The United States of Us

by Kate Sundara

  ‘What the…? She stands in astonishment.

  Zak’s sat in the corner, grinning.

  ‘How did you…? And the apartment’s gleaming!’ The sun outside is still bright. ‘You did all this? You really are a magician!’ She marvels at all the exotic-coloured birds hanging high above.

  Zak walks over to her and kisses her stunned lips.

  ‘They’re for you. You make me feel so free.’

  ‘But how did you – in such a short space of… Wow, that was one manic burst of energy. You even made an elephant!’ she points up noticing. ‘I can’t believe you made so many – birds and butterflies! I love them.’

  ‘I love you,’ he tells her. ‘Maybe now it’s time for the birds and the bees.’

  Silence and all the birds stop singing in the trees.

  The birds and the bees?

  She breathes a laugh.

  How to tell him she’s never done it? Now the time has come but the words will not.

  It’s her first day in America and Zak’s declared his love, talked marriage, magicked his home into a jungle and is now suggesting sex.

  ‘You don’t want to?’ he coaxes.

  ‘So soon? Everything’s happening so fast.’

  ‘Is it? After all these months?’

  ‘But we haven’t been together in that time, I mean…’

  ‘It’s alright,’ he smiles understandingly, though she can tell he’s put out. He plants a kiss on her forehead. ‘There’s no hurry.’

  She puts her arms around him, face against his chest, feeling like a killjoy, strict and self-conscious.

  * * *

  And her amazement doesn’t stop there. Zak is singing his own version of a Leonard Cohen song, changing one word for Mia’s benefit.

  ‘And he has a fantastic voice,’ she mutters through in the bedroom as she unpacks in the early afternoon light. He doesn’t hear her of course, not like I do. ‘Is there anything this guy isn’t great at?’ she asks, smiling, Zak’s joy infectious.

  Switching the name Suzanne to Mia, he sings of a heroine in rags and feathers who has stolen his heart, how she takes him to the river, how he wants to travel with her, how he’s touched her perfect body with his mind.

  ‘Far from perfect body,’ jests Mia as he comes through to the bedroom, fully-dressed this time.

  ‘If I told you it was, maybe you’d hold it against me.’ Zak grins widely.

  Mia giggles, rolls her eyes and stops folding her clothes into the dresser-drawer he cleared out for her. She’s stashed her passport and return ticket under the lining for safekeeping.

  Zak pulls her towards him.

  ‘How can you make even bad jokes cute and funny?’ she asks. ‘Are you the happiest guy I’ve ever met? I think you must be.’

  ‘Happy you’re here.’ He presses their stomachs together, wraps his arms around her.

  ‘That’s a pretty darn fine voice you got yourself,’ she imitates his accent. ‘Raspy, sexy, strong.’

  Zak grins blissfully, then his bliss drops away.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I wish I could just go off travelling somewhere with you. Y’know, just take off…’

  ‘Well we can.’ She looks between him and the travel photos on his walls, ‘I mean that is your job, you’re a travel-photographer, right? When your semester’s over we can go wherever we like!’

  ‘You’re so free, he says. ‘Free as a bird. You’re like a bird. I wish I could be.’

  ‘Remember the bluebird? Remember how you fixed him up? You sent Anna off for flour.’

  ‘I just wanted to be alone with you.’

  She laughs.

  ‘I knew it the moment I saw you on the island’, says Zak. ‘I knew you were the one for me. I knew I loved you there and then.’ Love?

  Her head starts spinning, like everything’s catching up with her. ‘Is it Wednesday today? I’m so jet-lagged, I don’t even know what day it is…’ Things are disorientating for me too.

  Zak reaches for her again, kisses her. As she breathes him in she remembers all those love-starved months in which she hungered for this embrace.

  ‘I’d better get to work,’ says Zak.

  ‘Do you have to?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Where do you go? Surely not the dark room on such a beautiful day?’

  Zak just smiles, ever the mystery, doesn’t answer her questions.

  ‘Thanks for lunch,’ she says. ‘It was delicious. You’re an excellent cook.’

  He kisses her smile.

