This Body

by Laurel Doud

  Always. Happily ever after.

  What a lot of Harlequin romance bullshit.

  She watched Philip and Diana, their heads touching as they spoke quietly to each other.

  Does he play DJ for you while you're doing the dishes? Does he come into the kitchen and dance for you — the Funky Chicken, the Frug, and a very bad but energetic Running Man? He could make her laugh so, grabbing her hands encased in soapy, industrial rubber gloves. “Here comes the dip,” he'd warn her.

  It had been years since he'd dipped her, and washing dishes had become yet another drudge.

  Do you bake him chocolate chip cookies?

  Katharine rested her fingertips on the inside of her other wrist and thought she had flatlined again. There seemed to be no vital signs at all, but then she realized there were entire oceans between her heartbeats. She had to do something, or she would drown.

  “Marion would like a dog.”

  Everyone started, and Philip blinked, trying to digest this bit of information. “Diana's afraid of dogs.”

  Diana's mouth opened.

  “All dogs?” Katharine upstaged her, ignoring Philip.

  “I … Big dogs scare me.” No one spoke, though Philip appeared to be wrestling with himself in order not to elaborate for her. Diana looked trapped, and struggled to explain. “I was bitten one summer when I was about seven. We had rented a cabin up in the mountains.” She spoke directly to Katharine again, as if she were the most important person to convince. “I got surrounded by a pack of dogs. They weren't wild or anything. Not always, I mean. I was walking around the small lake, and they charged out from the trees. I had been told to stand still around charging dogs, so I did. They ringed around me. It made me dizzy, trying to keep all of them in my sight. And they kept moving, circling to the right, then to the left, weaving from side to side. Then one jumped at me.” She bent up her right arm, and there was a jagged edge of puckered skin. “He drew blood, of course. Even at seven, I knew the smell of the blood would drive the others crazy. I screamed. That backed away all of them except the one who had bitten me. He was crazy. Not rabid. Just mean crazy. He was going to bring me down, and I was going to die. I knew it, and I didn't know how to stop it.”

  True shuddered next to Katharine. “Shit.”

  Philip sat silently, holding Diana's hand, watching her closely.

  “Then one of the neighbors came and scared them away. He drove me down to the county hospital with his shirt wrapped around my arm. Forty stitches. A couple of days later I had to pick out the dogs that had attacked me. A doggie lineup.” She tried to laugh. “I couldn't. They all looked alike, and the dog that had bitten me wasn't there. Him, I would have known. My mother was told later in the summer that they had found him. He'd gone completely feral, and they destroyed him.”

  Philip looked up at Katharine with a see-I-told-you-so challenge.

  “I know Marion would really like a dog. … I don't think I'd mind a small dog,” Diana finished softly, and Philip swung his head around to make sure he had heard right.

  “A small dog?” Philip exclaimed. “I don't think so. She wouldn't stand for it.”

  Who in the hell is he talking about? Marion or me? Marion was right. I had the whole family convinced that the only dogs are big dogs. “It doesn't have to be a rodent, you know.” At Katharine's choice of words, Katharine noticed Philip shiver. Good. “As a matter of fact, there's a Sheltie to adopt where Quince works that's full-grown but only about twenty-five pounds. She's the sweetest thing. Marion already loves her.”

  Diana smiled shyly at Philip. “Maybe we could go by tomorrow. Just to look.”

  He shrugged and looked almost threateningly at Katharine. She stared right back at him.

  Take that … Phil.

  He looked away.

  Tears welled up in her eyes. So that's it. She wasn't even worth a sarcastic retort. He had no connection with this young woman across the table from him. Why waste energy on her? She was not part of his family.

  Philip had indeed been a bit of a fuckup when she first met him, and he had wasted energy on so many useless or impossible things. Admittedly, that was what had initially attracted her. But he turned solid on her — so respectable and responsible — it was as if being a fuckup were only a passing fad to be dragged out at appropriate times to show her up in front of her own children. See how right-on and groovy I was?

