This Body

by Laurel Doud

  Katharine never quite got over the toxic shock scare in the seventies. She was never fond of tampons to begin with, having inserted her first one in secret, incorrectly, with the cardboard sheathing still on, her mother having thrown away the directions. After all, she didn't need them, and who would have thought ten-year-old Katharine would start her period so soon?

  Later on Katharine was tired of sticking things, or having them stuck, up her — the IUDs and speculums and cervical scrapers and fingers and even penises. The toxic shock scare took care of ever using tampons again, even when they were deemed safe. When Marion asked for her first tampons, Katharine had kept her mouth shut. She was proud of herself. To tell Marion of her fears was too much of a burden for a young girl, and anyway, what if Katharine was wrong? Maybe it was just her. It wasn't as if it were going to change anything anyway. She never saw Marion's underwear soiled. Did even her daughter know the secrets she didn't? Did Marion learn from her friends or just know — an inbred skill of which Katharine was ignorant, a certain gene that skipped a generation?

  Katharine knew that Thisby had problems with her period —

  … I still haven't started my period. Maxie did this year. I'm getting boobs and there's a little hair under my arms. Everybody at school has started. I'm the only one who hasn't. …

  … My mother made me go to the doctor about my period. I've got pubes but no period. I had to lie on this table and stick my feet in these baskets so the doctor could stick his hand up my cunt. The doctor made some remark about my being a virgin, which pissed me off royally. Then he told me I didn't have anything to worry about and he put me on the Pill, supposedly to bring on my period and regulate it. Well, I mind as well put it to its other use …

  — and maybe Thisby's drawers would reveal something.

  But Katharine didn't find what she was looking for.

  I guess I was a freak.

  Thursday came, and she was glad. She felt that it was time for the sleeper to awaken, to come out of the coma. It was time to come back to the living.

  She went out to buy food for her dinner with Goodfellow. He had called the night before to make sure it was still on. It was lovely to hear a real voice. She could carry on only so many conversations in her head.

  As she walked to the store, that uncertain feeling of being at a perpetual masquerade continued, but she began to feel a sense of freedom. She was in costume, playing a part, and having had that part sketched in, she could now develop the character while remaining anonymous herself.

  Katharine found herself looking at reflections of Thisby as she walked down the business section, her profile flitting from one windowpane to the next. As she headed toward a glass door, she framed Thisby in it and watched how she walked, how she held her head, what she did with her arms. Katharine used to make it a habit to walk straight at the seams around the doors so her own reflection would be sucked into the trough. She avoided mirrored walls at fast-food restaurants and washed her hands with head bowed in restrooms. She was always fascinated by the girls and women who could preen in front of mirrors in restrooms, applying makeup, brushing hair and adjusting skirts and pantyhose. She was still watching in fascination, for now it was an exterior that masked her interior.

  And the mask was a young one. Here was an opportunity to be twenty-two again, though at twenty-two, Katharine had already been a wife and a new mother. Katharine had to admit to herself that she wanted a second chance at that young blood. Thisby wasn't a child: she was old enough to be on her own, with her own money and her own place. But she was still young and, therefore, attractive. Katharine noticed that about her children's friends too. Their naïveté, their energy made them beautiful. They all complained, boys and girls, about their bodies, big or small, and their skin, clear or pimply, and their noses and hair, but Katharine found them all adorable — that young flesh with all its imperfections. It glowed with — what? The full flush of their youth?

  What is youth? She never knew. She was born with an old soul. Her parents recognized it immediately and took advantage of it. Is youth the tasting of the infinite possibilities of being? She definitely hadn't tasted that, since so many of the possibilities had been decided for her by other people. What was my culpability in all of that? I was needed. I needed to be needed. But being needed is what drains youth, what pales the flush. Katharine realized, after her long hours on the balcony porch, that it was not just time and gravity that sagged the butt, the breasts, the shoulders, but the weight of family, of tradition, of responsibility, of need. The roots, the tendrils of that weight slowly dig in over the years and settle firmly in one place, holding fast, holding firm, binding.

  Could she avoid that weight now, in her new body? Did she really have another chance at youth? Or would it just be new trappings over the same old soul?

  When she came home, the message machine was blinking. Oh, God, what if it's Goodfellow, and he can't come tonight? What if he's going to be late for dinner? She danced a bit out of frustration and then pushed the button. She was immediately relieved when the voice wasn't Goodfellow's, but then she recognized it as the man who had left messages before. “It's Hook. Gondorff said he saw you on the street the other day. When'd you get back? Haven't stung your old friends, have you? Call me.”

  She erased the message quickly and went into the kitchen to open one of the bottles of merlot she had purchased that afternoon. After a glass or two, she felt better and decided to start preparing dinner. She found that she was excited — her first dinner guest. She needed onion-chopping music, so she found something that had a good beat.

  While stirring the spaghetti sauce, she stopped and set down her wineglass. “Number, please,” she said in a caricature of a man's voice. She held the dripping wooden spoon to her mouth, and answered in a teenybopper's voice, “Well, Dick, I give it a nine cuz you can dance to it.” She laughed.

