Sleep came easily. More easily than it should have. No-one had
told her how simple the whole thing would be. She could almost
pretend, if she wanted to, that the last seven weeks had never
taken place. She assumed, when the pamphlet said it was seven
times less likely to be fatal than actually going through with the
birth, that it still meant she was going to be torn and tattered by the
end. Torn by guilt, not just the machine that had hummed below
her on the floor.
But she wasn’t. She hardly even bled. It all seemed too easy
somehow. Too much like a trip to the dentist.
When they arrived home, it took her twice as long as usual to
mount the stairs to the room they rented on the fourth floor. She got
into their bed and rested her head on the wall behind. She tried
not to remember.
They had gone and had Chinese afterwards. He limped with
her from the car to the restaurant. As they sat in the corner booth
with the mirrors, she had tried not to catch herself in the reflection.
They spoke of so many things that day and she was pleased he
was not afraid to hear what she had gone through behind door
number nine. He listened and held her hand while seven weeks of
numbness, that had threatened to turn to something worse, thawed
easily and completely; as easily as the knowledge that the vertigo
and sickness were over. She remembered, as they shared their
food in the quiet, weekday lull, that around every corner, behind
every door, had been the words:No. You know this can never be.
Later that afternoon she awoke from her effortless valium sleep
to the intrusive sounds of raised voices from the floor below. For
a moment that lasted too long, she thought she was at home in her
own childhood bed. Back in Australia before she had met Stefan.
She thought the voices she heard were those of her brothers,
beyond the bedroom door in the house where she had grown up.
The round table with the chairs that scraped on the tiles in summer;
tiles the colour of sea water.
But she wasn’t home. She was in a strange country that only
rarely felt like home to her. Sometimes she would catch herself
thinking – this is my haunt. The rest of the time it was like standing
on the street, hands cupped to the window, looking in. And
anyway, that house she called home – the house of her dreams
- had been sold 10 years ago, after she had moved out; the last
one to fly the coop. But it was always home in that muffled time
between midnight and dawn. She wondered, as she lay there
listening to the voices below, if that would always be so. Even
when she had a house of her own.A haunt.A family and children.
Would she continue to go back there, to the house with the high
roof and the sea-green tiles? The tiles that her mother had covered
with rugs every winter.
Stefan walked in the door and stood looking at her. It was late
afternoon. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Can I get you anything?”
She smiled through the haze. She thought she knew what
would be going through his mind. As he stood there holding open
the door, he’d be thinkingWhat a sad smile that is. What a sad
girl...“No, Stefan. I’m fine,” she replied. I’m not sad. I’m not.
He came and sat on the bed. “Dick’s asked me if I want to go
out for dinner.”
“You go,” she said. “I’ll be more than fine. I’ll probably read or
watch some telly.” She smiled again and reached up and rubbed
his shoulder. “I’ll be fine, really.”
It’s easy.
So he kissed her and shut the door behind him.
Alice and Stefan had met one day on an old hotel staircase in
West Hollywood and discussed, of all things, sewing machines.
Alice knew nothing about them, and Stefan had made his own
curtains. Alice had laughed at that and he hadn’t understood why.
In the hotel where they met, Stefan did his washing in the ground-
floor laundry because he knew Alice was living in the room he had
to pass to get there. He didn’t know this but she was writing home to
her best friend all about him. Once she chose to write a letter in the
coffee shop beneath the building and she had to slam the writing
pad shut when he sat down next to her and told her shyly he was
just waiting for a cappuccino and his washing to be done. She
believed him. They went everywhere together after that.
They came to the Denver Youth Hostel by way of an argument.
Since then, in her dry way, she had coined the place, silently, The
International House of Fun. Stefan thought it best to spend a little
more and get better accommodation. Alice said they didn’t have
enough money to throw around and they should take the cheapest
place in town. She got her way. Like always.
Neither had any inclination to stay more than a couple of
days, at most a week. Both changed their minds when they
unlocked the room on the fourth floor and saw the view.
Later that same heavy, white afternoon they lay in bed together
breathing in each other’s warm scent; argument forgotten. She
lay cushioned in his arms and didn’t want to move to tell him his
shoulder bone hurt her ear. The sound of the city noise entered
through the open window like an animal wanting food. The air
four floors above the street cracked as the winter glassiness
stalked in and touched her face.
Winter moves to spring slowly in Colorado. The last snow falls
right up into April. The mountains keep their white caps almost the
whole year round and sometimes blend with the white of the sky
so you can’t tell where mountain peak ends and clouds begin.
A picnic planned on a sunny morning, while viewing the sky
from a bedroom window, will just as quickly be abandoned once
the sleet and spits of rain come down and change that moment as
you watch. Temperatures drop, and then maybe while you’re
stubbornly packing the picnic basket, the warmth of the sun
behind a moving sky will coat you like a yellow sheet being
lowered on a breeze.
They eventually got up to go to the window and, wrapped
together in a blanket, they held their hands out, cupped, to catch
the snow and taste it on their tongues. The window bay was small
and they had to squeeze in, facing each other, just to fit. The roof
sloped down below them to where a car park housed 50 or so
snow-covered cars. But, of course, everything was white.>FICTION
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