by Kyra Wilder
We went to drop off the clothes at the dry cleaners. It really wasn’t very far to walk. It really was very far for us. B in his stroller, E walking beside me. We have to do this for Daddy, I said. E brought her giraffe and we passed through the front door of the apartment which was beginning to feel to me more and more like a portal, a barrier that separated two different kinds of real, something that could not always be depended upon to open, to be openable. I had begun feeling a bit like a crab leaving its shell when I stepped out the door. I began to feel like that even though I knew the thought was silly and wrong and not right. I balanced the purple zip-bag over the handles of B’s stroller and we tried to pass for everyday people on the street. People who made sense here on this sidewalk in this particular part of the world. I tried to walk like a woman who could be spoken to.
Sometimes, walking like this, slowly, in the middle of the morning, behind and with and in between all the other women who were also pushing strollers, who also were carrying zip-bags for the dry cleaners and shopping lists in their pockets, it seemed that we were all ghosts, in the way that we were pale, yes, and in the way we lurched and glided, but also in the way that we were remnants, in the way we were unable to recall what had come before. Ghosts of business women or doctors or ghosts of shop clerks or teachers, and of course all of us were ghosts of little girls.
We passed the cafe. It was OK that we walked slowly. We had the whole day to do this one thing. It was OK and I could be an excellent mother who does not yell, Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up! to her child in a shrill ugly voice. We could smile and walk so slowly and that was fine and wonderful and of course we could stop and look at this flower and that flower and talk about them along the way. Of course we could do all this happily and slowly, of course we could take our time.
At the dry cleaners I presented my purple bag at the counter and duly received my receipts. There was a woman ironing, a mountain of shirts piled up beside her. It would take her all day to finish. I was so jealous. I really was! She was so good at what she did and she could do it all day in peace without stopping once.
Back at the apartment, E fed her giraffe sesame seeds. I fanned myself, changed my shirt, swatted at the flies, began to cut up something or other for lunch.
When we went to the park that afternoon Nell wasn’t there. Her shoe wasn’t there either. The shoe, at least, that I thought was hers. Perhaps she’d already come for it, or the man had, or someone had thrown it away. I felt restless all afternoon sitting there, filling a pail with water for B, dipping his fingers in it. Waiting for something to happen. Sometimes it seemed like being a good mother, the best, meant mostly covering yourself over in a layer of smiling and smiling. There was nothing to think about except making everything exactly right in the minute you were in. An endless happy present, dipping fingers in the water, see? Wet. Water. Cucumbers and crustless sandwiches, all that happiness built on the backs of a thousand tiny things.
The afternoon slipped away and we climbed back through the window into the apartment. I put B and E to bed and went into the guest room to oil the floor. I ran a wet towel over the plant to keep the dust off and pictured the room as it would be when it was perfect. I pictured myself just standing there inside it.
I was there for a long time, crouched in the small room that really could have been a closet except for the sink. Maybe I slept, when I left anyway, it was the middle of the night. M wasn’t home. I switched off the light in the guest room and pulled the door closed. The apartment felt heavy in the dark, felt draped around my shoulders. I ran my finger along the counter in the kitchen, making sure that everything was clean, presentable, ready for the next day.
There was a noise at the door. A light scratching. Perhaps M had forgotten his keys. A thud hit the outside of the door. I heard a slithering, like fabric on the floor, then a tap, tap, like a finger, testing. It was almost hesitant, the sound. Tap, tap, tap, anybody home? I felt cold. Suddenly really cold and I could hear the blood start to hum in my ears, the stutter-whoosh of my heart.
I went to the door. I thought I wouldn’t. I thought I might just fall to the floor in the kitchen and wait for it to be M, wait for him to walk through the door and find me. But it wasn’t M. I walked to the door and pressed my cheek against it. I pressed my cheek up close to the wood but wasn’t able to make myself look through the peephole. My heart really was beating so fast and my head was beginning to buzz, blood rushing in, rushing out. Here I was in the quiet so quiet midnight dark alone. This was the thing that would happen. The terrible thing.
