Fiction / Suzy Eynon 

 

          Mad­die and Chris cross the thresh­old into the first gallery room of the down­town art muse­um still blink­ing away the bright spots in their vision left by an indif­fer­ent win­ter sun. Mad­die reads the neat script on a small white note­card, a slight­ly dif­fer­ent shade of white from the wall to which it’s affixed, next to the Geor­gia O’Keeffe. A Cel­e­bra­tion, it says. She is drawn to the swirling clouds against a blue close to the pri­ma­ry shade she learned in kinder­garten. This blue is every­where that after­noon: the paint­ing, her wool coat, the unin­ter­rupt­ed Jan­u­ary sky. Chris leaves her side after only a minute to head for the rest of the Amer­i­can oils in their gild­ed frames. The cou­ple rarely remains side-by-side in pub­lic, as if wit­ness­ing or con­sum­ing some­thing togeth­er can only occur at a phys­i­cal dis­tance. If she fol­lows him, he will pro­ceed to the next paint­ing, a game of chase. She’s always in pur­suit, try­ing to catch up. She puts a hand to the spot on her low back which throbs as if to reas­sure it. Then, a high-pitched squeal inter­rupts the rooms of the sec­ond floor of the muse­um, a sound at first unplace­able to Mad­die.  

          The sharp alert is fol­lowed by a ris­ing cas­cade of voic­es and shuf­fles, bod­ies adjust­ing and on guard, a heel squelch­ing against the shined floor. A young child gig­gles then set­tles into a sob. The alarm speaks in a woman’s voice, calm but firm. There has been an emer­gency report­ed in the build­ing. Please con­tin­ue to the stair­well and evac­u­ate the build­ing. Do not use the ele­va­tors. Mad­die looks for a glow­ing red exit sign, imag­ines curl­ing fin­gers of smoke creep­ing into the room from an unknown source and becomes aware of her own breath­ing. Chris appears at her side, grab­bing her hand. She pulls away from the heavy warmth of his palm on impulse before find­ing it again. They walk toward a stair­well, where oth­ers form a line to exit. 

          “Only in the Pacif­ic North­west would peo­ple line up dur­ing an evac­u­a­tion,” some­one says behind Mad­die.   

          At the bot­tom of the stairs, a muse­um vol­un­teer holds a door open to the street. Mad­die and Chris walk away from the build­ing, then stop near a win­ter-bare Japan­ese maple plant­ed in a cement con­tain­er. Mad­die looks up at the build­ing, vague­ly hop­ing to see some­thing on the roof or a shad­ow in retreat from an upper floor win­dow, more imag­ined smoke bil­low­ing from the build­ing, even some­thing oth­er­world­ly like slime in a crawl down the mono­lith of glass and steel but sees no evi­dence of what sent them onto the side­walk. Patrons gath­er in twos or in clumps form­ing lit­tle closed cir­cles of chat­ter. The few vol­un­teers in their bright blue but­ton-up shirts and lan­yards give away noth­ing. They stand with groups of patrons or peer through the glass to the inside of the muse­um. 

          “Do you think this is far enough away, in case?” Mad­die ges­tures up at the roof of the build­ing. 

          “There’s nobody on the roof,” Chris says. But he can’t know this. 

          Mad­die search­es Seat­tle art muse­um emer­gency today on her phone. Dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of words fail to bring her the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion. It seems to her more and more late­ly that there is too much infor­ma­tion avail­able, so when she needs a spe­cif­ic piece of information—wants to know if she should run or wait, won­ders what a loud boom was in the night—she can’t find any rel­e­vant results. She con­sid­ers ask­ing a near­by vol­un­teer what hap­pened, but this feels wrong, like an admis­sion of weak­ness. She glimpses a ver­sion of her­self as an uneasy per­son, hands shak­ing as she asks with wide eyes what’s going on, too breathy, like a con­fused child. She might annoy them, a per­son too impa­tient to wait, or look like a neigh­bor­hood gos­sip while some­body might be suf­fer­ing a real emer­gency. This ver­sion of her­self sends a wave of revul­sion through her body, which she receives as a chill and pulls her coat closed over her chest. The vol­un­teers don’t seem to know much more than she does, since they wait on the side­walk with the rest of the crowd. No one makes a move to re-enter the build­ing or share fur­ther infor­ma­tion with the group. 

          A lad­der truck and small­er firetruck pull up across the street.  

          “Why are they over there?” Chris says. He pulls up the fire depart­ment live response web site and reads off the codes. Fire alarm. 

          Sev­er­al fire­fight­ers hop out of the truck and head for the build­ing across the street instead of toward the art muse­um. Some­one in a muse­um shirt approach­es the trucks. Then Mad­die sees a fig­ure through the glass front of the muse­um, some­one in repose. Injured, maybe, or bent down to retrieve some­thing. She steps clos­er and peers inside.  

