Cruising

by Ea Anderson

Alonso Reyes

I have always wanted something rich and round; cherries, a house with a tower, a fat husband; voluptuous, like an opera singer or at least someone who didn’t dress in grey. Wooden floors in a warm colour, thick glasses of red wine, thick liquids in general. A farmhouse, a chaiselongue to be languid on.

My parents were skinny as sticks. My mother had easy access to tears, my father was completely without hobbies or interests. I was fat and red as a child, my brother was distant. I call him now sometimes in the city where he lives. ‘Elsa,’ he says. ‘I love you, James, like a brother,’ I say.

We talk about visiting. I talk about visiting. And we have done in the past, talked and visited.

My brother used to be rich and round. He’s still rich money wise, but the rest seem to have slumped. Physically, his muscles have turned into loose skin or that’s what it looks like through his clothes; I haven’t seen a bit of his skin, apart from what is open to everyone — hands, feet, face — for years. Last time was one of the times we visited, long ago. I visited and we went to an outdoor swimming pool together in the city where he still lives.

He was proud of me, his sister. I was round, not fat, just big and with large round breasts, still muscular. And I was proud of him. We were like these power people, large and beautiful, everything about to happen and that’s the best time. He looked like an athlete from the 1940s without the jerky movements from the old movies. I wore a fuchsia-coloured swimsuit.

His flat was rich and round. It didn’t have a tower but the walls were oxblood red and teal, the wallpaper in the bathrooms looked like a tropical garden, rich green plants and flowers in all imaginable colours, peacocks with golden tails. Bursting bookcases lined the walls, music, the smell of dinner cooking or dense perfume. Always full of people coming and going. I guess it might still look like that; I don’t know because I haven’t seen it for years, but he still lives the same place and I can’t imagine him redecorating at this stage. Oh, I picture it now as it might be, peeling and flaky, the gold taps covered in limescale, the smell of cooking, which used to be elaborate dinners, now bags of fries, the smell of them stuck in the balding velvet couches.

Unfortunately, I fell in love with a poet there, in his flat at a long-ago party. I don’t know why I would love him. He was stern and serious. He wore high-waisted brown corduroy trousers, a stained white shirt that was too big for him and a grey tweed blazer. And what he saw in me is unfathomable, though he does have a streak of vanity in him more powerful than he likes to admit and it might have been that he liked to have me on his arm as a piece of jewellery, getting him noticed. I still love him, all grey and disappointed.

But I am silly. I have always been a bit silly; that was okay back then, not so much now, though. I won’t see things for what they really are and if I do, I pack them away till it’s really too late. Then I laugh and look for things rich and round, which can be difficult in this greying world. Like lunch with Maureen, who might still turn up in a pink swimming cap with white and yellow flowers over her grey hair, above her wrinkled face, which makes me laugh. A good fat pork roast with crispy cracklings dripping with fat. A boat ride on the river cruiser with dinner and dancing.

The poet keeps me busy though. We still have people from the faculty over for dinner or lunch sometimes in the weekends. He still teaches. All these grey skinny people complementing my creamy coleslaw and rich chocolate mousse.

He’s still embarrassed by me, everything is intact. Though now what it is, is that he tolerates me, I’m no longer really a jewellery you would want to wear, think Maureen with her swimming cap. It’s no longer worth yelling or fighting.

I left him once and went on a cruise. Not any cruise, a three-months cruise of the world. I spent a giddy amount of money. I drank tons of thick liquids, they ran out the corners of my mouth, down my chin and neck and onto my dress. I danced and swayed. I swam lane after lane in the pool and didn’t see land for days. But then there was land and all the parties from the cruise went on shore and shook the cities, towns and villages we came to, colourful as a carnival. Casablanca, Istanbul, all the white Greek isles in a row, Montecarlo and on and on.

And then the cruise was over and some of the people who had met went on together to other places and of course I was invited, they wanted me to come but I took a plane home from Naples. I remember that afternoon in the airport, the orange light through the enormous windows facing the runway. All the planes, dust in the air, red sand blowing in from Sahara. I looked at the board showing the departures, thinking the plane might get cancelled but it didn’t and when it was time I boarded.

The poet didn’t ask me anything and I didn’t offer. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased I was back. Now though, after all these years, I know he is, no matter how much he despises me sometimes. Now and again, I see him look at me in a certain way, almost grateful you could say, and I imagine he’s thinking of the time I went away, so pleased in his heart, in all his living cells, that I came back.

Really, I think, what would have been nice, would have been to live with my brother. Even now, with his loose skin and flaky flat. We were almost like a couple, platonic of course.

He invited our parents to one of his parties once. ‘Have you lost your mind?’ I said. But I was giddy about it too, now things really seemed to have reached the limit of lush, untamed lunacy, rich and round.

‘Your highnesses,’ he said as he opened the door for them. He had a white napkin draped over his arm and a tray with two glasses of champagne in the other, which he offered them as they entered. I didn’t see their faces, my eyes were filled with tears from laughing. I was hiding behind the open bathroom door.

Later though, I watched them. I entered the living room from the corridor. I had left the kitchen when one of my brother’s friends had started undressing to show the mole on his thigh, which he said was shaped exactly like Greenland. He always did that.

The living room was full of people, some were dancing, others chatting or singing. Our parents sat in two armchairs under the window, silently watching it all and on their faces, there was a small content smile.

They died soon after that. None of us had seen them since. It wasn’t a surprise. With people like them, death is never surprising. We arranged the funeral together, my brother and I. The poet helped too, he was the one who was mostly in contact with the funeral director. It somehow seemed more like a job for him than for us.

All of our friends came to the funeral even though they didn’t know my parents. We had to have someone to fill the church. I was grateful to them, I don’t think any of them wanted to be there. I have never seen them so quiet. Many of them cried during the service. Maybe it was the setting, the hymns, the sun through the coloured glass, who knows what?

I hadn’t imagined how much I would miss them. It was the same with the poet when I was away on the cruise. You just don’t know.

It is Sunday and I think these things often on a Sunday. Sundays have a different quality. The poet is in his study, as a poet should be.

I’m going to call my brother today, I think, as I do sometimes.

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Ea’s a serial expat. Originally from Denmark, she has lived in Scotland and now lives in France. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in L’Esprit Literary Review, West Trade Review, TheWestchester Review and The Woven Tale Press, as well as several Danish literary journals and anthologies. She’s the author of Hun Bryder sig Langsomt om Hunde (She Slowly Cares for Dogs).