suggested they spend the afternoon inline skating to Brighton. “I’ll pour
you a nice glass of London tap and that should curb it. They say eighty percent of hunger spells are actually caused by dehydration.
Particularly after a long flight. Murder on the skin. You look parched.”
Meredith began to drag her roller suitcase up to the flat. She remembered her prenatal yoga instructor’s words: “Be mindful
of your body, and the bodies of others.” She translated the words into a mantra of her own: “Try not to smack your mother,
no matter how much she tempts you.”
The flat was not so much dirty as decimated. Whole pieces of furniture were simply lost—buried beneath the heap of abandoned
human implements: paper, cloth, metal, plastic. The odor of wet wood shavings was overlaid with the suggestion of long-forgotten
fruit. For a moment Meredith considered the hopeful possibility she might be hallucinating from exhaustion. She gave her head
a shake. No luck.
The front hall opened onto the third floor of Irma’s building and served, illogically, as the upper floor of the flat: it
housed the two bedrooms and the bathroom. Immediately to the right of the front door was a largish bathroom, the walls covered
with crumbly tiles. To the right was the master bedroom, discernible by the piles of books, board games and discarded bottles
of Limoncello. Under a huge heap of velvet and a Cossack coat hulked Irma’s single bed. Beside it was a tea tray bearing half
a honeyed crumpet. Somewhere, from under something, a transistor radio brayed yesterday’s football scores.
Irma opened a door that led to her daughter’s childhood room. Meredith was relieved, and even touched, to see that it was
tidy compared to the rest of the place, even if it was barely the size of a pantry. The only furniture was a narrow military-issue
sleeping cot pushed against the far wall and made up neatly with a yellowed, but quite possibly clean, eyelet bedspread. The
walls were bare except for a framed and yellowed fingerpainting of a flesh-toned blob on a grassy expanse under a teal sky.
Meredith had no memory of executing this work, but figured she must have done it during one of her summer holidays spent with
her mother’s artist colony in the south of Spain.
“So what do you think?” Irma said.
“It’s very nice. But is there somewhere for me to work? I need to prep for tomorrow.”
“Hold your horses.”
Meredith dumped her suitcase and followed her mother up the stairs. At the top, she surveyed the main room.
“Hasn’t changed a bit, has it,” said Irma.
She walked into the kitchen (really just the southeast corner of the room), refilled the prehistoric electric kettle and set
it to boil with a flick of the switch. Meredith’s heart did not sink, it plummeted.
The room—a postage stamp of living area tacked onto a narrow galley kitchen—had the look of a well-loved bomb shelter. There
were books and papers and china teacups and strange swaths of gauze and feathers and tree bark and fur and antique hospital
equipment. Scraps of fabric that had once been ladies’ undergarments had been left to disintegrate on every open space. Piles
of human consumer waste—records, shoes, cutlery, ornamental gourds, dried-up potted plants, decorative papier-mâché party
place-setting cards left over from a long-forgotten dinner party, discarded auto parts, socks—were scattered about the place.
Meredith longed for a cheap hotel room but had to concede the truth. She was broke.
“Where, then?”
“Over there.” Irma pointed to a heap of books on top of an old steamer trunk.
“A trunk? You want me to work on a trunk?”
“No, dingbat, beyond it. In Jose’s old spot.”
Irma crossed the room, turned on a standing lamp and pulled away a saddle blanket to reveal a child’s school desk, the kind
with a plastic chair attached by a curved metal bar.
“You aren’t serious.” Meredith
you a nice glass of London tap and that should curb it. They say eighty percent of hunger spells are actually caused by dehydration.
Particularly after a long flight. Murder on the skin. You look parched.”
Meredith began to drag her roller suitcase up to the flat. She remembered her prenatal yoga instructor’s words: “Be mindful
of your body, and the bodies of others.” She translated the words into a mantra of her own: “Try not to smack your mother,
no matter how much she tempts you.”
The flat was not so much dirty as decimated. Whole pieces of furniture were simply lost—buried beneath the heap of abandoned
human implements: paper, cloth, metal, plastic. The odor of wet wood shavings was overlaid with the suggestion of long-forgotten
fruit. For a moment Meredith considered the hopeful possibility she might be hallucinating from exhaustion. She gave her head
a shake. No luck.
The front hall opened onto the third floor of Irma’s building and served, illogically, as the upper floor of the flat: it
housed the two bedrooms and the bathroom. Immediately to the right of the front door was a largish bathroom, the walls covered
with crumbly tiles. To the right was the master bedroom, discernible by the piles of books, board games and discarded bottles
of Limoncello. Under a huge heap of velvet and a Cossack coat hulked Irma’s single bed. Beside it was a tea tray bearing half
a honeyed crumpet. Somewhere, from under something, a transistor radio brayed yesterday’s football scores.
Irma opened a door that led to her daughter’s childhood room. Meredith was relieved, and even touched, to see that it was
tidy compared to the rest of the place, even if it was barely the size of a pantry. The only furniture was a narrow military-issue
sleeping cot pushed against the far wall and made up neatly with a yellowed, but quite possibly clean, eyelet bedspread. The
walls were bare except for a framed and yellowed fingerpainting of a flesh-toned blob on a grassy expanse under a teal sky.
Meredith had no memory of executing this work, but figured she must have done it during one of her summer holidays spent with
her mother’s artist colony in the south of Spain.
“So what do you think?” Irma said.
“It’s very nice. But is there somewhere for me to work? I need to prep for tomorrow.”
“Hold your horses.”
Meredith dumped her suitcase and followed her mother up the stairs. At the top, she surveyed the main room.
“Hasn’t changed a bit, has it,” said Irma.
She walked into the kitchen (really just the southeast corner of the room), refilled the prehistoric electric kettle and set
it to boil with a flick of the switch. Meredith’s heart did not sink, it plummeted.
The room—a postage stamp of living area tacked onto a narrow galley kitchen—had the look of a well-loved bomb shelter. There
were books and papers and china teacups and strange swaths of gauze and feathers and tree bark and fur and antique hospital
equipment. Scraps of fabric that had once been ladies’ undergarments had been left to disintegrate on every open space. Piles
of human consumer waste—records, shoes, cutlery, ornamental gourds, dried-up potted plants, decorative papier-mâché party
place-setting cards left over from a long-forgotten dinner party, discarded auto parts, socks—were scattered about the place.
Meredith longed for a cheap hotel room but had to concede the truth. She was broke.
“Where, then?”
“Over there.” Irma pointed to a heap of books on top of an old steamer trunk.
“A trunk? You want me to work on a trunk?”
“No, dingbat, beyond it. In Jose’s old spot.”
Irma crossed the room, turned on a standing lamp and pulled away a saddle blanket to reveal a child’s school desk, the kind
with a plastic chair attached by a curved metal bar.
“You aren’t serious.” Meredith
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