New World Fairy Tales

by Cassandra Parkin

  ‘There,’ he said.

  I turned my head experimentally. It felt light and free. He was still standing behind me. With my hair gone, I could feel the warmth of his body. He felt very close. He did not move away.

  ‘Shorter,’ I said.

  He hesitated, then his hands lightly brushed my head.

  ‘Okay.’

  He began to lift and snip, lift and snip. I thought of sheep-shearing, the ewe pressed against the man’s crotch, the arms wrapped round, the clippers moving over her body, the sheep springing free.

  ‘It’s coming out kind of spiky,’ he warned after a while.

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said. I could only find short, snappy sentences; I had no breath for more. His fingers touched my ear.

  ‘How’s that?’ he said. His voice was blurred, as if he was tired, or drunk.

  I ran my fingers over my head. It felt like thistledown.

  ‘Shorter,’ I repeated.

  He came back with an electric shaver, which normally lived a precarious existence on the shelf above the bath. The vibrations travelled over my scalp and down through my chest. I tried to remember when anyone had last touched me as intimately as Blue was touching me now, and came up empty and yearning.

  ‘It’s finished,’ he said at last. ‘It’s all gone. All but the last few millimetres.’ His voice still had that thick, blurred quality. I thought of the taste of wine.

  I ran my hands over my naked scalp. It felt like suede. My head was so light I thought it might float off my shoulders.

  ‘That feels strange,’ I mumbled. ‘But kind of good.’

  Behind me, Blue groaned out loud.

  I stroked my head, amazed at the shape of my own skull.

  ‘Do you want to feel?’

  ‘Cornelia . . . for God’s sweet sake . . .’ He sounded furious.

  I could still feel the vibration of his touch all over my body.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s wrong? How can you sit there and ask me what’s wrong? Ah, God, Cornelia, you must know how I — as if I haven’t dreamed about —’

  Then his hands were on my scalp, caressing, stroking, and I realised that they were shaking.

  Afterwards, we lay on the floor in each other’s arms and watched the sky turn black through the glass roof.

  Actually, I think . . . I’ll have to skip a little.

  Why? How can I put this?

  There are parts of your body you won’t let me touch, aren’t there? Even though you know I’ve seen them. Sight and touch are very different senses.

  Well, there are parts of my soul I can’t let you put your hands on either.

  But I’ll tell you four things I don’t remember, because they never happened. And it didn’t occur to me to want them. What we had was more than enough, more than I’d dreamed.

  He didn’t paint anything.

  I didn’t make anything.

  He never told me I was beautiful.

  And he never said he loved me.

  The memory of the day it ended.

  I parked in the usual spot and hiked through snow. I wore woollen long johns under men’s jeans, a checked shirt covered with a jumper and a peacoat, and a shapeless hat given to me years ago by my father. My naked head was still unused to the cold. In my rucksack I had venison steaks wrapped in paper.

  In the studio, the forge was lit, he always kept it lit for us, and the reflection of the firelight flickered in the glass ceiling. Someone sat in the chair I’d made, but it wasn’t Blue. I only struggled to recognise her because she was out of context, and naked into the bargain. Actually, she had far more right to be there than I.

  ‘Hello,’ said Amaranth.

  I thought she had a dead animal on her lap, but it turned out to be the long braid of my discarded hair, tied top and bottom with black ribbon.

  ‘Well, you certainly took care of him, didn’t you?’ said Amaranth. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not jealous. Blue’s just a man after all, they take it where they can find it.’ She laughed. ‘You didn’t have to leave your job over this, you know. And especially not by letter. Family circumstances call me away, indeed. That was rude, Cornelia. But you’ve always been a rude, uncouth girl. Listening at doors. Taking things that don’t belong to you.’

  I could have said, How did you find out? I could have said, I thought you weren’t jealous. I could have said, Blue isn’t a thing, he’s a person. I could have said, You left him here without even bothering to check he was warm. I could have said, He chose me. I could have said any of those things.

  I looked at her, slender and lithe and beautiful, and said nothing.

  ‘I suppose I should thank you for keeping him alive,’ said Amaranth, stroking that braid of black hair. ‘But he doesn’t need you any more. He didn’t want to tell you himself, but he’s had enough of you now. Sex with you was just part of the creative process, like a pregnant woman eating coal. He’s finished the work he promised, and he’s coming back to civilisation. And you . . .’ she laughed. ‘You can go and deal with those family circumstances of yours.’

  You can use silence like a shield, or like a sword. It was the only weapon I had.

  ‘Did you make this chair?’ she asked disdainfully. ‘It’s far too high to be comfortable. And it tilts forward.’

  I could have said, I didn’t make it for you.

  Amaranth stood up. The braid of hair fell to the floor as she showed me her beautiful witch’s body in the firelight. She looked at my clothes, at my hat clutched in my hand, at my shorn head.

  ‘I hope you didn’t imagine he was in love with you,’ she said lightly, and laughed. ‘Good God, look at you . . . how could he be?’

  What came next? What can I say? I left the cabin, leaving my heart behind.

  Time passed.

