Extracts from Everyone Agrees

Chloe Reid

The following selection is taken from Everyone Agrees, a collection of very short fiction by Chloë Reid.

OK 

The key for the guardhouse is attached to the panic button in a mug in the top drawer of the dresser in the hall. You’ll need this key if you want to read the Business Day, which is delivered there every morning except on Sundays. If you don’t collect the newspaper, they’ll begin to pile up. This will impede deliveries and upset the other residents in the complex. The code for the alarm in the guardhouse is 5557. Deactivate it upon entering and activate it when you leave, making sure that you lock the guardhouse as well. In the evenings, before you and the dogs go to bed, activate the beams and the electric fence. When you go to bed, deactivate the beams, take the dogs for a wee in the garden, activate the beams again, put the dogs in the guest loo with their bed and activate the internal alarm. If you have a friend to stay, bypass the guest room on the keypad by selecting ‘MENU’, ‘BYP’, ‘ZONE 25’, ‘0404’, before activating the internal alarm. When it’s windy or if there is a big storm, you’ll need to deactivate the electric fencing in order to avoid being woken up repeatedly in the night by the alarm. When the alarm goes off, CSS Tactical will phone you to find out if everything is OK. If you say ‘yes’, you’ll have to give them a password to confirm it. The password is: WEARESECURE. If you fail to answer the phone or to confirm that everything is OK, CSS Tactical will send a team to the property. This includes one or two men with torches, bulletproof vests and automatic weapons. They are friendly and will assume that everything is OK if you stand at the window and wave at them. If the alarm goes off at night and you aren’t sure why, turn on the floodlights. The dogs usually bark if there is an intruder. You might also want to keep the beams on during the day if you’re alone in the house. In this case, you’ll need to deactivate the beams each time you let the dogs out for a wee. The dogs will let you know when they need to go by pawing at your legs.

Sorry 

If we go to the car and still can’t find it, will you say sorry?

If we go to the car and I find it, will you say sorry?

Okay.

Okay.

Susan 

Susan says she’s been here longer than I have but Edna’s been here the longest. Edna doesn’t really communicate so it’s hard to know for sure. Susan says Edna hasn’t spoken since the man came to install the glass, but I can’t remember Edna saying much before that. I probably have the best memory of everyone but it’s still not very good. Jane claims to remember things through colour association. Yesterday a boy steamed up the glass with his breath and wrote ‘STIT’ with a stubby pink finger. If you look carefully, you can still see the outline of the soft letters. Jane remembers the colour pink and then traces her way back through the story. She describes this with conviction, but we all know she rarely makes it past the colours when trying to recall things from more than a few days ago. Beyond a few days the colours start to smudge. Gladys describes her memory as a series of moments. She’s the most sentimental of the group or ‘collection’, as they refer to us here. Vivian gets upset when they use that word. She says ‘collection’ is singular and we are plural. Susan says it’s more complicated than that but refuses to expand on this when pressed. Susan acts like she’s in charge, but there’s really no need for any kind of leadership. Very little changes here and even if it did, who would remember?

Opinions vary over the installation of the glass. Vivian says it’s a relief not to be groped by the visitors and when Barb responds that she feels alienated without physical contact, Vivian tells her she’s been conditioned to feel that way. I ask Vivian what she means by this but she can’t remember. Barb says the man who installed the glass looked sad or maybe bored. Jane says she’s seen him before, in the garden, and that he looks that way because he’s a deep thinker. Susan scoffs at this but won’t offer a counter argument. Edna says nothing. According to the guide, we’ve all got a blank look. The others are easier to distinguish.

Physio

She hoped the physio might recognise that what she really wanted was someone to talk to whose eyes wouldn’t glaze over as soon as she got to the part about South Africa being so much more conservative than other parts of the world she’d been fortunate enough to live in. The physio told her to approach the corner of the room, position her left lower arm flush with the wall leading in from the left, and her right lower arm flush with the wall leading in from the right, and walk into the corner. She said to do this as often as possible.

Faye

A few hours before she died, Faye’s mother wanted to know if there were young women dancing around her. I’m cutting Faye’s hair on the lawn. The gleaming surface of the pool is dusted with the wispy grey-blonde ends of her hair. As I make my way around her head, she tells me she’s mapped out all the parts of the story but still doesn’t know what it means. She’s written about the crook of her mother’s arm as she lay sleeping with her eyelids not fully closed, halfway there, about the feeling of an ending. Her mother was always eager for the next thing. When she retired to Johannesburg it was to begin her new life of theatre visits, exhibition openings and eating at restaurants. But the feeling Faye had at her mother’s bedside was of something final, with nothing more to come. I tell her I’m not sure it’s up to her to decide what the meaning of the story is, not at this stage anyway. I suggest she give her mother another name so she can write without feeling guilty. Before I started cutting, Faye showed me pictures in a magazine of a towering woman with a chic white bob. She said she wanted to grow her hair out to look something like that.

Even Then

It was Sunday afternoon and they mowed the lawn. It was my birthday and they mowed the lawn. It was Christmas and they mowed the lawn. They mowed the lawn on Election Day and when the water dried up. When the grass stopped growing, they mowed what was left of it.

There was a flood, the cars washed away, there was a fire, their dog went missing, the house washed away, they all got sick and many of them died, and even then they mowed the lawn.