All the Finest Girls

by Alexandra Styron

  “So what yah tinking? A lickle soup?”

  The music plays on. I am not thinking. I’m breaking up into tiny shards. The moon is a rusty blade.

  “Addy. Look at me. What’s dat buggly face for? Watch it doesn’t stay that way, now. OK. I’m going to make yah some lovely dinner. Jest a lickle someting light. Yah rest now.”

  Cat is in the corner, playing with a mouse, batting it from paw to paw. I’ve had enough of Cat. Tonight I’d strangle him if I had the strength.

  When Lou is gone, I peel back the covers and lift my nightgown, inspecting my body. I am not in pieces like a broken mirror. I am just me, covered in calamine. Pale and pinkish like an oyster out of her shell. My chest, where Owen wanted to touch but I wouldn’t let him, is only two little rosy caps. I should have. Let him. They are nothing and neither am I. Now it’s too late. Fuck off, he said when I stood on the steps outside his house. Fuck off.

  Ladies and gentlemen, Rat Girl like you’ve never seen her before! Let’s give her a big round of applause as she prepares to do the impossible! To kill mighty Cat!

  Over by the window, I look down on the green expanse of Edith’s lawn and watch the guests under the party tent. Mr. Grose is showing a woman the backside of his tie, where there is a hidden pocket and a zipper. Aunt Susan is in her stocking feet on the dance floor, holding her square-toed shoes by their thin straps. It takes two to tango, the bandleader sings now, clutching the microphone, his skinny arms too long for his stripey jacket. Two to really get the feeling of romance.

  Funsy, Mom would say. The party was funsy. Except I can see her next to the buffet table, in her swirly green dress, listening to Mr. and Mrs. Harding. She doesn’t look like things are funsy at all. She’s smiling her robot smile, and her hand is at her neck, where her birthmark is painted over. I lean against the glass and close my eyes, remembering how she held me on the boat. She was there and I felt her arms against me. I was something to hold, to be pressed against. I was not nothing after all.

  I’ve greased the window with my forehead, made a smudgy triangle with my nose. Ha-ha-ha, I say to the glass, and leave behind a misty curtain. When I swipe it away with the sleeve of my nightgown, my eye is caught by a flicker of light on the seawall. A blaze, darkness, and a blaze again. From a cigarette lighter. My stomach turns a circle, a revolution. You say you want a revolution, we-ell you know Owen is holding the flame beneath his chin and waving his arm in a slow arc. At me. When I wave back, he slips his hands into his pockets and walks off toward the studio. My stomach is like a washing machine.

  I’m halfway out the bedroom door before I think again and turn around. On a hook inside the door is my party dress. My arms are crusty with calamine that stains the sleeve holes as I pull the dress down over me. I don’t bother with shoes but rip a hairbrush across my head. Quick, quick, quick. When I fumble and drop the brush on the hard floor I hold my breath and pray Lou hasn’t heard me. No time to lose. I can pull Owen back through the hole in the day. Take back time and begin again. Press something against me. No time to lose.

  Outside my bedroom, the second floor is silent. Hush folks, this takes the utmost concentration, now. On the left, Lou’s room, which I peek into, making doubly sure she’s not there. My skin tingles again so that I shiver. My brain feels big but light, like a Thanksgiving Day float. The back stairs lead to the kitchen. I tiptoe by them and scoot down the long hall, past the upstairs window seat, where Mom smokes and naps and traces little whirligigs in the chenille quilt while the sunny August world goes on outside. Swinging my hand around the smooth newel post, I’m down the main staircase and out to the gravel drive. Back behind the garage is where I can sneak and then follow the tall privet as it runs in a crisp line at the edge of the lawn, far from the lights of the tent.

  In school this year we learned all about Kaspar Hauser. The story swam around in my head like an electric eel, slippery and giving off thunderbolts. I wanted to hold on to the details, bite down on their tails with my teeth so that I could taste each one. I listened to the story with hungry ears. Kaspar lived in a box until he was sixteen, Mr. Spooner said. When he appeared one day from the woods outside a German town, he could barely walk. And he didn’t know how to use his fingers. Just as if he were still a baby. “I want to be a rider like my father,” was all he could say. But he said it in German.

