Somewhere Else

by Haley Jenkins

  Somewhere else

  ‘“Assure you I don’t mean to intrude. Tried calling several times. No answer. I understand completely. You’re here to get away from that”’

  - Don DeLillo, The Body Artist

  The milk is off. Susie holds the plastic neck to her nose and breathes in the cat-sick tang. How has it gone off? She bought it yesterday and it doesn’t expire until the weekend. She sniffs it again and again to make sure. Susie wonders what it smells like when the calf is sucking on those wobbly udders, green muck caking it’s mother’s legs. The fridge hangs open around Susie’s legs, until her calves freeze.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Steve asks, buttoning up his jacket ready for the ride to work. Why does he do that, Susie wonders, it’s just going to get creased, why not put it on just before he goes into the office?

  “Milk’s off” Susie says, closing the fridge door and slamming the milk on the counter. He has ruined her thoughts with his buttons.

  “Oh, ok. Can’t you go and get some more?” Steve brushes his jacket down with a brush. Again, pointless, Susie knows spring seedlings with catch it in the wind.

  “I have to go to work.”

  “So do I.” Steve mutters. “Hey that reminds me, can you drop me off at The Seven Moons in Stornoway tonight? Doing a gig there.”

  “How does work and off-milk remind you of a gig?” Susie asks.

  “Don’t know. Think of work, then you think of fun, something like that. Can you do it? Pick me up after? Can’t promise I’ll be sober.” Steve flicks up his fringe, but it will never detract from that too-wide jawline.

  “Sure. What about the milk?”

  “What about it, Sue? It’s just milk.” Steve snatches up his briefcase and leaves, the front door thud echoes through the house.

  Susie stands there, still holding the handle of the milk carton. She turns to the sink and pours the contents down the drain, studying how it swirls around the spoons before vanishing. She doesn’t need to get dressed up for work, she never gets seen and the apron hides most of her. What will she be cleaning or preserving today, old manuscripts of a dead duke or some ancient dinosaur crap? She doesn’t even need to drive there. Albert Harris decided some years ago to set up an official local history centre in Newmarket, converting several disused farm buildings into a museum of few qualities and many staff. He added a nursery and petting zoo so the staff would have more to do. It gets the mothers in, he said, all them gossips. Harris often put ‘unofficial’ history up the museum too, usually sourced from these ‘gossips’.

  Susie doesn’t need to pick up anything, all her tools and her apron are at the centre already. She holds the empty carton over the sink. She doesn’t want to let it go, she wants to take it to work like a brief case and see the looks. The same looks Susie remembers from her childhood, when she would wander around carrying anything from duck eggshells to empty buckets to forgotten potato sacks. Look at that girl, she’s somewhere else. Her parents or the farm hands said something like that.

  It’s August and the isle has been dyed lilac by the heather-flowers. It grows thick along the path to the centre, Susie stops there to pick up more memories. She remembers really seeing the heather-bloom for the first time. She had been running wild on the hills around the farmstead and suddenly stopped. Her mouth didn’t drop and she didn’t smile or go wide-eyed either. She just sat down and stayed there for six hours. Susie only knew it had been that long because she had checked her little watch at some point and realised Mum would be serving their casserole. She hadn’t wanted to move, she had become a heather bush too and knew she couldn’t uproot herself. Susie frowns at the heather by the path. How did she ever get home that day?

  “Hello Sue! Saw another pack of tourists set up nearby, so let’s hope they see our signs. I had Jack touch them up a bit over the weekend, make them a bit brighter to see” Harris shouted across the courtyard of Newmarket History Centre as Susie approached. Why did everyone insist on calling her Sue? Susie had long stopped bothering to tell them she was Susie, Sue had been her mother.

  “How are you, Alan?”

