Sepia

This is how she remembers happiness.

They step out into the warm sunlit day and she locks the green door to their apartment, jingling her keyring of silver stars in front of the little boy’s face. He coos with a wide gummy smile and bounces up and down on the shoulders of his father, who laughs and tightens his grip on the boy’s thighs.

The little boy gurgles with delight as a red kite swoops and dips overhead and she points up at it, naming the colour aloud. She swings her lemony yellow hair over her shoulder and reaches up to kiss his tiny soft hands. Fluttering around his father’s temples, they rest for a moment on her face, splayed like little stars, each nail a perfect silvery crescent.

His father watches her walking beside him in his peripheral vision. Her eyes are lit turquoise when she looks into the sunlight at him, her hair a blaze of white platinum. My Nordic Queen. He feels something rise in his chest as she smiles up at his son, her eyes shifting between their faces recognizing the same black hair, the same slate eyes.

People are littered across the grassy park, throwing frisbees, tossing balls for their dogs, lazing like lizards drunk and dozing in the sun across brightly coloured picnic rugs and blankets. A few men with graying ponytails and torn jeans are clustered together around their guitars singing Neil Young songs. A young woman sits on her own under the protective outstretched arms of an ancient Moreton Bay Fig, a bulging backpack at her feet as she scribbles madly into a notebook. Trails of laughter tumble and swirl on the breeze, carried on the wind away from the potato salads and chicken sandwiches of family picnics.

She points to an empty patch of grass and they stake their claim to it with a bright blue rug that billows in the slight breeze when she unfolds it. He lazes on his back with his head propped up on one hand and watches her hold his son in her arms, whispering to him about the sun, moon and the stars.

She nestles the little boy in the crook of his father’s arm and rummages through her backpack for her old camera. She’s about to take a photo when a passerby offers to take a picture of the three of them. With a smile as warm as the sunlight on their bare arms, she accepts the offer, and finds her place on the rug with her head on his stomach, holding the little boy in her arms. She is laughing as she hears the shutter click. She realises too late that she wasn’t looking at the camera.

The park overlooks the harbour where white sailboats dot the water like crystal prisms afloat in the sea. She sits with the little boy between her legs, talking into his ear softly as she points this out, and he claps and hums into the wind. She looks over at his father, who smiles softly and asks her if she wants ice cream. He disappears towards the ice creamery with promises of double chocolate cones and almond fudge swirls.

She holds the little boy in her lap, feeling the blood pulse through his veins, feeling the softness of his flesh covering his tiny filigree bones. She breathes in his scent of baby powder and sleep, feeling the pulse within him that she did not create. She wishes she could make her arms bigger, to carry him, to protect him, to create an embrace strong enough to deny pain and disappointment. She looks up and sees his father coming towards them, laughing as ice cream drips down the cones in his hands, down his forearms in slow chocolatey streams. Her eyes desperately search his face for the bounty of his promises. Slowly, a perforation rips somewhere deep inside and she lunges at the little voice telling her they’re only playing make-believe.

She holds her face towards the sun as he settles on the rug beside her, the three of them adrift on their bright blue raft.

She stares up at the vast and clear bowl of cobalt sky, silently bargaining with fate.

There is nothing else she wishes for.

There is nothing else on earth she wants.

---

copyright © 2008, Holly Ringland.

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Tags:

red, black, green, mother, grass, hunter, wind, picnic, sepia, happiness, kite, photograph, lemon, wish, stars, earth, silver, queen, camera, crystal, slate, fate, father, adrift, son, treasure, bargain, platinum, flutter, filigree and nordic