Starling Days

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

  “Need any help?” she asked.

  “Almost done.”

  Mina preferred guests who arrived in the winter. In the frigid months, they’d have to stand by the door, unzipping and unbuttoning. She’d get a good look at them. As it was, Theo and his sister simply stepped into the apartment.

  “The lovely bride.” A big male body hugged her and clapped her shoulders, like he was trying to dislodge something from her throat. She tried to smile. A bony female hand thrust into hers. Each finger had a thread-thin silver ring. The sister. Mina looked into her face and stopped.

  She hadn’t seen a face like that in a long time. Years, maybe. She never knew what to do when she did. A certain type of woman glowed. A type that Mina knew she should not stare at, but her eyes swiveled towards anyway. This sort of woman could not be defined precisely. Phoebe had smooth white cheeks. Red curls feathered her skull. But other features could summon the same feeling. Mina remembered a woman with eyes the hazel of a boa constrictor and another with lashes like bear-traps.

  “Fee-bee,” Mina said, enjoying the way the rhyme tasted. Phoebe, Phoebus Apollo, sun god. How could her parents have detected the glow when she was only a round-bellied baby? Or perhaps the name had blessed the baby. Phoebe’s pink shift dress matched the shade of the kneecaps that emerged below the hem. Mina remembered something about redheads not being allowed to wear pink. She couldn’t see why.

  “Let me get a good look at you.” Phoebe leaned towards Mina. “You’re just like the photos.”

  “What photos?” Mina asked.

  “The wedding photos. I saw them on Facebook. You two were adorable.”

  Mina thought the girl in the photographs looked Photoshopped, her teeth glinting like broken glass. “They were very flattering,” Mina said.

  “No, really, you look just like them.” Phoebe’s face was still so close. Something about her filled Mina’s mouth with the taste of fruit. Specifically, a fruit so ripe that its juice runs down the hand and has to be licked from the palms and wrists. It was probably the hair. The blood-orange waves swayed as Phoebe moved.

  “Oscar’s lucky to have you.” Phoebe’s top lip slowly thinned into a smile.

  Mina’s mouth followed suit. The expression came almost easily. She’d spent most of the past hour using a mirror to practice smiling like a normal person. “Thank you,” she said.

  “And, Oscar, you’re a married man now! How does it feel?” Phoebe punched his shoulder.

  “I figured it was time. We’ve been together . . . what? How long now?”

  Mina knew that Oscar knew. She heard the pride in his voice. They’d made it so far. They’d got married on their ten-year anniversary. That was seven months ago. Seven months that somehow felt longer than the preceding decade. Was he still glad that he’d asked? As if sensing her worry, he ran a gentle hand down the side of her arm.

  “Since it’s hot out, we threw together some salad.” Oscar changed the subject. “Sit wherever.” He was already pouring Theo a glass of wine. Mina was struck by the kindness of that we. She had chopped nothing. But there he was including her. Heat rose to her face. Who was she to be looking at a woman like Phoebe when she had a husband so ready to enfold her in pronouns: we, us, our life together? As if they had not two lives but one.

  The men took the table’s wide shanks, leaving the women the head and tail. Mina had a clear view of Phoebe. It was impossible not to look. She’d never seen a redhead with such blank skin. Not a freckle, a mole, a vein, barely a blush. It was so clean you could bite into it.

  There was a sloshing of water and a chugging of more wine into more glasses. Hands grabbed tussocks of bread. Salad was passed. The sunset tie-dyed the sky outside and splashed the room. Forks, floors, walls and skin were spattered with gold. We are so lucky, Mina thought.

  Theo proposed a toast. “To the happy couple! I’m only sorry I couldn’t make it to the wedding. Thank you for being so understanding.”

  He’d called to say he couldn’t come to the wedding only a few days before it began. Some case that just couldn’t be delayed.

  The glasses sang their clinking song.

  Theo addressed Mina. “How’s teaching?”

  Mina had given up the contracts at the three universities where she taught Introductory Latin. They’d accepted her excuse of health problems but had sounded as skeptical as she felt when a student explained his absence as being due to a bad case of Domino’s pizza indigestion.

  “I’m focusing on my research,” she said.

  “How’s that going?”

