by Amina Cain
“Yes, madame.”
I felt the weirdest I ever had and was momentarily hesitant, yet I went ahead with it. I had to.
“Solange, I apologize in advance, but I’m afraid I have to be blunt about something.”
“Dinner?”
“No, it was fine. There’s something else I want to talk to you about.”
“All right, then.”
“I’ve thought I’ve seen you, well … look at my husband sometimes. Is that right?”
“Look at him in what way?” She was already offended.
“With love, maybe.”
“With love, madame? I look at him for my directions, that’s the only way I look.”
“I should say right off that it’s okay if you look at him like that.”
Solange was astonished, or at least she appeared that way, but we can never know what’s in someone’s mind. Anyway, she stared at me with some disbelief.
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Don’t you?”
“You’ll have to enlighten me.”
“Solange, it means that I don’t love my husband, and I think it’s possible that you do. Or at least like him. Or you might enjoy another kind of life. I would like to leave this house, but I don’t know how.”
“Then you should figure it out on your own.”
“That’s the thing, I think I have. But it involves you, unfortunately. I had this idea, forgive me if it was a stupid one, that you might want him. If it’s true, I think we could figure out a way for you to have him.”
“I’ve never liked you, madame, but truly I had no idea just how much.”
“But don’t you see, your decision doesn’t have to have anything to do with me. Solange, what do you want your life to be like? Would this help you get it?”
She tried to leave then and I called her back. I couldn’t give up without even a small fight.
“I won’t apologize for speaking to you in this way,” she said. “Not after what you’ve said to me.”
“I don’t want you to apologize. I want you to help me, and help yourself in the process. If that’s possible.”
She stormed out and no amount of calling her back would do. Well, it was a warm-up, at least. I had broached the topic. She knew what was in my mind and heart. I didn’t know what was in hers.
FOR THREE WEEKS, I failed to bring it up again, and Solange and I were more at odds around each other than we’d ever been; we had finally crossed a line. I had crossed it. If my husband noticed, he didn’t say anything. He came and went, and when he was at home, he left me alone more than he usually did. I had rejected his advances several times, and that seemed to change something in him. When he was gone, Solange expressed herself angrily. She slammed cupboard doors, put plates and saucers down roughly on the counters. I felt she might break them, and then I began to see that it wouldn’t work, that I had affected her quite negatively. I wasn’t ready to give up, but the feeling in the house was becoming unbearable. I would obviously have to let it go. If I could.
“Solange,” I said one day, “I’m sorry for—”
She left the room; she wouldn’t allow me to say anything. That night she served me steak for dinner and I didn’t dare ask for anything else. Instead, I took a break from eating. The next night she served it again, the same one, I believe, from the night before. From then on I started eating dinner out. We couldn’t do this forever.
Then something incredible happened, if such a thing can be considered incredible. It was incredible for me.
One morning I told my husband I would be going to a play that evening, and I did go, but halfway through the performance I began to feel nauseous and left during intermission. When I arrived at home, it was quiet, but that was nothing new. My husband is out, I thought, and Solange shut into her bedroom doing who knows what, planning her next revenge. But when I passed by her door, I finally heard noises. I stopped and listened and could hardly believe my ears. Solange was moaning. What in God’s name was happening? I hadn’t thought her capable. And there was my husband, in a way I had only heard him be with me. Bedsprings were squeaking rhythmically.
I couldn’t fathom it, but Solange and my husband were having sex. I had never heard someone else have sex before. What strangeness. Never in a million years would I have anticipated its happening like this if it was to happen at all. What had made Solange follow through on something to which she had never agreed, that had made her irate? Had I forced her, made her feel she must do it? Or was this revenge too? Or did it have nothing to do with me? Or …
I had every right to assert myself, yet ironically I felt I was invading their privacy. I put my hand to the door as if I might knock, but only held it there gently and listened a while more.
Finally, I left them, walked upstairs to the bedroom I shared with my husband and fell back onto the bed. Almost without thinking, I began to touch my own body, and before long I felt my own pleasure. Immediately after, I burst out crying. It was sad to touch oneself in a moment such as this. It might even be pathetic. Or weird. I was weird.
I hadn’t loved my husband, yet he probably hadn’t loved me. It had obviously been easy for him to have sex with Solange, to do it while I was away, in the few hours in which I’d be gone from the house we lived in together. It was a cliché and I knew he didn’t mind them, but I did.
Eventually he came upstairs to our room, where I lay reading. I wasn’t crying any longer and didn’t know if I should act angry. In that moment I really did hate him.
“What are you doing here? I thought you were seeing a play.”
“I got sick.”
“Oh.” He nodded and seemed to consider this, then sat down in the chair at the foot of our bed.
“Is Solange a good lover?”
He looked up, but not at me. He was focused on a corner of the room. What he saw there I don’t know. “You heard us?”
