The Ice Shelf: An Eco-Comedy Read online

  After a thud-filled minute, Miles and Dorothy erupted from the bedroom, and I had an immediate impression of Miles—wild-eyed, untucked and muss-haired—and of Dorothy’s 1950s polkadots gone all out of shape like in Put Me in the Zoo (‘I will go into the zoo. I want to see it. Yes I do’). I thought I heard her say, ‘Oh no, it’s the murderer.’ That was all I had time to take in, because after Miles asked, ‘Ah, Janice, you wouldn’t have the keys to the apartment by any chance, would you?’ there was a tumult.

  I hadn’t thought about the keys. I rushed back to the hall and snatched them up from the little side table, but as I did, I felt Dorothy’s hand close over mine. She’d scooted right up to my elbow in a nanosecond, even in her ruffly skirt. I must say I applaud her sense of involvement. Half an hour in the house and she was shouldering responsibilities that, frankly, no one would expect of her. Go, Dorothy! However, I wasn’t giving up the keys.

  Dorothy lunged at the hand in which I clutched the keys. She yelled ‘Miles!’ over her shoulder, as if she might need him to take a pass in a game of basketball. I was only dimly aware of Miles hovering in the background. With Dorothy gripping my hand, we wrestled, at first in a jokey way, then getting a bit more serious. She was surprisingly strong for such a tiny person. Staring up into my face, she squeezed my hand like a vice. The keys dug into my palm and I struggled like crazy—this was getting much less friendly—as she bent my fingers back one by one, starting with the index finger and arriving eventually at the pinkie, and as she wrenched that finger back I yelped in pain and felt her small hand dive like the teeth of a fish into my palm and swallow the keys. She stared at me in triumph. Miles coughed lightly.

  I guess my being a bit stoned turned out to be an unfortunate handicap, otherwise I might’ve put up a better fight. But it doesn’t matter, it’s actually fine. I have no problem whatsoever with Dorothy, then or now. As I stemmed the flow of blood from my hand (keys are surprisingly sharp), I realised that she was an innocent bystander in all this. When people are on the rebound they will flick out randomly like a snake’s tongue at any passing thing, just to see, and that thing happened to be Dorothy. In fact, Dorothy is very nice. I would go so far as to say, Dorothy is spectacular. As I ruminated on this, Dorothy abruptly left the apartment, and I thought that might be the last I saw of her and felt wistful and worried on her behalf. I hoped she wouldn’t be too heartbroken. But read on. I was not to be lumbered with Miles for very much longer.

  With Dorothy off the premises, I was alone with Miles, just like the old days. We stood about silently scuffing our heels for a bit. ‘I think,’ Miles began, ‘no, I know, I know for sure, I’ve probably, no, not probably, really, certainly …’

  Then Miles looked at me, and he was no longer the quintessential Kiwi man described in Cinema of Unease. And I was no longer the woman who wanted an uneasy man.

  ‘I’ve never loved you,’ he said levelly.

  Immediately I got out my phone and opened Facebook to change my relationship status. Single. I also posted a status update: Relationship over, don’t ask and got three likes straight away from Mandy, Linda Dent and Nick Hall; Mandy replied, succinctly, xxxxx, and Linda commented, Oh no! Big hugs! <3 <3 <3 xxxxxx. I replied, It’s fine! Really!!! Thanks anyway! Xxxxx And to show just how fine, I tweeted a link about taking your own utensils to Chinese restaurants rather than using the plastic ones, and this was already causing a stir before I’d pocketed my phone. So, more or less immediately, I could see that Miles leaving me was the best thing that had ever happened, and perhaps ever *would* happen in my life.

  I told him I was taking the fridge.

  He tossed his head in a wild, leonine way, and I prepared for battle, but instead he wailed, ‘Take it, take the fucking fridge, I don’t care!’

  I’d never heard Miles so impassioned, and it shocked me. But I wasn’t going to wait for a second invitation, because I *was* going to take the fridge. I admit I was tremulous as I yanked its heavy black reconditioned plug from the spidery zone and started ferrying food from wire shelves to table. I would’ve uplifted it right then if at that moment there hadn’t been an urgent grinding of keys and a gust of Femme de Rochas. Strangely, at that point it occurred to me for the first time, as Dorothy filled the doorway in her poodle skirt, that she matched the fifties apartment.

