The contact lens slid off Effie’s fingertip and disappeared. “Oh, not today, today of all days!” She let out a grunt at the farce of life.
It was always hit-or-miss if the lens would land on target, especially with a trembly hand. But she’d discovered that if she knelt she could steady her forearm against the table edge. It amused her, every time, the picture of herself “at prayer”. It lifted the scene out of the pathetic and into the enlivening absurd. Pity there was no one to share the joke with. No one now.
She’d been at prayer when a wisp of hair got in the way. She was a woman of wisps. A small part of her life had been used to whisk wisps away. They were fewer now, but wispier and even more wayward. They found their way into her tea or the polystyrene cup of soup delivered once a day. And now here was another, come to hinder and put her plan on pause. Destiny derailed – by a hair. The farce of it!
Angel-hair, spiderweb, filament – strands would stray, persuaded by the slightest waft of air. They trailed as if in a watery element. Silvio had called her a jellyfish: “La mia bella medusa” – my beautiful medusa. She’d read recently about Turritopsis dohrnii, a jellyfish that can live forever. Immortality – would one want that? Would she want that? Perhaps she might – if she had her work, and Silvio, no pills, and no pain. But not as a jellyfish, not on life support. Never.
In the eyes of strangers, she came across as unfocused. First impression: ditzy air-head. Even fellow academics surrendered to the aura of fine chaos around her head. Mind and hair were a mismatch. Well, the strands might be vague, but she knew herself to be clear-sighted. Clear-sighted, and also large of jaw, a tad hefty, too pink – “plain” had been the usual euphemism. But she was a person of little vanity; the mind was the thing, that and the real and present world. Still – let’s not pretend – vanity it was to wear contacts instead of glasses. The only compliment she’d ever got as people cast about for a favourable feature was, “You have lovely eyes”. Just her eyes. Intending to be kind, her father would say, “Looks don’t matter, Effie” – but she wished he’d lied and called her his “pretty dove” or said, “You look good in that dress”. A lie would have been lovely now and then.… But, there’d been Silvio, sweetest man on earth, Silvio who could finesse the sweetest lie. Oh yes.
She found the lens at last, by touch: slimy-sleek. Falling like a fish scale, it had slipped right back into its own little eye-sized plastic pond. She scooped it out and got it in. Left eye. Right eye. All done. The terrible twins. She glanced at the time.
She made a mug of tea to settle herself after the flurry – kettle – mug – teabag – horrid powdered milk – each step supervised by Commandant Pain. She coddled a spoon of powder across to the mug. The tip caught the rim and powder cascaded down her dress. She gaped at the mess. Can’t be helped. Press on.
She watched the tea get milky as she stirred. Powdered milk – Silvio’s Italian eyes would have rolled, imploring the heavens. “Madonna santa!”
Trailing faint white footprints, she carried the mug back to her bed and sat cradling it.
Powdered milk meant scalding tea. She took little sips with a small, quiet pause between each – little sips like tiny kisses: ciao ciao, kiss it better, buonanotte – baby kisses, un bacetto, one at a time – ti amo, arrivederci, grazie di tutto… A ceremony of kisses.
During the week, she’d shelved books and tackled the medicine drawer – bottles, blister packs, package inserts in Big Pharma’s nasty teeny font. Not much to tidy in a one-room flat. Only one room, but it was hers. She still had independence; she still had autonomy. When she moved in, it had been alarming to part with her belongings, but she’d found she didn’t disappear. She plucked a dry leaf from the plant on her bedside table, turned the pot towards the light, and tipped in the water from her tumbler. Pacing herself, she went and rinsed the glass, filled it, then filled another. She made her shaky way back and set the glasses side by side. Smoothing the bed cover, she tried to get a handle on the pain. It would be worse in a week, or tomorrow – it wasn’t as predictable as Meals on Wheels. There were biscuit crumbs on the mat – she could feel them with her toes. Have to pass on that – low on coupons.
The dull drone from the city was company of a kind, a shapeless hum punctuated by car alarms, hooters, sirens, skidding tyres – the bird calls of the street. And she listened for birds themselves, perched on the sill or out of sight on a ledge. They comforted her with little doses of distraction, joy even, pulling her into the present: life now. A string of four notes or the dip and bob of a tail … It was absurd how such moments gave hope.
The view was a rectangle of sky. But if she stood near the sill and looked down, she could see concrete rooftops, lift-shaft housings, cables, gutters, ducts. She made a point each day of getting up to look out at a certain time when the low, late, yellow-orange sun, raking across it all, crisped wires, posts and planes, and made them sing against blue shadow. Even ugly things had their time of beauty.
