Starling Days

by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

  Oscar had tried to look into the yellow eyes to see the madness but he saw only yellow and orange.

  In the taxi home, his father had asked, “How about you come stay with me and Ami this summer?”

  But Oscar had still been thinking about the tiger’s yellow eyes and wondering if it had gone mad immediately or if it was slow, and what madness was. He knew instinctively that this wasn’t the madness of the Animaniacs or mad professors. The edges of his mouth felt sticky with ice cream. The day had been too cold, and his nose was clogged. He didn’t remember what he’d said, only that he’d thought, No.

  That summer he hadn’t gone to his father’s house but stayed with his mother, listening to the clack of her keys and running his red Hot Wheels racing car along the edges of the floorboards, making clacks of his own.

  “Ami wanted to know . . .” His father looked embarrassed. “Have you thought about a family of your own? Not that we’re not your family . . . What I mean is, are you going to make me a granddad?”

  “It’s complicated with Mina. The doctors say there’s something wrong with her ovaries.”

  “Ah,” his father said. Oscar knew well enough that there were treatments out there, like IVF. For a moment he allowed himself to pretend the only thing wrong with Mina was her reproductive system. Doctors would be consulted until eventually his boy and his girl were born. They’d visit this beach. Their small bodies would run down to the water. They’d hold hands as they stepped into the sea, yelping at the chill. The brother would hold his sister’s hand so she wouldn’t fall. The girl would look like her mother; she’d laugh the way her mother did, with half-closed eyes. But he supposed if he was ever going to have children he’d have to imagine them with new faces. New un-Mina faces.

  Oscar felt the cold seep through his T-shirt. He said to his father, “Yeah, I’ll come back. So you’ll have to keep up the running.”

  His father laughed and said, “がんばりましょう,” and Oscar laughed to hear the words from his father’s mouth and not from the buck teeth of the language app’s animated rabbit. We will do our best. Yes, he thought, we will.

  “Don’t. You’ll smudge me,” Phoebe stepped back to avoid the kiss. Her lipstick was the red of a freshly scraped knee. “Is this your phone charger?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. You can use it. I’m fully charged,” Mina said. Phoebe looked at her like she was very stupid. She dropped the charger on the sofa next to Mina, as if it was a microphone and she were some rock star. The prongs pointed forlornly skywards. Mina thought she should tidy before Oscar showed up. Phoebe had rolled her suitcase into the middle of the room. Oscar wouldn’t like that. Tomorrow. He would be here tomorrow.

  Oscar would be here. Oscar. In her mind she dragged out the syllables of his name. Ohhh-scccarrr. He seemed like someone she’d made up. An imaginary best friend. Even New York seemed made up, a diorama someone had constructed to sell—postcards.

  “I’m going,” Phoebe said, interrupting Mina’s thoughts. Phoebe was wearing earmuffs.

  “Are those new?” Mina asked.

  “Listen, I’m going.”

  “You don’t work tonight.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Mina laughed. She’d tried to tell Phoebe everything that was wrong, and Phoebe hadn’t wanted to know.

  “Mina, it’s not working. And this isn’t right.”

  “I’ll explain to Oscar that we’re . . .”

  “We’re not anything. This was . . . I don’t know what this was. I’m leaving. And I need to know you’re not going to follow me. You’re not going to show up at the restaurant or my brother’s. Or anywhere else. I have enough drama in my life. It’s my fault, really. I thought I deserved something fun. You’re cute but I never wanted anything intense.”

  Phoebe swept a hand to encompass the breadth of the room. The black earmuffs washed her out. As Mina tried to chase Phoebe’s sentences, they skimmed away from her. Phoebe was talking about things being too much. Or Mina being too much. It occurred to Mina that break-ups, like marriages, have scripts. The words were already provided. The memorizing started when you were a kid, before you’d even had your first kiss. You watched it on TV.

  “Is it your husband?” Mina asked.

  Phoebe stopped buttoning her coat. She ran a tongue over those little teeth. She closed her eyes. “No, Mina. It is not my husband.”

