Paradise

My friend loved her ducks so much she killed them. Even now when she talks about them her mouth takes on the shape of their bills. A side effect of attachment I guess, or how to look like what you’ve lost. This is when I want to say ‘Hey Duckface’ and don’t out of respect for her grief. For sixteen years I have dealt with the fact she is better looking than me…so that’s where the light went, I think, when I look at her. She ate it.

I met the ducks the day before they died. The sun was out in Dunedin in November, so like the rest of the city, we were happy. For someone with a lifelong phobia of ducks I had to admit they were not ugly or frightening. They were Paradise ducklings, black and white as salt and pepper. I told her she should call them that, then they’d be like those hip hop girls from the eighties. But she’d made the grievous mistake of letting her child name them so one was called Dolly, and the other, well, I don’t remember.

They lived in a shoebox or her red imitation Kelly bag named after Grace being miserable in Monaco. They looked good sitting in that bag, better than a Chihuahua, more original and surprising. My friend was sunbathing topless and the ducklings kept trying to peck at her nipples and I kept trying not to look. I shy from intimacy and her perfect B’s.

Though they already thought she was their mother, they weren’t trying to drink her milk; they weren’t mammals, they were ducks that liked the Bullseye of her nipples. At no point did I find this erotic, though I felt a little sorry for them and their fruitless activity.

It was ok to touch her ducklings and I did that day, but their tarry black feet were disconcerting, at primeval odds with the fluff hovering above them and their Disney faces. I will say for feet they looked like they’d come in handy.

We got stoned and drove in her 1992 Corona to the cemetery. I have people there and I like the way the blue dish of sky sets its lip down on the sea. The crematorium on the cliff is a moving piece of architecture; I think for concrete it has soul. We sat in her car and smoked two Benson and Hedges each and felt alive and I got really thirsty and the ducks were in the backseat in their shoebox and I felt this warm hum for their peaceful little bodies, I caught it from my friend. Not a mood, but a mode, soft as her.

I thought for a minute paradise could be found in ducklings and the present tense but then Kerry caught me singing along to Coldplay and laughed at me for being so uncool. I didn’t care, there was someone I couldn’t stop thinking about, my light in the dark of other people.

I told my son about my friend and her ducks, how she loved them enough to cook them prawns cooked pink as coral, loved them enough to turn the bath into a paddling pool in the middle of the night--- and blow their duck fluff dry with her hairdryer. I told him how she loved them enough to sleep with them in a curl by her head. He said he wanted to meet them. Yin and yang.

The next day we marched into her house and he said, ‘Where’s the ducks Kerry?’ but she was sitting in her bed crying and she said, ‘I killed them.’

He needed grommets then and didn’t hear so he asked her again,

‘Where’s the ducks Kerry?’

And she said softer, ’I killed them.’ so he still didn’t hear her and he said,

‘Where’s the ducks Kerry?’

and she wailed then and said, ‘I killed them!’

And he said, “Awww, can I see them?’

Because he wanted to see what they looked like dead. They looked smaller dead; there was less of them. I suspect my son was disappointed by the lack of blood.

I took charge, every six months I like to do something useful. There was no spade so I went into the kitchen and got a slotted spoon from the cutlery drawer. We are the kind of people who don’t own spades,

‘This will do;’ I said to my friend,’ you’ll feel better once they’re in the ground.’ because I felt better about my dog this way when she died.

I went to the half dead rose bush out the front and started digging at the bark chips beneath it with her kitchen utensil. There was a really strong cat shit smell coming up to meet me. It was my hair shirt and a bit of a worry. I didn’t want that cat to dig up the ducks so I had to dig a bigger hole than I’d planned. I thought because of the cat shit it would be best to bury the spoon too. None of this felt the least bit absurd, love and death deserve better than Camus and I was unemployed at the time, I was grateful for something to do.

Kerry stayed inside and cried while I buried them and my son watched and that’s how we had our Tangi for the ducks.

A year later we were watching C4 and one of the hard men from Metallica was saying the only way he knew how to love things was to choke them to death. He was talking about why he plays guitar in lieu of the devil. It was a great line, but it was not like my friend and her ducks, their souls flying off the wall of her life. That was an accident.