by Bex Brian
“Its looks like a fucking brushfire.”
“What about me?” I wanted to scream. “Fish. You’re leaving me for fish.”
“Your tears won’t help that girl,” he said.
Would you marry a man you didn’t know?” Sonia asked, breaking the silence that had fallen between us.
“I did,” I said, lifting myself up by my arms so I could make room on my bed for her to sit. I don’t like to do this. The heavy throb of blood swamping the bed-deadened points on my body create hot zones. “Anyway, she didn’t stay married long.”
“No, she ran away,” Sonia said, thoughtfully.
“Just like you, though I suspect she didn’t have to shimmy down the ivy the way you did when you ran away from school.”
Refugee. Escape and flight. Two seemingly related actions, or impulses, and yet flight is mindless whereas you need wile to escape. Here now, sedated just down the hall, is a girl from the outskirts of Pristina, a girl who probably never thought of either, and suddenly found herself caught up in both. The knock on the door. Her father, with his weak heart, can’t bring himself to open it. The noise is terrible. The family photos lining the hallway bounce with each blow; many fall to the floor and crash. Her father, mother, and brothers and sisters can see the front door beginning to splinter. Enough. Our refugee springs forward and opens the door to face men she once thought of as neighbors. All she can remember is the rush, the contrary human flow of men blowing past them into their tiny flat as she pushes her family out the door against the storm.
There’ll be no flight from the train. She realizes that soon enough. And she tells her little brother, who likes to collect tickets, not to be a jerk and start crying because they weren’t issuing any tickets for this ride. Pressed in with thousands of her countrymen, she is wedged in the middle of the aisle, surrounded by the exposed armpits of men reaching up to brace themselves against the rocking. It is a short ride, just over the border. But to reach true safety they have to walk. Days and days of walking, sleeping on the ground, no shelter, hardly any food and yet, and yet she feels strong. To her father’s endless tears she turns a cold eye. And once when he trips and falls and lies sobbing on the ground, she demands that he get up and pull himself together. Her mother and younger siblings, noting this new fiery beauty, soon become afraid of her and wonder what sort of sick devil would blossom in such circumstances.
She doesn’t care what they think. When they finally arrive at the camp, her family seems as far away as if she were looking at them from the wrong end of a telescope. She has already forgotten the smell of their little apartment, the cloistered hot kitchen, where the family gathered in the heavy air of boiled onions and cigarette smoke. She lasts no more than five minutes in their refugee tent. The younger children haven’t even had a chance to bathe, to tend to the terrible blisters festering on their feet, when she abandons them for the first time and goes to look for ways of escape.
And she finds one. A French soldier assigned to hand out toiletries to the camp’s bedraggled newcomers. His gift? Toothbrushes. She takes six, then goes back to her tent to wash her hair. When she realizes she doesn’t have a hairbrush, she uses all six toothbrushes to work out the knots. Then she goes back for more.
“Not just escape.” Sonia bowed her head. “Love. That’s what she thought, at least.”
I raised my brows.
“Then it was the uniform.”
“What’s so good about the French uniform?”
“Nothing, it’s like any other,” Sonia said waving her hand impatiently. “Or,” she said, “maybe it was because he was clean. That’s what the night nurse thinks.”
“She had just walked for four days and four nights,” I said. “No bath, no shower, no toilets.”
“Being that dirty, it could be why she got married. He was clean. I had a boyfriend once who never changed his underwear. I wouldn’t have married him. That I understand. But the time it took to love him . . .”
“There is no time limit,” I said. “I’ve loved a man the length of an elevator ride. She must have been one of thousands streaming past, one indistinguishable from the next, all worn out and filthy, and yet she was noticed. That’s something.”
