All day, she looked in the sky for planes but saw none. The sky was flat and still as a bathtub. The city felt oddly empty without them in it. She had the same light-headed feeling as not eating all day.
1969, Goethite Ochre
Goethite has been used since prehistoric times to paint the yellow-brown backs of deer. In 2010, the mineral from which the paint is made will be found on Mars. Depending on the concentrations it is the color of dried leaves, deserts, old pennies, trench coats.
Fingers of grass slipped under her shirt. Yuki lay on her belly, her shoulder rubbing Odile’s. Odile’s hair curled around Yuki’s shirt collar. Canada goslings whistled at the bread that Yuki pitched over their heads. The stale loaf was polka-dotted with poppy seeds, and these stuck under Yuki’s nails as she tore the stiff crust. She worked them out with her teeth and her tongue. The salt tasted good. She hadn’t eaten breakfast. Even the sweat of her own fingers tasted good, and she sucked them one by one.
What was a greater symbol of faith than starvation? Didn’t saints do it? Hadn’t the Buddha given up food as he meditated? When Kathy Y speared gluey macaroni, Odile’s whole face contorted in disgust. If this was what it took for Odile to see they were the same, it was easy.
They were skipping Odile’s graduation ceremony to lie in Central Park’s lemonade sunlight. She hadn’t mentioned school or a job or a man. She seemed content to lie in the sun and wait for the future.
“You’ll stay at Lillian’s for a bit?” Yuki asked, by which she meant, “you’ll staying here with me.”
Odile shrugged, stretched. A pale shadow moved across her pointed toes. It was a man, wearing a trench coat buttoned against the thin breeze, crouched down in front of the girls. It was an unusually cold June, but even so he was the only one in the park in a coat. He blocked Yuki’s view of the pond. She considered lobbing the bread in his face. Yuki had come to expect Odile’s fans, but she still didn’t like them.
Behind this man was another, sporting a flapping, rust-colored button-up over a white T-shirt. He stood diffidently to the side. His hair was scraggy, and there was something soft about his lips and the flesh around his eyes. A college boy perhaps. Trench Coat was broader, firmer—older. Around Trench Coat’s neck was a camera. It was made by a different manufacturer than Lillian’s, chrome with a black, textured grip. In the top corner, there was a red dot that reminded her of nail polish or blood.
Trench Coat asked, “May we take your picture?”
The two girls eyed each other. Yuki asked, “Why?” Odile stretched her legs and pointed her toes.
“Because you look perfect.”
Odile flexed her perfect toes. “All right, but you have to pay.”
“And the price of admission is?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Odile said.
“How about I take you both for drinks at the Plaza.”
On Yuki’s twelfth birthday, her father had taken her and her mother to the Plaza Hotel for afternoon tea. There had been little cakes on little racks, and bone-china cups.
“All right,” Odile said.
“Okay, don’t move. I want you right as you are.”
Ten clicks later, they left the flaccid bread bag to blow where it might and followed the men out of the park. They didn’t go to the Palm Court, where Yuki had smashed meringues between newly adult teeth, still too large for her lips. Trench Coat led them to a wood-paneled bar.
Strange that this room heady with beeswax and that place with its Happy Hour and sharp smiling soldier boy could be described by the same little word: bar—as if the liquid content was all that mattered. Behind Yuki someone tittered, she started, but it was only two pearl-necked ladies sharing some secret morsel of their own.
Trench Coat ordered four mimosas. Odile had taught Yuki to drink, each girl taking long kisses from the neck of a bottle of bourbon Lillian kept next to the pasta sauce. Yuki knew the mimosa would press the blood into her cheeks. She’d never liked orange juice. It made her queasy. She took hesitant sips from the edge of the champagne flute, clinking the glass against her teeth.
Odile asked, “So are you brothers, or boyfriends, or what?”
The younger man blushed cat-paw pink. Yuki almost smiled at him, but then she thought of the boy who’d flown away to be a soldier. He too had had delicate lashes and thin hands.