  Picking my way in the dark through the grassy alley next to Edith’s garage, I start thinking of Kaspar and how he couldn’t see in the light. Daylight blinded him. It made him faint. But in the darkness, he could see almost everything. Once, after nightfall, he pointed far away and showed his teacher a tiny bug caught in a spider’s web. I think about Kaspar and the electric eel comes alive again in my head, lighting up the ground in front of me. I start to run toward the studio, dewy grass clippings stuck to my toes Thank you. The band and I are taking a little break and I’m going to turn things over to your hostess, Mrs. Edith Kane. Mrs. Kane? Across the lawn, the party continues.

  Owen has lit a candle. I can see the jitterbugging light as I close in on the studio. At the door, I nearly stumble on Constable, lying in his familiar spot. He’s stolen a lobster, and his long tail swings crazily across the grass when he sees me. His jaw is clenched hard around the big red creature. The shell will make him sick. It always does. But I’ve got no time for tug-of-war.

  Inside, the light is dim and ambery. Owen’s shadow is a gray giant on the farthest wall, and my heart rocks hard in my chest to see it. He’s looking at my grandfather’s unfinished self-portrait, head cocked to one side, a paintbrush in his mouth. With a little dab into a broken tube of holly green paint, he’s coloring in the collar of my grandfather’s shirt. I’ve never seen Owen do anything gently. He is hard and flat as a counterfeit nickel, and doesn’t care about “girly shit” like art. But in the winter, when the summer people are gone, Owen is in the studio all the time. He’s told me that, and other secrets too. Now I see he’s been painting when no one is around, and it makes me like him more, though I know what he is doing is wrong. I like and I hate Owen both, and just now I like him like crazy. When I push open the door, Owen jumps back from the easel. He sees it’s me, turns, and gives the easel a little push so that the painting falls to the floor.

  “Fuckin’ scared me,” he says.

  “Sorry,” I say, wanting more than anything for him not to be angry with me. Back under the tent, Edith is talking into the microphone.

  And so I want to raise a glass to my daughter. What? Oh. Yes, I guess. All right. Sorry, friends, before we toast, someone else wants to say a word or two. My daughter’s shall I say erstwhile husband, Henry Abraham. Come on up, Hank.

  Without looking at me again, Owen throws himself down on the cot, back against the blue-and-white ticking. The bedsprings hee-haw. I can hardly make him out now, in the dark. But I want suddenly, desperately, to be up close to him again, to breathe his loamy, sour smell like the one that comes from my father’s garden when he turns the soil, black and rich. Thanks, Edith, thanks a lot. I don’t really have anything prepared. I just wanted to say … what? To tell Baby that I love her I thread my way through the shadows and sit down on the edge of the cot. Owen’s pulling at a bottle of liquor, the expensive kind that Edith drinks. I know where he got it. After he gulps, he squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head like a wet dog. He shoves the bottle toward me and I tilt it back, the clear liquid blazing like a brushfire down into my belly. Most of you have known Barbara even longer than I, but it’s been, wow, I can’t believe more than twelve years ago when we met. God, she was so fantastically beautiful, IS fantastically beautiful, and, well, I’m sure you all can imagine. Here I was this impoverished Ph.D. candidate in some kind of fetid getup from which I hadn’t likely changed in weeks — didn’t even have the money to do my laundry back then — just quite a mess, and here comes this creature to talk to me at this Morningside Heights ratfuck, excuse me, anyway I’m crawling across the bed. I give the bottle back to Owen and reach up, wanting to t
ouch his scar, which runs like dental floss from the edge of his nose down to the bow of his lip.

  “Get off me,” he says, leaning away and flicking his cigarette off into the darkness.

