Prick of the Spindle: Fiction: Rossi: Foreign

Foreign
By Alan Rossi

Gert Svenson moved into the house some afternoon in the fall. It was after my wife, Lena, had moved in with a man named Duncan. I was on the porch of my new apartment, which was attached to a larger house with other apartments. I didn’t know yet, but Gert was taking the apartment above mine. I was watching the mountain above our neighborhood, the trees orange and yellow and brown. The mountain loomed well in those colors. I was thinking about building a thatch hut and moving into it. Living in a hut seemed like it might solve a lot of my problems.

Gert walked up with a duffel bag. He had wavy brown hair which was slicked back, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip, and a kind of German or Austrian pout on his face. He was slim, tall, wearing a pressed white oxford, neat jeans, and shiny black shoes. He lit the cigarette.

I don’t have any furniture. My flight got in early this morning and I’ve been walking around town. I came from Oxford. My refrigerator isn’t working, either. He took a drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke at the roof of the porch.

We went inside my apartment. I was glad Gert was there, giving me something to do, making me forget about Lena. We went through my apartment, two rooms. In one, I had a sofa against a wall, a coffee table, and a television. The other room had only a mattress in the middle of the room. The walls were white, no pictures, no incense burning, no stereo going, no shelf of DVDs or books. You had to walk through the apartment, through both rooms to get to the kitchen and the phone. Out on the bed were clothes and magazines and things.

He walked quietly; he might have tiptoed through the bedroom, I didn’t look down. In the small kitchen, I handed him the phone. We stood in the small kitchen pressed close to one another, he near the refrigerator, me near the sink, his duffel bag on the floor between us.

We found a sofa at the Franklin Street Goodwill store. It was brown and had a duct-tape patch on the arm at one end. We lifted it onto the roof of my Sentra and a lady in Goodwill, heavy-set with glasses and a floral dress, gave us rope to tie the sofa to the car. She watched us set the sofa on the roof, shivering in her thin dress. She watched us tie it down.

She undid all the rope and started clean over, pulling rope through the windows of the Sentra and wrapping it around the top of the sofa. Then she made some serious boy scout knots. When we finished she said, Good to go, slapped the top of the Sentra, and went back inside.

Gert sat in my car smoking on the way back. He asked twice if I minded if he smoked then he let the window down. Cold air got in. My windshield fogged up.

I’m a mathematician at the university, he said, smoking. I thought I was going to be famous.

No, he said. I teach introductory courses. I’ve resigned myself. I play too much online chess. He grabbed my hand that was wiping the windshield. I’ll bite it off, he said. You’re making it worse.

I told him I worked in insurance. He let go of my hand and didn’t say anything to that. We made a turn onto Buffalo Street, a long road up a hill toward the mountain that curved up to our apartment house. The sofa bumped on the roof of the car. Whoa, I said. It bumped again and I felt the bump in my seat. Then the sofa made a skidding sound.

I pulled off to the side of the road and put on my safety blinkers. I turned and looked back at the sofa sitting upright in the middle of two lanes. A truck went around it and the driver stared at me. I waved. Let’s save it from danger, I said.

Lena came to get her record player when Gert was sitting in my family room one day. She knocked on the door and walked in. Gert was eating a bowl of ice cream, watching a movie on my television.

I came in from the kitchen, where I was making a leftover taco. I was trying to keep the shell hard and warm up the meat, so I was scraping the meat out. Then I was going to microwave the meat, but I was breaking the shell with the scraping. That’s Gert, I said. He works at the university. He was going to be a famous mathematician.

I don’t really want that going around, Gert said. That was a confidence thing.

She was going to be a great philosopher, I said, walking around the room with the taco mess on my plate. Look at the two great people, I said.

He got up and went out of the apartment. Lena went over to the hall closet and got in. She pressed around among the jackets and sweaters, falling into all the hanging clothes, clothes she had bought me. She moved boxes, banged something. It was a big closet, and I had my bike in there, and she must’ve knocked it because it fell in the closet. She got me the bike, too. We did a lot of mountain biking together, though neither of us was any good at it. After a minute she came out with her record player. She stood holding the record player to her chest, her arms crossed over the record player.

I nodded. I don’t have any records, I said. I mean, I had them, but I burned them in a bonfire.

