The Insomnia Museum

by Laurie Canciani

  When they were done with the game she shoved the video underneath Tick’s pillow and folded the blanket on top of that. There was a knock on the door that had come before they picked all the cards up. They were scattered in a pile in their pairs and when someone knocked on the front door they shoved them back into the box and hid the box away. The knock came again. Tick stood up and opened his mouth wide and she looked at him and knew that it wasn’t Lucky.

  What’s wrong? Who’s that?

  It’s them.

  Who?

  I’ve been waiting. I knew they’d come. They’re angry.

  You shouldn’t answer. Let them think we’re not here.

  They know. They always know. I knew they’d come get me. They know. They knew it as soon as I didn’t show up to look after Simon. It’s happened before. This is just like then but worse now because there’s no coming back. They realize what I’ve done. They know now. It’s so. It’s. The cards were fun though. I forgot about them until last night. I forgot I even had them. I just wanted to be a kid again. I wanted to be a kid once more before I had to put those cards away. You can have them now. They’re yours. You can be a kid too if you want. Time, like you said, it’s just broken apart and if we want to go back we can.

  You can too.

  No. I can’t. Not now.

  She started to cry. Outside the day was cold and grey and the sky had sunk around the estate in a thick cloud and the world looked so much smaller then. There was no background. The sky was sharp and white and the moon was a thumbprint without edges. There were no hills that rolled into the distance. No feathering grass caught by the breeze. Everything had disappeared into a damp fog that hid the cracks and the streets. Tick turned away from her and sat on the edge of the bed. He pulled his boots on and did the laces and looked at the carpet.

  Can’t you just stay here?

  No. I wish I could.

  Stay and watch TV.

  I can’t. I’ll go out and I’ll try to settle things, but if I’m not back you should take all the money and you should leave here. You’re the only person I’ve ever met who isn’t really from anywhere. You’re not tied here. You can leave. You can go away and get lost and you don’t ever have to be found if you don’t want to. All you need is money. Money is freedom. You can take it and you can go. You can go anywhere you want in the whole world and nobody would know.

  I want to go where you are.

  The boy stood up and shook his head and she leaped off the bed and pulled him to her chest and laid her chin on his head. His hair smelled like chemicals and shampoo, but there was something else there too. She closed her eyes. She squeezed him so hard he yelped like a dog and then became quiet. He smelled of grass and dirt.

  The dog on the wall had disappeared and his mother had gone to sleep in the other room and the boy was spiking his hair back up in a mirror that belonged to the outside of his father’s car. He jerked his chin and made little noises in the back of his throat. The knock came again. Then voices. They shouted through the letterbox but she couldn’t understand what they said. It sounded like the barking of dogs. He took all his money and the white rabbits and everything else from underneath the bed and he took it all into his hands and he looked at her and she looked at him. He gave her the money and he kissed her on the cheek and he left the room. She looked at the money in her hands and listened to the sound of the door clicking open. The cold wind blew in. There was the sound of shuffling and then the voices of children. Tick’s words were caught in the wind and then he too sounded like the barking of dogs. His mother called from the next room.

  Is that you, Tick? Can you come here? I just want to look at you. I only want to look at you.

  But the boy had already gone.

  *

  Tick didn’t come home that night and he didn’t come back the next day. She sat in the living room and smoked and watched TV and she rubbed her eyes and played with all the money in her lap. On the TV there was a cartoon and the cartoon was red. She stared at the TV for hours but she hadn’t watched anything. Her sight stopped at the base of the carpet where her own feet were as still and useless as plastic toys that couldn’t run or walk or kick or fight. She saw only the things in her mind that was swollen with bloody pictures and broken glass and hollow iron fences driven deep into the ground. Her feet wouldn’t move. The red shoes shone. She hated them. Everything.

  The cuckoo struck.

  Shut up, she said.

  The cuckoo was silent.

