Slip of a Fish

by Amy Arnold

  Papa found my hair.

  ‘Would you look at this?’ he said.

  It was woven into the thick of the nest as if it belonged there.

  ‘A true bird-girl,’ he said, though the way he tousled my hair was more like the way I’d seen with boys.

  Bird-boy. Not girl. Your papa was wrong.

  I’d put the bolt across, so she wouldn’t, Kate. But she does, although where’s she hiding? Where?

  ‘Bird-boy,’ she says. ‘Aren’t you? Hey?’

  I didn’t mind. I never minded what anyone called me. Boy, girl. Girl, boy, I couldn’t see the point in being one or the other, and if I’d had the photo of Kevojärvi that summer I would’ve asked her about the wading pair. Do you think they’re men or women? Boys, perhaps? I would’ve asked and she would’ve looked and if she’d said. It doesn’t matter.

  But it’s difficult to hear what she says above the din, although Abbott would say it isn’t a din, would say, he can’t hear a thing and shake his head, but it’s him. It’s Abbott. He’s the one who leaves things switched on. He plugs things in and leaves them with their lights flashing, he says they need charging, and I understand, I’ve told him I understand, but it’s difficult to hear above all the din they make.

  Now, that hair, the auburn one. Kate, look, it’s wound its way around my toe with its curling end. Look, the hair, it’s on my toe, it’s wound its way around, and when I move my foot like this, up and down, it tightens, tugs on my toe. It’s like a little root, see, and it’s got a lot of give that hair, but be careful. Lest it snap, lest it become two.

  I took the hair to the bin. I had to unwind it first. I took it to the bin and watched it float down and curl around the base. It lay there like a snake. I didn’t want it escaping. I didn’t like the way it had found my toe, wound itself around it, and I wondered for a moment if Abbott had put it there, in the bed, to stop me from falling somehow, but he wouldn’t, I mean, it didn’t add up and I was trying to remember whether I’d ever told him that wound is one of only a few serious homonyms.

  Abbott found a hair. Kate’s. He found it in his sock that summer, twenty-three days after the house martins left. But he didn’t think. I mean, you don’t think, you just think, he just thought, a hair, but he wouldn’t have wanted me to find the auburn one, because a woman and a man. Do you know what that means? Do you?

  He pulled on the hair he found. It came out of his sock, it kept coming out of his sock, he kept pulling. It couldn’t have been his, or mine, or Charlie’s, but what did it matter whose it was, if he was clean, although now he’s cleaner, she likes everything, you know. He rubbed the hair between his thumb and forefinger so it would be gone the moment he let go and when he left the room I got down on my hands and knees and looked. I crawled across the bedroom floor and prayed it would find me. Somehow.

  ‌

  We saved the cake for the top.

  Kate made it. She was as light as I’d ever seen her. She moved seamlessly between cupboards and surfaces, shaking and mixing and sprinkling.

  ‘Taste this, Ash,’ she said. ‘Better now?’ she said.

  She was getting high. She was as high as I ever saw her, but it wasn’t that high. I’d been higher, she said so herself, although she said it reluctantly.

  She’d had to look up. I was climbing, I was going up, could see her looking, could see her eyes, her mascara. I liked it, I liked her, she liked me, she liked the way I went higher.

  But wait, that day, the day Kate made the cake. We walked up Cotters Hill. I was wearing shorts and she was wearing a skirt and carrying that cake. She’d wrapped it in paper, put it in a tin, in a bag, a jute bag. The bag was suspended from the crook of her arm, and I wondered how long it would be until she said something about being vulnerable, because it was one of her words, vulnerable, and that’s what I’d been thinking watching her, watching her tend to that cake. We walked up Cotters Hill. It wasn’t cold and it wasn’t raining, although it almost was. It might’ve been if we’d stopped, if we’d given ourselves time, to stop, to notice, I mean.

  ‘The top isn’t the best bit,’ I said when we got there.

  She linked her free arm through mine.

  ‘What is, then?’ she said.

