Starling Days

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

  After he’d gone away, his mother had bought a cottage up near Inverness where she continued her work, receiving recordings first by post, then by email. Oscar’s watch told him he’d been in plank position for four minutes. His abdomen trembled. He held it. The ache gripped his legs. Pain endurance is power. Pain endurance is power. Pain endurance is power. Endurance is power. Pain is power. Endurance is pain. Power is pain. Pain is power.

  “Please excuse the delay. The cow is proving uncooperative. We are working with the farmer to resolve this as quickly as possible.”

  He dropped to his knees. The carpet was rough. Eventually the train shuffled forward, the cow removed.

  His mother was under the station clock, staring up at its iron hands. Her own were thrust into the pockets of her waxed jacket.

  “Mum,” he called.

  “My prodigal one.” She grinned and opened her arms. She’d called him that since he’d gone away to school. When she was a little melancholic or Pinot-tipsy, “my prodigal sweetheart.” He hugged her, his lips dabbing her cheek. Somewhere along the line, holding his mother had begun to seem strange. Her body was so puny and unknown. He patted her back. The jacket was rain-damp.

  “Where’s Mina?” His mother looked around him for the shape of his wife among bodies seeping down the platform.

  “Afraid it’s just me. She has an appointment in town.”

  His mother did not ask about the appointment. She’d always been big on privacy. The morning after his wedding, he’d appeared alone at the breakfast laid out for those who’d stayed the night in the cabins. He’d told everyone that Mina was sleeping off the night before. His mother had never pressed him. Almost as soon as he could talk, she’d taught him, “Ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. Close your mouth and you’ll catch no flies.” She nattered happily on most subjects, but if she didn’t want to discuss a topic she wouldn’t.

  He followed her to the car. As the key rotated, Radio 4 buzzed on. Voices poured into the car. By the time they escaped Inverness, Oscar could tell it was a game show and that the presenter thought himself hilarious. They drove past cows of uncertain stubbornness and black-nosed sheep. The car left the main road, swerving onto the old one-lane track.

  Oscar and Mina visited Scotland every other Christmas, when the beech trees were bare and rain mulched the ground. The landscape looked more cheerful now, seams of blue hanging between the clouds. The cottage hovered at the edge of a beech wood whose leaves were going beer-bottle brown. The red door and windowsills were jolly against the old sandstone walls. But he’d never understand why his mother had chosen this part of the world. All she’d said was that it was cheap, and it didn’t make any sense to stay in London while he was away at school, did it?

  The building was so isolated. Of course, the supermarket delivery driver, the postman, his mum’s church group, her Red Squirrel Society friends all came by. She’d told him about the biscuits they ate or didn’t and who was gluten-free. But these people seemed as unreal as characters on the side of a cereal box.

  She fiddled with a loop of keys. “Darling, I should let you know that I said I’d host the poetry book club tomorrow. We’re reading Larkin this week, whiny little bugger. Wasn’t my choice, of course. Give me Hopkins any day. For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings . . . Well, you know how it goes. So, the girls will be around. They’d love to meet you.”

  The door swayed open and he saw again the rubber boots she kept for him, the old hat stand, and the doormat cut to look like a pine forest.

  “Are you going to compliment me on my new glasses or what?” she asked.

  They were big, round and lemon yellow.

  “They’re mad.”

  She grinned so widely he could see the glint of the gold tooth at the very back. The tooth she’d had replaced before there were resins and which, when he was small, she’d told him was her pirate tooth.

  Mina saw the sign sail into view through the Tube window: Angel. The station’s name was fantastical. Angel! It sounded unreal. Outside, the road was heavy with cars. The sun slanted and the cars glittered. Perhaps there was an angelic dash in the air. The café was empty, apart from a bald man whose head gleamed like sucked candy. Through a tall window, she glimpsed the courtyard that Phoebe had mentioned by text.

  “I’m waiting for someone. Is it okay if I sit?” she asked the girl at the counter. Iron tables and chairs clustered in the courtyard. Above them, a tree cradled the sky. Mina chose a seat in the shade. The sound of recorded piano music burbled from the café’s open window.

