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I know the weekday morning drill by heart: make you breakfast, pack a lunch, grab a coffee, open the laptop – pray that it starts. You stay away, get dressed, get ready for school. Today the laptop does start, and I scan the wanted ads, mark the possibilities. I’m still making notes as you leave to catch the bus. You slam the door leaving a late but cheery farewell in your wake.
‘Have a good day,’ I yell, after the whirlwind that is you.
Returning to my routine, I revise cover letters, tweak the resume, send off two applications and prepare to send a dozen more. I make another coffee. As I return the milk to the fridge, I notice the unpaid bills stuck on by magnets. More bills than ever before. The notices billow as I shut the door, waving, reminding me they are there.
Then the front door opens and, sheepish and guilty, you mumble you’ve missed the bus. Everything goes on hold. In a blink I’m shucking off my slippers and slipping into a familiar resentment about things not going as they should. I curse your father for dying, for leaving me in this mess, and I curse you too, even though I know it’s not your fault. The unpaid bills wave at me again as I grab the car keys, telling me to get a job. To do better. To be better. Maybe I’ll get the job from yesterday’s interview. But who can ever tell.
Onwards I push. Push. I push you out the door. ‘Be better,’ I say to you, regretting saying it and justifying saying it, confused about feeling I have to say it.
The road is busy; too busy. I pull out to overtake the bus. I don’t listen to what you say. Maybe I don’t want to hear. I’m angry – at you, at me, at it all. Maybe, if I’d been that little less upset, I would have heard the panic when you called out—
The metal twists and shrieks and shattered glass rains in. A pent-up hiss, an airbag releases against my chest. Yours doesn’t deploy. It all becomes a haze. The scent of burnt hair and flesh; a copper taste coats my tongue. You—
