Mum’s job is to drive and mine is to watch the flowers - the flowers in a bunch in my lap, positioned so the paper won’t crumple, so the pollen won’t stain my dress - soft worn cotton, pastel blue, below my knee, as if I’m going to be baptised - as if it’s a new beginning and the sky has worn the same faded blue but it all feels wrong so I watch the flowers like I’m nursing a sleeping child, watching every blink and breath as the car turns off the roundabout and pushes me out-ways - I used to love the feeling but today I feel sick so I look down and watch the flowers, the perfect folds of the petals like they’re made of marzipan, each set symmetrical, arranged like a clock face, the same purple brushstroke inside, I retie the ribbon around the tissue paper, once, twice, on the third I notice water banked in the bottom, a tiny oasis caught in the plastic, submerging the stems cut by the florist with giant scissors that creaked and cut them clean and sharp, and we veer off the roundabout at a new exit because there’s a bypass now, propelled like a slingshot we merge with a new lane lined with clean concrete and piles of soil and shiny patches where the bitumen’s seeping out like molasses and I watch the flowers - on the way here car tremors shook the pollen like bells but there’s a bypass now so the road is straight and smooth and they barely flutter, the road cuts diagonal through the paddocks, electric fences can’t keep us out, old trees part for us, nothing stands in our way and Mum doesn’t even turn as the familiar poppies smear across the window and the smell of silage creeps in through the air vents and the sun settles on the dashboard and makes my cheeks pink - I asked the florist how long the flowers would last in this heat, “three hours” she said, and I see a petal curl and flop away from the others and I worry they’re fading so Mum turns on the air con without taking her eyes off the road like she’s in Formula One and the bypass is her race track and my arms get goose bumps as we divert the old road with Marty’s Bakery and the rows of hedges all matted and dense and the place near the river where we had a barbeque once and the old house where Claire was married, where we drank coke for the first time and squished in between parents doing the Zorba and thought we saw an Aurora but it was only a sunset and there’s a bypass now so I watch the flowers, take them out of the plastic and for a minute the severed stems are exposed, dehydrating with every second and the pollen mixes with my sweat and turns my fingers yellow and I can feel the flowers getting limp in my arms and Mum tells me to put them back but I fumble with the plastic for so long it sounds like radio static but finally they’re wrapped and sealed and I notice wire twisted around each flower stem, propping up their heads as they soften and fall and when I see this I can breathe, now the car feels cool like a fridge and I look up and see the old road running parallel, the sign for the maze, a paddock that turned into a cricket oval, I think I see the place we had a barbeque once but it’s impossible to tell from this distance and angle and there’s no place to stop because there’s a bypass now - Mum’s job is to drive and mine is to watch the flowers.
Caitlin Richardson has contributed fiction and non-fiction pieces to local Tasmanian publications, worked as crew on an animated children's television series, and written theatre work that's been performed in Hobart, Launceston and Sydney. She is currently completing a Masters of Teaching and has been the coordinator of Twitch (the branch of the Tasmanian Writers' Centre dedicated to young writers) since 2013.