This Body

by Laurel Doud

When she woke up, Hooker was there, sitting on her bad. “You're boring me,” he told her, his voice strung tight with control. “You used to be fun — even when you were stoned or drunk. Now you're just drunk.” He stood up and looked down on her with …

  Disappointment. He's got the fucking gall to be disappointed in me.

  “Don't call me,” he said bluntly.

  He turned to leave, but she grabbed his pant leg and tried to think. “You can't leave me. You can't.” She held on tighter. The panic grew in her. Tears choked her throat. She wanted to say to him, Everything I love, I lose. I had a husband, kids. I lost them. I don't love you, but I thought I could keep you. But no further sound came out, and she only tugged harder.

  Hooker pulled away, rather gently, and left.

  Emily and Hank Denton walked into the Zweimal. They caught sight of Quince, waved to her, and then gestured quickly to someone who was entering behind them. Katharine was surprised that they had come. After Hooker had dumped her, she went out with True a couple of times. Hey, if I had no compunction about fucking TB's brother, why should I worry about my nephew? We aren't even genetically related. But it had ended badly. True informed her that she wasn't the fun drunk she had been when she was younger and suggested that she get some professional help. For his troubles, she had told him to fuck off.

  Katharine saw Quince smile as she shook hands with the third person in the Denton party. Katharine was almost shocked to see how pretty she looked. Had Katharine never noticed it, or had something changed, had something happened to Quince?

  Yet another person moving on without me.

  Hank stepped forward to give Quince a hug, and Katharine had her first clear view of the stranger. Her mind sent Thisby's heart leaping into her throat.

  It's Ben. Ohmigod, it's Ben.

  She reached out to steady herself, found nothing, and stumbled. The Denton party and Quince turned toward her, and Katharine thought she might faint or throw up. Emily gave her a tentative smile. Hank's was warmer. Quince's face was like granite, and both Katharine and Quince watched Ben size up Katharine with interest. Quince's face almost solidified.

  Katharine narrowed her sights to focus only on Ben. He looked so handsome, so mature, so tall, so grown-up, so like Philip when she first met him, with his multicolored hair and hazel eyes. Her baby boy. But where were the torn jeans, the soiled T-shirt with the hole in the back of the stretched-out neckband where the manufacturer's tag had been cut out — and part of the shirt with it — because it irritated his skin?

  Not there. His slacks were baggy, but they were intact and clean. The shirt was funky fifties, but it had a collar and was buttoned all the way up. Katharine recognized him, but she realized that she didn't know him.

  Katharine set her champagne glass down on a passing tray and walked toward him. She had dreamed about this so often, the reality of it was surreal. She watched herself approach him from so many angles, she felt dizzy. From one angle she was so controlled, she looked robotic. This was her own son, for God's sake. Didn't she feel anything? From another it looked as though she was having trouble breathing. Why did she still care — considering how she had given up on her old life? Another part of her just felt numb. She had no great expectations. The previous two close encounters with the other members of her family had not produced any momentous results; her life had not essentially changed.

  After scarcely returning the greetings of Emily and Hank, she was in front of him. “Hi, I'm Thisby. You must be Ben.”

  “Ahh, the cause célèbre. How's the fifteen minutes been?” He turned to Quince and said, “Fifteen minutes of fame. An Andy Warhol quote.”

  “Gee, thanks for the explanation.” The edge in Quince's voice sliced right through his veneer, and Katharine could see how thin and how freshly laid it was; he was trying on this aspect of his personality and seeing how it fit, just like the new clothes.

  She saw her own boy then and wanted to gather him in her arms. Pretty soon she was going to be crying. She was crying. Why had she drunk so much?

  She stopped a waiter, lifted a glass, handed it to Ben, and then took one for herself. She took his arm and leaned into him, feeling how his body compensated to take her weight. She steered him down a panel of Thisby's photographs. “Here, I'll give you a personally guided tour.”

  Quince kept up with them; Katharine could feel her.

  Go away.

  “Marion says hi.” Ben directed this somewhat toward the both of them, but then said to Katharine, “She couldn't come down this weekend. Some school thing. Homecoming float or something.”

