The Insomnia Museum

by Laurie Canciani

  She twisted and untwisted the lipstick and watched the red bulb rise and fall and she tapped her finger on the tip and saw how her skin sponged the colour. The tap in the bathroom had been broken for two or six or eight years. One tap ran constantly with thin brown water and the other ran clean water that steamed and dribbled and came out too hot and too fast. She fitted the plug into the hole and let both taps run at the same time and the water rose in the sink. Steam came. Her face sweated. She closed the bathroom door like he always told her not to do and she brushed the hair out of her face and looked at the mirror that was attached to the wall by a metal fist. She poked her tongue through the gap in her teeth that she had got when she chewed on black jacks and pieces of rubber she’d pulled from a tyre.

  She twisted the tube and slipped the lipstick up and turned it towards her and looked into the mirror and stopped breathing and stopped her heart and concentrated on the bright colour and she patted the bulb onto her lips. She looked at herself.

  She dabbed the colour and then she pinched her lips and slicked it from side to side until her whole mouth was as bright as poppies. The mirror sweated and she turned the water off and she wiped it with the sleeve of her father’s tee shirt and she looked at herself standing there. Sometimes Dad watched these black and white films with women who danced with men and waved to their sisters and pulled children into their skirts and powdered their faces and looked right into the camera and smiled. She smiled as she remembered them smiling. She thought about her mother. She brushed her hair with her fingers and let it fall in front of her face a little and she tilted her head back and pressed her lips together.

  She hid the lipstick in the back of her jeans and washed her hands in the muddish water and she went into the living room to rewind the tape and set it to play again and she made dinner even though she was distracted by the look of the lips in the toaster. She chucked a bowl of beans in the microwave.

  When the bells rang she opened the door and the chemical smell came up and she poured the mess over toast and dropped the empty bowl in the sink. She heard a sound. It started small. Then it came all at once like a machine working in the sink pipes. She took the bowl out of the sink and got up on the counter and put her ear to the noise and held her hair out of the wet base and listened. She closed her eyes and the sound filled the museum.

  There had always been noises outside. Dad used to play the music on the Hi-Fi loud and he used to dance and rock his head. He raved. Smoked. She listened to the music and didn’t hear the other sounds from outside the flat until Dad had fallen too deep into the chase one day and hit his head against the Hi-Fi and broke the player. She heard it all while he was sleeping. It was noise without meaning. It was the outside. There was drumming from the pipes in the walls. There was a vibration. A machine. Then there was this piping sneeze that came up from the belly of the earth. It was all from that other place that was behind the rain and in the sky.

  She listened to the sound rising in the sink and she pushed her ear to it and the noise of outside travelled up the pipe. There were the bells that she had first heard when she was seven or eight and no longer wanted to forgive her mother. Chiming. Rattling. The noise was like pennies in a bag. She stood on the counter and opened the door of the cupboard that was already broken on one hinge, and she took a jar from the back and emptied the vinegar into the sink and then she pressed her ear to the noise and opened the jar and let the sound rattle into the glass. She closed the lid. The sound of chimes was inside the glass and the noise of the world died away in the sink.

  She listened hard to make sure the sound wasn’t just the rattle in her own head and then she got off the counter and ran to her bedroom which had been full of junk and her own baby clothes and shoes and pictures of pretty women and men cut out of magazines and stuck to the wall. The picture she made was of the world. There were dogs. On the ceiling were a hundred and forty-six paper dolls that held hands and hung in arcs above her mattress. In the wardrobe there were stacks of clothes that didn’t fit her anymore and some others that Dad had brought home that were too big or broken on the zips and buttons. Underneath the pile of clothes were the jars.

  She picked one up from the back and looked at it but didn’t unscrew the top. There was still a little jam on the base where she had scooped the insides out too quickly and had forgotten to fill it with water and shake it and drain everything out. She put the jar into the back of the wardrobe and closed the door.

  Then everything was quiet. She played the tape and then she rewound it and played it again and sat with her beans and the mad bird that bashed its head against the wood and told her that it had been hours since she had last seen Dad. She looked at the clock. It rattled and ticked. Dad was probably out looking for Mum or for rabbits. I don’t understand what life is, he always said. But the white rabbit can tell me.

  She played the tape. Plastic Jesus said that Dad had so many secrets and she was one.

  4

  Dorothy

  SHE HAD SEEN The Wizard of Oz over ten thousand times. But never to the end. Whenever she watched she pressed the stop button and then rewound the tape all the way to the writing at the beginning and the dusty orange and grey tint in the sky and she played it all again. She never really wanted Dorothy to go home.

  She paused the tape and rewound it once more and played it again. She struck a spider dead with her fist because she felt like being bad. The jewellery box was all patched up and fixed with a new dancer that was made of wool and wax that she carved out of a candle just after she saved the noise in the jar.

