Clear-out - Flo Fitzpatrick

Living room 

Located still at the centre of the room, as it has been for years. Mahogany wooden border, a glass surface and a shelf underneath. It weighs 19kg, easy to carry for two people. But it was heavy as he floundered at the foot of the stairs, hence the scratches as it caught on the  bannister rail. Some house-warming gift, "I’ve brought you a table," what would she say, if anything at all, or will she reply with that smile that reveals everything and nothing? She was waiting in her room–their room–as he carried it up, and her father had liked the idea, probably her mother too. And she loved them, but she loved freedom too, and she wouldn’t be sharing that room with her sisters anymore. Jealousy tastes good, in the mouth of another, and it was no big deal, Mary would find her own place soon. Even if not as good as theirs, hers. 

Conservatory 

The Saturday edition, published September 1975. Out of print since not long after. 30 sheets  of pulp magazine paper in A4. But she’d only pretend to read them as she waited, her gaze was always hitched up from the top of the column onto the street. It led to the orchards, and  at 5pm she’d come running up the bend, upright, at the front of a long line of all the others  from the road. There was an aperture from which she’d emerge out of the fields every day, but on legs that sort of came from nowhere. They came from her, she was her only child,  frighteningly three-dimensional. That, even though she was once but invisible, before that not  even merely an idea, maybe that’s why it was a miracle to see those legs come back to life  from beyond a curve in the road each evening. A column for each footstep each evening. 

Garage 

20-metre rope washing line, involute and embedded among cans of expired paint. The material discoloured by years hung out in a west-facing garden of a terraced house many  miles away. But it was bought for the second house, their first was a first-floor flat with  hardly a courtyard. She kept unwavering watch, nonetheless, over her plant pots on the  kitchen windowsill. The kitchen became a forest, a laboratory, and if he didn’t like them, he  never said. Her favourite task was to water the pothos and watch the leaves spill outwards in  spring. In summer they’d be forced to climb the tiles on the wall and weave their way  between the ivy and the echeveria. Each year she found a new addition: an extra shoot  plucked from one of the pots, the neighbours didn’t notice when she took an empty ceramic  basin from under their windowsill outside. They were discarded; no one would miss them.  Nor did anyone notice when a handful of soil wandered astray from the allotment over the road, stowed in the pockets of her dress. She had a piece of everywhere: the wind chime that never used to sound tucked away behind the entrance blinds, pebbles from the bottom of the  street, she lured the cat down from the upper floor most evenings. That’s how she came to know every being and their movements, and learned to wait until those from the flat above were gone before she sought the cat out. They were the sort to pry from behind their curtains, the sort to tell. 

Kitchen 

Hexagonal at the base and widening as it reaches its height of 50cm. A curved handle for pouring and a convex filter inside. But it hadn’t been cleaned since her Isaac took it with him, when at eighteen he jumped at the chance and onto the train. And he said he was lifting his weight from the house, leaving them air and space for themselves, but what really beleaguers her is the vast expanse left behind when one room is cleared out. She didn’t see why it should be so, just because she’d told him that the world was his, and he, insouciant, took her word just  like that. Postcards are nice, but they’re sticky with delay. He was parading his 80s acid wash denim in Sark, but not now that she’d had time to look at it filtered through an A6 card. He said he’d take her there someday, but he’d not yet come back to pick her up. 

Cupboard 

Woolen holed paisley shawl, faded and frayed at the sleeves. But it caught the eye on Sewerby beach, a burnt orange effervescent in the the ‘76 heatwave. She was relieved under a parasol, but he’d run down to the shore to sink his feet into the sea. She’d told him not to  leave the shade, not to fill in the crimson fretwork on his neck from after he took her shawl  and said it’d do. But she couldn’t complain; he’d almost kept a promise. It wasn’t Sark, but he’d come to collect them and driven them out. And maybe next year, or whenever, it would  be somewhere over the channel. The eye on the shore, the atlas mind, yes, that was her.