by Sharon Bala
We decide to extend our wardrobes by sharing and hang our clothes together. You are generous, encouraging me to wear your expensive, classy outfits. You fix up my hair and lend me your jewellery. We pose like models, with sucked-in cheeks, in front of the pockmarked mirror.
You tell me that my hot flashes, which have tormented me for ten years, sweat pouring out of my body to drench my pillow and derange my sleep, should be viewed differently, as an opportunity, a gift, that they allow me to detoxify. My own portable sauna. No more complaining! But I can’t stop my urgent seeking of shadows when a hot flash begins under a malicious sun.
* * *
—
My niece Gracie asked me how well we knew each other when I told her of these travel plans. I told her how we had met two years ago in Mexico. Two women travelling alone. Five days of swimming, five nights of dancing. It felt like a romance: exciting, joyful, so much in common. We returned home and kept in touch. When you invited me to join you on this trip I hadn’t thought to be cautious of strangers.
In late August, Barcelona nights in the Barri Gotic are a gentle, sleeveless warmth. The buskers are at every plaza, flamenco guitar, cello, opera, even Shakespeare. Sometimes you are quiet when they play. We stroll and stop and unload our pockets of the coins we’ve saved for these virtuosos.
We stop for coffee in the morning, wine at night. You show me pictures of your lover and tell me of his attentions in rich detail. You want me to agree that he looks good. You read me his emails and commandeer me to help you select a fitting gift for him. We go into bookstores and shoe stores. You buy something but change your mind and return it the next day. I want to show you pictures of my daughter and my grandchildren. You glance, then look away. Narcissistic, I think.
* * *
—
We go to bed before midnight, pulling ourselves away from the intense talk we share at our kitchen table when we return each night. We have a routine to keep me from walking past your bed in the nook between my room and the bathroom and kitchen. I gather everything I might need: water, a midnight snack, my reading glasses, my iPad. I have my last toilet pee, we hug goodnight, and I walk through the long, windowed hallway to my little windowless bedroom at the end. You have asked me to keep the hallway windows closed because of the street noises, neighbours talking till five in the morning, restaurants moving tables inside at two or three a.m. It is very stuffy in this room where I spend my nights and very hot in this body where I spend my hot flashes. If I dared I would drift into the cooler, long hallway that separates our spaces and gaze at the action on the street below. I leave my door open to let the air flow but even my reading light reaching through my doorway bothers your light sleep. So I read from my tablet instead of my paperback and glimpse the outdoors with my ears.
So many rules to be followed. So many bright yellow pitchers to fill.
* * *
—
The first time I email my niece I tell her that I am infatuated, with Barcelona and with you. I recount the birthday celebration you made for me and the day spent at Park Güell, an expansive Gaudí masterpiece. You’d waited to see it so we could share the experience. I tell her how you led me through the streets of Barceloneta, that little residential neighbourhood of five- or six-storey buildings and narrow streets where locals are involved in the business of living: riding bikes, carrying groceries, stopping to speak with neighbours, children playing ball with their friends. I tell her I would like to return with her someday and stay in this district. But I notice there are banners that hang from windows telling tourists they are not welcome. Being so close to the beach they have been inundated with people like us, who rent short-term accommodations on Airbnb, infiltrating and threatening their community.
Writing to Gracie the next time, I refer to you as complicated, as inconsistent. And the next time I explain “complicated.” Complicated is your vegan, organic diet coupled with your five cups of coffee and accompanying pastries each day. You preach healthy choices when I order my third martini and pontificate animal rights to my mouthful of foie gras. Yet you keep a rabbit foot for good luck. Complicated is your relationship with money, how you carry a notebook and pen to detail every penny you spend, how you panicked last night when you returned home with five Euros less than you could account for.
You sat down to fifteen minutes of meticulous calculations when we returned from your generous celebration of my birthday: dinner at Pitarra, a concert at the opera house, a purse you bought for me at Desigual and filled with chocolates, and a rose purchased at the table. When we got home you took out your notebook to record every penny you’d spent on me. Do you remember how much I paid for the violinist who serenaded you during dessert? you asked.
* * *
—
Complicated is your grief after the accidental death of your five-year-old daughter thirty years ago.
I awake late, a little hungover. You are at the kitchen sink, your breakfast of toast, almonds, and coffee on the table, untouched.
Thank you, I say. Yesterday was perfect, magic. I can’t believe you did all that for me. I kiss your cheek.
Your body is as still and contained and dripping as an ice carving. It hunches over the sink, supported by your hands that dissolve into the enamel. Your silence, thick and abrupt, absorbs my words. All that moves is your melting face, shiny streams down your cheeks, drops from your nose drowning your mouth. Your tongue slinks out to lick your lips. I wipe my arm over my own lips, soaked with the tears I kissed off your cheek.
What? What is it? I think, If I touch her she will shatter. I step back out of the heat coming off your frozen body.
What did I do?
You take a few steps to the table and I see the photographs. Today is her birthday, you tell me, and you sob as though you have just discovered her body in the swimming pool.
