by Kyra Wilder
When the tram pulled up at my stop I ran all the way to the front door of the apartment, fast with my eyes almost closed, feeling better and better the tighter I shut them.
The door wasn’t locked, but I locked it behind me after I was inside. Lock, deadbolt, chain. Click, slam, slide. Everything felt instantly better. When kids played tag in the Parc des Délices, older kids, not mine, they called the place where they were safe, the spot where they couldn’t be gotten, the maison magique, and what could have been more right than that.
It is the most wonderful thing really, to have a door, a personal door that is all your own, that you can shut on everything else. Of course all the real true magic is in locks, wood panelling and hinges.
I found M playing a game in the living room with E. He held B, sleeping, gurgling and coo-dreaming in the crook of his arm. I walked past them with my bags and he laughed and said, Well, I see you found what you were looking for. I smiled and curtseyed a little with the bags, playing, playful, fun. Just a little shopping, I said. I set the bags down in the guest room and closed the door.
M and I went to Paris for our honeymoon. We spent all our money on the plane tickets and hadn’t planned a thing beforehand, so we found ourselves stuck in a hostel in a really terrible part of town. M in the men’s dorms, me in the women’s. For seven nights we slept on plastic mattresses, listening to the snores of other people, their bouts of night-time itchiness, their French cheese farts. It was, I swear to god, the most romantic thing.
We’d meet each morning at breakfast and kiss over juice-machine apple juice, watery butter packets and limp croissants. I would sit on the same side of the table as him and we would look out at all the other people paying fifteen euros a night for the privilege of being in Paris. For being right there where we were. I would lean into his shoulder and press my face into his old college hoodie that smelled of chemical detergent and other people’s socks and he would jump up and get me another cup of push-button coffee if I asked him, anytime I asked him to.
For a week we walked up one street and down another. We shared baguettes. We marvelled at enormous doors. When it rained we walked along the Seine because that way we had the whole river to ourselves. We went to museums but they hardly mattered. Nothing in them was alive like we were alive. In the Louvre a tour group took a picture of us kissing in front of the Venus de Milo. What I’m trying to say is, we didn’t even know the statue was there.
M lost his wedding ring in Paris. It was a half-size too big and it slipped off his finger while we ran through the Gare de Lyon trying to catch the late-night train back to the hostel. We discovered his empty finger just as we took our seats. Just behind us though, a woman, yelling at a station attendant as she boarded the train, pushed a small child through the closing doors and squeezed in afterwards herself. This child was playing with the ring. M’s lost one. She was flipping it between her fingers and when she dropped it we snatched it up while the mother, who we were afraid of because of the way she had been yelling, wasn’t looking. The child only stared at us. We hopped off the train at our stop and ran all the way back to the hostel. We had it back, the ring, and it never slipped again. After that, losing it and finding it again, it was the perfect size. M thought maybe he’d made a mistake, maybe the child hadn’t been playing with his ring at all, but how could we have been wrong? How would it have been possible for us to steal something? We who were so in love. Paris is for lovers and everything in Paris belonged to us. What could have been more true than that?
After Paris, after the ring, I’ve always had a suspicion about losing things. It seems lucky somehow to do it. It seems like the lost thing or things will come back better than before, a more perfect fit. At least there’s the possibility of that. Miracles can only happen to people who have lost things. My mother used to say that to me and it seems very much the truth. It’s also maybe true that we can never really lose the things we love. Our love makes them belong only to us and so we can smile and not ever worry. We expect miracles! We who are deserving people. We lovers who love who we love.
M was getting up off the floor, smiling at me. He was such a good father. E was tending to the baby giraffe again who was sick and looking for its mother. She’s gone, E kept telling it and waiting, looking at it closely as if to check for any expression that might run across its face. M set B down in his crib. Shh, he whispered to me, don’t wake him. I only just got him to sleep.