“Friends,” said Trench Coat. “He’s visiting me from Montreal. So what are you two, sisters?”
Odile laughed, but Yuki ran her tongue over her dry lips. Life would’ve been easier if she’d had a sister. If there’d been someone with whom living wasn’t an act of translation.
They sat on bar stools: the girls in the middle, Trench Coat to Odile’s left and the friend to Yuki’s right. Yuki saw Trench Coat loop his long arm around the back of Odile’s chair. The hand moved from the chair to Odile’s shoulder. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything. Even as his left hand gesticulated, the right stayed perfectly motionless, gripping Odile.
A barman uniformed in white tails and a black bow tie asked if he could get them anything else. Trench Coat ordered another round. Yuki held her half-full glass between her fingers, feeling the weight of it.
Trench Coat said he was a fashion photographer.
“You know Twiggy, of course you do, anyway she was on one of my shoots, and she says she has to stop. Girl’s hungry. An aide runs down to the automat and she eats an entire carton of fries and gets oil spots on the thousand-dollar dress. A less famous girl would never work again, but Twiggy’s just giggling. That’s star power.”
Odile challenged: did he really know Twiggy? Guys just said they worked in fashion to sleep with would-be models.
“Fine, don’t believe me. We can go down to a newsstand right now. My name is in the back of Harper’s Bazaar. I’ll buy you a copy.”
“Okay then. Let’s go.” Odile tilted her head toward him, both challenging and familiar. Yuki was used to Odile’s fanged charm. Lillian hadn’t taught her daughter the things one should and should not say. It upset teachers, but men admired it as much as they admired her tangled halo of gold strands or the greenness of her eyes. Yuki did too. She never had the right words, never mind the perfectly wrong ones.
Odile slid from her chair. Trench Coat said, “You two stay here. We’ll be back.”
“But . . .” You’re not supposed to leave me, Yuki thought.
“Back in a minute,” Odile said over her shoulder. “Promise.”
The women behind them were speaking a chirrupy language Yuki thought was French. She had to admit this was probably the safest place in New York.
“So, you’re at college,” Yuki tried.
“Getting my Masters. Well, I will be in September,” the man-boy said. “Right now, I’m just taking art classes at this place in Midtown. New York’s a trip. Where I’m from, it’s more sheep than people. We say we’re from Montreal, but it’s a five-hour drive.”
“Never lived anywhere else.” True enough: it was the only place that mattered.
“You should travel. The world is huge.”
She couldn’t tell him that she felt small enough, so she glugged her second mimosa. Did all young men have such an obsession with travel? Or was that what they thought of when talking to her?
“I’ve forgotten your name,” she said. It came out as an accusation.
“Edison,” he said, “like the man who bottled light. You can call me Eddie though, like the guy who always says the wrong thing to girls.”
“I like Edison better.” She took a fast gulp of the mimosa, which tingled in her throat.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” he asked. “God, I sound like someone’s maiden aunt.”
“Dunno.” Yuki wished she could just stay in her high-school art room painting frame after frame of pears until each fruit’s freckles and bruises worked into her hand and she owned completely that scrap of the universe. But wanting to be an artist was like wanting to be a ballerina or an astronaut: a kindergarte
ner’s ambition. He seemed to be waiting for her to continue. She emptied the last of the mimosa.
“Myself, but shorter,” she said.
“Shorter?” he asked. She’d meant taller, but the word had somersaulted in her mouth.
“Shorter. Shorter and shorter.” She stuck to the word. “When I’m sixty, I’ll be thumb-sized. There’s this story my dad used to tell about a thumb-high samurai.” The glass felt trembly in her hands. It spun rainbows across the varnished wood. “Everyone underestimates him, even the oni who swallows him. But he pricks his way out through the demon’s guts with the point of his needle sword. Imagine the surprise.” She clutched her own flat stomach. Then she remembered that at the end of the story, Issun-boshi grows to full height. No one wants be tiny forever.
Dust motes caught the slanting light. Someone had told her that dust was just scuffed-off skin. Edison gently reached toward her.