  ‘I saw the curtains of the downstairs apartment twitch when I was in the yard picking mint from your herb-garden. So you don’t know who lives there?’

  Zak doesn’t reply, he’s looking around the room for something instead.

  ‘Will I meet some of your friends soon?’ she asks him. Zak’s as elusive in person as he was in his emails. All those poetic streams of consciousness – all cryptic, never practical – never answering any of her questions. And she’d had a lot of questions. She still has. As do I.

  ‘Curious little thing aren’t you,’ says Zak. Even that’s more a statement than a query.

  Yeah she’s curious and deep down a little troubled by Zak’s continued lack of curiosity. It suddenly dawns on her: they’ve been together since yesterday and he hasn’t asked her a single question, has he? She thinks back over their conversations and realises that any information he had on her was because she’d volunteered it. It was the same as when they’d been emailing. Up until now she figured that he found the day-to-day she’d asked him about online mundane, or that he relished the mystique of their connection – the romance of not knowing making it all the more magical. But now she’s starting to wonder if it’s because he’s not actually interested. It makes her feel so… uninteresting. Not to mention it seems like bad manners.

  Mia now identifies the cause of her disturbance when they exchanged their I love yous – that awkward, not-right feeling on her tongue like something inserted at a wrong angle, that didn’t quite fit: Zak doesn’t have enough questions and she still has too many. Maybe she’s cynical, she worries, maybe he’s capable of loving her unconditionally, but honestly, why doesn’t he ask her anything? Her opinion on something, what she likes, her life? She’s sure they talked like that on the island. Maybe he knows all he needs to know? I doubt it.

  ‘You’ll meet my friends,’ he finally concedes. ‘I just want to keep you all to myself a little while.’

  Mia smiles, secretly wondering how he can give his love to a girl he knows so little about. But she tries to ignore her inconvenient concerns.

  ‘Well I might just go and explore this town of yours.’

  ‘Your new home.’

  ‘My new home!’ she beams. ‘See you later.’ Mia reaches for her journal. She’s started writing more in there than she has in years. Feeling this many feelings, her flow is back.

  * * *

  Zak’s house on White Willow Lane is a stone’s throw from the university. There’s a happy bustle around campus, a buzz of spring in the air. Students flood the vast neat lawns in front of steepled academic buildings, grand architectural designs brought into this new world to look like those from the old. Mia watches little groups of people eating lunch together, hanging out and laughing; part of her wishes to belong in that scene. At present, Zak’s the only person she knows out here, but her independent spirit won’t remain reliant on him as her only company. She’s good at making friends when she wants to, and she used to want to all the time before…

  I remember when she was like that.

  Out on his front lawn, realisations sinking in, she starts to tingle all over with grace and gratitude for their new idyllic life together, a life that’s just begun. This is her life, the way it was meant to be. Life blown wide open into that technicolour-3D she experienced with Zak in Utopia. Up till now she’s been watching life on a flat-screen.

  The spring air is pure and alive with the smells of nature. She sits and
writes her journal in Zak’s front yard but to her it’s a field of four-leaved clovers – a Wonderland. By the time she’s finished jotting her entry she’s written out any of her doubt. She concludes that her only issue with the love thing is that she can’t believe her luck.

  Mia walks along Zak’s street, where daffodils line the kerbs and sunlight glitters through the trees. The light is different in this corner of the world – fresh, bright, sweet – like its peoples’ greetings in the street. A smiling old lady walks her pooch along the pavement, a man washing his car acknowledges Mia with a wave and a nod, a woman pushing a baby-buggy says a friendly ‘Hey.’ Everyone she encounters seems upbeat.

  The cherry trees stir again, releasing their pretty blossoms in the zephyr, maples wisha-wisher, weeping willows sweep the grass. Patriotic flags ripple in lush front gardens, the spring breeze switching between warm and nippy.

