Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

“’Scuse me, dear, could you give me a hand?” a voice behind him says. He turns to see an old woman buttoned in a green wool coat. She stands no more than a yard away, holding a grocery bag. He can’t understand how she’s come this near without his notice. As he looks more closely, he sees it is the old woman from the restaurant, her brown eyes set in wrinkled skin.

“Didn’t mean to scare you, dear. Just that I’ve dropped a bit of the shopping. Shouldn’t have brought Polly down before stopping at the house.” She glances back along the cliff, where a white terrier emerges from the mist. A brown paper bag lies on the ground before her.

Mutely, he kneels to retrieve it.

“The chemist—always a new something or other,” she mutters. When she has the bag safely in hand, she says,

“You’re American.”

Paul stares at her, as if at an apparition.

“Come for the course, have you?… Have you come over for the golf?”

He shakes his head.

“Air force? Over at Leuchars, are you?”

“No. My wife. She’s…”

“She’s what, dear?… At the university?”

He nods.

“Right. Lots of the foreigners over for that. Nothing like the golf, though. Last summer was dreadful. We had the British Open. You’d think Christ had risen on the eighteenth green. More telly people than putters as far as I could tell. Awful. You live in Texas?”

He shakes his head. “Pennsylvania.”

“Is that near Texas?”

“No.”

She leans down to pat the head of her terrier, who has scurried up to meet them. “Your wife’s in the books and you’ve got the day to yourself.”

Paul says nothing. She comes a step closer, barely two feet from him. “Not an easy place to entertain yourself,” she says, leaning her head forward. “Without the golf, I mean.”

She searches his face, as though straining to read the fine print of a map. “Would you like to come for a cup of tea?”

HE DOES NOT know why he goes with her. She is here and has asked and so he goes.

They walk down past the clock tower. She moves slowly, They walk down past the clock tower. She moves slowly, stopping to look back for the dog, checking her bags and packages. She speaks of the university students, complains of the noise they make during term, says the tourists are generally polite but she doesn’t like all the coach buses.

They take a right turn, then a left down a narrow street of two-story houses. At the door of one, the old woman pauses and finding the key in the pocket of her coat, inserts it in the lock.

The dog runs ahead into the darkened hall and the old woman follows, leaving Paul standing at the entrance. As he steps into the house, a heavy, warm odor envelops him. His first reaction is to close his nostrils, breathe only through his mouth. Then, tentatively, he sniffs. It is flesh he smells, not sweat or the dankness of a locker room, but something close. A rotting. Breathing through his mouth, he advances down the hall toward a light that has come on in the next room. He won’t want to stay long, he thinks, wondering how anyone could live with such a smell. She’ll comment on it, make an apology of some sort, he feels sure. But when he reaches the kitchen, she is calmly stowing her groceries.

“Have a seat, dear. Tea won’t be a moment.”

Though it is day, the curtains are drawn and a naked bulb provides the only light. He perches on the edge of a chair by the kitchen table, sampling the air again. The stench tickles his nostrils.

The kitchen looks a bit disheveled, the counters cluttered with jars and mugs, but otherwise it is like any other kitchen.

There is nothing here to explain such an odor. He imagines naked, sweating bodies packed into the other rooms of the house.

“I’ve got some biscuits round here somewhere, what did I do with them? Do you take milk and sugar?”

Watching the old woman shuffle past the sink, he feels disoriented and tries to confirm to himself where he is, the day of the week, the country they are in.

“Milk, dear?”

“I saw you in the restaurant last night, didn’t I?” he says.

“Yes, dear, you did. Sometimes I come and sit in the evenings, if I can find someone for Albert. He’s my grandson. You’ll meet him.”

She arranges cookies on a plate. “Have you been visiting elsewhere, then?”

“We passed through Edinburgh,” he says.

“Terrible place. Full of strangers. What do you do in the States?”

Paul has to repeat her words to himself before replying.

“I used to teach,” he says.

For a moment, he sees the classroom on the third floor of the high school, its scratched plastic windows, chairs of chrome metal, beige desks affixed, a map of America, the portrait of Lincoln tacked to the back wall. The students staring, waiting for him to speak.

“How wonderful. Noble profession, teaching is,” she says, placing a mug on the table beside him. “There’s sugar there if you like.”

She puts her own mug down and takes a seat opposite.

“And what is it you taught?”

“History,” he says.

“Dates. Yes. Albert’s very good with dates… Are you a father?”

“No,” he says, wondering why he is here.

“A mixed blessing children are, of course. Up to all sorts of things. When they’re young, though—nothing like it. You taught young ones, did you?”

“Teenagers.”

“Difficult they are.”

There is a pause. The old woman leans forward in her chair.

“You’re tired,” she says.

“Sorry?”

“You’re tired, dear, under the eyes. You’ve been sleeping poorly.”

Paul feels a surge of anger. He wants to yell at the old woman. How dare she presume? But there is something so frank in her expression, so lacking in judgment, he can’t bring himself to do it.

“Jet lag, I suppose,” he says.

He sips at his mug. The odor leaks in. He feels he might heave the liquid up.

“Have you ever had fresh mutton?” she asks.

He shakes his head.

“An excellent meat. My friend Sibyl gets it straight from the abattoir. Rosemary, wee spot of mint jelly. Quite delicious. Perhaps you might come for dinner. I doubt they’ll be giving you any Scottish meat in the hotels.”

The smell has got to him now and he is beginning to feel dizzy. “What time is it?”

“It’s early, dear. Just gone half eight.”

“I should go back.”

“There’s no hurry, surely.” She stirs her tea. “Just out for a walk this morning, were you?”

He looks up at her. “My wife,” he says. “She’ll be waking up. I really have to go.” He stands up from his chair.

“Well, if you must rush, then—pity though, you’ve just arrived.

But there we are, you’ll come tomorrow. For dinner—two o’clock. It’ll rain in the morning.”

“No… I don’t know.”

“Not to worry about it now,” she says, patting him on the shoulder. They move into the front hall. “It’s getting cold this time of year. The haar will cover the town by the end of the week. You’ll want to keep inside for that.”

She holds open the front door. When he steps onto the street, he breathes in the cold air, finding it less of a relief than he’d hoped.

HE WALKS TO the end of the cobbled street, looking one way and the other, forgetting the route that brought him here.

Steps lead to doors on the second floor of row houses, smoke rising from squat chimneys. A child passes on a bicycle. He watches the little figure vanish around a corner and begins moving in the same direction.

He follows the sound of voices down onto Market Street. In the square, vendors arrange stalls of plants and secondhand books. A man wearing a placard reads from the book of Revelation, while his wife, standing silently by, passes literature to those who will take it. There are etchings of the seashore in the dry basin of the fountain. He walks slowly through, past tables covered with baked goods and china, testing the scent of the air as he goes.