Oola

by Brittany Newell

  That’s a white lie (or off-white, as it were). I know perfectly well what it’s called. Oola wore an eyelet blouse when we went for dinner in Watercolor, Florida, on May 16; months later, when I put it on, I could recall with stunning clarity the taste of the mussels with white wine we’d shared.

  A natural question would be, I suppose, when did I first start wearing her clothes? I don’t blame you for asking. It took us both by surprise, in the mute way of a body’s changes—one day the wart appears, despite having been forming for the past year and a half; both parties notice it in the same harried instant and both choose to say nothing. I was doing laundry. It was late July, which meant this was the first wash we’d done since coming to Big Sur. I insisted on doing it solo, both O’s clothes and mine, so that I could take my time with each garment, unfolding, smoothing, inhaling, locating each pleat and smear in time and space. Oola was too impatient, chucking clothes in by the armload, unaware of the creative worth of a cum stain.

  The cabin had a washing machine in the basement, where the light was always still and soupy and one never knew the time or season, and a clothesline in the garden. In the amber haze of the basement’s single window, I liked to spread the clothes around me and attempt to remember what had happened in what, how and when her bralette had been splattered and by which condiment (mustard always my first guess), before gently placing each article in the washer. I untangled the sweaters in their dying embrace; I inside-outed her nylons ad infinitum. I found the crumbs of Proust’s madeleine embedded in a denim jacket (she’d been snacking, sloppy girl). In this way I formed a scrapbook, sailing back to unplanned picnics and picture-perfect moments by way of balled kneesocks, still reeking of spring, while stooped in the basement’s atemporal gloom. Lace inserts were my magic carpet. I assumed the position: panties to nose, a pose not only mnemonic but also protective, as fiberglass particles drifted in wait.

  The progression was natural. First I held each garment up to the light, inspecting it for traces, anything to jog my memory. Soon I began to hold it against myself, the way a salesgirl models a dress (you’ll love it, I’m certain), which afforded me more-intimate knowledge of its odor and feel. It wasn’t until I’d wriggled my hands into a pair of her tights that the obvious hit me: To embody the memory conjured up by each garment, all I had to do was put it on.

  Voilà. It was an almost absurdly literal way to walk a mile in her shoes (or, at least, her gnarly socks). It was unnerving how well everything fit me, though not entirely surprising given her penchant for men’s supersized shirts and semi-frequent forays into my own closet. Women’s magazines always posit that as a dealbreaker: Would you date a man who wore the same jeans size as you? I’d never understood why that was a negative.

  The first thing I wore, rather modestly, was a sweatshirt that could’ve belonged to either of us. It was tatty and white with a bull’s-eye on the chest. She’d cut off the sleeves, leaving raw threads to tickle my shoulders, and chewed the plastic tips off the drawstrings. She’d worn it to a party a few days after we met.

  As I’ve already mentioned, we were shy in the early stages, using Tay’s network of fashionistas and journalists and their semi-constant stream of events to coincidentally bring us together. Time and again we found ourselves in a gallery or warehouse chock-full of up-and-comers, art students dressed to the nines and willowy girls who barely spoke but slayed with their smiles, everyone a model-cum-DJ who also took photos, all gearing up for their meteoric ascent, each deemed a rising star by some new obtusely named magazine (Ponyboy, Pizzaface, R.I.P. Kate), O and I the only ones, it seemed, content to tread water. The party inevitably morphed into three after-parties, and we took comfort in catching the other’s eye, over the beautiful bowed heads of three drug-muted muses (their mousy roots showing, for a moment, in the gray morning light), at least once an hour. We’d chat, then separate, mentally mapping the heat of the other as we bobbled on opposite sides of the room.

  As a rule, I went to great lengths to be the first one up at a party. With Tay’s amphetamined crew, this was a formidable task. It was 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday, at someone’s great-uncle’s estate in outer Oxford. I was wandering through the gardens, surveying the wreckage, when I ran into Oola. She wore the sweatshirt and no pants, just zebra-print bikini briefs, which I would likewise later shiver into, and mountain climber’s socks that I could see, from thirty feet away, were being soaked by dew.

