THE WALKING FRAME
He’s about 80 and she’d be about 75, but they might as well be a generation apart.
She would’ve been a treat to any male eye at twenty, thirty, forty, but even now somehow manages to keep the residual flush of her youth and her beauty about her, still erect and trim, with a well-trained mop of hair that would’ve once been auburn, the gray kept at bay with regular honey-to-fair colourings. Only the creases, at the edges of her eyes and mouth, tend to give away any truth about her age.
He would’ve once been tallish and lean, with the kind of fitness that comes with muscles hard-won from a life of grafting. Sixty-odd years ago he could’ve been the medium paced bowler you’d toss the ball to when the tail is wagging and nothing’s working. Or he’d be at centre-half forward for Port Adelaide every Saturday. But now he’s on a walking frame, unsure of his legs and a widower at the mercy of do-gooders who insist he needs support. They turn up regularly, bearing mops and pamphlets and good intentions, causing his eyes to acquire that old-man-angry-at-the-world look, pitched at the accumulated injustices of Time.
At about eleven o’clock one Wednesday morning their lives cross, for about a minute, possibly less. It’s in the toilets of a Hungry Jack’s burger-joint.
The toilets are the standard space-saver fast-foodery arrangement of a single outer door that opens into a small shared space, and the Men’s and Women’s each lead off from that, a neutral area where the In and Out paths of the sexes can sometimes cross abruptly without fore-warning, causing that nondescript – “Ah-hh!” – surprise noise from each, the apology noise, usually followed by an exchage of polite self-conscious smiles.
She’s here with her husband of a lifetime, indulging their every-now-and-then relapse from their respective diets, a relapse that overtakes them about every five or six weeks and always calls for something served with a decent heap of deep-fried chips.
He’s here on his own, shuffles in from his unit up the street about once a week because his doctor told him he has to cut way down on his intake of fat and salt but his diet and his doctor can get stuffed. It’s either this or his own cooking. Or Meals On Wheels. Capitulation.
She heads for the loo and pushes through the outer door, just as he comes out of the Mens, struggling to steer his walking frame with one hand and reach for the outer door with the other while the spring-loaded door behind him is shoving him up the bum and suddenly her and him and his uncooperative wheels are in the changeover space together.
They each do that surprise-apology – “Ah-hh!” – noise as oldtime chivalry makes him try to step back from the traffic jam to let her pass, because for one nano-second he’s still a hunk with a full set of barking hormones and she’s a total heart-stopper and that’s how God intended it to work. A Him and a Her and Nature at hand with all guns loaded. Brilliant piece of design. But the door bangs his walking frame and he doesn’t know what to grab first and he’s about to fall over.
“Are you right there?”, and she smiles kindly and steadies his wayward wheels and makes to grab his arm as well, but knows that would be a step too far and checks herself. It’s more than he can take.
“Fucken walking frames!”, he explodes, hands now shaking, face going pink and shiny. Their eyes meet, and he tries to recover what he sees as his lost ground, knows she can sense his tears prickling. Tears of frustration. Tears of loss.
“Uhh - sorry about the language love”, and he flickers away and back again.
She grins openly now, and her creases go in all directions.
“It’s okay, that’s become my favourite word too lately”, and the two of them pause, while the years come back, then they share a quick laugh, at Time, and Nature, and the mechanics of life, and they shuffle around each other and nothing more is said.
© T. R. Edmonds 2016
<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>