Nikan Rebuilt

by Scarlett Cole

  Her hands shook momentarily as she dropped the letter into the mailbox.

  Her thoughts drifted back to Nik. Knowing he’d been under tremendous pressure had, in a sad way, been a comfort. It had been the teeniest bit better than finding out he’d simply had enough of her and grabbed the first groupie skank he could get his hands on. It didn’t make it right, but it made it . . . gah. She didn’t have the right word. “Understandable” and “relatable” were too forgiving. But something in her had bent a little as she’d watched him apologize.

  They’d packed up and driven home in silence, but when he’d dropped her at her apartment, he’d hurried around to open her car door. When she’d stepped toward the house, he’d reached for her wrist as he’d always done, and she remembered his words as clearly as if he was standing in front of her right now.

  “I can’t take away the pain I caused, but I want to dilute the shit out of it by being there for you over and over and over. Even if we never get past this. Even if we can’t get back what we had. I’m going to be right here for you, every time you need me.”

  She let herself into the home, where Simon was in the kitchen with Albi clearing up after breakfast. “Good morning,” she called out.

  “Glad you’re here,” Simon said, walking toward her so he was out of Albi’s earshot. “Could do with a hand. Thomas and Harry are not ready for school. Emotionally, I mean.”

  “I’m on it,” Jenny said, and parked all thoughts of Nik. She ran up the stairs, ready to help. Deep inside, she knew she’d give these children her all, and usually that was all that mattered. But she was equally aware that she was in her probationary period with the city and was determined to make a good impression.

  Seven hours later, Jenny looked down at the lasagna she’d just prepared. She wouldn’t bake it yet, but it would save time that evening. It was movie night, and she was going to let Leon pick in recognition of how hard he’d practiced on the drums since Lennon had left, saying the home could keep the kit. Every day when he got home from school, Leon hurried through his homework so he could get to his drums. Ellen had been stunned by the revelation. Apparently homework had been something they’d argued over daily.

  The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac had been her go-to album in the days since Nik visited the home. It had been painful to listen to at first because of the memories attached to the songs. One of the ladies who had moved into the compound to become one of her father’s heavenly brides—as he called them—had brought a CD player and a very eclectic mix of music. They’d been allowed to play it when they were doing chores in the kitchen. Stevie Nicks had always looked so cool on the CD covers, and Jenny had secretly wanted to be her when she grew up. One day, they’d listened to “Everywhere” while one of the women crimped Jenny’s hair to look like Stevie’s.

  The kitchen had always been a safe place, the one place the men in the compound never ventured. It had been somewhere for the women to speak freely without fear of reprisals. As the prophet, her father—who had asked people to call him Akasha, the Sanskrit word for “sky” or “space”—had been able to sleep with whomever he’d wanted. She hadn’t realized back then exactly why those women had walked in and out of her father’s room at random times of day, but as an adult, she now understood why her mother had become more and more ostracized by the other women. In the kitchen, the women shared their graphic stories with pride. She’d kneaded bread to Lynne’s explicit retelling of the threesome she’d participated in to enable Jenny’s father to meditate the day before the mass suicide. She’d scrambled a huge bowl of eggs while Lisa boldly told them how she’d been taken by every member of Jenny’s father’s inner circle to help them achieve mental clarity. Even though she was older now, Jenny still couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be violated by a group of men that way.

  If Lisa hadn’t seen sense and escaped, if she hadn’t told the police what had been happening at the commune, there was no doubt in Jenny’s mind that she would have been murdered. She’d once asked her lawyer what had changed Lisa’s mind and had been shocked to find out that Lisa had been pregnant. A DNA test had shown that one of her father’s inner circle members was the father.

  The women had envied and hated Jenny in equal measure. As the attractive daughter of Akasha, many of the men had watched her though none dared touch. And as she got older, the camaraderie and safety she’d once felt in the kitchen had been replaced with sly looks and whispered comments, especially when she’d turned ten and began to blossom early.

