In here, pressed up against the towels, the sheets, the heating pad, it’s clear that everything is not hunky-dory. I’ve got one of those Itty Bitty Book Lights and I’m making notes.
Today is Odessa’s day. At any minute she might turn the knob and let the world, disguised as daylight, come flooding in. She might do that and never know what she’s done. She’ll open the door and her eyes will get wide. She’ll look at me and say, “Lord.” She’ll say, “You could have given me a heart attack.” And I’ll think, Yes, I could have, but I’m having one myself and there isn’t room for two in the same place at the same time. She’ll look at my face and I’ll have to look at the floor. She won’t know that having someone look directly at me, having someone expect me to look at her, causes a sharp pain that begins in my eyes, ricochets off my skull, and in the end makes my entire skeleton shake. She won’t know that I can’t look at anything except the towels without being overcome with emotion. She won’t know that at the sight of another person I weep, I wish to embrace and be embraced, and then to kill. She won’t get that I’m dangerous.
Odessa will open the door and see me standing with this tiny light, clipped to the middle shelf, with the pad of paper on top of some extra blankets, with two extra pencils sticking out of the space between the bath sheets and the Turkish towels. She’ll see all this and ask, “Are you all right?” I won’t be able to answer. I can’t tell her why I’m standing in a closet filled with enough towels to take a small town to the beach. I won’t say, I’m not all right. God help me, I’m not. I will simply stand here, resting my arm over my notepad like a child taking a test, trying to make it difficult for cheaters to get their work done.
Odessa will do the talking. She’ll say, “Well, if you could excuse me, I need clean sheets for the beds.” I’ll move over a little bit. I’ll twist to the left so she can get to the twin and queen sizes. I’m willing to move for Odessa. I can put one foot on top of the other. I’ll do anything for her as long as I don’t have to put my feet onto the gray carpet in the hall. I can’t. I’m not ready. If I put a foot out there too early, everything will be lost.
Odessa sometimes asks me, “Which sheets do you want on your bed?” She knows I’m particular about these things. She knows her color combinations, dots and stripes together, attack me in my sleep. Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night, pull the sheets off the bed, throw them into the hall, and return to sleep. She will ask me what I want and I’ll point to the plain white ones, the ones that seem lighter, cleaner than all the others. Odessa reaches for the sheets and in the instant when they’re in her hand but still in the closet, I press my face into them. I press my face into the pile of sheets, into Odessa’s hands underneath. I won’t feel her skin, her fingers, only cool, clean fabric against my cheek. I inhale deeply as if there were a way to draw the sheets into my lungs, to hold the linen inside me. I breathe and take my head away. Odessa will pull her hands out of the closet and ask, “Do you want the door closed?” I nod. I turn away; draw in my breath, and make myself flat. She closes the door.
I’m hiding in the linen closet sending memos to myself. It’s getting complicated. Odessa knows I’m here. She knows but she won’t tell anybody. She won’t go running into the living room and announce, “Jody’s locked herself into the linen closet and she won’t come out.”
Odessa won’t go outside and look for my father. She won’t find him pulling weeds on the hill behind the house. Odessa won’t tell him, “She’s in there with paper, pencils, and that little light you gave her for Christmas.” She won’t say anything. Odessa understands that this is the way things sometimes are. She’ll change the sheets on all the beds, serve the Fat Club ladies their cottage cheese and cantaloupe, and then she’ll go downstairs into the bathroom and take a few sips from the bottle of Johnnie Walker she keeps there.
I’m hiding in the closet with my life suspended. I’m hiding and I’m scared to death. I want to come clean, to see myself clearly, in detail, like a hallucination, a death-bed vision, a Kodacolor photograph. I need to know if I’m alive or dead.
I’m hiding in the linen closet and I want to introduce myself to myself. I need to like what I see. If I am really as horrible as I feel, I will spontaneously combust, leaving a small heap of ashes that can be picked up with the Dust-buster. I will explode myself in a flash of fire, leaving a letter of most profuse apology.