  She wore her hood up, which made her look like a tomboy and also a bit like a widow, hiding her hair, as she examined the table where Tay and his cohort had had an impromptu breakfast of champagne and pancakes (a bit undercooked). She trailed her fingers over the tablecloth, as soiled by butter as it was by booze, and turned over every glass she passed in some sort of private ritual. She stopped, brandy snifter in hand, when I neared.

  “This man,” she said, meaning our host, “will never recover all of his spoons.” She gestured to the garden, where they glinted in the grass like queer Easter eggs.

  “Are you trying to tidy things up?”

  She shook her head, a bit sheepish. “I find it interesting, the aftermath.” She later confessed that she had been embarrassed to see me, because her sweatshirt and underwear clashed.

  I came to stand beside her, tracing a forgotten house key in a puddle of syrup.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Why are you up?”

  The inkling of a comedown and a need for caffeine made me honest. “You lost a hair tie. Last night, when Tay was showing off his third nipple.” There was a delicate pause, in which she half-laughed. “I watched it slip off. I wanted to find it.” I patted my pocket awkwardly. “It was near the primrose.”

  She looked at me with shattering gratitude. “God,” she said. “Thank you. That’s really too sweet.”

  I had no choice but to hand it over.

  We talked a bit more, then went inside to make coffee and greet the rest of the gang, spangled over the great-uncle’s various antiques. Thin limbs, post-orgy, made new patterns on the Persian rugs. Calvin Kleins clashed with crushed velvet, while the host, in too-tight Fruit of the Looms, snoozed sadly in his breakfast nook. As we sat side by side on an overstuffed loveseat, she touched me lightly on the inner crook of the elbow, where nurses stick needles, and asked, “Why don’t we see more of each other, Leif?”

  This invocation, only barely masked by her joking tone, replaced whatever sense of loss I’d felt over the hair tie. It was the first time since meeting that I’d heard her say my name.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t have a good excuse.”

  “Neither do I,” she said. “We’re independent adults. Let’s change our ways.”

  She was chewing on the end of one drawstring, which in the moment I’d interpreted as flirty. When wearing the sweatshirt, however, so many months later, I found myself nibbling it instinctively, staring at the basement’s brick wall. I replayed the way she said my name, softly so that the others wouldn’t wake, and the anxiety of the moment, the bareness of desire, made me squirm deeper into the sweatshirt, just as I remember she had.

  I began to do laundry weekly, spending my mornings in the basement, bedecked. Oola noticed the shift, of course, but couldn’t complain. “Good boy,” she said, donning a spanking fresh T-shirt. “I feel almost decent.” She liked to hang the things to dry, and I liked to watch her do it, blinking in and out of sight as she struggled with the fitted sheets. When we sat on the porch, a boneless Greek chorus of leggings and lacies lurched in the background, and at night the long sleeves applauded our love scenes the deaf way.

  I grew bolder, pairing outfits with the patience and finesse of a historian, taking pains to find the exact pair of tights she’d worn that afternoon with that soccer jersey (#69). Imitating her gestures came naturally; I now understood why she fretted her hemline and the inexplicable comfort of pulling one’s sleeves over one’s hands like a petulant child. It wasn’t long before I longed for longer hair, though mine already graz
ed my shoulders, if only to twirl it into a ponytail and tuck it into my collar as she did in choice sweaters. There was so much to learn. When I sat down in skirts, I was stunned by how often my bare ass touched the chair; I fiddled hopelessly with bra straps, accruing a collection of angry red marks; I was enraged by the constriction of zippers at my waist. Form-fitting things made me think of my stomach in a whole new light, as a tempestuous being who could make me or break me, and her battery of camisoles brought to my attention what a lovely V-shaped bone one has just below the collarbone, and the superior tenor of mine. I came to relish the feeling of putting on tights and rubbing my thighs against each other almost as much as I relished the feeling of rubbing O’s thighs, hours later, with my plain and increasingly lurid ones.

  I didn’t feel feminine, per se, since most of her clothes were unisex or too baggy to be gendered. I just felt like her, as if I’d slipped into a different vantage point, as in those children’s movies where the protagonist becomes an ant, or a chair, or the mean older sister, by means of some G-rated voodoo. I guess you could say, at a certain point, I got sick of myself in love. My body was full to the brim, giving in; the pressure of all this love, slopping over, was giving me headaches, busting my gut. Moreover, my body in love had begun to bore me. I knew its trials inside out. I knew when I’d climax; I knew when I’d bloat; I knew when I’d feel sexy or worthless or gross. Suddenly, fallen into my lap, here was the chance to be another body in love, to feel how differently things twanged and rubbed, with tiny silky panties as the classic metonym for want. I put them on and found a brand-new vessel for my love. I was eager to be plugged, filled up.