  “It’s going. You know how it is.”

  Salad leaves were stabbed. The olive oil was passed.

  “Nice wallpaper,” said Phoebe, raising an eyebrow. “You must be Morris fans.”

  The flat was papered in a dark blue and green print. Mina supposed you would call it floral. Between the flowers squatted indigo-eyed birds. A mischievous renter had scribbled eye-patches, monocles and moustaches on a few of the avians.

  “Morris?” Mina asked, looking again at the walls and the pop-eyed birds.

  “That’s a William Morris wallpaper, you know, the designer. I suppose he’s British, maybe not as big a deal in the States.”

  “Or you’re a nerd,” said her brother, reaching over and ruffling that hair. She batted him off, baring her teeth.

  Oscar laughed and said, “We didn’t choose it. Must’ve been my father’s wife.”

  “It’s cute,” Phoebe said. Wine glossed her lower lip.

  “So tell me about it,” Mina said, to keep Phoebe talking. One of Phoebe’s canines tilted jauntily to the side. Mina wanted to see it again. Her own teeth were depressingly orthodontia-ed.

  “William Morris. William Morris.” Phoebe paused to dip her bread into the olive oil. “To be honest, I don’t remember much other than that he was a bit of a socialist and really into medieval stuff. Oh, and his wife fucked around behind his back. Janey was this gangly girl who was an artists’ model for Morris’s best friend. Anyway . . .” Phoebe took a breath and another swallow of wine. Mina felt the Anyway like an arm around her shoulders, as if she and Phoebe were walking down a well-worn path together. “Morris asks her to marry him. And she says yes. She doesn’t come from money and here’s this rich guy. They set up house. They embroider the curtains together and everything. Then Morris’s best friend, the one Janey was modeling for, starts sleeping with her. All their friends know it too. What does Morris do? He potters off to Iceland and waits for it to pass. Can you imagine? Inside he must’ve felt like . . .” Phoebe’s bony hands made a strangling gesture.

  “Pheeb,” Theo said.

  “All right, all right, I’ll behave. Anyway, as a good feminist I should probably be on Janey’s side. She didn’t want to marry some rich lump. But I have a soft spot for cuckolds, being one myself.”

  “Pheeb,” Theo said again.

  She poured herself another glass of wine. “If your husband left you for some slut, you’d have feelings,” she said. “Sorry, I shouldn’t call her a slut. Maybe I should say the brave, independent woman who is sleeping with my soon-to-be ex-husband. Would that be the correct take on it?”

  “Phoebe,” said Theo. “Can you not have a tantrum at table?”

  Phoebe took another long drink and rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. The knuckles came back smudged pink. Mina had the strangest urge to soap the little palm under the tap. It didn’t make sense that someone would leave this person. Even just watching Phoebe drizzle a swirl of balsamic dressing over her salad and lifting a red sphere to her lips made Mina feel like the world might be a bearable place.

  Oscar thought that Phoebe’s face had hardened. He supposed she was twenty-eight now. Twenty-nine? The skin had tightened on her cheeks. And that thin mouth. It was odd to think he’d kissed it less than half a life ago. It had been a summer party at Theo’s house. Her tongue had tasted of sugary Pimm’s, and her soft body had been close to his. His own body had been fresh then too, no
t that he’d realized at the time. Hormones and lust ran like sap up his veins. He’d been scared to tell Theo about the kiss, so hadn’t. Summer ended. They’d gone back to school. For a while, the taste of Pimm’s made him think of that kiss, not with longing or desire but like a man looking at a tree in his garden and thinking, Ah, yes, that is my tree. Finally, he’d moved to America where they didn’t drink Pimm’s, and without the fruity cordial, he didn’t often think of her.

  Did she remember the kiss? He looked again at the thin lip, dusted with flour from the ciabatta. She was divorcing a man Oscar had never even met.

  “I thought we brought champagne.” Phoebe put on a squeaky childish voice, “Didn’t we, biggest brother?”

  “Yes, littlest sister, we did. But I think you’ve had enough of the grape already.”

  Siblings were weird creatures, not quite friends, not quite anything else. There was a savage, cultic whiff about their relations that Oscar didn’t understand. He was thankful that Mina was another only child.

