Creative Writing - Sample Stories

Stick with what you know

I knew it was Mum that Saturday morning before I even picked up the phone. I put down the spliff, put the receiver to my ear, and I knew exactly what she was going to say before she said it.

Then she said it. She was crying and I heard myself saying, in a voice that didn't sound like mine, It's okay, Mum. Then our conversation was over, we made arrangements to get together later in the morning, and I hung the phone back up on the kitchen wall. I went to the back porch, sat down on my deckchair and looked at the clouds shitting around above the bare plum tree. I sat there, the spliff useless in my hands, and I thought about Mum. Sort of. I actually thought more about all the things she'd done for my father.

For weeks she'd been turning up at the hospital, sitting in the chair next to his bed, doing her duty. She reckoned it wasn't just about ‘doing the right thing'. But every time she was in that hospital room she had a half smile on her face and her voice was flat. Like it was last Wednesday.

‘Syd do you want anything?'

My father's name was Cedric, but everyone called him Syd. He looked at her, his eyelids half closed, his grey hair sweaty and sticking to his wrinkly forehead.

‘Nah, nah, I'm right Lil . . . I'll be right.'

Syd looked like shit that was still sliding down the side wall of a dunny bowl. He wriggled a bit further down in his bedclothes and I wondered how much longer I'd bother sitting there. It was my lunch hour; they'd be looking for me at the nursery before long, thinking I was hiding down in the rubber plant row, stacking an extra 10 minutes onto my lunch break.

‘Gunna head off now Syd,' I said. I never called him Dad.

Syd's eyes went all bright like I'd turned into something that shone and sparkled. And sure enough I had.

‘No worries son. You're a gem for comin in.'

I stood up and stuck my hands into my overall pockets, fiddled with my keys and chewie packet, but didn't pull anything out. I was about to say goodbye to the back of Mum's head when Syd piped up again.

‘Nath, did ya hear Gazza's comin in?'

I looked at his tired head. His lips seemed to be moving slower than the words that were coming out of them.

‘No Syd, I didn't . . .'

That was because it was next to bloody impossible. It was the glory days of Gary Ablett senior and he'd have been up to his ears in training for the second semi-final against West Coast. With likely three finals to come, he wouldn't be visiting the ex-president of his home club anytime soon. Even if that prez was bailed up in hossy with cancer eating away whatever backbone he had.

‘Yep, Spider Thompson gave me a tingle and said Gazza'd be in later in the week, maybe early next . . . Best player ever to pull the boots on, don't you worry . . .'

Fucken Gary Ablett. The way Syd carried on you'd think he was the saviour of mankind. And with that religion crap Ablett went on with, thanking Jesus left, right and centre, maybe the old man really believed it. But if you had to have that God bothering stuff, give me Mum sitting there in the hospital room turning rosary beads over in her fingers without any bastard noticing. Not even Syd, no doubt.

‘Yeah, that'll be great Syd.' I looked at Mum. She was up and fiddling around in Syd's bedside drawers.

‘Seeya Mum, thanks for comin in,' I said to her.

The first few times I'd said it, Mum had taken the bait and given me a spiel about Syd being her ex-husband and of course she was going to come in, what else was she going to do and all that bullshit. Later she got jack of me saying it and ignored me. Then she changed tack again.

‘No worries Nath,' she said and smiled at me.

I watched her arrange the get well cards on Syd's dresser that were in perfectly good order before.

(This is an excerpt from a story that appears in Meanjin, June 2009)