Ahead of my workshop on Sense-ational Writing on Saturday, 25 February here’s a free story for you. This story was published in First published fourW thirty-three New Writing, fourW press, 2022.
You can book for my workshop here.
The idea came to me when I discovered that when Fidel Castro became Cuba’s leader, he refused to cash the US’s cheques for the Guantanamo naval base. It brought to mind the transactions we have in our lives that we don’t complete.
Happy reading!
The fountain pen’s nib hovers above the cheque book placed perfectly in the centre of the desk mat of the man’s late 19th-century secretaire. The pen is his writing implement of choice, but the 21st-century office chair, its chrome clashing with the studded russet leather back and seat, isn’t. Still, he admits it offers comfort and supports his spine. Even at ten in the morning, a slight ache in his lower back reminds him he’s been on the planet almost seventy years and parts of him are wearing. In protest at any suggestion of his body breaking down, he bends his knees and wriggles his hips – originals. Despite his sweet tooth, he wears his 34- inch waist jeans with no pot belly. Content with these thoughts, he leans back in the chair.
“Dad! Careful!” the daughter calls from his study doorway.
Before he has time to right the chair, she’s behind him and pushes the back of the chair forward. The action bangs him against the desk edge and the point of the nib into the blotter.
He cries out.
“Oh, Dad. I’m sorry. Are you hurt?”
He pushes his hands against the desk and stands abruptly, sending the chair wheeling behind him across the polished timber floor to the wall of bookshelves. “No. I’m fine.” He holds up the pen with its bent nib. “Sadly, this isn’t.”
“Oh, Dad. That’s the pen mum gave you.” The daughter puts her hand out to take it. He turns and places the damaged writing instrument on top of the chequebook, suddenly feeling as outdated as them.
“I’ll write the cheque out later,” he says quietly.
“What cheque?”
He picks up the invoice. “To pay the builder.”
The daughter takes the paper from his hand and points to the payment details. “Just do a direct payment. Osko. She’ll have the money straight away.”
“But I’ve already dated it. Never mind.” He opens the centre drawer of the secretaire. “I’ll just pop it in here … like Castro.”
“The author?” she asks, remembering seeing the writer’s name in one of her father’s bookshop catalogues that littered the dining table.
“No, the dictator. Fidel. Have I not told you that story before?” He smiles at her, happy at the chance to spend some time in her company.
“No,” she says, then sighs, “I’ll make us some tea.”
*
At the new table on the back deck, the father watches as the daughter pours the tea from the teapot that had been his mother’s and then his family’s. She bites her bottom lip gently, only releasing it when the mugs are full and the teapot returned to the table. The same way her mother did.
“So, Dad. Castro and the cheques?” She leans back into the chair as she sips her tea. The sun warms her face.
As the father puts a heaped teaspoon of sugar in his tea, the daughter sends him a tut-tut look. He ignores her censure and begins his story. “You’ve heard of Guantanamo Bay?”
“Yes, Dad. Who hasn’t?” The daughter takes another sip of her unsugared tea.
“Of course. So – I remember reading an article around 2007 or maybe 2008 that said at that time, Cuba paid … I think it was about four thousand dollars a month for the Guantanamo naval base but Castro said the occupation was illegal and refused to cash the cheques.
Somewhere in the article, it mentioned a TV interview he’d done where they showed the uncashed cheques stuffed into a drawer.” He picks up his mug and observes the daughter as he drinks. Everything about her looks is her mother.
“How do you remember all that stuff, Dad, and not remember where you’ve put your keys or your glasses or —” The father interrupts her, plonking down his mug. He reaches for the sugar basin and adds an extra half teaspoon of the raw sugar crystals.
“Easy,” the father says, “it’s the way long-term and short-term memory work.”
“Yes, I know that.” The daughter exhales and answers before the father can launch into a detailed explanation of the differences. “It’s just frustrating when I have things to do, and you come to me only having had a boy’s look for your possessions.” She places her mug carefully onto the table.
He was a little abashed that just this morning they had spent almost twenty minutes looking for his keys so he could drive downtown to get the local rag, the heavy rain having interrupted his early morning ‘walk and get the paper’ routine. “It used to annoy the crap out of Mum … not that she ever told you.”
The father isn’t surprised by the daughter’s comment but chides her in return. “Your mother would never have used that language.” Then he remembers the daughter is almost forty and says more softly. “I know. Your mother was very patient. Right to the end.”
