by Kate Sundara
She has a lot to organise, her room at the flat to fill, all the travel bits to sort, her whole life to rearrange. Because if Zak’s The One – and she’s almost certain he is – then River Valley will be her home. This is it. Her fairytale. Her American dream. Putting the past behind her once and for all. Maybe this is what was missing before. Now she actually has a clear idea of that something – that someone – to move forward to.
Even with my own opinions in check, I have more reservation than Mia. I want her to move on, but a relationship is not the answer – not unless it’s healing the relationship she has with herself, which means releasing me. A third party is no more of a mend to her than paper to the cracks, than a plaster to a mortal wound.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
TWO MONTHS LATER
APRIL,2006
River Valley, Rocky Mountains, USA
Mia stands on the landing outside Zak Ryder’s front door, the scrap of paper with his key-code on it trembling in her hand. For months she’s been trying to imagine their reunion and only at the last minute had he emailed to say he couldn’t come to greet her. He had to work, she’d have to make her own way to his house. Mia understood: busy man.
She’s met instead by the scribbled paper sign stuck to his door:
Welcome Home, Mia! Make yourself comfortable, I’ll be back soon! I can’t wait to see you!!! Zak xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It’s taken her thirty-eight hours, two commercial planes, a fretful customs interrogation and a light-aircraft over the Rockies to reach River Valley; touching down to a tiny airport that looked more like a barn from the outside. Inside, it had a thick carpet, walls covered with drawings by kindergarten kids, a huge stuffed bear up on its hind legs, leering from inside a glass display cabinet next to leaflets for hiking trails and local fly-fishing trips. Struck by spectacular scenery as she stepped out front, she stood encircled by magnificent mountains, sweet spring air swirling with the scents of flowers and pine, hope and promise. Thrilled by the car park, ecstatic at the sky. So happy was she to be in his town, she barely cared that her backpack had been flown all the way to Moscow, that she’d entered Zak’s world with nothing but her hand luggage and the stale clothes in which she arrived.
The cab-ride was the final, most exciting part of the journey, riding through the cute little town she’d dreamt of for so long. Mia drank it in – the wide and perfect streets, sunlight flickering through the branches as they passed manicured lawns, kerbs lined with daffodils, pretty timber houses with white-picket fences like in the movies, lovely cherry-blossom trees. In the distance all around she saw forests, known to be filled with elk and wolves. And then Zak’s abode, an attractive ivory house in White Willow Lane: the perfect place for that fairytale.
Now a new kind of ecstasy runs through her veins, throat dry with the most delicious kind of fear. She taps in the code, pushes open the door and is struck by the squalor, the mess. Had the place been ransacked while poor Zak was at work? Has she come to the right address? Pots of paint all over the living-room, papers splayed across the floor, note- books stained with coffee-rings fallen open to reveal their scribbled contents. In the kitchen, dirty dishes piled high in the sink, crusty pans all along the work-bench, flecks of food fossilized on the hob, the tiles. The disarray is devastating, but she tries to block her disappointment.
Mia looks down at his welcome sign, his kisses, warmth and urgency all but leaping off the page and hugging her. Would he hug her when he saw her? Would they kiss? Romance and reality seem totally disconnected. The paper’s crinkled in her hands – nervous sweat.
She searches for something good, something she recognises as part of Zak. She finds fire-poi, circus silks and spinning diabolo flung over bookshelves storing manuals on yoga, veganism and ketogenic dieting, all still sealed in their cellophane wraps. A polaroid camera, a guitar, stacks of albums, that’s more like it. She tells herself it’s alright: a creative mess is better than a tidy idleness. Zak has more important things to do than clean – he’s take-me-as-you-find-me free. And besides, this is a student house, what did she expect?
Curtainless windows draw her eyes towards them – it’s darker in here than on the outside. She finds it surprising how the interior doesn’t match its clean-cut façade.
She moves around the apartment, more and more detail permeating her giddy blur: a vintage Rolling Stone magazine, a dream-catcher dangling in a window, a giant painting with mad clashing colours and a figure laughing in ecstasy. Smaller abstract artwork hangs on the dingy walls which presently she doesn’t have the head-space to comprehend.
