by Karen Runge
Well, are you?
Would you be?
What do you think?
While you’re thinking, remember this: you’re not safe with him, either.
You shouldn’t have cut me off, Ada. I’m the only person in the world who gets you. I know what you need. Better than you do.
– THIRTY-THREE –
Three days after the dinner party, Daniel went to the coffee shop near his office. It hadn’t snowed much more since that night, and what was left of the light fall was grey and black with street filth, frozen and melted in turns, churned to a thin layer of slush in the gutters. The air was sharp but he pulled his scarf away from his mouth, breathing it in to wake himself up.
Fatigue hummed in the nerves that ran across his scalp. A constant vibration urging him to lower his head, to sleep, to rest for a few minutes.
Coffee, he thought. He was supposed to be cutting back, but Ada wasn’t here to see, to stop him, to judge him in that spiked-saccharine way of hers that made him think of barbs embedded in sweets. Bite, and expect to be bitten. Ada wasn’t here. She was at home in their apartment cat-napping on the couch with the TV on low. She was home, and if he didn’t have some coffee he would fall asleep at his desk, or risk dozing through his meeting that afternoon. His boss and colleagues picking apart project details in low, focused tones. The pattern of their voices reminding him of meditation tapes, that soft, indecipherable buzz. His eyelids drooping until he slipped his hands under the desk, flicked his lighter and held a hand over the flame, finding focus in the burn. Blistering his palms.
Coffee. Wake up.
A double shot, large cappuccino, extra chocolate on the foam to satisfy his sweet tooth. It would be rich. It might unsettle his stomach, but that would just be another thing to keep him on his toes, wouldn’t it?
He pushed open the doors of Double Cream, the bell over his head tinkling. He walked straight past the display fridges with their staggering triple-tier cakes, sold by the slice, each in various stages of demolition. At the counter, a young guy with a wispy attempt at a beard looked at him in surprise. Then greeted him in slangy city speech.
That’s different, Daniel thought. He was expecting a stream of broken English offered with a hopeful smile, followed by visible relief when Daniel replied to show that yes, he could in fact speak the language.
Daniel fumbled in his coat for his wallet. “Large cappuccino, double shot—”
“—Extra cocoa powder. I remember. Did you drop it?”
Daniel stopped, frowned. “What?”
“Your coffee. Did you drop it outside? If you’d dropped it in-store I coulda replaced it free, but if you didn’t—and I’m pretty sure you didn’t—I’m afraid I’ll have to charge you again. Sorry, brother.”
“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
The kid rolled his eyes. “Look friend, I can’t give you another one for free just like that. You didn’t drop it in-store. I can’t replace it. You’re gonna have to buy another one.”
“That’s—that’s what I want,” Daniel said, irritated. “I would like to buy a cappuccino, double shot—”
“And you want lots of cocoa. Yeah, okay, okay.”
The kid shouted the order over his shoulder to the guys at the coffee machines. One of them—a big man with a tattoo on his neck—spotted Daniel and did a sharp double-take. He gave Daniel a brief, perplexed stare. The kid at the bar took Daniel’s money, gave him his change without thanks. The kid’s fingers were greasy, the nails bitten to the quick in luminous arcs, sensitive flesh semi-healed to a bright pink that still remembered blood.
I coulda replaced it free—
I’ll have to charge you again—
Daniel stood back with his hands in his coat pockets, agitated, watching.
Hot air hissed through milk.
A woman and a little girl came in, holding hands. The child dragged her mother to the display fridges, her chubby finger smearing the glass as she pointed out a cake.
“There! This one! There!”
Daniel watched them, unconscious of the vacant cast of his face as other patrons looked on and smiled. He looked haggard, hollow, shadows pressed under his eyes. In his pockets, his fists clenched and unclenched. The mother glanced his way, her smile hardening as she pulled her daughter closer to her. She looked deliberately away.
She thinks I’m a predator, he thought, waking up. Some monster who would—
“Hey, friend.”
