Chattering by Louise Stern / Fiction / Untitled Books

'From reading the business letters, he thought he would like to be a lawyer one day. Lawyers seemed to know what to do.'

Chattering by Louise Stern

Time alone was hard to find in Alex's house. He timed his trips to the toilet so that he would have time to have a good look at himself in the mirror. Their house only had one bathroom, and most of the time if someone was there too long, the rest of the family would bang on the thin door wanting to get in. There was a split in one side of it where his brother Jordan had punched it in a fit of rage. Sometimes, while his mother was out working at the restaurant and his brothers were in the back yard or watching a movie on TV, he could have a long look at himself. The mirror had three metalframed sections. The centre section was flat against the wall, but you could swing open the mirrors on the left and the right to get to the medicine cabinet behind them. Alex always looked at himself for a while, studying his face - his freckled cheeks, the mole on the side of the short bumpy nose that he hated, and his sad blue eyes - wondering who this person looking back at him was and how he could find out for sure. Then he brought his face up against the edge of the mirror on the right, the one without all the rust spots on the glass, and swung it around a little, so that he became a coneheaded ogre with one eye or a Medusa with spreading hair, two noses, a huge mouth, and two small, pinched eyes.

The only things to read in the house were bills his mother got sent in the mail. They watched a lot of television, Jordan stretched out on the maroon velour La-Z-Boy right in front of the TV and the rest of them on the old brown sofa. After she was done with her shift at the restaurant, Alex's mother put on her pink sweats and found her spot on the sofa so she could have her beers and watch the talk shows where people's problems were sorted out in half an hour. When his mother was at work and they weren't at school, Alex and his brothers fought over what to watch. The top contenders were usually sports, the sitcoms, cartoons, and MTV. Jordan was big and muscular, so he usually won and they all watched ESPN, switching over to the other stuff during the commercials. The room was dark, with a low ceiling, one small window that was at the wrong angle to catch any light, and a lamp on the table by the sofa. The wavering glare of the television illuminated them all.

Alex remembered when his mother's arms had been thin, but now there was rippled fat under them. Her body was flabby and she had freckles on the backs of her hands. Whenever she hauled herself off the brown couch, she left a trail of wadded-up tissues, gossip magazines, half-empty bags of sour cream and onion potato chips, candy wrappers, and empty beer cans behind her. She was always angry when she came home from work, at the crusted dishes in the sink, the overflowing kitchen trash can, at how many people were in the house. Other people's messiness irritated her much more than her own.

From when he was about nine, Alex often went for long walks on his own around the neighbourhood. The Denny's restaurant where his mother worked was a few blocks away from the house, and there was a playground in between, behind his school. He would stop there and play on the yellow swing set for a while. When the swing got to a certain point in the air, its chains jumped and buckled, and then he stopped swinging and let it slow down by itself. He dragged his feet in the dirt beneath the swing, deepening the ruts in the ground, and then after a while he would get up to go to the corner store for some candy. Sometimes he took coins from his mother's purse to buy his favourite sour candy, but otherwise he wore a big sweatshirt and slipped the candy into his sleeve when the man at the counter was talking on his phone. The candy made his teeth stick together, and he chewed it as he walked up to the dumpster that stood against the concrete-block wall behind the corner store. If nobody was around, he dragged over one of the plastic orange crates that were stacked next to the dumpster, stood on it, and pushed up the rubber cover of the dumpster to look inside. There were sometimes things to read in there, all kinds of things - people's cancelled cheques, business letters, personal letters, thick books with small print and fake leather covers, or romance novels with women in flowing dresses leaning back under strong brown men. Alex climbed inside and read everything there was for a while. From reading the business letters, he thought he would like to be a lawyer one day. Lawyers seemed to know what to do.

There were a few houses in the neighbourhood where doors were never locked. Alex knew this because he often tried doors on his walks. A few times he had been caught, but he lied and said he had been visiting a friend and had gone to the store on the way, and wasn't this his friend's house? There was one big house that he loved, a few blocks away from his house in an area where the people had much more money. A man lived alone there, and he was often away. He kept his spare key under a loose tile by the side of the house - Alex had seen him put it there once when he was walking by. If there was no car in the driveway and more than one newspaper by the front door, Alex went inside. There were always expensive chocolates wrapped in gold foil in the refrigerator, and the clothes were all in plastic wrappers from the dry cleaners, hanging neatly in the closet. First white shirts, then blue ones, then all the other ones, and then pants. The shoes were ordered by colour, too, and the ties were on a rack. There were no women's clothes anywhere. He was sure the man lived alone.

