by Elske Rahill
The lady nods. ‘Isn’t that terrible?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I did, though. Just not now.’
‘That’s okay,’ says Donna.
‘You don’t have to stay here. You should go home,’ she says. ‘It’s not good for your baby.’
‘Oh. No, well. I left my purse and phone at home. I panicked. The ambulance men were really nice. They kept the sirens off and everything. My granny is asleep. She’ll be up at seven. I’ll find a phone and she’ll come and get me when she wakes up.’
‘Oh. My phone has died,’ says the lady, ‘or you could use that.’ She roots in the pockets of the big jacket. Donna can hear keys and hard things bumping each other, and bits of paper crackling. The lady produces a fifty-euro note, and folds it in half over one finger, as though this might make the gesture more discreet. She passes it to Donna silently, at hip level, and disappears behind the green plastic curtain. Donna can hear a chair squeak, the creak of the big jacket as she shifts about.
She crouches on her heels and closes her eyes. She cannot go back behind the curtain to where her brother’s face pulls her blood to water.
There is a rustle as the mother opens a packet of something; crisps or crackers, Donna thinks, or ginger biscuits.
With her knuckles squished into her eyes, Donna sees yellow splotches and the veins in her eyelids like red cables winding into dancing shapes. She sees her grandfather lift his finger and open his mouth, the big breath in and the toothless cavern, tongue heavy like a grey oyster: her grandfather about to make his last point.
Playing House
BECAUSE SHE HAD nowhere else to go, the woman told the movers to carry on. The one in the cap crinkled his face, but he continued up the stairs anyway, pieces of her son’s cot under each arm.
To occupy herself while the men worked, she hung her clothes in the wardrobe, which was white inside and out. She did it slowly to fill the time, shaking and smoothing each garment, dipping her head in and out one hanger at a time. There were pale hairs curled in the corners and disturbed dust crisscrossed the base like shadows on a forest floor. She had planned to clean the room before unpacking. She thought it might look rude though, now, if she was to get out the hoover and the polish.
Officially, she was renting the place unfurnished, but the bedroom wardrobe was built in. There were fitted cabinets in the bathroom too, which she was glad of.
When the clothes had been unpacked, she began to lift books out of a cardboard box and stack them against the wall.
A passing sunbeam lit the room, heating the woman’s face and exposing a sparsely woven cobweb strung across a corner of the ceiling. Before it left, she noticed the friendly shape of a small, splayed hand clouding the windowpane. It was made of something sticky, she thought; a jelly sweet that had been sucked and mauled, folded into a hot palm and dissolved to make a paste of spit and sugar and childish sweat.
The removal men heaved her headboard into the bedroom. She turned to face them and, feeling called upon to make some comment, she said, ‘Can you believe it?’ The outrage in her voice surprised her. Emboldened, she said it again, ‘Can you believe it? I don’t fucking believe it. I’ve checked the email. It says it very clearly: the property will be vacant from the third. Today is the third. Any time from the third, I can move in, it says. I just don’t know what to do. This is ridiculous. It’s unacceptable.’
The older of the men, Mick, knelt down by a bedside locker and began to pick delicately at the wide brown tape she had used to keep the drawer closed for transit. He glanced up at her and shook his head. ‘You should be careful, chicken. Something not right there. State of his nails...’
He lifted his cap and shook it, hooked it at the back of his skull, and tugged it forward over his crown. A trail of sweat swelled at his temple and ran a bright path down his cheek to his jaw. He wiped it away with his shoulder. Turning to the younger man, he said, ‘Did you see them, Carl? Did you see the nails? Polished like a girl’s. Not right. Puff or something.’
Carl was plugging a heavy tool into a socket positioned high up on the wall. He took a breath to speak, but then he looked at the open door and exhaled.
The woman’s landlord was leaning against the frame. He had an elbow cupped in his palm and with heavy eyelids he was examining his nails. The edges of his lips curled wide in an expression of quiet amusement. His chest was bare and so were his long, bony feet. He looked past the men, directly into the woman’s eyes.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘It’s just a mix-up. It doesn’t need to be a problem.’ He moved to fill the doorway, putting a hand on the frame, and the other in the pocket of his loose tartan-print trousers.
