Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

DIFFERENT PARTS SMELL DIFFERENT.

“Yes…my hands smell like pencils, and lotiony, it’s that cucumber one you used to buy me…I had pepperoni for lunch…Hmm. I don’t know if it’s possible to know one’s own smell. Sort of like not being able to ever see one’s own face, don’t you think?”

I CAN’T SEE MYSELF IN MIRRORS.

“Oh. That seems-lonely.”

Yes.

“I wish I could see you.”

I’M ON YOUR LEFT, LEANING OVER YOU.

“Mmm. No. Perhaps you’re in some other part of the spectrum. Ultraviolet? Infrared?”

YOU NEED GHOST SPECS.

“Brilliant! We could patent them, people could walk down the street and see all the ghosts riding the bus, haunting Sainsbury’s-”

YOU COULD WEAR THEM IN THE CEMETERY. LOADS OF GHOSTS THERE?

“I wonder. I mean, you aren’t in the cemetery, which is where I rather expected to find you.”

TWINS ARE COMING.

“Oh dear. Till tomorrow, then.”

And:

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO? YOU CAN’T LIVE THIS WAY.

“What do you mean? I’m happy. That is, I’m happy, considering.”

VALENTINA IS IN LOVE WITH YOU.

Robert put down the pencil. He got up and walked around the perimeter of the dining room, his arms wrapped around his torso as though for warmth. Finally he sat down again. “What do you want me to do?”

I DON’T KNOW.

He stood up again. “I don’t know what to say, Elspeth.” He gathered up the notebook and pencils and went downstairs. Elspeth thought, Say you love me. Two days went by before Robert reappeared in the dining room, notebook in hand. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, and sat with his hand poised over the paper, waiting for Elspeth to turn up. She was already there but she made no sign to him. She sat on one of the straight-backed chairs across the table from him, arms folded, eyes slitted.

Finally Robert said, “Elspeth, I’ve been trying to sort things out. About Valentina. And I’m just very-confused.”

Silence. Robert could hear his nervous system whining in his head. It was a soft dark rainy day and the dining room was very gloomy.

“Okay, then. I’ll just sit here and talk to myself.” He paused. Elspeth waited. “Elspeth, what did you think was going to happen? You died almost a year and a half ago. I spent a year just-mourning you, and wishing I could die, thinking quite seriously in fact of killing myself, and just when things seemed to be lifting somewhat, the twins arrived. And if you think back, you had hinted or, actually, you’d said it more than once, that you were sending the twins here as a sort of substitute for yourself. And just as I began to regard them, or rather Valentina, in that light, you reappear-well, not appear, but you reveal yourself to be here, and while that’s absolutely wonderful it does seem as if we are rather stuck.”

Elspeth had a feeling about Robert then that she had never had when she was alive. He’s going to leave me, she thought. He doesn’t love me any more. It was something about the tone of his voice.

“Elspeth, if I could come and get you-if I knew where to go and how-or even if I could join you, I would do it.”

She went and stood next to him, afraid to hear what he would say next and afraid to interrupt him.

“But we’re both betwixt and between, aren’t we? I’m caught here in my body, and you’re caught-here, without any body at all; no body, no voice…I go downstairs and look at all these pages of writing, and I think I’m losing my mind.”

She caught his hand and made a jerky line with the pencil. When she got it under control she wrote: YOU WANT ME TO HAVE A BODY?

“It’s what I’m used to,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Elspeth let herself rise, until she was looking down at Robert from the ceiling; she was somewhat entangled in the chandelier. She began to run her hands through the little crystals and Robert looked up. It’s as though I’m a cloud, and he’s expecting rain.

“If you want me to give up Valentina I’ll do it.”

Is that what I want? she wondered. Why does he make me decide? She put her fingers to the base of one of the delicate flame-shaped light bulbs in the chandelier. It surged with light and exploded. Robert averted his face, put up his hands to shield his eyes. He sat that way for what seemed to Elspeth a long time. Then he said quietly, “Why did you do that?” He picked up the pencil, put his hand over the paper gingerly, avoiding the shards of light-bulb glass.

SORRY SORRY SORRY. BY MISTAKE-I WAS THINKING.

“Are you angry with me?”

HURT & CONFUSED, NOT ANGRY.

“Wait here, Elspeth. I’m going to clean up the glass. It will give us both time to think.” He went to the kitchen and found the dustpan and brush. After he had swept up all the slivers and replaced the bulb he sat down again and stared at the paper. He looks so depressed, Elspeth thought. It’s not good for him to sit in the dark scribbling with the dead lady. If this were a fairy tale the princess would come and save him. The least I can do is let him go.

IT’S ALL RIGHT, she wrote. IF VALENTINA MAKES YOU HAPPY, GO AHEAD.

“Elspeth-”

DON’T FORGET ME.

“Elspeth, listen…”

But she had left the room, and she did not come back to talk with him that day or for many days to come.

I T WAS very early morning and Valentina woke before Julia, as she often did. She gently disengaged herself from Julia’s arms and sat up in bed. The curtains were not quite closed; the light was pale and diffused. Something moved. Valentina wasn’t properly awake and she saw it without really seeing. She thought it was the Kitten, but the Kitten was sleeping beside her on the bed. Valentina looked harder, and as she did the thing unfolded itself from where it had been sitting by the window and Valentina realised that she was seeing Elspeth.

It was like seeing from a long distance; Elspeth was faint and not sharply defined. She looks just like Mom , Valentina thought, but there was something about the way the ghost looked back at her that was unfamiliar and alien. Elspeth moved her mouth as though she were speaking and began to walk towards the bed. Until that moment Valentina had not been afraid but suddenly she was. The fear woke her up completely: Elspeth vanished. Valentina felt a cold touch on her cheek, then nothing. She slid off the bed and ran out of the flat, down the front stairs, then stood panting next to the mail baskets in her pyjamas.

Robert had only been asleep for an hour or so, and it took him some time to become aware of the knocking at his door. His first thought was that the house must be on fire. He came to the door in his underwear and poked his head out, squinting.

Valentina said, “Can I come in?”

“Ah. Minute.” He walked to his bedroom and put on trousers and yesterday’s shirt, then went back to the door and opened it wide. He said, “Good morning,” and then, observing her more carefully, “What’s wrong?”

“I saw Elspeth,” she replied, and began to cry.

Robert put his arms around Valentina and said, “Hush,” to the top of her head. After she had recovered somewhat, he said, “I’ve been trying to see her for weeks. How did she look?”