  The memory of realising that actually, my life hadn’t ended, that I still had something worth keeping. Blue had left me without even saying goodbye, but before he went, he’d shown me who I was. I found a job at a garage, a room in the owner’s house, and space to build my own forge.

  The first thing I made was frames for two sheets of mirror from a building supply yard. I mounted them on opposite walls of my room, so I could shave my head without having to guess and fumble.

  After a year, I began to find purchasers for the things I made. After some more years, I had enough to leave the garage and rent a studio. Some more years, and my name was beginning to be known, and the things were called pieces and the prices went up. My life, my real life, began.

  I found happiness.

  The day I went to New York.

  It’s not a city I’m fond of, but a gallery had purchased one of my things — my pieces — and my agent insisted. I don’t know why I’m being so coy; actually it was MOMA, and I went to gaze incredulously at the Cornelia Adair Artist’s Chair, which I’d made nineteen of altogether, all commissions. This particular chair was for Jane Broadman, and when she died, they bought it from her daughter. Next, I was paraded around lesser but still prestigious galleries, which sold rather than collected, and finally driven to an alarmingly gracious home near Central Park where a man wanted me to make him a bathtub. Yes, really, that’s what he wanted; a custom-made bathtub. Well, why not?

  He saw me, and turned pale.

  ‘But you’re her,’ he said.

  I was baffled.

  ‘You’re the woman in the paintings.’ He wore his clothes the way a tortoise wears its shell. ‘Come with me.’

  I decided the advantages of six inches, twenty pounds and thirty years would guard my honour. He unlocked two doors before we reached the room he wanted.

  ‘This is my treasure-room,’ he told me. I nodded, and tried not to laugh.

  Then I was inside, and glad, as I’ve so often been, for the face my father gave me, the exp
ression called inscrutable.

  The woman in the pictures wasn’t beautiful; he’d never said that, and she never had been. But she was the right size and shape for the life he showed. There she was carrying a stack of logs. I’d been warm from chopping them, so I’d hung my coat up. Turning away, I snagged my sweater on the nail. In the picture, the thread hung from my left elbow.

  There I was scrubbing the dining table. My face was towards the viewer and my expression was threatening. That was the day I told him if he wanted every mouse on the mountain to live with him, that was his business, but I wasn’t eating off a table with mouldy crumbs in the cracks, so he could clean it himself, or eat outside. I smiled at the memory.

  There were my hands, large and muscled and square. They were peeling a potato. There was a scratch on the back where I’d snagged it on a bramble, and my thumbnail was broken. How had he seen so much, so clearly? He’d only watched me for a few seconds before I gave him the carrots to scrape.

  ‘I’ve bought one every year for the last fifteen years,’ said the man.

  Fifteen years? I added up quickly in my head.

  Yes. Yes. Fifteen years.

  ‘Every year, there’s one of these,’ said the man. ‘Just one of this woman.’ He glanced at me slyly. ‘Of you.’

  I saw my half-shaved head, and Blue’s hand on my neck. The next was a nude, I didn’t want to look at it with this strange chelonian man beside me.

  ‘Why did you leave him?’ he demanded.

  I could have said, That’s none of your business. I could have said, I didn’t realise how he felt. I could have said, He left me.

  He waited greedily.

  ‘Why don’t you show me where you want the bathtub?’ I said.

  The art world is small, and now I was looking instead of avoiding, it was easy to find him. His work in maturity fulfilled every promise: rich, deep, bruisingly beautiful. And every year, without fail, a study of me — a love letter shared with the world, a declaration, a plea. A message in a bottle. A howl to the moon.

  I could have gone to him. I could have said, I didn’t know. I could have said, I’ll never leave you. I could have said, I’m yours. I could have said, No-one else, ever, nor ever will . . .

  But I didn’t do any of those things.

  My dear, you’re so young, so romantic. You’ll learn one day that love can be terribly destructive.

  I lived in peace. Blue and Amaranth between them had broken my heart; but for anyone a little late in finding their true purpose, the heart is a troublesome organ, best left behind and forgotten.

  And yet, when love passes . . .

  I waited five more years.

  What was I waiting for? Why, for it to end. I waited until, twenty-one years after that day on the mountain, there was no picture of me in his collection.

  When I saw that, I went to see him. He wasn’t so far away after all, just the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in South Carolina.

  There was grey in his hair, but he was still beautiful.

  ‘You stopped painting me,’ I said, over the coffee he made and the muffins I’d brought.

  ‘It was time. Twenty years is long enough to break your heart over someone who doesn’t love you back.’

  ‘I worked that out the first year,’ I told him.

  He smiled.

  ‘You were always cleverer than me. And tougher.’

  ‘Ugly women have to be,’ I said.

  He took my rough, scarred hand and examined it closely.

  ‘I knew you’d be amazing,’ he said. ‘These hands were never meant just for making bread.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Domestic skills keep food on the table while the artists shut themselves away and dream.’

  He let my hand go again.

  ‘Why did you leave?’ he asked. ‘What did I do wrong?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘That note you left. Family circumstances call me away. Cornelia. Just that note, and you never came back.’