An artist’s hovel.
The living-room furniture looks old and mismatched, mustard and brown bobbled fabrics, different types of wood. She’s stood on a hard, grey carpet with spicks and specks in its deep woven grooves; it seems like it might not have been vacuumed in a few years, if ever at all. Maybe Zak doesn’t own a vacuum. The décor is like in the backgrounds of 70s family photos, but no, she hasn’t quantum leaped back in time three decades – she’s just spotted a computer, left on. That strikes her as odd too. She’d considered Zak the ecological type. She warns herself against being judgemental.
She steps around the apartment as if she’s not supposed to be here. How suddenly surreal to be surrounded by his things, arriving into his world with nothing from her own. But still she can’t connect any of this to Zak, to believe that any of this is true until she’s seen him here among it.
She peeks into the one bedroom, dimming with the last dregs of sun. She enters but doesn’t switch on the light; presently that seems like too bold an action. None of this feels believable to her. Maybe it’s the jet-lag, she’s floating. She sits in darkness on the futon, gazing out of the window, waiting for reality to seem real. She’s here and it’s nothing short of a miracle. This must be how Dorothy felt when she woke up in Oz.
Checking herself in the dim bedroom mirror she’s pleased that, considering the epic journey – breaking out in a sweat as she ran to make transfers, that awful interrogation at customs – her appearance is holding up. She swept a sheer bronzing-powder across her face, applied a little mascara and perfume oil just before she got off the plane, released her braids only once in the cab (a little travel-trick she’d learnt to keep hair fresh against air-con, perspiration, duration and all those other elements in transit that make it greasy and lank). Her hair now tumbles in beachy bohemian waves; she slicks on some rose-tinted lip-balm. Until she can shower this is as good as it gets. Zak could be home at any minute and no way she’s risking their romantic reunion involve scraggly wet hair, panda-eyes and an unsexy bobbled bath towel.
Only when she enters his bathroom does it hit home. Thick dark shavings edge the sink, shavings like magnetic chips, demagnetised so that instead of obeying the pulls of polarity they point in every direction, shavings so black they’re almost blue – those are Zak’s alright.
A flashback to summer – his stubbled jaw – wanting to run it down her spine and…
A slamming door.
Feet running up stairs, her heart leaps into her mouth, adrenaline propels her mid living room where she stands, grasping her hands, stomach in, shoulders back. The room spins, the floor tilts towards her, the door rattles, her eyes wide on the turning handle. Then the door flies open.
* * *
Mia is startled into wakefulness the next morning by Zak padding into the bedroom as naked as the emperor without his clothes. She sees him, looks away, then doesn’t know where to look at all. Her heart is racing for all the wrong reasons…
‘Morning Sleeping Beauty,’ he smiles.
Shocked as she is, Mia tries not to show it as he slips beneath the covers close beside her and huddles in the nook of her neck. ‘It’s so good to be in your arms,’ he says.
She starts to hum quietly, that self-soothing habit she picked up from me, and tells herself it’s no big deal. She’s seen plenty of bare bodies on European beaches, she’s a woman of the world. But she�
��s also a virgin and finds his nudity completely confronting, considering she and Zak have only ever kissed. I feel her recoil.
Wide-awake, she lies there, his warm body, paradoxically, like a cold-shower or a slap round the face. She’s holding her breath. Now he’s covered with the bed-sheet her body loosens a little; it’d instantly stiffened when he walked in the room like that – she tries not to think about things stiffening. She reassures herself that Zak is unconventional, unpredictable, that it’s what she should embrace about him, not fear. He’s right about the Sleeping Beauty part – after her journey to get here, she could sleep for a hundred years. She’s almost too tired to spend any longer fretting that he’s naked beside her. Not only is she sharing his room, his futon, but arriving without her things, she’s wearing his jogging-bottoms and T-shirt too. It occurs to her that maybe Zak doesn’t own enough clothes to go around.
‘I didn’t expect we’d be sharing a bed straight away,’ she admits, her voice strained and unnatural.
