Kissing Dinosaurs

by Karen Goldrick

I stand at the front door, looking at the overgrown dandelions and green splintered wood. The doorbell is too high — so I drag over his iron lace chair to stand on. He is eighty — my Gampa — but he is still taller than I. The doorbell does not work, and I have to bang on the door instead.

I follow him down the hall. There are towers of cardboard boxes and wallpapered photos. Some are framed, some are sticky taped. They are all brown and grey and white. Beautiful princesses in long dresses. Men with funny beards and hats. I wonder who all these people are. These ghosts. These dead people.

We go into the kitchen with it’s mustard coloured light, and drink ginger beer and eat pink and red Iced Vovos. I like Iced Vovos — but I eat them too quickly — and the crumbs and coconut flakes fall into my shorts. Panda sits under my stool, purring and waiting for his share.

“Breana, look at your face!”

There is an old painted mirror in my hands. I stare at my hair: brown, in two plaits, the left fatter than the right. Blue eyes stare back at me, and my face is round and sticky. Licking the crumbs from my lips, I look over at her photo on the fridge.

She’s beautiful — my mum. She’s in the white silk wedding dress (which I now keep in the bottom of my dressing up box). You can’t tell she has red hair. Nor can you see her green eyes. There is an arm, in a dark suit around her waist. The rest of the suit has been cut out of the picture.

I brush the Iced Vovo from my shorts, and ask Gampa if we can go downstairs.

The letter waited for her on the front door mat. Bre picked up the starched white envelope, accompanied by unpaid credit card reminders and Art Society raffles. She checked her machine, but as usual there was no message from Max. Tossing off the sharp Dior heels, she fell into her sofa to take a closer look. As far as she remembered, she’d never had any dealings with Chalky, Hodder, Willis and Dynamo solicitors before.

Bre tore it open and skimmed the contents. She found had to reread it several times before the small typeset finally made itself understood. Apparently she had come into an inheritance.

An inheritance.

Bre considered her long list of dead relations, and tried to work out whom may have left her (what she hoped was ) a fortune. Not dried up old Aunt Cordelia — unless she had had a post mortem change of heart. Gampa’s estate had been almost worthless when he passed away — fifteen years before. And Bre, along with her little brother Luke, had personally overseen the selling of their Mother’s estate.

She looked at the faded wedding photo standing on top of her TV. Below it she saw her reflection distorted by the green screen. She could almost make out her enamel red hair with it’s telltale brown parting, her blue eyes and round freckled face. If she blurred her eyes she almost resembled her mother- and her broad flat nose might be mistaken for her mother’s fine upturned one.

An inheritance.

She made a note in her diary to ring Mr Chalky the next morning.

Gampa and I climb down the ladder. I go first. I am the fastest. My candle sways as I cling with three fingers to the smooth uneven rungs. The shadows behind me join, then separate like watching ghosts. I wait for Gampa at the bottom, and we both go in together.

We are in Gampa’s den — the Lion’s den — he calls it. Nobody else knows about it — not even Luke, or Mum. To me, the ceiling seems high in the darkness, but Gampa can barely stand up. Mum would have to stoop if she came down. It is all made of wood, wrinkled and dusty: wooden floor, wooden walls and wooden ceiling. It smells of damp and old fur and newspaper.There are piles of maps and photos and old corrugated cartons piled up level with spectators eyes. Gampa lights the old hurricane lantern, and we see their eyes more clearly.

They are from the Old World. Not the world we learn about at school, but another, older world. A world where Atlantis is real and Australia does not exist. They form a semicircle around the den, fixing us with their unseeing amber gaze. I stare right back. As I stare I can almost see the faint movement of breathing.

Almost.

Mr Chalky was just that. A tall fat man with pale almost luminous skin and a crisp white topping of hair. His jet black suit merely brightened his whiteness. Bre sat clenching her fingers into her palms to stop herself from fidgeting. Mr Chalky searched through a large pile of paper on his desk.

“Ahhh yes. Ms Bogard. Ms Breana Bogard.”

“Bre.”

“Ahh yes. Breana. It seems you have come into an inheritance.”

Bre clamped down an impatient sigh. She shifted in her seat. “ May I ask from whom?”

“Ahh yes. Yes of course.” Mr Chalky placed a pair of startling purple glasses on and peered more closely at his document. “ Patrick James O’Dowd. Deceased January 20, 1984.”

“Gampa!” Bre frowned and bit her lip. “ But, why did he wait so long? I mean — why now? Why not fifteen years ago?”

Mr Chalky reread his paperwork, but could provide no satisfactory answer. Bre slowly munched on her thumbnail- then moved on to her fingers.

“And ... er ... what is the nature of this inheritance ... exactly?”

Mr Chalky looked puzzled, and shifted his glasses down his bony nose. “Hmmm. Well Ms Breana, it would seem you have inherited a Pygarg.”

There are ten eyes, if you don't count the shifting slits belonging to Panda. They are old, yet familiar. All identical golden glass balls with fixed dilated pupils. Gampa holds the lantern up close to the first pair. The shadows draw apart, and we can clearly see him. He is half my size, and sits up on a rusted iron stool. He is plump and silly looking, with feathers that once were glossy green, and wings too small to ever fly. His beak is large and yellow — with a bulbous ridge. A brass tag encircles one foot. It reads: ‘Duodo’.

If I am careful I am allowed to touch. My fingers tingle as they caress his feathers, some four hundred years old. I close my eyes and try to feel some movement, some sign of life. But I am not patient enough, and quickly open them again. Then I ask Gampa to show me the rest.

