warren beatty was supposed to be in on it too

My parents have lived in their house for more than fifty years, the walls fortified by sand, mortar and emotion. I hardly ever visit them, outgrowing them along with my need for their internet connection. Three generations lived there once upon, and I think they outgrew each other too, retreating into themselves in the face of their impotency to break away or get along with each other.

But then, a few days ago, I stayed for dinner and spent the night – the first since I’d moved out of the region. The time and distance may have made me forgetful about mornings there; or just plain complacent about my own level of painless tolerance.

As I walked into the bathroom in the morning though, I’d started slipping back into the old routine, and remembered breakfast. Decades could pass (but they haven’t), and I’ll still be haunted by the breakfast table, the daily gathering of three generations and two branches of the family, a family web-spun parlour, whose sole purpose seemed to be to lay to waste hopes, aspirations and dreams. Or, Hopes, Aspirations and Dreams; they’d make you forever regret that you’d ever deigned to have had HAD. And never let you enjoy the meal.

Under the shower, I needed to keep reminding myself that they were all dead. Even those who seemed immortal in their mean-spiritedness, who made me feel guilty inside for wishing their deaths. Who made me wonder if they’d been feeding off my hate, sustaining their undoubtedly malevolent spirits. Who’d have made me poison them if they’d lived even a little bit longer. Who I’m glad were cremated, else I’d be scouting my shadows for them. Those who haunt the dust. Yes, I had issues with all of them.

I like to think that they’d have forced my hand, that I’d have emerged from my cocoon and killed them all. Every last one of them. Well, there were only five, but I could’ve thrown in a couple more once I got into the groove. It’s like flying, I think. I’m afraid to take the first flight (crash, death and all that), but each connecting flight becomes easier until the point that I stop consciously thinking about it.

Their eventual deaths were shocking though. The first to go was the oldest. But no, it was a surprise, because she was the biggest curmudgeon of the lot, and seemed destined to live forever, Tithonus-like, wasting away yet never dying. She was something of a cicada in life itself, it must be said. She was snuffed by a nurse’s pillow – it was either her or her, she must have thought. There were a lot of people who thought the same thing. Maybe they drew straws.

She was the widow. The other two went together, bickering to the very end. She’d studied no longer than class 7 (and never let her B.A. educated handmaidens forget it), while he’d nabbed her when she was sixteen, the two entwined for the next sixty odd years, completely incompatible. I used to think of a body rejected an unsuitable organ when I saw them together, only rather than accepting failure, they seemed to morph into something else altogether, bound by distrustful squabbling. By all accounts they never touched each other outside of conception (and waited long before conceding defeat), something that suited both of them.

So it was a shock when they died in a road accident, mowed down by drag-racing rickshaws with inebriated drivers. I think they conked them over the head for good measure post-mow. It’s shocking because the last thing either of them would have wanted was to have died in each other’s arms, reflexively clutching at the closest non-conking individual. My mirth at funerals has always been interpreted as an outlet for grief. Hah.

And now, ‘home’ again, I could do the same to two octogenarians – who’s going to doubt them ‘passing away’ in their sleep? Who’d even worry, weep or wonder? The next of kin? Um. No. Nobody cares, and a fair number would clap silently.

This is the vintage stock that flows through me. I’m going to linger in the shower a little longer.