  Then the door opened and closed. It took Dad a long time to come into the living room where she was sitting in the green TV glow. He had been gone for the whole night. She heard him locking the front door and he came and stood in the hall looking into the living room and he wiped the winter out of his face. He looked at her. His eyes were raw from rubbing and his chin had grown those little whiskers that always made him look dirtier and older than he was. She paused the TV.

  Did you find it?

  What?

  That white rabbit.

  I found. I don’t know. I’m tired.

  He went back to check the lock and then he came into the living room and went into the kitchen to lean on the counter. He looked at her and stared long and deep into a place in the corner that was too dark to see.

  What’s the matter, Dad?

  I don’t know, Love.

  Have you been crying?

  She played with her little finger while he filled a glass with water and drank it all and filled another and drank that. Her little finger was the ugliest part of her. It had no fingernail. It was ripped and scarred and twisted up on the end like potato roots all twined together. She couldn’t remember how she did it. All she could remember was how it felt. There was the pull and rip of the nail and the throb of the end and the blood from the torn skin and sometimes it made her sick to remember. Sometimes she went into the bathroom and lay down in the bath so that she could think on the rattle of the pipes and the twisted finger and Mum who had been gone for such a long. Once she put her toe up the tap to keep the dripping from wrecking her brain and she heard a different noise down the plughole. She sat up and looked down at the black hole and she rubbed the twist and she heard a crash and then she heard a cry and a scream. And nothing.

  Why have you been crying, Dad?

  He rolled a smoke and came into the living room and gave her one and she looked at him and he looked at her.

  Later he held her hand and he told her that he went away yesterday and thought about not coming back. I’m sorry for that. I’ll never think that way again. I’ll never do that again. I’m your father and you are my daughter. Look at my hands. Sometimes I go to sleep and I wake up in the middle of the night and I look at my hands in the light and I can’t figure out if they’re mine.

  He blew smoke.

  You know somewhere near this building there’s a beach. Did you know that? There’s a beach about t
wenty minutes down the road and there’s sand and rocks and fish and the smell of chips and fried sugar and kids run around with the sunlight on their backs. There are waves. They bring the water in and take the water out again and the air smells fresh and salty and the salt gets into your skin and dries you up. The sea gets to the core of you.

  Can we go there one day?

  Where?

  The sea.

  You don’t remember. You’ve already been.

  *

  He was asleep on the settee and it was sometime in the dark morning. Every time the bird bashed its head against the walls of its wooden house she turned to watch him stir and mumble.

  What did you say, Dad?

  I saw a woman on the bus. She was looking out of the window and watching the world go past. I was talking to my mates. I wasn’t doing anything. I didn’t. I don’t know why. Mum. It was. The bus was full and going along that long road and the woman looked straight ahead and smiled. Everything was quiet and good and all right and then.

  Then what happened, Dad?

  Then she screamed, Mum. For so long with her fists raised. Why did she do that? I don’t know what I did wrong. Why would someone do that? It’s all. Why would someone scream for no reason?

  She stroked the back of his head and smoked until she coughed.

  She went into her bedroom and sat down and opened the wardrobe and lifted off the pile of clothes and she took each jar into her hands and twisted the lid to hear the noise of the world again. It was like stones shaking in a cup and falling down a long set of stairs into what was quiet and dark and far away. It was just like the sound of Dad’s rough voice. She scratched the place just between her breasts where a drop of sweat had rolled and she tried to think on the place that Dad talked about before he fell deep into the chase. The sea. Sand.

  A cigarette burned on a pile of plastic toys and when she picked it up the plastic softened and stuck to the tip with white fingers that stretched up but would not let it go. She licked her fingers and pinched the burning end of the cigarette until it was dead.

  5

  I Know I Have a Heart

  HE DIDN’T WANT her to wear the lipstick.

  In the attic there was a cage that sat around a bulb of light that hung down from the ceiling. Over years the cage had slowly filled with cobwebs and tiny spiders and when she shook it everything crawled out and snapped and drifted like hair in water. Dad stood behind one of the stacks working his hands raw on a gas tank that he told her he wanted to be a carousel.

  Good job, Dad.

  I think it is.

  Will you be taking it back out there today?

  I thought you would want to play with it first.

  Well.

  Well what?

  I don’t want to play with anything anymore.

  I thought we could play together.

  I don’t want toys anymore, Dad.

  What do you want?

  When can I go out there with you?

  Where?

  Out there. Outside. With the sea.

  When I’m done changing things.

  He worked his knuckles into his lower back and raised himself from the chamber.

  I don’t like it when you put that stuff on your face. You’re too young to wear lipstick and you’re too young to go outside. It’s dangerous. There are tribes of men and there are big dogs and big women who want to make you their daughter. You think you know but you don’t. Look at my hands. Don’t they look to you like the hands of some other man?

  She left the room and went down the spiral stairs that he had made out of she couldn’t remember what. Plastic Jesus nodded his head.

  When she was done with the soup she looked at her face in the spoon and put the lipstick on and tilted her head back and pressed her lips together.

