How to Write Monday’s Shopping List
1. When the butcherbirds start whistling a hymn you don’t want to remember, it’s time to put the kettle on. The water pops and hisses against the Breville, and steam licks at the windowsill finding escape through tiny splits in the rotting wood. You really should get someone in to fix that.
Pull out the spiral notebook from underneath the sewing kit in the pantry and start The List. Call window guy, you write. It feels better to get it down on paper, like you’ve confirmed with the future that it’s going to get done. The butcherbirds warble the same five notes over and over. They probably feel better getting their words out too.
A scribble on the last page (titled with the date, 13/11/2022) reminds you that you’ve been all out of coffee for weeks.
Flick the kettle off. Jot down nestle gold.
2. The counsellor at the hospital said that sometimes you’ll feel far away. He said it’s important to practice ‘anchoring’, which is where you say things like who you are and what you’re feeling. It’s supposed to keep you present and grounded.
‘My name’s Estelle,’ you start. It’s a little bit awkward. The house is so quiet, still scattered with boxes full of move-in stuff. Try again.
‘My name’s Estelle, I’m in my kitchen drinking water instead of coffee, and I can’t find my other bloody moccasin.’ Your bare foot is lifted off the ground, because the tiles are cold.
‘And Tom’s not home right now to help me find it.’
The counsellor said it’s important to say his name.
3. The telephone on the wall rattles against the switch hook, and for a second your heart palpitates. The ringing and the sound of plastic-on-plastic itches the pit of your gut. Your stomach does a lot of the talking nowadays. It groans when you feed it, it groans when you don’t. It whispers, ‘you are home to me, you are home to me,’ but spews up anything that tries to stay inside of it.
The telephone wire dangles over the fruit bowl, taunting the speckled produce. Tom loved bananas. You never have. He stopped buying green ones after the fourth appointment, when things started looking bad.
‘There’ll be no one to eat them if… well, you know,’ he’d said, grinning as if everything was all right and you’d both be cuddled up watching the cricket by dinnertime.
Throw them out the window to decompose or rot or get eaten by flies, whatever old bananas do. Grab the wire for stability before picking up the phone.
‘Stell, you there love?’
Can you call her your mother-in-law?
‘Hi, Julie,’ you say instead.
‘How’ve you been sleeping?’
‘Oh, I’m still on the couch. Not really ready to go into the bedroom yet. Lots of boxes to sort through in there.’
The line goes quiet, and for a moment you think she’s hung up the phone. Your stomach sinks down to your knees.
But then she’s back, and her voice is steady.
‘Look love, I’ve got some fish soup and profiteroles here from last night. Mike can bring it over if you’d like?’
It’s a nice thought, only it’s shopping day, and the thought of seafood upsets your stomach.
‘Oh, thanks. But just keep it for yourselves.’
‘You sure? The warmth really will do you some good.’
‘Nah, thanks anyway.’
‘Tom loved my fish soup, you know.’
It sort of stings, the way she says his name. It isn’t soft, like the way it’s supposed to be when you do anchoring.
‘Yeah?’ It’s all you can manage.
‘Yeah, he did.’
Try to ignore the burning in your chest as the line goes quiet again.
‘You do realise we don’t have to do this for you, right? All of this-’
A voice in the background cuts her off, and there’s some muffled whispers. Plastic-on-plastic, maybe the handset being placed on the table. Can she hear the gurgles echoing from your insides? Daylight blinks through the blinds like morse code. You burp.
‘Look, I’m sorry love. I just–well, I guess I don’t have to explain to you what I’ve been going through.’
It’s too late. Bile starts to bubble from somewhere deep in your stomach.
‘We’re just tired. I’m bloody tired.’
The bubbles rise higher.
‘I keep thinking you’ll admit one of these days that you’re tired too. Or sad. Or happy, please, just something.’
Maybe it’s all in your head.
‘Stell? You th–’
Take a clean bite out of the receiver. Tear off chunks of the glossy cream plastic, bit by bit. It’s a little hard to chew at first, but the more you smush it between your teeth, the softer it becomes. You bite and swallow and bite and swallow until the bubbling subsides; until it’s just the curly wire dangling from the wall.
Assorted fruit goes in the notebook.
4. Start your ignition and turn on Google Maps. Next time, you’ll have enough practice to get there on your own. ETA is seven minutes. S e v e n m i n u t e s. The gearbox sounds sick.
Stall at a green light. The fifty-something-year-old woman in the green Nissan Patrol behind you honks long and slow. You want to drive her into the concrete divider, but it might be your mum.
The granola bar wrapper is exactly where he left it in the driver’s side door. Grip the wheel a little tighter. Recite your vows for the billionth time.
‘There is a point in time where home becomes less about a place, and more about a person. You don’t really realise it until anyone else’s “good morning” and “good night” feels unfamiliar. Tom, you are home to me.’
The car in front of you sports a yellow bumper sticker of a cartoon potato doing a cartwheel. I yam what I yam, it says. Let yourself smile a little bit at the stupidity of it.
