Ash is the way everything is. Caught in the tray, lumpy, discoloured and piled upon. There is a glow within that forgotten heap; the ghost of the cigarette that hung on painted lips. All that’s left is the moment’s remnant. The promise that such a beauty did once exist, only it remains in a crumbled form of itself. 

 

Joan 

I keep the house quiet when I am alone. The congeniality of a radio host and the melodrama of music only make me feel unwelcome. After cleaning and washing and preparing and cooking, all I crave is the comfort of a private cigarette. With this winter weather in the solitude of my quiet house, I can let the moment stretch. I can have that feeling again… 

 

Fortunately, I am at the kitchen window lighting my first when I spot Mirabel in the driveway, still dressed in her tartan skirt and thigh-high socks and that obnoxious blazer. If she would only lose it: that showy thing. The other mothers, better suited to the suburban life, keep giving compliments with barbed sweetness on my “darling genius” and her renowned school. Mirabel’s head lolls with the weight of my gaze while behind her, head kept high and trouncing like a prize horse, is Alexia. I have met Alexia a number of times; each time the pleasure of her acquaintance decreases. The brash tones of her personality which have charmed Mirabel only repulse me. The seductive snake strides in her modified uniform, skirt cut high and socks low to show off the firm bronzed skin of her athletic thighs. Though she holds herself like a Madonna, in my eyes she is only a fade of one. As if in disgust, the cigarette I am smoking stings my tongue. I throw it into my personal box and stash it in its hidden spot under the sink. The stirring scent of the smoke puts a full stop on my tranquil afternoon, and the new one begins as I drop my crucifix over my chest. 

 

I spray my handy air freshener, laying the thick scent of pine over the transgression, as Mirabel’s key fumbles into the lock. Do I let my disappointment show? No, I am a mother. When I hear my daughter and her guest entering, I raise the apron over my head so that they do not see my face. Then I let the cloth fall to showcase my exemplar welcoming smile. I spread my arms and beckon my daughter who obligingly surrenders herself to my embrace. 

“Hi, mum,” she mumbles into my chest. 

“Hello, sweetie,” I wrench the sweetness out of the second-last syllable. 

 

Then I move away, making sure to hold up the smile.  

“Alexia, how nice to see you! Will you be staying for dinner?” 

“I reckon I will, Joan.” Keep the smile up. Mirabel has now moved her anxious attention to her hangnails, drooping indecorously over her sawed fingernails. A mother should not need to announce her displeasure, my own mother once told me. I turn my glare onto Mirabel like a signal lamp and she jumps off the mutilated skin. “Sorry mum.” She is about to politely pin her hands behind her back when Alexia reaches out to grab one. She rubs one of her manicured fingers over my daughter’s knuckles; the garish bubble gum pink of Alexia’s nails is enough to give me a headache. She soothes her. Remember Joan, maintain that smile.  

 

Thankfully, as I nod to my work in the kitchen, Alexia’s plastic talons fall back to her sides. “I’m just preheating the oven now,” I say before waving a theatrical arc to show the dinner preparation. “I will let the both of you know when it is ready.”  

“Thanks for cooking, mum,” Mirabel mumbles into the lock of hair she’s pulled as a curtain across her face. “Yeah, thanks,” Alexia echoes before Mirabel grasps her hand and leads her down the hallway. I sigh at the delightful noise of the lock turning and my responsibilities dissolving. 

 

Left alone again in my quiet, I set about the work. I turn the oven on, retrieve my pack from behind the bin, and smoke as I watch the hallway. 

 

Mirabel 

Once I had triple checked the lock, I collapsed against the wall, just to see Alex laying against the headboard. Her hair fanned out on my pillows like a solar storm against the void. Her eyes were closed as she rested and that thin, powerful smile was fixed just so on her face like she couldn’t help it. She had already thrown the school shirt over my vanity and was left only in her faded pink singlet and the skirt with a ragged hem. My eyes ran down her like dripping paint. Though there was something to the serenity that seemed rehearsed, like she was posing for a painting that was simultaneously completed and being made. 

 

I recalled how Alex’s hair swayed across her broad shoulders as she and Kayla talked in Math that morning. From the back, I only saw her smile when she turned to Kayla, who laughed back in her halting nasal honk. At one point, during one of her fits, Kayla chucked her hand onto Alex’s shoulder, pretending to need the balance. I watched as her fat fingers with wayward hangnails crawled over Alex’s shoulder, clawing down her collar and revealing the pink scar that spread across Alex’s creamy skin like an insightful wink. Alex caught me staring and gave me the look I had grown so vulnerable to, an almost imperceptible glint in her eye, coquettish and accusatory. I threw my head back down to my work, but I felt her attention still on me, softer now, and the hushed flame reignited in my gut, the warm feeling somewhere between nausea and nostalgia. 