  Mina closed her eyes to better feel the sun. A breeze ran through the tree, and the leaves applauded. She did not want to check her phone. It might tell her Phoebe wasn’t coming. She eased one eye open. Two women settled at the next-door table. Their heads tilted towards each other. Points of gold danced in the older woman’s ears. She nodded again and again as she spoke. What was so agreeable?

  Mina told herself that the moment she was sure Phoebe wouldn’t come Phoebe would arrive. She wondered how long it took to push out all hope. Was the memory of hoping a form of hope? The question was overblown. This was, after all, just tea with a woman and a dog.

  It was so long since a girl had made Mina feel like this.

  Mina’s first crush was the first girl to get breasts in their year at school. She had worn her top three buttons undone. A mole hung perched above her cleavage. It was the color of a park bench gone dark with rain. Mina had spent three years wanting to kiss the mole, to feel the gentle bud of it on her bottom lip. She never spoke to the girl. The girl, now woman, had recently been profiled in Forbes for a feature on young professionals. Staring at the magazine, Mina had tried to map where the mole was hiding.

  The second was Mina’s roommate in freshman year. This girl talked in her sleep. She wore fake eyelashes to class but didn’t shave her legs all winter. “No one’s going to see them,” the girl always said. The roommate had nightmares and afterwards she’d crawl into Mina’s bed, wearing only boxer shorts and a loose T-shirt. The hairs tickled Mina’s legs and made her think of coral fronds reaching out for her skin. It was that year that Mina had first thought of her own topiary as optional. The bed was boosted two feet to make room for Mina’s books, shoes, and cereal bars underneath. On the thin mattress, they spooned precariously. Later that girl found a girlfriend to cuddle in the night, and Mina wondered, Why not me?

  The third was studying jewelry at the art school—a tall girl with two lip rings. She made tiny glass abstracts that seemed too delicate to wear. She’d asked Mina to model a pair of earrings, and Mina had felt those careful fingers raise a blush on each lobe. The feeling had been so intense that she’d fidgeted, jiggling toes and drumming fingers. The girl had had to ask her to sit still. Mina had been so full of longing that she was sure if she said anything at all the girl would run and run and never look back. At a party hosted in that girl’s room Mina had met Oscar.

  She’d told him about all these women over a dinner of pizza in his dorm room. He’d smiled indulgently. Sometimes, as they fucked, he described another woman touching Mina. He described the things that that other woman might do with lips and blindfolds, as fantastical as bodice-ripping. In cafés, he’d lean towards Mina and ask, “Her?” nodding towards a swishing skirt. Mina had never done anything about it so it wasn’t quite real to either of them. She guessed it never would be.

  Phoebe must have forgotten the date. Mina thought of the quiet filling the apartment. She’d go back. She’d meditate. Wasn’t that what crazy people did when they were trying to become uncrazy?

  “Hi!” Phoebe was followed by a hillock of fur. As it got closer, Mina saw the flapping tongue. Phoebe looped a leash around the chair. Should Mina stroke the animal? It looked suspiciously up at her. “They take orders at the counter,” Phoebe said. “Can I get you anything?”

  “I’ll get it.” Mina wanted to say thank you, thank you for showing
up today when you must already have so many people who want your time, your attention.

  “I invited you out.”

  Mina gave in to the pleasure of being bought a drink. Phoebe returned with Mina’s green tea and a latte, bouffant with foam. She settled in her chair, lifted the cup with both hands, and pecked at the froth. “They do the best matcha lattes here. Want to try?”

  Mina did, kissing the soft milk. The foam collapsed as her lips touched it.

  “Good, right?” Phoebe said.

  Mina was presented with a full view of Phoebe’s face. It had the burnish of skin seen underwater. Phoebe belonged among reeds and minnows on a clear day, soaking in lake-light.

  As their drinks cooled, they handed across biographical information like a game of Go Fish—matching factoids. They were both more tea-drinkers than coffee-chuggers. Mina’s dentist had told her that coffee, tea and soy sauce all stained the teeth. “It was like he wanted to take all the joy out of my life.”

  Phoebe asked, “Do you remember the stickers they used to give you for going when you were a kid? You know, with pictures of teeth or dinosaurs. They should have that for adults.”