  “How is she?” Katharine knew she couldn't hide the wistfulness in her tone, so she didn't try.

  “She's doing good. She's having a good year. She made the tennis team, third or fourth doubles.”

  “Third,” Quince informed them curtly.

  Some loud woman tried to waylay them, some relative by Quince's salutation, and Katharine deftly sidestepped her and allowed Quince to run interference.

  They pulled away from the sound of the gushing relative. “So, Ben, I've heard a lot about you.” Katharine dropped her voice to imply intimacy.

  “I've heard a lot about you too.”

  “All good, I'm sure.”

  He looked boyishly uncomfortable, and she laughed. God, she felt good. Wasn't life good? “It's okay. Sometimes it's fun to be wicked.”

  His reaction almost sobered her. He looked pained, and sad, and oh-so-guilty.

  Katharine suddenly had a wild urge to pull down his pants to see whether he had gotten the tattoo he threatened Diana with. She didn't do it, but then they talked about tattoos. They talked about a lot of things, wandering up and down the aisles as if no one else were there. They talked about life and college and career.

  And death.

  They talked a lot about death.

  And his buttoned-down look.

  They're related, you know.

  That buttoned-down look was for her. His dead mother. He thinks he caused her death. He thinks he was responsible. If only he hadn't been fucking up. If only he had been more responsible. Had seen things from her point of view. Had seen what it was doing to her. The stress on her heart. Then she would have lived. And he wouldn't have to carry around this guilt.

  So he's trying to clean up his act. Stay on the straight and narrow. A good son. He is what he thinks his mother would have wanted him to be. He's trying to be responsible, cleanliving, hardworking, and self-sacrificing. What mother could be unhappy about that?

  Me. I am.

  “So now I'm taking a couple of night classes to make up for the classes I fucked up when I was younger,” Ben continued, refusing a third glass of champagne. “I'll graduate okay, but I'll have to go to community college before I can go to a four-year. I'm working at a bank part-time, and hopefully next summer they'll give me full-time hours.” He stopped and stared at a photograph, but Katharine could tell that he wasn't really seeing it. “I've got this chance to go to Wyoming next summer with a friend of mine to work on his dad's ranch, but”— he turned to her —“I guess it's really just a stupid idea. I don't know, though.” They walked on. “I know I'd be doing grunt work for a while, but I've always loved horses, and maybe I could learn something. I've always wanted to be a cowboy.” He paused again. “But I guess it's just a stupid idea.”

  A cowboy? I never knew this about Ben. A quote skittered across Katharine's brain like a spider. “It is a wise father who knows his own child.” Maybe Will got it wrong. Maybe there aren't really any wise parents out there.

  He finished talking, and she, unexpectedly — even to herself — lit into him. He might have thought she was nuts. She did kind of go off. But how could she not? She'd seen too much. She knew too much. She'd felt too much.

  “Your mother did not die for your sins.” She could feel him stiffen under her hand, but she squeezed back and leaned farther into him. “She does not want your penance. You do not need absolution. Don't you know a life spent
for someone else is just an imitation of life?” She felt impassioned. Because I believe it.

  Ben did not respond, and Katharine could feel a space growing between them. She did not know how to make him see, if he would not look.

  I'm trying my personal best here. Why go through all this if you can't tell someone, help someone go through it too? Are we always doomed to go through it alone? What good does it do to be a parent if you can't help your children with the tough problems in life? What good are you? Oh, it's easy when they're young. The advice is easy. Don't play in the street. Don't talk to strangers. Don't run with sharp objects in your hand.

  They barely made a pretense of looking at the photographs, each of them inside their own thoughts.

  Later on, it's all different. Don't you even dare think about drinking. But if for some unforeseeable reason you do, then please feel free to call home. We'll be happy to jump in the car in our pajamas and come get you. No questions asked. No recriminations.

  And sex? Well, it should be enjoyed, but it can kill you. Wear a condom, insert a diaphragm, and wash up thoroughly afterward.

