Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 24

by Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant, Jedediah Berry

  "That's what happened with you and your ex,” says my friend. “It was going badly, but you kept holding on.” His gloved hands move under my shirt a little and around my bare waist.

  Knowing he has just handled dead flesh I recoil at first, but then I move closer. Maybe, I decide, that is actually a good thing because of the contrast. After touching a dead person, my skin must seem so special and alive, so not at all just-skin. “You know,” he says, “I've smoked up so many memories of bad relationships. I mean,” he tells me, taking off a glove so he can press his bare hand to my face, “I know what not to do."

  The body behind us gives another death rattle. It startles me and I jump, but his hand stays on my face and I do not look away. “But I've seen good memories, too,” he continues. “I know how to be very romantic."

  I expect his breath to smell awful, like burnt hair, but instead it smells like Lilac Rain shampoo. I watch the fine layer of talc the rubber glove left on his hand glitter magically in the light, and the memory-hole in my brain turns hungry then hungrier. “Eat him with a thousand kisses,” the hole says; it needs to snack on a new memory right away. So we kiss, and the weird smells of the morgue suddenly turn tame and slippery, something my lungs can slide over easy as jelly, something that can hold my heart steady through our own quiet death rattle.

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  A Story Like Mine by Eve Tushnet

  I.

  Once upon a time there was a girl with a gift she didn't like.

  To be fair, it wasn't the sort of gift anyone would have liked. She could see something: a very distressing thing that happened sometimes, when she touched things. When she touched things, they changed. Glass cracked. Paper yellowed and crumbled. Grass went brown and brittle. One time, a tomato turned to fungus-furred mush when she tried to chop it.

  She didn't know why she was so reluctant to tell anyone about the gift, but she knew she didn't want to make a fuss. So she tried to do things that would make it go away. She developed a number of theories. She made a wish every time she saw a black squirrel, she made sure to tap her foot against her chair leg thirty-nine times every day, and she carried a lucky clump of thistle that bit into her palm when she reached nervously into her pocket to make sure it was still there. None of this helped.

  She wondered if the scar across her face was because she'd touched her skin at some point, and it had warped. Regardless, she did grow older, and she got used to her gift, because humans get used to things like that. She stopped chewing on the teddy bear. She got used to throwing things away when her touch turned them moldy or wormy or caked with dirt. She got used to the difficulties of walking on sidewalks that shrugged and puckered under her feet.

  She was in high school when she started reading books that suggested a reason for her gift: The books suggested she had a vision problem. She snuck out of the house and began seeing an eye doctor in secret. He also had a scar across his face. He said her gift was the projection of her own uncertainties, unhappiness, and poor self-image. There were things she could do, things that would actually work, unlike the squirrel wishes and the lucky thistle. She became very radical, in her small ferocious way: hard-working and sensitive to insult. Her scar remained, but her touch didn't seem to wither or corrode things anymore. She was happy now and then, starting to acquire the habits of happiness. Her gift faded and she didn't miss it; she didn't notice when the sidewalk shivered.

  She went on few adventures, and lived intermittently happy ever after.

  * * * *

  II.

  Once upon a time there was a boy whose father was dying. The boy was the youngest of a large family. After school each day he followed his family into the hospital. The family was ushered in; each time, the boy, for reasons he never fully understood, was stopped and asked to show his school I.D. Still, he was let in each time. His father was groggy and snappish, but still able to communicate, still able to give instructions and be pleased. The boy wanted to be given some assignment: something he could do for his father, something he could get right. He lurked behind his aunts and uncles and worried about himself, knowing he should be worrying about his father. He knew he wasn't reacting the right way. He tried to feel the way someone whose father was dying should feel. Instead he just wanted to be noticed, acknowledged, and given a necessary but easily-performed task—so he could show that he wanted to do the right thing, instead of having to figure out what the right thing was.