“Hey, you’ve gone the color of my shirt.” And he held the corner of the flannel up to her cheek. It was plush, like the underbelly of a young animal. The fans whipped the air of the bar. She was cold, and she wanted to ask him to give it to her. Then came the clatter of Odile and Trench Coat’s shoes.
Odile twitched like a nervous greyhound, wiggling her shoulders, straining her neck from right to left, scrunching and unscrunching her nose.
“I look okay?”
“Yes, I told you already, yes,” Yuki replied.
Trench Coat had called to say he knew an agent who was looking for fresh girls. Trench Coat himself would take Odile’s portfolio shots. The studio was on the third floor of a building, the first floor of which was a grocery store. Peaches, strawberries and grapes obscured the blue door to the upper apartments.
“Ring the bell for me,” Odile said. Trench Coat’s name in print had whisked away Odile’s scorn and confidence. “He’s a real photographer. Really, really real.”
Oh really, Yuki thought. But she jabbed the plastic nipple of the doorbell, pressing until they heard him coming down the stairs. When he opened the door, he looked irritated.
“No audience,” he said. “I need to concentrate while I’m shooting.”
“Yuki looks okay.” Odile asked, “You can’t use her?” Yuki squeezed Odile’s hand, grateful for the gesture. Risking the really real photographer’s irritation was probably making Odile crave milky coffee, her greatest vice.
“No one’s looking for Oriental models at the moment,” he said. “Anyway, she doesn’t have the height for it. And her face wouldn’t photograph well, too flat.”
“I don’t want to model,” Yuki said. “I can wait outside.” After soldier boy, she was glad that so many men didn’t find her worth looking at. Though for half a glimmer she had hoped Edison would be there. But why would he be?
“Go home.” Trench Coat put his hand on Odile’s shoulder. “I’ll drive her back.” He pointed to a car parked in front of the building. It was so new that each fleck of dirt showed against the grapefruit paint job. Odile didn’t turn as she walked up the stairs. Yuki pressed her hand to the painted wood. It was skin warm.
The shades of the upstairs room were down, and she had a premonition that she would never see Odile again. This was, of course, crazy. The art store was nearby. Yuki walked over, not ready to go back to Lillian.
The paint tubes were gridded calendar-fashion. The entire top row was varieties of yellow, ochre, and gold. A golden afternoon. A black week. Red-letter day. You could make a calendar from paint. Her memories of Japan were a smudge of pink and green. This was how she imagined her mother: soaked in pink and green light. The years since had been yellow-white like so much limescale building up inside a kettle. Yuki picked up a paint tube, squeezing it in her fist. What was Odile doing? The tin tube gave way, soft as flesh. Odile would have swiped it, but Odile wasn’t there, and Yuki owned no brushes, only stubby pencils sharpened clumsily with an X-Acto knife. She slotted the paint into the wrong hole.
After Lillian had put her hair in curlers and all the neon signs had turned on in the street, Odile slammed in. She went straight to the shower without saying anything.
“How was it?” Yuki asked when Odile emerged. Her hair stuck to her skull. She was a waif out of one of Lillian’s novels, down to the thin white lashes hanging like icicles under her eyes. Yuki wanted to offer her something, a robe or tea. But nothing in the apartment was Yuki’s to give.
“Why’d you have to be so ugly?” Odile said. Her voice was smooth as a bar of soap moving along skin.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Are you okay?” Yuki asked. Odile was often vulgar, but rarely crude.
“I’m fine. Was your face always like that or did your mom drop you on it?”
The taunt was childish, but the hostility was searing.
“I’m going to go to sleep.” Yuki’s side of the bed was the farthest from the wall. She moved to the very edge, so that her left arm and leg brushed the floor.
A shingle of slate-blue dawn moved across the floor. Yuki blinked. In the night, Odile’s arm had found its way around her shoulder. Yuki rolled over.
“Hey.” She was half an inch from Odile’s face. “What happened yesterday?” Yuki asked. Specks of black sleep dust stuck in the corners of Odile’s now open eyes.
