Short Story Saturday: Overthinking

The strangest things triggered a chain of thoughts in Celia. Today it was the act of squashing garlic with the blade of her knife, the heel of her hand thumping down on the clove until it burst out of its skin with a satisfying pop, before peeling back the papery layers that made her fingers sticky with juice. She remembered doing the same thing one night at Suann’s house. They’d been preparing bolognaise from a recipe Suann’s friend had copied for her. The paper, although now safe in a plastic sleeve, was dotted with leftover ingredients from other cooking expeditions.

“This is the best bolognaise you’ll ever eat,” Suann said. “OK, Google, turn the volume down by fifteen percent.”

 

“I’ll never get used to having one of those,” said Celia, brushing the garlic skins to the edge of her chopping board. She walked to the sink and started rubbing her hands against the steel – a trick she’d learnt that helped remove the stink of garlic from her hands.

 

“Hold on.” Suann opened a drawer to her left and passed her a cake of steel soap.

 

“Of course you have one of these,” said Celia.

 

Suann appeared not to hear. She was poring over the recipe again, tapping her feet in time to the music.

 

The chiming of the front door dragged Celia back. She grabbed a paper towel and tried to remove some of the garlic from her hands without shredding bits of kitchen tissue in the process. The chime sounded again.

 

She undid the safety chain, the childproof lock her predecessor had installed and turned the key four times. A man wearing socks with Birkenstocks was standing on her mat. There was a reason it didn’t say “welcome”.

 

“Ms Attenborough?”

 

She nodded.

 

“Apparently you have a package for me?”

 

He was also wearing cotton boxers and an undershirt. It would have been offensive but for the fact that he was clearly no stranger to exercise and also in his early twenties.

 

“I have a note from the courier service here that says you received it earlier today.”

 

“Yes. Right. Sorry.” She left the door ajar while she retrieved the box from her dining room table. It had a dent in the side, as though whoever transported it couldn’t care less about how they handled the package.

 

When she returned to the front door, he seemed to be reading something on the noticeboard opposite her door. The message was always the same. “Don’t park bikes in the foyer. Not even for 5 minutes.” The last statement had been underlined several times, and the ink, which had once been red, was now oxblood with touches of brown.

 

“Here you go.”

 

His face lit up. All she knew was that his surname was Klein, which was a misnomer given the size of his feet. “Thank you so much!” he said, taking the parcel.

 

“You’re very welcome,” she said, lowering her eyes like a heroine in a bonnet drama. She shut the door more quickly than necessary and listened. She counted to fifteen before she heard his footfalls on the stairs.

 

She looked down and saw that some garlic skins were stuck to her t-shirt. They were worse than animal hairs for getting stuck to things. Celia trundled back to the kitchen and resumed her efforts. She was preparing lemon and herb chicken with forty cloves of garlic. The wine was already sweating in her fridge. She had olives and cashews on the counter, waiting to be decanted into bowls. She’d bought sparkling water and a half-jack of whisky even though drank neither of those things.

 

A searing sensation flared in her left shoulder. She shifted her weight and leant her right hip against the counter. There were only eight cloves on the board. She sighed. Every time she made this dish she wondered why the recipe called for forty cloves, and every time she ate the dish, she understood. The cloves became soft as butter, and there were few things that compared to dipping a slice of a baguette into the garlicky bottom of the pot to retrieve the curds of the chicken, lemon and herbs. But, still, it took a lot of effort to make, and she wasn’t even sure if her dinner guest was worth it.

 

She’d met Gerald Scrimgeour at university. At 26 she’d had her quarter-life crisis, decided being a journo wasn’t as interesting as she’d hoped (the most exciting thing she got to do was fact-check and copy-edit stories pounded out by her aged and alcoholic, and occasionally stoned, department head, Manfred.  She’d begged him to let her write; in fact, she’d started an alternative news blog that satirised the daily headlines and got thousands of hits every day. He said no. His superior, Anthea, said no. And all the rival newspapers said no. Well, they said something about the bad economy and then cross-examined her about Manfred in star-struck tones. After four years of grunt work and no promotion or recognition, Celia decided to retrain as a historian. It was her second love, after writing.

