Adam Haslett - You Are Not a Stranger Here

She kneels on the floor and starts packing the rest of their belongings, tears streaming down her face.

IT IS IN the middle of the night that he wakes and goes to sit by the window. The hotel is quiet and there is no traffic on the street. He can hear the steady, washing sound of the sea and he imagines the blankness of night out there in the northern waters.

Once, when he was a boy, his parents took him on a cruise ship, and after dinner one night his father and he stood on the deck, and Paul imagined what it would be like if he were to fall, disappearing into that vast, anonymous darkness. He can still remember how his heart thumped in his chest, how he clung to that railing that separated him from death.

Who could say all that has happened since then, or why? As a man, he has pictured his own end so many times the thought arrives like an old friend, there to reassure him. For an hour or more he sits, listening to the water. He is calm as he goes to the desk; calm, as he writes his note to Ellen.

I’ve been a burden long enough. I hope eventually you will remember the better times. Please forgive me.

A TAXI PICKS them up after breakfast and takes them to the station.

They board the front car of the train, storing their luggage on a rack by the door, and then they find a compartment to themselves. The overhead speaker announces the train will be held in the station for ten minutes, just as the schedule that Paul checked said it would.

Ellen roots in her handbag for something. Paul clutches the envelope in his pocket.

As she bends forward, her hair, parted in the middle, comes loose from behind her ears. He washed that velvet black hair the week they married, lying in the tub in her apartment, lathering her head as it rested on his chest. They would have three children, she said. There would be closets of toys and winter coats and summer holidays and a home to return to.

Enough, he thinks, and stops remembering. In Dr. Gormley’s waiting room, the coatrack would still persist. The beige watercooler. The dog-eared magazines. The humming. The air without scent. He sees Ellen, alone, walking the aisle of a supermarket, pausing, taking a can from the shelf. He feels incredibly tired.

From the window, Paul watches as the last of the passengers board at the far end of the platform. The rumble of the engine grows louder. He stands and bends down to kiss Ellen’s cheek.

“I’m just going to use the bathroom,” he says, and then can’t help adding, “You’ll be all right.”

“Sure,” she says distractedly, examining their tickets. He moves quickly down the passageway. At the end of the car, he takes his bag from the rack and steps off the train. The conductor is standing there on the platform.

“There’s a woman in number twelve,” Paul says to him.

“Could you give her this?”

The conductor takes the envelope from him with no apparent interest.

“I’ll see she gets it,” he says, putting the whistle between his lips.

MRS. McLAGGAN IS just returning from the shops as he enters the lane. She does not notice him until he is there at the door.

“Mr. Lewis,” she says, glancing down at his bag. “You’ve come for a visit. How good of you, Albert will be so pleased.”

Again there is the high, rotting odor as they step into the hall, the terrier trailing behind. In the kitchen, he watches Mrs.

McLaggan take her tins and vegetables from her cloth bag.

“Colder this morning,” she says. “The haar will be here soon. You won’t be able to see a thing in a day or two for all the mist and fog.”

The groceries put in place, she fills the kettle at the sink.

“Albert enjoyed that yesterday, really he did.”

“How do you manage?” Paul asks. “Knowing he’s going to die.”

She arranges milk and sugar on a tray.

“It’ll sound odd, I know, but the idea’s not so peculiar to me actually. I used to nurse on a ward, you see. Before you were born, dear, during the war. They were desperate for people.

Adverts up in all the shops about how the young women had to come south. I’d never been. A hospital outside Southampton’s where they put me. We got the ones who weren’t going back. Most were healthy enough, just lost a leg or an arm… There were others, though, dying ones. Not much to do for them really but keep them comfortable if you could. Some of the nurses, they were young, you see—we all were—and they would tell the dying ones things would be fine. But I have to say, Mr. Lewis, I couldn’t bring myself to reassure them like that. Struck me as a lie.”

She pours boiling water into the pot.

“The beds had wheels on. After the doctors’ rounds I’d roll the sicker ones up next to each other so they could talk. They were just glad someone else knew, I think.”

The kettle is rinsed and set back on the counter. Once again, they ascend the stairs, Mrs. McLaggan carrying the tray.

Albert is asleep, his red face turned to one side on the pillow. Mrs. McLaggan sets the tray down on the side table.

“I’ll leave you with him now,” she says, laying a hand on Paul’s shoulder.

When she has gone, he perches on the stool by the bed.

Here, he can make out the boy’s features hidden beneath the rotting skin: the thin lips and pointed nose, the bony forehead of his Celtic ancestors, the corners of his skull showing at the temples. Paul lets the stench rise up into his nostrils, breathing it in freely. It will not be long now, he thinks, for either of them. The boy’s head moves slightly on the pillow and he wakes.

“Would you like to hear another story?” Paul asks. Albert nods. It is not thanks Paul sees in his expression but forgiveness.

“Tel me about the kings.”

WHEN IT FINALLY arrived, the minister’s letter came in a typed envelope bearing no return address. It was signed at the bottom in careful script. The request had been seen to, the arrangements made. The local council would require a check; an address was given. James read it on the stairs up to his flat. When he’d found his keys and got inside, he put the letter on the mantel to make sure he wouldn’t forget.

Simon, his manager at the estate agents, had initially thought it odd that James should want his holiday at such short notice, and all four weeks at once. But it was midsummer, nothing selling, the time as good as any. He’d said James could leave right away if all his work was in order, which it was—he had seen to that before making his request. He stood now in his living room, removing from his briefcase the bits and pieces he had collected from his desk, placing the framed picture of his father on the side table.

“How ’bout a drink before you head off?” his redheaded colleague, Patrick, had offered. He had been kind and helpful from the beginning, yet James was caught off guard by his suggestion, a first in their yearlong acquaintance.

What would he have to say, sitting in a pub with this fellow he’d spent time thinking about? Over the partition, colleagues had looked on.

“Perhaps another time,” was all James had managed to respond. The groceries put away, he showered, and afterward stood before the mirror, wrapped in a towel. Three or four times he drew the razor over the taut flesh of his chin before he was satisfied the stubble was gone. Shaving made him look younger than twenty-five; with his hair cut the right way he could still pass for a university student. He examined the skin beneath his eyes, noticing a little flaking, the hint of a rash just below the surface. As he stepped back from the mirror, the latter disappeared, and he observed his smooth face with a modicum of contentment; not so bad, he thought. In his bedroom, he found a clean T-shirt and pair of boxers, folded neatly in the bureau drawer. The room, as usual, was tidy: the bed made, the curtains fastened in place, laundry piled in the corner hamper. He returned his suit to its hanger, fitted his brogues with shoehorns, and put his tie on the rack fixed to the inside of the wardrobe door, wondering, all the while, how long this order would last.