“I stood by the door listening for quite a while. It’s possible I was there almost the entire time. I heard you cry out.” I was lying, I hadn’t heard everything, but I wanted him to think I had.
“There’s no point in my denying it, then.”
“You could try.”
So he went on, “The men I play cards with—well, I came home, you can imagine it. I deserve a certain level of comfort from my wife. I didn’t do anything, I promise, I just didn’t stop it from happening. I’ll have to go away for a few weeks and I was preparing for that. Solange will be let go. I won’t allow things to get away from me here. I was dictating to my secretary; you see she has been a great help to me—I don’t think I could do without her, you understand. You’ve never met my secretary and I don’t know why that is. She asks about you often. I imagine you understand; you’ve always seemed like a very understanding person. Many men have told me many times. And yet, life goes on. I never thought I would experience it, but there was a presence in one of the other rooms, and then I felt that I had no control over my limbs, that something was moving me there. You seem as though you’ve often been moved against your will, so I would think you’d be able to relate to this. Women, I know they’re attuned to something, they’re always tuned in, I guess. I’ve often felt that women were tuned in to things they have no business being tuned in to. But you can’t stop it, can you? Not you. You encourage it, in fact! Don’t do that! But I wanted it, yes—I won’t deny it. Women like me and I like women. My secretary brings me great comfort. And then I deserve comfort at home. I don’t even like sex! But I do like comfort. Men told me. Why didn’t I listen? And just who are you, anyway? Just what are you attuned to? I’ve only wanted to live a normal life, and with you that’s impossible. Do you know what people say about you? Do you have any idea? They feel sorry for me! And now I know why. Please do not listen to my private moments. I am at home and I’ll have what I want. You’re like an old piece of pie I can’t throw away, a very good pie. But I rescued you. You know that! And yet, I’d never seen anyone so alluring. You’re always turnin
g away. Turn toward me. Haven’t you ever felt yourself carried away? Toward a woman? Something carried me to that room. Look at me, you are my wife, first and foremost, and I will be loyal to you. Let’s go away, I’ll take you to Brazil after all. Let me take you somewhere. Imagine it. We’ll walk up and down the avenues. I’ll protect you and keep you close. I gave very dear things to you, many, many jewels. Everything you’re wearing right now. You are a proper woman. No, you are not. Clothes can’t make a woman proper. Do you know how hard I’ve tried? And to be honest, I lay down on the bed—I did nothing else. I was exhausted. I don’t think you realize how hard I work—not once have you come to my office!”
That is where I stopped listening. A part of me was floating. The room was a ship and I was already floating away. Where I was floating to I can’t say, but it was mine, and his voice was becoming more and more distant. I hadn’t actually thought that was possible.
WE DIDN’T SAY MUCH in the days that followed. My husband rambled no longer. It was all now back inside his head and body. Without drawing attention to myself, I began to prepare what I would take with me when I left. At night I let the dog and the cat sleep on the bed with me, which my husband had never allowed. He slept in one of the guest rooms. Solange avoided me as well, and I didn’t know how to feel about her now that it was done. It was as if we were all at a silent retreat together, except for the negative energy. When I wrote in the evenings, the house was completely still.
I wrote about a painting I thought matched the situation.
The interior is nearly colorless, a light gray room with light moldings, the room beyond gray as well, but darker, with small lamps of gold. The curtain that separates the two rooms is bright red. Three figures are dressed brightly too. A nobleman in green with a gold turban on his head. Two women dressed in saris of orange and yellow. The first woman holds the nobleman back at arm’s length, and the other woman covers her mouth in disbelief. Or perhaps it’s amusement. All of it is in miniature.
Finally, my husband came to me for a talk. He told me I should leave. I had been expecting it.
“Where will I go?” I said innocently enough. “I have no money and no prospects for a job.”
“I’ll give you money, enough to live on. You won’t be rich, but it’s the least I can do. In exchange, we’ll tell people that you refused to have a child, that you’re unstable.”
“But I’m not unstable.”
“That remains to be seen.”
I turned to the suitcase I had already been packing and folded one of my blouses before placing it inside. I was getting everything I wanted.
THAT DAY I FINISHED PACKING, and by evening I was ready with what I would need in the weeks ahead, including the dog, who I had decided I was taking with me. The rest I would send for once I had found a place to live. When I left, Solange was nowhere to be seen, yet I saw her watch me from the door when I turned back to look one last time at the house. We stared at each other quite awkwardly, yet in the most direct look we had ever had.
Ironically, Solange had done what I wanted, all while leaving me completely in the dark. In a way, she had deceived me. Even in the transfer of my husband, she had refused any kind of partnership. I had not been able to know her, or perhaps I now did. Maybe I had been naïve. The beautiful house I had come to feel at home in was no longer mine; I assumed it would be hers from this point forward. How quickly things could change. Yet I had wanted it.