  But maybe it was all her doing. Maybe it was she who took all the fun out of Philip.

  She picked up the glass of wine and tilted it to her mouth. It was like swimming: once learned, never forgotten. The wine burned her throat, and the voice that whispered was roaring gleefully in her ears.

  The evening was over, and the four people stood up, gathering their individual belongings and their individual thoughts. Katharine felt eroded; parts of her had been forever sluiced away.

  The men were a little ahead when Diana stopped her. “Thank you for bringing up the dog. Phil wouldn't talk to me about it. I really think I can handle a small dog, and Marion knows so much about them already. She really would like one. And maybe she would feel more comfortable in my house. Maybe my house would seem more like a home to her then.”

  Katharine barely looked at her.

  I don't give a rat's ass about you. I did it for Marion, not you. You can make your own fucking way with Marion.

  As Katharine was driving home, the evening whirled and barked around her like Diana's dogs, snarling and encircling her, making her dizzy as she tried to keep all of them in her sight and under control. They herded her toward the dark waters.

  I was too proud, too stubborn to let people know when I needed help. What an image I projected.

  Oh,fuck the self-pity.

  My daughter wouldn't talk to me because she thinks I never made any mistakes. My own husband felt unneeded and unappreciated; I could do it all with or without him.

  You did the best you could. What else can you expect?

  My family was falling down around my ears, and I wasn't going to change. I couldn't see a damned thing. I was too busy hanging on to what I thought was the only way — rigidity, rules, conformity, rightness.

  Don't worry. It will turn out all right. It always does. It was just meant to be.

  I can't be strong anymore. I don't want to be strong anymore.

  Never weaken! That's always been your motto.

  What a joke. What a theater of the absurd.

  She gave up and slipped into the drowning pool, letting the voices close in over her head.

  The best thing I ever did for my children was to die.

  Act 4, Scene 5

  Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;

  And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

  — HELENA, A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1.1.234

  She knocked on his door. It opened so quickly, she jumped back. It was only him, but he looked crazed, and it took a moment for his eyes to synchronize and focus.

  “God, that was fast.” He blinked myopically. “I just left the message. I didn't know what else to do.” He wandered back into the apartment, leaving her to follow.

  She had to shout down the voices that continued to thunder in her head. “What's wrong?” she said, now frightened. “What's happened? I haven't been home yet. I didn't hear your message. Is everyone okay?”

  He turned and looked at her blankly for a second. “No, everyone's okay. I mean, yes, everyone's okay. No, I don't mean that either. I'm not okay.” He sat down heavily on a kitchen chair, almost missing the seat. There was a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the table. “I called because Vivian left me. Irreconcilable differences.” She watched him fill his glass, how the tawny-colored liquid gathered and reflected the light. “That's what she said we had. Irreconcilable differences.” He had trouble with the word “irreconcilable,” and it came out “irrecable.”

  “She's moving up to San Francisco. She's leaving this weekend. Just like that. Already subletting an apartmen
t. Has a job. She probably already has a fucking boyfriend. What do I know? She says it's best this way. She says she was dying in my arms.”

  It felt as if she were suffering from hypothermia, stripped down and exposed, shivering from the center of her being. One voice that she had kept so successfully dampened, the voice that had watched and studied him — the way his hands looked while buttoning his shirtsleeves, how the line of his jaw changed when he was thinking, the curve of his pectoral muscles — that voice now had access and came forward softly.

  Then I envy her. If I were to die, there's nowhere else on earth I'd rather be.

  “Thiz, whaddam I gonna to do?” He took a small swallow from his glass, and she watched the muscles in his neck constrict. He stood up, the chair almost upending, and looked at her desperately.

  She went over and hugged him, her face in the hollow of his throat. He smelled warm and smoky, and she drank him in. It was better than wine.