  She tightened her arm, she pulled it a bit tighter, and the wind was picking up. We were looking down at the grassy slope stretching out below us in every direction. Every way down was full of the kind of emptiness that calls you. I mean, it was calling, the way empty places do. I was about to go. I mean, I could hardly stay.

  ‘No, don’t, Ash,’ she said and tightened her grip. ‘I’m scared, darling. Call me a fool, but I’m scared,’ she said.

  I didn’t go. I couldn’t, although I could hardly stay. We walked to the Crag, we crouched down out of the wind and ate the cake. We walked down. She kept her arm through mine the whole way and told me about her mum.

  ‘She left,’ she said. ‘She stopped loving my dad, so she left.’

  The auburn hair found its way out of the bin. I put it there on Tuesday and now it’s Thursday and here it is in the bed. It’s sitting up in front of me, the top end of it in a loop, wound around itself, and thicker, much thicker than it was. I pinched it between my forefinger and thumb a moment ago and it lurched its pinhead towards me.

  Kate laughed. She laughed when she saw me recoiling. We laughed. Went on laughing for a while and it wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the first time we’d been in bed laughing, but where she is, and how she got in, she hasn’t said, although it’s broken the ice a bit, laughing like that, because I can’t always hear what she says, not with all this din. It was easy to laugh, but you can’t laugh, you have to practise losing.

  We stopped laughing, although she went on longer, and I was about to say, but I didn’t say because I caught sight of the auburn hair again. There it is, there, sitting up, feeling under our sheets with its roots. I’m glad. I’m glad I didn’t know it’d escaped last night. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep if I’d known. I suppose I should’ve checked the bin. I suppose I should start checking the bin as a matter of course, from now on. I won’t sleep. How will I sleep, if I start thinking about the places it could wind itself, because the way it held my toe, that time. The way it tightened, the way people tighten, when they warn you. It’s in their faces and hardly ever in their words and you shouldn’t have to listen to distinguish between warn and warm, but you do.

  But never mind the hair, I couldn’t sleep anyway last night. For all the noise. I couldn’t think straight for the sound of electricity. I ran through the Fibonacci sequence to drown it out. Papa always said, if you can get as far as, and I got as far as, but the buzzing, the crackling, seemed to be getting louder, so I kept on, got as far as seventy-five thousand and twenty-five, which sounds quite far, but isn’t, isn’t far at all, but everything was growing, numbers and noises, but maybe they weren’t growing, or not as much as I thought because in the end I slept. I don’t know how I did, but I did.

  But now it’s getting to me again. The buzzing and the hair, and I could go outside and take a little breath, but where would I take it when I’d taken it. And this buzzing, this electricity, not ours, probably Lynn’s, and auburn can’t be her natural colour. Kate was older, you were older, your greys were coming through. Even then. And now, you’re all chatter, you never listen.

  Listen.

  When I tell you, the reason I can’t hear everything you’re saying.

  It’s the noise. The electricity. Abbott’s electricity. And there’s a master switch somewhere, a trip switch, I’ve heard him say, if you flick the trip switch it’ll sort it, quite often, bring it all back. That’s what Abbott does and comes back bounding, takes two stairs at a time, flicks the trip switch, two, four, master switcher. I never noticed, where he bounds from.

  That hair, I should keep an eye, fucking thing, and who cares about the master, the switch, I’ll turn them all off without it. I’ll switch them all off, and nothing’s radical unless it’s
seen, but anyway. People say mad, mad. That’s what they say. And I liked the blue dress. I liked my knees, and now, now I know what I am. I’m gamine. That’s what she said, Joan.

  She stuck her head over the fence.

  ‘You’re gamine, that’s what you are.’

  The magnolia was hanging over her, its fleshy heads like mouths.

  ‘It struck me, gamine, that’s all, you know how things strike you sometimes?’ she said.