I did begin to wonder, though, if other French soldiers had snapped up wives for themselves. Or was the refugee the only one? The one who made it happen. A newly minted victim, but hardly ignorant of the horrible alternatives she faced. Seeing the filth and the misery all around her, perhaps she just had to do something wildly romantic in the face of what might end up being an inevitable, anonymous death. She couldn’t help but have in her head images of other lovers, lovers who had died tragically, romantically in that roiling conflict. Like that Muslim boy, and Catholic girl, trying to escape Sarajevo, shot by snipers, reaching out to each other, their bodies lying there for days on end because it was just too dangerous to retrieve them. Why then wouldn’t she, in a crowd of a million, want more than anything to be one in a million?
“Still, to marry a man you don’t know . . .”
“Why the fuck not,” I told her. “It happens all the time. War changes things. Look at Churchill’s son. He had to have a wife before joining up, just had to. Married Pamela Harriman after one date. She was the last on his list. Six or seven other women first who couldn’t be convinced, despite the fact that he was Churchill’s boy.
“Who is Churchill?”
“Was. Dead now, they all are. He was the prime minister of England during World War Two. A fat guy with a cigar.”
“Oh him.”
“That Harriman, she knew what she was doing. Not only would she go on to marry a succession of rich and powerful men but she became the U.S. ambassador to France as well. Until, of course, she died of a heart attack last year taking her daily exercise in the Ritz swimming pool. Marriage works for some people.”
“But not for you?” Sonia asked, giving me one of her sideways glances. Up to that point she had been careful not to delve too deeply into the story of my marriage. I think she, like some of the nurses, believes I threw myself under that truck.
“Let’s not talk about this,” I said sharply, not ready for the wrong of it, let alone the right.
Would I marry a man I didn’t know? That’s not the question, not the dilemma. The molten core of one’s being, that’s the issue; how much does it need to be cooled for love?
Ralph, that first sight of him, standing with his wife Mary at Alastair’s party in his big white house that skirted Holland Park. I sometimes forget that Ralph was married before me. But she was there that night. And looking distinctly yellow, having contracted hepatitis while accompanying Ralph on one of his trips. A or B? I can’t remember. Which one is worse? But being yellow lent her a bit of gravitas, made her one of the attractions at the party. I was the other. My father, the great Maurice Yellow, had recently died. Alastair, his friend, his true friend, was holding this party in his honor and everyone who had worked with him over the years had come to pay their respects to me, his only child. High day—sudden squalls of tears and lots of jokes. I’m all grown up at that point but more than a few guests had first seen me as I lay swaddled in a row of my father’s other prized babies, the current stars of his latest show, a feature on newborn animals: a garter snake, a chick, a kitten, a tadpole swimming in a petri dish, a blind, hairless roo, and finally, an albino baby black bear. As the TV camera would zoom in and focus on each miracle of life, Father mapped out for everyone the time and attention required of the offspring’s parents to insure survival. When the camera came to me, it slowly panned back up to my father, who stood with a wry smile on his face. “Endless, Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said. “Endless.”
Bathed in late-afternoon light, each of Alastair’s guest moved ponderously, diligently about the room as though attending the stations of the cross, first to the bar, then to me: sincere condolences followed by a brief recollection of good times had. Then to the buffet table to load up before circling around to a hepatitis-
stricken Mary: heartfelt sympathy followed by jokes about how there would be no more scotch in her future.
From my end of the room I could hear her laugh and say time and again that’s it’s not the scotch she was missing but the love of her man. Ralph, she said, lowering her voice, drawing the listener in, was terrified of getting sick. Ralph had his back to her, but by about the fifth time she’d confessed to everyone within earshot that she hadn’t been fucked in weeks, I remember seeing an involuntary shake of his head, as if a chill had run through him.
Grand toasts finally shut her up. “Let’s drink,” said Ralph, holding up his nearly empty beer glass and looking at me, “to a great Englishman, naturalist, and educator named Yellow and to a woman who merely looks yellow.” I knew then that he wasn’t particularly in love with her anymore. If he ever was.
Immediately afterward he came up to me. I felt Mary watching us, but not with keen interest, vain enough to believe his diminished sex drive applied to the rest of us. I could tell she was merely gathering material for some other grievance and that later in the car would come the inevitable fight. Still, her watching us made me soft somehow, and for the first time since my father died I was willing to wrap myself in grief.
