DEBORAH BIANCOTTI
Deborah Biancotti published her first story in 2000. winning the Aurealis Award for Best Horror and subsequently winning a Ditmar Award for Best New Talent. She has also received a Ditmar for Best Short Story and has earned four Honourable Mentions in Datlow and Windling’s Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror over the past three years. Her stories have appeared in Borderlands, Orb, Redsine and Altair, as well as anthologies such as Ideomanrer Unbound. Southern Blood and assorted Agog! volumes, you can find her online at http://deboral1bia11col.ti.11et and http:// www.hvejourüaI.coin/users/deborahb.
‘This story is a kind of ‘The Gifts of the Magi’, but without the happy ending. It’s about trying to provide what you think someone else wants, and failing.’
* * * *
|
I |
t’s new,” Ted apologized.
The bank clerk stared flatly ahead. “Never heard of it.”
Seated behind Perspex, she was blurred around the edges like a crayon drawing.
“Maybe because we’re the first to move in?” Ted offered.
The clerk didn’t care. She pushed a thin piece of paper under the Perspex and it came out sharp. Clean and white; not blurred at all. He was surprised.
“Should I fill this in?” he asked. He smiled, encouraging her to smile back.
She didn’t. Only kept staring; the thick lines of her eyes unmoving. Ted wondered if he should take the form to a bench, or fill it in right there. Did she have to witness his signature, after all? He looked around to see what others were doing, but there was no one else. So he wrote where he was, using a pen on a string that was too short. He wrote with his hand all cramped up.
Then he slid the form back under the security screen and watched its edges blur. Like handing it to a deep sea diver; perspective skewing where the water began. The woman took the form with soaking fingers and held it in front of her face. She seemed to read it okay.
“Ten working days,” she said, and filed it away.
Ted nodded, and returned to the house.
* * * *
Walking home took over an hour. All uphill, too, so he had to do most of it bent forward, breathing heavily. He looked ahead once to see his roof pushing upward from the landscape like a flint. Apart from that one construction, and the road on which he walked, everything else this far from town was bushland.
As he climbed, the rest of the house emerged bit by bit and curled over him. He swore it was the house that advanced on him, and not the other way around. The thought made him dizzy and for a moment he believed that if he lost his footing and fell, he would be swept away to follow the road on and over the hill.
He hesitated by his front door. When he couldn’t avoid it any longer, he slipped inside. It was gloomy and dark, even without curtains. In the loungeroom the answering machine flashed twice and paused. Two messages.
“Hello?” said each voice. “Hello?”
They sounded confused. Ted slapped the delete button. More wrong numbers. Didn’t these people check before they dialled? He crept upstairs to his study to wait for Jemma.
When he thought about it later, moving restlessly along the corridors, watching the afternoon light ripen to gold, he couldn’t even say what his own phone number was.
* * * *
“Hello? Is anybody there?’”
* * * *
Jemma was back right on time, like always. From the bedroom window, he was able to watch her progress for a full ten minutes, climbing the arterial road from town. Her car began as small as a toy, winding through folds of green bedspread. Advancing, it swelled, until finally it was big enough to stop and let Jemma climb out.
“Here I am, Teddy!” she called.
Her long black hair was tied at her neck, and her cheeks were flushed. She held up two pizza boxes and made as if to throw them, laughing when he flinched. She hugged him instead, pizza boxes balancing on one arm, then dragged him inside.
“Good day?” she asked.
She pulled them both along the corridor to the kitchen, flipping the pizzas and car keys onto a bench. There was a spot on the hall table for keys, but she kept ignoring it. Ted didn’t mind. It suited her, this careless abandonment. Brought a flush to her cheeks.
Jemma spun so fast it disoriented him. She fixed her hands to his shoulders and smiled, drinking him in. It always undid him, the intensity of her crystal eyes. He held onto her and tried not to feel washed away. He focussed on the forgotten pizza boxes.
“Credit cards,” he said, distracting her, “take ten days.”
