MIKAYLA UTNEHMER

Reflection on a Glass House

Him lying next to me presents the most dangerous temptation. I envision that the sheets are made of the heaviest cloth, preventing me from leaving the bed. How I wish this were true! I glance over at him. The innocence of sleep casts a youthfulness upon his face. My resolve to leave melts under the memory of his warm gaze. Every part of me strains towards him like a plant does the sun. I don’t want to leave this place. I want to remain hidden from the world in the sanctuary of his bedroom. But I know I should go. I should take responsibility for my life. I’ve conducted myself for twenty-two years on shoulds. This morning will be no different. With effort I summon reason to assert dominance over the yearning ache of my muscles, drawing the curtains on my sentimental reflections. My solitude is a return to darkness. I leave the glass house how I entered it: uncertain of what is to come.

I seem to have fallen victim to the aimlessness of life after university. Having attributed these recent feelings of purposelessness to my environment, I decided to leave the States. Just yesterday I arrived in France. I was delighted by the way the trees lined the streets creating a green lacy lattice over the sky. I liked being surrounded by old things: the cobblestone streets, graffitied buildings, even the stench of erosion from the overflowing trash bins. Being surrounded by a past impersonal to me made mine seem nonexistent. Simultaneously, it flung the doors to my future wide open. Less than a day later and the romance has worn off. Here I walk in my melancholy: my only reminder of home. I had expected the city to compel me to be more. To do more. To want something outside of myself. I hadn’t considered that even in Paris I would be plagued with decisions.

The previous evening I had met him at a cocktail bar in the 11th arrondissement. We had matched on a dating app, exchanging a few witty messages before agreeing to drinks. I measured time by its relation to the hour we had arranged to meet. It was early because I arrived early. It became late when he was late. Seated at a small table near the window of the bar I pretended to read the menu. My eyes skipped across each line, my attention drawn to the few words that remained the same in French as they are in English. All the while, I tried to hide my mortification at the possibility that I was being stood up. I fiddled with the buttons on my blouse. I checked my phone. I crossed and uncrossed my legs. With each moment I began to feel the familiar itch of self-consciousness. I was a girl again, believing that painting my mother’s lipstick on my mouth distracted the world from the naivety that poured from it. I was certain that every burst of laughter was elicited by my unfit presence. Every glance in my direction one of judgement and scorn. Every second of eye contact a peek under the illusory cloak of adulthood I wore. Just as I felt that I couldn’t bear the reproach of my existence any longer, he appeared.

I wander aimlessly through the streets. The city swims before my eyes. The white window panes swirl with the black lace iron of balconies in the storm of my tears. I walk with the heaviness that comes from leaving someone lovely behind. Around me people talk in a language I don’t understand of things I can’t know. A white noise that seems to emphasize the loudness of my thoughts.

A few things struck me as I watched him approach through the window. He was tall. His lankiness emphasized by the crop of the leather jacket he wore. It cut off just above the tops of his black jeans. He walked with a languid sort of lope that I found odd considering his tardiness. Though, it is often these idiosyncrasies–the ones others possess that contradict my own–that I find the most endearing. We locked eyes through the window. It was this moment that began my undoing.

The clouds are a grey damp blanket that act as covers for the sky. April’s bleakness distorts the passage of time. I don’t recognize the woman I am becoming. I seem to have misplaced the girl I once was. I can’t remember where. Perhaps the corner store, or on a park bench, or in the arms of a lover. Somewhere my soul sits without me waiting to be reclaimed. When was it that I last felt like myself? Last week or the one before?

The conversation was quite stiff at first, like a tightly drawn knot that we both sought to undo. I asked about his upbringing, his work in Paris, his friends. He reciprocated my questions. I became delighted that he sought to know me. Then, mentally chided myself for how easily impressed I was.

What do you want to do then, if you don’t like your job?

I want to be a writer.

Have you finished anything?

My silence echoed.

C’mon, you need to finish! He encouraged without reproach.