          A young woman is seat­ed in a plas­tic chair by the exit, her back to the glass doors. From the side, her face appears to be at rest, nei­ther smil­ing nor frown­ing, and yet she looks pleased, some­how. Open. She sits with her legs squared, one foot firm­ly on the ground and the oth­er casu­al­ly crossed. 

          Glass sep­a­rates the two women. Mad­die can’t tell if the woman holds a walkie-talkie like she imag­ines some of the guards might. She looks as if she belongs there, like a per­son at ease with her exis­tence in the world, not clam­or­ing to occu­py any space oth­er than the inside of the muse­um, unin­ter­est­ed in the com­mo­tion out­side. It strikes Mad­die as strange that this per­son is inside of the build­ing while they all wait out­side for the emer­gency to pass, just sit­ting pas­sive­ly in the cen­ter of this sup­posed emer­gency. 

          “Should we get a cof­fee and come back?” Chris asks. “Or we can get lunch.” 

          This is a belat­ed birth­day gift to her from Chris, the muse­um out­ing, an attempt to break up the monot­o­ny of those sil­ver-skied win­ter work­days.  

          The groups of muse­um­go­ers slow­ly dis­perse, set­ting off to get food or drinks, some way to pass the time. There’s no infor­ma­tion about how long the emer­gency may take. A man asks one of the vol­un­teers if he can use his exhib­it pass­es anoth­er time and says he’ll come back lat­er for his coat from the coat check. Mad­die has nev­er used a coat check in her life and is relieved to have noth­ing to leave behind. She likes to keep things on her per­son, so she leaves no strings attached, no require­ment to return to a par­ty she might run from. Her child­hood home was crowd­ed with belong­ings: fur­ni­ture obscured by stacks of news­pa­pers, tow­ers of unla­beled box­es nev­er unpacked, all man­ner of elec­tron­ics and house­hold items bro­ken but which might have been fixed but nev­er were. She learned to squeeze through the mar­gins between piles, mem­o­rized where to step or stand in this sea of stuff. The home was filled with rooms she could no longer enter by the time she moved away with two trash bags of clothes and books.  

          They’d parked the car in the garage attached to the muse­um, teth­er­ing them to the area unless they aban­doned it and returned for it lat­er, the garage now closed for the emer­gency just like the build­ing.  

          “I don’t know where we’d go,” Mad­die says, final­ly. 

          Despite stand­ing on a side­walk down­town sur­round­ed by shin­ing build­ings, she feels this deci­sion requires too much plan­ning and research. What if they leave that moment, and the muse­um re-opens just as they walk away? They’ve already invest­ed the time to dri­ve down here, cir­cle the under­ground park­ing garage in search of a space, and walk the wind­ing garage to find an elu­sive unmarked ele­va­tor. Mad­die is com­mit­ted to the idea of a muse­um day. The blue sky is a rar­i­ty in Jan­u­ary, and the feel­ing of light­ness she car­ried in the brief moments spent inside float­ing from piece to piece had felt rare, too, a blan­ket­ing calm she hadn’t felt in months. With each pass­ing moment, Mad­die ques­tions whether they should walk away. The wind picks up, blow­ing off the water and up through the streets. It licks at the flaps of Maddie’s coat. She tight­ens the scarf around her neck. They tuck clos­er to the build­ing again as the sun shifts over­heard toward an after­noon glare which makes Maddie’s eyes tired. She has the sense of being late to some­thing, like walk­ing into a high school class already in progress after arriv­ing late from a doctor’s appoint­ment. 

          A few groups remain by the time a guard holds open the back doors, and they re-enter the build­ing. They are direct­ed in clumps to go back through the main entry to the exhibits. They walk past the tick­et scan­ner and ascend the same esca­la­tor they used pri­or to the alarm. Mad­die walks at a quick pace, eager to get back to the point at which they’d been inter­rupt­ed before, just past the O’Keeffe.  

          A cou­ple trails behind Maddie’s path through the muse­um. “I stud­ied in France,” one of the women says. The pair give off the air of a first date or arranged meet-up: one does much of the talk­ing, rat­tling through a list of col­leges attend­ed and coun­tries vis­it­ed. Places Mad­die has nev­er and will like­ly nev­er vis­it. When­ev­er at the table for a din­ner con­ver­sa­tion that veers into trav­el, she rearranges the food on her plate, nudges piles to the edge with her fork as the oth­ers vol­ley des­ti­na­tions among their cir­cle like triv­ia, the words float­ing above them with­out ref­er­ence in Maddie’s mind. Biar­ritz, Cor­si­ca, Nice. 

