Test Signal

by Nathan Connolly (Dead Ink)

  I take up running. Physical activity is good for the mind, they said in the talks. So I run and run, as though perhaps if I cover enough of these streets, I will eventually know this place, and it will know me.

  I run past a church that has been turned into a night-club. I run past a graveyard that is overgrown with weeds. Who are these people, who would let the weeds grow over their dead? When someone is very special it seems their family dedicates a bench. A man and his dog have stopped by a bench that says Grandma. He looks down the path while his animal crouches and shits on the pavement. My grandmother would kick a dog for shitting by her bench. Now this man puts his hand in a bag, like a glove, and scoops up the shit. It must feel warm through the thin plastic. Then he ties up the bag and just abandons it there. Sometimes I notice these bags are left dangling on trees. What is this telling you about these people? They will touch, or nearly touch, their own dog’s shit. But still leave it in the street. Why is this better? What do the dogs think? Perhaps that they have left a small gift that has been wrapped and preserved.

  After my run I return for a drink in the kitchen and finger out my seed to see if it has germinated. When I discover that it has, I bury it again quickly, in case I jinx it. The Historian comes in as I am wiping my muddy finger on a dishcloth. She checks the fridge and then leaves with-out taking anything out. Perhaps she is really checking to see that I am still who she thinks I am: quiet and clean.

  I submit my first assignment. My supervisor says my angle of appreciation is interesting but could use some definition. I have no idea what this means.

  I continue running. In this neighbourhood, front doors open into the street and there are bins everywhere, with colours meaning different things. Rules. Dates. What does and doesn’t go where. How do you know? My bin. Your bin. My shelf in the fridge. Your box of cereal. These people want to pretend they aren’t living among others. Eyes and ears everywhere, though. As if they want to know what you are doing but would really prefer to live behind one-way glass, like they have at the airport.

  By the time the clocks change, the Physicist and the Historian have started cooking together. They often dirty all the pans in the kitchen. The Historian says, ‘I always make too much rice. I can never predict how it’s going to expand.’ The Physicist seems rapt by her insight and analysis. They don’t offer me any of their extra rice. They watch box sets, taking up the whole sofa. I come in when I have cooked my own rice, and sit on a floor cushion.

  ‘It won’t make sense if you haven’t seen season one.’

  The nights are suddenly longer – daylight is getting squeezed out. I’m convinced that my bedroom is shrinking. In the safety talk they told us not to go out alone in the dark. How are you supposed to go anywhere in this city after 6 p.m. from November to March? Perhaps you are not. Perhaps you are supposed to stay at home and watch box sets with maximum one other person. If you are lucky then you and the other person will soon be able to stop watching the box sets and entertain each other in alternative ways. This is clearly what the Historian wants to happen. And probably the Physicist too. Although when I sit on the floor cushion near his feet, I catch him looking at me, as though perhaps he’d like me to come and sit on his lap.

  When I can’t stay in my bedroom any longer, I follow pavements at random as the light abandons the sky. I find an empty children’s park made of hard tarmac and metal. Traffic streams on all sides on its way elsewhere. As I wait at a crossing, a group of boys joins and waits with me. They are a head shorter than me, but looming a little too close. From one I recognise the smell of damp laundry. Another is all sweat and cigarettes. I don’t know the words they are saying but I hear the notes, the undertones. The hairs on my legs stand on end. I am angry with them for making me feel scared, and angry with myself for being unsure whether I need to be. The lights change, the traffic stops, and I run, with all the power my muscles will give me. People in cars watch me go. They are all safe inside their own metal boxes. They could save me or they could smash me to bits.

