The camera nosedives and extricates itself from the Jeep, attached to the sweaty palm of a thirty-year-old music video director from Tallahassee. Below the lens, the Central African dirt is fine and dry and orange. The cameraman lifts his machine and records Tim getting out of the Jeep, too pale in his pale-blue T-shirt, with its halos of sweat around the armpits and at the collar. Still arguing in French with the driver, Rodrigue follows Tim out of the car. ‘No fucking reference. Moron,’ says the man from Tallahassee to the driver.
The firing is closer now – minutes away. The camera is behind the other two; the fixer in his navy PRESS windbreaker, and Tim in his American Apparel T-shirt. There is something discordant about Tim, and it’s not the fear. ‘Tim, you gonna faint? You think you can tell us what’s going on, here? You know, narrate this shit?’ Tim stops and turns. He swallows his saliva and gags. Every now and again, the gunshots come with distant screams.
‘So we heard reports of gunshots near the airport and—’
An explosion detonates streets away. A teenage boy runs out from behind a corrugated-iron hut and takes shelter inside a cabin across the street. He’s followed by a woman and two more teenage boys. People start to cross the frame like ghosts, or extras. Two quick explosions and the camera is pointed at the dirt again. Mustard sand, now, and stones, their crunch underfoot picked up by the camera’s mic. Gunshot makes the camera shake and slap against the mud wall of the hut beside them.
‘Fuck. Fuck.’ The cameraman runs behind Tim and stays close to his back; the camera picks up Tim’s jeans. ‘Walk fast,’ comes Rodrigue’s voice from behind. They are walking fast among tiny houses and shacks. The neighbourhood is deserted again. They turn a corner and see him. ‘Oh, fuck. Fuck, man,’ says the music video director. Tim vomits into the dust. Rodrigue walks over to the shape, followed closely by the man from Tallahassee. It’s not one shape, it’s two. Two boys. One dead. One bleeding to death from a red hole in his abdomen. ‘Aidez-moi. J’ai mal.’ Help me. It hurts.
Lois types the words into the text box. The red letters come up over the image, one after a bloody other. H. e. l. p. The full stop lodges itself in the middle of the hurt boy’s torn-open knee. Lois pulls off her headphones and puts them down on the keyboard. Trapped inside the headphones, the cameraman’s voice fades to a squeak. The lower third shakes with jeans and blood and subtitles. Lois rolls her chair back, but even at a distance things continue to unfold. The dead boy looks deader. The one who is still alive looks lost, delirious. (He is lost, she finds out around 4 p.m., two hours of footage later, when, on the back seat of the Jeep, the boy closes his eyes and death rolls them open again one last time.)
As the boys get carried off into the back of the Jeep, which has miraculously turned up, Lois looks around the room where she is working. There are eight computers, three of them in use. Two monitors to the right is a guy in a hat and parka. He appears to be animating the credits for a food or travel show, or maybe it is a travel food show. Next to him, a girl with long blonde hair watches a screen where another girl with long blonde hair and fast-moving lips fondles a leather handbag from a luxury brand.
Lois gazes back into her own monitor and hits the space bar on the two boys. They stop in blurry freeze-frame, as though some transport of the souls were already taking place. The two boys – who can’t be older than seventeen or eighteen – fill the screen. Their moment in the sand is framed by the subtitling software browser, which looks like a navigational instrument. To the right is a text file of the words on screen, like a step by step to the end point. A path of subtitles from ‘What the fuck, man’ to two dead boys. Underneath, positioned in the ribbon of free space on the screen, is Lois’s email, and the history of an earlier conversation with her mother.
‘It’s basically a castrated cock.’
‘Ha.’
‘I didn’t want to do turkey. We just did the whole turkey thing.’
‘Yeah. I’ll take a castrated cock any day.’
‘Yes, yes, Lois... Get all the capon jokes out of your system now.’
‘Capon. He sounds like a superhero. Capon – the superhero castrated cock! A cock with a cape on it!’
The boy who is dead has a film of yellow dust halfway up his Adidas tracksuit bottoms. It is like the line of scum on the bathtub at Guernsey Street. The blood forms a tiny black puddle that soaks in or out of his shirt.