The sounds drifted away but I stood there with my cheek to the door, with my hand on the handle for a long time, until light began poking through the metal storm shutters in the kitchen window. I stood there that long, though it was possible that I drifted in and out of sleep.
In the morning I felt stupid, finding myself standing there at the door. Believing something, being afraid of it. Thank goodness for morning and things to do. Dawn washes away so many ridiculous things, all suds and soap bubbles and light.
M had been away all night and hadn’t told me. He hadn’t come back for even a moment or I would have known it, standing like that, right behind the door. He hadn’t crawled into bed with me and I hadn’t been in bed. It felt like we had gone over something, M and me, without talking at all about it. It felt like some line or barrier had been crossed.
I made coffee and drank it standing by the small table in the kitchen, holding my eye right up to the shuttered window, peeking out between the slats. When E woke and wanted to roll the shades up, I would tell her no. I would tell her that today we were inside a submarine. That today was a day for pressing our eyes to peepholes and being silent like jellyfish or eels, a day for secrets, and double-hinging jaws. I would tell her something like that, when she got up. I set the table for breakfast in the wavy underwater light. In the corners of my eyes, I could see the kitchen begin to fill with sea creatures. They hung up by the ceiling pulsing and expectant, like extravagant plants.
B woke and I fed him on the sofa in his pyjamas, his feet kicking at my arms, his fingers opening and closing in that particular baby way. I tried to count how many days old he was, how many hours, how many minutes. We fell asleep I guess, or, we fell into some space together that wasn’t really awake, because when the door opened we both jumped. M walked into the room, wearing yesterday’s suit, scattering the jellyfish, the anemones, the watery squid from their coves, their hiding places, their cosy seaweed nests, scattering also the soft knocks and taps, the shadow steps, the whisperings and knockings that had been gathering and gathering in the apartment while I sat alone with B and closed my eyes. He’d taken his shoes off at the door so he stood in the living room in his socks, showing me his knobbly, getting-older feet.
There you are, he said, as if we were the ones who had gone somewhere. He came over and put his fingers in B’s hair and sat down next to me and put his arm around me, around us, around B and me both and leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. E woke up and came into the room in her nightgown and I was pleased to have her find us like this. The picture was just right. We both smiled at her in just the right way. B even cooed or made some soft baby sound that was fitting. E rubbed her eyes, blinked and came to curl up between us. Being touched and seen and so familiar with each other, well, it felt then like everything would just go on and be absolutely beautiful for ever. Sometimes everything can seem right with your life if you pretend to take a picture of yourself at the perfect moment. Here we were.
M sighed and stretched, cracked his neck. I can’t stay, he said. I’ve got to get back to work. I can’t believe I didn’t make it home last night.
We all tumbled off the couch and back into ourselves. I ran to the kitchen to boil water for more coffee, hoping that the beans were still fresh. Hoping that they were the kind of beans he liked. E needed breakfast too.
I need you to get something for me, M said. Already in a clean suit, already almost out
the door before the water had boiled. My hands were shaking, I was trying to make his coffee that fast, scooping the grounds into the French press. Really I was thinking if I could only keep him for just a moment longer in the apartment everything would be better, would be right. Really I was also thinking of what I must look like, my hair flat, an old sweater thrown around my shoulders. Is that for me? M said. Looking at the French press, at the white mug with the blue flowers that I’d placed perfectly and rightly beside it.
Thanks, he said, but it’s OK. My assistant can get it for me at work. He said a name but I didn’t catch it. Some name that was like a kind of silk ribbon or a deer, long legs, eyes and eyelashes. His assistant.
Once a woman has had children she always looks like a woman who has had children. She looks like a woman who has always had children too and this is of course even worse. The coffee was so close to being almost ready. Wait, I said.
Sorry, he said, I really need to get going. I’ve got a meeting, he said and he rolled his eyes and made a mock-bored face. You know how it goes, he said, but of course I didn’t, know I mean.
