Bottled Goods Page 11
My belly is wobbly and my boobs are sagging and even I don’t want to look at myself in the mirror.
I have no hopes or dreams, but maybe some ambitions. I just want to get this over with.
I feel like an orphan.
I don’t have a home.
Things that haven’t changed:
I want men to leave me alone.
I don’t have time to think of anything else because it’s happening. The plane is gliding really fast and now it gives a jolt and my stomach turns upside down and I think it wants to make its way upward, like the plane. Liviu’s hand on top of mine feels like a giant slug threatening to swallow it. Next time we’re looking at each other’s nakedness, it will be so hard to run from ourselves. I wish we had never arranged this flight. But I have prepared some shields:
A stack of books for the pool.
Two pairs of very, very dark sunglasses, to make him believe that I am sleeping on the beach, while I am looking at the sky, wondering if God will ever forgive me for what I did to my mother.
A bottle of sleeping pills, to take very early in the afternoon.
Postcards to My Mother
Postcard 1—A Village in a Frog-Green Valley, a Mountain Behind It. Pfronten, Allgäu, Germany
Pfronten, October 12th, 1998
Hello (or hallo) Mother,
I hope this postcard finds you well. As well as anyone who lives in a bird’s cage, and in permanent conflict with the cat (as Aunt Theresa tells me), can be. If you’re asking, I’m doing well, too. The doctors are helping me finally deal with the harm I’ve done in my life. Maybe the postcard confused you—I’m not on a vacation, I’m in a recovery resort (not unlike the ones you used to visit for the rheumatism in your knee), except this one is for the nerves. After my divorce from Liviu (you’ll be more than happy to hear this bit of information), I suffered from what you might call a little “nervous breakdown.” They call it “mild depression” nowadays.
My therapist, Dr. Rielke, says that it’s on account of so many frustrations I’ve been amassing for more than thirty years (starting with never finishing college, and up to the job as “carer” I’ve done since I defected, which is nothing more than wiping old lady arses. No joy there—most of my “customers” patronize me for being a foreigner, instead of being grateful.)
Postcard 2—A Wooden Cabin on a Green Pasture on the Slope of a Mountain, Surrounded by Sheep. Pfronten, Allgäu, Germany
Pfronten, October 12th, 1998
But I’m getting away from the point. Yes, the frustrations, the doctor said, the tensions in my marriage to Liviu (apparently I took too long to realize that we weren’t fitting together. But you know how it is. You never really think of divorce as a possibility if you grow up with the stupid Romanian mentality. I mean, look at Dad. Really, for his own sake, he should have scorched the earth behind him running from you, a long, long time ago. Maybe he’d still be alive if he had). Yes, the tensions, and there was also the extreme guilt I felt toward you (though, really, Mother, who would turn on their own children and rat on them to the Secret Services? Who? Who?).
According to Dr. Rielke, I was not only depressed, but I was also showing obsessive behavior (making lists all the time in my head and panicking if I didn’t get all the boxes checked. But you know how I am—I like to have things organized).
But, again, this is not the point of the postcard. Dr. Rielke encouraged me to make peace with my past, and allow myself to admit that I was wrong, and that I did wrong by you.
Postcard 3—An Edelweiss
Pfronten, October 12th, 1998
So here it is.
I’m sorry.
Love,
Alina
Harbinger
Sie haben eine neue Nachricht erhalten am 22 Oktober um 14 Uhr 10.*
“Hi, Alina, Aunt Theresa speaking. Adam told me that you called and wanted to speak to your mother. We received your postcards, honey, they moved me to tears. But I’m sorry to tell you—I don’t know how—”Sighs. Breathes hard into the receiver. “I’m so glad you wanted to talk to your mother, after all these years. She would have been so happy, I’m sure.” Sighs. “What I mean to say is that—Oh, how can I say this? Honey, your postcards came too late. There has been an accident involving the cat.”
Sie haben keine weiteren neue Nachrichten.*
Pink Fudge Frosting
My hometown feels like a tune played in the wrong key. Roast beef frosted with pink fudge. After twenty years, it’s the same and it’s not.
