This Body

by Laurel Doud

  “Oh, around one hundred and fifty.”

  He laughed. “Archival-quality printed and matted? Like these?”

  “Oh, no. Not like those.” Like those? How was she going to print them properly? I doubt the local photo store is appropriate. “Just ones my sister and I liked.”

  “Okay. Well, bring them down, and we'll have a look.” He glanced up at her and grinned, humoring her. “One hundred and fifty is a bit much. I mean, that's a lifetime's work, and you're not even dead yet.”

  Katharine dropped her eyes. “But they're okay? You'll show them?”

  “Absolutely. They're wonderful.”

  “I think so too,” Katharine said wistfully as she looked at them.

  They grow on you. Maybe I didn't like them at first but …

  She started. “I mean …”

  “I know. I understand. Sometimes we wonder how we did it. It's like we were a different person. I think of it as a form of divine inspiration, so when we're back in our own bodies, it's not from egotism that we compliment ourselves. We're complimenting the inspiration that flowed through us for a time.”

  She nodded as if she understood, and said nothing.

  “So you've got twenty here, and another hundred and fifty to look through. How 'bout Friday?”

  Katharine thought two days ahead. “Friday's okay.”

  “Wonderful. Say, four o'clock. My assistant will be here by then.”

  It had been an eventful week so far. I bear a charmed life. Sort of.

  The goals she had set, the feats she had to accomplish, the promises she had made, the wheels she had set in motion, were being realized. In order to be able to go home — when she was ready to go home — these things had to be completed. She had found Quince a job, and she would have Thisby's exhibit.

  It was almost scary how simple it seemed to be.

  Act 2, Scene 6

  Some of us are cursed with memories like flypaper.

  — ROBERT STEPHENS, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

  Quince was over at eight o'clock the next morning. Katharine wasn't ready. She had thought she would walk Quince to the veterinary clinic as if it were her first day of school, but Quince barely leaned in, dropped her overnight stuff by the front door, waved good-bye, and said she'd be back around five.

  Katharine felt hurt by this dismissal.

  For God's sake, don't be like your mother.

  She had a flashback to her mother on the sidewalk in front of their house, watching Katharine walk the length of the street to the corner. There Katharine would meet a classmate, and they would walk the rest of the way to school together. She remembered the feel of her mother's eyes on her back. Katharine would have to physically stop herself from turning around. It always felt as if her mother were right behind her; she could practically feel her mother's breath on the edge of an ear. Katharine would walk straight ahead, without one unnecessary movement. Her arms hung straight at her sides, her hands keeping the lunchbox and book bag from swinging, her head level. It wasn't that her mother ever said anything about her demeanor; she never did. But Katharine didn't want her to see, didn't want her to mark any part of her. When she reached the corner and had to turn around, she wished that once — just once — her mother would have already gone back into the house. But no, now it was Katharine's turn. She had to watch and make sure her mother got to the front door and into the house safely, her mother's last little wave another tug on the knot.

  Katharine walked nervously into Mulwray's office later that morning. He had called the night before and said he had some information for her; she had fretted and fidgeted ever since, as if she were truly awaiting the ghost dentist with his bite blocks and drill bits.

  This time there was a young woman dressed like a European model behind the sliding glass window. The desk in front of her was clean.

  Katharine gave her name to the receptionist, who picked up the phone and said into the receiver, “Miss Bennet is here to see you.”

  A voice bellowed from the back office, “Kelly, just send her back.”

  Kelly stood up and leaned toward the window and Katharine. “My name's really Sabrina, but Mr. Mulwray says he calls all his temps Kelly. Isn't that cute?”

  “Darling.”

  Sabrina let her in and escorted her back to the office. “Miss Bennet, Mr. Mulwray,” she announced at the doorway and turned away.

  Mulwray waved her in. Katharine could see all the furniture, and the files were in neat manageable stacks on the low bookcase. He got up and closed the door behind Katharine and motioned her to one of the two chairs in front of the desk. He sat down again and looked at the top file tab on a stack of folders at his right elbow.

