by S. L. Grey
My anxiety receded further as the plane leveled out. As the woman in the window seat was determinedly reading her book, my neighbor—a thirtyish German with blond eyebrows—focused on me. He wanted to talk, and I needed distracting. He offered a hand, and I shook it limply, aware that my palm was wet. Only then did I notice that my fingernails were arced with filth. I buried them in my palms.
“You are from South Africa?” he asked.
“Yes. Cape Town.”
“Ah. I am going to Johannesburg. It is my first time there.”
He’d seen us in the standby queue and offered to swap seats with Mark—as the last to board, we were unable to sit together—but I told him not to worry. Now that we were safely away from Paris, I didn’t trust myself with Mark. I didn’t trust myself not to cause a scene, not to demand, Just what the fuck is wrong with you? He’d scared me, and the fear was now turning to anger. Fortunately the blond was too wrapped up in himself to question why I didn’t want to sit next to my husband. He was en route to meet a South African girl he’d met online and was bubbling with loved-up happiness. It won’t last, I wanted to say. One day you could wake up and find her cradling a dead fucking cat.
I mechanically ate the chicken and broccoli in-flight slop. I downed the mini-bottle of cabernet too quickly, and it turned to acid in my gullet. The lights dimmed, and my neighbor finally got tired of holding a one-sided conversation and fixed his attention to the screen in front of him, laughing unself-consciously at 22 Jump Street. I used the corner of the in-flight magazine to dig the dirt out of my nails. It was glutinous and left a bloody smear on a duty-free advert. I knew what it was, and I tried not to think about it.
We should never have returned to that building. We were rain soaked and on edge, we didn’t have a cent, and our clothes were trapped inside Carla’s bloody hotel. Neither of us was cut out to sleep rough or hole up in a bus or train station for the night. But to be honest, I hadn’t felt much of anything except exhaustion as we’d slogged up the apartment’s familiar stairs, breathing in the familiar odor of dust and ancient cooking: no fear, no trepidation, no sadness or regret for Mireille. I was done.
I’d passed out almost immediately. I don’t know what woke me—I don’t remember dreaming. One minute Mark and I were wrapped around each other; the next, he was gone from the bed. I sat up and listened, but I couldn’t hear him moving around elsewhere in the apartment. “Mark?” I called, my voice slurred with sleep.
I jumped up, switched on all the lights, and, still groggy, padded from the bathroom to the kitchen and back again. The only sound was the slap of my bare feet on wood, which for some reason made me think of the shadows poisoning our own home. No Mark. I don’t know why, but I got it into my head that he’d gone upstairs to Mireille’s room. I didn’t bother to get dressed—panic was setting in by now and I was barely aware I was half-naked—nor did I check to see if Mark had left the keys behind. I left the apartment, letting the door slam shut behind me, and ran up the stairs in nothing but my underwear.
Mireille’s door was half-open. “Mark?” I whispered, but I could sense the studio apartment was empty. It felt like an intrusion, but I couldn’t stop myself from peering inside it and turning on the light. It still reeked of smoke and turps, but now there was an undertone of something else—something like lavender. Someone, probably one of the cops, had turned all the canvases around, and scores of big-eyed children surrounded me as I stepped farther into the room. Then it hit me that the paintings all seemed to depict the same dark-haired child in different emotional states: leering, laughing, crying, and screaming. They were too slapdash to be creepy, but there was something lonely and desperate about their expressions, which stopped them from being purely kitschy or ridiculous. I reached out a hand to touch them but then snatched it back, irrationally certain they’d infect me somehow. The laptop was gone, as were the coffeepot and the coverlet. A pair of worn corduroy trousers lay curled forlornly in the corner.
A thunking sound reverberated up from the guts of the building—the slam of the entrance door?—and I backed out of there, fleeing for our apartment, praying that Mark had returned while I was snooping in Mireille’s room. Without the keys, I was locked out. I slapped the door with the flat of my hand. “Mark! You in there? Mark!”
I turned to the neighboring apartment and traced my fingers across the top of the door. The key was gone. I pressed my ear to the door but could hear nothing but the gush of blood in my veins. Mark must have gone outside for some reason.
By now the cold was really starting to bite, and my skin prickled with goosebumps. I hurried down the stairs and pushed through the door and out into the courtyard.
“Mark?”
His dark shape staggered out of the corner.
“Thank God. What are you doing down here?” His shoulders were shaking. Something was wrong. I walked toward him slowly. There was something in his arms. A dark bundle. Unable to see what it was at first, I reached out to touch it, recoiling as my fingers stroked fur, the flesh beneath it holding only a trace of warmth. It was an animal of some sort, and it must have died fairly recently. He shifted his position and I realized it was a cat. The ground beneath me tipped. I forgot about the cold and the stones piercing the soles of my bare feet. “Put it down, Mark. Drop it. We’re getting the fuck out of here.”
He murmured something, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Nor could I read his eyes in the gloom.