Expectation, she’s now aware, is a total mind-bender. Their big reunion last night was stranger than she’d ever envisioned: she in his living-room, Zak through the front door. A bumbled hug, awkward but elated pauses, her jabbering nervous recounts of the journey and then Zak – almost obligingly, as if to fill another silence – leaning in and kissing her. Yes, he kissed her… and that was it… she didn’t shatter, the earth didn’t move like she thought it would. Her overwhelm turned to underwhelm, the taste of an anti-climax on her lips. Right after that she got changed into his clothes, slipped into his double bed and fell fast asleep. No, it wasn’t as magical as she’d expected it to be, but lying here now she convinces herself that everything’s okay, it’s just the newness of everything, the jet-lag. She shouldn’t have let last night surprise or concern her – she was so exhausted it was an effort to stand. Had he slept naked beside her all night? How could she know? She’d passed out as soon as her head hit the pillow.
She focuses now on the positive. How wonderful it is to wake this morning with that weight finally lifted, for the first time in eight long months to be free from frustration, that old hanger-on which had coiled up so tight inside her and dragged her down as the days went on. Frustration and all its miserable counterparts have finally been given the boot! Relax, she tells herself, relax…
‘If you’re not comfortable sharing my bed, I can sleep on the couch…’
‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘All those months apart, a wall between us is the last thing we need. Stay.’ They cuddle up sleepily. Mia, holding him, stares out the window at daylight creeping over the mountains. It’s early. The quiet street outside is edged with daffodils, scattered with cherry-blossom. All is still… then the songs of birds. She closes her eyes again and just listens to the sweetness that, living in the city, she hadn’t heard in a long time.
She registers another sweetness – a herby smell she recognises from youth hostels and other people’s parties. She turns over on the futon, Zak’s reclined beside her, smoking a marble pipe stuffed with–
‘Weed? You’re smoking weed at…’ she leans over to check the clock, ‘… seven in the morning?!’
Zak smiles, takes a long drag, holds the thick smoke inside him. He offers her the marble bowl, but she declines. He takes another toke then rests it on the side.
‘I’m glad you’re awake to see in the first day of your new life,’ he tells her. ‘I forgot your body shape,’ he says, running his fingers beneath her – his – T-shirt. ‘You have a beautiful body.’
Looking at his face is revision of an image she’s studied endlessly in her mind. The faintest freckles on his skin, a detail time has concealed from her, tiny surprise details re-emerging from the blur of remembrance. Freckles even in his eyes, like pebbles in lagoons, like constellations. Those eyes, oh she remembers those eyes: topaz, cobalt, aquamarine. Eyes like glass, like the warmest, calmest sea –
Only the scar – she doesn’t remember the scar…
‘What’s this?’ she asks him, tracing the indent on his forehead. Her mind’s ricocheting with questions but, as if to purposely stop them, Zak’s pulling his T-shirt up off her, sliding his hand over her breasts. He starts kissing her down her body, she temporarily forgets to breathe. Water seeps through the bedroom door, spreads across the wooden floor, rises up the skirting board and around the futon on which they lie. I can’t do anything to reverse it. She wants to tell him to stop but doesn’t really want him to; she sees things he can’t see. Like her shock at his nudeness and her inexperience with men, like her concern that their reunion wasn’t romantic like she thought it’d be. Like the water rising around the bed, representing her guilt, reminding her of me. And she wishes that everything were different – that she were different. If only I could evaporate along with this flood sensation, and yet a part of me needs to stay, needs to make sure she’s okay. I’m not convinced that she is, not here, with him. Not yet.
‘I – I just got here,’ she gulps. The scent of his skin makes her dizzy, unable to think straight.
‘You smell so good.’
‘White musk,’ she tells him.
‘No, it’s not that. It’s your natural scent.’ He runs his hand across her belly.
‘Wow, you can see the mountains from here,’ she says, trying to distract herself – or him – she’s not sure who – maybe both. The water stops rising as she looks instead to the landscape.
‘We’ll get married up there,’ says Zak.
