Gingerbread Read online

  Gioia Fischer, head of the PPA, wears no scent and no makeup apart from a touch of berry-red lipstick; her chestnut-colored hair bounces from scalp to shoulder, and she exudes well-being with an aggression that’s difficult to deflect; before you know it, her health is arm-wrestling yours. Her living room is a sort of delirium of blue and white, like fighting your way through clouds on a mountain peak. Harriet arrived half an hour early for the meeting, and all the other PPA members were already there in their heartbreakingly casual clothing; catwalk casual, really. They traded gossip and witticisms and current affairs commentary, and Harriet stared and listened. They talked about Felix Nguyen’s parenting blog, which seemed to be all about raising twin boys in adherence to a family tradition of “supreme banter” (SO FUNNY, FELIX . . . almost wet myself. And if I had, I’d have sent you the dry-cleaning bill, mate). Harriet looked up the blog on her phone—access password-protected, yes, of course it was. And as these beautiful people talked, they politely discarded the tins of gingerbread that had been forced on them out of the blue. Gioia ran through a list of items and repairs the PPA intended to make contributions toward. Harriet can’t remember if she made any fundraising suggestions or not. She does remember picking up her gingerbread and making another attempt to force it on one of the more approachable PPA members. The biscuit tin fell into the void between Harriet’s outstretched arms and Abigail’s folded ones, and gingerbread tiles spilled out, tessellating with an air of intelligent design. There was so much of it, and it all fitted together so fastidiously . . . it was spreading, and it had to be stopped. Houses are houses and biscuits are biscuits and people are people, and we all know nothing good comes of relaxing boundaries such as these. This is the only reason Harriet can think of for the mass trampling. Gioia bellowed, “Er, excuse me,” a couple of times, then gave up when she saw the damage had been done. Harriet spent the rest of the PPA meeting on her knees, dustpan and brush in hand as she chased clumps of sand-colored powder into corners and under tables.

  Harriet thought they must be famous, the other parents. She found their faces familiar, and they were either indifferent or accustomed to being gawked at. Days later, walking through the lobby of Perdita’s school, she stopped before the wall with all the photos of previous prefects on it, and there they were, every single member of the PPA laughing together in a twenty-one-year-old photo. Gioia Marchesi (now Gioia Fischer), Emil Szep, Abigail Klein, Hyorin Nam, Gemma Jones (now Gemma Ahmad), Felix Nguyen, Noah Finlay, Alesha Thomas (now Alesha Matsumoto), Mariama Guled Ismail. Then, as now, each was an appealing example of a physical type, utterly at ease with his or her genes and with one another. Collectively they were an embodiment of Cool Britannia before the concept had even had a name. And this set of parents certainly is one body—it’s impossible to speak to any of them individually. Group communication or deafening silence . . . your choice. Harriet can see why the other parents don’t bother with the PPA. Harriet has asked about her fellow PPA members’ kids, has seen the offspring around, has not stalked them, not exactly . . . they’re Perdita’s classmates. There are eleven of them in all, including two sets of twins, one identical and one fraternal, every base covered. And they’re shaping up nicely to be members of another impenetrable in-crowd. So Harriet maintains her point, which is that joining isn’t a question of effort or overextension thereof. You miss your chance to join several generations before birth.

  Still . . . does Harriet want in? Fuck yes. Imagine the sense of invulnerability! What must it be like to clock that someone’s staring at you and feel no concern? She wants to know how it feels to be absolutely sure that you haven’t done anything wrong. She’s not intimidated either—she doesn’t believe for a second that these people aren’t tryhards just like her. They’re tryhards who succeed, that’s all. Their striving is never past tense; it’s merely concealed. Harriet’s close reading of body language at the PPA meetings tells her that Abigail and Mariama are exes, the kind who can’t work out why they aren’t still together and send their current partners into spirals of paranoia whenever they meet up. Emil and Hyorin are not amused by the way that Noah pervs on Gemma, but they let it go because, against all odds, Gemma likes it. Alesha backs up everything Felix says out of fear, while Felix backs up everything Alesha says out of fondness. This could be down to a couple of specific incidents, or they could’ve been misreading each other for years. Harriet sees all this and more, and she supposes these factors could be used by a newcomer to destabilize the group. But Harriet would never do that! Well, she might, actually, for their own good. Much can be improved through reorganization.

