Addition by Toni Jordan

Author:Toni Jordan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FIC044000, FIC000000
ISBN: 9781921776472
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2010-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

11

The swing creaks, once on the upswing and once on the downswing. Tired wooden plank attached to a chain. The sky-blue paint on the chain has peeled from years of exposure to sun and rain, and with each movement of the swing a fine red dust floats to the ground.

‘My parents were very proud of me,’ I hear myself say. ‘I was bright at school. So grown up. They bragged about me constantly to their friends and relatives. Showed everyone my report cards. As a special treat, because I was so mature, when I was eight we were given a puppy for Christmas. It was a soft, adorable little bundle of mischief. People didn’t train their dogs so much in those days. Puppies were just puppies until they got older and learned better. Anyway this puppy was just plain annoying. For some reason it didn’t take to Jill the way it did to me. It followed me everywhere. I was supposed to look after it. I was the big girl.’

I could see the backyard from my room. Our house was long and narrow, a single-fronted double-storey terrace. In the middle, at the end of the concrete path, was the incinerator. In the right corner was an enormous flowering gum tree, and in front of that was the clothesline. I can see it now, easily, without even shutting my eyes because my whole mind back then was turned to escaping.

‘Mum and Dad worked so hard to buy the place—nice house, nice suburb—so that their kids would have a better start than they did. Down the back was this steep set of steps. The puppy was so small. Couldn’t possibly negotiate all those stairs by himself. My mother told me over and over: “If you go out the back door, be sure and shut it so the puppy doesn’t fall down the stairs.”’

‘Oh God,’ Seamus says.

‘One day I forgot. He fell down the back stairs.’ I look up to the sky, a moment of silent prayer, but I’m not sure he notices. ‘The puppy died.’

‘You poor little thing. You must have been devastated.’

Poor little thing. Tell him. Tell him everything. Everything.

With my eyes closed I can gauge the movement of the swing as it arcs back to meet his hands. I can feel his hands go back with the swing just a little before he leans towards it and pushes it forward. I imagine his legs astride, the left slightly ahead of the right. Any deviation in the pace or the effort or the speed will reflect hesitation in his mind, and I will have lost him. I am alert for the movement of the swing to change, but it doesn’t. It continues, up and down, like we were discussing the chances of rain.

‘He just tumbled down. Hit his head. Died instantly without even a whimper. He lay at the bottom of the stairs like he was sleeping. This is the worst part: seeing him there, lying dead like that, my only thought was for myself.

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