The Woman in Valencia by Annie Perreault (book recommendations website txt) 📗

like an apparition brought forth from the forest, I’ll never forget your scream,

stay focused, the course veers off, hairpin turn, I haven’t seen the beach yet, I’m almost at aid station 5, tables on either side of the street, volunteers bustling about, pitchers in hand, others holding out paper cups, smiling, making eye contact, I grab one on the fly—¡ Gracias !—I pinch the rim together to stem the flow of the liquid, chug the contents in two or three gulps, bright orange drink, salty and citrusy in my throat, then toss the cup on the ground…

TRAVELLING LIGHT

Claire is balanced on a step stool, stretched out precariously on her tiptoes. She gropes around on the top shelf of her bedroom closet, pushing boxes out of the way, feeling around till her fingers land on the supple leather, which she grabs and pulls toward her. In a slithering motion, the bulky mauve purse slides off the shelf and onto her chest. Claire almost topples over.

She sits down on her unmade bed and stares coldly at the bag on her lap. Her eyelid twitches as she pulls open the silver zipper.

She dips her hand into the bag and pulls out what she initially thinks is a piece of raw meat, warm and smooth against her palm. Claire doesn’t need to press her ear to the glistening mass to hear the pulsing sound that’s getting louder, rising toward her, reverberating through the room like a ringing in the ears or the droning of a horsefly. A human heart. She examines it, recognizes arteries, aorta, vena cava, atria, dissected like on an anatomical diagram. The muscle quivers in her hand, pumping and circulating an increasingly large amount of blood, which soon overflows her cupped palms, runs down her forearms, and soaks her skin, the purse, and the pearl grey sheets under her thighs.

In the hallway, Laure is pounding on the door, rattling the doorknob, yelling at the top of her lungs. “Mama! Maaamaaa!”

As Claire goes to shove the heart back in the bag, it begins to swell, a gelatinous blob that takes on size, that she can barely contain. She lets out a scream when the heart slips between her fingers and flops to the bedroom floor.

“Mama! Mama! Get up! There’s blood all over the floor. Léon’s nose is bleeding again. And he used up all the milk for his cereal…”

WHEN TO LEAVE?

“Jean, I need a vacation,” Claire declares a few hours later, her fingers gripped tightly around the phone receiver. “I really need a change of scenery. I’d like you to watch the kids for ten days.”

They’re both silent for a beat.

“Um, and you’re going where, and with—”

Claire cuts him off. “None of your business, Jean. I need some time to clear my head.”

A longer silence this time. Jean doesn’t understand, starts to protest.

“It’s a bad idea. If I were you, I’d—”

“I’m not asking for your opinion, Jean. I’m telling you that I’m leaving.”

“Just like that? Without consulting me? So, what? I should just say bon voyage, off you go, have a great time?”

Claire raises her voice.

“Seriously? And what about all your diving trips, your Venice Biennales, your weekends in New York City with your architect buddies, your week-long hunting trips up north?”

“Don’t start with that again, Claire. I’ve never held you back, I even encouraged you to go back to work, take on new jobs. Shit, enough’s enough. Maybe it’s time you get over the whole thing, you didn’t even know the wom—”

Claire slams the receiver down. But she continues the conversation, raging at the kitchen wall.

“Enough, Jean! Don’t you dare tell me how I should feel, you didn’t even goddamn care enough to hug me, you did fuck all to comfort me after she killed herself right in front of me, you piece of…”

She pounds her fist against the door frame. Blood vessels burst under her skin. Behind her, a purple painted cat hanging on the end of a nail wobbles, and Claire hears it crash to the floor. Pieces of broken glass scatter in all directions, some disappearing under the stove. Claire examines the edge of her palm; the skin is turning red, like an instant sunburn or the kind of embarrassing injury you’d get if you were stupid enough to stick your hand into a flaming toaster.

She grinds her molars together—two hundred pounds of pressure per square inch, her dentist reminds her at each checkup. When she finally unclenches her jaw, a pool of frothy saliva leaks out and a string of drool runs down her chin and falls to the slate floor. Three drops of rage among the shards of glass at her feet.

AT THE AIRPORT

The city has been in the grips of a heatwave for three days—five people dead already—and it’s early August 2015 when Claire sets her suitcase down on the conveyor belt at the American Airlines check-in counter. It’s been a long time since she’s wandered around an airport alone. In the air-conditioned climate of the Montreal airport, she fans the top of her dress to dry the sweat trickling down her back and between her breasts. She makes her way to the duty-free shop, where she spots a bottle of limited-edition Absolut Honey vodka with the message Honey, I’m coming home emblazoned on the bottle in stylized letters. She pictures a smiling woman paying for the alcohol and carrying it onto the plane, happy to be heading home to her sweetheart. Claire frowns and instead buys a bottle of microdistilled gin with a large parsnip on the bottle.

She orders a coffee, watches the news distractedly: seventy-one bodies found in a refrigerated truck left on the side of a highway in Austria, near the Hungarian border. Fifty-nine men, eight women and four children. It’s more of an uneasy feeling than an actual image that forms in her head. It’s hard to imagine a pile of corpses: exposed necks, dark hair,