This Body

by Laurel Doud

  “What? Okay, okay. Asian or Latina. Shit, you sound like Mom.”

  Katharine stretched her mouth in an unspoken response.

  “Maybe…,” Quince said slowly, not quite looking at Katharine, “Maybe I could find a job in Westwood, and then maybe I could stay with you.”

  Katharine stood very still, not even moving her eyes. How am I going to get myself out of this one?

  Bluff.

  “Okay. Will you let me look around first?”

  Quince's face lightened, but not too much.

  “Does it have to be for money?” Katharine suddenly thought to ask. What are you doing? I said, Bluff — don't get serious on me.

  “A job without money? What kind of job is that?”

  “Do you need money?” Like I need money?

  Quince started to respond, but then shifted. “I guess not. Dad gives me a pretty good allowance. It's not as much as my friends get, though.”

  Katharine smiled. She had heard this complaint before from both her kids.

  “But I don't want some stupid job taking care of kids or putting stuff on shelves or anything. And I won't change my hair. And I won't wear a uniform, like those pie places.”

  “Hey, you'd look pretty in pink. Okay. Okay. Pretty tough requirements, but I'll try.”

  “You'll call me?”

  “I'll call you. I promise.”

  Hard promises.

  No, it's okay. I can keep them and still do what I have to do.

  Yeah, right.

  Katharine hurried back outside and climbed into Puck's car before Anne or Robert could say anything else to her. She waved to Thisby's parents, and was off.

  Act 2, Scene 1

  I do perceive here a divided duty.

  — DESDEMONA, Othello, 1.3.180

  She was home alone.

  She stood in the apartment at a loss for what to do. On the way home, she had asked Goodfellow to come over for dinner Thursday night. He was suspicious, but he agreed.

  Katharine wasn't quite sure when she had started to think of Puck as Goodfellow. It happened before she even realized it. She guessed it was sometime after she had read the play, when she couldn't reconcile the character Puck with the brother Puck. For some reason, then, it was easier to think of him as Goodfellow.

  There was nothing to clean up in the apartment. No one had been there to mess it up. She had never lived on her own before. She had lived with her parents and commuted to the nearby college. She was married after her sophomore year, and traded two parents for one husband. She graduated from college six months' pregnant. A loner who's never lived alone.

  The tears that lately seemed always to be pressing against her ducts bubbled up and over. She used to savor the silence in her house when she was lucky enough to have it. But standing there in the silent emptiness, she realized that she had savored it because there had been balance.

  Savor the silence because in just a little while, life will come sweeping in the door — the kids, Philip — and the phone will start ringing, and the refrigerator door will open and close a hundred times. There'll be the sound of soda and beer cans popping, the rattle of chip bags. She swiped at the tears with the side of her hand.

  Cry-baby. It doesn't matter whether it's silent or noisy. What matters is that there's not a damned thing to eat in the apartment — you gotta eat something — and I don't have a goddamned red cent. She had Thisby's checks, and she was going to have to bounce one if Thisby didn't have any money in the bank. She went into the bedroom, got the checkbook, and stared at the blank where the balance should have been. She flipped the ledger closed and saw, written in Thisby's hand, the five digits with the word “PIN” after them.

  She listened, stunned, to the computerized bank teller as it recited Thisby's checking-account balance for the third time. Thisby had three months' worth of Katharine's household budget in just her checking account. This was real freedom. This was real independence. No wonder Thisby never kept track. How could she ever run out? Where did she get it? It was an outrageous fortune.

  Katharine could leave now. She didn't need to wait to be resurrected by other people's money. She could call up right now and buy a plane ticket. Bound for home.

  She picked up the bag she brought from the Bennets' and put it on the kitchen table, but then she let the handle slowly slip from her fingers. I can't just show up. He's married. I can't just show up looking like this. What if Thisby got herself —? What if I'm pregnant? What do I tell them? Where have I been? The thought of the confrontation, the explanations, the required energy, deflated her. Maybe I should wait a bit. Get healthy. Get strong. Hire a detective, maybe, to find out things. Then go. Okay. That's the Plan. In the meantime, she would go to the store and buy food, various household products, and a home pregnancy test.

