Things will be different after that.
David is heaping sand into the tray of the dump truck, making a truck’s growling noise. Maureen has tipped her face to the sky and closed her black-panther eyes. A midge has landed and is walking on the fine skin of her neck. “What an evening,” she breathes. “Hardly a cloud. Shh, David, don’t make that noise.”
Plum glances at the sky — no stars are out yet, and the moon is as cracked and colorless as a cafeteria plate — but her eyes, compelled, flick back to the midge. Maureen’s hands rest in her lap, she doesn’t seem to feel the insect’s exploration. “Summer is leaving us again,” she says. “Nights like this always make me sorrowful.”
“Sorrowful?” Plum’s voice is a donkey’s bray against a cheetah’s sigh. “How come?”
“Because it feels like something lovely is ending, and all that’s coming is coldness.”
The girl stares at the woman, whose closed eyes and unmoving body are like moats. A bird cries in the she-oak and the cricket stops creaking: in the garden’s sudden silence David’s hands grow still, he turns his face away. “Daddy,” he asks distractedly. Plum, embarrassed, dredges something to say. “It’s sad when good things finish. I don’t like change. I don’t care if bad things finish. But good things shouldn’t change.”
“Aria. A moment ago you said that people shouldn’t cling to things.”
Her immediate instinct is to twist and weave, attempting to justify her nonsensical self. To anyone else in the world, she’d do it. But there’s relief in conceding to Maureen, “Yeah. I get confused sometimes. Real life isn’t the same as a movie.”
“No, it isn’t. Everything has to change, Aria. There would be something very bad about a good thing that didn’t change.”
“Where’s Daddy?” David asks loudly. Plum and Maureen ignore him. “Like robots,” Plum offers, trying hard.
“Exactly.” Maureen’s eyes go to the girl. “Human beings change. Who you are now is not the person you’ll be in a few years. The things you do, the decisions you make — they won’t always seem right, later on.”
Plum nods; she accepts this is true for some people, but not necessarily for herself. She is, after all, already quite astute. Rather than point this out, she says, “There’s a creature on your neck. An insect. A gnat.”
Maureen’s hand rises to her throat. “Aria, I almost forgot. Would you babysit David on Sunday? I need the afternoon.”
Plum has no choice but to say, “I guess.”
“I’ll pay you, of course.” She smiles quickly at Plum, who smiles back instantly, adjusting her features to covetous. But Maureen’s searching fingers have crushed the midge into a paste, and the sight of the mess on the graceful throat is disturbing and somehow disappointing. Plum had imagined Maureen was above such helpless, human things.
The following day dawns clear. Plum wakes earlier than usual, a tall solid girl lying haphazardly across a bed, her blue pajamas pinched in the brown clefts of her body. She lies, humming dully, waiting for her father to bring her breakfast. Her hands clench and unclench at the sides of the mattress. When she stops humming, the room is hush, like a memorial to her.
In the bathroom she showers for a long time, skimming the English Leather over the hills and valleys of her body. Her breasts hurt when she presses them. Her tan halts at her elbows and knees. She has the arms of a juvenile shot-putter, the calves of a bicycle rider. A week of missed lunches hasn’t made any difference that she can see. But maybe today will: maybe, after today, many things will alter. When she’s dried and dressed herself, Plum spends a short time with the objects, distilling their energy, whispering voodoo. Rearranging their positions inside the briefcase, something makes her think of Maureen. Maureen is like the objects come to life — she is happiness, she is power. The thought occurs that the objects brought Maureen to Plum: talismans, soaked through with feeling, must be capable of doing unguessable things. She closes the briefcase lid with more than her usual care.
Her mother drives her to Sophie’s house at the arranged time. Plum is quiet on the journey, answering her mother’s chatter with grunts. As she walks up the driveway of Sophie’s home, she can feel her mother watching her. Although her heart is thudding, Plum is not tempted to run back to Mums and be comforted. At such times she knows herself to be a very determined girl. She knocks on the front door and, as it is opened, turns and waves a succinct good-bye.
Rachael, Dash and Samantha have already arrived; Plum suspects they conspired to arrive earlier, and her alienation entangles her like wire. But she reminds herself of why she’s come, and shoves the disgruntlement down. This afternoon they are all here for her, in ways they cannot imagine. The longer they have been here, the more they’ve given her.