 

At lunch today, we kept each other on our peripheries. I took my usual reading spot on the bench just beside the try zone on the school green. Normally, I kept myself hidden enough behind whatever book I was reading. I would trail along an unimportant plot while Alex played rugby with her mates. I don’t know the positions in rugby, but she was always the one in the front. She would burst through the line of behemoths on the other team, and dash to the try zone like a marathon runner with the line in the distance. Often, Alex would steal a look to me, but at lunch today, peeking over the pages, I was transfixed as she ran straight towards me. She passed the line, dove, and slid towards me so fast that I shut my knees together in a panic. Once she came to a rest, she rose above me, threw the ball back over her shoulder, and blew me a kiss. I drowned beneath her presence, falling even deeper when I saw again that scar painted across her collarbone that was framed just for me. I would have passed out were it not for Kayla and her teammates jumping onto Alex’s back and screaming about the big win.  

 

That afternoon, Alex walked with me as she had done every Friday for the last two and a half months. It was Alex who first joined me on my way out; I thought she was going to force me to “help” with her classwork, having never spoken to her, but for the first few afternoons she didn’t even mention it. She only threw her arm around me, walked me home in such a stiff manner that I could only call her a gentleman. After a while, knowing that beneath our awkward chuckles was a mutual need to feel secluded from the publicness of the street, I invited her home. To my room.  

 

We only ever wanted to talk, to avoid any action that would distract from enjoyment of the other’s presence. My gaze narrowed solely on her and, sometimes, I caught her staring, too.  

 

Earlier today, I waited anxiously for her, the peeling skin besides my fingers trapped between my teeth while my eyes kept guard on the gate. When she came, she took my hand from me and trailed me to my home. She asked me about the book I was reading today, Dangerous Liaisons; I hid under murmurs and behind my draping hair when I skipped over the sensual moments. She laughed at my shyness, but in a cadence full of kindness, and the feeling deepened. 

 

“What shall we do this evening, madame?” Alex asked, her eyes having drifted open. Her tone was playful, so I matched it.  

“Perhaps, my young lady –” I winced – “could tell me about her day after her interrogations as to mine?” I fell on the bed beside her, laying on my stomach so I could hide my traitorous face, where, I knew, the fireworks of emotions I wished to cover were dramatically obvious. I looked up and saw her raised eyebrows.  

“Am I the young lady now?” I panicked for a moment trying to call forward a response, but she clapped my shoulder before I could. “At this point, I think you’re the young lady.” 

I nodded, and thankfully she relented. 

“I was the MVP at lunch today.” 

“I saw.” 

“I know. I’m always glad to have my number-one fan there just for me.” This time she kept her hand resting on my exposed shoulder blade. My entire back went stiff at her touch and I prayed to everything that she didn’t notice. My hand crept back to my mouth and my teeth closed protectively around a particularly annoying hangnail.  

“I like being there for my number-one player,” I mumbled. I inched forward, moving like a motivated slug towards Alex’s thigh. A kind of bliss was wrapped under that tartan, and as I silently rested my head on it, I felt protected. Like a little lamb on the ewe’s thick wool. 

 

Joan 

Unfortunately, I have to cut my cigarette to a halfer when I realise that I had made a mistake in my motherly greeting. It was a formality I often forgot with Alexia; I needed to ask, for the social sake of it, whether Alexia’s mother was aware that her daughter would not be home for dinner. So, I tuck another wasted cigarette in my box, hide the trace with the strong pine scent, and walk towards Mirabel’s door. 

 

As I approach, however, I worry that I didn’t adequately mask the tobacco. The hallway reeks more and more like a rancid old men’s pub; I think of going back to spritz once more. But then, closer to Mirabel’s room now, I hear the unmistakable click of a lighter, the pause of the flame held in the air, and then the second click as the thumb releases the pedal. The ghost of ash spreads on my tongue as I hear the first breath from behind the door. There’s rustling, shifting clothes on nervous young bodies trying to find the best position. But the door is locked. All I can do is press myself tighter against the wood and listen. Another click, another pause, this one longer and obviously more awkward, then Alexia whispers, “Take it slow, darling, and cough into your sleeve.” The words hold me still. The words from so long ago, on those painted lips, now revived and played again for my daughter. The hallway closes around me like I’m travelling backwards in a tunnel and the forgotten moments are waiting at the far end of it, waiting in Victoria Pillette’s house party. 

 

My eyes turned back to the floor as I waddled towards the living room from where cruel jeers and high-pitched giggling sprung out. I plucked at my clothes, conservative as a nun’s next to Veronica’s flared, neon pink crop top and distressed jeans. Veronica led me into the room, arms around my shoulders as if bringing in a new contestant, or a new attraction at a magic show. Everyone cheered as I entered, and I heard a few ask whether my mother knew I was here. Veronica didn’t give me a moment, shoving a cup into my hand filled with some kind of pungent alcoholic beverage before she set me down on her father’s armchair. I anxiously traced the cracks in the decrepit leather of the chair as she walked away. I felt like a child left by its mother to make friends, left with only a landscape of backs to stare at, and the insidious feeling I was waiting to be snatched. 

