Helen Oyeyemi - Mr. Fox

And that’s how I plan to begin Hedda Gabler and Other Monsters. I think I’ll cut the part about the magic carpet being for sale, though. It might come off as tacky.

I moved the dresser away from the door at about four in the morning. I had to go to the bathroom. Then I went into our bedroom, mine and St. John’s. He wasn’t there. I went downstairs and found him in his study, asleep at his desk, drooling a little on some newly written pages so that the ink ran. I pulled the pages out from under his arms and put them aside without looking at them. He woke up, but he didn’t open his eyes. “I can explain about dinner,” I said. “In the morning. Just come out to Cloud Island with me, and I’ll show you.” He made no answer, and I pinched him. He opened his eyes, then, and gave me a sulky look.

“How’s the book going?”

He winced.

“Will you read me some? Please?”

“It’s not ready.”

“Just a little.”

He read a couple of pages aloud, very quickly. Then he saw that I wanted to hear more and he slowed down. He writes beautifully but without hope. Odd that he could be responsible for a little dancing cinder like Mary. He reached a particularly stressful part of a chapter and I came to crisis and said, “Oh, Lord,” before I could check myself. He looked up from the page. “Bad things are going to happen, D.”

“To the two of us?” I held out my hand to him. He took it and touched his lips to my wrist. Pins and needles, as if all my blood was rushing back into me.

“Yes, to the two of us. It’s inevitable.”

“But good things are going to happen, too.” He opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it, closed his mouth. “Were you going to say I sound like Mary?”

“Or Mary sounds like you. . ”

I came to him without substance, and six years later I’m still the same. Sometimes I say terrible things to him because I don’t want him to know I’m sad; sometimes I fly off the handle to hide the fact that I don’t know what I’m talking about. And other times — too often, maybe — I don’t dare have an opinion in case it upsets anyone. I’m too stupid for him.

Have you ever heard a note in someone’s voice that said “This is the end”? I heard it in the next words he said to me, and I stopped listening. Have you ever wanted to try and cross an ending with some colossal revelation—“There’s something I never told you. I’m a princess from the kingdom atop Mount Qaf,” for example—“My family live in eternal youth, and if you abide with me, you will, too. I kept this secret from you to see if you would cherish me for who I am.” Have you ever wished, wished, wished. .

My head got so heavy, it sank down onto my chest. So say whatever it is you think you’ve got to say, St. John. That you’re not in love with me. That you need to be alone. Say it. I’m not going to like it, no, I won’t like it at all. But I’ll be all right.

I told him that I loved him. I’ve never, ever, said that to him before, because I just didn’t know how he’d take it. I love you. I mouthed the words because there didn’t seem any point in interrupting him just then. I don’t know if he saw. I hope he did, because I don’t believe it’s the sort of thing a woman can tell a man more than, say, three times in their life together. It’s only really appropriate in the event of a life-threatening emergency, “I love you.” It means a different thing to us than it means to them. God knows what it means to them. God knows what it means to us.

“. . start again, D. Let’s start all over again,” my husband said. He rested his hands on my shoulders for a moment, then took them away. “Can we?”

Start again? Nice in theory, but what was he really trying to say? How far back would we have to fall? All that undoing. .

Show you’re game, Daphne.

“Sure,” I said. I held out my hand. “Shake on it.”

We shook hands. He held on to my hand; his grip was tight, and our palms were sweaty. I looked up at him, he looked down at me, and I had absolutely no idea what was on his mind just then. I decided to wait. But after a few more speechless seconds I figured he must not know what to say next. Maybe he was scared of saying the wrong thing.

So I took the initiative. I broke the handshake and introduced myself. I said I was glad to meet him, and I asked him what his name was. I heard myself, all bubbles and sparkle. I’d had to drop my gaze to be able to pull off the playful act, though, and I felt him looking at me, still looking. I heard him stifle a yawn. Then he lifted my chin with his thumb; his lips grazed my cheek; my spine melted down my back; he murmured, “Okay, but I was wondering if we couldn’t go a little faster than that—”

I slid my hands up under his shirt, my fingers spread across the bareness of his chest, shaking as I felt the depth of the breaths he took. It felt nice, of course, but really I was just stalling him, trying to think of a way to give in without letting him think he could always get his own way. I needed some phrase that was simultaneously encouraging and disparaging.

“Well?” he said, and he was so close, smiling just a little, his lips not quite touching mine. I just couldn’t find that phrase I wanted, so I gave his nose a good, hard tweak — all the better for being sudden. He gave a pretty satisfying squawk after that, so I kissed him.

And, laughing a little, he kissed me back. He kissed me like ice cream, like a jazz waltz, the rough, gentle way the sea washed sand off my skin on the hottest day of the year. And the whole time there was that little laugh between us, sweet and silly.

We rode the ferry across to the lighthouse in the morning, having slept too late to walk across. Mary Foxe wasn’t there. But she’d left us a note on the kitchen table, with the keys to the lighthouse on top of it.

Gone travelling! To Mexico via Mississippi. Met a beachcomber who said he’d take me as far as Virginia — not bad, huh? Don’t know how long I’ll be gone.

Mrs. Fox — I’ll send you a forwarding address when I know it, so you can send me pages of Hedda Gabler and Other Monsters — don’t forget to write it. And don’t talk yourself out of it — you can do it, and it’s going to be really good. (Maybe I am slightly magical after all.)

Mr. Fox — don’t worry. I’ll come back to you. Maybe you’ll be nicer to me once you’ve missed me a little. And hey, now you can do whatever you want. For a while.

I’m dying to know what it’ll be like when I come home — the three of us(!). I almost wish I was there and back again already. .

Take care of each other,

okay?

M.F.

We’d found my shirtwaist by the dock, just where she’d left it, crumpled and ruined by the rain, so I could only hope she had some clothes on.

St. John read the note over and over, his lips moving silently. He looked both stricken and relieved. I suspected that in the next few minutes he was going to start quizzing me pretty hard.

As for me, I’d noticed just how similar Mary’s handwriting was to St. John’s and was thinking that perhaps a break from Mary Foxe wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

I

The little girl feared the fox cub, and the fox cub felt exactly the same way about her.

The woods went on for many miles, and a few foxes lived at the heart of it and didn’t encounter people if they could help it. Yet the girl and the fox cub had been pointed out to each other — the girl’s mother had used a picture book, and the fox cub’s mother had brought him to peer in at a window once, when everyone in the girl’s house was sound asleep — and each had been told: That is your enemy.