  In the bathroom, she read the directions. When Marion was about seven or eight, Katharine had thought she was pregnant again. She had had a strange conflict of emotions. Pregnancy hadn't been easy on her, with the varicose veins, the morning sickness, the various postnatal infections, the neverending story of worry and sleeplessness. But even now, the remembered feel of having a life inside her — the kicks like karate jabs and the turning over like a slow-breaching whale — was incredible. If she had been pregnant again all those many years ago, then she would have had a reason to quit work, a reason to retrench. She didn't tell Philip but nursed the knowledge herself until it was a reality in her mind. She often thought that was the hardest thing for men to handle — the news. Women wrestle with the idea of pregnancy long before they ever become pregnant. By the time the woman gets around to telling the actual news, she's already dealt with it in some manner or other, and the man is always hurrying to catch up. But she never got to tell Philip anything. The home pregnancy test had been negative, and the final proof was the pale pink discharge heralding her period a couple of days later.

  This test took five minutes and promised 99 percent accuracy, even one day after a missed period. The medicine strip that she had soaked with her urine showed the minus sign, and there were no conflicting emotions this time. The muscles in Thisby's chest loosened, and her lungs expanded with relief — and a bit of joy. She had just herself to worry about now.

  Katharine had found some unopened birth control pills in the medicine cabinet, and as soon as TB had a period, she would start taking them. Or should she start taking them now and hope the periods would follow? She couldn't remember if it was okay to do that.

  Better a couple of messed-up cycles than getting pregnant.

  And just who are you planning to have sex with?

  Katharine decided to wait for the period before she started the pills.

  It was eight o'clock in the morning when she took up the phone and dialed the private investigator she had picked out the night before from the Yellow Pages. There were ads for decoy detectives who would entrap cheating spouses and for electronic debugging experts who would declare Thisby's apartment clean. There was even an ad for a discreet and confidential pet detective. She chose J. J. Mulwray for his modest ad, highlighting his expertise in child-recovery and adoption services.

  It was early, but the voice that answered sounded as if the person had been up for hours. “Mulwray here.”

  “Oh, Mr. Mulwray. I didn't expect … I'm wondering … I'd like to make an appointment with you to talk to you about some … things.”

  “Some … things?” He didn't try to soften his sarcasm.

  Katharine gripped the phone tighter. “I need some information … on some people.”

  There was a short pause before he spoke again. “Come over this afternoon. Tomorrow I'll be leaving for the next couple of days.”

  Katharine suddenly felt as though she were caught in a huge wave at the oceanside, forced along no matter how much she flailed her arms. The only thing to do was to ride it out and hope she didn't get slammed onto the sand with the breath completely knocked out of her. “Okay. Thanks.”

  Now what?r />
  She sat and looked at her hands. They were beginning to look comfortable as they lay so innocently in her lap, as if she knew them — as if they are someone to watch over me — as if they would respond quickly to her commands, do little things for her, like pick lint off sleeves without being asked or massage her temples when the headaches got too bad. Katharine stood up quickly and shook them, as if she were flinging something foul off them. They're not my hands. They're some dead girl's hands. They'll never be my hands.

  She paced the length of the living space and once more had mortal thoughts. I could be dead again. There were the bottles of pills in the cupboard. I can still OD on them. She always knew, for some strange reason, that she would die young. She used to think she was just being melodramatic — now it seemed she was clairvoyant — but she tried to tell Philip how she had always felt marked for an early death. She would not grow old with him. His family had hardy genes; he would probably live to ninety. She was tough, but she wasn't strong. It was just bravado and willpower. In everyday life, nothing knocked her flat, but she had always known that something — something big and nasty, something fatal — lurked just beyond the daylight. Something wicked this way comes. Maybe that was why she was always afraid of the dark. A grown woman who refused to walk into a dark room, who needed a light on in the bathroom so it would spill out into the bedroom, whose night shadows rose up immediately from the yawning netherworld when electrical power was lost.