Lois gets up and walks to the communal kitchen, past the numbered editing suites. She takes a paper cup and loads up the coffee maker with a cartridge of Donut Shop Blend. As the coffee pisses out, she turns the corner to the toilets and locks herself inside one of the cubicles. The dead boy flashes into her mind, his open eyes the colour of sand. Lois throws up into the toilet, flushing as she does so to hide the sound of her retching. She sits with her back against the door, and the tears start to push out of her eyes. It is painful. Not the crying, but how difficult it is to.
Lois wants the fat, warm tears, the ones that streak your cheeks and leave trails on your shirt. The ones that make it feel like you are looking through a glass bottom. The ones that make your nose run. The ones that conjure up the furball of choke at the back of your throat. The ones that relax your jaw, and paint grimaces on your face that dig up dimples to catch the fat, warm tears that caused all this shifting of skin in the first place.
Instead, all she gets are the needling, dry tears that don’t get rid of anything. And the worst thing is, she has to keep reminding herself of the dead boy, because his face keeps getting replaced with Nick’s.
But Nick isn’t dead. Nick is probably home from work by now, packing for France, where her father is busy being unfaithful to her mother, who will soon be trussing a bird with no balls.
So why is she crying? Because she doesn’t want to go home to Nick. Because Nick, for all his forgiveness and gestures, has stopped making sense. They are living it out, these days. And she wants the boy to live. The baby to have lived. She would leave Nick to bring them both back. And all her want is, ultimately, a great waste of energy.
*
When it is 4.39 a.m., Maya opens her eyes and stares at the black giraffe guarding the bedroom door. By 5.33 a.m. the giraffe is no longer a giraffe, but a wooden chair with Cole’s blazer folded over its back.
Maya looks up at the wall across from the bed, where three ribbons of blue light from the chinks in the curtains are beaming onto framed pictures of her family. Cole’s right eye with eyebrow, her father’s crossed legs, Cole’s sister’s chin, tilted, another one of Cole’s eyes, Gitsy’s baby teeth – the light from the street gives them up in little morsels, like clues.
The biggest clue, perhaps, is the wedding picture. Cole grinning in a fine grey wool suit, Maya beatific in a long white skirt with a fitted rose point-lace blouse. They are sitting on the stone wall, legs dangling over the dwarf crab apple trees. Behind them is the Brittany house, with bouquets of white hydrangeas pinned to the blue shutters. Later that month, Cole gets a job in Geneva, working for the UN. They come home. Joan is delirious – she cried as she waved Maya off to university, and now Maya is back. Three years later, Cole gets a job in DC. Joan is happy for them. Happy there is someone in the US to keep an eye on Lois. In this wedding picture they are young and radiant. Six years on they still look as young as they did in the photo; two bodies on the right side of time.
Maya listens to Cole’s breathing and, for a moment, tries to align her respiration with his. She falls asleep this way.
When it is 6.58 a.m., Maya wakes up again. She tries a meditation exercise she read about in Marie Claire, and falls asleep this way.
At 7.20 a.m., Maya is woken up by thoughts of Liz. When she is done thinking of Liz, she turns her head to the left to make sure it is still Cole who is lying in bed next to her.
At 8.02 a.m., Maya turns off her phone’s alarm, due to come on at 8.15 a.m., and gets out of bed. She pulls on her sweatpants and goes downstairs to the kitchen.
The stairs are carpeted. Everywhe
re is carpeted. The carpet was put down by the previous owner to make the house more attractive to prospective buyers. The carpet is too thick to be tasteful, and it’s white, which is just silly. Already around the dining table there are crusty puddles of orange pasta sauce, tears of dried apple juice and Cheerios glued to the pile. They’ve spoken of removing it once Finn is walking, but now Maya isn’t so sure. She knows she’s meant to want the wooden floorboards, yes, but now she’s grown used to treading on the ridge of the step, and it feeling soft under the arch of her foot. Gitsy says it’s like walking on fluffy sheep babies.
Maya goes over to the French doors with the kettle, to empty yesterday’s water out in the garden. She knows yesterday’s water is still potable, but it’s a habit. New water for a new day.
