Helen Oyeyemi - Mr. Fox

I drank, and realised it wasn’t whisky. It started off like liquid gingerbread, then lingered on the tongue, deep and woody, the way I imagined tree sap tasted.

“What’s this?”

“Nonalcoholic. Nutmeg, mostly.”

“Nutmeg? That’s meant to be an aphrodisiac, isn’t it? It tastes nice.”

“Yes. And in large doses, it’s a psychotropic agent.”

I spat my drink back into the glass. I never want visions. They’re not fun.

“Mary,” he said suddenly.

“Yes?”

“I didn’t do anything to Daphne.”

“Okay.”

“I tried to take care of her — to help her. And I couldn’t.”

His voice was completely steady, but he was crying. “She slipped through my fingers every time.”

I wiped his tears away with my hands.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

“I didn’t speak to anyone for three days after I found her. I mean, I didn’t speak to anyone who didn’t have to speak to me. Nobody called. They knew what had happened, but they didn’t call. I stared at the phone. I understood what was going on — I’ve done it myself. When someone’s bereaved you think they want to be alone, or that they don’t want to talk, or that they only want to talk to someone close to them. Someone closer than you are. So you don’t phone. You assume that the poor bastard is being inundated with calls from other people, and you don’t phone.” His voice grew halting. “They were — long days. I wanted to talk. To anyone. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be with people. But mostly I stayed here. I tried not to go too far from the house, because I thought that if I got too far away I might decide not to come back. And it would be a shame not to come back. The house is all right. It didn’t do anything wrong—”

“People should have called,” I said. I was angry. Why wasn’t he angry? “Even if they tried and it was engaged they should have kept trying. They didn’t even try. I would have called.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And I’d have said anything that came into my head. I’d have read you the weather forecast. We should have known each other back then.”

There was something childish, something timidly happy, about the way he smiled as he listened to me. As if he had been promised something so good that he was trying to manage his hope, trying not to believe it until he saw it with his own eyes.

Later he showed me where I would sleep. The room was crammed with a four-poster bed hung with grape-coloured velvet, which I gaped at as I walked around it. I heard the creaking of a rocking chair but couldn’t find the chair itself at first — the space was complicated by folding screens and empty vases and trinket boxes. I began counting the different vases, lost count, began again. At some point this room must have been bursting with flowers. Five foxgloves stood up like spread fingers in one of the vases. There was a dressing table and chair in there, too, and a kind of mirror closet — it was a box of mirrors that had a latch and pulled open so that you could stand surrounded by every possible view of yourself whilst dressing.

Daphne’s room. Daphne had been gone for four years. This was the state of things, him living in two rooms — just his study and a bedroom, the one next door to this. I tried not to show that it made me sad.

We undressed. He turned the light out and lay down beside me. He kissed me, and parted my legs with the stroke of his hand. He was gentle at first, and rocked slowly, then he pressed all the breath out of me, little by little. At first it was good, and then it wasn’t good. Our bodies were cold and it hurt when he moved inside me. I didn’t wince or cry out. I kept my eyes firmly closed.

(He’ll stop once he feels that it’s hurting me.)

But he didn’t; he stopped when he was finished.

“I can’t stay here,” he said, and he left, stumbling over things — shadows, slippers, whatever was on the floor.

Minutes pricked shallowly, like thorns. I shivered in my chemise. I’d never slept in a four-poster before — my dreams came framed by the purple velvet of the canopy. I kept waking up, or thinking that I did — I couldn’t tell. This was Daphne’s bed. Daphne Fox had lain here, looking up into this canopy. How had she lain? What had she looked at? Was it here that he had found her? The pounding on the door, the footsteps rushing towards the bed, the sound he made when he found her dead. He’d have shaken her, I imagine, slapped her, tried to revive her, dragged her about, knelt over her with his mouth pressed desperately to hers. Now, in her bed, I tried to find her. I lay on my front, but it was too suffocating, so I changed and lay listlessly on my side, my head on my arm, pretending to be a woman who didn’t want to live. Then I turned onto my back, and cold surged all along my body. My hands followed it. How full my breasts were, how soft my stomach; in death everything froze. But my thighs were warm, and the bedclothes were soft against my back, and there was the smell of the foxgloves. . My bones moved with suppleness under my skin as I pushed my hips upwards, rocking against my fingers. . It became almost too much. Who is touching me? Me, it’s only me, only me. The heavy wetness on my fingers, as if I’d smeared them with honey. When it was over, goose bumps forced themselves up from every patch of bare skin.

And the handle of the bedroom door clicked as it turned from the outside, and the door swung open.

I shot upright and jerked the bedclothes up around me. But no one appeared in the doorway, and when I marched up to it, there still wasn’t anyone there. I looked up and down the empty passageway. In a very small voice I said, “S.J.?”

His bedroom door was closed.

I closed mine, too, and returned to bed, only to be jolted from sleep by the sound of the door opening again. It was not a dream or any sort of reverie. There was something terrible about watching the door come open the second time. It opened all the way, and with such force that I don’t know what stopped it from slamming against the wall.

I didn’t call out. I closed the door again. There must be something wrong with the door frame, or the way the door had been set in it when the place was built. It happened, doors popping open of their own accord, bad builders taken to task. The third time the door opened it felt as if I was being told very sternly to go. But go where? Get out, clear out.

I stood, half asleep, and held the door closed for two hours or so. It began to feel as if I was shaking a small, cold, smooth stump that had been proffered in place of a hand. When I’d had enough of that I sat, then lay on the blue carpet, hardly aware of what I was doing, or where I was. The door opened again as soon as I let go of the handle. Let it stay open, then; let it stay open. I heaved myself back into bed as a collection of parts, concentrating on getting my arms up over the edge, torso, legs.

The next time I opened my eyes it was very early morning. I put on a pair of slippers that were beside the bed. They were just my size. Which gave me something of a jolt. But they were warm, so I left them on. I went down to S.J.’s study. The plate with the squares of cake on it was still there on his desk, and I wanted to get rid of it. It jarred me. I found it feminine. So I opened the French doors and stepped outside, showering moist crumbs amongst some finches and sparrows that were already pecking at the grass outside. There were seeds in the cake, and it smelt of rum. I hoped the birds wouldn’t get too drunk. I wiped my hand on my skirt. Then I stood near the twisted cedar tree, staring. There was just enough light for the leaves to glow. I imagined touching a branch and watching it rise, followed by another branch and another, the trailing leaves parting so that I could step into the space the tree guarded, the secret place it hunched over for safekeeping from the sun.