With the arrival of Caroline and Victoria, an urgency lights the edges of the afternoon. Sophie’s parents won’t be away forever, and her younger brother and sister will become nosy before long. Gripping her wrists, the friends propel Plum down the hall, crowding her into the bathroom. Sophie bellows, “Stay out!” to her siblings, and slams shut the door.
The bathroom into which Plum has been pushed is sunless and small, with a rectangular frosted window and a smell of rotten wood. The taps and rails are enameled white, the tiles are holiday-yellow. The decorations are aquatic — fish on the shower curtain, coral on the shelves. It makes Plum think of Cydar’s bungalow, although the two rooms have really nothing in common. She fights down a fluttery desperation to be there, in the bungalow’s bubbly gloom, hearing Cydar’s wolf-voice explain. He’s told her that a sea horse is difficult to keep alive in captivity; in Sophie’s bathroom there’s a dead one, a prickly husk hooked by the snout to the rim of the toothbrush holder.
The bathroom has already been organized for the operation. There’s a high-backed chair in the center of the room, a hard bare arrangement of planks. Samantha slaps its seat, “Sit, sit.” Plum sits, her heart galumphing like a pony in a sack. “Caz, Vics,” says Samantha, “you’ll need to hold her down. She’ll probably try to run.”
“I won’t,” Plum corrects. “You don’t need to hold me.”
“Well, if you struggle, you know what will happen. A needle in the eye.”
Plum blasts the big blonde with hatred, then quickly retracts it. Strength.“I won’t,” she vows.
The confines of the bathroom mean that the friends must crowd around the chair, and there’s a warmth in the closeness of their bodies that vanishes the moment a gap opens between them, a yellow tile is seen; then the room becomes instantly frigid, and the girl on the chair shivers. Plum’s hair is bundled into a shower cap, her shoulders are draped with a towel. “There won’t be much blood.” Sophie reassures her with a pat. “But just in case.” Ice is brought and tipped into the basin, where it begins to melt. “I’m not touching her disgusting ears.” Dash’s lip can’t curl higher. “I’m only here to watch. Don’t ask me to do anything.” So Sophie and Caroline each take charge of an ear, pressing ice cubes to the lobes. The coldness is a drilling pain that scrabbles at the nerves of Plum’s teeth. She screws her eyes shut and endures what she can; then, “Wait!” she gasps, and digs the towel furiously into each earhole. “Are you numb?” asks Rachael.
“Numb in the head,” says Dash. Plum squeezes a lobe consideringly. It feels peculiar, detached from her. “Just a bit more, maybe.”
She sits with her hands clasped in her lap, ankles together and head high. The girls bob around her like bridesmaids. They are wearing their best casual clothes — knickerbockers, polo shirts, lolly-colored plastic sandals. Her friends have dressed up because of Plum, this afternoon exists because of her, the subject of their discussion is Plum — when they say she, they mean Plum. But Plum, silent and single-minded on the chair, is merely their object — she’s a Christmas tree, a hunk of meat, merely the source of today’s entertainment. Plum feels the betrayal of her dignity, and it’s nearly enough to make her cry. But power, she consoles herself: safety, place. She has a plan,
and she concentrates on it.
Sophie pinches an earlobe. “Feel that?”
Plum does, but the sensation is muffled, and such deadness will do.
Victoria says, “I’ll draw the dots.”
A dot of marker is applied to each lobe, and criticized as uneven, then redecided as even. Plum, given a hand-mirror, stares at her image. Her broad forehead, her mane of hair, the round chin, the dark eyes. None of it seems familiar, it’s the face of an emotionless enemy. The dots balance well enough, and Plum nods. “Show me again,” says Sophie, and Plum looks up. “It’s good,” her friend tells her.
There is a candle burning in a holder, a burned-feather smell from the striking of the match. Now Samantha is holding a needle to the flame — a thick silver sewing needle, the kind over which Plum’s fingers blunder in Needlework. The little fire dodges and ducks around the point. Plum squirms, plunging through nervousness and into real fear. Caroline glances at her, smiling tightly. “Don’t worry,” she says. Victoria says, “Hurry.”
When Samantha douses the needle in water the steel should sizzle, but it does not. The bridesmaids fall back like the petals of a flower, and Plum is engulfed by yellow chill. “We could use two needles,” Caroline suggests, a tinge of desperation in her voice. “Do both ears at once?”