The living room is white. White carpet, white walls, and a green sofa with white cushions and a white throw. On the walls there are two paintings by a rising Kenyan artist. Cole brought them back with him in April, after a three-week consultancy on governance and transparency in Nairobi. One is mostly white, the other is white with a transparent grey geometrical shape in the middle. Finn’s bouncy chair is parked in the corner, filled with the toys she and Cole picked up off the floor last night.
Cole’s ability to work a ten-hour day, get in an hour of water polo, and still have time to be a devoted father amazes her. Frank never had the consistency of a Cole. Maya has no recollection of him ever giving her and Lois a bath, much less playing Rapunzel on the top bunk. Frank’s strength as a father was in grand outings that were devised to be memorable. Not in the small stuff, which took place again and again, and was routinely forgotten.
In the week, he usually appeared just when Joan was about to serve dinner. They’d be sitting on the bench with wet hair and clean pyjamas, and suddenly Frank would come in the front door and take his place at the head of the table. After dinner, he would read his book on the sofa or wait for Joan in front of the television. The children would single-file down the stairs one last time to collect their goodnight kisses from him.
Weekends were different. Frank worked most Saturdays, but was with them on Sundays. There were weekends when he doled out his parenting from morn till midnight, with the same cultish ardour he directed at his research. Maya remembers him rousing them at the crack of dawn to go mushrooming. He filled baskets with plastic bottles sawn in half, and gave them each a pocket knife. They stayed out all day, came home with cuts on their fingers and teary from exhaustion. At night he turned the harvest into omelettes – one omelette per species of mushroom. Dinner would be ten omelettes, which came flying out of the kitchen way past the children’s bedtime. If they found berries too he would let them make jam with him until they were too sleepy to stand.
Other Sundays he disappeared into his study with his books and maps, or took long sitting naps with his mouth wide open.
Maya looks at the white staircase that leads up to where her children and husband are still asleep. She walks over to the bookcase, which is filled with photography books and monographs but almost no novels, and feels for her phone on the top shelf. Two unread messages from Liz.
I’m writing a list of all the phenomenal things you’ve said and done so I never forget them.
I miss you already. You have warm, cinnamon skin that’s never sweaty.
Maya smiles at the second message, and puts the phone in the pocket of her sweatpants.
She fills the kettle at the sink. It’s a much better kitchen than the one in the rental apartment. Before they became homeowners. There’s a breakfast nook. Cole always sets the table for breakfast the night before, and Gitsy’s Hello Kitty cereal bowl is sitting next to two coffee cups. Empty and ready to receive.
When Joan stays with them, she gives Maya Ican’tbelieveyouhaveitthisgood looks. It’s just empty coffee cups, thinks Maya. But she knows it isn’t.
Maya takes the coffee out of the freezer and drops three scoops into the cafetière. Then she adds a fourth. She changes her mind, and dredges up half a scoop. She always does this – hesitates over the amount of coffee to put in. She leans against the work surface as the kettle comes to a rattle, and looks at the calendar on the fridge. Looking at December this way, a grid of seven possibilities repeated four times, the month falls into two categories: chaperone and liar.
There was Finn’s ten-month check-up, Gitsy’s ballet recital. Then Cole’s mother, who came over from London to help out with the kids that week Cole was away. There was a dentist visit for Cole, and a hair appointment for her, and then all the SWIMMING she did this month. All that SWIMMING with Liz. SWIMMING in Liz’s apartment, on Friday night, Saturday, another Saturday, Thursday, Sunday, Thursday night, and then last Monday. All that coming home with wet hair, but never smelling of chlorine.
Maya reaches above the fridge for the ready oats and tears the top off a sachet. She props it up against the toaster and takes out a small pan. She eyeballs a cup of milk and puts the pan on the smallest burner, holding it steady and stirring the milk just short of a boil.
Maya sprinkles cornflakes into Gitsy’s bowl. A few scatter around the bowl, but she leaves them there. She does not decant the milk into the little blue jug that says ‘Kisses from Brighton’, but instead sets the carton down on the table. Behind her the kettle screeches.
Maya pours the boiling water into the coffee pot and empties the sachet of ready oats into the little red pan, stirring it with a wooden spoon that has a leather cord looped through the handle. Today she finds this detail infuriating. If some objects are purely utilitarian and others only aesthetic, then everything in Maya’s kitchen is exactly halfway between the two.
