The Insomnia Museum

by Laurie Canciani

  What did you say?

  I said Anna’s not here.

  Mum said who’s there now?

  Not Anna. Anna moved away a few years ago with her Dad. They don’t live here anymore. They live on a farm. My parents are going to be home any minute. They don’t like strangers and neither do I. Please go away. Your family’s not here. They’re gone and I don’t know where they are. They’re not here anymore.

  She told me she was sorry through the door and I covered my mouth because the words tasted like wax in my mouth. I saw her on the other side of the glass. She was just standing there. Then she told me she was sorry again and I told her to go away. I said fuck off. I said the word fuck over and over and sometimes I hear myself saying it now. I heard her crying. I made up a story in my head that Dad was behind me telling me not to open the door but that’s not true because he wasn’t there. I was alone in the house and I could’ve let her in but I didn’t. I didn’t open the door. It was my fault. I told her to fuck off and she did. She went away and didn’t come back and then she died. And so did Dad. Everything that happened to me is because of me. Everything that happened to them is because of me. I’m so. I’m just bad.

  They sat in the quiet and the dark and Tick kissed her hand and the night grew loud and the moon vanished behind the fog. She wiped her eyes and listened to her heart slowing down. They walked and Tick didn’t speak. They walked and the sun began to come up on the other side of the world and the towers were golden and the panes of glass mirrored the light. She thought on Mum and Dad and she thought on the beautiful life that she had lost because she had been too afraid to open the door.

  Tick held her hand and smiled and when they got to the house he watched her face and stood in front of her and set down two bricks beneath his feet that had come loose from the wall. He stood on them and raised himself up so that he was as tall as she was. He balanced with his arms out and when one brick wobbled and he was about to fall he laid his hands on her shoulders and smiled and flashed all the silver in his mouth and he closed his eyes and leaned forward. He kissed her. He kissed her on the lips. They stood under the black sky and in the light of all those lovely windows where people cried and laughed and spat and fought and were real. He kissed her and she let him do it. She let him stay there for a while without moving or talking or spoiling the time. His lips were wet and fat and her lip touched the tracks along his bottom teeth and his face was squashed against her glasses and she leaned back and pushed her lips together and it was like those black and white films. She closed her eyes and sank away from time and thinking and bad weather. She went away. She didn’t know where. She was somewhere where there were no walls and no doors and the world was folded into a paper plane that glided along the grey green sky. They kissed for a long time. The boy pulled back and looked at her and she looked at him. She laughed. His cheeks grew roses. He stepped down from the bricks and took the key out of his pocket and looked at his boots and his tee shirt that had no Jesus on it that day. He turned from the door once more and held her hand and looked at her.

  You’re not bad, he said.

  She looked at the little speck of shining glass that twisted in his eye.

  You’re just no good, like me.

  29

  There’s No Place Like

  TIME WAS A BASTARD. It took Tick back to school and exhausted Lucky and upset the woman in the bed who looked into a little mirror and cried. It turned children into shadows and left her alone sometimes for hours and hours and for days and the TV was no help and neither was Plastic Jesus who sat on the desk, pointed his finger and wept. She rubbed her face. Dorothy twisted her hair into knots in the corner of the room. She took Plastic Jesus into the living room and he bobbed his head to nothing but the sound of the rain and the noise of howling dogs and car radios. The mad bird called. He flashed his doll face and kept them all in the hour fifteen and the fifteenth hour shifted to the fifteenth day and the fifteenth day became the fifteenth week and everything drove on much quicker than it did when she had been with Dad.

  She watched the woman in the room sometimes. Watched that long lovely back stretching in the fiery dust and silver plated light. The flat was emptied of furniture and small things more and more each day and Tick hid everything he owned in a safe in the back of the wardrobe and she kept her video in a slit in the mattress with her lipstick and a packet of lemon chewing gum that she had stolen when she was on her own and wandering through the concrete world.

  Tick didn’t talk much. She watched him from doorframes and corners. He went away and came back again with another stack of money that he kept in a box beneath his bed and sometimes she went out with him and sometimes she stayed at home and sometimes she sat outside the school gates and waited for him to finish and they walked home together and swore loudly into the open windows of cars that drove through town and turned onto thin roads that were not black.

  Lucky spoke to Tick in the evenings when they were in front of the TV eating pie or chips or both with tomato sauce. He asked Tick how he was doing at school and what are you up to now and have you seen your mother today and the boy answered fine and nothing and no and Lucky took something from the kitchen and went out again.

  She saw Lucky less and less and. She went with Tick to Sweet Street sometimes and then back to the passenger’s place where Simon waited for them on the floor in the room full of rabbits, some fine and some almost alive or newly dead and still warm. She didn’t see the man again. Only in the stories or actions of the children who vandalized and chewed and molested the whole of the estate and sent their mothers and fathers into misery and thoughts of chasing rabbits.

  Any spare change?

  Fuck. You.