  Being the youngest, he got hungry. He nagged his mother and was sent to the hospital cafeteria. There were hamburgers that tasted like construction paper and paste, and fried zucchini that had been sitting too long under heat lamps. He sat alone, knowing he should have waited, knowing he'd bothered his mother when she had enough to deal with already.

  The next day, on his way from the school to the hospital, he met the knife merchant.

  From then on, he stopped at the knife merchant's store every day before going on to the hospital. The knife merchant gave him small, particular tasks, taught him to sharpen the knives and fit the blades into the hasps. He was praised when he did it right, and gently corrected when he didn't. The knife merchant, who was then in the Indian summer of his life (the days sweltering and the nights very cold), talked to him like he was an adult. With the knife merchant he didn't feel annoying, inconvenient, self-pitying, or inexplicable.

  His father died. He didn't know what to do at the funeral. He cried, too loudly and too obviously dramatic, and was told to be quiet. Afterward, while the family was filling up his house, he slipped away and went out to the knife store. The knife merchant explained exactly how the business worked, and asked if he wanted to be a knife merchant as well. The boy agreed. He knelt down and let the knife merchant carve a deep scar across his face, a scar that mirrored the merchant's own. It didn't hurt nearly as much as he had expected. He held still as the knife merchant sewed up the cut. The knife merchant told him he'd done a great job—a real trooper. He grinned, then winced as his stitches pulled, but he was too relieved to stop smiling.

  He left town soon after, with a few clothes in a duffel bag and a case of knives. His mother was unhappy, but resigned herself to seeing him when he came into town. In later years he always spoke highly of the knife merchant who'd taught him the trade, but they never saw each other again. He became a successful businessman: He paid off his mother's mortgage, and bought a penthouse apartment in a city far enough away that he had to take an airplane every time he came home.

  * * * *

  III.

  Once upon a time there was a girl named Alice who thought her best friend was as beautiful as Snow White: black and pale and red. And her best friend, a girl named Celia, thought Alice was as beautiful as Rapunzel: golden ringlets down to here.

  They laughed about how each of them wanted to look like the other. They were inseparable from fourth grade through high school. They stayed up all night drinking Kool-Aid; later it was cold coffee. They went to the same summer camp. They stuck up for each other on the playground and put up with each other everywhere else. Alice learned to ignore Celia's irresponsibility and her belief that everyone should make exceptions for her. Celia learned to ignore Alice's snobbery and her need to have everything exactly the way she liked it.

  The problem came when they applied to colleges. They didn't get into the same schools. They were upset, and they went to a local witch. The witch explained that there was a way that they could be together, but it was frightening and weird and it sounded like it wouldn't make people happy. It required a lot of effort.

  More effort, it turned out, than either one of them was willing to expend.

  So they went to different colleges, and after that, it wasn't the same. They fell back into one another's pasts. Celia hacked her way through walls of thorn, and pulled herself up glass hills on her hands and knees, wheedled and tricked and developed frown lines between her brows and at the corners of her mouth. Alice met a series of men—the one who was a frog, and t
he one who was a beast, and the one who was a swan. (That one left her to live with some other swans, and she couldn't say she was sorry, because he was as handsome as a swan but also as mean.) And nothing seemed to have a satisfactory ending.

  Then one day Celia stopped into a bar for a quick drink, in the middle of a dulled unimportant afternoon, and saw Alice sipping at a margarita with a bewildered look on her face.

  Celia's glassy eyes suddenly went bright and alive. She cried out, because it was almost painful, the sudden rush of air into the airtight coffin. Alice heard her, and turned; and the golden hair that had grown too thick and fast for years, weighing her down and tangling around her feet, fell away. Celia laughed out loud at the sudden change: “Oh wow!” They stood, grinning stupidly at each other. “I love this with your hair, it's all—” and Celia lifted her hands and wagged them by her ears to indicate what she meant—"flippy and flarey! Are you—are you waiting for someone?"

