Schrödinger's Cat

And the smell of roast chicken

Photo by Kevin Knezic on Unsplash

1.

My mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner, the radio gently playing while a deeply comforting aroma of roast chicken filled this usually forsaken space. I hadn’t smelt chicken for a long time. 

She was swinging a little to drive-time easy listening. A cigarette commuting from the ashtray to her lips and back as if it weren’t really hers, as if she were just taking sneaky puffs. 

It was all so extravagant, a roast on a Tuesday, my mother filling the kitchen like a crowd of strangers. She was everywhere, moving from fridge to oven to cupboard, lifting saucepan lids and slicing and chopping. 

I said nothing, entranced, caught like an intruder in a flashlight beam, unwilling to break the spell.

There were flowers on the table. Flowers and chicken and herbs. There was bottle of wine too. A bottle of wine. What other extravagances might be waiting to unveil themselves in this dream?

She turned up Led Zeppelin’s Going to California, and sang along, “Spent my days with a woman unkind, Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine,” her voice eagerly striding ahead, giddy with the pleasure of it all as she poured another glass, “Made up my mind to make a new start, Going to California with an aching in my heart.” 

A slow motion pirouette and there I was standing in the doorway. “THERE you are,” she said, coming toward me, arms open, her face beaming. “Here I am,” I said, swamped in arms and kisses, like a confused solider, standing vigilant, waiting for it all to end.

“We’re having chicken,” she said flapping her wings and shaking her head as if to convey that none of us can know the mysteries of the Universe.

“Your brother’s out with whatshisname, I wonder what they’ve got going on, I really do, strange kid, smart, don’t you think? Your sister’s just gone for dessert, I sent her to Foodies, she doesn’t have enough cash to run away,” laughing, “she’d not get far. Whatshisname, plays the cello, you should take up something, you could try anyway, don’t you think?” her head leaning sideways, grimacing as if hearing an impossible tale of woe. Then a slow whirl away to toast the whole world.

Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn, Trying to find a woman who's never, never, never been born, Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams, Telling myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.

I stay still and say nothing.

“Don’t, just don’t. Don’t ruin it, just don’t,” she says, her back to me, hands on the kitchen counter, shoulders stiffening. 

My cheeks, slobbered with wine kisses, are blushing like a sticky bun and all I can think is Schrödinger's fucking cat!

She turns toward me and pulling together the semblance of a smile, says, “I’m not, there’s chicken, it’s all, I’m not.”

2. 

Earlier, there was no question I was in the right house.

“I’m going to drink the wine in the fridge and blame you for it,” my brother looming over me, his mouth puckered, his eyes cold.

I’d smoked all his hash and left nothing. Not good. Not good at all. Yesterday the consequences be damned. Who knew, maybe they’d get lost in the chaos. But here they were, arriving as usual, never forgetting.

Whatshisname took the Tetra Pak and poured two coffee mugs of wine. They clinked and drank and poured two more. 

My dope debt was being passed on to the most feared collector right in front of my eyes. A whole new set of consequences were lining up.

“My my, look at you drinking all the wine,” my brother said downing the second in one, glaring. Whatshisname took a gulp and opened a drawer. 

“Got any cigs?” 

My brother puffed his cheeks and said, “Menthol,” as if announcing that plague had broken out. Whatshisname was willing to take his chances. Nodding to another drawer my brother said, “Open the window.”

“I’ll have one,” I said.

“I think you won’t,” said Whatshisname. 

“I know you won’t,” said my brother.

“I think you’ll smoke them all,” Whatshisname said, pocketing the packet. 

“My my, look at you smoking all the cigarettes,” my brother said, laughing. 

Even though they had just pushed my debt past insolvency, the tacit truth of our shared exposure was, for all the wrong reasons, perversely reassuring. As if brotherliness were measured by the extent of your mutual shame.  

We had been to enough regular homes to know how regular families operated. Of course they kept the blood lust behind closed doors but they rarely exhibited our frazzled exhaustion, our recklessness. They had safe words to step back from the brink. We were malicious acrobats forever pushing and tripping each other, until falling became all we knew, until falling was like standing still. There was something so familiar about the wind whistling past my ears and my brother knew it, because if we shared one thing, it was the perpetual plummeting. 

“Fuck it, take the wine, let’s go,” said Whatshisname. 

“We’ve drunk it, genius,” my brother said pouring the last into the mugs.

“Then we’d better get some more hadn’t we, genius,” said Whatshisname downing the dregs.

As they left my brother pointed at me and said “You’d better get some more, and my dope, hadn’t you, genius.”

3.

I exited the house like a ninja, creeping past my mother’s bedroom, silently squeezing the front door back into its frame. Hovering away like a ghost. It felt safer that way. But it isn’t actually safer because people without weight eventually just float away.

Our town is a harsh place getting harsher, decorated in union jack bunting and casual xenophobia. If people aren’t careful this place is heading for trouble. It’s already stumbling and snarling like a ravenous drunk searching for another bottle, strenuously attempting and comically failing to keep up the appearance of sobriety, stability and civility. It can’t last. Just like us.

Exposed, exhausted and despised our town’s population comprised of the newly coronated Precarious Poor, sinking fast as the shaky ground under our feet is turned to quicksand. Fingers are pointing, tongues are whispering. The country knows who’s to blame. Non-enterprise types like my mother, my brother, my sister and me. Bloodsuckers. Bread-liners. The Undeserved. The Feckless. In this town I’m not me. In this town I’m just one of Them.

