Open by Nick Holdstock

When I first met Kate she preferred Chekov to Tolstoy, did not like travelling, knitted scarves and hats, loved wine, detested beer. We had eleven good years of marriage before I enlisted to fight the rogue state of Yunnan. She did not say anything when I told her. Since childhood she had preferred to meet calamity with silence, which was her choice, unlike the restrictions of her father, who sometimes put her in the cupboard under the stairs while he and my mother made the kitchen table move back and forth with a creak and squeak, as if its wood needed exercise. This was a task my mother was always glad to help with, what with them being neighbors and all, and his wife so sick, and my father so dead. The cupboard smelt of sour hops because Kate’s father had once bottled his home brew too soon, it had gone pop pop pop in the night, waking he and Kate but not her mother who never really slept. She was a fog in the shape of a person that haunted their attic, lying on one surface, then another, each not as good as the last.

In that cupboard Kate was guarded by a squad of bottles assembled on the floor. They prevented her from sitting down or moving her feet so all she could do in that darkness was sway left and right, forward, back, as if she was dancing without a partner. But on that tiny stage she had to be careful not to knock into the bottles because a nudge would wake the bubbles, which would then start to dance until there were so many collisions the bottle would explode. Even if she didn’t wake the bottles, the pressure was always building, and she’d certainly be blamed. Kate’s father said that before she was born her mother used to wake up with a smile that stayed on her mouth all day. He said she used to go around singing like a bird was in her throat, which sounded nice until Kate thought of the bird having to come and go all the time, the tickling tips of its wings. What would happen when she was asleep and her mouth was closed? If birds could peck their way through trees, a cheek would be like butter. Quickly there would be a hole the same size as the hole in the cupboard door, a tiny one you couldn’t see from the outside but through which Kate could view the kitchen. When her father and my mother were using the table the kitchen door was usually closed but that door had a mind of its own, opening when it seemed shut. That made looking through the hole a risk because there was no way to predict if she would see a leg, a breast, a flailing arm, my mother’s face locked into an unfamiliar expression that made Kate think she was being hurt. Kate didn’t want to look through the hole, and yet it was the only way to escape the cupboard. And so Kate saw some horrors, avoided others, and this was not her entire childhood. There were birthdays, Christmases, playground visits, a Labrador when she was nine, tonsillitis at twelve, sertraline and twice-weekly sessions with Dr. Cohen from sixteen to twenty-one.

In the weeks before Sean left I was neither volatile nor crazy. I was a cool, hard ball of marble whose weight would have troubled a hand.

After the ground let go I swallowed three yellow pills because I had no interest in the journey. When I next opened my eyes a cold hand was rattling my bicep. ‘Try and make us proud’ said the cabin attendant in a voice that suggested she wasn’t sure I could. Although I had never cared for obvious make up, her broad lips were such a saturated shade of red I let them flash on and off in my head for the following year because I didn’t want to make Kate into a fantasy. I could avoid the pink-lit hairdressers where the pouting girls never cut hair, but at night, when my comrades were using their hands, or someone else’s, I sometimes had to give in and let the red lips offer to let me enter first class. Though this felt like cheating, it was necessary if I was not to be distracted during the day because a distracted marine was a dead marine. I allowed myself these nocturnal compromises just as I followed orders during the day that often made no sense. While we did not burn villages and shoot livestock – this was not, so we joked, Vietnam – the logic and goodness of risking our lives to disable cell towers did not always seem like a great contribution to the Struggle to Promote Global Liberty.

My doubts vanished as soon as I was climbing a hill in tropical heat while carrying forty pounds. Then I was entirely focused on lifting my feet and swinging my arms and trying to avoid the metal swarming through the air. Our enemies had a preference for headshots, as if they believed we were zombies who’d keep getting up if hit elsewhere. After six months I stopped flinching when blood fountained from a neck like a shaken bottle of beer. It disturbed me less than the fragments of metal, plastic, rock and bone that entered my body every day, souvenirs of our heroism that moved around in us like they just couldn’t get comfortable. These wounds were not even useful, they did not lead to a bed with clean sheets in a long room quiet except for the distant thunder of planes, the crumpling of shelling, an occasional scream from a man coming out of a dream to realize he was no longer able to run, play tennis, enjoy all manner of lips. We were frequently warned by the brass about ‘a growing culture of carelessness in the care of weapons.’ A foot wound was said to hurt less than a hand.

