then nothing, then waking on cold tiles.

Cried some more. Found a bottle of claret, hidden behind a wall of noodle cups.

Drank. Passed out.

Bed.

-0000000-

Somehow, I slept for twelve hours. The house felt warmer. I had coffee. Took my meds. Threw the empty bottles in the recycling.

What happened last night?

I reached for the memories like I’d reach for my socks in the dark, scrabbling around the floor, picking up underwear, t-shirts, then finding one hiking sock and then one ankle sock, throwing them both away then finding their twins or perhaps the first ones again then screaming with frustration into the darkness.

Nothing.

No, not nothing, but wisps of something. Not enough to make anything out of.

What happens to someone when everyone forgets them?

The booze cupboard was empty. Luckily. Until I found my hand quivering over the car keys and my eyes scanned the road to see only a rime of snow under the hedgerows thanks to the warming sun.

I drove into town, still over the limit I didn’t doubt, but careless of the fact. Confident in my driving anyhow, but careless still.

I needed.

Needed.

The supermarket car park was deathly quiet, the kind of quiet you only see in zombie movies, just half a dozen cars at the far end, none of them new, none of them luxury models. Staff then.

I looked at the time on the dash clock. 7.02am.

Seriously?

I experimented with a few carts to find one which steered decently well and stepped into the glare of the waking store. I had the place to myself. The staff, beetling around, stacking shelves, glanced once and then got back to work.

The alcohol was at the far end from the entrance. I’d head there soon but I needed some food, and the wrapped sandwiches for the office workers were at this end.

I rooted through the small selection of options, picked something brown looking in white bread, no idea what it was, a drinking yoghurt with a blue and white label and a crinkly yellow packet of something.

Would I buy gin or vodka? The gin helped with the tears, but the backlash was worse than the vodka. Rum, no, definitely not. Red wine? It did knock me out, but maybe that was the problem.

I looked up. I’d pushed my cart, unthinking, into the other half of the aisle, into the bookstore concession, a cave of wonders with a dark green carpet and acres of blond wood encasing books and luxury stationery.

And greetings cards.

I felt ambushed, turned my head away from the cards, not letting a whisper of a suggestion of a hint enter my mind.

And yet there they were...

Happy Birthday To The Greatest Mum In The World.

Happy Birthday To The Greatest Son A Mum Could Wish For.

My brain backflipped. I stood in the livid silence, unable to move, like a bird frozen on a glacier, shut my eyes tight as if that would stop the flood. A moment passed into seconds and then stretched endlessly.

I couldn’t remember. Didn’t WANT to remember. I could taste pale ale and white rum and red wine in my mouth, sour, longing.

Not helping, guys.

Suddenly I wanted to fill my cart with all the bottles and cans and boxes and sixpacks in the place so that the memories would come in a wave and come and come and never stop, engulfing, comforting, stifling, suffocating, erasing me.

But I knew they’d take me in and leave me gasping next day on the chilly beach, unable to remember.

I allowed my eyes to open.

And then I saw it.

It was a small thing, but it shouted at me from a mosaic of subtle shades. I picked it up, ran a forefinger under the elastic holding its round-edged black covers shut. The pages inside were cream, lined, begging a pen.

I looked up and saw a neat rack of them. I picked up a fountain pen the price of a bottle of vodka, sitting under plastic with five small blue cartridges.

I had pens at home, hundreds of them probably, stuck in drawers and cupboards. Notebooks too for that matter.

But not this notebook. Not this pen.

This was the memory book and this the memory pen.

I’d let them come, this time, the memories, provoke them to come, swim in them, roll and dive and emerge. But I’d capture them, this time. I wouldn’t let one get away. I’d remember. For me. And for her. And I’d cash that cheque and buy something I could look at.

I left the cart by the book concession and walked to the checkout. There was a solitary cashier and she smiled when she saw me. The smile touched eyes the colour of winter sky. Tears welled up in me, but I blinked them away, clenched my teeth until it hurt so that no more would come.

I put the pen and the little black book down on the rubberised belt.

“Hello again, my darling. Is that all you need?”

“Yes, thanks. That’s all.”

End