“Nothing. Nothing happened.” Odile pulled the thin sheet over her head.
That Nothing nested between them. Yuki felt it waking up and following them around the apartment. All day, Odile stared straight into this Nothing and didn’t seem to see Yuki at all.
There was one telephone in the apartment. It was heavy, red plastic, and Lillian kept it between her typewriter and her ashtray. Often she sat, typing with one hand, talking on the phone to an editor or Odile’s grandmother—the woman responsible for the school bills, the princess-sleeved dresses, and, Yuki gleaned through the thin walls, often the phone bill itself. It had a long cord, and when Lou called, Lillian dragged it to her room. When Yuki’s mother called, Yuki sat at the table digging her nail into the wood.
“Are you okay? How is school? What have you been up to? Have you and that girl done anything nice?”
“I’m fine. It’s fine. Nothing, really. Yeah, Nothing.” Yuki pulled up shards of wood. “Mom, when you were my age, what did you do with your friends?”
Her mother paused. “Well, after the war, we sold vegetables together, I always got the best prices. Naoko-chan didn’t have a spine, she always ended up giving everything away and Midori-san, well she was scary, but many customers liked me. I did well.” She could hear her mother’s smile across the Pacific. “Why ask?”
“Nothing.”
“I should go but Yuki-chan—I love you. Be happy.”
“Love you too, Mom. ”
“” Bai, bai, bye-bye. Yuki squeezed the splinter of wood between thumb and forefinger so tight it drew blood.
But that summer, it was Odile who got the most calls. She, like a skinnier Lillian, dragged the telephone into her bedroom. Yuki hid in the bath.
“You mean it? Really? You do?” Odile’s giggles came through the bathroom door as a high-pitched laugh track.
Trench Coat’s calls had increased in frequency. Around the same time the air began to bite with cold, the calls became nightly. Lillian kept the apartment hot, but in the cold bathwater Yuki couldn’t feel herself sweat. Outside was cool, but Yuki had nowhere to go in the autumn night, and if she did leave it was the Nothing that would accompany her.
Lying in the bath, she heard: “Really, really? You’re sure?” Odile’s voice was high and churning. Yuki normally avoided eavesdropping, preferring to lie dreaming of design school, but the change in pitch caught her attention. “Promise me. You have to absolutely promise.”
Yuki looked down at the sharp angles of her hipbones distorted by the bathwater. She visualized again the portfolio section of the art school brochure. There was a requirement to draw a bicycle. She’d been over again and again the best way to approach this.
A perfect sketch, each spoke in place. Or a smear of red and gray. But the first was boring and the second they might see as a cheat.
The bathroom door flapped open, hitting the tub. Yuki sat up and pulled her knees to her face. Her narrow thighs made poor shelter. Even with her knees pressed together, they left an arrow slit of air. She let her hair hang down as coverage.
“I’m going to be a model. A real model. One of the girls dropped out from a shoot this week. He showed them my picture. I’m going to be in a magazine!” Her face was a storm of joy.
Through her knees Yuki asked, “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you care so much?” Yuki asked. Odile was almost hysterical. Her breath gasped through her smile.
“Because it means I’m beautiful.”
Odile held her hands up to the diffuse light of the bathroom window. She turned her palms over, examining them from both sides, as if they were a garment.
“Want to come to the set?” Odile’s belt-clasp was shaped like a rabbit’s head. The rabbit twitched left and right as Odile squirmed with joy.
“I’ll be in the way, won’t I?” Who needed a flat-faced friend? Odile still hadn’t bothered saying sorry—it was as if she had just forgotten their fight. It was that unimportant.
“You’re jealous.” Odile pouted, her eyes focusing for the first time on Yuki. Ugly, Yuki thought, you said ugly in that same tone of voice. Nothing had been right since the Nothing moved into the apartment.
“If you want me, I’ll come. But you didn’t need me last time?” Yuki really didn’t want to model. That winter it had been just the two of them wrapped in snow and wind. Now there was this new world, in which she was a flat-faced distraction.
Harmless Like You Page 6