The Insomnia Museum

by Laurie Canciani

  I will.

  It’ll help. I’ve been meaning to go over there more but.

  I know.

  It’s hard.

  The man didn’t look at him while he spoke but instead spoke to the back of his hand and then his palm as his hand twisted around and disappeared back underneath the counter and he wiped a spot of fat again. You’re good, he said. You’re a good guy. I’m glad to know you, but your goodness isn’t an umbrella for your boy to walk under. You know it. It only stretches so far.

  He wiped the counter once more and twisted the rag in his hand and wiped his own face that was wet with the steam. Lucky kicked his boot off and then slipped it on again. He looked at the man and then he looked at the food listed on the sign above the counter. He told the man what he wanted and it was fetched for him and chucked on top of large pieces of paper and salted heavily. The man wrapped the chips up and went into the fridge and got two cans of Coke and came back to the counter. He gave everything to Lucky and then he put his hand on Lucky’s shoulder and they looked at each other. Lucky placed his hand on the top of his. He said I know, I know. Don’t worry. Then he turned from the counter and the man went back to shaking the baskets.

  Outside the sun was coming up. There were large white birds that came low and landed on the concrete next to an open chip packet and they stabbed at the paper with their sharp beaks and tore it up and then stabbed at each other until they all flew back to the rising day.

  What birds were they? he said. I didn’t see them.

  White ones.

  Gulls then.

  Sounds about right.

  He gave her one of the paper parcels that was already beginning to darken and she opened it out on the table and smelled the salt that rose up with the heat. He unrolled his own. They ate with their fingers even though there were wooden forks in a box in the middle of the table.

  Slow down, he said. You’ll burn your tongue.

  She fanned air into her mouth and chewed fast and sucked the salt from her fingers and she drank from the Coke can that he opened and put down in front of her. The Coke popped with sweet electricity. She drank half the can at once and filled up her stomach with the slush and fizz and then she ate again. Lucky ate slowly. He bit a chip in half and looked at it before throwing the last of it into his mouth and then he sat back to think.

  When Lucky was done he slid the packet to her and told her she could have the rest and he sat back in his chair and wiped his eyes with a clean sleeve. She ate. When she was done she folded the packets together and shoved them into the middle of the table and rested against the wall and looked at him.

  You must’ve been hungry, he said.

  I was. I’m tired now.

  Let’s rest here now. It’s a nice place.

  They both leaned back and said nothing. Outside a dog barked and tired people began to come out of their houses to look at the rising sun or lean down low and pull something out of the garden or to shoo away a cat or to get inside their cars and drive away with coffee cups in their hands. She watched them and waited for some kind of murder. Chaos. Mad rush. Blunt edges. Something that told her she wasn’t safe outside because Dad always told her that the world was the worst place she could ever be. She waited but there was nothing. The night burned away and all the shadows began to draw themselves back from the streets. Birds came and went. Dorothy sang somewhere among the black bagged pavements. In her head her father swung from a hanging rope that had been fixed to a post long before she was born and. She watched it all and listened to the sound of the moths in her head.

  She turned to Lucky who was looking at his thumbs.

  Lucky looked at her. What is it?

  Why did he let you have the food?

  Who?

  That man. He was angry before.

  Lucky sank back into his seat and scratched the inside of his wrist where the little moon winked. He picked up a chip and looked at it in his hand, turning it one way and then the other. He brought it to his mouth and twisted his face and dropped it back down again to the paper where the rest of his food was losing its steam and growing cold. He looked at her and leaned forward.

  You know, he said. You should never use guilt as a weapon. It’s such a terrible thing to do to someone else, don’t you think? Don’t ever do that, okay? Don’t ever use guilt as a weapon. Even if you think you’ll end up getting something good out of it. It’s not worth it. It destroys people. It gets in their head and doesn’t come back out again. It’s like planting a seed inside them that grows and spreads and blocks out all the light. It’s worse than shooting somebody. It’s worse than killing them.

