Her Here Read online

  HER HERE

  HER HERE

  Amanda Dennis

  First published in the United States in 2021 by

  Bellevue Literary Press, New York

  For information, contact:

  Bellevue Literary Press

  90 Broad Street

  Suite 2100

  New York, NY 10004

  www.blpress.org

  © 2021 by Amanda Dennis

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, organizations, events, and places (even those that are actual) are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dennis, Amanda, author.

  Title: Her here / Amanda Dennis.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Bellevue Literary Press, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020002400 (print) | LCCN 2020002401 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942658764 (paperback ; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781942658771 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PS3604.E58633 H47 2021 (print) | LCC PS3604.E58633 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002400

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020002401

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a print, online, or broadcast review.

  Bellevue Literary Press would like to thank all its generous donors—individuals and foundations—for their support.

  This publication is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

  This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

  Book design and composition by Mulberry Tree Press, Inc.

  Bellevue Literary Press is committed to ecological stewardship in our book production practices, working to reduce our impact on the natural environment.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  paperback ISBN: 978-1-942658-76-4

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-942658-77-1

  for my parents and for Laura

  Contents

  Part I: The View from Elsewhere

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part II: Loi Krathong

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Part III: Aurelia: The Hot Season

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part IV: Monsoons

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Toti se inserens mundo

  —SENECA

  Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.

  —MARCEL PROUST

  Contrary to what people say, using the first person in films is a sign of humility. All I have to offer is myself.

  —CHRIS MARKER

  HER HERE

  I

  The View from Elsewhere

  1

  I HAVE BEEN UP ALL NIGHT and now the day is gray, the narrow streets slick and silvered outside the taxi window. Sleeplessness gives the city an unreal, varnished air—shops, shutters, pigeons, and trees all flickering and chromed, like movie stills cut together in the old way.

  The driver stops alongside stone steps that lead uphill. He tells me again that the street I am looking for does not exist. On the ride from the airport, he spoke of his childhood in Montmartre, of parties in squares strung with lights, where children were allowed to stay up dancing. As he spoke, he looked into the rearview mirror, his gaze warm, soliciting. Sometimes I give the impression of not paying attention, but I’m gleaning all I can from the present, encoding it carefully. It is unlikely that this man, who has lived here all his life, does not know my street. Perhaps he is right. None of it is real: Siobhán, the flat, the missing girl.

  I find the place Marcel-Aymé on my GPS and show the driver. His bright laugh fills the car. He swivels into reverse. Maybe I was mispronouncing the name.

  On the square, which exists, my eyes travel up the building façade, balcony after balcony, to a dome with a topmost window, which will be mine. Through sheets of cloud, sun strikes the wet brick and stone. Looking up like that gives me vertigo. By the door, which faces the square, a tree sways under its burden of pink, excessive blooms.

  At the square’s far end, people are gathered. They are looking at something hidden from my view by their windbreakers and backpacks. When the group drifts away, I approach, leaving my suitcase by the door.

  The statue is of a man stuck in the wall—or emerging. I can’t tell. His face of dark bronze is resigned. His fingers, long and expressive, reach toward me out of the stones, rubbed gold by many eager, living hands. As I move to touch the fingers, a high, shrill voice stops me.

  —Isa!

  A woman from the tourist group is gazing at me from the street.

  —Isa! she says again, and runs down the slope that joins the street to the square.

  Embarrassed, I stand still, my legs taking root among the stones. My face is one people think they know, and strangers will often tell me I remind them of someone. When she sees me up close, this woman, too, will find some detail in my face to set her right. She’ll apologize, ashamed of her error, but aglow with the memory of whomever she took me for.

  Now she runs across the square, her black hair loose behind her, her low heels unsteady on the cobblestones. She reaches me, breathless, and takes my hands, pressing them to her chest. Her forehead is broad, and her eyes are black and wet with tears.

  —Isabelle, she says.

  Her smile makes me want to smile, too.

  —No, I say.

  She steps back and studies me, probing my gaze for recognition.

  —But Isabelle, it’s you. Of course it’s you.

  She laughs again, but more sadly this time, performing a calculation.

  —If it was you, you wouldn’t tell me, she says, squeezing my hands.

  Her touch is warm, her skin a little dry.

  —No, I’m not her. I’m not Isa. My name is Elena. I’m sorry.