  The doorbell rang.

  He's here!

  Katharine opened the door without looking through the security lens, and Puck stepped over the threshold.

  “Isn't it a little loud? I can hear it from the elevator.”

  She paused to listen. “Yeah, I guess it is.” She walked back to turn down the music. “I'm so glad you came. Take off your coat and tie. Do you want anything to drink?”

  He removed his coat and tie and draped them across the couch. Katharine noticed how long his fingers were as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and rolled up the sleeves to his elbows. “No, nothing. Not right now.”

  “I've got some wine.”

  “So I can see. No, thanks.”

  She recited, “Good wine is a good familiar creature.” Puck looked stonily at her. “It's from Othello. So how was work?” she asked as she headed back into the kitchen.

  There was a long pause. “When did you learn to cook?”

  Katharine just looked back at him and didn't answer; she didn't know how to answer.

  He shrugged and answered her question. “Work was good today. I actually got some things done.” He leaned against the counter. “We have a case pending, and I tracked down some evidence to substantiate our claim of copyright violation. That's when the law works for me.”

  “It's like a paper chase, isn't it?”

  “Yeah, I guess it is, but I like it. The rest of it, though? I don't know. But I gave Dad my word I'd stick it out for a year or two. I won't bail like some of the others. But it's not exactly what I'd hoped it would be.”

  Katharine thought about this for a while. “Yeah, I know. I was getting so bored with my job at the end, I felt sick. I mean, I had been doing all that jazz for close to —” Katharine looked at Puck, his face like granite again. You know, this is really getting old. I was just talking about work. No big … Oh, bloody hell.

  “What's this, Thiz?” Puck said sarcastically. “Pretending to relate to the common working girl? Give it up. You're a slacker, and you know it. You haven't worked a day in your life.”

  “She must … I mean �
�” What's wrong with me? Why can't I control myself?

  “A couple of weeks at Mom's store and filing papers in Dad's office is hardly what I call work. I think Mom is right. We should commit you.”

  Everything froze.

  Puck walked over to the counter and lifted up the bottle of wine and tilted it. A finger depth of wine sloshed to the side. “Having a few drinks, are we? I thought …”

  Katharine glared at him. Anger, at least, heated up the blood. “I'm not … I'm not …” She stopped to feel contact with Thisby's body, but it wasn't there. Drugs. Drugs. I thought it was drugs. Not alcohol. Never alcohol … I'm not an alcoholic. I've never been one. I've never had any trouble with alcohol. Just a couple of glasses of wine at home. Margaritas when I was out.

  Puck still held up the bottle, displaying it. It seemed to throb. I drank that entire bottle, and I don't even remember doing it. I was spilling my guts to Goodfellow about my other life, and I wasn't even aware of it. I may not be an alcoholic, but TB is. … And, therefore, I am … one … too.

  Katharine slumped down on the kitchen stool, the pressure building up behind her eyes. I don't want to play the crying game. But this body was taking over again.

  “When are you going to figure it out?”

  There was such self-righteousness in his voice, the Puck of old, that Katharine stood up, yanked the bottle from his hand and whipped it against the utility-room door. It shattered, and the red wine dripped down to pool at the base of the door.

  Katharine was stunned, the anger immediately dissipating. She looked at the glass scattered over the floor. She was too petrified to look sideways at Puck. “I'm so sorry.” Puck made no sound beside her. She got a broom, and Puck started to pick up the large pieces. Katharine saw the hard line of his jaw twitch.

  “You know,” she confessed slowly, “I've always wanted to do something like that. Just like in the movies.” She ran a hand through her hair. “Funny. It helps too.” She looked around again at the floor. “It makes a mess though, doesn't it?”

  He didn't respond. Breaking a bottle like that was something Thisby would have done, and probably did, regularly.

  By the time they sat down to dinner, Katharine was not feeling too terrific, but she didn't know whether it was the wine or the shock of almost exposing herself that soured her stomach. Puck seemed willing to fill the silence, and she was willing to listen as best she could through her raging headache. She did find out that he was a lawyer at his father's studio. His new girlfriend, Vivian Ward, was “a very pretty woman, but a hard-ass in the courtroom.” The firm she worked for was prestigious and recruited only the best and the brightest and the most ruthless people. They both billed long hours and didn't see much of each other. “I admire her,” he told Katharine. “She knows what she wants.”

  Puck refused wine with dinner, and the thought of it alternately called and repulsed her. The world was shrinking in on her. It was as if she were in a daguerreotype, and the edges of the image were being eaten away by shadows and fog. She tried to hide her distraction from Puck, and by the time he left, after she had silently handed him the unopened bottle of wine and he took it without comment, she was almost reeling but promised to call him “real soon.”

  Katharine slowly finished cleaning up, trying to shore up the barriers between her mind and this body. The distinctions were getting blurred, had been getting blurred, slowly, unevenly, but without her knowledge. She was losing the sense of what was her, Katharine, and what might have been Thisby.

  There's a price. There's always a price. Maybe in order to be the exorcist — to get her out of my head — I must perform a sacrifice. Maybe before I can go home again, I must accomplish a feat, a labor.

