Remember Why You Fear Me

by Robert Shearman

  He just stared and smoked.

  “All right,” she said. “I admit, I did find someone else. He didn’t treat me right. I tried to give him my heart, but it wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t beat for him at all, it just lay there like a dead weight. And he said it smelt funny.” She fetched it from her bag, held it out for him to take.

  “It does smell funny,” he said.

  “I know.”

  She continued to hold it out. He continued not to take it. At last she put it down on the table, between them, as a compromise.

  “I’ve nowhere to go,” she said.

  “There’s the spare room. You can have it for one night. Just one night.”

  She nodded. Waited for him to say something else. When he didn’t, she nodded once more, then went upstairs.

  He opened a bottle of wine. After he’d finished his second glass, he supposed he ought to see how she was getting on. Whether she wanted some dinner, he suddenly thought, maybe she was hungry. And he was surprised to feel some concern, where had that come from?

  He went into the spare room. She’d been through the cupboards, there was debris all over the bed. From an empty shoebox she’d found his heart. She was holding it in one palm—he’d forgotten how, in death, it had grown so small and wizened.

  “Put that back,” he said. “That isn’t yours anymore.”

  “Look,” she said softly. “Look.” And she began to stroke it. She blew on it gently.

  “It’s not yours,” he said, uselessly.

  And as he watched, the rock cracked. Pink tissue broke through the stone and bone. “Look,” she said again. It was struggling, and then it managed a beat, and once it had managed one, it seemed all too happy to beat again. “Look,” she said, and kissed it. The last of the rock crumbled away at her touch. “I love you,” she said. “Look. I love you. Look how much.” And she offered his heart out to him, as good to new.

  Dazedly he reached for it. She smiled, nodded. He took hold of it. Looked at it, as it swelled with new life. And then he dug his fingernails in, dug them in deep, dug ’til it bled. “No,” she said. And began squeezing hard, so that one of the ventricles bulged then burst. “No, stop!” And ripped it apart, tearing at it, pulling off gobbets of it, showering them on to the spare room carpet.

  “I told you,” he said. “It isn’t yours. You gave it back.”

  And his wife began to cry. He looked away in disgust.

  “One night only,” he said, “and then you find somewhere else to stay.” He wiped his hands on his shirt, then left, closing the door behind him.

  “I’ll get you back,” she said softly. “It’ll take time, but I’ll get you.” And she looked down at the bloody chunks strewn all over the floor. And saw that, in spite of all the damage that he’d inflicted on it—all the damage they’d both done—the shattered heart still, stubbornly, beat.

  BLUE CRAYON,

  YELLOW CRAYON

  Andrew Kaplan was coming home, at last, and it’d be for a real holiday, not like that time last August when the company called him back to work after only four days’ leave, they’d guaranteed he wouldn’t be needed in until January 5th, that would very nearly give him two weeks. “Great,” his wife had said, when he’d phoned her and told her the good news, and Andrew asked whether his daughter would be excited too, and his wife assured him that she would be. The flight from Boston was packed with British people who’d be getting to see their families, and there was a revelry in the air, nothing too outspoken, nothing drunken or boisterous, they were respectable denizens of middle management—but there were polite smiles everywhere, everyone seemed to be sporting a smile, and the stewardesses were wearing tinsel on their name badges, it all seemed very festive.

  The aeroplane took off half an hour late, but Andrew wasn’t too worried, he knew that nine times out of ten any delay is made good in transit. But when the pilot came over the intercom and apologized once again that they were going to have to circle Heathrow for the fourth time—“The runways are all full, everyone wants to get back for Christmas!”—Andrew began to worry about his connecting flight from London to Edinburgh. By the time all the passengers had filed off the plane and made their way to baggage claim, no one was smiling anymore. Andrew was almost resigned to the idea that he’d missed the connection, but then he dazedly realized that his suitcase was the first on to the conveyor belt—and that never happened!—and if he ran he might just make it to the check-in desk on time; and so that’s what he did, he ran, and his case was heavy, laden down with so many special presents for his family, but he didn’t let that stop him—he raced down the travelator from terminal three to terminal two, apologizing as he pushed other passengers to one side—and it was going to be okay, if he kept up this pace he was going to make it with minutes to spare, and he burst into the departures hall and looked up at the monitors for his flight details—and there they were, it hadn’t taken off yet!—and there was a word in red right beside it, and the word was ‘cancelled.’