‘I don’t mind if you don’t mind, basically. I’m sleeping in the top room, but you can move the furniture in now, I don’t mind. And you’re welcome to sleep here. I mean, unless you’re afraid of me or something... I’ll be leaving tomorrow and you won’t see me again.’
*
When the men had left she opened the bedroom window to let out the smell of their sweat and their boots, and looked out onto the dim scrap of yard below: dark paving, dead grass, brilliant blobs of evergreen shrubs. It was evening already, the sky had hardened to a grey tarnish over the russet housetops. She liked all the matching roofs; the lines they made on the horizon, the soft colour of the tiles and the blunt peaks like lids on all the neat lives they closed.
She made patterns of the view; stuttering configurations of walls and windows and slopes riffling closer and smaller as they wound into the thick estate. Her new home was hidden in a maze of cul de sacs and traffic circles, Glades and Groves and Crescents and Courts – hers was a Court. There was a green at the centre, with railings around it and a swing set. Her son could play there, perhaps. That was somewhere to go on a Saturday morning.
She used her sleeve to clear the dust from the windowsill, and arranged some books on it. Her bedroom was painted baby-girl pink, and there was a large picture of a blonde princess glued to the wall. The lampshade was also pink, the shape of a genie’s lantern, with white ribbons and beads hanging from it like dewdrops. There was a nightlight in the plug socket with three yellow ducks on it. As the room darkened, the ducks began to glow.
*
Down in the kitchen her landlord was eating a bowl of cornflakes. He had closed the curtains and switched on a dim cylindrical lamp on the sideboard. The woman stood at the door wearing mismatched pyjamas and folded her arms over her nipples.
‘Thank you for letting me stay,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about the mix-up. The estate agent said the lease started today. She gave me the key... I would fuck off but I have nowhere to go.’
She sounded foolish when she cursed; she knew that. She rubbed her shoulder and looked around the room instead of at the man.
‘No,’ he said. His skin was a queer, even tone she knew as burnt sienna. The eyes and lips shone unnaturally pale and disconnected, like objects too carefully arranged.
‘Honestly. I don’t mind, if you don’t mind. You couldn’t have chosen a better person to... I don’t give a shit, believe me. I’m not doing anything tonight. I have nowhere to go either, or I would fuck off.’
The woman wished she hadn’t worn her glasses. She could see everything – the moistness of his eyes, the small, sparse blackheads and the angry stubble struggling up through his cleanly shaven skin.
She was ferociously hungry.
‘Is there a Chinese takeaway around here? Or an Indian?’
‘You’re welcome to have some cornflakes.’ Her landlord waggled the box of cornflakes, and put it down again.
‘Thanks but I haven’t eaten in two days. I’m starving.’
‘You should have cornflakes if you haven’t eaten yet, and a cup of tea. Then we can order a Chinese.’
It was too late to remove the glasses. There would be embarrassing red marks on her nose now. They sat opposite one another, spooning cornflakes into their mouths, looking at the stained Chinese menu that her landlord had unpinn
ed from a corkboard on the wall. The options were numbered and there were black biro rings around no. 4 – Vegetable spring rolls, and no. 17 – Chicken chow mein. The woman and her landlord agreed on six starters instead of two main courses, and maybe a portion of duck pancakes between them.
‘Why haven’t you eaten?’
‘Oh, you know... stress, rushing with the move and organizing things and stuff. Things ended very suddenly, with my husband. It’s been hectic, moving out and everything.’
His phone began to trill. He picked it up, looked at the screen, and placed it face down on the table to ring out. It vibrated as it rang, and each time it did it moved a little towards her across the table. The woman folded her glasses and placed them on the table. Minutes later the phone rang again. Then again. The vibration made the glasses tremble. The fourth time it rang she asked him, ‘Don’t you want to get that?’