Though the wall I hear my mother’s Fat Club ladies laugh. I hear the rattle of the group and the gentle tinkling of the individual. It’s as though I have more than one pair of ears. Each voice enters in a different place, with a different effect.
I hear them and realize they’re laughing for me. They’re celebrating the fact that I can no longer pretend. There are tears in my eyes. I’m saying thank you and good-bye. I’m writing it down because I can’t simply go out there and stand at the edge of the dining room table until my mother looks up from her copy of the Eat Yourself Slim Diet and says, “Yes?”
I can’t say that I’m leaving because she’ll ask, “When will you be back?”
She’ll be looking through the book, flipping through the menus, seeing how many ounces she can eat. If I tell the truth, if I say never, she’ll look up at me, peering up higher than usual, above the frameless edges of her reading glasses. She’ll say, “A comedian. Maybe Johnny Carson will hire you to guest-host. When will you be back?”
If I go without answering, the other ladies will watch me leave. When I get to where they think I can’t hear them, when I get to the kitchen door, they’ll put a pause in their meeting and talk about their children.
They’ll say they were always the best parents they knew how to be. They’ll say they gave their children everything and it was never enough. They’ll say they hope their children will grow up and have children exactly like themselves. They’ll be thinking about how their children hate them and how they hate their children back because they don’t understand what it was they did wrong.
“It has nothing to do with you,” I’ll have to say. “It’s me, it’s me, all mine. There is no blame.”
“Selfish,” the mothers will say.
I’m here in the linen closet, doing my spring cleaning. I’m confessing right and left and Odessa knocks on the door. She knocks and then opens the door. She’s carrying a plate with a sandwich and a glass of milk. Only Odessa would serve milk and a sandwich. My mother would give me a Tab with a twist of lemon. My father would make something like club soda with a little bit of syrup in it. He would use maple syrup and spend all afternoon telling me he’d invented something new, something better than other sodas because it had no chemicals, less sugar, and no caffeine. Odessa brings me a sandwich and a glass of milk and it looks like a television commercial. The bread is white, the sandwich cut perfectly in half. There are no finger marks on it, no indentations on the white bread where Odessa put her fingers while she was cutting. The glass is full except for an inch at the top. There are no spots in that inch. The milk looks white and thick, with small bubbles near the top. It looks cool and refreshing.
Odessa hands me the plate. I look at her for a moment. She is perfect. I drink the milk and know that I will have a mustache. I look at Odessa and want to say, “I love you.” I want to tell her how no one else would bring me a glass of milk. I want to tell her everything, but she starts talking. Odessa says, “Make sure you don’t leave that plate in the closet. I don’t want your mother finding it and thinking I’ve lost my mind. I don’t want bugs in here. Bring it out and put it in the dishwasher. Don’t stay in there all day or you’ll lose your color.” I nod and she closes the door.
I’m hiding and I’m earing a cream-cheese-and-cucumber sandwich and having my head examined. I’m in the neighborhood of my soul and getting worried. I’m trying not to hate myself so much, trying not to hate my body, my mind, the thoughts I think. I’m hiding in the linen closet having a sex change. I’m in here with a pad of paper writing things I’ve thought and then unthought. Thoughts
that seemed like incest, like they shouldn’t be allowed.
I’m trying to find some piece of myself that is truly me, a part that I would be willing to wear like a jewel around my neck. My foot. I love my foot. If I had to send a part of myself to represent myself in some other country, or in some other way, I would amputate my foot and send it wrapped in white tissue on a silk-embroidered cushion. I would send my foot because it is me, more me than I’m willing to let on. There are other parts that are also good – hands, eyes, mouth – but after a few months I might look at them and not see the truth. After a few years I might look at them and think of someone else. But my foot is mine, all mine, the real thing. There is no mistaking it. I look at it; I take off my sock and it screams my name.
I could go on for hours demonstrating how well I know myself, through my foot, but I won’t. It’s embarrassing. The foot, my foot, that I wish to wear on a ribbon around my neck is an example of grace twisted and trapped. Chunks of bone and flesh conforming to the dictum: form follows function. It’s a wonder I’m not a cripple.