  I just didn't realize that I would be so hard to kill.

  But now what was there to live for? She didn't even have the true grit to fight for what was hers. She had no family. No friends. She opened the cupboard and looked in. She had stacked the pill bottles in a pyramid so she could read all the labels easily.

  Lioness, my ass.

  Come on, I just need some time. Just a little time.

  She backhanded the base of the pill bottles and sent them flying against the rear of the cabinet. She thought that she should be crying now, but this body remained dry-eyed, as if still on a different frequency. Where are the tears now, when I want to cry?

  She was dead certain of one thing. It was suddenly clear in her mind, exposed and tingling like a raw nerve. I want to live. I want to live anyhow, anyway I can. I can't do differently. I'm staying alive.

  So she did what she had always done when too many warring feelings threatened to overwhelm her. She pushed forward, pushed through. You just keep going and get to the other side.

  She picked up Thisby's diary and started to read.

  … Sometime when I am older, I am going to be a famous photographer. I am going to go all over the world and take pictures of famous people. I will be famous then too. Maxie and Puck can come with me …

  Katharine lay on the couch a couple of hours later. She had just finished reading Thisby's diary for the second time. She felt like a vampire who has just drunk in his latest soul. There was a sense of shared space within her, though the space was finite, as there would be no more growth for Thisby.

  The diary was not long, and there were huge gaps between entries, often leaving Thisby's thoughts and concerns isolated and unresolved.

  The first entry was dated when she was eight, the last at seventeen.

  … Daddy taught me how to use the telephoto lens. It's not that hard. I could tell D was proud I learned so fast. He made me memorize “Say, I taught thee.” It's from one of the Henrys. I can't remember which one. Who cares anyways … Maxie and Puck took Quince Prologue — I secretly call her Kewpie — to the park. She's only a year old and can't even walk. Everyone feels sorry for her with her ugly lip. Puck's real weird about it. I didn't want to go, so I went into the darkroom. I spilled some fixer on the counter. I think I got it all up. I hope D doesn't find out … Not that he's ever around …

  … I'm supposed to keep a logbook of my photos. You know, of the f-stops and the shutter speeds and stuff. Dad says I have to. He's going to check it when he comes home from the road. It's an exercise in thinking about technique, he says. I'm doing it but it's stupid. Thinking just gets in the way. I don't want to be Ansel Adams. I just see something and react. If you wait for settings, the picture's gone. At least, mine are …

  … Puck thinks he's so cool calling me Lady Ophelia cuz he can swim and I can't. I try to swim but I keep sinking. Puck says I sink like an army …

  … I'm not doing very well in school. I thought junior high would be different. Puck tries to tell me what to do. Just because Dad isn't around much, Puck thinks he's the father and all. Yeah, right …

  … Lunch. I hate it. You stand around in a circle and one by one everybody leaves and you're left alone standing there like some geek. Then you have to go break in on some other circle and sometimes people pretend that you're not even there. They make me so mad, I want to rip their heads off …

  … I bring my camera to school now and take pictures at lunch and break. Now I can leave the circle and have a reason to go to another. It's amazing what fools do in front of a camera. Suddenly everyone wants to be a star. I do funny things to them in the pictures and they don't even know it. I take one good picture that I give to them. Some of them don't even say thanks. Then I take other pictures that make them look weird. It's easy. You just have to change the angle sometimes …

  She felt a sudden twitch of envy. Katharine, being one of the outsiders, had watched that inner circle when she was a teenager. She had stood there many a time while it slowly collapsed in on itself and left her its sole survivor. Thisby had had her camera, but Katharine had had no buffer at all. Not even at home. Her parents needed her to protect them. She had never said, Go ahead, lean on me, but they did, pressing their weight on her as if she were the adult. At stores, she spoke for them while they stood a little way back, looking bewildered and bemused at this new and strange world and at this child who was their bridge. But her parents weren't Old World. Their ancestors had come to the United States generations ago. They were Americans raised on Fords and Quaker Oats and the righteousness of Uncle Sam. But for some reason they felt incapable of handling the outside world, and since there was nobody else to do it, Katharine did. Good ol' Katharine. They didn't even worry that she might get into trouble or why she was good. She just was. I was.

