Thursday, December 20, 2007
Feeling somnicidal
This morning I woke up…and I know I should be thankful for that, but I wasn’t. I wanted to return to sleep. That really depressing feeling of not simply wanting to sleep more, but wanting to fall back to sleep and not come back. Not suicidal, but rather somnicidal. Is wishing to die in your sleep a bad thing? Isn’t that what most people wish for – to die in their sleep. However, I guess in most cases, it is prefaced by a conditional – ‘if I am to die, I want to die in my sleep.’ That’s not quite the same as ‘I want to die in my sleep.'
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Do something important...
It is not about doing something that’s important,
it is about doing something that is important for me.
And what's important to me now
may be different from what was important to me
and what will be important to me.
Follow your passion - for now.
it is about doing something that is important for me.
And what's important to me now
may be different from what was important to me
and what will be important to me.
Follow your passion - for now.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Is there any justification for justifications?
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
Donald Rumsfeld
Introduction
Enormous amounts of human endeavour are aimed at the getting of knowledge. Academics, scientists, educationalists and students are all interested in knowledge for its own sake. Businesses and governments are interested in knowledge for what it might do for them or allow them to do. Everyday people in their everyday lives want knowledge – be it expertise, sporting facts or gossip – both for its own sake and for what it can do for them.
But what constitutes knowledge? Many people may claim to have knowledge, but the claim (belief) alone is insufficient to constitute knowledge. For instance, many people claim to have knowledge about what influences their behaviour. Many would be willing to claim that advertising has no effect on their purchasing patterns. Many people (even the same ones!) would be willing to claim that subliminal advertisements in cinemas (presentations of ads so brief that they are not perceived consciously) can affect purchasing patterns – perhaps not their own so that they are consistent with their first belief!
I doubt that people have very complete knowledge about what influences their behaviour. And I doubt that the provision of ‘justification’ separates knowledge from non-knowledge. A woman says that she generally has no awareness of an ad when making a purchase, and justifies her claim by saying that if an ad has come to mind at the time of purchase, she explicitly refuses to buy the advertised brand. She also believes that subliminal ads have an influence on people, and as justification, points to a newspaper article from the late 1950s reporting that subliminal ads affected purchasing patterns.
My view is that the woman’s justifications add nothing to establishing whether she has knowledge or not. I believe that this woman is affected by advertising – without her awareness. I also believe that people are little affected by subliminally-presented stimuli. Determining whether she or I have knowledge can only be established if we ‘know’ the truth. The provision of justification does nothing to change the truth value of the claim. Plato’s definition that knowledge is ‘justified true belief’ is widely held today. I however, wonder whether the proposition that the true belief be justified is justified.
How does justification support true belief ?
Justification is, in my view, an attempt to show that truth and belief are aligned by simultaneously ‘proving’ the truth and bolstering the belief.
Justification serves first as a bootstrapping argument in support of the truth of a proposition. Whether a proposition such as ‘advertising has no effect on me’ is true is difficult to establish independently. We become more confident about the truth only through the passage of time and more specifically, through accumulated evidence. The evidence gathered increases our confidence of the claim of the truth value of the proposition, but does not prove it. The problem is that of induction where a number of instances may increase our confidence that some proposition is true, but they cannot prove irrefutably the truth of the proposition.
As a corollary to the role of justification as a proxy for truth, justification serves as a means of emphasizing our belief. A justification is however, just another belief, a belief about a belief. A justification, like the belief in a proposition, is a value-judgment, it is subjective and personal. Adding a belief about what justifies the first belief leads us to an infinite regress. Better to simply accept that the first belief is a direct personal experience, and cannot be questioned.
The insufficiency of justification
The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy states that: “Not all true beliefs constitute knowledge; only true beliefs arrived at in the right way constitute knowledge.”[1] The assertion begs the question as to what is the ‘right way’? Arguing that only certain methods (as argued in reliabilism[2]) give us knowledge has a long history – with repeated failures. For instance, Galileo’s effort to show heliocentrism was denied as the telescope was dismissed as an unacceptable method of demonstrating his claims. However, as Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Introspection is a method that is generally dismissed in psychology today – even while William James’ highly regarded contributions to the field were typically based on this approach. In the study of customer psychology today, there are two approaches to generating knowledge known as quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative research typically relies on complex statistical analyses about which many will argue or even reject as akin to “lies.” Qualitative research is rejected by many as lacking in rigour, validity and reliability.
If someone states their belief and justifies it based on voices or a vision, many would be prone to dismiss any claim for that proposition being knowledge. People arguing on the basis of a hunch or intuition might be similarly dismissed. However, there are parts of accepted knowledge today which appear to have come from essentially these types of sources. The chemist Kekulé claims that he realized that the benzene molecule was a closed-ring structure after seeing a snake swallowing its own tail during a daydream[3].
The field of psychology suggests that the explanations that people give for their behaviour are often constructed after the fact and only on questioning[4]. That is, justification follows belief, and is constructed in the way of backward reasoning[5] and / or self interest[6]. We humans dedicate a lot of energy to explaining tragedies such as air disasters (e.g., Challenger), mass murderers (e.g., the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007), and terrorism (e.g., 9-11). While post-event justifications may comfort humans, the ability of these justifications to establish knowledge appears to be dubious.
Another example of backward reasoning is argument by vindication. People may argue from subsequent evidence that their belief served them appropriately, and is therefore vindicated. However, if a person carries an umbrella every day, one day they will be vindicated for doing so. This reasoning puts me in mind of the bumper sticker, “Just ‘cos you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that people aren’t out to get you.”
Justification in rhetoric
While the justification does not add to knowledge, it certainly helps in the communication of knowledge. For example, essays with strong reasons are far more compelling than those with poor reasons. However, powerful rhetoric does not constitute truth. Marketing communications and advertising are designed to persuade people, and provide justification for people to do so. The question of whether the belief is correctly aligned with truth is not important to rhetoric – something useful for the gullible to bear in mind.
Justification and meta-knowledge
If knowledge is based on only two conditions, truth and belief, can we know anything or are we left with the morass suggested by Donald Rumsfeld’s quote at the beginning of this essay? Justification appears to help resolve the problem of meta-knowledge. Justification increases our confidence that our belief is aligned with the truth by providing justification. It does not give us knowledge as noted earlier; but it makes us feel more comfortable that we know what we think we know.
Like truth on which it depends, knowledge is unknowable in an absolute sense. However, we are generally confident that we have ‘knowledge’, and accept that knowledge will be revised from time to time. Happily and encouragingly, the knowledge we operate on appears to work for us most of the time, much like the problem of induction is not a major concern for the pragmatist.
How do we live with the idea that knowledge is unknowable? In much the same way that we are unable to comprehend infinity.
My views are to some extent in accord with those of Feyeraband[7]. In a sense, I see that the development of knowledge is an ongoing movement of belief towards truth – whether the justifications are good or not. People once justified the existence of the earth and life on one or more gods; some still do. Others (e.g., Richard Dawkins, Douglas Adams (of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame, etc.) prefer to rely on a theory derived from the notion of evolution. Given the objective of philosophy is often to elevate ‘reason’ to a supreme place, it is not surprising perhaps that justification should count as important in the definition of knowledge. However, as stated by Feyerabrand in the last chapter of Against Method (1975), “Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions.”
In practical terms, I believe that we must accept the ‘truth’ of some proposition on a perpetual conditional basis. That is, we accept the truth for the moment, but we may have to revise this in light of disconfirming evidence (as proposed by Popper). Therefore, while we can talk of the ‘truth’ of a proposition, it would appear to me that the truth of any proposition is unknowable and cannot be independently established. Nevertheless, it does seem appropriate to me that knowledge is defined as those beliefs which are true – regardless of the justification given.
[2] Prof. Alvin Goldman, See Alvin Goldman "justification, epistemic" The Oxford Companion to Philosophy.
http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t116.e1304
[3] http://www.chemsoc.org/timeline/pages/1864_benzene.html & http://www.brilliantdreams.com/product/famous-dreams.htm
[4] For example, there is an extensive and sometimes horrifying literature on the construction of memories - see
[5] A recent article in the NY Times suggests that Kekulé’s account of developing the benzene ring through a dream is a fiction created by Kekulé and others. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4DF113BF935A2575BC0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
[6] Clifford, William K., The Ethics of Belief, originally published in Contemporary Review, 1877, now available on the internet : http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/w_k_clifford/ethics_of_belief.html
[7] http://www.cavehill.uwi.edu/bnccde/ph29a/feyerabe.htm,
Friday, October 12, 2007
On the ethics of dying
I want to talk to you about dying, son. In particular, I want to talk to you about the ethics of dying. Ethics is a term that is generally used to describe ‘the right way to live.’ (It gets confused with morals where morals are often a collective opinion about what is right and wrong to do. Ethics has nothing to do with what others think is right and wrong. It has to do with what you think is right and wrong – decisions that you can make only on reflection and thought.)
However, that’s not my point here, I want you to think about the ethics of dying. That is ‘the right way to die.’ Life is amazing – it is so trite to say that. Every day we are confronted by miracle. Whenever someone asks me if I’m having a good day, I think to myself, ‘I woke up didn’t I?’ That’s a good day. To see life, vigour, energy, exchange, co-creation, ah…how can life be anything other than amazing – awesome.
However, we need to prepare for, be mindful of our mortality. One day, I will not awake – and one day, the same will be true for you.
My wish for you is not to throw away your life – and certainly, don’t do it too soon.
I’m biased of course, You are my son, I want you to live, to experience life as I have. Let me be really honest, I want you to carry forward our genes, our name. I am proud of you, I don’t want you to disappear early from this mortal coil.
I have to admit that I was lucky to get through my teenage years and twenties. I probably was close to dying on a number of occasions. I am just so grateful for having ‘lucked out.’ To think of all that I would have missed if I had not made it through.
