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Sport 34: Winter 2006

Stale bread

Stale bread

Bea's centre wasn't holding. Her legs were swollen and she coughed like a lawn mower choking. Federico found a thick lump of phlegm in the kitchen sink, stuck to the bone handle of a butter knife. His stomach contracted and heaved. He turned on the hot tap and washed the glob down the plughole. The doctor visited and said it was better if she kept her legs elevated. He looked at Sylvia when he talked. Federico found a few short planks behind the woodwork room at school and built Bea a block to rest her legs on in bed. He nailed a pillow to it. Sylvia said she didn't know he could be so useful.

At dinner Bea's sausages lie on her plate, cut up and pink in the middle. Federico talks about the camping trip his class is planning. He tells them about how breakfast can stop hypothermia and how to build a tent from trees and leaves and can they buy some powdered mashed potato to try? Bea holds her hand up to his chatter like she is stopping traffic and looks at Mr Flood.

Remember Victor's funeral, Sarsfield?

Mr Flood places his hand over Bea's. Yes.

Bea shakes her hand free and touches her cheek. Those dreadful colours they used on his face. They must've worked off his Cabaret photo. Her eyes go out of focus. She stands up and leaves the table. Sylvia and Sarsfield chew slowly and stare at their plates.

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Federico finds her standing in the living room, hands lightly rubbing the backs of the new chairs. She doesn't look at him till he stands beside her and then she says, I'm like stale bread. Her eyes are dull sea sponge, watery in the corners. I have no weather left. He opens his mouth, but no voice comes out. She turns and brushes her fingers across his temple.

Mr Flood and Sylvia are whispering in the kitchen. Static floods his ears, the sound that comes before tears. He thinks about the moment of dying. Robert told him about mushroom clouds and bones crumbling in the street but Federico has imagined his own ending to the world. It's a scene by a man-made lake where all the families are walking their dogs and children, smiling, with kites in a blue sky. Then the oxygen starts to rise out of the air, so the short people fall first, their faces turn purple from shock and no air to breathe. They crumple to the ground and the babies freeze in the pushchairs and the dogs on their leads. Then the tall people will know what's coming. They will realise, as if they had known all along, that life will drop where it stands.

Later, he presses his ear against her bedroom door, hears Bea cough then gasp for breath as if deep roots were being wrenched from inside her.