  She stroked his back. She could feel how tense he was, how the muscles across his shoulders were ropy and strained. She kneaded them blindly with her fingertips, using the muscles' feel and dimension to guide her, and slowly, ever so slowly, they softened, and he began to feel like a man again instead of a cyborg encased in thin epidermis.

  “I-I don't feel so good,” she heard him groan through his throat. She stepped back, and his face had a satin finish.

  “Come on.” She put her arm around his waist and led him into the bedroom.

  She sat him down on the bed, pried the whiskey glass out of his hand, and put it on the nightstand. He fumbled with the belt of his khaki shorts. She helped him undo the buckle and slide off the shorts. He curled up on the bed in his boxer shorts. She started to leave, but he stopped her. “Don't go.”

  She closed the bedroom door, and the room was in total darkness.

  “Don't go,” he called louder.

  “I'm here.”

  She heard him settle back down.

  She sat on the bed. He wiggled more into the middle, and she lay down beside him. She continued to shiver.

  “You smell good,” he said.

  She had gone out and bought some of Katharine's perfume before her dinner with Philip, thinking it would trigger some sort of response in him, but Philip's nostrils never even quivered.

  He pressed closer to her and seemed to fall asleep for a while.

  She could feel his hand like a hot iron on her shoulder blade, and she started to cry.

  Propped up on one elbow, she held the whiskey glass under her nose, the fumes whirling her brain. The wine she had drunk had taken the edge off for a bit, but now it was back. She imagined the whiskey in the glass, like amber syrup, smooth and medicinal. She tipped the glass back and took a sip. He stirred, and she replaced the glass on the stand.

  “Thisby?” he said drowsily.

  “No,” she whispered. “Katharine.”

  “Katharine?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know you?”

  “Yes.”

  She slowly leaned forward and with lips still stinging with alcohol anointed his eyelids with kisses. His mouth opened, and his breath, smooth as the smell of softened caramel candies, fogged over her. She lowered her mouth and reached into him with her tongue and her soul, and like Queen Titania with her ass-headed lover, she sang his anxieties to sleep.

  She sat on a chair next to the bed and watched him sleep. She wanted to be smoking. It would have felt so right. She had even gone unsuccessfully through his dresser drawers to find a cigarette. So she sat there, legs crossed, leaning one elbow on the topmost knee, the closed fist holding up her head, watching him and wishing for a cigarette. He was so beautiful, lying on his stomach, his head turned toward her. His features were smooth, almost porcelain, his morning beard barely noticeable. His hair was tufted around his ears and curled over his forehead. The sheet barely reached his waist, and she had gently pulled down a corner to reveal the fairy kiss. In the gray, it looked like a mere smudge. A flexed knee struck out from under the covers toward her. She wanted to touch that knee. It had fit in her palm so well before. His right arm was relaxed and gently curved, almost groping for something. For her? She could touch it if she just reached out. How she wanted to reach out. He wasn't snoring now, but he had been before; she had nudged him under the shoulder blade to turn him over, and then she had begun to cry.

  It was the morning after. The sun was up, and even though she had opened the curtains to let in the light, the rays hadn't yet reached the level of the rear window. She was glad. She didn't want him to wake up just yet. She wanted to watch him. One of his pillows was at her feet. They had knocked it off last night. She rocked it back and forth with her dangling toes and then flipped it over, rotisserie-style. Over and over again.

  She remembered everything. This time. One potato, two potato. It was just that she didn't want to think about it. Three potato, four. But she didn't want it to be like a Harlequin romance. Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more. They kissed and then it was afterward …

  Katharine had kissed him. It was true; she had started it. But she hadn't come to his apartment to do that. She hadn't. She wasn't quite sure what she had come for — she just wanted a little kindness, a little sympathy, a little closeness.

  And when he lay in her arms in the dark, so warm and alive and needing, she wanted to be closer. She wanted to lay bare her soul, open up to him. Thisby was only skin deep, and Katharine was right there.

