XXX
Back in the present, things weren’t so sweet. Jack would leave for work every morning, and I’d have a lonely day to fill. By late afternoon, I might have visited the ironmonger’s three times – it’s amazing how many things you don’t realize you need until you’re really bored. I was becoming a familiar face to the strange man behind the counter. ‘Your total is sixteen-oh-nine!’ He beamed. ‘I love your accent. Australia, right?’
I reached for my rubber-footed cheese-grater. ‘England.’
‘Well, close, eh?’
‘Not really.’
‘English, eh? There are some great Irish bars around here. We should go out for a drink some time.’
‘Mm … yeah.’ I looked down into my purse. I wasn’t used to this kind of talk. I’d never been on a date.
‘Yeah,’ he pressed on, ‘like Jimmy Foley’s and the Green Giant. You know them?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, see you!’
As soon as I was out of the door, I broke into a run. This meant I couldn’t go into the hardware shop any more. Damn it. I was so bored it seemed like a loss. This wasn’t how I’d envisaged the Golden State. The laws of gravity still applied: it was just plain old reality, minus my friends. Admittedly, the weather was better, and I found all kinds of reasons to go outside. I walked up and down perilously tilted pavements, each block affording me another fabulous sea-andsky-filled view, buildings tumbling together, nestling in valleys and skimming hilltops as though they were on the crest of a wave. The air was warm and breezy, rich with ions, and its touch on my skin was a pleasure. On cloudy days the locals moaned, while I gasped at the mist – chunks of cloud suspended in the air like scenery in a divine school play. But however beautiful my surroundings, I didn’t belong there.
I confided in Jack: ‘It makes me so angry, Chief. I have you, and that’s just the most amazing thing, and I’m still sad. Why can’t I just be happy?’
‘That’s what you always say, and you never are. To be honest, I don’t think you ever will be.’
So I went to the doctor and told her I’d been feeling a bit blue. Without blinking, she wrote me repeat prescriptions for a thousand Prozac capsules. ‘You should be feeling better in about three weeks.’ I read that the side-effects included lower libido and increased homicidal urges.
As I made dinner, Tova would sidle in and tell me about her amazing life – the places she’d been, the people she’d met and the wild things she’d done. She could make anything dull, but next to this vigorously sprouting shrub, I felt like a limp, etiolated stem. To protect myself, I responded only to direct probes, such as ‘You’re from England, right?’
‘Yup.’
‘Hmm. Where else have you lived?’
‘Here.’
‘Just here? Well, where have you been, like long trips?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Oh … Really?’
‘Really.’
She was all about the where, not the what. I couldn’t stand her, and boycotted the kitchen when she was around. Jack would come home from work to find me sitting on the bed with an open can of tuna and a bag of crisps.
‘Here’s dinner, Chief.’
‘Lins, can’t you at least make some pasta?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to talk to Tova while it boils.’
‘Well, you turn on the water, then I’ll go in a bit and sort it out.’
I agreed, but she caught me in the hall and pointed at my pink socks. ‘Look, Chico!’ she cried, laughing. ‘They match her sweater!’ I was a pink moth, writhing on a pin. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, ‘I used to do that – match stuff. When I was much younger, of course.’
I reversed back into our room. ‘Jack,’ I hissed, ‘we have to get out of this place! I can’t stay indoors in the daytime because it’s like a dungeon and it makes me feel really sad and I can’t go outdoors because there’s nothing left to buy and I’m getting sunburned and I can’t stay indoors at night because I’m going to kill Tova and I can’t go out at night because there’s nowhere to go because I don’t have any friends.’
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ said Jack. ‘We can get some food, too.’
We clambered to the top of Lombard Street, a giant game of crazy-golf, twisting and turning down towards the mass of the city. Beyond the clustered lights lay the black expanse of the bay, and beyond that more land, more lights, more people, doing more interesting things than I was. It was time to confront the truth: I was not a writer, because writers write stuff.
‘Chief,’ I wailed, sitting down, ‘I’m just, like – nothing! And my face is all bumpy.’
It was true: I’d got a weird sort of rash. He patted my head. ‘It’s OK, you’re still the best rabbit in the world!’
My tears blurred the city into a twinkling puddle. ‘I’ll never write anything except recruitment ads!’
Jack held me close. ‘That’s OK, Bun. I’ll still love you more than anything in the world and I’d love you if you couldn’t even write your own name.’ He cradled my head in his lap and wiped my tears on his shirtsleeve. ‘Poor Bun. You’ve got mascara all over your face.’
Comforted, I grew calmer. We had a few minutes of silence while he stroked my hair. ‘It’s OK.’ I sniffed. ‘You know, I feel kind of a sense of relief. Denying it all this time, when it’s fine not to write stuff. Who cares?’
‘Well, maybe you don’t need it to be my lovely Bun, but you might need it to be a happy, fulfilled rabbit.’
How annoying. Not just the herbivore references – he wouldn’t let me off the hook. All of a sudden I had an idea. I sat up, still sniffing. ‘I know! I could write about all the freaks I meet here!’
He squeezed my hand. ‘That’s a great idea. You’ve got all this time, Bun, and you’ve not had it for years. You deserve to put it to good use. If nothing else, it’ll make you feel better. You can write short stories.’
‘Can’t do anything that long.’
‘Poems, then.’
‘Nobody reads poems except other poets.’
‘Hmm.’
‘What if I stuck a tune on top? Then they’d be songs. And maybe a few people will listen.’ I’d written a song once, to promote the use of dustbins on school premises. I was back on track, so we got some dinner, and then returned to the house, where Jack immediately conducted a bottom inspection. It was a new habit of his, and it got on my nerves.
‘Hmm, let’s see. Turn round.’ He put his hands inside my knickers and started feeling around. ‘Oh, it’s
