The Crane Wife(42)
Author: Patrick Ness

‘Bring him by tomorrow, will you?’

‘I will, Dad,’ she said and started to ascend the stairs.

‘Amanda,’ he said, stopping her.

‘Yeah?’

‘Did your friend leave?’

A that’s-a-good-question expression crossed Amanda’s face. ‘She must have got a lift or something.’ She shrugged. ‘Weird. But kind of typical.’

She carried on up the stairs, and George moved to his last remaining guests, all of whom, mercifully, he knew and, in their own different ways, loved.

‘Well, you’re a dark horse,’ Clare said. ‘Actually, you’re completely not a dark horse, ever, which is why I’ve found this all vaguely upsetting.’

‘Aren’t you happy for me?’

‘Ecstatic, darling. I haven’t the slightest idea how you managed to get her to look at you, but now that you have– ’

‘Congratulations,’ Hank said, shaking George’s hand in that too-hard way George suspected was reserved for his wife’s ex-husband. ‘Maybe fewer guests next time?’

‘I know. We’re a little baffled as to who exactly–’

‘Art junkies,’ Mehmet interrupted. ‘Like those starling murmurations. They rise up out of nowhere in their millions, dazzle you for like seven minutes, then gone again into oblivion.’

There was a silence at this. Then George said, ‘Mehmet, that was–’

‘I told you there was something on the way,’ Mehmet said to Hank, wavering slightly from the vertical. ‘Something wonderful.’

‘You said it would also be terrible,’ said Hank.

‘Well,’ Mehmet says, looking back at George, ‘I’m sure that’s on the way, too.’

‘Gosh,’ George said, collapsing onto the settee after the final stragglers had left.

Kumiko sat down next to him. ‘We made it.’

But – unless George was imagining it, which was entirely possible – there was an awkwardness between them somehow, a new one, as if now that they’d made their announcement to his family and a roomful of bastards, they were strangers once again. He desperately hoped it wasn’t anything to do with Rachel.

‘Is there anyone on your side we need to tell?’ he asked.

She smiled wearily at him. ‘I have said to you many times. There is only me. Except that now, there is only me and you.’

He breathed out through his nose. He was still unfeasibly warm. His sweat had soaked through three layers to drench his blazer. ‘Is there really me and you?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

He was surprised to find himself near tears. ‘You keep so much of yourself from me. Still.’

‘Please do not get too greedy, George,’ she said, and he was shocked by her use of greedy, the same word he used with Amanda. ‘Can we not have what we have now?’ she continued. ‘Even as husband and wife? Can you not love me with all my closed doors?’

‘Kumiko, it isn’t a question of loving you–’

‘There are things that are hard for me to answer. I am sorry.’ She looked unhappy, and he felt as if there was nothing in the world he wouldn’t do to stop her looking like that, murder, destruction, betrayal, if only she would pour sunshine on him again.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry. I actually don’t feel all that great. I wonder if I have a little fever–’

She cut him off, almost gently. ‘I have finished a new tile.’

He was taken aback. ‘Well, but. But that’s wonder–’

‘It is here.’ She went to one of his bookcases and fetched it out from where it was hidden behind a row of books. ‘I had it ready for the party, but there seemed no moment.’

She handed it to him.

‘It’s from the story,’ George whispered, the tears gathering again with full force as he looked down on her clipped and gathered feathers, his clipped and gathered words. ‘Kumiko, it’s . . .’

But he could only look.

The lady and the volcano circled one another warily, both now made of a combination of feathers and words, as their world cowered beneath them. And the tenderness as they watched one another, the anger, the heartache about to erupt, were almost too much for George. He was going to have to lie down in a moment and deal with this strange fever, but for now he just looked and looked, staring at the elegant, bird-like curves of the lady, at the blazing green stones Kumiko had given the volcano for eyes.

‘The story,’ he asked. ‘Is this the end?’

‘Not yet,’ Kumiko whispered, her voice like a breath of cloud. ‘But soon.’

Amanda dreamed she was an entire army eating the earth. Her hands were twisting streams of soldier ants and soldier men, destroying but also dissolving, then re-forming as fingers to grab, fists to pound, her body stretching from horizon to horizon, flattening everything in her path, approaching a city, yes, approaching it and raising a mighty tidal wave of a hand to sweep it all away–

But hesitating now, holding herself back from the final destruction–

And learning in an instant the fatality of this hesitation, because already she is dissipating, already she is falling to pieces, atom by painful atom–

She woke, not with a start, but with a simple opening of her eyes (never knowing this was an exact mirror of how her father woke from nightmares). She reached across the bed to place a hand on the bare skin of Henri’s back, an action that always re-anchored her after a troubling dream, bringing her back to earth, settling her again for sleep.

But Henri wasn’t there, of course. Not for years.

She breathed out slowly across night-dried lips and tried not to let wakefulness take hold. She shifted in the bed and sensed the wetness of night sweats on her sheets. She’d been fighting off a low fever for at least a week, culminating in a lovely new cold sore that now, as she yawned, cracked painfully at the corner of her mouth, like the punishment of an irritable god.

Even in her grogginess, it felt like a punishment she deserved. The days since the party had been fractious and stormy, not least in her own head. She found herself thinking of Kumiko almost constantly, wondering what she was doing that moment, wondering if she was with George, wondering especially when she herself might see her again. It was ludicrous. On one level, it felt like nothing so much as a crush, a surprising one as Amanda had never been attracted to other women – she kept mentally pressing those buttons to see if she had any feelings that way, but so far nada, which was both confusing and slightly disappointing – but the longing didn’t seem physical. Or no, that wasn’t right, it did seem physical but not that kind of physical. It was almost like the foods she had craved when she was pregnant with JP, her body telling her with unstoppable force that she had to eat peanuts and pineapple or die. Yes, that seemed to be it, Kumiko was a vital element that Amanda needed to keep on living.