First I went to Antoinette’s, where I stayed for the night, wide-awake while little Frederick cried. I felt lost in the sounds he made, but it wasn’t entirely bad. When Antoinette got up to comfort him, she comforted me too. She sang Frederick his lullabies.
The next day I went to Dana’s to tell her what had happened, but I couldn’t stay over. Her family couldn’t know yet that I was leaving. It was one of my husband’s stipulations.
“Vitória, you’re free,” she said. “He’s so stupid. He fell for it right away, and now he has to give you money.” She pulled me tightly to her.
“I know.” I was finally genuinely happy, even if a little nervous about my future. Then I pulled away. “Should I feel guilty?”
“No, of course you shouldn’t. You deserve your freedom. People hardly ever get it.” She shook me lightly. “Do you understand?”
I was being returned to something. “Yes. Yes, I’m free.”
NOW I’M NOT FAR FROM HOME, but far enough for life to feel different, to be in the midst of strangers and, when I think of knowing them, to feel repelled. I know I shouldn’t be that way toward another.
If I’m bored, at least it’s not coming from outside my own life. I chose the boredom I’m a part of. In the mornings I write and then I look out at a field, imagining someone else’s life. What it must be to look at this field forever. To farm it or to be the one who cooks all the meals.
Sometimes I am immersed in my writing, ecstatic; sometimes I am able to write only one paragraph. On certain days I hate that paragraph.
I look at my books of paintings while sitting at my desk. I look at paintings with snow in them. Here, people are skating across a pond, buying things from a Christmas market. How rosy they look. I don’t think I’ve ever looked that rosy before.
Who am I if I’m not writing? I’m a person in a dance class, then I’m walking next to a dump. I listen to music, write my own name in my notebook, winter charging toward me. For things do charge, you must feel that too.
The sky is flat against the mountains. The mountains and then the ground. Here is the place where the town turns into the country, and then the valley leading to the mountains, all of it the same piece of land. Here is a black dog, running wildly toward it with all of its being. The last time I mirrored something I was coming to nature. Now I seem to be mirroring this dog.
Still in the process of becoming, the soul makes room.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my appreciation to Amanda Montei at P-QUEUE, Meghan Lamb at The Spectacle, and Nathaniel Klein and Brody Albert from Office Hours Gallery in Los Angeles (and curators of The Mountain Show), who published excerpts of this novel, sometimes in different form.
Short passages from Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Genet’s The Maids, and Octavia Butler’s Kindred appear here, and I’ve named my characters after characters in those works, as well as Clarice Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark. A passage also appears from Goya: The Witches and Old Women Album.
Thank you to my husband and best friend, Amarnath Ravva, for talking through the novel with me and for sharing your writing with me too.
Thank you to my parents, Deborah Miner and Steven Cain, for always having been encouraging and supportive, of writing and everything.
Thank you to Sofia Samatar and Anna Moschovakis, for reading early drafts of the novel and giving me such good and generous feedback, and for your own writing, with which I feel great kinship.
Thank you to Danielle Dutton, Kate Zambreno, Renee Gladman, Suzanne Scanlon, Bhanu Kapil, Patty Cottrell, and Amanda Ackerman. My work, including this novel, has been changed by reading yours, and I feel a kind of conversation with you when I write.
Thank you to Beth Nugent and Phyllis Moore. I don’t think I’ve told you properly how special and invaluable you were as teachers when writing was still very new to me.
Thank you to my yoga teachers present and past, especially Samantha Jones Garrison, Adriana Rizzolo, Satyajeet Avila, Jessie Barr, Amanda Perri, Puja Singh Titchkosky, Camille Dieterle, Rachel Scandling, Ana Maria Delgado, and Sam Bianchini. I’ve learned so much from you, and sometimes parts of the novel came to me unexpectedly in your classes.
Thank you to my friends, especially Adam Novy, Daniel Borzutzky, Alicia Scherson, Richard Yoo, Adrienne Walser, Brent Armendinger, Ravish Momin, Alex Guthrie Branch, Laida Lertxundi, and Nathanaël.
With endless gratitude to my kind and wonderful agent, Mel Flashman. And to my editor, Jeremy M. Davies, whom I have been lucky to work with, and whose
sharp eyes have helped me make this novel better than it was before, somehow more itself. And thank you to everyone else at FSG.
ALSO BY AMINA CAIN
I Go to Some Hollow
Creature
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amina Cain is the author of two collections of short fiction, Creature and I Go to Some Hollow. Her essays and short stories have appeared in n+1, The Paris Review Daily, BOMB, Full Stop, VICE, The Believer Logger, and other places. She lives in Los Angeles and is a literature contributing editor at BOMB. You can sign up for email updates here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraph
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
Also by Amina Cain
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2020 by Amina Cain
All rights reserved
First edition, 2020
E-book ISBN: 978-0-374-71873-2
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