Starling Days

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

  The binder took up most of the desk. With each flip the plastic pages made the sharp smack of a kiss. He thought, with amusement, his card was probably in somebody else’s folder. After Oscar had changed his name to Umeda, his father sent him new business cards. They arrived in a long box. It was as heavy as a small dumbbell. The paper was thick. Umeda Trading, it said on one side. And then on the other his new name: Oscar Umeda.

  It implied something sacred was being preserved, in the same way that the butcher Coleridge & Sons made you think of young boys learning to chop pigs at their father’s feet, their sons after them chopping the descendants of those pigs. He’d propped one up at the edge of his desk. When Mina got back from teaching, she demanded one to keep in her wallet for no other reason than that she wanted to have this thing of his with her. He’d thought, This is my family.

  As he flipped the pages of the business-card binder, carefully transcribing names and telephone numbers, he kept thinking about Mina. Did she still have that card in her wallet? Perhaps he could still care for her without being married to her. He’d pay alimony or an allowance. But he wouldn’t be responsible for loving her and holding her. He wouldn’t fall asleep next to her wondering if the next day might be the day she chose to vanish.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if some day he was the only Umeda. A name wasn’t such a heavy thing to carry.

  Phoebe was working. It didn’t look like work. But Mina had been told that it was necessary that Phoebe be online. Liking a certain number of posts was required. It was imperative that she left a certain number of comments. Blogging was a community you had to give back to. You had to be friendly. To be friendly online, you had to be unfriendly offline. Phoebe hunched over the laptop. She was wearing one of Oscar’s shirts. It exposed the delicate scaffolding of her collarbones. Her freckled feet poked out from under crossed legs. She lit another cigarette, sucking hard from the side of her mouth. She’d had two just that morning. The stubs lay in a water glass that balanced uncertainly on the arm of the sofa.

  Phoebe glanced up. “Stop watching me. I can’t concentrate.”

  “I wasn’t. I was thinking.” Mina turned away. She had her own laptop to weigh her down. She’d been contacted by one of the universities she taught at regularly. A member of faculty who was supposed be teaching next term had received a large grant and wanted to head to Sicily. Could Mina cover for him? It was only one university gig but it was a beginning. Hopefully, she’d be able to get her old classes back next year. Ms Davies had also written back.

  Yes! We’d love to have you. When can you start?

  Each word had zinged gloriously along Mina’s spine.

  In their bedroom, the painters were at work. The sound of the radio covered the lick of the brushes. The station pumped out the same hit every quarter-hour. The beat bounced Mina’s marrow. Phoebe had headphones on, but as the radio repeated itself, she cast an irritated look over her shoulder.

  “Shall I make us lunch?” Mina asked.

  “I think I’ll go to a café. I work better alone.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “And I’m meeting a friend for dinner so don’t expect me back for a bit.”

  “Sure.” Mina tried to keep her voice relaxed and casual.

  Phoebe shut her laptop. A shiny vinyl sticker adorned the front. It proclaimed the name of her website in a swooshing calligraphic font. She pushed the headphones down so they collared her neck. She walked to the basket of fresh laundry that Mina had done that morning and pulled out her socks. She tucked her left foot inside, adjusting the jeans to preserve their line. As Phoebe put on the right sock, Mina had a terrible intuition that she’d never see the freckled toes again. She tried and failed to remember their precise dotted distribution. Impossible. A simpler task would be to record the height of anklebone from heel. As high as Mina’s thumb?

  “I’ve been thinking. Can you not come to the restaurant when I’m working? It’s distracting.”

  “In a good way?” Mina tried to sound flirtatious.

  Phoebe yanked her Scandinavian backpack from the door-hook. She removed some receipts from the bottom, smoothing them neatly and leaving them aside. Then she began to fill the backpack, starting with the laptop.

  “It helps,” Mina said. “It helps to see you.”

  “Helps with what?” Phoebe seemed to be looking for something, her eyes darting all over the room.

  “Sometimes I get sad.”

  Phoebe grabbed her camera and placed it inside the backpack.

