Tangerine

by Christine Mangan

  I knew, of course, that she was not responsible for what happened, not in the sense that I had first suspected, that dark, cold night when I had turned around in the car, eyes blazing, certain she was the one. In my mind, I made her into something profane, something monstrous—one of my shadows that lurked in the darkness, waiting, always waiting, to lay hold of me. The truth was much more simple. The truth was that, had it not been for her, I would not have made that telephone call, would not have crawled inside his automobile the night of the blizzard. If it had not been for her jealousy, her strangeness, it would never have happened. That was the truth, or at least part of it. It was the real reason why I had stopped and stuttered at her presence the morning she had arrived in Tangier, for in her I would always be reminded of him, of what had happened, of what she had made happen.

  But there was something more too.

  I turned to her now, lowering my black sunglasses once more, so that my eyes peered out at her, wide and unflinching. I opened my mouth to tell her, to accuse her, finally, but instead, what I said was “You left.” I had meant the words as a question, but they fell, heavy and dull, and I wondered then whether that wasn’t the real reason why I had spent so long blaming her—for abandoning me when I needed her most. “After the accident, after Tom,” I said, giving voice to what I had long since puzzled over, of what I had read as evidence of her guilt, of her admittance. “You left.”

  She looked up at me, squinting. “You told me to, Alice.”

  Her words were simple, but true. I had told her to go that night, had told her other things that I could no longer remember but that I felt in the pit of my stomach on those rare occasions when I let the memories find their way in. I had wished for awful things in those moments and they had come true—only it hadn’t been to her that they had happened. They had happened to me, to Tom.

  And it was my fault, not hers, that they had.

  It began to slip away then—the wall that I had placed between us since her arrival, since that night of the blizzard. I felt it give way in that moment, the resistance that I had worked so hard to cultivate, its mass no longer something that was tangible, solid, so that my fingers grasped, unable to hold on to it any longer.

  “I haven’t felt like myself since we arrived, not really,” I said then, pausing a moment, letting the confession settle between us. “It all feels too much sometimes, don’t you think? Sometimes I feel as though I can’t breathe. I’m filled with so much dread at the thought of walking out my front door on my own. I know it’s ridiculous, but I can’t help it. I just don’t feel myself here.” I stopped, staring into space, my breath heavy and ragged. “I know it’s all down to me—isn’t it? I chose to come here.” A laugh escaped from me. “Although what other choice did I have, really.”

  Lucy waited the space of a few moments before speaking: “Is it really as bad as all that, Alice?”

  I wanted to flinch then, under the intensity of her gaze, but I didn’t. I could see from her face—could tell from the sound of her voice—that she didn’t understand, that she couldn’t. I thought of what she had said earlier, about the different names that Tangier had had over the course of history. In some ways, I felt like it was appropriate to the moment—we were both of us in the same place, but in two very different versions of Tangier, and I could not imagine hers, a place of excitement, a place to start anew. Mine held only fear and isolation. “Of course not,” I murmured, my voice barely above a whisper. But then, because I could not stop, not when the words were finally pouring from me, I asked, “Do you ever regret going to Bennington?”

  Lucy frowned, startled it seemed by my words. “Regret it?”

  My voice wavered as I spoke. “Yes. Sometimes I feel like I do, regret it, I mean, almost horribly so. I feel like they lied to us, in a way. Making us feel like we could go off into the world and be equal to them—to men, I mean. But it’s all lies, isn’t it? They lied to us. We thought we were learning a vocation, but really, they’re just a finishing school in disguise. Preparing us with hobbies to pass the time once we marry. It makes it all so much more difficult.”

  “But, Alice,” Lucy began, “it doesn’t have to be like that.”

  A laugh escaped me, one that sounded more akin to a sob than anything else. I rushed to cover it. “Don’t mind me, Lucy. It’s the heat, I think. I never was very good with it. There’s something about a hot, sunny day that puts my teeth on edge. I always feel as though I’m teetering on the precipice of something.” I paused. “It will pass.”

