The United States of Us

by Kate Sundara

  ‘Home, Lucy? Where’s home? Here? The world’s my home.’

  Lucy tuts. ‘It’s just… it’s not like you… to be hung-up on a guy. It’s odd.’

  Mia doesn’t like her choice of words, doesn’t care for her tone.

  ‘I still want to write. But I want to write stories, something with meaning. No more vapid reviews for glossy magazines. I’m searching for a story. Who knows, I might find one in America.’

  ‘And what does he do, this Zak?’

  ‘He’s a photography student. He does freelance photography.’

  ‘I don’t get it, Mia. What exactly are you hoping to achieve?’

  ‘Achieve? You make it sound like a business proposition!’

  Lucy was always was the high-flyer, the go-getter, out of us. Since my death, she’s worked hard academically and now in her career, pouring her grief and love into her work. It’s served her well, but of course, she doesn’t see it that way.

  ‘Lucy, I just met this amazing guy who’s asked me to spend time with him in a beautiful part of the world… and hey, why not? It’s not like I’d be giving up a great job. And I’m not about to marry the guy!’ Although Zak did actually suggest that in one of his recent emails…

  ‘You just need to work out what you’re good at, Mia.’

  ‘I’m good at being free.’

  ‘Good at running away.’

  Mia lets the pain pass through her. She forces herself to stay calm, tells herself she knew to expect this. It hurts to know that I’m the cause of their contention. Me. This is all because of me.

  ‘We all deal with things a different way, Luce. Yours was to throw yourself into your career. We’re different. I’m searching for something different.’

  ‘Well what? What do you want to do with your life? What are your long-term goals? And what about study? You deferred your degree for a year – that turned into three! You’re an artist then a writer –’

  ‘That’s how I express myself. Instead of… storing it all up inside.’

  Lucy glowers. ‘Don’t you feel like you’re just roaming?’

  Searching-

  ‘I’m just trying to be happy.’

  Lucy draws in a sharp breath, exhales heavily, impatiently.

  ‘If there’s the slightest chance of happiness anywhere then can you blame me for wanting to take it? I’m tired of living my life around…’

  ‘Don’t,’ warns Lucy. ‘Just don’t.’

  The waitress delivers Lucy her double espresso and Mia her white tea.

  ‘Thank you,’ say both girls distractedly.

  ‘I’ll get a waitressing job or something when I’m out there,’ says Mia picking herself up.

  ‘Can you even work in the States? Temporary work visas are virtually impossible to obtain – you remember when you tried before!’

  ‘So I’ll save up a whole load of cash before I go. I’ve this temp job, plus my extra shifts at the bar, and tips, and I’ve sold a couple of my paintings. I’ve just got to keep working hard, earn the money, save up enough to get myself there and support myself for ninety days. That’s the maximum length of time immigration will let you stay in America. I’ll go for ninety days.’

  ‘Then what?’ Not leaving anything to chance, Lucy has to have everything planned. Ostensibly, my two girls couldn’t be more opposite, but their division is an illusion – they’re on the same side. I’m the source of both their pain. I love them both. They both loved me.

  ‘Anything can happen in ninety days!’ Mia tries to smile. Lucy doesn’t.

  ‘Yes, an outright disaster.’

  ‘What – why – why are you being so negative about this?’ Although in these last few years a cloud has been blocking her sun, Mia is ever the optimist.

  ‘I’m giving you a reality-check,’ contests Lucy.

  ‘Reality?!’ Mia finds it hard to speak, her throat tightening, her heart heavy the way it always is around Lucy. ‘What’s so great about reality?’ She stops herself, holds her tongue: Who is Lucy to give me a reality-check? she thinks. She won’t even talk about what drove me away…

  I wish they could see through this, wish they could help heal each other instead of hurt each other. It doesn’t have to be this way. When will they see?

  Lucy sees Mia is upset. She’s known her so long she can read her face, can read the emotions she does so well to keep hidden from the rest of the world.

  ‘What did the others say?’

  ‘They’re happy for me, said I should go for it.’