  Quiet. If I sit still and be very quiet, I can stay here, close to Owen and his dirt smell. Owen drinks from the bottle again. I keep my head down and taste the bitter fire at the back of my throat. It reminds me of the pink jelly Lou puts in her hair and how I tasted it when I was smaller. I don’t want to drink from the bottle again. And she says, “Mr. Abraham, I’m Barbara Kane, I heard you lecture at the New School, and I just wanted to tell you how interesting I thought your talk was.” So I’m thinking, Ah well, I’m interesting. THAT won’t get me laid. What? I’m sorry, Baby, but that’s the truth. In any case, I was wrong. One story I can tell I’m very quiet, my back against the wall, and now Owen has his hand on my knee. He’s rubbing my leg and I don’t look at him, because if I am very quiet he will stay. Cat nestles on the beam overhead, looking down with a Cheshire smile just after we got hitched. Oh, how utterly perfect the moment was, because here we were in the goddamn White House of all places and sweet Baby asks the president which of my works the guy likes the best. Well, it was the longest ten seconds of my life, because of course he hasn’t actually read anything of mine, and my wife barrels ahead with her gorgeous enthusiasm I’ve tilted my head back, crown against the wall to stop my trembling, and Owen’s face is on my neck, wetting my skin with his open mouth. Finally she takes a breath, and the president says, “I’m told you’re Noah Kane’s daughter. I’m such a fan of his!” And then he turns his shoulder to me to speak to Baby in private, and the First Lady says, “If you’ll excuse me, Mr. … Kane, is it? Lovely to have met you.” Now I’m standing there alone He’s whimpering like an enormous, angry baby and his hot, sticky hand is on my wrist, pulling me in to touch at the hardness in his pants. I can feel sickness rising up in my stomach and throat, and I have to swallow hard so it doesn’t come up. But there, there with all his smell and hard touch, Owen is up against me, and I am not nothing. We are together, up from the hole. His fingers are under my party dress and pulling at the waistband of my underpants Yah wash everywhere. Keep yah punani clean or de gibnut will come and get yah! I know what they look like, his fingers, the nails all bitten and the corners shredded and raw. They’re poking and straining at the V between my legs someamazingflower. With my head pressed against the wall I’m not trembling, but the light from the candle is. It jiggers and sways, makes a lion-size shadow of Cat on the ceiling, his white needle teeth like great long spears. Click click. He’s using his claws to sharpen his teeth. Jesus, I have loved her. She’s a goddess. A goddess, for christsake. And I a mere mortal. Right, Edith? Ask my mother-in-law. Baby, I bow down before you. I’m your humble goddamn servant I close my eyes against the sight of Cat’s shadow as Owen’s fingers begin to pull apart where I do not know what’s on the other side. I’m hollow like the hull of a boat, and his fingers scrape at me like oars. I’m afraid there’s nothing inside me where Owen is trying to reach. Constable barks once outside, and Cat wails a wail of death. I’m sliding down across the mattress, and my legs are at the strangest angle so I feel just like Raggedy Ann on the bench in my Coldbrook room, her arms and legs all splayed where she hasn’t been held or moved for the longest time. Owen is moaning, his fingers like Cat’s long claws. How could I ever compete? How could I ever — I’m sorry I’m going I’m gone. Happy birthday, Baby Cat, on the beam, flashes his yellow eyes, rolls them back, is about to pounce till Owen springs back and an oval of flash-light exposes his sweaty face.

  “What’s that? What yah do —? Oh, Lawd. Get out! Get outta here, yah nasty boy!”

  The seam in the day splits wide open. For a time, I don’t know how long, everything is perfectly quiet. Like a silent movie. In one quick movement, Owen is gone. Not pressed against me, not inside me. Gone again, like he was never there. The band starts playing.

  I sit up. Lou is in the doorway, her hand over her heart. Her eyes have a drowning look. Just like Mom’s. Cat is flying through space, his claws like spokes of a wheel. Everyone is going again and there’s nothing I can do. Like they were never there.

  “YOU get out,” I scream.

  My tongue is a spit of flame. I’m lighting the tattered hole on fire.

  “Addy —”

  “YOU get out. NIGGER!!!”

  Nothingnothingnothing. Cat lands at last. His fur covers me. Once I breathe. Twice. We’re burning everything beyond us. Cauterizing the fluttering hole in the day, slipping inside a box that closes, smooth and firm. Bang bang. Nothingness is ours.

  24

  IWAS BURNED, sensationally sunburned. When I at last got up from the sand, a nearly radioactive wave of heat rose from my body. My arms were crimson and inflamed. Walking on uneasy legs back to Foxy’s, I tried to judge the hour from the angle of the sun. I had no idea how long I’d been down on the beach, wandering in the dark thicket of my mind. I only knew that I felt as lost as any castaway.