“No,” says Sophie. “It would hurt too much.”
Samantha steps forward. “Lift your head.” And although her body spasms with her treachery, although her heart kicks and whinnies, Plum raises her chin. She feels Samantha’s manly fingers pincer the lobe; then, in a lull, nothing. The first thing that comes is sound, not pain. A burrowing, excavating sound. Then, “Ow!” Plum says. “Ow-ow-ow-ow —”
“Oh, yuck.” Victoria hides her mouth.
“Wah wah wah wah!” A crow’s noise warbles unstoppably from Plum. Knuckles dig into her cheek as Samantha leans closer — Plum hears her teeth grit, feels her fist push and turn. Fiery pain skims Plum’s scalp, spears into her eyes and sinuses, bucks the wisdom teeth buried in her jaw. Her feet dance electrically on the linoleum. “Uk! Uk! Uk! Arh! Arh! Arh!”
“Hurry up, Sam!” Rachael shouts. “Put her out of her misery!”
Samantha’s hand pivots; pain shoots through Plum’s brain, accompanied by the sickening noise: “There!” says Samantha, stepping back. “That’s one done. You’ve got fat ears, Aria.”
Plum feels the needle prized backward, then the snub-nosed probing of the earring. Her lids, fiercely scrunched, are painful to unfurl. Through swirling vision she sees Victoria and Sophie staring; Caroline, behind her, pats her head. “There, there,” she says.
Samantha crosses to Plum’s other side, needle drawn like an arrow. “Wait!” says Plum; she can’t help but say it. “I don’t — I can’t — I don’t want to!”
Her hands quaver, ready to fight. Samantha looks down at her, her face remorseless as a goddess’s. “Only boys have one earring, Aria. Only boys . . . and girls who love girls.” And though Plum isn’t sure exactly what Samantha means, she does recognize the scorn that crouches, tail whipping, inside the words. “All right then,” she moans.
Only later will the friends realize that they should have applied more ice at this point, for the left ear has considerably thawed; and by the time the needle is partway on its mission Plum has started to bawl, openmouthed like an infant, heedless of snot and drool. “Shut up!” Samantha bellows, but Plum cannot shut up: her body arches, her feet slither, tears rush from her eyes. And when it is over and Caroline says, “Your tongue was waggling like a lizard, Plummy,” Plum has no strength remaining for shame. She slumps on the seat, hands clamped to her head, wondering if she might vomit. And yet, even as she hunches and gasps, the pain begins to withdraw, ebbing out of her skull to pool in her lobes — a fact Plum keeps to herself, for it’s important that she appear ominously damaged. She squeezes her eyes so tears drop to her thighs, and shudders theatrically. “Are you OK?” Victoria asks her. Dash scoffs: “It couldn’t have hurt that much. Your ear is just gristle, it’s nothing. It would hardly have hurt at all.”
But Plum’s face, when she lifts it, is sufficiently stricken to make Dash close her know-it-all mouth. “Can I see the mirror?”
The mirror is hastily presented, and Plum studies. The two gold studs — perhaps more gray than gold — sit perkily in her lobes. There is no blood, but her ears are scarlet roses planted on each side of her head. She is now a girl with pierced ears. “Thanks, Sam,” she whispers.
It is when she stands that her knees buckle, as had the knees of the lady at Justin’s twenty-first birthday party; and exactly as Justin’s friends had done, Plum’s friends swoop to catch her. “I’ll be OK.” Plum lists groggily. “Maybe if I lie down . . .”
A delicious panic accompanies the girls as they scuttle their casualty down the hall to Sophie’s bedroom. “She’s just feeling faint,” Rachael explains. “She’s not dying, everyone!”
“Do you want water, Aria? Do you want ice cream?”
Plum, on the bed, waves a lank hand. “Just leave me alone for a minute. I just want to rest here a minute . . .”
And her friends abandon their victim with alacrity, swinging the door behind them. For a few minutes Plum lies like a weighty beast slain, her eyes roving Sophie’s bedroom. It is a smaller room than Plum’s, but the flooring is carpet rather than boards, and the cupboard is not a hefty thing like hers, but made-to-measure, with mirrored doors. She imagines her friends huddling elsewhere in the house, recounting the ordeal as if they too had spilled blood, not even allowing her to be the sole possessor of pain. Plum sniffs and sighs, wipes her nose and sits up. Immediately her gaze falls on what she has endured all this to find.