Jemma’s eyes went wide. “You went into town?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And?” she asked, willing him to say he loved it. Loved the house, loved the town, loved it all. “Pretty, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ted assured her. He moved to the cupboard to get plates and, as he spoke, he addressed himself to the ceramics inside. “It’s pretty. Very quiet.”
“Just what we wanted, right?” Jemma said
“Right,” Ted said, although he couldn’t remember what he’d wanted.
Jemma took the plates from him and cradled them to her chest. She had her head on one side, searching his face.
“Anyway,” she said, “with our big, beautiful new home -” she leaned in softly to kiss his cheek, “- we won’t need to leave.”
Ted nodded and smiled, because she seemed to need him to. In reality, the house she loved so much belonged mostly to his father’s designs, but he could never bring that up. Jemma would only wave her hands in the air between them and assure him his best work was yet to come. It didn’t seem to matter to her what he did.
“Except,” he said, “you’ll have to leave to go to the office.”
“Oh, sure,” Jemma looked as though she’d already forgotten the conversation. “Well, there’s that. Speaking of which, I’ve got a new project.” She rolled her eyes to show him what she thought of new projects.
Ted laughed at last, watching her pull her clown faces, imitating her boss, whom he’d never met, and an apparently deranged colleague of hers. He reached for the pizzas, but something in the Ioungeroom confused him and for a moment he swore it was a demon by the windows, biding time, its red eye blinking.
He froze.
Jemma followed his gaze.
“Oh,” she breathed. “So you got the phone line working, too?”
She was already crossing to the answering machine, where the light flashed slowly. One message.
“No,” said Ted. No, don’t play the tape. “I mean, it’s been working for… a few days.”
Jemma stabbed at the play button.
“Hello?” said the machine. “Hello? Who’s this?”
There was a pause and a clunk as the caller hung up.
Jemma twisted, looking at Ted. “Who’s this?” she repeated. “They’re ringing and asking ‘who’s this’? What is that, a joke?” Then, more softly, she added, “The question is, who’s that? Ringing us?”
She tried to grin, but it came out strained.
“There’s been a few of those,” Ted said. “They must be recycling the phone numbers. You know, using an old one somebody else had.”
Jemma nodded, but she was slow to do it. Her knuckles whitened around the edges of the plates. “That must be it,” she murmured.
She was staring at the machine. Ted moved around her to the delete key.
“Don’t worry, Teddy,” she said, brushing the back of her hand along his arm as he passed. “I’ll take care of it.”
Ted nodded. Good, he thought. He liked it better when she took care of things.
* * * *
“Bob’s Trucks and Services, no job too small. Hello, Bob speaking… Hello?”
* * * *
The house was too big.
Sometimes the thought struck him, like today, right after breakfast. After Jemma had gone and the place was empty. Then the walls thickened, ambushing him. Even the air was bloated. Not enough windows, so the darkness kept winding around him, wrapping his arms and legs like leeches. He was pinned, rocking in the centre of it, the house ebbing and flowing, and rolling like an ocean over him.
He had to get upstairs.
There, the light could still get in, and the air wouldn’t be so thick.
He made a break for it, rushing across the loungeroom, taking the steps two at a time, darkness pulling on his ribs.
In the study, the floor rippled with sunlight. Much better, he thought, red spots dancing in his eyes. He leant onto the doorframe to gather himself. When he could, he crossed to the window, legs shaking. If Jemma could see him now, he knew, rubbing the cold from his arms, she would be so ashamed for him.
He sank into his desk chair, but spun it so he couldn’t see the desk at all. This way, he faced the bay window at the back of the room. This window always seemed to lean in on him, the weight of the bushland too heavy to hold. It made Ted feel small, but there was a kind of safety in that. He felt contained. Today, though, the sight of all that mottled green bushland so close only added to the sense he was drowning. He didn’t dare look away, though, because he knew if he did, he’d be forced to confront his desk. His empty desk, the blank slate, the daily reminder.
