The Cloud
The mesh weighed coldly on June's collarbone and pressed her cheek. A corflute sign with a logo, too close to read. Her glasses had fallen. "Flawless Fencing". A number.
She had fought onto her back as the shadows lengthened on the path. The wind shuddered windows and whipped through the lot - a void, among these houses, that made her feel her missing molar. The socket made her yearn, after all these years, not to be seen. Her parker scratched in her ears as she wriggled beneath the chain link.
The Flawless Fencing sign had caught the wind like a sail, she decided, as she'd walked past. June reached her bag. It had landed clear of the fence, which had pinned June, crushing her groceries and glugging milk onto the path. She fumbled her purse with a brass pop; twenty dollars curled away and she glimpsed her seniors card. The wind droned through something canvas and a stormfront marbled the sky. June unlocked her phone on the third try.
"Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name."
She thought of calling Nicholas. Her son lived out west with Josephine - Jo, not unpretty but severe, tattoos that spilled into family picnics - and their soundless daughters. Nicholas would down tools in some reach of his property, watch her name fade. For his unfathomable reasons he would wait for a recording of his mother's voice. June could not explain Nicholas's absence from her phone's list of Favourites. Michael, her eldest, was a Favourite, but it was God-knows-what-time in Mexico. She sighed, and scrolled.
The phone remembered she and her friends in the bag clutches and hesitant smiles of her unphotographed generation. Only her friend Gail, a fellow Vinnies volunteer, beamed out. "Skinny Gail" they called her, thrillingly; always clinking a toast, booking a cruise, a black-and-white self-portrait in her house. Some photos memorialised subdued gatherings in June's leafy yard ("Garden Party"); others were of June unfocused, gap tooth shielded, with roadside landmarks ("Coffs Harbour trip").
June hadn't meant to keep photos of the men, but the phone retrieved her past without prejudice. Three "lucky contestants", Michael had said, swigging soda water from her fridge. In years gone by June would have asked, "how old are you Michael?", but she was less inclined now the answer was "39". Asked how he felt about her "meeting someone", maybe, no one yet of course, but they could talk about it, you know, this long since your father, Michael had seethed.
"How exactly do you think I'm the right person for this?" he'd said, to the fridge. "Like, come on. For us it's, you know. Gross."
Nicholas had said nothing, and Gail had signed her up to the service. Too slowly, June thought, for something she was paying for, an email arrived with three "Connections".
"Your first three," Gail called them.
June scrolled the Connections, now. Gail had endorsed none - "I told you to click 'under 55'" - but June felt a lump in her throat at the thought of rejecting someone based on a photo.
And so there was Maurice, grey moustache, fashioned by cheese and wine and held in place with green suspenders. Maurice couldn't be accused of failing to resemble his picture; the sole update when he arrived were his suspenders, this time red, with gold silhouettes of horses. He had booked a restaurant even further out than her bullnose house, but June had made appetisers in her kitchen. He was, she noted, a nervous eater.
"Salmon mousse, eh. You can certainly cook," Maurice said, in the restaurant. "Salmon mousse."
June breezed over Graeme's cancer and decline; Maurice made no mention of a wife. June guessed she had left rather than died. Maurice owned horses that June would have gladly heard more about. But Maurice praised and ate. She felt spent. He paid. As she left his car, he sounded flat.
"Salmon mousse. You'll have to ah, give me the recipe. Unless it's a secret. If it's a family secret I'll -"
"I can give you the recipe, Maurice," she'd said.
Gail had laughed, fingers to her temples.
"You're meeting him again? At least you'll know what to cook."
Gail laughed again, and June allowed herself a smile. Gail topped up her glass.
"But sweetie," Gail said, "how many Maurices? And Graemes? At your age."
June thinned her lips.
"Our age."
Outside the villa Maurice booked for their anniversary, June heard her voice drop. Something had shifted, as Maurice surveyed his feet. The walk from the beach was metres, Bermuda grass, yet there he'd sat, towelling each toe...
"Maurice. I'm not sure this is working."
Without her glasses everything had a halo, and Maurice wore his agreeably on her screen. He lived an hour away; it wouldn't be right. Not that he wouldn't help. He absolutely would.
The phone returned to its lock screen, occupied by Nicholas, Jo and the girls. June wondered again. Blond, silent people. Nicholas had bearded himself so densely that June could barely picture him. He would never get rid of it, least of all if she said something. How could it be right, that a mother could lose the face of her son? June's attempts in the TV-less house - "how's school, Kayla?", "Mia, here's a book your daddy used to love", "Jo, you're not doing dishes" - left her with a tightness eased only by gunning her silver hatchback, just a bit, along the dirt access road and leaving the membrane of her son's severity. She would sit up in her seat, lulled by the AM band.
Sand bit her face and her bones ached. Worksite plastic flapped to crescendos, saplings pulled at stakes, and leaves banked up against her back. Why had she gone this way?
"Your kingdom come, thy will be done..."
No one had come, not a car, on this unlived street. She wondered what it would take for her to call triple-zero. When it gets dark, she promised. When the storm comes.
