The Insomnia Museum

by Laurie Canciani

  He picked up the sheets and held them to his nose and then he held them closer and he was quiet and his eyes were closed. The lines beneath his eyes were hardened in the sunlight that came through the window and she watched him sink back into old age as Dad did so often in those long silences between them. He opened his eyes and flung the sheets onto the bed and straightened them and said nothing and he walked out of the room and closed the door and she was alone and thinking on that.

  She picked her nail and looked out of the window at the towers on the other side of the world and she began to tidy everything into neat piles that had no order and no meaning. She stacked the papers on the desk with the rolled up socks and looked at the books with drawings of boys and dogs on the front and she opened the pages and looked at the letters and she made up stories in her head. She closed them again and stacked them in piles of three and on top of the largest pile she stood the Plastic Jesus and shook him to see if he was happy. He nodded at her.

  Are we alone? she said to him.

  Very.

  Am I going to disappear?

  One day.

  Should I change my clothes?

  It’s all you can do.

  She took off her jeans and knickers. Folded them and stuffed them in the back of the wardrobe where her own baby shoes would’ve been if this had been hers. She covered them with a heap of the boy’s dirty clothes and fetched a fresh pair of jeans and knickers and a clean tee shirt from the black bag and put them on. She got the cuckoo and put him on the windowsill and turned him to face the rain that had started out there while she had been getting dressed. She set the time on the clock to whatever time she thought it could be and fitted the bird back onto the spring and spoke softly to him so he would sleep. She looked out of the window. The weather bounced right up from the concrete. It was. She had never seen the rain.

  She watched a black tree with black branches on a hill past the next tower along. The rain made the potted plants shiver. She cried because she felt like it but she didn’t make a sound. The glass was cold on her cheek and her breath couldn’t warm it and Dad was a fish and Walter was a poet and her mother was alive in a deep pit on the moon and everything was different and nothing mattered as much as she thought.

  When she was done with crying she smoked. She tied her hair up and put on her lipstick and looked at herself in a mirror that was buried underneath some towels and a book on space. She watched the smoke rising and straightened the pillow that Lucky had put on the bed and she took the video out of the bag and looked at the picture on the front. The picture was torn underneath the plastic sheet that held it in place. She slid her fingers down and flicked back the corners and she straightened out Dorothy’s face that had a crease running along the middle just above the nose. They were ugly like her. Lovely like her. The yellow brick road was green in the lenses of her glasses. She hid the video underneath the pile of papers on the desk. She tipped the black bag up and put all her clothes onto the wire hangers that were unused along the metal bar in the wardrobe. She took down the pictures of the women on the wall and she rolled them up and shoved them down the back of the headboard so that the wall was clean and empty and the women couldn’t stare at her. She sat on the bed and crossed her legs and lay back on her elbows and looked at the wall and thought of the sea and the roving, jumping tide. Then she thought of the fish and.

  The hands of the clock on the windowsill had moved five or seven or nine minutes while she had slept accidentally above the covers. Moths had gathered again. She thought on something that she had kept since girlhood and tried to flush away with that little silver fish. She stopped the thought before it. She always. When. Dad died without knowing it and she cried on that for hours and. Let me in, Love, someone said from long ago.

  Let me in.

  It all went down with the fish.

  18

  Witch

  Tin Woman

  SHE WAS DONE with thinking.

  Outside the rain ran down the side of the block that stood on the other side of the black road. She left the room and went along the hall and found the kitchen that was in the same place as her own and she went through the living room door and looked at Lucky. He was standing and looking at the wall with a spoon raised in his hand and three cups steaming on the counter. He had taken his jacket off and it was slung past the worktop behind him and into the living room on top of a chair with a crooked back. She went into the kitchen and leaned against the wall and looked at his face and the ugly love burned in her throat.

  You and Dad, she said. Were you friends?

  He didn’t look at her.

  How did you know him?

  I didn’t know him, he said. Not even a little bit and I’m sorry about that. I was just trying to help him. I saw him out there one day. Wandering. He didn’t belong anywhere and he didn’t like himself. I could tell. I saw him wandering and I looked at him and I said to myself there’s a man who needs help and love. I wanted to help him. I talked to him and I bought him a meal. We talked. We were alike in a lot of ways except one or two and I can’t remember what they were. I gave him money. I gave him a little time. I gave him a card with my number and later on I found it jammed into a wire fence so I followed him home and I posted my number through the letterbox. I tried to help but in the end I couldn’t and that’s just life. For a lot of us life is hard until it gets harder.

  I phoned you.

  I know. I heard. I’m glad. You could be dead.

  And we wouldn’t be here now.

  Mm.

  He moved his hands in front of him as though he wanted to take hold of something that she couldn’t see. He talked slow and calm without stopping and he didn’t look away from the wall. She covered his hand with her own and brought it back to the counter and he looked at her hand which was pale and thin and then he turned to her and smiled and wiped his eyes that had been open all this time. He finished making the tea and she thought on the way he stirred slow and one-sided. The tea was brown and thick. He stopped stirring for no reason. He was like a bad clock that thought too much on the minutes and on the seconds and not enough on the days. Sometimes he watched people with his hand on his face and his little finger pointed at his lip and sometimes he stared with open eyes and an open mouth as though he was falling into all the minutes and the seconds, into all the time that he should never have stopped to consider.