M had to go to the office. Only for an hour, maybe two, he said. Aurelie and Jean wanted to finalize arrangements. He kissed me before I could say, Stop. Before I could say, Don’t go. I’ll make dinner just the way you like. I’ll say the thing that you will love, the thing that will make you laugh, the thing that will make you stay.
We used to eat sandwiches together every Wednesday night and drink lemonade and we would laugh at ourselves because it felt then that being an adult could still be just pretending, a coat we could take on and off.
I made noodles for E and we slurped them up one by one like snakes and then we all went to bed together, E and B and I. B nursed all night long but I didn’t mind. I rocked him from one side to the other. The hours were things inside of things inside of other things. All packed away together. We all kept time like this, inside ourselves.
M didn’t come home from the office that night, but that was all right because in the morning he was there. I woke up late and found him. He’d already made coffee. It was on the table waiting for me. Sorry about last night, he said. One of the computers crashed, he said. I imagined the data spilling out like oil, little bits and big bits of the company’s money spreading out thick and dark all over the office carpet, sinking into it.
He and Jean had been scrambling all night, M said, to fix it. I could see them working in the dark like fishermen in the frozen north, passing all the hours hauling in nets, the water so cold and dripping like nectar off the almost frozen bodies of their silvery catch. Work work work, M said, grinning at me in that way that I really loved. He had the handle of his rolling suitcase in his hand and I was only just seeing that.
It should only be for a few weeks, he was saying. Jean and I decided to leave today, get a good night’s sleep before the meetings and all that. Besides, the flights are better today, would you believe it? Aurelie could only get us coach on Monday and, but he stopped talking when he saw my face. When he saw something or other in it, in the lines of it, the lines around my mouth and eyes, or maybe it was the way I held my hands or maybe it was something else, but anyway he stopped. Then he said more softly, in his I’m-actually-really-and-truly-really-sorry voice, There’s no way to avoid it. He had to talk to some other men or women who owned or ran some other businesses in some other place or places. He really had to, he said. He wished he didn’t, he said, but Jean needed him. The company did. Conversations had to be had, handshakes and cards exchanged with those other men, those other women. Important people talking to other important people. Wine and lunch and decisions. Hotel lobbies, pressed suits and the right kind of laughing.
It’s not what you think, he said. These trips, they’re just meetings, they’re always so boring, they always run on and on, people saying the same things, telling the same awful jokes. It’s not all glamour, he laughed, and I laughed too. Poor you, I said, of course it isn’t glamorous, of course it’s work. Of course I was only picturing the cool white of the hotel sheets, the sheets that were tucked and fluffed and made right every day by a horde of efficient maids, the places that were clean without me cleaning them, the food that was there without me making it, the guests that clinked their rings against their glasses and ordered another round at midnight just for fun, and for being alive and because everything was constantly being taken care of, of course I was only picturing these things because I didn’t understand, how could I, what it was all about.
Of course I was also thinking of Aurelie, who would be there, who would be flying with him maybe with nothing to hold her back or down but her tiny gold-chaine
d purse. She could have packed a hundred dresses in her tiny purse, they were so fine, the silk so delicate and sheer as to be almost only a trick of the light.
M walked into E’s bedroom and ran his hands through her hair while she slept. He told me he’d miss us. I said good luck and I really meant it. I said that E and B would miss him too. I told him that they loved him, that they were really lucky to have a father like him. I said that we would all be here for him when he got back. I said that we loved him, that we loved him very much and every day.
What else could I have said? I was almost chasing him down the hallway, saying this, saying that. He kissed the top of my head and I was suddenly so small and I was sinking and sinking into the carpet. He gave me dates and places, I’m going first here, he said, for this many days, and then I’m going here for this other number of days and nights, and then, he said there will be another place, and he listed more days and nights but I was too far away to hear him. I was floating off into another place even with him holding me there by the shoulders, kissing my cheek. We had a party, I wanted to tell him, we had a party and we left the door open all night, and I, and you, and after we, and afterwards it was all so and also. He kissed me but it wasn’t me, I wasn’t even there. He left and the whole apartment smelled like him for a moment and then it didn’t because he was gone.