  But in that moment I knew that I didn’t want it to pass. I wanted—oh, I didn’t know what. For her to take my hand, like she had in the old days, to tell me that if I wanted to get away from Tangier, she would be that for me—my way out. The words swelled on my lips—everything, the whole mess: how distant John had grown over the months, how I had become convinced that I had made the wrong decision when I had agreed to marry him, to come to this wretched place. I longed to speak then, to confide, to tell Lucy everything. But the words would not come.

  I stood, fumbling in my purse for francs, looking around for the boy who had served us our tea, anxious to leave, though to go where, I didn’t know. I felt stuck, trapped, and the realization that there was no way out, no place that I could escape to, threatened to overwhelm me. In response, Lucy stood, placing a few coins on the table, her movements anticipating my own once more, I noted.

  We were halfway up the aisle of the terraced settings when I felt Lucy’s body press against my own, when I heard a crash sound, directly below. I jumped, startled by the noise but certain, in that moment, that it had been one of the waiters, perhaps the boy who had served us our tea, having dropped one of those swinging contraptions from his hands. But then I glanced backward and saw her—a woman, vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t quite manage to place her—lying at the bottom of the stairs, the broken glass surrounding her an intricate mosaic that shimmered underneath the afternoon sun.

  My hand flew to my mouth, aghast. “Lucy?” I heard myself whisper.

  The café erupted in pandemonium then. The waiters rushed down to assist the woman, who was, I saw with a relieved sigh, sitting up, slowly. Customers rose from their seats, a few even leaving their belongings unattended as they rushed to offer aid. I could see that the woman’s arms and legs had been badly scraped up—by the fall, by the glass, I didn’t know. She stood, testing her ankle, as though hesitant to place any weight on it.

  And then she looked up, to where Lucy and I stood, her eyes dark and shining.

  I felt my stomach turn, felt the taste of the mint from the tea go sour in my mouth. Something like fear ran through me then, so that I reached out my hand, clamping onto Lucy’s wrist. “Can we go?” I asked, my voice broken, shattered. My fingers, I knew, were digging into her skin, but I could not stop, could not pause the strange rising tide of panic. For in that moment, despite everything, despite all my uneasiness and suspicions, and everything that had occurred between us over the years, I was certain of the one thing I had always known about Lucy: that she loved me, that she would do anything to help me. And so I turned to her now, my voice pleading, and said, “Oh, please, Lucy, can’t we go?”

  I wasn’t sure exactly what I meant by those words. I knew only that I had to get away—from the café, from the woman’s insistent gaze, from the truth of my relationship with John. I could not look at it, could not take it out into the sun and examine it—not just yet. In that moment, I only wanted to be away from it, from him.

  From Tangier.

  II

  Eight

  Lucy

  WE SHOULD GO TO CHEFCHAOUEN.”

  I made the pronouncement over breakfast as Alice and I sat silently over our tea and bread, voicing the words before thinking them through, before worrying about whether her answer would be yes or no. I knew only that after the incident at Café Hafa, I was desperate for more traces of Alice—of the original, ancient Alice who had once spent late nights with me in the lo
cal diner, laughing over coffee and maple syrup pancakes, the one I had sat next to during winter, watching as the fire rose and fell before us. I realized now that Morocco threatened to burn those memories away—burn the both of us to ash. We needed a break—from the heat, from the city, from Tangier.

  “We could hire a grand taxi to drive us,” I explained. “It’s not that expensive and it’s fairly easy. I could go now and find one and be back in no time at all. You wouldn’t have to do a thing but pack a bag. And it’s supposed to be beautiful, Alice.” I spoke hastily, as if a torrent of words would be enough to protect me from her protestations, her probable refusal.

  Alice nodded, her teacup held tightly between her two hands, her knuckles white. “All right, then.” The words slipped out quickly, as if she needed to expunge them from her body before she had time to consider—to reconsider. “All right, Lucy. Let’s go.”

  She smiled, and in it I could see a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of her.