  I am sorry. I’ve hurt her without meaning to. To appease her, I ask:

  —When did you know Isa? Isabelle?r />
  The ground of stones swells up like the sea, and the woman looks at me with such confusion that I turn away, embarrassed, and move quickly with my suitcase into the building.

  Leaning against a wall of mirror in the foyer, I watch her retreat across the square. A scene like this shouldn’t bother me so much, but the world is strange today. I’ve been awake all night, crossing the ocean, and now I can’t shake her look of need. I’m not Isa, but the time I’ve lived and don’t remember deprives me of certainties. I’m sick of grasping, still, for the strong, solid shore where life can begin.

  I imagine myself arriving at Ella’s door—or finding her on a beach or in a square—and saying, Ella, Ella! Do you know how long your mother—your real mother—has been looking for you? I’ll bring them together, mother and daughter. I can do nothing for the woman outside, but I can help Siobhán. I believe that Ella is alive and can be found.

  I carry my suitcase up seven flights to the flat that is to be mine. My mother was British, and, though my accent is American, she has left me with certain words, ways of saying. Taking the key from under the carpet, I twist it in the lock until the door opens onto a studio with high ceilings and parquet floors, dormer windows and false balconies, balustrades beyond which the city flickers under exchanges of sun and cloud. I find Ella’s journals immediately, on a table by the entrance, stacked under a Post-it with my name on it. Six books, all with hard canvas backings and each a different color. They seem both childish and prematurely ancient. I open one. Beige cover. Sharp scent of its paper is full of elsewhere. The handwriting is neat, round letters anchored to the lines of every page. Some entries are a paragraph, others much longer. I turn to a page at random and begin to read:

  A Lanna house has no borders. Walls are doors, open to breezes blown across rice fields, orange orchards, and tea plantations. Jasmine is everywhere, on the highway with its trucks and motorcycles and at the roadside pineapple stands and noodle shops. I first noticed it on the tarmac of the tiny airport—its sweet, heavy scent.

  It’s ridiculous to feel this frisson and hint of smell from words alone. A thought flies up, made of sounds: I’d rather be her than here. It doesn’t make sense. Ella could be dead. Maybe Siobhán is deluded to think she can be found. No. Siobhán is strange—secretive and intense—but not deluded. And she has lost a daughter—twice. Once given up, once taken away by the world.

  Flipping through the pages, I feel embarrassed, catching phrases not meant for my eyes.

  Her is Ella. She is so alive in her journals, the way I want to be. Looking for her feels urgent, a task with clear edges, purpose. She is someone I might love.

  Here is a room with wide windows, a metallic sky rising like a dome over rooftops and monuments. Far below, in a park, branches are bone white under veils of leaves. Nothing moves, and it is cold for early summer. The clean white emptiness of the studio flat makes me think of Irigaray, that feminist philosopher of watery things, who thought women use pronouns differently than men, who cast herself as the marine lover of Nietzsche, and who—a professor once told me this—lived in a white apartment, wore only white, and would not let others touch her. This is what I see. Others might say what a nice flat this is.

  Here is also the city I left a month ago. Returning to it now—audaciously, as if the place were a sort of home—I feel its foreignness more acutely. The language still trips my tongue, and I don’t know this part of town. I was probably wrong to return.

  Today is the sixteenth of June. The date is significant because Ella began the journals on the same day eight years ago. Siobhán must know this, working carefully as she does.

  When Ella disappeared more than six years ago, her adoptive parents conducted a search in Thailand. The detective failed to turn up anything—only a few interviews (inconclusive) in the village where she lived. Even so, I’d rather be him, too, tracking Ella through jungles. All I have are her words, their rhythms—bodiless and abandoned.

  Closing the beige book, I slip out the journal at the bottom of the stack. Green cover. The pages are stiffer, marked by rings of salt and warped by sea air. Her handwriting has changed, black threads of sentences unfurling over ruled paper.

  I have glimpses into what is real. Can’t sustain them. Thresholds vanish as I try to enter. The world I’m writing is already gone.

  I flip back, looking for context. A guesthouse in the hills near Chiang Rai. Teakwood gives the room its odor, rich and sharp. A breeze touches my face and arms—her face and arms, which, as I read, are mine. Someone is packing, suitcase on the bed. His back is turned, and his white shirt stands out against polished wood walls. Behind him, through wall-size doors, hills stretch into Myanmar.

  Reading on, I see the brown track of the river, layered green hills going forever. Then a sun flash through the window returns me to myself and to here, to this white room in Paris.

