Happy Birthday and Other Short Stories

By Mary Brooks

A series of short stories about everyday life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jan 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503501263

Book preview

Bed Rest

L aurel spent the day in bed on Saturday. She did get up to go to her writing class at nine thirty, but halfway there she turned around, came home, and went back to bed. Part of Sunday afternoon she stayed in bed too.

Laurel often felt paralysed by anxiety. She could not reason with herself, and it was very disabling. She had been very isolated as a child and young adult but was determined this should not continue or she would indeed be a very lonely little old lady.

She lived alone, and that particular Saturday, there were two particular tasks ahead of her. Tomorrow morning was her grandson’s christening, and she had to sort out a garage full of books. The christening meant going to a big Catholic church with her son and his wife and her daughter too, and all the dozens of her in-laws. The christening was part of the mass service.

The books were worse, in a way, as they would not be ‘over and done with’ any time soon. There were two thousand copies of two different books, which had been sent to her in error and which were too expensive to return. The company responsible did say they would help her sell them, but that seemed impossible to her, and she was attempting to give away some of them, so far without any success. She had written so many letters.

Apart from those two thousand books, there were three boxes that were delivered later in a separate order. Opening up each box, Laurel had found each one had the same titled books on the top of each box. Unfortunately the book company insisted they had sent three different books, not the one title, and were asking her to search through these three boxes and the ten boxes of one of these three titles that were sent in error. It was a task that overwhelmed her. It had taken all her physical and emotional strength so far to open each of sixty boxes and pile them up in her garage in order of their titles.

And so she stayed in bed, though at the time, she really didn’t know why. She was just lazy! Or perhaps her work had worn her out more than she thought.

For months now, Laurel had resolved to get herself out and about, to go to social events and places like the movies, picnics, restaurants, other people’s houses for meals. Despite this, almost every time she committed herself to attend a meeting related to her work, she would feel unsettled for several days beforehand and stew about it all day, then usually cancel it at the last moment. If she did manage to get herself there, she would leave at the earliest opportunity.

If someone was coming, or if she was going somewhere, she would obsess about it in advance and rehearse all the possible alternative outcomes: Would Carol stay to lunch? What should she offer with morning tea? Should she go to Carol’s place next Friday after work, or should she just go home? Should she visit Meryl in hospital? Usually she did the things she felt she would want people to do for herself, like visiting Meryl in hospital, and the best way to ensure she did go to Carol’s place was to say she would go. She didn’t like letting people down. The work-related dinners didn’t count.

Laurel was disappointed and annoyed with herself for not going to the writing class that Saturday morning. Unfortunately she had done the same thing last Thursday. She had left work early to go to an advanced writing class she had not attended before, driven to the university, parked her car, walked to the venue, then turned around, hurried back to the car, and driven home.

The week before, she had paid for a very special writing class with a visiting speaker, and she forced herself to go, took part, and enjoyed it. She did have to reward herself by going shopping afterwards. Laurel had decided to try and make a lovely toile handbag from a piece of material she had bought previously and for which she had bought a pattern. It was something very challenging. So rather stupidly, she spent an hour and a half in the shop buying three more toile materials and enough of all the other components to make four handbags. Where would she find the time and patience for this demanding new venture?

After spending all day in bed on Saturday, on Sunday morning, Laurel dressed for the christening. She dressed carefully and looked very nice. Her son and daughter-in-law drove her to the church. She sat through the service quietly, worrying to herself how this baby would be nurtured in a Catholic lifestyle when her son was not at all religious. Yes, it was their problem, she acknowledged. But what about her own daughter, who had pledged the same promise as a godmother?

Her daughter drove her home afterwards. But wouldn’t her son be upset if she didn’t go to the big family luncheon afterwards? ‘No, Mum, he understands you.’

Laurel went home, undressed, and fell into bed again for about three hours. Then she pulled herself up and out into the garage and began unstacking boxes of books and digging down into the ten boxes she had to go through to find what was in them. Yes, these ones are a thousand of one title. Now pack them back again. Now try the last three boxes. She emptied them all out and was very surprised to find that under the top ten of each title, there were another ten of a different title. In all, the three boxes did contain eighty of each of two titles and only thirty of the third title.

Bella

H e sat at his desk with his head in his hands and wept silently; he missed her terribly. He asked himself if he had made the right decision. Why did she have to die?

Kane felt very lonely since his marriage broke up; he lived alone, except for his old cat, who slept all day. To keep him company, he decided to get another pet. Dogs were out of the question as he had no backyard at his unit, so he decided it would be kittens. He could play with them, and they were full of energy and mischief.

Kane managed to procure two little kittens. One September, his friend at the pet shop had rung him. She had too many kittens, and the latest pair, a sister and brother, were gorgeous, one of them with long hair and bushy tail, like a feather duster. The brother was black and short-haired. They both had similar white markings around the face.

‘I thought of you immediately,’ said his friend Jo. ‘Are they what you were looking for?’

‘Yes, fantastic, thanks, Jo.’

Kane had been out shopping and on the way home called into the supermarket and bought kitty litter and a litter tray, kitten biscuits, and milk. He drove to the pet shop. He bought a cage to carry the kittens home.

The kittens were divine. He enjoyed the way they ran about and played with musical little balls and feathered toys. At first he called the black one Sooty, then decided it was too common for such a beautiful kitten, so changed it to Snooty, but again, that name had dreadful connotations of a nose-in-the-air selfish cat. He then settled on Snooky. His sister with the long silky hair was named Minky.

Kane’s old cat was seventeen years old and was named Smudge, and he was delighted to see that she happily accepted the two new arrivals. In fact, the mischievous, hyperactive kittens encouraged her to be more playful herself.

Kane’s sister Louise came to visit and immediately fell in love with the kittens.

‘How happy Smudge is,’ she remarked. ‘Do you remember she seemed so much younger again when we had that little tortoiseshell kitten Tigger, who got run over?’

‘Yes, she was beautiful,’ said Kane.

Louise had two young girls, Betty and Jo, and Kane had them over at the weekends. They loved the kittens and Smudge. The kittens were nearly as big as Smudge now. Louise didn’t look well, and Kane knew she was having problems with her marriage.

Kane sat down, crestfallen, the kittens forgotten, as he saw Louise’s pain. Suddenly Snooky jumped up on his lap. Kane cuddled him tenderly. How happy he was that these cats couldn’t run on the road and be killed like Tigger. He knew this was nothing in the same vein as Louise’s problems, but he forced himself to turn his attention to the kittens to cheer himself up.

This time, Kane had built a cat run so the cats had no access to the road. He had closed in the side passage with a grill at one end, a brick wall at the other, and the roof covered in shade cloth. It had been a lot of work.

Cats turned out to be an expensive hobby because buying all the necessary pieces for the cat run had cost several hundred dollars. Then there was the cat door to let them into the house. The original glass panel could not be cut because it was the standard sort that shattered if it was cut into, and it cost him three hundred dollars to replace it with specially toughened glass that could be cut to allow the cat door.

The kittens were lots of fun, and the older cat, Smudge, was much more fun too. Kane didn’t notice any change in his playful little kittens except that they both grew much bigger. The smooth-haired Snooky became more handsome, and the fluffy one, Minky, was a most gentle-natured, rather timid cat. Her beautiful long fur had only one drawback: fur was all over the house now. However often he vacuumed, the fur built up again. It was a small problem, really, when he looked at it with perspective.

One weekend, Kane went to the Blue Mountains, to Leura, for a work conference. He came back to find two more tiny baby kittens. The older kittens were barely six months old, and Kane had had in mind to get them microchipped and sterilised soon, never expecting they might mate sooner. The babies were both the fluffy, beautiful-tailed ones, like their mother. One was black all over; one was grey and white. Minky was a wonderful mother, and they all lived happily in a cardboard box lined with a cushion for several weeks until they