 

Her first day on campus was daunting. She was surrounded by all these bright young things with hormones and iPhone 4s and Facebook status updates that read “[Name] is trying to start her Philosophy assignment and it’s already 10pm. Lol!” or “pUbLiC hOLiDaY 2MoRo!! pArTayYyy!!! lyk a G6!!!” As far as she knew, the G6 were the most powerful nations in Europe. But, whatever.

 

She found the Arts Block where she’d left it when she graduated with her BA in Media Studies some years before. The same faces were there, bar one or two she didn’t recognise. After completing the ream of paper that begged her for information about for her courses, billing address and next of kin and signing a number of documents she didn’t read as thoroughly as she should have, Celia collected her schedule and started to feel a bit more like a postgrad student than a Mature Age student. It wasn’t hard to feel her age around people who used the word “like” as though it was punctuation.

 

She’d heard Gerald before she’d seen him. A staccato Italian voice chopped all over whatever he was trying to say, and when she came into the foyer, she saw a man with a birthmark more glorious than Gorby’s gesticulating and rising up on the balls of his feet.

 

“I will not ‘aff this!”

 

Celia froze. She’d witnessed enough altercations in the newsroom to know that her best course of action was to stay close to the wall and not make any sudden movements until it was over.

 

“I don’t think you can disagree, Professor. She’s done her research, and there’s plenty of evidence to support her thesis. It wouldn’t be fair to fail her and cost her her degree because she’s challenged your theory.”

 

The professor turned purple. “I ‘aff been a leader in my field before your-a mother learn to fuck. You tell me...”

 

“Professor, there’s no other way to see it. If she takes you to the university court, and I think she will because she knows she’ll win, then you stand to lose more than your reputation.”

 

“Fuck you.” The professor snatched something from Gerald and stomped through the foyer. When he noticed Celia, he paused. “What? You laugh at me?”

 

Celia shook her head.

 

The professor glanced over his shoulder at Gerald and then back at her. “Well, I quit this place.”

 

The air in the foyer felt like the tropics. Gerald walked to her. “I’m sorry you had to see that. Don’t take it personally. He threatens to quit at least once a semester, and he’s been here for thirteen years.” He spotted the prospectus sticking out of her satchel. “So, are you a new staff member?”

 

At least he didn’t say the words “Mature Age”. She smiled. “Student. Postgrad. I’m retraining as a historian.”

 

“Then I suppose we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. I’m Gerald. I’m Professor Amaretti’s research slave, although my official title is ‘research assistant’.”

 

“Celia. Former journo... Former journalist. Research is sort of my specialty. That and fact-checking and covering for my boss when he was stoned or hungover.”

 

He’d laughed. It was a huffing sound, like an old steam train preparing to leave the station. “So, which courses are you doing?”

 

She handed him her timetable.

 

“Wow. Russian history, 20th Century Europe and South American history. That’s an eclectic mix.”

 

“What’s your area?”

 

“Mediaeval Italian and German history. I’m actually doing my Masters in folklore and fairy tales. And, if all goes well, I’ll be heading to Sicily in a few months to do research for my thesis.”

 

“Fascinating. Do you speak Italian and German?”

 

“German, yes. Italian, barely. I thought hanging around the professor would give me more exposure to the language, but so far all I’ve learnt are expletives.”

 

“Those can be handy at football games, I imagine.”

 

He huffed his laugh again and handed back her timetable. “One tip I’d offer you, if you’re interested, is to drop the course on Germany during the World Wars because you could get all that from a good documentary I can recommend.” He tapped his chin for a moment and then shrugged. “The name escapes me now. To be honest, I’m not a fan of the American associate prof who presents it. Her grandparents escaped Poland, and she has an axe to grind. I mean, if you like political scapegoating and proselytising, then by all means. As for me, I’d rather take Wilhelm Gottschalk’s course on the German rubble films and the Italian neo-realist films. You’ll get a lot more from that. You’ll see how the people really were and what they really felt. And, if nothing else, it’s an excuse to watch films.”

“Thanks. I’ll think about it.” She didn’t need to think about it.

 

He smiled and glanced at his watch. “Um, sorry, but I actually have a meeting to go to. It’s in twenty minutes, but the venue is on the other side of the campus, and it’s quite a walk.”

 

“Oh, yes. Of course. It was nice meeting you. Thanks for the advice.”

 

“Any time.” He turned as if to leave and then paused. “By the way, you can find me at the Pig and Stoat most Wednesdays after six. That’s the...”