In the living room the carpet was white and fluffy, with not a spot anywhere on it, and the man had a soft black leather couch in front of a big TV. He had a shower and a tub in his bathroom, with matching frosted bottles lined up at the sides. Alex had taken a bath in the tub once, squeezing a little from all of the bottles into the hot water. He hadn't dared stay in the bath too long - you never knew when the man was coming back, although there were only two newspapers at the front door so far. For as long as Alex had been watching the house, the man always stayed away at least five or six days.

Alex had looked in the desk, too. From a contract he found out that the man's name was Matthew Joseph and he was a lawyer. There were no personal letters or photographs there though, or anything that told Alex more about the lawyer and what he thought about when he was at home. There were notes about a case on a yellow pad in his handwriting, which was spiky and narrow. On the silver refrigerator was just one magnet, from a realestate company.

At home their refrigerator was covered with magnets. One said 'It's either the house or me that's clean', and another one had a psalm on it. Alex was always careful to put everything in Matthew Joseph's house back the way he found it, although he sometimes ate a chocolate if there were enough in the refrigerator that he thought one wouldn't be easily missed.

Alex became a lawyer. He had worked as a waiter to pay his way through school. He bought a white carpet like the one in Matthew Joseph's house. Every place he lived had a big bathtub like Matthew Joseph's. He had some things that Matthew Joseph hadn't - a grand piano, that he kept by his front window. Matthew Joseph hadn't had many books, and Alex had hundreds of books on different subjects. He shelved them by category and then alphabetized them by author. He had read most of them too.

At parties, a glass of champagne was never missing from his hand, and he sipped it throughout the evenings. He saw many of the same people at these parties. There was a woman Alex liked to look at, with nervous grey eyes and red lipstick, and a large but beautiful body. She stood with her shoulders back, always in silky dresses and diamonds or simple black beads, and she had freckles on her tan chest. Her husband was short and jittery and always kept one skinny arm around her waist. He was the one with something to say. His wife would just ask how Alex had been.

Another woman, dark and wiry with big teeth that rose up into her swollen red gums, always wore bright turquoise or amber beads around her neck and long skirts. She talked about her most recent travels and how much nicer people were in other places. Alex didn't travel much, but he asked her about the historical landmarks and culture in the places she had visited, and what they were like. After a few minutes, he excused himself and moved to another cluster of people. They were all men this time, talking about business and which stocks to buy.

Alex was polite to everyone. People came and went.

His brother Jordan called him sometimes to ask for money, and Alex gave it to him. He got angry though, and often told Jordan to stop pestering him for god's sakes.

Lately a woman Alex had seen at parties for years was trying to get him to join her group that met once a month for the members to talk about themselves. Their childhoods, their relationships, the books they read and what that said about them. Michelle wasn't at all pretty, but she had convinced herself that she was. She had big hips and a big nose, with dyed short blonde hair, and her fingernails were always perfectly painted. She would lay her hands with their glistening nails lightly on people's shoulders when she talked to them and look into their eyes for a long time. She moved around rooms purposefully. She chose whom she wanted to talk to and what should be said. She had decided that Alex should be her friend. Alex wasn't sure if he wanted to be, but it would probably be easier to just give in to her. For the time being he was still holding out, though.

Michelle always exclaimed to him how so very interesting he was because he'd read and seen everything that she brought up. She often sent him some article or other she liked and asked his opinion on it. She said his replies were revealing psychologically and she wanted to discuss them with him the next time they met. She was always inviting him out to dinner or to Sunday lunch. Alex never went.

One weekend, though, he decided to go. He hadn't been out all weekend and he wanted a distraction. He drove to her house, chewing gum. The sun was shining and he found the place easily. The guard in his little enclosure at the entrance into the gated community smiled as he waved Alex in. Michelle's orange-pink Spanish-style house with its adobe roof tiles was at one end of a cul-de-sac and had a twisted iron railing by the concrete steps leading up to it. He rang the doorbell, and when Michelle let him into the white hallway he saw pieces by artists he knew on the walls. He was surprised to see that he was the only person in the house, even though he was twenty minutes late. She said she'd forgotten to tell him that the lunch had been delayed. He followed her into the living room.

The glasses were placed rim down, lined up exactly with the stripes in the white-on-white silk tablecloth. Two rows of stripes separated each glass from the next one. There were sixteen glasses all together, four down and four across, and the forks were in two rows, just so, next to them. The knives were next to the forks. White linen napkins were folded on the diagonal and plumped in a silver basket next to the crystal vase of mixed pink flowers.