  She tapped her cigarette ash over our side of the fence and walked off. Strike and gamine. It wasn’t like Joan to use words like that, the i, the eyes, the magnolia heads hanging heavy, her back door banged shut and all I’ve got to do is start. Start somewhere, flick one switch and the rest will follow. Get out of our bed. Get away from the hair. Take the stairs in twos, bound when I do.

  Here, here. Soon I’ll hear.

  I’ll switch them off. Switch everything off. On then off, on, off.

  Abbott’s study. The hub. All his precious buzzing things and now, think. Start with his laptop, hold my finger on the power button, keep my finger where it is and wait, yes, for its little light, its little light to disappear. His desktop too, why he needs two, but, here, the same, the little light, the sighing. His lamp, off at the wall and now I’m moving, now I’m getting the hang, and it’s been a long time since. It’s been a long time since I felt so alive, so effervescent, and where’s his tablet, where are all his charging things, because if he can take Leaves of Grass, a log, if he can take stairs in two, four, six.

  And now, downstairs. Off with the chattering TV at last, its eye, its sigh, listen, aah, and going down. The fridge, the freezer, the oven, the toaster. Their lights, their little electric selves, going down, going down. Now the phone, and yes, the phone, there’s trickery in perception, there’s trickery everywhere you listen and ears don’t hear on their own, no, and dead magnolia heads fall. We heard them from our side of the fence, Charlie and I, and where did Joan go, where on earth? Knock down decibels, gain momentum, but. Momentum, inertia, resist change, both of us, so have a little rest and surprise yourself, save yourself, switch off. Off without the master, without the trick switch, turn off the cars, stop the bus from coming, stop Joan, her talking, the others too, Terry, U, the feet, the heads, stop the heads, the boat on the fjord, the waves, no, don’t and still. Still, the song of myself.

  Still the song of myself.

  I couldn’t have stumbled across a better homonym.

  And now, sit in half lotus. Pull the blinds down. First. Then. Sit in half lotus.

  She liked it both ways. She liked to fuck, she said that too. Her mouth opened and I was sure she was going to swallow me down, but. She laughed. I pinched my leg to check and I was still alive.

  All this I swallow. I, swallow.

  Ardha padmasana. Now. It opens the hips and calms the brain. She wasn’t sure how. You weren’t sure how and why did it matter?

  Sit in half lotus and shut my eyes.

  And where is she? Where are you? I’ve turned everything off. And of course. Of course you’re not.

  I’ve done the whole thing, one by one I’ve turned them off. Without the trick switch too, and you never showed up when you were supposed to. You didn’t come, the house martins left three times and why didn’t you marvel, why don’t you marvel, why don’t you sing their little bodies electric?

  I’m going down now, look, look, my little light, my little life, going down, my head and legs coming together, meeting, and I’m perfectly folded. So. I’m a chip paper, a newspaper, a slip of a fish of a thing, and it’s possible, it’s perfectly possible to fall flat.

  ‘What’re you doing down there, Ash? The blinds are down. Ash?’

  He’s standing over me, they’re standing over me, Abbott, Charlie and Nelson. Charlie in her school uniform, socks slack around her ankles and I’m down and I’m looking up and next to my head, Nelson’s big head and. I’m used to it, now.

  ‘Nelson was whining,’ he says. ‘We could hear him from the front step. Have you let him out? What are you doing down there?’

  And what am I doing down here, Abbott wants to know, and I should be up, I can see in his face, I should be up, I shouldn’t be down but I am down and why am I down, why are you down, that’s what he wants to know.

  ‘I’ll let Nelson out,’ he says. ‘Come on, get up. Come and have a drink.’

  I come through. We come through. Ten legs, more than eight, not thundering, only coming through, although Charlie should be talking, used to talk on, I used to tell her she talked on and she did, after school, she’d have a drink and something to eat and sit at the table and I’d have to say, Charlie, you’re talking on, but.

  ‘Tea?’ Abbott says, holding up a mug. ‘Two teas. Two teas and a glass of squash. Coming up.’

  He adds water to the kettle. He says, ‘Who’s turned the kettle off at the wall?’

