The Water Tower

Wendy Lynn looked down at the kitchen floorboards with a suspicious look. She was fixating her gaze over an area no more than one metre wide. Her aged fingers rattled on her green vinyl kitchen benchtop as she surveyed the area more closely. Yep, it was still there alright; she couldn't unsee it. What fixated her gaze and almost stared back at her mockingly was the discoloured floorboards, a stain that Wendy had previously tried to remove but couldn’t. Its slightly circular off-colour had a tinge of red, but only minimal compared to the brown timber floorboards surrounding it. Her tapping increased as the stain became more obvious the longer she looked at it. Tap, tap, tap, tap—her thin fingers beat a tune on the uneven surface. Her silver chunky rings made a small click with each tap of the benchtop, like a soft chime. Her brown bushy eyebrows burrowed high on her forehead as she contemplated her next move.

This was a battle she had fought ever since she moved into the small home on Wellington Place with her son, Richie Lynn. A single mother of her 12-year-old boy, Wendy knew resilience and would often preach her inspirational quotes out loud to anyone who would listen. "Practice makes perfect" and "Everyone's journey starts with a single step" were a couple of her recurring favourites. She thumped all her fingers on the table at once, making a slightly louder cracking sound as frustration overcame her. She knew her next move in this game of chess with the stain and immediately grabbed the yellow bucket from under the sink and her favourite scrubbing brush. Her compulsive and slightly controlling attitude came to the forefront. Her brown curly hair was up in a bun, so her strands wouldn't distract her from her cleaning duties.

She normally liked the routine of cleaning the house, as she could see progression. She would sing and dance, smiling as the house became cleaner and cleaner. Wendy knew this house on Wellington Place was a steal at the price because no one could see its potential like she could. An old dusty, run-down two-bedroom place, but still large enough for her and her boy.

"It has a history," Greg Delamore, the town's local real estate agent from Star View Estates, said quietly through his gritted teeth, expecting the quip to become a conversation. Wendy didn’t even look at him, focused instead on the tasks at hand. Her brown eyes darted from floor to ceiling, making a checklist in her mind of how she could turn this house into a home.

"We all have a history." Wendy ended the conversation as Greg’s gritted teeth turned into a profitable smile. Wendy was referring to herself and how she had up and moved to Lewton on a whim because, as she put it, “A fresh start can be the beginning of a new book.”

And a fresh start was exactly what she needed, and Arlington wasn’t the place to raise a decent boy. She didn’t like the hustle and bustle of the busy city and wanted to slow down because, if things moved more slowly, then so would her ageing, she believed. Wendy Lynn turned the faucet onto the red side, and after a few moments, the warm water started to turn hot. She threw in the ‘Eazy-Breeze Floor Refresher’ product that claimed to revitalise dull floors and enhance their natural colour and shine. The bucket overflowed slightly with bubbles that smelt like bleached fruit.

In an instant, Wendy Lynn was down on her knees, scrubbing as hard as she could over the discoloured floorboards, her knuckles turning off-white as she applied pressure. The liquid darkened the boards instantly as she scrubbed hard, trying to remove all remnants of the past. If she could do the same with her own past, she would have scrubbed that away long ago too. She would have scrubbed away Dan “the Man” Taylor and his fancy yellow car, who thought that because he worked in an office all day, he could come home and expect to be served hand and foot. Scrubbed away all Fiona Dailey’s sly remarks that to succeed in life you need a good man by your side. Wendy’s scrubbing intensified as she cleaned away her memories. If only Richie’s father was still around today—the only decent man she had ever known. He was always smiling and wanting to be with his family; in fact, he would have loved the idea of moving to a small town. Dylan Lynn’s pictures still hung proudly on the wall because, as Wendy put it, "Memories are what shape who we are and guide us."

She still remembered the call she received many years ago from the factory.

"Ah, Mrs Lynn, there's been an accident," the man stated nervously on the phone as she cradled the bright yellow phone handset. She felt her heart drop as she looked up at Richie in his high chair.

"Hello. Mrs Lynn, are you still there?" She wanted to say yes, but only a whimper came out.

"Ah, Dylan has been rushed to hospital, Mrs Lynn," the deep voice advised on the phone sincerely. "...there was a machine malfunction, we believe, and, well, it seems Dylan is pretty badly cut up." "Badly cut up" was a nice way of saying he had lost his arms from the shoulders when the large aluminium blades of the sheet cutter flew across the room because someone at Sencorp forgot to put the safety lock in place.