He’d offered many reasons for risking his life to defend a kink in the line of someone else’s border. He’d spoken of ‘sacrifice’ and ‘our values’. He’d said ‘We can’t let this happen.’ But he didn’t ask my permission. Nor did I try and stop him. After eleven years of marriage I knew Sean too well. He couldn’t pass up the chance to save an entire country.

On our three hundred and ninetieth day of involvement we attacked a steep hill near Dali, running as fast as we could and yet still in slow motion. It was another hill, another cell tower we might have shelled and yet were ordered to merely disable for ‘strategic reasons’. We spent an hour huddled in our holes while Captain Hastings barked into a radio that was being jammed. As officers went he was better than most. In his pre-war life he’d been a vehicle inspector for Buick, and in the life before that, a steward on the Titanic, and if no one laughed when he said this, it was because it was comforting to think about there being other lives. When the radio crackled and said, ‘Stand by,’ Hastings looked relieved until a piece of metal opened his head into a red and silent firework. As shrapnel made more heads go pop pop pop, all we could do was take cover, wait, pray if we were able.

Billy Marks, aka the Dane, was a blonde, handsome, slow-witted Corporal who had relinquished a baseball scholarship to enlist. The Dane no more belonged on the field of battle than a horse in a hardware store and all of us, including Hastings, had tried to protect him. Yet he was not so sweetly dumb that he didn’t feel guilty for being assigned to barracks. He’d volunteered to be a soldier, not a mascot, and so maybe he felt he had a debt to repay. As mortars came down behind us the Dane stood up and I saw an expression of determination that could have come from one of the war films that were the ultimate yardsticks for our combat experiences. When I said, ‘Get down you idiot’ he forgave my cowardice with a smile. Then he was moving uphill impossibly fast, as if during his time in the rear his legs had been storing energy. I should have been hunkered down but it is hard to take your eyes from the heroically insane because they are a special gala performance that will never be repeated. The Dane made it unscathed to a large boulder. There he rested, gathering breath, and perhaps courage too, because whatever pulse of adrenalin had whirred his legs must have begun to fade. From our foxholes we watched like children hiding from a scary movie, as fearful of what we might see as of what we might imagine. I had to close my eyes, just as I’d had to when I saw my mother lying on the kitchen table in Kate’s house. I had snuck out because Mom had been helping Kate’s Dad for over an hour and I was getting hungry. When I looked in the kitchen and saw them I could not understand why Kate’s father was dancing on top of her. I didn’t know my mother danced.

You must be so proud, they said and usually I said Yes. And because I had made their question my own this was not a lie. I was proud of many things. Proud that I was not only a victim. Proud that my father didn’t appear in my dreams. Proud I understood that having kids of my own would be a very bad idea. And Sean accepted this. I had let him bring me out of the darkness: he could not ask for more.

When I opened my eyes the Dane was waving his arm over his head, inviting the rest of the squad to join him like he was up on the bandstand where it was Fourth of July. His happiness was an orange flare calling us forward and maybe we would have accepted his invitation, just like in that film, or that film, but then shells were dropping between the Dane and us. And though I could see his fear perhaps he was not entirely alone in that moment, he might have heard the trill of a sweetheart, the steady tones of his father telling him what to do next. I wanted to receive my own orders but with Hastings gone and no one assuming command I was cursed with full autonomy, stand up, stay down, it was entirely my choice, until it wasn’t. The next group of shells came down amongst us. Some of us went pop and my face was wet, I had many new souvenirs as I ran towards the Dane.

In the cupboard there was no time, no light, no change. The only way out was through the hole I am sure my father did not know was there. He didn’t care how frightened I was, whether I wet myself or threw up, but I am sure he did not want to be watched. I didn’t always look through the hole. If they did it fast I could bite my lip or cheek and wait for the consolation of blood. So I don’t know when Sean first came to the kitchen window. But the first time I saw him it was autumn. His face was only there a few moments. The next time it was snowing and he had his hand raised as if his little fist was about to knock on the window to interrupt. I waited, I hoped; I’d only get some of the blame. But then he was gone and I was so upset I knocked over a bottle that began to hiss.

When the battlefield went quiet it did not seem strange. There did not need to be epic music as I ran towards the Dane. I had seen heroes run in silence, their courage and determination deafening them as they approached victory. I was twenty paces from the Dane, he was virtually standing by me on the podium, medal in one hand, his arm around a nurse. Except he wasn’t looking at me, his neck was twisted to the sky like a dog who’d heard its whistle. At first this was the unworried peep of an owner putting an end to squirrel chasing. But as a local darkness grew the owner became worried, she blew louder, yet the Dane didn’t move. The whistling acquired the anger of a sports ref declaring a foul.