  One day, she had walked into the living room where an older man with a big belly had been on his knees behind Kathryn, one of the younger women, thrusting viciously. Ugly red handprints stained her skin. “Now do you understand what it will be like?” she grunted. “Are you ready for this?”

  The man had laughed and slapped Kathryn’s butt so hard that she’d fallen forward.

  The same feeling of shame she’d experienced back then flooded through Jenny now, and she breathed deeply to clear her mind.

  She jumped as the boys bounded in through the door and she used their voices and teasing of one another to anchor her back into the kitchen in the home. A safe kitchen in a safe place. The kids were always hyper on Fridays. It was a feeling she remembered. Friday had always meant she was one more sleep away from spending more time with Nik.

  “How was your day?” she asked as Leon hurried into the kitchen and grabbed an apple from the bowl. He dropped a copy of the free paper from the transit onto the table, and she pulled it toward her.

  “Boring. Mr. Elm gave us so much math homework, I’ll be lucky if I finish it before the end of term, let alone the weekend.”

  “Let me know if you need any help with it.” Although she hoped he didn’t. The last couple of sets of homework had almost been outside of her capabilities. “What about you, Albi? Has there been any blowback from what happened a couple of weeks ago?” she asked, referring to the incident by the SkyDome.

  Albi shook his head. “Those boys haven’t been around. Do you think Nik went and found them?”

  “I’m not sure, Albi. But we can ask him when we next see him.”

  He moved toward the table, then stopped and looked back at her. “It helped, you know. Knowing I could call Nik.” Quickly he turned back to the table and pulled out a chair.

  She thought about what Nik had said, about being a father to all of them back then, and she wondered if Nik realized he still did that today. To his brothers and to the children in her care.

  The boys sat down at the large kitchen table and began to pull out their books. They knew the drill. Movie night didn’t begin until the last one seated at the table had finished his homework. That was usually Ravi because the kid could barely focus for longer than fifteen minutes despite his current medication. She had it in her planner as one of the things to talk to the doctor about. Her own preference was always to keep dosages as light as possible and use other methods to develop the skills needed to function properly in life. But Ravi’s teacher had called her just that morning to say that he’d been disruptive again with his constant chatter and need to get up and move around the classroom.

  While they were busy, she considered getting the Christmas decorations out of the garage, but it was so dark outside she decided to wait until tomorrow. Plus, that would give her the opportunity to take the boys with her to pick out a tree.

  It was hard to believe that Christmas was only a month away. Perhaps she’d encourage the boys to work their way through the Christmas movies starting tonight.

  Jenny opened the paper and flicked through it. Not much happening. There was another pending garbage strike, and someone had left poisoned meat out for dogs in the park, which was just sick. She turned to the entertainment page. “Preload Guitarist’s Raciest Video Yet.” The grainy image showed him in bed with two women. Jenny forced herself to take a deep breath and do what Ellen had suggested. She looked at the tattoos.

  There was no ink on his right arm, which was f
ull now. She took out her phone and googled “Nikan.” Image after image popped up, and she picked one that she thought he looked younger in, and she could see that Nik had both arms tattooed. It was from the 2011 Grammys, which meant the video really was old.

  It was cold comfort though. She balled up the paper and threw it into the recycling.

  As the boys worked, Jenny stayed available to help with any questions but killed time by prepping the veggies required for dinner the next day. While the boys had a schedule for assisting with cooking and cleaning and other household chores, she liked helping whoever was on duty with meal prep.

  As usual, Ravi was first up, but his math homework was almost impossible to follow.

  “I can see what you were trying to do, Ravi. And it looks like this, this, and this are actually correct,” she said, pointing to random numbers dotted around the sheet. “But I think your teacher is going to have a hard time following along, and you know you get marks for showing your process. Do you think you could perhaps structure it a little better?”