Jemma’s gift to him. An architectural ensemble with an adjustable angle. Perfect, she’d said, for netting ideas. She’d treated it like a game. Still, Ted’s ideas leaked away. His head was littered with half-formed creations. Bright, noble planes and sweeping curves. Open plan homes with atriums, mezzanines, grand staircases, sliding wall panels. Rooms for all sorts of lives. Once snared by the page, they dulled to grey.
He never discussed this with Jemma. She thought the world of him.
The desk still squatted at the corner of his eye, so he rolled the chair to the set of drawers where his plans were held. The drawers were old, made of dark wood, long and shallow and mostly empty. He couldn’t bring himself to look at his old designs. He knew what he would find.
Instead, he opened the lowest drawer where remnants of his father’s works were held. Fine, bold constructions with assertive, almost aggressive, lines and pencil marks so strong they sometimes scored right through the page. That, he thought - not for the first time - is what architecture is meant to be. A power with which to create new worlds for people. He put the stack of blueprints back in the drawer and replaced his father’s notebooks on top.
Ted leant back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. When he took his hands away, his vision blurred and danced. To his right, the bay window had come apart, and swung giddily like Siamese ghosts. Ted blinked, waiting for it to pass. But when the window finally pulled back into focus, it brought something else with it. Something he hadn’t seen before.
Foundations.
Bushland crowded the left side of his window, of course, and the road was a narrow strip on the right. But between them, he now saw, someone had begun work on a house. Square, concrete patterns in the ground, grey bricks stacked up. Wider and longer than his own house, but similarly proportioned. It was set back from the road, allowing space for what would undoubtedly become a small garden.
For no reason at all, it occurred to him that Jemma hadn’t wanted a garden out front.
He stared at the space, allowing himself to be captivated by the idea of it, the potential, the new beginning. When he thought about it later, it occurred to him that he hadn’t heard any building work. Nor had he seen any builders. Yet, there they were, rock-solid foundations, almost as if they’d grown. As if the bush had finally tired of trees and plants and birdlife, and decided to throw up a home. Somewhere for people to plant roots instead.
Jemma had wanted to get away from it all.
She wouldn’t like this at all.
* * * *
“Radio TBR, we’re here to listen. Can I take your call?… Are you there? “
* * * *
She hated it.
She’d come home, like always (this time, with Chinese takeaway), wrapping her arms around Ted, almost daring him to carry her inside. She’d thrown her keys at the kitchen bench and turned to get plates for dinner. Then she saw it. Above the sink, framed perfectly by the porthole window, the beginnings of the house.
“Brand new,” Ted said.
“Sure is,” Jemma replied. She moved to the glass and put her hand on it, looking out at the monster through splayed fingers.
After that, they’d had dinner in silence, and hadn’t mentioned the new place again for two weeks. Ted was surprised by her resentment. He continued to live around the edges of his own home and Jemma’s mood, moving from window to window, avoiding the dark at the core. He kept an eye on the other place. It was three doors up, or would be when someone got around to building doors between him and it.
The cement on the foundations had dried, and construction workers had appeared. It all seemed so mundane. Ted forgot to wonder how he’d missed that first day of work. Lumber had been laid for floor framing.
“It had to happen,” Ted consoled her.
They were eating toast by the French doors in the lounge, Jemma having tired of take-away.
She shrugged. “You think?”
“You can borrow cups of sugar,” he said.
“What would I do with sugar?”
Ted nodded. True. The only thing he’d ever seen Jemma make was toast.
“I kinda like the idea of having neighbours,” he said at last, but softly, not wanting to disturb her.
Jemma looked up at him. She was about to speak, but stopped abruptly.
“Did the phone ring today?” she asked, moving to the blinking eye of the answering machine.
In truth, the messages came most days, though Ted usually remembered to delete them. He never heard the phone ring, and assumed the tone was set too low. It didn’t bother him. He didn’t want to talk to anyone anyhow.
