Dead Straight Meanders

What was an extra half centimetre if it meant it would be straight. Still smarting from the phone call she began to cut, in the bathroom now; the paucity of hairs falling away each snip bordered on the absurd, like wood-shaves from a precious carving. The phone was switched off at the outlet. Her lashes kissed the mirror and every blood vessel in her eyes was there, arresting, too many, her breath a visible murk rubbed off and put on and rubbed. Evenness draws less attention but not fake evenness, anything better than accidental crookedness. What was an extra half centimetre. The perfume on her neck seemed to refract off the glass into her nostrils and when ten minutes had passed and her neck was clammy with concentration it was a nauseating bouquet. Her head ached from the perfume and from keeping her eyebrows raised up. No sooner had she contracted those muscles to their maximum than another tiny contraction was forced out, the way as a girl she would breathe in as much as she could for diving contests in nanna’s pool but manage some extra gulps right before going down.

Once she had done nearly two laps and heard nanna spluttering on the surface after less than half that. To the end and a final big kick off in the other direction and still nanna spluttered. The farmhouse had very high gables made of orangey wood with circle windows in them, white-rimmed, and drapes like wedding dress veils. There were a lot of cobwebs on the gables and on the big red trusses because nanna couldn’t get up to them with her broom. On rainy days she would look out the windows downstairs with those drapes pressed right up to her eyes; the rain was gone, except for pitter-patters on the iron roof. Mould between the shower tiles and in the back corners of the floor, and in the bath drain. Hairs piling silently on the floor. Work starting but this nowhere near finished. So close the blood vessels were worms and the irises veined, more yellow than blue, she realised the farm was always destined to end up with her.

In the time it took for the headlights to die away completely in the night, nanna had got out and was halfway up their front path. Even then they seemed still to be giving off some light, the faintest of faint glows. Their letterbox, which had stood askew for months, obstructed the front gate like a rakish stalker. Uncollected junk mail made sodden by the rain left a slippery trail of neglect all the way up the path. The weak knock, and the weak hug, the kisses.