Moving On

My partner got a job in Melbourne. We packed up and removed to a new city. City? What is this? Billy asked me. She got used to it. She never did get used to the idea that the city was not a place of pats and chat. She still lay under my piano while I practised and eventually prodded me into passing serious music exams.
We moved againk this time to Sydney. Billy sat in the back seat of our Renault10 for hundreds of kilometres, learned to stay in a motel when she wasn't supposed to be there, didn't complain and didn't throw up. Not once. Lucky for me.
We stayed with my partner's Mum. It was good to have a place to stay, but, Billy found it hard. She had to sit still and straight on a towel on a mat so as not to spread her black hair over the white carpet.
She would stay on that towel, stiff and straight while we watched telly at night and never said a word. (she used to huff, snuffle and set her burning glance upon me when I did things that she didn't approve of). We found our own house.
We all lived together in our house for a long time. I got a job that took me out of the house everyday. The story goes that Billy waited for me by the front door everyday till I returned. Every day she received me with such joy that you would have thought I must have gone missing for ten years.
Billy ran with us, cleaned, cooked and mowed the lawn with us, and i know that it isn't really true, but it seemed to me that she thought of all my best ideas. She was horrified, along with everyone else present, when I announced that I couldn't stand working in the graphic arts industry any more and didn't care if I never saw another piece of artwork. All conversation stopped. All present, including Billy, stopped and stared. Making art was my thing. Something was wrong.