Jemma was playing the messages; something Ted had long stopped doing. The first voice was old. Perhaps a man, perhaps a woman, hard to say. Next were two women.
“Hello?” they all said. “Hello?”
The final voice was young, a man.
“Pizza Palace,” he said. “What can I get you today?”
“Why would a pizza place ring us?” Jemma asked.
“Maybe it’s a joke,” Ted suggested. “Or a new way to drum up business.”
But his answer was a little too fast, because Jemma looked at him, frowning. For the first time, he saw her face as it would look decades from now. It was careworn, with a soft crease where her frown would sit. He felt suddenly lost. Where was he, in that future?
“Let’s get an extension in your study, Teddy,” Jemma was saying, “so you can hear it.” She added, nearly under her breath, “I’m sick of this.”
“Sure,” Ted replied straight away.
Jemma wrapped her arms around herself and stared out the windows. She was almost shivering, although the evening was warm. Ted didn’t have to follow her gaze to know she was watching the new house where it lay with twilight pooling in the wooden frets of its floor.
Looking for all the world like rows of coffins.
* * * *
“You break ‘em, we fix ‘cm. Windows our specialty. How can I help? ..I”
* * * *
The man from the phone company was meant to arrive first thing. He didn’t, of course. Up the road, the builders were back. Just four of them, draping the frame of the house with a tarpaulin. They must be expecting rain.
Ted was fascinated. He squeezed around the inside edges of his home until he reached the front door. It was early afternoon and the sunlight felt milky. Now that the place was covered - its modesty protected, so to speak - he had an urgent need to go over there, to sneak past the builders and peek under the tarp. He wanted to check nothing was still inside. He felt an odd mix of professional curiosity and greed. He wished it was his house.
It was then the van pulled up.
“Sorry,” said the phone technician, squeezing out. “I woulda been here sooner only I had trouble finding the place.”
“Yes,” said Ted, “they haven’t put it on any maps yet. Still, you could’ve called. We do have a phone, after all.”
“Yeah,” said the man, with indifference.
There were to be three extensions, according to Jemma’s instructions: study, kitchen, bedroom. Ted pointed out all the places and then fidgeted, waiting for the technician to finish. It took hours, surely much longer than it should have.
The builders left silently, and in the gathering gloom the tarp shifted and itched. Occasionally it puffed out and then flattened, exposing the rib of a wall, the cheekbone of a window frame.
When at last he was able to wave goodbye to the technician, Ted found three more messages on the machine. He deleted them without listening.
Jemma was late that night.
* * * *
“Who is this? Why do you keep calling?”
* * * *
“What is it?” she asked.
She was staring at the house again, at the empty wall frames where the panels would go. The tarp was gone. Roof trusses extended across the cavity of the house. At the very top, towards the back, was a square shape like a cage.
Ted thought of it as the skull.
He shook his head vaguely. “I think I’ve seen something like it before, someplace.”
He gathered his father’s notebooks from the study. Jemma was curled up tight on the lounge when he returned. She shifted to rest on his shoulder as he flipped through the notebooks. Of all his father’s works, Ted loved the notebooks the most. Pages of ideas and designs, all done in his father’s hand. Notes were added alongside the most complex pieces, to decode them.
“Here,” he said at last. “A widow’s walk.”
“A what?” Jemma started.
Ted read the accompanying note. “A small, windowed room at the top of a house. So wives can watch for their sailor husbands, returning from the sea.”
“Only,” Jemma whispered, “there’s no sea here.”
“No,” Ted agreed, and felt the house rock shut around them. “I suppose they’ll use it as a kind of viewing platform. To look at the bushland. It’s kinda nice, don’t you think?”
“All those wives,” Jemma said, “pacing up and down. Watching for husbands that never returned.”
Ted squeezed her arm. “I meant architecturally, it’s nice.”
Jemma was quiet for a while, fingering a loose thread in the lounge. “I don’t want one,” she said.