  I was so smitten by this method that her resistance took me by surprise.

  Here are another two memories, evoked by a lovely velvet dress that she took out only rarely despite it being one of her favorites. “I never have a reason to wear it,” she’d demur. “Putting it on only sets me up for disappointment. No event ever merits it. And look how nicely it hangs in the closet.” It was midnight blue, sleeveless, with a wonderful ability to capture air under the skirt, keeping the thighs and groin cool. In all our time together, I’d only seen her wear it out twice. Upon finding it in the hamper, both memories swarmed me, vying for the spotlight.

  A few weeks after arriving at the cabin, we’d driven to San Francisco to go to the opera. It was the opening night for some experimental Belgian work—gutsy, the press said, a feminist romp—that reimagined Freud’s Dora as a flower child and chronic groupie. If my memory serves correctly, it was titled Good Vibrations. My mother had procured the tickets for us. The husband of one of her sorority sisters was on the board of directors, and their son had broken his leg on a ski trip. “Have a proper date!” she’d wailed over the phone. The reception got spotty, and her next sentence sounded something like, Eat someone’s knives, my teat.

  For once, Oola was dressed perfectly, smack-dab in her element. “I swear to God,” she said as we mounted the stairs, “I recognize some of my benefactors from Curtis.” In the lobby, more than one gold-plated heiress grabbed her by the arm to gasp, “Look at you!” One even insisted she do a spin in her dress, after which a cluster of silver foxes clapped. Watching from the sidelines, I felt a bit like a spud in my black jeans and button-down, my hair hopelessly wetted and smoothed into a bun. “You look dashing,” O told me, chucking my chin with the ninety-nine-cent fan she’d bought for the occasion. “Like the host in a really nice restaurant.”

  “What do you do?” an obvious billionaire interrupted. He had a retired actress on each arm.

  “I’m a writer,” I said quickly, “and she’s a pianist.”

  This caused a surge of geriatric excitement. “Where do you play?”

  “In my room,” Oola cackled.

  I flushed, afraid that I’d said the wrong thing. “She’s on hiatus.”

  Oola twinkled, unfazed. “You say lapsed, I say failed.”

  To my surprise, everyone around us laughed. I guess I didn’t understand the language of classical musicians.

  “You’ll get back on that horse one day,” somebody said.

  “When she’s head of the sausage factory!” someone else bellowed.

  “I have a horse,” someone else added faintly. “His name’s Amadeus.”

  I was relieved when the bell dinged, ushering us inside. With the Tinkelspiels trapped in Lake Tahoe, we had the best seats in the house to ourselves. Tipsy on complimentary champagne, we surveyed a sea of white heads from our box. I took her hand as the lights dimmed. She smiled, as radiant and relaxed as ever I’d seen her, before blotting out into concert-hall darkness. Snuffles and coughs formed a surf-like rhythm beneath us. I counted softly under my breath, pressing down on her wrist with my thumb. I wasn’t holding her hand like some love-dulled chump. I glanced at my watch. I was taking her pulse.

  It wasn’t until midway through the first act that she turned to me. “What’s wrong?” she mouthed. “Do you need something?”

  I shook my head and faced the stage. The lead soprano had just begun an aria entitled “Papa War Ein Rolling Stone.” A Christ-like Freud in head scarves reclined on a beanbag, interjecting every verse with a world-weary ja. I must admit, I was lost. I hadn’t been watching the singers but, rather, Oola’s reactions to them. She gasped, I gasped. Her eyes glazed over during the beautiful bits, and I, by proxy, got chills. By intermission, I’d slipped back into watching her profile and only dimly perceived that Flora (having changed her name) had begun to trail upstart rock band the Electras and the Oedipals down the California coast. The lights went up, and I hastily averted my gaze.

  “Amazing!” O cried, fluttering her fan.

  “Amazing.” I nodded in vehement agreement. I studied our shoes. “Simply hysterical.”

