Sara Majka - Cities I've Never Lived In - Stories

We went back to his apartment. He said, Just say it.

It wasn’t yours.

It was a picture of me.

It wasn’t yours, I said. I found a painting that looked like me, but I didn’t take it.

Well, I regret it, he said. I took it and regret it, if that’s what you want.

That’s not what I want.

He touched the side of my face, my cheeks rashy from the cold. I tried to move but he held me. You just need to stand here, he said. It’s okay, just stand where you are. That’s all you need to do. He brought his face in and kissed me, gripping me as if holding me up.

In the bedroom, he didn’t turn on the lights — I didn’t even see a lamp, just a bed and nightstand — but he kept the door open. He stood over me as I sat on the iron bed. Studying me, trying to figure out how to go about it. I wriggled my jeans off and sat there in my wool sweater and underpants. We lay down. He slid the sweater to my armpits. I was bare underneath, with small breasts and nipples scratched red from the wool.

The hall light caught the cream of my legs and the sweater at my armpits. He leaned over to pick up his drink. Cold drops landed on my stomach. He drew a finger connecting them, then we kissed, kissing so hard that it seemed wrong, the way he still held his drink to his side. He paused to take a sip. Stop that, I said.

Teasing you, he said, holding it out for me. As I drank, he pulled down my underwear. He still wore his jeans, and he climbed on top of me so the fly of his pants rubbed into me. He took the drink from me. I took it back, drained it, and put it on the table.

I could do with a cigarette, he said.

Are you going to take your clothes off?

You could take them off for me.

I could, I said. Or you could just do it. Which would be easier.

That’s sexy.

I’m just saying.

I pushed him away. He undressed. First the shirt, shaking his head when it came off to get his hair out of his eyes. Then the pants, down to his boxers. Sitting next to me, pulling them down to put on a condom, then climbing back on top. After so many years of waiting you wouldn’t think I would have noticed so much about the ceiling, that there were places where it flaked, and blooms of moisture. I even worried there might be serious water damage, and I almost asked, but his eyes were squished, and there was a lot of focus. A lot of the bed hitting the wall. And all that sighing I did when I lifted my arms to clutch the bars and he clutched my arms. To show my pleasure, I lifted my knees to cradle him, because he was about to come, and I wanted him to be cradled when he did.

After, we sat together, still naked on the bed. My knees tight to me. His arm around me, his lips in my hair. Why the fear? he said.

How much did he give you for it? I asked.

Five thousand dollars.

And you regret it?

I regret it. Anything else?

No, that’s all.

After that, we kept meeting at the bar, drinking and going home together. Sometimes we’d stay in the living room, me straddling him on the sofa, his head rolling back and forth. Other times me propped on the kitchen counter with him behind, both of us facing the Frigidaire, the dish towel looped on the handle.

We stayed up late in bed, looking through art books. Wrapping the sheet around me, going into the bathroom to wash up, sleeping next to him in the cold room, waking up too late, the shock of cold from the faucet, running into my classes un-prepared, still with the smell of him on me.

One morning, as I was coming out onto the steps — looking down at the old houses of the West End, slipping my arms into my coat — Franz walked by. My hair disheveled, short strands poking up, my face blotchy. He held his violin case, and wore the thick wool coat I always told him made him look Eastern European. The case small in his hands. He stood under a tree; its roots made the sidewalk rise. He walked up to me and, without any harshness, said, You’ll have to decide at some point.

We walked through the streets, past the trees with circle fences, the bottoms of our coats flapping open then closed with our steps. I don’t mean between the two of us, he said. I’m not an idiot. But here, he said, patting a hand to his chest, with you, you’ll have to decide. Do you understand what I’m saying? I think you’re making a mistake.

Let me do it then, I said. Let me do what I’m going to do.

The answer wasn’t for Franz, but for my mother, many years too late. Once, when I was a child, she took me to a mental health clinic. She knew one of the doctors and wanted me examined. Afterward, the friend let her walk me through a set of doors and down a hallway. The hallway ended at a cube, with windows and children in bright clothing. There were many children, some drawing, some sitting against the wall with dark circles under their eyes. Some crying. My mother behind me, hands on my shoulders, keeping me there, until at last she turned me and we went back.

When we opened the outside door, you could feel the air all hot and open; it’s what freedom would always feel like to me. That’s what I once told Franz, what freedom always felt like to me: like school being let out for the summer and seeing all the school buses in a row ready to take you home. My mother opened the passenger door and waited for me to buckle before closing it. She got in and buckled her belt but stayed with her hands on the wheel, not putting the key in. We were going to drive without keys. I liked that. She stared at the parking space ahead as if concentration was necessary to avert disaster. She said, This is what happens. Did you see those children? Did you see them in the room? Please, Anne. What good does this do any of us?

While we drove, I waited for the ocean; sometimes we would stop and feed the seagulls from tissue-thin bread bags, the bags tumbling in the breeze, floating and sparkling.

Eli eventually moved away. After a few years, I learned from a friend that he had married a painter, a Swiss woman, and was living in Cambridge. I found a picture of him online, taken at a gallery opening, and I almost didn’t recognize him, he looked so happy, so much at peace.

Years ago, I came across an article with the headline “Local History Professor Caught Stealing Maps.” Under the headline, I was surprised to find the name of a man who had once been a friend of mine. Years ago, not long after the girl had gone missing, I had watched him leave the library. I was under the shade of a tree, and he didn’t see me. There was an intensity about him — as if everything was wrapped into one emotion, not sadness, or despair; the closest I could come was confusion, but it wasn’t really that.

After a time his face relaxed, and he continued down the stairs. I felt sympathy for him and thought I understood that moment on the stairs, what it was for him, but I’d been wrong.

In those days, during the time of the lost girl, I was living with my husband in a grand but decrepit loft apartment in an area of Portland that was known as resurgent, a description that carried more than a little wistfulness. Near us, an upscale restaurant was tucked into an old brick warehouse. We would sometimes sit at the bar, eating complimentary cheese straws and ordering the cheapest bottles of wine before sweeping back up the street in our mismatched secondhand clothes, my crimson coat and rubber boots, Richard’s gray cashmere coat that must have once belonged to a wealthy man but now very much belonged to him — the military lapels, the satin lining, the soft matted pills under the arms.

We lived on the third floor of a building that looked vacant from the street. Even when climbing the central stairs — a rattling, metal affair that echoed with every step — we felt an air of abandonment. Our apartment, too, was cavernous. In the middle of the space, we had created a sitting area out of Chinese screens. It was silly, really, looking like something the Red Cross might have set up as a triage area if Chinese screens had been considered appropriate. Inside sat two chairs, a newspaper rack, and a coffee table piled with books and newspapers.