  “Alright, alright, can’t complain.” Harris replies. But he’s lying, he complains all the time. After a busy day some months ago, Harris had taken a bit of too much brandy – “for my aching chest” – and visited Susie in her curating room. He hadn’t done anything, just leant over her shoulder to look at her work. But his hard-on had pressed into the back of her left buttock and she had made some excuse to get away. Even when Steve did it and meant it, she usually found some excuse to get away. It didn’t always work.

  Inside her cool workroom, Susie breathes out three times. She counts them. One. Two. Three. Then she can look at what Jack, Alan’s youngest son, has delivered to her today. The room is the same small size as her kitchen, enclosed by the furniture put there by somebody else. Metal shelves line the walls and sag under the weight of pink, blue and green plastic boxes, full of potentially worthless junk. There is only one bare light bulb in the ceiling, but plenty of lamps. They are always on, there is no window.

  It’s the silver of course. Susie should have known, she had been watching the trophies and dishes turn into copper behind the fairground snapshots. She sat in some of those crisping photographs, her chocolate hair tied into a long plait, her nose still a button and not a hook, her skin tanned from running in those heather fields.

  She found the polish and the dishcloths, sat down on the stool and began. It would take hours to clean all of it properly. As the clock ticked she heard sheep bleating as children petted them or the shrieks of toddlers as they fell off the jungle gym. Steve popped into her thoughts now and again, but she tried to shove him out.

  “Why did I stay with him?” Susie asks the Best Cabbage trophy used for smallholder competitions. She hadn’t wanted to move in together, she didn’t even want to sleep with him anymore. Had she ever? It had all been ‘what everyone expected’, Susie must get a job, get a boyfriend, get a house, someday get married and have kids. In this day and age it should have been something entirely different, she could have done anything or go anywhere, she can still go or do whatever. How had to all happened? She could barely remember. It had been like a formula, a recipe someone gave you for happiness but she had put too little sugar in the mix. She felt nothing. No desire and no need to go and find it. Even when Steve had pounded through her virginity, she had wondered what the fuss had been about.

  The lunch bell rings or rather Alan waves around the cow bell. Susie’s chest knots up at the thought of sitting amongst the others. They would ask her about Steve and she would have to lie.

  “How is Steve?” They would say.

  “I neither know nor care. That dick can shag the petting zoo goat for all I care. That is how much I care! Give him to the goat, I don’t want him! Or you or anyone here or this job, you can all go grab the goats!” Susie hisses into the silver trophies, smiling when she thought of the looks that would get.

  She slips out a tube of Pringles from her desk drawer and hopes no one will come and get her. The crunching sound of her teeth mashing the crisps is too loud.

  “I want to stop” Susie whispers between mouthfuls. Once she’s dropped Steve off at his gig, she’ll keep driving. She won’t look at maps or plan anything, she’ll just go. Just like a little girl, she won’t consider the consequences, only the now. Hang what happens after that.

  Another bell rings. Susie looks up at the clock and flinches at five p.m. She looks down at the tube and it’s empty, she looks at the table and sees all the silver polished. Susie must have continued working while too deep in thought to even notice. She pops the silver piece by piece into the out-box so Jack can put it back in the display cabinets. Sh
e hangs up her apron, washes her hands, stares at herself in the mirror and then leaves the workroom, repeating the goat-lines to herself over and over under her breath.

  “See you tomorrow, Sue!” Alan calls out from the courtyard again, still holding the bell in his hand. He looks like a Santa Claus who doesn’t have any naughty kids on his list.

  “Bye”. Susie says with a smile and a brisk wave. She won’t be coming back, they won’t see her again, and she runs these facts over and over just to make sure she has made that decision, that she didn’t dream it. She’s leaving.

  Steve has managed to get home early and packed his equipment in the Fiat, a guitar floating on top of other audio equipment like a Roman emperor being carried by slaves. His work clothes have been traded for jeans and a loose white shirt, his hair is now all messed up. Susie watches him checking and double-checking his equipment as she walks up the path. They met in University five years ago and already they were an old married couple, but not happy.