  “And when I see you, my insides lift. It pulls me upwards. Oh, I don’t know.” Phoebe’s expression seemed either pitying or incredulous. Mina kept trying. “You keep it out.”

  “Keep what out?” Phoebe undid her ponytail and shook out her hair.

  “This feeling I used to have.” How was she supposed to tell Phoebe about wanting to die? She could say that, statistically speaking, after two attempts she was more likely than not to be her own undoing. But she didn’t want to freak Phoebe out. “You make me happy,” Mina said. “You’re like . . . you’re like good weather. You know how everything is easier when the sun’s out? You’re like that.”

  “The sun is a giant ball of burning gas. Too much of it will give you cancer.” Phoebe pulled on a green raincoat that brought out the pink of her lips. “If divorce has taught me one thing, it’s that people don’t fix each other.”

  And then Phoebe left. It wasn’t forever. Not yet. Benson was curled up in the corner. The tips of the bow tie were just visible under his fluff. Phoebe wouldn’t vanish without him.

  The song vibrated again through the apartment. Mina decided to be happy. They said being happy made you smile, but that smiling also made you happy. Surely dancing would pump joy through the arteries. As the song surged, she began. Her dancing was just a sway of hips and hair. It was a wiggle of fingers and a shake of the elbows. She danced as if showing off, though whether for Oscar or Phoebe or the gynecologist only the air knew. In the bedroom Ed and Tomek were hard at work, but here Benson watched her with wet eyes. She tried to think only of the song. Everyone was dancing to it that month. It was being played in gyms and restaurants. It was being played in New York. It was being played in cabs and in the short distance between earbuds and ear canal. As she danced, she must be with all those people. All their happiness.

  It wasn’t until the lights of the Travelodge had almost all blinked off that Mina gave in. The computer, which remembered her old vices, autofilled. How to make a n became How to make a noose. The voice on the video explained the Ichabod knot. The voice was even. It repeated itself. It told her how ranchers had used the knot to tie cattle to posts. A different voice on a different video said a traditional noose had thirteen loops, but you wouldn’t need that many. That was just superstition. A thirteen-loop rope would be very long. Mina had no length of cord. But her hands danced the second dance of the day, her fingers folding over fingers, miming the steps that would be needed.

  She wasn’t planning on anything. It was just a comfort to know you could escape.

  Tissuey light fell over Phoebe’s sleeping face. Her lips hung slightly open. Mina had seen fish lying on ice, their mouths spread. The pink inside the sea bass was the same as the pink inside Phoebe. Though Phoebe would not taste of sea and salt but of sleep-musted life. Mina wished she could lie there and be content in this. Under the lids Phoebe’s eyes moved, watching a scene Mina would never see. Sleeping, Phoebe nestled closer. Her breath pushed across Mina’s lips.

  Mina had once thought she’d write about an obscure passage of Ovid. The story of Iphis and Anaxarete. Once a common boy, Iphis saw the noble Anaxarete. He became obsessed. Legend did not tell if it was due to the sweep of fabric over her rounded behind or her young body slim as an unlit candle. Every day he brought flowers to her door. He begged her nurse to pass on his compliments, but she didn’t reciprocate. Legend didn’t specify the flowers. Lilies for purity? Poppies for the undoing of purity? Did she step over the wilted
petals or did they adhere to the pad of her sandal? She never spoke to him and yet he wanted her. So, one night he stole to her door and hanged himself from the lintel he’d once garlanded. He left a note to the effect that he hoped she enjoyed this offering more than what he’d left before. He told her he loved her but that her heart was unfeeling metal. He did not explain why he loved a girl he called cruel. His body wilted from the rope, like a bloated bloom. The next day, her servants removed the corpse. Iphis was carried through the streets. As she watched the boy, who would finally torment her no more, poor Anaxarete was turned to stone. For some reason, of all the burnt, tortured, transformed girls of legend, it was Anaxarete who had stuck in Mina’s mind. Perhaps because it was not a god she had defied but a lone boy and his hungry body. Mina had tried to hold back the roar of despair. She’d tried to think instead of the women who survived.