  Alice laughed and grinned some more. “Yeah. I'm waiting for someone. But I think she just arrived.” Celia actually looked behind her, unhappy and out-of-place, before she realized what Alice meant.

  They sat together and ate sushi and drank margaritas and talked about the years since college. Alice told Celia about the frog and the beast and the swan, and Celia said, loyally and with gusto, “I think they should all be batter-fried!” They laughed, talked, and eventually Celia had had enough drinks that she mentioned the witch. “Do you—do you ever think about that, you know? About doing that?"

  Alice took a quick breath, and had more of her margarita. “Yeah, I ... I mean, it—it wouldn't—it could totally be fun. You know."

  "It could totally be fun,” Celia echoed.

  So they did it. They went back to the witch, who was by now very old, and bought a knife from her. They bought a house with chicken feet, and they merged their finances; and the first night in their new house, they took the witch's knife and carved matching scars into each other's faces. And from then on they lived in the chickenfoot house, with Alice's daughter (from her marriage to the frog prince). They vacationed together while the chickenfoot house migrated for the winter. Celia sat by the hotel pool sipping blue drinks with orange umbrellas, and Alice took her daughter out into dusty marketplaces where they bought colorful wraps to hide their thighs. Alice and Celia made out their wills to one another, with a substantial bequest to the witch. They were familiar faces in the neighborhood. Alice's daughter went to Stanford and became an anthropologist.

  Sometimes one or the other would find that her scar had faded. (Usually Alice, but sometimes Celia.) It was an easy matter, though, to hand the knife over and let the other woman carve the scar back in, so they matched again.

  * * * *

  IV.

  Once upon a time there was a boy whose face broke open.

  He was shaving in front of the mirror one day—he had only just started shaving—when his hand slipped and his face split. Underneath the skin there was horror. Where the skin split he could see oily, black things, writhing and pulsing. He cried out, dropped the razor. His mother knocked on the bathroom door and asked if he was all right. He tried to hold his face together, tried to pinch the edges of the cut in the hope that it would somehow heal itself. He told her he was fine.

  Whatever was under his skin smelled foul. The stinking stuff began to crawl out from between his fingers. In the bright bathroom light he could see that it was reddened black, like blood clots, and it had a gelatin texture.

  He cracked the bathroom door and checked to make sure his mother wasn't in the hallway. Then he bolted for his bedroom. He rooted around on the top of his bureau until he found what he was looking for: his stage-makeup kit. (He was an accomplished actor, with prominent roles in all the school plays.) He had whiteface makeup, false hair, spirit gum, makeup remover, and he had a press-on scar. He found the rubbery scar, coated the backing with spirit gum, and pressed it to his broken face.

  The fake scar stopped the leakage. He was able to go down to breakfast, go to school, without whatever was inside him getting out.

  It took about a year, but eventually the scar grew into his skin. He didn't have to stick the peeling edges down with spirit gum anymore, or blend the edges of the scar with makeup. He never resented the scar. Everyone thought him very brave for his matter-of-fact attitude toward the scar, but he knew he wasn't brave. He just knew what it was hiding.

  * * * *

  V.

  Once upon a time there was a woman who wanted to be a more successful reporter.

  She was well-known in her field. She evoked sympathy in interviewees. She had the combination of ambition and vulnerability that makes men want to be father-figures and women want to be mentors. But she could never get on television, because of the scar across her face. In print, anything could be fixed with Photoshop; but television was another matter, and that was where the action was.

  So she investigated various treatments. She had a skin peel. It hurt, and it made her whole face red and blistery, and for a month she couldn't leave the house without being stared at even more than usual. It hurt a lot, but the humiliation—knowing she'd brought this on herself, had even paid thousands of dollars for it—was much worse than the physical pain.

  She tried masking creams. These were simply not enough to deal with the problem. Her scar, apparently, was very assertive. This realization made her fond of the scar, in a way, but not fond enough to make her want to keep it.

