The Apartment (16 page)

And Hayden was screaming.

I darted into the living room, gathered her into my arms, and just stood there, squeezing my eyes shut, holding her to me. I couldn't move. I was paralyzed; I was waiting for the cold steel of a knife against my throat. The growl of a voice demanding to know where the safe was hidden. The alarm wasn't connected to a private security company—we couldn't afford the monthly subscription. Unless a neighbor called the cops, we were alone. No one was coming. Cell phone—I needed my cell phone. I tapped my pockets but it wasn't there. Just where the fuck had I left it?

“Mumma! Mumma! Mumma!” Hayden shrieked over and over again. A fresh spurt of panic got me moving.
Get out, get out, get out!
I ran for the front door, fingers clumsily unlocking the security gate. As we reached the stoop, something clattered from Hayden's fingers. I looked down to see the panic button lying smashed on the flagstones. Shakily, and clutching Hayden to me, I bent down to pick it up. Inside the house, the alarm shrieked on, then finally died.

“Hayden?” I said as gently as I could. “Did you touch this? Did you press the red button?”

She nodded. “Yes, Mumma.”

I breathed in a lungful of humid air. “You mustn't touch it again, you hear me, Hayden?”

Her lip wobbled. “Sorry, Mumma.”

“It's okay. It was just a mistake.” I wiped the tears from her cheeks with the palm of my hand.

“You okay?” a man's voice called. I shielded my eyes against the sun. A rangy guy about my age was standing outside the front gate. I recognized him as one of the students from next door.

My pulse was slowing. I swallowed. “Yeah. Thank you. My daughter pressed the panic button. Sorry—I hope it didn't disturb you.”

“It's cool. Used to it. I'm originally from Joburg.” He grinned at me. “In any case, it's been happening a lot.”

“What has?”

“Your alarm. It's been going off a lot.”

A cold fist punched my gut. “When?”

“The last few days.”

“We've been away. We've only just got back.”

“Yeah. I figured. I called the cops a couple of times, but they didn't show up. I checked your windows and doors, but they all looked cool. Reckon it's just a glitch.”

“That is so good of you.”

“No problemo.” He shrugged. “I heard you had a break-in. It happened to my cousin and his family. Dude who broke in held them at gunpoint for…” His voice trailed away as he took in my dismayed expression. “I'm sorry. Not what you want to hear. I'm Karim, by the way.”

“I'm Steph and this is Hayden.” Hayden sniffed back the last of her tears and gave him a shy smile.

“Cool. Cute kid. That guy who lives here, is he your dad?”

Blood rushed to my cheeks, making my already hot face burn. “No. My husband.”

“I can be such a dumb ass.”

I laughed. It felt good to flirt. “Don't worry about it.”

Someone honked a horn and called his name. “Gotta shoot. We're going to Clifton. Last-minute thing, you know.”

“That'll be nice.” Better than nice. A small bubble of envy surfaced: I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be so carefree. Heading off to the beach on a whim, downing beers, talking shit.

“Yeah. Going for a swim. It's so bloody hot.” He slapped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry. Shouldn't swear in front of the kid.”

“She's heard worse.” I tickled Hayden and she squirmed and giggled.

“She is
seriously
cute.”

“Thanks again for checking on us. I owe you a beer. Or six.”

“Hey, no worries. You know where I am if you need anything. Laters.” He gave me another grin and ambled away.

Back in the house I decided against resetting the alarm—if there was a glitch in the system, I didn't want to risk startling Hayden again if it went off accidentally. To distract myself, I threw myself into playing with her. We played pirates and dress-up and built a Duplo house, and I put on a puppet show with her new Princess Elsa doll and vile Mermaid Barbie. Little by little I felt the stress draining away. When Hayden became irritable, I settled her on the couch with a juice bottle and sat next to her while she napped.