The duodo is the youngest. The rest — Gampa says — are some two thousand years old. Or more. I cannot touch these, cannot feel them. Gampa says they will fall apart, like him. So I look as hard as I can. If I look hard enough they might come to life.

The second one is so big she has to crouch down to fit. I wonder if she crouched before she died- before they stuffed her. This one looks like a mix of lion, eagle and horse. As if someone put them in the mixmaster and poured this new creature out. Her once white fur is mouldy and grey with large hairless patches. Many of the huge feathers are missing from her wings. She has a ginger curled mane, and her muzzle is pointed and hardened into a beak. I am glad I cannot see her teeth. She is the Hippogriff. Gampa’s favourite.

I imagine a whole herd of them, flying over the ice. They look ferocious, but I know they are fish eaters — and are harmless. Panda sits on his stool and regards her with suspicion, his black and white tail twitching.

Four eyes glare at us from a tank filled with filmy liquid. It is a two headed serpent — and he has seen better days. His skin is brown am shredded, where once it was shiny blue. I watch his forked tongues floating from out of his mouths. The coils of his trunk float slowly from side to side in the bottom of the tank.

Gampa shines the lantern close to him — until his four eyes flash. The light moves slowly along the rusted steel rim of the tank, until it reaches its end. From behind me Panda spits: and the light now illuminates the Pygarg.

It was well after nine PM, Saturday night. Max hadn’t rung. This wasn’t unusual. Bre often had to do the ringing. Jolt Max’s memory and remind him they were supposed to have some sort of relationship. Maybe not the sort of relationship Bre would have wanted. For despite self help guides, university degrees, glitzy magazine articles and Dior heels, she would have preferred something more pink, more Barbara Cartland. Flowers and opening of doors.

She wondered where on earth she was going to put the Pygarg.

She had ‘veged’ out in a tracksuit made comfortable by twelve hours stretching and perspiring. She surveyed her apartment. Large. Open plan. Stark white walls and yellow brown floorboards. Sparse Ikea. The Pygarg would definitely strike a discord. Dustmites would exacerbate her allergies. What would Max think? Receding hair and interesting facial growth — even a couple of earrings. But probably not enough imagination to appreciate a Pygarg.

Bre looked at the photo sitting on the TV. What would her mother think?

“Why can”t I see Gampa?’

Mum brushes back her long red hair in that patient/impatient way of hers. “ Gampa’s gone to Heaven.”

I know that. We’ve already talked about that. Although I’m not too clear on where Heaven is. There was a church, lots of flowers with no smell, and tall men in black suits — like shadows. Luke said they collected dead bodies.

“Can I go to Gampa's house then?” I can see the dandelions and the green splintery door.

“No darling. Gampa’s house is all locked up.” Mum turns back to the washing up.

“ But Mum. Where are all Gampa’s things?” I’m watching her, but she won’t turn around.

“Gone darling.”

Gone. All the boxes. The ginger beer glasses. The map of the Old World. The picture of the carnivorous plant. The Duodo. The Pygarg. All gone.

“ What about Panda mum? Is he gone too?”

She still won’t turn around. She tells me Panda has found a new home.

The wedding photo sits on top of our fridge now. The picture has slipped — and I can see a carnation in the man’s suit. It is small and frayed, like it needed a drink.

The Pygarg stood in the middle of her floor. Bre had positioned it under the skylight, in front of the full length mirror. It had been inexpertly wrapped in gritty brown paper and gaffa tape, and had been delivered one month before. Max still hadn’t been to see it. Formalin, lavender, and musty sawdust. Bre wrinkled her nose and sneezed — sending her bowl of two minute noodles swimming across the floor. Pissed off — she left them there. The photo on top of the telly needed a dust. Bre looked at her mother’s eyes — but they did not look back.

Mum? What really happened to all of Gampa’s things? And Panda? Who would have wanted a cranky old cat? But perhaps her mother did not know.

What about Luke? Did he now stare at a Duodo? His wife would be displeased — clashing with her prized Axminster.

I always ask the same question — and Panda blinks his eyes .

“Gampa — where did they all come from?”. While I lick the outside of my ginger beer glass, Gampa clears his throat and lays down his pipe. Looking up to the ceiling he tells me yet again that many years ago, there was a Roman explorer named Pliny the Elder. That some years since there was a daring raid on the British museum, by a long dead Great Grandfather. That this is our secret — his and mine.

And I always ask him if that’s where my daddy went, on a voyage of exploration. But Gampa never answers, and blows big purple smoke rings over my head.

Bre had finally tidied away the relentless magazines, and cleaned the perpetual dishes. Max had left numerous pointless messages on her machine — all of which she’d wiped. She had dusted the photo of her mother, and moved it onto the coffee table. Not the old Ikea, but a newer, older, coffee table. Antique, scratched with Queen Anne legs.

It was time to open the Pygarg.

The gaffa tape stubbornly refused to relinquish its hold. Soon strips of brown paper littered the floor. Bre tore carefully at first — as one tears a shredding sunburn. But soon the task took hold and broad flanks of paper covered the sofa. Bre freed the Pygarg, and he stood: magnificent and dignified in the orange twilight.

She poured herself a ginger beer, adding a small measure of scotch. Then she sat in the growing dark and watched the shadows climb the walls.

And as the light slowly left her, she saw his chest begin the slow rhythmic movements of respiration.