Page 43 - WTP Vol. X #7

so tired, she can’t hold on to any thoughts.
When he comes to her door and calls her, “Elinor, Elinor. Are you in there?”, she runs down the back stairs. She stands in the courtyard with her back pressed against the wall trying to catch her breath, the children playing around her, staring at her.
Then Ricardo stops calling. ~
They make Elinor take a break from the theatre, she’s just out for half a season. From her window she can see them come and go.
She paints the floors in her flat shining white. She moves all the furniture into one room, then paints the floor in the empty room. She is on her knees painting. In the evening, she sits in the doorway and looks at her day’s work. The radio is playing in the kitchen, the kids are playing in the courtyard, people are walking in and out of the big glass doors in the theatre and at around ten o’clock Elinor thinks she can hear their applause.
A few days before Elinor is to start at the theatre again, she goes home to visit.
She recognises the smell when she walks in, the smell of fish and perfume, asparagus pee, dust and sour milk, and from the garden Mrs. Evans’ yellow roses.
“Elinor. Elinor,” her grandmother says. Elinor kisses her father’s cheeks. Her grandmother’s preparing the meal. Her father pours dark liquid in the thick glasses in the living room. They sit next to each other on the couch and drink, the cat purrs, her father strokes its back again and again. He asks Elinor about the theatre and Elinor gives him tickets for the opening of her next play. He puts them in the drawer in the dark cabinet, then he puts the music on, he’s crooning and giggling to Elinor.
Before tea Elinor goes to see the chickens. She picks up their eggs and brings them into the kitchen. Her father is waiting by the door, Elinor holds the eggs, she looks into her father’s eyes and then he says, “Go show them to your mother, Elinor.”
Elinor feels the hurt in her throat, Elinor goes up the stairs and into her mother’s bedroom.
“Little bird,” her mother whispers. Elinor walks through the room, over to the windows and draws the curtains wide open. The evening sun fills the
room, every dark little corner. Elinor’s mother opens her mouth but no sound comes out, there is no voice. Everything’s glaring and everything’s moving, her mother’s limbs move and then stiffens, the eggs
roll and fall to the floor, yoke and white and sharp little shells. Her mother’s mouth frozen, open as if she wanted to scream. Elinor stands with her back pressed against the wall in the other end of the room. She can hear the footsteps of her father and grandmother coming up the stairs. Elinor stands pressed against the wall. Then she runs. She runs past her mother, she runs past her father and grand- mother entering the room, she runs down the stairs, out through the door and out on the street. She runs through the evening neighbourhood. Elinor runs and runs.
~
When Elinor was younger, still a young new actress, she often looked at the movie posters wishing
she could be in movies herself, but she never did anything about it and nothing happened and maybe it wasn’t a real wish.
Now Elinor has been at the theatre for years. People know her name, Elinor Reading, but she’s not a famous actress.
Autumn has been so long this year, it started early in August already and now in mid-November, it’s still not winter yet. The trees are still orange and often it’s fifteen degrees in the late afternoon.
Elinor has taken the tram out of the city, then she takes the bus east. She has taken this bus many times before, but never far enough, not before now.
She walks through the gates into the graveyard, she finds the area D, she walks down path number 15. Down the path in between all the graves.
The stone is not a big stone, it’s not a small stone either, it’s a good average stone. Evergreens, Tuska and Water-pine, grow tall on each side of it. Elinor steps closer, she stands right in front of it now. Then she reads their names, Leonard and Elisabeth Reading.
Anderson is originally from Denmark but now writes primarily in Eng- lish. Some of her recent work can be found in West Trade Review, L’Esprit Literary Review, and The Westchester Review. She’s the Author of Hun Bryder sig langsomt om Hunde (She Slowly Cares for Dogs). At the moment Ea lives in the south of France and is working on a novel.
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