During the first few months after Sean left I had considered leaving the house but then I realized there was no need. In his absence the place seemed bigger, lighter, as if it had new windows. I exercised my options. I slept with Edward, my lugubrious dentist, then with Lucy, his wife. Soon the three of us had an arrangement. In bed she was kittenish. It was good to hear him laugh. I spent my days studying Spanish and French and the inglorious history of US involvement in Asia. I became so-so at chess. I planted hyacinths. There were a few iffy weeks when I thought I might need to get a job but then I discovered there were men and women all over the world who’d pay to watch me eat breakfast in a bathrobe. Toast was the most popular item, yoghurt a close second. I used to wish Sean would cheat with a Lucy or Edward to wound what I felt for him. Beneath the loving gratitude there was always fear. A jar removed from a cupboard is likely to be put back.

The trick to catching a fly ball is not to move too much. You make yourself the ball’s target and a good target stays still. The Dane, like me, had played in right field, and unlike me, held the all-time record for most catches in a single season. Though he was, of course, not trying to catch the now frantically whistling shell, I wonder if some of his training kicked in because as I ran and shouted he was as frozen as if movement had been forbidden by his coach.

I do not blame the war. Our marriage was built on a shared victimhood that didn’t require the present version of myself. What with Sean coaching Little League, organizing bake sales, spearheading litter drives and reading to two separate blind ladies each week, I only spent about an hour with him each day. The only thing he wouldn’t do was join me at the animal shelter. Although he pleaded allergies, I think it was more that animals could not say thank you.

The whistling stopped. There was silence and calm. The Dane raised his head, smiled, and I would like to think this was a look of understanding and acceptance. But I suspect he didn’t get it. He probably thought the silence meant that we had won.

It seemed strange that people were celebrating the end of the war with more explosions. My neighbor Gayle knocked on my door with the persistence with which alcoholics try to make others drink. Soon they were all out on their lawns popping corks while Chinese people searched through the wreckage. Later the mood shifted and there was crying, anger, bottles smashed, as if they didn’t want the conflict to end. Perhaps they felt scared to lose something that had helped define their lives. What if nothing came next?

The Dane probably did not see a montage of home runs and sweethearts. He just became a firework. I received heat and souvenirs, then nothing. Nothing, then pain, then nothing. Vibration and roaring then nothing, nothing. Nothing then the brightest lights, the dry reek of metal, the entrance of a high, sharp sound that did not whistle: it whined.

Next morning I opened the door to a tall man in a black suit who got taller as he flashed his credentials. I had imagined this moment so many times I thought I was numb to it. Yet there was still a popping in my ears when I thought of Sean in a bag, in a hole, in darkness. When the man said wounded, I didn’t want to believe him. How dare he try and come back.

‘Transhumeral amputation’ has a funny ring. It makes me think of a joke that cuts across borders, boundaries, a joke everyone can enjoy.

After the man from the army left I removed my clothes and went amongst the trees. It was a warm night with a breeze that stroked and the leaves would not shut up. I needed solitude and quiet so I could find the name for how I felt. ‘Relief’ and ‘Glad’ did not describe the tightness in my chest. I went slowly, taking half steps, so the sensations of movement would not replace thought. The ground was damp. Owls were out. Once I had made my decision I stretched out on the ground until it was dawn. Of course I felt remorse. It was a shame to miss what people would say about a heartless slut abandoning a hero.

Short days of brightness and floating and people pumping my hand like I needed to be inflated.

Sometimes, in the arms of morphine, I could actually forget. If my nose did not itch. If my cock did not twitch. If I was no body.

Daylight moves too slowly.

On the plane there was no lipstick.

I stayed in Arrivals for eight hours even though my neighbor had told me he’d seen Kate loading the car.

The house was clean and quiet. Neither my desk or the kitchen table was troubled by a note.

In the supermarket people thanked me for my service then explained the war to me.

I bought slip on shoes and sweatpants.

For two weeks our neighbor Gayle brought me casseroles, stews and pies. Once my fridge and freezer were full I stopped answering the door.

I woke to double absence.

I took my walks at night. In the daytime there was too much space between the houses, too much space above.

I stopped going outside.

Not that my rooms were easy. The walls were moving away. At first a centimetre each day, but soon it was an inch.

I didn’t drink or take too many pills.

I had no gun.

I couldn’t have tied a noose.