  The front door popped and clicked open. Keys jangled and the wind came into the room and then went back out again. She stood up and let the money fall out of her arms and it caught on the breeze and rolled around the empty room like the moth wings in her head. Then it was all still. She stood up and wiped her face and waited. The boy was home. He was back and everything was good and lovely again. She played with the twist in her little finger and smiled for the boy.

  I knew you’d.

  She stood back. She felt her feet go numb again as the money rolled and covered the shoes in green. Her nose ran but she didn’t wipe it. The boy had not come home. It was Lucky who stood in the doorway. He stood tall against the frame of the door with the keys in his hand and looked at her. He smiled at first but then his eyes darted around the room and he looked at the money that rolled like rabbits over her feet. He raised his hand to his face and then balanced against the frame. He steadied himself. His eyes were tired. His face was a rolling, sunken sheet. His cheeks were dirty and covered with yellow and grey hair. He stood in front of her and watched the shadows lean into the room, and he was both close and far away. He wiped the raw circles underneath his eyes and licked his dry lips.

  What’s happened? he said. What’s going on?

  She was quiet. She felt herself emptying. Crying.

  He stumbled forward and looked at her. He wiped her eyes and then he fell onto his hands and knees and took the money in his fists and looked at it there. She came down to the floor and shook her head and he took her by the shoulders and stared deeply into her face. His lovely eyes rolled. That lovely ugly love was nowhere in the room and she thought that nothing would ever be good again. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t. He couldn’t say anything. She wished he were the boy. The ruby shoes sat on her feet as useless as stones and she worked them into the carpet.

  Tell me what happened. What the Hell is going on here? Where did all this money come from? Where’s Tick?

  You left, she said.

  What?

  You were gone and Tick was.

  I’m sorry.

  You can’t just go. You can’t just go away, Dad.

  What?

  You can’t just.

  She slapped him, and he pinned her arms to her sides.

  She fought.

  You can’t just go away, Dad. Please. Please.

  He pulled her to his chest and she smelled the ash in his clothes and the beer in his throat. She felt his heart beating against her cheek and the warmth of his body and she remembered what his eyes looked like in the rear-view mirror all those years ago. He said sorry. She let herself empty on him. Her mouth opened and she howled until there was no sound left. She was still. Her eyes closed. He said sorry. He said sorry, over and over. Sorry, for everything. For all he’d ever done and everything he ever was. I’m sorry. I’m just a man and I’m learning how to live with that. I have to try. I have to be different. I have to make things right again.

  The sun peeked through the windows and warmed them both. The moon and sun shared the same sky and the fog broke apart and disappeared. She could see the hills again. The long towers in the distance and the black road. She could see a place that could’ve been her father’s place, sticking up like a finger. Like the bad finger one person points at another when they’re trying to be rude. She smiled.

  I have to tell you something, she said.

  Please, tell me everything.

  She sat with the fallen man and she told him about Tick and about Sweet
Street and the man in the car and she told him about the boy who had rolled over the top of the car and she told him that Tick had been gone for a long time. She talked about all the things that they had done and she told him all the things that Tick said he would do if he could. Lucky listened and he opened his eyes and he held his hand on the top of her head while all the moths came flying out through her eyes. She sank as the words came. He held her up. When she was done he braced himself on the frame of the door and pushed himself up. Every word seemed like a stone thrown hard against his back. He was crippled with the broken bones and the red marks that existed only in his heart and underneath the layers of scarred skin. He drew his hands to his face and held them there. He said something into his palms but his voice was too muffled for her to understand and then he brought his hands down and looked at them. He spoke again. She listened.

  I’m his father and he is my son, he said.

  She looked at him and she.

  I’m the father, he said. He’s the son.

  I think they want to hurt him. He wants to hurt him.

  No, he said. He doesn’t want to hurt him.

  Who then?

  Not him.