The daughter reaches over, picks up the father’s hands and holds them between hers.
“Sorry, Dad. I know Mum found those traits endearing.” She stands up, collects the tea things onto a tray, and picks it up. “That’s interesting stuff about Castro.”
“More interestingly,” the father says, “the Yanks have an endless lease on the place.”
There’s no sound as he slides the new glass door open along its tracks for the daughter to step through.
“A bit like the agreement we have. You live here with me until I’m gone – then it’s all yours.”
The daughter puts the tray down next to the sink and informs him she’s going out and doesn’t know when she’ll be back.
*
The father has not meant his remark unkindly. It is true. When he dies, the house and all he owns will be hers with no debt. No uncashed cheques in his drawers. Still, she was right, there were times he didn’t remember where he had put his phone or keys, but he ensures nothing is missed when it comes to critical matters. His will is up to date. Nothing for her to pay either now or in the future—she pays only a token rent—far less than she did in the private market. Where she rented, had rented since returning three years earlier to be with her mother through her illness, had been sold to a young couple eager to make a tree-change.
Despite having a lease, the transaction with the landlord was cancelled.
So, the daughter had returned to her childhood home in a new bedroom in the guest wing while he had the privacy of his wing with its bedroom that had felt too big for the past year since his wife had breathed her last breath there. There were times when he was in their bed when he still felt the curve of her and saw her shape on the bottom sheet.
He and the daughter meet in the centre of the home for their scheduled mid-week dinner and infrequently for cups of tea or coffee on the deck, or before that was built, at the small dining table in the spacious kitchen.
*
In his study, he runs his fingertips along the spines of the books his wife had given him for their wedding anniversaries, his birthdays, and Christmases in the last two years of her life. After her death (he refused to call it her passing or passing away, which sounded like she had drifted off somewhere carelessly), he had moved the true and not true tales from their careful categorisation to within arm’s reach and the order of her gifting. Shanghai Dancing, Shepherd’s Hut. The First Casualty, The White Girl, The Wife and the Widow were the first she’d given him. Then, in the last year of her life, she didn’t wait for special occasions. She had ordered his books from her armchair in the living room during sun-drenched afternoons or in the last few months in the light-filled mornings from their bed. He asked her to stop, but she insisted, telling him he would have plenty of time to read when she was no longer there. In the last year he has not finished one book.
He would arrive home from collecting her favourite flavour from the ice creamery (in the last weeks it was all she could eat) and her medication to find the titles he had read the reviews of out aloud to her in boxes from the local bookstore at the front door, then would remind her of how they’d rationed their book buying in the early years of their marriage when
they’d been saving for their first and only home (there had been renovations). Remind her of how in the early years of her marriage he’d broken their agreement.
For her twenty-first birthday he’d found a first edition of Doris Lessing’s The Notebook and paid for it by cheque. He hid the chequebook for a week in his op shop desk drawer under a pile of papers so she wouldn’t know how much he’d spent. He’d had to take it from its hiding place for her to pay the gas bill and sheepishly handed it over in its yellow plastic folder. From then until a few weeks before she died, she had managed their finances to the last cent the way she managed everything else, including her death. Meticulously.
He’d felt short-changed by her decision to not have further chemo. To only have enough medication to take the edge off the pain.
She told him she’d made the calculations. She would rather spend time with him and their daughter than fritter it away in waiting rooms and sitting in a chair while the poison that simply post-dated her demise entered her body. She held his hands between hers, the hands she had held for almost forty-five years, and extracted his promise that if it became too much for him, he would tell her.
It got more than too much, it overwhelmed him, but he never told her. He stuffed his words and feelings into the many drawers of his memory. There was still no room for details of where his keys or his glasses or anything else he owned might be.
*
The father takes the chequebook from the drawer and opens it to the cheque that is blank apart from the date. He’s recently read cheques will be phased out because hardly anyone is using them, the preference being for electronic transactions that are quicker and safer. But he’s only been in charge of the finances for the last year, and there is something about the
physicality of writing on paper, placing the cheque in an envelope and posting it. He wonders if the day will come when even letters will be redundant or were they already, replaced by email, phone calls and texts.
The father picks up his fountain pen, examines then removes the bent nib. When the daughter returns, he will ask her where he can buy a replacement because he might not write any more cheques, but he wants to write lists with her, maybe itineraries for trips together.
He wants more than a transactional relationship with his daughter. The father wants no uncashed cheques stuffed in any drawer.
You can book for my workshop here.
