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Sport 31: Spring 2003
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She is waiting by the carousel, counting. A lone canvas bag is going slowly round the track beside her while she stands, the black suitcase at her feet, leather bag over her shoulder. And the cardboard box in her arms. She shifts the weight of the box around from one arm to the other but she never puts it down. From where she is standing she can't see a clock so she counts. The unclaimed bag is on its eleventh solo journey by the time he turns up.
Fuckin’ traffic, he says. She tries to kiss him but the box is in the way. He looks at the box and she explains. Bottled plums.
He rolls his eyes. Christ, he says, your mother … He picks up the suitcase and heads to the exit.
As she runs to catch up, out of the air-cooled interior to the outside heat, she adjusts the box, putting a hand underneath to make sure the bottom doesn't fall out. She pictures the jars falling and exploding on the footpath, imagines glass and blood and flesh all over the tarmac.
Your mother, he says. Christ.
Your mother, she thinks, believes fruit grows in tins.
She kills me, your mother, her boyfriend says as he unlocks the car. Hasn't she ever heard of Watties?
The car is full of band equipment. Guitar cases. Amps and assorted cables lie in the back seat but there is room, just, to squeeze the suitcase behind the passenger seat. She puts the shoulder bag at her feet. The box of plums sits on her lap.
What about the money? he says.
He has parked the car in the sun. The vinyl of the seats burns her legs and when she closes the door, she can't breathe. She winds the window halfway down but the air outside is warm and sticky and blows her hair in her eyes.
Well? he says and blasts the horn at a car pulling out in front of him. Every time he brakes suddenly like that, the box lurches into her stomach.
She said she'd lend it to us and we don't have to pay it back. But, she says, but …
A gift? Cool, he says. He slows down and stops at the corner, indicates page 64 left, waves a girl across the road in front of him.
No, she thinks. No, a loan we don't have to pay back is not a gift. It's quite a different transaction altogether.
But it is too hot to explain so she unwinds the window down as far as it goes, rests her head against the edge and looks at the people they're driving past. A couple kissing. A mother pushing a stroller. Two kids fighting. There is always a cost, she thinks.
Hey, he says. He reaches out and squeezes the bit of her knee sticking out from under the box.
Hey, he says when she turns to him. We're rich. He smiles at her and blows a kiss.
The heat has given her a headache, and her stomach hurts. But a cool breeze is flowing into the car and she can breathe again.
Yeah, she says. We're rich.