  Thisby had lost herself and tried to find someone else in drugs and, no doubt, in sex, overlaying her alienation with synthesized bravado. What happened to Thisby that didn't happen to Katharine?

  I never got into drugs, and I certainly could have, considering the times.

  Bullshit, you were just chickenshit about getting caught. It wasn't that you were better than anyone else or knew something no one else knew. You were just scared shitless.

  But Philip fell in love with her, and he was no Goody Two-shoes. He had been through a lot of bad experiences before her, though he probably would not call them “bad” — just growing pains. Is that why the kids related better to him? He knew what it was like to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight, and I didn't?

  Philip saved pictures of himself: pictures taken at fraternity parties, at parties at the house he rented with a couple of other guys. There was one picture in particular that had always fascinated Katharine, though as the years went by, it became more of a bothered fascination. Philip is sitting in a camp chair, wearing only a pair of faded PE shorts and his ever present bandanna around his head. Sweat shines on his chest, and the waistband of his shorts is dark with moisture. He is in the backyard of his rented house — filling his navel, Philip liked to call it, collecting sweat until rivulets burst over the rim to run down into the waistband of his shorts. A cigarette is in one hand and a fat beer bottle is in the other — a Mickey's Big Mouth Malt Liquor, a brew that smelled like skunk to Katharine. Philip's eyes are unfocused, and there's a slackness, a vacuousness about his mouth.

  Philip's roommate, Al, had bet that Philip couldn't drink eighteen Big Mouths in twelve hours without puking or passing out. Philip had taken the bet. On a hot summer Saturday at noon,
Philip drank his first Big Mouth. Al brought out his tape recorder and played the event like a radio interview, thrusting the mike in her face as she put out food and drink. “Well, what do you think the odds are now? How's our boy looking?”

  Philip sat outside in the hot sun, taking audience with the friends who came by to see how things were progressing. Katharine hadn't been with Philip long and had watched, amazed and slightly horrified. It wasn't just that she had never been with anyone like him — she had never even imagined being with anyone like him. She didn't know what he saw in her — she knew his friends didn't know what he saw in her either — but for once in her life, she was willing to just go with it and not analyze it too much.

  In three hours Philip downed twelve Big Mouths and, though a little buzzed, seemed to be holding it together. It looked like a sure thing. More and more people showed up, and Al greeted them to get their assessment of Philip's chances for posterity.

  It was the dreaded thirteenth Big Mouth in the fourth hour that took out Philip, puking what seemed like gallons of skunky-smelling beer and then passing out on the lawn.

  For years Philip lamented that his mistake had been a lack of pacing, that his strategy was off, and he often threatened to try the bet again.

  Katharine often dreamed that Philip had returned to his wild life. The dreams had been quite frequent before she died. Were things really bad between us just before I died? Had I already lost him to Diana, or the idea of a Diana, and didn't even know it? Life was so stressful with the kids and her health and the job and money. She and Philip found things to do separately, but then they didn't talk about them when they were together again, each having lost too much background. Together alone. Then not wanting to leave the house at night for fear of Ben doing something stupid. As if staying home would be some sort of protection against stupidity. Not leaving on weekends. Hardly even going out. She would watch movies, and Philip would read and go to bed early. She would stay up until Ben would come home or lie awake in bed until she heard the rasp of his door opening while Philip slipped in and out of his card-flapping snores.