  Then he was quiet. All the light that had poured in from the sun had turned into streetlights and the red and blue of police cars. On the outside the world was dark and the darkness seemed to settle on his face. He stood in the doorway and she could see all the scars and the age and the wear that had crept upon him while he had not been there.

  What are you going to do? she said.

  It’s him. It’s always been him. He’s my son and all this time I didn’t see how much it mattered. I’m the father and he is mine. My son. My boy. I’m going to end this, all of it. I’m going to bring him home.

  The woman in the bed had been listening. She shouted murder and rage from the other room and there was so much noise all around them but Lucky was calm. The woman cried, howled, barked like a dog and then there was nothing. There was silence. All the noise of the estate and all the noise of the other room were numbed into whispers. Lucky dried his eyes on his sleeves.

  She shook her head. Don’t go.

  I have to.

  I love you.

  He laughed. I don’t know why.

  I don’t know why everything hurts but it does. I don’t know why people do things they don’t want to do but they do. Nothing makes sense. You don’t take care of each other and you don’t take care of yourselves and things rot and you watch them do it because you’re too scared of anything different. Everyone is afraid all the time, and nobody sleeps. Not really. You all lie there thinking you’re asleep but you’re not. I know you’re not. All you are is quiet and still and thinking and doing nothing while the world rolls. Like tin people. You lie there awake watching everything like TV until the TV gets into your head and you can’t see anything else. I can’t sleep either. I’m awake all the time and it’s bullshit. I didn’t realise how bullshit it all is but it is and I don’t know why.

  That’s just life.

  Please don’t go.

  I have to go. I have to bring my son back.

  I know. I wish.

  You wish it could be different.

  That’s just life.

  Yes.

  He looked at her and she looked at him. She closed her eyes and she pretended to be somewhere else. She felt the walls recede around her and she felt the wash of the cold waves and the salt that dried her skin and the cool sand underneath her feet. She felt him standing there, the man who came. The first one there ever was who wasn’t her father. She pushed her lips together and tilted her head back and she pretended to be. Then he kissed her. She felt him there. Breath. Lips. Eyes that saw who she had been and who she now was. He kissed her while she stood on that impossible beach. She felt the ugly lovely love rush over her and then she felt it sink away again. She opened her eyes.

  I would’ve loved you, he said. Back then. Before I got into the car and before the world split into two. If I was a better man. I think I would’ve loved you, Sweetheart. If it had all been different.

  33

  Simon Says

  LUCKY DIED SOMETIME around that fifteenth hour, or so they said.

  It was all he’d ever wanted.

  Tick came home one day later just like Plastic Jesus said he would when she took him in her fist and asked him if Lucky would die. She waited. She sat for hours and hours in the hallway looking up at the front door just like she did when she had lived inside the museum. It wasn’t parcels or papers or a voice without a face that she was waiting for this time. It was the boy. Her boy. Her lovely wild friend who would not turn away from pain but drove towards it with furious certainty and a bright silver smile. She waited in the hall until bedtime and then she kept herself awake. Her eyes burned. The next day the door clicked and then opened and the boy stood in the hallway.

  Tick came into the light. She stood up and looked at him with the sun showing all the difference that was made by those two days. The boy looked at the ground. She stepped towards him and pulled his chin up. He had a bruised eye that was punctured on the lid and specks of blood that turned the ends of his lashes into roses. His lip was swollen and purple. The white of his left eye was bright red and one of his teeth was chipped. The silver tracks in his mouth hung broken and crooked and it had cut the inside of his lip. His thumb was twisted. Body bruised underneath a school uniform that he hadn’t needed on the day he left but told her it would help when they found him afterwards. When he was gone. He would be a doll then, he said. He would be a doll dressed in a school uniform and they would know where he belonged and his Mum would know what happened.

  The cuckoo in the room struck sixteen and seventeen and twenty-one all at once and she held him to her chest until she felt him recede into despair. Then he didn’t talk. Then he didn’t look at her. He went to sleep for two days and woke up again hungry. He had wet his sheets. She changed them. When she took his clothes off he said nothing and when she washed his body he said nothing. She changed his clothes into what was fresh and clean and then he looked in the mirror. In the mirror the boy was different. He told her that his eyes had changed.

