Assumptions

By Pat Gallagher

champagne limoncello

I was not going to dress up. Leggings would do. Plain tee shirt. Maybe just a chunky necklace though, and those matching earrings.Hair: Loose? No, tied up. No, loose. Loosely tied up? Either way, it would be the first thing she’d notice. “A glorious dying sun,” a boyfriend once said of my hair. We parted company when I replied that his resembled a sad dying badger. No compliment should reference death.

First impressions count, don’t they. Well, she was engrossed in a vacuous glossy magazine that matched her vacuous glossy appearance. Not even looking out for me. I was mad to think we might have got on. I turned around, walked straight out of the cafe and back into the bleak high street. Coffee was needed now and food. I would just go somewhere else instead.

                                       

The route back to my flat an hour later took me past the cafe again. She was still there. Still reading the same magazine! Clearly she had a brain the size of a pea. I should have stayed at home, saved some money, finished my essay. Someone should tell her what a selfish cow she was, wasting my time, getting my hopes up. Sitting there reading junk, not a care in the world.

I  barged through the door, anger propelled me towards her table.

“So you thought it was ok to give me away? To walk into the sunset and just abandon a baby?”

I was ablaze and she gazed back at me, cool and impassive. 

Then she spoke.“Well you were very ugly.”

I nearly walked out again. What sort of person would come out with that? What sort of person?

To my surprise I found I did actually want to know what sort of person.“So that was it,” I said slowly. “And I suppose my hair clashed with your sofa.”

“Nightmare. That’s why your father had to go too.”

We paused. Something softened in her face and she put her hand to her mouth, like a naughty child.

“I'm often told I have an inappropriate sense of humour.”

Wow.“Me too.”

Suddenly I was being enveloped in the warmest embrace I had ever experienced. My shoulders began to shake. Then hers. We continued to laugh longer than was reasonable.

Later, her eyes circled with smudged mascara, she no longer looked glamorous. And she told me I was beautiful. No dying sun nonsense, just beautiful. I told her I was studying astronomy and she was like a procyon, which is a bright star. It’s also a racoon.

I’ll tell her that next time.

About the author

Pat has recently returned to writing fiction. She has just started a local writing support group and looks forward to sharing the pleasures and occasional pains (but mostly pleasures) of the writing process

The First Time

By Patricia Gallagher

Bloody Mary

The red slick fanned out slowly across the floorboards. Mesmerizingly terrible.

This was not meant to happen. I thought everyone was occupied and it should have been easy to slip in and take what I wanted. But the figure in the shadows startled me and I had leapt in panic. With catastrophic results.

I soon saw that there had been no real threat from the old man, but it was too late. The damage was done. I'd always known I was bad, I'd  been told often enough. Now I knew I was really wicked I had nothing to lose. I could dive headlong and immerse myself in my true, awful nature.

Kneeling, putting thought aside, I dipped trembling fingers into the warm stickiness. Traced a bold stripe across my brow, then my nose, my cheeks, my chin. Then the desire to put my fingers to my lips became difficult to ignore - that would be a step too far wouldn't it? I did it anyway, and added disgust to the teeming sensations. I moved on to the walls, becoming daring and wild. Intoxicated, I knew one thing for certain. I would do this again.

Utterly absorbed, I was jolted to my senses only when I heard a shriek from the doorway. My poor mother had her hand to her mouth as she surveyed her studio. “God in heaven Mary, what have you done now!”

Upturned tub of paint on the floor, crimson daubs everywhere, and my four year old self, a defiant warrior among the carnage.

I got off lightly considering how long the clean up took and how expensive the jumbo tin of acrylic had been. Miraculously, the full sized, recently completed portrait of my grandfather lurking in the corner survived unscathed. His accusing eyes continued to bore into me from above the fireplace throughout my childhood.

But I did do it again. Many times. First with brush on paper and later palette knife on canvas. And crimson would always find its way in there, never failing to transport me back to my first glorious experience of artistic abandon.

The First Time

By Patricia Gallagher

Bloody Mary

The red slick fanned out slowly across the floorboards. Mesmerizingly terrible.

This was not meant to happen. I thought everyone was occupied and it should have been easy to slip in and take what I wanted. But the figure in the shadows startled me and I had leapt in panic. With catastrophic results.

I soon saw that there had been no real threat from the old man, but it was too late. The damage was done.

I'd always known I was bad, I'd  been told often enough. Now I knew I was really wicked I had nothing to lose. I could dive headlong and immerse myself in my true, awful nature.

Kneeling, putting thought aside, I dipped trembling fingers into the warm stickiness. Traced a bold stripe across my brow, then my nose, my cheeks, my chin. Then the desire to put my fingers to my lips became difficult to ignore - that would be a step too far wouldn't it? I did it anyway, and added disgust to the teeming sensations. I moved on to the walls, becoming daring and wild. Intoxicated, Iknew one thing for certain. I would do this again.

Utterly absorbed, I was jolted to my senses only when I heard a shriek from the doorway. 

My poor mother had her hand to her mouth as she surveyed her studio. “God in heaven Mary, what have you done now!”

Upturned tub of paint on the floor, crimson daubs everywhere, and my four year old self, a defiant warrior among the carnage.

I got off lightly considering how long the clean up took and how expensive the jumbo tin of acrylic had been. Miraculously, the full sized, recently completed portrait of my grandfather lurking in the corner survived unscathed. His accusing eyes continued to bore into me from above the fireplace throughout my childhood.

But I did do it again. Many times. First with brush on paper and later palette knife on canvas. And crimson would always find its way in there, never failing to transport me back to my first glorious experience of artistic abandon.