Untitled - Of a Pig, a Teacup and a Barbie Doll

Another Sunday afternoon writers' group challenge. Lacking a title as of this moment. Please feel free to suggest!
Among the required elements this time: The first and last sentence, as presented; required items including pink cake, a magic wand, bobby pins, a mesh tank top; required vocaulary including elixir, bailiwock, detritus, fuddy-duddy, muse, shiatsu, kitsch, malfeasance and probably more that elude me at this moment!

*

Who knew that a pig, a teacup and a Barbie doll would turn out to be so important? Not Graham, certainly. He has no feeling of prescience as he rolls lazily over and squints at the unexpected sunshine. He considers the possibility that a magnanimous fairy has waved her wand and allowed him to sleep through another Vancouver winter.
Then it comes back to him, piece by piece, fragments that feel not like memory but like snatches of a movie. A teasing smile. A shared laugh. A flicker of unexpected something in the blue eyes. A touch of slim fingers on his forearm.
He realizes that the magic elixir that brought sunshine into this November morning originated not in the realm of imagination that is his usual bailiwick but in the kitchen of his third-floor apartment.
Their apartment.
Graham groans as that flash of reality interrupts his interior movie before it gets to the good bit. He allows himself to fast-forward to the moment when slim blue jeans, pink T-shirt and some scrap of black lace that was much too small to be underwear joined his hastily shed khakis and button-down in a heap on his bedroom floor.
He is about to permit himself the indulgence of recalling the softness of the white skin when reality intrudes again.
Mo. It was Mo. Mo-from-Grade 3. Mo-his-childhood-partner-in-crime. Mo-his-roommate who’d moved in after the jackass broke her heart and Graham insisted he should look after her.
You sure know how to look after a damsel in distress, jeers a voice in Graham’s mind. Rather unkindly, he thinks, considering he wasn’t the one who made the first move.
She came onto me, remember? he tells the voice.
And how much had she had to drink at the time? the voice jeers back.
“Oh, shut up,” he mutters to the voice, swinging his legs onto the floor. The morning chill hits him, and he’s surprised to discover he’s not wearing his blue-and-white-striped pyjamas.
Mo gets no end of fun out of those pyjamas. “You look like an old fuddy-duddy,” she teased the first time she saw them. “You’ll have to get some different sleepwear if you’re going to show off that studly body to the ladies.”
He blushed then. And he feels himself blushing now as he recalls it hadn’t required any sleepwear at all to convince Mo of his aforementioned studliness.
He can’t help the smile that creeps across his face, though he does his best to quench it as he reaches for the navy terrycloth robe. He neatly knots the belt, wondering as he does so if the robe is too middle-aged for a guy who isn’t even twenty-five yet.
He hears the shower running as he heads towards the kitchen and isn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved that he won’t find Mo at the table.
Graham can feel himself holding his breath as he measures out Raisin Bran, pours milk and sets the coffeepot in motion in an attempt at nonchalanace.
He grabs his laptop off the counter and flips it open, deciding to get the next scene written before Mo finishes her shower and beautification regime. He grins as he starts to type, realizing there may be hope for the hapless Edward and his unrequited love for the fair Rebecca. How, he wonders, should he get Edward to see it’s not hopeless after all? That there’s a chance Rebecca has been harbouring feelings for him all along?
Graham is startled out of his literary contemplation by the feel of two soft, warm hands on his shoulders.
“Hard at work already?” Mo’s voice is light and cheerful.
Her slim fingers begin their usual journey, massaging the stiffness out of his neck and working their gentle magic on the knot next to his left shoulder blade. It’s a familiar ritual that began during all-nighters in their university dorm days, but Graham can’t help wondering if it feels different to Mo today.
He allows his body to grow limp in her hands.
“Other writers have muses. I just have a shiatsu expert.” His answering tone is as light and cheerful as Mo’s own.
Mo’s fingers squeeze harder, making him wince. “Just? Most writers would kill for a live-in masseuse, you doorknob.”
She giggles, and after a moment Graham laughs too, telling himself that the old childhood insult is really a term of endearment.
They eat breakfast together companionably, albeit briefly, as Mo races her way through a cinnamon roll and an oversize mug of coffee – her preferred fuel for facing a classroom of six-year-olds.
The apartment seems lifeless after she leaves. Not just quieter – it always is, without Mo’s stream of chatter and ready giggle – but duller somehow.