  2

  I FIRST MET SIOBHÁN TWO MONTHS AGO, over coffee in the gardens of the Palais-Royal. It was April, and the long rows of trees were blooming. Raw warmth dug up smells of turned earth and flowers, a too-sweetness that made me think of decomposition.

  Siobhán was seated when I arrived, reading a glossy arts magazine. I knew it was her because she stiffened in recognition as I approached, though she’d never seen me before. Her sunglasses showed me a distorted version of myself before she raised them, extending her hand.

  —Your mother was a close friend of mine a long time ago. It’s a pleasure to meet you.

  Siobhán spoke with calibrated calm, with a poise I found contagious.

  I don’t remember my mother ever mentioning Siobhán. She never liked to speak of the past, of remote people or things. She loved what was immediate, present to the senses. It was my father who had put me in touch with Siobhán. We know someone in Paris, he’d said over the phone. She and your mother were very close. I might have asked how they’d known each other or why I’d never heard of Siobhán, but all I could think of at the time was his way of saying your mother, as if she were more my relation than his.

  Espressos arrived at our table without our having ordered them. Unless Siobhán had ordered them before I arrived. Or they reached us by mistake. We sat for a moment, immune to the shouts of children, to the absurdly flowering trees.

  Siobhán looked at me evenly, her eyes very blue and calm. Her hair, light gray, was pulled together at the base of her neck. Her skin was smooth. She slipped her magazine into an outer pocket of her briefcase and reached for an espresso.

  I was afraid she would tell me I reminded her of my mother, but she said nothing more about it, and we spoke of other things: my doctoral research on the French filmmaker Chris Marker, my reason for being in Paris (a monthlong trip was all I could afford), architecture, which had been Siobhán’s profession, and the gallery she’d designed after retiring. I asked to see it, and Siobhán offered to give me a tour.

  Siobhán had grown up in Montreal and had an Irish mother, which explained her name and her accent (not quite North American). When she learned that my research trip was nearing its end, she asked if I’d found what I was looking for. I laughed and told her about my plan to teach in the summer and fall to save enough for a longer trip next year. A month was too short. Besides, I’d misspent it, writing a poetic essay about being able to see a vibrant world, precisely and with clarity, but not touch it, not feel it living as part of me and me of it. My essay was inspired by the film Sans Soleil, but it was too formless and full of feeling for any academic film journal to take seriously. I felt silly after telling her this—it wasn’t something I ever talked about.

  —You’re a writer, Siobhán said.

  Her calm, which I had admired earlier, was on full display.

  —No, I said, pleased.

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

  —Did my mother exhibit here—with you? I asked.

  —No, Siobhán said, looking up, surprised.

  She tapped the spoon from her espresso on her cup. It made a
small bell-like sound.

  —I’m sorry, Elena, she said finally, in a tone that made it clear what she was talking about. Your father was in touch. I wish I could have been there.

  —It was a long time ago, I said, meaning she shouldn’t worry.

  It occurred to me only in retrospect that Siobhán and I might have met already, at the funeral. I was relieved we hadn’t.

  Siobhán shifted, recrossing her legs.

  —I wanted to be there, but I couldn’t.

  Her gaze drifted above the building tops to a raw patch of sky. Her face was youthful—fine lines, yes, but a fullness of flesh that made her expression innocent, unmarked by life. She wasn’t indifferent, just intensely private, and mercurial.

  —Ella would be your age now, she said. You’re twenty-nine?

  I nodded. I didn’t want to ask who Ella was. Our intimacy felt strong and comfortable in that moment, because of my mother.

  —I don’t know why I’m telling you so much, Siobhán said, although she hadn’t told me anything. Your mother was there when Ella was born. That must be why.

  She looked at her shoes, black heels whitened by the gravel of the gardens. With the napkin from her espresso, she bent down and began to wipe the leather.

  —Is Ella your daughter? I asked.

  Siobhán sat up and was quiet. When she finally answered, her speech was stilted.

  —I gave birth to her. I haven’t seen her since she was three months old. She was raised by friends I trusted, in America.

  Siobhán looked again at the sky and went on.

  —She grew up not knowing. They wanted her, as they put it, to grow up “whole.” They waited until she finished university to tell her.

  I took a sugar cube and rolled it between my fingers until it was dust.

  —Her response was to go live in Asia. If she saw how big the world was, maybe her own crisis would matter less. Or it’s just what people will do at that age if they have the means—go live somewhere they can’t fathom. London was that for me—it’s where I met Ida, as you know.