5. When picking tomatoes, give each one a light squeeze to make sure it’s firm. Gently plop a few into the thin, green freezer bag.
The mist blowing out of the top of the fridges looks like your breath on those cold mornings as you’d drag weak feet up the stairs to the wards. Reach your hand toward the vapour. Feel the cool droplets on your skin.
‘Hey,’ someone says. The checkout boy is bent over a crate full of something orange, and the purple blotches under his eyes are stark beneath the white lights. His name tag says Bodhi.
‘D’you need any help today?’
‘Nah thanks,’ you say. Turn back to the mist and notice that it’s seeping further away from the fridge.
‘Why’s it spreading?’
Bodhi looks up with a bag of carrots in both hands. His shoulders are still hunched over when he stands, and you sort of feel sorry for him.
‘The mist,’ you repeat, ‘why’s it spreading?’
‘Oh. I think the fridge is just turned up too high. It’s just water though.’
It pricks your face like microscopic thorns, the temperature biting little sores into your flesh. Watch the vapour dissipate further, winding towards the aisles. Suddenly, fish soup and profiteroles don’t sound too bad.
‘Yeah, just water.’
His fingers were cold in the last days.
6. Gulp down the bitter burning in your chest and check the list in your hand. Spring rolls. You need to get spring rolls.
The water vapour has formed a thin eclipse over the fluorescent ceiling lights, and you are dizzy. Squeeze past a small elderly woman in the freezer aisle and (accidentally) bump into her trolley.
‘’Scuse you,’ she says, blinking with cloudy blue eyes.
‘Sorry. Oh, hang on. I think you’re standing in front of–’
‘Beg your pardon?’
‘I just—need to get behind you.’ Point to the spring rolls.
She waddles to the side. Open the door and let the cold fog take you in, predator and prey. For a second, a marimba chord echoes through the freezer.
‘Did you hear that?’ You say.
‘Beg your pardon?’
‘That ringing…’ On cue, the metallic noise starts up again. ‘D’you hear it?’
‘Oh, yes, yes.’
‘Really?’
‘All the time.’
‘But d’you hear it now?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘Tinnitus. I hit my head on the stairs a few months back. Since then, something’s always ringing.’
She laughs.
7. The tomato in your basket starts pulsing. Trickles of scarlet juice leak from the bag, and a little puddle stains the glossy tiles. The light around you goes dark.
A circle of scarlet on the white bedsheets, just a small little glob. You trace a string of bloody saliva back to his lips, and choose not to believe it. The friction from the bed rail stings your palms.
‘Oh Tom, oh love,’ she says, her face swollen and her hair tied back. There are tears spilling from her eyes. There are tears spilling from your eyes.
Then the light is back and you realize the ringing is coming from your stomach, the trill of plastic-on-plastic muted under thick layers of flesh.
8. Make it to the ground before the retching starts. Try not to shiver with the rhythmic buzzing. A long, thin string bean slides out of your throat. Let your body go limp on the tiles as the contents of your stomach empty onto the shop floor.
A head of broccoli.
A tub of laundry detergent.
A bottle of olive oil.
You’re still rattling. Prop your elbow under your chin and open your mouth wider. Pink, sweet froth gathers on your tongue. Guava juice. You gag hard and it spatters all over the tiles and halfway up the freezers. The sound of cracking—your jaw or the shells?—as a wet carton of eggs hits the floor. The paper list in your hand is soaked with pink sludge and bits of half-digested packaging. I’ll need to make a new one, you think.
Cough and splutter and then hurl up a chunk of glossy cream plastic. Sliced wires sizzle in the murky bile. The ringing is clearer now, and you know it’s almost out.
A whole banana splats onto the tiles. It’s brown and spotty and reminds you why you hate bananas. A second slides out, and a third, and then there’s a click in your throat.
‘Hey, Stella.’
The sound comes out of your mouth, but it’s not your voice.
‘It’s Tom, I’m coming home now.’
Sit up. The crackle of what must be the mangled answering machine makes his accent sound softer than what it was.
‘I just wanna know if you still want me to pick up the coffee and stuff–’
Please, you want to say. Please, Tom, just come home.
‘–I know you’re probably not gonna answer, but that’s fine. I’m sorry about everything.’
There’s nothing to do but let it play out, sitting there with your jaw wide open. He doesn’t want you to be upset. He’s going to clean the car like you asked, come help with the boxes. He hopes he’s given you enough space.
You burp, and a small jar of red jam smashes onto the tile.
‘I’ll just get it anyways, okay? See ya soon.’ Click.
And then he’s gone, his image forever frozen under blinking fluorescent lights and the colour scarlet. Sticky jam dangles off your bottom lip and drips from your nose as you fight back another round.
You are home to me.
9. The butcherbirds sing louder at sunset. Their wings dance along to odes and hymns and the sombre chime of wedding bells, notes bouncing between walls and between memories. Softs and flats and sharps and chords that you know by heart, wailing, waning, whistling as the glowing durian sinks deeper into the sky.
They will still be here tomorrow. You will still be here tomorrow.
Turn on The Ashes for some different noise.