“You didn’t know my father, did you?” I said. “And yet your toast was the best.”
“No. But I certainly knew of him. Well, I suppose everybody did. A chronicled life.”
“By design,” I said sourly.
“Not yours, I presume,” he said, laughing. He had amazingly straight teeth, naturally straight.
“I can’t bring myself to complain about the past.”
“How unusual.”
“You sound henpecked.”
“Do I?” He smiled. Hands deep in his pockets, he rocked back on his heels. “I suppose being a naturalist it’s either henpecked or pussy-whipped.”
I blushed. Heat all over. Mary, suddenly the little heat sensor, was over in a flash.
“We were just discussing my father,” I said to her, moving aside so she could stand by her husband
“And what about him?” Her voice was flat. Australian. She was wearing open-toed shoes with stockings.
“Whether, outside of real abuse, one gets to complain about the life your parents provide you.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d want to complain. Growing up on TV. A life lived all over the world with the famous Maurice Yellow. Ralph and I would have killed for that. What did we have instead, darling? You rooting around for insects in shitty old Orpington, me stuck at the bottom of the world with my mother, the claims adjuster, and my father, running his little money-losing revival cinema.”
“How did you end up here?” I asked.
“The same route a lot of us itching-to-get-out Aussies take. Come to England, work in a pub, go to school.”
“Mary studied film,” Ralph said, draining his beer. “She was my production assistant.”
I had to get away. I didn’t want to know any more.
“I should go speak to some of my father’s old pals,” I said, scooping up my drink. “Most didn’t get a chance to see him before he died.”
No better than walking alone on a desert road, hearing the footsteps behind you only to turn and find nothing. Ralph was stalking my thoughts, but never once did I catch him looking. The party was emptying. A “core group,” as Alastair put it, was going on to dinner at a Greek restaurant.
“Nothing so gauche as waiters smashing plates to the ground,” Alastair said, taking my hand. “So, you can get that wild look off your face.”
“How core is core?” I asked.
“You mean will anybody under fifty be coming?”
“Not that it matters.”
“I’ve asked Ralph McCrimmon and his little yellow wife. Or I should say he asked me.”
I got ready, spinning in circles, amidst a swirl of departing voices: “You come with us, dear.” “Don’t forget your coat. This house is a black hole. I lost a beautiful pair of cashmere gloves here last winter.” “Everyone, tell the driver to avoid Oxford.” “I can’t sit on the jump seat. My dress is too tight. “Well, I can’t. My knees don’t bend.” “Grab a drink, will you? Why suffer a moment.”
My coat, a half-empty bottle of whiskey, and I was off into the damp night air, flanked on one side by Alastair, on the other by . . . who was it? Lydia Lester, once my father’s mistress, shimmering with resentment and unspent love. She had me at last in her web.
Three taxis were needed, lots of bumbling, lots of hot bodies squashed together. Not the right hot bodies, but I didn’t dare ask if he was ahead. Twisted in the jump seat, I kept an eye on the taillights of the other two taxis. We passed through the city as if being squeezed from a toothpaste tube, a force seeming to push us from behind rather than pull us along. We moved in unison along wet streets, the other cars on the road falling away. The city, cloud-bound, looked squat and heavy.
The restaurant on Charlotte Street was all steamed up. More bumbling. Someone nearly fell on the steps of the restaurant but the swearing was good-hearted. I was steered away by Alastair. “Either arrive first,” he said, opening the door to the pub across the street, “and get to choose whom you want to sit with, or arrive late and demand to sit where you want. As it was, with us bringing up the rear, we would have been struck between Tim and Larry and subjected to their warped renderings of your father. Fucking sycophants.”
“This drink will put me over the top.”
“Top yourself then, I don’t give a shit.”
“Let them have my father.”
“Let them?
“Let them.”
“The fuck, always did get what he wanted. I better be canonized when I die.”
“No doubt there’ll be a boy or two in Soho who will raise a glass.”
“But now what?” Alastair asked, downing his drink.
“Now I’m looking for love.”
