yyy

FROM HER bedroom, she could hear the new kitchen clock ticking as she stared defiantly at the box for a minute or two. You cannot hurt me now. I’m not the same person.

She swivelled it around with her foot. ‘DO NOT OPEN’ was written in thick black marker-pen on the side. Not the same person. Not afraid anymore. There was dust or sand, something grainy, on the cupboard floor beneath the ‘DO NOT OPEN’ box; hairs or spider webs clung to the bottom as she lifted it out. She carried it from the monsters’ cupboard and set it down on her old double bed.

Adrenaline somersaulted in her gut. Voices stirred. She flopped onto the desk chair and swivelled. Outside the window, leaves rustled. A truck rumbled, gearing down on the highway. Inside, the kitchen clock tick, tick, ticked.

She ran her hands over the ‘DO NOT OPEN’ box.

She slowly lifted one of the flaps just far enough so she could peek inside.

When Sidney was six or seven, Faye and Auntie Stella had decided they wanted to see the ocean and had driven four hours to Queenscliff for a weekend. They bought Sidney a jar of raspberry lollies from the old-fashioned sweet shop in the town. The lollies tasted a little sour and a little sweet, and a lot like cough medicine. Sidney had gobbled them all, one after the other, unable to control herself even when their edges had cut her tongue and the roof of her mouth. Over time, in her memory, those lollies became the best things she’d ever tasted. Years later, when she and Christos had visited Queenscliff, she’d found that sweet shop again, and bought a jar of those raspberry lollies. She’d shoved them eagerly into her mouth, but they hadn’t tasted the same.

<don’t open it don’t open it don’t open it>

She tore back the flaps on the ‘DO NOT OPEN’ box wildly, the way she’d unlidded the jar of raspberry lollies.

Inside was a man’s denim jacket and, on top of it, the Chanel address book, two white Cs interlocking on the black quilted-leather cover. Her pulse quickened as she turned to D. Donna Doherty, Dom’s Cafe. No Dean Cola. She’d made him up, a hallucination — like Jesus in the door. Her mouth was dry; she looked around for her water bottle, must have left it in the kitchen.

C. Kim Carmichael, Marie Caruso, Dean Cola (Coke). She laughed and swallowed tears, hiccupped, and wiped her eyes. He had existed!

She traced a fingertip over the phone number that started with a two, remembering that sometime during the nineties the digits five and eight had been added to local number prefixes. What if she dialled the number, starting with five-eight? In her mind she heard a phone in an empty place ringing, ringing, echoing.

Her hand went to her pocket. No phone. Again. Fuck. Christos would probably be on his way back now. She left the address book on the bed and hurried through the house looking for her phone.

It was in the kitchen. Tick, tick, tick. She’d have to dismantle that fucking clock. Six messages and as many missed calls from Christos. She was about to call him, but he beat her to it.

‘Sid! What’s going on? Why haven’t you been answering your phone? I …’

His voice was scratchy, garbled, dropping out. She stepped outside, where the reception was better.

‘… to drive back up there. Or get Mahersy to make a call-out.’

‘I just went for a walk, forgot to take my phone.’

‘Be careful walking around alone there — the river, snakes, spiders, and God knows what else.’

‘I’m a country girl, Chris, remember?’ As usual, he wasn’t listening.

‘You get onto the funeral place, and the Salvos?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And the real-estate agent?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Had your dinner? Sure you’re all right? You sound a bit funny.’

‘Phone reception’s bad here.’

‘Got the heater going?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Taken your tablets?’

‘Yes, Chris.’

‘Love you.’

She touched The Poem in her pocket. ‘Goodnight.’

Liberace cried, ‘Aah–aah! Hell–p!’

It was cold. Her breath was a ghost in the air. She pocketed her phone and carried in an armful of firewood.

Wind billowed the curtains. She closed all the windows, and got a fire going in the pot-belly stove.

The address book was still in her room — not a hallucination — on the bed next to the ‘DO NOT OPEN’ box.

She put on the man’s denim jacket and remembered a feeling she could neither hold nor give shape to, a full-body ache like when you have the flu or are in love. Was it her imagination, or did the jacket smell faintly of Fruit Tingles?

She carried the box out to the lounge room, where it was warmer. Placing the box on the floor, she sat on a chair and leaned forward to fossick through the loose-leaf paper and notebooks filled with forgotten poems and stories. In the middle of the nest of paper, she found what she was looking for. The yellow spiral-bound notebook. Attached to it, with a crunchy rubber band, was an old audio cassette labelled ‘1991’. She removed the cassette, placed it aside on an arm of the chair. On the cover of the notebook was a Supergirl ‘S’ sticker, a coffee-cup stain, and a red love heart hand-drawn around S.M. 4 D.C. In the ruled box, in backwards-slanting handwriting, reaching towards circles instead of dots on i’s:

Sidney Madsen

Private diary

1/1/89–23/11/89