In fairness, if I had been snuffed out, I wouldn’t of course have known what I had missed. And the same is for you. Perhaps you will be tempted to go to the edge, to experiment with motorbikes, unsafe sex, drugs – to amplify that experience of life. While I don’t want you to stop from exploring any of these areas, I want you to be aware that in your journey to the edge, you have to be careful because if you fall over the other side, there is no chance of coming back. On the other hand, it is hardly life if we don’t push to the limit of our possible glory.
There’s a right way to die – and you need to find that.
More specifically, I want you to consider not dying young. I have loved the changes in my life, the shifts, the movements, it is really exciting to grow old. Of course, I cannot really say whether dying younger might not have been bettter. I suggest you live longer – but I did not try the shorter, brighter option – which is probably something you ought to be grateful for!
Perhaps you will choose to exit in a blaze, a bright-magnesium spark of life lived. To die on a firey motorcycle crash, to die by contracting AIDS or some other terminal sexually transmitted disease contracted in a blazing orgasm, to die in mind-blowing ecstacy of a drug-induced trip – these may be glorious in ways that I cannot know because I never chose them. Perhaps I am weak for that. Perhaps you will be able to go closer to the edge than me – but do be careful. Don’t fall off – unless that is of course your conscious choice.
That’s what this is about – it is about choice. I want you to choose. More, I want you to choose wisely. You have the wisdom of youth which is quite different from the wisdom of age. Wisdom of age is that held in the hearts and minds of older people who survived – and if they were to be honest, survived by good fortune rather than good design. I hope you might at least consider that wisdom.
I admit that this piece of advice is as much for me as it is for you. For my part, I need to let go, to accept your decisions. It is your life. You have the right to choose how to live it and how to leave it. What sort of gift is it when I grant the gift, then try to control how you use it.
I want you to die consciously, not unconsciously. Don’t die by accident, make it deliberate, make it thoughtful. The ethics of living are intimately tied up with the ethics of dying. Give it some thought. Live, love, laugh – and when you go, it is my deepest wish that you will leave having experienced all that you would have wished to have experienced at the point that you exit.
Friday, September 07, 2007
ISO (17 words)
If you think
you have learned
all of life's lessons,
at least two
important lessons
still remain
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Religion as Creation
Religion is a testimony to the curiosity, the creativity and the credibility of mankind.
The world is one helluva ‘n amazin’ place. Of this, there can be no doubt whatsoever.
In cuts the curiosity. So how did it all get here? I mean, this is frickin’ amazing, truly dazzling. Here we are on a sparkling, wafer-thin, life-infested segment of the surface of a great big hunk of rock hurling through lifeless space around an even huger ball of fire. The wafer-thin surface of the big rock accommodates not just human life, but lots of other forms too. But the other forms are too stupid to know how privileged they are. Or at least, that is the arrogant view of the humans. Curiosity never killed a cat – according to the humans. Okay, so if there is an earth, if there is a present moment, and if there are humans, then there must have been a beginning, and it all must have started at some point. So where’d it start, and how?
So now, a cut to creativity to fill in the gaps. Some use a backward inferencing process. If there is time, space and life now, there must be some point where each of these dimensions began. And for the beginning to move to becoming as it has today is sufficient for some to infer that God must have existed as the first mover. Well, that’s fine, but it is perhaps useful to remember that just because there is an inferential process doesn’t mean that that which is inferred is true. Apparently, some people used to believe that the planet was flat, that it had edges. I believe that Norse mythology suggests that it was supported by all sorts of animals. Voila, an inference – but no real evidence on which to base the inferences. Sure, there is an end-point, the here-and-now. However, the existence of the here-and-now does not by itself suggest the process by which the here-and-now was reached.
This was always the problem that I have had with Artificial Intelligence being proposed as a model of how humans operate. It may well be that the process reflects the outcomes that are arrived at by humans, but that by no means guarantees that humans took the same path to get there. To take a more mundane example, regression analysis is the way in which predictions can be made about a variable based on weighted sums of various predictors. The weights and predictors can be derived from humans, and the mathematics can effectively model how humans make their predictions. However, there is no necessity that this is the way that the human makes their predictions. The more recent emerging science of neural networks is an entirely different model that also makes predictions. Again, they model human predictions – quite accurately – just like regression. However, the pathway is quite different.
So creativity is invoked to answer the curiosity. How did we get here? No ideas out there? That’s okay because I’ve got some neat ideas here. How about that there was this big cauldron, and a fairy and a gremlin were fluttering around above it, an updraft blew the fairy out and into the flame and the gremlin fell in formed a precipitate. The precipitate exploded and the universe expanded rapidly from there. The fairy that fell into the flame created energy, and some lightning struck the sea of turgid green (but not organic) soup that encompassed much of the third planet from the sol, and out popped life. Millions of years passed, and instead of that life just staying the same (which would have probably led to that life being wiped out), it changed and begat brothers and sisters that were different, and better suited to different situations until we had lots of forms of life.
And finally, credulity. A goodly number of the godless many have no useful ideas, or lack the imagination to have an idea, about where we come from. They latch onto an idea developed by some wanna-be account executive. Yep, this is where ontological explanations (or rather of origin) become the domain of marketers. And to be honest, like most marketing, it really doesn’t take much because good ideas sell themselves. Most people are just dying to know where it all started – and to know that it won’t end. Who wants to believe otherwise?
Let's be honest, none of us has any real clue. The explanations are simply creations about creation. Here’s your choice. Version 1 offers you a world that sees your life as a brief spark in the longer but nevertheless minor ‘daytime’ in which life has existed on the planet. When you die, you’re snuffed out. Your molecules get recycled, and the closest you get to live again is when your molecules are co-opted to support some other living being.
Then there’s version 2. You know that self-important view you have. Well, this is the one for you. You are precious, the essence of you, hey let’s call it ‘luos’, this ineffable quality that is you, this will last forever. You have a purpose, there is a higher power watching over you, ...
Did my 'luos' just start with my birth, or has it existed forever? Will I be conscious after I'm gone? Will I see my friends again? And so on... Honestly, I dunno, go find someone else who can fill in answers to your endless questions.
Religion. It’s nothing really special. We’re here. We’re conscious. This place is truly amazing.
Of course we’re gunna ask how we got here. And some smart-ass is going to give you their thoughts. And if the story is appealing, we’re gonna accept it.
Religion is well-marketed stories. And like most marketing, it is less about developing a story to convince people. It is more about writing a story that people can accept easily. Something along the lines of a Jungian archetype. These are stories that seem eternal, they resonate with our internal software, they make us tingle, they inspire. Religion is great. It resonates, it inspires. But that doesn’t make it true.
The world is one helluva ‘n amazin’ place. Of this, there can be no doubt whatsoever.
In cuts the curiosity. So how did it all get here? I mean, this is frickin’ amazing, truly dazzling. Here we are on a sparkling, wafer-thin, life-infested segment of the surface of a great big hunk of rock hurling through lifeless space around an even huger ball of fire. The wafer-thin surface of the big rock accommodates not just human life, but lots of other forms too. But the other forms are too stupid to know how privileged they are. Or at least, that is the arrogant view of the humans. Curiosity never killed a cat – according to the humans. Okay, so if there is an earth, if there is a present moment, and if there are humans, then there must have been a beginning, and it all must have started at some point. So where’d it start, and how?
So now, a cut to creativity to fill in the gaps. Some use a backward inferencing process. If there is time, space and life now, there must be some point where each of these dimensions began. And for the beginning to move to becoming as it has today is sufficient for some to infer that God must have existed as the first mover. Well, that’s fine, but it is perhaps useful to remember that just because there is an inferential process doesn’t mean that that which is inferred is true. Apparently, some people used to believe that the planet was flat, that it had edges. I believe that Norse mythology suggests that it was supported by all sorts of animals. Voila, an inference – but no real evidence on which to base the inferences. Sure, there is an end-point, the here-and-now. However, the existence of the here-and-now does not by itself suggest the process by which the here-and-now was reached.
This was always the problem that I have had with Artificial Intelligence being proposed as a model of how humans operate. It may well be that the process reflects the outcomes that are arrived at by humans, but that by no means guarantees that humans took the same path to get there. To take a more mundane example, regression analysis is the way in which predictions can be made about a variable based on weighted sums of various predictors. The weights and predictors can be derived from humans, and the mathematics can effectively model how humans make their predictions. However, there is no necessity that this is the way that the human makes their predictions. The more recent emerging science of neural networks is an entirely different model that also makes predictions. Again, they model human predictions – quite accurately – just like regression. However, the pathway is quite different.
So creativity is invoked to answer the curiosity. How did we get here? No ideas out there? That’s okay because I’ve got some neat ideas here. How about that there was this big cauldron, and a fairy and a gremlin were fluttering around above it, an updraft blew the fairy out and into the flame and the gremlin fell in formed a precipitate. The precipitate exploded and the universe expanded rapidly from there. The fairy that fell into the flame created energy, and some lightning struck the sea of turgid green (but not organic) soup that encompassed much of the third planet from the sol, and out popped life. Millions of years passed, and instead of that life just staying the same (which would have probably led to that life being wiped out), it changed and begat brothers and sisters that were different, and better suited to different situations until we had lots of forms of life.
And finally, credulity. A goodly number of the godless many have no useful ideas, or lack the imagination to have an idea, about where we come from. They latch onto an idea developed by some wanna-be account executive. Yep, this is where ontological explanations (or rather of origin) become the domain of marketers. And to be honest, like most marketing, it really doesn’t take much because good ideas sell themselves. Most people are just dying to know where it all started – and to know that it won’t end. Who wants to believe otherwise?
Let's be honest, none of us has any real clue. The explanations are simply creations about creation. Here’s your choice. Version 1 offers you a world that sees your life as a brief spark in the longer but nevertheless minor ‘daytime’ in which life has existed on the planet. When you die, you’re snuffed out. Your molecules get recycled, and the closest you get to live again is when your molecules are co-opted to support some other living being.
