Losing It

The electric kettle hissed and sputtered like an impatient steam train as it worked itself up to a crescendo. It always did that when it needed de-scaling. I made a mental note to buy some limescale remover from the DIY superstore and wondered how long it would be before the pipes to the bathroom were completely blocked. Living near the South Downs was great for country walks but it took half an hour to fill the bath.

When the kettle clicked off, I poured boiling water over my teabag and stirred it absently, distracted by the downpour outside. Raindrops tracked down the kitchen window, deviating to join their colleagues and form larger runnels. I leaned closer to the glass, fascinated by the patterns and remembering high school physics classes about surface tension and meniscuses, or was it menisci? Strange how the older I get the more I remember about my schooldays. I even remember the chemical formula for limescale: CaCO3. 

“What are you doing?” Faye asked, startling me. I hadn't heard her come into the kitchen.

“Oh, nothing. Just watching the rain on the window and thinking about applying for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. I was making a cup of tea ... Damn!”

My tea had the consistency of oxtail soup. I'd forgotten to take the teabag out. Faye poured half into another mug and topped them both up with hot water from the kettle.

“There you are ... perfect,” she said. “I was going to do some washing today but just look at that weather.”

“We only did the washing yesterday, sweetheart, did you forget?” I saw the uncertainty in her eyes.

“Did we? I thought we did it on Monday. Was it Monday yesterday? What day is it today?”

The panic in her voice nearly broke my heart. “It’s Tuesday, the 18th of July ... 2023,” I said after checking the newspaper lying on the countertop.

“Is it really only Tuesday? Ever since you retired the days seem to run together. I lose track of time. We don't seem to have any routine anymore.”

“We don't need a routine. We can do whatever we want, when we want. Who needs a routine?”

“I know but we used to be so organized. Now everything seems so ... muddled.”

“The whole world is in a muddle. Why should we be the odd ones out?”

A clatter and a thud on the hall carpet announced the arrival of the morning post and I went to collect it. When I returned, Faye was sitting at the kitchen table sipping her tea.

“Anything for me?”

“It wasn’t the post, it was the paperboy. That other one must be yesterday's. It's Wednesday today. You're not the only one losing track of time!” I laughed and slapped the morning paper on the table.

Faye stayed silent and thoughtful so I divided the newspaper and pushed the center pages across to her. We both read quietly until Faye put her pages down with a sigh.

“All bad news as usual ... I know, let's look for a holiday. We could go on another cruise. Get away from this awful weather. That cruise we went on last year was so lovely! We could book one on the internet today.”

I took her hand gently. “Sweetheart, we only came back from the cruise last month, don't you remember?”

“Last month? It seems so long ago!”

It pained me to see the look of blank confusion in her eyes. “Why don't we look at the photos? That might jog your memory.”

“Yes, I'd like that.”

I led her into the sitting room, picked up the iPad, and we sat together on the sofa. I tapped the Photos icon and found our newest holiday folder, and then my heart sank when I read the title I’d given it: Holiday June 2022 - Greek Islands Cruise.

As I stared at the date, unable to accept the truth, I felt Faye's hand close over mine.

“Don’t worry, darling,” she whispered. “Whatever happens we’ll always have each other. That’s one thing we’ll never lose.”

~ ~ ~

Matt MacBride is an aspiring British writer and podcast content creator enjoying retirement on Spain’s beautiful Costa Blanca. He writes short stories, novellas, and screenplays in a variety of genres and has been published online and in print in the UK. A selection of his stories can be found on The Coffee Break Podcast

Last Night in Halifax

We used to drive aimlessly, without any destination. We’d pass bridges and ocean basins, houses that looked expensive and houses that looked prefabricated, mansions and subdivisions. There were always more trees than I’d ever seen in Ontario, white cedars and jack pines that look like they’re touching the clouds, little ponds surrounded by red oaks and black walnuts. Sometimes in my mind, I’d talk to my grandfather like he was still alive, and I could just ask him. He knew the Latin names of every tree and plant and flower that crossed our path. In my mind, he’d examine each one with his big hands, tell me if they looked healthy, what they’d need to keep growing optimally.