I know, I know. It’s just that I start things and then get bored of them. I don’t know how to write endings… I don’t know how tomorrow will end, let alone my life. How can I profess to know how a character’s story ends?

Because it’s your story.

It’s not that simple.

Isn’t it?

But what should I even write about?

Hmmm. How about this?  He waved his arms widely in a gesture that encompassed himself and the surrounding cityscape.

You’re vain! I kicked him playfully beneath the table.

Somewhere between sugary sips of margarita and the oceanic buzz of the oysters we shared, the conversation began to loosen and unravel. Oh, how marvelous it was when it finally gave! We laughed easily as we joked about the most egregious parties we’d been to. The lines that framed his mouth curved like parentheses around his smile. When he spoke, he swirled the large ice cube in his drink with his finger. I admired his hands. Everyone around us fell away. As did the problems concerning my life: what to do with it, where to live it, who to spend it with. At that moment, all of the potential directions my life could go converged into one. He conferred my entire existence with his gaze.

People pass by with places to go. I only walk in an attempt to escape the internal torment I afflict myself with. I don’t know whether I wish to find myself or continue running from her. I don’t know if I walk nearer or further from the part of myself that has become estranged. I watch as people stride along with baguettes under their arms, pushing buggies, speaking on their phones. My surroundings are framed by the black ovals of my eyelids. A constant frame that I’ve recently become too conscious of. An awareness that unsettles and perturbs because it is an acknowledgement of the subjectiveness that separates me from existing in the same picture as everyone else. I much prefer to borrow the vantage point of a lover. From their lofty view I am able to witness my participation in the world rather than forced to spectate in isolation.

At some point in the evening, a homeless beggar approached our table. He muttered something in French to us, disrupting my reverie. My date patted his pockets sincerely before shaking his head. The man turned to me next. His cheeks were hollow, smudged with grime. His hair stringy with grease. His eyes, though lifeless, reflected my image. The exchange was a brief acknowledgement of our likeness. We sought salvation in the same place. I looked away.

I am disoriented by my lack of sleep. I am forgetting him. Perhaps I made a mistake in revisiting my memory of the evening too many times. I had thought that if I recalled the events of the night over and over I could wear the memory’s path in my brain like a beloved trail. Maybe memories are more like photographs: the more often you look at them, the quicker the ink fades. Is the image of his face I remember (his big eyes, his ears, that smile!) true to the one that exists somewhere parallel in time? I wonder what he is doing now…What he shall do with the rest of his day? His weekend? His life? Why hadn’t he asked to see me again? Oh, how trivial these questions are. They present nothing more than a captivating distraction from the ones that concern my future.

When he suggested that we go back to his place, it is true I agreed more eagerly than I would have liked. But part of me–the part that is sickened by apathy and those who sport it like a jacket to conceal evidence of their beating hearts–did not feel like being coy. He rewarded my honesty with a grin (how lucky I felt!). Our walk was one of joy and innocence. We shared my wired earbuds as we strolled through the dark city streets. I am always struck by how different places look in the evening. Devoid of its people, Paris could have been anywhere. The cafes that were usually stuffed with handsome men and women sat abandoned. The stench of smoke and sweat that usually hung in the air had dissipated into something sweet and pure. And the sounds, how there were none! Just our two small voices–usually drowned in the collective din of the world–afforded this fleeting moment to reverberate off the stone buildings.

Do you think we’re compatible?

Yes. He paused for a moment. Do you? Do you think we’re compatible?

The thought of him lies heavy on my chest where his head used to be. The recollection of his voice presses my heart as if stamping it with his name in bold black letters.

Yes.

I allow myself to feel the swirling tornado that builds in my stomach. The feeling of unease that comes with the disillusionment that someone else could be my salvation. I am not sure what I had hoped would come from our evening together. That we would fall in love and begin a life together? That our love would act as a haven from the responsibility of commanding my life? Yes, yes. It is this I had wanted. Though I have never considered myself a religious person, time and time again I seem to sacrifice myself on the altar of a man for the chance to have a place to rest. How many times will I be forced to drag myself to my feet after kneeling at the promise of another before I learn to stop worshipping fiction? But, oh, how weary I am! I want so badly to renounce my ability to choose. To renounce my life and call it anyone else’s.