A nail caught a groove in the floorboard, and an audible snap could be heard as Wendy Lynn scrubbed harder. Damn it, she thought, looking down at her nails and noticing her right middle fingernail was now obviously shorter than the rest. She knew she could get it redone, but it would mean another trip to Hayley Laureen’s beauty parlour, "Glamour-Us" off Kensington Road. As much as Hayley could remove the fake nail and replace it with one that would look identical in colour and length to the others, it would mean Wendy would have to put up with that fake country accent she put on.

"Y’all back again, I see," Wendy could hear the country twang in her ears.

"I could do 'em shorter for ya, darling, if ya like." Wendy played the scene in her head and knew that if she went to see her again today, it would be the third time this week, and all because of this stain.

She ignored the nail and went right back to pushing that scrubbing brush back and forth on the soapy floorboards. Over and over again—up and back, up and back.

It reminded her of those horrible hospital trips she had taken in Arlington over the week Dylan was admitted to hospital at Arlington Medical Centre. Dr Brown's clearly indiscreet wig sat awkwardly on his head as he looked at his clipboard to answer any questions Wendy had about Dylan.

“Yes, well, we induced the coma because...” Dr Brown looked down at the A4 clipboard and turned a few of the yellow medical pages stamped with the hospital's logo at the top—an eagle with spread wings and a crest bearing the initials AMC in capitals. “...Because your husband has sustained several external and internal injuries.” He paused, almost as if he was unsure, as though discovering the answers on his clipboard in that very moment. “It's the best move we have to minimise his movement and aid his healing.”

Dr Brown glanced up, meeting Wendy's eyes briefly before looking straight back down at the clipboard. “It's touch and go, I’m sorry.” His deep, nervous tone lingered for a few seconds before the sound of more pages turning, and then Dr Brown walked off down the brightly illuminated hallway, possibly to retrieve more pages for his all-important clipboard.

Dylan Lynn never came out of that coma. He never got to see Richie becoming a miniature version of himself, but Wendy Lynn was lucky, because she got to see Dylan in Richie's likeness every day. She loved being able to run her fingers through what felt almost like her husband's hair again.

Wendy stopped scrubbing and looked up at her Dazzle Dial wall clock, concerned that time was getting away from her and aware that it wouldn’t be long before Richie would be coming home after his first week at Lewton's High Elementary School. She still had a few hours left, and looking down at the floorboards, she knew that if she stopped cleaning this stain now, she could still pop over to Lewton’s Family Mart and pick up groceries to make Richie’s favourite spaghetti for dinner.

She pulled the bright red tea towel from her apron pocket, which she had tucked in before starting the house clean, and wiped the floor. Then, before rising to her feet, she studied her handiwork one last time, smiling to herself. Though it was hard to tell because of the water that had soaked into the floorboards, it seemed that the discolouration was gone. Wendy felt victorious as she stood tall over her handiwork. “Nothing a little TLC can't take care of,” she said softly, almost hoping the distant stain could hear her—a victory statement that Wendy Lynn believed to be true.

She took off the apron and put it straight into the wash because she knew that, to keep a house clean, everything had its place. She grabbed her keys off the key rack next to the little sign that said “Home” and quickly checked her hair in the bathroom’s circular mirror.

“Feeling your best is all about looking your best,” she said aloud because positive affirmations comforted her. She looked at her reflection. Wendy Lynn was a 40-year-old mother, but the years had been kind to her appearance, and she could easily pass for someone in their late twenties. Her pale complexion was a stark contrast to her brown eyes, and she never used lipstick because her lips were always a natural ruby red. Her minimal makeup enhanced her high cheekbones, and she smiled a photographer’s dream smile at herself, her bright white teeth a result of brushing twice a day since she was little.

Wendy was about to walk out to her little dented-up blue Honda Civic hatchback, but something stopped her in her tracks. She paused, and there, on the floorboards right next to the table, the stain stood prominently, staring back at her. Wendy’s smile faded, and in the pit of her stomach, she got that feeling—the feeling you get when you know something is wrong, but you're not sure what.

She felt uneasy, knowing she wouldn't be able to unsee this imperfection in the house. Even if a rug was purchased and placed over the stain, she would know it was there, hidden underneath. Her anxiety grew, and for a brief second, she felt lightheaded, her feet giving way slightly, causing her to lean on the counter for support. Wendy Lynn breathed heavily, realising that, like the stain on the floor, sometimes the past rears its ugly head. She took a few deep breaths, just as her grief counsellor in Arlington had advised her to do when she had panic attacks. She counted up to ten in her head and back down to zero, focusing on each number to ease her breathing.

Wendy Lynn took one final deep breath before smiling to herself again, not needing a mirror to envision her reflection. Then she walked straight over the stain, stepping on it with her fashionable wedge sandals that matched her outfit, and headed out to her car. She knew Richie’s face would light up when he found out they were having spaghetti for dinner.