  There was a black mark on the back of the spoon. It ran from the silver oval and down the handle and it wouldn’t come off when she scraped it with her fingernail. She looked at it and saw that the mark was not on the spoon but somewhere above her. It was on the ceiling. She looked up. The mark grew like a black rose from a crack in the ceiling and spread out to where the cable descended and held the lit bulb in place. She stood on the settee and took the TV remote in her hand and used it to clear away some of the dusty webs.

  She got down off the settee and looked at the mark. There were three black flowers that grew in the flaking plaster and they were growing into cracks and they were all split by a larger crack that ran between them and onto the wall. She threw a set of plastic keys on a ring to the ceiling and some of the plaster came away and all the black flowers began to bloom. She watched.

  The post came through the letterbox at quarter to fifteen and she waited next to the door to listen to the sound of the man walking around on the other side. The man pushed the letters through the metal mouth at the base of the door and between the black plastic bristles and straight into her lap. She picked the letters up in a bunch and held them to her face. She held them one at a time to the light and then she brought them to her nose and smelled them. Each corner. She sniffed the glue on the envelopes and she smelled the ink that she couldn’t read and the fat red writing that had grown bigger and angrier over these last few days and she smelled the oil on the fingers of the man. She smelled the whole world. Everything. Dirt. Grass. Sky. Water. Bricks. Streets. Light. All. She smelled it all on the back of the letters and leaflets and she smelled it in the air that had slipped through, for a second, from the outside.

  6

  If I Were King

  SOMETIMES WIZARDS ARE just old men who make up stories. She always paused the tape when it got to that part. She always leaned forward and looked the wizard straight in his eye and tried to make sense of him.

  It was raining beyond the boards. She heard it spitting fast against the metal and concrete and wood on the outside and she heard the sound it made when it filled up all the little holes and bends and openings until they burst and drained out. She imagined the outside as one great and complex surface. It was raining inside too. The shower was on and water spat down to the bath where she was sitting with the water in her face and her hair twisted up around her shoulders holding Dad against her chest. Both of them had been here before.

  Wake up, Dad. Come on.

  She pushed herself forward and raised him up and pulled the wet hair out of his eyes and tried to feel the heart. There was nothing. She called him and then she pressed his chest and opened his mouth and banged her wrist on the side of the bath until it was red and sore. The veins throbbed. Dad slipped again and she pulled him up and above them the showerhead rattled and clicked and the pipes whined and the plug gurgled. She touched his face and held him once more and pressed his chest with her hand and rubbed his windpipe and held his hand until she heard it. The thump.

  Come on, Dad. Come on.

  She knocked on his back like a door and listened there and the machine inside him worked and turned and ticked like the clock on the mantle. He opened his mouth and opened his eyes and his one big eye rolled back to the front and he went forward on his hands and knees.

  *

  It had got deep into his bones, he told her. He felt the rabbit kicking inside his head.

  Look at my hands.

  They’re good hands, Dad.

  She helped him get to the living room and then she walked with him to the settee where he lay down and didn’t get up again. She took Plastic Jesus in her arms and asked him a question and then she shook him and put him down on the Hi-Fi and watched the head bobbing.

  What should I do about Dad?

  Who knows?

  You should.

  Not if you don’t.

  It had happened before. He had been out chasing rabbits when she was five or seven or eight and he came home and stood in the middle of the room and walked from here to there and talked about nothing fast. He said that the rabbits were getting smarter. He paced and talked and told her that he’d made a trap in his head but the rabbit w
ould not bite.

  He wanted to talk about Mum.

  Talk. I think I’m dying.

  I don’t know what to say.

  What do you remember?

  Mum.

  I loved her a lot.

  Oh Dad.

  She loved me and she loved you.

  Well.

  Which one is your favourite?

  I don’t.

  Who is your favourite character?

  Dorothy.

  Your Mum liked the Lion.

  I used to sing all the time, he said. Can you believe that? I used to sing for people and so did your Mum. She was a wonderful singer.

  Dad.

  She went back to watching the TV and she leaned over and put her head into his lap even though he always told her she was too big for it now. Plastic Jesus nodded and the sound of outside began to come again. She would not talk of that time that she remembered from way back before the windows were blocked with wood. Dorothy would not hear of it. Mum was gone and Dad was there and the claustrophobia that always came to sit in her throat didn’t come to her then. That day was good. Kind. She would not think on Mum who had murdered her twice. Dad didn’t want to remember and neither did. She only remembered watching her mother’s face that was turned away and covered by the dark and then she remembered the sound of her father. Shouting. Crying. And.

  Dad.

  Yes?

  Nothing.

  7

  Crushing Poppies

  SHE WORKED. At the edge of the attic was a book of poetry that he’d brought home with him when she was young and wanted to read. He came home smelling of vodka and poppies and chemical spray and he used the wall to keep him upright and laughed like the joker drawn on the playing cards. He showed her. He read a poem called Silver by Walter de la Mare. When he was done he sat back against the settee and told her that de la Mare means of the ocean.