Then there’s version 2. You know that self-important view you have. Well, this is the one for you. You are precious, the essence of you, hey let’s call it ‘luos’, this ineffable quality that is you, this will last forever. You have a purpose, there is a higher power watching over you, ...
Did my 'luos' just start with my birth, or has it existed forever? Will I be conscious after I'm gone? Will I see my friends again? And so on... Honestly, I dunno, go find someone else who can fill in answers to your endless questions.
Religion. It’s nothing really special. We’re here. We’re conscious. This place is truly amazing.
Of course we’re gunna ask how we got here. And some smart-ass is going to give you their thoughts. And if the story is appealing, we’re gonna accept it.
Religion is well-marketed stories. And like most marketing, it is less about developing a story to convince people. It is more about writing a story that people can accept easily. Something along the lines of a Jungian archetype. These are stories that seem eternal, they resonate with our internal software, they make us tingle, they inspire. Religion is great. It resonates, it inspires. But that doesn’t make it true.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Confessions of a Putative Child Abuser
 |
| Possible Abusers - the accused on one hand, the accuser on the other |
August 21 was a horrible evening. Blustery winds buffeted the windows and the door occasionally mixed with driving rain, and occasionally not. This was merely the harbinger of the horrors. An eye in the storm that heralded the arrival of the troopers.
There was a knock at the front door that no-one was expecting rang on the door. I had three boys spreading toys around my home - my four year old son and the two boys from next door. To help me oversee this chaos was the father from next door as well.
I left them to answer the unexpected knock at the door. I wondered if it might be my neighbour’s wife arrived home early come over to join the party. Or perhaps my partner.
Nothing prepared me for what was there.
On the Nature of Abuse
I stand accused of playing with my son’s penis, and for encouraging him to play with mine.
Forget the truth value of the accusation. Is that behavior abuse?
If I was to have named our respective penises and played some puppet game (as was alleged), would that constitute child abuse? Two grown men travel putting on a show called Puppetry of the Penis. It amuses adults. I'm not sure it is very sexual.
Is it child abuse because the child’s sexuality is being exploited when the child is incapable of understanding it? By that argument, making a child kiss you would be child abuse because there are not many children that understand love – in fact, there’s a good number of adults that don’t understand it!
Is it abuse because I’m playing with him, or he with me? If I’m playing with him and he’s laughing and giggling but not getting excited (does a child experience excitement when he experiences an erection?), is that abuse. Is tickling abuse? Is pleasure verboten? If he’s playing with me and I get excited, is that abuse? If I don’t get excited, is it not abuse?
I guess the notion of sexual abuse of a child typically refers to the adult engaging in sexual practices with the child. Kissing is in, hugging is in, but touching sexual parts is out. OK. No problem there.
But what about schooling on toileting. Am I the only parent that has a boy that won’t actually hold his penis when he goes for a pee? Instead, he insists on grabbing the skin at the base of the penis (and the top of the scrotum) and wiggling it side to side. This is his idea of shaking it!
However, he also has a foreskin. So, to be clean (because everyone knows that the foreskin harbours “germs”), he really needs to pull it back. So, he won’t do it. Do I show him? Once? Twice? Three times? Never again? I’m not engaging in sexual practices here. I’m helping in toileting.
Or should I leave it to his mother? Is it abuse if the man touches a boy's penis, but not if the mother touches it? Is it better that a woman show a boy how to behave like a man?
Some people engage in golden showers. My boy sometimes thinks it is fun for him and I to pee together – and when he gets excited and starts flicking it about, I get a golden shower. It is no kind of turn on for me. I put it down to his high spirits. I presume that this is not child abuse.
And what about other games. As he learns about the man’s penis, he’s probably going to grab for it. My son already has. I’ve explained it is a no-go zone. But he’s a child, what if he goes for it again. And again? And again? Sure, there’s some point where something has to be done – but how far do we go to stop an undesired behavior? How far should we go? Electro-therapy probably seems a little harsh. And isn’t that child abuse anyway! Going back from there, where's the line?
The hangup is ours. The dirty thoughts are in the head of the adult, not in the head of the child.
I think the key is that an adult who uses a child to get sexual excitement should be the measure of child abuse (as we typically use the word). Of course, it is perhaps hard to measure sexual excitement, let alone the adult's intentions. However, just because it is tough to measure does not mean we should simply measure something else which is not valid but easier to measure.
Monday, January 01, 2007
Frank Unfolding
Frank loves the weather, the way that this piece of nature penetrates the force-field of the city. He loves its unpredictability. A little like the stock markets which are the focus of his job, but infinitely more interesting. While the stock market endlessly tracks perturbations of price; the weather shows its variety through infinitely more variety; temperature, clouds, precipitation, wind, humidity and more.
Today is a wintry summer day in November. Today’s weather is totally different from, but exactly what might be expected to follow yesterday’s tropical afternoon storm. Today, the air is cooler, humid, and sagging, heavy clouds are suspended from the sky like the grey washing of the old widower who lives next door to Frank. As the bus grinds up Ann St and out of the Valley, Frank senses the wall of warm air thrown up by the city, the prickle of heat.
Frank delights at the smell of a dash of salt in the air. Something clean, a whisper from nature, separate from the showered and perfumed smell of early-morning business people taking the bus. Frank wonders if a slight breeze is blowing in from beyond the bay and the islands and is pushing back at the busy city which honks, hisses, spits and spews. Strange to see the masses move mindlessly towards the song of the perverted city Siren, away from the islands by the sea.
Frank also loves the weather for the way that it reflects his thoughts, his feelings, his moods. Some think that the weather influences their mood. Frank sees it the other way around. It is a weather vane for his demeanour. Today is heavy, leaden, humid, with only a hint of a breeze. Ugh. He has had these thoughts for a while. Frank’s thoughts are electrical impulses, clinging together like tumble-dried polyester. Thinking simply creates more static, and Frank resigns himself to watch the swirl of negativity.
Frank sees himself as nothing out of the ordinary: he wakes, he widdles, he walks, he whinges, he whistles (badly) and he wanders home again. To his particular dissatisfaction, it is all without a woman. In the past, he dreamed of wealth, of achievement, of glory – and in some ways, he has achieved all that. Except he is alone – he had not addressed that concern and he wonders whether he has left it too late to do so. He feels he has officially reached middle age because he is now seeing more hair growth in his nose and his ears than on his head.
Frank’s morose thoughts continue. The way forward is simply to put one foot in front of the other – left, right, left, right. A rut with footprints. To top it all, at this moment, he is not even walking. He is standing, his feet planted on the sticky floor of the same bus, the same route (199), the same routine. He is gripping with his long slender fingers, the slimy leather strap hanging from the chrome rail. He is examining his own hand, hoping perhaps to understand why the back of his own hand does not look at all familiar. He looks a little higher, and sees his own face in the chrome rail, distorted obscenely. He smiles, but the image simply grimaces. However, just beside the image of his face, he sees another face, two eyes more than anything else. He looks down beside him and there is a young woman, blonde hair in pigtails. She smiles at him. He is a little piqued to realize that she has been watching him.
He asks, a little roughly he realizes, ‘Was there something that you were looking at?’
She laughs, ‘Yeah, the balding patch at the crown of your head actually.’
Mindlessly, Frank puts his hand to his crown. In hotel bathrooms where the mirrors create a corner, Frank would look into the infinite reflections to see if his hair was indeed thinning, only to promptly dismiss any evidence as an artifact of overly bright lighting.
She laughs, ‘I didn’t mean it as a criticism, it’s nice to see your head. It’s like getting to see you naked almost.’
She blushes and hastily adds, as if by way of explanation, “I’ve seen you on the bus before.”
Frank smiles at her remark, her inadequate explanation and her apparent awkwardness.
She appears to recover her composure, “Hey, look it’s our stop.”
Frank is now off balance. How does she know this is “our stop” as she has so proprietarily stated? Wordlessly, his bus-companion walks herself confidently off the bus, crosses the bustle of Adelaide St and up into Hutton Lane running up to Ann St. Frank follows in her wake, his disequilibrium descending into the surreal as she leads him along the exact route Frank takes towards his office each day. As they walk into the coolness of the lane between the buildings, she asks him in a conspiratorial whisper, “Do you smell the salt in the air? I think we are being called to the sea!” She laughs a bright clear laughter that echoes through off the walls of the lane. Frank enjoys her reverberating delight as he wonders at the echo of their thoughts.
As they walk in the shaded silence, Frank basks in the sunshine radiated by this woman. She is considerably younger than him; he normally would not allow himsel to even notice someone like her. However, he loves her youthfulness, he feels it like a match igniting an ember in himself, one he had thought to have been extinguished. As she walks along beside him in silence, he wonders if and how he might ask her out – but despairs at how to do this. The cloying negativity returns.
As they emerge onto Ann St, she ends the silence. “Here I am” and she sweeps a hand toward the Masonic Lodge to their left, a striking building dominated by six four storey corinthinian columns. Frank has always considered the Masonic Lodge to be a bizarre inhabitant of the area, but has never really considered it much even though it faces his own building. As if she is reading his mind, “And I think you’re over there somewhere,” his companion says waving her hand to the buildings across the street.
As Frank’s head fills with a flurry of thick thoughts, he hears her ask, “Hey, how about having coffee with me later this morning, say ten, over there at that coffee shop?”
Frank becomes inarticulate. Despite making a very successful living from developing and presenting complex financial investment strategies, Frank finds himself unable to connect words together. A string of words issue from his mouth, but to him, they are without meaning, without volition. Her beaming smile reassures him that somehow, he has communicated his grateful acceptance of her offer.
As she proceeds up the steps to the Masonic Lodge, he realizes he doesn’t know her name. Frank blurts out, “Hey, what’s your name? Mine is Frank.”
“Wendy” she replies, “I know. I’ll see you at ten.” She waves, turns, and disappears into the ancient building, a war memorial and the fitting headquarters of the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Freemasons of Queensland. ‘How does she know my name?’ Frank asks himself as he walks across Ann St to the Suncorp-Metway tower. He smiles as he disappears into the nameless space behind the one-way mirror glass that adorns the building, smiling at the fact that its glory is really simply a reflection of the Masonic Lodge across the street. Everything is seen a little differently today.