Graham looks around, taking in the second-hand table and chairs and the poorly assembled Ikea cabinet that sits at a bit of a lean despite his best efforts to right it. It occurs to him it would be a nice gesture to make the place welcoming for Mo’s return home. Surely, he thinks as he closes his laptop, she can start considering it her home now. They can share his room. She can move out of the den – it’s too small to be a bedroom anyway, though she’d refused to let him trade. He won’t complain when his dresser is littered with baby powder and bobby pins and lipstick and that sweet-smelling goop in a purple jar she uses to smooth the frizz out of her honey-coloured curls.
Graham heads to the back closet, recalling that Mo stowed a few large boxes of belongings there when she arrived. He pulls down the top box, wondering which of her multitudinous knick-knacks he should use to decorate the apartment. He lifts the lid and finds her collection of travel souvenirs, grinning as he removes a miniature plastic Venetian gondola, a small marble Colisseum and an Eiffel Tower paperweight. He knows they’re amongst her favourites, though he mocks them as being kitsch of the most egregiously touristy kind.
A flash of pink makes him smile. He lifts it out and sees the piggy bank that’s been on Mo’s dresser since they were eight. There’s something about the pig’s determinedly cheerful pinkness, just-so curly tail and winsome painted smile that reminds him of Mo. (Not that he ever says that. An expert on women he is not – in the real world, they tend to behave in far more mysterious ways than does the fair Rebecca – but he’s astute enough to realize that being compared to a pig wouldn’t be considered a compliment.)
The pig will look good on their dresser, he thinks, and the tourist kitsch can live on the shelf over the TV.
He digs further and can’t help laughing as he finds Halloween costumes from years gone by, including the mesh tank top she’d made him wear to an ’80s retro party the same year she’d gone as Madonna in her Like A Virgin incarnation. Graham can feel his face flushing as he removes the lace bustier and fingerless gloves from the box, recalling how he’d gaped at the unfamiliar but far from unwelcome sight of Mo’s skin and how he’d blushed when she eyed him appraisingly and told him he should show off his flat stomach more often.
He shoves the clothes back in and moves on to the next box, discovering Mo’s dolls and stuffies. If he clears away some of his books, he thinks, he can find room for a few of her favourites on the shelf in their room. Contemplating the jumble of fur and cloth and painted smiles, he selects a rag doll made by her Granny, an old lop-earned plush rabbit, a stuffed elephant he won for her years ago at the PNE and a curly-haired Barbie doll in a pink dress that’s always reminded him of Mo.
The rest he puts away, reaching for the third box – this one marked, in Mo’s loopy script, “Fragile.” He peers inside and realizes it’s her Granny’s china, which she’s always said she’ll bring out when she has a home of her own and a china cabinet. Graham carefully removes one teacup and saucer, gilt-edged and covered with a delicate spray of roses and vines. He’ll make space for them on the counter for now, then he and Mo can go looking for a china cabinet on the weekend.
He spends the rest of the day absorbed in what he knows Mo would call “fussing,” dusting and arranging her knick-knacks on the living room shelf, making space for the stuffies in the bedroom and clearing his dresser top for Mo’s things. He hauls the dresser from the den across the hallway to his room, marvelling at how she’s managed to stuff so many clothes into its small drawers. He assesses the bed, wondering if Mo would prefer his blue duvet or her old pink-flowered comforter. He decides to leave it and let Mo make the decision later. Probably after dinner, once they’re curled up in the living room with wine.
Not for the first time, Graham thanks his lucky stars he’s a good cook – was it schadenfreude, he often wondered, that he had been so gleeful when Mo laughed to him after her third date with the jackass about the disaster that had been his attempt at beef Wellington. Who’d make beef Wellington for Mo anyway, Graham laughs to himself as he sets to work in the kitchen, when she’s clearly such a shepherd’s pie kind of gal.
And dessert? With Mo, that’s easy. Nothing can make her smile like the pink-iced chocolate cupcakes Graham makes – usually only for her birthday, but he’ll make an exception since tonight will be a special occasion.
His methodical culinary preparations are interrupted only once, by the ringing of the phone.
It’s Mo.
“Hey.” The sound of her voice bubbling across the line makes Graham smile. “I’m just heading out, but I wanted to let you know I’ll be an hour or so. I’ve got some things to do on the way home. It’s been a big day. I’ll tell you about it later.”
Graham feels his stomach flip a little, the way it used to when he’d clutch Mo’s arm on the old wooden rollercoaster at the PNE. What’s Mo going to surprise him with? He contemplates the question as he returns to mixing icing sugar and butter, wondering whether she’s stopping to pick up their favourite wine – the Wolf Blass shiraz would go quite well with his shepherd’s pie. Or maybe, he thinks as he feels his face grow hot again, she’s going to buy something special at La Vie En Rose.