We’d breathe better when we were far from the city. When we saw open land for miles, green field after green field, rolls of hay like a movie about rural life.

One time we drove up to a marshy body of water and she pulled a raft of out of her trunk that she called a rubber dinghy. I was scared to get in it with her, but we didn’t sink. I took off my shoes, and she put on black rubber boots, and we floated, safe as twin babies in a womb.

Celi always made me feel safe, no matter what we did. She had a soft, reassuring voice, and when she talked to her family and friends from rural Newfoundland she got extra animated. I didn’t always get everything she said, between all the yes b’ys and hey b’ys, but I think I always understood the essence.

We used to call them road trips, when Celi did all of the driving and I was the world’s most eager passenger. We’d stop for either Timmy’s or Wendy’s, the car would smell like bagels and sweet strawberry cream cheese or cheeseburgers and fries. I grew up Orthodox, and I’d been angry and rebelling against God for years, but somehow it was in Celi’s car that I had my first cheeseburger, the thin patty merging with the hot slice of processed cheese, and extra ketchup I’d piled on, somehow tasting like the greatest thing I’d ever had. I remembered the exact biblical lines in Hebrew I’d learned as a kid, about not cooking a kid goat in its mother’s milk, which is why the rabbi’s all inferred that mixing meat and dairy was wrong. I kept waiting for a thunderbolt to take me out, as if death was all I could be sure about in this life, but it never came. Celi and I ate lobster in our sushi, we drank a bowl of mussel soup at a Belgian restaurant that smelled like rotting fish, drank red and white wines and pint after pint of beer and nothing changed.

Nothing changed the fact that my marriage was over. It was like coming out of a trance I didn’t know I was in. I didn’t love him anymore. Maybe I never did.

I thought about calling my ex, who lived in another country. I always had a sixth sense about him, even when we weren’t in touch, and I knew he was single. I tried to remind myself why things didn’t work out in the first place. I felt so untethered. It was the first time in years that I was going to be on my own.

When I finally moved out, I spent my last night in Halifax at Celi’s. I couldn’t stay longer because of her roommate. We tossed and turned in the same bed, surrounded by her cats and her clothes and her comforter, and I cried because what was most irreplaceable in my life was her, and words failed me when I tried to tell her.

!~ ~ ~

Danila Botha is the author of three short story collections, Got No Secrets; For All the Men (and Some of the Women I’ve Known), finalist for the Trillium Book Award, The Vine Awards and the ReLit Award; her collection, Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness, is due in March 2024 from Guernica Editions. Her award-winning novel, Too Much on the Inside, was recently optioned for film, and her new novel, A Place for People Like Us, will be published by Guernica in 2025. She is on faculty at Humber School for Writers and teaches Creative Writing at University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She just completed writing and illustrating her first graphic novel, Call Me Vidal.

So Sings the Washing Machine

Toss in a detergent pod. Hear it thump as it lands. Empty the bag of dirty, coffee-stained, mud-soiled laundry into the washer. Buttons plink, as they hit the sides. Close the metal lid; it clangs, echoes. Select the temperature, “cold,” and the cycle, “normal” (whatever that means). Press start.

Hear the hiss of water reverberate as the barrel inside begins to fill. This machine is louder than the one that broke at the start of the pandemic. This one shimmies, shuddering with joy, clattering with determination. Be grateful to have it. Be grateful you don’t have to haul your dirty laundry to a dank basement, travel to a crowded laundromat, wash everything by hand. Know this is a luxury, to be safe at home as the machine cheerfully soaks, sudses, and rinses your towels, your sheets, your pajamas.

Listen to the rumble and murmur of the washer, as it churns and spins. Let it be a comfort, a hymn, a celebration of grace. Know the cacophonous machine is singing as it cleanses your clothes: “You are lucky. You are blessed. You are grateful. You are lucky. You are blessed.  You are grateful.”

~ ~ ~

Wendy K. Mages, a Mercy University Professor, is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an award-winning poet and author. She earned her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her master’s in Theatre at Northwestern University. As a complement to her research on the effect of the arts on learning and development, she performs at storytelling events and festivals in the US and abroad. To learn more about Wendy, visit her website.