Chapter 9
She tried to become the girl on the list again.
Monday a lecture hall with seats that folded and a professor who talked too fast.
Lina wrote until her hand cramped and understood one word in three.
Tuesday a gallery with free hours, white rooms, a guard on a stool.
She stood in front of a painting of a river that was not her river and took a photo for Tomas so the week would have proof of culture.
Wednesday a church downtown. She did not know the denomination.
She sat in the back pew and looked at stained glass until her eyes watered, red and blue on her hands.
She photographed a dome. She photographed her shoes on stone.
She rode the bus with the notebook open so her face would look occupied.
It almost worked.
Then the house.
The twins were ordinary in the kitchen if you only listened.
Eggs. Orange juice. Cole talking about a quiz he had not studied for.
Ryan scrolling, grunting. Their eyes were not ordinary.
Ryan’s glance caught on Lina’s mouth when she said good morning and stayed a second too long, as if he could still see himself there.
Cole’s dropped to her cardigan buttons, then to the floor, then to her throat, remembering.
Mark was worse because he was soft.
He passed her in the upstairs hall and his fingers found her hip through the skirt, a secret squeeze, counted, released before Diane’s door opened.
Lina kept walking. The squeeze stayed. Once, Tuesday, Diane’s shower drumming, Mark came into the kitchen and kissed Lina’s hairline while she held a plate, mouth warm, the word *sweetheart* so quiet it could have been steam from the dishwasher.
“Coordinator emailed,” he said there. “I said you’re thriving.”
Thriving.
She carried the plate upstairs and set it on the desk uneaten. The chicken skin dulled.
Vocabulary until the letters swam. She copied English for things she already understood and for things the dictionary refused: host, household, consent, placement. There was no entry for okay that meant a belt. There was no entry for thriving that meant a kiss at the hairline.
She fled to the bench under the clock tower and called Tomas with stone behind her so he would not see pale guest paint.
Wind. Lithuanian. His evening lamp.
“Still cold?” he asked.
“A little.”
“You should see a doctor. Their air is wrong.”
“It’s only my throat.”
True if she counted Cole’s collar of fingers and Mark on her tongue and the word office sitting under the register of her thoughts.
Tomas talked about the wedding again, a suit he did not like.
Lina watched a girl on the quad tip her head back and laugh with her whole face.
She wanted to be that girl. She wanted to be on a plane.
She wanted a lock. The wanting stacked. She almost said it: *the father kissed me by the washer and Sunday I was on my knees so he would not call the people who sent me*.
The sentence was too long for wind and too true for a green camera light.
She said, “I love you.”
He said it back. Thumb on the lens.
Afterward she sat until the clock marked a new hour. Then she rode the bus toward the house because the syllabus lived there, and the chair, and the squeeze that meant thriving, and the plate of untouched chicken.
Dinner was loud in the polite way.
Diane asked if the gallery was good.
“Yes. The dome was… large.”
Cole said, “We’ll take you to a better dome,” and Ryan kicked him under the table, and Mark smiled into his water as if the joke were harmless and he owned the punchline.
No one played footsie.
The air did it for them.
Lina washed her fork, said she had reading, and went up before coffee could become a living room.
Chair under the knob.
Notebook.
*I tried to be the list. Lecture. Gallery. Glass. Bus. Shoes on stone.*
*Their eyes in the kitchen.*
*His squeeze. Sweetheart in the steam. Thriving.*
*I told Tomas a cold. I almost told him the office.*
*I said I love you instead. That is also a lid.*
She put on socks. Doubled.
The house settled into television and pipes.
Two temperatures: the bench with the dome in her phone, and this hallway that remembered her hip.
She slept in the cardigan, buttons to the throat, a lock that only fooled a girl who was already asleep, and only until the first dream of a coordinator’s smile.
Thursday the twins offered the library wall again.
