by Kyra Wilder
Little Bandaged Days
Kyra Wilder
Contents
Part One
1
2
3
4
5
Part Two
January
6
7
8
February
9
More February
10
More and More February
11
12
13
More and More and More and More and Always February
14
March
Part Three
15
16
17
18
Acknowledgements
For Alan,
and for Dashiell,
and for Dexter,
and for Daley
It’s harder to burn down a house than you think.
Shirley Jackson
Part One
1
It wasn’t true, what my mother said, when I called to show her the apartment, about the light. I held the phone up and tiptoed around while E and B napped but she only kept saying, It’s so dark! I can’t see a thing! You always live in the darkest places! Isn’t there a window you can open? she said. I’m worried about you!
I told her I was fine, that it was amazing here. That E had fed swans by the lake. That I had already learned to say bonjour. Bonjour, I said, and wiggled my fingers at her through the screen. I wanted her to see me like that, speaking French I mean. I had a baguette in the kitchen for her to see too, lying half cut on the wooden board with some piece or other of cheese next to it. A cherry tomato. She said she couldn’t see inside the kitchen.
Turn on a light. Ohforgoodnesssake, she said. The signal wasn’t really very good in the apartment so her words came out all at once or not at all and her face either jerked around the screen or was frozen.
Ohforgoodnesssake, she said again. I wiggled my fingers at the screen in a goodbye sort of way and mouthed, I LOVE YOU, slow, like I was shouting it.
Talk soon, I said, hoping she could hear me and air-smooched and pushed the red button to send her away.
Ohforgoodnesssake. She would have said that again, she would have been unhappy when I hung up on her like that, she wouldn’t have liked it a bit, but E would be up soon and I wanted to have a snack ready for her.
I liked the light, the half-light really, in the apartment. It was grey, soothing. To me it felt like the inside of an oyster. Delicate and safe and tucked away with us inside it. Everything was cool and clean and new.
The ceilings were low. That was true. My mother had been right about that. Well what did I expect? The apartment was on the ground floor of a hulking great concrete building. A dumpy grey block that made no concessions to those that might be looking at it. It didn’t bow, or straighten up, or take off its hat. It only squatted on its patch of gravel, like a dog maybe, shitting in the grass.
I loved that about it. I specifically did, especially when I tumbled out of it in the morning with B, with E, with my hair a bit more wild than I would have liked and my skirt not matching my shirt, and everything pilled and wrinkled and pulling at me. I liked to have it behind me, my great big ugly building with my beautiful apartment nestled safe inside it like a pearl.
It didn’t even have balconies or window boxes, the building. It wasn’t that kind of place. If the people that lived in the other apartments had beautiful things, if they were stylish, if they loved flowers, lace underwear or a particular shade of purple, they kept all this to themselves, behind their various doors. I had heard that was the way of things here, and it seemed to be true. People kept to themselves. Only, if you were out walking and threw something into the bin and missed and pretended not to, or really didn’t, see that you’d missed and started to walk away from the wrapper or receipt that was lying next to, but not in, the bin, then people would talk to you. Did you see that? they would say. Did you see what you just did?
There was a park with a sandbox and a water pump behind the building. We could get there by means of a little path that led between our building and the identical one next to it. I liked the path because it was always filled with tiny old ladies walking tiny old dogs and I could practise saying bonjour to them and they would nod and smile no matter how garbled I sounded. Sometimes speaking French was like having your mouth filled with rocks and expecting your tongue to just leap, flying over all the dips and drops and cracks in the words, in the sounds of them.
Our first Saturday in the apartment, M and I had made a great show of buying real Swiss-made toys to use at the park. E had chosen each toy with that grave attention particular to four-year-olds: an adjustable hand rake, a trowel and a miniature hoe. The tools were made out of wood and metal, painted red, and on each handle a tiny Swiss flag had been drawn by hand. B, being only a baby, didn’t need a toy of course, but we bought him a wooden cow to set by his crib, to watch him sleep with its peaceful hand-painted eyes. They were expensive, the tools, the cow, but M laughed away the price at the register. We were going to live like real Swiss people: toys would be handmade, expensive, beautiful, sparse and practical. For the tools we also bought the matching red-leather carry bag. We kept them by the door and I loved holding them as much as E did. The soft weight of the perfectly turned wood felt pure and promising against my skin, as if in Switzerland the trees grew without splinters, and took the shape of handles easily, without even needing to be cut. Everything was right and natural and clean, everything fell into line and stayed there.
M and me, we did our best to fall in with everyone else, into the place that was natural for us. We took a tourist train up to the mountains and breathed in air that made us feel like we’d never been alive before right then. When we took the tools to the park we cleaned each one at the pump before we went home. We dusted and polished them, ferreting out every individual grain of sand, rubbing the red paint with the soft ends of our shirts until it shone.
It was true that the apartment was small. On that point too, Mother was right and there was no denying it. But, I told E, small is wonderful! When we are packed up tight inside it, I told her, the apartment is small like a treasure chest, and that means we turn into gems when we step inside. What are you today? I’d ask her, when we squeezed through the front door with our shopping, and she would always say a diamond and I would pick something different every time so she would learn the names of the different stones. Emeralds are green, Sapphires are blue, Rubies are red and I love you. See? We could make anything wonderful, anything fun.