Of course not, Ted thought. That wasn’t what he’d meant.
She was quiet so long he thought she had fallen asleep. He waited as long as he could, listening to the steadiness of her breath. He had a cramp in his arm, and when he finally made to move out from under her, she said,
“Who’s moving in there, Teddy?”
* * * *
“Is that you, dear?”
* * * *
Proper siding had been put up, although the widow’s walk was still bare. The window spaces on the lower floors were huge, almost floor to ceiling.
Ted sat in a puddle of sunlight in his study. He was flipping through another of his father’s notebooks, but he was staring at the house. Funny how it was the windows that gave a place its personality. This one seemed open and generous. The new people would need blinds, though, to stop neighbours looking in. He supposed he’d have to get blinds himself. Then they could start shutting each other out.
He noticed a page had come loose from the notebook in his lap. Pulling it free, he found it was a piece of folded blueprint paper, the edges shorn roughly with a ruler. Unfolding it, he found a house. With a widow’s walk.
He’d been through these notebooks a thousand times and never seen this, but it made sense to him that his very need to discover this thing would make it so, at this time. Automatically he stood, pressing the blueprint to the window above the new neighbours’ house. Even without looking, he knew it was the same place. Window for window, wall for wall. Cut from the same cloth.
Ted turned and stalked downstairs, passing through the dark guts of his own home without a thought. He moved stiffly up the road towards the workmen. He did all this without vomiting, though he felt sick to his shoes.
“You,” he said to the nearest builder. “Whose house is this?”
They all turned like bumblebees, sluggishly, gazing at him.
“Where did the plans come from?” Ted snapped. “Who’s the foreman?”
“Problem?” said one of them. He was crouched by the steps, sorting nails. When Ted approached, he stood and gazed warily.
“I want to see your plans,” Ted said.
“They’re at council. Been there for months.”
“I want your copy.”
The man shrugged, indecisive. He rubbed his forehead where the hardhat marked it. Then he took Ted to his truck and - slowly, slowly - unspooled his plans across the bonnet. They each held a side of the paper flat, the corners folding over their fingers.
Ted scanned the print.
“This isn’t what you’re building,” he said. “These plans are nothing like that house.”
The foreman frowned blearily, unable to wake up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ted shoved his own blueprint in the man’s face. “This! This is what I’m talking about.”
The foreman peered at the drawing, chuckling at the old fashioned handmade marks and shorn edges. He looked back to the pristine, computer-perfected plans on his bonnet.
“Are you qualified to interpret these?” he asked.
Ted was choking. He wanted to scream how dare you. Instead, he backed away, letting the blueprints roll loosely back along the bonnet. They were all watching him. Not with malice, but with a kind of listless curiosity. Ted could feel their eyes on him all the way to his front door.
He hid from the windows for the rest of the day, standing just outside their light. In the centre, the house was like ice, so Ted had to circle and circle, rubbing the warmth back into his arms.
As he passed the answering machine for the twelfth time, it sprang to life.
“Hello?” came a strange voice. “Hello?”
Ted snatched up the phone before he had time to think better of it.
“Who is this?” he shouted.
“Hey, what d’you mean?” said the stranger. “You called me, buddy.”
“No, I didn’t, I -” Ted began. Then stopped.
He put the phone back on the receiver.
It wasn’t him. It had never been him.
Had it?
* * * *
“Justin, is that you? Have you been calling? Why don’t you come home? Say something, son. It’ll all be okay, I promise. Just come home.”
* * * *
Jemma was back early, pleading flu. She was home before the builders had even left for the day, and she lay on the lounge looking at Ted with thick eyes. If it hadn’t been for her, he would be at the other house. He couldn’t help it. Something about what he’d seen that afternoon was nagging him. But Jemma was like an anchor, so he stayed.
Just before he drifted off to sleep that night, he realized what it was.
The new house didn’t even have glass in its windows yet. But he swore he’d seen furniture behind its empty frames.