Duncan has a lot of records, she said. I don’t really like them, though, but his player just broke, so. She held out the player she had been holding to her chest like it was an answer. She ended a lot of sentences with ‘so.’ I felt like I hadn’t looked at her yet, like she had walked in and she was like a piece of furniture or a noise you get used to. I felt like I hadn’t looked at her in a long time and I was glad to be looking at her. Her face was pale, her brown hair making her face pear-shaped. She wore jeans and a big wool sweater. She looked so warm.

She cocked her head a little and her hair fell from one side of her face. Why do you say that now? she said. She walked out the front door with the record player and I followed her. Don’t follow me, she said.

Wait, I said. Let’s go buy a record and listen to it this afternoon. Stay here this afternoon. Remember when you got me into records. You always had me read the liner notes before we listened to them.

She looked at me then turned and went to her car and drove out down the street. I went up to Gert’s apartment.

It got colder. My car stopped running smooth and then it stopped running. It snowed at the end of October even though earlier in the week it had been in the seventies. I started walking to work with Gert. When past winters came, Lena and I swam at the university pool because she had a pass. The indoor pool was warm, like a steam room, and we swam laps, played water basketball, then sat at the edge of the pool with our feet in. The pool was domed with skylights in the ceiling. I like it here because it feels like a terrarium, Lena had said one time. Like we’re living in a terrarium. Wouldn’t that be fun, having someone looking down on you in a terrarium? Then we would go into the cold winter outside and still feel warm from the pool. In the time we were married, she made me do a lot of things I had never done, like the pool or mountain biking, though I had looked down on these things before as boring; she made things interesting, I don’t know how.

Now I was walking to work with Gert everyday. He made coffee in the morning. Living in the apartment below him made me know him. He woke, ground coffee beans, smoked outside while the coffee was brewing, went inside to put the coffee in mugs and brought them down each morning. We had first sips in my apartment on my sofa then we started walking to our jobs.

Why do you say things like that? I said. I hate it when you say things like that.

Sometimes in my apartment I got her smell. Her shampoo or odor eaters. I’d sniff around like a dog, on all fours, trying to find where it came from, hoping to find a sock behind a sofa or a hair tie with hair smell on it. Lena had bad sweating feet, which at first was funny and I made fun of her for. Later, it became a point of contention. Those feet are absurd, I told her in one fight. Your face is absurd, she told me. We found little ways to hate things about each other. How it happened, I don’t know. The things I liked, how she clicked her jaw when worried, or asked me to tell her she was pretty, or said incomprehensible things in her sleep, or knew far too much about cat breeds, became things I hated. Then when she was gone, those things seemed okay again, good even, wonderful. I had kept a pad by the bed and wrote down the things she said in her sleep and numbered them. I found it one night under the bed. At night I read the pad before I went to bed. I liked three of them more than others: 1. There’s no real question here; 2. I can’t find the lock; 3. When they’re coming, the animals have to be safe. The words she said in her dreams were never words about me, but one day, I remembered, she had found the pad. She had said she didn’t think it was like me to be so sentimental or caring. I said I didn’t know whether she was giving me a compliment or not.

My mother called one morning when Gert was over making omelets. She asked if Lena and I were coming for Thanksgiving. I told her I had forgotten about Thanksgiving and I had forgotten to mention that Lena had moved out. I had forgotten to tell my mother too much, probably. I kept things to a minimum for her.

You could go get her back, she said. But that would take a grand gesture. And you’ve never been very good at grand gestures.

They elude him, Gert said – he must have been able to her hear on the phone; she spoke loudly. Tell her I understand, he said. Tell her I have the same problem.

One day when I got home from work, Gert was in my apartment. I don’t know how he got in, but I didn’t ask. I was glad to come home to someone. It was getting close to Thanksgiving and he was in my kitchen, cutting up food, rubbing steaks with spice, and after an hour, the apartment began to smell good.

I don’t like turkey, he said. So I made something called Jamaican Jerk flank steak.

It better, he said. When we finish it, we’ll have strength to do what needs done.

Eat this Jamaican Jerk flank steak. It’ll give us the strength to do what needs done.

I’m sorry. It’s not funny? It sounds funny in my head. Let’s think about a big gesture.

Neither of us had a working car so we had to take a cab to Duncan’s house. I had been there one time when Lena and Duncan invited me over for drinks and dinner. Before dinner, but a little after drinks, I had thrown a coffee table book on Magritte into a sliding glass door. The door didn’t break and Duncan said it was time for me to leave. I told him it was time for him to say something original. Then I said I was sorry and left.

