Apartment 108
(The World Had Been Constructed Out of Eggshells.)
It was a little like time travel to a time he had never experienced, he imagined that if he had experienced a regular childhood he would found this familiar, but he hadn’t so he had no idea if any of what he felt was normal.
He had four suitable shirts and four pairs of jeans without paint stains. So, it should have been an easy choice, but it wasn’t. Nothing seemed to fit right, everything hung on him in such a way that it made him think of all his faults, or at least his perceived faults.
He couldn’t even understand why any of it mattered. Not only had he never met the woman, he also didn’t even want to meet her. He saw no reason to make a good impression. He should be trying to make a bad one.
He selected the jeans with the paint thinner stains across the thighs. At a cursory glance, they looked like they had been stone-washed so they might look slightly less out of place. Then he took the lumberjack shirt, which was nearly new and had the least fraying at the cuffs.
Lucas dressed and glanced at himself in his apartment’s single mirror. He looked like he belonged in an amateur dramatics’ presentation of Rent, which wasn’t his ideal look, but it would have to do.
All he took from his apartment was his door key, and he even wondered if that was overkill as he wouldn’t be leaving the building. He moved down to the angle at the L-shaped corridor and looked left. Just to the right of his view was the foyer. The light was dim and the games machine he had seen Matthew playing on was bright enough that anything behind it was hard to see, but Lucas thought he saw movement. He waited a moment, breathed and slipped by, hoping no one would spot him. Once he was safely past the entrance, he moved a little faster. He was not hurrying to meet the new woman but was resigned to his fate.
The quicker he started, he thought, the quicker he would finish.
He made his way down to the other end of the corridor. Above him, the fluorescent light flickered, blinked completely off twice, then flickered again. It sounded like a large blowfly drunkenly hitting a pane of glass, and then it died.
Lucas looked up at the tube within its frosted plastic cover, dead insects dusted its interior, their tiny bodies ghostly, and he tried not to think of it as an omen.
He passed room 106, then a step later he walked past 105. Ten feet further were the trio of doors leading to 107 and 108 and the stairwell door between them.
Should he have brought flowers?
The thought popped into his head with the force of a bullet, and for a moment he stood in panic. Would it be appropriate? Was it inappropriate to even think such a thing under the circumstances? It took less than a moment for him to lose control, and it was a blink later that he realised he had never really had any. It was a cascade failure, a catastrophic and sudden overflow of emotions that triggered the elevated response of flight or fight.
Neither was an option.
Be strong, Lucas. He told himself. Be strong, and of good courage.
He raised one hand to the door and for a second it didn’t respond, it didn’t even close into a fist for preparation. Instead, it hung in stasis, palm towards the door as if he were trying to open it using a Jedi mind trick. He lowered it and then moved from foot to foot looking like an athlete warming up for a 100-meter dash.
He ran through a quick prayer, his lips moving to the words without making a sound, then lifted his fist. The knock was a resounding triple thud. It sounded of the confidence he wished he possessed, and before the hand was even dropped from the freshly painted wood, he heard the latch being drawn aside.
Neither of them discussed what they thought of their first encounter. Neither of them had anyone they could speak to regarding it other than each other, their first thoughts would never be spoken but some things weren’t necessary.
Lucas was shorter than she’d imagined, his shoulders were narrower, and he was not the burly person she envisioned to be a maintenance man. She knew that she could have asked Matty what to expect, and the fact that she didn’t may have indicated she was more nervous about the meeting than she had admitted.
Natalie was prettier than he’d imagined. He liked the short hair that fell haphazardly across her scalp, and the long fringe that fell just into her eye-line. Her eyes were a startling green that made her blonde locks appear almost white. She didn’t look like a woman who had suffered, though he suspected she had.
The Gatehouse drew suffering like moths to a flame, it had drawn Lucas and his family all those years ago, and the only members who had escaped paid the ultimate price.
Natalie stepped back from the door, the barest tip of her head permitting him entry. Lucas had always felt strangely empty in apartment 108. It was the one that held the least darkness, and Lucas had lived so long with the darkness that its absence left him uneasy, as though something unpleasant awaited him, just out of sight.
108 was well finished, and he was pleased with his work. The bookcase was filled with books, many of them part of a series judging by their spines, and a small television set was perched on the coffee table, Matty sat in front of it. The screen played the choppy, fast footage of an animation, but Matty’s eyes were fixed on Lucas.