  And for a moment he felt quite relieved, because it meant he had no reason to run anymore, and he’d done his best, hadn’t he? And for another moment he was quite angry. And then he just didn’t feel anything very much, he was just so tired.

  No more flights to Scotland tonight. Sorry. Yes, the inconvenience is highly regrettable. There will, of course, be compensation, and somewhere for Mr Kaplan to rest until service resumed in the morning. But Andrew didn’t want an airport hotel, or, God knows, did they just mean some sort of darkened lounge he could sit in?—it’s all he had thought about on the flight over, that after three months away he was going home. He remembered what his wife had said, one of those last times he’d managed to get through to her on the phone—”We’ve never been apart so long before.” He’d asked her whether his daughter was looking forward to Christmas, and his wife had said, “Of course she is, she’s five years old, Christmas is all she thinks about!” And she’d explained that they had already decorated the tree together, and sent out the cards, and been carol singing—all the things they’d always done as a family, and this time he’d been away for them, and she didn’t press that point, she didn’t try to make him feel guilty—but then, she didn’t need to. And Andrew stood in the airport terminal and fumed; by rights he should be flying home right now, by rights he should be somewhere in the air over Birmingham. “I need to get back,” he said to the woman behind the counter, “I need to get back tonight, whatever it takes.” It was Christmas Eve tomorrow, he needed to know that when his daughter woke up on Christmas Eve her father would be there ready for her.

  He was told there was a last train to Edinburgh, leaving from King’s Cross station within the hour. He joined the queue for a taxi, then pleaded with the people in front to let him go first, then paid them all ten pounds each. The taxi fare cost him fifty quid, but by this stage of the proceedings Andrew didn’t care about money anymore—on the radio there was playing a non-stop medley of Christmas hits, and Andrew wasn’t in the mood for them, and the driver seemed quite put out when Andrew told him to turn them off. Andrew apologized with a healthy tip that used up all his spare cash. Andrew tried to call his wife to tell her he’d be late home, but his mobile phone was confused, it was still hunting for a signal from an American network provider. He asked the taxi driver whether he could use his phone. The taxi driver refused.

  He bought a ticket with his credit card. The train was already filling up. He dragged his suitcase down the platform, and carriage after carriage he couldn’t spot an empty seat. He was starting to despair—and there, at the very last compartment, there were seats galore, the train was almost deserted. He couldn’t see why, he looked for a sign that said it was a different class, or required special reservation, but no, nothing. He climbed aboard, heaved his case into the empty luggage rack, plopped himself down wearily into a seat. He had a whole table to himself. He smiled at the people around him—”Pretty lucky!” he said, but they didn’t reply.
There were a couple of businessmen sitting together, a young mother with a girl, an elderly mother reading a magazine, a middle-aged man who was asleep. Andrew decided to take his cue from this last passenger; he closed his eyes, and by the time the train pulled out of the station Andrew was snoring gently.

  “Bang!”

  And Andrew was awake, and there was the little girl, and she was leaning over his table as if she owned it, and she was pointing a gun at him, except it wasn’t a gun, it was two fingers, with a third wiggling underneath as a trigger. “Bang! Bang! Bang!”

  Andrew wasn’t sure whether to respond or not. With his own daughter he tried to play along as much as possible, no matter what strange pretending game she flung at him, that was what a daddy was supposed to do. But this wasn’t his daughter, and he didn’t know whether he should encourage her, frankly he didn’t know whether he should be talking to her at all. So he sort of half went for it; he clutched at his chest, he said, “Ugh!” quietly, as if he’d been shot, as if he were dying, but it was all a bit pathetic, and even as he did it, Andrew could feel himself blushing red with embarrassment.

