by James Short
April had imagined she loved the large, kind, well-to-do Philip Ives. Not entirely passionately, perhaps, yet enduringly. At this moment, she couldn’t swear absolutely that she had fallen out of love with him. When she tried to explain this to Philip, he said actions speak louder than words. He was right, she supposed—actions speak louder than words and certainly louder than thoughts. And there was no denying that solely due to her obstinacy, six nights into their honeymoon, she remained a virgin.
Philip wouldn’t believe her, but April was as dumbfounded by the turn of events as he was. She had no idea on their wedding night, that after sexily undressing in front of him and donning a nightgown whose purpose in existence was mostly not to exist, she would fall to her knees and plead, “Darling, could we wait until the morning?” Philip, the kind man that he was, reacted to her request with gentleness and understanding. April then promised with sincerity, “Tomorrow it will be so much better, my love.”
By the sixth day, the promise of tomorrow had become stale and hollow, and both of them had taken on a distraught sleepless appearance. April wondered whether, as Philip had hinted, her reticence really was the fear of losing her virginity. As far as April could tell she wasn’t quaking with fright at the prospect of robust male virility.
In these modern times though, virginity was a somewhat awkward condition in a twenty-four-year-old woman which seemed to require an explanation with its admission. Her rationale that the timing had never been right rang false now. Philip had done everything to make the moment perfect, and she had cooperated. Yet, at the point of final commitment, ultimate surrender, she always lost heart. April stared deeply into the face in the mirror. She sensed an ominous change coming over her, a final resolution, a last terror like an abyss glimpsed by a man about to leap.
This evening April hadn’t even bothered to go through the motions of undressing. She did so now, rising from her chair, drawing the drapes across the sliding glass door and disrobing close enough to the mirror to touch the mysterious reflected image. She unlaced, unbuttoned and peeled slowly as if she could answer the riddle by contemplating her body.
Although April had never lacked dates and suitors, she was at a loss to understand how any man could find her attractive. Her proportions were all wrong. Long gazelle-like legs, narrow hips, a short torso, breasts that were each larger than what her two hands could cover, although one was noticeably smaller than the other. Nor did her facial features conform to any accepted ideal of beauty. Her lips were full, but an overbite and a gap between her front teeth made her appear slightly goofy. Her nose was too small to possess character, and her cheekbones were too high, slightly distorting her face. Her only really admirable physical attributes, in her opinion, were her skin, which had the color of dark roses drowning in cream, her black hair falling so thickly down her back that she could plait it into two dense ropes, and her eyes which a former boyfriend had called “Mata Hari” eyes.
“Why can I only feel pain?” April quietly asked the nude figure in the mirror.
To her surprise, a familiar voice whispered, “Do you want to know the truth?”
“You don’t have the slightest idea of what’s going on here!” April retorted and looked around to see what she expected to see: nothing.
“Don’t I? You’re the one asking the question.” The high nasal whine in the voice worried the ears like a mosquito’s whir or a dentist’s drill.
“I already know what your answer is going to be,” April insisted.
“No, you don’t. You only know that the truth is rarely kind. I won’t claim to be the whole truth because I’m never kind, but I’m the closest you’ll come.”
“Okay, you’ve stopped by for a visit—a short one, I hope. Say what you have to say, and then please leave before I get mad.”
“Is that your threat against me now—getting mad? You don’t have enough strength left in you to get mad. Face it: you’re tired and yearn to rest. That’s my desire also—rest. Not happiness—that’s not your thing, and it’s not my thing—but acceptance of fate, which brings rest and repose. So, my dear, let’s start with the obvious. How did it ever enter your head that you could love Philip Ives? Of all the possible Romeos in the world, he would rank rather low, don’t you think?”
“My friends were jealous!” April protested.
“Your friends said you were lucky to find a good man. Can you think of fainter praise? You didn’t want to admit to yourself that you saw in their eyes a bafflement at how this particular male could light the spark of romance in you. Be honest! Did this Ives ever really thrill you? Did he ever stir within your soul actual passion? Did he send a tingle up your leg? Did he make your heart pitter-patter?”
April glared at the empty space.
The nasal whirring continued: “Oh, I’m aware that you’ve already asked yourself these questions and answered, ‘Yes, of course.’ But we both know you were just playing pretend. I might allow you that this Ives has a primitive appeal. Certainly, his kisses took your breath away, although that might have been the result of his hugs squeezing the air out of you. But you even somehow convinced yourself he was your hero. Hero? Hero? Come on now. Do you really believe he’s the sort to slay dragons? More likely, he’s the type to keep a checkbook balanced to the penny and not to forget an umbrella on a cloudy day. The type to make love every other Saturday in exactly the same way and believe you should be content with that. Be honest: you have been deceiving yourself you were in love for the last eight months because you became bored with living as an unengaged single woman.”
“That’s not true!” April raised her fist to hit the voice.
“I’m in top form tonight, am I not? Play pretend—that’s what you did. But you can’t do that with me! I know you too well.”
“I wasn’t pretending!” April burst out.