I need you to get something for me though, OK? he said. A baby gift, from us, something nice. Jean’s wife just had a baby. Besides, he said, it will be good for you to get out of the apartment for a while. Get some fresh air. Do a little shopping. Maybe you’ll see something nice for yourself, he said, smiling, offering, giving, what? Maybe I would.
Jean invited us over, to meet the baby, M said. We’ll swing by his apartment this weekend, it’s right on the lake! You’ll love it. But we need a gift. You should get to know Polina, he said, dipping his head into the kitchen, coming for a second close to me. He smelled like soap and toothpaste. He smelled so good. You guys could get together, hang out, he said. You must need someone to talk to, he said, cooped up here alone all day.
I need you, I need you here to help me, I said. I need you here with me in this apartment, I need you here at night. But he couldn’t hear me. He couldn’t hear me because I didn’t want him to hear me and I was saying all that into the empty coffee cup, muttering. M wasn’t speaking quietly, his words swarmed up the walls and over me, charging, and taking charge. Black ink and capital letters. Sorry, what’s that? he said, but his phone rang and he had to go. I had to go too. B was crying. I’d left him alone in his crib by the sofa in my hurry to make M coffee. E had hurt her toe pulling out a chair at the table. She was pulling on my shirt, needed ice, needed looking after.
Talking on the phone, M kissed me on the cheek and left, see you tonight, he said. I’ll probably be back late. Love you guys.
I knew that he felt lucky that he had me to watch over E, to take care of B. I knew that he felt that what I was doing was difficult and important. Indispensable.
The door closed behind him. I dumped the boiling coffee down the sink and the pipe steamed and gurgled and belched out a rotting smell and for a moment I just stood there by the sink, breathing in that smell and feeling something turning over inside me.
More February
Three children sliding on the ice
upon a summer’s day –
it so fell out, they all fell in.
The rest they ran away.
Now, had these children been at home
or sliding on dry ground,
ten thousand pounds to one,
they had not all been drowned.
You parents that have children dear,
pray keep them safe at home.
What a terrible song! I’m sorry I just can’t help it, singing it I mean, it’s stuck right in my head and I can’t get it out. Who sings that sort of thing to a child I can’t imagine. I only thought that maybe if I sang it just now it would help. Isn’t it true that sometimes, saying a thing is helpful when we’re trying to get it to leave us alone? Honestly though, it must have been written by a mother, that song I mean, who else imagines her children drowning under the ice in the middle of summer?
You know the woman who sleeps here? In the bed under the window? She’s getting her teeth cleaned right now. Or fixed maybe. They took her out this morning. They said maybe there’s a problem with her jaw and that’s why she won’t talk. Or maybe a problem with her teeth and that’s why she keeps her mouth closed all the time except when she’s asleep.
They’re going to drive her somewhere to be looked at. They said that to her on the way out. We’re going in a car. They were talking to her like some people talk to cats, when they know the cat is listening but know also that it can’t understand words. They talk to me like that too. When they talk to me at all. Always saying everything twice.
It’s true, that she never talks, or looks at anyone. She won’t talk to me about anything, she just sits in her chair all day and grows whiskers.
Listen, please, I need you to ask them something. Please. They don’t listen to me. They say I’m not ready to be listened to yet. In terms of requests they must mean. That I haven’t earned that or them. Something like that. So I need you to ask them to stop letting her daughter into our room. I need them to stop.
When they let her daughter in, her daughter, who’s older than me and fat and wears overalls and squelching yellow rubber boots, goes over to her and kisses her on the cheek. Then she braids her hair, her mother’s hair I mean, into these two limp braids that she leaves coiled in her lap, her mother’s lap. Do you see? And she never looks up, the mother I mean, the woman in the bed under the window. She never looks up at her daughter, and her daughter never looks over at me. When they’re there, by the window together, well I can’t really tell you. Well I can’t. Not really.