  Question authority … but not mine …

  God, she was doing it again. Giving advice. Was any of it any good? She had told Ben to follow his heart. Did she really mean that, or was that just Thisby talking? Thisby, who followed nothing but her own heart and wants and needs and desires and demands? Who had no regard for anyone else. Who didn't sacrifice. Who didn't put others before her. Who didn't allow others to take advantage of her and then resent them and send them spiraling away from her.

  She wanted to grab her head and twist it off, unscrew it like a bottle cap. She really was going crazy. All the simple truths she thought she had captured in her life were splitting off and rearranging themselves. All the thoughts she thought were only hers didn't seem to be following along the paths she thought they should take.

  Who was she these days?

  I am Katharine. I am a mother. I am a wife. I am Thisby. I am independent. I am alone. I am nobody.

  I'm afraid I am not who I think I am.

  They came around to the front of the gallery, where Emily and Hank were waiting for them. Katharine felt tired beyond time. She couldn't see anymore. She couldn't think anymore.

  Ben gently shifted her weight away from him, and immediately her body felt as if it were going to break through the floor. “Thanks for the guided tour and the talk. Maybe I can call you the next time I come down. I'll be sure to send you a postcard from Wyoming. Maybe I will go.” He gestured with his shoulder toward Quince, who was also waiting. “I gotta go. I promised my sister I'd take her little friend out for coffee. You know.” He dug into his pocket for his keys, reassuring his aunt and uncle that he knew the way back to Long Beach and that he wouldn't be late, eyeing Katharine to see if that made any difference to her. The silence fattened between them. “Well, nice to meet you, Thisby. I hope to see you again.” He went over to Quince and they left, Quince's grim little face lightening a bit as they walked out the door.

  Hank chuckled. “There's good news waiting for Ben when he goes back up north. We got a call from his father tonight, but Philip wants to tell Ben in person. Diana, you know, Marion's stepmother, is pregnant. She's having a baby.”

  Katharine could feel the memory of the speculum being jammed into her vagina and the wrench of the screw to widen the opening.

  “You'll feel pain now,” the doctor says, his voice reaming right through her body.

  Her abdomen seizes up, and she screams.

  “It's finished,” the doctor says.

  She jerks her feet out of the stirrups, gets off the table, and stands up. She stands up, and she stands up in what she knows is her own aborted fetus. The nurse is too slow to pull away the plastic sheet that the doctor scooped it out on. She doesn't wince. She doesn't shudder. She doesn't do anything but walk on, ectoplasm stuck to the soles of her feet.

  The shaking started in the core of her solar plexus and radiated out. A waiter stepped in front of her, his tray laden with champagne glasses. The cool liquid shimmered, and the bubbles that escaped from the sides of the glasses sent baby plumes of spray over their lips. The voice that whispered now laughed, its glee translating into words that it poked and jabbed her with. You need a license to buy a dog or drive a car. You need a license to catch a fish, but they'll let any buttweeman-asshole be a parent.

  She saw her arm come up like a backhanded slap and felt it connect with the bottom of the metal tray. The horrified look on the waiter's face hung in the air like a hologram.

  She didn't remember much after that. She remembered the sound of breaking glass, someone pinning her arms to her side, and voices — oh, so many voices — raised in surprise and concern and anger.

  Was one of them hers? Were all of them hers?

  Act 5, Scene 2

  … we are not ourselves

  When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind to suffer with the body.

  — LEAR, King Lear, 2.4.107

  They all appeared at her door the next afternoon: Anne, Robert, Quince, and — surprise — Puck. Actually, Katharine wasn't all that surprised that they had come, though she had heard that Vivian and Puck were leaving for San Francisco that morning. She knew she had gone too far at the reception, that there were going to be repercussions. Sometime during the night she had thrown up — which was unusual for her — on the bathroom floor, and the irony was not lost on her. Her whole head was as tender as a bruise, and she felt hollowed out, but the showdown was coming and she thought she was ready for it.

  Thisby's family walked into the apartment, and before Katharine could close the door behind them, who else should arrive, making a grand entrance? Why Dr. Mantle. That quintessence of dust. That pigeon-liver'd ape-dog. That diffused infection of a man.