March
Hark hark the dogs do bark.
The beggars are coming to town.
Some in rags and some in jags.
And one in a velvet gown.
Do you know that one?
Do you know it’s my birthday? Soon? Or maybe today? Or maybe it was yesterday? I never used to tell anyone that it was my birthday. Didn’t want to make a fuss. Well, look how that turned out. So Happy Birthday to me! Yes! Saturday’s child works hard for a living. I say, works hard at living. And I do! I’ve stacked all my troubles up in a heap and run at it.
Listen, I wanted to tell you, I’m sorry for, well, down there, in the basement. The other day, or the other night, whichever it was. I made such a mess didn’t I! Sometimes I can’t stop myself from doing that, after the treatments or sometimes if I think the wrong thought, sometimes we all just turn into meat don’t we? Become a body I mean. Sometimes we’re brought up against exactly what we are. But if I say, Désolée pour tout à l’heure, can we still call ourselves friends?
Do you know what that means? Literally? It means I’m sorry for everything in the hour. Or, I’m sorry for all the hours. Or, I’m sorry for everything that came before. Or, I’m sorry for everything and all the hours. I don’t know. I don’t speak French! I wish I did. I can only tell you what it could mean, what it possibly could, and I am! I am sorry! For all of the above. For all of it!
I would give you a present, if I had anything, to go with the sorry-saying. Something sweet. It seems like the right moment for chocolates. I would give you one of those little boxes that only come with two chocolates inside and a big ribbon to show the cost. I would give you the box and say, I was unbelievable! And you would laugh and say, You’re always unbelievable. And I would feel so relieved because I would know that you knew that I didn’t mean it.
Then we would share them. We would have one each and we would say, Aren’t we being naughty! And we would say, Look at us! And we would say, Thank goodness for Winter Coats! And we would pretend that it would never be July.
Honestly, I wish we were friends! You can’t know how much I wish that. I wish that we would sit down somewhere for coffee. Then, when we were done, I would get up and take your purse once maybe by mistake. We would laugh about this because of how similar our purses looked, and we’d laugh again and we would say, We never noticed that before! How could we have not! And we would trade back purses and smile and wave and promise to see each other soon. We don’t see enough of each other! you would say to me, when we were leaving. I feel sure that you would say that.
They tell me I’ll have my hair washed soon. And brushed. Just like before. I hope that means that she’ll come back, the lady who cut my hair. I haven’t seen her and my hair is really starting to pull itself into the most awful mess. Of course you can see that. But you haven’t mentioned it. I can see that you’re not the type of person who would mention a thing like that. I try to wash it in the showers but of course they’re not showers really are they? They’re just giant spigots of icy water that they dunk me in twice a week. I see that it’s important, I understand that, cleanliness is next to . . . I’m not asking for anything about it to be changed but certainly it’s no place for a lady to brush her hair. Anyways I only have my fingers and what really can I do with those.
If you see her ever, the lady who cut my hair, could you tell her, could you make sure that she knows that visiting hours are from two to four? Sometimes I go up to the window and shout that, with my face pressed right up to the glass. Sometimes I shout until my throat gets sore and I claw my arms with my fingernails. Visiting hours are from two to four! Sometimes it’s just nice to have something to yell, isn’t it? To have words to put to the sounds that want to come out of your throat.
She’s not a visitor. I know that she’s not. I don’t want you to think that I’m confused on that point. So the visiting hours don’t apply. I know that. It’s just that I think it would be nice really, if she would come then, during visiting hours. If she would come specifically then to brush my hair and really, it seemed that she would care to know if there was a thing that I wanted. If there was a thing that I preferred. Really it seems as if she would care to know that.