  The little girl didn’t seem to mind. She looked delighted by this unexpected piece of playacting. “Bang! Bang!” she went, she shot him twice more for good measure, and Andrew didn’t know what he was supposed to do this time, he was already dead, wasn’t he? And she laughed out loud, and then, with a scream, turned and ran down the aisle to the other end of the carriage. She didn’t shoot at any of the other passengers, and Andrew didn’t know how he felt about that, whether he was annoyed or just a little bit proud.

  He looked towards the girl’s mother, but she didn’t appear even to have noticed, she was staring dully out of the window. He looked around the rest of the carriage, with a rueful smile—kids!—but no one caught his eye. The old woman was still reading her magazine; the businessmen had run out of things to say, and were looking away from each other; the middle-aged man was still asleep.

  Andrew rather envied him, because here came the girl again, running back down the aisle, whooping. Andrew wondered how anyone could sleep through a racket like that.

  His head felt muzzy, he knew he was teetering upon the edge of sleep, and if only he could fall in the right direction he’d be dozing soundly all the way home. Why wouldn’t the girl shut up, why wouldn’t she just sit down and shut up—he’d never let his daughter run riot on a train, especially not when it was late at night, especially not when there was a passenger onboard who was clearly fighting jetlag—and he felt a resentment for the mother who was still not doing a thing to help, still just looking out of the bloody window, really!—and he tried to force the resentment down, because he knew if he let it the resentment would keep him awake, it’d growl away at his innards, he’d be unable to relax. And here came the girl again—

  “Ssh!” he said, and glared at her, and put his finger to his lips. And she stopped dead, and looked surprised, and a little hurt maybe that her one playfellow, the one person who had given her a damn, had turned against her. Her bottom lip trembled. She began to cry.

  “No, no,” said Andrew, “ssh!” And he put his finger to his lips again, but this time with a smiley face, see, all smiles, he wasn’t cross with her, not really. But it was no good. The tears were in full flow now, the girl let out a misery that was profound and was sincere, and was very, very loud, she began to scream the place down. He hadn’t realized you could scream tears out like that.

  Andrew panicked a bit, looked quickly at the other passengers. But no one seemed to mind. The woman didn’t raise her eyes from her magazine. The businessmen turned their heads in the child’s direction, but with supreme indifference—and then quickly turned away again, as if annoyed that the pair of them had been caught looking at the exact same thing.

  And the mother said, very soft, but stern, “Come and sit down.” And for a moment Andrew stupidly thought she might mean him. But the girl sulkily turned, and went back to her seat. “Get out your colouring book. Play with your crayons.” The little girl was still crying, angry little sobs, but she did what she was told. And all the while the mother didn’t so much as glance at her, her attention still upon the window and whatever she could make out from the darkness.

  The little girl took out her crayons. She looked down at her colouring book. Grim, not a hint of a smile. The crying had almost dribbled to a halt, there was just the odd little moan punctuated with sudden sniffs. Andrew watched her, carefully; the little girl didn’t seem to notice he was spying on her, but then, then, in one instant she turned her head towards Andrew, right at him—and what was that in her smile? Rage? Triumph? Something adult anyway, something almost sneering, and it made Andrew feel small and ashamed.

