The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (30 page)

“Sure, come in. Take as long as you like.”

She turned around and called out, “Conor, come on, it’s OK!”

A surprisingly young boy came around the corner, grinning like a Texas politician. It was a creepy smile, as false as patent leather. It made him uncomfortable.

“How do you do? I’m Conor Bryson. It’s very nice of you to let us do this.”

How old could the kid be, fifteen? He spoke like a diplomat and looked either like a fake, or a member of a wacky religious cult. Despite the woman’s beauty, the man hoped Conor and his sister wouldn’t stay very long.

It was his house, but he didn’t know what to do once they were inside. They didn’t look like thieves or voyeurs, but should he follow them around to make sure they didn’t steal or peek at anything? That made him realize something else pathetic about himself: there was nothing in his house to steal. Nor were there any delicious secrets or sins hiding in drawers or beneath things that would blush if seen by strangers. He and his wife had made love in the bedroom and almost always at night. There were no naughty magazines in drawers or lewd toys bought with a giggle and a flush in a sex shop, then spirited home to be used night after happy night in secret. Secret was not a word in his life’s vocabulary these days. He had none and nothing interesting to steal. Do we want to discover these things about ourselves? He did not because he had enough trouble getting through these days without life putting on its combat boots and kicking him in the pants with its nasty revelations.

But there was nothing he could do about it now, so he sat on the cheap brown couch and listened as the two young people walked around his house, remembering good times and loving parents and probably a great dog that had sat at their feet and adored everyone.

Sitting there alone in the living room, listening to them upstairs, he tried to imagine this room full of a giant Christmas tree and presents that made these kids whoop and screech their young delight. There had probably been big parties here, too. The room filled with people and fat drinks and ashtrays overflowing with guests’ cigarettes. He and his wife were not big entertainers. Neither had liked big to-do’s, so most of their time in here had been spent watching TV or talking quietly about things that were by now completely forgotten. Some people have revelations like this and it gooses them to jump out of their chairs, shake fists at the sky, and resolve on the spot to find ways to get their lives going again. But with a shudder he understood he had neither the energy nor the wherewithal to do that, though of course he knew it was essential. When these people left his house he would mope around for a day or two being more depressed than usual, but then the whole experience would diminish and eventually disappear off his life’s map and things would go on as usual.

The woman came into the room by herself and the look on her face was something to behold—it held longing and sadness and fulfilment in one. If it were possible, she looked even more beautiful for having spent these minutes walking through her memories.

“Thank you so much! I don’t know if I’m happy or sad that we did this. It’s so strong! Every room had a whole world of memories in them I’d completely forgotten. Anyway, it was very kind of you to let us in.”

The front door was open. Her brother stood out on the step with his back to them. The man accompanied them across the small front lawn. At the sidewalk the three of them shook hands. Their ugly grey Japanese car was parked there. That lifted him a little; he’d expected them to own an expensive red convertible or a sleek black cruiser that had more buttons inside than an airplane. At least driving down the street these two were not gods. That counted for something.

He watched them pull away and then he went back into the house. He guessed he was hungry and, since there was nothing else to do, guessed he’d go to the kitchen and make a sandwich or something. A sandwich and a beer and maybe there’d be a good show on television.

Walking back across the living room, he remembered their voices again upstairs, re-living days here. He was not a dirtyminded man, but for an instant he imagined the woman as a ripe teenager walking naked around her bedroom. Or down in the tiny basement playroom, sprawled on a couch making out with a lucky boyfriend.

These things were in his mind when he pushed the door open to the kitchen and immediately saw an olive on the kitchen counter. He hated olives of any kind. Their almost-bitterness, the vaguely obscene way they came apart in the mouth, their strong smell when you first opened the jar or can. An olive in his kitchen was either a joke or odd. But the sad truth was there was no one around who cared enough about him these days to play a joke. So where had it come from? A big fat green olive alone in the middle of the white formica counter.