They were not accusatory, and Lucas could sense no anger in the boy, but his lack of emotion said everything.
Watch yourself, the expression said, because I know I will.
“This is a little embarrassing,” Natalie said as she closed the door behind Lucas. Her voice was exactly as he had imagined after seeing her elfin features. It was quiet but somehow firm, it was the voice of a woman who had discovered her limits and would not have them pressed.
“I’m sorry.” He replied and immediately thought it was the wrong thing to say. It wasn’t very ethical. He wasn’t sorry, he was glad, not of Natalie’s embarrassment, but of the situation.
“We do have to live with meddling Mrs Nicholson,” she smiled, “and she is well-meaning. So, I was hoping we could make the best of it. I don’t want to fall out with anyone, and if showing our face means they’ll leave us be then it’ll be worth it. What do you think?”
“Of course,” Lucas replied. He glanced at Matty, who had not moved as much as an inch, then back at Natalie. “I… uh… I did want to tell you that I had nothing to do with this. I really wouldn’t have put you through it.” He was about to say sorry but cut off the words in time. He didn’t want to lie to her twice. He wasn’t sorry.
Natalie leaned against the edge of the kitchen worktop. She wore a knee-length denim skirt and a pale blue blouse tied at the side. The skirt was faded, and Lucas suspected it was through genuine wear rather than artistic distress. She folded her arms, then immediately unfolded them.
“Best we show our face,” She looked at her son, “Are you coming along Matty?”
Matty watched them for a moment later then turned back to the TV as he said, “Charlie said she wanted to watch the rest of this episode.”
Lucas watched Natalie’s head slowly shake in motherly exasperation, it was like watching a tyre slowly lose air. “Okay, tell her only one more episode though… then you show your faces. Where is she anyway?”
She pushed from the edge of the countertop as her son hooked a thumb towards the bathroom, then Natalie straightened her skirt and nodded towards the door. Lucas followed her through, noticing her latch the door behind her.
Natalie had not constructed a vision of what she would encounter when she opened the door, but what she had seen standing there was not what she had expected.
Lucas looked young. She had been given the impression that they were roughly the same age but she appeared ten years her junior. His hair was dishevelled, and his eyes had that alert quality she had seen in some of the women in her group therapy sessions. She suspected that Lucas would know the location of all the exits and could estimate how many steps would take him to get to each. He had made for those exits a few times in his life, she could read that much in those eyes, but she could not tell if those times were to seek safety, or to cut off someone else’s escape.
By the time the door to the apartment had closed, she had already considered her fight and flight options. He worked with his hands, and they were strong, but she had already noticed that he favoured his right leg. Either there was an old injury there or he had recently had an accident that had made it weak.
Natalie thought a hard blow to the knee could effectively disable him, he was not a large man, and it may not take much to make him manageable.
“I think I’ve annoyed him,” Lucas said quietly after the door was safely closed. He spoke through a look of utter dejection. His brow was creased in grief, and Natalie almost felt guilty for her previous thoughts.
Almost.
“What do you mean?” She asked, and he glanced up at her, then looked away.
“He cornered me outside my apartment,” Lucas appeared to shrink, “he told me he’d take care of me if I did anything wrong.” He glanced up again. This time he had a slight smile, but it contained no humour. “I don’t think he meant he would buy me lunch or anything like that.”
“Yeah.” Natalie drew out the word with a sigh. “He’s had a hard time, he’s just…”
“Protective, I understand. Of course, he’d want to protect you, and I think he knows he doesn’t have to protect you from me.” Lucas paused. He had surprisingly pretty eyes for a man, their colour eluded her. At first, she thought they were blue, then green. When he spoke again it felt as though he would rather not talk but feared that if he didn’t say it now, it would never get said. “I don’t mean any harm to anyone. I’ve seen too much of it. My dad was not a good man, and I’ve seen my share.”
Natalie nodded slowly. It was not a nod of agreement but of acknowledgement. She’d reserve the right to judge his words later when his actions became apparent, but for the moment it was enough for him to know that his words had been heard.
“C’mon,” she said, and she inclined her head towards the lobby, “we have to show our face, or else Barb will never leave us alone.”
Matty could tell they were talking and he knew he would be mentioned.
He didn’t care.