It seems as if you would care to know that too. So, please, I know you’re not supposed to say, that you’re not supposed to talk to me about any of the others here but please. That woman, in the bed under the window. She never came back. You know she didn’t. Please. I really have to know. Did they fix her teeth and did she start to talk and was everything fine and wonderful for her after that? That’s possible. I know that’s possible. For that to have happened. It’s almost always possible for things to be fine and wonderful isn’t it?
It’s true that we’re all disappearing, everyone in the world is I mean. Only here, it seems to be happening more quickly. Everyone is gone all the time. Everyone is going down the drain. Only I’m stuck here waiting. I’m a bone aren’t I? Caught in a dog’s throat.
It’s so dark here at night. It’s so quiet without her snoring that my ears ring. When I’m alone and it’s dark and the silence heaps up around me. When it puts its mouth to my ear and shrieks. Please. Just tell me where she went. I feel sure that that would help me. I feel so sure of it.
* * *
I had a little husband no bigger than my thumb,
I put him in a pint pot and there I bid him drum;
I bought a little handkerchief to wipe his little nose,
and a pair of little garters to tie his little hose.
What about that one? Do you know it? It’s funny you know, the songs that get stuck, running and running through our heads.
What is the thing you are not saying. That’s all they say to me now, there in their offices I mean. What is the thing. What is the thing. What is it. Sometimes I’m listening, sometimes I’m not, but they’re still saying it. All the time they are. Sometimes I’m sitting in a chair, or sometimes I’m lying down. Sometimes it’s one doctor. Sometimes it’s two. Sometimes the men are doctors. Sometimes they’re not. Sometimes I mean to say I’m lying down and they’re not doctors, the men. I’m sure they’re not.
We’re running out of time, they say. That’s my lawyer, who mainly says that. But there’s too much time here anyway. So how could that concern me? It would be lovely to run out of it. I try to explain that to him but I don’t think he sees what I mean.
He’s such a funny man, I wish you could meet him. He always looks so tired, so, I don’t know, briefcased. So be-biroed, so be-foldered and be-noted and be-cased. He has everything already printed out in triplicate when he gets here and he looks so tired, really so almost at the end of
his rope that I want to tell him to take a seat even when he’s already sitting down. Sometimes I want to lean over the table and kiss him right on his chapped lips and I have to quickly quickly quickly imagine myself as a toad to stop myself. I have to imagine my big toad’s mouth and bulging swamp-water eyes. He says we have to concentrate on my case but I just blink my froggy eyes at him and flick my tongue. Visiting hours are from two to four I say sometimes because that’s the only thing I can think of. I only say it because I’m trying to help, because I want to make him happy. I want him to tell me that’s it, that’s right, that’s exactly right. Only I never do get it exactly right and usually we just sit there staring at each other across the table until I start cawing or shouting and I have to be taken away. That’s usually how it goes when he comes. I’m afraid I’m not much help to him at all.
It’s important today, though, the visiting hours because he, my lawyer, said I might be getting a visitor today, after lunch. I’m going to be taken down to the waiting room, to well, wait I suppose. I can’t tell you how wonderful it feels to know that. I wish the lady was here to brush out my hair but we mustn’t be silly must we?
There are supposed to be rolls with lunch today. The soft kind with the dusting of flour on the top that looks like powdered sugar or snow. What’s more is, they’re my favourite, so today really must be lucky, today really must be all for me. We only get them sometimes, the rolls, not often at all, and do you know, I think that’s nice. It gives me so much to look forward to. Really so much. I was shocked you know when I first got here and saw the food we were expected to eat, really shocked, but now, well, it’s easy to see how nice the rest of it makes the rolls seem, don’t you think? It’s important to remember all the good things we have isn’t it, to wear them like rings on our fingers? Not to forget a single good thing or we might lose it. It’s possible to lose things that way, if we forget them. If we don’t hold the thought of them all the time very very close to us. So, maybe a visitor, maybe a soft roll, maybe a bird at the window if I’m quiet and watchful.