But you didn’t find her floating there yourself. She was not in my care, you tell me, as though pleading with me to judge you kindly.
She looks like you. She has, had, your green eyes. You must have put lipstick on her for this photo. Did you braid her hair yourself?
I try to understand but it has been three decades. Drink your coffee, I tell you.
I left her with my brother’s wife, you are saying. I was in Rome. In Rome. I travelled. For work. Executive. Hilton. Important. She stayed with them. They had a child her age, a boy. She stayed with them.
I reach across and touch your cold coffee cup. I try to imagine the horror. The drugged, endless trip back from Italy. You don’t tell me if you travelled alone. I imagine you alone, having to sit in the middle seat that long, endless way between two strangers. Men, businessmen, who look at you in your white business suit and white high heels that you don’t kick off throughout the inert white flight. They think they are in a movie when you sit down between them like Princess Grace. They do not notice that your perfume is missing and your fingernail is split. So far from them, even an inch away, but each of them writes you into his script.
I really have to eat. How long have we been sitting here? You talking. Me imagining.
I can’t imagine, I tell you. That long plane trip, I say.
Endless, you whisper.
Thirty years? I think.
You haven’t moved when I come back from the bathroom, the photos of your daughter still disarranged in front of you, overlapping, fragments of eyes and noses and mouths, like dead leaves that need to be raked up and discarded. I want to reach down, separate them, spread them out and turn them around to see them clearly. I want to scoop them up and dump them in the compost bin to decompose.
I don’t want to be here with you and your past. Will you notice if I just leave, go to the beach by myself? I want to walk out the door, but there is the problem of the key, the lock, my bruised arm.
When I sit down to rejoin you at the table your stories continue. You are home but you haven’t seen her yet. You see her, frozen and dead. You have her body cremated. I think, Yes, it would ta
ke a lifetime to resolve this loss. I will let go of my swim. I will give you one day.
You dig a photo out of the pile. Your daughter grins with a missing tooth and bright pink lipstick outside the lines. You pull out a picture of a stuffed llama, a lizard, and a leopard. She went through the alphabet, you explain, each day taking a photo to make an alphabet chart on her wall. You find a photo of her with a fish, “F,” and another one with jellybeans, “J.”
So creative, I tell you.
Gifted, you respond, she was only four.
She only got to “J,” you tell me, I finished it for her.
You search for the rest of the alphabet in the mass of photos in front of you and put them in order. All the ones before “K” are of your daughter surrounded by things she collected, except “C,” where she is by herself, Christy.
She put on her princess gown for that one and got me to shoot it, you tell me between sobs.
The letters that come after, the photos you took, have just lonely objects. You are searching frantically for the “P” picture. P is for panic, I think. Panic. Pathetic. Perturbation. Pathos. You find it, a panda bear. It is stuck to the back of “O,” little girl’s overalls, an Easy-Bake oven. As the crisis subsides you gulp and pant, recovering air.
Someday I want to put these together in an album, one of those small ones, to make a little alphabet book, you say.
That would be nice, I respond.
Thirty years later? Honey, it’s not going to happen, I think.
I get up and walk to the window, look down at the street life below. I am yearning for the water I can see at the edge of the cityscape.
Come to the beach; it will heal you, I say. You look at me as though I have punched you.
The fridge is empty.
The fridge is empty, I tell you, I’m going out to get groceries. I’ll come back and make us some lunch.
You make your way over to your bed and lie down, facing the wall.
* * *
—
Outside, the streets are shimmering in the midday sun and vibrating with August tourists. I pass through corridors of Spanish and German and French. I am going to the beach first. Like a truant schoolgirl I tell myself that I am free to do what I want. I say, out loud, I don’t care. I have no beach gear but I don’t care and I leave my pile of clothes, backpack, money exposed on the burning sand.
When I come out of the water I stand like a statue to sundry, looming over the prone bodies. It’s like one of those nightmares, suddenly naked in a crowd. I don’t have your company to clothe me, and with no wind the sun is painfully slow to dry me even as it burns my skin. I did not swim well. Haunted by images of Christy I didn’t feel the rocking of the water or the easing of my body. I am thirsty but I don’t have the courage to signal to the water peddler passing by or to walk to the showers less than thirty metres away. I put my clothes on over my sticky carcass. I dread going back to you and your little girl.
* * *
—
You are not home and I still can’t make my key work. When you finally arrive at dinnertime you find me asleep on the doorsill, your doormat. You could wipe your feet on me and I would not protest, I am so relieved to see you, to be let into our flat, to unload the groceries I brought home, which are as wilted as I. There is no sign of your breakfast or the photos that covered the table. As I empty the bags you stand over me picking up each item and putting it down again, whispering: lettuce, cheese, parsley, pomegranate, buns. You step closer and, like a feral animal, you sniff me, smell the sea on me, smell my secret swim. You don’t say the word betrayal, but you pick up an apple, bite into it, put it down, and walk away.
These are the things I think, but do not to say to you, as we mumble past each other in the silent rooms.
Where were you? When did you go out?
Why did you leave me locked out for so long?