  “You know, I don’t think I ever saw a picture of him. What’s this guy you saw fit to marry like?”

  In Mina’s head he was ugly. He had over-plump cheeks and a mop of blond hair, like a cherub. Perhaps that was because Phoebe seemed like the sort of woman who, as a girl, had only had ugly friends. An ugly husband would remind everyone how lovely Phoebe was. No, that wasn’t fair. Beautiful girls who only had beautiful friends would be called cliquey. There was no right sort of friend and there was no right husband for Phoebe. Mina imagined someone tall, someone with abs, and eyes as smooth as sea-glass. No. That would not be better.

  “This isn’t about him,” Phoebe said.

  “What is it about?”

  “Are you really asking me that?” She waved her arms at the walls or at Mina. It wasn’t clear which. The arms were lovely, long and slim, dimpled at the elbows. They were arms you could lose yourself inside. All Mina had wanted was to vanish into this woman’s arms.

  “Oscar did leave,” Mina said. “He did. It wasn’t . . . I just hadn’t . . . But I want you to come back to New York with me. There are museums in New York. There are bloggers in New York.”

  Phoebe clicked out the extendable suitcase handle. “This was supposed to be fun, you know. A fun fling.” Phoebe pulled her tote bag onto her shoulder. “It wasn’t supposed to be more than that.”

  “Stay, please.” Mina didn’t know what she was asking for. But Phoebe couldn’t leave. Every blood vessel in her body rushed along its path.

  “Benson, come on. Come to Mummy,” Phoebe called, and the dog trotted over to her without a backward glance. “Right now, I can’t do anything.” Phoebe paused. “Heavy.”

  Mina went to Phoebe and grabbed the slim, familiar arm. “Please,” she said.

  “Mina, stop it.”

  The kiss slid off Phoebe’s tensed face. Her hair smelled of tobacco.

  “Please,” Mina said again.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve got enough of my own shit to sort out.”

  Phoebe shut the door quietly. The automatic latch clicked to lock.

  “But I ordered pizza,” Mina said. In the empty apartment, her hands opened and closed. Her chest ached. And she wished she had someone to hold, even if that someone was only Benson. His warm fur, brushing against her eyelids. But he was not her dog.

  The pizza arrived in a wide cardboard box. After tipping the delivery guy, she stood in the hall holding it. The grease and heat soaked through the base, stroking her palms. It was almost a comfort.

  The affair, if that’s what it was, wasn’t a month old. Yogurt came with a longer expiration date.

  A breeze blew through the trees and tickled windows. In the hallway, Oscar double-checked his passport. Photobooth-photograph Oscar Umeda looked back at him from behind plastic. Ami hugged him.

  “I wish I could drive you,” she said.

  “It’s better you stay here with Dad,” Oscar replied.

  “Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here. I’m not dead yet.” His father’s hair was wet from the shower, and under the comb-lines were visible the freckles of an old-man skull.

  The lights were off when Oscar arrived. Daylight sliced through the shutters, striping the blank walls. Good, the painting was done. He stepped into the hall. Something gave under his foot, his knee locked, and he grabbed the doorknob for balance. Just a shoe, lying lumpen in the hall. He picked it up and moved it to the side, next to an umbrella he didn’t recognize. The space seemed to have swelled since he’d left. Where was his wife?

  “Mina?” he called into the shadow. No response. Os
car turned on the lights. One was out. He checked the app but, of course, she’d hidden herself from its signal. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and the lights were out. There was a sour smell in the flat.

  The bedroom was dark too. The bed was humped. As he walked closer he saw his wife’s face covered by a mess of hair. Her roots had grown out long and dark. She didn’t move. His lungs swelled against his ribs. “Mina?”

  The smallest movement, a sliding downwards deeper into the bed. There she was. His horizontal wife. On the plane he’d practiced saying, “I don’t think I can help you anymore.”

  As he looked at the shape of his wife, he felt very tired. He told himself that there is always a moment in a run when you think you can’t do it. You start coming up with reasons to stop. But the thing is, if you have the energy to come up with excuses you have the energy to run. All he had to do was tell her.