She looks back at him, laughs the littlest bit but his face assumes only a vague smile.
‘I love you,’ he says. And the words hang there, ringing in the air – Mia’s ears clanging with them and then the clang of silence. A twinge of doubt. A pinch from her intuition. Her confused mind working fast to find sense in the chaos of conflicting emotions. Okay, it’s sudden (but is it really?) after all her months of agonising to get out here? She’s sharing his clothes, his bed – she’s here. Is it too soon to know it? What about stories from wartimes when people got engaged within weeks of meeting, like her own grandparents on the island where they met? When one look across a ballroom was enough to know you’d met The One? And how sweet and vulnerable Zak looks with his heart open to her. Why retract? What kind of princess pullies up the drawbridge just as the prince on his charger makes his mighty leap? Of course she loves him, that’s why she’s come all this way, hasn’t she? Why she’d invested everything she had into being in his world, this fairytale come true, this crazy, beautiful thing. She convinces herself, again.
‘Me too,’ she says and smiles a little as she says it. So why does it feel like she’s just laid a piece of puzzle in the wrong place?
‘We have so much to do!’ says Zak with a spurt of excitement. ‘What to do first… I want to paint you a picture, the best painting I’ve ever painted anyone!’
‘You paint?’ She’s not surprised; Zak’s a fountain of creativity.
‘You inspire so many things in me. I want to take you to a château in the forest – it’s like this fairytale castle – let’s go take beautiful naked pictures in the woods. Someday I’ll build us a house with my own two hands, Mia. I can make anything with these hands…’
She laughs at Zak’s euphoria, at his Mad Hatter chatter, his White Rabbit rushing – so much energy. Why doesn’t he put some of it into cleaning the apartment? The skirting-boards near their heads are layered with fluff. Zak, now looking so seriously into her says, ‘We’ll build a nest.’
The doorbell rings, breaking his gaze, he bounces up, pulls on a pair of jogging ‘pants’ and answers the door to the guy from the airport delivering Mia’s backpack.
‘Hey-hey!’ says Zak, dumping it on the floor.
‘Excellent! Oh, that reminds me: who lives in the apartment downstairs?’
Zak shrugs. ‘I don’t know. Hurry, get changed, Mia!’
‘Where are we going?’
‘The art store.’
‘Now? It’s barely eight a.m.!’
‘I’m gonna paint you that picture – landscapes in blue – Endless Blue Tranquillity, yeah, that’s how you make me feel… I’m so energised right now having you here with me. C’mon!’ he insists.
In spite of her fatigue and the fact that she only arrived last night, she’s touched by his sweet gesture and not wanting to dampen his enthusiasm, ‘Okay,’ she agrees and pulls herself up off the futon.
Zak undresses her, the both of them laughing as he pulls his clothes off her and she piles on new layers of her own, the first things she whips from her bag. Zak looks her up and down, twirls her under his arm, wolf-whistles and says, ‘You’d look hot in whatever.’
Hurrying out of the apartment, she doesn’t bother brushing her hair.
She’s in the wild now.
* * *
Endless blue tranquillity. There’s nothing tranquil about this morning. With his mission in mind, they’re down at the art store within seconds of it opening. Zak frantically searches for the biggest canvas he can find, the store-owner looking on hopefully.
‘I love to paint too!’ volunteers Mia.
‘Buy anything you want,’ Zak gushes, ‘It’s all on me!’
‘Why are people looking at us strangely? A girl was pointing to you a minute ago.’ The girl and her friend were the only other customers.
Zak doesn’t answer, he’s in his zone, on his spending spree. He just can’t get enough acrylic blues; it’s like he’s heard they’re going to stop making paint. He buys handfuls of tubes, a stack of canvases to go with the giant one, expensive brushes of every size.
Back from their outing, ‘I need a little cat-nap,’ says Mia. Zak doesn’t seem to hear her, too focused on all his new materials.
Two hours later she wakes to an immaculate apartment and the scent of fresh lemons, a hundred origami birds hung from the living-room ceiling, made from the stack of card Zak bought at the art store.
