by Sue Saliba
mia didn’t have to imagine, not now. she’d come to alaska to be with em and here she was with ethan, a stranger to her in every way only three months ago. here she was, alone in his house, sharing his house. yes, she was living here with him, she realised.
mia hugged the dressing gown tight around herself and looked about at her new home. there, beneath her, were the patterned tiles she’d wondered at that first night she’d stayed here. she pulled her foot from its slipper and touched her bare sole to the floor, then she drew it back. she stayed still for a moment, silent. she looked across the room to a chair by the wall. a t-shirt of ethan’s was flung across its back. she moved towards it. it was the blue t-shirt she’d seen him wearing that day she’d first met him in the forest. she felt pieces of her new home coming together, his presence through the objects of his life, and her? what part of this home would be her?
she looked at the kitchen, with its few stray dishes and opened letters on the bench. she began just by putting some dried cups away, then she wiped the sink and she found a broom and swept the floor, after that, she dusted down the window sill and wiped the stove top. on she went, how nice she’d make the kitchen look.
she hadn’t intended to clean so much, but somehow one task led to another. and, through it all, mia felt a growing sense of happiness, as if she might at last have found a place to trust.
what a stranger she had felt in em’s house, with terrence, with christian, even with em.
she continued her cleaning, wiping out the shelves of the fridge, and was just about to return the food when she heard a sound at the door. she looked at the clock – it was only three thirty. who could it be? there she stood, in front of the open fridge with a sponge and wearing ethan’s dressing gown and slippers.
who else might have a key to his house? suddenly she felt frightened of being discovered by someone else. a friend of ethan’s, perhaps, or even a neighbour.
her sense of home flew from her as easily as it had arrived.
how timid it was. but she should not have worried. she heard the footsteps coming closer and then she saw that it was ethan.
‘hi,’ he said, from the doorway of the kitchen.
he paused as he took in the full vision of her. he glanced around the kitchen and his eye seemed to catch on something.
‘i see you’ve made yourself at home,’ he said.
yes, it was true, she had. she’d cleaned the kitchen and thrown out the old newspapers gathered in the corner and she’d gone out to the post box to collect his mail. she’d brought in two letters and they now sat beside the teapot.
‘i thought …’ mia began, but then she stopped.
in an instant a whole new context had arisen to envelope her. she looked down at herself and felt exposed, standing there in his dressing gown and slippers.
‘i should go and change,’ she said. ‘get dressed.’ and she hurried away upstairs.
what was it that had suddenly come over her? mia stared at the unmade bed and tried to re-enter the happiness she’d felt earlier, but it was impossible. something had changed the moment ethan had come home. no, not the moment he had come home. she went over it slowly in her mind – how he had hesitated when he saw her and how the tone of his voice had been tight, constricted.
she made the bed then, unsure if it was the right thing to do or not, and she dressed herself in her own clothes of the night before.
she heard him downstairs and she heard the tearing of paper. he must be opening the letters she’d brought in. perhaps that was what had shifted his mood – seeing the letters there. she hadn’t noticed what they were, one had a clear plastic window on the front. she couldn’t remember the front of the other.
yes, it must have been something about the letters or one of them, that’s what mia told herself, she folded his dressing gown and lay it at the end of the bed. she tied up the laces of her shoes and then untied them, and then tied them again, and then she straightened the curtains, all in an effort to use up time, to give some space to ethan and how he needed to be.
surely when she went downstairs again, he would be as she knew him – easy, attentive, friendly.
he was at the kitchen window, standing there looking out when she came up behind him. it was only four o’clock or so, but already mia felt the dark approaching.
‘you came home early from work,’ she said as a way of letting him know she was there.
he turned to her and she saw the cloud had not entirely left him.
‘things are a bit messed up at work right now,’ he said.
‘oh?’
he said nothing more and mia thought, perhaps that was the reason for his distance, some concern about work. the letter, a situation at his work, her – any one of these things could be responsible. she hated to think of it, but it could have been her dressed in his night clothes and caring for his house, which had created this sudden change in him.
that’s when she thought to tell him again about the meeting she’d been to the evening before, about the protest, it had seemed last night that he hadn’t heard, not really. perhaps if she told him, things would be okay. everything would fall into place somehow and their special bond would return.
‘ethan,’ she began.
he didn’t move.
‘ethan, you know last night i was telling you about …’
he stepped towards her and shifted the hair from her cheek.
she was silent.
‘let’s go somewhere nice for dinner,’ he said.
mia smiled, she should have been happy, it was a nice offer – thinking of such an offer would have once made her giddy with excitement – but standing here she felt something beyond words. it was as if they faced each other, but stood at entirely different angles.