‘No,’ said her landlord, ‘it’s my fiancée. I’ll call her back after.’
She poured more cornflakes into his bowl, and then into her own. She rubbed at the sides of her nose where she knew the glasses must have made their mark.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ he said. ‘I’ll open the window. I know that maybe with the child you might prefer...’
‘Go ahead.’
He put a cigarette between his lips, stood up and walked towards the stove, moving around the two giant suitcases that he had left lined up against the sideboard. They were identical suitcases, expensive and brand new. He started the gas and bent his face to the flame, frowning as he lit the cigarette. The way he did that opened a sore muscle in the woman’s throat. She strained for that memory like a muffled tune; a night last year, when she went to a party with her husband. He had left through the back door to smoke, and she had followed him. He had frowned like that as he lit up.
Her landlord came back to the table and sat opposite her. She kept watching his hands. It was hard to pull her gaze to his face.
She said, ‘Whose is the little girl’s room?’
‘It was my little girl’s room. She lives in London now. With her mother. With my wife.’
‘Oh.’
The ducks, she thought. Should she remind him about the nightlight? Perhaps he meant to pack it. She would clean the room tomorrow; the gluey handprint, the blonde hair and all the dust between the floorboards. The dust was dead bits of the little girl; her skin cells and the dirt that had once been on her. If her landlord didn’t want it, the nightlight would do for her son’s room.
‘I have a son too,’ said her landlord. ‘He lives in LA with his mother.’ He pointed to the phone where it lay face down on the table and added, ‘With my fiancée.’
‘Oh. What age are they?’
‘She’s nearly five. He’s three.’
‘Oh. My little boy is two. He’s staying overnight with his daddy.’
When she said that something tripped in her voice. She looked at her hands.
Her landlord rubbed his temples, then his eyes. ‘Yep,’ he said, ‘that’s the way things are.’ He looked her in the face. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Lily.’
‘Lily. Lillian. Yes, that’s right, Lillian Murphy. Yes, I knew I recognized your face. We are so ordinary,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’m realizing now, Lily. This—’
With one palm he motioned grandly to the room around them, as though their lives were here in the kitchen, the estrangements and love objects lined up on the Formica alongside the toaster and the kettle and the naked banana tree. He said, ‘This is all so normal.’
He used a saucer as an ashtray. It already held two shrivelled tea bags. Their juice fed a dark pool into the centre, and the ash dispersed prettily when it hit the liquid; a burst of silver.
Lily knew what she was remembering – or was she inventing now? Her mind snatched at it; a catchy tune that hooked into her, playing on and on but the words were half made up. At the party there was that woman with careful make-up and very nice shoes, who her husband immediately noticed. He had followed the woman outside to smoke with her. When Lily came out after them, her husband looked hard at the night and frowned as he lit his cigarette. The woman smiled at Lily with closed lips and finished her cigarette quickly. She dropped it on the slippery decking and with a languid tilt of the hip she ground the butt hard with the toe of her lovely shoe.
Her landlord flipped his phone over. ‘Let’s order.’
He left the phone flat on the table, using one finger to tap at the digits. His nails were very clean, very even, the same pink as his lips. The mover man was right – they were polished. Her own hands had stained cuticles, blue paint stuck under the nails, and some of them splitting from all the turpentine she had used to scrub at them. Over the last few weeks, she had started to bite her nails again. She picked at her torn thumb nail, trying to remove some of the dried paint and shredded skin. She clenched her hand into a fist, tucking in the stubby finger ends. Each person’s clenched fist is the size of their own heart. That was something that had a lovely ring to it. The first time she had heard that was from a drunk boy in a nightclub. He had shouted it over the music, and made a fist to demonstrate. When she nodded he said it again, as though it proved something.
When her landlord had finished ordering, he stretched an arm’s length between himself and the phone, and placed it face down on the table.
Lily wanted to talk about herself. She said, ‘That must be your luggage in the hall. You have a lot of pictures? Are they paintings?’
