by Natasha Bell
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What have you ever done that’s brilliant?” she said. “I want to do something important and interesting and worthwhile with my life. I want to have a job that makes a difference, to help people or discover things or save lives. I’d rather be like Fran than you.” Lizzie’s face was pink, her nostrils quivering.
I stood up straight. “I’m not really sure how we got to this from still life,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “I’m glad you have dreams and ambitions, but Fran’s not the only one doing something important with her life, you know? And it’s not like she hasn’t made choices to sacrifice things too.”
Lizzie folded her arms across her narrow chest and moved her eyes in a long, slow circle.
“Bloody hell,” I said. “You can be a real brat sometimes. You’re spoiled and ungrateful and—” I clamped my mouth shut and lowered the hand I hadn’t realized I’d raised. I turned away from my daughter, saw the door to the next room and walked toward it. Then I kept walking, following the exit signs until I was on the street. I turned right and right again and kept moving my feet until I was crossing the tram tracks and scooped into the middle of a bustle of shoppers, being washed with their wave into a shop full of fabric and mannequins. There were voices all around me, snippets of conversations bombarding my ears, the security tag alarm screeching by the door, cars sounding their horns outside. I rested my hand on a pile of folded T-shirts and closed my eyes.
“Why are you crying?” I heard an exasperated mother shout from across the store. “Just stop it.”
“Stop it.” I heard my own mum then. “Stop crying, will you?” Her voice was slurred and the wine sloshed against the side of her glass, threatening to spill. I was nine years old and I’d spent the evening trying not to listen to my parents shouting at each other. At half past eight there had been an enormous crash, followed by the slam of the front door and then silence. I’d waited another half an hour before venturing to the top of the stairs. I didn’t know who had left, my mum or my dad, but their argument had preceded dinner and my stomach was cramping with hunger. I tiptoed down and along the hallway to the kitchen, but stopped in the doorway. The dining table was on its side, cutlery and plates and what I assumed was meant to have been our meal mashed onto the lino. My mother was leaning against a counter, taking long, methodical gulps from a glass.
“Sorry about dinner, darling,” she said slowly, her eyes struggling to focus. “Want some cheese on toast?”
I hovered in the doorway as she pulled four slices from the bread bin and hunted in the fridge for the Cheddar. While it was under the grill, she placed her glass on the side and used both hands to right the table. She set two chairs at the end, then laid two new plates from the cupboard, fresh cutlery and a new bottle of wine. When I refused to step over the mess of broken crockery and food, she picked her way to me and carried me to my seat.
As we ate our cheese and toast, I felt the tears roll down my cheeks. By the time my plate was cleared I was sniffling and struggling to take full breaths.
“Why are you crying?” she asked, sweetly at first. “What can Mummy do?” But when I couldn’t answer, she grew impatient. “Stop it,” she said. “You’re driving me mad.” She grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
Then she placed her lips right by my ear and shouted, “WHY ARE YOU CRYING?”
Fresh tears came along with a ringing in my ears. I looked up at my mother’s blotched and puffy face and shouted back, “BECAUSE YOU’RE DRUNK!”
I froze. I’d brought her glasses of water when she couldn’t get out of bed before, fed her little pellets of bread and gathered up her stained and soiled clothing to hide in the washing basket before Dad could see them, but never before had I challenged her. Never once had I named the thing that was destroying us.
For a moment I thought she was taking her hands away, regretting shaking me, ready to apologize and ask my forgiveness. But then I felt the full force of my mother’s palms connect with my shoulders as she shoved me away from her. I felt my chair tip back and to one side, until I was wobbling on just one leg, my arms flying out, grabbing at the air. I crashed into the ground, landing on the mess of our uneaten dinner, the prongs of a fork stabbing my arm, a glass slicing my thigh and the thick shard of a broken plate penetrating the flesh beneath my left shoulder blade.
I opened my eyes, the skin beneath my tattoo itching with the memory. The exasperated mother and her wailing child were gone. Other shoppers wove around me, inspecting jackets and tops, jeans and leggings. Suddenly I realized where I was. What I’d done.
I elbowed my way back on to the street and tried to run through the crowds, took a wrong turn. My heart was thudding in my ears and I could hardly breathe, but I managed to ask for directions, sprinted back toward the gallery.
Lizzie was in the lobby, standing next to a security guard, her eyes red from crying.
“Oh my God,” I said, running up to her, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and head and anything I could cling to. I felt her body stiffen in my arms.
“Is this your child?” the guard said. “We found her wandering around alone; she was quite upset.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said to both Lizzie and the guard.
“I’m going to need you to tell me what happened,” said the guard.
Lizzie leant away from me and extracted herself from my grasp. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I ran off. I shouldn’t have done it.”
I looked at Lizzie and she looked back at me, her eyes dark and unreadable.
“Is that what happened?” the guard asked.
I turned to face him, struggling to break eye contact with Lizzie. “Um, yes, that’s what happened.”