Daniel didn’t hear him.
“Hey, cappuccino man. Hello!”
The kid had half-stepped out from behind the counter and was pointing to the cappuccino, capped and waiting in a takeaway cup.
It occurred to Daniel he hadn’t specified that he wanted it to go. He did, of course. But—
“Sure, coming.”
As he passed the counter again on his way out, he paused.
“Sorry…kid?”
The kid flinched at the title, sarcasm twitching at the edges of his mouth as he smiled. “Yeah? You want another one already?”
“Did…did you say I ordered one of these before?”
“Uh, yeah. You did. About ten minutes before you came back in now.”
Daniel took a sip of the coffee. It was too hot and the first drop touched the tip of his tongue like a piercing needle. He swallowed, eyes watering. “Well…I, uh…I didn’t. This is my first coffee today.”
The twitch in the kid’s smile vanished. “Well, the guy who came in first and ordered the exact same thing sure looked a hell of a lot like you.”
“Same jacket? Same—”
“Same everything. It was you, man.” He turned back to a pile of receipts, shaking his head.
Crazy, Daniel thought as he pushed the doors open and stepped back outside. Totally fucking nuts.
At least he was awake again.
– THIRTY-FOUR –
All right, Ada. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you something about me. I tried to tell you once before about the country I come from. Back when we were drinking coffee, our first time out alone together. Back when I still thought there was something broken about you. Something fucked up that made you interesting. That made you beautiful.
Back when that was the only reason I wanted to get close to you.
I tried to tell you about my country, though I didn’t want to slip into those stupid platitudes, those conversation crushers, where everyone gets to ooh and aah and ask dumb questions. But this is how much I liked you back then. Or at least, that’s the way I liked you. Then. I tried to describe it to you. I tried, and I saw winter in your eyes. Snowscapes and dark forests. Clichéd images snatched out of stereotypes.
You stupid bitch, I thought even then. It was nothing like that.
The house I grew up in was modest, simple. That’s true. A squat building, small, with mountains behind it. It was close to the railway tracks, and at night the passing trains rattled the windows and shook the doorframes. I used to have these dreams that a giant had come down over the mountains and picked our house up, gripped it in his hands, was shaking it.
I liked those dreams.
There were only two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a tiny living room, and a single bathroom I had to share with my parents. In the mornings I often stood in the passage outside by the bathroom door, my hands clasped over my crotch, dancing on the spot while my father took his time shaving or brushing his teeth, or sat on the toilet for what felt like hours reading old magazines. Or maybe just staring at the wall. I don’t know.
My father, he was a handsome guy. He took care of his appearance. He put oil in his hair, he cleaned his fingernails. He was pretty neat for a railway worker. I was a little too young to know if he fucked around on my mom. It’s possible, I guess. But I don’t know. I doubt it somehow.
On those mornings I knew better than to knock on the door when he was in there. I held my bladder tight and danced. When the dance slowed too much, drops of urine bled into my underpants, and when my m
other passed she would stop, run a hand through my hair.
“Don’t hassle him,” she’d say.
As if I didn’t know.
Sometimes I had to abandon propriety and dash outside to pee, burning my mother’s flower patch. It stung the petals and leaves so that they changed colour and curled up on themselves. I didn’t like to do that—destroy my mother’s things. The things she worked so hard to keep beautiful. But it was the closest place to the front door where I could safely go and not be seen. And I would never go out round the back. That was where the rabbit hutch was.
The rabbit hutch. A square shape hulking under a layer of tarp.
I had dreams about that thing, too.
Wait. I can’t tell you this. What am I doing? You won’t understand. You won’t understand.
Will you?
– THIRTY-FIVE –
Ada sat slumped in her wicker chair, picking at the weave with her fingernails. She was out in her balcony studio, staring at her latest painting—or rather the canvas that was supposed to be her latest painting. The first in almost two years. Its base coat gleamed a sick, muted yellow, the colour of institution walls when someone tries to make them look “homely.”
