A Slight Tilt

[numerical-x.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to improve this piece so critique is more than welcome, I'm happy to return the favour.

It is Thursday, I'm visiting my parents’ house. Vince is standing on the wall out front and I am sitting next to him. I'm not tempted to stand like my brother, as far as I'm concerned the wall's too high for that. There is music coming from inside and I’m trying to work out what it is, I think it’s Michael Jackson’s Thriller but a lot of songs sound alike from a distance.
    I mention this to Vince and he makes an apathetic grunt in reply. My mother has the sprinkler on to water the grass and it sprays our backs each time it clicks around in its slow arc. I don’t mind and Vince barely seems to notice at all. The sun is just past its apex and it reflects a thousand times over in the water on my bare arms. I slit my eyes like a cat, I feel good like this – like the world around me is ingenuous after all. I bring my feet up onto the wall and rise, standing beside my brother and staring out across the road into the middle distance.
    “Look, Vince – I’m standing on the wall.”
    “Do you think I have a chance with Heather?”
    Around the corner Mum turns the sprinkler off and we go inside the house.

    The morning of the next day I am at home in my room. I listen to music but don’t dance. The sleeve of my shirt irritates the flesh on my arm and every few minutes I scratch at it.
    Vince comes in, or looks like he’s going to. He leans his long body against the door frame and stares at a smudge on my wall. I wonder if I should initiate the conversation, but don’t.
    “Hey, sis,” he says after a while.
    “Hey, Vince,” he is fidgeting; he taps his foot against the door frame. I can tell he’s trying to look casual.
    “Uh, I just thought I’d tell you that I’m thinking of moving into Heather’s place. You know – as friends. I’m not moving just yet, so you know, you’ll have time to find someone else to fill the room.”
    I open my mouth to say something and he waits. I close my mouth and stay silent, wondering if my bed has one leg shorter than the others because it has a slight tilt. Vince is speaking again.
    “…shouldn’t be too hard to find someone to move in. It’s a great little place and close to the station and shops. Should make a list of those things they told us when we first rented it.”
    I stand up and move to the door, ducking under his arm to get past.
    “There’s a KFC in walking distance, you should probably mention that too. You can put my number in the ad and all. I can talk to the potentials if you like,” he says.
    I take a set of keys off the hook at the door and head outside.
    I’m in his car, driving it away from the house. Something synthetic plays on the stereo and after about half a minute I switch it off and drive in silence. As I leave my street behind there is a child too young to have a gender playing in a bright plastic wading-pool. Broken bits of grass fur the sides and the sun on the splashes is too bright for eyes. I drive perfunctorily in one direction.
    The road leads me out of the city and I guess now that I must be going north. I like the way the buildings thin out as I move further away from my home. They fragment and fall away. I wind the window down a little and I can smell the warm asphalt and the grazed-off scabs of rubber from other vehicles.
    The clock on the dashboard shows that I have been driving for three and a half hours. I finally stop for fuel in a town where ornate old buildings line the streets. It’s all very romantic but as I pay for the petrol I start to think about going back.
    I buy a sandwich from the matronly woman at the service station and sit in my car overlooking a park to eat it. I can’t see the limits of the park but I like how green it looks as it slopes down towards the centre point. I think I’ve seen the park before, something in my memory whispers of little tiny trains that small children could ride in along the tracks that run through the park.
    The sandwich is finished and I’m driving again. The road opens out and I pass a plant nursery in an old drive-in movie theatre, and a Christian centre with its roof entirely taken up by the letters JESUS IS LORD. There are tiny horses in a paddock and then trees – so many broken finger-bones stuck close together in the ground to hold up grey-green scrub. Then billboards with pictures of whales on them, then another stretch of buildings – another town. I skirt around the edge of this town and there are trees again.

    The sign says I’m in BURRUM HEADS. The stretch of land between the road and the beach has concrete squares and a spilled handful of off-season caravans. I park under a large tree that drops tiny leaves on the car. There is still plenty of light left in the day as I reach the bikeway that obediently follows the sand along the coast.
    I walk for a short while, but soon I veer off the bricks of the path. The water makes a wonderfully unbroken line against the sky and I think of the balance poles used by tight-rope walkers – curving slightly down at the ends. I slip off my shoes and out of my shirt. I leave my clothes; my arms are stretched out away from my body as I slip into the water. It’s quite shallow, and the tide is slowly creeping away from the shore. Beads of water are trapped under the thin blonde hairs on my arms. The sun turns every bubble into a snow-globe's diorama of sea, sky and me. Weak waves push against my legs; I don’t stumble. I’m in my natural state.