  “Mina, it’s three o’clock. No, it’s three oh seven.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Get up, Mina. Come on. Get up.”

  “Go away.”

  He wrenched the duvet off. She was wearing jeans, and one sock. Her fly was undone. The lace of her underwear was revealed in the gap. It was weeks since he’d eased the elastic over her hips. Weeks. He sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked her calf. Mina rolled over. Her face was buried in the pillow. Creases of cotton surrounded her skull in exclamation marks.

  He didn’t want to drag her physically from the bed. His back was sore from travel. His head ached. He didn’t want to have a fight. Anyway, it wasn’t like anything could hurt her there. She’d have to get up eventually.

  He flicked all the switches. The sitting room was host to a box of pizza, uneaten. The cheese had gone cold and grease-shiny. More grease had seeped through the cardboard. The assembly smelled of unbrushed teeth. It turned his stomach. As his gut writhed, it reminded him of its presence. He hadn’t eaten on the plane. The food had been all starches.

  He picked up the pizza box, folded it into the trash. He grabbed some paper towels and wiped off the smear of grease that glossed the table. If Ami had decided differently, he might’ve grown up here. He would’ve rolled his Hot Wheels cars over these floorboards. This would be the wall against which he would’ve bounced a tennis ball. That would’ve been the corner he slumped into, Game Boy in hand. He would’ve had two mothers. People said that you married someone like your mother. If he’d had two mothers, he supposed, he would have been like his father, a man who always wanted more. But he had only wanted one wife. Was that so much to ask for?

  In the fridge there was bread—more starch. It would have to do. He turned the oven on to preheat. The orange light glared up at him. A pat of French butter had appeared. Président, slightly salted. Mina had never liked butter. She always chose margarine. She said she didn’t like to think of a milking machine squeezing aching udders. Why would she buy this? He slid the bread onto the metal grille.

  As the oven clanged shut, Mina appeared, wearing the blanket like a cape.

  “You’re awake,” he said. “Do you want some toast?”

  She shook her head and stared at her feet. He saw it was a bear day, the hairs sticking up at all angles.

  Still staring at her toes, she said, “I have a new mole. I found it last night. Here.” She bit her lower lip and pointed at the arch of her chin.

  “I can’t see it.”

  “Look closer.”

  It was flat and smaller than a poppy seed. She might have drawn it on with a single dot of a ballpoint pen.

  “You’re sure it’s not a spot?”

  “It’s not a spot. My spots don’t look like that. Don’t think it’s cancerous. I’m just getting older.” She raised her chin in challenge. He ran a thumb over the dot. He shut his eyes. Behind the red-black of his eyelids, he paused, letting the thumb dwell on her skin. It was as soft as it had ever been. His thumb fitted neatly under her lip. It was a warm furrow. Her breath shivered.

  The words that came out were not those he intended. “I love you.”

  Mina stepped back, the warmth of her gone. “But you weren’t here. You should’ve been here to see it.”

  “How could I have been here? And what difference would it have made?” His presence didn’t stop bananas spotting. It hadn’t stopped her trying to kill herself, not once but twice.

  “You didn’t want to talk to me. You didn’t want to see me,” Mina said.

  “I did.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I did. Just not immediately.” He didn’t know why this distinction felt so important. “Mina, you tried to die. Guess what? Dying is leaving someone too. If you die, you never respond to texts. You told me you wanted to leave New York. I said okay. You said you wished we weren’t married. And then you told me you kissed my best friend’s sister. So, forgive me if I didn’t know what to say to you.”

  “You’re still worried about Theo?”

  “Mina, I think we should separate.” It was out now.

  “Separate?”

  “It’s not like we have kids to stay together for.”

  She bit the lip he had so recently been touching. Mina wasn’t crying. She spoke slowly, looking down at her hands. “When I met you, not that night, sometime just after, I decided I could finally relax. Like all of life had felt like walking through this windowless shopping mall. You know, the kind which is so big it has more than one Starbucks. And I’d see all these things I was supposed to want but didn’t. Or things I did want but couldn’t afford. And then one day there you were, like a bench. A stable place to rest. A place to just be.”