“Shall I give examples? Naturally, I will,” the voice cooed sarcastically. “We’ll begin with those pretend sighs and moans while you petted. You can’t deny that even during the most passionate sessions, there was a little stage director inside your head. Kiss now, sigh now, tell him you love him now, open your thighs a little bit now, though not too much. However, that’s not even the tip of the iceberg…”
April stared at the near stranger in the mirror considering whether she wanted to pursue the dialogue. “You can’t shut me up this time,” the voice inserted itself into her thoughts.
Could she shut her up? April had done so once.
April had just turned twelve when she first made the acquaintance with this persona. Twelve had been the most troubled year of her life. April was a dreadfully awkwardly shy, socially graceless girl. She had binged so frequently on chocolate-chip cookies that she carried sixty pounds in extra rolls of fat, and her complexion was spotted with dozens of tiny red volcanoes. She was the favorite victim of cruel peers who dubbed her “Acne April.” She didn’t even have the consolation of earning good grades.
In the middle of one teary Friday night when the world seemed to be having a party she wasn’t invited to, this conjuration appeared, announcing herself with the proclamation, “They’re right, you know, the kids who make fun of you. Everything they say is God’s truth.”
Oddly, this observation had comforted her, and she listened eagerly to the long screed on all of her faults. She gave the voice the name Ravela, perhaps because at the time they were studying “The Raven” in English class and “Ravela” seemed to her a more feminine incarnation of that name.
That was how it began. Ravela cheered and celebrated her goofs, her gaffes, her failures, her petty humiliations with unreserved enthusiasm. In the beginning, April had wondered why her imagination had conjured up such a spiteful companion. She arrived at two partially contradictory theories. This hypercritical, super-pessimistic, exuberantly malicious version of herself allowed April to transcend the pathetic sniveling clumsy girl whom she so despised. She could side with the winners, so to speak. The other was that Ravela’s vicious diatribe
s hardened her nerves against the taunts of her classmates. Whatever they hurled at her was nothing compared to the virago inside her head, who used all her intimate secrets against her.
Those theories, however, didn’t quite square with Ravela’s self-destructive drive. There had been times when Ravela’s purpose seemed not merely to intensify April’s sense of inferiority but to confuse her so, fog her reasoning to such a degree that she became open to the suggestion of self-extinction.
How else could April explain her obedience when, on that sub-zero night, Ravela suggested she wander out of the campsite dressed only in a T-shirt and shorts? Cold was good, Ravela had explained in a soft wooing voice; it took away feeling and replaced it with numbing serenity. When the camp counselors found her blue and sobbing, April pretended she had been sleepwalking. Or why did she comply when in seductive tones Ravela had urged her to swim farther and farther out into the ocean to see the other side? Wouldn’t it be interesting, Ravela had said? While April was performing those indecisively suicidal acts—three in total—Ravela’s rationale seemed irrefutable and irresistible, although she could never recall the chain of reasoning clearly afterward.
Her attempt to swim into eternity did unexpectedly change the game. As April waded beyond the children playing in the waves, beyond the bodysurfers, losing her footing and then swimming beyond their voices, beyond their cares, she imagined drowning as a painless surrender to Mother Sea. Then, as she sank, she inhaled seawater. The acrid fluid hit her lungs like a thousand volts of electricity. April screamed, gulped more seawater, flailing uncontrollably. Seemingly hundreds of wild animals had taken hold of her limbs and were jerking, pulling and twisting her every which way. As the horror and terror climaxed, she lost consciousness.
A half an hour later, as April came to, she mistily observed a handsome lifeguard bending over her and applying his big hands to her diaphragm. At the precise moment that the acrid seawater gushed out of her mouth and nostrils, she had an epiphany. To give up at the age of sixteen was premature. That such a beautiful man could work so hard to bring her back to life and seemed so worried he might fail must mean the world held promises she hadn’t considered. No matter what Ravela said, April really couldn’t concede defeat yet. She needed a larger sampling of life—other people got along, and loved, and laughed, and refused to take themselves too seriously, why not her?
With this atom of hope, April dismissed Ravela’s persona then and there, as easily as snapping her fingers. Over the next year, with the slightest exertion of will, the excess weight melted off; her face cleared; her shyness moderated to the degree that she could smile in company and friendships appeared a possibility. She knew she had arrived at a different epoch of life when a formerly derisive classmate suddenly turned to her and commented, “April, I do believe you’re becoming pretty.”
Now Ravela was back, refreshed by her long sabbatical, and gloating over April’s predicament. That other self spoke with sublime confidence. “I’ve come to claim you, body, mind, and soul.”
“You don’t have the right,” April insisted.
“Of course I do. I am you—the true you. Yes, you’ve painted a smile on your face for the past eight years. You’ve had your little vacation. You got to see a bit of the world. You’ve gone through the motions of being happy.”
“I am happy!”
“Oh yeah, tell me about it, April. You’ve been happy like a fool dancing on a sinking ship. You probably could have gone on a while longer, but now, poor dear, you’ve made the mistake of getting married. You’ve called your own bluff. This is where the rubber meets the road, babe. This is real intimacy, real commitment, which presupposes real love. And what do you find in your heart of hearts? Look at it! Don’t close your eyes! It’s the truth. Don’t want to articulate it. Let me whisper it softly: it’s all—are you ready—all a sham. Love, joy, fulfillment—figments of our desperate, mortal hopes. A complete and utter lie, a false bill of goods, fool’s gold, a desert mirage, a tale told by an idiot, or to put the very best spin on it, a practical joke of the divine practical joker.”
