THE YEAR OF OPEN DOORS
‘Oh, you go to university? Good for you. didn’t you?’
Whereabouts?’
Most of them didn’t know where Aberdeen was, but pretended to. Those that did would look at her in surprise, almost suspicious. ‘In England?’ ‘Scotland. Next to England.’ ‘Same thing,’ they would say. Or, ‘well how about that.’ Or, ‘bet it’s rainy as hell over there.’ And once, ‘why’s a pretty little thing like you want to go so far away for?’ And to all of them she said ‘Dollar forty-five please,’ without looking up.
Doug had complained the whole drive down. ‘Why would you want to spend the whole day walking around in this weather? It’s goddamn hot. Where the hell am I going to put the car? Jesus, Annie, you’d think you’d learn a thing or two with all this school.’ In the end he dropped her off downtown and told her he’d meet her for dinner. He was off to catch up with an old friend from high school who’d moved out here for god knows what reason but at least probably had a driveway to put the car in. She wandered the city all day, elated, walking for hours even when her jeans got stiff and sticky. At dinner, Doug was fuming. His friend had no driveway and lived in a sixteenth-floor condo.
They ate dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown. The streets were teeming with people walking over the slimy remains of that day’s vegetable sales. Doug asked the waitress for a fork. Couples walked past glued together by the heat, shining where they were naked. The sun was setting and the whole neighborhood was orange and steaming. Annabel ate spring rolls and cold noodles, watching the stop lights controlling everything. Arriving in Scotland,
Annabel was conscious of doing things for the last time. This is the last time I will land in this country, she thought. This is the last time I will take the train in this direction. This is the last time I will bring my full suitcase into this place.
The first time they went to the pub Leonard was there. He welcomed them back and they looked sheepish, waiting to see if, not being their tutor any longer, he would still buy them drinks. Annabel was one of the lucky winners and she chatted to him for a short while, astounded when she realised they’d been talking for well over an hour. When he left he looked closely at her. The next time he came to the pub and bought her another drink, it felt like a done thing. She went outside the pub with him for a cigarette even though she rarely smoked. ‘Home to the city for summer?’ ‘What?’ ‘Aren’t you from Toronto?’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I expect it’s a bit livelier than here,’ he said. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Well then.’ ‘You went to a small town for school too,
24 THE LIST 22 Jul–5 Aug 2010
‘What do you mean?’ ‘Didn’t you go to Cambridge? That’s a small
town.’
He looked at her curiously. ‘I suppose it is a
small town.’
‘Would you like to go somewhere else?’ he asked her when they finished their cigarettes.
‘No, thanks. Everything’s the same around
here.’
‘Shall I buy you another drink inside, then?’ ‘No, thanks.’ ‘Shall we go for a bit of a walk?’ She was outraged at how certain he appeared, forgetting that she’d felt an inevitability about it herself. ‘Have you been to London?’ ‘No.’ ‘It’s quite expensive.’ She sighed. ‘Then you must be rich.’ He laughed uncomfortably. ‘Just half the family. But the half that counts. You might know a bit about that yourself, flying halfway round the world to do an arts degree.’
‘Of course, of course they are. Let’s spend some time together, Annabel. Your papers last year showed a lot of promise.’ He said these three sentences as though they bore some relation to each other. Leonard lived in a flat entirely different from hers, with heat and matching cutlery and a duvet that always stayed on top of the bed. Leonard liked to tell stories about people he used to know that bored Annabel to tears because it seemed all he’d ever done with these people was sit around and put down other people. Once in a while he talked about his family and growing up. There was the important half, and the half with money. Those were the two different halves of the Leonard- whole. Annabel never talked about her family or growing up, or how she wasn’t divided into halves, unless there was a highway half and a lying-by-omission half. Periodically she would slip up and make some allusion to home and he would tell her the thing he liked most about Canadians was how their provincial ways always seemed like modesty. They would both
She was laugh.
Then it was Christmas. There was never enough money to fly home more than once a year. The first year Annabel had sat in her flat, dumb with grief under the duvet. Her family called at an odd hour on Christmas Day, clamouring for space on the other end of before suddenly hanging up because of the cost. The following two years she had been invited to two different classmates’ houses. She brought wine and biscuits and both years she received a scarf from the two different mothers, an inoffensive color that matched everything. One scarf was of significantly higher quality line
the
stunned. ‘I guess I do,’ she lied, before adding, ‘I thought British people never talked about money.’ She didn’t know where this impression had come from. In fact, her classmates were only too glad to compare prices and wages. He laughed uncomfortably again. ‘I’m American,’ he said. ‘Born there. We moved before I could talk. So I sound like this. But only half of us moved.’
‘The half that doesn’t count?’ guessed
Annabel. He grinned.
‘The rich are different from you and me,’ he
said, as if this was an explanation.
‘I guess they have more money,’ she said, wondering if that sounded rude. He looked at her curiously again and she worried she’d sounded foolish. ‘I’ve spent time in Toronto,’ he said abruptly. ‘I went for a year when I was younger, and I’ve gone to conferences and things here and there. Bit of a toddler of a city, don’t you think? Doesn’t know quite how big or small it is, or what to do with itself.’
‘No. I think it’s amazing,’ she said. ‘I should
go back. My friends are waiting.’
than the other.
At the beginning of December, Leonard asked if she wanted to come with him to see his family for Christmas. ‘To meet half the family?’ she asked, ‘no,
thanks.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I don’t feel like going to London,’ she lied. ‘I’m not going to London. Not that half.’ The other half was in Manhattan. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘You can’t just sit here all break,’ he said, with enough certainty that she began to doubt whether she had actually spent the past three Christmas breaks just sitting here. After the third time he asked, she closed her eyes and told him she didn’t want to spend the money for the ticket. He burst out laughing. ‘Jesus, who cares about the ticket? I’ll buy them both tomorrow.’
This is an extract. The full version of Where Things are Happening will be printed in The Year of Open Doors. Micaela Maftei lives in Glasgow and is working on a creative writing PhD.