I’m hiding in the linen closet, writing a declaration of independence. I’m in the closet, but the worst is over. There is hope, trapped inside my foot; inside my soul there is possibility. I’m looking at myself and slowly I’m falling in love. I’ve figured out what it takes to live forever. I’m in love and I’m free.
I want to throw the door open and hear an orchestra swell. I want to run out to the Fat Club ladies and tell them, “Life can go on, I’m in love.”
I’ll stand in the living room, facing the sofa. I’ll stand with my arms spread wide, the violins reaching their pitch. I’ll be sweating and shaking, unsteady on my feet, my wonderful, loving, lovable feet. At the end of my proclamation my mother will let her glasses fall from her face and dangle from the cord around her neck.
“Miss Dramatic,” she’ll say. “Why weren’t you an actress?”
The fat ladies will look at each other. They’ll look at me and think of other declarations of love. They’ll look and one will ask, “Who’s the lucky man?”
There will be a silence while they wait for a name, preferably the right kind of a name. If I tell them it isn’t a man, their silence will grow and they’ll expect what they think is the worst. No one except my mother will have nerve enough to say, “A girl then?”
I’ll be forced to tell them, It’s not like that. One of the ladies, the one the others think isn’t so smart, will ask, “What’s it like?”
I’ll smile, the orchestra will swell, and I’ll look at the four ladies sitting on the sofa, the sofa covered with something modern and green, something that vaguely resembles the turf on a putting green.
“It’s like falling in love with life itself,” I’ll say.
My mother will look around the room. She’ll look anywhere except at me.
“Are you all right?” she’ll ask when I stop to catch my breath. “You look a little flushed.” I’ll be singing and dancing.
“I’m fine, I’m wonderful, I’m better than before. I’m in love.”
I’ll sing and on the end note cymbals will crash and the sound will hold in the air for a minute. And then swinging a top hat and cane, I’ll dance away. I’ll dance down the hall towards the den.
I want to find my father in the den, the family room, watching tennis on television. I want to catch him in the middle of a set and say that I can’t wait for a break. I want to tell him, “Life must go on.”
He’ll say that it’s match point. He’ll say that he’s been trying to tell me that all along.
“But why didn’t you tell me what it really means?”
“It seemed pretty obvious.”
And then I’ll tell him, “I’m in love.” There will be a pause. Someone will have the advantage. My feet will go clickety-clack over the parquet floor and he’ll say, “Yes, you sound very happy. You sound like you’re not quite yourself.”
“I’m more myself than I’ve ever been.”
I want to find Odessa. “Life will go on,” I’ll tell her. “I’m in love.” I’ll take her by the hand and we’ll dance in circles around the recreation room. We’ll dance until we’re dizzy and Odessa will ask me, “Are you all right?”
I’ll only be able to mumble “Ummmm hummm,” because my grin will have set like cement. I’m hiding in the linen closet writing love letters to myself.
(She Owns) Every Thing
Anne Enright
Anne Enright (b. 1962) is an Irish author, born in Dublin. She has published essays, short stories, a work of non-fiction and four novels. Her novel, The Gathering, won the 2007 Man Booker Prize.
Cathy was often wrong, she found it more interesting. She was wrong about the taste of bananas. She was wrong about the future of the bob. She was wrong about where her life ended up. She loved corners, surprises, changes of light.
Of all the fates that could have been hers (spinster, murderer, savant, saint), she chose to work behind a handbag counter in Dublin and take her holidays in the sun.
For ten years she lived with the gloves and beside the umbrellas, their colours shy and neatly furled. The handbag counter travelled through navy and brown to a classic black. Yellows, reds, and white were to one side and all varieties of plastic were left out on stands, for the customer to steal.
Cathy couldn’t tell you what the handbag counter was like. It was hers. It smelt like a leather dream. It was never quite right. Despite the close and intimate spaces of the gloves and the empty generosity of the bags themselves, the discreet mess that was the handbag counter was just beyond her control.