* * * *
“Your call’s important to us. Please hold the line.”
* * * *
He’d never noticed how quiet the bush was before. Not a bird-song, not a cricket. No cicadas, nor the soft rush of creatures in the undergrowth. Pure silence. As though the countryside was a painted backdrop for an empty theatre.
The house was finished.
He hadn’t slept for days, and perhaps it was fatigue that made the new place shimmer like that in the sunlight. It had an Arcadian glow, as idle and serene as an oil painting.
There was a verandah at the back of the house, with a flat aluminium roof. On the second floor, louvres had been added almost all the way around. At the very top, the widow’s walk had its siding at last, and large windows that would open out.
Jemma wouldn’t look at it. She barely even looked at Ted. Not directly, anyhow, although he felt her watching. During the three days she had off sick, Ted retreated mainly to his study. She shuffled past his door every so often, bent over, like she was dragging something invisible behind her. Eventually, she had to leave and return to work. Ted was glad. It meant at last he could come up for air.
Sure enough, the new house had a garden out front, with piercing orange flowers and full green leaves. There was even a mat beside the front door. Ted would bet it said Welcome in warm, red letters. Behind the louvred windows of the second floor, blinds were pulled shut. But on the ground floor, where there were no blinds, reflections in the windows made it look like movement. Like somebody was in there.
In a heartbeat, Ted was outside. It was warm, almost hot, in the sun. He didn’t even feel the distance between houses anymore. One moment, he was by his window and the next, he was here, where the mat by the door did indeed spell out Welcome. There was a bright copper door handle in front of him and he twisted it, but it was locked tight.
So he went to the windows. There was an oily sheen to the glass, but if he pressed the side of his face against it, he could just make out the insides. Heavy curtains were pulled back on soft ropes. Beyond them, the light was mottled and dense. It trapped strange shapes, shadows with rough-hewn edges like old wooden furniture. Ted had the impression these shapes had been sent to mark out the spaces where real furniture would go. It was as though the house was making plans of its own.
Ted moved around the walls, trying each window. They were all locked. He cupped his hand over the panes, breaking the morning glare, trying to see what was inside.
When he passed the back sitting room, he saw a man.
Though the man’s back was to him, Ted could make out every detail of the clothes he wore. Dark trousers, pale yellow shirt, sleeves rolled up. He could see the colour of the man’s hair. He was about to call out, but thought better of it and then a minute later, wondered why. The man was leaving the room. Ted hurried further around the house and caught sight of him climbing the staircase.
“Hey!” he called.
He rapped the glass with his knuckles. The man continued up. Not wanting to be left behind, Ted rushed onto the back verandah. This door was locked, too. He looked around for a way to climb to the second level. There was only the balcony railing, but when he pulled himself onto that and stood upright, he found the flat verandah roof was at eye level. With his left hand, he was able to grab hold of the nearest window frame. Wedging his foot against a corner of the building, he hauled himself high enough to hook his elbows over the gutter. From there, he dragged himself along the roof, more by will than design. Eventually, enough of him was on the roof that he could roll over and pull his legs up into a foetal position.
His ribs hurt, and when he sat up, his shirt was torn and dirtied. He took a few breaths to steady himself and found he had never felt better. He was thrilled, fascinated by what was inside.
He crawled across to the louvred windows and peeked in. No shadows in this room, and no blinds either. No mistaking what he saw. This room was fully furnished, complete with bedspread stretched across an old-fashioned bed. It was warm and rosy, the morning sun making it shine.
“Hey,” Ted said softly.
The man was there. He was shutting a drawer in the dresser and turning back towards the door. Not once did he look in Ted’s direction, not even when Ted began beating frantically at the glass.
There was no reason to think the man had gone up to the widow’s walk, but Ted knew it was true. He looked to the roof above him. It wasn’t possible to climb any further on the outside of the house. It was too steep and high.