They did it in the kitchen, Cole spinning keys, Ryan eating toast over the sink. Lina said no while Diane’s back was turned at the coffee machine, then said no again when Diane turned around, so the word would have a witness.
“I will take the bus.”
Cole shrugged, keys chiming. “Your martyrdom.”
Ryan smiled with one side of his mouth. The guest-room side. “Wall’s there if you change religions.”
Mark, tying a work shoe against the jamb, said, “She can ride the bus. Independence is the point.”
Independence, with his hip already close to the counter, with the ghost of a squeeze still on Lina’s skirt from the hall.
On campus she lasted until four. Lecture. Notes that looked like another language even when they were English. A study group at a long table waved her over and she shook her head, polite, and sat alone with a cold tea. An email landed from the coordinator. Subject: *Check-in.*
*How is the placement? Any concerns? We want you to feel supported.*
Lina typed *Everything is wonderful.*
She sat with the sentence. The cursor blinked in the e of wonderful. She thought of a lock, a washer, a chair, a belt, a cold she did not have. She hit send before she could put a period of truth in it.
Mark would like wonderful.
Tomas would never be on that thread.
She walked home a different way so the bar street would not appear. Her feet found it anyway: chalkboard, burned neon letter, the steeple two blocks over that Ryan had pointed at like a punchline. She crossed to the other sidewalk. No twins. Still watched, or that was only her skin.
Dinner was fish and lemon and Diane talking about a coupon.
Under the table Cole’s knee drifted toward Lina’s and stopped short, a joke he decided not to finish.
Ryan asked her to pass the water. When she did, he looked at her mouth, not the glass.
Mark’s shoe found the leg of her chair and rested there, a vibration up the wood into her thigh that was not a touch and was not nothing.
After dishes Diane asked Lina to fold towels in the living room.
Television on. A cooking show. Safe. Public.
They made stacks. Lina aligned corners like the towels might be graded. Mark passed behind the couch toward his office. His fingers trailed the back of her neck, hidden by the pile in her arms, five warm points, gone. Lina dropped a washcloth. It flopped onto the rug.
Diane picked it up.
She did not ask.
“You’re flushed,” Diane said.
“The dryer.”
Mark’s voice from the hall, easy: “Basement’s always hot.”
Lina folded until her fingers ached and the cooking show ended in applause.
Upstairs her phone had Cole.
Cole: wall tomorrow. or not. ur call nun
She deleted it. The preview lingered in her head.
Ryan: a photo of the library steps, gray stone, no caption, no people. The wall empty. An invitation shaped like architecture.
She deleted that too.
Tomas sent the river at dusk, water like slate, the poster made real. Lina sent the dome again. Repeating a church. As if stone could cancel a nape.
She almost wrote: *I told the coordinator a lie. The father calls it thriving.*
She wrote: *I love you. I am studying.*
Chair under the knob. Suitcase still thick with the hidden spread. Notebook.
*Wonderful sent.*
*Knee that stopped. Mouth that looked. Chair leg.*
*Fingers on my nape under towels. Diane picked up what I dropped.*
*Basement’s always hot.*
*I am studying. That is also a lie if studying means this house.*
She sat on the bed and practiced syllabus words out loud, very quietly, so the room would hear a student.
“Placement. Concern. Supported. Wonderful.”
They sounded like Mark’s kitchen voice.
She stopped.
Socks. Doubled. Lamp off.
In the dark she lined up the twins’ kitchen eyes, the hairline kiss, Diane’s hand on a dropped washcloth, the coordinator’s empty inbox waiting for a second wonderful.
She could not tell which door was the kind one.
All of them opened.
None of them locked.
Sleep came in a thin sheet.
Not enough to make her the girl on the museum list when the alarm went.
Enough to get to the bus with *everything is wonderful* sitting in a sent folder like a second stamp in her passport, pretty and untrue.
Friday the coordinator replied.