White is severity. White is empty. White is not pure or clean because the pure and clean are the most easily corrupted. One smear, one touch, one scratch. Instantly visible. Stark. I hate white. But maybe I hate yellow more.
She’d stamped on a beetle once when she was a child, and this was the exact shade that burst out between the shards of its broken shell.
Sick yellow, fucked up yellow, disgusting yellow-cream.
“It’s just a base coat,” she said aloud to herself. “It’s just how we start.”
She’d spent the morning cleaning her studio. Floor, worktable, desk. Every crevice, every corner. Her brushes were spotless, drying in their jar. Her various paints had been gathered and rearranged, organised by shade. She’d done this before, many times. She’d done everything except start. Really start. She sat defunct in her rag T-shirt, one of Daniel’s old cast-offs, and the baggy jeans she liked to paint in. The faded fabric of the shirt was splattered with the bright stains of more productive days. Her jeans had holes worn in the pockets, the thighs streaked with stripes of colour from her habit of absently wiping her brushes off on them.
All dressed up and nowhere to go. All dolled up, and nothing to show.
She needed to paint, if not for herself then because Daniel believed she did nothing all day except lie on the couch watching TV. It was where he left her every morning, and usually where he found her every night when he came back. Daniel didn’t judge her for it—for what?—but even so, she didn’t like how it never occurred to him she might be doing something else with her day. She did plenty. She did laundry; she vacuumed; she cleaned the bathroom, polishing tiles and fastidiously removing every last stray of pubic hair Daniel shed in there. Shed like a dog, she sometimes thought. Last week she’d organised the fridge and gone through all the kitchen cupboards, checking expiry dates and replacing the shelf linings. She’d single-handedly hefted two heaving rubbish bags down four flights of stairs. She’d grinned like Superwoman when he came home that night, his eyes travelling her body, misreading her smile.
Still.
Damned if she’d turn into just another housewhore. Smug, sensible women with hips ballooning under their breezy dresses, cutting their hair short and sniffing at the younger girls. The childless girls. The girls who still looked good in knee-high boots, who were careful with their weight but not their words, who could command a room without domineering it. As she still did, as she still was, as she still could.
“So do something, bitch!” she said to herself, the snap in her tone a cruel sting, remote and alien.
This couldn’t be her, speaking to her.
In the old days, when she was stuck she’d get herself a drink, sip it down in thoughtful mouthfuls as she listened to Miranda Sex Garden, Godflesh, Skinny Puppy. Something like that, depending on the mood, the moment, the atmosphere she wanted to wrap around herself. If not alcohol, then half a joint. A blunt, Daniel called them. A term she didn’t quite understand and had never used herself. If neither of those, then she’d raid their stash, kept in an antique Oriental jewellery box she’d restored herself, touching up the chipped paint, fixing up the lacquer. A thing of beauty, oblivion locked inside.
If not alcohol or harder drugs then at least a cigarette, for God’s sake. Chain-smoking while she drank cup after cup of filter coffee, thinning it with water when her hands began to shake. And painting. God…painting.
But all those doors were barred. Nicotine, caffeine. Banned. It was just her and her. Her inside of her. For now.
She sat desolate in her chair, plucking at strands of broken weave.
She missed her old life. She missed the drugs, those sweet, wild blasts of euphoria swooping through her head in a gritty line of white powder. A dizzying mouthful of smoke that veiled her world in a softly shifting haze. Daniel, for all his stalwart smiles and enthusiasm for her breakfast bran muffins, was struggling with this too. She’d noticed his exhaustion, the tremble in his fingers as he knotted his tie—like a good little office soldier—and left her every morning, a kiss on her cheek and a serviette-wrapped muffin clenched in his hand. His brow furrowed like his head ached and the Excedrin hadn’t kicked in yet. This change, they hadn’t planned it well enough. It had been overnight and absolute, like plunging from wild, warm waters into a still, cold pond.