  ‘What’s she doing?’ asked Dorothy, referring to yours truly in a rather impolite third person, even though I was only a metre or two away. Plus I was technically still the lady of the house. I continued to unpack the fridge systematically, knowing that Miles wouldn’t stop me. He’s actually a nice person. He stood with his shoulders buckled at odd angles, saying nothing.

  Dorothy pawed at his arm. ‘Don’t let her take the fridge, Miles!’

  Miles had a new wild look in his eye; he seemed stretched like a drying pelt.

  I watched these antics from under my brow in the course of my travels between fridge and table. I also noticed a bulging bag at Dorothy’s feet. She’d obviously gone home for the proverbial carpet bag, plus the scent; perhaps she’d had a quick shower after the evening’s kinky antics. Good for her. I didn’t mind. Miles replied sotto voce to Dorothy re the fridge: yes, he thought it was probably half his.

  ‘Well,’ said Dorothy, whose forthright manner would’ve made her most unwelcome in In My Father’s Den, ‘it’s settled. Don’t let the murderer take the fridge.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ hissed Miles to Dorothy.

  ‘You said it,’ Dorothy hissed back.

  Miles shook his head over and over. I ferried chutneys, jams, butter.

  Of course, none of this had any veracity. First of all, I bought the fridge with my payout for unlawful dismissal from the Glass Menagerie in 2011. And secondly, I’d been stuffing my face from this fridge for almost three years. I think you’ll agree, Reader, that this establishes a primal kind of ownership, or at least part-ownership. Since mid 2011 I’d eaten just as much food from this fridge as Miles had—in fact, more, because I snacked and lunched at home on account of my temporary unemployed status, while Miles frequented various cafés around town in his lunch hour, no doubt hoofing down quiche and roquette salad in the company of an assortment of other people on a payroll. The truth is, if I were to finish a degree in something random like archeology or psychology, I could have one of those jobs too and would have enough money to buy something in a ramekin for lunch. Good thing I haven’t. Good thing I stuck to my creative guns and kept writing and eating lunch on the wing, otherwise there’d be no Utter and Terrible Destruction (which you might remember is my first little effort, the autobiographical novella/roman à clef, which appeared from Chook Books in 2010, and for which I am hugely grateful, even though it didn’t have a spine) and there’d be no The Ice Shelf. My time would be gobbled up in a frenzy of meetings and sit-down soup-and-crouton lunches. Clearly I was and am more entitled to the fridge than Miles.

  However, I didn’t want to make a scene. How can we be defined, except by how we behave? So, on that Night of the Tortuous Sex, I left the apartment without a single fridge. In the fridge department I possessed at that moment none, zero, zilch milch. I am, then, deeply indebted to the scrawny Dorothy over the transactions of the evening on several counts. Firstly, because the fridge that was rightfully mine had been wrested from me so callously, I was in the fortunate position of being able to exit the apartment, where I’d resided for exactly three years, quickly and cleanly with no trappings. My decamp would’ve been much trickier encumbered with a fridge, let alone any of the other possessions I’d accumulated over those three years, especially on account of the Southeast Ridge. It is all thanks to Dorothy that I got to experience the graceful sensation of freefall that comes with having, at least temporarily, almost nothing. But more importantly, if not for Dorothy’s bull-headedness and Miles’s lily-livered demurring, I would not have been offered the opportunity to assess the fridge’s importance to me and to make arrangements for my future uplifting of it. I wasn’t going to m
ake the same mistake as Sorrell and be left high and dry, at room temperature, without the fridge. My most heartfelt gratitude to Miles and Dorothy.

  It’s true that I did experience a certain amount of trauma over being evicted from the glorious fifties space that was half mine. It might sound fanciful, but I had the impression of ice melting in the palm of my hand and dripping onto the carpet.