Frank is happier entering the office today than he has felt for two or three years. People walking past probably notice nothing different. It is all on the inside that he is experiencing a great erupting, an unfolding, an emerging. This is a good thing, like a shower of rain, a refreshing sea-change blowing in from the inside. Cobwebs blown away, dust mites tumbling across acres of grey matter, and bright sparks bustling along the white leads of the information highway inside his head.
Of course, nothing is really different other than having met a cheeky, smiling, pretty stranger on the bus for a brief moment. He smiles at the fickle discontinuities of his thoughts and emotions. His happiness is briefly challenged when he sees on his calendar that he has a conference call with three directors of a Sydney-based client at 10h45. Coffee may be shorter than Frank would like, but it gives him enough time to set up a date, and not enough time to procrastinate.
Frank finds himself watching the clock on the wall across from his office, like a young child grappling with the concept that the symbols around the edge of the clock face indicate two different values – one for the big hand and one for the little. For Frank, the clock indicates the boring passage of time on one hand, and on the other, it is the smiling herald of exciting future possibilities.
Finally, the big hand reaches the little hand, both approaching the number 10. Frank feels a pull to leave right away, but he does not want to appear too eager and resolves to wait a further five minutes. Frank’s big clunky black retro phone rings startling Frank from his reverie. He grabs the handpiece, and an operator speaks, “This is Telstra Sydney, am I speaking with Frank Sadler?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, we’re connecting you to the planned conference call being hosted by Capital Finance, stand by please.”
As the connections are made, Frank’s brain whirs around what is happening. Had he wrongly recorded the time of the conference call? Was the office clock an hour out? Realization hit Frank with a clunk, like a narcissistic bird flying into the mirrored window of his office as had happened a month ago. Sydney had moved onto daylight saving a week ago, and it was just after 10h45 their time. His conference call was now.
Frank is listening, but not participating. He watches the clock helplessly, the hands now showing the implacable dripping away of minutes. The herald of exciting future possibilities now laughs in a deranged way as the torturous drip, drip, drip of minutes lost continues.
The waves of sound issuing from the receiver wash up against Frank’s ears. Like any seashore, thousands of waves hit the beach without being noticed by anyone. It is endless repetition that does the work. Over an hour later, the clients, like the tide, eventually recede. Frank is numb in the knowledge that the gem he found on the beach has been taken away by the tide.
Frank tries to make his mind do a left-hand or right-hand turn, away from his circling thoughts. Could he find Wendy again? Can he simply visit the Masonic Lodge? What would he say to her? In his mind’s eye, he sees a large red sign like one that guards off-ramps to the freeway: ‘Go back, go the other way.’ He tries to reverse but is now trapped on the carousel of self-doubt.
Today is Friday and Frank has resolved to act. Wendy is not on the bus and he has not seen her on any day since Monday. As he descends from the bus and crosses Adelaide St, Frank feels the steel of his new attitude. He will find Wendy and ask her out. But what if she says ‘No’? Or worse, what if she says ‘Yes’? Frank feels fear clawing at his throat. The uncertainty of how she might respond, and how he should respond in turn, leaves him a little giddy and breathless. He curses his thinking cycle. He tries to talk down his self doubt. In this moment, there is nothing but potentials. The only thing that is clear is that the future is not.
As he walks up Hutton Lane to Ann St, the pale pink Masonic Lodge towering on his left weakens his resolve. His mind begins to spin on thoughts of what might and might not be. He can hear his grandmother’s wise words, “Stop worrying Frank, worrying is like taking a journey on a rocking chair. You can go all day long, and you still won’t get anywhere.”
At 8.15am, almost exactly four days after meeting Wendy on the bus, Frank marches into the Masonic Lodge. The place appears deserted, a marble mosaic floor, great pillars, an enormous urn like one to hold ashes, only this one must have held the ashes of millions, a dizzying void stretches above. Frank walks around the enormous centerpiece urn, and looks up the long corridor framed by two Australian flags. He wonders what is done in this building, and what does Wendy do here? He has no answers, just numb, unnamed fear. With some relief he hears a hum, an industrial sound coming from the left-hand branch at the other end of the long corridor through the building. A power cable disappears around the corner to the left, and he sees it gently flicking like a cat’s tail.
He walks around the corridor to see a pretty feminine backside swaying back and forth, a blonde pony-tail that swings in a syncopated rhythm to the behind. He realizes he is looking at Wendy as she proficiently manoeuvres a floor polishing machine back and forth. “Hello” he shouts over the noise of the machine, feeling foolish.
She has not heard him. The telltale white cord running around the back of her neck gives him a clue as to why not. She is tuned into a virtual world. He steps forward and touches her shoulder. She looks around startled. Her eyes are wide. He smiles. She shuts down the machine and smiles back – to Frank’s relief.
She drops the headphones from her ears, “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
“Yeah, and didn’t hear me either. Something interesting on the i-pod?’
‘Yeah, Black Sabbath reminds me of my childhood.’
‘Hey, good to see you again.’
Wendy looks at him blankly.
‘On the bus’ prompts Frank.
‘Oh’ says Wendy noncommittally.
Frank feels out of place, suspended in space, he feels like he’s being hung out to dry. He has to lead the way, and leading is not his forte, he is way out of depth.
‘Look, I was wondering if you’d like to go out for brunch with me, maybe tomorrow, 11am?’
Wendy’s face breaks into a smile.
‘Sure’ she says. ‘You wanna know where I live so you can come and pick me up? Maybe you could meet my family.’
A little surprised, Frank responds, ‘Well, sure I’d be happy to meet them. Where do you live?’
Wendy provides her address, “72 Welsby St” stumbling on the word Welsby and continuing, “near to the corner of Lamington St in New Farm.”
Frank jokes with her, “Bit of a mouthful, eh?”
Wendy smiles rather than laughs. Frank admits to himself quietly that his effort at some humour was probably a bit lame and did not deserve any greater response.
Frank feels relief at having asked his question and obtained the response he wanted, he moves to withdraw. Wendy smiles at him, seeing that he’s going, reinserts her headphones, switches on the floor polisher, and with a smile and a wave, turns back to her task.
Saturday morning, the sun is shining, and the atmosphere is crackling with energy – or so it feels for Frank. Arriving about 20 minutes early, Frank retreats to a coffee shop at the intersection of Lamington and Welsby. He does not want to appear too keen.
@@At 11am, Frank walks up to the little weatherboard house and rusty red roof half hidden behind the flourishing green of the long established verge-side trees. The house is a little sad, rundown, and especially dilapidated relative to the high ceilings, timber and glass flourishes of the bistros and boutiques at Welsby and Lamington just 50 metres away. The house looks substantial and Frank wonders if Wendy shares it with others. He nervously rubs his wet palms down his calm, cool beige pants, and immediately regrets it glancing down to see if he has marked them with the sweat.
He knocks firmly, but briefly on the door and steps back. He does not want to be crowded around the door, he needs to keep a polite distance. He hears soft footsteps, the sounds of locks being released, the handle turns, but a lock slips. “Shit” he hears at a low level. Eventually, the door opens. Peering through the screen door is Wendy. She looks beautiful, her bright airy face flushed red and stretched taunt by the two pigtails, and dressed in bright, tight running gear. Wendy looks a little surprised. Frank looks down at the sweat underlining her breasts, he tries to withhold his own surprise.
“Hi” says Frank brightly. He feels awkward. Something is wrong. Brunch isn’t meant to be dressy, but he thinks that running gear is a little too déclassé even if she does look pretty cute like that. And Wendy does not look like she is expecting him.
“Umm, have I stuffed up the time again” asks Frank.
Wendy recovers, “Sorry, I didn’t expect you at my door right now.”
“Brunch?” he asks plaintively, the ground shifting beneath him.
Wendy’s face knits up, then unravels as a large smile crosses her face. “Oh, oh, so, that’s why you’re here.”
Frank feels like he is climbing scree, two metres forward, one metre back. “Yeah, that’s right.. You made me a bit nervous.”
“You should be, after standing me up for coffee.”
“Yeah, sorry, I do feel bad about that, and I realize that I didn’t talk to you about it when I caught up with you at the Masonic Lodge.”
A moment’s silence. Frank fills the silence, “I guess I wanted to find out first whether you were an axe-murderer or not.” Frank smiles as much at his own humour, it helps him feel like things are okay again.
Wendy scoffs, “I swear, it was only once, the guy deserved it, and it’s like it’s going to follow me around my whole life.”
Frank laughs out loud but stops as he sees Wendy’s unbroken face. She meets his eyes, and then a smile spreads across her face. Frank starts to breathe again.
“So where to for lunch” Wendy asks.
“The Powerhouse down by the river” suggests Frank.
Silence follows, and Frank, flustered tries to fill the silence, “So, are you changing or coming out to lunch like that.”
“Oh, I don’t know about changing,” giving a big smile, “seems to me that you are quite taken with this outfit.”
Frank feels his cheeks redden. Her directness disarms him – and delights him. He remains perplexed about why she had appeared so distant and remote when he caught up with her at the Masonic Lodge. He thinks to ask her directly about this.
“Hey, you know when I caught up with you at the Masonic Lodge, I hope you didn’t think me a pest or something.”
Wendy laughs, “No Frank, I didn’t think you were a pest. In fact, I was’t even there!”
Frank tries to rewind the film, something is not gelling, he doesn’t understand what is happening here. He wonders if he has slipped through a wormhole into an alternative or parallel universe. Rather than go on with all the various seriously bizarre alternatives, he decides to check his understanding first.
“Sorry, what do you mean you weren’t even there?”
“I wasn’t there, I was at the pool, swimming. I did hear about your visit though later that day.”
“I’m not understanding this very much.”
“Yeah, I can tell.” Wendy is alight with glee dancing in her face.