  “So” — he centered the file squarely in front of him —“preliminary information was rather easy to find, as you intimated.” He lifted up the top single sheet of paper. “On Tuesday, June twenty-first of last year, at two twenty-two A.M., Katharine Rachel Ashley suffered sudden cardiac death.”

  “Sudden cardiac death?” TB's heart seemed to cramp, and Katharine tried to relax it by breathing methodically. “Is that different” — she breathed —“from a heart attack?”

  He took a minute to silently read further and then read out loud, “Sudden cardiac death is an electrical phenomenon that throws off the rhythm of the heart. It's different from a heart attack, which occurs when a clot inside the artery causes a blockage of blood flow. Scientists believe that high anxiety and intense psychological stress may trigger episodes of irregular heart rhythms that lead to sudden death.” He looked up. “I didn't know what it was either and asked my researcher for clarification.” He then continued reading. “Mrs. Ashley was cremated Friday, June twenty-fourth, at the Sultenfuss Mortuary. Interred privately, and a memorial service was held in the Berlin Funeral Chapel, Saturday, June twenty-fifth. Reception followed at the deceased's home. The death notice is in the file.” He patted the folder. “Is this the kind of information you wanted?”

  Katharine nodded, her neck so stiff, the nod was almost imperceptible.

  “You'll get a copy of all this, but I like to go over it verbally. Then we both know whether I got the right stuff or not.” He looked back down, one hand silently tapping the blotter pad. “Philip Burton Ashley married Diana Christensen, Saturday, May twenty-seventh of this year, at her home on Hanover Street, where the couple and the two children now live.”

  “They moved? But I …” But I called them. I called my own number. She couldn't believe it; her old number now rang through to this Diana's house. She had never imagined them in any other place than familiar surroundings, at the kitchen table looking out on the planter boxes filled with the current flowering annual, or Ben leaning back in the one of the precarious dining-room chairs, watching Japanese spy shows on cable TV for the heck of it, Marion and her homework littered across the table. She felt her grasp on them slip.

  “Yes, but it's in the same school district, so the children don't have to change schools.”

  “Is it a big house?” Jesus, I can't believe you asked that.

  “I have pictures.” He gestured to a manila envelope in the file but didn't bring it out. “They had their honeymoon in Vegas.”

  You gotta be joking.

  “The children stayed with friends, though our contact did find out the son spent a great deal of time in the house at Ten Navarone Drive under the auspices of getting it ready for rental. He did have a large house party, and the police were called out to disperse it.”

  Katharine couldn't help but smile wryly. That's my boy.

  “The new couple seem to be financially stable, though Mrs. Ashley is still paying off the last of her college loans. There was a good life-insurance policy out on the former Mrs. Ashley. A double indemnity, in fact.”

  I took that out.

  “We're working on getting a contact in the school or the district office with access to the computer. I'm optimistic that we'll be able to get you a copy of their transcripts. As
far as the more personal items, like copies of letters sent home? I don't know. That will be iffy. We'll try, but we'll need to go slow on that. At least, until the school year is closer at hand.” He seemed to wait for Katharine to say something, but she couldn't trust herself to open her mouth. “As for their current activities, the daughter isn't doing much that's organized this summer. She isn't working or going to summer school, though she is taking tennis lessons at the club.”

  “The club?”

  Mulwray glanced through the file and found another sheet of paper. “They belong to Club Paradise Swim and Racket Mrs. Ashley had a single membership and now, of course, it's a family membership. Nice place.”

  “Oh.”

  “The boy, Ben, has a part-time job at Federal Security Bank.”

  “He has a job at a bank?”

  “Yes, he works nine to five three days …”

  But he would have to wear a tie! I couldn't even get him to wear a clean T-shirt. What is this? I die, and my children turn into Republicans?

  He checked his notes. “We don't know when or how the current Mrs. Ashley and Mr. Ashley met, but I'm encouraged that we will. People have been very free with information so far.” Mr. Mulwray picked up yet another sheet of paper. “Diana Ashley was born Diana Faye Christensen, thirty-three years ago —”

  I knew she was young.

