Tell me right away if I’m disturbing you, he said as he stepped inside my door, and I’ll leave at once.
You not only disturb me, I said, you shatter my entire existence. Welcome.
Eeva Kilpi
(translated by Börje Vähämäki)
All you need to know is this: Coxsackie. Coxsuckie. Cock-a-leekie.
Three funny words that sound the same.
Can you guess what they mean?
I’ll tell you: a virus, a sexual act and a kind of soup made from chicken and leeks.
WHEN SHE’S FALLING asleep, she rubs her left foot against her right foot. Stop that, he says, you’re like a giant cricket. He deserves an acrobatic lover, a Nadia Comaneci. When she’s got energy, she goes on top as a special treat.
Dragging legs, concentrating on every step, I feel like I’m wading through water. I take a trolley even though I’m only buying a few things. I don’t want to have to carry a basket. I pick up some tea bags. My arms and face are going numb, my bones are burning. I stop the trolley and pretend to look at the coffee. The lights are too bright, there are too many shiny things to look at, too many jars and bottles. I don’t feel real. I abandon the trolley and go to the checkout, picking up a lime on the way.
The woman in front of me places the NEXT CUSTOMER divider between her dog food and my lime. She has a pink pinched face and limpid blue eyes. You can’t see her eyelashes. A mountain of Pedigree Chum edges towards the scanner.
I focus on the lime and hope my legs will last.
I’m wondering how many dogs the pinched woman has, and if her husband loves her without eyelashes, when a shrill voice punctures my head: the voice of the checkout girl. I haven’t realised it’s my turn.
D’you know how much this is? she says, holding up the lime. She’s typed in a code, and PUMPKIN LARGE has come up on the till display.
It’s not a pumpkin, I say. It’s a lime.
She rings for the store manager, who appears from nowhere, brisk and important. He gives the girl the correct code and disappears again in a camp jangle of keys. The girl rings up the lime and I’m free. I go outside and sit on the wall. I feel spectacularly ill.
I make my way home with no shopping. It’s only a five minute walk. I pass the dead seagull folded on the road. It’s been there for three days. It has blood on it.
I reach the house and the smell of fresh paint hits me as I unlock the front door – we’d painted the bathroom last week, my arms left like rags.
I’ll need to call him.
When he answers the phone, I try to sound independent.
I got ill at the supermarket, I say. Can you please get some groceries on the way home?
What do we need?
Pasta, salad, bread. Basics.
I’ll nip home just now. I need to get out of here for a bit anyway.
Can you get some Parmesan too?
Okay.
I’m sorry, I say.
It’s not your fault, he replies.
That seagull’s still there, d’you think I should call the council?
They’ll be closed, he says, it’s after four.
Someone’s moved it into the gutter, at least it’s not in the middle of the road anymore.
Call them tomorrow, he says.
I just feel sorry for it.
See you in a bit, he says.
I imagine him taking off his glasses after he’s hung up, rubbing his eyes and sighing. When he gets home, I’ll tell him I dreamt we had a baby made of lettuce, and he’ll smile and unwind in spite of himself.
Things had been tense last night. Why d’you have to hack the whole head, why can’t you just chop it normally? he’d said, frowning at the mess of skins and garlic cloves on the work-top. I don’t do anything normally, I’d replied – did no one tell you?
I lie down on the couch. I can’t get the seagull out of my head.
Why didn’t you wait for me to come home? he says, handing me a cup of tea. I could’ve done the shopping. You really are your own worst enemy sometimes.
The fridge was bare, I say, I got you a lime for your gin.
I have to go back to work for a couple of hours. I’ll make dinner tonight. You don’t mind eating late, do you?
No, I say, I’m not hungry at all.
He kisses the top of my head as he leaves.
I dreamt we had a baby made of lettuce last night.
Tell me later, he says, I have to go.
I wonder if he’s really gone back to work or if he’s gone to fuck Lucia. I wonder if I’ll have to call in sick tomorrow.
She’d stayed with us before Christmas when her central heating wasn’t working. It was supposed to be for a couple of nights, but two nights had become two weeks. She’d given me a bag of Guatemalan worry dolls. For under your pillow, she’d said.
I know, I said, I’ve had them before.
She went on, girlishly, Tell them your worries before you sleep, and in the morning, they’ll all be gone!
I’m worried you’ll sleep with my boyfriend, I’d said into myself.
She’d slept on the sofa bed in the study. One morning, I’d been woken by loud voices and laughing. I got up. The sofa bed was sticking up in the middle of the floor like a monstrous orange sculpture. It’s stuck, said Lucia, giggling, I don’t know what I’ve done! They’d wrestled with it for a while and finally managed to collapse it and fold it up. Sorry we woke you, Helen, he said. We didn’t want to leave you with it all day.
I’d hated him referring to Lucia and him as ‘we’. I’d watched them go out to the car. I grudged their intimacy, their shared knowledge of genes and proteins. She was beginning to annoy me with her skittishness, her smart coat and boots, so matching and groomed. I’d gone back to bed and tried to sleep more, but I couldn’t settle: they had to go – I felt agitated, just knowing they were there. I’d scooped the tiny Guatemalans from under my pillow and thrown them in the bin, covering them with rubbish so no one else would see them.
NB. Helen’s boyfriend