Fate. An empty seat. No wife in sight. A frenzy of fear. Don’t lose this drunk. Don’t dare. Alastair called for tapas. The waiter bowed his head. Tapas are not Greek. No worry, the manager solved it all, just a matter of semantics, the Greeks eat bits and pieces too. “Tasty treats.”
“Tasty treats, I like that,” Ralph whispered to me after the order had been taken.
“I like that too.”
And then shyness, that stealthy bugger, enveloped us like a caul.
I saw a mobile once. Huge, hanging down the middle of a spiral stairwell, it was comprised of black letters painted on red tin pieces forever circulating into nonsense words. But every few years, I was told, all the letters swirled into place and spelled out a word. “What word?” No one would tell me. The thrill of being the one to see it would be ruined if I knew.
There were perfect moments in my marriage. I mustn’t forget. I mustn’t forget he was like no other. Not that that changed anything. Still, it should have. I was shy with him, so shy. I never paraded around naked. I always closed the bathroom door, even just for a pee. And I woke early to brush my teeth. He was like no other. I was suspended, upended, waiting, always waiting for his attentions. When alone, which I was often—a coarser soul might say the marriage faltered because we were apart so much; not true—I would try to dissect what it was about Ralph that made him so elusive. Never came up with anything, other than that he was an entity unto himself. I’d play games to try to trick him into swooning love, hell-bent love. Pretend, I’d tell him, that you are kissing me like they do in the movies. Pretend, I tell him, that every time you see me you want to fall to your knees and kiss the hem of my skirt.
But for all my song and dance there were those unscripted moments. They seem so fleeting now, and few. He got a buzz haircut once and came home, transformed, boyish, burying his head in my lap with excitement. I also learned once, quite by accident, that he thought it was boring to dance to the beat of slow songs. From then on I could let him dance his bad dance, happy that the mystery of why I could never keep up with him was at last solved.
But it was in darkness that we had our best times. The middle of the night. Maybe we just needed darkness to free ourselves into. His disembodied voice would tell me secrets, his secrets. The scar on his rib case, the one he had told everyone was the result of a snakebite which had nearly killed him, was, in truth of fact, caused by a bad case of the measles. He told me he didn’t like his mother, that her love disgusted him. I held my breath then, afraid she and I might meld in his mind in the dark. But he said I was different, that there was a coldness in me that he found reassuring. I wanted to correct him, tell him it was heat, that I was burning up for him, but I didn’t dare. Then, with dawn and him turning away to sleep, it seemed as if our confessions evaporated. In the morning I would badger him, try to build on secrets told, but you can’t force these things. That I never learned.
I wanted. I wanted. I wanted. And when he would bow toward me, place me in the center of his thoughts, his affections, I felt sick with nerves, waiting for him to spring away again. I’d gnash my teeth and remind myself of the loves that had loved obviously and how deathly that was. I’d remind myself not to question Fate. I’d remind myself that nobody ever said marriage was natural. Pavlovian it was, and I, having grown up never knowing the habit, was probably sniffing at the wrong door looking for the biscuit.
My not calling Ralph is becoming a problem. In fact, my stubborn refusal to contact anyone since the accident is becoming a problem. Hospitals like to think you are cared for. Hospitals like to think that somewhere there is someone out there willing to pay for what they are doing to you. Two weeks ago they sent in a shrink, Madame deBuchard. Ramrod deBuchard has done nothing but talk about herself. My head is full now of what it means to be a French woman, to love, to not mind the summer heat, or winter skies, to have a good shoemaker—how she blushed when she realized how inappropriate that topic was—and a good midwife, to know how to cook, especially a roux, and how to use wine in sauce sparingly. We have yet to discuss my lack of visitors. I have wondered if this is a particularly French approach to a delicate subject: present a world of observations, truths, personal remembrances and see if any of them trigger in the listener a flood of confessions and revelations. So far all the revelations have been hers, but I don’t mind because in amongst her discourses on three-inch heels and béchamel is the refugee, her life, pearls worth keeping.