  “ — in Santa Ynez, California. She graduated from CalPoly in communications and got her MBA from UC Berkeley. She works for United Broadcasting System. It's quite a large network. She's a member of the American Association of University Women, Business and Professional Women's Foundation, Women in Cable, and Women in Broadcast Technology. She also belongs to one of those local businessman's — excuse me, businessperson's breakfast clubs. This is her first marriage, and she has no children of her own.”

  Yeah, so she had to go out and steal mine.

  “You should be receiving the local newspaper soon — let me know if you don't — and when school starts again, we'll get you the school paper. Well” — he leaned back with a decided air of satisfaction —“I would say that was an auspicious beginning. Don't you agree?”

  Katharine nodded.

  Well, you asked for it.

  Mulwray seemed a little disappointed that she didn't say anything. “Do we agree to continue on the projected course, then reevaluate after school has been in session for a few weeks?”

  She nodded again and paid him for the information.

  “I know it seems like a lot of money,” Mr. Mulwray said with some chagrin.

  The price I'm paying now is not monetary.

  Mr. Mulwray said he'd call her in a couple of weeks, and Katharine took the file and the envelope of pictures, nodded to the temp, and went out.

  After she cried, arms over the steering wheel, head pressed against the spokes, wishing they would slice and dice her brain like a Veg-o-Matic, she sat in Thisby's car and looked at the manila envelope in her lap, her stomach roller-coastering though her lower intestines. Her hands shook when she pinned aside the brad, raised the flap, and pulled out the photos. They were all 8 × 10 black-and-whites. In her newly acquired knowledge Katharine thought that they were rather sterile but well taken, balanced and focused with good contrast. The top photo was of Ben and Marion coming out of a ranch-style house, heavily landscaped with low-maintenance junipers and evergreens. They were laughing, Ben's arm outstretched toward Marion as if he were in the process of playfully jabbing her in the shoulder. Ben was indeed in a tie, white shirt, and slacks, Marion in tennis gear. They looked older, taller, more mature than Katharine remembered them.

  They look glorious.

  The next picture was of Philip and, presumably, the new Mrs. Ashley, also coming from the house on their way to work. Katharine could even see it. He has just kissed her good-bye, holding her left hand with his right. They are leaning toward their respective automobiles, but their hands are still clasped just before the moment of release. Philip looks happy, relaxed, full — rich in love. Diana is tall and thin, wearing a tailored suit and tasteful gold jewelry that gleams even in the black-and-white photo. When did this kind of woman attract him? With her good clothes and her good connections? He never commented on this type. He never followed them with his eyes as they wove their way around tables in downtown restaurants carrying their practical briefcases and expensive purses.

  There were a couple more photographs of Marion at the club, of Ben going in and out of the bank. There was a picture of Philip and Diana at a restaurant. They have been given a window table, and the shot is taken from outside. They are talking earnestly, hands held across the table. Katharine imagined the cameraman hiding somewhere across the empty outdoor patio, huge telephoto lens glinting in the dying sunlight.

  She jammed the pictures back in the envelope, feeling dirty, as if she had just bought a National Enquirer featuring her own family, the paparazzi relentlessly dogging the happy couple. Voyeur. She felt drugged — Thisby's body heavy and dull, her mind slow and stupid. One year — and Ben and Marion already had lives she had no part in anymore. They were moving away from her so fast, she had no way of keeping up. As if from a long distance, she heard sounds — the pulling up of stakes, the snapping of roots — and she listened until there was nothing left to hear.

  That night Quince came home with a puppy in a box. It was a sad little thing with barely opened eyes. “You remember the puppies from the clinic? Well, the mother died,” she explained quickly. “She got something called eclampsia, or milk fever. The vets tried to save her, but they couldn't. It was awful. We couldn't just let the puppies die. We got all of them homes except one. This one. I couldn't just let him die. I have to feed him with a baby bottle every four hours. He would have died if I hadn't brought him here. No one else could take him. I couldn't just let him die. I …”

  “It's okay, Quince.” Katharine soothed her. “I don't mind. I'm not sure the super would be too happy if he knew, but I doubt” — she looked down on the barely moving mass not much bigger than her hand —“this one is going to be racing around and pissing on the carpet.”