  “I can help him,” Leon said, pushing his pile to one side. Even though he’d complained about his own workload, he was willing to stop to help Ravi? It was the first time she’d seen Leon offer to do anything.

  One by one, they began to leave the table and show her their homework so she could check it. When Leon was the last man standing, she offered him a deal. “You’re on breakfast tomorrow, right?”

  “Mm-hmm.” He didn’t look up from his notebook.

  “Because you were so good with Ravi, I’m going to take your shift so you can finish your math in the morning.”

  This time he did look up. “For real?”

  “For real, Leon. It was really good of you to help, and you spent quite a bit of time with him. I’m proud of you for doing that.”

  For a moment, Leon had looked as if he was about to smile, but as quickly as Jenny had noticed, it was gone. He slammed his books shut, shoved them into his pack, and hurried to his room. Five o’clock and the kitchen was quiet again. Soon, though, there would be the thunder of footsteps down the stairs asking what was for dinner and pestering her to let them be the one to pick the movie they were all going to watch together, even though she’d already chosen Leon.

  Jenny looked down at her watch, figured she had enough time to make a quick call, and hurried to the office before she could chicken out. She grabbed her phone and pulled up Nik’s number.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, sounding breathless.

  “Did I catch you at a bad time?” she asked, unable to stop the negative voice in her head from listing all the reasons he could be breathing heavily at four in the afternoon. “You’re out of breath. I mean, I can call back, or you could . . .”

  “No, you are saving me from sanding drywall joint compound,” he said with a laugh that stopped suddenly. “Wait. What did you think I was doing?”

  “Nothing,” she answered a little too quickly and then sighed. “Okay. I thought you might be busy . . . you know . . .”

  “Shit. No. Fuck. I swear, Jenny, you are making me nervous. And I can’t remember the last time I got nervous around a girl. I just . . . I was sanding away, and my phone buzzes, and I see your name and it takes my breath away and I get stupid.”

  Confidence Nik had never lacked. In fact, his confidence bordered on cocky. She’d always felt insecure around him, especially as his fame had grown. This was new.

  “Let me try this. The next person I sleep with is going to be you, because you are the only woman I want to sleep with. It’s you or no one, babe,” he said. “If I’m ever out of breath because of that, you’ll know about it because you’ll be right there with me . . . beneath me, on top of—”

  “Nik,” she cried. She wanted to be mad at his flirting, but she couldn’t ignore the flutter in her tummy at the thought of what he’d suggested. Sex between the two of them had always been incredible. “That might never happen.”

  “So, I’m gonna be celibate for a fucking long time then, which is good because I have a shit-ton of sanding to do to take mind off you. Maybe I’ll get my writing mojo back.”

  “Nik . . .” What was there to say to that?

  “I mean it, babe. It’s you or nothing. What did you need?”

  Why had she called? Oh. Yes. “I was just checking in, and Albi told me that knowing he could rely on you really helped him the other day. I just wanted to let you know.”

  There was silence on the other end for a moment. “That’s good to hear,” he said finally. “They need every lifeline they can get, don’t they?”

  “They do,” she agreed. “We did, didn’t we?”

  “Even if we were sometimes too stupid to see a lifeline when one came along.”

  Jenny laughed. “Yeah. We weren’t always the smartest.”

  “Come on a date with me tomorrow, Jenny. Catch up with me. The good stuff this time.”

  A battle of wills fought inside. She couldn’t. They were water under the bridge. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Think of it as a business meeting. We were thinking of offering to convert the group home’s garage into a rehearsal space for the boys. You and I can talk about it.”

  “You should really talk to Ellen about that.”

  “I know. But if it gets you to sit across from me at a place that serves food, I’ll use it.”

  His words shouldn’t excite her like they did. It was so wrong. “It can’t be a date,” she replied. “But maybe we should talk. Clear the air. Set some boundaries. It’s clear we are going to see each other over the next couple of months. We could do lunch.”