  Climbing the terrace stairs, I found my way into the restaurant, cool and empty in the stillness of afternoon. A plump banquette under the ceiling fan beckoned me. Completely overheated, I leaned back against the vinyl and felt my last reserve of energy rushing away from me. Lying there, I drifted off for a bit, grateful to the darkness, and woke to the sound of clacking shoes on the heavy tiled floor.

  “Bubbupbup. Don’t yah move,” came a voice behind me. Weak and uncomfortable, I complied and lay back down.

  “Yah just rest now.”

  A damp cloth was placed across my forehead. I closed my eyes and drank in the scent of bay rum that wafted from the body close by me, and tried to focus on the motion of my lungs, their lift and descent. I was such a shambling wreck at that moment that I wasn’t even entirely sure what was going on. Eventually, though, propriety spoke and I forced open my eyes, wanting to set myself straight. The man who was applying the compress took a seat beside me. When I saw his face, the hair instantly rose on my arms.

  Of course. Of course I’d seen Errol before, knew him intimately beyond even the tissue of my deflated brain. His square jaw and smooth brow were just the same, though his hairline had beat a retreat and lay in a thin and graying crown about his head. Just as Philip had said, Errol wasn’t white. But neither was he black in any categorical way. His sloping eyes and angular cheekbones, his smooth, light skin and broad nose made him the ultimate exotic, polymorphic, pandemic. He was still stunningly handsome. His image had riveted me as a little girl; the sensation of him lingered long after I could recall the context.

  Lou didn’t keep his picture on display. It was stashed in her bureau, beneath her slips. I discovered it as I was snooping one morning while she took her bath. I had thought, at first, that he was my father, not because the figure looked like him but because I was a child and he was a man. At some point I realized my mistake but was more excited by the feeling the picture itself gave than the truth of the subject’s identity. It interested me that the photo had been ripped in two then carefully taped back together. I liked the paper, its thick stock and scalloped edges. But mostly I was preoccupied by something I couldn’t name, the very Him-ness of the person looking out at me. He didn’t belong in that drawer, I remember thinking. He couldn’t possibly be contained by it. One day he would certainly levitate, explode through the wood, and go away forever. The man in the picture couldn’t be trusted to remain in that static and lovely state for good.

  Through my fritzing mind came an old hunger, unbidden. Errol handed me a glass of water.

  “Yah an angry red, aren’t yah? Feelin’ badly too, I cyan see.”

  His voice was a near whisper, and he smiled warmly as he spoke. I tried to remember an imprecation or two I’d intended for him, but when I opened my mouth, the words had fled away.

  “That’s arright,” he said, “ ’sarright. Is it paining you? Just rest. Errol’s here now.”

  Reaching into a pocket of his trousers, Err
ol drew out a handkerchief. I noticed that his hand trembled. Carefully, he wrapped the fabric around his finger and began to blot my tears, which were apparently trickling in streams down my face. I tried to stop them, but it was as though I were paralyzed. Each time he touched me, I cried more. I had no control whatsoever.

  “Yah got in a piece of trouble, didn’t yah? A piece of trouble. Don’t fret. Don’t yah fret now.”

  I remembered some of Derek’s words to me and an invisible fist socked me in the stomach. My crying continued unabated, though it felt as if only my eyes were engaged. I didn’t make any noise. Powerless, I lay still and watched Errol through my tears. He leaned into me, dabbing the handkerchief along my temple and hairline, but his eyes were flat, unfocused, and seemed to look beyond me. After a while, he leaned back in against the upholstery. His shirt hung loose over his broad shoulders, as if he were a hanger, and his trousers bunched up under his tightly cinched belt. He was disappearing inside the folds of his clothes.

  “I’m Addy,” I said finally.

  They were the only words that came to mind. Errol nodded, unsurprised, and continued to sit peacefully on the banquette. Besides the idling of his hands, he was motionless. His skin glowed, and I thought he looked beatific, otherworldly. I don’t remember being aware of anything else in the room except Errol. Stirring briefly from my torpor, I tried once to sit up, but he placed a shaky hand on my ankle and I quickly relented. His touch dissolved all my various aches and pains, and time moved in an indeterminate wave. When Errol spoke to me again, it was in a private way, as if he were letting me in on a great secret.