  Harriet and Perdita live in five affordable rooms of a house that has monumental staircases and no lift, which is where the affordability comes in. Each step is so large that climbing the staircases takes more than just walking up; it’s also necessary to spring, scramble, and wriggle. This upsets delivery people and is more exercise than Margot Lee likes, but she has a soft spot for houses that look sensible until you get inside. There’s lion-print wallpaper to look at on every floor. When visiting her kid and grandkid, Margot brings a book and sits down to read a little at each of her rest stops on the second, third, and sixth floors. Then, one more flight up and she arrives at Harriet and Perdita’s front door, swaps her outdoor shoes for a pair of slippers, and is admitted to their cheerfully warped matchstick box of a home, where a velvet forest stands between the rooms and their casement windows. Margot made these curtains herself, embroidering them with vine-like patterns that seem to lengthen in the mornings and retract at night. Above those, silver satin parasols have been turned inside out to take the place of chandeliers—light bulbs dangle from their spokes. On the kitchen wall there’s a black-and-white photo of a gingerbread man in an antique frame, a jumble-sale find from a decade earlier. The photo has an outdoor setting; the gingerbread man is posed so it looks like he’s ambling through foliage with his gingerbread knapsack, off to see the world. Once, when Perdita was little, she took the photo into school and told everyone the man pictured was her father. She sounded so much in earnest that nobody knew what to say. Perdita’s teacher got tears in her eyes telling Harriet about it and flinched when Harriet laughed.

  On an evening when Perdita’s away on a school trip, Harriet sits in front of her computer eating sample squares of lavender shortbread and practicing her favorite form of procrastination: writing highly positive reviews of her eBay, Etsy, and Amazon purchases. Five stars for everybody. She didn’t finish one of the books she just gave five stars to. She just liked the author photo. Five stars for the portrait photographer, then. She’s been doing this ever since some of her students told her they do this with one-star reviews. Opposing random negativity with random positivity—that’s the main thing. She sips some bitter melon tea; the shortbread is just a little too sweet. When she’s run out of synonyms for the word “fabulous,” she visualizes a message from Gioia. Hi, it’s Gioia. Just broke my Lenten fast with your gingerbread, and all I can say is wizzy wow. We need this to be part of the fundraising bazaar. Not want, need. I won’t take no for an answer. How much can you make? Also, do you want to go bowling with us?

  OK, maybe not bowling, but an invitation to something.

  In the absence of that message, Harriet drafts an email to the entire PPA, to Gioia, Felix, Emil, Abigail, Hyorin, Gemma, Mariama, Alesha, Noah. It is both rant and unanswerable questionnaire. WHAT ARE YOU ALL SO AFRAID OF? Harriet types. Why won’t you try the gingerbread? Are you looking down on me because you think all I have is a handful of flour?

  But Harriet has this friend . . . well, she doesn’t know if Gretel’s still her friend; she isn’t sure where Gretel is and doesn’t know what Gretel is doing right now, but sometimes she receives an opinion from Gretel, an opinion just as clear as if Gretel’s phoned her up and said the words herself. Harriet likes the thought of occasionally bursting in on Gretel’s thoughts too, advising on all sorts of situations she couldn’t possibly be aware of.
This time her psychic projection of Gretel calmly and coolly looks over the email Harriet’s about to send. Send it if you want, the projection says. They won’t reply. It is all pork in different sauces.

  Psychic-projection Gretel has been doing this a lot lately. Giving apathetic counsel. It’s as if she knows Harriet doesn’t pay her as much heed as she used to.

  A word of advice, Gretel: You’re losing authority. Shouldn’t you put in an actual appearance instead of just talking?

  Chop chop—now’s the time. What do you mean, why now . . .

  . . . there’s never been a better time than the present. As you know, as you know.

  Harriet’s lights flicker, and she hears feet on the long flight of stairs between the sixth and the seventh floors. Skip, step, hop, skip, step, hop, and quick exhalations, hfff hfff hfff. But otherwise a dauntless ascent. Long, long strides.

  Harriet listens with nothing in her mind but ?!?!

