Excerpt

Let’s have a party, she says and she twirls on those impossibly high heels with that tattered old summer dress hanging off her skinny shoulders. In the afternoon light, it looks a bit yellowed, as if it’d been buried in someone’s closet for years and years under heaps of newer, shinier, brighter clothing. Which of course it had been.

Out of fondness, and perhaps with the enduring air of a patronising bastard, I ask her, for what? And the dreamer jumps, squeaks as though startled to see me there, to hear my voice. What? she squeaks. Like a mouse nibbling at your ears for a bite to eat. Now I know this analogy may strike you as inspired, but what can I say, I had a mouse once, when I was not more than perhaps six years old.

What party, I repeat. Why do you want one? And the squeak dies out of her eyes and the imagination lifts her lips into a smile, and she says, I want conversation, and wine. Sparkling, resplendent conversation, and sparkling, resplendent wine. And lots and lots and lots of dancing, and she ends with what she assumes is a pirouette. Sometimes when she gets like this, I forget that she is that skinny brat with her rat’s tail of a braid hanging limp and long down her spare shoulders.

And why would you want that conversation and wine and dancing, when you don’t talk well enough, aren’t old enough and can’t dance? You think I’m cruel? That’s quite alright with me, because, my dear interested party, she doesn’t care a whit. Right after what I said, instead of that joy dimming down to a flicker, she comes and squats in front of my chair where I smoke my pipe and watch her through slitted eyes, (excuse me but I like to portray myself as some kind of hero). She squats right down, her silly overlarge flower-patterned summer dress hanging from between her thighs, and grins. In that moment, she looks like the child she is. And through that mile wide grin she bubbles up that she wants to hear the sounds, see the sparkle of jewels – diamonds, rubies, emeralds and crystal wine glasses with almost jewel-like wine tumbling in them… she is old enough to know that at these parties, wine tumbles. Not flows, and nor is it poured. It is tumbled from those elegant bottles into those clear goblets, filling them to the brim until they overflow, something I consider highly tasteless and gaudy. And then,, she giggles that she wants to watch those fat obnoxious mummies dripping in gaudy oversized jewellery, and stuffed into those imported silk-and-fur dresses make fools of themselves as they try and snag a dance with one eligible bachelor after another. How does she know so much? Well, I being the distinguished member of my community that I am, I know, and so, I tell her.

Her teachers tell me I influence her greatly, up unto the extent that she questions their authority over a subject everytime some opinion or other does not concur with mine. They tell me she is difficult, headstrong and quite honestly, largely unaware of her age. Is it true? I don’t know. You tell me. Sometimes, when I’m tending to my flowers in the backyard, and I turn around for some tool or other, I see her playing in the mud, talking to herself, covered in filth from head to toe. Other times, when there is company for dinner, she is Miss Manners herself, sitting like an angel at the table, obliging my guests with smiles at their clever jokes and at some of their not-so-clever ones as well. And still, when I keep her away from chocolates for a day, I have a tantrum awaiting me at night, and she won’t let me in her room, let alone tuck her in. And then, the very next day, if it were a Sunday, she’s up at the crack of dawn, has cooked us a lovely breakfast, and is poring over the Sunday crossword or reading one of the poetry books in that huge chair by the window of our library.

Suffice it to say, I mostly have to surprise her, so I know what mood she is in.

©2005.