  I keep sprinting onto a canal towpath. It is framed by leaves and graffiti, stone and water. A cluster of dried-out flowers wrapped in plastic has been taped to a lamp-post by a bridge. I am breathing hard now. Breathing in the piss and canal smell. Breathing out carbon dioxide. My legs are starting to burn. I can’t see anyone in front or behind me. The light is beige brown, like a city fading away in time. Hedge trimmings and sodden pieces of clothing lie abandoned, like dead bodies. I’ve lived with this premonition for a long time: that at some point I’ll discover a cadaver in some undergrowth. My school-friends used to report nightmares of kidnapping or abduction. We’d compare lurid scenarios and plot escape plans while inflating sweet pink-skinned gum bubbles. Secretly, though, I always had different fears. A flap of material would catch my eye, perhaps in the scrubland around the train tracks behind my parents’ apartment building. I’d move on past, but a story would thread itself into my mind. I’d imagine looking closer, finding a strand of hair mingling with decaying leaves. Then, nudging those leaves with my toe, I’d start to uncover fingers in the mulch. Now there are corpses on the news washing up on beaches and I sense shapes moving in the trees. The light of a mobile phone. Laughter. I realise this is a place I shouldn’t be alone.

  Should I turn back or keep going? Behind me could be the gang of boys from the crossing. Or maybe I am imag-ining them. The towpath curves and I keep away from the bushes, close to the water’s edge, until I find an exit route onto a new street. I notice a sign half buried in a hedge that says Unadopted Road. I look down the street for clues about what this could mean. A street with no parents? The houses are different from the terraces where I am staying. Detached, they are called. Cars in driveways. The street seems cared for. Square hedges. Different colours and shapes of paving stones and gravel. Alarm boxes. Bins tucked into little spots next to a garage, just so.

  I bend over for breath, and check Google Maps for the way home. But as I look up I’m surprised by the sight of an exploding hedge overhanging the pavement about fifty metres down the street. Curious, I jog towards it and then stop. The house behind the hedge is the same size as the others, but everything else about it is different. Most obviously, there is a small tree growing out of the roof. Underneath it a gutter bends down, loose and smiling, and below that white soak-lines mark the bricks, like tear stains dried onto a cheek. I cover the house with my eyes. It’s so unusual, this dilapidation, almost enticing. Wooden window frames are softening with moss. They hold grimy glass and shaggy brown net curtains. I sense the other houses on the street looking sideways at this soft, mossy house, bonding in quiet disapproval. But I am drawn to it. I step up to the gate for a better look, assuming the house must be empty, but then I notice a dim light come on in a downstairs window. Inside my chest, the urge to run and the urge to stay push so hard against each other that I let out a gasp. I feel dizzy; the view in front of me seems to bend, but my feet are stuck. Through the net curtains I think I sense movement. A figure in a chair, seeing me looking. I blink. And then I run. My feet suddenly feel light again. I almost fly.

  That night I dream about you – the figure in the house. You are a woman, I am sure. You say, Oh have you come to help me? You say, My only child is on the other side of the world. In my dream I say, Yes, I have come to help you. You are my friend. When I wake I can feel that you were there, my friend, but I cannot make out your face. I worry that I have abandoned you. That I have missed my chance and you will not remember me when I return.

  The Physicist and the Historian have started doing their laundry together. Black jeans, mutually greying underwear, floral smocks. They festoon them around the radiators in communal areas, like occupying flags. The house gives off a mushroom smell. When the Physicist and the Historian go home for Christmas, the clothes stay out, like they have shed their skin into the space. They will be gone for two weeks.

  Two days before Christmas, the Landlord says he wants to come and check the house. Twenty-four-ho
urs’ notice. I WhatsApp the Physicist and the Historian.

  An immediate reply: ‘Don’t let him touch our stuff.’

  The Landlord sits down on the sofa. Bounces up and down a bit. ‘This has seen some action I’ll bet! Life in the old dog yet, though.’ Is he saying he is an old dog? I look at his face. He is not that old.

  I follow him upstairs. In the Historian’s room there are black knickers on the radiator. He purses his lips.

  ‘You shouldn’t dry things this way. It causes condensation. You know, things get wet inside?’ He looks as though he expects something from me. I do nothing. He picks the knickers up off the radiator. ‘She’s a big lass, isn’t she?’ He stretches the knickers and I look away. From the corner of my eye, I see him bury his shiny nose in them.