He picked it up and looked at it as if it were an artefact found on an archaeological dig, or a clue to an important mystery. He even said out loud, “What is this doing here?” But nothing answered. He opened the door beneath the sink and carefully dropped the fat green offender into the garbage. When it hit the bottom, the sound was so loud and hollow that he involuntarily peered over to see what else was in the garbage can. Almost nothing. He couldn’t remember when he had last dumped it. But there was no garbage in there, or very little. And that disturbed him a lot. Where was he in this house? He didn’t even make his presence felt with garbage! He veered on a heel and stomped into the living room.

On the walls were a few pictures but they were dull, formal things he and the wife had bought at a crafts fair years ago. Junk. With hands on hips, he surveyed his living room for signs of himself. There was nothing in the room that distinctly said his name. Nothing that said, Here lives a man different from the rest. Everything said a brown couch, safe pictures on the walls, books on the shelves that were bestsellers a while ago but no one remembered now. Had it been any different when his wife was around? He didn’t think so.

He walked back into the kitchen and right over to the refrigerator. He’d make a ham sandwich and drink the beer he’d bought after work. Screw these thoughts. Screw wondering why he wasn’t more of a presence, much less a big cheese in the world. He was who he was and lived in a house where other nonentities had lived before. So what? So what if the beautiful woman had—

The refrigerator was jammed with food. There was Iranian caviar (although he didn’t know what it was because he’d never seen, much less tasted, Iranian caviar),
pâté de foie gras
from Strasbourg,
dreikornbrot
from Austria. His refrigerator was a three-ring circus of densely packed colourful cans and bottles, with writing on them in all sorts of languages, even Cyrillic. It looked like one of those ridiculously expensive exotic food shops in New York where a loaf of bread costs ten dollars. But this stuff was in his fridge and why the hell was that? He was so shocked that he left the door open and, playing with his lower lip without knowing it, simply stared in at all that extraordinary bounty.

It took some time for him to connect it with the olive that had had the nerve to be on his counter only a few minutes ago. First a single olive and now this? Something was happening, but like primitive natives staring at their images in mirrors for the first time, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the rampage of colour and variety sitting in his refrigerator in his house, none of it bought by him. He read “capers” on the side of a slim dark bottle and thought he remembered what capers were for, but he wasn’t sure. Cilantro and tarragon vinegar and things from other strange food planets were there.

Then, when he was finally able to tear his eyes away from the refrigerator, he turned to see that his kitchen was suddenly transformed too. Impressive copper pots hung from the walls. On the counter were three wooden-handled knives and other cooking utensils he had never seen before. There was a black Philco radio on the window above the sink. It was of a style he remembered from childhood—big and fat, with dials the colour of old ivory. His father had a radio like that in his workshop.

If he’d stayed in the kitchen he would have noticed the changes everywhere: the different colour paint on the shelves, chubby yellow and orange soup mugs from Portugal, a carving knife from Japan sharp enough to slice the wind. There was a yellow legal pad on a counter that had a child’s drawing of Santa Claus on it. Instead of two cheap plastic chairs, there were four chrome ones placed around a table he wouldn’t have recognized either had he stayed, but by then he was already out of the room so it didn’t matter.

Out of the kitchen but back into the living room, and that was just as bad, just as shocking. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Although his calendar said it was July, his living room was all Christmas. Just as he’d imagined a few minutes ago, the room was transformed into the happiest, fullest Christmas scene he had ever seen. There was a gigantic, magnificently decorated tree, a beautiful Nativity scene, stockings that would have been hung from the chimney with care if there’d been a chimney. It was a room from a corny film that broke your heart; the setting for the last scene of a 1940s film where everything has turned out for the best after all and everyone good in the story is reunited for Christmas Day.
It’s a Wonderful Life
could have been shot in his living room.

