Children's Children by Jan Carson

Author:Jan Carson [Jan Carson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910742594
Publisher: Liberties Press
Published: 2016-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

10.

Floater

Your father was an open door. Your mother, a thumb-nosed fool. And you, for your sins – insignificant though they may be – were conceived in an airplane bathroom.

Don’t get the wrong idea, kiddo. It was a pleasant-enough bathroom, generously proportioned and fitted with not one but two conveniently located life vests. There was a small sink, barely large enough to squeeze both hands beneath the tap, and, mounted on the back of this sink, two dispensers: the first for soap and the second for hand lotion. Both smelt soundly of pear drops. The paper towels descended in frisky cotton wads from beneath the mirror. The bin was a trapdoor. The toilet, when it flushed, was furious, suckering every last teaspoonful of excrement into outer space as if determined to sever all association with freshly laid shit. The door folded in upon itself, like the wings of a paper airplane pinching in anticipation of flight. When closed, there was barely enough space for two full-grown adults to stand. Your father was forced to sit on me as he manoeuvred himself out the door. We were strangers again, and his trousered buttocks advancing towards my groin seemed an oddly, intimate epitaph.

Everything was neat, everything was useful; your father and I were the only deviations in an otherwise faultless space. I’d have preferred a hotel.

At the point of your conception I was a nineteen-year-old girl with average-sized feet. I say ‘average’, though in all honesty ‘generous’, or even ‘enormous’, might be more fitting descriptions.

I was very well grounded. I can only assume your father to have been similarly blessed.

Your father’s feet, as I last remember them, backing through the bathroom door, were of average length and breadth for a middle-aged man. Save for the normal squirming and repositioning, the sort of behaviour to be expected given the cramped conditions, all our feet remained reassuringly attached to the bathroom floor for the duration of our encounter.

Your father said many wise and witty things, none of which broke air in my presence.

‘Goodness,’ your father once said (the only thing I can clearly remember), ‘this soap reeks of something I can’t quite place.’

‘Pear drops,’ I mumbled, bent double, arranging the tails of my skirt. But your father had already unfolded the door.

Surely we should not blame the airplane bathroom for everything that followed.

*

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.