Glitter
RUBY SCOTT-WISHART
The first night I smoked with Charlie it was magic. I was so high I was convinced that with every breath I expelled, glitter and sparkles were blown out onto the breeze. I could see them floating and flying off as the smoke passed through the light emitted from the outdoor lamps. I was so fucking high.
Before Charlie I always had to have a reason to smoke. I’d broken my ankle when I was twenty and had smoked for the pain, and then when Dad died, I smoked for a different kind of pain, but I wasn’t a regular smoker. Not for fun or ‘just cause.’
The next time we smoked it happened again, with the addition of the feeling that I was floating high above the house. I watched Charlie and I watched myself. He was so beautiful. He had long brown eyelashes - the glitter landed and rested on them, and when he blinked, it disappeared. Charlie wasn't like any guy I had dated before. He was quiet and reflective. He rarely spoke when we were out with a group, but when it was just us, or when he escaped to the corner of the bar with a friend, he never seemed to stop talking. I liked that. He thought before he spoke.
That night, as I watched myself from above and the glitter floated around me, I leaned forward and kissed him for the first time. He seemed taken aback, lifting his hands to his lips and brushing his fingers against them.
‘I've got lips?’ He looked at his hand, ‘I've got lips!’ And then he leaned in and kissed me back. It was firm but not harsh, just, sure. I probably fell in love with him that night.
He introduced me to his mother the next week. We were out for lunch – the food was shit but the company was good. He was peering over my shoulder down the street and suddenly looked at me and said:
‘My mother is walking up the street towards us. She lives three streets away; she’s probably going to the library.’ I shifted nervously in my seat, and he reached under the table and grabbed my hand, ‘I promise I didn’t invite her here to spring this on you. Her name is Leanne. She is going to love you. You are going to love her.’ He stood up and waved her down and she tottered over.
‘Charles,’ I hadn’t even considered that his name might be Charles, ‘what a pleasant surprise!’ Before I had a chance to get up and shake her hand she had sat down next to me.
‘And you must be Daphne. Charles has told me wonderful things about you.’
Leanne and I were fast friends. She called me Daphie. My grandmother had been the only person to call me that. She even reminded me of grandma – they were both very maternal but entirely themselves, wild women with a gentle touch.
Leanne would even smoke with us sometimes. The first time, Charlie and I had been going out for about a year. She just turned up at the front door with a chicken pot pie under her arm that she popped in the oven. When she saw a bag of papers on the coffee table she asked if she could have one. Charlie blushed. I don’t think Leanne knew that he smoked.
‘Oh Charles, get over yourself.’ She promptly took the bag from the table, instructed Charlie to bring her an iced tea and the dope, rolled herself a blunt and lit it. She passed it to me after taking a long drag. She didn’t even cough. I was hesitant. She raised an eyebrow. I took it from her hand and took a drag. She smiled at me, her eyes twinkling.
The three of us sat in a comfortable silence while the smell of pie filled the apartment, the sour smell of the weed poking out every now and then. We sat in that magical bubble for a while, our closeness a warm gift. She told us that it was the ten-year anniversary of her mother’s death.
‘Oh mum, I’m so sorry, I completely forgot. We can run down to the shops and grab some flowers?’ He said with his head in his hands. I rubbed the small of his back.
‘It’s alright Charles. I forgot too. That’s why I needed a smoke.’
‘What was her name?’ I asked, sitting up in the armchair.
‘Evelyn. But everyone called her Evie.’ She looked at me intently, her eyes beginning to shine with tears.
When I got pregnant four years later, we didn’t even have to talk about what we were naming her. Evie was born on a hot summer day in January.
Before Evie was born Charlie and I smoked at least once a week for over five years. It became a habit, a ritual. It was a time for my brain to stop. I got to watch the glitter dance and fly on the breeze. And I got to be with Charlie. He always looked especially beautiful when I was high - taller, gentle, more muscular. We would slip into this magical sweet spot. A pleasant humming of happiness.
When I got pregnant, we stopped, and once the kids were in the picture it suddenly seemed a lot harder to find the time to drift off in the backyard and watch the glitter.
One night when Charlie was away for work, Leanne turned up and instructed me to have a hot shower and roll a joint. She put the kids to bed and came and joined me in the garden. Ben was only a few months old so the bedtime routine ended before the sun had even set, so we sat in the garden and watched the sun spray streams of orange and red across the sky as we smoked. It was the first time in years I had smoked without Charlie. Only after it had gotten dark did I realise that there was no glitter.
One balmy November evening when Evie was five, Charlie and I were huddled around the dining table. We hadn’t smoked in months. My birthday back in August? No, our anniversary in June. Wow. Now we nursed glasses of wine. Leanne was sick. The kind of sick that ate away at a person. It was the kind of sickness I had watched dad battle for years, as it slowly drained the life and blood from him.