  I look like Lucky, he said. My eyes. They’re his.

  Yes, they are. So much like his.

  I never noticed before. They’re the same colour.

  Sometimes.

  The boy began to cry. I lost my keys, he said. I don’t remember losing them but they’re gone now. I think they’re somewhere around the estate. Probably on the grass or maybe they dropped down a drain or something. I’ll have to find them. I’m not supposed to lose them. They’re my only set and they cost a lot of money to cut. I’m such an idiot.

  He cried long and hard in the bathroom and his mother began to cry from the other room. They killed him, the boy said. They killed my Dad. Anna. Anna. Anna. He came to get me and they let me go and they killed him instead. They killed him like he was nothing. I don’t know. I just. He’s dead. He’s gone.

  She held the boy.

  Tick told her that Lucky had died somewhere on the black road. He had gone there to take his son home and to face whatever needed facing, and there was no way back from that. Lucky told Tick to run. That’s it, boy. Run on home now. Run. Go that way. Don’t look back. Don’t you look back even for a second. Just run. So Tick turned around but he didn’t run. He walked, slowly, and he felt his father standing behind him and he saw the shine in the windows and the young shadows that began to move in. Some were crying. He heard them all behind. Then he heard the passenger and saw all the people in the windows and all the people lurking down alleyways. Listening. Watching. Crying. Doing nothing. Lucky died and the whole of the estate turned out to watch, but silently behind closed doors and lovely little gardens. The passenger shouted after Tick. He said that’s what you get, Son. You make me do these things. It’s all on you. The boy didn’t believe him, he said. It was all on him. All him. And nobody else.

  Lucky was beaten until
he was still and then he was dragged to the concrete and then to the dirt by a dozen children who cried as they took him there and didn’t stop when the boy was over the rough mound of the park. She washed the boy’s face with cold water and wiped it with a towel that had been warming on the radiator and she took him into the living room where the TV was playing and she sat him on the floor in front of it. The woman in the bed was. All this chaos came from behind her door and she threw down a cup and watched the water spin in the air and went into her room and looked at her where she fought with her quilt and pulled it into her mouth and tried to choke herself. The woman cried. Wailed. Shouted. She turned in the bed and wrapped herself up and called for Lucky over and over until the name was chewed up like fat. She reached out and snatched the quilt and stood over the woman and watched as she looked up and bit the air like a dog. Outside there was no sound. The last of the day collapsed around them and tomorrow would soon come aching into now. The mad bird said. Dorothy was. She turned around and went out of the room and left the woman naked and crying on the bed.

  I knew it. I heard it. I knew it, the woman said. I knew it wouldn’t be long before he left us all. Good things die. Pretty things die. I knew it before he went out of the door. Let me sleep. Dear Dog in heaven let me sleep. She shoved the quilt into the bath and turned on the water and shut the door and got into the bath with the wet quilt underneath. She wiped her face. Closed her eyes. She turned to look at the toilet seat and then at the ceiling, and thought long and hard about all the things that were no longer there.

  There were no more games. The next day the boy was silent but his eyes were wide and when she spoke they looked through her. Tick lay in bed but he didn’t sleep and she lay next to him and slept even less and they didn’t speak and didn’t look at each other for hours at a time. She took Plastic Jesus in her hand and asked him if everyone has to die in the end and Plastic Jesus smiled and nodded yes, yes, yes. She thought about all the people of the estate. Good. Bad. Ugly. Fat. Lovely. Old. New. And she thought of Dorothy who would last forever in a plastic case and she knew that people were more than that. They were minutes long. Seconds. They screamed furiously into life and then furiously into death just as fast. They were the dreams that burned. Hot. Hungry. And she burned too.