The World Was Whole by Fiona Wright

Author:Fiona Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing
Published: 2018-10-02T04:00:00+00:00

THE WORLD WAS WHOLE, ALWAYS

In the evening of the day we move, I go to a birthday party, in Mieke’s new house in Summer Hill. It’s an ice-cream party, which means Mieke has filled tiny bowls with berries, crushed nuts, pretzels, sprinkles, caramel sauce, and asked her guests to bring their favourite ice-cream so that everyone can make elaborate sundaes for their dinner. I’d forgotten this not-insignificant detail until I arrived and realised I’d be conspicuously doing without; instead I flit about and drink too quickly, too conspicuously; I’m almost immediately exhausted. I order an Uber just as everyone is settling in to play a card game and I know Mieke is disappointed, although she tries to hide it. The driver asks me what I do, and when I say I am a writer he says, I don’t get many of them in here, mostly I just get drunks, and I reply, I can’t say I’m not one of those as well. He tells me he works in security – he’s still wearing his uniform – and mostly for an agency, that he was yesterday assigned to guard a high-end escort while she worked. She was pretty, he says, but not as pretty as you, and my heart drops to the pit of my stomach. I can’t remember which of my new keys fits the lock of my front door and I fumble there for long and awful minutes, the whole time aware that this man’s car hasn’t driven away.

My new housemate has a cat, a beautifully glossy tortoiseshell, and she brings her home from her parents’ house in a carrier a few days after we have moved. My dog, still a puppy, is sitting on my lap when they arrive, and she is desperately excited to play with this new animal; the cat is distinctly, and cattily, nonplussed. The dog keeps bounding up, the cat keeps meowling, and my housemate and I are in stitches watching them try to figure each other out. (We’re still figuring each other out.)

Three days in, and I have a drink with Tom. Whenever I move house, he says, I live off takeaways for, like, a week, because there’s just no time to shop for groceries. I laugh, and he adds, you know, you make your tea with long-life milk and hit up UberEats until you’ve unpacked the kitchen and stocked the fridge. I laugh, but my fridge shelves were never less than full, of vegetables, of cans of Diet Pepsi, the soft cheese I eat for supper and still feel guilty about. My pantry: sauces and vinegars, unopened packets of muesli bars and rice cakes and crackers that I still think I might eat one day, when things are going better, when I am closer to well. I unpack my kitchen before my bedroom. I’ve never used UberEats.

Les Murray writes, ‘Home is the first / and final poem.’

Two weeks before we move, and the week before we find the house we’ll eventually move

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