I swam. I left you alone and went to the beach. I had a good swim. A great swim.
Are you okay now?
Are you hungry? I’m hungry.
Is it like this every year or just on the decade anniversaries?
We have to do something about this key thing. We could get a locksmith, change the lock.
I shouldn’t have left you alone with your grief.
Do you know what a passive-aggressive bitch you are?
I’m so sorry about your daughter. I had no idea.
You need to get a local cellphone plan so I can call you to let me back in.
I need to find another place.
I can’t take this.
Why are you resisting getting a local plan?
You have no idea how this key thing is insane for me.
I’m not going to France with you next week. I’m done. I’m going home.
Your daughter, so beautiful. How did you bear it?
Do you know how controlling you are?
Thirty years, for fuck’s sake. Get a life.
I’m leaving. I’m leaving. I’m leaving.
I’m so sorry.
* * *
—
Four more days. We sit at the table after breakfast and dinner, each with our iPads, sending and receiving emails from stable, supportive, faraway people. We don’t share stories, talk and laugh about our day together, or share excitement in planning the next day. When we go out I follow you around, a cloud. Should we go to the gardens? you ask. Sure. Do you want to have tapas tonight? Okay. I still haven’t told you. You still think I will be going with you when we leave this flat and rent the car. Three more days. I have to tell you. I waver, thinking I could handle the road trip with you, that I am giving up an opportunity. I think, I can do it. I stay home at night and go to bed before you get back from the Barcelona nights we used to share. I start packing. In the morning you go out and return with a large bag of groceries, taking money out of our grocery pool. You insist that I review the bill while you put the items away. Two packages of tofu, two litres of milk, a half-dozen apples, half a kilo of cheese, crème caramel, a litre of ice cream.
What is all this stuff? We’re leaving the day after tomorrow.
There was nothing left. We still have to eat.
But you bought enough food here to last a week. We’ll never be able to eat a quarter of this.
We can pack it for the road trip.
Ice cream? And I tell you I’m not going.
You sit down with a spoon and eat all the ice cream and drink the milk right out of the carton.
One more day. We are cleaning the apartment. Tomorrow the owner returns and we are supposed to pick up the car. My flight is at six in the morning. I know you are furious but you are not dramatic. Tears, only your damn tears, pouring out of your face. When I wake at four I walk past your bed lugging my suitcase. It sounds like a train wreck. Of course you are awake and you will get up to lock the door behind me. But for now you don’t move.
ROWAN MCCANDLESS
CASTAWAYS
Mr. Papadakis tells us to smile. He says, “Girls, here at Castaways, we’re not just selling Singapore Slings and Crab Rangoon. We’re selling fantasy. We’re giving a bunch of poor saps who’ve never been anywhere special a taste of tropical paradise right here on the Prairie. And you, young ladies, are key to the illusion. You’re the dusky jewels in Castaways’ crown…Yes, Tina. Even you. So you can stop rolling your eyes. Now, where was I?”
“Dusky jewels,” I say, duct-taping my coconut bra into place.
“Oh yes, dusky jewels. Thank you, Amber.”
“Uh huh. Whatever.”
I fiddle with my bikini top. I gotta make sure “the girls” stay in place so there’s no more unfortunate wardrobe malfunctions, like what happened last month in front of the Rotary Club.
“You’re the dusky jewels in Castaways’ crown,” Mr. Papadakis says.
I test the duct tape by jumping up and down. Tina joins in. So does Janine, and my best friend, Enza. We bounce up and down, wiggle and jiggle like crazy, cuz being charged with public n
udity ain’t as much fun as you’d think.
Mr. Papadakis turns beet red. He mops his forehead. “You…you are…you’re—”
“Delicate orchids,” we say. “The exotic blooms in Castaways’ floral lei.”
Talk about your total bull-crap. I mean, there’s nothing authentic or native about our South Seas Polynesian Revue. Like, Tina’s native, but, you know, not that kinda native. Janine’s fresh off the boat from some country that no longer exists. Enza’s frickin’ Italian. And me? I’m a Heinz 57. A little bit of everything and a whole lotta wasted potential, according to Mom.
Janine spritzes her hair with Sexi Hold Hairspray. Sexi Hold Hairspray promises to hold your hair like nobody’s business. So does Enza, as she bulldozes over a chair and puts Janine in a headlock.
“Bitch,” Enza says. “I told you to keep your hands off my shit.”
“Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” Janine says.
Janine’s still learning English. Picks a lot of it up watching television.
Tina’s all WWF, pacing the linoleum, totally psyched to get tagged.
“Ow. Ow. Ow!” Janine says. “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin!”
Janine drops the can.
I elbow Mr. Papadakis. Point at the clock.
He looks at the time, then claps his hands.
“Girls,” he says. “Places.”
Our grass skirts rustle on our race to the exit. Janine shoves right in front of me and I wind up last in line and the first girl Mr. Papadakis pinches on the ass tonight. FYI, we don’t call him Papa Dick behind his back for nothing. So thanks, Janine. Thanks a frickin’ lot.