As I sat there, listening to Hayden breathing in her sleep, I let my mind work through everything that was bothering me. The alarm might be faulty, but the house was secure. My dad had seen to that. No one was getting in. And Hayden was fine. That was all that mattered. There was no point dwelling on Paris. What had happened in France was just pure bad luck. And wasn't it possible that the aftershock of the home invasion had poisoned everything and made it seem much worse than it actually was? Sure, there was no doubt that the Petits were seriously weird, and there was no getting away from what Mireille had done, but the policewoman had said she was mentally ill. Mark and I had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Carla had searched through my stuff, but so what? If her life was so unfulfilled that she got her kicks by nosing through other people's belongings, then that was her problem, not mine. And I had nothing to hide. No weird sex toys, no diary, no private love letters. Mark was a different story: he was feeling the strain; there was no doubt about that. When he got home I'd insist—for Hayden's sake—that he seek professional help.

I sent him a text—it was going on four p.m. and he'd been gone for more than two hours—but he didn't reply.

It was almost nine thirty when he returned. I'd fallen asleep in my room reading Hayden a story, and the creak of footsteps on the floorboards woke me up with the usual breath-stealing lurch. But instead of leaping to my feet, I was flooded with inertia—I wanted nothing more than to just lie there: if the men were back, so be it. I remember thinking that perhaps, like Mark, I'd also reached the breaking point. I wasn't sure how much more of the endless ebb and flow of fear I could stand: the noises in the night, the paranoia.

It took a monumental effort to snatch up the panic button and tiptoe into the shadowy hallway, telling myself,
It's just Mark, it's just Mark.

The light was on in Hayden's room, the door half-open. “You in there, Mark?”

I stepped cautiously toward it. He was hunched over her bed, pulling her duvet out of her coverlet. Another cover lay crumpled at his feet. “Mark.”

He turned and looked at me blearily, like a sleepwalker who'd been rudely awoken.

“What are you doing?”

The seconds ticked by, then, “I thought this might be dirty. I thought I should change it.”

“It's fine. It's clean. I washed it before we left.”

“God.” He gave a forced laugh. “Don't know what's got into me, Steph. Maybe I'm turning into one of those germophobes. Probably had too much sun today.”

“Mark…”

“Really. Don't look at me like that, Steph. I'm fine.”

I helped him shove Hayden's duvet back into its cover. His breath reeked of stale wine; he must have been way over the limit when he drove home.

“Mumma?” Hayden came toddling out of our bedroom.

Mark stepped toward her. “I'll put her to bed.”

“It's okay. I'll do it.” I swept Hayden into my arms. I didn't want him to touch her. She slipped a thumb in her mouth and buried her head in my shoulder, a sign that she was upset. She'd clearly picked up on the tension strumming through the house. “Why don't you go to bed, Mark?” I was putting on an over-cheery voice.
Look, Hayden, we're all one big happy family. Your daddy isn't going mad, oh no, no, no.
“You need your rest, Mark. Especially after…and you have work tomorrow, don't you?”

“Yeah. Yeah. You're right.”

I gave him a spectacularly fake smile and took Hayden down to the kitchen with me. There was no sign of Mark when I carried her back to her room, but our bedroom door was shut. Good. I lay down next to Hayden and snuggled as close to her as I could get. There was no point talking to him tonight. He was drunk. Tomorrow I would insist that he go to see some kind of head doctor. That or…or what? Ask him to leave until he'd sorted himself out? No. We were a family. We'd been happy once, secure.

Hayden kicked the duvet off her legs, rousing me. I sat up, knocking Princess Elsa to the floor. The spare duvet cover Mark had been fiddling with was curled in a ball in the corner of the room. Patterned with garish zigzags, it wasn't something I would have chosen for Hayden. I stood, made my way over to it, and shook it out. It was bobbled and faded in places, and dust bunnies clung to it. Where had it come from?

But I knew. It was Zoë's. It had to have been Zoë's.