  “What's with you these days? I thought you've always hated dogs.”

  “Me?” she asked incredulously and then realized who the “me” involved was — she had forgotten; she was no longer feeling such an identity crisis in this body. She ached to tell Quince how she loved dogs, how she knew just the right spot to scratch with just the right pressure, how she could correct Rathbone with one well-stressed word. “People can change, you know,” she said lamely. “I don't mind as long as you're the one who gets up to feed him. I hope you're a light sleeper. What kind of dog is he? I know the mother was a German shepherd.”

  “Conrad thinks the father was a Malamute.”

  “Oh, a small dog.”

  “He won't get real big for at least —”

  “It's okay, Quince,” Katharine assured her again.

  “I'm the only one who's supposed to handle him. Too many people, and he might get sick.”

  “Okay, he's all yours.” But the scent of the puppy made her want to scratch his little head. “Can you manage dinner?”

  “I plan to eat you out of house and home. I'm starved.”

  “A starved body has a skinny soul.”

  Quince looked perplexed. “I don't know that one. Falstaff?”

  Katharine smiled a little self-consciously. “Marlon Brando.” Quince continued to look puzzled. “Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata!” Katharine trailed off. “It's a movie. From the fifties.”

  “Umm. I like it. I wonder if Shakespeare said it first? I'll check the concordance.”

  Over take-out dim sum and tampopo noodles, Quince told Katharine about her day, the temperament and known history of the animals currently at the clinic. “Because we're so close to the University, we get a lot of animals that have just been abandoned. You know, the students leave for the summer or graduate, and they figure the animal can stay with the house or apartment, and the next guy will
take care of it. It doesn't always work out that way. The vets are really nice. They do a lot of stuff for free, and we try and adopt the animals out, so they don't have to go off to the Humane Society, or to Animal Regulation. That's where they get put down.” Quince visibly shuddered. “We also have a big program to spay and neuter animals. Real cheap, too. Sometimes we even get weird animals like snakes and birds and wild things. Conrad has a six-foot python at home that someone lost at a frat house and was found a couple of months later in an old Raiders' football helmet. He was so weak, he could hardly constrict enough to eat. Now he's fat and happy and named Reggie.”

  Quince, in turn, listened intently when Katharine told her about her meeting the day before with Max von Mayerling of the Ziegfeld-Zelig Gallerie, or the Zweimal, as its nickname appeared to be. “The Zweimal has good stuff,” Quince said knowingly. “I like it there. So when are you telling Dad?”

  Katharine had truly forgotten that she needed to do that. It was hard to remember that, as Thisby, she needed help from other adults for the exhibit to happen.

  “Now is a time to storm. Why art thou still?” Quince asked. “If this Max guy knows Dad, he might find out before you tell him.”

  Carpe diem?

  Katharine snapped apart the fortune cookie, the white strip of paper sticking out from one half like a tongue — “You will be fortunate in the opportunities presented to you.”

  “Hi … Dad. It's Thisby. Yes, Quince is here. She's fine. Yes, she's had quite a first day. I'll let her tell you about it later.” Looking over at Quince, who was feeding the puppy in her arms, she added, “She's made a lot of new friends. … I'm fine. … Well, that's kind of why I called.” Jesus, don't you think about anything else? “I've decided to take you up on your offer of the exhibit. … Yes, well, I changed my mind. … I — I already did that. I've got it set up …” — we know what we're doing — “Max von Mayerling at the Ziegfeld-Zelig Gallerie … Yes, the Zweimal. He says he knows you. … I'm glad you think so” — not that it would have mattered if you didn't. Well, maybe it would. You're controlling the money —“I meet with him again tomorrow. … Dad, please, if you don't mind, I'd like to take care of that part myself. I understand, but … ”— back off —“Quince is helping.” Quince looked up, rather surprised. “Okay, I'll call you this weekend.” Like hell. “And … thanks, Dad.”