  He looked at her and she looked at him. Both leaned across the table with their hands barely touching. They didn’t talk. His eyes were greener when she wore the glasses. Clear. Burning. Amphibious. The lenses seemed to cut him from the rest of the world, drawing him closer than anything else in the hot white room. He leaned back again in his chair and rubbed his eyelids with his fingers.

  She looked out of the window. She watched the gulls gathering around a paper packet that they tore into shreds and dragged away and she looked at the people who drove and walked and came and went on the outside. An old dog passed. It was gentle. Alone. Its muscles were shrunken by time and ownership and memories of wildness that still ebbed in his blood. When people saw each other they stopped and talked. When they left their homes they locked them up and checked the locks once or twice by tugging the handles down. She looked at Lucky again. He had fallen asleep with his head in his hands. She kissed him on the back of the neck and went into his pockets and smelled the petrol and exhaust fumes in his hair and took out the lighter and the pack of smokes and she put one into her mouth and lit it and she sat back and smoked.

  The dark faced man looked at her and raised the cloth over his head and shouted something in another language and came from behind the counter and shouted again and waved his dirty cloth and stamped his foot. He came and stood in front of her. He waved his hands. She stood up in her chair and held her hands up like they did in those black and white films with the gangsters and the violence and all that hoochy talk.

  You can’t smoke in here, the man said. Are you crazy? You can’t do that here. Put it out. Put it out right now.

  She rested the cigarette on her bottom lip. Why?

  It’s against the law. You stupid. Put it out. It’s against the law to smoke in here and you shouldn’t be smoking anyway. It’s bad for you. How old are you? You’re a kid, aren’t you? Didn’t your mother ever tell you that smoking is bad?

  I’m just smoking. I’m not a kid. I don’t know the laws. It’s only smoking. I didn’t know. It calms me down. You can have one if you want.

  I don’t want one. Disgusting. Filthy.

  He spat on the floor and then looked at the spot and cleaned it up with his cloth and Lucky woke up and looked at her and looked at the man. He saw the cigarette that was now resting between her fingers. He wiped his eyes and stood up and raised his hands to his head and then. He laughed. He laughed hard with his hand on his face. The man opened his mouth but nothing came out. Lucky held his hand out for her to take. I think it’s time to go, he said.

  17

  Emerald City

  HOME WAS IN the sky.

  They had not been driving long on the road when they reached the end of it and the end of all things was waiting there. The day had ignited. The sun heated everything into blue and grey haze with swirling patterns and small far away spots. The houses came less often in that part of the estate and the only buildings standing were the ones that were boarded up and empty and labelled with fat signs and bold red letters. Grass grew through concrete slabs. Brick walls stood slantways and sideways and spilled themselves onto patches of white dust and broken glass and black bags weighed down by weeks and weeks of rainwater. There were fewer people. The ones who walked did so quickly and with their heads down and the ones who remained in one place were sleeping on blue padded coats and sodden blan
kets and they were brave enough to be drunk and clever enough to be mad.

  Where are we going?

  Home.

  Where’s home?

  Home is up.

  He pointed towards a black mass that rose out of the ground as they travelled towards it. It grew high, unfolding above them like black paper. The towers here were miles wide and layered one behind the other, linked together by bridges that were stacked like ribs between concrete walls. There were wire fences topped with razors, corrugated tin roofs and stone steps that led to nothing. There were a hundred thousand windows gleaming, white sheets that swung on black lines above plastic chairs and buckets and baskets and chunks of bread not thrown far enough for the birds. There was life. There was living and there was a wall that went around it all. As they arrived children came to stare at them and to spit and stick out their belly buttons and kick the muck up with their unlaced shoes. They drove under a bridge. The sun and sky were covered in concrete.

  This is where I live, he said.

  I’m in a dream.