‘Well, she won’t be able to come with us to Mudgee this year. Maybe we can book for the Easter holidays. You know the meds might have started working better by then?’ Charlie cracked his knuckles as he spoke. I reached forward to squeeze his hand, unsure whether to break his sliver of hope or let it live. Leanne wouldn’t be well enough to travel at Easter.
‘But Daddy, won’t Nanny be coming for Christmas this year?’ Evie peered up at Charlie from the floor where she was arranging her blocks in some pattern only she understood. Kids always surprised you with what they could pick up.
‘Oh pumpkin,’ Charlie cooed, ‘Nanny isn’t very well at the moment, so she won’t be able to come this Christmas.’
‘What about my birthday?’
‘I’m not sure darling.’ He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘Oh.’ She paused before turning back to her blocks.
‘But we will have a fun Christmas even without Nanny pumpkin! We’ll decorate the tree and go to the farm on Christmas Eve like we always do. It will be magical!’ I moved down from the kitchen chairs to the floor.
‘Nanny loves the farm.’ She said perkily.
‘She does. We can send her a picture,’ Charlie came down to the floor as well. ‘We could even send a postcard if you like.’
Evie grinned widely at this.
‘Maybe a cow? Nanny loves the cows!’ And with that her mind moved quickly to the stuffed animals sitting in the basket near the tv. She abandoned the blocks and wandered off.
In April Leanne asked us to come over. Charlie took the day off, and the three of us sat in the backyard and smoked. Glitter swirled around us in the autumn wind. Orange, amber, red, pink.
‘Weed is a wonderful thing isn’t it Daphie?’ Leanne said as she inspected the blunt between her thin fingers, ‘something magical about it.’ She blew out a puff of smoke, sparkles flying on the breeze. I laughed, and she joined me, coughing and spluttering as she went. I held that night tight, trying to stop the mystic of it from slipping away.
She died three weeks later.
Charlie couldn’t articulate to the kids what was happening. Evie cried, her six-year-old brain was overwhelmed by the idea of death. She couldn’t understand Leanne would never come through the front door again. Ben was too young to understand any of it.
Charlie only cried when we smoked. The glitter stuck to his cheeks and his eyelashes as he cried, silently sobbing.
Eventually we stopped smoking all together. It was never an official decision, but I think when he smoked Charlie could feel, really feel, and that was too hard. And as the kids got older it got harder too. I didn’t have time to eat lunch some days let alone get high. Life became repetitive – work, eat, kids, sport, eat, clean, music class, cook, clean, sleep, repeat. Days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years.
One weekend when the house was empty – kids at camp, Charlie away for work – I smoked by myself. I realised it was the first time I’d smoked alone, maybe ever. It was lonely. I felt old and frumpy; my hair was now mousy and thin. I thought of the first time I had kissed Charlie, the way his fingers had twirled in my hair. The way he had held my face in his hands and cradled me in his arms later that night under the sheets. I had felt so touched. So cared for.
When he got back the next week, I told him that I’d smoked.
‘Did you get the glitter thing?’ Charlie asked. I paused in shock while chopping the carrots. I hadn’t told anyone about the glitter, ever. It had been my own little treasure, my fantasy.
‘What?’ I replied.
‘That glitter thing you told me about?’
‘I never – how do you know about that?’
‘You told me. The first time you kissed me. You said, “there’s something on your cheek. Its glitter. Don’t you see it?”, and then I said no, and you started telling me about the glitter.’ I didn’t even know how to react. Someone else knowing felt foreign. Strange.
‘No, I didn’t see it,’ I turned back to the carrots, ‘I only see it when you smoke with me.’ I chopped intently.
‘I didn’t know that.’ He went quiet and wandered off, coming back a few minutes later with something in his hand.
‘I got it a few weeks ago from the store that opened on Greenspring. I just thought, well you know, it’s been a while. And I miss it. Well not really, I don’t miss it I just miss you. The rhythm of it. The routine.’ He paused, turning the object over in his hand. ‘I don’t see glitter. I see people.’
I stopped cooking and came and stood in front of him. It was a vape pen.
‘Before mum died it was easier cause they were distant, the people, they felt distant. But then she was so close. Before it was comforting, just this presence, off in the distance. But she was too close.’ He handed me the pen. ‘But I miss her. And I know you miss the glitter.’
That night after the kids went to bed we sat in the backyard, listening to the cicadas chirp and currawongs call. It did feel a bit childish sucking on a vape, but I didn’t mind.
Quickly the glitter came. Every colour of the rainbow swirling and dancing around us. And Charlie cried. I’m sure he could see Leanne or at least feel her. I wondered if he saw Dad.
The tantrums and dirty dishes and grief and emails and pain and ripped school pants and dusty skirting boards could stay inside. For now, I just watched the glitter dance around Charlie’s face.
And got really fucking high.
Ruby Scott-Wishart is a short story writer from Sydney, living on Wangal land. She is passionate about contemporary Australian literature, but enjoys seeing where stories and genre take her. As her to-be-read pile grows she hopes to be a wider and better reader one day.