          The cou­ple paus­es in front of a case con­tain­ing blue and white ceram­ics, lit­tle bowls with par­rots on them. Mad­die imag­ines eat­ing stove-warmed Chick­en N’Stars soup from one of the bowls, her Ikea spoon mak­ing a pleas­ant ting as it con­tacts the hilly tex­ture of the insides. The par­rots are espe­cial­ly beau­ti­ful to her, and in that moment she imag­ines a future includ­ing fam­i­ly heir­looms she doesn’t pos­sess: her mother’s berry print crock­ery, which her broth­er had remind­ed her was promised to him before their moth­er died, or the juice glass­es with car­toon char­ac­ters on them they’d used with break­fast as chil­dren. Mad­die hadn’t been home in years but pic­tured her broth­er scoop­ing mashed pota­toes from the largest dish, pre­pared by his wife and devoured by their chil­dren, or his chil­dren let­ting a juice glass slip from sticky hands while they stared at the tele­vi­sion. It had made sense for Mad­die not to argue about the dis­tri­b­u­tion of their mother’s items, of the wealth if you could call it that. Her broth­er had chil­dren while she and Chris didn’t. Couldn’t, she had stopped explain­ing to peo­ple who asked. It was eas­i­er to make it sound like a deci­sion they’d made. 

          Mad­die dis­tances her­self from the cou­ple, mov­ing toward a tex­tile instal­la­tion, a heap of knit­ted blan­kets piled in a stud­ied non­cha­lance from their pedestal to the ceil­ing. She inspects the pile, search­ing for how they man­aged to stay in that form, stacked so high, with­out falling. There must be a cen­ter­ing force. The edge of a rust-col­ored blan­ket catch­es her eye, its loose weave giv­ing it a drape the oth­er blan­kets don’t have. She stretch­es to run her fin­gers along its edges, her arm reach­ing over a rope bar­ri­er. She wants to feel the yarn at her fin­ger­tips, but she stops short as she recalls the guards she knows are wait­ing near­by. Dur­ing oth­er vis­its, she had seen them mate­ri­al­ize next to an offend­er caught with a hand against the glass or a cam­era inside an exhib­it labeled no pho­tog­ra­phy. She pic­tures pulling the blan­ket over her out­stretched body. 

          She turns to find Chris, to call him to the pile of blan­kets, when a sec­ond wail­ing punc­tures her thoughts and a rolling door descends from one of the path­ways to the oth­er rooms, dis­con­nect­ing the gal­leries. The sight of the door rolling toward the ground pan­ics Mad­die more than the pre­vi­ous alarm because while this time has to be anoth­er false alarm, the quick­ness of their trap­ping is breath­tak­ing.  

          “I won­der why those didn’t close before,” she says as Chris returns. 

          “Maybe we just didn’t notice,” he says. They walk to the same stair­well as ear­li­er, this time with a sense of direc­tion.  

          They must leave this time. Mad­die can’t bear the thought of repeat­ing this dance every half hour, hear­ing the same emer­gency and react­ing the same way, only to begin again. At one land­ing, Mad­die pulls her gaze away from the back of the head in front of her to look ahead, to cal­cu­late how much far­ther they have to go. She thinks she sees, in the trick­ling riv­er of bod­ies ahead, the com­posed face of the woman from ear­li­er. A turn­ing sliv­er of face, of jaw, a del­i­cate neck. Was her hair this shade of brown? The woman merges into a bun­dle of move­ment, absorbed by the loose, snaking line.  

          “Keep going?” some­one ahead of Mad­die in the stair­well asks the air. At each land­ing, it isn’t obvi­ous which way to go, if they are to push through the heavy unmarked doors or descend anoth­er flight. 

          “It’s down one more lev­el,” Mad­die offers. She is now an expert at escap­ing, at least from this par­tic­u­lar emer­gency.  

          Those ahead of Mad­die and Chris on the stairs file through the street-lev­el door. Chris reach­es over Mad­die to hold it for their exit, but Mad­die dodges to the side, step­ping out of line. 

          “What are you doing?” Chris asks.  

          “I have to go to the bath­room.”  

          “Now?” asks Chris, but he fol­lows her down anoth­er lev­el. 

          “Here,” Mad­die says. The next met­al door is marked to Shop. “I remem­ber there was a restroom on this lev­el when I came years ago.” She pulls the door toward her chest and holds it for Chris, forc­ing him to pass first. 

          They enter a vestibule which leads to the muse­um gift shop, the restrooms, and an undec­o­rat­ed rest area with a sin­gle stuffed beige chair. 

          “I don’t think you should go right now,” Chris says. “We can go to a cof­fee shop. You can use the bath­room there.” 

          With­out respond­ing, Mad­die pulls the door to the gift shop. But­tery light blooms into the vestibule, a con­trast to the con­trolled, cool­ly lit envi­ron­ment of the gal­leries. A staff mem­ber remains behind the cash reg­is­ter. Some patrons gath­er out­side the large win­dows of the shop, heads craned into their phones.  