 

“Pub in the sports centre. I know. I did my undergrad here too.”

 

“Good. Great. See you, then.”

 

“Bye.”

 

*

 

The second step in the recipe was the marinating of the chicken. Celia liked this part the best. She’d take a pat of soft butter and throw in as many herbs as she dared. Her favourites were parsley and rosemary with stalks of dried thyme. After unwrapping the chicken from the butcher’s paper, removing the gizzards and checking for stray feathers, she’d massage olive oil into the pock-marked skin, sprinkle coarse salt on every side and place the whole chicken into her cast-iron pot. The trick, she’d learnt, was to stuff lemon wedges and knobs of herby butter into the cavity and arrange the same two components around the carcass too. As for the garlic, dumping the lot on top got the best result. She lidded the pot and put it into her preheated oven. It was a good sign when she began to smell the meal. But that was at least two hours off.

 

With that done, she started on the salad. The ingredients were missing something. She scanned her usual arsenal and realised she’d forgotten to buy feta cheese. A hunk of blue would have to do, even if it did smell more than it should. She wasn’t sure if mouldy cheese should grow more mould, but she thought the better of asking Google for the answer. Had she been in Suann’s kitchen, it might have been a different story.

 

Actually, making bolognaise with Suann was the unintentional cause of her cooking the chicken. Suann had lifted the file to study the recipe when a slip of newspaper had fallen out. Suann hadn’t noticed, so Celia retrieved it from the floor. At first it seemed like an advertisement for sound systems, but when she turned it over she saw two familiar faces. There was Suann’s husband, Tim, and Gerald in their doctoral gowns on the steps of the university.

 

“Thank god you found that!” Suann snatched it from her. “Tim accused me of throwing it away. Now I have the evidence that he’s a liar and that he owes me a weekend by the sea. Ha!”

 

“Who’s that with Tim? He looks familiar.”

 

“Oh, that’s Gerald. We call him ‘Scrimgeour the bacheleour’. It’s a shame. He’s not gay, and he’s not bad looking. But he can’t seem to find a woman he can hang on to.” Suann looked up from the cutting. “Do you know him?”

 

“Maybe. He looks like someone I studied with.” She took the article from Suann. It was definitely him.

 

“Pants on fire,” said Suann. “Are you going to tell me what he was like in bed, or do I have to drag it out of you?”

 

“It was a long time ago.”

 

“He’s coming up to visit Tim next week.”

 

Celia swallowed.

 

“Oh. Wow. I had no idea.”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“You still love him, don’t you? Actually, Tim said he always did get a bit misty-eyed whenever he talked about this woman he said was the ‘one who got away’. Maybe he meant you?”

 

“I seriously doubt that.”

 

“It’s time to take the dinner out of the oven. It’s time to take the dinner out of the oven. It’s time to take the dinner out...”

 

“OK Google!” Suann had to repeat herself a few times before it stopped. She pulled an apple cake from the oven. “Dessert,” she said, “but Google can’t tell the difference.”

 

*

 

The first time she’d cooked for Gerald, she’d made what she called posh fish and chips: fish cakes and potato wedges. There’d been a large bottle of plonk decanted into a carafe, with tiramisu for dessert. She’d let him sit there with cream on his lip for ten minutes before she’d said anything, hoping he’d wipe his face himself. He’d sat back in his chair, enjoying the view of her serving him, offering him more of everything and even cleaning up. The only thing he did was refill her wine glass when she asked and eat as though he’d recently returned from a trek in the wilderness. She hadn’t minded. His company was enjoyable, and it was good to get him alone. All their other meetings had been in the pub where he seemed to constantly be accosted by chums and faculty. On one occasion, when she was trying to flirt with him, a rat-faced undergrad joined them and tried to keep a conversation going despite her pointed attempts to get him to leave. And through all that, Gerald never once made a move. She knew he was interested and interesting, but he never did anything that went beyond that. Unbuttoning her shirt and leaning forward when she spoke to him seemed to have no effect. She was paradoxically fortified and frustrated by his response. Until, one night, when they were waiting for the bus, he pushed her against a wall and kissed her as though she was his source of oxygen. After that, they saw and enjoyed each other almost every day.

