You Are Not a Stranger Here - Adam Haslett [34]
“No . . . I don’t know.”
“Not to worry about it now,” she says, patting him on the shoulder. They move into the front hall. “It’s getting cold this time of year. The haar will cover the town by the end of the week. You’ll want to keep inside for that.”
She holds open the front door. When he steps onto the street, he breathes in the cold air, finding it less of a relief than he’d hoped.
HE WALKS TO the end of the cobbled street, looking one way and the other, forgetting the route that brought him here. Steps lead to doors on the second floor of row houses, smoke rising from squat chimneys. A child passes on a bicycle. He watches the little figure vanish around a corner and begins moving in the same direction.
He follows the sound of voices down onto Market Street. In the square, vendors arrange stalls of plants and secondhand books. A man wearing a placard reads from the book of Revelation, while his wife, standing silently by, passes literature to those who will take it. There are etchings of the seashore in the dry basin of the fountain. He walks slowly through, past tables covered with baked goods and china, testing the scent of the air as he goes.
“Where have you been?” Ellen cries as he enters the lobby. “Where in the world have you been?”
He looks at her with what he imagines is a pleading expression.
“Paul,” she says, her voice quavering. She puts her arms around him, holds his head against her shoulder.
“Why didn’t you wake me? What’s going on?”
He’s used all the words he has to describe his state to her. He could only repeat them now. A selfish repetition. How many times will he ask for a reassurance he will never believe?
This should have ended by now.
He holds on to her, grabbing her more tightly because he can think of nothing to say.
THEY SPEND THE rest of that morning in the room. Paul sits in a chair by the window, while Ellen reads the paper. She has called the library to let the curator know she will be starting a day later.
Her way of coping with him has changed over the years. She’s read books and articles about depression and its symptoms, spoken to the psychiatrists he sees, tackled the problem like the researcher she is. She knows the clinical details, reminding him always it is a chemical problem, a treatable disease: eventually a doctor will find the right formula.
From the window, he sees a man across the street depositing a letter in a mailbox and he wonders what the inside of the man’s leather glove would smell of. He runs a hand under his nose, sniffing his palm.
“Do you want to call Dr. Gormley?” Ellen asks.
His glance drops, freezing on the wool ticking of the armchair; strands of dust settle on the blue fibers. He shakes his head.
THAT NIGHT, WHEN he cannot sleep he goes into the bathroom and pees. He splashes urine on the edge of the bowl, then gets on his hands and knees to sniff the rim. He smells the cracks in the tile, the damp bath mat, his wife’s underwear, the hair and skin in the drain of the tub. He runs his finger along the back of the medicine cabinet’s shelf and tastes the gray-white dust. None of it comes close to the stench in that house.
ALL THE NEXT morning it rains, as the old woman said it would. They eat lunch in the nearly empty dining room of the hotel. Across the way, a German couple argues quietly over a map. Ellen suggests that Paul come back to the library with her, he could read the British papers there. She only needs a day or two, she says, then they can take the train back to Edinburgh, see more of the city.
There is a fragment of tea leaf on the rim of her cup; a sheen to the softening butter; a black fly brushing its feelers on the white cloth of the table. He pictures the library and at once fears some constriction he imagines he will experience there. It is the familiar fear of being anywhere at all, of committing to the decision to stay in one place.
“I think I’ll take a walk,” he says.
“Did you take the pill this morning?” she asks. There is no impatience in her voice. She has trained herself over the