Waiting for Bidet – Jenny 28

 

[For back story go here: Story so far at 17 Sept 2020.]

[Other back story for in in-links]

Nothing to be done. A strange day. There sky was mainly blue and yet every now and then some kind of precipitation emitted from the clouds passing by. Jenny watched them as she warmed her hands on a cup of mint tea, but couldn’t trick or encourage herself to see they looked like anything in particular. They were just clouds.

She wasn’t here yet.

The house was empty and this was something of a puzzle for Jenny. Helen was back at school, searching for whatever kind of normality was being offered there. The corridors stalked by visor-clad education professionals, Dalek like but well intentioned, hopefully. Helen seemed quite happy at going back, mainly because she could catch up with her friends and discuss the latest Instagram posts rather than just get wound up by them.

Peter had slunk off to school as per usual as well. He was quieter now, not so much of a rebel, she thought. Dare she even think he might be becoming more mature? Not least with the future of fatherhood awaiting him. Think! Maybe he’d make a great dad, no, no, not maybe, he would. The kind of dad you’d love to have who would be strict as hell and then pull a huge joke out of the bag when you needed it.

While school was all well and good, next week was a week’s break so the house wouldn’t continue to be empty. Jenny couldn’t bank on a relaxed atmosphere. And would it only be one week off before they went back in?

Still she wasn’t here.

Izzy was at work too. The business had picked up a little, but was now hesitant, troubled by the external environment that seemed to slow down and speed up erratically. Threatening on occasions to stop altogether. The company’s clients were uncertain what to do. Everyone was uncertain what to do. They were in a constant state of unpreparedness, and yet always trying to prepare. Preparing to be unprepared. Trying to think - think! Your way into a future state where everything would be safe and snug and warm – like the tea – but before you got to take a sip someone would take your mug away, or even less surprisingly they’d just come up with a straw and take the tea away from you while you stood there. Leaving you with an empty mug and telling you that this was just the ‘new normal’. 

Nothing was unexpected. Nothing was expected. 

And she wasn’t here yet.

And so with nothing really to do, no one really to account for, the trouble was actually getting a sense of what it was she was meant to be doing. The house was sufficiently up together not to require further cleaning or rearranging or anything really. Washing wasn’t really piling up. The kitchen wasn’t really in a state and the floors didn’t really look at all bad. So what was she meant to do? Think! Try and plan the next move in her career? Well, yes, that was what today was meant to have been about, but as yet Claire had not turned up. That had been the plan, Claire turns up, Jenny jumps in the van and off they go for more adventures, part testing out the new role, part getting invested in the new job and understanding what next. And then to find an appropriate online or at the very least distanced course to get some (distanced) hands-on experience.

That was what everyone wanted now. Distanced hands-on.

But she wasn’t here.

Maybe Jenny should have been a teacher after all. Or an accountant elsewhere. A freelance number cruncher, hired hand, ready, willing and able to fill in and file out the forms that would pave the way for others to live their lives smoothly and with few complications. It would suit Jenny’s life to a tee. Think! Just bring me the problems of the world, the knots you cannot untie, the socks you cannot pair and the hair you cannot disentangle and let me, with a flourish and a flex and (please) an electronic calculator, at least, bring peace.

The tea was now cold. But it had done its job. Jenny’s thoughts had rambled all over the shop, filling the crevices of her unstructured home and life and current experience and that was when the now familiar blue transit of Claire’s with the certain and helpful lettering and logo pulled up outside her house and the horn blew twice.

Jenny left her empty mug on the nearest surface, just so she would have the task of picking it up, tidying and washing it up later, and she left the house.