That’s what was wrong with her, she realized—apart, of course, from her riddled corpus. There beside the longhouse it struck her, trying not to inhale the stench of rotting flesh. It wasn’t just her own decay. Or her shyness. It was not knowing what she wanted. Wanting not to know: this, it turned out, was not enough. You couldn’t treat a disease, you couldn’t make someone love you, you couldn’t get around the Internet and its infinity of filth, you couldn’t be useful to your child, you couldn’t even buy dinner, not without knowing what you wanted. What happened to feeling your way? What happened to things just as they were, to not going to the gym and not rearranging the furniture, which had worked for everyone’s ancestors for centuries, until now? This was all gone.
She hurried back to the car, pursued by an old woman selling prawns from a bucket. Just to get rid of her, Jean bought the lot, and back on the road she thought once more, This is what’s wrong with you—and what, she guessed, was right with Giovana. The clarity of purpose. She wondered how much time she had left. She’d read about it—she’d even written about it—how suddenly it could strike you, a matter of weeks. Forget the échographie, whatever the hell stopgap measure that was. She was desperate to get rid of her breasts, not that she expected excision or mastectomy to work. You could chop down the tree, but the roots remained below, with their everextending reach; a destiny courtesy of the St. Jacques Ministry of Health—the antique X-ray and the inexperienced eye—as you had only to expect on an outpost island in an outpost ocean.
Three months: she couldn’t bear to think what kind of difference to her life span it might have made if she’d collected her results straightaway. There was no more time to waste. She had to become more like her rival, and more like Mark. He, too, had always known what he wanted. He was already specialized when she met him. There he was in Crime and Thriller, while she gazed over the long rows of General Release—Drama, Period, Romantic Comedy.
That night Jean passed out in the bath and had to be helped to bed, wrapped by Mark in the shroud of his blue robe. When she woke, twelve hours later, he was standing beside her holding a mug of milky tea.
“Tragic nap?” he asked sweetly (in his habits of speech Mark enjoyed compression even more than exaggeration: the twelve-hour “nap”). She could only nod assent and obediently sip, nursing the cup in two hands, and when he left her to go back to work, she looked down at her partially exposed breasts—still there, showing nothing…they were all such good little liars now. Farther down, she saw that her body was imprinted with a diamond pattern from the waffle weave of the fabric, like a fishnet catsuit.
In the bathroom, Jean judged that sleep, or dehydration, was working in her favor: she looked firmer than she would later in the day, as if she’d spent the night in a big woman-shaped Jell-O mold and her form had settled and temporarily solidified. Gravity would bag it out again and, hours later, the fishnet would still be there, but it would hold nothing in. No more holding in and no more springing back. And even as she had this thought—just the kind of cold-eyed, womanly observation that made her the mass-read health writer she was—she realized it, too, would have to be revised, through the prism of gratitude that was contingent on major illness.
Mark, belted into what he called his dressy dressing gown of patterned vintage rayon—a gift from Victoria—had spent the entire morning in the small study, working on the campaign for that line of nostalgic appliances: rotund ovens and fridges. He was stumped. In St. Jacques all appliances looked like this, but they were painstakingly maintained antiques, not winking retro. Sitting with coffee, Jean watched him go in and out of the fridge three times for beer, and it wasn’t yet lunchtime.
“What are you doing now?” she asked, as if she couldn’t see. Dan would be calling to go over the pitch in less than an hour.
“Making a proper drink,” he said, defiant. “Dark rum, a splash of our favored cane, a squeeze of lime, a spriglet of mint, and two heaping tablespoons of vanilla sugar—nectar of the gods.”
But Jean could see he was distracted by a bigger worry—and she hadn’t even told him about the clinic. For the first time she thought it entirely possible Giovana would dump him first. Or maybe it was that he couldn’t work here. Advertising was about tuning in to local mood, trends, perversions, aspirations, even weather. In fact mainly weather. People shopped to make up for weather. Of course it didn’t matter what kind of fridge you had in St. Jacques, so long as it got cold enough. (So, here too, it was about weather.) He couldn’t connect at a distance; he couldn’t care enough about the shape of a refrigerator. That’s what Jean saw in the upped booze consumption, Mark trying to give a shit, with consequences. His deadlines always triggered an increase. Because he didn’t acknowledge stress, thinking it newfangled and possibly American, he convinced himself that pressure stirred his creative juices. But increasingly, his elaborate cocktails were his creative juices.
How long could they last if he couldn’t work? Jean was also having problems with her column. She couldn’t write about betel nut, the local stimulant and digestive aid, because it wasn’t yet available in Tesco or CVS. But what kind of health story could she do while she was facing down cancer? She really didn’t want to write about that—like those obituaries filed years in advance. And she didn’t want to talk to him about it before she decided what to do. Maybe neither of them could work here, she thought, spinning lettuce at the sink, spinning, spinning, spinning. Oh my God, there he was again, back in that fridge, still muttering about “these fat fucking fridges.”
Jean didn’t respond, just kept about her task, assembling lunch, and through the window, she spotted Christian chugging along the track. Well, at least she’d already had the horrible news from the clinic—what other surprises might he have in his bag of tricks? She followed his progress, his bob and his weave, climbing toward the house. Up here at her high command station by the kitchen window she felt like a lighthouse keeper. Jean plunged the prawns into the boiling water and watched as they turned, almost instantly, from gray to pink. That must be what it’s like, she thought. Having an affair.
