Short fiction

Yellow Once

There are words I shouldn’t have said. I think about what we said and what we didn’t say through the incessant buzz in the back of my skull while Mary turns on taps and turns off taps, pitter-patters around the wet vinyl bathroom. I bite down on my tongue.
I love her. But god, god, sometimes I hate her.
“Mary.”
She doesn’t answer; she’s turning on taps. She’s picking things up and putting them down too hard, hunched over the sink staring at herself in the mirror.
“Mary.”
“What?”
I close my eyes and grit my teeth. She walks by me, past the sagging bed, and I watch her while she peers through the moth-eaten curtains. There are flies; fly paper strips do nothing to stop them. It doesn’t matter, we won’t be here for long (I hope). We’ve been squatting in this house for about a week; we have to move on soon. The wallpaper’s water-stained and peeling; the mattress makes my skin itch. People have been writing on the walls, going back years. I’m not worried about being found by the owners, but I’m worried about some other squatters coming in and finding us here. We found it empty, with just this bare bed and cans on the floor.
Mary’s pacing around the room, clothes sticking to her. She’s sweating as much as I am. There’s a fly buzzing around the bare lightbulb in the ceiling.
I should go out. Pull on some clothes and leave. Go sit at a bus stop for a few hours and pretend I’m going somewhere. Better than lying here, plastered to the bed.
Mary gives out a great sigh and leans against the wall, her fists clenched. She’s mad, just because. She’s mad because of me, because I do nothing. Nothing different, but nothing enough to make her happy. There’s no new happiness. It’s a tired happiness, the kind we’ve known for so long that it’s dull. We’re so bored. Frustrated with our flat happiness. We used to lock ourselves away in rooms for days; now she paces around this one like I’ve caged her in.
It’s not permanent; we won’t be here for long. I keep promising her.
Mary comes back in. She walks around the room, roots through her bag, picks up a glass and slams it back down so hard I think it might shatter. She doesn’t use anything she picks up, she’s just moving. Like those people who can’t stand silence and talk for the sake of it. They’ve got nothing to say and she’s got nothing to do. Nothing important to do. She paces with her blonde hair sticking to her neck, her eyes unblinking. My eyes itch.
“Mary.”
She doesn’t look at me. She sits on the floor by the window and starts tearing at the label of a beer bottle.
“Mary.”
She gets up suddenly and throws the bottle against the wall and it smashes against the fading wallpaper. She stands there breathing heavily then grabs her shoes and walks out the door, slamming it behind her, briefly covering the dingy room with bright light before she disappears.
She’ll come back. She’ll come back burnt, covered in more sweat. She’ll taste like salt, sweat and tears. Or is she too angry to cry? Either way. Buckets and buckets of salt.
I lie there until it gets dark. The flowers I got for her are by the window in a bottle. They’re brown now but they were yellow once.
She isn’t back hours later, and I wonder if she’ll come back at all. But she will. She always comes back. We hate each other but we love each other. Or, at least, we’ve forgotten how to be apart from each other. It’d be uncomfortable, and take too long to get used to. And she can’t bear that. Like losing a hand. You could manage, but it would be uncomfortable.

Later she wakes me up as she walks back in. It feels cooler now. I feign sleep. She says my name.
I feign sleep.
She says my name again.
In a smaller voice now.
I roll over and put my arm around her, and she sleeps in her clothes and her worn out shoes.
I can smell the salt.

Isabelle Grimshaw