Addition by Toni Jordan Read Free Book Online Page A

base so she can roll the walls together and then slide them apart. She needs as much storage space as she can get. She keeps stories in these cubicles, little tidbits that she collects. Blue stories for my mother, the ghoulish bower bird.
    The phone rings. It’s 8.01 p.m.
    ‘Hello Mother.’
    ‘Hello dear. Sorry I’m late.’
    ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘How are you?’
    ‘Well, my hip is giving me a little trouble, but I won’t complain. I’ve been busy. I visited Liz across the street yesterday and we had scones with currants in them. Or were they raisins? And I’ve been crocheting for the stall at the community centre. The azaleas are looking beautiful. I’ve been mulching. Mr Parker has a rash on his tummy. I think it’s the heat.’
    My mother’s cat must be the laughing stock of all the other pets in the street. ‘Hey, Parker,’ they must sneer at him, ‘has your Mumsy wubbed your tummy-wummy today?’
    ‘Perhaps he should be sleeping on the nice cold floor instead of in bed with you.’
    ‘That’s funny, dear. Mr Parker loves sleeping in my bed. Oh, and everyone asked after you at church today.’
    Well that took 15 seconds. She often reaches the bit about church inside 10.
    ‘I was speaking with Sophie…You remember Sophie, my nextdoor neighbour? Italian lady? She had that mole on her face removed last year?’
    ‘I remember the mole…’ It had its own postcode.
    ‘You’ll never believe what happened to her cousin’s daughter’s yoga teacher. She was minding her own business, driving along with her baby son in the car and she was coming down this steep hill and there were red lights at the bottom and you won’t believe this, you really won’t, how cruel it all is, all of it. But at the bottom of that hill of all places was a semi-trailer parked at the lights and as she started down the hill the brakes went. Failed! And you know, mother of God, they slammed into the back of that semi and it squashed them flat as pancakes, both of them, never hurt anyone in their lives. It only goes to show you, we should all have four-wheel drives, not those little Japanese things. Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask: can sushi give you worms?’
    ‘Have you ever eaten sushi?’
    ‘No, dear, but I lived on kippers as a girl and they’re practically the same thing.’
    Now that my mother has delivered her flat as a pancake story she says goodnight. She will return this story to its cubicle so if someone at church should mention new brake pads or Japanese cars or for that matter going skiing or doing drugs or crossing the road or storms that bring down power lines or playing backyard cricket or eating sushi or buying weed killer, she’ll be ready.
    The real tragedy is hidden from us. Every year we pass anniversaries. We often mark them; birthdays, the day we started a job, the day we met our significant other. Our parents’ wedding anniversary, name days of nieces and nephews. Lucky dates or the day we arrived in a city. The anniversary of the day the family dog died. This year will be the 27th anniversary of the day our dog died.
    And every year we all pass a day, an anniversary, but we don’t know the date. This is the day that might be remembered for a little while at least, and if you are very special someone might cry on this day every year or buy roses or stay in bed or go to a bar and drink their way through the top shelf starting from the left-hand side. Or if you are so environmentally unaware as to have a tombstone, this is the date on the right-hand side. I often wonder which date will be mine.
    The anniversary of my father’s death is April the twenty-first. My father died in 1989 when I was seventeen, so he is spared the cubicles and their contents. He died as he lived, disappointed. His disappointment was like some kind of gas around him that left you with a bitter metallic taste in his company.
    The disappointment grew about his late thirties, a realisation he would never sail around the world