‘okay,’ she said. ‘that would be lovely.’
it was still early, too early for dinner, but ethan wanted to leave. ‘let’s go before it’s dark,’ he said.
they drove along a road mia was not aware of. it went back behind the nearby woods and then climbed as if it were travelling along the side of a mountain or a very steep hill, along the night sky, almost, a raven crossed their window. ethan smiled. mia stayed still.
on and on they travelled, and then at last they stopped. mia knew this place. she remembered it. a silent clearing beneath the northern lights, she looked out the window at the sky, but the colours were gone now. they’d disappeared with the coming winter, she thought back to that time she’d driven here alone, that one time when something outside her bedroom window had guided her.
‘ethan.’
he turned to her.
‘it’s a special place, isn’t it? right here,’ she said.
‘it is,’ he answered and touched her cheek.
she wanted to ask him something she’d been meaning to ask him since he’d said, you remind me of a part of myself. what part do i remind you of? instead she simply looked back at him.
at last she said, ‘what are you thinking about?’
‘i was thinking how different this sky is from the one in california. i remember it from when my family first arrived there from africa. they’re still down in los angeles,’ he said.
mia didn’t respond, not at first, and then she said, ‘your family must be proud of you.’
‘yeah, it took a lot for them to send me here. they made real sacrifices,’ he said. ‘they came to the states with nothing and they worked shifts in factories, so i could go to college.’
‘well, it’s been worth it,’ mia said. she knew how important his time at the university had been to him. he’d told her it was a life-changing experience, was that the term? life-changing. he’d told her it was the first time he’d met people who saw the world so differently from how he’d known it. she imagined they’d talked about philosophy and literature and all the beauty in the natural world around them and that a whole new part of ethan had awakened.
‘you must miss it,’ she said now. ‘the university.’
&n
bsp; ‘miss it? well, i had to graduate.’
‘yeah, i know. i mean, you must miss the people,’ she
said. ‘the way of life, of thinking.’
‘yeah,’ he answered. ‘yeah, it was fun.’
fun. he must have meant special, or meaningful. sometimes ethan chose the wrong word, mia noticed, she thought it was perhaps because english was a language he had learnt as an older child, or maybe it was just that he was tired from his work, or … it could be anything. once he had even called her cute, it didn’t seem to fit, but it didn’t matter, mia knew what he meant. and she knew what he meant now. this special sky above him, above them both, had made him reflective and had touched something deeper in him. as she moved closer now he put his arm around her and folded her neatly into his chest. she stayed like that, listening attentively to the rhythm of his breath.
they were meant to be together, that was certain. why else would they be here like this beneath the same sky? all mia’s doubts of the last hours left her and she felt happy, safe. they didn’t move, either of them, until the dark was all around them and then he said, ‘we should go,’ and mia lifted herself from him and they drove down the hill towards town.
the night was full of things familiar and also strange.
mia had been into the town before, down the main street with its two bars and its fishing store, its stone monument to dead pioneers and its library, but she’d never noticed the laneway ethan stopped beside now.
‘we can park here,’ he said. ‘it might be too crowded at the other end.’
crowded? she’d never come across a place in fairbanks that was crowded, but her time in alaska had been spent alone in the forest, or in the rooms of ethan’s home, or inside em’s house.
mia couldn’t help thinking of her sister. what might she be doing? would she have thought about mia at all? of course she would have, mia knew that.
she pushed the thought of em aside.
‘so it’s a popular place?’ she said.
ethan was adjusting something on the dashboard of the car.
‘yeah, yeah,’ he said. ‘with certain people.’
they left the car then, and walked along the laneway. it was the first time they’d been out together as a couple, mia realised, the narrow roadway became filled with cars. in the darkness, they passed the huge shapes of pick-up trucks and utilities, and oddly, near the door of the restaurant, a red sports car. it gleamed under the one tiny streetlight.
mia had to orientate herself before she went inside, she stopped still. the library she’d been to the night before was only down the road, she was sure. only around the corner, she turned to look in its direction.
‘what are you doing?’ ethan said. he was already at the door, leaning forward to open it.
‘just … remembering something,’ she said.
he smiled at her, bemused, and opened the door.
in they went. mia hadn’t expected the restaurant to be quite so dim, so intimate, a waiter led them to a small table in a corner with a white tablecloth and a single candle, which he leant towards and lit. they sat down.
‘so what were you remembering?’ ethan said.
‘i was remembering,’ she said. she paused, and then the answer came tumbling out of her. ‘i was remembering being in a place where there was so much to fear, yet i felt there was nothing to fear.’
he laughed. ‘you think a lot, don’t you,’ he said, touching her arm. ‘come on, let’s look at the menu. they even have seafood here. can you believe that? so far from the ocean.’
mia nodded and looked around the restaurant. there must have been an upstairs room since the area they sat in was not crowded. yes, towards the far corner, she could make out a wooden staircase.
she felt the soft velvet cushion of the chair beneath her. she saw the pleated red curtains against the long windows, this wasn’t her kind of place. she thought of the meeting at the library, the girl she’d seen sketching a tiny bird, her ragged fingernails.
