Love Is Red

by Sophie Jaff

  We finally got everything belted and bagged and I paid, but as we were walking out one of those clear plastic balls literally fell out of the slot of the last gumball machine. It couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. We both froze. It was epically creepy, like a movie. So we stood and watched and it rolled by Lucas’s feet and he picked it up. I thought, Well, at least it’s not a gumball, because then we’d have a scene on our hands. He looked up at me with that sad little face again. Fine, clearly the universe wants my son to get a prize. So I said, “Want me to open that for you? See if we can keep it?” Trying to keep my options open. Ha. He said, “Yes, please, Momma.” So I opened it, it took some squeezing and I almost broke a nail, and suddenly it went pop! There was this big bright green fake-ass rabbit’s foot on a gold key chain. I’ve never seen a prize like that. It was the ugliest, most synthetic thing I have ever seen in my life. I wanted to throw it away immediately but he gazed at me with his hand held out. I took a deep breath and I said, “If I ever see you putting it into your mouth I’m taking it away, understand? This is not for eating. Do you understand me?” And he nodded. “Yes. I understand.” So I handed it over and he immediately brightened up. And I ended up eating the chocolate. That was that. Which goes to show that I should have just let him chew some damn gum, because now my kid has this weird lucky rabbit’s foot key chain up under his nose like a cokehead. It’s what they call a “teachable moment.” Shit.

  She jokes about it, but I know how much Andrea resents that rabbit’s foot. She resents it because it comforts Lucas when she can’t; it seems to offer him some sort of safety. It seems to gloat at her, to say a mother’s love isn’t always going to be enough, to be the first thing that Lucas loves and she does not. The first diversion of their paths, and as small as it may be, it’s still a divergence, a difference, a cleaving.

  I hate the way he’s started holding on to it during the day and now with the thumb, like a security blanket. She sighed. I guess I can’t really blame him. It’s like his talisman. I could do with one myself.

  Now I tell the therapist what happened when I put out my hand and Lucas placed the fuzzy charm into my palm. How I closed my fingers over it, soft and slippery and cool, its fur feeling almost wet.

  “I swear I felt a tingling, a light and tremulous buzz. Just for a moment I thought I saw . . . something.”

  Q: Can you describe what you saw?

  Hold it. It’s lucky.

  A: “For a moment I thought I saw someone standing in the corner.”

  I drawed her a shirt, pink ’cause she’s a girl.

  I dropped the rabbit’s foot and the tingling stopped.

  You see too. It wasn’t a question.

  I . . . I began and then I paused. I looked down into his face, his round eyes looking back at me solemnly, trusting. Maybe . . .

  He seemed content with that one useless word and went back to his program again.

  “Of course, I didn’t see anything. I didn’t see anything, but—”

  Q: But what?

  A: “Small, stupid things have me uneasy—”

  Q: What things?

  A: “I’m getting calls. Wrong numbers, all the time now. Mostly there are no messages, just ring-and-hang-ups from numbers I don’t recognize, or just silence on the other end of the phone.”

  Q: Have you reported this?

  A: “I have, but the police said a lot of sick people are taking advantage of everything going on. That there’s a lot of these kind of pranks and stuff happening at the moment. If anyone actually threatens me, I have to come in and file a report, but until they do, I basically have to sit tight.”

  I guess I could call the numbers back, but I think about the doctor’s office, about Daniella Zaretti, and I’m scared.

  Q: What else?

  A: “There’s the closet door.”

  These days the closet door is always two or three inches open. It never used to be, but even though I know I shut it, every time I come back to my room, it’s ajar. Forcing me to look in before I close it. I do, how stupid, but I do, and of course there’s nothing there but my clothes, some linen, my two suitcases.

  The closet door is always open. It means nothing. But somehow I feel that it does mean something. I’ve made sure that there are no bags hanging from the door, pulling it wide, no coat caught in its hinges or a suitcase jutting out. There’s nothing. I close the closet door, I leave my room, and every time I come back, it’s open.

  A camp counselor once told me, You have to close all the closet doors before you sleep or the bogeymen will get you. A thoughtless, cruel way of keeping us neat. Nevertheless it has stayed with me. It worked. I always kept the closet doors closed. Now they are always open.

  “Not that it means anything, but . . .”

  Q: It makes you feel anxious?

  A: “Yes. And then there was what happened last week.”

  I’d been out drinking with Sasha and Liz at some pretentious little bar on the Lower East Side—I can’t remember the name.

  Q: What happened?

  A: “It was almost two in the morning, and I was standing on the Fifty-ninth/Lex subway platform, waiting for the train to take me back to Queens.”

  I hated waiting there; the air was thick and clammy. I saw a fat rat scampering along the tracks and the escalator was squeaking in anguish.

  “I didn’t want to be alone. I saw a young couple farther down, making out, and a woman playing the violin and I went to stand near them.”

