Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

She stepped back a little. She hated that word. Beautiful . It meant nothing; it was too unreliable. What if they took out her eye? If her hair fell out in chunks? If her facial muscles lost their grip? Would he still say she was beautiful?

But William kept going. “I guess, if you pressed me, I’d say your face is a little…”

“What?” Irene urged. “Come on, I can take it.”

“Well, it’s your ears, actually. They’re really tiny. It’s almost like they’re trying to climb back into your head.”

“They are not!” she shouted, jumping up to find a mirror.

“They are too. You’ve basically got no ears.”

“ No ears? ” she shrieked at her reflection in a black-framed mirror without any discernable character, but it wasn’t her ears she stared at. It was him, behind her, smiling shyly. She turned and he grabbed her, and they collapsed together against the couch.

“Don’t worry,” he said, pushing her hair back as if to study her more closely. “It’s really very becoming, No Ears.”

“You take it back!” she shrieked.

Gently he brushed her hair back and kissed one of her allegedly nonexistent ears.

“There they are!” he exclaimed.

“There you are,” she said. At last.

• • •

Irene slept heavily on top of William, right there on the mahogany leather couch, and he didn’t dare budge for fear of waking her. She’d told him all about her day at the hospital and the first treatment, which would begin in just a few hours. Just before she’d nodded off, he’d made the mistake of asking why she didn’t have any family to visit for the holidays, or to take her to the hospital, for that matter. I left home when I was sixteen, she’d explained. I won’t get into all the reasons I had to go. I just never belonged there. People get born into the wrong families sometimes. Just like souls wind up in the wrong bodies occasionally. I have a very old soul. I think my soul belongs in the body of someone who’s already a hundred and ninety-five.

William couldn’t quite tell if she was kidding, but in the shadows, he could imagine her on top of him, all wrinkled and bird-boned, with hair as gray as moonlight.

Not like you , she’d continued. Your soul’s very young. It’s a boy’s soul. Now don’t be angry — see, that’s just what I mean — there’s no reason to be angry. Your body’s plenty manly. But inside you’re boyish. The way you took my clothes off, for one example. Kind of awestruck. Slow. It’s what I like most about you. Your soul is so boyish actually that it is almost girlish.

He hadn’t reacted especially well to this comment, and he regretted it now, as he lay there, replaying it all, and watching her dreaming.

So? she’d replied, I like a girlish soul. And a girlish body too, if we’re going to be honest. In fact, you should feel special because I haven’t slept with many boys. Far more girls than boys.

William hadn’t covered his surprise at this well either, and he was so flustered that he didn’t shift his lap away from Irene in time to cover his inevitable reaction to the idea of Irene with another woman.

You see? she had teased. Boyish.

Later, he asked again about her real family, and why she’d left them, but she was either pretending to be falling asleep or really nodding off.

I left them because they weren’t my family , she mumbled. I thought Alis-ahh was my family, but she said I was always leaving her. These were the last words to fall from her mouth before she slept.

William wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. What sort of a name was “Alis-ahh”? Had she said Alissa or Alicia ? Had he misheard?

So he sat, awake and unwilling to move, until the sun rose up over Queens.

• • •

Irene woke up at seven, vaguely aware she had only an hour to get to the hospital to begin her first day of treatment. She’d had one of the strangest dreams of her life — Dr. Zarrani had said it wasn’t uncommon for cancer patients to get them. Dreams like full-on acid trips. Surreal visions that didn’t always end right away when she woke up. The doctor had called them “healing dreams” but hadn’t explained what exactly was healing about them. Irene barely had time to think about it, however. She was hectically running around the apartment. When William asked why, she told him she had to get ready for her first infusion.

“Just wear what you had on yesterday,” he said.

“That’s — don’t be ridiculous.” She thought about taking back what she’d said about him being girlish, but she thought that might please him too much, and besides, when she opened up his wardrobe (made of real wood that was faux-weathered), she discovered that his closet was filled with clothes that she could easily wear. A pair of jeans that must not have fit William since college were a bit torn in the knees but looked quite good on her with the cuffs rolled and a yellow necktie as a belt. She spotted a pink dress shirt and rolled the sleeves around her elbows, cinched it in the back with a rubber band, and tucked that into the waistline of the jeans.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you had a girl living here with you,” she said, detaching a silvery pull cord from his window shade and retying it as a necklace.

“We’re going to a hospital, No Ears. What does it matter what you look like?” William groaned. She saw his eyes were sunken and bleary.

“It’s my first day, I have to make a good impression! Do you have any makeup?”

“Why would I? Let’s go! You look beautiful!”

“What did I say about that word?” she chided. “Come on, you don’t have anything? Who doesn’t have some concealer lying around for bad skin days? Or some lipstick a girlfriend left somewhere?” She eyed him curiously as she lifted a white panama hat down from his hat rack. “I know you’ve had girlfriends. Don’t tell me you bought this for yourself.”

William placed it on her head. “It was a gift from my mother.”

Irene took the hat off and studied it. “It’s excellent. I’d like to meet this woman.”

“If you will hurry up and get to your appointment, you can meet her tonight.”

Her eyes widened. She hadn’t expected him to take her up on it, but suddenly she wanted to meet Mrs. Cho very badly — if anyone could help uncover the real William beneath all this showroom furniture, it would be her.

He went on. “We’re having a big family dinner for Christmas Eve. You’ll love it. It’s like my own personal circle of hell.”

Irene clapped eagerly.

William began to say firmly, “If you keep delaying and we miss your appointment, then we’ll never get there in time…” but Irene was already halfway out the door.

• • •

They made it into the hospital just in time, and Irene enjoyed the holiday decorations much more now that William was there to look aghast alongside her. After filling out some more paperwork, they met with Dr. Zarrani, who guided them around the chemotherapy suite as if it were an apartment they might be interested in buying.

“No elves or reindeer in here!” Irene said.

“The design was done around the concept of a Japanese Zen garden,” she said. “You come in over here past the waterfall sculpture to check in each morning.”

All the light came from great brass lanterns, and to one side of the waiting area was an actual sandbox filled with rocks and little rakes, which two children were busy attempting to demolish. The tables, covered in magazines and catalogs, were all made of polished stone, and trimmed bonsai trees divided the waiting area to make it more peaceful.