  Then maybe she'll leave me alone, and I can live my own life.

  . . .

  It was a little after 11:30 P.M. when she called Quince on her own line. Katharine figured she wouldn't be asleep, and the sound of the music in the background proved her correct.

  “Are you doing anything this weekend?”

  “Lie abed till noon, then I shall be dogged with company.”

  Katharine smiled weakly, not having the strength to respond out loud. “I was wondering if you could come over Saturday or Sunday.”

  “What? Hath your grace no better company?”

  “I need your help.”

  “With what?”

  “To go through some photos here.”

  “Why?”

  “To help me pick out the good ones.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need your help.”

  “Why? Okay, okay. Can I spend the night?”

  Christ.

  Oh, go on. Why not? Play the sister act.

  “Okay. I'll come pick you up around two o'clock on Saturday.”

  “I can get there myself.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Katharine was not overly anxious to see Thisby's parents for a while.

  Katharine lay in bed. It's been decided. Katharine's family, no doubt, had given her body a funeral or, at least, a memorial service. Some sort of last rites. Even if they didn't, people knew she had died. They mourned her. I assume. But there had been no funeral for Thisby, no memorial. Not even any grief. Thisby's dead, and no one knows but me.

  And maybe this would be enough for atonement. Maybe this would be the right offering to deflect all the Bennet women. She would take Thisby's father up on his offer of a photographic exhibit. It would be Katharine's memorial to Thisby. She would produce an exhibit, “The Photographs of Thisby Flute Bennet.”

  A posthumous retrospective.

  Act 2, Scene 4

  I will not permit you to have two families, no matter what their problems are

  — SHANNON WILCOX, Six Weeks (1982)

  Quince appeared about three o'clock, decked out in faded jean shorts and a T-shirt with SAVE THE WORLD across it and shod in purple sneakers. She had attached a chain from her nose ring to an earring, and it swayed across her left cheek like a jump rope. Katharine cringed as she imagined the chain getting caught on something, and the nose ring ripping apart all that cosmetic surgery.

  Quince threw her overnight bag in the bedroom and looked around. “You've cleaned up.”

  Katharine was unsure whether Quince thought this was a good thing. “Yeah, I did. Did Mom bring you over?”

  “Yeah, right.” Quince gave her a withering look. “I hitched.”

  “You what?”

  “I hitched. How'd you expect me to get here? By taxi?”

  “There's a bus stop right out in front.”

  “Gimme a break.”

  “I never would have let you —” Katharine stopped.

  A hitcher?

  You are not her parent.

  “I'll come get you the next time.”

  Quince shrugged. “So what are we doing?” she asked, eyeing the boxes lined up on the floor in the dining area.

  “We're going to go through those and pick out the photographs we think should be exhibited.”

  Quince looked up sharply. “You changed your mind?”

  “It just happened.”

  Quince shrugged and knelt down. “I never could figure why you were such a wench about it. You could be famous. The Lewis Hine of Slummed LA.”

  Katharine knew the name from Thisby's trip to New York.

  … We took a flight to Rochester and saw the Lewis Hine Collection of Social Documentary photographs at the George Eastman House. Hine photographed a lot of immigrants at Ellis Island and the poor, the coal miners and stuff. He did a lot of action shots and liked weird angles, climbing up on things and shooting down.

  They had other photographers, too. I'll never forget this one photo. It was of this narrow street lined with tall apartment buildings and dead trees. It was taken from above, at least three stories up. There was an ambulance in the street. The guys were bringing someone out on a stretcher. The lights on the ambulance were flashing and lighting up the area around the car. That was it. But it was
n't. If you looked closer, you could see people like storefront dummies at the windows in the apartment building across the way, barely visible but backlighted by the TV screens behind them. It was really eerie. I liked it …

  Quince opened up a box and looked through the top layer. “You've marked up a lot of these contact sheets.” She pointed to hand-drawn lines that cut across the tops and sides of the exposures. “Did you print these up with the new crops?”

  “I … I don't know. I don't remember.”

  She snorted and shook her head. “Okay, so what do you want me to look for?”

  “Let's just separate the ‘like’ from the ‘dislike’ for now.”

  “So you're adding to your portfolio?”

  Portfolio? What portfolio? I haven't found that. Shit. “Yeah.”

  Quince grunted, then folded and rocked herself into a comfortable lotus position.

  “Do you want a Coke or something before we start?”

  Quince had stacked photographs and contact sheets in her lap. “No, I'm okay.” She began to spread them out around her like lily pads until she was awash in a pond of pictures. Katharine watched Quince study each photo critically. This was another incarnation of Quince Katharine would have to get to know. And she seems knowledgeable about photography. Katharine picked up her own stack and started going through it, but very slowly; she kept checking the photos Quince was interested in.

  Surprisingly, it was Katharine who asked if she could put on some music; Quince was completely absorbed. But about five o'clock, Quince straightened up and announced, “Cigarette break. Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.”

  Katharine sensed something sit up excitedly in this body, but she quickly tamped it back down. “I don't smoke anymore, and you need to go outside if you do.”