“That doesn’t answer the question of why I can’t make love to Philip,” April said, feeling the will to fight back drain out of her.
“It’s obvious with a little thought, dear. When you threw me out of your life the last time, you claimed there was no reason why you couldn’t be happy like everybody else. I’ve reflected on that and concluded that you’re only defective in one regard. However, it is the most significant one. You’re not very good with fiction. Even as a child you quickly became bored with the imaginary games of your brothers and sisters. That has always set you apart, making you more quiet and sad. How often did the other children laugh and even though you understood the joke, you couldn’t laugh with them? And now, you can no longer pretend to believe, love or hope because you, like me, detest the sham. You don’t have it in you to fool yourself. You’re different. And because of that, you are alone—utterly, absolutely alone—and there’s no remedy for that state of affairs.”
Ravela had timed her moment well. April couldn’t find the energy to argue, much less command Ravela to leave as she had done eight years back. For the past six days, April had barely possessed enough strength of character to engage in such basic personal care as brushing her hair or cleaning her fingernails. Only one course of action remained: ignore Ravela and distract herself. Perhaps Ravela would become bored and leave. April picked up her cell phone, then put it down, turned on the TV, turned it off. She leafed through a glossy magazine and felt hopeless.
April then spotted the pamphlet she had picked up in the foyer of the hotel entitled “The True Story of the Treasure of Solvidado’s Romeo and Juliet.” It was a foolish tale about a wealthy young woman, Penelope Boller, and a bank robber, Thomas Deering, who fell in love. When they were found out, they committed suicide by driving a wagon over a cliff. They were buried the way they died—locked together in each other’s arm. This incident might have been forgotten except before he tried to elope with Penelope, Thomas had hidden the profits of his labor—one thousand double gold eagles it was rumored—somewhere in the neighborhood. Ever since then, treasure hunters had scoured Solvidado and its environs looking for the treasure.
A guide book had referred to the incident, and on the way to their hotel, April and Philip had stopped off at Point Diego Partida where the couple had plunged to their deaths. April had been in high spirits all afternoon until that turnoff. She was still laughing when she gazed at the surf churning in the rocks a sheer hundred feet below. Suddenly, an offshore gust of wind plucked the wide-brimmed hat off her head. It soared a few dozen yards into the blue sky and then glided down to the water beyond the waves and floated away, becoming finally a speck on the southern current.
As easy to lose a life as a hat, April thought. Then she felt a sudden crazy almost irresistible impulse to join her hat. If it hadn’t been for Philip’s hand on her shoulder, she might have. Unaccountably, the spell had been broken. She had lost hope and joy, although she pretended with all of her might she hadn’t.
“Now I don’t want any amateurish attempts at suicide like when you were a teenager. Swallowing a bullet is most effective, but you made the mistake of marrying a man who doesn’t carry a concealed weapon, and you can’t exactly ask room service for one. I think a long fall onto jagged rocks might be the ticket—that would be conclusive and dramatic.”
“Pills are easier, and I don’t have to walk through the hotel lobby again. I’ll take them all, even the birth control ones. You’ll see: I’ll do it right this time.” April raised her hand to silence Ravela’s protest, and Ravela stepped back, deciding to watch mutely.
Just to be sure, April emptied the medicine cabinet and her purse onto the night table. Aside from the three months of birth control pills, there were forty Tylenols, sixty aspirins, a package of breath mints, an unwrapped cigar from Philip’s bachelor party, and perhaps most promisingly a bottle of codeine cough syrup which some
how had gotten mixed up with the medicines.
Then April remembered the unopened bottle of champagne in the refrigerator they had been saving for the official consummation of their union. She retrieved it and popped open the cork, letting the frothy liquid spill over her and the bedclothes, then took a deep gulp, gagged for she hated alcohol in any form, and sipped again, wondering if that alone might do the job. The beautiful lifeguard suddenly came to mind.
“He would have screwed you if you had been prettier,” Ravela sneered. No, he couldn’t rescue her this time. April swept the aspirins into the palm of her hand.
Suddenly, a scuffling and scratching sound on the balcony distracted her. A breeze billowed out the curtain drawn across the sliding glass door.
“Who’s there?” April let the pills scatter back on the night table, pulled the cover from the bed, draped it around herself, and summoning all her anger, intoned, “Philip, I never believed you would sink so low…”
There was no response. She approached the balcony cautiously, peered through the chink in the curtain at the dying sunset and switched on the outside light. “Phil, I don’t appreciate this joke; I really don’t,” she said for good measure.
However, she saw nothing but two lounge chairs and a small cast-iron table that the sea air had started to corrode. A gull alighted on the railing, gazed at her out of one eye, and then strutted up and down, making a noise similar to the one she had heard. April laughed. Oh! It seemed a century since she had laughed. She slid the door completely closed and returned to the bed.