  I am pleased to report that even though feelings were high, I found it within myself to vacate the premises in a dignified manner. Far be it from me to comment on the dignity of Miles and Dorothy, but in the hall, Miles pushed my coat at me and Dorothy even wound my scarf several times around my neck. They frog-marched me down the Southeast Ridge, which was something of a mission due to the narrowness of the staircase; we jostled for room and almost lost our collective footing on more than one occasion, like some ungainly six-legged creature tumbling sideways. Down in the courtyard, which is desolate at the best of times, we all paused. Perhaps it was exhaustion, or realisation; I don’t know, but it seemed that time and space stood still, that we were suspended in a heterotopia where everything was equal, neutral, balanced, and that anything could happen, things could go forward in a different way if we so desired. I felt a surge of hope. Miles and I were kaput, but perhaps I could wish him well. I didn’t really mind about Dorothy in her fifties clothes in the fifties apartment. Perhaps Miles would wish *me* well.

  But the moment passed and we were back in the unruly night. Miles held out my overstuffed hold-all which he’d apparently thought to pack and which I supposed contained most of my worldly possessions except for half the fridge and half the apartment, while Dorothy leered from the sidelines. I snatched the hold-all, turned out of the courtyard onto Majoribanks Street and headed up the hill to Mandy’s.

  If it weren’t for the seemingly cut-throat actions of the happy (sic) couple, I would not be where I am today. I would not have divested myself of the bourgeois shackles of the modernist apartment, would not have moved in with my friend Mandy and had a whale of a time doing Book Club 24/7, would not have assumed rightful ownership of my fridge, nor generally branched out in every area of my life. The most crucial thing of course was receiving the Antarctica Residency, which led to the writing of the text which follows these tributes.

  *

  Roar ahead really fast and come to a shuddering stop nine months after the Tortuous Sex Night, and here I am in front of Mandy’s bathroom mirror (she’s at her job as an assistant at Kilbirnie Library), inching up the zip on a floaty red chiffon dress in anticipation of attending the awards ceremony, which is happening at the National Library at six o’clock this evening. Having posed in various angles in front of the mirror, I’ve decided none of my regular clothes apply. I tend to hang out in big tops, short skirts, leggings and pixie boots, retro eighties-wear, and while I’m fond of my style, it’s not quite right for the Antarctica Awards. So now I’m not looking like me anymore, a strange feeling that I find I actually quite like! Plus, I’m the wee-est bit nervous because I don’t relish being the centre of attention at the awards ceremony. For Dutch courage I’ve allowed myself a small vodka and orange, which is teetering on the bathroom shelf. I’m also punching my thank yous into a doc on my phone as they occur to me; there are going to be a lot, and I want to get a head start before the book is accepted for publication, and at the same time I’m tweeting about the night to come (feeling humble), *plus* posting a link to a great article I half read earlier and I don’t think anyone else will have seen about Environmental Gratitude and the middle class, basically the ethics of trashing the planet when you take it for granted. So, definitely multi-tasking. Through the French doors, I see there’s a furious summer thunderstorm in action over the harbour; lightning walks on water like some supernatural being. I hope the inclement weather will have passed by the time I need to leave.

  Having succeeded with the dress, which was a bit of struggle (Mandy is way too thin, but thank you anyway, Mandy), I’m finding it hard to breathe but it’s just temporary. I slap on some warpaint (ditto to Mandy) to counteract my pale cheeks. In the living room I stuff into my hold-all the clumpy, mouse-smelling down jacket they gave us at training plus the snowboots for Antarctica; my hold-all is cylindrical and over-the-shoulder, as I anticipate wheels will be almost useless when walking up the permafrost path to Scott Base. We Antarctica Residency recipients fly out to Christchurch in the morning from whence we will board a New Zealand Army Hercules aircraft bound for the Polar Ice Cap. After a little contretemps earlier, nothing serious, Mandy has kicked me out of her abode, so I need to find somewhere to stay tonight. But it’s only a heartbeat in the scheme of things, and it’s not like I wanted to stay on in her poxy flat post-Antarctica. But on top of that, she has refused to look after my fridge—an ungenerous gesture that has me doubting myself as a judge of character. Because of my trusting nature, I’ve always regarded Mandy as a nice person. And in fact I have a lot to thank her for, despite everything, and will do so in a little while.