  I knew that it was time then. To tell her what I had seen, first at the bar and later in the streets of Tangier. That now was the time to relay all my hopes and dreams for the future, for us, so that the two of us could move forward together, just like we had always planned. But first we needed to get away—from John, from Tangier, where the past would remain steadfastly behind and the present could no longer touch us.

  WE ARRIVED THREE HOURS LATER. The ride was supposed to take only two, but Alice had pleaded for the driver to pull the taxi over so that she could hop out and take photographs of the scenery—of the Rif women, of the rolling green mountains that looked entirely out of place in Morocco. At first the driver had not understood. The poor man had, in fact, looked fairly frightened when Alice had begun exclaiming wildly for him to stop and then, failing to make her point with words, began vigorously tapping him on the shoulder.

  It was the first time I had seen her produce the camera that had once belonged to her mother. The casing surrounding the lens had been chipped—my mother’s fault, Alice had once insisted—and there was a jagged line that appeared in the lens when you looked through it, though for some reason it did not appear on any of the printed photographs. Alice had explained it once, but I had forgotten. The world of photography and science in general made little sense to me. It was full of numbers and absolutes, something I had never been very good at. But I had always loved to watch her work, watching from the doorway as she poured and measured the required chemicals, stirring and shaking until they were just right, until the negatives had become something real and tangible and she at last pinned up her contact sheets to the rack.

  I had wondered, over those first few days in Tangier, if she had left the camera behind in England along with the other traces of her former life that she had seemed to relinquish. Once, while she was in the bath, I had even gone looking for it, though a search of her room had produced nothing but dresses I did not recognize, tiny perfume bottles that did not smell quite as I remembered her, and a strange emptiness that seemed to pervade the room, as if it were not quite real, as if it were all for show.

  I cast a glance out of the back window of the car, watching the trail of dust that we left in our wake, watching as Tangier disappeared behind us, imagining that I could already feel the change, the difference, its hold, its grip, suddenly less.

  The camera, I thought, was proof.

  IN CHEFCHAOUEN, WE MOVED SLOWLY through the medina. “Can you believe how blue it is?” Alice murmured, repeating the words over and over again until it seemed that she was no longer speaking them, expecting a response, but as if they were an incantation necessary to reassure herself that it was real.

  At times she disappeared from my sight, but I was able to locate her by the clatter of metal, as it echoed against the silent walls. I could turn the corner, I knew, and she would be there. So I slowed my pace, allowing her to run off as she pleased, knowing that I would be able to find her when needed. There was a calm to the city that was immediately at odds with Tangier. No one rushed to sell us anything, no one beckoned from restaurants or cafés. There was an eerie quiet after all the noise and bustle of Tangier. I wasn’t sure I entirely enjoyed it. I was, I had always been, I felt, made for cities—for the dark and dingy alleyways, for the twenty-four-hour cacophony of noise, for the overbearing and often cloying smells and the tightly packed familiarity of strangers. Chefchaouen was the opposite. It was light, where Tangier was dark. It was airy, where Tangier was stifling. It was soothing, where Tangier refused to let anyone within its grasp exhale or take a breath. I did not belong here, I felt it instinctively, but I could see that Alice did. This place was made for her—and for that reason, I decided it was perfect.

  We continued on like this—an ebb and flow, I thought—for nearly an hour, at the end of which Alice turned to me, her arms hung limply by her side. “I’m exhausted, Lucy.” She sighed. “And in desperate need of a cup of tea.”

  “It’s likely to be mint,” I warned her, with a hesitant smile, wondering if it was still too soon to laugh about yesterday, her anxiety, her frustration, boiling under the Tangier sun.

  She took a deep breath, her lungs exhaling for what seemed like the first time. “I don’t care,” she said, looking around us, the smile on her face deepening. “Tonight, I don’t care about any of it.”

  After that, we hurried to find a place in the medina to spend the night. “Look there, a bed-and-breakfast,” I observed, pointing at the first establishment, for though its sign was a bit tattered, a bit worn, it seemed promising all the same.