 

She tried to ignore the fact that he would be leaving for Sicily until he posted a Facebook update: “Sicily: T minus 100 days”. She was crushed. Suddenly, “we” became “me”. She did the only thing she could to try to take control of the situation: she ended things with him. It was easy, at first, to pretend that she didn’t miss him, or that she didn’t mind not having a partner in crime.  One hundred days turned into a few weeks, and finally his departure day arrived. She hadn’t heard from him since after their break-up. She didn’t get to say goodbye.

 

“You know, I’ll tell Tim to bring him here, and we can cook for him. And by ‘we’ I mean you and me. We’ll make goulash. I think I have Erzsébet’s recipe somewhere.”

 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. He might feel ambushed.”

 

“It’s a small world, Celia. You’re a good actress. Pretend you’re as surprised to see him. You never would have known which Gerald I was talking about unless you’d seen that picture. I mean, he has less hair now, and he’s lost weight, but he looks the same. Come on. Don’t you want to find out if he’s still ‘Scrimgeour the bacheleour’?”

 

“We last saw each other ten years ago, Suann. No, actually, we did bump into each other once or twice in between – but only ever as friends.”

 

“Good. Then you can eat dinner as friends too.”

 

On the night that Gerald was due to arrive for dinner, Celia had been a wreck. She couldn’t tell if what she was feeling was nerves, illness from an odd-tasting steak and kidney pie she’d had for lunch or excitement. The fact that Suann had been more of a busybody than usual didn’t help matters.

 

“Here, drink this.” Suann thrust a glass of prosecco at her. “I find the fizz settles the stomach.”

 

The goulash was bubbling happily when Tim arrived back from his tennis game. He came into the kitchen carrying his shoes. “Blasted geese shat all over the court again. I’ve told Bob he should have them culled, and he said he had, and these are new arrivals. I swear it’s those fu... It’s those bloody Green Peace knobheads who keep bringing them there.” He glanced at his shoes. “Anyway, these are ruined.” He was about to dump them into the kitchen bin when Suann stopped him.

 

“I will not have my kitchen smelling of goose shit. Take those to the outside bin. And maybe if you hosed them down you’d find they’re actually salvageable.”

 

“I don’t think so, Suann.”

 

“They cost more than what I pay to service my car, so I think they are, Tim.”

 

“One new voicemail. One new voicemail.”

 

“OK Google. Play.”

 

It was from Gerald. His train had been cancelled. He wouldn’t be eating dinner with them after all.

 

“Suann, would it be OK if I went home? I think that steak and kidney pie I had for lunch doesn’t agree with me.”

 

Ten minutes later she’d bundled Celia into her car with her share of dinner and a slice of hummingbird cake. The recipe, she said, was from an African-American Texan woman she’d met at her son’s school called Monica Lebowski, but everyone called her Monica Lewinsky behind her back.

 

“I’m sorry about tonight,” said Suann. “I was hoping we’d all get a happy ending this evening.”

“Once Tim’s had a shower and some of your goulash there’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”

 

Suann looked at her nails. “Tell Tim that.” She stepped back as the engine started. “Drive safely. Text me when you’re home.”

 

While Suann was saying goodbye, Gerald called again. He’d found another train and was on his way, but he’d be thirty minutes late. By the time Tim came out to tell Suann, Celia was gone. She was still feeling queasy, so she decided to go for a walk in the forest around the corner from Suann’s house. The fresh air did her good. It cleared her head. It made her realise that the what-if game she’d been playing since she thought she would be seeing Gerald again had been silly: it came from feeling lonely, from nostalgia for what might have been between them, and it definitely wasn’t love.

 

When she got back to the car, a bus groaned to a stop across the street. Something made her look up. She saw Gerald disembark. He was looking at his phone. Her heart stalled. He looked across the street, seemingly searching for the street name. She pressed the fob to unlock her car door, and the flashing indicator lights drew his eyes to her.

 

He smiled. Then huffed with laughter. He waited for the bus to drive on before crossing the street to where she was standing, having wedged herself between the car and the door.

 

“Celia Attenborough.”

 

She stepped into his embrace without meaning to.

 

“It’s so good to see you.”

 

She swallowed and forced herself to smile. “What are you doing here?” 

 

“I’m visiting old friends for dinner. I think they are going to try to set me up with a friend of theirs, so... But then I was late because of the train and... It doesn’t matter. It’s so good to see you.”