  ‘The others say that Mia stands for Missing In Action.’

  Love my sister as I do, I can’t bear her treating Mia this way.

  Silence.

  ‘We’ve hardly seen you all year, what with you running off to live with hippies in the hills.’

  ‘I was in an abbey, not Byron Bay.’

  ‘I think you’re Mad,’ says Lucy. The word comes out with a capital letter.

  Mia can’t take anymore. ‘Thanks for your support,’ she murmurs, getting up to leave without sipping her tea, leaving payment on the table.

  ‘Mia…’

  ‘I can’t let my whole life revolve around what happened to Robin.’ Mia shocks even herself with the words, saying them out loud like that. Lucy’s speechless, and I’m – I’m the silent presence I always am, the sound of my own name reverberating in the space all around.

  Drained and deflated, Mia gets back home and slumps on her bed, chin to pillow. She confides in her journal for the first time in ages – the one she uses for taking notes when travelling. Today she writes as therapy. She misses Utopia, everything about it – the weather, the feel-good vibe – all a world away from here and now. The further she drifts from Lucy, the closer she feels to Zak. And as she falls asleep, cold grey city racing below her, she dreams of him in some serene mountain pasture, drenched in harvest-time’s sweet hazy light.

  ‘I’m with you now’, she whispers in her mind. She wonders if he hears her.

  JANUARY, 2006

  Sun tries to push through grey London cloud. It’s been months since the island when she felt the sun on her skin. Mia’s become so lonely in the city she’s started challenging the cosmos, playing games with the seasons. In autumn she waged that if she reached her front door before the falling leaf kissed the ground there’d be an email from Zak waiting for her. Now in winter she bet that if icicles formed on her gutter while she slept, Zak was dreaming of her as she dreamt of him. Each little sign gave her hope.

  But as summer leaves turned to snowflakes in her hair Mia grew ever more isolated, ever more insulated in her love for Zak, with no outlet. In December, when his emails stopped, Mia became paralysed by both his presence and his absence in her life. Lost in a thick white fog, this is the winter of her discontent. How she wishes she had a river she could skate away on; she’s had Joni Mitchell on a loop for weeks.

  Mia wonders how he’s getting on in the outside world. Is he alright? Has he met somebody else? She’s plagued with daunting scenarios: Zak’s car veering off an icy road. Zak on his travels meeting an Amazonian goddess and living in a beach hut, gorging on exotic fruits between sessions of steamy insatiable sex. Zak busy with his photography in the mountains, leaning from a steep edge, trying to capture a baby eagle being born, but slipping – falling into an empty road, his last thoughts in this physical world, his last cry out as he reaches up weakly with broken fingers to the sun, the last word whispered on his trembling lips was ‘Mia…’. It’s the not knowing that drives her insane.

  Her heart aches for contact but Christmas came and Christmas went and all that Mia wanted wasn’t under any tree. Songs were sung, candles lit – more than four months passed since they performed those same sacred rituals on the island.

  Happy New Year, Zak. Happy New Year…

  She thinks of all that’s happened in the time they’ve been apart: summer flowers have withered, she’s carved pumpkins with no sight of a carriage, the Guy Fawkes bonfire had burnt to black ash,
Yuletide decorations have been packed away, New Year’s passed without a mistletoe kiss.

  She remembers his laugh, how she laughed with him in his conjured air-balloon and when he said she looked like she’d stepped straight out of Woodstock. She hasn’t laughed like that since summer – laughter’s frozen up inside of her. She remembers how he saw the magic in her, how she saw the magic in him, how alive she felt compared with now. Maybe he’s met someone equally as brilliant as himself – it’s only natural someone so effervescent shouldn’t stay single. They’re probably out there doing something fun and amazing. Mia finds herself envying that hypothetical someone – another her who may or may not exist.

  For months Mia’s scrimped and saved to see Zak. She’s earned almost enough to buy the ticket, but now he’s disappeared and she can only guess why. Has his passion faded like the bright sarongs she hung in her dorm window blanched by island sun? Here in this Narnia, in this winter-without-end, it seems like summer and their fairytale encounter was too Long Ago and Far Away.