  ‘Ash?’ he says.

  ‘Ash?’

  ‘Ash?’

  Ash. Which means why, not who, and he knows what he’s saying. He knows.

  ‘It was making a noise, a kind of buzzing,’ I say.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘Well. Maybe it’s about to short circuit. You can’t be too safe, but.’

  He says he’ll try it. The switch. He says we should stand back, Charlie, stand back, because he’s going to turn the power on. And Charlie stands back and Abbott stands back. Stands back to the point where nothing but his fingertip could meet the switch, stands back and tightens his face and.

  ‘Ready?’ And we are.

  ‘It seems all right,’ he says. ‘It seems all right now.’

  He moves in. Flicks the switch off, on, off, on.

  ‘Was it a buzzing or a crackling? I can’t hear anything. Can you hear anything now? Ash? Charlie?’

  And Charlie shakes her head, can’t hear anything, and Abbott says, good, says, phew, as though. And reaches into the fridge for milk.

  ‘Look,’ he says. ‘It’s dark, the light’s gone off,’ he says.

  And I’m thinking, tautology, yes, and he holds the door and gestures and yes, it’s dark. Inside the fridge. The light’s off.

  ‘You might be right after all. About that crackling. And all that fresh food. The stuff Lynn brought over. What a waste,’ he says.

  He wonders how long the electricity’s been off, he wants a time, I thought he was going to tap at his Second Core, but he hasn’t. He wants to know. How long? And he’s thinking about the potato gratin, thinking about losing his hands in her hair. And the way he asked, politely, the way he felt, urgently.

  ‘What time was it? Ash?’

  It was ever since. Ever since.

  You followed me home, under the wind. There was no need to be scared. No need to hold me down. There wasn’t anywhere for me to go. Listen though. I dreamt I was a feather. I dreamt I was a feather and at the same time, the wind. I didn’t know whether I was free or trapped. I mean.

  He says he could ask Joan.

  ‘Pop round and ask whether they’ve had an outage too,’ he says. And Charlie says yes and Nelson will come, because Joan likes Nelson and he hasn’t been out, it looks like Ash hasn’t taken him out, so we could, they could and then he says:

  ‘Hang on.’

  He points.

  ‘You’ve turned it off at the wall. The fridge, look. Ash. The freezer, too.’

  He says, ‘Hang on.’ He says, ‘Hang bloody on.’ And he looks around and he says, ‘The dishwasher, the dryer, they’re off, all of at the wall,’ and he says, ‘When did you do it? Ash?’

  ‘Ash?’

  And Nelson’s gone back and Charlie’s gone back and they can tell, Nelson can tell and Abbott opens the fridge door again as if to say. Then says:

  ‘When?’ he says. ‘When, Ash?’

  And Charlie’s gone back and the fridge is black, the inside of the fridge and Charlie’s gone back with her hands over her face and it’s been a long time since she went on, since she sat at the table, or under the ash tre
e and I said. I said she went on and she was and now. Nobody’s going on, nobody’s talking, nobody dares. Abbott looks into the fridge and he doesn’t say, but we can tell. He looks in and he pulls out. He pulls out a packet of chicken goujons, and he shakes it and he doesn’t say, but we listen, until he stops shaking and pulls at the film lid, takes one, two, three tries and good things. Good things come in threes.

  He holds one up. Dangles a goujon and doesn’t say, but, dangles it, swings it and makes sure we’re looking and where else could we look and he says:

  ‘Use your eyes and fucking look at it.’

  He says. He shouts. Then he crumples, yes, crumples onto the floor and curls up and holds his head in his hands and where’s the goujon now because we’re looking at Abbott and his hair and his hands in his hair which isn’t smoothed down and I want him to, take his hand, I mean and tenderly, and.

  Abbott put the food in the bin. I heard it fall. I heard him say, ‘One, two, three things wasted, four, five, six things wasted.’ Heard him in threes, and I guess he knows, and I thought about saying, thought about coming downstairs, standing in the kitchen and saying: