Affection by Krissy Kneen Read Free Book Online

crocodile skeleton in the shell shop at The Rocks. We will buy you the complete set of Ray Bradbury stories. We will move away from Blacktown and we’ll build a dream world, Xanadu, just like in the poem. A stately pleasure dome, caverns measureless to man, like Disneyland, only better. Much better than Disneyland because the papier-mâché models that we make are nicer. Roller coasters, haunted houses, a mirror maze, a gingerbread house, a forest of flowers big as trees, a forest of trees as small as flowers. There will be a little train running through it and all the children can sit on top of it and chug along through our wonderland.
    My grandmother watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory over and over on video. She called it Willy Wanker, and after my sister and I had exhausted our snickering over her mispronunciation, we would sit with her, watching as she paused the video, standing up close and leaning over the hulking screen of the old TV, pointing. A chocolate river, like that, only we could have lily pads for stepping-stones. We could put giant chocolate frogs,
not chocolate, really, papier-mâché, but made to look like chocolate. What you think Sheila? When the lotto numbers fall for us—yes? And my aunt would nod, seriously considering the technicalities of this confectionous feat of engineering.
    But on this night there was a win, I was certain of it. There was a little electric thrill of excitement as they checked and double-checked the numbers. Even my mother had lifted herself out of her chair to join them. A win, definitely, and not just a twenty-dollar win. Maybe as much as five hundred dollars and perhaps we would put on our best clothes and get on the train and spend Sunday at The Rocks, picking through shelves of Sepik art, fossils buried in stone. If we had a win then there might be scones with jam and cream in some little backstreet courtyard café.
    â€œDid you win?”
    My aunt was quick to answer. “Not really.” Too quick.
    â€œWe have to check it. A little win maybe.” I knew my grandmother was lying. When they had a little win she would stand up and cheer. She would gloat about the system she had developed, crank the handle on their little toy lotto wheel and let the balls fall into a neat row where she could count them. She would sit with my aunt for an hour after the lotto draw congratulating herself on her mathematical prowess, or, if there was no little win, she would check back through pages of calculations to see where they went wrong, adjusting their formula to make their chances of winning more solid.

    On this night they closed their lotto journal immediately. They sat in silence. My aunt inserted a cigarette into a spidery black cigarette holder as long as my hand and lit it. My grandmother lit her own smoke off her daughter’s and stuffed it into a shorter holder. My mother shook her lighter and found sparks three times before there was a flame. She puffed and I breathed in the sweet minty odor of her smoke.
    My mother couldn’t settle that night. She creaked back and forth in her lounge chair. My aunt and grandmother were surprisingly still, staring at the blank face of the television. I was not used to seeing my grandmother sit still for so long. It made me slightly nervous.
    â€œThere is a little bit of crème de menthe,” my mother said, “left over from Christmas.”
    Crème de menthe. It wasn’t anyone’s birthday. It wasn’t Easter, they hadn’t just completed one of their displays for a council library. It was an ordinary weeknight and they were talking about crème de menthe.
    â€œWendy! Please!” My grandmother chided as if she had suggested we all take off our clothes and run naked down Duckmallois Avenue.
    â€œJust a little glass.”
    My grandmother held up a stern finger. “If you feel like it still, tomorrow night, after—” she left space for an unspoken fragment of