She sold clutch bags for people to hang on to; folded slivers of animal skin that wouldn’t hold a box of cigarettes, or money unless it was paper, or a bunch of keys, ‘just a credit card and a condom,’ said one young woman to another and Cathy felt the ache of times changing.
She sold the handbag proper, sleek and stiff and surprisingly roomy – the favourite bag, the thoroughbred, with a hard clasp, or a fold-over flap and the smell of her best perfume. She sold sacks to young women, in canvas or in suede, baggy enough to hold a life, a change of underwear, a novel, a deodorant spray.
The women’s faces as they made their choice were full of lines going nowhere, tense with the problems of leather, price, vulgarity, colour. Cathy matched blue eyes with a blue trim, a modest mouth with smooth, plum suede. She sold patent to the click of high heels, urged women who had forgotten into neat, swish reticules. Quietly, one customer after another was guided to the inevitable and surprising choice of a bag that was not ‘them’ but one step beyond who they thought they might be.
Cathy knew what handbags were for. She herself carried everything (which wasn’t much) in one pocket, or the other.
She divided her women into two categories: those who could and those who could not.
She had little affection for those who could, they had no need of her, and they were often mistaken. Their secret was not one of class, although that seemed to help, but one of belief, and like all questions of belief, it involved certain mysteries. How, for example, does one believe in navy?
There were also the women who could not. A woman for example, who could NOT wear blue. A woman who could wear a print, but NOT beside her face. A woman who could wear beads but NOT earrings. A woman who had a secret life of shoes too exotic for her, or one who could neither pass a perfume counter nor buy a perfume, unless it was for someone else. A woman who comes home with royal jelly every time she tries to buy a blouse.
A woman who cries in the lingerie department.
A woman who laughs while trying on hats.
A woman who buys two coats of a different colour.
The problem became vicious when they brought their daughters shopping. Cathy could smell these couples from Kitchenware.
Cathy married late and it was hard work. She had to find a man. Once she had found one, she discovered that the city was full of them. She had to talk and laugh and be fond. She had to choose. Did she
like big burly men with soft brown eyes? Did she like that blond man with the eyes of pathological blue? What did she think of her own face, its notches and dents?
She went the easy road with a kind teacher from Fairview and a registry office do. She stole him from a coltish young woman with awkward eyes. Cathy would have sold her a tapestry Gladstone bag, one that was ‘wrong’ but ‘worked’ all the same.
Sex was a pleasant surprise. It was such a singular activity, it seemed to scatter and gather her at the same time.
Cathy fell in love one day with a loose, rangy woman, who came to her counter and to her smile and seemed to pick her up with the same ease as she did an Argentinian calf-skin shoulder bag in tobacco brown, with woven leather inset panels, pig-skin lining and snap clasp. It was quite a surprise.
The woman, whose eyes were a tired shade of blue, asked Cathy’s opinion, and Cathy heard herself say ‘DIVE RIGHT IN, HONEY, THE WATER’S JUST FINE!’ – a phrase she must have picked up from the television set. The woman did not flinch. She said ‘Have you got it in black?’
Brown was the colour of the bag. Cathy was disappointed by this betrayal. The weave would just disappear in black, the staining was everything. Cathy said, ‘It’s worth it in brown, even if it means new shoes. It really is a beautiful bag.’ The woman, however, neither bought the brown nor argued for black. She rubbed the leather with the base of her thumb as she laid the bag down. She looked at Cathy. She despaired. She turned her wide, sporting shoulders, her dry, bleached hair, and her nose with the bump in it, gave a small sigh, and walked out of the shop.
Cathy spent the rest of the day thinking, not of her hands, with their large knuckles, but of her breasts, that were widely spaced and looked two ways, one towards the umbrellas, the other at the scarves. She also wondered whether the woman had a necklace of lines hanging from her hips, whether she had ever been touched by a woman, what she might say, what Cathy might say back. Whether her foldings and infoldings were the same as her own or as different as daffodil from narcissus. It was a very lyrical afternoon.
The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories Page 108