  Lucky turned the mirror. His eyes were reflected there. We call them the streets in the sky, he said. They’re around sixty years old and they go from over there to over there and it’s like a little world above everything. If you don’t want to come down to the town you don’t have to. There are shops here. Some of them are halfway up. I know a man who has been up there for fifteen years and he only came down once for his sister’s funeral. He pays kids to do his shopping and he pays other people to walk down the road and back again and tell him what’s happening at the other side of the world. You can live happy and high up and away from the rest of the world. There’s even a church on the third floor. It’s like God’s estate.

  Plastic Jesus nodded in the back.

  They came to an opening between two long towers. There were other cars. White lines. Overturned bins. There was a lamppost that buzzed and crackled and around everything was another wall made of thin wood held up by beams that had been leaned against it. The wooden wall was painted with words and pictures just like the hallway and it leaned in the wind and came back again. The beams creaked. Lucky stopped the car close to the lamppost on the far side. She took off her seatbelt and opened the door and stood outside and closed the door again.

  Lucky got out of the car and wrestled the black bag from the back and swung it over his shoulder and Plastic Jesus swore furiously at him but he didn’t hear it and didn’t talk back. On the other side of the wall she could hear the sound of running water. She asked him what was on the other side and he told her it was a river and there were houses beyond that and a factory and a field and new developments for well-off families who dreamed of driveways and blue front doors.

  They walked. He kept her close. Above her the gulls sang and circled a patch of grey sky and she followed them with her eyes until she was dizzy.

  Be careful, Sweetheart.

  Everywhere was a place she had never been. She was tired. She was thirsty from the salt and heavy from the fat and Dorothy was singing somewhere on the other side of the wall. Her stomach worked on the chips. She thought that if she fell asleep she would disappear or wake up dead just like Dad who hadn’t been done with life when life was done with him. Plastic Jesus nodded in the bag. She held onto Lucky’s hand.

  They walked down a path and followed the wall of wooden panels standing taller than Lucky and topped with metal that was twisted into cutthroat roses. She followed him down the path and through a heavy door set into the base of the block. She kept her hand inside his coat pocket. Before they went into the tower she saw there was nothing at all on the other side of it. The tower was the end of the world. It was the edge of everything and she didn’t stop to think on that.

  *

  Through the door was a corridor covered in more words. When she asked him to read the words out loud he laughed and said Fuck, fuck, fuck. In the middle of the corridor was a set of wide concrete steps. On the stairs were crushed cans and bits of smashed glass and carrier bags of discarded waste and a lonely little crack that went all the way up and came all the way back down again.

  She wasn’t used to walking so much. She fell behind him on the stairs when the backs of her legs began to throb. Her body was not built for more than a few rooms of walking. One set of stairs. A small space to fall down if the standing gets too hard. A bed and a hard floor and time spent in front of the TV watching the world go by. She sat down and Lucky came back and put his hand on the top of her head and she got up and went on again. The stairs fell away behind her. All the moths gathered inside like drifts of leaves.

  Are you crying?

  No.

  They went on.

  She held his hand and he opened a steel door with a bar across it and the wind sucked all the air out of her body and she walked out onto a stone corridor suspended above the world. In front of her was a wall that came as high as her waist and beyond that was the tower on the other side and beyond that was the town and the hills and the black road that cut through everything on the ground. She could see the whole of it. The wind whipped her hair around her head. A dog barked but she couldn’t see it. A man called. She thought on everything. She was too tired for words and drunk and sick on memories that wouldn’t stay still. Lucky picked a crisp packet and an empty cigarette box from the ground and then he rubbed the dust off the corner of a window. He turned to her and smiled big and fat and asked if she was ready to go in. She looked at the low ground and the road below that was no bigger than her wrist and she thought of Dad and the hangman and Mum and. She nodded.

