Minimalist Gossip Magazine Cover (49).pdf (13) - Flipbook - Page 57
ORNAMENT
by Andrew McDonnell
You often think about your grandmother, even though you never really felt any love for
her. She lived her last twenty years as a castaway on an island of her own making, you
would explain to people. She would never leave the house, apart from the odd
excursion outside to sit beneath the apple tree during summer, where she would sleep
some more, then rush in to watch television. There she would collect all her information
and pass damning verdicts on real and imaginary characters. You remember that when
she fell ill with throat cancer, she slowly moved through the house until finally she went
upstairs for the last time and the black and white television your dad had won through
work became yours.
You saw her after she died. Your dad said it was important to go in and say goodbye, as
she was your gran after all. You went into the bedroom where she was laid out waiting
for the undertakers to come. It felt eerie being in the room with a dead body. When you
walk into the room where there’s others, you feel those people there, their energy, but
that day you remember feeling like you were staring at a puppet, her face distorted and
unrecognisable from cancer. Outside you could hear the sound of the next-door kids
playing. The hum from the bees in the honeysuckle. The net curtains hanging still. On
her chest of drawers, a cheap porcelain ballerina sat looking towards the open window.
You had bought her this as a present from a flea market. Now you wished you had never
given it to her, as you felt she didn’t deserve such thought. Later you asked your father
what he did with it, and he thinks he took it to the skip. You imagine it out there,
shattered amongst plates and lamps. Funny, you shrug, how we save things then cast
them away.
A few weeks later you go to stay with friends in Essex for the August bank holiday,
borrowing your dad’s car. They had moved up there as your friend had a new job as a
security guard at Stansted. They seem happy here, and you sit in the garden as planes
bank and turn for landing, her partner at the barbecue, your friend asking you about
home. That night in the little spare room, you lie awake listening to the sound of the
planes, to the sound of giggling next door, and wish you could also live here. You
wonder when your own life will begin.
You get away a little later than planned on the bank holiday Monday and hit the rush
hour circuiting the London Orbital. Somewhere near the A12, the traffic grinds to a halt
completely, and your heart begins to sink as you realise that you could be stuck here a
very long time. You start to look at the other cars around you. To your left is a little
Peugeot with two elderly men inside. One is holding a Magic Tree air freshener to his
nose as if it was an expensive wine. His eyes are closed, his head gently wobbling as if
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