You look like a Joan. That’s what Ciara’s flatmate Fidelma said to me one Friday night in The Round House. We’d gone out for drinks after work and Ciara had texted her to invite her along. Ciara’d gone up to get the first round in when she said it.
“Sorry, what did you say your name was again?” Fidelma asked, even though Ciara had only just introduced us.
“Joan,” I replied.
I didn’t move to Malta for The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, but it factored in when I decided to make the move. I’m talking about the painting of course, not the actual decapitation of the man. Valetta didn’t even exist when they were lopping off John’s noggin and the severing of said head happened in what’s now Jordan I believe. I don’t care about all that stuff, the history, the faith, that can all sod off. It’s Caravaggio’s colours, light, sense of space, the still action in the painting. The beauty and the violence. The messages. The blood. The signing in John the Baptist’s blood right there, on the huge, five metre canvas, that’s what gets me. Every time I’ve been to the cathedral, and paid the extortionate 12 euros entrance fee, it has got me.
You are compact, says the estate agent, a glorified cupboard say your owners. You are the custodian of cardboard boxes and unwanted wedding gifts. You are magnolia.
You are papered in pink princesses. Cartoon character curtains hang at your window and a homemade mobile of cotton wool clouds and knitted rainbows is suspended from your ceiling. You are filled with laughter and lullabies, crying and crises, the gurgling, giggling growing of your girl.
I go swimming three times a week. Mostly I walk to the leisure centre. If it’s raining I get the bus although I really don’t like to. I feel the stares. People can be very judgmental. They think you’re lazy. Look at that great whale of a woman they whisper. If I were that size, I’d be walking, they say. She wants to get some of that blubber off, they snigger.
Francine usually avoided baggage claim, especially after an international flight arrived. The palpable, cranky energy that rolled off the living as they watched other people’s luggage bump down the ramp was enough to put her on edge for days. She ignored the red flags her brain flung out and held her ground, waiting. Again.
Hours passed. When even the security guards were dozing in their uncomfortable chairs, the baggage conveyor belt’s fogged plastic flaps parted to admit an abandoned duffel. An ethereal shape draped itself over it, quickly apparent as a diaphanous, boy-sized human that leaped off the carousel and ran to Francine. “You’re back!”
I’m leaking again, and it’s just as annoying as the last fucking time. Harvey had to tell me there was blood on my shirt because I didn’t even notice at first. So now I’m standing in the bathroom rewrapping my bandages while he waits outside as usual.
He offered to help, of course, but I don’t need help. As frustrating as it is, I usually like this being my own little ritual where I can just dissemble and breathe freely. It’s less enjoyable when I’ve ruined another shirt and I’m getting fluids all over the sink.
Shane picks his mysteries by their covers. Trench coats, fedoras, shadowy back alleys, that sort of thing. One Sunday afternoon, at a restaurant called Chester’s, Shane was caught up in a mystery involving a stolen antique spoon when a dark-haired young lady leaned across her table to say, “Any guesses?”
Shane blank-faced her over top of his paperback.
“Who stole the spoon?” she said. Her voice was low, syrupy, and her smile said she was about to give away the answer.
They corner me a quarter of the way into my evening walk. I’ve been tracing this route since the first week of lockdown; now, in week five, my soles can pull me through it in my sleep. These habits are innocuous enough in isolation. And yet I can’t contain that air of doom, the anxiety throbbing underneath it all. I see myself shuffling through my neighborhood like those fleeing pixels that become Pacman’s lunch, gliding down the same old tunnels to no escape.
I’m entering one such tunnel, a sort of wooded path forking off a driveway, when I hear a hello at my heels. I turn, squinting in the glare of early sunset. It’s three women: an older woman and two young women. A mother and daughters, teacher and students? Leader and disciples? They approach, this strange trinity, asking if they can give me a “presentation” on the Passover. Lucky for them I say yes because I’m a poor practitioner of saying no. (Do I emit a heathen look? Hare Krishnas like to stop me on the street.)
‘Mind you get that bike home in one piece.’
His mother left him at the school bike sheds. The car faded towards Ipsden Heath, leaving him to cycle home the long route.
The long route would have been all right in the end. But on this fateful day Tom Purton decided to make the descent of Berins Hill, the forbidden shortcut. Thirty seconds down the incline he heard a little tinkling behind him. His rear brake was falling off. Away went the endless sequence of nuts and washers accompanying the brake pads, into the abyss. The bike picked up speed.
Idle Ink 