Mostly, I just fell. In the shower, down the stairs. The kitchen floor was an ice rink.

The bruises were interesting. With the aid of two mirrors I was able to explore my body for hours. Very few people really know their backs.

It wasn’t love or guilt that made me return. I was merely curious. As I drove up to the house the hyacinths looked like dying mutants. I was so angry that he wasn’t watering them I had to drive away immediately.

There was a six-year waiting list for transplants.

On eBay my Silver Star was worth about the same as the Bronze.

When I returned two weeks later the hyacinths were ghosts. This time my anger sent me inside.

I had stopped wearing clothes so when I went into the kitchen she saw all of me. Kate was in the breakfast nook with a cup of chamomile. She was holding a dead flower.

A naked man came into the kitchen but it wasn’t Sean. Sean had two elbows, two wrists, two hands. I waited for him to speak, but he said nothing. He did not apologize.

I didn’t speak. I didn’t move. A wild animal was in the house and I didn’t want to frighten her.

I left in a fury and drove until I reached the red calm of New Mexico. After watching the sun’s slow crash I went to a bar and waited for a man to find the courage. After three drinks someone who smelt of solvents made a crude advance. In my motel room I made him lie on the floor. I told him to close his eyes. I stood on his hand.

After Kate left the walls began to move faster. The house wanted to expand and stretch until it was translucent.

Abrupt desert dawns in which the sun rose with the speed and sureness of a ball tossed up for a racket. If it provided light for others that was incidental, a side effect of its wish to inspect the landscape. I did a lot of that too. The more I considered the repetition of red earth, rocks and bushes, the less the mountains belonged. The desert should have continued until the horizon.

But I was not helpless against the house’s plans.

In a shithole called Deming I picked up a blind guy wearing a dinner jacket and jeans. ‘Don’t think you’re doing me a favor,’ he said. ‘If you want a gratitude fuck I can hook you up with some deaf guys.’ We had a good night but early next morning he woke up screaming and waving his arms. Once he’d calmed down we went out on the porch of his house. It had a real screensaver of a view. There was a fast river, horses grazing, a brown mesa like a chunk of chocolate. I made him a glass of rum with crushed ice and mint and after drinking half of it he said, ‘It’s like a door suddenly slams in my face and I’m trapped in here.’ Ordinarily Carl wasn’t claustrophobic. He had been born blind. There were just sudden attacks of panic that brought to mind the unheralded vengeance inflicted by God on those who messed with him.

It took a week to make the second lounge. I hit my foot a lot.

Carl said he’d never had better omelettes. I replied that I’d never had better sex. After two weeks I suspected he was making a place for me in that old ranch house. He was a kind man for sure. But it wasn’t a good idea for us to play match-the-trauma. If things turned nasty, I did not trust myself.

Every time I nailed a board I felt the house adjust, trying to go faster.

For him, I left a note. Or rather I recorded it. I don’t remember everything I said but I know I said ‘thank you’ a lot.

While he slept I drove through sun up, the last of the coolness. I saw the colors boosted. I was searching for a place that didn’t feel like one.

It was lounge 4 that really put the brakes on the house.

Around ten I stopped and got out and felt the sun bang on my head. I started towards the wall of mountains. There were lizards. A dead snake. The cacti looked immortal. When I turned round my car seemed far away. I walked on and saw colors whiten, edges blur. I swam deep in a warping of air that was an anti-mirage because I did not see water, palms, an iced tea stand. Something was taken, not added. In that shimmer the only thing ahead of me was desert.

Lounge Five. Lounge Six.

I arrived at the house at 4 a.m. Before I could slide my key in the lock Gayle said, ‘You don’t want to go in there.’ I had not seen her because she had been crouched behind her Prius. I didn’t ask what she was doing there and in return she didn’t question me about my three-month absence. ‘Sean’s not himself. Not at all. If you look you can see there’s still lasagna on the lawn.’ Apparently Sean had objected to having his doorbell rung three times by a lady from the Church who refused to give up on a wounded hero as easily as her co-parishioners. A shard of the dish had nicked the woman’s foot. The police had been invoked, but not called. Since then Sean had disconnected the bell and taped up the letterbox. I could imagine him reacting badly to the silent entry of someone in the middle of the night.

Inside the greatest hazard was the slippery covers of the prosthetics catalogues that carpeted the floor. I stood and listened. I sniffed. The house was quiet and didn’t smell of piss or beer or rotting food. If Sean was having a breakdown, at least he was avoiding the clichés.