I bundled it into a ball and crept downstairs. In the kitchen, I shoved it into a trash bag, and for once not caring who or what could be lurking outside, I hurried out to the trash can. I hauled out the bag already inside, threw the duvet into the pool of maggoty, putrid liquid at the bottom, and shut the lid.

My eyes are getting tired from avoiding Santé's gaze, so it's a relief when a cat's hiss outside sends the two massive hounds barreling off their couch and slamming out the door in a fit of deep barking, accompanied by the panicked squawk of chickens in the yard. At least I have an excuse to look away.

The therapist's room is all the way out on a smallholding in the Bottelary Hills. You'd think there'd be two therapists for every middle-class family much closer to home in the southern suburbs, but Santé Joubert is the only psychotherapist contracted with the college's homespun medical-aid scheme who had an opening. Dozens of psychiatrists could have seen me within five minutes, but I don't want to be medicated. Whatever this is, it is not something that can simply be pressed down with medication. I tried that before and it didn't work.

“I'm not delusional, Steph,” I said. “I'm not psychotic. I'm not dangerous.”

She clasped Hayden tighter to her and hissed over her shoulder. “So why's your daughter crying then? Why're you shouting at me?”

“I'm
not
shouting,” I shouted, then stopped. What a tacky scene, played out millions of times in millions of sad, drained families. I'm nothing but a cliché. I changed my tone, turned my hands over. “What do you want me to do, Steph? What can I do to make you trust me?”

“It's not about trust, Mark. I'm worried about you; that's all. Can't you understand that?”

“Then what? What can I do?” I glanced at Hayden and lowered my voice, as if that would stop her from hearing me. “You haven't let me be with her since we came back.”

“Do you blame me? Sometimes I think you have to get half-drunk just to be near her.” She caught her breath. “Look, I know you're under a lot of stress. Maybe there's a whole lot of stuff you haven't processed, that you've been pushing down. It will be good for you to talk about it.” I couldn't tell whether the look on her face was intensely empathetic or panicked. “We just want you to feel better.”

All because I waited till I thought Steph was asleep and took Zoë's bedding out of the trash can, intending to put it back on her bed. I know what Zoë needs me to do, but I can't explain that to Steph. All I was doing was trying to settle Zoë. I'm in constant mourning, for God's sake—you don't get over it; the grief comes in waves that never end. Steph can never understand that type of grief. If she lost Hayden, she could go running naked through the streets, screaming and pulling out her hair, and everyone would indulge her. But if I want to honor my daughter's memory in some private way, all of a sudden I'm insane.

It's not fair,
the voice of the bruised little child inside me wheedled, and that pathetic, plaintive appeal made me feel even more estranged. Just then, I was willing to battle it out forever, stand my ground, assert my dwindling rights, but one moment changed everything. As Steph bobbed around agitated, Hayden stopped crying and shifted her face out of the nook of Steph's shoulder; she raised her little hand and opened a chink in the curtain of her hair and peeked at me. Instinctively, I smiled and winked at her—that's what I do when I see her—and she smiled back, tentative but warm.

“I want to make this right,” I said. I didn't say,
Whatever you think I've done wrong.

“Show us that. Show us your willingness and we'll go from there.” Despite her conciliatory words, her tone was ice cold and her body was a bunker wall. That was the end of the discussion, the closest we'd get to agreement that night.

I was caught behind a procession of rickety trucks along Voortrekker Road through Bellville, the slow ones overtaking the even slower ones, and even though I'd given myself plenty of time, I was late for the eleven o'clock appointment. I followed Santé's directions along a series of tributary lanes and into a rutted dirt driveway, my little Hyundai slung way too low, then pressed the button on the intercom post at the front gate. It crackled and hissed as I glanced across the property's wall of precast concrete slabs topped by razor wire and electric strands. I announced myself back to the static, and the motorized gate swung open. After I'd followed the track along a fence toward a cluster of buildings set amid a stand of cypresses, Santé Joubert, fifty-something, her indeterminate shape and size swathed in Indian silks, directed me to park against one of the tree trunks.