Outside Duncan’s house the man driving the cab told us, for the third time, that we were being charged for sitting around.

The man driving the cab turned in the seat and looked at us. What is this? he said. Why are we sitting in suburbia like this? I want in. What are you guys running?

The man turned back around in his seat and gripped the steering wheel. I’ll be the getaway driver, he said. Which house?

I reached up through the front of the cab and pointed out the windshield. When I pointed, I began to get nervous, and I felt my heart really going in my chest. That greenish-looking one, I said, pointing. With that weird jockey statue in the lawn.

A lawn jockey, the cab driver said. I have a feeling we’re conspicuous. There are no other cars parallel parked on this street. Not to mention, we’re in a cab.

Gert and I went up to the house and knocked on the door. We waited. It was cold out, flurries skittering around on the pavement, the sky a slate grey. I rubbed my hands and put them in my pockets. I kept rubbing, then putting my hands in my pockets, and tapping my feet and shivering, though I wasn’t very cold. I told myself to steady myself, to think bland, unemotional thoughts. It was hard not to think about Lena, though, holding her, bringing her home. It was exciting that I was going to be bringing her home.

Gert knocked on the door again and rang the doorbell. It might work, I said. I stared at the door and felt my eyes widen.

After a couple minutes, Gert cupped his hands to the windows around the front door. Not home, he said. It’s really cold out today. Let’s go.

Wait, I said. I looked in the windows. The house was dark. I could see the family room, carpet on the floor, a nice sofa, wall-mounted plasma television, flowers in two vases. A cat was staring at me from the dining room. He opened his mouth so that I knew he was meowing. I tried the door, but it didn’t open.

Let’s try around back, I said. Let’s try the windows and the back door. Gert and I hunched down and walked around the house. There weren’t many trees in the neighborhood, the grass was dead, the sky was grey, and I felt exposed. We got around back, where there were the backs of other houses. A cold dog was out on a tie-out. We peeked in windows, tried them. We went to the sliding door that led out to the patio, but it was locked, too. The back patio was made of brick and there were several bricks stacked in a far corner of the patio. Gert picked one up.

I said okay and Gert backed up, held the brick above his head. He backed up some more. The cabbie came around the house. What’re you doing? I said. You’re the getaway driver.

I saw you guys come around the back, he said. I thought something was happening. What’re you doing, breaking and entering? Put that brick down.

Gert put it down and the cab man walked up to the sliding glass door. Why didn’t you tell me this was a job? he said.

The cab man pulled something from his pocket, fiddled it into the keyhole, and slid the glass door open. We went inside. It was cold in the house. The cat came up to us and meowed, rubbed around our ankles. We were in the kitchen, among granite counter tops, a stainless steel refrigerator. Everything shined. The cat walked on the counter.

Let’s look around, Gert said. He opened up cabinets, drawers, the pantry, and I followed him. He went upstairs and I told the cab man to stay down here, to not move, this wasn’t a job.

It’s okay, he said. I don’t want to steal anything. Can I watch some TV? Can I turn up the heat just a touch?

I told him he could. I went upstairs and Gert was standing in the walk-in closet, inspecting some suits.

I looked at Lena’s clothes in a dresser: socks and underwear, then T-shirts, then jeans, she liked her jeans folded. I could hear the cab man walking around downstairs. Gert had a smile on his face.

We went back downstairs. The cab man was sitting on the sofa, watching a football game. They’ve got Tivo, he said. Check this out. They Tivo-ed the news.

Below the television there was a black entertainment stand. It had a small CD player, some CDs, and the record player Lena had got a week or so ago. I went over and picked up the record player. Let’s go, I said.

Who are you people? the cab man said. He clicked off the TV. They say that on that show Lost all the time.

We got back in the cab and started driving home, the record player on my lap. I wondered where Lena and Duncan were, but knew it didn’t matter. They could be anywhere. It was warm in the cab, the heat blasting and making a loud humming noise. I stuck my hands up into the front of the cab and warmed them on the blasting heat like it was a campfire. The record player was jabbing me in the ribs when I leaned forward. We should all get a drink, the cab man said.