  Skip, step, hop, Gretel. Skip, step, hop, Gretel. Skip, step, hope and hope and hope—

  This is part and parcel of living at the top of seven steep staircases. Princess-in-a-tower syndrome sets in. You expect momentous visitors, since those are the only kind who would take the time and trouble to seek you out. Visitations from fate or from one you long to behold. But Harriet might do well to bar the door. If the climb from first to seventh floors isn’t a big deal for Gretel Kercheval, that could be because the longest climb was the one that brought her to the first floor. The silver lights flicker again, and the stitched vines grow across the windows, grow toward one another. The vines do that sometimes, become a bridge with one tread of its deck missing. Twenty years. Gretel might be dour at first, mostly because of the bother of having to inform her grievances they must part ways. She never was able to surrender a feeling without a review of its peaks and low points.

  Harriet stands by the front door with a corner of a shortbread square poking out of her mouth like a stylized tongue. She doesn’t remember standing up and walking across the flat: she was in her chair, and now she’s at the door, that’s all. She listens as two feet settle on the top step. The puffing stops.

  She covers both eyes with her hands for an instant before looking through the peephole. No Gretel. But she’d come close. There must have been something Harriet could’ve done on her end. She should have gone to meet her guest halfway, and she would have, if she wasn’t wearing slippers and a baggy T-shirt that reads FRIED IN BUTTER. Nothing remarkable has ever happened to anybody while they were wearing a T-shirt that reads FRIED IN BUTTER. Harriet opens the door, and it is just her, the smell of her downstairs neighbor’s potato pancakes, and tawny lions embossed onto navy blue wallpaper. Each one hails her solemnly, with upheld paws. The lions seem sorry that Gretel isn’t here. The square of shortbread falls into her palm. Gretel would have leaned forward and drawn it into her own mouth with her greeting kiss—soft lips, sharp teeth. And then she would have said: “More.”

  Harriet deletes her draft message to the PPA and texts Perdita instead: How’s Canterbury? Everything OK? Perdita sends her a thumbs-up emoji.

  Harriet:

  makes dinner for one and plans the lesson for the class she’s teaching the following day: Spotlight on Lady Macbeth, she’s calling it. “Out, out, damned spotlight,” the class will not say.

  responds to her mother’s flustered inquiry about what to do if you’ve accidentally “superliked” someone on Tinder and then discovered that the accidental superlike has superliked you too (also accidentally?).

  checks that her bag is filled with the essentials she’ll need for the next morning, including the gingerbread with which she bribes a librarian in the Wellcome Library reading room to keep watch over her window seat of choice.

  googles Druhástrana, but there’s nothing new. The top result is the Wikipedia page, like it always is.

  Druhástrana (druhástranae) is the name of an alleged nation state of indeterminable geographic location. Very little verifiable information concerning Druhástrana is available, as there have been several prominent cases of stateless people claiming Druhástranian citizenship under a form of poetic license, and other, yet more unfortunate cases in which claims to Druhástranian citizenship or ancestry have been proven to result from false memories or flawed cognitive information.

  Even when credible witnesses have described flying over or sailing past an island that could be identified as Druhástrana, there is conflicting data as to whether the island is currently inhabited and further conflict as to who or what the island may be inhabited by. Reports include “a bear-like species clothed in human fashion,” “some form of lizard,” and “beings either long dead or not visible to the human eye.” To date, Druhástrana has been formally recognized by only three nations. (See: Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.) Slovakia revoked recognition of Druhástrana without explanation on January 1, 2010, and Hungary followed suit on January 1, 2013.

  Several prominent thinkers have proposed reclassifying Druhástrana as a purely notional/mythical land since a) nobody seems to actually come from there or know how to get there and b) literal interpretations of the assertion that Druhástrana exists may be a profound mistranslation of Czech humor.

  The article is peppered with footnotes that link to a number of essays available online:

  “I Belong to Druhástrana, Republic of Beauty,” by Guadeloupe Moreno, translated by Drahomíra Maszkeradi

  “I Belong to Druhástrana, Republic of Freedom,” by Anele Ndaba

  “I Belong to Druhástrana, Republic of Justice,” by Tansy Adams

  “I Belong to Druhástrana, a Republic That Is Judging You All,” by Nimrod Tóth, translated by Drahomíra Maszkeradi

  “Nimrod Tóth Does Indeed Belong to Druhástrana, a Republic of Breathtaking Hypocrisy,” by Simeon Vesik, translated by Drahomíra Maszkeradi