  Phoebe found the champagne and walked across the room with it raised above her head, as if it were a prize. They drank it out of the wine glasses. Oscar and Mina wouldn’t be in England long enough to need champagne flutes. The empty plates lay, tomato seeds congealing on the china.

  “Happy to be back?” Theo asked.

  “Of course, why wouldn’t I be?” Oscar said. Was Theo worried about him? It was hard to tell. They were old friends, but not the kind who gushed about feelings.

  Phoebe’s hand reached around him to take his plate. He grabbed the edge. “Don’t do that,” he said. “You’re the guest.”

  “Exactly. You fed me,” she said. “Now let go.” She rapped his fingers, which still gripped the plate. It stung and he wondered if she’d intended to be so loud, if this was the person that shy girl had grown up to be. She was bending towards him. The thin dress hammocked downwards. No bra then, only shadow and skin. He let go of the plate.

  “I win!” Phoebe said. “I win.” She curtsied to the audience. His fork tinked as she dropped it onto the china. Mina asked if anyone wanted coffee or chamomile tea.

  What did they think of his wife? It was hard to tell. Theo had met her a couple of times, when Oscar had come back to visit his mother, but the two were essentially strangers. It was hard for Oscar to see Mina as someone distinct from his memories of her. When Theo looked at Mina he saw no bridges, no pills, no body sleeping into the afternoon. He’d never been sleepless, trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong. He’d never felt her neck droop as she fell asleep on his shoulder. He’d never sat in a parking lot holding her and watching the Perseid meteors melt across the sky. Or witnessed a smile break from tears. Mina was a person like any other to Theo.

  Somehow, the conversation wiggled back to the wedding.

  Theo leaned back. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone and the hair tufted out. “So your dad gave the best-man speech?”

  Oscar nodded. The speech had been short. Something about pride. Something about happiness. Something about luck. After Theo’s last-minute cancellation, Oscar could’ve asked a friend from college, but that would have rubbed in that they were second choice, so he’d gone with the man who knew his bastard son in a largely professional capacity. As a boy, Oscar had never really missed his father. Once he was at school, he didn’t miss his mother either. He loved her, worried about her alone in that cottage, but didn’t miss her. He’d always had a sense of himself as being on a solo journey. A ball lobbed against a clear sky does not miss the hand that threw it.

  Mina was the first person he could imagine missing so he’d married her. He hadn’t understood then that you could marry someone, live with her and miss her anyway.

  Theo said, “I’d started writing my speech, and now it’ll never be heard. Well, not unless this lovely lady tires of you and you have to find wife number two.”

  “Oscar’s rarely boring,” Mina said. She smiled in that way where her eyes arched in happiness.

  “Or you could give it a go now,” Phoebe said.

  Theo rubbed his chin theatrically. “Let me see. The speech opened with the first time I saw Oscar kiss a girl.”

  “No one wants to hear that,” Oscar said.

  “I do!” Mina waved a hand in the air.

  “I’m sure I’ve told you already,” Oscar said.

  Theo coughed. “It was one of those school socials. They filled the gym with disco lights and S Club 7 hits. We were thirteen and the only thing to drink was Tesco cola in plastic cups. Though someone snuck in a couple of those airplane bottles of vodka stolen from his dad. The school was all boys. The girls got bussed in. There were these strips of paper. You wrote your email on them and tried to give them to as many girls as possible. This was before any of us had mobiles.”

  Phoebe banged a palm on the table. “The kiss, get to the kiss!”

  “Okay, so the real challenge was to see if you could pull a girl.”

  “Pull?” Mina asked.

  “Snog. French kiss. Make out. It was what we were calling it that year. The trick was to get a girl to slow-dance, move your face close to hers and go for it. Oscar was doing so well with this girl in a green tube top. She had the beginnings of boobs, which, believe me, was a precious quality at the time.”

  Oscar interrupted. “You remember this too well. It’s disturbing.”

  “Hey, I was thirteen. My best mate was about to pull. All of you stop interrupting. So Oscar, he gets right up close. All her friends are barely dancing, they’re watching and flicking their hair. Our lot were wondering if any of her mates would be up for it and tallying how much time was left before the girls were packed back into their bus. And my mate here. He freezes. Just stops.”