  Finally, when she was up much too late one night working on a story that needed to be filed by morning, she decided she needed some background noise. She turned the television to a show about a spunky female detective. Late, in the back alleys of the night, a commercial caught her attention. A smooth-faced brunette was holding a thick tube. She squeezed the tube—slowly, sensually—and a white cream pooled in her palm. She rubbed the cream on a fake-looking scar on the inside of her arm, and in time-lapse photography the scar disappeared.

  The reporter stared. Somewhat shakily, she wrote down the product's name on the whiteboard where she kept her grocery list and deadline reminders. The next day, after she'd filed her story and slept into the afternoon, she bought a tube of Scar Removal Solution.

  The white cream was grittier than it had looked on television. It burned a little against her palm, and she was briefly frightened. Still, she was determined: as determined to get rid of her scar as the scar was to stay. So she rubbed the cream over her face. She covered the cream with the thick bandage provided in the package, and went to sleep. When she woke up, the first thing she did was head for the mirror. She carefully pulled the bandage away. The skin underneath was slightly reddened, but smooth. She looked at a face she had never seen—except in her retouched publicity photos.

  She stood, very quiet, and realized she didn't know what to do. She didn't want anyone to see her yet—not anyone who knew her. She stayed inside all day, and all the next day. She tried to sleep, but she kept getting up to go look in the mirror again. Each time the strange scarless face looked back.

  It only took two days before she gave in. She took a kitchen knife and put her face back the way it had been.

  It hurt even more than the skin peel, but she didn't mind. She could recognize herself again.

  * * * *

  VI.

  Once upon a time there was a boy with a scar he couldn't see.

  Other people could see it, and remarked on it. The adults were often solicitous; the children, being children, were usually vicious. A girl with a scar he could see attached herself to him, a little gauche limpet, and he had a hard time scraping her off. He didn't see what they had in common.

  He regretted that the day four other boys jumped him after school. She stood by and watched, like everyone else, while the other boys carved a scar across his face. The blood got in his eyes; when he wiped at his face, crying, he could see that she looked angry and satisfied at once.

  * * * *

  VII.

  Once upon
a time there was a degree of resentment.

  This resentment lived in a skinny awkward girl, a sophomore in high school. Like most sophomores she was prone to barbarism and unable to see beyond the end of her nose. She had too much money, too much attention from her teachers, and several promising talents. She acted in all the school plays, and her best friend worked tech for all of them.

  She wasn't satisfied, of course. She auditioned for ingénue roles and got ironist roles instead; she auditioned for maidens and played spinsters.

  After rehearsal one night toward the end of her sophomore year, she and her best friend walked to his home. He practiced on his drums while she pawed through his older sister's books. She chattered about who was dating whom, and he practiced on his bass guitar. She hinted broadly, and he fiddled with his amplifiers.

  "God! Are you even listening?"

  "...Uh huh, but—"

  "There's this movie, it's like a sequel to Spinal Tap, it's supposed to be funny even if you haven't seen the, you know, the original, and I thought we could go."

  "Yeah—we could go with Dan."

  "We could go with us."

  "I ... hey, I really don't think that's such a great idea, I mean you, I mean we have a lot in common, and—I mean with the scar and everything."

  "The what?"

  He hunted around for a guitar pick, so he wouldn't have to look at her. “You know, the scar. Thing. That I know you have, and I'm pretty sure I have."

  And she said, “Oh.” She looked around. “I—uh, I have to, to use the restroom, I'll be back.” In the basement bathroom, she stared into the mirror, and she saw it. “Oh. I've been really stupid.” Her mouth worked, as if she were one of her characters about to discipline an overexuberant serving-girl, and she said, very softly, “I don't like this.” It wasn't so much the scar, really. It was that she felt as if she didn't know how to act, when one of the biggest attractions of the school theater productions had been that she always knew how to convey the emotions she was expected to portray. “I don't like this.” She was supposed to be insightful. That was what it said on her essays: good work, insightful.