  Katharine was furious. It changed the balance completely. This was supposed to be a family matter. “What's he doing here?”

  Robert Bennet answered her. “Your mother and I asked him.”

  They sat down in the living room in a circle, and Katharine felt surrounded, ringed by so many snarling dogs masquerading as a loving family.

  The accused presumed innocent until proven guilty? No way. They're out to get me.

  “Thisby, we're all here, your family,” began Robert Bennet, “because we love you. You are a member of this family. You mean a great deal to this family, even if you think at this time in your life that doesn't matter to you. We felt the only way to make you understand this is to confront you. All of us. However, your mother and I felt that we — and you too — needed some professional guidance. We felt the only way to get through to you is to have an intervention, and we asked Dr. Mantle to come because he has had quite a bit of experience with interventions.”

  Only Quince had the decency to look uncomfortable.

  “We want you to know we think you're killing yourself. You're killing yourself as surely as if you held a loaded gun to your head. But we believe you can take your finger off the trigger. You can save yourself. Maybe if you think of it as being possessed by some alien thing, you can fight back. You've got to stop the drinking and get yourself clean. Then the old Thisby will come back. Then our own Thisby will return.”

  Katharine looked at their frightened faces and almost spat at them, Fat chance. Can't help you there, guys.

  It was so orchestrated — their little speeches like Academy Award acceptances. Puck read a letter he had written. “To my sister, Thisby” it began, as if he needed to make sure it was addressed properly. He dwelt on their younger days, before Quince was born, when he and Thisby were buds.

  As if that means jack shit right now to either me or Thisby.

  Quince's contribution was achingly curt, full of hurt and love and confusion. She didn't know which sister, which personality, she wanted back; she just wanted a sister she could talk to and who would remember the conversation the next day.

  Anne's was hardened over with tenets of tough love worked
out from a handbook or an afternoon TV talk show. But not that shallow. Never that shallow. Anne also had seen too much, knew too much, felt too much, to be shallow. “I am concerned for you. I love you, but in the last couple of months we have opened up our hearts to you again, only to have you shred them. I will not let you drag the emotions of this family down the self-destructive path you've chosen. I will not let you. I will fight you, and then I will let you go. But if you let me, I will fight for you. Fight for you in every way I can. But only if you let me. The choice is yours.”

  Katharine was staring down at the rug, hearing Quince, hearing Anne, hearing her own voices from so many dedicated speakers.

  Then Anne asked Mantle to talk, and Katharine's head snapped up and stared at him.

  He's holding the family's trump card. And isn't he just loving it. So caring. So concerned. And doesn't he just have me over a barrel cuz he can damage me now. He's muscled his addiction into sweet revenge, and he's playing for keeps.

  He spoke evenly, softly, but letting the edge of his voice separate himself from Thisby's family. He was concerned too, but after this intervention he would do what had to be done, if it came down to that. With the approval of her mother and father, he would certify her as mentally incompetent and commit her, for her own good, of course, but commit her nevertheless. Again, the choice was hers.

  Katharine realized he wanted her to fight back. He wanted a reason, wanted justification, to certify her, right then and there, bullgoose looney tunes and commit her. Into the snake pit, the madhouse, with all the other lunatics. For her own good, of course. The choice was hers.

  So who gave him all the best lines?

  Katharine looked away from Mantle's mean, pasty face into Robert's hopeful one, to Anne's waiting one, to Puck's skeptical one, to Quince's. Quince was looking down at the rug, the shadow of her nose broken by the scar above her lip. She looked utterly miserable, wishing she could be anyplace but here.

  I know how you feel, kid.

  Katharine closed her eyes. She knew what she feared most. She had been fearing it all morning. She could do this, get sober, but there was a good chance that nothing would be any different, nothing would change. Life could still be no better than it was. She would still be alone. She would still be in a stranger's body and she would still be living a stranger's life. And, without the alcohol, it could be worse; it had been worse. It was so easy to drink; it was so easy to keep drinking. It was going to require so much energy to stop. And for what?