A Story from a Room
Agnès Madrigal
This story is a portrait of interiors: of a room in winter weather and of a narrator amid a tempest of her own psyche. What does it mean to be a woman and a writer? A Story from a Room is the beginning of a quest.
The room, both womblike and tomblike, offered a small desk for writing. Photograph by Madrigalit
The room was on the top floor at the back of the house overlooking the snowy yard and the neighbor’s parking lot. The house was a restored Georgian mansion in the older part of the city, near the cathedral, where the other fancier houses were built more than a hundred years ago. The section of the city was now protected from destruction after, forty years earlier, various old homes that had fallen into disrepair were demolished to make way for a new freeway. The city sat nearly at the source of a great river that rushed downward, drawing a line that cut the country in two; where the city was, the river was still medium-sized, mild—it was hard to imagine it further downstream, where it flanked big grassy islands and where the waters could rush up suddenly and devour a small bridge or a beach campsite. The river commenced in a region where the weather was intense no matter the season, and it was a fierce winter now: outside the houses and apartment buildings in view were covered with a thick layer of snow. From some of the apartment balconies, the tiniest bits of colored holiday lights shone through the white, like messages of hope. There—she sighed and set down her ink pen—had she said enough about where she was?
She had rented the room for just seven days. She had business in the city, with one of the small presses that had grown quite popular there. But the business lasted only a few days; she had extended her stay for reasons she could not quite write down because she could not say them, she didn’t understand them. There was more to do in the city than she could reasonably accomplish in a week, but she didn’t want to do anything, apart from a few trips to the museums and some dinners at the new chic spots, also blossoming anew in the region. She wanted to stay in the room, the room filled with its antique furniture, with its walls covered with flocked wallpaper, with its refinished wood floors beneath the thick Turkish rugs—there were two in the room, the room divided with an area for sleeping with a great mahogany bed, and another as a sitting area with a plump damask-covered sofa and a roll-top desk for writing. She sat at the desk now. Maybe this was what she was here to do: write. And, yet, it came with such difficulty . . .
“The river commenced in a region where the weather was intense no matter the season, and it was a fierce winter now: outside the houses and apartment buildings in view were covered with a thick layer of snow. From some of the apartment balconies, the tiniest bits of colored holiday lights shone through the white, like messages of hope.”
—Agnès Madrigal, from a first draft of “A Story from a Room”
In the mornings they served a grand breakfast downstairs. She piled her plate with the thick, syrup-soaked pancakes, with the crisp and greasy ribbons of bacon, and she drank several cups of the filter coffee from the hot stainless steel tank. She filled herself in order to spend the rest of the morning and afternoon back in the room, sprawled across the bed with her notebook, or crouched over her laptop at the desk. To write, she thought, to write and write and write and write some more. She could never do it at home, could not extract herself from everything else: the demanding job at the publishing house, the marvelous husband with his various entertainments for them, the child not yet able to take much care of herself, and the dog that probably, at this very moment, needed a trim and a shampoo. There were only these few days apart, these precious hours. In the room, the silver radiators clanked and hissed. Outside the snow swirled and gathered. She felt entombed, enwombed—either metaphor provided a sense of comfort she felt she seldom had otherwise.
In the pretty silver mirror, the narrator examines her face—she had not seen it in a while. Photograph by Madrigalit
Inside the room, there was a small woman’s body—fine-boned some might call her. She imagined her skeleton beneath her pale, freckled skin; she felt through that skin her ribcage, her clavicle, her jutting hip bones if she laid on her back across the matelassé bedspread. In the bathroom’s pretty silver mirror, she examined her face. She had not seen it in a while, though she looked at it each day to apply her anti-aging creams, her pale foundation, her mascara, and the shimmering pink lip gloss she had worn since she was young. Her face stared back at her, curiously, but without demand. Her eyes were blue. In the winter light they seemed a brighter blue, more penetrating, or she was just older now, and now her eyes did this. She didn’t understand aging, how it etched itself into her while she was busy doing other things. In the bathroom, with her bare feet on the white-outlined-in-black coinlike tiles of the floor, she saw the vessels cross the tops of her feet like tributaries to some unknown river, noticed the ragged edges of her toenails where the soft pink polish of the last pedicure had worn off and chipped. Her hands, too, were laced with wispy veins and a delicate crepelike texture that might have been considered opulent on a cloth. Her fingernails, ravaged from the housecleaning she had done just before leaving, were dry and uneven—
“Her face stared back at her, curiously, but without demand. Her eyes were blue. In the winter light they seemed a brighter blue, more penetrating, or she was just older now, and now her eyes did this. She didn’t understand aging, how it etched itself into her while she was busy doing other things.”
—Agnès Madrigal, from a first draft of “A Story from a Room”
Where was she? She clamped together the hinged dual frame with the photo of her husband and daughter and put it in a drawer. She dug into her luggage to find the tiny kit with nail clippers, tweezers, and little scissors. They were also nestled inside a compact, glistening and silver like medical tools. She began with her fingernails, tearing off the white edges then cutting them as far as she could go, filing them down further. She did the same with her toes. Then, with the tweezers, she pulled the hairs from her eyebrows, first the wayward ones along the edges, and then the main ones, too, until she was left with just a thin quivering line above each eye. She scrubbed her face with the cheap hotel soap until her skin was red and then slathered it with one of the fancy lotions she had been seduced to buy at one of the department stores in her home city. And with the little scissors, she cut at pieces of her longish brown-blonde hair until she was left with just a strange thin nest against her scalp. It would be cold outside, but for that, she had a cap, also from the elegant store where she shopped with her friends. In the silver bathroom mirror, her recent self eradicated, she saw herself again, saw herself anew. The notebook on the desk was laid open, and she could then begin.