She had a pee, rehung her towel, and felt she was of no use to anyone. A wave of weariness came and went. Catching her face in the mirror, she paused… the strangeness of the thing, the fact of it, the falseness of the image, its truth. A plain face, but one of a kind. Hers. Her?
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red…
Coral lips would have been nice – and all the rest. Happily, the face was not as comprehensively detailed as the one that the monstrous magnifying mirror flung back at her when she put her lenses in. That was going eye to eye with a Cyclops.
Coral lips… Ah, well, regrets were part of life. Hettie, yes, that was a regret, Hettie, three floors down in Cultural History, Hettie with her coffee mug and crosswords – “Six across: ‘accountant with a harelip’ “ – presenting her with a pumpkin, home-grown; Hettie on her Honda, her laugh like a car starting up; formidable, funny, delicate, loyal – Hettie, who had loved her too deeply. And she had shied away from it, she who looked at things straight. She had hung back because she’d felt ugly and unlovable and only half-believed it, and never let the love in, not really. She never acknowledged it: that was the crime. That was the regret. Years, those years of love. And then it stopped. Hettie stopped, without argument, explanation or accusation. It was like a yellow flower that had dulled overnight and turned its face away. There had been occasions, moments, chances, when she could have spoken, named the thing, its beauty, its impossibility.
She had tried to make amends.
“Hettie?”
A silence confirmed that a single word, the vibration of a voice, was all it took to connect them across time. It was like a book falling open at the page where you’d left it.
“I’m phoning to say thank you.”
“For what?”
“For loving me.”
A new silence, the size of a sky, extended itself. She listened to Hettie’s breathing – eloquent, close, unsettled – and waited, a shamed penitent.
“Thank you. I appreciate that. It’s something.”
“I should have–”
“Shhh…”
They gave it over to silence, in deep communion, then said goodbye.
Whenever Hettie had looked at Silvio, her volatile face recast itself into glacial repose. He referred to her as The Clam. He also called her The Hiker, Cat Person, and Hecate. But he was always kind to her. That was Silvio. A buzzer bleeped: her 10 a.m. meds – she ignored it. It’s a form of love, kindness, isn’t it.
The couple next door were trading insults. It made her sad to hear their voices through the wall. Vera and Donoghue. She had heard the names shouted and screamed. They used a name as a club, to bludgeon and bruise, provoke and subdue. There was no respect, no honouring of a name. Still, it must be hard living on top of each other in one room. Neither Vera nor Donoghue greeted her if they saw her putting out the rubbish. To them she was a blur. It was as if they didn’t know her name. She gave her hair a perfunctory, pointless comb-through. The scrap was more strident than usual and she closed the bathroom door as she left.
It was eleven already. She’d factored in delays, but she’d got lost in the past and now time was short. The last thing she wanted was Meals on Wheels barging in. Madonna santa! Good thing there was no chance of Vera popping in for a cosy chat or to borrow a cup of powdered milk. She managed a spirited chortle-cough. Without bending down, she wedged her feet into her loafers.
She sat on the edge of the bed with everything in full view and focus. Her heart was beating – of course it would – but essentially she felt a serene conviction. She’d come to her decision over time. It was not impulsive. Pulling open the drawer of the bedside table, she retrieved the three envelopes she’d taped to the underside. One envelope was thin, addressed with a name. The other two bulged with tablets. She set them in a row next to the two glasses of water.
She picked up the photograph by her bed – another face, a face behind glass, the image overfamiliar and fixed, one moment in time tasked with conveying an entirety. Yet he was there, and her fingers touched his cheek. Softly, in a clear voice, as she – as Silvio – had done many a time, she recited Sonnet 130.
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. ... I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
The old words. One last time.
She placed the photo back in its usual place. Without haste, she spread a towel on her lap, tore open an envelope, and gathered a fistful of tablets. A thud, close by, broke through and she jumped. Tablets scattered. Her eyes darted to the window. On the sill lay a small bird, its body at a tilt, one leg stuck out, one wing fanned. A gleaming eye. She gasped. For several seconds she could think of nothing but the little creature: it might be in pain, alive; it could be helped. How could she carry on with that happening. The farce of life! She rose and, stepping on tablets, made her way to the sill. She brought her face to the glass. The poor thing – how could she reach it?. Distress rose. A pounding on the door and Vera yelling, “Effie! Effie! I need your help!”
Michael Pettit is an artist from Cape Town – a painter – with works in the SA National Gallery and other major public collections. He also writes. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his stories and poems have been published in The Barcelona Review, Meniscus, Thin Skin, and other journals. They have been shortlisted, placed, or won competitions including those of Wells, Hastings, Parracombe, MTP, WestWord, Bournemouth, Hammond House (Editor’s International Choice award), and the 2025 Plaza Short Story Prize judged by Booker Prize winner, Damon Galgut.