“Give me the keys.” I dug in his coat pocket, doing my best not to brush against the cat again. I breathed with relief when my fingers curled around metal. I shouldn’t leave him there alone, but I doubted I’d be able to hustle him up to the apartment. “Put that fucking thing down and wait. I’ll be back in two minutes.”
I hurled myself up the stairs, a fresh surge of panic pushing me on. All I could think was that this was bad. Very bad. What would make him want to pick that dead cat up? Had he gone out onto the street to find it?
I grabbed towels, threw on my clothes—my jeans were still damp, but that was the least of my worries—gathered the rest of our stuff, and ran to rejoin him.
He was calmer when I returned and had discarded the cat in a corner of the courtyard. He didn’t speak to me as I scraped the worst of the muck off his coat, gagging at the odor of spoiled meat. I asked him again what the hell he was thinking, and he murmured something about thinking it was still alive and trying to save it. I could forgive his irrational behavior at the train station—his refusal to sneak through the turnstiles like everyone else; he’d always been like that, proud of his moral compass—but I wasn’t sure I could forgive him for begging from that family. Mark had scared them. He’d scared me. We were lucky they didn’t call the cops. I would have handed over my wallet as well if a man with screaming eyes, an unshaven face, and matted cat hair on his sleeve had approached me. And worse, Mark had been oblivious to their fear and triumphant about what he’d done: Look, Steph, there is kindness in the world.
Sickened by the memory, I felt the acid in my gut turn to nausea. I slipped out of my seat and weaved my way toward the lavatory at the back of the plane. On the other side of the aisle, Mark was staring at his screen, fingers pressed to his earphones. He didn’t look up as I passed him.
Safely inside the bathroom, I locked the door, sat on the metal toilet seat, and stared at the clump of dirty paper towels spilling out of the trash can. The nausea had eased, but my stomach was still churning. In less than eight hours we’d be home. Before we left, I assumed I’d be returning relaxed, confident, rejuvenated, with enough ammunition to eradicate the intruders’ lingering shadows. Perhaps, I thought, I could say that I was desperate to see Hayden (which was true), then drive down to Montagu and stay at Mom and Dad’s for a few days. They were scheduled to bring Hayden back on Sunday—I could easily say I wanted to fetch her myself. Could I—or more important, should I—leave Mark alone in the house so soon after we returned? No. He wasn’t well. I had to face the house sometime;
running off to Montagu would only be postponing the inevitable. Unless, a voice whispered, you don’t come back.
The shame came then. How could I think that? Sitting in that bathroom, that stupid stinking bathroom, I came to a decision. Whatever Mark was going through was our problem. I still resented how he’d behaved during the home invasion, but that was my problem. I could forgive him for that. I loved him. Of course I did. And his freakish behavior—the dead cat, harassing that family—might be symptoms of a chronic lack of sleep, PTSD, and stress. I stood up and stared at myself in the warped mirror above the sink. We’d been through Hayden’s difficult first months together; we’d built a life. I’d known he was damaged from the start; I’d known what I was getting myself into. You don’t come back from the death of a child. You can’t run away from your history. And I wish I could say that pride wasn’t a factor, but I’d be lying. No one had thought our relationship would work, not my parents, not my friends, and especially not Carla. I needed to prove them wrong.
I left the bathroom, and this time as I made my way back to my seat I touched Mark on the shoulder. He jumped but then smiled in relief when he saw it was me. I almost mentioned that the guy next to me was willing to swap seats but decided against it. A few hours apart wouldn’t hurt.
“You okay up there?” he asked.
“Fine.”
The light was poor, but I searched his face, looking for any sign of irrationality. The woman sitting next to him stirred and eyed me with interest. Women liked Mark—they always had.
“Steph, I’m sorry about what happened in the airport.”
“In the airport?” Oh shit, I thought, has he done something else I don’t know about? “What happened in the airport, Mark?”
“You know, me falling asleep and letting you deal with everything by yourself.”
“Oh. Oh right. That’s okay.”
“It isn’t. Really.” He gave me a crooked grin. “I’m sowwy, Steph.” I laughed out of relief, remembering the crappy vocalist on the train ride into Paris. He was sane enough to make a joke—that was something.
“Try and get some sleep.” He kissed my hand, and I returned to my seat. I felt easier, almost ready to convince myself that I’d blown the scene with the cat out of proportion. I’d just woken up, after all. I was spooked, disoriented. Maybe I had misremembered it. Maybe he really did think he could save it. Soothed, I fell asleep within minutes.
The blond German woke me as the plane was touching down in Joburg. At some point he must have climbed past me to get to the toilets—he was freshly shaven and was wearing a crisp white shirt. As everyone deplaned, I waited nervously outside the exit door for Mark to join me. His two-day stubble made him appear haggard and older, but he seemed calmer, less fidgety and distracted than the day before. As we queued at immigration and collected our baggage, we didn’t say much, mostly just swapped inanities like polite strangers: “Did you sleep well?” “Wasn’t the breakfast awful?” “Should we get coffee before the flight to Cape Town?”