He lived behind one of the impressively large wooden double doors dispersed along the city’s streets. I had always assumed these kinds of doors would remain anonymous to me. Yet, there I stood waiting to discover what lied beyond one. He punched a few numbers into the keypad to the right of the door before pushing it open to reveal a courtyard. Filled with the same shade of ink black as the sky, I didn’t see the house at first. It was made entirely of glass.

I continue wandering through the streets, vaguely aware of my surroundings: the scent of baking bread, the orange light warmly pouring from the windows of a wine bar across the street, the jangling of a dog’s collar. My thoughts trample them all. I wonder if he would have asked to see me again if I lived in Paris. Maybe not. Perhaps he is one of those men who spends his life collecting experiences with different women. If I must accept that he has admired other women, then I at least want to be deemed beautiful enough to hang in the halls of his mind amongst them. I hope that my image will remain preserved forever youthful, beautiful, and innocent there.

We stayed awake the entire night lying in his bed. Our limbs were so jumbled that I couldn’t be sure where he ended and I began. It seemed an unspoken agreement this would be the only evening we spent together. Perhaps this is why we traded intimacies with such ease. I learned of his father’s cancer and he of my grandmother’s. He listed the names his parents had contemplated giving him, and we envisioned the lives he would have led had he been Roger, John, or Diego. We spoke of music and uncovered our shared love of Tim Buckley. The whole time I was transfixed by the way he spoke. Words sounded so soft, so supple pouring from his lips. Though we also spoke of ugly things–death, prison, the illusion of justice–he seemed to transform everything wretched into something beautiful. That is why I liked it so much when he would say my name.

Why can’t I let things be good? I can’t allow myself to be content with this beautiful memory without salivating at the idea of more. How utterly glutinous love makes me! I feel as though I could be perfectly happy if every night of the rest of my life should go exactly as that one had. But of course, the life I envision with him can never fade into the dullness and rote of everyday because it can never be. Oh, how I despise the aching in my chest! How rotten it is to be so easily pacified by the idea of love that one no longer cares to pursue one’s passions in life, whatever those passions are. I want to want something greater for myself than the affection of a man.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I cursed myself for allowing it to happen. The cheerful chirping of the birds told me that it was a new day. They mocked me with their joyful embrace of the morning. I kissed his cheek and whispered goodbye. I didn’t think he would hear me, but he did. It turns out that the closing gates of heaven don’t resound with a clash of metal. The death of hope sounds like the soft utterance of goodbye from the lips of a sleepy lover.

My walk has led me to a park. Though I sit nestled between tall bushes on a splintering green bench, it is from the vantage point of his courtyard that I rewatch the memory of us taped through the walls of the glass house. I see myself look up in amazement at the sky beyond the courtyard’s stony walls. A few stars twinkle in the beyond. My cheeks are flushed pink from the cool night and the feeling of being alive. Through the transparent walls I watch as we enter the house. We look ghostly in the moonlight. Giggling, we fumbled to take off our shoes and jackets at the entryway before disappearing down the stairs. I long for this image to refresh daily. I picture his and my entrance into the glass house on an infinite loop with only the smallest variations to suggest the passage of time: the weather, our clothing, our age. I clearly see my future with him projected onto the empty black night reflecting through the walls. I wish the evening could last forever. But, of course it can’t. The sun rises faithfully. The lightness of day washes the walls of our future. The glass house is transparent once again, and through its walls I watch as the only person who can save me pushes open its door.

Mikayla Utnehmer is a Japanese American writer born and raised in the Midwest, USA. Most of her fiction work highlights the subjectivity of experience and the isolation it births. Oscillating between the fantastical and the ordinary, her stories and poems aim to reconcile the “pristine” concepts of love and beauty with the mundane.