  The second act passed in much the same fashion. We were both in our element, eyes wide, ecstatically sweating. Afterward, we ate somewhere nice, as per my mother’s request. We sat on the roof, with a view of the bridge. O ordered first, a vegan variation of the salad of the day—extra pickles, heavy dressing—and a cold glass of wine.

  The waiter turned to me. “I’ll have what she’s having,” I said quickly.

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Really? You don’t want something normal?”

  “Nope.” I smiled sheepishly, tried to look convincing. “I love eggplant.”

  “Your loss,” she said, and the evening dreamed on. We got fabulously plastered and ate a basket of bread each, Oola with oil, I, regrettably, with butter.

  “Aha!” she cried. “I knew you couldn’t keep to it!”

  I hung my head in shame.

  The second time she wore the dress was not so copacetic.

  It was September, and the summer vibes were slowly dying. We’d gone to Costco to stock up: groceries, gasoline, magazines. Why she wore the dress at all is a bit of a mystery; perhaps it was laundry day.

  Nothing eventful happened until we pulled out of the parking lot and found Route 1 at a standstill. It was one of those traffic jams where people sit on their car roofs, radios blasting, and walk their long-suffering dogs down the median strip. The scene had an almost festive air, and I spotted more than a few slapdash picnics, of remembered granola bars and warm Gatorade, unfolding in the patches between parked cars.

  She peered out her window. “For fuck’s sake,” she bellowed. “I’m starving.” It was six forty-five and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  I could make out the whirl of ambulance lights in the distance. “I think somebody died.” An old woman was going from car to car, selling tamales.

  O slumped against the window. The light had gone from her eyes and she looked, in her party dress, like a sugared-up brat. “How inconsiderate.”

  Not too long ago, this sort of snafu would’ve tickled us. It would have given us the excuse to roll down all the windows and critique Christian pop radio, befriend fellow sufferers with shared cigarettes. That was when we were travelers and less staunchly in love. Now, as recluses, s
worn to our small world, we were unprepared and frankly offended by the inconvenience of the real one. Its hustle and hassle were no longer glamorous but, rather, a threat. This sudden influx of stimuli—howling families, fast-food signs, headlights blinkering, a gruff male voice calling Geena!, someone else shrieking Gotcha!, the melting sand dunes of the Carmel River on one side, the melting McDonald’s and Steinbeckian strawberry fields on the other—threatened to overload the membrane-like peace that swaddled Oola and me. We’d snowed ourselves in, so to speak, via love, and now, on the sunset-hot tarmac, we pined for our white world and, moreover, our white room, with its evenly spaced windows and enforced quiet hours. I nearly jumped when a speckly teenager knocked on the window, asking with his hands if we had a light. Smoking kills, Oola mouthed. Wanna fuck?

  With no other choice, we pulled off and went to a Denny’s.

  “Shoot me,” she sighed. “It’s like homecoming.” We were one of three vehicles in the parking lot.

  “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

  “This will do.” She hopped over a puddle of diesel on her way to the door. “Did I tell you about the time I got fingered in Denny’s? I was thirteen.” She slipped inside.

  I didn’t share her displeasure. I’ve always had a soft spot for pit-stop diners, with their purgatorial lighting and red plastic booths, still bearing, in indents, the ghosts of asses past. I liked the gummy menus and heavy-breasted waitstaff. I embraced the inevitable heartburn. Of the many joints I’d visited and wept a bit in, Denny’s was the undisputed king: site and source of all misgivings, a roadside lighthouse for bottom-feeders, pedophiles, nursing-home runaways with a yen for ham steak. How many broken hearts have bled themselves dry over a bottomless cup of their coffee? It seemed to me that if civilization should collapse, I could always find refuge in Denny’s. The gals on the aptly named graveyard shift would barely bat an eye (caked, I see, in Boo Hoo Blue). After all, what hadn’t Denny’s borne witness to? Abortions in the bathroom, ODs over dessert; I remember my mother telling me about the line cook who recognized a missing girl when she and her kidnapper stopped in for a milkshake. I was touched by the kidnapper’s kindness. Why not add apocalypse to their roster? Denny’s, the last resort, dishing up the last supper, at a fixed $4.99. They serve it with more toast than you know you deserve. Nobody rushes you. Nobody cares.