“The person you met and invited to lunch is my sister.” Turning, she calls back into the house, “Wembley, your date is here.”
Frank flushes again and offers some half formed questions,. “Sister? Wembley?”
A girl appears at the door, Wendy’s double, Wembley he presumes. One in sweaty shorts and t-shirt, the other in a pretty summer frock, sensible low sandals, and a fresh bright face featuring a few endearing freckles.
“Hi” says Wembley with a shiny smile. “So you’ve met some of my family already. This is Wendy, she’s my twin sister.”
Frank is flummoxed. He feels like his jaw is hanging open which Wendy confirms, “Frank, close your mouth, you look like you’ve never seen twins before.”
Wembley fills in some gaps, “We both share this house with our Grandma, but she’s busy out back at the moment. So, I’m ready to go, where are we headed?”
Frank is speechless.
Wendy steps in, “Well you two enjoy yourselves, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and have a glass of wine for me.” She winks at Frank.
Frank could see that the two are identical. Wembley is slightly smaller and slightly thinner, but nothing that he would notice – or indeed did notice – when he met them separately. Despite their being parallels one of the other, he realizes almost with shame, that he is more drawn to Wendy rather than Wembley. He can’t say why, but he realizes that he feels like he is going out with the wrong girl.
Stammering and uncertain about how to proceed, Frank asks Wendy “I…, you…, do you want to join us for lunch?”
Frank delights when he sees her smile, and then feels crushed when she replies, “Oh gosh no, Wembley has been so looking forward to this, haven’t you dear?”
Wembley nods her agreement.
“No, you two go out and have a great time.”
“Will I see you later?” asks Frank.
“Really Frank, I’m given to wonder whether you are here for Wembley or for me. No, you go and have lunch with Wembley.”
With a smile and wave, she gives Wembley a kiss on her cheek, pushes her outside towards Frank, closes the screen door and the front door and walks away inside.
Frank is left standing on the pavement befuddled. Wembley looks at him expectantly.
“Right then” says Frank, his head full of cloud and fog, “let’s head off to lunch then.”
As they begin the short walk, Frank feels his fear clarify, a fear of a long, silent lunch with Wendy physically present in the body, but not in the spirit. Frank’s fear of silence is quickly pushed aside.
Wembley talks easily, “I could tell you were nice guy from the moment that I met you. You have such a nice smile. I really enjoy meeting new people. My job is really great because I’m always meeting new people. That’s how I met you, isn’t it” as she gives a giggle.
“Isn’t it funny how things work. Actually, I don’t think I have met a lot of people there really. I’ve been working there Mondays for a while. You’re one of the first people to come and really talk to me. And you only talked to me for about a minute or two. I guess you didn’t want to disturb me from meeting up with Wendy. We often meet up for breakfast when I knock off at about 8.30. I am so glad that you did come and talk to me. I really love Wendy and Grandma, but we don’t always see a lot of people. Wendy has had a few boyfriends, but they don’t seem to last. And Grandma hasn’t had a boyfriend in years. And I’ve never had a boyfriend. I don’t think I want one, they seem to be just too much hassle. My friends at my other job, some of them have boyfriends, but they are always fighting. I don’t know why they bother. Seems strange to me. Grandma is probably too old for a boyfriend now. I don’t know how old she is, but seems like she doesn’t need a boyfriend now. Anyway, she will probably die soon. If there was a boyfriend, well then he would only be sad. We’ll be sad when Grandma dies too, but it has to happen eventually. Will happen to me too eventually. I wonder if I will die before Wendy, maybe because of the accident when I was a baby. Still, doesn’t help to be thinking about grim matters like that. Grim – a word that Grandma uses. So what are we going to eat? I love Italian, spaghetti, as long as you don’t mind me making a mess. You might want to be sure that you stand back. Wendy gets annoyed with me if I make too much mess when I’m eating, but it’s not my fault. I do try to do my best. She knows that. I guess I feel sorry for Wendy and Grandma having to look after me. But I’m really okay, it’s not like I’m a child, I’m an adult and I can fend for myself. Grandma says so. Wendy is not so sure. They don’t fight too much about that anymore. I like to listen to them. I’ve always liked to listen. That’s why I am called Wembley. I was actually named Arianne. Wendy learned to speak before me. I just copied her, only I didn’t pronounce her name correctly and I was calling myself Wembley.”
Frank allows the sounds of Wembley’s talk to wash over him. She is pleasant to listen to, undemanding, and allows him space and time to think. The sun warms his head and shoulders. He enjoys seeing the signs of life emerging under the sun, little lizards leaping away from the edges of pavements as they walk by, the trees buzzing and clicking with insects. Tt the restaurant, Frank notices the sun is warming the wildlife jogging, cycling, or simply walking along the riverwalk.
With Wembley beside him, Frank stops at a sign asking them to wait to be seated. Frank touches Wembley on the arm in pointing to the table by the riverwalk, “Look at that table there, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
A chubby waitress approaches taking two menus from a holder at the bar. She smiles as she approaches and remarks “Got your eye on the best table in the house, have you?”
Frank feels caught out, “No, I guess it’s reserved is it?”
Wembley chimes in, “Is it reserved?”
The waitress nods.
“For us?” Wembley asks.
The waitress laughs, and turns to face Frank, “What’s your name?”
Before Frank can reply, Wembley responds, “His name is Frank, mine is Wembley, what’s yours?”
The waitress laughs again, “My name’s Melanie. Did you make a reservation?”
“No” said Wembley turning to look at the desired table, “Should I make one now before someone else comes and makes one?”
Melanie, hugs the two menus she has picked up at the front of her body, she surveys the two of them with a smile. She continues, “Well Frank, Wembley clearly wants the best table in the house, but you seem a little less clear.”
Frank feels awkward inside. He hates the feeling of not being able to ask for even simple things. He wants to protest on many levels. Wembley can barely be counted as a friend at this early stage, and besides Wembley is merely a substitute for the one that he hopes – or hoped – might be his friend. Frank feels pressure pushing his blood into his face, and his lips into inactivity.
Melanie smiles, “Hmm, I take it that you would like that table.”
With a flick of his head towards the table, Frank responds, “Sure, if it’s no trouble.”
“I doubt you’ll be any more trouble than most of my customers, and good deal less trouble than my worst customers, so come on over.”
Wembley claps her hands in delight, and the trio move through the tables of early lunchtime diners to the prize table. Melanie leads the way in her black waiting outfit. Wembley follows asking Melanie questions about how big the kitchen must be to cook for all these people. Frank shuffles along in an embarrassed silence.
At the table, Melanie leans forward and deftly removes the black ‘Reserved’ sign putting it into the front pocket in her black apron. Once settled at the table, Frank is able to return to his quiet internal world as Wembley talks, asks questions of Melanie, and devours a bowl of spaghetti Napolitano. Frank is pleased to be at the front of the restaurant where somehow he feels safer close to the people walking past on the riverwalk and removed from his fellow diners. In fairness, he realises that Wembley makes only a little mess.
As he delivers Wembley back to her home, Frank feels unsure of what to do next. Wembley is beautiful, the cast of her sister, she’s a beautiful person, not some empty shell, and Frank finds it in him some compassion for this girl. She is a happy soul, full of delight and has sparks of the cheeky fun that make Wendy Wendy, but she is her own person. And not the person that Frank wants.
On arriving at the door, Wembley excitedly grabs his hand, shakes it vigorously, and says, “Hey that was really fun, I really enjoyed it. Maybe I’ll catch you around sometime.” She skips up the steps, pulls a key from her tiny purse which appears big enough to hold only this one key, opens it and dances inside without looking back and closes the door.
Frank grins. A delightful soul, how could he say anything otherwise. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the curtain at the front window flicker. He just smiles to himself.
As he turns to walk away, the door opens. Frank turns expecting to see Wendy, but it is not to be. A smallish, matronly figure is there, round around the middle in a really comforting sort of way, and wrapped in a stained butcher’s apron. In her hands, she is holding a wooden spoon covered in sauce or batter of some kind. Her blue eyes twinkle, and the beauty of Wembley and Wendy is clearly seen within. Beneath her rudy cheeks, a cheeky grin spreads across her face.
“Now you get to reckon with Grandma!”
Frank is flabbergasted.
“Where’s your manners boy. How about a “Hello, how do you do?’”
Frank grabs at her suggestions and uses them as he might a half-inflated, and rapidly deflating life vest: “Hello, how do you do?” He trails off.
“Very well thank you. How about you and I have a little talk?”
Frank nods.
“I can tell you’re quite taken with our girl. Thought it might be timely for me to have a little chat with you.”
Frank seeks to clarify any misunderstanding, “It’s actually Wendy that I’m quite taken with.”
“Of course it is. Who else would it be? I know Wendy pulled that little trick on you.” Grandma gives a wry laugh. “She’s a fool, but she’s young. Of course I know that you were here for Wendy.”
“Don’t you think that this talk is all a little premature?”
“Premature? How long should a person wait? Don’t you think that I’m old enough to know what is likely to work and what is not? Wendy told me about your meeting on the bus. You took your time to notice her, and I suspect she had to throw herself at you. I was frankly surprised that she had not heard from you since you met sooner – and Wendy was sure disappointed. However, all the pieces fell back together when you showed up today to take out our Wembley. Wendy was caught off guard.” Grandma snorted a wry laugh again. “But not so off guard as to not play coy. A foolish move I would suggest, but a woman must do what a woman must do.”
“Why foolish? Did she stand a chance of losing me you think?”
“No you silly boy. Foolish because times a-wastin’. They say experience gives wisdom. Maybe. However, I think that age can give a good deal of wisdom. I’ve collected more regrets about what I might have done than most. I’m a bit further down the track, and don’t have much truck with games. Why play bets from the side when you could be in the centre of the circle making the action happen.”
“What sort of action are you expecting here?”
“I’m here to tell you to take action. What that young missy needs is a good root.”
Frank’s face opens wide.