And when, some minutes later, Sophie knocks gently on the door, she finds Plum propped on her elbows, wan but full of forgiveness, and even pleased about what has been done.
That evening Plum sits on her own bed in her own bedroom, the briefcase open on her knees. A smile crosses her face irregularly, she prods the precious objects with the tips of her fingers. She’s cozy with the smugness of success. Rachael, Samantha, that awful Dash: they think they are incredibly clever, but this afternoon at Sophie’s they had not suspected what was going on. The real Plum had stood untouched, laughing at them. The actor Plum had been so good at almost fainting that she might do it again one day, perhaps when there’s some compulsory school sports gala to attend.
Snug with satisfaction, she closes the case, shutting light from the icons. The latches catch with their safe sound, chock chock. Before going downstairs Plum checks to make sure her hair is covering her ears. Her lobes are throbbing, and feel thick as mice. If she squeezes them, fluid swells out from the pinpoint holes. In exchange for what she’s achieved, the mutilation is fair. But she won’t show it to anyone until the redness is gone, the leaking has stopped, and the difference looks like it didn’t hurt at all.
SHE WATCHES HIM WALK toward the house, furtive but certain, easy to mistake for a thief. But she is not owned by anyone; what he gets, she gives gladly.
Except, of course, she had not meant to give love. It was meant to be amusement and now it is love, catastrophic as quicksand. She loves him, so much so that even the shirt he wears — a lime polo sporting the image of a cavorting snake-limbed bottle, with the words Every Day is a Beer Barn Day! printed across the shoulders — is not repulsive to her.
She can never quite believe the sight of him, his height, his smell, his groomed darkness, here in her hall — yet she feels she was born to see him. They meet at the door, where the carpet is protected by a loop-pile mat. Glancing down she notes that the skirting-board paint has been chipped. So this is not Paris or a steamy train station; nonetheless, it is wonderful. His presence makes it wonderful. She steps back, her hands enclosing his. She can’t stop smiling in these first minutes, she’s so buoyed and reassured. “We’ve got the afternoon to ourselves. Your sister is babysitting David. The whole afternoon,” she marvels: it’s like a year, like freedom.
“Let’s go out to lunch —”
“No,” says Justin.
Maureen pauses — freezes, alert to the slightest change in pressure. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” Then, because he knows what’s been detected and because he wanted it to be, “I wish you wouldn’t ask Plum to mind David.”
She breathes again, her blood rushing on. “Your sister is perfectly capable —”
He won’t let her misunderstand. “We shouldn’t drag Plum into this.”
Maureen steps back, raising stringent eyebrows — she knows the effect is like brandishing knives. If she had a knife she would aim it at him, not threateningly but enough to illustrate how close he’s come to hurting her feelings. “This isn’t mud. We’re not dragging anyone into anything.”
They are standing at the door of the master bedroom — when Maureen thinks of this room, she thinks of him. When he isn’t here, she can still see him pulling back the bed’s cover. She sees the puddle of his clothes, the opened belt and overturned shoes, his hand on the snowy sheet. He rests his temple against the doorframe, and she will think of this too. From now on, when she passes the door, she’ll think of him, and what he is about to say. If she had the knife she would press it warningly to the beer bottle dancing over his heart. He says, “You don’t have to send David away.”
Maureen laughs; and hates him a little. “David hasn’t been sent away. He’s having a day out with Aria. And we can go out too, like normal people.”
“But we’re not normal, are we? We have to hide all the time. We have to lie —”
“What lies? I don’t lie. I never lie about you. I tell you openly that I love you.”
He has long lashes that dip over his eyes because he can’t look at her, at her coal-cool gaze or at her mouth which is a challenging red line. She stares an instant longer, then smiles, letting him off the hard hook. She had planned to take him to a restaurant, she’s even bought a shirt for him to wear; but something has spooked him today, and it’s clear they must stay with what’s familiar. Maureen knows she tends to rush ahead, but only because the future looks so inviting. “Come,” she says, scooping up his hands. Everything can be repaired. But as she steps into the bedroom, Maureen feels a resistance in his wrists — a moment of refusal which is there and gone so quickly that, were she to confront him with it, Justin could easily deny it, and she would have no choice but to believe.
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