Wiped

When Rose pulled up, her journey reached, she turned off the engine and sat. There was no hurry to leave the car and go inside. No one was waiting for her in there and she realised that in any case she was not obligated to meet anyone else’s expectations of her.

She related to each wonderful, sparkling sliver of cold water on her windscreen, a fine spray separated by momentum and mass, gravity and air pressure or whatever the science dictated. Each tiny body was beautiful and clear and crystal, reflecting subtle grey light, rolling down the windscreen, meeting with itself and bloating, rolling faster, then thwarted by a single violent sweep of the windscreen wiper before it could reach its destination and rejoice in a new wholeness.

The life metaphor was not lost on Rose. She could have turned the wipers off and saved that tiny sliver from obliteration. But she wanted to lose herself in the scenario, find peace in what would be. None of it was, of course, a conscious decision. It all just happened and intuitively she reached out and clutched it. She would not be fine spray. She was not the windscreen or the wiper. She was not science.

It was warm and safe inside the car. The world was without, and she felt hermetically sealed in that small, manageable space. She needed to think. Perhaps she had reached her destination? Rose wondered about her life for the millionth time, wondered how she had arrived at this point. She knew all the answers in a mechanical and academic sense. And the trigger for this brain space was the cup of coffee she had just consumed with a friend from a distant place where things were so different.

Lisa and Rose were so close, with an intimacy that could only gestate in the mind of a sixteen-year-old.

“Do you remember that time we talked about the intricacies of vision and colour? We were eating Crunchies and observing how you and I saw the gold wrappers in such different terms!” Lisa nodded and lifted her latte to her lips, her eyes looking left and up to the sky. “Yes, I do remember that,” she said. Rose noted the tinges to her friend’s voice; something not quite right, not quite real. Nervously, Rose continued with the story, ignoring the attempt at blocking the path to the memory.

“It was the middle of rehearsals. We weren’t on stage, so we went down to the last milk bar open. You remember that empty old place. Half of it was closed. I reckon that place would have been wonderful if the tables in the dark half of the café were spruced up and the lights replaced. Milkshakes, duke boxes. It could have been nice. I don’t understand how that old lady made a living from selling the occasional 10pm crunchy. My Dad had a theory, but he was being nasty about her. I hated it when he was mean. I repeated his theory to a potential friend once and it turned out I was talking to the woman’s granddaughter. She instantly hated me for life, and I was instantly filled with shame. I just wanted to join in the gossipy group, and I chose the absolute worst piece of crap to relate.”

“Yeah, the colours, the gold wrapper. I remember,” Lisa repeated. Clearly, she decided the colour discussion was safer than a meandering path down Rose’s self-hating memory lane. This time Rose recognised the manipulation. A swirl in her stomach pulled her up. Her face blushed, she sipped at froth, lifted the cup a tad more and burnt her lips on the liquid.

“What you didn’t know at the time was this. I was trying to tell you about my eyes,” Lisa said tersely. “I had to wear contact lenses so no one would know I couldn’t see properly.”

Rose remembered the revelation that came after the event. She never understood why her friend was so secretive about it. The explanation that girls who wear glasses are considered unattractive never washed with Rose and she put it all down to warped vanity, but Rose did not account for different lived experiences. And Lisa never passed on the jokes she had been subjected to as a child. While Rose saw clear, sharp gold, Lisa only saw bronze unless she was wearing her contact lenses.

“Do you remember that time we went swimming down at Cumberland Lake?” Rose was alarmed that she would mention that, but Lisa seemed unmoved. It was a rotten memory. Rose was wearing her expensive Myer bathers that even her own dad had approved of and complimented – a rare thing indeed. The garment made her feel beautiful in a way she seldom had felt, the tailored one-piece with small skirt brought out the best in her full figure while camouflaging her less complimentary bits. Rose only saw her front, of course. Lisa’s terse appraisal covered only that she had a fat back. Rose was hurt and bit back that Lisa probably should not have been wearing a bikini. Or that her view was warped because she couldn’t wear her contacts when she was swimming. Or a dozen other thoughts that swirled in a bitter pool in her stomach.

She felt that pool now as she sipped her coffee. But she chose to stop and wait for her taciturn friend to respond.

“What’s this all about, Rose?” Lisa stared over the top of her half glasses. Her once clear green eyes had somehow lost their shine although Lisa noted that Rose seemed to be just the same, new and raw and straight out of the wrapper. “You know what? Some things change and some don’t. I’ve changed. You haven’t. Why are we here, Rose?”

Rose began to wonder too. She watched people walk around their table and in through the bakery door, others walking out juggling bags of bread and cardboard trays of coffee. She looked her friend squarely in the face and was surprised she had not noticed the lines, the crows’ feet, the fine fuzz above her lip, even the hint of grey at her scalp mocking the pale blonde hair. Superficially, her friend looked the same, but life had left a map all over her face.

“We were such good friends once. I saw you online and reached out, that’s all. I thought it would be nice to …”

Lisa cut her off, but Rose realised the question went both ways.

“It was forty years ago. We were eighteen years old.”

“Sixteen!”

“No, eighteen. And we were friends for how long? Maybe a couple of years. We were never really that close. The last time we saw each other was over twenty years ago and you visited me at my work, for god’s sake! My work! You! Every decade you reach out. Why do you do that? You just have this mixed bag of lollies you keep digging into.”

“Why are you here?” Rose countered. Lisa was offended. How dare she be questioned. Rose never questioned her before.

“I was just being friendly. That’s my nature. Why are you here?” Rose repeated.

“I like to see people from my past growing old,” Lisa replied.

Rose drank the dregs of her cappuccino, stood up, and left without a word.

Rose had grown a great deal more than Lisa could see. Her friend was obsessing about aesthetics while Rose was looking for growth. The greatest difference in Rose, perhaps, was that while she never lost her kindness, Rose began to apply a perspective to her memories. They were not so great, she realised, but they were a long time ago and as LP Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

While she was so very late to the game, Rose decided to let go finally, and make new memories.

She watched the rain on her windscreen, waited for the drops to almost connect, then flipped the switch and watched the wiper clear it all away.

“That was mean,” she said aloud, then laughed.