  Harriet has lots to tell Gretel too. About Margot and the Kercheval men: Aristide, Gabriel, Rémy, and Ambrose, four walls of a charmed prison. But the Wikipedia entry for Druhástrana would be the first thing Harriet would show her friend, followed by a selection of maps and atlases that almost uniformly substitute Druhástrana’s spot on the globe with unmarked stretches of ocean. Then she’d show Gretel photographs from her trip to the one country where Druhástrana does appear on maps. The average Druhástranian has only ever heard tell of the Czech Republic, so Harriet and Margot Lee took a trip there and had a look around. Cream cakes and amber glass, concentrations of cigarette smoke (a blue-gray mist curled out onto the street every time a pub door opened), grim light pressing down on grass so that whole fields of green stalks lean to one side, rainfall that seemed semi-divine in nature, blurring and brightening the faces of the statues. And then there were those street-corner skirmishes—three times Margot and Harriet had held onto each other so as to stay upright in a sudden wave of starched shirts and petticoats as masked men and women appeared out of nowhere, fought with axes made out of balloons, and then ran away crowing into the night, leaving the fallen where they lay, popped balloons strewn all around like burst lungs. Nobody would explain the skirmishes to Margot and Harriet, so Harriet decided they were reenactments of some key battle of antiquity and Margot decided they were prophecies of a battle to come. By the time they crossed off the last cathedral on their list and stood before an altar contemplating a Virgin Mary garlanded with precious stones and grinning an unnervingly modern grin (the kind of grin one stereotypically attributes to corporate fat cats when they’re among close friends), by the time they were standing before that altar, Margot and Harriet didn’t know what to make of Czechia and the fact that it’s a place that doesn’t get called notional or mythical, while Druhástrana does. They’ll always appreciate the acknowledgment, though. Having glanced through the literature, it’s their understanding that Druhástrana wasn’t a favorite with the Czech travelers who somehow found their way there. Most
describe it as “nightmarish.” But at least they don’t dismiss it.

  Harriet stands in the doorway of Perdita’s bedroom before she goes to bed herself. The room is almost entirely four-poster bed, with a doll at each post, guarding the inner sanctum, where Perdita dances, reads, sleeps, does her homework, watches TV, swigs cold tea from a hip flask, and so on. Harriet likes to look in even when Perdita isn’t there, because Perdita’s dolls have grown with her, and living with them is like having four bonus daughters. When Perdita’s among her dolls, she is part of a clique of willowy teens with exactly the same shade of improbably perfect skin. Perdita calls them Bonnie, Sago, Lollipop, and Prim. Their names match the plants they bear . . . it was Margot and Perdita who removed Bonnie’s hands at the wrist and replaced them with a pair of bonsai elm trees with leaves that separate into finger-like bunches. And Margot said to Harriet: “Whenever you begin to find Perdita too odd, just think how odd I find you.”

  Sago has feathery palm leaves for hair, and Lollipop’s golden beehive hairdo is a Pachystachys lutea shrub. Prim’s open chest cavity is a dormant green right now, but for twelve weeks of the year, pink-and-white primrose petals emerge. The dolls haven’t got anything to say about these changes. They had these names before they changed, so maybe they already knew.

  2

  The next morning involves awkward phone communications galore. It begins with Samreen Shah—Harriet thought they were supposed to be having lunch together. They hadn’t made a date or anything like that, but Samreen has been at the library from Monday to Friday for the past three months, and almost every lunchtime she and Harriet have chewed salad together in the café as they exchange details of their morning’s reading. Lunchtime was when Harriet would tell Samreen what those members of the Salinas family who kept diaries and household accounts got up to in the years between 1300 and 1400 (mostly traveling Western Europe with troubadours and/or dying of the plague), and Samreen would tell Harriet about the feral camels of Australia, their exploits, plight, and eradication. Then they’d return to their desks with fresh energy for the research ahead. But Samreen doesn’t come to lunch today, and when Harriet phones her, it transpires that Samreen moved to Manchester with her husband over the weekend. This is also the phone call during which Harriet discovers that Samreen hasn’t saved her phone number, forgot Harriet’s name very soon after first being told it, and in fact doesn’t recall exchanging numbers at all, so it’s difficult for Harriet to get Samreen to understand who she’s even talking to. Samreen is a bit alarmed that Harriet knows so much about the book she’s working on, and as Harriet does the necessary reframing of their acquaintanceship, her memory of their lunchtimes is altered too. Samreen never really looked her in the eyes, never called her by name, and never instigated contact. Harriet was the one who’d sit down at Samreen’s table, mistakenly thinking that Samreen had been scanning the room for her. The talking was to pass the time; there was no Harriet-specific content whatsoever.