I Can't Get You Out of My Mind by Marianne Apostolides

Author:Marianne Apostolides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookThug
Published: 2020-04-01T23:42:37+00:00

2.

Ariadne will spend Christmas alone. She’ll be solo for most of the week, until just before New Year’s. It’s a great time to focus on work, she tells herself. On Christmas morning, hours before dawn, Ariadne’s writing session is interrupted by the joyful squeals of the children in the adjoining house. Judging from the noises that penetrate the wall, the kids have received a set of bongo drums and a toy Uzi that makes electronic shooting sounds. The writing session does not go well. In the afternoon, Ariadne attends a film at the art-house cinema downtown. This has become her holiday tradition, eschewing the well-intended invitations from friends. If she can’t be with her children on Christmas, she’ll sink into solitude, and the cushiony chairs at the cinema.

No one can see you cry in the dark.

They can, however, hear you scream. (Last year, she saw The Shining.)

This year, she chooses another Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. As the lights dim, Ariadne wishes Dirk could be there. She’s curious to hear his perspective on Hal’s psychic makeup—whether his actions are villainy or merely the birth of agency. On second thought, it’s probably fortuitous that Dirk is on vacation, getting an overhaul during the holiday break. Ariadne pulls out her old phone, shuts off the ringer. It’s a good thing she remembered. The text would’ve disturbed her fellow Christmas misfits.

She didn’t think he’d write, not on Christmas Day.

He must’ve stolen a moment, stealing into a secluded space, shutting the door on the loud conversations, the laughter and good cheer, the dangling earrings: it all fell away as he slipped inside his quietude, and wrote to Ariadne.

Thank you for feeding me last week. I’m savouring it (and you). You’ve become a mantra, Ariadne... a mantra, a song, a splinter in my mind and in my heart. Happy Christmas.

* * *

That night, Ariadne unwraps the expensive beeswax candle she bought for herself, an indulgence she’d resisted until she opened Theo’s gift to her: a dish sponge and a new pair of latex gloves. He meant this gift without irony. Justifiably, Ariadne went straight to the home decor boutique and spent obscene amounts of money on a candle. She thought it might help her meditate.

She lights the wick.

Sometime later, when she blows out the flame, she can smell the honeyed, earthen sweetness of the wax pooled in the basin. Ariadne inhales the fragrance. She wishes herself a Merry Christmas.

For the next few days, Ariadne refrains from replying to Adam. Perhaps he has plans—more family on Boxing Day?—or maybe he and his wife are spending restful afternoons together. She doesn’t know; she doesn’t write. Ariadne meditates, does yoga, works, walks; she fills her apartment with podcasts, other voices, other people to keep her company, as if she were having a conversation. When she finally sends an email, she gives it a subject, a phrase from a podcast she’d heard the previous night: “Infinitely open-ended.”

Dear Adam,

I hope you’ve been well since I saw you, despite the crazedness of the holidays.

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