A cloud of metallic balloons bounced above the crowd congregating around the arrivals-hall barrier, and my spirits began to lift. The place was packed, full of noise and color; it felt like real life again after the grayness of where we’d been. Someone screeched, making both of us jump, and then I spotted the German guy running toward a woman clutching a handful of ribbons tethered to the balloons. She outweighed him by at least forty pounds, but he swung her around effortlessly, both of them laughing. As they kissed, the people around them laughed and clapped, the balloons floating off listlessly.
I nudged Mark. “I sat next to that guy on the plane. He told me he was—”
Mark squeezed my wrist so tightly I winced. He was staring straight ahead at something—or someone—in the throng of people around us. His eyes tracked the progress of a preteen girl with mousy braids.
“What is it?”
“I thought she’d…” He released my arm. “Nothing,” he said with a strained smile. “Nothing at all. Really. Let’s go home.”
Chapter 15
Mark
“Top you up, darling?”
I should get back home, but the hot afternoon sun has thawed me out and I’m lethargic. I’d like to go home and help with Hayden’s bath time, but I know Steph’s happy for the quality time alone with her. When Jan and Rina delivered her back home from the B and B this morning, Steph was so relieved her eyes started to well up. I made up a pretext to come and see Carla—“I should go and fetch the keys and thank her for her time”—and Steph almost bustled me physically out of the house, she was so keen to have a break from me.
When we got in yesterday afternoon, she dropped her bag and started stalking around the house. “This has been moved,” she said, pointing at the dressing table that’s always been under the window in our bedroom. Before I could even come over, she was across to the bookshelf. “Someone’s laid these books on their sides.” Perhaps it was Hayden, I said; perhaps Carla took them out while she was here, but she was off again. “Do you smell that?” “Is this where we left it?” “We closed this blind, didn’t we?”
Having been through the week we just had, I know I should have been more sympathetic. Steph was right: things in the house did look different—they felt different—but I was so exhausted by our constant traumatized hyperawareness, I willfully ignored it. If I couldn’t feel at home there, where on earth could I? I wanted so urgently to be lulled. So I’ve run out to this soul-thawing café with my comforting old friend and I’m leaning back in my chair as if I have no bones, instead of staring down this trauma by the side of my wife and child. Good going, Mark. I really should get back now, but rich summer light is glinting off the ocean, and a stiff breeze cools my skin. I can see half the sky from here. “Sure, thanks,” I tell Carla.
She leans over and fills my glass with chardonnay from the ice bucket, and a skein of hair loosens from behind her ear and falls across her face, catching the light. Though it’s hennaed with beetrooty-red highlights, there’s still some of that rich bronze in it—her natural color.
I’ve always been a sucker for pretty hair. Odette’s hair used to make her look like an American beauty queen, like the sun shone into every room she graced; it was thick, lustrous, effortless, and when we made love she’d run it across my body and I could feel the warm life stroking into me. I’d try to smother myself in its scent. At times like that, Odette embracing and covering me, shielding me from the world, I could have died happy over and over again. When Odette’s hair grew back, it was strangely curly and mousy brown.
Even though Odette tried to keep up a brave face, once Zoë caught her crying at her mirror during one of the chemo courses, grasping a hank of hair in her hand. “What’s wrong, Mommy?” Zoë asked. “I’m so ugly,” she said. Zoë just shook her head, and five minutes later she determinedly returned, clutching all of her dolls, each of them shorn. “See, they’re pretty, Mommy, just like you.” Later, Zoë had gathered all of the dolls’ plastic hair trimmings into a small Tupperware, “for later, when they feel better.”
Perhaps it’s the wine, the sun, the breeze, the distance from Steph—but I don’t stop myself reaching out to feel the ends of Carla’s hair. “This is nice,” I say. “New color?”
She pulls back gently and frowns at me, but with a—suggestive? indulgent?—curl of the lips. “You sounded so strange when you called that day”—she does her cheeky impression of my voice—“ ‘We need to get out of there, now, Carla.’ What happened?”
I take a deep, slow sip of my wine—suicides, ghosts, dead cats. Where do I start? And if I start, where will I finish? I put down my glass, hoping the heat of the day will counteract the nauseating chill that’s returned to my blood just thinking about that place. “Let’s just say the apartment was not as advertised.”
“You told me that, remember?”
“I did?”
“Mark, darling, we had a long Skype convo about it. There was hair in the closet or something.” S
he shuddered. “Ugh. You shouldn’t have made light of it. You should have moved to the hotel straightaway.”
“You know how it is. You think you’ll settle in, that things will be okay. Until they’re not and it’s too late.”
But I can tell from her expression that she’s aware of what I’m not saying: we didn’t have enough money for a hotel, even in an emergency, even if the bloody credit card had been working. That heavy weight sits between us—that she’s still sitting in a well-paid professorship on the verdant UCT campus, while I’ve been downgraded to my poky cubicle in an office-park college. It’s an embarrassment for both of us. She’s moved up, and I’ve moved down; I’m no longer the impressive boy with a future she once knew; I’m a pity case. For a second, I’m tempted to stand up and leave, but the waiter comes around and offers us another bottle and I settle back into my chair. Here is still better than there, my body says.