  It’s better to wait around strangers than it is to wait alone. It’s better to have witnesses.

  “I didn’t want to stand too close to the couple, it was awkward enough, so I stood and watched the woman. She looked to be in her twenties, her head was shaved, and she was covered with tattoos. She wore a black leather bodice laced tight and her jeans were dark with sweat. She bristled with piercings and chains. I had thought she was playing a violin, but her instrument looked a little bit older, rounder and darker. Her eyes were closed and she swayed in time with the music.”

  There were a few dollars and some change in the cap by her feet. I like to support musicians when I can, as long as their music isn’t intolerable. Besides, she distracted me from the alien atmosphere on the platform and the distant rumblings of other trains. I stooped and put a dollar down, and she stopped, freezing mid-slide of the bow. The shock of silence was so abrupt that even the amorous couple stopped groping each other and looked up, alarmed. With her eyes still closed she began to play another song. There was something terrifyingly magnificent about her focus, her skill, her piercings and leather bodice coupled with the pretty little melody.

  “She opened her eyes and stared straight at me. Then she started singing.”

  Her voice was low and surprisingly lovely, but the words she sang sounded old and strange.

  Sing me a song

  Of the stars and the moon,

  Sing of the one

  Who was taken too soon.

  “It was as if she was singing to me and not singing to me at the same time, maybe singing to someone just behind me. I swung round, but there was no one there.”

  My skin crawled and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.

  Q: You felt she was singing to you?

  A: “Yes.”

  Only I felt that it wasn’t really the girl who was singing. As if something was using her like a marionette, jerking her strings to make her deliver a message.

  A smile in the dark

  A knife gleaming bright

  Sing me a song

  Of the night

  “And there’s the other thing.”

  Q: What other thing?

  A: “It was the night of the vigil. I had come home and gone into the kitchen for some desperately needed ice cream.”

  Katherine?

  I shrieked.

  “Andrea was sitting at the counter.”

  Jesus, you scared me!

  I scared you? Holy hell!

  What
are you doing up?

  She smiled guiltily. Sometimes a woman needs to eat cold chicken and read some trash. There’s the Us Weekly spread out in front of her, a drumstick in one of her hands.

  I agree.

  So, how was the vigil? Andrea had said she couldn’t get out of work, though I privately thought that she couldn’t deal with it. I wasn’t going to judge.

  Intense, sad, moving.

  She nodded.

  Speaking of that and of everything that’s been going on—

  Yeah?

  Do you know where Alexis might have put my window guards when she moved out? I thought briefly of Sael standing on my fire escape, demanding that I let him in. It’s just that my room faces out onto the street and—

  Well, it’s funny you should mention that because I was just on the phone with a guy from the hardware store today.

  “She told me that she knew I was worried about getting the window guard reinstalled, so she’d called the hardware store.”

  Really? Relief flooded through me.

  Yeah, they’re going to come and install some window bars in about two weeks. I asked for an earlier date but they’re booked up until Fourth of July weekend.

  Still, you managed to get an appointment! That’s great!

  She looked a little shame-faced. I’m just sorry I didn’t get it taken care of sooner. I know you’ve been really worried about it.

  “I was puzzled. I hadn’t mentioned it before.”

  Why do you say so?

  She looked away. If I didn’t know her better, I’d think she was embarrassed. Very un-Andrea-like.

  “She said I’d been talking in my sleep.”

  What?

  Hey, don’t look at me like that! I wasn’t eavesdropping, I promise! She sees my expression and sighs. Okay, it was about one in the morning and I couldn’t sleep, so I went and got a nightcap—it sometimes does the trick, y’know?

  I grinned, in spite of myself. Andrea had received this bottle of brandy last Christmas and she was bizarrely defensive about the tiny amounts she doled out to herself on rare occasions. You lush.

  Oh, shut up! Anyway. I saw the light on under your door so I thought you were also up and that maybe, just maybe, if you played your cards right, I would be so generous as to offer you a nightcap too. Because that’s the kind of generous and incredible person I am.

  And?

  And? When I peeped in you were lying in bed with a pillow over your head, sound asleep. No drink for you.

  But you heard me say something?

  Yeah, after I closed the door and turned to walk back to the kitchen. Except it didn’t really sound like you, that was the weird thing.

  What did I say?

  She frowned for a moment, recollecting, then she lowered her voice to a dragging drawl. “He could get in any time he likes. It won’t be long now.”

  What the hell?!

  I know.

  Are you serious? That’s horrifying!

  You’re telling me!

  Seriously, I said that?

  Jesus, Kat, people do all sorts of strange shit in their sleep. It’s no big deal.

  I can’t believe it!

  She laughs. I think she’s relieved to be talking about it. Okay, how’s this, the next time it happens I’ll record you on my phone for undeniable proof.

  Q: What did you feel when she told you that?

