One Perfect Day. My project for course: Creative Writing for Beginners: Bringing Your Story to Life

ONE PERFECT DAY

The text flashes on my phone. Hey girl, I’m down at the lake with a bottle of tequila. Come party with me!

It’s Kelly. She’s someone in my circle, we see each other occasionally at parties and exhibitions. We like each other, but she lives up the coast and I live in the city, so there’s not much chance to build a real friendship. There’s something we have in common, but I don’t want to think about that right now. I think about her offer. I don’t have anything else to do. I make a decision. I text back. I have a bottle of vodka and a bottle of bloody mary mix. Let’s party!

It’s summer and the weather is glorious – clear blue sky, everything bathed in golden sunshine. The drive is uneventful. My old car is enjoying the outing and purrs along the freeway. I can still drag the guys off at the lights. Eat my dust!

It’s afternoon by the time I find Kelly’s house by the lake. It’s a holiday house that’s been added on many times, there are bedrooms everywhere. Kelly’s dad used to be a child services carer and kids would come to stay with his family. He has dementia now, she warns me. But when I meet him, he’s still charming. “You’re so beautiful!” he exclaims in his lilting brogue. “Do I know you?”

Kelly is staying in the lake house with her daughter, Evie, who is only thirteen. She is quiet with huge watchful brown eyes and stays close to Kelly. I’ve never met her before.

The house has a huge, grassed yard that leads to the lake, the shore fringed by mangroves. I watch the sun set, golden fingers of light dipping into the dark water. Kelly pours me a margarita before dinner. Her mum has cooked a roast lamb with all the trimmings. It’s my favourite and I relish the sweet caramelised lamb, crunchy potatoes and minty peas. Kelly doesn’t eat much, that’s probably why she’s quite petite.

We move to the lounge room, which features an old piano, lid open, with music propped up. Kelly’s a musician. Her mum puts her dad to bed, Evie disappears to her room, and it’s the three of us, drinking cocktails and listening to Kelly play everything from Elton John to Liebestraum. We can’t have a singalong, it would wake Evie’s dad, but we talk and drink and laugh until suddenly it’s midnight, somehow we’ve polished off the tequila and the vodka between the three of us, and we all realise we’re tired.

I’m woken by the twittering of birds, it sounds like all the birds in the world are singing outside my window just for me. I lift my head, and the room spins. Oh no! I overdid the partying and now it’s time to pay. I’m a guest in their house, and by force of will I shower and dress without throwing up. Kelly and her family are early birds and are already at breakfast when I drag myself up the stairs. I am amazed how cheerful Kelly is, considering she drank just as much as I did. She pours me a strange green drink that looks like alien slime, but tastes of bananas and pineapple. I feel much better.

“It’s such a great day, let’s go canoeing!” says Kelly.

I’m not really what you would call athletic, I’m a cushiony type, and my joints seem to need oiling these days. I haven’t been well and my body lets me down when I least expect it. It can be embarrassing. Kelly is determined. She leads me across the vast lawn. Two old canoes are tied up near the shore. She unties one, pushes it into the water, and hops in. “Come in!” she says. The canoe bobs and tips while somehow I manage to slide in and plop heavily on the back seat. We take our paddles and Kelly leads, steering us away from the mangrove spikes to deeper waters. As we paddle, I match her rhythm and find it’s easy.

It’s a still day, a silver day. Clouds gather overhead, threatening rain, but that will come later. Cormorants fly overhead. Moorehens pick their way among the mangroves. The water is like a polished mirror; our reflections are perfect on its smooth surface. We laugh at the ways her neighbours have modified the riverbank for their benefit. There’s a retaining wall of old tyres propping up the yard of one house. Another has an old boatshed with a rooftop courtyard sporting artificial grass, two white chairs and a table for afternoon cocktails. Only Kelly’s house has a yard directly running to the lake, merging the border between earth and water.

I suddenly remember an old song I learned in primary school. My paddle’s keen and bright, flashing with silver. Swift as the wild goose flight, dip dip and swing! I start singing, my voice clear and high. Kelly joins in, slightly behind me, and we sing, our voices harmonising in a round. The light breaks and sparkles as we dip our paddles in and out of the water. I imagine the notes we sing turning into silver crystals, twining into shining arabesques, melting into the clouds.

My shoulders start feeling the strain of paddling. I’m not used to it. I say to Kelly, “I think it’s time to turn around.” She’s glad I said that and turns for home, we paddle slower against the current, our voices quiet again.

I’m even worse getting out of a canoe than into one. My knees seem to have locked up and I simply can’t get the oomph I need to get out. Eventually I flop out onto the landing as if I were a whale beaching myself. When I get up, my knees are bloody. I’m on blood thinners, so any cut is dramatic. Kelly’s mum comes out to meet us. I wash the dirt off my legs under the garden tap and stick plasters on my knees. It’s time to go. I hug Kelly, she holds me tight, as if she’s drowning and I'm her lifejacket.

“It’s been wonderful,” I say. “A perfect day.” I drive off into the sunset, leaving Kelly and her family on the lake's edge, a happy memory.

A few weeks later, I get another text from Kelly. I’m in hospital again. It’s metastised to my lungs. I won’t be seeing you for a while.

Oh my god. I was afraid this would happen. Kelly’s cancer is getting worse, while mine is getting better. That's why I love to sing now. My voice has been freed by my surgery. Hers is being silenced. There’s no rhyme or reason, it’s just life. Kelly needs a few more years with Evie but will be lucky to get them. I’m well enough to spend sunny Sundays paddling on my grubby old city river, picking up rubbish, trying to heal it from years of human abuse, while the river heals me. It’s lined with mangroves too, like the lake, that’s where most of the rubbish ends up. You develop a close relationship with sticky, squelchy mud on the river. It's the price of freedom in motion.

I do the only thing I can. I text back. I can’t wait to go back on the lake with you. Let’s have another perfect day!