Tub—N.H. Van Der Haar
I drink glasses of warm Claret in the sweltering heat as Father once did, I like to think I can do it with more distinction, well at least without spilling half on the floor of the house wandering after some party at 3am covered in sweat, shirt unbuttoned; looking for someone to talk to, something to insult or compliment, to reflect himself off. To prove, prove something. Eventually, The Women He Married tore up the purpling, soggy carpet. Waiting for her husband to fall asleep they would click and clack black leather heels in agitation on cypress floorboards. It was one of the prettier ones.
Father withered, and his friends died, after that he put mirrors up everywhere in the halls in the kitchen even outside, he put a large round mirror with a thick silver rim, so that it always looked like there was other people, reflections of himself to fill up space, the room, his glasses of warm Claret.
To make sure I had fun, my father would watch me play. He would shout through open windows and doors to The Women he Married about God and burnt Toast, about a night of clumsy lovemaking, about how he should repaint the trellis and about how his Bougainvillea was out of control, about how he should buy a hat and about brand-new Dendrobium Orchids that twisted and withered in summer fortnights.
It was those parched afternoons that stretch on for weeks, he would fan himself with a funeral program and having quietly loaded his freckled belly with sandwiches and bubbling mineral water, would fan and sip himself into a state, one hand on a filthy glass and the other around a frayed and weathered program, every parched afternoon, making sure I had fun by watching me play. I was told that people died to the Heat, that like a plague or malicious creature it hunted elderly relatives, not letting them survive till Christmas or the Next Summer. The elderly relatives were like the new Dendrobium Orchids my Father would shout to The Women He Married, they twisted and withered. I know, knew, that it was truly the best of childhoods.
My Claret was thinning out, boiling into the hot afternoon. Soon stinging gnats would arrive hungry for their own delicious red liquids. Those vicious beasts jabbing at vulnerable veins and ankles, I went inside to find more, catching myself in the mirror She had hung in the hallway. My pale face had turned red and flush from my nostalgic libations, the nose was a flailing scarlet mountain, my cheeks burning fields and my forehead a massive ridge of sweat.
I decided I would recreate my father’s other afternoon tradition.
Ambling through the kitchen, I collected another bottle and bag of ice I purchased that morning. My odyssey completed, standing at the porch, I surveyed my tiny green fiefdom, the wild lawn pockmarked with garden pots, some black plastic things, a few large squat terracotta ones, even a few metal tubs that I had stuffed with dirt and fertiliser in the winter, all of them were overflowing with bright Burgundy Geraniums their wonky, crooked branches erupting with red blooms.
A thin line of trees filtered the harshest rays down into a mellow orange hue.
I looked for it.
Poking my head around the side of the house.
I must have moved it in the winter.
I didn’t sell it.
Would She? No, I’d have known, She’d need me to move it for her! Pah! Lazy-
It’s gotta be somewhere, upside down-
To stop Mosquito’s laying eggs in- Ah!
Sweaty fingers gripped heavy porcelain, heaving, yanking and pulling into the middle of the lawn, in front of a messy hedge of Burgundy Geraniums in wide, concrete cylinders.
As had been done in years past and As I had done for him, I carefully sprayed out dirt and leaves, wiping out grime with my shirt, navy turning brown, brown turning white.
A Flurry of chestnut-dyed-blonde in the window, the sound of French nails scraping against the sink. The Woman I Married was watching. Gritting straightened and whitened teeth in unspoken anxiety. She had joined me in this tradition in the beginning, she thought it ‘quaint’ and strange, like knitting like riding the bus. But novelty, like Dendrobium Orchids, twist and wither in heat. She would instead satisfy herself with watching me from a old chair on our porch, resting a novel on her knee, polished sunglasses resting on a meticulously moisturised nose. 33 Summers later, The Women I Married was Watching, inside her house.
The rusted tap rattled as the water rose. Father had told me about water, shouted about water. Drownings and floods in nameless places, about what water did to the house of the Polish Neighbour, Miss. Joan. About having left her shower and sink to overflow, about her second storey bathroom obliterating her downstairs living room where she was napping that summer afternoon. Lots of little black bags were used to bury Miss. Joan as opposed to the traditional one big black bag, Father had of course, spoken at that ceremony too.
And there was always more, about Miss. Joan slurping liquor with pills, about waving to Father that morning, falling over on her lawn as she tried to reach her newspapers, dressing gown tearing, cane flung into a shrub, “wobbling white thighs terrifying birds”. About being helped back into her house, about being forced into a “home”, by “undeserving brattish sons”. Miss. Joan napped loudly, whispering in her plastic wrapped, floral lounge chair, whispering about a complex, vindictive suicide plot. Miss. Joan who loathed the idea of her children living in her house, her house. The drowned house had been replaced with waterproof apartments, Miss. Joan’s relatives had sold them to other Polish neighbours, who lived the time probing the afterlife for Miss. Joan’s spirit and banging brooms on walls shouting about noise.
Tub reached almost full, I turned the rusting tap, emptying my bag of ice, I peeled off in the hot sun. Layers. Scars. I had a “trim” figure when I was younger No-one tells you about the “trim” figure you had No-one tells you now that your old and fat and grey. They just started calling you ‘Sir’ instead of ‘Boy’ or ‘Shit-head’. Occasionally I get called ‘Shit-head’. The Woman I Married stared with a warning in her throat, she had long given up scolding. There was a scheme to hide the Tub, to shame it, to bring it up at functions but I felt, entitled as my Father felt. Leaving my clothes to dry on a tall clump of Geraniums, I lowered into the chilled water, already my skin opened and my sweat and aches drifted to the surface of the water to be boiled away by the hot sun. I should have one hand to stay dry to find the Claret to run my fingers along the rim tracing rust and dirt feeling it chafe my fingers. One hand to pluck Grass and Weeds and withered Geranium Flowers. The Woman I married was gone, to drink wine whiter than Claret, to nap in her conditioned lounge. I didn’t see her for years when I did it was awkwardly, in a queue for the toilet at the intermission of her award-winning play. What did I think of her award-winning play? The question hang in the air, even before it was asked, what had I thought? “quaint”.
Bitch.
My one hand lowered into the water it surround my fingers, the cool calmed my ruddy wine-stained body. Bones, veins and muscles loosened losing their tension, the anxieties of the world. As my Father had done so many times till his last hot afternoon, I took a long sniff of air, of warm Claret, of Dendrobium Orchids, of Burgundy Geraniums, of Miss. Joan, of vindictive suicides, of the Woman I Married, of soggy, purpling carpet and sank my head deep into the water.
Author Bio:
N.H. Van Der Haar is an Australian writer previously published in Aniko Press and Antithesis Magazine. He lives in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, completing a Masters of Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne. Before that they were a
freelance stage manager.
Parcham Online 
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