Pink Prop

The house’s breath is slowing and the skipping of the insects and rats are beginning to beat on the timber quicker. The house rests early now, it sleeps and wakes with the sun. A drop of dust flits down from the roof and lands onto the hands that are attacking a computer keyboard. A sneeze splinters the air.

Amanda sits at her computer and the computer sits on the bench near the kitchen. And she scrolls through a website that has houses for sale, nothing grabs her attention through the screen. The timber home she lives in now, comforts her but began to erode many years ago. She fears that the roof will collapse. The house must go, be redesigned or knocked down. Amanda can’t though, knock it down or redesign it; the house screams and frowns at her if she even considers it. The house is stubborn, glued to its antique aesthetic. So, she must go. She has decided to turn her back and walk away instead of battling the house to be remoulded and repaired.

The dim yellow light flickers, her computer screen is brighter than the light doddering on the roof. She hears a soft scatter; it must be an overweight cockroach. A heavy thump smacks the floor beside her. The sound electrifies her and she squirms on her chair. Her head cocks to the side and she thanks the lord because it is not a giant rat, it is her son, but all the same. Jared prances up and down in a small space, swaying his hips, knocking his head into the air, his mouth moves too, making various shapes. His behaviour looks painful, her head would hurt if she mimicked him. However, she knows he is having fun. He calls it dancing or rocking. A toy guitar string hangs around his neck, supporting the guitar that dangles just below his stomach. Jared arches backwards, whilst strumming the guitar and the wig on his head splats on the floor, like yoghurt. The wig is pink, and the areas around the ears are shorter than the train of hair that begins above the eyebrows and trails down towards the back of the neck. He squats next to it and slaps it onto his head, his body is still giggling. The hairpiece is outrageous. Amanda wonders why she bought it for him; maybe it is the new fashion. Her eyes tumble in her head. The hair that grows from her head is tamed curls and speckles of blonde flow through the brown – it's sun-kissed.

“Mum, look ima rock star, look, look!!” Jared says.

Amanda turns her head to see her son looking like a fish out of water, and then goes back to focusing on her computer. The chair that she is sitting on wiggles because it has been bumped by the fish; for a moment, she becomes a car bubblehead.

“Loook, so high, I got many, yeah, yeah, money, that's it, lets go,” his voice crackles as he sings.

“Stop it! You’re not going to become a rock star acting like this. You need sleep, go to bed!” Amanda commands.

The kid scrunches his nose, turns around, lets gravity supersede his arms and chest and then drags his feet down the hall and into his room. The door claps against the wall when he closes it. He was trying to be dramatic, he was trying to slam it.

Amanda sits on the chair and considers the psychology behind learned helplessness, and acid bubbles around her heart from the guilt of not believing in her son. Then she goes to her son’s room and softly opens the door. He is rustling his sheets, trying to get covered by the time she has gained full view of the room; trying to hide the fact that he was not in bed. He was playing his keyboard, the red-power-light beams from the floor. She wants to laugh at how bad of an emissary he would be, but instead sits at her son’s feet on the bed.

“I’m sorry for yelling at you. You will become a famous rock star and the world will love you, just as you will love it,” she says.

“Thanks mum, sorry for hitting your chair.”

“Have you said goodnight to grandpa?”

The boy tosses the sheets off himself and potters out of the room. When he leaves the room Amanda jumps up, and heads towards the keyboard to deduct the electricity going into it. And after returns to her position, as if she had never moved, to wait to wrap the blankets around her son. He comes back slouching, resembling his behaviour from when she had yelled at him. He climbs into his bed like a puppy tackling a height of stairs.

“Mum is grandpa going to die?”

“Die is a sorrow word. How about we say sleep or end? Everything has an end and sadly grandpa is reaching it. He has had an enduring life, and although he is scared to sleep forever. He must eventually rest.”

The child’s nose huffs the air and his cheeks sparkle with translucent drops, “But, but, why doesn’t he get to live forever? Why can’t he be young like me?”

“We have to share the world we live in. There is sooo many living things that deserve some time on earth. If everybody stayed forever, then no more would be able to come.”

“Everything should just stay the way it is,” Jared crosses his arms.

“If everything stayed the same then you wouldn’t be able to become a rock star. People would stop dreaming and people would stop living. For life to continue it must be restricted within a certain time frame.”

Confusion wraps around Jared's face, his brows bent and his lips at a pout. Amanda embraces her son and dreads for him to speak again. How does any parent explain death or other contemporary topics to their children? His sobbing softens.

“It’s just not fair,” he hiccups the air when he speaks.

Amanda continues to comfort her child until she thinks it is a plausible time to leave. Jared's breathing slows down and his body tangles in the bed sheets. Then she flicks the switch to turn off the light, and leaves the door jarred open to allow the hallway brightness to shine into his room. Amanda walks to the lounge-room where her father has been rocking on a chair all this time. The lounge-room is shielded by two sliding doors, so, she pulls one to the side, then steps past the threshold of the room. The warmth of the air encases her and the burning-sticks in the fire crackle and pop. In the centre of the room is the old man, rocking back and forth in his chair. He glows because of the light of the flames. On his head sits a pink wig, with the areas of the temporal lobe shorter than the train of hair that begins above the eyebrows and trails down to the back of his neck. Her feet take two steps backwards at the sight of the wrinkled limp man, with a bright pink set of hair.

“Father, would you like to go to bed?”

“I feel younger,” his voice is hoarse and low.

A smile strikes Amanda's face because of the fact that her father can put on a wig and feel younger; for the fact that he does not feel stagnant or contemptuous due to his old age. Maybe she will renovate the house after all.