  ‘But that was for Amaranth,’ I said. ‘I quit my job. You left me. I came to the cabin and she was waiting. She said you’d had enough of me. She said I was —’ it was hard to speak. ‘— like coal for a pregnant woman. Just something you needed to help you create.’

  ‘But that’s what happened to me, too,’ he said, confused. ‘I went out for a walk. When I got back Amaranth was there. She said you’d had enough of me. Well, I could understand that. I said you wouldn’t go without telling me, and she showed me the note.’

  ‘And you believed that?’

  ‘Well, why not?’ he demanded with spirit. ‘You bloody did.’

  ‘But —’

  I wanted to say, that’s different. But he was right, it was exactly the same. I’d been distracted by the surface of things. I’d confused beauty with rightness.

  ‘So why come now?’ he asked me. ‘All those years I’d have given anything, done anything, gone anywhere you wanted . . . and now — ’

  ‘Now it’s gone,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said wearily. ‘Now it’s gone.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘If we’d stayed together, what do you think we’d have achieved? Would you have done — all this? Would I?’ I waved at the half-finished works leaning on the walls. ‘Love’s a distraction. It takes too much time and effort.’ He was so angry his fingers twitched. ‘I know you don’t want to hear this, Blue, but you remember how it was. We didn’t do anything, anything but screw each other’s brains out on the studio floor. You couldn’t work. Neither could I. We hardly ate, we couldn’t even get dressed. We’d have killed each other in six months. People aren’t meant to live that way.’

  ‘Maybe I wanted to live that way!’

  ‘Well, I didn’t. I’d just found out who I really was. I wanted to go off and be myself for a while.’

  ‘For twenty years?’

  ‘Why not? I spent twenty years before that not having a clue. But now I’m ready for the next thing.’

  ‘What next thing? It’s gone, Cornelia, we wasted it all. You wasted it all. If you’d come to me even just last year . . . God, if you knew how I longed for you — the dreams I had about you, night after night — and now —’

  ‘Now we can try again,’ I said. ‘Now, we can stand alone, not needing anybody. We can do whatever we want. We can be together, or not. We’re strong enough to withstand each other.’

  ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he demanded furiously. ‘What makes you think you can do this? How can you just wander into my life and expect me to let you in? How fucking dare you?’

  Twenty years ago he’d been so gentle, so humble, so grateful. It was refreshing to see him angry enough to want to hit me.

  I kissed him.

  Twenty years ago, it had been a wild journey across a storm-tossed sea. Now, we were arriving in safe harbour after a perilous and lonely voyage; we were returning to a place well-loved, seeing it with new eyes.

  We were home.

  And that’s it, young man; you have my memories, the most important memories of my life. Thank you for sharing yourself with me in return.

  You’d like to see? Of course.

  I’m glad you think it’s beautiful; but I’d prefer you to say it will be useful. Something tells me your room back home is a mess, and that you lose your keys and your wallet and your tape recorder and your pens and your small change on a regular basis, and you can never find a piece of paper when you need one. When you go home to write this up . . . I thought this might help.

  This is called the lost wax technique, by the way. In the process, the wax of the original form is lost; but what’s left instead is equally beautiful, and far more durable.

  And now you want to know why I wanted to
touch your head and your hands, don’t you? Well, I could tell you the answer, but I won’t. Apart from anything else, my husband will be back soon.

  You look very young, my dear, when you blush like that.

  Interview #17

  — ‘Tom’

  Skid Row, Los Angeles, CA

  Ah, take a hike, you nosey son-of-a-bitch. I told you last time. I don’t give a good god-damn about your project, and I certainly ain’t tellin’ you how I got here. You think there’s anything worthwhile down here in the gutter? I’m telling you, boy; ain’t nothing here but horror and confusion and lost, desperate souls. Take your lousy college project and your fucking liberal compassion and your I just rilly feel like there’s a story to be told here, sir, bleeding-heart West-Coast bullshit and get the hell outta here.

  You, again? Got some cojones on you, aintcha? No offence. And don’t think I don’t know why you’re comin’ after me so desperate and hopeful-like; I know what they told you. Talk to Tom, he’s got a vocabulary of thirty-eight thousand words, even if half of them are fuckin’ obscenities. He chose to be here, he coulda been anything if’n he’d wanted. Tom, he’s doing penance. You’re only here because you reckon I’m more like you than I am like them. You want to hear how a man starts out cradled in his momma’s arms and ends up rotting away down here? Go talk to Ron, under the bridge. Charming fella if you happen to catch him in the right phase of the moon. Paranoid schizophrenic, self-medicates with booze. Half the time he’s shouting at the sky, the other half he’s layin’ in the mud . . . now there’s a fascinating fucking journey for you; it’s got everything. Tragedy. Pathos. Unexpected bouts of extreme violence.

  Yeah, I had you pegged for a god-damn pussy the first time I laid eyes on you.

  What is it this time . . . ? Oh, now you’re gonna try and buy me off, huh. Well, I ain’t for sale, and neither’s my life story . . . what did you bring?