  A: “I felt unsettled, because I have, to my knowledge, never talked in my sleep. I mean no one has ever told me that before. I guess the window situation was really freaking me out after all.”

  Andrea gave my arm an affectionate squeeze. But Katherine, it doesn’t matter! What matters is it made me realize that I needed to get going regarding those window bars! I should have done it before.

  I still felt unnerved, but I nodded, letting it go. So how did you swing such a fast appointment? I know the demand is ridiculous.

  I might have mentioned I was a lawyer.

  You told them you were a public defender?

  I may have insinuated that I was more of the prosecutor type. The type who would sue their asses if they didn’t help out some damsels in distress.

  Awesome.

  I know, the only thing is that they need someone to be home to supervise and the earliest date they can make it would be next Wednesday from eleven to twelve. Random huh? I thought if maybe you could take an early lunch break, apparently they’re super fast—

  She saw my expression.

  Uh-oh, what?

  I hadn’t told Andrea yet.

  Actually, I was planning on working through my lunch break so I could go home early.

  Why? Everything okay?

  Yeah, uh, it’s just that David asked me to the annual fund-raising gala for his fancy-shmancy university—it’s so fancy-shmancy that it’s in the middle of the week.

  She smiled. I guess Wednesday is the new Thursday, huh? Well, I’m glad it’s going well with you guys. A gala is a big deal!

  I know, but what about—

  Oh, that’s all right. I’ll stay, I mean, it shouldn’t take long. I can work from home until they’re done.

  Are you sure?

  Oh please, it’s no biggie. She brandished the Us Weekly at me like a wand. Cinderella, you SHALL go to the ball!

  “She’s going to stay and wait for the guys to come and put them in. I guess she’s really rooting for David.”

  Q: Who is David?

  A: “This guy I’m seeing.”

  The truth is that everything seems to be on the upswing.

  “I mean, I haven’t heard from Sael again, that chapter seems to be finally closed, and David is so lovely, but . . .”

  Q: But?

  A: “We haven’t spent the night together yet, almost another month has gone by, and I’m starting to wonder.”

  Most of my friends say it’s a good thing.

  “One of my friends suggested that he could be gay . . .”

  Q: Do you think he could be gay?

  A: “No, I don’t think so. I can tell from the way he looks at me, the way he kisses me.”

  Q: Who’s Sael?

  Oops.

  “Sael?”

  I stall for time.

  Q: You mentioned him earlier, said you hadn’t heard from him again.

  A: “There was this guy Sael . . .”

  Q: That’s an interesting name.

  A: “I know. It’s an old name, from the word ‘sailor.’”

  There’s a silence as the words die in my throat. I can explain the origin of his name, but I’m not sure how to talk about him.

  Q: Do you want to tell me about him?

  A: “I was involved with him briefly, just for one night, but that’s long over.”

  It’s true. Ever since the night when he climbed up the fire escape, I haven’t heard from him. He kept his promise, which I’m glad about. Obviously.

  The therapist nods at me as if to say “Continue.”

  “He and David are friends, best friends.”

  She nods again.

  “David doesn’t know about us, though . . . I guess I feel horrible about the whole thing.”

  Q: You feel unresolved about this.

  A: “Yes.”

  Q: Would you say that the level of your anxiety heightened when you met Sael?

  A: “No.”

  The word is out of my mouth before I can stop it. I don’t want to talk about Sael, or anything to do with him.

  Q: You feel it’s an intrusion when I ask?

  A: “No.”

  Yes, I do.

  “No, I just don’t think there’s a connection.”

  Q: Anything else you want to tell me?

  I’ve been skirting around it the entire session, until we’re almost out of time. Not talking about the real reason I’m here, the thing that happened about a week ago.

  It’s the thing that made me cautiously ask around for a recommendation. Seeing a therapist is nothing to be ashamed of, but still, I don’t wan
t to broadcast it. I asked my friend Michelle, who shared a name. Then another three days of sitting with the number, looking at it and not calling, but I have to tell someone. I have to know.

  Now I don’t look at this woman’s pleasant, impassive face, this woman who sits opposite me. I can’t. So I focus on the wastepaper basket by the left-hand side of her desk as I tell her what happened that night. It’s as if it didn’t happen to me at all, as if I am watching it happen to someone else.

  A: “A week ago I was washing the dishes.”

  I like the water very soapy. Our building is too old and the landlord is too cheap for a dishwasher, but at least the sink water will be hot and soapy, filled with bubbles. I use too much dishwashing liquid—Andrea has told me so. It’s one of the very few things we bump heads over. But I figure it’s okay as long as I pay extra. I always get the green-apple-scented kind, or the pink one. The pink dishwashing liquid has a sharp and bright, efficient smell, like chemical flowers. I wear long yellow gloves and I wash with a green scrubbing pad. I like to dry with paper towels, even though I know this also costs extra money. I put a cleaned plate in the rack, and then two and then three.