Everyone keeps an eye on each other. In case anyone needs taking down a peg or two. In case anyone seems to be making their escape without taking their punishment. 

As the town falls slowly into disrepair and the rest of the country seems to be partying, we’re ignored as humans and despised as people, so we end up treating each other the same way. With all that frustration and anger looking for a place to land you’d better make sure it didn’t land on you. So I hovered around haunting life as an uneasy phantom with the twitchiness of prey.

“Where you going?” my sister’s voice scorched across the sky like a flare fired from the open window. Three long, long seconds of silence. No screeching, no doors slamming, no windows crashing. Nothing. I looked over my shoulder and jerked my head forward - are you coming or not? followed by the sound of two feet softly landing from a ground floor window then trotting up beside me. 

“Where we going?”

“Him and Whatshisname drank the wine and they’re blaming me for it.”

“You idiot,” she says, half-skipping, looking strangely upbeat. 

“We’re not running away,” I say, “in case you’re getting your hopes up.”

She looks sideways, serious, “She’s going to be so mad. Like so mad.”

“We’re not running away,” I say, “I’ll sort it.”

She looks sideways again, “She says that’s going to be your downfall, your stupid saviour complex,” she shrugs. “you think you can fix everything, but you can’t.”

I see her eyes smouldering away, flickering between fear and fortitude. I put my arm around her and pull her in and say, “Yeah, she's probably right.”

“You got any money?” she asks.

“Oh yeah, I’m loaded.” I say.

“Exactly.” she says.

And for no reason we start running.

4.

My sister. Her little face always looking over, always checking. Her little heart, always searching, always bursting. I know she loves me. She’s wildflowers. I know I love her. I know love is a complex and terrifying force. I know it can turn inside out and become something dangerous. I know that from a distance crying and laughing can look the same. And I know that really close up love and hate can embrace and confuse each other so all of a sudden you’re lying on the floor with bloody teeth and ringing ears when you were only sitting at a table and laughing.

I know these things but not because of my sister.

From her I know that love is simple. I know that love will stand beside you no matter what, even when it’s a stupid place to stand. Even when you’re digging a hole and to see how deep you can go. I know love will climb down with you and keep tugging at you and saying, “come on, lets get out of this hole,” and I know the only reason you actually get out of the hole is because love clambered down there with you and got all covered in dark earth and still shone like a full moon in October. I know love won’t ask you to change. Or try to break you. I know love will climb through the briar and bramble without question. I know love will stand beside me in my mountain of dreams, telling me with beseeching eyes that it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems. And I know love will be patient. And I know that I’ll never really float away because my little sister’s love anchors me to the ground.

And I know her little heart well. Because I hold it in my small hands, every single day, and tend to the tiniest of changes and whisper sweet encouragement even when I’m screaming the worst things as loud I can.

We are running.

Down the hill and across the bridge over the river and past the new law courts and the refurbished police station and the dilapidated school where I haven’t been for a while and up the high street and through our dreary town with its perpetual drizzle and we arrive at the park at the top of the town and sit on a bench and pant and pant and pant as we try to get our breath back, try to get enough air, for what feels like the first time in our lives, and we look out across the low hills and dream of things we do not understand, quietly together, beside each other, in peace.

5.

Whatshisname is walking through the park. He see’s us and sits on a low wall and takes out one of my mother’s menthol’s and lights up. There’s a warm breeze blowing and it feels like the weather is changing. We walk over and stand in front of him.

“Alright dickhead,” he says, then he smiles at my sister and says “Hello kid,” and offers me a cigarette from my mother’s packet. He’s bleary eyed but calm. I take the cigarette and he flicks a lighter. I hate menthol but I lean forward anyway. Obviously.

He looks at me through his squinted eyes and takes a deep draw and releases it in a kind of sigh.

“You know your mother’s a fucking nutcase don’t you,” he says looking intently at me. I do know that she’s broken in some way, and I know I can’t trust her, not really, because she’d rather break me than look into herself. I know she spends days bouncing around like a half-normal person, and then weeks in her darkened room crushed by the weight of it all. But I still can’t betray her. Better the Devil you know. So I say nothing.

“Where’s my brother?” I say.

Whatshisname looks at me for a long time, then at my sister, then back at me and shakes his head

“Your brothers fucking nuts too,” he says and he sees the flicker of frustration flash across me and he smiles. He knows I won’t break rank even if it’s true. He knows the rules.

“Sorry about the booze and cigs,” he says.

I shrug, what can you do?

He looks across the town and seems to drift off, then he says “I put some money in your nutcase mother’s purse,” and at first I can’t comprehend what he’s said, and my sister starts fidgeting from foot to foot, her dress flickering in the breeze.

“Everything is so fucked,” he says and looks out across our sinking town and then he looks at me hard and say’s “You’re gonna be all right,” and then with a wry smile adds, “For a dickhead.”

As we get close to home my sister runs ahead but I don’t. I walk slowly because I’ve read about Schrödinger's Cat. And until I actually open the door and cross that threshold all possibilities were equally likely, so until I cross that threshold, who knows? Maybe, just maybe. I started whistling Led Zeppelin’s Going To California as the early evening sun finally broke through the cloud and the smell of roasting chicken comes unexpectedly on the breeze.

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