“Sorry” responds Grandma, and with a twinkle, “I realize that’s an old word now. What is it these days? A bang, a boink or something?”
“Bonk, and that’s an old word too” Frank offers.
“Yeah, well one of those. And no matter how old the word is, the intention and the motion are the same. The two of you might dance around forever, she playing games and you being shy.”
Frank starts to grin. He can see that Grandma is something of a character, but also, he can see the strong family resemblance, at least in manner, and perhaps even the clear sparkle in the eyes, the laughing face, the teasing nature.
“What if we go down that path, and we’re not really well suited for one another?”
“What if you do? Gawd sakes, you not been listening to me boy? Nothing ventured, nothing gained, a thousand other things that you might expect me to say as Grandma. But more to the point, d’ya wanna bonk her?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, time you got on with it. And I can’t wait around forever to become a great grandma while you do foolish time wasting things. So, you need to talk to her, maybe when she gets back from her run.”
“She went out running? I thought she must have been running this morning.”
“She did. Needed to bang out some of that energy she got from playing that game with you. That and trying to erase the demons of maybe having played you just a little too hard. Frankly, I think she could play you harder, but I don’t want to see that.” Looking to her right, Grandma continues, “Here she comes now.”
Looking left, Frank watches Wendy running strongly up through the dappled shadows of the pavement, then slowing cautiously as she sees him and Grandma arranged like a tableau on the front step. Wiping a wisp of blonde hair from her eyes, she glances from Frank to Grandma and back again.
“Hi.”
Frank could not help but admire her for a second time dressed in sweaty running gear. He felt guilt as lascivious thoughts ran through his mind, but a look to Grandma who was waving him on with a finger encouraged him. Frank was not sure that Wendy had seen her Grandma’s motions, but felt strength to continue in any case.
“Hey Wendy. Listen. I was wondering, if you were free tonight, to go out, on a date?”
“Hmm, well, I’ll have to check.”
“Nonsense,” said Grandma matter-of-factly. “You ain’t got nothing on tonight.” Frank blushes at Grandma’s double-entendre. Glancing at Wendy with embarrassment, he feels relief to see a pink blush in her cheeks too.
Wendy turns to Frank with a smile, “Appears that Grandma has got my dance card, and tells me that there are no other better offers around, sure, why not.” With a snort, Grandma retreats into the house leaving Frank and Wendy to sort themselves out.
Today is a wintry summer day in November. Today’s weather is totally different from, but exactly what might be expected to follow yesterday’s tropical afternoon storm. Today, the air is cooler, humid, and sagging, heavy clouds are suspended from the sky like the grey washing of the old widower who lives next door to Frank. As the bus grinds up Ann St and out of the Valley, Frank senses the wall of warm air thrown up by the city, the prickle of heat.
Frank delights at the smell of a dash of salt in the air. Something clean, a whisper from nature, separate from the showered and perfumed smell of early-morning business people taking the bus. Frank wonders if a slight breeze is blowing in from beyond the bay and the islands and is pushing back at the busy city which honks, hisses, spits and spews. Strange to see the masses move mindlessly towards the song of the perverted city Siren, away from the islands by the sea.
Frank also loves the weather for the way that it reflects his thoughts, his feelings, his moods. Some think that the weather influences their mood. Frank sees it the other way around. It is a weather vane for his demeanour. Today is heavy, leaden, humid, with only a hint of a breeze. Ugh. He has had these thoughts for a while. Frank’s thoughts are electrical impulses, clinging together like tumble-dried polyester. Thinking simply creates more static, and Frank resigns himself to watch the swirl of negativity.
Frank sees himself as nothing out of the ordinary: he wakes, he widdles, he walks, he whinges, he whistles (badly) and he wanders home again. To his particular dissatisfaction, it is all without a woman. In the past, he dreamed of wealth, of achievement, of glory – and in some ways, he has achieved all that. Except he is alone – he had not addressed that concern and he wonders whether he has left it too late to do so. He feels he has officially reached middle age because he is now seeing more hair growth in his nose and his ears than on his head.
Frank’s morose thoughts continue. The way forward is simply to put one foot in front of the other – left, right, left, right. A rut with footprints. To top it all, at this moment, he is not even walking. He is standing, his feet planted on the sticky floor of the same bus, the same route (199), the same routine. He is gripping with his long slender fingers, the slimy leather strap hanging from the chrome rail. He is examining his own hand, hoping perhaps to understand why the back of his own hand does not look at all familiar. He looks a little higher, and sees his own face in the chrome rail, distorted obscenely. He smiles, but the image simply grimaces. However, just beside the image of his face, he sees another face, two eyes more than anything else. He looks down beside him and there is a young woman, blonde hair in pigtails. She smiles at him. He is a little piqued to realize that she has been watching him.
He asks, a little roughly he realizes, ‘Was there something that you were looking at?’
She laughs, ‘Yeah, the balding patch at the crown of your head actually.’
Mindlessly, Frank puts his hand to his crown. In hotel bathrooms where the mirrors create a corner, Frank would look into the infinite reflections to see if his hair was indeed thinning, only to promptly dismiss any evidence as an artifact of overly bright lighting.
She laughs, ‘I didn’t mean it as a criticism, it’s nice to see your head. It’s like getting to see you naked almost.’
She blushes and hastily adds, as if by way of explanation, “I’ve seen you on the bus before.”
Frank smiles at her remark, her inadequate explanation and her apparent awkwardness.
She appears to recover her composure, “Hey, look it’s our stop.”
Frank is now off balance. How does she know this is “our stop” as she has so proprietarily stated? Wordlessly, his bus-companion walks herself confidently off the bus, crosses the bustle of Adelaide St and up into Hutton Lane running up to Ann St. Frank follows in her wake, his disequilibrium descending into the surreal as she leads him along the exact route Frank takes towards his office each day. As they walk into the coolness of the lane between the buildings, she asks him in a conspiratorial whisper, “Do you smell the salt in the air? I think we are being called to the sea!” She laughs a bright clear laughter that echoes through off the walls of the lane. Frank enjoys her reverberating delight as he wonders at the echo of their thoughts.
As they walk in the shaded silence, Frank basks in the sunshine radiated by this woman. She is considerably younger than him; he normally would not allow himsel to even notice someone like her. However, he loves her youthfulness, he feels it like a match igniting an ember in himself, one he had thought to have been extinguished. As she walks along beside him in silence, he wonders if and how he might ask her out – but despairs at how to do this. The cloying negativity returns.
As they emerge onto Ann St, she ends the silence. “Here I am” and she sweeps a hand toward the Masonic Lodge to their left, a striking building dominated by six four storey corinthinian columns. Frank has always considered the Masonic Lodge to be a bizarre inhabitant of the area, but has never really considered it much even though it faces his own building. As if she is reading his mind, “And I think you’re over there somewhere,” his companion says waving her hand to the buildings across the street.
As Frank’s head fills with a flurry of thick thoughts, he hears her ask, “Hey, how about having coffee with me later this morning, say ten, over there at that coffee shop?”
Frank becomes inarticulate. Despite making a very successful living from developing and presenting complex financial investment strategies, Frank finds himself unable to connect words together. A string of words issue from his mouth, but to him, they are without meaning, without volition. Her beaming smile reassures him that somehow, he has communicated his grateful acceptance of her offer.
As she proceeds up the steps to the Masonic Lodge, he realizes he doesn’t know her name. Frank blurts out, “Hey, what’s your name? Mine is Frank.”
“Wendy” she replies, “I know. I’ll see you at ten.” She waves, turns, and disappears into the ancient building, a war memorial and the fitting headquarters of the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Freemasons of Queensland. ‘How does she know my name?’ Frank asks himself as he walks across Ann St to the Suncorp-Metway tower. He smiles as he disappears into the nameless space behind the one-way mirror glass that adorns the building, smiling at the fact that its glory is really simply a reflection of the Masonic Lodge across the street. Everything is seen a little differently today.
Frank is happier entering the office today than he has felt for two or three years. People walking past probably notice nothing different. It is all on the inside that he is experiencing a great erupting, an unfolding, an emerging. This is a good thing, like a shower of rain, a refreshing sea-change blowing in from the inside. Cobwebs blown away, dust mites tumbling across acres of grey matter, and bright sparks bustling along the white leads of the information highway inside his head.
Of course, nothing is really different other than having met a cheeky, smiling, pretty stranger on the bus for a brief moment. He smiles at the fickle discontinuities of his thoughts and emotions. His happiness is briefly challenged when he sees on his calendar that he has a conference call with three directors of a Sydney-based client at 10h45. Coffee may be shorter than Frank would like, but it gives him enough time to set up a date, and not enough time to procrastinate.
Frank finds himself watching the clock on the wall across from his office, like a young child grappling with the concept that the symbols around the edge of the clock face indicate two different values – one for the big hand and one for the little. For Frank, the clock indicates the boring passage of time on one hand, and on the other, it is the smiling herald of exciting future possibilities.
Finally, the big hand reaches the little hand, both approaching the number 10. Frank feels a pull to leave right away, but he does not want to appear too eager and resolves to wait a further five minutes. Frank’s big clunky black retro phone rings startling Frank from his reverie. He grabs the handpiece, and an operator speaks, “This is Telstra Sydney, am I speaking with Frank Sadler?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, we’re connecting you to the planned conference call being hosted by Capital Finance, stand by please.”
As the connections are made, Frank’s brain whirs around what is happening. Had he wrongly recorded the time of the conference call? Was the office clock an hour out? Realization hit Frank with a clunk, like a narcissistic bird flying into the mirrored window of his office as had happened a month ago. Sydney had moved onto daylight saving a week ago, and it was just after 10h45 their time. His conference call was now.
Frank is listening, but not participating. He watches the clock helplessly, the hands now showing the implacable dripping away of minutes. The herald of exciting future possibilities now laughs in a deranged way as the torturous drip, drip, drip of minutes lost continues.