When his mother had moved to open the door, he had seen Charlie move out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t a quick movement, but the lazy movement of someone adjusting their position for one more comfortable. When Lucas entered the room Matty realised that Charlie was in his bedroom looking through the pile of VHS tapes tucked under his bed.
Seeing Charlie and Lucas made Matty think of the pages he still had folded in his back pocket, and he wondered what the man would find interesting in them. He should have given them to him, but he had decided to hold on to them as petty revenge.
Matty didn’t know why he was so irritated with Lucas. He liked him, and he knew none of this was his fault. Barbara Nicholson was one of those adults who thought that everyone needed her meddling, and Matty imagined that Lucas had experienced this before.
But Matty remembered what it used to be like, and he had no intention of that life returning. It hadn’t been the arguments that had stayed with him, it had been the uncertainty. The world had been constructed out of eggshells, and it was only a matter of time before one cracked.
Things were far better now, as much as he missed his father, he was glad he was gone.
“Is this the one?” Charlie’s voice drew him back from his thoughts. She had a soft voice that made him think of the uncut grass of a meadow. He felt strange thinking such things around Charlie, but it also seemed right.
“Yeah,” he said and took the VHS from her. As the copyright information faded onto the screen, he noticed Charlie was looking towards the apartment door.
“Do you think your mum will like him?”
“I dunno, I don’t wanna think about it.”
He pressed the fast-forward button, but the player wouldn’t respond. A few moments later the opening logo appeared onscreen, and Matty knew there would be another twenty seconds before the program would start.
“I hope she likes him.”
Those twenty seconds might feel very long.
“Charlie, she’s my mum!”
“Don’t you think she gets lonely though? When did you leave your father?”
“Seems like forever.”
“So, she’d feel lonely then.”
She said it as a matter of fact, allowing no room for argument. The opening logo animation was finally ending and Matty mashed the play button to hurry it along.
“Why did your mother leave your father?”
He mashed at the button a little harder.
“They were arguing all the time.”
He thought of the last evening they had all been together. It had gotten a lot worse than just arguing. His dad had thrown a lamp and it had collided with the TV. A spiderweb of cracks had erupted across the screen as it rocked backwards on its stand. It teetered there a second as if it was deciding whether to take the plunge. Then it toppled forward, and if his mother hadn’t pulled him aside it would have crashed into him.
As bad as things were, it was then that the screams and accusations reached a point where nothing could be taken back. Matty had understood this even as it was happening. Some things once done, could never be undone.
He had seen the horror in his father’s eyes as the TV toppled towards his son, and he knew it had not been a deliberate act, but in her rage, his mother saw just the danger, and Matty knew something had irrevocably changed between them.
“I suppose mum just had enough.” He said. The words were empty, there were no words to describe it, it was like trying to explain Voltron to a grandfather. Some things were not possible.
The opening animation to the anime began to play, but Matty no longer had any interest in it.
“My mother and father never argued,” Charlie said. She wrapped her long skirts around her legs and sat on the floor beside him. He had never thought of someone as graceful before, but it was the only word that described her, she folded her legs under her in a way that made her appear older.
“They never shouted or screamed. My father spoke and Mother trembled, shouting wasn’t necessary.”
“Did he…” His voice trailed off, he didn’t want to say the words, but they weren’t necessary. Charlie nodded.
“He would all the time. Mother would have bruises sometimes, and so would I, but my brother always got it the worst. He’d stand up to him, though he wasn’t big,” she smiled, but it looked sad, and Matty had to resist the urge to reach out to her, “he was only a couple of years older than me when…”
The words died in her throat. She bit her lower lip and Matty thought he could see tears in her eyes.
“Grown-ups are weird,” Matty said, and Charlie laughed, and it was as sad as her smile. Matty did reach out to her then. He didn’t mean to, but when he took her hand, it was as cold as a metal railing in the dead of winter.
“They are.” She agreed, and she looked at him with grown-up eyes. “I never want to be one.”
“Me neither,” he replied, and he knew that the truth of adulthood was to forget all that made life good. Charlie placed her other hand over his, and the cold was comforting. “I don’t,” he said, surprised at himself.
“Are you going to stay my friend Matty?”
Her eyes were moist from tears that had not been shed, and he gave her the only answer his heart would allow.
“Forever.”
“Forever?”
“Yeah, forever,” he said, and it did not occur to him that forever was a very long time.