  Oscar remembered the way the lights flashed on the faces in the onlooking circle. Inside his stomach, the school dinner had pulsed along with the music. His lips found the girl’s mouth. It was unexpectedly sticky. Gloss? Cola? He’d pressed his tongue onwards until it hit a wall of teeth. The tongue stopped there, pressed against the enamel ridges. The week before, he’d smoked his first cigarette and he’d almost put it in the wrong way round, filter tip out. Theo had mocked him for that. The girl was worse. The cigarette had had no idea what was happening. The girl had her hard teeth and her closed eyes. Green powder was pasted over the lids. He hadn’t known where to go. Should he fight his way past the incisors? Paint them with his tongue? He’d stopped. Beyond the round slope of the girl’s cheek, he’d seen Theo’s face watching him fail. He’d fled, hiding in the gym toilet until the night was over.

  To Theo he said, “On second thought, I think I should have written that client a thank-you note for keeping you away from the wedding.” Oscar tried to make his laugh sound as genuine as Mina’s. She jangled with amusement.

  “Oh, that’s adorable,” Phoebe said.

  “Don’t worry, he more than made up for the errors of his youth, once we got to sixth form.” Theo laughed and glanced at his watch. “Oscar had youthful indiscretions aplenty but, sadly, I must love you and leave you as I have an early start tomorrow.” He drained his coffee cup.

  Mina was surprised it was time for their guests to go. She glanced out of the window. All the lights in the Travelodge had blinked themselves to sleep. Oscar let out a thick yawn.

  Theo kissed her on both cheeks. The slight stubble was rough. This was Europe, Mina thought. They kissed here.

  Phoebe squeezed Mina in a hug. Without letting go, she said, “We’ll see each other again soon. Yeah?” The breath was warm against Mina’s cheek, more kiss-like than whatever Theo had dabbed against her face. Mina smelled champagne and the last breath of perfume.

  Mina couldn’t think where they’d see each other again. Then she realized it was an invitation. She nodded. “Yes. Yes. I’d like that.”

  Mina’s eyelids opened slowly. The lashes stuck together. She rubbed her face, pushing away flecks of sleep dust. The crescents under her eyes were wet. Her nose felt blocked.
Her head hurt. She’d been crying in her sleep again. What was there to cry about? The nightmare hovered beyond reach.

  From another room came Oscar’s grunts. “Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two . . .”

  He must already be back from his run. Oscar ran almost every morning. When he was worried about over-straining his knees, he’d take his skipping rope into the park. Sometimes, she used to go with him to watch. He did repetition after repetition as the rope spun over his head. Sitting on a bench, she’d sing him old playground songs.

  “Fortune teller please tell me

  what my husband’s name will be:

  A?

  B?

  C?

  D?”

  He’d ignore her, the rope whipping overhead, but always he’d let it drop on O. And she’d laugh. Then he’d start up again.

  But lately, she was too tired to get up with him. She didn’t want to start the day earlier than she had to. And he’d stopped offering to take her, letting her hide inside sleep.

  Sunlight spread-eagled across Oscar’s empty side of the bed. She touched the imprint of his head. A black hair curled there. She picked up this vestige of her husband. The Victorians kept the hair of the dead. Should she have lopped off a chunk of her bleached mess for Oscar? A considerate suicide might argan-oil it first. He wouldn’t find that funny, would he? Who would? Anyway, dust was partly human skin and they’d lived together since the summer after college. He’d inhaled years of Mina. Tiny particles of her swirled in his lungs.

  “Three, four, five . . .”

  Oscar must’ve started a new exercise. How long had she been lying there? In the bathroom, Mina splashed water on her face. She shoved the toothbrush over her teeth, put in her contacts, and paused. Her pillbox wasn’t there. Of course not. No more pills. The habit of more than a decade ghosted her limbs.

  Mina swirled peppermint mouthwash and spat. Walking to the kitchen, she found her husband dangling in the doorway. Oscar hung from a pull-up bar. His body compressed into a ball, then stretched into a line. Dot, dash, dot, dash, dot, dash, dot. What did that say in Morse code? Sweat glossed the back of his neck.