The waves of sound issuing from the receiver wash up against Frank’s ears. Like any seashore, thousands of waves hit the beach without being noticed by anyone. It is endless repetition that does the work. Over an hour later, the clients, like the tide, eventually recede. Frank is numb in the knowledge that the gem he found on the beach has been taken away by the tide.
Frank tries to make his mind do a left-hand or right-hand turn, away from his circling thoughts. Could he find Wendy again? Can he simply visit the Masonic Lodge? What would he say to her? In his mind’s eye, he sees a large red sign like one that guards off-ramps to the freeway: ‘Go back, go the other way.’ He tries to reverse but is now trapped on the carousel of self-doubt.
Today is Friday and Frank has resolved to act. Wendy is not on the bus and he has not seen her on any day since Monday. As he descends from the bus and crosses Adelaide St, Frank feels the steel of his new attitude. He will find Wendy and ask her out. But what if she says ‘No’? Or worse, what if she says ‘Yes’? Frank feels fear clawing at his throat. The uncertainty of how she might respond, and how he should respond in turn, leaves him a little giddy and breathless. He curses his thinking cycle. He tries to talk down his self doubt. In this moment, there is nothing but potentials. The only thing that is clear is that the future is not.
As he walks up Hutton Lane to Ann St, the pale pink Masonic Lodge towering on his left weakens his resolve. His mind begins to spin on thoughts of what might and might not be. He can hear his grandmother’s wise words, “Stop worrying Frank, worrying is like taking a journey on a rocking chair. You can go all day long, and you still won’t get anywhere.”
At 8.15am, almost exactly four days after meeting Wendy on the bus, Frank marches into the Masonic Lodge. The place appears deserted, a marble mosaic floor, great pillars, an enormous urn like one to hold ashes, only this one must have held the ashes of millions, a dizzying void stretches above. Frank walks around the enormous centerpiece urn, and looks up the long corridor framed by two Australian flags. He wonders what is done in this building, and what does Wendy do here? He has no answers, just numb, unnamed fear. With some relief he hears a hum, an industrial sound coming from the left-hand branch at the other end of the long corridor through the building. A power cable disappears around the corner to the left, and he sees it gently flicking like a cat’s tail.
He walks around the corridor to see a pretty feminine backside swaying back and forth, a blonde pony-tail that swings in a syncopated rhythm to the behind. He realizes he is looking at Wendy as she proficiently manoeuvres a floor polishing machine back and forth. “Hello” he shouts over the noise of the machine, feeling foolish.
She has not heard him. The telltale white cord running around the back of her neck gives him a clue as to why not. She is tuned into a virtual world. He steps forward and touches her shoulder. She looks around startled. Her eyes are wide. He smiles. She shuts down the machine and smiles back – to Frank’s relief.
She drops the headphones from her ears, “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
“Yeah, and didn’t hear me either. Something interesting on the i-pod?’
‘Yeah, Black Sabbath reminds me of my childhood.’
‘Hey, good to see you again.’
Wendy looks at him blankly.
‘On the bus’ prompts Frank.
‘Oh’ says Wendy noncommittally.
Frank feels out of place, suspended in space, he feels like he’s being hung out to dry. He has to lead the way, and leading is not his forte, he is way out of depth.
‘Look, I was wondering if you’d like to go out for brunch with me, maybe tomorrow, 11am?’
Wendy’s face breaks into a smile.
‘Sure’ she says. ‘You wanna know where I live so you can come and pick me up? Maybe you could meet my family.’
A little surprised, Frank responds, ‘Well, sure I’d be happy to meet them. Where do you live?’
Wendy provides her address, “72 Welsby St” stumbling on the word Welsby and continuing, “near to the corner of Lamington St in New Farm.”
Frank jokes with her, “Bit of a mouthful, eh?”
Wendy smiles rather than laughs. Frank admits to himself quietly that his effort at some humour was probably a bit lame and did not deserve any greater response.
Frank feels relief at having asked his question and obtained the response he wanted, he moves to withdraw. Wendy smiles at him, seeing that he’s going, reinserts her headphones, switches on the floor polisher, and with a smile and a wave, turns back to her task.
Saturday morning, the sun is shining, and the atmosphere is crackling with energy – or so it feels for Frank. Arriving about 20 minutes early, Frank retreats to a coffee shop at the intersection of Lamington and Welsby. He does not want to appear too keen.
@@At 11am, Frank walks up to the little weatherboard house and rusty red roof half hidden behind the flourishing green of the long established verge-side trees. The house is a little sad, rundown, and especially dilapidated relative to the high ceilings, timber and glass flourishes of the bistros and boutiques at Welsby and Lamington just 50 metres away. The house looks substantial and Frank wonders if Wendy shares it with others. He nervously rubs his wet palms down his calm, cool beige pants, and immediately regrets it glancing down to see if he has marked them with the sweat.
He knocks firmly, but briefly on the door and steps back. He does not want to be crowded around the door, he needs to keep a polite distance. He hears soft footsteps, the sounds of locks being released, the handle turns, but a lock slips. “Shit” he hears at a low level. Eventually, the door opens. Peering through the screen door is Wendy. She looks beautiful, her bright airy face flushed red and stretched taunt by the two pigtails, and dressed in bright, tight running gear. Wendy looks a little surprised. Frank looks down at the sweat underlining her breasts, he tries to withhold his own surprise.
“Hi” says Frank brightly. He feels awkward. Something is wrong. Brunch isn’t meant to be dressy, but he thinks that running gear is a little too déclassé even if she does look pretty cute like that. And Wendy does not look like she is expecting him.
“Umm, have I stuffed up the time again” asks Frank.
Wendy recovers, “Sorry, I didn’t expect you at my door right now.”
“Brunch?” he asks plaintively, the ground shifting beneath him.
Wendy’s face knits up, then unravels as a large smile crosses her face. “Oh, oh, so, that’s why you’re here.”
Frank feels like he is climbing scree, two metres forward, one metre back. “Yeah, that’s right.. You made me a bit nervous.”
“You should be, after standing me up for coffee.”
“Yeah, sorry, I do feel bad about that, and I realize that I didn’t talk to you about it when I caught up with you at the Masonic Lodge.”
A moment’s silence. Frank fills the silence, “I guess I wanted to find out first whether you were an axe-murderer or not.” Frank smiles as much at his own humour, it helps him feel like things are okay again.
Wendy scoffs, “I swear, it was only once, the guy deserved it, and it’s like it’s going to follow me around my whole life.”
Frank laughs out loud but stops as he sees Wendy’s unbroken face. She meets his eyes, and then a smile spreads across her face. Frank starts to breathe again.
“So where to for lunch” Wendy asks.
“The Powerhouse down by the river” suggests Frank.
Silence follows, and Frank, flustered tries to fill the silence, “So, are you changing or coming out to lunch like that.”
“Oh, I don’t know about changing,” giving a big smile, “seems to me that you are quite taken with this outfit.”
Frank feels his cheeks redden. Her directness disarms him – and delights him. He remains perplexed about why she had appeared so distant and remote when he caught up with her at the Masonic Lodge. He thinks to ask her directly about this.
“Hey, you know when I caught up with you at the Masonic Lodge, I hope you didn’t think me a pest or something.”
Wendy laughs, “No Frank, I didn’t think you were a pest. In fact, I was’t even there!”
Frank tries to rewind the film, something is not gelling, he doesn’t understand what is happening here. He wonders if he has slipped through a wormhole into an alternative or parallel universe. Rather than go on with all the various seriously bizarre alternatives, he decides to check his understanding first.
“Sorry, what do you mean you weren’t even there?”
“I wasn’t there, I was at the pool, swimming. I did hear about your visit though later that day.”
“I’m not understanding this very much.”
“Yeah, I can tell.” Wendy is alight with glee dancing in her face.
“The person you met and invited to lunch is my sister.” Turning, she calls back into the house, “Wembley, your date is here.”
Frank flushes again and offers some half formed questions,. “Sister? Wembley?”
A girl appears at the door, Wendy’s double, Wembley he presumes. One in sweaty shorts and t-shirt, the other in a pretty summer frock, sensible low sandals, and a fresh bright face featuring a few endearing freckles.
“Hi” says Wembley with a shiny smile. “So you’ve met some of my family already. This is Wendy, she’s my twin sister.”
Frank is flummoxed. He feels like his jaw is hanging open which Wendy confirms, “Frank, close your mouth, you look like you’ve never seen twins before.”
Wembley fills in some gaps, “We both share this house with our Grandma, but she’s busy out back at the moment. So, I’m ready to go, where are we headed?”
Frank is speechless.
Wendy steps in, “Well you two enjoy yourselves, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and have a glass of wine for me.” She winks at Frank.
Frank could see that the two are identical. Wembley is slightly smaller and slightly thinner, but nothing that he would notice – or indeed did notice – when he met them separately. Despite their being parallels one of the other, he realizes almost with shame, that he is more drawn to Wendy rather than Wembley. He can’t say why, but he realizes that he feels like he is going out with the wrong girl.
Stammering and uncertain about how to proceed, Frank asks Wendy “I…, you…, do you want to join us for lunch?”
Frank delights when he sees her smile, and then feels crushed when she replies, “Oh gosh no, Wembley has been so looking forward to this, haven’t you dear?”
Wembley nods her agreement.
“No, you two go out and have a great time.”
“Will I see you later?” asks Frank.
“Really Frank, I’m given to wonder whether you are here for Wembley or for me. No, you go and have lunch with Wembley.”
With a smile and wave, she gives Wembley a kiss on her cheek, pushes her outside towards Frank, closes the screen door and the front door and walks away inside.
Frank is left standing on the pavement befuddled. Wembley looks at him expectantly.
“Right then” says Frank, his head full of cloud and fog, “let’s head off to lunch then.”
As they begin the short walk, Frank feels his fear clarify, a fear of a long, silent lunch with Wendy physically present in the body, but not in the spirit. Frank’s fear of silence is quickly pushed aside.