  Typically determined in spirit, she’s already applied for alternative means to reach his world. She got through to the final round in a travel scholarship for global exploratory research – her topic eco-tourism – and only messed up on the last part of the interview when the panel were unconvinced about her change of focus from the Damara tribe of Namibia to the Native Americans of the Rocky Mountains. She’s a hunter-gather of creative solutions, willing to try anything to be with Zak.

  Failing that, she sold her old artwork to make extra cash, then, between her temp job and bar-shifts and checking her emails for the umpteenth time of the day, she tried to create new images, though her efforts were in vain. Concerns about Zak were all that occupied her imagination every hour of every day. In the time that’s passed between them he’s become her everything. Before, her goal was finding a story, but when Zak found her, her goal became him.

  When she tried to paint, she hoped her brush-strokes would bring her closer to him. Zak’s an artist too – that song he wrote and gave to her, those nature photographs she watched him taking in the fig-grove. Is he immersed in his art – is that what’s keeping him? She’d used rich reds, ostensibly inspired by autumnal hues or holly-berries – but no, to her the colour of frustrated desire, the wildfire of angst within. Mia can’t stand being a captive of the city, she longs to run free; no part of her spirit wants this mad-paced urban life, doesn’t want it to be the reason for the sweat on her skin. He’s her desire, her fever, the itch she can’t scratch, all she can think about, all she craves and agonises for. If he’s not letting her go, then the only cure for this madness is to meet, but has he let go? If only he’d say.

  There’s no point going anywhere else to work, this is where the money is to be made, everyone said so. At least here in London she has her flat, her friends. She’s world-weary after travelling so much alone. Travelling to see Zak is the only prospect that could reignite her enthusiasm for relocation.

  She gazes out of her window, hating how want has weakened her, like some princess waiting to be rescued from her tower, some forsaken bride locked in the attic – is she destined for his mental oubliette? Ever the strong one, she’s not used to feeling vulnerable, but here she is hanging by a cobweb thread. Will she wither up and die here? If their chance has passed she wishes he’d reply to tell her so, then, disappointed as she’ll be, she’ll change back into her rags. She starts to doubt her account of their frisson in Utopia, that perhaps it was nothing more than a hiatus from thinking about me all the time. Assuming she’s lost yet another love, she writes the word jinxed? in her journal.

  Email had been their only real means of communication, while it lasted. Time differences and tightening vocal chords made telephone calls too taxing, text messaging seemed tedious – how much could be shared in such a short space on screen? They’d had a couple of chats on Instant Messenger, but it was tricky getting online at the same time and then with pressure to think on the spot. The same went for Skype. Emails were best, his emails surprise gifts, opening them up like opening presents on a birthday morning. That system – at least for Zak – had lent itself to romance. He’d called her Tinkerbell, Beautiful, Mia Moonflower, made her feel special. It was always poetic, never practical. He didn’t answer her questions and she still knew very few facts about him. He had written that he wanted them to reunite but hadn’t mentioned dates, he was ever elusive. Mia felt inept at returning his sentiments in writing. Shy and self-conscious, love-letters were a form of expression she was unaccustomed to.

  She recalled the island, Zak confidently taking her hand as they walked beneath the canopy, half in shadow, half in sun. Still so much she didn’t know and couldn’t reach through cyberspace. They’d met in a place where there is almost no technology; she could barely even picture Zak holding a phone. They were both of the wild, disconnected from mod-cons. It was like he was from another place in time.

  And then he’d stopped writing altogether. And so she waited. And she waited…

  With the last of her hope waning, in mid-January Zak’s emails suddenly surge again. Great streams of consciousness, now dark and obscure. Mia’s inbox fills fast with epic emails – one about everlasting, apocalyptic love, the next about the adrenaline of beasts, primitive desires, fear and unshakable sweats. Zak writes of birds, birth, of dark brooding skies, his poems increasingly intense. Star-crossed, he writes amid a murky river of lament. He uses words like cursed and cannot be. He sends her an abstract text from the viewpoint of a raven deep down in a canyon, another about a predatory hunter-shadow and a lone white wolf and another entitled ‘The Dark Room’, a reference to his photography. Mia shies away from his darkness as much as she’s drawn to it, she wants to explore it as much as wants to pretend it isn’t there. Heartstrings reverberating as she reads his latest two-page tangent, his abrupt change of tone. She fears for his emotional state, worries she’s about to be e-dumped. She sits trying to make sense of the words on screen.