During the long drive I’d planned what to say to him. I wasn’t going to apologize or explain. I wasn’t going to criticize him. I imagined us having a frank, calm conversation about our situation and feelings. This noble, naïve idea was immediately forgotten when I went two steps into the lounge and was stopped by a new wall. There was a hole at floor level big enough to crawl through. Squatting down I could see it led into another, slightly larger compartment. I started to crawl in then stopped. My lungs refused air. Bottles popped in my chest. I’d like to think my reaction to this manifest insanity was the same as that of any rational person with no history of parental abuse. I left the house immediately. I drove and listened to Ben Folds and Abba while the green signs led me south.

With lounge seven and eight I had to be careful. There wasn’t much room to work.

Outside Santa Fe I stopped in a place I liked for its lemon pepper chicken. The strippers were pretty good too. They projected an amphetamine-fuelled contempt their audience seemed to enjoy. As I watched a woman bend with yogic ease I didn’t experience a moment of revelation. The curve of her spine imparted no lessons. But in that half-darkness, with sticky hands and lips and a head full of Alice Cooper, an intention entered my mind so gracefully it was like knowing the answer to a math problem without having to do the sum.

Lounge Nine was the best.

I hate driving at night. You keep going and going and nothing changes; the signs seem to be lying; it’s all just one tunnel. But if I couldn’t make it through the night there was no point going back to the house.

Wagon Mound, then Springer, Maxwell.

Raton.

Trinidad.

The worst thing about being scared in the dark is that shutting your eyes doesn’t help. It is no escape.

Just after Farista I stopped for coffee and a power-cry. The coffee was awful but all the thoughts came out. I dozed two hours, then continued. Dawn caught me in Denver. From there it was only an hour’s drive but I stopped for pancakes at a place with tables outside. Shivering felt good.

Back home the lasagna was gone from the lawn. Inside it was quiet but I smelt coffee. One of the prosthetics catalogues was on the kitchen counter. When I said Sean’s name it was both to announce my presence and to summon him. After a minute of no reply I went to the garage to get the big hammer. It would be fine to smash through the plywood because any idea of respecting his boundaries and choices was surely a kind of enabling. He shouldn’t be allowed to hide.

When I came back in I heard a voice, a man’s, but very faintly, like a neighbors’ TV. The man wasn’t Sean. He was talking about sailing, the pleasure of being out on the sea. He had a nice voice that drew me in so I got on my hands and knees. In the first compartment there was still some light and quite a bit of room. I followed the voice into the next compartment that was so dark I had to feel along the wall to find the next hole but I had the voice to guide me. I’d just entered the third section when it went silent, leaving me alone in the dark with no breath and my heart bursting in my chest. ‘Sean’, I said and my panic was the squeak of a mouse in a maze without exits. I was frozen, unable to move, there was no hole to look through, no escape, only dark and the yeasty smell of wood.

The lid was on my coffin.

He was on her on the table.

The walls were getting closer. The walls were going to kiss.

Unless the walls weren’t there.

I couldn’t see them, didn’t feel them.

They might have disappeared.

I thought of Carl.

I saw the mesa.

And then the dark pulsed and red desert was stretching ahead in a shimmer. I could move a hand. A foot. I crawled. The last hole was a squeeze to get through. Sean was sitting cross-legged on a cushion reading a book that had lost its cover by the light of a small lamp. He wore clean clothes and was freshly shaved. He did not seem surprised to see me.

‘Hi. How was work?’ he said.

‘Fine,’ I said, though I had not worked for two years. ‘How was your day?’

‘Quiet. I thought about adding another wall but this is enough for now.’

‘Sean, I haven’t been working. I’ve been in New Mexico.’

‘Today?’

‘For a month.’

He nodded. We sat there for a while, close but not actually touching. Our silence wasn’t uncomfortable or even strange. He wasn’t someone else.

‘So tell me,’ I said. ‘Does it itch? Are there phantom pains?’

‘No. Not pain. But sometimes there’s a warmth. It’s like that hand is having a bath on its own.’

‘How did you lose it?’

‘Oh you know. War. Though apparently the war had been officially over for a few minutes. So maybe it was the peace.’

’You seem very calm about it.’

‘Sometimes,’ he said and closed his eyes. His breathing slowed, became deep. He was in a state I didn’t have the right to disturb.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I said but wasn’t sure if that was true. Slowly I backed out of his cupboard. I drove into the sky.

………………..

www.nickholdstock.com

Twitter: @NickHoldstock