But it was easy enough to begin pulling out the louvres, making a space to crawl inside.
* * * *
“Is this a hoax? Stop calling here. I mean it!”
* * * *
When Jemma got home, it was quiet.
“Ted?” she called.
She thought to call again, but knew he was gone. She checked all the rooms, anyhow.
In the loungeroom, the answering machine winked nearly a dozen times. While she wondered what to do, she listened to all the messages, keeping her back to the French doors and the house beyond.
The final message had her mother’s voice.
“Is that you, Jemma?” her mother said. “Have you been trying to call?”
“No,” Jemma whispered, letting the tape rewind. “Not me.”
The presence beyond the windows drilled into her back, so she turned at last. There it was, the house. It was perfectly complete, perfectly still. Some trick of the light made the windows glow so it looked almost welcoming.
She knew. She’d known all along. She hadn’t wanted to leave that morning, but what good would it have done to stay.
She went at last to the new place.
There was no sound except for her shoes on the road, and while she walked, she pressed one hand to her stomach, one to her mouth. Twilight was descending, transforming the greens and browns into bruised purples. Beside the front door was a mat with black lettering.
Welcome.
“Ted?” she called.
The windows still shone, but whatever was behind was obscured by thick curtains. The frames were locked tight. She took her time circling the house, trying each window. She reached the back balcony, which seemed to float in the thickening dark.
“Can you hear me, Ted?” she called. “Come home.”
Come home, come home.
She waited. There was no response from the house. There couldn’t be, but she stayed anyway.
The bushland had become a wall of black to her left and above that the sky was a twisted mess of darkness. Standing in the silence was like being at the bottom of a tank. It was hollow here, and empty, and the walls felt thin.
“Ted?”
She was surprised her voice didn’t echo.
Sometimes she stood, sometimes she sat on the verandah’s balcony, wondering how he’d gotten inside, and why, what compelled him. Eventually, the windows lost their evening glow and the world was as dark as it was silent. It made no more sense to wait here than it did to wait anywhere. So she went home, stumbling, almost crawling, searching out the front steps with her hands. She flipped on the hall light and the sudden luminescence was a slap to the face.
She used the phone in the kitchen to call. It rang three times before someone picked it up.
“Hello?”
“He’s gone,” was all she said.
“Darling. I’m so sorry,” said her mother. There was sympathy in her voice, but no real surprise.
Jemma filled the next silence.
“I thought it would be enough for him, but he kept wanting more. He kept adding things. Windows, everywhere, all these bloody windows. Every shape and bloody size. What did he want to see?”
“Oh, sweetheart,” said her mother.
“All these stupid bloody windows, and not a moment to ourselves,” she was rambling. She was crying.
“It’s time you got out of there,” her mother was saying, “and came home.”
Home, thought Jemma. Good word. “This was meant to be our…”
She didn’t finish. In the loungeroom, the French doors gaped like mouths. They belonged to Ted, of course. Bigger and bigger windows, trying to let the outside in. Now it felt like the insides would be sucked out. Nothing protected her against the vacuum of the world.
In her mind, it was all destroyed. She was tearing it down, pulling the buildings apart, ripping up the roads, laying waste to the damn bushland, the people. Folding it all back into itself like dough. She pictured it gone, just gone, and nothing left but dirt and this house and the other house, where Ted was. In case he was still there. In case he hadn’t slipped right into the walls and been drowned by that place.
The new world was a bland, featureless place, and she promised herself it would be enough. At least for her, at least for now.
The porthole window above the sink gave her a perfect picture of darkness. She knew it framed that other place, and she hated it for that. She used her free hand to press at the frame, kneading it, pushing at it the way someone might push on a flap of skin to seal over a wound.
“I can’t leave him in there,” she whispered.
“Darling,” said her mother. “He was made to fit that world. But you, dear, you can’t stay. It’s not healthy for you. After all, it’s not like he’s real.”
Tears rolled down Jemma’s face.
Real, she thought, had never been the point.