‘Some of them,’ he said. ‘Yes, a lot of paintings, and a lot of photos. So many bloody photos...’ He gestured to her fingers with his chin. ‘You’re a painter.’
Lily nodded.
‘I’ve seen your stuff.’
‘Oh.’
He smiled then, as though in triumph. His teeth were small, extremely white and straight. There was exactly the right distance between his eyes; the space of a third eye.
‘You don’t remember me?’ he said. ‘I was at an exhibition of yours. I didn’t buy, but I stood at a painting for ages.’
‘Oh? It’s been a long time since I’ve exhibited.’
‘I was trying to figure out what it was that made your work so... maybe that’s what you are going for? I’m hardly an art critic but... I wondered why you painted, and whether you painted differently when you were younger. I did think you had great go, though.’
‘Oh.’
‘They intrigued me anyway... so that’s something.’
Her landlord gave that queer smile she had seen when she had first stepped through the front door and stood, startled, before him. It might have been a smirk.
‘What do you do?’ she asked.
‘I’m a photographer, Lily.’
He pronounced her name confidently, as though laying a claim.
‘I do some good stuff, and I do some crap. Mostly I photograph ugly families and edit them to look good and they pay me. But let’s not do this. I’m not going to start unwrapping my photographs to show you... They’re bubble-wrapped now anyway. I spent a long time bubble-wrapping them.’
‘Okay,’ said Lily.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Okay.’
‘So are you sleeping in my daughter’s room?’
‘Yes.’
‘And your little boy is sleeping in our – my room. I saw the cot. They haven’t assembled it right. Will I fix it for you in the morning? I have no plans.’
‘Sure. That’s kind of you. Thanks, if you don’t... mind or whatever. I knew they hadn’t done it right. I thought that.’
Her little boy would be asleep now. Today was nearly over and tomorrow she would bring him back here. But he was sleeping in the travel cot because she had taken the proper one. If he woke in the night he could climb out and make his way to the big bedroom. He would feel around for her on the far side of the bed, and would he notice the different shape, the different smell, or would the heat and softness of another woman’s body be eno
ugh to send him back to sleep?
Lily stretched her arms out in front of her. She noticed her landlord glance at her lips and her loose breasts, and she looked at the curtains that covered the window; duck-egg blue, a colour too solid for the wobbly curves the fabric made.
‘So your girl is in London?’ she asked.
Her landlord pulled at his jaw.
‘That’s where her mother moved to. My wife. We had a short marriage...’
He sucked a long, ragged breath and began to speak. He spoke reluctantly, as though she were coaxing him.
Lily replaced the glasses quickly. She had been wearing contacts for years and had forgotten how useful the glasses could be. When she wore them, an onlooker would see only her finely arched brows and the dark of her sockets. No one would notice that uncertainty she had always worn right there under the sweep of lashes, the little nook where things like eyeliner and tears gathered, the place her husband used to kiss to calm her when it seemed uncertainty itself was a force that might burst her like a dam.
Her landlord was looking at her intently. His story held no surprises. His wife, he said, was a nag, was a psycho, was a control freak, and his new fiancée was too good for him, and too young to be dragged into all of this... In the dull light his pupils had swelled to black blotches. He was looking at her face, at her lips moving, her ruined fingernails. He was looking as though he didn’t know he could be seen. He wanted to touch her lip, she thought, or he wanted to slap her. He wanted to put his fingers inside her mouth.
‘Such bitterness,’ he said, ‘and sexism. Who says a mother knows best? I’m a better parent than she’ll ever be. She’s a psycho. But anyway I’ve given up. It’s not fair on Alannah, dragging her over the sea every fortnight, and it’s not fair on my son. He doesn’t even know me. I’m going to LA and I’m going to marry his mother.’
He was rubbing his face, looking at his hands, then rubbing his face some more.
‘Bitterness. She’s bitter now, my wife. When we got married we were never going to split up,’ he said, ‘no matter what. Because my wife came from a broken home, and so did I and it’s not what we wanted... I never thought... if I had known—’