  What would Phoebe make of the legend? And what would have happened if Anaxarete had given in? Would Iphis’s desire have burned on? Would he always have been afraid that she’d change her mind and slip away? Or would she slowly have become commonplace? A snorer. A sniffler. A wife like any other.

  Mina reached out to touch the faint wrinkle that framed Phoebe’s mouth. Phoebe groaned and shuffled deeper under the sheets.

  Mina climbed out of bed. She sawed two slices of bread and placed them on the oven rack. Her phone lay charging next to the microwave. She flicked through her emails as the smell of warm sourdough rose. Various New York establishments wanted to tell her about their newest promotions.

  An email from Oscar: I arrive Thurs.

  Oscar coming back. It seemed so unlikely. He’d been gone for almost a month. Phoebe had updated her blog five times.

  Mina poured coffee beans into the grinder. The beans had been recommended by Phoebe’s blog. The grinder roared under her fist. Oscar was coming back. Oscar would walk into this flat. He hadn’t given a flight number or time. In the past he’d always forwarded her his itinerary details so that she wouldn’t worry. As if knowing the number of a flight would keep it in the air.

  She pulled open the oven, angling out the toast. Phoebe’s French butter nestled on the refrigerator shelf. She removed it. The butter had gone hard. Mina scraped it against the toast, which cracked under the force of the knife.

  Benson trotted into the kitchen and barked hungrily up at her. She ran the wing of the butter knife over her fingers. Kneeling, she let his tongue slap her skin. His dog-breath was sour, similar to hangover-breath. She’d have to wash her hands. He seemed to enjoy it no more and no less than margarine.

  “Do you ever miss them? Your old owners?” she asked.

  He tilted his head as if considering her point. She pasted more butter over her fingers. It was good to have this animal love her for a minute. His body was created to love, from his golden ruff to his wine-dark eyes. Imagine being in this world only to love.

  She put the two pieces of toast onto a plate, waited for the coffee to filter, then carefully walked to their bedroom. Phoebe had kicked off the covers, revealing swathes of leg and fire-freckle feet.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

  After Phoebe had eaten, she seemed in a gentler mood. It was a Saturday and the decorators weren’t coming. They could spend all morning in a tangle of limbs. She’d have to tell Phoebe that Oscar was coming back. But not yet. Not when she was smiling and licking crumbs of toast from the side of her mouth. Mina couldn’t think of the right way to say it. She looked down at her hands and saw the wedding ring wrapping her finger. There had never been a right moment—a definitive moment—to remove the swirl of golden leaves. Or there had been, but she’d missed it. Or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to lose this last proof that her husband had loved her, had chosen her, had wanted her to be his. Carefully she took it off, her hands working under the table and out of Phoebe’s vision. She slid it into her pocket, where it pressed accusingly against her hip.

  “Can we go see that ring?” Mina asked. “The one in the V&A? You could do a jewelry post. I bet your readers would like that.” Hadn’t Phoebe said the lover’s rings were more beautiful than the husband’s? Perhaps in the museum she might see there were different types of love.

  *

  The jewelry room was pearled, silvered, glittered, gilded. Mina had the impression of a lurid night sky. School groups goggled at the expensive stars.

  Phoebe’s eyes trailed over the brightness. Mina skimmed the sober descriptions of the hoard. The jewels had been bought, stolen, given from, to and by poets, artists, wives and queens. Mina didn’t notice the ring until Phoebe stopped in front of it. It was simple. So simple that it seemed only one more link on the chain from which it hung. 1858 was engraved into the 22-carat gold, the year Janey had married William. The panel below declared in bland serif that Dante Gabriel Rossetti was in love with Janey and that much of the jewelry on display was from him. Rossetti had given her gold filigree, citrine, emeralds, rubies, a plaited gold Burmese bangle. The gifts of lover and husband were entombed together—husband left and lover right. As they lay by a riverbank, did Rossetti wrap his teeth around her finger, tugging off the wedding band? Did he transform ring finger to a plain finger, long and white and lovely?

