Apartment 108
(Probably The Weird Kind.)
“You stink,” Natalie said as Matthew walked through the door of 108. Her nose was wrinkled and her hand went straight to her forehead as if she was about to swoon under the stench. She had a moment of anxiety. It was sudden and misplaced, but it was hard to undo years of conditioning. Then she calmed herself. It was nothing. He was just a boy, and a change of clothes and a shower would fix it.
She paused a moment before she said anything more to collect herself. She took a slow breath, four seconds in, held for four, then exhaled for four. She did this twice. Twenty-four seconds later, Matty waited patiently, and she felt calmer. It was a trick her therapist had told her about. Originally it had taken her thirty breaths, a full two minutes before she had experienced any benefits, but now the thought of the exercise alone would calm her.
She was getting better, as was her son.
“What have you been doing?” She asked, then immediately added. “Don’t tell me. Shower. Change. Now.” And then ushered him into the small bathroom.
He grumbled and she heard his clothes as they hit the tile floor. A moment later the shower spat out water. Natalie listened and then went to his room to collect some fresh clothes. The sheets on his bed were tied up into knots, just as he had left them, and discarded clothes lay strewn across the floor. He caught herself leaning down to pick them up, stopped and then moved to the small built-in wardrobe instead.
She selected some clothes and returned to the bathroom. Matty let out a groan of embarrassment as she placed the clothes beside him, and she reminded him that she once cleaned up his poop, to which he groaned again.
Natalie left the bathroom smiling.
Life was good. Finally, life was good.
She was making something to eat when Matty left the bathroom. She smelled lavender and realised he had used her shower gel again. She considered teasing him about it but decided not to.
She served up bacon, eggs, and fried potato, and they ate. Matty always ate in perfect silence, and so did she, it was a habit hard learned that had saved them many an unpleasant evening. As she ate, she watched her son move methodically around his plate of food. He ate neatly, using perfectly cut potato pieces to contain the egg yolk.
Not for the first time she wondered if damage had been caused that would never leave the boy, and she felt her heart sink at the thought.
“What was the smell?” She said, and Matty’s eyes grew wide at the sound. He held his knife and fork in clumped fists, the knife sticking up and the fork pointing down, but for a few seconds, they didn’t move. It was as if he didn’t know how to respond.
“Earlier?” She clarified, ignoring his confusion. “You stank. How did you get so stinky?”
“I was helping.” The words were quiet, and hesitant, as if he wasn’t certain if he should speak. Then he took another careful slice of egg.
“Helping who?”
“Lucas.” Matty was a little louder now. “He was fixing the pipes, and I helped.” Then, as an afterthought, he added. “You know he doesn’t know what Voltron is?”
“No? Imagine that. What has he been doing with his life?”
“Dunno,” Matty responded, completely missing the sarcasm. “He thought I was talking about a cartoon, and I told him that it’s an animation, and I read the comic. He had no idea what I was talking about.”
“Where did you help him?”
Matty pointed to the apartment door.
“In the hallway, I can show you. He painted the pipe with something. He said it’d stop it rust.”
She made a mental note to ask someone about this ‘Lucas’, then cleared her dirty plate and utensils. The sink was sparkling, and she realised that it was unused, probably newly installed. The idea struck her as surreal. They had never been able to afford anything new. Matty had been clothed from thrift stores since he could walk, and she still wore the same dress she had arrived in. Perhaps things were looking up for them finally.
She began to wash her plate. The instant hot water was another simple pleasure denied them far too many times. Matty finished his meal and cleared up what remained on the table. He quietly placed it all in the chrome dish drainer beside the sink. She felt him put one small hand on her hip. He didn’t tug on her clothes as she had seen other children do, but merely touched her hip and waited.
“Can I watch some TV Mum?”
“Sure. Nothing too violent though.” She said, knowing that he would probably find a channel broadcasting anything animated. Sometimes she’d catch him drawing, and he would hide his work self-consciously. She knew nothing about art and wouldn’t know if what the boy was drawing was good or not, but it looked good to her.
Matty paused a moment before he left her side, then wrapped both arms around her waist and buried his face in the flesh just above her hip. She put her arm around him, trying not to drip soap suds onto the floor. A cavalcade of emotions swept over her in an instant. She couldn’t separate them and would have had no chance at accurately describing them. It was swift and suddenly overwhelming. He was all the things she loved about his father when she first met him. She remembered the drawings he had made of her, the same ones she had torn up so savagely before she had left.