The sidewalks are full of potholes where dirty rainwater gathers. I can’t see the bottom and still I know I am out of my depth—it’s impossible for me to walk around here in my heels. I don’t know how the others do it, these flocks of teenagers in slicker jackets and dizzying stilettos. On the streets, dark cars, Jaguars, Audis, BMWs sink their wheels in holes in the asphalt with great pomp.
The pharmacies, the department stores, the supermarkets have all changed. There was a pleasant pattern in that gray cement with tiny, white pebbles on all the floors. The communists used it everywhere—in hospitals, in stores, in factories. Now, there is too much light in all the shops, and it’s infinitely reflected by shiny tiles in vivid colors. I wonder how their eyes don’t hurt.
Even the apartment buildings are painted red and green and yellow, searing my retinas.
I flinch and cower in front of this cacophony of colors and light. If something’s not colorful, then it’s at least covered in plastic. Like the vegetable market. It’s now a hall covered with a transparent plastic roof, but at least the metal stands are the same as thirty years ago. The women behind the counters have suffered the same process of plastification. The middle-aged women in straight knee-length skirts, with head-kerchiefs in floral patterns, have turned to wearing pink and orange tracksuits.
I’m buying some eggplants for Aunt Theresa, when I recognize the woman standing in line behind me. It’s Mariana, one of my former fellow teachers. She pretends to be glad to see me while she eyes my manicure, my haircut, my posh slim-fitted dress. Her whole being appears to have had an unfortunate encounter with bleach.
She tells me how the news that I fled the country came as a shock. How she never expected it. How I was the opposite of daring. How she never expected that I would be so successful. A housecleaning agency? My, my! She tells me she’s happy for me. That maybe I always had it in myself—I did surprise everyone with that affair about the contraband magazine, didn’t I? People change, don’t they?
Do they? I ask. You were ratting on me. That never would’ve changed, would it? It’s a shot in the dark, but her mouth shuts with an audible click and she scurries off, like a cockroach hurrying under the sink when you turn the lights on. I remain standing, feet well anchored in the ground, throwing a tall shadow over all the shrill colors around me.
A Wooden Box
Perched on the edge of her armchair, Aunt Theresa looks like an ancient bird of prey. An old hawk. Her back is bent, and her legs are curved—osteoporosis is unforgiving. The tips of her toes barely brush the polished floors. But what troubles me most is her face, the wrinkles like the deep furrows in the shell of the earth, like the ones I saw the day she drove me to the country. What also disturbs me is how lean she has become: her round, Botticellian thighs dwindled, the whole of her dried and shrunk like a raisin. I wonder what is draining her. I wonder if it’s the old Romanian fatalism, which makes people barely past sixty arrange their own funerals; it’s also a sort of modesty, not wishing to burden the ones who live on. I wonder if it’s all because of her will to occupy a smaller wooden box when the time comes.
Aunt Theresa and I, we have sunk low. We used to soar in the high circles of kindred spirits. Now, our conversation has the plastic sheen of the fakes everybody in this country wears.
Our meeting starts well, then she says, “You should have called more often. I missed you.”
I reply, “I should have.”
This is the only moment of honesty
between me and my aunt, before we veer into half-spoken truths, untold reproaches. I tell her about the cleaning company I started when I left the rehab clinic. About its success, and the empowerment it gives me. But I don’t tell her that now, aged over fifty, it is the first time I have any kind of control over my own life.
My quiet brooding lays a blanket of silence between us, until Aunt Theresa says, “Never mind. Let me give you back your grandmother’s earrings.”
“Keep them,” I say. “I can’t remember one single instance when I’ve missed them. And besides, when I die, they have nobody to go to.”
Aunt Theresa says, “I’ll give them to my granddaughter.”
“I think they’ll look gorgeous on her,” I reply, though I don’t know her grandchildren, and I don’t want to.
“You are beautiful,” she says. “You’re so much more mature.”
“I recommend a divorce anytime instead of Botox or other expensive beauty treatments.” I chuckle. “I feel twenty years younger.”