 

She watched him looking at her, and then she realised that he was holding her hand the way he used to.

 

“How long are you here?”

 

“I’m not sure. I have an interview at the university on Monday, so we’ll see.”

 

She nodded.

 

“Hey, what’s your phone number?” he said, plucking his phone from his pocket.

 

She recited it as though she were running through the seven times table in front of the class in primary school.

 

“Good. Great. Look, I’ve got to go. My friends are expecting me. But I’ll call you?”

 

“Yes. Sure.”

 

“It’s so good to see you.” He hugged her again before heading towards Tim and Suann’s house.

 

From what Suann told Celia when she called later that night, Gerald couldn’t stop talking about how he’d bumped into an old flame in the street on the way to their place. Apparently he’d wolfed down the goulash and then, when Tim pressed him for details about the old flame and found out it was Celia, Suann saw it as her opportunity to tell him that there was definitely unfinished business between them as far as she could tell. She also told him that Celia was his would-be dinner date who’d left when she thought he would no longer be coming. When she asked him when he was planning on calling Celia, he’d been non-committal, saying something about having to wait to hear the outcome of his interview.

 

She didn’t tell Suann this, but Gerald had texted her incessantly throughout the evening. He’d phoned the next morning and left a message because she didn’t pick up. He’d found out her email address (probably from Suann) and sent her chatty messages with photo attachments of family travels from his youth. Then Monday came and she was in her office on campus, wading through some first-year essays on Il Duce’s rise to power. So far only one student had thought to develop an argument with comparative discussion points rather than merely regurgitate the equivalent of a Wikipedia page. She ignored the knock on her door for as long as possible before inviting the visitor to enter. She kept her eyes on the essay in front of her until she heard the footfalls stop in front of her desk.

 

“You’re in your element.”

 

Her mouth was dry.

 

He was smiling. “I hope you don’t mind. I just finished my interview. I think I’ll get the job. The only other candidate is...”

 

“Professor Amaretti. I heard that too. Congratulations.”

 

He sat in the chair opposite her. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, Celia.”

 

“It’s nice to see you too, Gerald. It’s been a long time.”

 

“I know. I’m terrible at keeping in touch.” He lowered his eyes briefly. “Forgive me?”

 

“I’ll think about it.” She couldn’t help but smile.

 

“I hear that the Pig and Stoat are having their pub quiz tonight, so going there isn’t an option. Could I take you to Boutros-Boutros instead? Apparently it’s more grown up.”

 

“Suann’s suggestion?”

 

“How did you know?”

“She has two teenage sons. She tells them the same thing.”

 

His laughter made her scalp prickle with the static of the memories in her brain.

 

“Give me an hour to finish here?”

 

“Take as long as you need. I’ll wait.”

 

It was so different to their pub nights of ten years earlier, and yet so much of it was also the same. They had a lot to talk about, which was unsurprising, but he seemed different too. He was more confident, more forthcoming with his opinions and definitely more demonstrative than before. She lost count of the number of times he touched her face or arms, squeezed her hand or thigh or looked into her eyes with a depth of emotion he didn’t know he possessed. And while it seemed that the years fell away, the chasm was still there; there was so much he didn’t know about her life and that she didn’t know about his. Apart from the kiss goodnight, he’d been a gentleman, and she’d been confused. What did she feel for him, and why was she feeling it?

 

It didn’t help to talk to Suann, who felt she was obligated to encourage Celia to rekindle their romance. So what if he was practically bald and a bit worse for wear; everyone aged, and Hollywood romances only lived in the land of make-believe. So there Celia was, preparing her chicken with forty cloves of garlic in her quest to get answers.

 

When the doorbell rang just after six, she checked herself in the reflection of the oven door, tugged at her shirt and fiddled with her hair. She could hear him knocking lightly.

 

“Celia?”

 

As she walked down the passage, she heard Suann’s parting advice in her head. “Whatever happens tonight, Celia, just promise me you won’t over think it.”

 

She opened the door, and perhaps her heart, to Gerald.

 

“You look nice,” he said, brushing her cheeks with his lips. “It’s so good to see you.”

 

“You too,” she said. “Come in.” She shut the door behind him and paused, fiddling with the lock. Whatever happened next, she wouldn’t overthink it.