  Democrat and Republican – the two words are everywhere; opposing posters on picket-fences and in living room windows the only hint of turbulence in these peaceful streets. Conventional and alternative seem to blend together here; Zak’s house could be either, depending on which side of the wall you stand. When Mia researched River Valley, prior to her arrival, she read that when the Swinging Sixties were over, many peace-lovers and first generation hippies headed out this way. Looking around her now she sees the clues: flower-power in a porch, posters for every kind of holistic therapy, stickers on mailboxes stating War Is Not The Way.

  Buildings on the outskirts of town are a hodgepodge of fraternity and sorority mansions, run-down shacks with allotments, bungalows and middle-class family homes. The community mural on the outside wall of the baker’s celebrates diversity. I like it.

  Downtown has an artsy, grass-roots vibe, suggesting that the produce in the grocery store comes from somewhere close by. Nearly everyone Mia passes tells her ‘Hi’ or ‘What’s up?’ translating, as she knows, into English as, ‘Hello, how do you do?’. In shops, strangers stop beside her to recommend their favourite scent as she sniffs incense sticks. In the street she spots a ticket on the windscreen of a small truck that’s outstayed its parking time, that reads We welcome out- of-town visitors. You’re forgiven. It’s a cool little town.

  Mia crosses the bridge connecting east to west that divides the town of River Valley into two. Once upon a time, an enormous glacier sat here. When the ice melted, it left a valley filled with water, which, over time, receded, merged with other water sources and became the river that earned the town its name. As far as naming places went, people round here don’t seem to like ambiguity. That big mountain she can see from Zak’s window? Yep, she might’ve guessed it: Big Mountain.

  On the other side of the river, real life cowboys and Indians walk the streets. Mia’s never seen a Native American in the flesh before and finds herself staring at them with awe and wonder. Modern shops are set in old-style saloons, she sees a couple of retro and recycled clothing stores, a taco-diner, some bars and take-out parlours. This town ain’t flashy, no fashionista would come here for a shopping spree. Most customers are men in lumberjack shirts and Stetsons visiting the hardware-store in their pick-ups. Mia’s charmed by the earthy vibe of the place; after so long surrounded by noisy London shops, River Valley’s a breath of fresh air. Way out here, far from the city she’s fled, her heart begins to soften like it did with Zak on the island. She’s still carrying his scent on her skin. She can’t wait to tell him how she loves her new home.

  But Zak doesn’t come home.

  * * *

  Mia dreamt of me last night. Must be to do with being in new surroundings. Or Zak disappearing. Sometimes I show up in metaphor.

  She wakes on his couch, looks at the clock. 8.20am. He’s still not home. Maybe he is home. Maybe he’s in the bedroom and she didn’t hear him come in and he hadn’t wanted to wake her.

  She checks there. No.

  Why hadn’t she taken his cell-phone number yet? She needs to sort an American SIM-card for her mobile. They were so excited, so caught up with everything yesterday they didn’t get around to it. She peers out of the window again, the sunny streets, walks back to the living room, looking for clues. She wouldn’t even know who to call out of concern, doesn’t know anyone here but him.

  She bites her nails, paces the floor, flicks through his CDs, Zak’s taste in music even more eclectic than her own. Something for every mood.

  The Mach Band? She pulls out a Gothic looking album and to her surprise sees Zak on the front cover! Reading the back of the sleeve, it appears he has a different surname. How much more success would she have had back in London if she’d Googled Zak Mach?

  She puts it on. Track One is a dark, moving melody. She can’t get over it. Is that Zak singing lead? It’s brilliant, brooding, emotive – goose-bumps pucker her skin. The credits confirm his are the vocals, and the artwork is mostly his too. Amazing! She can’t wait to ask him all about it.

  Where is he?

  Spellbound in the living-room, encircled by his voice, she leafs through the CD-booklet, full of photos, scrawled lyrics and etchings. The silhouettes of a moth, a raven, a bat and a butterfly flying out of black ink spilt across the pages, like inkblots used to test if people are crazy.

  She keeps checking out of the window, comforted by the soft sun and his singing voice, the rest of her… she doesn’t know if she’s more anxious, aggravated or annoyed…

  Suddenly footfall – feet up stairs, and Zak bursts through the door looking bewildered with a king-sized coffee.