He was so like him, and so unlike him. Matty was gentle and so deeply thoughtful she worried for him. He would offer a helping hand to a hungry bear without a thought.
If she had one wish, she would have wished for time to stop, but as she thought this, Matty pulled away. Those moments were never long enough, and he was young enough to offer them frequently, but he would not always be so young. One day, perhaps soon, he would pull away from her entirely.
He didn’t see her sudden tears as he went to the small TV – some years out of date and certain not to last another year – and started cycling through the channels.
She was no stranger to weeping with her arms elbow-deep in hot water, the smell of lemon made her think of tears on her cheeks, so she cried like she ate, silently and without fuss.
Slowly she washed the two plates, the two knives and two forks, then moved on to the small collection of pans she had used to cook the meal. Each item was washed and inspected, then washed again for good measure. So engrossed was she in her task that she heard the noise but didn’t respond. It was not as if she didn’t recognise it, she didn’t associate the noise with some action she should perform.
She was never encouraged to answer the door when someone knocked. So, by the time she dried her hands and quickly inspected her appearance, the knocking had become slower and more hesitant.
She moved to the door and reached out with shaking fingers towards the handle.
“Hi.” The woman said brightly when the door was wide enough to see her face. The simple dress the woman wore may have been fashionable thirty years before. Her dark hair was long and tied back in a loose ponytail, and her eyes were wide, and dancing, not staying in the same spot for long. She stood a little behind a little girl who looked no older than Matty. She was also dressed as if from a quarter century ago but the little girl carried it well, her dress was dark blue which accentuated the girl’s pale complexion and dark eyes. The woman’s hands were placed on the girls’ shoulders in a way that Natalie thought of as protective.
“Hi,” Natalie replied.
“I’m Gail Mellor from 105.” She nodded her head to the side. “And this is Charlotte…”
“Charlie.” The little girl corrected. Her tone was matter-of-fact, and her face showed a seriousness beyond her years. Natalie looked at the little girl, and the little girl looked back without averting her eyes. Natalie instantly liked her. The girl’s mother, Natalie was confident that’s who she was, was a little harder for Natalie to like. She had the demeanour of a whipped animal, her smile was slightly too broad, and Natalie sensed a woman a little too eager to please.
Even at her worst, Natalie always had fight left in her.
“You like animation?” She asked the little girl.
“What kind?”
“Probably the weird kind.”
Natalie thought she saw a smile flicker across the little girl’s lips. It was brief and may have been nothing more than Natalie’s imagination.
She liked this girl.
Natalie hooked a thumb, pointing into the living room with it and said. “Go say ‘hi’ to Matthew.” Then she turned to the mother and said. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
Natalie introduced herself as Matty explained the finer elements of Voltron to Charlie. The child nodded in all the right places; her little face so serious that it naturally brought a smile to Natalie’s lips. What transpired between herself and Gail would not be noted down in Natalie’s diary as a discussion; it would be called a monologue but a pleasant one.
Despite her first impression, she also Liked Gail Mellor. She recognised her from the meetings she had gone to before her therapy. She was like those women who constantly looked for where the next blow would come from. Women who were to Natalie akin to broken ornaments that someone had inexpertly glued together. They were whole but were fragile and far too aware of the fact. But Natalie liked people who spoke easily. It didn’t matter to her if they were narcissists who enjoyed their voices far too much, or those people who coveted the agreement and attention of others; either way, it meant Natalie could sit in silence if she wished.
She listened to Gail and watched Charlie interact with Matty. It was as if they had known each other all their lives. Charlie leaned in close to Matty as he spoke. On the TV was an animated movie Matty had seen many times. It was a Halloween story about a tree, Natalie had tried to watch it with him but would quickly lose interest.
“Do you know who Lucas is?” Natalie said suddenly. The name had popped into her head, and immediately she had blurted it out while Gail was in mid-sentence.
Without so much as a beat, Gail grasped the new topic of conversation with such speed Natalie wasn’t altogether certain she had asked a question at all.
“Have you met our local handyman? Lucas, over in 103? He’s been working his way around this place patching up this and that.” She looked around Natalie’s apartment. “He did all the work in here. He managed to save a little extra here and there. That’s why you have some furniture. He felt bad leaving it all bare bones, so he went out and got the furnishings himself. He’s a sweetheart of a boy. Quiet, but always friendly.”
“Hold on.” Natalie cut in while Gail took a rare breath. “Are you telling me that the other apartments aren’t furnished?”
“Perhaps they’ll all be eventually,” Gail said with a shrug. “This one is the first one completed since he came to live here.”