  “A bench. That was what our marriage was to you? A bench.”

  “You’re missing the point.” She slid to the kitchen floor. God knew if it was clean. “I was trying to find the life I wanted. I was researching PhD programs, I was studying for quizzes, I was trying to look cool at parties in dorm rooms that stank of bong water. I was so tired, and you were so stable and good.”

  She put her face between her knees. She was right. He was good. He kept his voice careful and kind. He could be a good man about this. He was so bloody tired.

  “I’ll be in 5B if you need anything. Tell me when you want me to book your plane ticket to the States. Can you think of anyone you want to stay with? I’ll sort out everything with the people subleasing our place.”

  He couldn’t sell the flats while she was living there, ordering pizza, weeping. He had to ease her out. He flicked through memories of their friends. Who would be amenable to Mina?

  Mina stood on the exposed walkway. She looked down. Beside the bins yet more trash bags lay in great black pillows. Pigeons moved their grey backs over the grey ground. A lance of light speared the wall on the other side of the courtyard, burnished the bricks copper. The smell of cooking flew upwards. She imagined falling down that gap, ending her life in this strange city. She imagined the heads that would lean over railings to look at the mess of a woman, who had spattered like pigeon shit over the ground. She put her palms on the railing. The cold turned her fingers red. She wrapped her hand around the rail tightly, and her knuckles blanched white. She shifted her weight from her feet to her hands. Slowly, her toes lifted off the ground. The heat of effort burned in her upper arms. It would be easy to jump from this balcony. Would the pigeons peck her eyeballs? There would be blood, she assumed. Or would it all be internal, an inward collapse? But she didn’t want to die in public. Even animals went off alone to die. A car honked. She did not climb over. She did not jump.

  Her arms slackened. Her feet hit the floor with no sound. Sometimes Mina wished she smoked. Smoking gave a person the excuse to stand alone in the cold for a precise amount of time. When the ash approached the fingertips, the cigarette told them it was time to go inside.

  The elevator chimed. She turned, embarrassed, ready to see Oscar and his glare of disapproval. A wire trolley slid through the open door onto the balcony. The figure that followed the trolley was bent in conce
ntration. A red beret was pulled down over her ears. The neighbor. Mina hurried to hold the door.

  “Oh, hi,” Mina said.

  The woman grabbed the rail so that one hand balanced on the trolley, the other on the balcony. Her bright Perspex rings caught the light. The old woman was smiling, and her teeth were as brown as old books. “Oh, my dear, don’t fuss.”

  Mina wasn’t aware of fussing, but after the accusation she wondered if she should. The cold didn’t seem to bother her neighbor. Should she be encouraging her to go inside?

  “Liking it here?” the neighbor asked.

  “Oh, yes. London is lovely.”

  “Too bloody cold but it always has been. This building has cold bones, if you ask me. I’m moving to Corfu.”

  “But you said you’d lived here for decades.”

  “Exactly.” The neighbor began to explain how she’d bought the flat for nothing. Bought it from the government and now it was worth a mint. A mint and a half! She was getting out. She would lie in the sun for the rest of the days God gave her. Mina nodded and smiled, imagining red bikinis and beautiful young people swimming in the golden light, like fish kept for this woman’s special entertainment.

  The fresh paint was a bluer white than he remembered choosing. Perhaps it was a trick of the weather and the month that thundered down around him. He might have lived here, among all those birds. It wasn’t useful to sit around wondering about the past. He was acting like Mina. He texted Theo.

  Might as well get that out of the way. They arranged to meet up at the pub they used to go to before a night out. The streets were crowded. Images of Christmas trees were painted, pasted, and printed on glass. Christmas shopping already?

  By the time Oscar got there, Theo was already sitting on a barstool. He had two pints of Camden Hells. Oscar asked how the game was going and Theo pointed to the TV, making a face of theatrical anguish. He asked how Mina was doing in the offhand sort of way that another man might’ve asked about traffic. Relief cut through Oscar. Phoebe had not told Theo. There was one less disaster to contain.