‘would madam care to look at the wine list?’
the waiter had returned and was flicking open the white table napkin and placing it across mia’s lap.
‘no … okay. i mean, i’ll just look… yes.’
ethan took his copy of the list effortlessly.
‘we could go somewhere else, if you like,’ he said once the waiter had left them. ‘order pizza in or something.’
mia was caught between feeling angry at him for treating her as though she didn’t belong here and grateful for his sensitivity, his consideration. most of all she felt embarrassed and wished she could disentangle herself from this uncomfortable feeling.
‘no,’ she said. ‘no, let’s stay. i’m sorry, it’s just that …’
he waited.
‘it’s just… it made me think of someone.’
he dropped his head a little, ready to listen, she had to say something now.
‘it’s just that … it made me think of my mother,’ she said.
she was as surprised by what she’d said as he was.
‘your mother?’
‘yes.’
he sat back. ‘what is it about this place that makes you think of your mother?’
‘not this place, not this entire place. just … the wine list.’
‘i just feel strange because …’
now she had to continue.
‘my mother … alcohol’s … a problem for her …
and … it just made me think of her and how …’
‘how?’
‘how things can be so difficult for her.’
he said nothing.
‘she’s in hospital, you know,’ mia said.
ethan reached across the table and held her left hand.
she felt his warmth.
she hadn’t wanted to say any of this. she hadn’t wanted him to see her as weak, deficient, in need, but somehow it had all come tumbling out. she looked at the window and was sure she saw a thin pattern of ice against its pane. she’d heard each ice crystal was as complex and as mysterious as a prayer. still, each one could not be as indecipherable as her own feelings were to her that evening.
this restaurant made her feel uneasy.
ethan leant across to her. she thought she heard him say, ‘i’m here for you,’ but she could not be sure because as he spoke there was a sudden noise from the stairway. people were spilling down it, laughing, talking loudly, they were boisterous and happy. they made their way towards the door of the restaurant. there must have been ten or eleven of them, all dressed in neat going-out clothes that mia had never seen in fairbanks before. three of the women even wore high heels. one of them caught her eye. what was it about her that made mia start?
‘ethan …’ mia began and she turned to him, but his chair was empty.
‘ethan!’
she looked around.
the woman was just passing through the door. she was younger than all the others, mia noticed. and she noticed something else – the woman had beautiful dark, dark hair.
it was the woman she’d seen that day leaving ethan’s house when she’d travelled there with the discovery of the murdered deer stark inside her. mia was sure of it. the truck driver had dropped her off and continued on his way to the sawmill and mia had crouched behind a bush when she saw the car moving down ethan’s driveway, her heart had faltered for a moment and she had thought that it might have been because of the deer or terrence, or her journey beside the truck driver, but now she was not so sure.
it’s so wonderful to see you, ethan had said when he’d opened the door. i’ve been sitting here all morning thinking about you.
she had followed him inside then, felt herself drawn into his home, and even imagined herself living there one day, soon.
ethan came back to the table now, muttering something about the menu and the waiter and changing the dish he’d ordered.
mia nodded. ‘what did you change your order to?’
she said.
‘
rockfish.’
‘ah.’
mia nodded again, she thought of her mother, or more precisely her mother’s boyfriend, peter, who would arrive at their house unexpectedly with a warm paper bundle and inside its damp layers, the fish and chips he’d picked up from the takeaway shop near the bus stop. fish was peter’s special gift to their mother.
mia hadn’t thought of peter for a long time, he was someone she tried not to think of, although it was em who was the most determined to erase him from their lives.
‘he’s not only a drunkard,’ em said, ‘he’s a liar, and the worst of it is she keeps taking the bastard back, letting him come and go as he pleases.’
em had been determined that she would never marry anyone like peter. terrence didn’t drink alcohol except for an occasional glass of red wine if he attended a work function at the university, and he didn’t lie as peter had, with his promises of a horse for em that never materialised and his assurances to mia that he would marry their mother and they would all live in a clean, new house together.
peter must have lied to their mother, too, although their mother would never admit it. for her, peter was a companion to stave off loneliness, introducing her to his friends and, with it all, to alcohol.
‘let him look after her,’ em had said when mia rang to say their mother was going into hospital again, sick because of the drinking.
‘come to alaska, mia. come and stay with me. it’s about time he did something for her. after all …’ em never completed what she began, but mia knew what her sister meant to say – after all, it was his fault.
yes, em could think of it that way, and so could mia if she wanted to. peter was obviously wrong for their mother – he was a drifter who lived between friends’ places and the boarding house where he could pay his rent by the week. he was a forklift driver, then a market worker, before he became unemployed, of course, he often stayed with them and when he did he had a certain charm, making their mother laugh at his fanciful stories.
em said peter was a loser, to be with someone like that was to be stuck in failure and difficulty, and unhappiness. so em had chosen terrence or allowed herself to be chosen by him.
and mia?
she looked up at ethan now with a strange appreciation.