In a way, this is true: living alone, using a dating service, this is not what I’d imagined I’d be doing at age fifty-five. But these are not things I could tell my aunt, not now, after having grown in an entirely different direction, a little Romanian tree malformed by the forces of the West. Soon, I won’t even need my roots. There is one more offering to my past that I have to make, one more candle to light on a certain grave.
“Where did you bury my mother?” I ask.
Aunt Theresa sighs. She rubs her fingers together—they sound like sandpaper. She scrambles from her armchair, begins fumbling with her glass display. That’s when I notice that all the cups are turned upside down, just like that time when she inadvertently called upon the strigoi, that troubled, bloodthirsty spirit. She extracts a wooden box, its lid encrusted with images of oak leaves, twisting together in the form of a spindle. She rests her wrinkled hand on it.
“Alina. I have a confession to make. I lied.”
Aunt Theresa opens the box.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to begin by thanking the people without whom starting this book wouldn’t have been possible: my husband, Silviu, and my mother, Claudia. Silviu, thank you for all your infinite support of my writing, and for believing that I had an ounce of talent. Mom, thank you for all the help with the research, and for always cheering for each and every one of my stories. Also, many thanks to my brother Cosmin, for reading and applauding every story I’ve ever written. As a writer, family support makes such a huge difference, whenever you battle with mountains of rejection slips, or if you just need someone to watch the baby while you have to take care of some quick edits (thank you, Mom; thank you, Dionisa).
A thank-you from all my heart to the entire Fairlight Books team: Louise, Urška, Gabrielė, Lindsey, Mo, Rebecca, and Emma for your catching enthusiasm and the love you treated my manuscript with. As an author, it’s a joy to work with a team as dedicated, professional, and passionate as you are. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
A basketful of thank-yous and hearts to the members of my writing group, Flash Force 5, for your unending supply of hearty support, sound writing advice, and patience. I learned so, so much from you wonderful, talented ladies: Christina Dalcher, Kayla Pongrac, and Stephanie Hutton. Stephanie, in particular, thank you so much for believing in this book, and being my “literary” shoulder I can cry on.
Also, thank you so much, Gillian Walker, for all the priceless feedback you gave me. Your opinion is always much cherished, and I love our little talks about the writing life.
A heartfelt thank-you to the editors who believed in individual pieces from my novella-in-flash, for selecting and publishing them in their literary journals.
The flashes first appeared in print as follows:
“Glazed Apples”—Ambit, January 2018
“The Skirt”—the 2017 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology
“Like Music”—Flash Frontier, February 2017; reprinted in the Paper Swans anthology Flash, I Love You!
“Prima Noctis”—Litro Online, #flashfridays, September 15th, 2017
“Ripping”—Chicago Literati, December 2nd, 2016
“The Low People in Our Family”—The Airgonaut, May 2017
About the Author
SOPHIE VAN LLEWYN was born in southeastern Romania and now lives in Germany. She has published and won awards for her flash fiction and short stories across the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States. Bottled Goods is Sophie’s debut long fiction work. It has been long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019, the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2019, and the People’s Book Prize 2018.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BOTTLED GOODS. Copyright © 2020 by Sophie van Llewyn. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Fairlight Books.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
Cover design by Caroline Johnson
Cover photographs © Constance Bannister
Corp/Getty Images (woman); © donatas1205/iStock/Getty Images (bottle)
Digital Edition JULY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-297953-7
Version 06152020
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-297952-0
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* Romanian dish made of boiled pearl barley, sugar, and candy, specific to funerals.
* Stuffed chicken breast, filled with pickled vegetables, coated with eggs and bread crumbs, then fried.
* Troubled spirit of the dead, rising from the grave (Romanian folklore).
* Romanian dish made of beef, boiled in salted water, along with vegetables and potatoes.
* Romanian currency.
* Member of the Romanian nobility.
* Paparudă, ruda/come and wet us.
* Romanian name for fairies and name of the annual festival that celebrates them.
* You have one new message received on October 22nd, at ten past two.
* There are no other new messages.
Sophie van Llewyn, Bottled Goods