FICTION
Waiting for Kate
by Laura Sixpence
She writes her name in ketchup on cardboard torn from a Burger King carton. She's collected sachets from the littered late-night tables, those steel-stooled podia, ripped the corners with sharp teeth and squeezed, like icing from a frosting-bag decorating the cakes of well-loved children.
She writes "Maria", exquisitely.
I know, because I'm perched on one of those unwelcoming seats, as I was last year on this day, and the year before. She's circled me, hopping from table to table, a scavenging sparrow cramming her beak with cold greasy fries, burger-ends, slurps of milkshake (always reversing the straw), until she's reached the nearest table. And she stands there, pecking, painting, head tilted, watching me from the corners of huge-pupilled eyes for signs of imminent movement, for the leaving of a warm bun perhaps, or for the hand that slaps.
She writes "Maria" exquisitely. She looks like my daughter.
Oh, Kate, Kate, why do I watch for you here in this railway cavern-tavern, gazing through an open wall at dwindling crowds? I left so many messages for you, small black words in newspapers, on the Internet – do I have to climb scaffolding, paint in giant dripping letters, "Happy Birthday. Katherine, Come Home"?
Maria's older, mid-twenties perhaps, with the same dark hair, but hers is flat, dull. She looks so normal, clean in her anorak and back-pack, but her tights are darned. I watched her for long minutes before I realised that the fries she was eating came from the leavings of different tables. She's vacuuming the debris. On her wrist chinks a bracelet, heavy with silver charms, incongruous on one who begs for tea-pennies, courting night-danger.
There's a jewellery-box on your dressing-table, Kate, with a ballerina who spin-tinkles when you open the lid. Daddy gave it to you. Inside is your bracelet, hung with birthday charms, wrapped in tissue paper. Why didn't you take it with you when you left? You always wore it. Did you fear you'd be driven to sell those privileged years, the book, violin, skier, Mickey-Mouse, to buy burgers, or worse? In my stocking-tangled knicker-drawer is a tiny box of charms, an Eiffel Tower, a key, two linked rings and a pram, collected, waiting.
A small slim girl stands at Platform Twenty-One – for one moment, I think – but as I watch she's enfolded by a boyfriend, leaves. I sit under massed pipes and beams, think of today's might-have-beens, of garden marquees, you dancing through ribboned poles, a band, champagne, a cake shaped like a key, or writhing in the dark heat-throb of a nightclub.
But maybe you are.
And I wonder where it all went wrong, your adolescence crashing into the buffers of my menopause, both of us stamping, slamming doors, so very much alike. I've an envelope here, Kate, from your father. He left it for you, said I was to give it to you today on your birthday. He says he loves you. He left me; he never left you.
Distant whistles, a chugging, tugging of air as late trains trundle out. Night people mark benches with bundles, like towels on beach-loungers at the last vacation station. Nobody at Twenty-One; only a wraith-like eddy of waste-paper.
A boy clears tables, sweeping the leavings into black sacks. I stand. There's a key in my pocket, new-cut, edges sharp with golden burrs, drawing a beaded bloodline across my thumb. I could take it to that pimpled youth with white exhausted face and baseball-cap, before he hooks the shutters down the wall, say, hopelessly say, I found this; it was left by a girl called Kate, Kate, with long dark hair that swings, a scar through her left eyebrow from falling off her bike when she was seven, three moles making a perfect triangle on her shoulder, a birthmark like a potato on her neck, slow soft smile. I'd give him this key, say if you see her give it to her, or she can't unlock the door, when she comes home. Her name is Kate, remember.
Platform Twenty-Two's around the other side. Will I wait there next year? How many years before I reach the final platform? Have I long enough?
Maria's finished writing. She's licking it off now with pointed tongue, tasting sweetness, leaving a wet blank where her name was once written.
I could buy her a burger of her own, fries, and leave it, wrapped, on this round table, extra sauce. She could write her name again and again, and maybe someone some time will read it, and recognise what she means.
Laura Sixpence writes short stories whenever she can escape from her other, less real life. She lives in England, and bears no relation whatsoever to any characters in her stories.