Statutory Statuary #fridayflash

"Bye. Thanks for having us".

"Our pleasure. It was so wonderful to see you all again".

"You must come over to us".

"Love to".

"We mustn't leave it so long next time".

"Absolutely".

By now their family foursome had all booted up their footwear and bedraggled themselves out our front door. Like a whippet with its tail on fire, my eldest slipped behind me and shot up the stairs. He'd been kept apart from solo devotionals at his console for two hours or so and doubtless there were sanguinary pixel expiations to be made. My wife ducked under my balancing arm into the kitchen, to launch into washing up the tea things. Even the six year old had wearied of playing with the door chain and had mooched off somewhere into the belly of the house. So appears that I'm charged with overseeing the farewell. Adieu rather than valediction.

I myself had errands I could be sinking my teeth into, (or more accurately a televised match I could be sinking my posterior into a cushion in front of), but I couldn't just shut the door before they had even pointed the remote to unlock their car. Could I? No, goodbye and good riddance could be the only possible punctuation offered by the sound of the door being heaved shut on their retreating backs. The air had a definite late afternoon nip in it and my unshod feet felt particularly exposed. Hooking them the leeward side of the door, I inserted half of my torso against the lintel and brought the leading edge to rest against my other side. I must have resembled one of those frieze statues that prop up cornices. I found my hand wobbling ridiculously at the end of my wrist, like a Ronald McDonald cardboard cut out greeter. Albeit without the make up, though I sported the same caked on smile.

How long was long enough to be stationed here? What constituted a decent interval? Did I have to wait until they drove off and disappeared from the vista of our driveway in a plume of disenchanted gravel? No, maybe I could get away with beating my retreat once the ignition was engaged. Not any time soon to judge by the dilatory nature of their self-shovelling into the car. One of the kids had burrowed himself half across the back seat, splayed legs dangling out. Presumably he was searching for something in the footwell to ease the pain of the journey home. A tad young for it to be alcohol, so more likely to be the sensory deprivation of an I-Pod.

In years gone by, it was always the Mother bent double between the interior and the exterior. Fussing with strapping the kids into their safety seats. And I might have walked out to the car with them and hovered around her, counterfeiting a genial host's seeking to preserve the convivial contact. When all I wanted to do was linger in her scent. My hand might well also have playfully hung parallel to her behind, suggesting chivalrous assistance in a most seemly fashion. But now she is firmly ensconced in the passenger seat. She was staring straight out in front of her, but the tinted strip of anti-glare glass meant I couldn't deduce the depth to which her gaze was focussed. The years of extended views of her unimpeachably wiggling posterior were palpably long over. I couldn't feign helping her with anything.

There had been that moment during the afternoon where mine and her glances had locked on to one another. At the time he had imagined it to be less a knowing scrutiny, merely an accidental convergence of rolling eyes. As if, like me, she had caught herself wondering what the hell she was doing sat there in a social situation that was devoid of either affinity or meaning. Four grown ups, stripped of the prompt of babies sat on their laps for driving cooing warmth, seeing as now the kids were re-enacting a bowling lane in the halls of Valhalla to judge by the detonations above our heads. Thereby forced to confront our fulsome lack of any connectivity across the entire quadrilateral armchair topography. Including that between spouses as well. The desultory intercourse of one of the quartet fitfully launching a topic, only to be met with dead air and the sinking despair that we were conducting the obsequy for our moribund friendship. And a wake for unrealised feelings? I still couldn't determine where her gaze was directed. And she could only possibly see half my body at best. The half that had turned to fat.

The engine started up with a growl and with a final cheerless wave, I brought the door to kiss snugly against its frame. "See you soon" I said to the inside plane of its wood and turned to go back inside the lounge.