A lady from the relocation agency provided by M’s new office had shown us the apartment on a tour of possible living spaces. Pick one, the memo from M’s office had read and so we did. All we had to do was put our finger on the one we wanted.
The lady had been sent to us by the agency because of her excellent English.
Oh my god! she said whenever we walked into a new room in one of the apartments on our tour. She liked also to raise a hand to her mouth.
I liked the way her heels clicked on the parquet floors when she walked into a room ahead of us, and the way she said, Zis way, and, Oh my god! as if she were still speaking French. But I didn’t like the way she only asked me to open the drawers in the kitchens or to peek inside the washing machines to see how big they were. Zee? she would say, For you! And I supposed that really they were for me, weren’t they? The kitchen drawers and the washing machines. Well, they certainly weren’t for the lady from the agency in her jacket and pencil skirt and clicking shoes. My clothes and E’s clothes and B’s were the only clothes that could be crumpled up into a washing machine. M’s clothes and her clothes, the clothes of working people, woul
d of course have to be seen to at the dry cleaners. It seemed I hadn’t realized this until we all stood together, M and me and her and E and B, in front of the washing machine in one of the apartments and she had said, ceremoniously, ’Ere, zis is for you. But of course I must have seen that from the beginning. What was for me I mean.
M had a whole new set of European suits for the office, Italian or English maybe. Fitted. Half-lined and light for summer. He looked really good. He had new sunglasses with little round lenses and tortoiseshell frames that he took on and off when we walked into apartments and out of them. His new leather loafers were so soft inside that I had actually gasped when I slipped them on, once, at the hotel, while he was asleep. I had actually gasped.
We chose the apartment closest to M’s work. Besides, M said, it’s only temporary, next year we’ll buy a house on the lake. Won’t you like that, he said. I liked the apartment though, I liked being close to him during the day. Me and the kids at home, him at work, all of us close. If E locks me in the bathroom, I could just yell and you could come get me out, I said to M.
Oh non, the lady from the agency interrupted. You must not yell here. In Switzerland we are quiet. We are always like mouzes in ze houzes. She said the like this, ze, and I really loved it. Like mouzes in ze houzes, I said quietly to myself. All right, I said, no yelling. The lady still looked at me though, cautiously, as if I might do anything, even though I said I wouldn’t yell. In Switzerland we are quiet, she said again. Well.
There was a bedroom for M and me, a small room for the toilet and another for the shower and the washing machine. The kitchen was in a room all by itself with two doors that could be closed and locked, one leading to the living room and the other to the front entryway. There was even a tiny bedroom for E with a bed and a table and a desk. In E’s room everything was touching everything else, the bed was touching the desk, the table was touching the bed. Everything was small and fine, and one day M brought home a quilt stitched all over with trailing crocuses and forget-me-nots and the room came alive around it and was perfect and fit E like a glove.
There was also a room with nothing in it that could be reached through a small door in the living room. It might have been a large closet or a small bedroom. The ceilings felt higher there, well, they were higher. Oh my god! the lady from the agency had said when we saw it. There was a plant in a pot, a succulent with stalks like the arms of an octopus, a small hand sink, and a scorch mark burned into the floor. Oh my god! the lady from the agency said again, and put her hand almost up to her mouth but not quite touching it. Patting my arm, winking at my husband, she said, Somezing for you! A little place! Oh, yes, zis is tiptop!
I had met her once before, the lady from the agency, at her office, by her own request. Zo she could get to know me, she said, talking with M and me on speakerphone. Because we know who it will be picking ze apartment, she said. I could hear the wink in her voice and started to say, No, but M said, Yes! Of course! And so I dug the put-away, then packed-at-the-last-minute, navy blazer I used to wear to meetings out of my bag, brushed my hair, and went alone so she could get a look at me and decide on the kind of places she might offer up.
I had to wait to see her when I got there, she was a busy woman, but I was given a home-design magazine in English. I was also given a thimble of coffee in a tiny porcelain cup. There was a chocolate perched on the side of the saucer and I was pointed into a chair that seemed to take me in its polished arms and set me straight. The magazine, for some reason, featured a series of close-up photographs of people’s feet on tiptoe, taken from behind. In all the photos the feet were poised directly above some delicate thing, their heels only just touching it. One heel hovered over an orange, another over a lime. There were several shots of heels with eggs underneath them. They were all curves and soft shadows, and I found my eyes drifting over them and thinking, in the quiet of the office, away from E, from B, where no one needed me right away, that it might be possible to prefer one sort of thing over another. Even small things, that it might be possible to consider: orange, or lime, or egg. It might be possible to think quietly of things like that, to make up my mind. The coffee was hot, and sweet in just the right way and I slipped the chocolate whole between my teeth.
Once we moved into the apartment, I kept the children out of the empty room. Perhaps it was for me: a little place. B slept in a small collapsible crib in the living room. Or that was the idea, for him to sleep there, but he was the sort of baby that preferred to cling to its mother at night and be walked and walked and walked and talked to. So mostly that’s what we did, at night, walk in circles. Living room, entryway, kitchen, living room. Here we are, I whispered to him over and over and over again, my lips pressed against his snail-shell ear.
