Outer Space / Carry On | Michael Clifford AU

3.

On Sunday morning, Dad and Joan went out baby shopping. They invited me along but I declined. Instead, I sat at my desk sipping tea and painting orange flowers onto the rainbow portrait of Mum.

People don't send flowers when people die the way my Mum did. 

Heart attack? Of course. Car accident? Sure. Cancer? Absolutely. 

But not suicides. 

They aren't treated like a normal death. People get all awkward about suicides. And I get it. It isn't a an easy or pleasant topic to talk about, but then, when is death ever easy or pleasant to talk about?

My Nonna - Mum's mum - she was a wreck the day of Mum's funeral. She kept sobbing into her floral hanky and swearing in Italian. At least, I think she was swearing. It sounded angry. "How could she do this to us?" she kept muttering to my Dad.

That made me angry. Why couldn't she understand? Mum didn't do it to us. She had an illness that she couldn't control. It was that illness that did it to her. It was that simple to me, and it made me angry that everyone else kept trying to make into something different. Adults had a knack for overcomplicating everything.

I left the rainbow portrait - still without eyes - on my desk so that the flowers could dry. Amongst it were other recent paintings I'd done: girls wearing flower crowns, a lion wearing a tiara. They all had something missing, of course. Maybe that was my thing. Maybe every painting I ever did would be unfinished. 

My paintings were much different from Ashton's, though that's what attracted me to his Tumblr originally. His art was dark and raw. He was always collecting things like newspaper clippings and polaroids and foreign coins to incorporate into his paintings. Where I mostly painted things that existed only in my imagination, Ashton's paintings were the way you'd imagine feelings to look.

Dad and Joan would be back shortly. They never left me home alone for too long. It was exhausting for me. It must have been exhausting for them too.

The room opposite mine would be the baby's room. It was already painted with cream paint, and a rocking chair sat in the corner. It had been passed on from Joan's mother, who'd had it passed on from her mother.

I really liked that the baby would grow up in a normal family with traditions like that. It was nice.

"Alice?" Dad's voice boomed easily through the empty house. With a voice like that, he was born to become a lawyer, Mum used to say. "Can you come and help us?"

Outside my Dad's arms were full of shopping bags. Joan waddled behind him, carrying a strawberry smoothie. "We got the cutest swaddles!"

Not being around babies before, I didn't have a clue what a swaddle was so I just smiled politely. "Where's the cot?"

"It wouldn't fit in the Mercedes," Dad mumbled.

"Why'd you take the Mercedes?" Even I knew that the minivan would have been a better choice.

"The same reason men do anything - " Joan chimed from the kitchen. She returned a moment later with two cookies. "- They think they know best."

That night I logged onto Lonely Hearts Club. It was only me and Ashton online so naturally we started talking about art.

Me: I painted some more flowers on the rainbow Mum today. Little orange ones, flittered through her hair.

Ashton: Sounds perfect

Me: I still haven't given her eyes though...

Me: What if I never finish a painting?