December
Ten Months Gone
Marc woke on Christmas morning in his childhood bedroom. He could hear the girls chuckling excitedly with his parents next door. He’d worried his mother might chide that they were too old to be barging into adults’ beds in the mornings, but she seemed to enjoy having them around.
“Are you sure you should stay in that house?” she asked as she stabbed a slice of turkey.
He glanced pointedly at the girls and muttered that maybe they could discuss this another time.
“I was only making conversation,” she said.
Carrying the plates through, he tried to tell her he couldn’t move, even if he wanted to.
“So you’re going to stay there forever? Just in case she comes back? Do you know how ludicrous that sounds?”
He didn’t have the energy to fight with her, and a part of him did know how ludicrous it sounded, how morbid and cruel it was to force the girls to stew in the remnants of our old life, especially given what he’d learned about that life. Would he be a ninety-year-old man with a stair-lift and a mobility scooter, still feeling his heart pound every time the doorbell chimed?
But what if? What if, despite DI Jones and Fran’s accusations, despite his own growing suspicions, despite knowing the odds were a million to one, what if I tried to reach them and found another family in their place? If they moved, it’d be like nailing my coffin without first checking my pulse. It’d mean giving up, saying there was no point hoping I’d find them because they’d accepted I wasn’t out there to look.
* * *
They returned to York and Emma invited the girls ice-skating. Home alone and on his second glass of wine at just three in the afternoon, my husband sat in our office and read Amelia’s final letter.
12/14/12
Al
I’m finally in a good place. I feel so calm and focused. I’ve signed a lease for an apartment and invested some of my Reception Gallery money, which means all I really have to worry about now is concentrating on making my life mean something. I’ve finally decided that’s the point. And while it’s kind of scary to take the plunge, it’s also lib
erating. I’ve been messing around for years and it’s now time to truly commit.
I went to this little art festival the other day. Half the stuff was no better than the turgid things we used to fuck around with at the Art Institute. Do you remember when Nico stood outside the library in her underwear with a sheet over her head and whipped herself with a piece of rope until the security guards came and carried her away? I swear this twenty-year-old with an eyebrow piercing was doing almost the exact same thing. She was wearing a burka instead of a sheet and had all these plaques around putting her act into context, but to me that made it less rather than more compelling. Am I getting old when I’m no longer amused by youngsters’ art? It’s events like that that make me glad I haven’t paraded my face out there with my art. I saw the eyebrow girl recognize an artist and approach him to ask for feedback. His eyes skitted about and he mumbled a few things about subtlety and interpretation. I almost went up and told her her piece was no better than shit on a dick and maybe she should go back to art school. Am I cruel? I’m definitely crude. You’d never have that thought, would you? You’d have looked at her and seen her as somebody’s child, somebody’s love.
But life is too short, Al. We only get to do this once. I want to help you. Think what a relief it will be to finally allow yourself your thoughts, to say what’s on your mind, to give in to your desires. I want you to try it. I want you to be who you want to be. I just need you to trust me.
Always yours
Am x
Marc had traced our friendship from beginning to premature end. This was the last and most recent letter, posted just a couple of months before I disappeared. This, surely, had been his destination all along. But arrival brought with it a fresh sense of loss. Not only had this journey failed to produce his missing wife, but the slivers of information imparted along its way had left him desperate for more. What went before these letters? What slotted in between?
He shuffled back to the first letter and tried to imagine me reading it in our first flat. We were happy, weren’t we? Our lives felt full of promise. But at some point an envelope had arrived and his future wife read that she was making a mistake.
What happens after this honeymoon period is over, when the artist inside you starts to hack her way out?
* * *
Had I laughed? Had I dismissed Amelia’s worries? Or had I stood among our things and our life and disappeared into my head, wondered if maybe my friend had a point?
You’ll resent him.
And this last one. I’d sat, probably in this very study, almost a year ago and been told life was short and my friend wanted to help me give in to my desires, be my true self. What did that say about the self I had been with him? What did Amelia know that he didn’t?
Marc placed both letters on top of the rest and reached for his wine. He couldn’t contemplate it. We were happy. He knew we were. Amelia was wrong; I did say what I felt. But I felt good things. Amelia may have wanted me to be as crass and cruel and rude as her, but I just wasn’t. I was kind and gentle and caring. Marc still couldn’t believe my heart was clouded by doubts. Every decision we made, we made it together. I’d always said I was sure. I’d promised him I regretted nothing. I’d missed things and people, of course, which was why I wrote and visited. When a friend said they were planning a trip to the States, I’d give them a list of breakfast places, must-dos and absolutely-cannot-be-misseds. But nostalgia wasn’t the same as regret.
There was another, more pressing thing in that first letter, though, that he tried and failed not to analyze. He left the letters in the office and descended the stairs to find the rest of the wine bottle, but the words followed him to the kitchen. He shook the final drops from the bottle and carried his glass to the table before confronting them.
I wish it could be with me.
* * *
As hard as his stubborn mind was working to refuse the thought, Marc finally realized that Amelia and I must have been more than just roommates.
He drained the glass with a wince. Why hadn’t I told him? “It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he said, defending himself to the empty room. It wouldn’t have changed anything to know I’d left her for him.
You know why Alex didn’t tell you, his cruel brain said. Marc’s eyelids drooped and his stomach growled. He rested his head on his arms, squeezing his eyes shut, denying his tears.
Then he opened his eyes, remembering something from one of the letters, something he’d logged months ago but never analyzed. Amelia signed off with “I can’t wait to have you here.” And in another letter, she’d said she was ill the same time I’d had pneumonia. He’d put it down to coincidence, but how could he have been so stupid? Suddenly his mind ran away from him, threading a flickering movie reel into an ancient projector, forcing him to imagine secret liaisons with my American lover, passionate trysts at the other end of the country, ducking quietly into my dead mother’s house and laughing cruelly at my cuckolded husband.
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered, shaking his cloudy head. How could he think like this? He missed me. That was all. These suspicions were just insane, drunken paranoia. He needed to eat something and forget all about them. He needed to continue believing in me.
But instead of walking toward the fridge, he found his legs carrying him back up to the office, his hand reaching for the filing cabinet. From the folder in the front, where they should all have been that first day the police came around, he pulled out my passport. Why hadn’t he looked at this before? He’d flicked to the back to mope over my photo, but he’d never checked the front, never questioned where I’d been. His fingers fanned the pages open and there, before him, were a dozen oval stamps. “Department of Homeland Security US Customs and Border Protection, Admitted NYC.” He read the dates: Aug 4, 2003 and May 7, 2010—he’d expected these, but with horror he learned I’d also entered the US on Oct 14, 2005; Jul 17, 2006; Jun 8, 2007; Sep 22, 2008; Jul 14, 2009; Sep 19, 2010; Feb 28, 2011; May 16, 2011; Nov 3, 2011; Mar 28, 2012; Sep 4, 2012; and, finally, Dec 18, 2012, just two months before I disappeared.
* * *
He tells me I need a physical examination. I roll my eyes, but it’s not like I have a choice. I’m instructed to take off my clothes. Hands prod and probe me. He stares at the scar on my stomach for a long time.
“That’s quite something,” he says, impressed or proud, I don’t know.
I’m left alone to clothe myself once more. I think of the different types of touch, of all the hands my skin has been stroked and held, gripped and hurt by. I think of the ways I have both wanted and feared all of those touches, how I have rarely felt comfortable in my skin unless I could feel another’s next to it.
I lie on the ground, feeling the concrete press into my flesh. What touch do I have left to look forward to? What intimacy? Do I really deserve this for what I’ve done?
2013
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2013
I had my hair rolled and pinned and wore this severely cut tweed skirt-suit I’d found in a charity shop. I’d tried to convince Marc to go as Hitler to my Eva Braun, but he’d said that would be taking it too far, so I’d had to get creative with my accessories. Lizzie had rolled her eyes and told me the whole thing was stupid, but Charlotte had helped me paint a cardboard Reichsadler to pin to my breast, tea-stain some identity papers and doctor a tin of mints into fake cyanide capsules.
“I’m not sure how appropriate this is,” Marc had said, walking in on our crafting session. “What if she tells her teacher she’s spent her weekend painting swastikas?”
“It’s educational,” I’d said. “And, anyway, it’s no less appropriate than the gross paper hearts her teacher had them cutting out. I’ve half a mind to complain to the school about their endorsement of such a clichéd, grossly heteronormative holiday invented by capitalist corporations to sell chocolates and greetings cards.”
Marc had raised his eyebrows and left us to our painting.
I’d dubbed the evening our Anti-Valentine Party. The invites had asked our guests to come as “History’s Worst Dates.” I’d managed to get Marc on board by telling him T. S. and Vivienne Eliot had attended parties as Dr. Crippen and his mistress Ethel le Neve. “It’s literary!” I’d said, kissing away his frown and trying not to think too hard about the state of Tom and Viv’s marriage at the point they donned those costumes.
Fran and Ollie had come as Bonnie and Clyde, while Patrick and Susan made an incongruously paired Dracula and Aileen Wuornos. Marc had opted for Lord Byron, which he’d dressed as for three previous costume parties. I complained he was lazy, but he did look good in his silk cravat and smoking jacket.
Among others, we had a Henry VIII, a Jack the Ripper, a Cleopatra and a Myra Hindley in attendance. I was particularly impressed with Philippa, who’d shed her power suits and convinced her husband to bare almost all with her as Adam and Eve. “Best or worst date ever? Discuss,” I heard them say as they introduced themselves to a couple of Marc’s colleagues.
I did the rounds, topping up drinks and encouraging people to play the silly card and truth games I’d set up throughout the house. Marc had helped me make a Treasure Hunt for the Broken-Hearted, and I’d turned the living room into a Vegas-style Chapel of Love, where guests could bond themselves in the most unholy of matrimonies. I glanced around, wondering if people were having fun, how long it would be until they left.
“What a performance,” Philippa said, sipping the wine I’d dyed with food coloring. “You’ve gone to so much effort.”
“So have you,” I said, gesturing toward her paper fig leaves.