As I started to step out of the car I saw the two huge hounds bolting toward me from a doorway, ears flapping and a scum of drool visible against their black lips even from this distance. Perhaps a human's primitive brain is primed to detect such fine details in his last moments. I froze. Santé did nothing to stop them, watching me with a neutral face as they cantered up and then clawed to a stop in the dust a few feet away from me.

“They like you,” she said in a winelands drawl, as if I'd passed some sort of test, as if the dogs could tell that I was who I said I was.

I eyed them as they snuffled around my shoes, wagging their pointy tails. I might have said something witty and collected like, “If they didn't, would they eat me?” but I was tongue-tied, on edge from the drive and shaken by the dogs, and all I managed was, “Heh,” as I followed her toward one of the low outbuildings, stoking a growing bitterness. Isn't a therapist supposed to put her client at ease? Isn't that the whole fucking point?

So when she led me into the cluttered session room, any desire I'd harbored to share my secrets had been cramped up, and when she said, “I hope you don't mind if the dogs sit in with us,” I really did, but who was I to say anything as the two Great Dane–mastiffs followed us in and settled themselves on a slumping couch covered by an old brown bedsheet? This wasn't my idea of a calm, minimalist therapist's room, and nothing like any doctor's office I'd ever seen. Santé's room was full of old furnishings as silk-draped and shapeless as its owner, a mismatched collection of hair- and mud-covered carpets. There was a stink of horse sweat and dog breath, and flies buzzed drowsily in the shaded light from the windows; the room was subterranean and earthy, like we were holed up in here among the roots of a vast tree.

Okay,
I thought as I settled back into the armchair she had shown me, the room certainly did make me feel far away from my office park and from home and from the dreary gauntlet of Voortrekker Road with its drive-throughs and concrete government offices, transported into some stinky hobbit's burrow. I did appreciate the books double-crammed into mismatched shelves placed around the large space to create organic nooks in which you could just hide away. But then I looked at her, regarding me like some sexless matron, judging me, and I straightened my back and edged toward the front of the seat. I'm not some child who can be manipulated by cheap tricks into telling the truth. This is the therapist's classic ploy: look at you until you say something, and the first sentence you utter is the most telling, the one they'll judge you on for the entire course. I was not going to break first; she could stare at me all she liked. Of course, I have a lifetime of talk I could've just started spewing, but why now, why here? I should be speaking out my guilt to Steph and to Odette, not to this flake.

It was only thirty seconds, perhaps, but it felt like an hour as I self-consciously darted my eyes anywhere but at hers, as I realized that stubborn silence is as telling as whatever I might say first, but that now I was committed and that failing to hold my silence was perhaps the most damning possible indictment of my character, or lack thereof. Stubborn, but too weak to hold any principle. So when the cat hisses and spits outside, sending the chickens into a frenzy and the dogs barging between Santé and me and battering through the door, it's with deep relief that I can look away and say something innocuous. “Do you want to check on that?”

But it's not an innocuous question, not really. I know that the dogs are Santé's protection, along with that bristling wall around her property. I wonder what has happened here, what has provoked this level of defense, which can't simply be a precaution. There must have been some attack from the countless claimants living the desperate sprawl of poverty that extends to her doorstep. It brings those three men shoving back through my mind, makes me hear Steph's terrified whimpers all over again, when I prayed I'd never hear them again. Santé's hippie passivity strikes me as just one more layer of this protective façade.

She just draws her mouth down and shakes her head. “No, it's okay,” she says, then resumes her gaze, her right hand resting on a small notepad on the arm of her chair. Not tapping her fingers, not impatient; waiting.

I don't have the energy for another round of gaze evasion, so I clear my throat. “I was wondering if we could get this over with in one go.”

“Get this over with?”

“The medical aid will only pay for four sessions, so we won't be able to get into anything too deep. So perhaps we can do it all in the next couple of days, if you're available?”

“Let's see how it goes. We can always discuss rates later.”