  “Adult stickers?”

  “Or loyalty cards or those bottles of booze they give you on planes.”

  “That doesn’t seem very dentisty.”

  “Maybe a mint liqueur?”

  Phoebe seemed different than at dinner. Her face was smiling, but her hands curled on her lap. When Mina didn’t reply immediately, Phoebe laughed, and the sound was like dropped pennies spilling over the pavement. Her eyes hovered here and there over the top of Mina’s ears. Was it possible that Phoebe was nervous?

  There was a pause and Mina noticed that the piano music had changed to the husk of a singer’s voice.

  “Anyway, how’s Oscar?”

  “Oh, he’s visiting his mother.”

  “I never realized they were close.”

  Mina paused, unsure how to explain her husband’s relationship to his mother. He spoke to her on the phone regularly. He worried about her living alone, although the woman seemed glint-eyed and happy.

  Phoebe added, “I mean, he spent most summers at our place.”

  How had Oscar not mentioned this girl? Oscar always spoke of Theo as his oldest friend. All three must have run through long grass, batted tennis balls, got lost in the woods.

  “How long have you known Oscar?” Mina asked.

  “Umm . . . I must’ve been ten so he would’ve been thirteen.” Phoebe smiled into the memory. “He was such an awkward kid. He had this baby-giraffe look that made you want to pet him.” She blushed the faintest pink. Mina might have missed it if she’d been less interested in Phoebe’s face. Phoebe gave an awkward shrug. “You know what I mean,” she added.

  Mina nodded but, to her, Oscar had always seemed so certain. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes angry, always certain. She tried to see her husband as a delicate beast. A thought shivered into existence.

  “Did you ever? Were you two ever? You know . . . I don’t mind. But I’m curious. He never told me much about growing up here.” She’d been so certain she knew Oscar. She’d found him his hairdresser, bought his underwear, balled his socks, fallen asleep to the thud of his snores. But there was this gap in her knowledge, an empty folder with Phoebe’s name on it.

  “Oh. No. Nothing like that. Theo would’ve killed me. Though I guess he wants to kill me now anyway.” She slumped. “But, like, where am I supposed to go? London is so expensive. I’m a culture and lifestyle blogger. I can’t not be in London.”

  Mina didn’t quite understand what bloggers did or how they survived. Phoebe continued, “Boarder since I was eight. Supposed to make you independent. Look at me now, living on my brother’s sofa.”

  What to say to that? Mina couldn’t tell Phoebe what independence was or how to get it. Her husband barely trusted her to be alone. Mina had not been to boarding school and the words conjured wizards and beautiful boys in starched cricket outfits, long hair falling over their eyes.

  “God, I shouldn’t have let you get the teas.” Mina looked into the bottom of the cup where five specks of green lay, having escaped the pot. No fortune revealed itself in the leaves.

  “Oh, don’t. One tea isn’t going to make a difference. But I can’t quite believe this is my life. Do you know what I mean? Sorry, I’m waffling. You don’t want to hear this.” Mina did. Mina wanted to hear everything. But Phoebe leaned forwards and said, “I’m being disgustingly self-centered. Tell me about you. What are you working on?”

  Mina thought about the happiness list. I’m working on being happy seemed like a statement reserved for yoga retreats and drunken confessions. Instead, she began to talk about the monograph she was supposedly writing. Did Phoebe know how hard it was for a woman to make it through a myth alive?

  “Monograph,” Phoebe asked.

  “Like a long essay. Sorry, I’m used to academia speak.”

  Phoebe said, “Tell me about one of them. One of your survivors.”

  Mina flicked through her brain for one Phoebe might enjoy. There was Lavinia, whose hair catches fire, but survives to marry and bear the sons of Rome. Meh. Lavinia had about as much personality as one of the deer munched upon by her husband-to-be. Psyche might count. Maybe Phoebe would like Psyche.