I flew to visit my mother at Thanksgiving. I invited Gert along because he didn’t have any family in the states. He said ‘in the states’ like that often. We went in for one night, I told my mother we couldn’t get away for long. I brought a book on the plane, a backpack with jeans and sweaters and underwear, and Chex mix.

My mother lived in the farmhouse I grew up in. She had rooms upstairs set up for me and Gert. To get upstairs you had to take a crooked staircase, and the upstairs rooms all had low, angled ceilings, and I remembered to lower my head. Gert copied me. I told Gert that I had brought Lena when we were first married and she said she liked the low, angled ceilings.

It reminds me of my mother’s house in Germany, Gert said. If my mother had lived in a farmhouse.

Gert sat in his room before dinner reading. I sat on the bed in my old room and thought about Lena. I want to move into this place, she had said when I brought her. She had stood up on her tiptoes and pushed her head into the low-angled ceiling. I’m a giant, she had said. At night in bed with her, I told her to listen to the farmhouse, it made noises. Where you worked the farm, she said. I told her my father was up every morning at four-thirty and got me up at five, when everything looked clean and new. She said, Aren’t I supposed to be listening to the farmhouse make its noises?

In the morning, farmhouse light came in the window. For a moment I had a good feeling, and then I knew it was because I had forgotten that Lena wasn’t there. Gert was standing in my doorway, looking at me. I sat up in bed. I expected him to be eating an apple from the way he was standing, leaned against the doorjamb. He had on his neat jeans, starched oxford, and an unlit cigarette hung from his pouty mouth.

When we went downstairs, my mother had spilled an industrial-size bottle of bleach on the floor in the living room. The wood floor was changing color.

It slipped right out of my hand, she said. She was wearing dark brown pants and a purple sweater. The bleach was staining the paints, little splash stains lightening the brown.

Oh for God’s sake, she said. Thank you, Gert. She patted him on the back and then wiped at her pants and went to the laundry room. I knelt on the floor and wiped up the bleach with paper towels. Gert stood over me, watching me, tapping his foot.

Later that day, after dinner, my mother brought out frozen cookies which depressed me. I ate about thirteen of them after they had thawed. She had always made very small cookies, the size of two grapes, maybe. I think it was the size that depressed me. We sat at the dinner table. Gert shuffled through a pack of playing cards and talked about how he didn’t know any card tricks.

I’m not asking you, she said. I’m talking to Gert. It’s always better to get an outsider’s opinion.

That’s not what I meant, my mother said. I’ve always been open to any nationalities and any creeds.

I’m only kidding, Gert said. To be honest, I don’t believe your son and Lena treat each other very well. It’s mutual bad treatment.

I put down my cookie and went outside to watch the farm fields. In the dark, the farm fields were like mounds of black lead. There was no wind, nothing moved, and the moon was gauzy through clouds. I wanted to cry.

In bed that night, I looked at my old room, the slanted ceilings, a dresser, a photo of my mother’s grandmother in black and white. The woman in the photo was incomprehensible. I heard Gert moving around in his room then it stopped. In the summer, breezes went through the farmhouse, the smell of hay, dampness. I used to sit up feeling the breezes and smelling hay and manure, hearing trucks go down the road, and the world felt like a place I was only visiting. It was a good place to visit. I remembered when I was ten or twelve, my dog named Chelsea got hit by a truck but didn’t die. I think I remembered my dog because I had wanted to cry earlier, maybe. The man who hit her stopped his truck and got out. He cried. My father touched her and tried to move her from the road. The dog whimpered and stared up at us. Then my father said her back was broken and sent me to get the .22. I walked to the house like anyone would. When I got to the house and went up to my room, I looked out the window and saw my father, the man and his truck, and the dog in the road, all very small and inanimate. When I got back to the road with the .22, my father and the man in the truck were gone. It felt like a movie. That was how I knew to shoot her. It felt like watching a movie or watching my father work in the low fields from high above in my room, so that he looked like a tiny shape moving without purpose.

The next morning, my mother said goodbye and told Gert that he was welcome any time. She asked us to come for Christmas and I told her we would and Gert told her he wouldn’t miss it. Our plane got up in the air and I opened a book. Gert slept in the aisle seat next to me. I looked out the window and put a finger on the page to mark my place.

Alan Rossi's stories appear in Hobart, elimae, Juked, Ninth Letter, and The Journal, among others. He has a PhD from USM's Center for Writers and currently teaches at East Tennessee State University.