  I'm not the person you think I am. If you could just see me out of this body.

  And he seemed to sense it. He was truly seeing her for the first time.

  He kissed her back, didn't he?

  Their lovemaking hadn't been elegant. The skirt of her dress was already around her waist, and he worked off their underwear with fumbling hands. He pulled her buttocks toward him and then turned heavily over into her.

  He murmured into her hair, but she didn't understand what he was saying, and she didn't want to know. She was fighting her own battles. They were all in her head, all yammering at her.

  Thisby's own flesh and blood. Even she wouldn't do something like this.

  Disgusting. You could be his mother.

  Such dexterity to incestuous sheets. Have you no shame?

  Come on. Come on.

  Shut up! Shut up! All of you. This has nothing to do with Thisby. I'm Katharine. And I … and I … and I love him.

  He came quickly, and she had been glad of it. She had excited him to a point where he had no control; he was swept along; she had pulled him out of himself. Then she had held him in her arms, stroking his head as it lay on her shoulder. His arm and hand rested lightly around her stomach, his ankle hooked around hers. He quickly quieted and seemed to sink alongside her. She held him up long after her arm began to numb. He then rolled away, and with it came the voodoo stabs of returning circulation. She would have held him all night if he had let her.

  Now she was sitting there, watching him. She felt like Oberon's mischievous henchman, Robin Goodfellow — having latched the wrong lover's eyes with the Cupid juice — now forced to undo the spell to see what remains.

  With eyes open and in the light of day.

  She took another sip of the whiskey on the nightstand. It made her shudder. With moist lips, she streaked his proffered eyelid. It fluttered.

  Will he wake up and be thought he was enamoured of an ass? Will his eye loathe this visage now?

  Act 4, Scene 6

  Life is a thief.

  — KATHARINE HEPBURN, Suddenly Last Summer (1959)

  She stood in the hallway, the morning sun hot on her back, and through the slit between the bedroom door and the jamb, she watched him slowly come to consciousness. She had all her belongings in her arms, the key to her car between her thumb and forefinger.

  Whom had she been kidding? She couldn't face him. This wasn't some damn play, where everything comes out all right after the exchange of a few simple lines. She couldn't stand to see the rea
lization explode across his face: he had just made love to his sister.

  She watched him open his eyes, grimace, and shut them again, covering his forehead with a hand to block out the light. “Too bright,” he moaned, but slowly like a contortionist bunched himself into a sitting position. He held his head in his hands, his elbows propped up on his knees. “Have I laid my brain in the sun and dried it?”

  He sat there and seemed to deliberately reconnect his various body parts. He finally looked around him, and she saw him take in the disarray of the bedclothes, his semi-erect penis. He took a handful of the sheet, brought it to his nose, and smelled it.

  The skin on her shoulders was on fire, and she thought she might throw up.

  He turned his torso toward the bedroom door, but didn't get up. “Kath — ? Katharine?” he called softly.

  She didn't move. Her skin blackened, and hairline cracks webbed across the surface.

  He frowned. “Thisby?”

  Flames licked up the length of her body. The hard casing around her, impervious to so many elements, finally succumbed to the intense heat and split apart, falling away to be left among the cinders.

  She pulled back, and her movement caused the bedroom door to sway. She ran.

  As she closed the front door behind her, she heard him call from the bedroom, “Wait …”

  Act 5, Scene 1

  Believe me, if a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life.

  — LIONEL BARRYMORE, Grand Hotel (1932)

  Katharine snaked another glass of champagne off the waiter's tray, spilling some on the marbled floor. Shit. She was getting a tad unsteady and thought perhaps the tequila poppers she had slammed down before going to Thisby's reception hadn't been such a good idea. She had felt increasingly frantic as the afternoon wore on, and the tequila had calmed her down — as she knew it would — but now she felt herself rushing too fast toward the oblivion she sought each night.