The door knob salesman. (Contains strong language)

Masterofballs

The door knob salesman.

He looked up the staircase, so strange to remember the sounds of toddlers carefully navigating their way up and then turning to boys and girls happily running up and finally to adults walking slowly down with suitcases in hand and tears running down cheeks. The floral decorative design of the wallpaper showing its age, me showing my age. Milly my deceased wife’s best and loyal friend will be here shortly, I like Milly, she shows up with beer and pizza and keeps me from getting down about loss and separation. The mail man with his hairy stubby fingers lodges the monthly bills through the stained brass letter box, God wont he, they, **** off. The mirror in the wall surrounded by a cheap gold frame and the background no different, how ghastly I look, fifty-five and here I am, still a loafer. This carpet has been around and seen it all, from puking, ****ing and utter ambivalence to unwelcomed sand and more unwelcomed visitors and I remember her laughs of mockery when they would leave and we would order a curry and get drunk on holiday wine, the smell would linger on and now here I stand looking at stained ceilings and her smell lingers on. The kitchen, ah, the sanctuary and heart of any good home and this fact is true. We sat naked on cold black tiles, naked without clothes but more importantly naked without selfishness as we cried each other’s tears upon us and mourned a child that never was. The kitchen sink, large, white, old fashioned and stolen from a garden in East wall in 1994, one man’s rubbish is another mans…. Its cracked but it has never leaked, stubbornly held itself together while all hell broke loose, our marriage summed up. The cheap tacky Spanish clock from our first holiday hangs on the wall and still telling us the time, we went as potatoes and came back as tomatoes and the gentleness as we moisturized each other’s bodies, the beautiful entanglement of souls washing around each other and we laid still, holding hands, laughing at our own stupidity or happy ignorance. The back door, mostly abused, kicked, scratched, broken and fixed, leading to the garden and summer was in bloom and the laughter, the smell of BBQ’s that went right and went wrong and the laughter and screams of the kids as I chased them with cold water in 7-UP bottles with hole burrowed through the lid and they ran, they ran screaming and laughing and she in a white t-shirt got done and that led to child number three. The pictures on the wall leading up the stairs tell a different story. Stoic looking children in stupid outfits for school things tell a different story. They are not really smiling in them and everything is posed and nothing like we taught them to be, they are fun, carefree and creative and not or should not be told to sit easy and smile, we didn’t teach them that. The toilet at the top, once separated but now a union, god the stories I could tell, awful and beautiful, she hit me with a hammer in there and I yelled like a wounded dog who has just had his balls snipped and his bone taken away, the agony and the ecstasy when she took my thumb in her mouth and made me feel better. I still taste her sometimes when I am brushing my teeth and staring out the window from the bathroom to the back garden and I still make her a cup of tea occasionally, but not too much as to question my sanity more out of respect for her devotion to the stuff. The bedroom, our wigwam, our stuff, the little cheap art and crafts with a story we would buy when she dragged me around second hand shops when we was broke and unemployed teenagers, the small enclaved sign on the wall that read ‘ oi, big nose, what ya looking at’ a homage to me she would snigger, she was absurd that way. The bed, same frame but different mattresses, she would nudge me and I would nudge her and then we would. The built-in wardrobes and when they were finished and how she looked like she had won the lottery. The dusty books on her side, half read with folded edges still in place, she hated romance and instead wanted scars to be the corner rock of our marriage and they were, in all their gory beauty. The wooden box under the bed, it holds our love letters within it. ‘Dear Asshole, you have not told me you loved me lately, what can you do?” ‘Dearest beast, I did, when you were freaking out over not having money for the mortgage and I said it will be ok and I love you even if you’re a homeless crack addict’ Dear Asshole, that is true, I forgot, yours truly, crack addict bitch’
Our photographs concealed in cheap album folders and there we are awkwardly smiling at numerous functions and weddings. Dancing on our wedding night, just the two of us and that song we hated, playing so loudly and you whispered in my ear ‘what the **** do we do now?’ and I laughed and said, ‘do not die before me’ it’s the only time you have ever let me down. The funeral, long and drawn out and all I wanted to do was go home to you, they spoke like they knew you, but, how could they? When I was just finding out new things about you, it’s so stupid. Your sexy draw, the sexy underwear you never wore because being naked was always sexier, that time you wanted to spice things up and went to a grooming place and how you scratched yourself for weeks unawares while watching TV and how I laughed. Never again you promised. That chair positioned by our widow and from where you watched the sky at night and sometimes you cried, silently, alone and I sometimes watched and I never asked why, never offered comfort and never interrupted because I knew you just needed it. I cried too. Down the stairs and the banisters which you would slide down when drunk and that one time you fell on your arse and sprained your wrist and of course you laughed hysterically. The living room, all those things on the wall, memories, achievements, clutter as you liked to say, the past, the past, leave it alone and see, me, here, now, you would say, I never knew what you meant and still don’t, batty old fool. That clock your parents gave us and how it ticked, drove us mad it did and we took the battery out and it now says 11.06 and it’s been like that for thirty-five years. You walked into this room twenty-five years ago and said, ‘this is it’ and we made an offer and it was accepted and we over achieved and it brought struggle, rows, worry, stress and everything else but we built it into a home, more than a home, it was our sanctuary away from the madness, a place we could just be, how delightful the image we created, a sun driven field full of beautiful wild flowers right in our living room. The weeds could always be plucked. Your stack of magazines bought each year at the airport as we begun to be able to live a little, mind you, you never read them, some people kept post cards but dates were always more important to you. The table and six chairs that you went on a crusade with, sanding down, varnishing and staining, you bought permanent markers and we all received one and we would write something honest on the table every week and when it was full you would sand, varnish and stain and so we would begin again, that table has the tales of our lives within it, it has saved lives and given life in the form of finding out we would be grandparents and your shock disgust at that but in reality your burning happiness sprawled upon it. Our window sill, just one picture on it, Rosa Parks. Not pretentious or for any other reason but that to remind our family that one person can change destiny with a simple act of defiance and how that act can inspire the hidden kindness in humanity. A bit pretentious I would say. But it stayed and like everything successful in life, compromise is the key, pretentious she would add. The once white blank wall where she would do funny shadow movements in times of strife and it worked. The deeds to this house in a frame she made from the oak tree in our garden and underneath read ‘the **** can go **** off now’ we paid our dues, in full and before time. The knock on the door. Milly’s frame seen through our stained glass, she is here, she has brought the paint and the wallpaper.

The end.

km85264

"we went as potatoes and came back as tomatoes"
Pure poetry!