  She couldn’t sleep. She looked out of the window where the moon was high and fat and listened to the sound of the boy who was asleep and barking loud in his own bed. He barked louder and louder and sometimes he howled and his mother began to cry asleep or awake in the room next to his. She listened to the boy and the woman and looked at the video that Plastic Jesus guarded and she looked at the cover and turned it around and looked at the back where the scenes were cut and glued back together and she read what she could of the shapes that were written down. Wizard. Oz. Green. Lion. Road. Dorothy. Yellow brick. Dorothy. Dorothy. Lion. Farm. Fifteen. Fifteen. She met the hour with a rolled smoke.

  She went out onto the balcony and took off her shoes. She had fallen asleep with the sun on her face when she heard the front door open behind her. She looked back and saw Lucky walking down the hallway and she wiped her eyes underneath the green lenses and stood up and followed him into the hall and closed the door behind her. The sun had got into her eyes and made everything on the inside so dark she struggled to see him standing there.

  I was just learning to read. I didn’t get far.

  Lucky stood in the doorway where the light was bright.

  Why do you look at me like that? she said.

  Like what?

  I don’t know. You look at me strange sometimes.

  What do you mean?

  I don’t know. You stare at me. Like.

  Like what?

  Like work that needs to be finished. Like I’m a dog or.

  Or.

  I don’t know.

  I’m sorry. I don’t mean it.

  It makes me feel so.

  I know.

  Did you know my father?

  No.

  He stood for a while smoking and then he turned away and took off his shoes and scratched the hairs on his cheek and went into the living room. She followed him from the living room and into the kitchen where he opened the cupboard doors beneath the sink and brought out a bottle of whisky or rum and came back to the settee to look at the ceiling and drink. He rolled her another cigarette and they smoked and he sank into the chair and she looked at him as he talked.

  Do you know that there’s a woman who lives on this estate who gets dressed up every day in a suit and wears that suit when she cooks and
cleans and takes the kids to school and picks them up? Did you know that?

  No.

  Do you know why she does it?

  She doesn’t have anything else to wear.

  She does it because she thinks that if she wears a suit every day then she’ll look important and if she looks important enough then someone will give her a job. She only has the one suit so sometimes she stays up all night and washes it and dries it and irons it just so she can put it on again in a hurry and listen to the sound of the phone not ringing. What do you think about that?

  I don’t care much.

  He laughed and drank from the bottle and laid his head back to look at the ceiling and she moved closer to him on the settee. He talked and she listened. Lucky was like the sky turning and changing and falling into dark and that made him sadder than death and debt because he would be around forever without wanting it. He drank and she listened to the sound of the bottle filling him up. He drank and.

  The curtains were gone from the window. Outside it was cold and it was wet. When the lights from the street came on she saw herself in the glass and when they went out again in flickers and tantrums she saw the wall and the sky and the stars above dotted like a rash. Sometimes she wondered if the sky was just the sea turned upside down. She wondered this and other things while the ugly love tightened in her throat and swelled so big she thought she would choke, and Lucky told her all the reasons to hate him.

  I’m so bad. I’m broken. I can’t think. I can’t see. I still want to die. I don’t know who I should help. I think maybe I shouldn’t help anyone. I’m punished. I don’t know how I can sit here with you. I don’t know how I can do anything. Look at my hands. Look at my hands. Aren’t they the hands of someone who does such terrible work?

  He talked and she stopped listening. She held her film in her hands and looked at the letters again until she saw a word untwisting. Wizard. She stuck the video down the side of the chair and moved closer to Lucky who had already fallen asleep and she took his arm and wrapped it around her shoulder and turned his hand up in her palm and kissed the tips of his fingers. He was like a wizard. She looked at his face and she kissed his cheek that had not been shaved or cleaned that day or yesterday. He moved in his sleep and said something that she couldn’t hear and he turned and let his head drop near her face and she watched him sleep. Only she could see him. Only she knew him. She pressed her lips together and took him by his hair and closed her eyes and kissed him. She kissed him on the mouth. She kissed him for a long time. She touched his hands. Kissed him again. Felt herself falling into his skin and into his bones and into his blood that warmed them both up.

  The kiss was finished and she pulled her head back and opened her eyes and she looked at Lucky. His eyes were open. He was looking at her. She wanted to speak but her voice had been lost all the way into his mouth and into the back of his throat and she couldn’t find it again. His face changed. He turned from the wizard she knew into one she didn’t. He doglooked her. She sat up and moved away and he pulled himself back and looked at his hands again. He breathed through his nose and looked at her and sat up in his seat and she wanted to say something but she couldn’t. She leaned against him and he took her by the shirt and his face was twisted and his eyes were wide and he shoved her.

  He pushed her hard.

  All the breath went out of her as she fell backwards off the end of the settee and she landed on the TV remote that stuck into her back. She looked at him from the floor and she sat up and coughed into her hands. Her breath wouldn’t come back. He sat with his fists over his mouth and then he wiped his eyes with his knuckles and laid his head in his fingers. She coughed. She could still feel his shock in her ribs. Her chest was raw and her throat had shrunk to the size of a cigarette. She couldn’t get her voice back and she cried about that and cried about everything and she wiped it all with the I hate Jesus tee shirt that Tick had given to her the day before.