  In the bathroom something rather unfortunate happens. I am a little overenthusiastic about my last slug of vodka and orange and in reaching for the glass on the shelf I knock my smartphone into the toilet. It lands with a Tiffany kind of splash, high-pitched and beaded. All I need! I dash to the kitchen to get tongs. Back in the bathroom, I fish in the toilet bowl for the phone, and as I do I think about what an amazing coincidence this is—the little phone, swallowed by the great white telephone. Despite this surprising truth hidden in the language, the reality is not so good. My Android is sodden. Once I’ve beached it on the basin counter, I perform an operation with a nail file. I read somewhere that smartphones can recover from a dunking as long as you don’t turn them on and you dry then out quickly, so I prise open the wafer-like back of the phone. Exposed, the fine metal plate patterned with an intricate grid is strangely beautiful; the fact it is boggy with bog-water makes it appear like a tiny cemetery on a wet day, and I picture a funeral happening and almost shed a tear. Under normal circumstances, I could’ve dried out the phone in the sun on the windowsill or in the hot-water cupboard, but I’m an itinerant artist, so I trot back to the kitchen and get a plastic bag from the bottom drawer (Mandy is nothing if not well organised). I have no choice but to discard quite a few items on the floor (sorry, Mandy), but in the end I find the perfect small, sturdy bag, fill it with rice, and in the bathroom I drop the smartphone bits into their new short-stay, entertaining briefly an analogy about me and my temporary homes. I stow the bag in my hold-all and finish off by returning to the bathroom to mop the toilet seat and floor with scads of toilet paper. Leaving a mess for Mandy is the last thing I want to do.

  Now, of course, I can’t tweet or make status updates from my phone, not to mention save my draft Acknowledgements. I happen to know that Mandy keeps her camera in the hall cupboard, so I rummage through, find the old Sanyo brick and take a quick shot of Me-with-Manuscript, which I load onto my laptop. So far so good. But do you think I can make a simple post or tweet? Oh no. I discover, in a rather agonising, slo-mo kind of way as I attempt multiple, *multiple* times to log on, that I no longer have access to Mandy’s WiFi. I suppose this is a follow-up to our little disagreement of the morning. I wouldn’t have picked that Mandy even knew how to change the password. She’s not the sharpest pencil in the box. I try to hack into Mandy’s account, knowing her birthday of course and the street she grew up in. Can’t. Never mind, onward. Thank goodness I’d been scribbling down these Acknowledgements with biro in a good old-fashioned notebook, otherwise they’d have gone west as well. I continue in this manner. This is what you are reading!

  I’m aware that while I’m fussing with appliances both dry and wet, with cameras and selfies and internet connections or lack of, valuable time is ticking away. I’m due at the Antarctica Awards in under an hour. And there is still a rather large problem to solve.

  My fridge is wedged between the dining table and the living-room door, where it has been for only a little over
a year, no trouble to anyone. We’ve simply eaten dinner on the couch and been careful going in and out of the room. In fact, the fridge has provided a handy surface—though high in altitude—for my in-tray, not to mention its capacious shelves for my early drafts. The shelves are now empty, as I’ve packed the drafts in a carton marked ‘The Ice Shelf drafts 1–7’ and left them in the attic. Yes, they’re a loss to me and undoubtedly to my future estate, but I chuckle to myself at the thought of a tenant in, say, two hundred years, if Earth is still habitable then, coming across a very lucky find and then making a breathless phone call—or perhaps apparating, because we’re talking 2212—to my literary executor. The truth is, although like Gertrude Stein I ‘never throw away a piece of paper upon which I have written’, I can’t carry my papers around with me and have nowhere of my own to store them. (Same with my clothes, which I’ve left in a chest of drawers in the sun-porch; I’m sure Mandy will keep them for me.) Such is the itinerant life of the artist. Perhaps that was the situation for Bach when he left a trunkful of compositions in an attic in Leipzig. I’ve planted other such troves around various Wellington flats I’ve lived in. Early drafts of Utter and Terrible Destruction are in a shed out back of 14B Rintoul Street, Newtown, and of course many of my papers reside in the cubbyhole at the apartment in Mount Victoria with the view over the harbour.