But it wasn’t his living room, not the way it looked now. He walked around it as if he were an astronaut exploring Venus, touching things hesitantly, as if any second they might jump up and bite him. Nothing in this room that belonged to him belonged to him. Not the furniture, the Christmas tree, the curtains. Not the rug, the hassock, the magazines on the coffee table. He’d never owned a coffee table! He was appalled but intrigued as never before. What the hell was this? Had aliens invaded his house? Was he in some candid-camera version of
The Twilight Zone
where they came into your house and changed everything in a few seconds so that you thought you were going mad from one minute to the next; from one room to the next?

So much was going through his mind that he didn’t hear the doorbell ring. He didn’t hear it ring a second or third time, didn’t hear the front door open or the footsteps enter. He was so caught up in his own astonishment that he didn’t hear anything until the woman screamed. Only barely did that penetrate his wonder.

“Oh God! Oh my God!”

He heard that but it didn’t dawn on him till he turned slowly and saw the beauty standing in the doorway again, her hands over her mouth, her eyes running wildly around the living room, taking it all in, believing everything and nothing at once.

“Ah! Oh God, oh God!”

He knew things were crazy, but why was she here? Why was she so scared? He looked back at the room to see if there was a monster loose or something else impossible he hadn’t taken in yet.

No, it was the same, but only then did he realize what he’d been missing since entering the room: every object in there was from years ago. Maybe ten or twelve years before, like the jolly fat radio in the kitchen. Everything was in good shape, but it was all stuff from back whenever. His eyes jumped to a
Time
magazine on the coffee table. The date on its cover was twelve years ago. He spotted framed photographs on the walls and wanted to look at them, but then she spoke.

“Mom’s crèche! Oh, look at it!” The woman walked across the room to the Nativity scene without saying a word to him. She picked up one of the figures and brought it to her eyes. “It’s the lamb! It’s impossible! This is the one I threw at Conor. It even has that broken leg! I thought Mom would die when I told her I’d broken it.” She looked at him now as if he would understand exactly what she was talking about.

He pushed away the cobwebs of wonder from in front of his own mind and asked exactly the right question in a low, understanding voice. “Do you know this room?”

“Of course I do! It was how it was. Exactly how we had it. Everything is exactly the way it was. I don’t believe it. How did you do it? Where did you get a lamb like ...? How did you know?” She would have gone on but when she saw he was shaking his head, her voice petered out.

“I don’t know this. I don’t know what’s happening. You and your brother left and the next thing I knew, the whole house was changing into this—” He gestured with his arm, taking in everything.

“But how—”

“I don’t know!” He licked his lips. “Maybe it’s remembering you.” It was a peculiar thing to say, but of course it was absolutely correct.

She looked at him and her eyes widened with understanding. “What? What do you mean? How can a house remember?”

As if to answer that question, music started somewhere which stopped both of them from saying anything more. They listened carefully but didn’t have to because the music was so stupid that it was instantly recognizable: Alvin and the Chipmunks, along with David Seville, were singing the Christmas song. Those annoyingly high, speeded-up voices screeching along about Christmas cheer.

The woman looked at the man and said in a monotone, “I bought that record for my father. It cost five dollars in a secondhand record shop, but he loved it so much that I searched for it for weeks till I found it.”

“Your father liked that?”

“Yes, his hobby was weird records. He had lots of them.”

The silence returned and the two stood there dumbly listening to the end of the song.

A look crossed the woman’s face. “My room! I have to go look at my room!”

Before he had a chance to say anything, she bolted for the narrow staircase and went running up as fast as she could go. He followed her, not knowing what else to do. He sure as hell didn’t want to stay in the living room with Alvin and the Chipmunks.

When he got to the bedroom, the door was open and the room that had been his wife’s sewing room was now a teenage girl’s room. There was a satiny pink spread on the bed, posters of heart-throb rock-and-roll singers on the wall, amorphous stuffed animals all over the room. She was sitting on the bed with a pink “Princess” telephone in her hand, in the middle of dialling.