Crustaceans by Andrew Cowan

kitchen when I came in from school, blue-breasted, white-faced, its wings rippled grey. It sat as if clipped to its perch, a blue dot on each cheek, a red metal ring on its ankle. We stood and admired it. The cage, Zoë told me, had belonged to her grandmother. My father had made the stand that afternoon. He placed an arm round my shoulder, the other round Zoë’s, and wondered aloud what we should call it. Mickey, I said, which was my grandfather’s name, what his friends called him. Mickey, he confirmed. Then, constricting his voice, he trilled to the bird, Mickey Michael! Mickey Michael! Mickey Michael! The budgie didn’t move and he started to laugh. Zoë bit her fingernail. She didn’t look happy. There had been other gifts – small wooden toys, a kite with long trailing ribbons, and a multicoloured hat that she’d knitted herself – but this, I told her, was my favourite. Good, she said, nodding; I’m glad. Then she turned and went from the room.
    A few nights after that I woke to the sound of her crying. I thought for a moment I was hearing my mother, and disorientated, I climbed from the wrong side of my bed. I couldn’t find my way to the door and stood still in the darkness. I listened. I’m not hap -py! Zoë yelled; I’ve already told you! Her footsteps crossed the landing below me, the bathroom door slammed and she fastened the latch. A little while later my father rattled the handle, whispered her name. He knocked, and called louder, and then he shouted, You are not! and forced the door open, I suppose with his shoulder. I got back into bed and burrowed under my blankets. I covered my head with a pillow.
    The next morning there were splinters in the door-frame; the bolt-bracket and screws still lay on the floor. I picked them up to give to my father. The only sounds at breakfast came from the budgie, pecking at the bars of its cage, constantly chirping. Zoë collected her bag and said she’d better be going. My father followed her out to the hall; and then Zoë hurried back in to hug me. But none of this was unusual – Zoë, I knew, had her own place to go to – and weeks would pass before I realised she wouldn’t be coming again. A pair of her earrings remained in the kitchen. When finally I showed them to my father he nodded. Keep them in your bedroom, he said, and went out to his studio. I hung them in the cage for the budgie to play with.

TEN
    I woke from troubling dreams to Ruth’s soft tread on the boards, the creak of the wardrobe, her coat-hangers jangling, and rolled on to my belly, as though to embrace her. I raised one knee and stretched out an arm. I breathed her scent in the pillows and felt the warmth she had left there. She laid some clothes on the bed. Her underwear drawer slid open, clunked shut. She parted the curtains. It was a weekday morning, some time after seven, and the sun glared back from the clockface. It shone too from her jewellery, clustered next to the clock, her tangle of earrings and bracelets and chains. Heavy-limbed and lethargic, I tried to remember which day this was, and what chores lay ahead, and as I drifted again into sleep I heard you talking in the room next to ours, your nonsense. I heard the lift in Ruth’s voice as she went through to greet you. The first half-hour of your day was always spent in her company, before she went off to work. The rest, until six, would be mine.
    You were eighteen months old then, a handful, and constantly mobile, and as I think of you now it seems you ran everywhere, planting your feet as if breaking a fall, tilting, lurching ahead, forever trying to escape me. It seems I spent my days chasing you, and I remember the tantrums – your shattering screams – whenever I caught you. I remember the nights on end when we woke to your wailing, and the days of fretful complaining, your fevers and colds. Often, I know, I was bored, and yet rarely for a moment