Sometimes, after he finally, finally, fell asleep I crept into the spare room and lay on the floor and called my mother. The signal ringing out of my midnight or one or two in the morning into her middle of the day. She was always eating lunch and would talk to me as she chewed and I would listen and sometimes fall asleep. The daylight always amazed me when she answered, even though it was only science, the most usual thing, to see her tiny and far away, wrapped in sunlight, blazing. There was always so much light, when I called her, there at the end of my wrist.
We had arrived in Switzerland pushing suitcases packed tight with the few things we’d decided to keep. The rest, the furniture, the silverware, the wedding plates with the bamboo pattern painted in seafoam green I’d spent such a long time picking out, had been given to friends or sold to strangers back home. Even B’s crib. Even the rug beneath the crib.
Ohforgoodnesssake, my mother said, when she asked about one thing or another thing. The hand-caned chairs we’d had in the living room say, or my grandmother’s creamer and sugar dish. Basically all of it was gone. How could we have kept it? We were disposing of things, cleaning up after ourselves. Don’t you want to keep this? my mother asked me, walking around the house, our beautiful emptying, empty house. Or this? I wasn’t listening to her though, I was already elsewhere, already on the plane, already in the new place.
M had been worried about taking the job. It was, after all, a difficult one. Many people would be working for him, depending on him, waiting to hear what he had to say. I’m not sure, he’d said, holding the contract. I remember him saying it. I remember him looking at the line that was waiting for his signature, how the terms and conditions swirled over the beautiful white paper like smoke.
I’d told him he should, that he could. I’ll have to work longer, more hours, he said. I’ll have to travel. I’ll see you less. I’ll see E and B less. Everything will be fine, I said, you work, and I’ll take care of everything else. Everything will be so wonderful, you’ll see. You can do this, I said, you should.
M had signed the contract, of course, and we were flown over and the moment we stumbled out of the airport he was snapped up because he was needed urgently already at work. I saw for one second before he got into the car that he was nervous. It was his face. I saw also that he was going to have to be someone else here, and from now on. Maybe neither one of us had seen that before then. A car had been waiting for him and he was sped away without us. There was another car for me and the kids and the bags. The driver was quite friendly and I hesitated the whole way about the tip and missed the places he was telling me about while I tried desperately to calculate appropriate amounts.
I always loved to travel but foreign countries have a way of making me doubt my instincts. In the end I didn’t have any money, my wallet was in M’s jacket pocket, so I had to smile terribly at the driver and sink lower and lower into the ground as he unloaded each one of our too heavy bags. He waited for a moment by his car, but I only smiled harder at him. I wanted him to understand that I was a good person. He left.
The hotel was a really nice one with views of the lake and the Jet d’Eau from the windows of our suite. Once we’d been helped into our room I found a cartoon on the TV for E and ordered a pot of c
offee to be sent up even though it was the equivalent of thirty US dollars. I told the lady at reception to charge it to the room. It came on a silver tray complete with a pitcher of steamed milk and a warm cup. I sat on the toilet seat in the white marble bathroom and drank the whole thing while B dozed in front of the TV and E asked, What are they saying, what are they saying, what are they saying. Why are they saying those funny words, she asked. Why are they speaking that way?
It’s French, I said. It’s beautiful. Soon, I said, you’ll sound like that too. She buttoned her lips at this, frowning. No, she said.
Oui, I said, and laughed.
We were only at the hotel for a week maybe, but the hours there passed like a dream, one opening easily onto the next, like an endless stream of French doors, all linen curtains, gentle breezes and light. M left the hotel early for work. Every morning he wore one of his new suits. B and E and I luxuriated in our jet lag. We slept when we wanted to and lingered late over the hotel breakfast. We spread berry jams from tiny jars onto thick slices of bread we cut ourselves from loaves the size of suckling pigs. Three-minute eggs came to the table with their own tiny spoons if we asked for them, their tops just waiting to be cracked. Pistachio nougat could be cut from a large block and brought to the table, likewise, if we asked for it, as could hot chocolate, as could bacon, as could pieces of honeycomb sliced from an actual hive.
We went out exploring. Exploring in a proprietary way I suppose, not like tourists. Well we weren’t, tourists I mean. We were home. We crossed back and forth over the lake, traversing the jaunty zigzagging bridges. We walked by the jewellery stores that rose in a glaring white wall, springing right out of the glittering lake. Tiffany, Bulgari, Piaget, Harry Winston, Chopard, Graff. We peeked inside to look at the beautiful ladies who were selling, at the beautiful ladies who were buying.
E stared hard through a window at a little girl about her own age. The girl wore a pink fur vest over a belted dress. She sat very still in a tufted chair. She was watching a woman in a black tailored suit slip watches onto her mother’s slim wrist. At least, I imagine the woman was her mother. They wore their hair in similar loose waves. A shop assistant offered the girl a chocolate but she shook her head. E watched this as if stunned.