  They were quiet. The light that flashed on and off had broken sometime after the kiss or sometime after he had pushed her away or perhaps it had broken a long time ago and she hadn’t noticed until then.

  Outside a bird sang. When she felt alone everything was bigger and colder and noisier and everything was more somehow. There were more doors down those long aisles and more pieces of rubbish that were piled up and carried away on stretches of wind that dragged everything back through the railings on the bridge. There were more steps to make her legs ache and there were more ways to get lost and stay that way. The alleyways were darker and longer and the towers were tall and wide and neither the dogs nor the tribes would ever go to sleep. It was not the place she dreamed about when she first dreamed of something else. The lights were like the roses that bloomed on Dad’s arms and legs. Bloody. Raw. Broken.

  You can’t do things like that, Lucky said.

  She looked at him. He was sitting with his fists open and his elbows on his knees and he was opening and closing his hands and looking at the pads on his fingers as though he had not seen them until then. His face was red but he had stopped crying. His eyes were wet and sad but they were lovely and she still thought it even after she knew that he didn’t love her.

  I love my wife, he said.

  Can’t you love me too?

  I can love you in a different way.

  Like Dad loved me?

  Yes.

  I don’t want that. It’s too much.

  What do you want?

  I want that ugly lovely love.

  I can’t give you that.

  She smoked and looked out of the window and she didn’t look at Lucky because he wouldn’t look at her the same way. He moved away when she sat next to him and he watched her when she got up to go to the toilet and she stayed in the bathroom and thought about big white rooms with closed doors and quiet windows. She took off all her clothes and waited with her arms around her knees and her back against the cold toilet seat but he didn’t come for her. The bathroom was warm and wet from the last shower and the black garden that had started to grow into the clear curtain was now trailing along the walls and the tiles and the ceiling. She sat on the toilet and pissed and then she. Lucky knocked on the door but he wouldn’t come in.

  Go away then, she said.

  No. Talk to me.

  I can’t.

  You need help.

  I don’t want help. I want you to.

  You don’t want me. You only think you do. You’re so fucking young.

  Stop talking.

  He was silent. Then.

  How did you know? he said through the door.

  She flushed the piss away and wiped her eyes on the flannel that was lying dirty and wet on the side of the bath and she went to the door and rested her face and shoulder on the wood and warmed her breasts under the yellow light. She listened with her hand against the wood just like she’d done when he had been on the other side of her front door. She felt him press himself against the wood. He talked. She listened and heard. He cried and she listened to that too. Then they were quiet and so was everything else.

  I knew your father, he said. You knew it, didn’t you?

  She raised her hand to the door and closed her eyes.

  I couldn’t tell you before because I was ashamed. Guilty. Afraid. I knew your father and I knew your mother and I knew you too when you were a little girl. I think a part of you remembers. Maybe. You were so sweet and lovely and you were so smart. You know that? You were smart as anything. Smarter than any of us. We were all friends like you and Tick. We lived on the same block and we went to the same school. My wife and your Mum went to Art College together. Your Mum helped me take care of myself when my father died. I think you probably remember me because I was there on that day. When it happened.

  He smoked and drank. His voice got rougher.

  Your mother was clever too you know. She looked like you. She was clever and she used to paint these pictures of us and she used to illustrate these little stories for you. She painted the oc
ean on the living room wall. Do you remember it? Your Dad was great at music. He could sing. He could sing so well they wanted him to sing in front of people. He was like Jagger or something. They were my best friends, you know? I miss them. I miss them a lot.

  Another drink. Another break. She wiped her eyes.

  I’m sorry too. For you. I’m sorry all the time. I always think it was raining when it happened but it must’ve been hot and clear because we had just come back from the beach. Do you remember that? I can still remember the way the air smelled. It was salt and vinegar and sugar cooking in wells of fat. We left early. Your Mum was sitting next to you in the back seat and I remember that you kept telling us you were hungry because we didn’t stay long enough for food. You were always hungry. Your Mum was in the back and your Dad was in the front and I was driving. I remember you looking at me in my mirror. Your Mum used to say you liked my eyes. I can’t see why. You just kept looking at me. I looked at you too and I made faces like you’re supposed to do with kids. Your Dad wanted to get back and I was driving too fast. We were young. When you’re young you think you’ll be someone. You think you’ll make a difference and people will know you and your life will mean something but it can all end in a minute. It can become nothing so damn fast. I was driving and you were hungry and crying and your mother took your seatbelt off so you could reach back and get some food and I took my eye off the road for a second and then. That’s all it was. It was only a second. God must’ve taken his eye off the road too. Don’t you think? And sometimes I think it was on purpose. Sometimes I think he’s not really there and it’s only me just wishing he were real. Putting a boss in the sky is easier than thinking that you’re in charge of it all. Imagine that, there’s only you and this life, it keeps me awake some nights. I try to talk to God about it and sometimes I think he answers but most of the time I think I’m talking to a dead TV character and trying to get a reply. There’s no answer. There was no answer that day either, because I hit him.