  Mina said, “I once thought I’d get my wedding ring tattooed. Nothing fancy, just a simple black line on my left ring finger.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Phoebe splayed her own empty hand in front of her.

  “Oscar didn’t want to. He didn’t feel like a tattoo sort of person. Then it felt silly to do it by myself.”

  Phoebe’s mouth slid into a side-smile. “Well, there’s a metaphor for marriage if I ever heard one. Two people not doing something together.”

  Children poured around them in a blue-shirted, clipboard-clutching army.

  “Oscar’s coming back,” Mina said.

  Phoebe said nothing and looked fixedly into the display. To the left of the wedding ring was a box just wider than a pack of cards. It was gold with a glass window. Inside, William Morris’s hair was whirled into a ring. She stared at the hair of the dead man whose wife didn’t love him. Perhaps that was the reward for being a famous artist and thinker: people remembered how he’d been betrayed.

  “Say something,” Mina asked.

  “You told me he left.”

  “He did.”

  “He’s coming back, though?” Phoebe drummed a finger on the display case. Mina waited for an alarm but nothing happened.

  “The apartment is his father’s,” Mina said. How many of these jewels were apologies? How many were promises? “It’s nothing to do with me,” she added. “He’s not coming back for me.” But the words came out wrong, all maudlin and not reassuring.

  Oscar would have written differently if he was. He would’ve asked if she was okay.

  The door of one of the beachfront houses opened and a woman emerged. Her Lycra leggings shimmered as her glutes stretched and compressed. Her feet cut delicate triangles into the sand. Oscar felt his jogging pace pick up to match hers.

  “Wait,” his father’s voice came from behind him. Oscar turned. His father raised a hand in the international symbol for stop. His mouth hung open and Oscar could see the slab of his tongue, as thick and pink as a heart.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” His father bent over as he panted.

  Oscar ran through the symptoms of angina in his head: sweatiness, shortness of breath, pain in the chest, nausea. “Are you sure?”

  “Mmm . . . Water?”

  Oscar was carrying the water bottle. He unscrewed the cap and pushed it into his father’s grip. His father chugged. The color in his neck was bright and uneven.

  “Need to sit,” his father said, and did so on a log of salt-white driftwood.

  Oscar asked again, “Are you sure?”

  His father reached into the pocket of his sweatpants and took out a plastic bottle. He shook out two small orange pills. “Baby aspirin, supposed to take it twice a day. Good for the blood.”<
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  “Okay,” Oscar said, and sat down next to him. He wondered if he should be calling an ambulance. How to tell good sweat from bad? He shouldn’t have been paying so much attention to that curve of ass. The woman ran on, her body shrinking into a slit of shadow. On the log, ants cut busy tracks around their hands.

  “Let’s do this again,” his father said.

  “Sure. Tomorrow? My flight isn’t until the afternoon.”

  “No. I mean after you handle the apartments, we’d like it if you came to stay.”

  “Thanks,” Oscar said, and didn’t remind his father that this plan had already been suggested.

  “Do you remember when we went to the zoo?” his father asked.

  “Yeah,” Oscar said. It had only been the one time. He’d been young, he knew that, but old enough to read the big letters at the entrance, his mouth making the shape of the O. Old enough to know his mother didn’t approve of the zoo or of keeping things in cages. But they’d gone anyway, after his birthday lunch, just him and his father. There’d been a tent of birds zigzagging in the air and a snake that didn’t move at all but lay like something stuffed. Then there had been the tigers. Or was it one tiger? The memory was of molten fur. The window was cut into a brick wall and Oscar stood nose to the pane. The tiger, unlike the snake, did not hide at the back of the cage but came right up close, pacing back and forth in front of the glass. It was so near that Oscar saw each hair of the pelt. The fur was as individually bladed as sunburnt stalks of grass. He put his hand up against the cool glass and watched the fur move behind his fingers. It was almost like stroking. And his father, who had been silent for most of the visit, other than to ask Oscar if he wanted an ice cream, said, “Animals in cages go nuts so they pace back and forth.”