“Oh, he’s new too?”
“Oh, yes. He moved in just after the unpleasantness over in…” Abruptly Gail’s rhetoric stumbled to a halt as if a wire had been cut. Then half a moment later she continued. “He’s done a shocking amount of work in that time though. Have you been down to the basement? He managed to get the washers and dryers in working order, and they haven’t worked in forever.”
“We have a laundry room?”
“Oh, yes. It’s all mismatched, and I think he managed to get the appliances second-hand from here and there, but it all works. I do mine on a Thursday, do you have a set day?”
“Tomorrow.” Natalie hadn’t thought about it. She was intending to find a laundromat in the local area and failing that she could always hand wash in the bath.
“I’m certain the landlord doesn’t know about the laundry room. As far as I know, everything is wired into the same communal supply as the hallway lights. So, whoever is paying for it all isn’t us.”
Natalie would later do some exploration. The laundry room was an unexpected bonus.
“Mum? We were going to see if the arcade machine is working again.” Natalie glanced up to see that it was Charlie speaking. Her voice was soft and orderly as if she were older than she appeared.
“If Natalie doesn’t mind.” Gail turned to her, and Natalie smiled and nodded.
“Does it take coins?” Natalie moved automatically for her purse, even though she knew how little there was in there. Gail touched her arm as the children scampered to the apartment door and let themselves out.
“No dear. It broke a long time ago and Lucas fixed it, so now it works anyway.” She smiled, and Natalie thought she saw something like pride peek through. “He is a very nice young man. A little caught up in his studies, but still.” She brightened suddenly. “You know he is single, so perhaps…”
“No. No, thank you.” Natalie leaned back; her hands raised as if to ward off blows.
“Well, it was just a thought.”
“And it’s a very nice thought, but that’s not why I’m here.”
“So, why are you here then dear?”
Natalie smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes.
Matty could not see her, but he heard her voice as he pressed his ear to the other side of the apartment door. “And that is something I don’t want to get into.” She said, and Matty heard the pain of her recollection under her words.
“What are you doing?” Charlie asked. Her tone was disapproving. “It’s not polite to eavesdrop.”
“What’s an ‘eves drop’?”
“It’s when you listen to someone without them knowing.”
“What does it matter?”
“It’s rude.”
Matty grunted. It was a noncommittal sound, it was a sound that said, “I hear you, but I don’t know if I believe you.” She nodded her head towards the foyer at the end of the corridor. Her hair rose in a wave and then settled again over her shoulders.
“I like your hair.” He said. He didn’t intend to speak; he thought the words and they just popped out.
“Thank you,” Charlie replied without much enthusiasm. “I don’t even have to brush it.”
She walked and Matty followed. Charlie was a little taller than he was, but he guessed they were roughly the same age.
“How old are you?” He asked, and she cut a look over one shoulder that could cut glass.
“Didn’t your father tell you never ask a lady her age?” She said. The words weren’t coldly delivered, and Matty heard no anger in them. He guessed they were words she had heard and repeated rather than something she felt strongly about.
“Didn’t say much of anything to me, ’Kay?” He replied as they turned the corner into the foyer. The rectangle of light through the doors to the outside dazzled him, and he could make out none of the surroundings, just a white blur. In the corner of the room was the arcade machine, directly opposite was a snack machine. Its lights were on, but its racks were empty. Matty looked at it, wondering why anyone would leave it empty.
On the couch Barbara Nicholson was reading the same page of her book, beside her Bart had his feet on the table, the same hole in his sock revealing the same patch of white flesh. In his hands was another copy of Anglers Monthly, or it may have been the same copy, Matty couldn’t tell. Something scraped across the hard floor, and Matty’s gaze moved to the source of the sound. Charlie had dragged a plastic crate in front of the arcade machine and was now staring at it. The machine sprang to life, garish graphics splashed across the curved screen fast enough that Matty couldn’t immediately understand what it portrayed.
Charlie moved to the crate edge to allow Matty to stand beside her. He stepped up, his shoulder brushing hers, and grasped the controls.
“You’re the man on the right.” She instructed. “I’m the lady on the left. The bar at the top is your energy. This row of buttons are punches.” She hit them and her character threw a series of punches some distance from his own, a moment later she hit another row of buttons. “And these are kicks.”
Matty edged his character forward, then experimented with the buttons.
“You ready?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah, think so.” Said Matty. But he realised over the next hour that Charlie had earned considerable skill with this particular game.