Flash fiction by Laura Pearson
Tea and Oranges
The sweet tang of oranges waits on her fingertips, behind the nails with their chipped red paint. It is for me that she eats them. She knows I don’t love her. She knows I’ll keep coming back for that scent and the memories it conjures.
Barely a man, I was seventeen and ready. I would linger in shadowed doorways or wait in the sunlit town square for her call. When it came, I’d be off and running, and on arrival, I’d wait at the foot of her stairs for my breathing to calm. My goddess was always partially hidden from view. Glimpses of a half-closed eye, a shimmering calf, a pale neck. And always that sharp, fruity scent in the room, in the crease of her knee and at her earlobe.
Today, my substitute twists and turns.
'Like this?' she asks. Eager to please.
'Nothing like that,' I tell her.
An amateur psychiatrist suggested that the memories haunt me because I didn’t have a mother. But I didn’t have a father either. It’s always all or nothing. I grew up among the withs and the withouts, and none of them are happy now.
She would tell me secrets as I undressed. Sing softly as I undressed her. I knew nothing but my body showed me the way. Instinct, like a baby sucking at its mother’s breast. Afterwards, she would let me stay for half an hour. Blissful minutes; eyes and ears and pores open to absorb everything of that crowded room. She would rest, reclined, while I breathed her in. Oranges, and something else. Sweet tea?
Today, my substitute exhales. 'I’m not what you want.'
'No,' I tell her.
'But could I be?'
'Perhaps.'
And I lead her to the kitchen, search her cupboards for tea, for sugar.
The sweet tang of oranges waits on her fingertips, behind the nails with their chipped red paint. It is for me that she eats them. She knows I don’t love her. She knows I’ll keep coming back for that scent and the memories it conjures.
Barely a man, I was seventeen and ready. I would linger in shadowed doorways or wait in the sunlit town square for her call. When it came, I’d be off and running, and on arrival, I’d wait at the foot of her stairs for my breathing to calm. My goddess was always partially hidden from view. Glimpses of a half-closed eye, a shimmering calf, a pale neck. And always that sharp, fruity scent in the room, in the crease of her knee and at her earlobe.
Today, my substitute twists and turns.
'Like this?' she asks. Eager to please.
'Nothing like that,' I tell her.
An amateur psychiatrist suggested that the memories haunt me because I didn’t have a mother. But I didn’t have a father either. It’s always all or nothing. I grew up among the withs and the withouts, and none of them are happy now.
She would tell me secrets as I undressed. Sing softly as I undressed her. I knew nothing but my body showed me the way. Instinct, like a baby sucking at its mother’s breast. Afterwards, she would let me stay for half an hour. Blissful minutes; eyes and ears and pores open to absorb everything of that crowded room. She would rest, reclined, while I breathed her in. Oranges, and something else. Sweet tea?
Today, my substitute exhales. 'I’m not what you want.'
'No,' I tell her.
'But could I be?'
'Perhaps.'
And I lead her to the kitchen, search her cupboards for tea, for sugar.
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Laura Pearson lives in Leicestershire, England, where she blogs about having breast cancer when she was pregnant (www.breastcancerandbaby.com) and writes novels and flash fiction.
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