  ‘Zak! There you are! I was worried about you. Are you alright? Where’ve you been?’

  He hears his CD, flashes her a great big grin. ‘It’s me!’ He’s sweating on the forehead, under the nose, eyes wild and darting.

  ‘How much coffee have you drunk?’ she asks.

  Zak doesn’t answer.

  She looks down at the CD. ‘This is incredible!’ she tells him. ‘I never knew you were in a student band, but where have…’

  ‘It’s not a student band, it’s my job.’

  She looks at his travel photo of a giant waterfall. ‘But you’re a travel photographer.’

  ‘Photography’s a passion – when I was a student I was into it.’

  ‘When – wait, you’re not a student?’

  ‘We’re playing Saturday night on campus! First concert in the valley. Come!’

  ‘What? Of course! But Saturday? The day after tomorrow? When were you going to tell me?’

  ‘I’ve been out getting it all arranged, Mia. Didn’t I tell you?’

  She frowns. Had she forgotten – what with jet-lag and the excitement of being here? ‘No…’ she recalls, almost certainly. ‘You didn’t.’

  He wraps his arms around her, presses a squishy kiss on her face.

  ‘I’m starving,’ he says. ‘Let’s make breakfast.’

  * * *

  Sunlight sparkles through the windows of the jeep, dappling them both with gold. When Zak suggested they go for a drive in the mountains Mia couldn’t get ready quick enough. She was already eager to get out of the house and start living the life she’d dreamed of, but now escaping the confusion of Zak’s life – just the two of them out in the wild, leaving everything behind – holds even greater appeal. We both enjoyed nature together.

  Climbing, winding roads take them up through emerald forests, past cascading waterfalls. Zak points out eagle nests way up in the tops of trees. The higher they go the grander, the more mind-blowing the scenery is. Everywhere is nature, rock-face, earth and colour, the snow-covered slopes surrounding the summit glinting beneath a flawless sky. Zak puts his hand on her knee. She’s falling back in love with life. And how much brighter, clearer and more amazing her life has just become. Even with me here. Am I finally fading?

  They pull over in a bay and slam the doors behind them. Zak runs round behind her, cupping his hands over her eyes as he leads her up a little track, his palms warm against the freshness of morning, the clean air heightening the mascu
line buzz of his scent.

  ‘You should see your face!’ he laughs, taking his hands away. She’s awestruck by the view. Miles of magical multicoloured mists roll out before them, peaks disappearing into the distance as far as the eye can see. Deep down in the other direction, the tiny town of River Valley, a glistening river running through its centre, dividing east from west. Encircled by mountains, the town’s buildings gleam in the sunbeams. River Valley, a precious jewel hidden from the rest of the world.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m here! It’s so surreal.’ She’s euphoric.

  He looks to her and takes her hand that same sure way he’d done on the island, holds it up into the brilliant blue sky. They hold the future in their interlocked hands, their love-story stretching out ahead of them like the heavens.

  Zak says, ‘I’m sorry things are all over the place, but after the gig on Saturday, when everything’s settled down, it’ll all be perfect, I promise…’

  He squeezes her fingers and she thinks that it’s already perfect.

  * * *

  Zak bangs on the door of the rickety green caravan in Hollow Wood Lane. The lane’s really a dust-track with allotments and paint-flaky houses, rusty bikes and gardening equipment propped up against fences. It started out sunny, but the weather here’s always changing. Zak confirmed that. Now he and Mia are getting sprinkled with warm spring rain.

  He bangs on the door again. ‘April? Open up, it’s Zak.’

  A cluttering sound, a cough and a thud, making the whole caravan shake. Tie-dye drapes twitch and a face appears in the window, amid the Bob Marley stickers and the Green Peace signs. The van door flies open, hands sweep back a beaded curtain with ribbons and there stands a girl in a patchwork dress and a cloud of smoke.

  ‘Hey kids!’ she beams, marble pipe in one hand, wafting smoke with the other. ‘Whoops!’ she exclaims. ‘Think I got up a little too quickly.’

  ‘Mia, this is my step-sister, April. April, this is Mia, my…’