  How dark do you like it? he said.

  Dad does it milky white.

  He raised the tea bag on the end of the spoon and threads of brown sweat spindled into the water. Damn, he said. He took the bag and chucked it into a green carrier bag that was open on the worktop, fat with old food. He got milk from the fridge and poured it into her mug. They drank their tea and she looked at a third cup that was left on the counter with a tea bag still floating upright inside it. She looked at him and he looked at her.

  She likes it dark, he said. Bitter. Near undrinkable.

  He scooped the bag out of the cup and chucked it with the others and spooned four sugars into the tea and he counted out one and two and three and four and he stirred it and asked her if she would help him carry it in.

  Carry it where?

  I think she’s awake now.

  She picked the cup off the counter and held it gentle and careful in front of her without spilling anything from what was too full inside. He cut the crust off the sandwiches and sucked the jam off his thumb and wiped his thumb on his jeans and stacked the bread on a small plate and walked ahead of her and she followed him into the hall.

  Lucky stood before the closed door at the dark end of the hall and he looked at her and she showed him the unspilled cup. He twisted the handle and opened the door. He went into the room and she followed him. Lucky bustled open some curtains and light shocked all the dust into the air. There was a bed next to the window. Lying in the bed and wrapped in loose sheets was a woman. Pale. Thin. She was beautiful and long-limbed and naked as the light that came to rest on the tops of her e
ars.

  Lucky sat on the edge of the bed and touched the woman’s forehead. The woman opened her eyes and looked at him and turned her head and she smiled and he smiled back. In the dust and the half-green light the woman let the sheets fall below her left breast and she took Lucky’s hand and placed it there.

  Feel my heart, she said. It was so fast just now. He looked at her and he spoke so gently she couldn’t hear him and as they talked the age that had come upon him was taken inch by inch from his face. She watched them with the cup in her hands.

  Caring was all over their faces and set in the photographs and furniture that were placed all around the room. The woman didn’t see her there standing upon the edge of the scene looking in and steadying the cup. The woman in the bed said she dreamed it was snowing. Lucky said it hasn’t snowed for years. The woman sat up and pulled the sheets and then she let them fall like white roses in her arms and uncovered her body down to the stomach that protruded a little just below the tracks of her ribs. He kissed her on her shoulder where there was a tattoo of a blue heart and the dust swam around them and she was both in the room and far away.

  She steadied the tea and wiped her eyes. Oh damn.

  The woman in the bed looked at her. They looked at each other. She stretched her thin neck from the bed and she touched Lucky’s hair and moved it behind his ears and she whispered something to him so quiet it was as though she hadn’t spoken at all. He turned around and gestured to the doorway.

  She was lost. She’s seventeen I think. She’s the daughter of a friend who died not long ago. You don’t know her. She’s full of trauma. I’m helping her because her father is dead. That’s just life, Sweetheart, like I always say. That’s just life.

  He kissed the woman’s hands and pushed the hair out of her eyes and the woman leaned in without taking her eyes from the doorway where she stood with the tea and she whispered something else and Lucky nodded. The tea was hot and unbalanced and she didn’t spill any of it.

  Anna, this is my wife, he said.

  The cup fell.

  *

  The woman in the bed turned over and Lucky mopped up the steaming stain on the carpet with a black tee shirt that had been hanging clean in the wardrobe. She said I’m sorry and looked at her hands, just like Dad used to, as though they had betrayed her.

  I’m sorry I didn’t mean to. I’ll help you.

  Don’t. It’s okay, Anna, you didn’t mean it.

  She looked at her hands again and then at the woman in the bed who was looking at her. She felt cold. Tired. Transparent. She wanted to be taken away. She wanted to jump into the water that was hidden behind the wallpaper.

  I didn’t mean it, she said again and she looked at the woman and they watched each other while Lucky sweated over the mess.

  I didn’t.

  Don’t worry, Sweetheart.

  I really didn’t.

  It’s okay.

  The woman doglooked her. Lucky picked up the handle that had broken off when the cup fell and she rested her hand on his shoulder while he cleaned. Then he took his hand away and chucked the cup into a bin that had been tipped over next to a chest of drawers with pearl necklaces and tangerine scarves and pretty red and black knickers draping out. He went to the woman and sat on the bed while she stood in the corner. They whispered and she strained to hear.

  You want another cup?

  Not now.

  You want anything else?

  I’ll tell you. I want you, the woman said. I want to feel something good.

  The woman took his hand in hers. The brown tea stain spread out and then stopped beneath her feet. It wasn’t her fault. It was all her fault. It wasn’t her fault. She wanted to be bad. Lucky turned and looked at her and she stepped out of the room before he could ask her to leave.