  If only she had someone to talk to, someone who understood. The friends around her don’t. After her flat-mate read one of Zak’s emails over her shoulder, the only suggestion she had was, ‘Maybe he’s a vampire.’ And as for Lucy – were they even friends, or just bound by the emotional residue of That Day? To Mia, it felt that way.

  It is Zia, of all people, who offers encouragement, just as she’d persuaded her to go to the island. Mia’s starting to see her as Fairy Godmother in disguise. Logging onto her computer this frosty Valentine’s morning to check for an email from Zak (no email) her great aunt’s face pops up on the screen instead. Eccentric Zia, with her mad grey sticky- out hair, startled eyes, pencilled-on eyebrows and make-up that looks like it was applied in the 40s and she’s just been touching it up ever since, has discovered Skype. It’s her way of keeping in touch with their big international family. She taps on the screen, ‘Pronto! Mia, are you there?’

  They’ve spoken since Utopia, but only on the phone.

  ‘Ciao Zia.’

  ‘Why the long face?’ If there’s anyone to snap Mia out of a glum spell it’s her great aunt. She’d survived wartime in fascist Italy, raised five children, always cut to the chase and put everything into perspective. ‘Wishing you were back on the island?’

  ‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘What happened with the American?’ Zia’s own husband is American – they’d met when he was a G.I. in the Second World War; that accounted for the twang in her Italian accent.

  ‘I haven’t seen him since summer. He writes, but lately… his emails have been… gloomy.’

  ‘Si, he’s gloomy! It’s winter and you still haven’t seen him? He misses you. You want to be with him, be with him. Your generation is lucky – all this technology! We had to wait months, years, not knowing if our men were dead or alive – waiting weeks for a letter! If you’ve found someone special don’t let him slip away, take it from me. These sad emails – he’s reaching out to you. Reach back. Tell him you want t
o meet up, arrange it!’

  ‘But isn’t that chasing, Zia? You always said never to chase.’

  ‘No, it’s not chasing! Who initiated things to begin with, on the island?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Si, certo! You’re just being assertive, firming things up. Are you going to see each other, yes or no? You’ve both better things to do than wait around. Make a plan! Men these days don’t know their place any more, women taking more charge…’

  Mia imagines her great aunt always took charge.

  ‘You’ve got to show him you’re interested, that you want to see him. Trust me, mia cara, you must grab these chances – someone like you, my free bird, or you’ll stay married to the wind.’ Zia stares into the lens on her computer, eyes wide and steady like a mystic at a fortune reading. ‘This I know,’ she says. ‘Be united and it will set you free. When you have unfinished business, the thought haunts you. He may be your soul-mate, but until you see him he is your ghost.’

  Mia doesn’t need another ghost in her life.

  * * *

  She’s going to America. She’s going to be with Zak. She thanks Zia for making her see sense, for urging her to reach out to him.

  I cannot stand the distance between us, read Zak’s latest email.

  Mia – online at the same time – threw him back a literal line: Do you still want me to come out and be with you?

  Yes! Do it! DO IT! :-D

  They switched to Instant Messenger, had an excited chat, he told her to book her journey straight away and before she knew it, they’d set a date. It’s been six months since they’ve seen each other, now only another two to wait. He’s busy with work and study till then, but now it’s sorted and she’s on her way.

  He emails her all sorts of plots and plans, camping trips they’ll go on, all the cool outdoorsy stuff they’ll do, parties and art projects, a theatrical show, maybe even a road-trip across the States. Judging by his slap-dashed email, he’s butterflying more manically than Mia, if that’s possible.