Her nail snagged on the weave, and a blade punched into the bed beneath her fingernail, neat and clean, the pain sharp and sudden.
“Bitch, cunt!” she yelled, whipping her hand away. She caught the broken end of the blade and teased it out, hissing between her teeth.
She put her finger in her mouth, sucking blood. Her fingertip throbbed against her tongue. She thought of Neven, his fingers in her mouth. The thick, salty taste of his skin so much sharper than Daniel’s. Tears stung behind her eyes.
Poor lost Neven, unmoored without them. Neven reduced to tedious compliments. She remembered the slow, painful way he’d put on his scarf the last time he’d come over for dinner, as though it ran an endless length and she might be tied to the end of it.
“You’re not married to Neven,” she said around her finger. “And Daniel didn’t marry him either.”
The thought made her smile. Made her wince. That magical, bestial union of three.
“But you chose this too,” she told herself. “Neven was right. You could’ve said no.”
It wasn’t a new thought. Still, it made her cry.
– THIRTY-SIX –
The house I grew up in. It was old. It was small. I’ve told you that. What I haven’t told you is that it was also neat. Really neat. You might appreciate how hard that is—living in the city we live in now—to maintain the beauty in beaten things, broken things. Junk. We didn’t have much money, but if you walked into our house you might’ve been fooled into thinking we had more than we actually did. The carpets were worn but always brushed. The windows were cracked, but they shone. Every surface was polished, every shelf ordered, every cushion and pillow arranged.
That was all because of my mother. Her skills and also her obedience. My father liked to keep beauty around him. And she knew that.
“Home is where the heart is,” she often said.
Okay, you’ll call that platitude. But it meant something to her. To us.
We didn’t have much on a railway worker’s salary, but she did her best. Not many women can do that, find ways to create a home, to cleave comfort out of spare pennies. But she could. She did that.
The place smelled of potpourri. She made it herself with the flowers I hadn’t doused in uric acid. She collected old china, buying all the mismatched and chipped pieces, the ones separated from their sets. She called them “scattered refugees of decadence.” I’m translating loosely, but I think that’s right. And she really was romantic like that. She b
ought them cheap whenever she could, and then she rearranged them—a cup that didn’t fit a saucer, a bowl that didn’t match a plate. She arranged them so they still looked good together. She angled them to hide their flaws. She made it work. She displayed them in an old glass cabinet that stood in the living room. That way she could see them from my dad’s worn armchair. From that chair, she could see the display just right.
What I learned the most from my mother, maybe, was her talent for calm, her way of moving with quiet purpose. I loved to watch her work. I learned something about grace from her. Something about the grace of intent, I mean. When she wrote letters, peeled vegetables, folded laundry, her movements were careful and precise. She focused completely on every task, one at a time, giving each the concentration it deserved. I found that very comforting. I guess that sounds dumb. I don’t expect you to understand.
Or okay, how’s this? When I caught you with that needle, Ada. Did I panic? Did I? If not for my mother, I might’ve. Instead, I was fucking thrilled. I moved immediately into precise motion. And I know you didn’t understand that. Not really. Though you didn’t bother to ask. Maybe when we’re through with this you’ll understand. Maybe when we’re done.
My father was a handsome guy. I told you that. But he was also big. Very big. And my mom, she was the smallest little thing. Petite, that’s the word. He didn’t talk much, seldom smoked, never drank. He had a stoic need for quiet, a love of order, an unbreakable obsession with control. In this way, I often thought my parents were perfect for each other. Where they matched, they were exactly the same. Where they were different, they met the other’s absences, filling the empty spaces. Creating something whole.
It was something that, even as a kid, I dreamed of someday finding for myself.
For example. When glass was broken. When things got smashed. An hour later, you’d never know. She swept it up, she tidied it away. She never mentioned the losses again, never mourned them. There was power in that—this ability to accept, and then forget. I guess she taught me that, too.