  Nik laughed. “I’ll take you anyway I can get you. But not lunch. I have rehearsals during the day. Let me come get you after work tomorrow.”

  The saying “playing with fire” popped into her head. She knew she was. But she still found herself saying yes.

  * * *

  Nik jacked the volume on his phone and placed it on the window ledge of apartment number three. Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” echoed through the empty room, competing with the whir of drills and the thud of hammers from upstairs. First-floor apartments one and two were going to be converted into a massive entertaining space and would be the last to be done. Third-floor apartments five and six were going to be his master suite. Leo and his crew were upstairs working on the master bedroom, walk-in closet, state-of-the-art bathroom, and luxury living area. Those floors were easy. They were for him as he was right now. As was the basement, which was going to become his own gym, recording studio, and movie room.

  But the second floor. . . . He picked up the sledgehammer and hit the wall that opened onto the main hallway. The second floor was an aspiration, a hope for the future. The second floor would have extra rooms that had initially been tagged as guest rooms, maybe a fun music space for composing. But now that he had knocked the walls down, he imagined children’s bedrooms and could visualize an office for Jenny.

  It was fucking stupid.

  It was fucking possible.

  It was way too early in his journey with Jenny to assume it was going to work out. Rebuilding trust wasn’t a light switch, something you could flick on and off. Trust took an age to build and a moment to destroy. But he was willing to put the work in.

  He put on his safety goggles, raised the sledgehammer over his shoulder, and swung, smashing through old drywall. It was too easy to swing the hammer to the beat of the song. In a parallel universe, this was the kind of music he would record and sing. Something more fused to the great bands of the eighties. Depeche Mode, The Cure, Simple Minds. More of his own lyrics, more of him singing instead of being resigned to backup. He could never outsing Dred when it came to metal, but he craved something more melodic.

  Or maybe he was just getting fucking old.

  He swung the hammer again, and the drywall broke apart into the hall. Among the debris, he spotted something red. He put the hammer down and walked through the door.

 
; In the rubble was a bundle of papers tied together with a ribbon.

  Nik crouched down wiped some dust off it. A name and address in a flourished cursive script looked like they’d been written with a fountain pen.

  Mrs. Avaline Redmont

  The address was his own.

  Carefully, he untied the red ribbon and took the top envelope from the pile. It had been neatly opened. Somebody had obviously taken care and used a letter opener. He slid the sheet of paper out of the envelope.

  My dear Avaline,

  I am a rotter for asking you to marry me the way that I did. I am quite certain that I ought to have waited until the war was over, but you see I have loved you for such a long time, since I was a schoolboy, and who knows how long this dreadful war will continue. I suppose I simply couldn’t bear the idea of you not being mine for a moment longer. Or perhaps, selfishly worse, that you would find another suitor in my absence, and that I should survive all of this only to come home to find you taken. That, for me, would be a pain far greater than anything that could happen to me on a battlefield in France.

  One day soon, we will be reunited, and hopefully we can make time for our honeymoon. Perhaps even a trip to Ottawa to stay in our nation’s great capital. But until then I will keep your photograph in my pocket and my love for you soundly in my heart to get me through the arduous days ahead.

  Farewell, my love,

  Wilfred

  Nik read the letter through again. If he wasn’t mistaken—although granted, Canadian history had been his least favorite subject at school given its colonial spin—the letter was dated from the Great War, making it a hundred years old.

  He flipped through the rest of the envelopes, each addressed the same way. Each sent to Avaline Redmont.

  A part of him wanted to put down the sledgehammer and spend the day reading the rest of them, but he had things to do. Carefully, he tied the ribbon around the letters and placed them on the window ledge in the hallway. Perhaps he could attempt to find out whether Avaline and Wilfred had ever had children and hand the letters over to them. If he couldn’t, they might as well go to a museum or a library or someplace that would want them.