Wembley talks easily, “I could tell you were nice guy from the moment that I met you. You have such a nice smile. I really enjoy meeting new people. My job is really great because I’m always meeting new people. That’s how I met you, isn’t it” as she gives a giggle.
“Isn’t it funny how things work. Actually, I don’t think I have met a lot of people there really. I’ve been working there Mondays for a while. You’re one of the first people to come and really talk to me. And you only talked to me for about a minute or two. I guess you didn’t want to disturb me from meeting up with Wendy. We often meet up for breakfast when I knock off at about 8.30. I am so glad that you did come and talk to me. I really love Wendy and Grandma, but we don’t always see a lot of people. Wendy has had a few boyfriends, but they don’t seem to last. And Grandma hasn’t had a boyfriend in years. And I’ve never had a boyfriend. I don’t think I want one, they seem to be just too much hassle. My friends at my other job, some of them have boyfriends, but they are always fighting. I don’t know why they bother. Seems strange to me. Grandma is probably too old for a boyfriend now. I don’t know how old she is, but seems like she doesn’t need a boyfriend now. Anyway, she will probably die soon. If there was a boyfriend, well then he would only be sad. We’ll be sad when Grandma dies too, but it has to happen eventually. Will happen to me too eventually. I wonder if I will die before Wendy, maybe because of the accident when I was a baby. Still, doesn’t help to be thinking about grim matters like that. Grim – a word that Grandma uses. So what are we going to eat? I love Italian, spaghetti, as long as you don’t mind me making a mess. You might want to be sure that you stand back. Wendy gets annoyed with me if I make too much mess when I’m eating, but it’s not my fault. I do try to do my best. She knows that. I guess I feel sorry for Wendy and Grandma having to look after me. But I’m really okay, it’s not like I’m a child, I’m an adult and I can fend for myself. Grandma says so. Wendy is not so sure. They don’t fight too much about that anymore. I like to listen to them. I’ve always liked to listen. That’s why I am called Wembley. I was actually named Arianne. Wendy learned to speak before me. I just copied her, only I didn’t pronounce her name correctly and I was calling myself Wembley.”
Frank allows the sounds of Wembley’s talk to wash over him. She is pleasant to listen to, undemanding, and allows him space and time to think. The sun warms his head and shoulders. He enjoys seeing the signs of life emerging under the sun, little lizards leaping away from the edges of pavements as they walk by, the trees buzzing and clicking with insects. Tt the restaurant, Frank notices the sun is warming the wildlife jogging, cycling, or simply walking along the riverwalk.
With Wembley beside him, Frank stops at a sign asking them to wait to be seated. Frank touches Wembley on the arm in pointing to the table by the riverwalk, “Look at that table there, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
A chubby waitress approaches taking two menus from a holder at the bar. She smiles as she approaches and remarks “Got your eye on the best table in the house, have you?”
Frank feels caught out, “No, I guess it’s reserved is it?”
Wembley chimes in, “Is it reserved?”
The waitress nods.
“For us?” Wembley asks.
The waitress laughs, and turns to face Frank, “What’s your name?”
Before Frank can reply, Wembley responds, “His name is Frank, mine is Wembley, what’s yours?”
The waitress laughs again, “My name’s Melanie. Did you make a reservation?”
“No” said Wembley turning to look at the desired table, “Should I make one now before someone else comes and makes one?”
Melanie, hugs the two menus she has picked up at the front of her body, she surveys the two of them with a smile. She continues, “Well Frank, Wembley clearly wants the best table in the house, but you seem a little less clear.”
Frank feels awkward inside. He hates the feeling of not being able to ask for even simple things. He wants to protest on many levels. Wembley can barely be counted as a friend at this early stage, and besides Wembley is merely a substitute for the one that he hopes – or hoped – might be his friend. Frank feels pressure pushing his blood into his face, and his lips into inactivity.
Melanie smiles, “Hmm, I take it that you would like that table.”
With a flick of his head towards the table, Frank responds, “Sure, if it’s no trouble.”
“I doubt you’ll be any more trouble than most of my customers, and good deal less trouble than my worst customers, so come on over.”
Wembley claps her hands in delight, and the trio move through the tables of early lunchtime diners to the prize table. Melanie leads the way in her black waiting outfit. Wembley follows asking Melanie questions about how big the kitchen must be to cook for all these people. Frank shuffles along in an embarrassed silence.
At the table, Melanie leans forward and deftly removes the black ‘Reserved’ sign putting it into the front pocket in her black apron. Once settled at the table, Frank is able to return to his quiet internal world as Wembley talks, asks questions of Melanie, and devours a bowl of spaghetti Napolitano. Frank is pleased to be at the front of the restaurant where somehow he feels safer close to the people walking past on the riverwalk and removed from his fellow diners. In fairness, he realises that Wembley makes only a little mess.
As he delivers Wembley back to her home, Frank feels unsure of what to do next. Wembley is beautiful, the cast of her sister, she’s a beautiful person, not some empty shell, and Frank finds it in him some compassion for this girl. She is a happy soul, full of delight and has sparks of the cheeky fun that make Wendy Wendy, but she is her own person. And not the person that Frank wants.
On arriving at the door, Wembley excitedly grabs his hand, shakes it vigorously, and says, “Hey that was really fun, I really enjoyed it. Maybe I’ll catch you around sometime.” She skips up the steps, pulls a key from her tiny purse which appears big enough to hold only this one key, opens it and dances inside without looking back and closes the door.
Frank grins. A delightful soul, how could he say anything otherwise. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the curtain at the front window flicker. He just smiles to himself.
As he turns to walk away, the door opens. Frank turns expecting to see Wendy, but it is not to be. A smallish, matronly figure is there, round around the middle in a really comforting sort of way, and wrapped in a stained butcher’s apron. In her hands, she is holding a wooden spoon covered in sauce or batter of some kind. Her blue eyes twinkle, and the beauty of Wembley and Wendy is clearly seen within. Beneath her rudy cheeks, a cheeky grin spreads across her face.
“Now you get to reckon with Grandma!”
Frank is flabbergasted.
“Where’s your manners boy. How about a “Hello, how do you do?’”
Frank grabs at her suggestions and uses them as he might a half-inflated, and rapidly deflating life vest: “Hello, how do you do?” He trails off.
“Very well thank you. How about you and I have a little talk?”
Frank nods.
“I can tell you’re quite taken with our girl. Thought it might be timely for me to have a little chat with you.”
Frank seeks to clarify any misunderstanding, “It’s actually Wendy that I’m quite taken with.”
“Of course it is. Who else would it be? I know Wendy pulled that little trick on you.” Grandma gives a wry laugh. “She’s a fool, but she’s young. Of course I know that you were here for Wendy.”
“Don’t you think that this talk is all a little premature?”
“Premature? How long should a person wait? Don’t you think that I’m old enough to know what is likely to work and what is not? Wendy told me about your meeting on the bus. You took your time to notice her, and I suspect she had to throw herself at you. I was frankly surprised that she had not heard from you since you met sooner – and Wendy was sure disappointed. However, all the pieces fell back together when you showed up today to take out our Wembley. Wendy was caught off guard.” Grandma snorted a wry laugh again. “But not so off guard as to not play coy. A foolish move I would suggest, but a woman must do what a woman must do.”
“Why foolish? Did she stand a chance of losing me you think?”
“No you silly boy. Foolish because times a-wastin’. They say experience gives wisdom. Maybe. However, I think that age can give a good deal of wisdom. I’ve collected more regrets about what I might have done than most. I’m a bit further down the track, and don’t have much truck with games. Why play bets from the side when you could be in the centre of the circle making the action happen.”
“What sort of action are you expecting here?”
“I’m here to tell you to take action. What that young missy needs is a good root.”
Frank’s face opens wide.
“Sorry” responds Grandma, and with a twinkle, “I realize that’s an old word now. What is it these days? A bang, a boink or something?”
“Bonk, and that’s an old word too” Frank offers.
“Yeah, well one of those. And no matter how old the word is, the intention and the motion are the same. The two of you might dance around forever, she playing games and you being shy.”
Frank starts to grin. He can see that Grandma is something of a character, but also, he can see the strong family resemblance, at least in manner, and perhaps even the clear sparkle in the eyes, the laughing face, the teasing nature.
“What if we go down that path, and we’re not really well suited for one another?”
“What if you do? Gawd sakes, you not been listening to me boy? Nothing ventured, nothing gained, a thousand other things that you might expect me to say as Grandma. But more to the point, d’ya wanna bonk her?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, time you got on with it. And I can’t wait around forever to become a great grandma while you do foolish time wasting things. So, you need to talk to her, maybe when she gets back from her run.”
“She went out running? I thought she must have been running this morning.”
“She did. Needed to bang out some of that energy she got from playing that game with you. That and trying to erase the demons of maybe having played you just a little too hard. Frankly, I think she could play you harder, but I don’t want to see that.” Looking to her right, Grandma continues, “Here she comes now.”
Looking left, Frank watches Wendy running strongly up through the dappled shadows of the pavement, then slowing cautiously as she sees him and Grandma arranged like a tableau on the front step. Wiping a wisp of blonde hair from her eyes, she glances from Frank to Grandma and back again.
“Hi.”
Frank could not help but admire her for a second time dressed in sweaty running gear. He felt guilt as lascivious thoughts ran through his mind, but a look to Grandma who was waving him on with a finger encouraged him. Frank was not sure that Wendy had seen her Grandma’s motions, but felt strength to continue in any case.
“Hey Wendy. Listen. I was wondering, if you were free tonight, to go out, on a date?”
“Hmm, well, I’ll have to check.”
“Nonsense,” said Grandma matter-of-factly. “You ain’t got nothing on tonight.” Frank blushes at Grandma’s double-entendre. Glancing at Wendy with embarrassment, he feels relief to see a pink blush in her cheeks too.
Wendy turns to Frank with a smile, “Appears that Grandma has got my dance card, and tells me that there are no other better offers around, sure, why not.” With a snort, Grandma retreats into the house leaving Frank and Wendy to sort themselves out.
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