Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

“That’s because you only know her as cold blasts of air and such. She was wonderful when she was alive.”

“Why is Elspeth not speaking to you?”

“Sorry?”

“You said she wasn’t…”

“Oh, so I did.” He got up to clear away the dishes. “It’s just a misunderstanding. It will pass.”

“Was she…was she more like Julia, or me?”

Robert shook his head. “She was herself. She was plucky, like Julia, but also restrained, like you. She was very clever and she liked to have her own way. But she usually worked it so that I enjoyed whatever it was she’d manoeuvred me into doing.”

“It freaks me out that she watches us and we don’t know she’s there.”

“Perhaps you could use that as an excuse to treat each other more kindly?”

“What did she tell you?” asked Valentina.

He looked surprised. “I can use my own eyes.”

She coloured deeply but did not reply. Robert said, “From what I’ve been able to glean, Elspeth and Edie had an agreement that Elspeth wouldn’t have anything to do with you and Julia. Elspeth seems to feel that she kept up her end of the bargain.” He returned the juice and butter to the fridge. “But now I think she would like to get to know you a bit. Since you’re here.” He began to run water into the sink. “If it’s any comfort, she probably spends less time hovering round than you imagine. She liked to be off on her own. If you put out a few books where she can get at them, or leave the TV on for her, I’m sure she’d let you be.”

“The TV’s broken,” Valentina reminded him.

“Let’s cope with that, then, shall we?” Robert was standing at the sink with his back to Valentina. He stared out of the window and thought of Elspeth. You must be bored silly. No one to talk to, nothing to read. He tried to imagine how Elspeth had felt when Valentina ran away from her in a panic. He turned to Valentina and said, “Do you mind if I go up later and try to talk to her?”

Valentina shrugged. “Sure, no problem. But why even ask? You’re in our flat all the time, talking to her.”

“I hadn’t realised I was so obvious.”

“We can use our own eyes.” She smiled.

“Touché.”

Valentina stood up and padded over to Robert. “Thank you for breakfast.” He had his hands in the soapy water and she darted a kiss at his face just as he turned to her.

“Ouch,” he said. “Let’s do that properly.” Each kiss was a little lesson. Robert enjoyed them, though he was beginning to wonder if they would ever lead to a more advanced curriculum. His hands were wet but he slid them under her pyjama top and ran his palms over her breasts.

She whispered, “That’s nice.”

“It could be much nicer,” he offered.

“Mmm. Not-yet.” She stepped back, looking confused. Robert smiled.

“I have to go upstairs,” Valentina said.

“Okay.”

“I’m going to talk to Elspeth.”

“That’s good,” he told her.

“And I’ll be nice to Julia.”

“Also good.”

“See you later.”

“Yes.”

When Valentina returned to their flat she found Julia at the dining-room table, fully dressed and reading the newspaper over a cup of coffee with a lit cigarette in her hand.

“Hi,” Valentina said.

“Hi,” Julia replied without looking up.

“I wish you wouldn’t smoke in the flat.”

“I wish you wouldn’t run downstairs and screw Robert when I’m sleeping but that doesn’t stop you, does it?” Julia kept her eyes on the newspaper.

“I haven’t-we haven’t-and that’s none of your business anyway.”

Julia looked at Valentina. “Whatever. Your pyjamas are all wet.” She put the cigarette to her lips, blew the smoke in Valentina’s direction. Valentina went to take a shower. By the time she was dressed Julia had left the flat.

Valentina collected a stack of paper and some pens and pencils. She spread the Ouija board Robert had made onto the coffee table, and placed the plastic planchette carefully in the middle of it. “Elspeth?” she called. “Are you here?”

The planchette began to move. GOOD MORNING, it said. As Valentina watched, she saw Elspeth materialise, hovering over the board, pushing the little planchette with great concentration. Elspeth looked up at her and smiled.

Valentina smiled back. “Tell me a story,” she said.

WHAT SORT OF STORY

“Tell me about you and Mom, when you were little…”

Elspeth tilted her head to the side and thought for a moment. She placed her finger inside the planchette and twirled it a few times. Then she knelt by the table and slowly began to spell: ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WERE TWO SISTERS NAMED EDIE AND ELSPETH…

M ARTIN HAD a toothache. It had been coming on for days. Now it had arrived in his mouth, like a train, and he was unable to think of anything else. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror and tried to see the painful tooth by leaning his head back, opening his mouth, and straining his eyes downward, but this merely caused him to fall over backwards and crack his shin on the bathtub. He gave up and took some codeine that Marijke had left over from her slipped disk. Then he went back to bed.

Later in the morning his phone rang. Since the phone was in bed with him, quite near his head, Martin felt as though it were his tooth that was ringing; the pain was excruciating. It was Marijke.

“Hallo, sailor, what of the sea?” She sounded quite cheerful.

“Still salty,” he said. “How are you?” He sat up and fumbled for his glasses.

“What’s wrong?” Marijke said. “You sound asleep.”

“Oh…I’ve got toothache.” He felt a little ashamed of himself; he wanted her to feel sorry for him.

“Oh, no .” Marijke was sitting in her flat, having a leisurely Saturday morning in her comfortable chair with a detective novel on her lap and a bowl of crisps to hand. She had decided to call Martin in a mood of magnanimity. Now his toothache groped through the phone and demanded that she attend to it. “Have you done anything for it? Which tooth?”

“One of the upper molars. On the right side. It feels like someone’s kicking my face.”

Neither of them said anything, because there was no obvious remedy. Even if Martin could have gone to the dentist, he had no dentist to go to: Dr. Prescott had left the NHS to practise privately; in the process he had dropped Martin from his patient list. Anyway, it didn’t matter, because Dr. Prescott didn’t do home visits. Finally Marijke said, “Maybe you should call Robert?”

“Why?”

“Maybe he could-no, never mind.”

Martin pressed his hand against his cheek. The tooth was throbbing more relentlessly. “He’s a clever chap, but I don’t think he knows much about dentistry.” Martin climbed out of the bed and walked into the bathroom. Something was different-but he couldn’t think what it was, not with his tooth pulsing whilst he was talking to Marijke and trying to find the bottle of codeine capsules- Ah, there . He swallowed two and wandered back to bed. As he got into bed he realised that he had just walked on the floor in his bare feet without giving it a thought. Hmm. The anxiety wasn’t there; no compulsion urged itself upon him. He turned his attention back to Marijke.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked him.

“Sleep?”

“Shall I call Robert, then?”

“All right-tell him to come up with a pair of pliers.”

“Ugh,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”

Later Martin was sitting at his kitchen table in a codeine fog, trying to eat lukewarm porridge. He heard Robert stumbling through the dark flat, calling his name. “Here. The kitchen,” Martin said, with effort.