Everybody Has Everything by Katrina Onstad

Author:Katrina Onstad
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780771068799
Publisher: Grand Central
Published: 2012-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

OCTOBER

Ana rose at six a.m. in the darkness. She changed into her running gear in the bathroom so the light wouldn’t wake James. But also, she was hiding her body a little bit, not out of shame but from fatigue, knowing that if he saw her naked leg, her toe extended en route to a sweat sock, he would rise sleepily and grab her, try and knead her flesh until it gave way to his. She would acquiesce, usually, and then the order of the morning would be flung apart, the pieces falling in the wrong place. This was James unemployed, always grabbing at her, rubbing up against her in the kitchen, in the foyer, winking when Finn appeared to quell things. Ana found it distasteful, drawing the child in to some adult fantasy, the turn-on of the forbidden. If she indulged James so early in the morning, she would live with a tilted feeling all day.

The door to Finn’s room was open. Ana peered in at him, so small on the double bed. In the light from the hall, she saw that he had kicked off the quilt and lay sprawled on his stomach like a starfish, his back rising and falling. Ana shut the door, but after walking down the staircase she questioned this gesture, wondered what fears he might have in him that only light could slay. She returned, opened it slightly. The boy had flipped onto his back, his arms still sprawled.

Outside, Ana felt the crack of the day opening wide as she ran. The streets were cold; she should have worn gloves, a hat warmer than the baseball cap on her head. She ran north, up the slight hill, past the houses that were beginning to rattle and stir. A light on here, a light there. She saw an old grey woman at a window, sipping from a mug. This woman lived only three houses from Ana, but Ana had never seen her on the street, did not know her name. She ran a little faster.

By the brothel house, a bag of garbage sat inside a recycling bin. It was always the dirtiest house on the block, the darkest. She could imagine, though, that when it went up for sale, it would go for near a million, just for the property itself, which had a huge parking pad at the side and a long elegant oak. The house would be razed. Something new would rise in its place, probably a modern echo of the houses around here, a grey concrete and glass structure with a winking Victorian sloped roof. A yard surrounded by imported grasses, sustainable and expensive. Ana could see in her mind’s eye exactly this oncoming glass house and thought: fingerprints. All those fingerprints.

As she crossed Harbord, she saw the lights flicker on in a coffee shop. Her heart was beating fast now, and her fingers weren’t cold anymore. She never ran with music because she wanted to hear the city, really hear it, and she did.

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