By Madeliene

The last of the salvage happened on Sunday.  Except for a broken piece of charcoal the memories bound up in the rubble are headed for landfill.

It was a house.  Then it was a flameball.  Then it exploded.  Glenda saw the whole thing.

The bushfire wasn’t far from the Pigs Arms and Glenda had sat it out in the furthest back car park in Danny’s air conditioned ute with her dog, just outside our place.  Danny thought it would be safer than the pub because he knew what Merv stored in the ladies lounge velour box seats for the bikies.

Glenda and Danny’s house burnt too, and she doesn’t know if she can be bothered going through the trouble of rebuilding for the sake of living together with Danny.  Couples uncertain rent a place.  Couples with certainty buy a place.  Only the most deeply committed, bored, idealistic, creative or naïve build a house.  G &D are none of these.

We’re definitely rebuilding, but I’ve been having trouble with the paving.  The paving covered the space separating the laundry and toilet outbuildings from the house and had survived the fire in perfect condition.  But the demolisher’s trucks would demolish the paving.  If we wanted to save it we had to pull it apart.  It was hard.

The survivor paving gave civilization to this wreck of a block – smooth, drained, perfect – a place to walk safely between the shattered asbestos piles to the blackened garden.  And it was a bit sacred, heralding from the most precious times of our early life together with our firstborn – laid with our hands, sprinkled with sands.  It was imbued with the champagne of christenings and Christmases, games, snow, and now fire.  Friendly ants lived below, and lizards beside.

We intended to relay it, but what if we couldn’t put it down with the same quality of love and commitment?  What if it couldn’t collect the same precious memories?  What if the paving was the only remnant of our beginnings holding us together?  The house was gone, the garden was gone – what if the last embodied foundation of our lives shattered as we pulled apart?

I’d moved ‘hundreds’ of pieces of corrugated roofing iron and gutters, fridge, oven, vacuum cleaner, bath, wood fire heater, washing machine, trough, all the bits of metal piping, cappings and edging one finds in a house.  I’d picked up all the crockery and ceramics that could be used in a mural, and searched for remnants of ‘valuable’ memories.  One by one we pulled down the three chimneys, chipped the old mortar from the bricks and moved them to a safe place.  Eventually only the pavers and the hot water system remained.

My prudent husband was afraid the free demolishers would move out of town before we were ‘ready’, and the pressure was on.  I asked him about our relationship (and not only once).  If he was uncertain, I would not pull the paving apart, hanging onto the precious qualities and memories it bound.

In the end I had to take his assurances, and Sunday was ‘paver-day’.  All five of us began to pick up the pavers, wash them, wheel them, and stack them.

The children quickly tired, and the girls went off to collect pieces of charcoal remains from the cupboard where their toys had died (mostly teddies).  I plan to re-sew them, but their plan is to re-imbue their spirit with the charcoal.

I claimed the right to pick up the last few pavers, like a jigsaw puzzle in reverse, as though they were the key to bring it all back together.

Only the hot water system remained, and as the night fell and the rain began to fall, with a glove on his left and its partner on my right, we pushed together, crashing the old copper onto the asbestos.  He left with the children but I stayed.  It would all be gone when I next returned.

The old copper was heaving in the silence.   Intermittently obeying the laws of gravity and air pressure, water flowed out, air bubbled in.  Water, air, water, air, and to this rhythm of upheaval visions and memories flooded my mind.  In a trance I moved around the house and watched the haunting poignant memories the moment chose to reveal.

At my firstborn’s bedroom I see his cot.  I see the austerity of the room, the dark cold floor, the plaited cold rag rug, I see the single bed.  It looks wrong – so austere, no comfort, no warmth surrounds him.  The memory seems the embodiment of regret.

At the laundry I see myself washing nappies.  Precious time, but how hard I worked.  At the outside toilet I see my young son walking towards the door.  I remember this particular moment – the toilet was rather grim, from my adult judgment I thought he would be afraid (I don’t know why), but he walked forward with optimism and I felt elevated wonder at his fearless, oblivious hope.

The hot water service heaved on and I progressed around the house in the rain.  Down the ‘paving’, over the deck, past the fireplace, and back to the corner where I began.  And then it was over.  There was nothing left that had to be done.  And still the old copper heaved.

There was no reason left to stay, and the moment to leave was faced.  An imperative drove me to our bedroom.  I walked to our bed, where our firstborn had slept on one night when he was ten days old.  Everything had felt right – he slept – warm, safe, between us – and I slept.  I picked up a piece of charcoal and it immediately broke in two – a big piece and a little piece.  I held them softly together in my hand, and waited in the rain for the moment to leave.  I tried but returned, back and forth again, and again, because when I left it would be the last time.

Finally the deed was done and as I walked down the path I looked through the big leafless trees in the garden and vowed “I will never leave you; I will never ever leave you”.  And I don’t know who I was talking to.

And even if our relationship falls apart because the paving’s gone and the beautiful and strange memories have been trucked away with the charcoal, I will be rebuilding because it’s a place I will never leave.

And as for Danny and Glenda, her colourist and nail assistant have told her a thousand times that Danny’s got the good end of the stick.  But Glenda’s a sucker and Danny knows it.  Danny’s got a friend in the building industry who can whack up a house the same as the last one – it won’t be like they have to make any ‘decisions for future life together’.   Glenda will have her salon, Danny’s got his car yard.

It was good to see the pub mostly unharmed, and in one of those weird moments of ‘community’ I kissed Merv when I saw he’d made it.  There’d been an explosion in the Ladies Lounge (granny had copped some flak), but when the renovations are finished there’ll be somewhere other than this Morose Drunks Corner for an emotional chat.

Wedge a la Nonna aka Bombe Awedges

Granny’s invented a new dish for the grande reopening – she calls it Bombe Awedges – firey on the outside – coool on the inside.