  The lock clicked on the other side of the door. She went into the bathroom and closed the door and sat on the edge of the bath and looked at the pile of clothes spilling out of a basket and the toothbrushes that were clean and white and had straight bristles that were not frayed and yellow as hers and Dad’s had been. There was a new bar of soap in the sink, medicine in pots and packets inside the cupboard and a mirror on the outside that she didn’t want to look at. There was a flannel that smelled of old water. There was a bottle of aftershave that she sprayed into her pocket. The tiles had no fish and no flowers and no garden that grew there in black lines towards the ceiling. They were blank and white and cracked here and there and inside the cracks was white gunk newly spread. She went to her knees next to the toilet stained between the seat and the rim with piss and black hair and she pulled her hair back and tried to throw up but nothing would come. She was empty. She didn’t cry and she didn’t speak and she sank into the quiet of the bare white room.

  She took off her glasses and washed her face with the soap and a small clean towel that was draped over the bath and water that was burning hot straight out of the tap. She took off her tee shirt and soaped the hair underneath her arms and watered it and dried herself in the towel and put the glasses back on and cleaned the dirt from underneath her fingernails. She brushed her teeth with one of the toothbrushes that had old lipstick on the neck and when she put it back again she didn’t rinse it. Dad moaned in her head but she wasn’t listening.

  She brought the mirror out from its zigzag frame and pulled it close to her face and looked at herself and poked her tongue through the gap in her teeth and wondered if she had a good face. Not as good as. When she brushed her teeth and spat into the sink the white foam had a flick of blood running through. She didn’t look good and she didn’t look bad. She was something more than and less than beautiful. She was herself. Her chin was like Dad’s. Her lips were like Mum’s. Her nose was her own. She took the lipstick out of her pocket and unscrewed it and drew it on her lips and pressed them together and arched her shoulders and pulled her head back. She stayed in the room and sat on the closed lid of the toilet and didn’t look at herself again.

  After a while he knocked on the door.

  Are you all right?

  Yeah. I was washing but I’m finished now.

  She opened the door and he was standing outside with a cigarette in his mouth and the smoke swam to the ceiling. His shirt was buttoned wrong and his hair was messed and his eyes burned boyish. He looked away.

  They sat in the kitchen and drank milk like children. He talked. He talked with his hands and with energy about the kindness of the world and how everyone must be kind to one another because God said so. She listened and didn’t listen. He asked her if she knew who Jesus was and she told him he was made of plastic and he lived on top of the Hi-Fi and she said she once buried him in a pot of dirt. He talked about Jesus and black books and holy houses and she picked her nail and killed an itch on her thigh. She asked him what was the matter with his wife.

  He sipped his milk and filled his glass again.

  Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with her. I don’t. Nobody knows. She didn’t get up one morning and she didn’t get up the next morning and that was a long time ago. I don’t know why. I don’t think she knows why. Sometimes I pray. I ask her every morning if she wants to get out of bed and put clothes on and she always says no. I don’t feel like it, she tells me. I have too much to think about.

  Perhaps she’s not happy.

  Perhaps.

  I’m happy.

  That surprises me.

  *

  She had slept for hours. She dreamed of Dad and Mum and Lucky and the woman who wouldn’t move and chip-shop nights under the glow of hot vinegar lamps. When she woke up it was early and she watched the sun rising through the window in the boy’s room. She thought on death because she was alone. Then she thought on her own living that hadn’t begun until she was coming close to eighteen. She thought on a lot of things and a lot of things seemed to look back at her. White rooms. Hot lights. Food. Drink. Cigarettes. Towers. Green clouds. Dad. Rot. She thought of Plastic Jesus who nodded in his dark corner. She reached over an
d bobbed his head with a pen and asked if she had disappeared in the middle of the night.

  Yes, you did.

  Is Dad really dead?

  Long gone, Girl.

  Long gone and so sad.

  She looked out of the window where there would never be boards and far below there were people walking and muttering and children scattering and there were cars on a road far away. Threading. She followed the line back down where one car came upon the black road and turned around and went off again. Below there were black bridges and red doors and patches of grass. Above the estate the clouds were stacking into towers. She had not realized that the sky was different every day.

  *

  Her belly and mind were still full from all the fat of the day before and she got out of bed and drew the sheets back to the pillow and fitted them around the mattress exactly like she never did at home. She kissed her fingers and stamped the kiss onto the pillow and took off the clothes she had slept in and dressed in those she had hung in the wardrobe that was hers now and she went out of the room.

  She had a headache she was trying to ignore.

  Lucky, are you there?

  He wasn’t.

  She went into the kitchen and the bathroom and the living room and looked for him but he was gone. She pressed her back against the wall in the hallway and looked through the gap in the room that belonged to the woman and saw the turning of a head and the raising of a shoulder that was not his. He had gone. He was gone off to get junk or magazines or music just like Dad. She went into the kitchen again. There were two cups set out with sugar and a clean tea bag and beneath one of the cups was a pen and next to that was a note that she couldn’t read. She looked at the two cups and boiled the kettle and poured water in one and then the other and poured a lot of milk in the cup she chose for herself and she looked at the other cup and at the note. She tried to force the scratches into something she could understand but they were lawless and drifted when she looked at them for too long. She splashed milk into the other cup and folded the note and slipped it into the pocket of her knee-cut shorts and took the two cups into her hands and walked as carefully with them as though Lucky was standing just behind her.