  “Psyche is a princess so stunning that even Venus, the goddess of beauty, is jealous. She can’t bear to have Psyche live so she sends her son, Cupid, to kill the girl. But Psyche is so hot that Cupid falls for her. He sneaks her into a mansion deep in the woods. She doesn’t know who he is or what he is, only that she’s been kidnapped. Each day the sun sets and a warm body slips into her bed. It holds her, it touches her, and its lips by her ear say that she must never see her lover in the light. She fears he is a monster. Finally overcome by curiosity, she lifts a lamp to his face. It’s Cupid, chiseled jaw and all. She immediately falls for him. He’s furious that she disobeyed and flies off in a sulk. Psyche searches the world for him.” Phoebe sipped her tea, her face too unknown to parse. Mina sped along past the trials Psyche faced. “Finally, they reconcile. She’s beautiful and good. They get married and she is made a goddess. Ta-da! Happy ending. But I guess I wonder . . . Are you still you if you become a goddess?”

  “Psyche and Cupid, that’s cute,” Phoebe said. “A marriage of mind and heart.”

  It took Mina a moment to understand. But in the Greek Psyche’s name meant something closer to breath than to brain. She tried to explain. Just then the dog began to whine. His keening was high-pitched, like a radiator bleeding.

  The poetry club arrived in Range Rovers. They wore cardigans and art jewelry. Oscar supposed women like this were to be found all over the world, buried even in these craggy hills. They squeezed his arm and told him he was a good boy for visiting. He nodded, though he sensed they did not expect a reply any more than they expected the spaniels who followed at their feet to chitchat about the weather.

  He excused himself to jog over sheep tracks in the marshy fields. When he returned, they had driven off, leaving behind only cake crumbs and a pile of mugs in the sink.

  His body felt pleasantly used and stretched. Burrs clung to his socks. He picked the seeds off one by one and lined the green fuzz balls along the grain of the pine table.

  In a minute, he’d get online and email a few more decorators. “Could you refill the bird feeder?” his mother asked. She was standing with her back to him pouring olive oil over pimple-skinned chicken. “I know they don’t really need it at this time of year but they expect it now. The seeds are under the sink. The feeder’s round the other side of the house.”

  Oscar found the bag of sunflower seeds. He lifted it with his left hand. The right had not quite healed and was inadequately covered by the pink plaster he’d pasted across it. He still couldn’t quite absorb that Mina had done this to him. It was an accident, yes, but not the sort of accident that happened in other people’s marriages.

  The trees strok
ed lilac shadows across the ground. Inverness cut a golden stripe into the horizon line. A shimmering strip of dinners being cooked, TVs nattering, a whole city settling in for Saturday evening. So, this was what his mother saw when she looked up from her desk. This and, apparently, birds. The shutters were open. He peered inside. A stack of papers lay beside her laptop. The hunched lamp was off. The air smelled of clean water with a dash of salt, perhaps rising from the firth. A cow moaned goodnight. He thought of those clocks with a dial for different time zones—London, New York, Tokyo, Beijing. No clock would ever bear the name of this damp hill.

  As he was thinking, he must have moved the bag of seeds because pain stung across his right hand. He let go and the bag thumped to the ground. Mina. Mina had cut him. The thought ached. He should text her, but he didn’t want to. Not now. He had nothing useful to say to his wife. God, there must be some new therapy they could try—mindfulness, sophrology, CBT. People were always saying yoga saved their lives.

  His hand itched. It wasn’t like she’d tried to stab him. Only, well, he hadn’t expected his wife to cut him. It had been going so well. She’d seemed happy. He’d thought this experiment could work. He told himself to man up. His mother had asked him to fill the bird feeder: he could do that.

  The feeder was a tube of wire mesh covered at both ends with green plastic. Careful of his palm, he wrenched the cap. It stuck. He tried again. This time it came away. Sunflower seeds swarmed into the feeder.

  His mother had put the chicken in the oven and was opening packets of crinkle-cut carrots. “Thanks, darling. The arthritis in my wrist’s been playing up again.”

  Was that why the carrots were pre-chopped? She’d always said those were a rip-off. “Again, Mum? How often is this happening?”

  “I told you about it.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I told you I was taking on less work because my wrists were sore.”

  “That wasn’t a temporary thing? You’re not working?”

  “Oh, don’t look like that. I’m fine. My wrists just get sore.”