          Mad­die has always been attract­ed to gift shops. She doesn’t find them to be tourist traps ped­al­ing over­priced tchotchkes. They are an exten­sion of the expe­ri­ence, a place to obtain a phys­i­cal reminder to show she’s been there, not to oth­ers but to her­self. A part­ing gift for hav­ing lived. 

          “Mad­die?” Chris says. He doesn’t fol­low her into the shop. He stands next to a rack of tote bags near the back door. “Come on.” 

          She picks up and then places down a thick text on William Mor­ris. “Just a sec­ond,” she says. She eyes glis­ten­ing glass­ware, a bas­ket brim­ming with logoed mar­bles. Stacks of mint green hard­cov­er note­books with clean, unbro­ken spines. She can prac­ti­cal­ly hear the crack of open­ing one for the first time, the fwip-fwip of stiff pages turn­ing. Mad­die paus­es again in front of a dis­play of pol­ished stones. They look like riv­er rock, or what her mom had called riv­er rock, like the stones beneath the small foun­tain in her child­hood home which absorbed splash­es or dis­played a spray of water across their flat sur­faces. These have no dirt debris and are cool to the touch as Mad­die runs her fin­ger across their sur­face. 

          “Folks, we need you to head out­side for a few moments until we’re ready to open the reg­is­ter back up,” says a guard, sweep­ing his hand in the direc­tion of the street-side door. A woman strug­gles with sev­er­al bags as she makes her way past Mad­die. Chris looks pained as he glances at Mad­die, then at the door.  

          “Excuse me,” says anoth­er woman. It is the woman from ear­li­er, the inside woman. She walks toward Mad­die with a wide, quick stride, a look of deter­mi­na­tion on her face. Mad­die feels a wave of guilt, a red­ness bloom­ing on her face. She braces as if to be struck or yelled at though she isn’t sure why she reacts this way even as it hap­pens in her body.  

          “Me?” she says.  

          The woman has a dis­arm­ing smile. Warm. “Your scarf.” She holds it aloft. Its weave has come loose from wear, fuzzy and haloed in the light. 

          Maddie’s hand goes to her throat. It must have slipped off. 

          “Wow, thank you,” she says. “That’s so nice.” She nev­er knows how to show appre­ci­a­tion when helped and knows she relies too much on say­ing things or peo­ple are nice or kind, like she can only acknowl­edge the deed by label­ing it. 

          The woman nods by way of acknowl­edg­ment and walks toward the exit. Mad­die knows she has been too appre­cia­tive of the woman. It’s only a scarf. Chris still stands at the edge of the shop, his expres­sion bored. Mad­die moves with rare flu­id­i­ty of motion, palm­ing a gray stone before drop­ping it into the deep pock­et of her coat. For a moment, she imag­ines an out­come in which she has mis­cal­cu­lat­ed, and the stone falls to the floor with a clat­ter, draw­ing the atten­tion of Chris and secu­ri­ty. But she can feel its weight, tug­ging her coat slight­ly down, root­ing her in place. It weighs her down, this imper­cep­ti­ble shift, and she doesn’t move until Chris stands before her with an out­stretched hand. When they make it to the street, Mad­die is reas­sured by the per­sis­tent sky, the pres­ence of low clouds obstruct­ed from her view by tall build­ings. 

From the writer

 

:: Account ::

The pro­tag­o­nist of this sto­ry, Mad­die, grap­ples with inde­ci­sion and comes from this place where she doesn’t feel there’s room for her, not just phys­i­cal­ly but in terms of space. The title is pas­sive—there has been—which was delib­er­ate, since she is pas­sive in ways, too. I was at an art muse­um once when the alarm kept get­ting trig­gered, a false alarm, and it made me think of dif­fer­ent types and sens­es of emer­gen­cies and how we react to them, the choic­es we are forced to make even dur­ing small emer­gen­cies. In this sto­ry, I was also think­ing about an art muse­um as a blank, clean, arranged space to which view­ers bring their own mess, their own lives. The art muse­um can be a place you peer into through glass, a reflec­tive sur­face or a place you look through to some­thing else. It’s a third place, not home or work but oth­er, and I think Mad­die is look­ing for her­self in there, or look­ing for some­thing to call her own or to pos­sess.  

Suzy Eynon is the author of the forth­com­ing novel­la Ter­res­tri­al (Malarkey Books 2026), and the prose chap­books Being Seen (Ethel) and Com­mut­ing (Ghost City Press sum­mer series). Her fic­tion and non­fic­tion work has been pub­lished in Roanoke Review, Pas­sages North, Aut­o­fo­cus, X‑R-A‑Y, and else­where. Orig­i­nal­ly from Ari­zona, she lives in Seat­tle. More at http://suzyeynon.com/.