She turns off the heat and leaves the oatmeal to stand. She pushes the plunger down into the coffee pot slowly, imagining the suction is a black hole that could absorb all this whiteness in a heartbeat. She pours coffee into Cole’s ‘Paw, Yer Coffee’s Ready’ mug, and opens the fridge to get the cream. There is no cream, so she uses the milk that is already on the table.
Maya walks back up the stairs, past the front door with its stained-glass half-moon that is raining turquoise shapes onto the packed suitcases in the hallway. She walks into her bedroom and kisses Cole on the forehead.
‘Paw, your coffee’s ready.’
‘Hmmm.’ Cole turns his head and pushes his forehead down into the pillow. ‘Your phone was beeping all night. Who the hell texts you at 1 a.m.?’
Maya pretends not to hear. After all, his mouth is full of pillow.
She puts the cup down on the ledge above the bed and goes over to the children’s room. Finn is awake and sucking on his dummy. He looks like a big grey frog in his romper, kicking away at the bars of the cot. Maya wonders if Finn takes after her father – if Frank’s legs were always so restless, even as a baby.
‘Mama.’ Gitsy’s voice is buried deep inside her duvet.
Maya scoops Finn up into her arms and walks over to the top bunk.
‘Good morning, darling.’
Gitsy kicks off the covers and pushes her forehead down into the pillow. Apart from her temper, Gitsy takes after Cole.
‘Are we going to sleep on the plane?’
‘Yes, you’re going to have a long sleep on the plane.’
Gitsy sits up in bed and frowns at her mother.
‘You said I could watch a movie.’
‘You can, darling.’
‘Then I won’t sleep.’
‘OK.’
Gitsy gets out of bed and sits on the white carpet of her bedroom, rubbing the sleep from her eyes with her little fists.
‘Will it be today or tomorrow when we see Grandma and Grandpa?’
‘It’ll be tomorrow night.’
They are flying to Paris just to spend half the day with Gitsy’s godmother. It seemed like a good idea back in October, but today Maya isn’t so sure. She wishes Cole had talked her out of it, but as ever Cole let Maya plan everything, reserving his contribution for the execution stage. He will drive them down to her parents�
�, while Maya plays I Spy with the children.
‘Then I’m going to keep my pyjamas on.’
‘You can if you want.’
Gitsy pushes past her and stomps down the stairs to the kitchen. Maya takes Finn back to her room and lays him down next to Cole. She goes to the bathroom and starts the shower running. She closes the door and texts Liz.
Are you awake?
She thinks of Liz asleep. She’s never seen Liz sleep – not properly, not through the night. A small wave of panic laps over her, enough to send out a discreet army of pins and needles to her brain. She wonders if this is what Lois means by ‘anxiety’. Lois talks about anxiety as though it were a normal thing, a daily phenomenon. Where Lois has panic attacks, Maya writes to-do lists. It was ever thus.
The shower sounds like a great crashing waterfall. Maya remembers the advice she read in Marie Claire, and brings her breathing to the forefront. She closes her eyes. She imagines she is breathing in water. She imagines that watching Liz sleep is like looking at kindness itself, if kindness were sharp, and wise, and irresistible.
The breathing exercise is not working. The pins and needles are bouncing up through her skull, and there is something cold and painful behind her eyes. Maya feels like she’s being consumed by her vision – as powerless as a gulp of water. She sits down on the floor of the bathroom and leans her head back against the white tiles. She makes a note to put her phone on silent. The door handle goes up and down. ‘I’ll be out in a minute,’ she says.
There is nothing to do today but go home.
*
She came over alone, in the spring. Back when they had Simon sleeping in the crate. In the days of equipment and training. They acquired the dog in January. He was almost finished being a puppy, but still they were convinced they had to get all this equipment. Different bins for different biscuits that would do different things to his nails, tonsils and hair. Brushes for his tail and brushes for his coat. A brush for his teeth. A metal stand to lift his food bowl up by seven inches. Things for him to chew on that made him feel like he wasn’t allowed to chew on things.
Stories We Tell Ourselves Page 4