Only the beeping of the oven timer prevents Graham from pursuing that line of thought, though he permits himself a vision of white skin in pink silk – or, dare he consider it, black lace? – as he sets the cupcakes out to cool.
The old clock on the living room wall ticks with an insistence that irritates him, an audible reminder of every long and painful minute that passes as he finishes his preparations, absorbed in visions of silk and lace and surrounded by the smells of shepherd’s pie and fresh-baked cupcakes.
He clears off the counter so she’ll be sure to notice her Granny’s cup and saucer. Then he decides he should bring a couple of her other favourite things out to the kitchen, to make a subtle statement about the fact that he’s decided to make the place hers as much as his.
He places the piggy bank and the Barbie doll on the counter with the teacup, unable to contain a small grin.
The only thing left, he thinks, is to make sure that appropriate music is playing when she walks in. He readies Clapton in the CD player, knowing she’ll appreciate his choice of songs. Then he perches on the edge of the couch and listens to each strident tick of the clock until he hears her in the hallway, stopping outside the door to scrabble in her purse for the keys.
Graham leans over to hit play as he hears the key in the lock, and Clapton starts to sing about her putting on her makeup and brushing her long blonde hair as the apartment door opens.
Graham looks up, feeling a smile and a blush suffuse his face, and wonders what he’ll say when she walks in.
Then.
He sees not Mo but the jackass. Followed by a grinning Mo, who skips over to Graham and throws her arms around him, appearing not to notice that Graham’s arms are frozen at his sides.
“I told you it was a big day!” Mo giggles and bounces like a small child with a Christmas stocking. “I was feeling kind of bummed today. Kind of off, you know? Maybe it was the hangover. But then Jamie called me at lunch and told me we had to talk, and we talked all through my lunch hour until I had to go back to class and then we met after work and talked some more, and it turns out he’s been totally missing me and we agreed we were complete idiots to break up just because of one stupid fight, and he’s asked me to move back in and we’re going to get back together!”
Mo’s dancing blue gaze takes in Graham.
“Oh, come on, dude, say something! Aren’t you happy to be getting rid of me?”
It occurs to Graham that neither he nor the jackass has spoken a word. This doesn’t entirely surprise him, since words have never been the jackass’s strong point and they’ve never had much to say to each other – the hockey-playing engineer and the piano-playing writer, neither making any attempt to mask his disdain for the other.
But Graham feels that he, at least, should say something.
“Dinner’s ready,” he manages, rather lamely. “Are you hungry?”
Mo sniffs the air appreciatively and glances towards the kitchen. “Wow, I wish we could stay, that smells amazing. What is it, beef Wellington?”
Before Graham can find his voice, Mo squeals and giggles again, racing over to the countertop where Graham has left her belongings.
“Ohmigosh Graham, you found the dishes! Cool. I had no idea what box I’d thrown them in and I was thinking it would be nice to bring them out once Jamie and I pick up that new cabinet at Ikea.”
She holds up the teacup for the jackass’s inspection. “Isn’t it gorgeous, hon? Won’t this set look great in our dining room?”
Again, she doesn’t wait for an answer. She races back to Graham and plants an enthusiastic kiss on his cheek. “You’re great, Graham, thanks a billion. Sorry we can’t stay. We’ve got to get home.”
She and the jackass exchange a glance that makes Graham feel something tighten in his chest, as though his lungs are being squeezed by an iron band that makes it impossible to take a normal breath.
The tightening becomes a sharp stab as the jackass reaches out an arm and wraps it around Mo’s waist, and they move as one towards the door.
“But …” Graham can’t prevent the protest from escaping his lips.
Mo stops and turns.
“But, your things,” Graham says weakly, gesturing at the pile on the kitchen counter.
Mo’s glance takes in the detritus of Graham’s shattered hopes without a flicker. She waves an airy hand at the Barbie doll, the pig and the teacup.
“Oh, that’s no biggie. We’ll come by later and get all my stuff. Maybe on the weekend? And I’ll leave your key then too, if that’s okay?”
Graham feels certain that the fairy in charge of doling out magic elixirs has committed some malfeasance. Because surely he cannot be watching Mo lean her head against the jackass’s chest and smile up at him as she reaches for the door.
Don’t go, he wants to say. You’re making a mistake.
But he can’t speak.
Leaving it all behind, she slowly walks away.