I shrug, knowing that whatever discount rates she proposes, we couldn't pay. It's now or never.

“Why did you come today, Mark?”

“To show my willingness.”

The brown dog saunters back to his spot on the couch, stretches, and farts. Santé's neutral expression doesn't change, but I smile. I suppose I'm more of a dog person than a cat person. I think it's because if given the choice, I'd prefer a dog's contented life to a cat's constant neurotic preening and parading.

And for the first time since the trip, I allow myself to think of what Zoë did to that cat, to replay the scene in my mind, not the way Steph wants us to remember it, but how it really happened. Nothing about this is coincidence, I convince myself. The guard dogs, the feral cats, the barbed wire and electric fencing. This woman knows me, she sees me, perhaps better than I imagined. I might have wound up in this musty room for a reason.

“Your willingness to do what?” she says.

“Oh, it's just an in-joke. Something my wife said.”

“In-jokes are important barometers in any relationship,” she says. “An intricate code that excludes people outside the relationship infers intimacy, empathy—almost telepathy. But I don't know you, Mark, so…if you're here for my assistance…”

“I know,” I say. “I've come here for a reason, and I suppose I'd better tell you about it. But I don't really know where to start.”

She lets me think about it for a few long moments, but when I come up blank she says, “How about telling me what you thought might happen in these four sessions. You live in Woodstock, don't you? That's a long way. What did you hope as you drove here? What did you fear?”

“In general?”

She finally rewards me with a twitch of the lips. “We could start with the specifics for now. What did you hope for this session? What worried you?”

I shift my position and lean against the chair arm. I don't know when last someone asked me something about me, about what I hoped and feared. I know it's a strategy. I know it's flattery, but it's relaxing me and making me want to talk. It's far easier to try to answer her questions honestly than resist for an hour. That's why I came all this way, after all.

“I suppose I hoped the session would do its job. My wife wanted me to come here. I wanted her to be satisfied.”

“She's unsatisfied now.” It's not a question, so I don't answer. “She wanted you to show your willingness to…to do what? To see her perspective? To change your behavior?”

“Yes, and I don't think I need to change anything. There's nothing wrong with me.”

“But your wife feels there is. Will it help to tell me what she feels is wrong with you?”

I consider it. “No, that's beside the point. I just want her to trust me again.” I want to add
trust me with our daughter,
but it would sound bad, and I don't want to spend the rest of the session trying to convince this stranger that I've never harmed Hayden and never will. I'm not ready to bring my daughters into this conversation. “I just feel…when we're not talking…I feel alone. She's my friend, and I miss her.”

“So, although you think there's nothing wrong with you, you're here to be fixed so that you're not alone anymore.”

I frown; that really does about sum it up.

“I see,” Santé says.

I get lost driving back home. I thought I could detour around some slow trucks by turning left on the way back though Bellville, but the road never returns and I end up winding south through Elsies River and Manenberg and Philippi. Dangerous kids with pimped cars prowl the potholed roads, but they don't give me or my uncharismatic Hyundai a second look. I get my bearings only once I've reached Baden Powell Drive almost an hour later. Normally a journey like that would have made me tense and angry, but since the session, I feel displaced, split in two, separated from myself like my body's in an impervious bubble and I'm a ghost, looking at it from the outside. And nobody can hurt a ghost.

I stop at a makeshift parking lot next to a dune, nodding at a cluster of people sharing a joint as they watch their fishing rods. I skirt behind them and stump along the dune line over the shards of glass and plastic detritus snaggling the ground and find a mound of fairly clean sand and sit on it, watching the gulls hovering over the fishing lines and the white horses capering over the rough water. The strong wind is brackish, puffing occasional drifts of human stink along with it. The scene is pretty, though: the glaring blue sky and white sand, the cold indigo of the water. I'm not sure if I've ever sat on this stretch of coast—it's not the sort of place you'd stop—and even if I willed Zoë to join me here, I'm not sure she'd find her way.