She asked him if he wanted some champagne while they waited for the other guests, and poured two glasses out, handing one to him. They sat on the white sofa. Alex noticed that on her side of the sofa was a trail, just like his mother always left behind. Michelle's trail was tissues, sunglasses, lipstick, mints, and a few fashion magazines. She began to show him a few books spread out on the coffee table that she said she particularly wanted his view on.

He gave her his views.

He wondered why the books he had read in the dumpster had drawn him in so much more than any since then.

One of the partners at Alex's law firm came into his mind. The man had recently gone AWOL. Nobody knew where he was, not even his ex-wife and children. Word was that he had gone to Mexico with his new girlfriend to avoid being taken to court over the divorce. Alex knew the man as a pretty arrogant son of a bitch, but it was still surprising to think of him hiding away from his own children. He had been the highest-earning partner at the firm.

Alex decided firmly, then and there, not to join Michelle's group. It was a gut response. He didn't know why it had come at that moment, but it had.

They talked for a while longer about the books, Michelle saying how astute Alex was as she placed her hand on his shoulder.

The lunch went as he had expected. No surprises. Nice food, nice champagne, nice chat. He made his excuses and left as soon as he politely could.

Alex went to the gym during his lunch hour if he didn't have too much work. If it was sunny and he couldn't face going to the gym, he often went to the patch of green in front of his office block with a sandwich from the deli, and found a bench. Today, he was sitting there with a ham sandwich and a Coke. Sometimes he watched people, but today, after he'd finished eating, he closed his eyes and let the sun fall on his face.

Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes and saw that it was Michelle. She had shopping bags in her hands - the smart shops weren't too far away from the firm. He hadn't seen her for some time. He greeted her and she sat down next to him, exclaiming how long it had been since they'd seen each other, and saying he had to come to lunch on Sunday, and had he

seen this particularly interesting exhibition yet?

He smiled and answered pleasantly. The partner from the law firm had been making an appearance in his mind again, along with the dumpster. He wasn't sure why.

Suddenly, he took Michelle's hand in his, pulled her towards him and bit down on her bare forearm, hard. The warm flesh gave way under his teeth and it had a nice texture. When he let go Michelle had red tooth marks on her arm. He smiled at her as if it were a perfectly everyday thing to do. She smiled back at him.

'I have a lot of work to do Sunday, but if I finish in time I'll come to your lunch,' he told her. 'See you then.'

Dismissed, she walked away, looking at her arm with a fixed smile on her face. Alex felt a bit bad. It wasn't really the thing to do, biting people. But it sure had shut her up, and it felt good. He sat back, closed his eyes, and let the sun fall on him again.

The disappearance of the partner meant that there was even more work to do than usual. The secretaries filled cardboard cartons with files from the partner's office and wiped the coffee rings from his desk. The partner's endless cups of coffee had seemed an ingrained part of the firm's character, but some extra-strength cleanser soon got rid of them. The few gold-framed personal photos on his desk were thrown away and the boxes of files brought to Alex and the other lawyers who had been assigned to take up the slack.

They stayed late every night for weeks.

Every night the building gradually went dark except for three squares of yellow light, each on a different floor. One was Alex's office, third from the left on the fourth floor; another was the centre office on the seventh floor; and the third was the very last office on the right on the top floor.

When he worked through the night, Alex occasionally bumped into one of the others by the free coffee machine. The lattes, cappuccinos, and plain coffee from the machine all tasted exactly the same, thick with artificial sweetener. The mixture tasted like the instant hot chocolate powder he had eaten as a kid, with a spoon, straight from the box, when his mother was waiting for her pay cheque and there was no food in the house. It coated his tongue in the same way and stuck to the back of his throat.

Walking back to his office from the coffee machine, he sometimes stopped by the big window by the elevator; there was one on each floor of the building. He liked looking out on the night.

He remembered the time he had climbed a high tree, when he was about eight. He had grasped each thick bough tightly and climbed up and up. Nobody else had been around - it was just him and the tree. The snow was dirty on the ground. When he got to the top, the branch was suddenly thin and bendy compared with the ones below. It broke when he hoisted himself up on it and he went crashing down, twigs and branches scratching his face and arms as he fell through them, a big one scraping his back roughly as he slid down it. He hit the ground and felt the snow melting through his jacket, prickling the big scrape on his back. It hurt and he lay there, but then he got up and walked home. Nobody asked what had happened, and he hadn't told anybody about it.

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Californian writer and artist Louise Stern now lives and works in London. She is the founder and publisher of Maurice, a contemporary art magazine for Children. Her first collection of short stories, Chattering, is published by Granta.

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Thursday, 24 June, 2010

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Issue 40 / January 2012

'From reading the business letters, he thought he would like to be a lawyer one day. Lawyers seemed to know what to do.'