  ‘How are you settling in anyway?’ He sits down on the Historian’s bed, his legs spread wide like men do. ‘Are people making you feel at home?’ I nod, and take a step back towards the door.

  He smooths his shirt over his gut. His shirt buttons are pulling open to show a gap of skin, a few curls of hair. He sees me looking down and it seems to encourage him in some way.

  ‘Everyone else has gone for Christmas? Call me if you get lonely, okay?’ He’s not an ugly man, but there is something disgusting about him. Something disgusting that, nevertheless, appeals. Touching him might feel like squeezing a blackhead.

  ‘I have to study.’ I imagine pulling on the hairs curling through the gaps in his shirt, stretching his skin into tiny peaks.

  When he’s gone I go back to straighten the blankets where his arse shape still shows on the Historian’s bed. I notice the knickers are still missing from the radiator.

  I wonder if he put them back in her drawers. I slide one open. There are socks and bras inside. I hold one up to my chest, trying to imagine such weight on my front. Trying to imagine how her breasts feel in the Physicist’s hands.

  The house is quiet without the Physicist and the Historian. I watch their leftovers growing mould in the fridge. The colours spread, soft and furry. I miss them. Their discussions about dinner. Their sex noises. And when they come back, I will miss their absence too. Like I miss my grandmother. And when I go back, I will miss this sad, angry freedom. I might even miss being scared in a place where I am not understood. I will miss these people who don’t make sense. I will forget what I had to unlearn. I will explore my regrets. I will remember the times I was bold.

  On Christmas Day the streets are empty and grey. I run my usual route. Thoughts disentangle from where they’ve been growing in clumps. Cars cluster around certain driveways where windows are steamed with light and heat. Other houses stand silent and sad.

  Your house is dark, my friend. I wonder if you have been swallowed up by a family somewhere. I feel I ought to check. Your front gate creaks when I open it. In the garden the weeds are spiky, sticks poking up through the gravel path. I approach your window. There’s a small crack between the net curtains, and halfway up there’s a torn piece that I can look through. There are webs between the curtains and the window frames, dead flies on the windowsill, like the ones I would feed to the lizards in my grandfather’s terrarium. When my grandfather died I begged my parents to let us keep the lizards, but they said we’d have no room, now that my grandmother was moving in. My father released the lizards in the park. I cried thinking of them alone and fending for themselves in a dangerous new place.

  Here at your window, I make out objects: piles of boxes and papers, an old rocking chair, a door at the back of the room. While I am peering in, your shape comes into focus and you look straight at me, my friend. You are in there after all, sitting very still in your chair in your dark house. This time I don’t run. I back away slowly while holding your gaze, in case you are trying to tell me something. My heel touches something hard behind me. A small black pot with an iridescent petrol glaze. It tugs at my heart. I want it for my spiky plant. I pick up the pot and return to your window with it. You don’t get up from your chair or shake your head. You keep staring straight at me. This time it is a warm feeling. You are telling me I should take it, I am sure. A Christmas gift from you, my friend.

  I run home with your pot clutched to my chest, and when I get there I rehome my plant and put it back where it lives on the kitchen windowsill. There is only one fly on my windowsill. I remember all the flies on yours. I wonder if my grandmother still remembers the lizards. Her memories have been shrinking recently, like she no longer has room for them.

  For the rest of the holiday I use as much of the space as possible. I write an essay on the sofa in the living room. I eat dinner at the Physicist’s desk. I switch round the DVDs in his box sets, then the next day I worry and switch them back again. I take pictures of myself in the Historian’s bed and imagine sending them to our Landlord.

  Then the Physicist and the Historian are back. I can tell because there’s now a note on the fridge: Can we ALL try to get rid of out-of-date stuff … They have forgotten the pretty leftovers belonged to them.