  And then she was at work with her crayons. She wasn’t colouring anything in, she was attacking the book, stabbing down hard with the bright blue stick, slashing at the page. And now, in her left hand, she produced a yellow crayon, and she was stabbing down with that too, she was showing no mercy, the crying had stopped, she was instead giving grunts of effort as she stabbed as hard as she could. And Andrew realized only he could see this, her mother took no interest whatsoever, and Andrew thought he should alert her, because this was wrong, something was terribly wrong—and as the child spattered blue and yellow cuts deep into the paper she looked at him again and he could see there was spit bubbling out of her mouth, was it even foam? And Andrew opened his mouth to say something, he didn’t know what, but before he got the chance—

  —the woman had turned from the window. She didn’t look angry, or annoyed, or frustrated—that was the oddness of it—her face looked perfectly composed and neutral. “Enough,” she said, calmly, and stood up, and she was pulling the little girl up too, by the shoulders, and up into her arms. And the little girl began to scream again, and this time it was a scream of fear, she knew she was in trouble now—and the mother didn’t care, she was into the aisle, and carrying the girl up to the other end of the carriage, the girl struggling and kicking and lashing out, and yet for all that still holding on tight to her crayons and her colouring book. And the mother and child were gone.

  The sudden silence was a shock. Andrew closed his eyes right away, to see if he could find that drowsiness again, but the silence rang right round his head.

  He looked out of the window. It was black out there, just black. He couldn’t see a thing, not a single house, or a tree; it was as if someone had painted over the windows, and there was a glossy shine to the black that began to give Andrew a headache.

  Presently the woman came back, and sat down in her seat. Andrew was pleased to see the noisy little girl wasn’t with her.

  He closed his eyes again. A couple of minutes later, when he opened them, he saw that one of the businessmen had fallen asleep. He closed his eyes once more; when he opened them, a few minutes after, he saw that the second businessman had succumbed too, and his head was lolling against his partner’s, and they seemed huddled together for warmth and protection. It almost made Andrew laugh out loud—and he decided that he’d like to take a picture of them with his phone, and send it to his wife. She would find it funny, and she could show it to their daughter too! He took out the phone, but it still hadn’t found a signal.

  Next time he closed his eyes he wanted to see whether he could make the old woman fall asleep too. But she didn’t, she remained forever glued so sourly to her magazine. Never mind.

  The mother was staring out at the blackness of the night.

  He wondered where the little girl had got to.

  The mother then took a thermos flask out of her bag, and poured herself a cup of tea. She sipped at it, turned back to the window.

  Andrew closed his eyes one last time, tried to fall asleep. The train rocked from side to side as it sped down the tracks, it made him feel like a baby, it made him feel drowsy. But all the while he listened out for the return of the little girl, he knew the little girl would be back soon, must be, he was tense with
anticipation of the noise she would make.

  He refused to open his eyes for a good ten minutes. He kept himself busy by reciting, silently, and in strict chronological order, the captains of the English cricket team since Len Hutton. When he reached the present day, he opened up—and looked—and the girl still hadn’t returned. The mother had put away her tea now, the old woman was still reading, the businessmen and the middle-aged man all still asleep.

  Where was she?

  He got to his feet. No one looked up. He walked down the aisle to the end of the compartment. The electronic door trundled open for him with a hiss.

  The girl wasn’t to be seen. He tried the far door, but it was locked, this was the end of the train. A sign said the toilet was vacant, and Andrew knew that little girls aren’t always very scrupulous about locks. He hesitated, then knocked gently upon the door. “Are you all right?” he called.

  There was no answer, and that annoyed him, she must have been in there for twenty minutes now, twenty at the very least, time for him to recite the English cricket team and back again! And he realized he needed the toilet anyway, he hadn’t been since halfway over the Atlantic Ocean, and so when he knocked again it wasn’t just as an interfering busybody, but as a man who had waited long and patiently for the lavatory and was now claiming his due right to pee.

  He pushed upon the door, very tentatively, and it swung open, and he peeked his head around the door, fully prepared to make protestations of surprise when he saw the little girl inside—but there was no one there—and he supposed that was a good thing, he hadn’t really wanted the embarrassment of a girl with her undies round her ankles—but where was she then? Where had she got to? And the answer crept over him, and any urine that had been nestling in his bowels froze to ice and was never going to come out now, not ever. . . .

  . . . The mother had thrown her overboard. She must have thrown her overboard.