I can only say that I curl up into a ball on the edge of my bed or that I sometimes press my head into my pillow and scream or make noises but only like a bird would. Like a crow. Caw caw caw. And I shout. I find myself shouting, Love Cannot Save You. But it only comes out in crow. Caw caw. Caw caw caw. Like retching. It sounds funny now, but I can’t help it when she’s here in the room. The woman’s fat daughter. It can’t go on. You have to tell them that. I shall lose my voice or I shall turn into a bird or I shall peck out all my hair looking for feathers. Do you see it? My hair? It’s already in patches. No. It’s all right. Right now it’s all right. I’m calm. See? I have something else to talk to you about.
Do you have a moment? Caw. No, I’m kidding. Why are patients not allowed to tell jokes? Of all the things they take from us that might be the worst. To be always assumed to be serious. It’s terrible. Listen though, one minute, please. I want to tell you.
There was a boy who lived in the house across from mine when I was little. I want you to be able to see it – my house. It was a big house. I had a pink bed with pink sheets and a bedroom with pink walls. I would watch this boy from my window. He had thick dark hair and dark eyes and he lived alone with his mother in a brick house that had a path leading from the driveway to the front door. On both sides of the path there were rose bushes. Every evening he would come out into the front garden with his mother and tend to them. They each had a small basket and a pair of pruning shears, his smaller than hers, and they would walk slowly through the flowers snipping or trimming or sometimes only just touching until all the roses had been seen to. Then they would walk in again together through the front door. Do you know when I picture them now they’re wearing hats, old-fashioned things. Like gauzy boats sailing on top of their heads, old-fashioned hats for beekeepers they must be. But it wasn’t really like that. Not really, it’s only that I see them that way, now.
It’s funny, I spent so much time watching them with the roses, but I couldn’t imagine what they were like inside their house. If the mother maybe whispered terrible things to the little boy once the door was closed. Or if she made him his favourite dinner every night. I couldn’t imagine it! Anyway, later the boy chopped up all the roses into tiny pieces with his smaller shears. I know because I watched him do it through my pink curtains, crouching on my bed.
You know I’m sorry really, to talk to you like th
is, perhaps you’d like it quiet. As quiet maybe as if we had all been painted up into a picture and our lips couldn’t move anymore ever, as if our mouths had dried closed. Perhaps you’d like that. There.
Oh but I can’t just sit here and be quiet! It feels so unfriendly. Is it silly that I feel like a hostess when you come in? It also feels like I’ve got something trying to crawl out of the front of my skull. Something pushing at me from the inside. Some awful wildness. But perhaps that’s more to be expected in a place like this. A home like this I should say, considering we have a window.
Let’s pretend everything was otherwise. Let’s pretend we have nothing behind us. See? A game.
I will say, when you come in, into my room in this house, I will say, But where are my manners? Like this, with my hand here. And then I will say, Here, let me take your coat. Let me bring you a drink. Let me tuck that piece of hair back behind your ear because we’re friends, best friends even, and it’s nothing, really nothing, if I touch the side of your face with my fingers. If I laugh a bit and dust a piece of something or other off the shoulder of your dress. If I lean into you just a bit if I’m jittery or tired. See? Because we’re just like that, aren’t we? We don’t have to be too careful around each other.
They tell me I must talk to them in order to make progress, so perhaps it’s right, perhaps I’m doing the right thing by talking to you. Do you think so? Only they tell me too that there’s a right kind of talking. That there are things I need to talk to them about. I laughed and tried to make them laugh, just to try and lighten the mood, do you see? It’s so serious in there, in their office with the heavy chairs and me with these silly old cuffs around my ankles. Clunking and hissing. Swishing like the bottom of a ballgown maybe, against an oiled parquet floor with wax as thick as ice. Lord we know what we are. But not, oh how does it go? Anyway, in there I seem ridiculous. I feel it. They don’t laugh though. They only give me more pills, more appointments, and scribble down my jokes into their grim black notebooks.