  “Hey” Steve’s eyes glitter “ready to get going?”

  “I just got here.” Susie says.

  “Oh. Are you late? Were you somewhere else?”

  “This is when I usually get back.” Susie walked past him, catching a faint oaky whiff of Steve’s roll-ups. He liked to smoke alone. Maybe he liked to pretend he could be free again too, or was he still too scared of his nagging mother?

  “Okay. Well the gig starts at six and it takes a while to get there you know.” Steve closes the car boot with a bent back, just like a cat when it’s about to pounce. He closes it too gently the first time, so the lock doesn’t fully catch and Steve has to do the process again.

  “You never told me it was so early.” Susie leans against their white picket fence, a tideline of fox piss staining the lower half green.

  “You never asked when it was. Sorry, Sue.” Steve chuckles, planting his hands triumphantly on his hips after the lock clamps into place and his precious guitar is entombed inside.

  Susie crosses her arms. “It’s Susie.”

  Steve looks at her, Susie realises that it is the first time all goddamn day he has looked at her. His eyes scan her face, the tightness of her lips and the eczema creeping up her left cheek. The summer sun always made it flare.

  “I haven’t called you Susie in a long time.” Steve mutters, letting his hands droop off his hips. “You’ve never corrected me. Your name is Sue, is – ” he stops and looks down at her feet instead of his own.

  “Isn’t it? You were going to say isn’t it. You need to know it’s still me huh?”

  “Oh come off it. Does it really matter what version of Sue I use? Sue, Susie, Suzette, Susanna? For Pete’s sake, you can call me Steve, Stephen, Stevie or Stephanie, it’s just a name. It’s still yours. And when did you start getting picky over stuff like that?”

  “It’s not mine. I’m not Sue. It’s always bothered me, I just got tired of correcting you. If you would just listen, maybe we could work things out.” Susie replies.

  This is the conversation Susie doesn’t want. It plays through it her head as she watches Steve get the boot locked, when he places his hands on his hips and expects her to drive him immediately to the gig without even a cup of tea. She knows what would happen after they were out of words too. The sex would be reasonable and the outcome another set of ten hopeful pins ready to be knocked down throw by throw. They have had this conversation before. She doesn’t want to go through it again.

  “You ready?” Steve makes his way to the passenger door, opening and slinging himself into the seat before Susie has replied.

  “Sure…goat-fucker.” She whispers when Steve’s door closes.

  The drive isn’t silent. Steve talks during the fifteen minute journey through rush hour traffic, which is a sheep herd being hounded from field to barn by two collies and their owners. Susie stares straight at the wide eyes of the sheep peeking back at them, how their teeth look so human when you really look. Steve talks about nothing, nothing of value, nothing of any significance to her, the nothing he knows is there between them but he is trying to fill up with words. The bullet wounds drained of blood and that refuse to heal.

  Maybe if he had cheated on her or committed some other unforgivable treason, Susie would have left sooner. She would have legitimate reason to run. But Steve was a good little boy and even though she knew many women – dead, living and unborn – would smack her for leaving him, she had to. This wasn’t her life.

  Susie leant back in her seat as Steve huffed and groaned his equipment out of their boot. The car smelt of pine, the culprit a Christmas tree freshener that Steve had hung on their rear-view mirror and never removed. Susie tried to conjure up their last Christmas, the vision or the smell of turkey might stop her from leaving. But there is that nothing again. She couldn’t even remember what she bought him. She rolls down the window, ready to throw the freshener out once Steve is gone.

  “Right, love. Pick me up around eleven? Forgive me of whatever trespasses I commit when I get back into their car with you.” Steve smirks, leans through the window to kiss her and strolls off towards the pub, his fingers twirling as songs rush through him.

  Did she need to pack anything? No, she didn’t want any of it. She had plenty of money in her purse and the bank, she would buy things she actually loved. The first would be a fresh pint of milk.