*So glad to hear it. Enjoy the city!*
The exclamation point looked like a person smiling with their whole face, the kind of girl on the quad. Lina deleted the email. It stayed in her anyway, in the sent folder under her own *wonderful*.
She sat in the library window chair and copied notes she would not remember.
Outside, the trees had gone thin. A squirrel ran the length of a branch and stopped, tail jerking.
Lina ate bread at noon on the bench and did not look at the low wall.
The wall went on without her. She knew that.
Knowing did not make her walk toward it.
Mark came home early.
She heard the garage, the keys, the pause in the kitchen where he would see her bag missing from the hook and understand she was upstairs.
Diane was at the store. Soap. The twins’ class ran late.
The house took on a Saturday shape for one thin hour: too quiet, machines still, the basement under the floor like a held breath.
Lina put the chair under the knob before he reached the hall.
He knocked.
“It’s me.”
She sat on the bed and looked at the chair legs.
He did not push. The knob did not turn.
“Coordinator’s pleased,” he said through the wood, gentle, doorway-soft. “You’re doing fine. I told you simple stories work. Dinner at seven. I’m proud of you.”
Proud.
The word sat on the pale spread beside the folded shirts.
Footsteps receded. His door. A closet. Ordinary.
Lina slid down to the floor with her back against the guest door and breathed until her hands unclenched. The chair held nothing except her idea of it. She left it there.
Dinner was chicken again, or fish—she would not remember.
Cole talked about a party off campus, a name, a cover.
Ryan asked if nuns went to parties. Lina said she had reading.
Mark poured her water before his own wine.
Diane unpacked a plastic bag and set two bottles of store soap by Lina’s plate, vanilla and unscented, like a present and a line drawn.
“Upstairs closet,” Diane said. “Yours.”
After dishes Diane asked Lina to help put the bottles away.
The closet was narrow. Towels. Extra pillows. Vanilla sweet in the dark.
“You can come to me,” Diane said, eyes on the labels. “If the house gets loud.”
Lina’s hands stopped on a cap.
“I am fine.”
Diane’s smile was small and tired, a kitchen smile at the end of a week. “That’s the word. I know that word.”
She squeezed Lina’s shoulder, high, proper, grandmother-high, not Mark-low, and went to her room.
Lina stood with the vanilla.
Skype at ten. Tomas in a jacket, hair combed, going out. Friends. A bar that was his, not a chalkboard on a side street. Lina wished him a good night and meant it and envied the jacket until her teeth hurt.
“You sure you’re all right? You keep saying cold.”
“Wonderful,” Lina said, and heard the coordinator’s exclamation point, and almost laughed, and swallowed the laugh because it would have become a basement. “I love you.”
“I love you. Eat. Sleep.”
Thumb. Dark screen.
The twins’ music started through the wall, bass like the movie night. Mark’s door clicked shut, a lock that existed for him.
Lina opened the notebook.
*Enjoy the city.*
*Proud. Through the door. He did not push the chair.*
*Diane: if the house gets loud. I said fine. She knows the word.*
*Vanilla soap. Not basement.*
*I said wonderful to Tomas. I am becoming a simple story on purpose.*
*The list does not run the day anymore.*
Socks. Cardigan to the throat. Lamp off.
Somewhere between Friday night and the thin Saturday morning the week split down the center like a piece of paper torn against a ruler: library light on one side, and on the other the light that came on when Diane left and the twins laughed and okay still meant visa,
and proud still meant his mouth on her hair.
Saturday, her hips knew, would not stay at squeezes and napes.
She woke anyway.
She buttoned the cardigan anyway.
She wrote the bus times again, ink dark, a ritual for a route she could still ride even if the destination had stopped being only stone and domes and a boy by a river.
The chair waited in the corner for night.
Night would come.
The house did not do locks.
It did proud, and wonderful, and fine, and family.
Lina put the notebook under the dictionary and went down to breakfast with her throat buttoned shut.