  His door was at the end of the street where the bad words were scratched out with black pen and there was a smell like paint and bleach and he told her there was a factory down the way that pumped chemicals into the sky. A potted plant grew crooked on a painted wooden chair. He turned a key in the door. She watched smoke rolling and she watched the sky draw it all up. She thought that Dad was in the smoke. Mum too.

  What’s the matter?

  Nothing.

  Are you coming in?

  I think I just.

  It’s okay, Sweetheart.

  Is it?

  Yes. Let’s go watch TV.

  Inside the door was a short hallway with no carpet and one pair of flat red shoes that had begun to curl up on the toes. At the back of the hall was a room with a closed door and to the right of the hall were two rooms and to the left was another and there were no pictures on the walls. A red bag was chucked on the floor next to the shoes with words scratched into it that all began with F and inside the bag was a stack of books. The shadows receded when he flicked a switch and the light above them flashed and drowned the whole hall in pale green.

  You can take the glasses off now if you want.

  I want to keep them on.

  He closed the door and it rang with all the chains and locks that were on the inside and he checked the frame with his finger and spent a long time locking it all up. She picked the red shoes up. They were too small for her feet. She put them down again. He touched her on the shoulder and walked down the hall and she looked at the doors and empty walls and cast into her mind for piles of junk and stacks of magazines from nineteen ninety whenever through to the just-before-now. She looked at Lucky.

  This place is like my home, she said. Everything is the shape and size of Dad’s place except it’s all on the left and not on the right and I feel like I’ve walked into a mirror or something. Look, this room was my room. This room was Dad’s room. This room is the living room and at the back is the kitchen and there are no windows there. There aren’t windows in the kitchen only cupboards and shelves and a mess under the sink. It’s my house and it’s not my house. My house. Not my house. Everything is facing the wrong way but it’s exactly the same. It’s home. It’s just like home but different. Look at all that light.

  She picked her nail. A thought clotted in her head. For a moment Dad almost walked out of the back room before she remembered to stop him. Her head hur
t. Her eyes had been open far too wide for far too long and when she closed them all she could see was. She couldn’t think. Everything was facing the wrong way and she was so tired she could die and be happy about it. I feel funny, she said. Sick. I think I need the toilet.

  She went to the end of the hall and reached for the door handle and twisted it once and the door popped open and inside the room it was stuffy and dark and she stood for a while without stepping in. It wasn’t the bathroom. She hung onto the door but didn’t go inside and Lucky came behind her fast and pulled it shut. That’s not the bathroom, he said.

  What is it?

  Nothing. The toilet is in here.

  I don’t have to go anymore.

  Lucky doglooked her. He picked up the black bag that he had dragged up from the car and he twisted it and swung it over his shoulder. He opened another door that was next to the bathroom on the left side and he went in and she followed him. It was a bedroom. It was where her bedroom would be if this was her home. There was an unmade bed beneath the window at the back of the room and above it was a wall that had posters of beautiful women standing and crouching next to cars or motorbikes and they were dressed only in knickers and small see-through tops stretched around large breasts. There was a desk next to the bed with papers and books chucked all over the top and good clean pages torn from their staples and thrown about. She couldn’t read the writing on the side of the books and she couldn’t read what was scratched into the wall in crooked letters above the desk. The wardrobe in the corner had no doors and there were holes in the carpet and grooves and scars that were bashed into the legs of the desk and bedpost and hinges and screws chucked on the carpet next to an old plate with crumbs and an old cup turned over. Inside the wardrobe were black tee shirts and jeans chucked into a pile and socks rolled into balls and it matched her own mess in the museum. The room knew she was coming. It was made for her. This is my room, she said, and she sat on the bed and looked at him.

  This is my son’s room, Lucky said. He’s been missing for a few days. You can have it until he decides to come back. I’ll leave you here to get settled and I’ll make us both some tea. There aren’t any more sheets so you’ll have to use the ones already on the bed. They’re okay though. Clean. I don’t think they’ve been slept in.