  Susie reverses out of car park and drives towards the darkening hillsides. The lights of the town fade and the oxygen rushes back into her, her head dizzy with it. She grins, her mouth feels like it should creak. It feels odd to smile.

  The winding tracks take her past farmer’s fields and into the wilder horizon. The landscape giving way to stretching flat green lands with only a few gorse bushes or small twisted trees breaking it up. The wind is too strong and constant for any seedlings to grow here. One night when she was nine, there had been a ‘giant storm’. When she heard her mother call it that, Susie believed giants were stopping all over the land and that is what thunder really was, the footsteps of giants. She had snuck out into the stinging rain, shaking but determined to find the giants. Her bedroom light struck out into the darkness, acting as a beacon to guide her home. But that unshielded bulb didn’t break the veil of night in front of Susie’s pink wellies.

  She stood there, the rain soaking into her and waited for the giants. Their thunder crashed all around her, but she never saw them. Outside the square of light, she couldn’t see anything at all.

  Susie picks the dirt tracks she doesn’t know and begins to goes faster. Suddenly it all seems too good, too brave and daring to be true. Any moment she’ll wake up with a rare hangover and a horny Steve next to her. He will start before she is even fully awake.

  The speed dial racks up to sixty miles per hour and she charges through the darkness, the only light coming from a half-moon peeping out from clouds. She will escape. This night would be just getting distance, tomorrow she would travel down to the Isle of Harris and get a ferry at Uig to the mainland. Then where? Where would she go? She didn’t have relatives or friends on that side, but she could always get into a B&B, find a flat and then a job. Baby steps.

  Something appears up ahead and Susie can’t slow down fast enough to see what it is. She only gets a brief glimpse at a large, shimmery object before ploughing through it. The breaks skid and Susie takes those three breaths again before getting out of the Fiat. The wind nibbles at her chest and arse as she wanders back to the spot, being careful to keep her back to the car so she can find her way back. There is a little wire fence on her left with loose sheep hair flapping in the wind, while a few bent trees bow to her right. But there is nothing in front of her, just the road.

  Maybe she didn’t hit it, it must have run off onto the flats where she can’t see it. Susie gets back in the car and carries on a lot slower than before. Now the bats darting across the headlights make her jump. They didn’t before. What had it been? What could have been that large in such an obscure
place and then just disappear?

  After driving for two hours, jumping at the tiny movements all around her, Susie shuts off the engine and crawls into the back sheet. She’ll have a stiff neck in the morning, but at least when the sun is out she can see where she’s going.

  Tap tap tap.

  Susie springs up too fast and knocks her forehead on the car roof. Her hands cradle her head as the world spins around her.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!” A high voice calls from the right window, although Susie can’t really tell which way is right as spots dance a gig behind her eyes.

  When she can finally see again, there is a little girl at the window. She has dark-chocolate hair tied back in a long plait that is hooked over her left shoulder, blue eyes that are full of worry and a button nose with a little snot around the nostrils. She’s in a woolly green jumper two sizes too big for her.

  It’s Susie. This girl is her. If they were the same age they would have passed for twins. They even have the same jumper, which is now somewhere in Susie’s wardrobe thick with moth eggs.

  “Why are you sleeping here?” The girl asks, echoing Susie’s voice before it deepened as all voices are cursed to do.

  Susie opens the car door and sits on the edge with her feet nestled between dewy grass. “I had nowhere else to sleep. What are you doing here?”

  “I live here. My house is just over there.” The girl points towards a small rise in the land, something which could pass for hills here, where a little farmstead nestled. There is purple heather all around it.

  It’s Susie’s old house. It doesn’t look a day older, but many days younger than when she had last seen it. Her parents had sold it and all her heather-fields to a young couple who wanted to live off the land. They retired to a small bungalow but still kept a goat for fresh milk. The house’s paint had been flaking and the roof threw off it’s tiles in bad weather. One had been thrown off so fast it had decapitated their prize chicken.