  I arrive for a new year meeting with my supervisor. Her office is empty. There are greasy smudges on the walls where her postcards used to be. The Head of Department comes in. ‘I’m sorry …’ He pauses, and I realise this is an invitation for me to say my own name. He says, ‘Your level of supervision has not been, how shall I put this, what we would have hoped. I’ve reviewed your recent work. Well, let’s just say you’ve got a lot left to do.’ I can sense meaning in the spaces between what he is saying. Perhaps meanings like this have been there all along.

  I work and I work and every day I run past your house. I tell you, my friend, that I am taking care of your pot. It is taking care of my plant. I tell you I am working hard. I put words on pages and the Head of Department says things like, ‘Yes, but more.’ The Historian keeps long hours and has disabled her Facebook. The Physicist splits activities into 25-minute bursts. The leaves are returning to the trees. I keep running and writing, writing and running, until foliage foams out of paths and crevices, and the streets smell sweet like shampoo. I feel the place changing around me, warming up.

  Then one evening, a shock of pink in the kitchen. The explosion catches my eye when I have been at the library all day. My spiky plant is flowering. The Historian sees me staring past the sink, where she stands with a steaming colander.

  ‘Would you like some pasta? I’ve made loads by accident.’ The Physicist’s eyes have wandered. He is staying somewhere else this week.

  I continue to stare at the pink flowers, so lovely against the sharp leaves and the deep darkness of my friend’s pot.

  ‘Yes?’ the Historian says, as though she can’t be certain if we have ever really understood each other.

  I nod. We eat the strings of flabby pasta. I see her trying to swirl the spaghetti around her fork, over and over, and almost every time it slips away. I catch her eye and suck mine up in one long slurp. She sees me, smiles and slurps too. We sit, slurping, not speaking but sometimes letting small smiles break out around our pursed lips.

  My friend, many things are different now, but I still think about the last time I visited your house. It had been raining but then the clouds broke. I wanted to bring you back your pot, with my plant in it for you to keep. I didn’t run. I walked down the pavements past the nightclub church and the park, along the canal, under the arch and back up to your unadopted road.

  Perhaps you know, my friend, that when you are looking at things for the last time, light falls on them in a special way. You see the thing you will remember, which is never really what has been. Perhaps you have never really seen the thing itself, but only how the thing made you feel. The sharp neon sign of the nightclub church. The memorial benches and the silver puddles in the park. The canal water reflecting trees and sky, and the shadows under the arch. I carried my plant in your pot past all these things, holding it out in front of me as a gift.

  I can tell you now, my friend, that there are things we can unlearn, but there are things we can’t u
nknow, things we can’t unsee. I opened your gate, noticed the new green weeds smothering your garden. I noticed so many more flies on your windowsill as I knocked, ready to tell you my name and that I would be leaving soon. Now, as I remember, I want to tell you that when I peered through the curtains and saw you still in that chair, with a shaft of sunlight across your face, so terribly in bloom, there was a part of me that had always known. But like you, I had no one to tell. Like you, I had started to change beyond all recognition. Like you, I would soon be returning to another place.

  GOOD MORNING VIETNAM

  LAURA BUI

  The last time I was with my Uncle Bill, I learned that my grandpa was still rummaging around in his house. He had been dead five years, but it seemed that he made appearances at old haunts. Uncle Bill spoke about this during lunch without a flicker of irony or embarrassment, transitioning from my cousin’s wedding and his children’s educational whereabouts. It was his usual bundle of news, centred on family, and whether I met the relation of interest was irrelevant. In emails, he asked after my well-being, then told me about my grandmother’s health and who was going to visit her and when. In phone calls made in between drives from his home to his office to house viewings for clients and to school pickups, he relayed who was poorly when and who would be graduating from what. For my graduations, he had asked if he should book a flight to attend, worried that too few would be there to celebrate. Whenever I was in Seattle, he never failed to make long stretches of time to see me, always offering to pick me up from the airport. And when I called him, on the other end of the line I was met with, ‘Good morning, Vietnam.’