  Alice laughed and swiftly corrected me: “A riad. See, there are still some things you don’t know about Morocco,” she said, her tone light and teasing.

  We entered, arms linked, happy to exchange the requested francs for a room key.

  “Roommates once more,” Alice whispered while we waited. “It will be just like Bennington again.”

  I nodded but did not mention that at Bennington we each had our own bed, while our current accommodation contained only one. The knowledge that we would soon share such a small space together, the possibility of this closeness, made my skin hum, as if every nerve was alive with anticipation, with the promise of what that night might make possible.

  “Tea,” Alice quipped over my shoulder as I paid, lest I forget to make the request.

  “Yes, tea, please,” I echoed.

  The man behind the desk looked momentarily confused.

  “Thé?” I tried again.

  His face lightened. “Ah, bien, thé à la menthe.”

  We both suppressed a smile. “Oui, merci.”

  With our tea, we ordered a couscous and tagine, although, in the end, we did not manage to finish either, our stomachs unused to the heaviness of the dishes. Still, the act of eating, of gorging, seemed somehow necessary. A release for everything that we had seemed to hold in and away from each other. Sitting on the floor of our rented room, we pushed aside the utensils, attacking the dishes the way the locals did, with our hands. The juices dripped down our fingers, but we didn’t bother wiping them away. Instead, we licked at them, delighting in the foreignness. A piece of what we suspected was lamb. An apricot. A raisin. Not typical fruits we associated with savory meals, but there, in the fading light of Morocco, they made a perfect kind of sense. Grease shimmered on our lips by the time we finished, both of us leaning back with a slight laugh of embarrassment as we observed the other.

  “We look absolutely frightful,” Alice declared but laughed as she did so.

  I looked at her once-white dress, now covered with blotches—dirt from our travels, stains from our meal. I wasn’t much better, I suspected. For although my own capris and blouse stood in stark contrast to Alice’s white dress, they were of a similarly light hue and had also suffered from our hasty meal. “No point in saving these, I suppose.” I grasped the collar of my shirt, pulling so that I could fully inspect the damage.

  “Of course we save them!” Alice exclaimed. “They’re souvenirs now. A remembran
ce of our trip.”

  I looked at her: smiling and unencumbered, her face smeared with grease, her dress askew. Part of me wanted to seize her then, to grasp her fragile shoulders and demand to know why—why had she locked herself away with a man who was so obviously unworthy of her love? But that meant mentioning him, and his unfaithfulness, and I couldn’t, not in that moment. It was not a day for John, not a day for Tangier. We had shed our layers at last, and Alice had returned—old, original, ancient Alice whom I had fallen in love with. I was not ready to see her buried once more, weighted down by both the present and the future—not yet.

  “Oh, but I can’t wear this back to Tangier,” she said, looking down at herself, taking in the full measure of her clothing and the mess she had made. “I didn’t pack a second dress, Lucy,” she said, looking up at me. “Only nightclothes. I suppose that was rather silly, but I guess I was caught up in it all.”

  I could see the frown beginning to form. “Don’t worry,” I said, anxious to dispel the oncoming storm. “I brought an extra blouse and trousers. You can wear those.”

  She wrinkled her nose while still managing to look pleased at the same time. “Do you think so, Lucy? Trousers?” She leaned forward, as if to inspect the ones I was currently wearing. “I’ve never worn trousers before.”

  “Here,” I said, reaching for my rucksack, a recent purchase from the souks. I could still smell the newness of it, the leather a mixture of something dark and earthy. Manure, perhaps. Most of the tourists wrinkled their noses at the scent, but I found comfort in it. There was something familiar, something real. As if the smell itself assured me of its authenticity, that its material and construction were indeed a product of Tangier, of Morocco, and not some sanitized re-creation that had been shipped overseas and marked up in price, specifically for the tourists who wanted that version of Morocco. I retrieved the two garments, already wrinkled from our journey, I noted with some dismay, and handed them to her. “Try them on.”