Jensen Beach - Swallowed by the Cold - Stories

She spent the rest of the afternoon on the balcony or else on the narrow, soft couch in the sitting room, reading. Days passed quickly when she drank. By five o’clock the sun had dipped behind the building to the west and the temperature dropped. Louise had nearly finished the first bottle of wine. When her neighbors started to arrive home after the workday, she went inside and sat at the kitchen island. She was careful about appearances. Sometimes she threw away bottles instead of taking them to the recycling because she didn’t want her neighbors to see how much she drank.

She fixed herself something to eat and opened the second bottle of wine. She watched the news while she ate. Dusk settled over the courtyard and by eight it was dark. She shut the television off and took a thin blanket from the couch and returned to the balcony. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. Outside the apartment, she could smell her own inside life distinctly on the blanket. The courtyard was dark. She tried to find a pattern in the lit-up windows on the building opposite. Two dark, one light. Three light, one dark, three light. Windows lit up and darkened and she could never get past a third position in the pattern and soon gave up trying and enjoyed the evening. Occasionally, the building’s front door would open loudly and slam shut. The hall light switched on and then off with every neighbor who came home or left. She heard voices, a television, laughter. Barbro Ekman’s apartment was still dark.

She was the one who’d ended things with Arman. She’d gotten pregnant and the idea that the baby might be his had frightened her. Of course, the timing wasn’t quite right. The last time she’d slept with Arman was weeks before the likely conception date. She’d been relieved to understand this when the midwife circled the estimated due date on the colorful chart she held in front of Louise and Martin in the cramped exam room at the thirteen-week checkup. Louise felt as if she’d risked something great and survived. The chances of that happening twice were small. She hadn’t told Arman she was pregnant. It was better that he didn’t know. Just after the birth, the first time she held Jonas against her chest, she felt the sticky wetness of her own blood on his body, she touched his hair. It was dark, curled wet with blood and amniotic fluid. Until the midwife had washed him and given him back to her, she was terrified that perhaps Jonas was Arman’s after all, that she’d miscalculated some crucial fact.

The heavy front door of the building creaked open. The light in the front hall came on. It sparked out into the courtyard, revealing a chair and the sharp contrasts of shadowed corners. The door slammed shut. She listened to footsteps in the stairwell. Her wine glass was empty and she got up to fill it. In the warmth of the apartment, she felt a chill in her feet. She filled her glass and held the bottle up in front of her to check how much wine was left. Just over half.

She took the bottle with her back to the balcony and sat in the darkness. She was warm and didn’t need the blanket. The lights in Barbro Ekman’s apartment had been turned on. Through the curtains, she saw movement. She watched the windows closely. There were three, spaced evenly from one end of the building to the other. Kitchen, living room, bedroom. There was a bathroom and a small dining room on the other side of the apartment. She knew this because she’d once been inside, years before, to help Barbro Ekman move a painting from the hall to the bedroom. Barbro Ekman had been dead for eight months. She was a young ghost. Louise watched the figure move from window to window, its dark shape heavy in the living room where the light was brightest, faint in the bedroom.

Martin wouldn’t be home for hours. He never came home when he said he was going to. She couldn’t remember how Arman Jahani had died. Probably some disease. Most people die in unassuming ways like that. Quiet but painful struggles consisting of medicines and doctor visits, hope established, quickly abandoned. It was so boring. Better to die like Barbro Ekman had. By the time Jonas was very young, two or three perhaps, she’d nearly forgotten that she had once thought he might be Arman’s son. She couldn’t remember what it had been like to feel any guilt about it. The wine was good, but it had left a sticky film in her mouth and she didn’t want the rest. She got up to find something else to drink.

In the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of scotch from the bottle that Martin saved for special occasions and guests. She didn’t like scotch, particularly, but this tasted good. It stung her throat. She coughed, took another sip. What would it have been like to raise Arman’s son? Without imaging any details she felt the idea forming, shapely and full, and was able to hold it firmly in her mind for just a moment. What did it matter? Arman was dead. That was the simplest truth of all. Would Martin have figured it out? He’d been a good father, a little distant, a little too rooted in his work, perhaps, but that was normal. Jonas had had a good childhood. She was happy she hadn’t had to carry a lie as big as his life with her all this time.

She emptied her glass, winced, searched the burn of the scotch in her throat for pleasure. On the balcony she filled the empty glass with the rest of the wine and sat in her chair and drank. In Barbro Ekman’s apartment, Arman’s real child was alive. It was funny how her path and Arman’s, such a ridiculous metaphor, had converged. He would have found it amusing. She was sure of it.

The figure came to the window in the kitchen, pulled the curtains to one side, and opened the window. Arman had a daughter. Louise watched her sit at the table, the light from the lamp forming a bright circle at the center of the table. She was drinking something from a mug. Coffee or tea, maybe wine, Louise thought.

She and Martin had lived in the building longer than everyone but grouchy old Jan Lindblom down on the ground floor and Barbro Ekman, of course, before she’d died. Back in the kitchen, Louise poured another finger of whiskey. It tasted a little like wine but it wasn’t bad. In the cupboard, she found an unopened package of cookies. Shortbread, the kind Martin liked.

The stairwell was dark. She took the first steps carefully, her hand against the smooth wall as a guide. As she descended, the light from the courtyard brightened and eventually she could walk without fear of falling. Outside, she looked up at her balcony. The light from her kitchen was inviting, soft orange and yellow. Warm colors. She would never do this sober.

The name was on the mail slot on the door. Jahani. She knocked. Footsteps. The young woman answered. She was beautiful, as far from the middle as Louise’s son was near it. “Hello,” the young woman said.

“I live here,” said Louise.

“I’m sorry?” the young woman said.

“I meant I live in this building and I wanted to welcome you.”

“That’s very nice,” the young woman said. “Thank you so much.” She looked back into the apartment. Louise peered in too. There were open boxes, a leaning stack of blankets and towels, an empty bookcase turned at a funny angle at the end of the hall. “I was unpacking.” She smiled. Louise could tell she was embarrassed.

Louise smiled back and didn’t move. “You’ve just moved in,” she said.

“Officially tomorrow,” the young woman said. “Getting a head start. Sara,” she said and held out her hand.

Louise took it. “Louise,” she said. It was difficult to recall exactly what Arman had looked like. She might have seen him in Sara. But had he been tall? Sara was tall, taller than Louise. He had dark hair and she remembered him as very thin, but also strong. Sinewy was the word for it. He had thick veins on his arms. “I live just over there,” she said. She held the box of cookies out to indicate the direction of her apartment.