 

Five delicate fingers then drummed along my shoulder. I thought Veronica had returned and so melted back into her touch. When she touched me, I could only surrender. “Hello, angel,” the voice breathed from behind me, not Veronica. I turned and found Zara. I hadn’t met her before, and since wish that perhaps I never did. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Uh… Joan.” 

“You’re cute, Joan. Why don’t you join the party?” 

I stared nervously at her, but my gaze could not hold her own and so fell down to a smile that skimmed across her collarbone like a smug smile. 

“I’m just taking a moment to gather myself. Might I ask, what is your name?” 

Click. Pause. Click. Normally, I hated smoking, but seeing her slender fingers delicately perch the cigarette between her crimson lips, and how her eyes closed in a brief moment of ecstasy as she inhaled, felt special. The fumes smelled delicious when she blew them back out, swirling like a starry night above my head. 

 

“I’m Zara.” The words danced in the smoke. “I’m a mate of Jake’s.”  

I didn’t know who Jake was, nor did I give him an atom of thought. She brought the cigarette down as she rested her hand on the chair, and how the smoke wove sensually in the air as she did, like an unending question mark, and Zara’s breath so close to my head transported me to a world where we existed in total solitude. Forget the party, forget the chair, forget my clothes or hers. It was just us and the smoke. The sensations and ideas that floated through my body that night, teetering between total security and fears of damnation, took roost in the following weeks. When I wasn’t studying or doing chores, I would be calling Zara or, sometimes, she was calling me. She would tell me whenever another party was coming and, in that husky voice that filled me up like a wine glass, whether we could find a spare bed. 

 

Zara gifted my first cigarettes and would always joke, “A fag for a fag.” I cringed every time, but the scent of the tobacco and the feeling of her body pressed against my own ceased any apprehension. Soon enough, every puff was another intake of her, and on every exhale, I breathed her name: Zara, mine. My focus diminished and my care for anything about my future disappeared. I was living in the present for once. My mother harangued me, threatened to evict me if I didn’t shape up. She almost did the night she caught me smoking, confiscated my cigarettes, too; probably added them to her own intake. I confided in Zara almost every night, crying and wailing like the girl I was, and she would listen. Sometimes she hushed me. 

 

One night when she had snuck in, the balance between us dissipated. She laid against my headboard in the same way, a Madonna under the paintbrush of my admiration, with the world revolving round her painted lips. I clawed at her breast and drew my mouth along her earlobe trying to drag her back down to me, but I whimpered back at every attempt when I saw the glaze over her eyes. Her laughs shrunk to grunts and her caresses to pats then, by the end of the night, shoves. I begged for an explanation in every way but with my words, as I feared the enunciation of what was so clearly an end would transform me. I would be made into some insect, some parasite, a slug on her lap. Weeks later, I saw her at another party. She was dressed in a pink slip with a neckline that drooped deep down her chest, and heels that had her towering over another mousy-looking virgin. She was giving her the look she used to give me, her arm pressed against the wall above the girl’s head, but when she looked at me the light in her eye dimmed and she looked down, and we both saw the hickey peeking from behind her neckline, bright and fresh as the blood of a lamb just spilled. 

 

After that, dejected but with nothing else to lay my hotbed of feelings onto, I went back to studying. For my heartbreak I received a 95 ATAR. 

 

The following events seemed to blow past the quickest. My short-lived academic pursuit before meeting my husband, settling into a home, having Mirabel, and then here, always smoking in secret. Now, returning to my place against the door, a hideous rush of mortal fear rushes through me at a violent pace. Sweat runs down my arched back as I lean against the door, thinking of anything that could be happening; what Alexia could take from my daughter, what Mirabel could be led into wanting. Where hands might wander and where they might be accepted. The clash of my Alexia’s copper skin pressing against my daughter’s own paper-white stabs into my eyes and sets my breathing ragged. 

 

But then, I hear resistance, a push and a mumble that is unmistakably my daughter’s. It isn’t insistent, but it is purposeful. There is a pause before a sob failingly suppressed; Mirabel reaches a hand out for comfort but Alexia bats it back. Then, swiping at the traitorous tears, Alexia jumps off the bed, grabs her clothes, and makes for the door. I bolt into my room and slam the door, willing my heart to quiet so I can listen. The lock on Mirabel’s door flicks open, the door crashes against the glass of a picture frame on the siding wall, and footsteps pound down the carpet. A muttering flashes past me, retreats further, then throws the front door behind itself. I sense a glowing from her as she leaves, fading and fading and finally snuffing out as the sound disappears. Never to be reignited under this roof again. 

 

A while later, dinner is ready, but only my husband sits with me. He talks about his day in the inane phrases that built this house, but only I hear the hiss of a nozzle from down the hallway, and only I smell that artificial waft of pine settle over the house.