She was prepared to meet Christian, but Mark—clearly desperate for any interruption—beat her to it. A few minutes later he wandered back inside carrying a couple of small parcels, a large envelope—probably from the clinic. Over his head he was waving a letter. “From Vic,” he said, depositing the packages on the shelf, out of the way of her lunch making. She glanced up at the first one. The minuscule handwriting was vaguely familiar but not readily identifiable. Mark frisked himself for his glasses; Jean peeled the prawns and waited. She might not tell him about the clinic at all, she thought. What perspicacity and foresight he showed, having someone lined up to comfort him and, one fine day in the not-too-distant future, to replace her. Before he got the letter out of the envelope, the phone rang.
“Shit. Dan!? Hi. Theo, that you? Connie? Is Connie on? Hang on a mo’.” He covered the mouthpiece and said to Jean, “Don’t wait for me. This’ll take about half an hour. Unless we get cut off.”
He took his beer from the counter and disappeared with the cordless phone, and the letter, into his study. Now Jean had to wait to hear Vic’s news. She stood at the sink, eating a giant prawn, and thought that would be one good thing about living on her own: no more meals. When she took down the two packages, her equanimity, such as it was, vanished. The small handwriting would have to wait; she knew who’d sent the second one and it made her scalp itch. A book bag that didn’t have a book in it, addressed to Mark. She studied the big block capitals, slanted backward—Giovana’s unschooled hand. London postmark, no return address.
A natural nosiness in Jean had, over these stealthy months, hardened into skill, and in a glance she saw that the packet had not been taped or glued, just stapled: these could easily be reinserted. Holding it out of sight in the depths of the sink, she unpicked the light aluminum staples and placed them in a saucer on the shelf, then she reached into the bag and pulled out something hard and bubble-wr
apped.
She removed the plastic and looked at the naked item that rolled into her palm, mystified. Hard purple rubber, it could be some sort of pacifier, or designer kitchen utensil. A bottle stopper, or maybe something for mixing cocktails? No doubt Mark and Giovana enjoyed their cocktails. But this was more like a teething ring, the kind you put in the freezer first. She held it up to the light to look for markings. Well, there was a ring, but too small for even a baby’s hand. And protruding from one end was a thick, flattish tab, made of the same molded rubber but ribbed. An instrument of torture? Jean looked again in the bag and saw a folded sheet of instructions: Fig. 1, pull ring down onto erect penis. It wasn’t a pacifier; it was a stimulator, for Giovana’s pleasure. No, for Jean’s pleasure. Why else had she sent it here? Just showing off, pushing the limits, as everybody knew you could with a man in thrall. A souvenir, like those underpants with the road signs? Was it used? She had the gizmo rewrapped and restapled and back on the shelf in under a minute. It took her longer to wash her hands, scrubbing and staring blindly through the window. When she was finished, she took the package down off the shelf and tossed it in the garbage under the sink.
She washed her hands again, still staring out the open window. Jean saw a bird of traffic-cone orange, sitting on the fence that marked the edge of the property. He was one of her regulars, and she called him Highlighter, for his fluorescent feathers. Poor creature, camouflaged nowhere, except in the bird book where she’d been unable to find a likeness. She leaned forward, holding some crumbs out through the window, urging him closer, trying to forget what she’d seen.
Jean hadn’t heard Mark leave the house, but there he was now, walking toward the road. She put on her glasses for detailed viewing and saw that as he walked he held his dressing gown together with his hands, letting the belt trail behind in the dust. He’d gone to close the gate. She knew it annoyed him that Christian left it open, and that it was Christian himself who grated. She watched as he struggled to hook the wire loop over the post with one hand, still holding his robe closed. She couldn’t help smiling as he tried to hold the robe closed with his elbow, to free up the other hand, now using both elbows. The wind had come up and lifted his hair, probably pulling at his dressing gown, too. He must be swearing his head off, she thought as he stepped back but held his robe tightly closed with his arms crossed, waiting and watching for the gate to spring open by itself, which it sometimes did. Just, he believed, to thwart him.
When Mark returned, his belt tied not in a bow but in a double knot, Jean was already sitting outside, sipping coffee. A pot on the table, a cup for him.
“We got cut off,” he said. “I’m going to have to go down to the St. Jerome in an hour.”
“Can we have Vic’s letter first?”
“I was just coming to that,” he said, pulling the envelope from his robe pocket and rummaging in the other for his rimless reading glasses. (“So much easier to lose,” he’d said, “designed especially, to get it over with.”) He sat down and read aloud. “Dear Mum and Dad.” Mark immediately interrupted himself. “Thank God we’re Mum and Dad again—I really loathed that Jean and Mark business. She probably read somewhere it makes your parents respect you more, never mind how you behave…”
“Read!” said Jean.
“Dear Mum and Dad, everything here is copacetic, bodacious, and superfabulicious! Usual appalling weather not that you care! Finished my essay on Engels, the gloomy bahst. I do love that Vic has given the short for bastard a proper permanent spelling, don’t you? Specially conceived to avoid an American pronunciation, you’ll note. Now where was I? Did you know he used to live in Primrose Hill—little known facts about gloomy bahsts. I’ve begun in on Max Weber. Durkheim and his anomie were good but…Hmm, let’s see.”
“Don’t skip!”
“Excellent 21st for Fiona who got at least three iPods… hint, hint. I wore my green bead dress and some really good silver shoes I got in the market almost new for £5. I still haven’t got anything for Fi. Have you noticed how hard it is to shop ie spend money for a prezzie after the party?”
Mark paused to exchange a look of pleasure with Jean. “The do was at Tramps, sad posh club in South Ken for your age crowd—Oy!—lots of lovely free drink all laid on by her dad who kept groping girls and saying sad things like ‘You’re as young as the woman you feel!’ Poor Fiona. Yes, I have forwarded all the post to Noleen…Maya broke up with Gavin and has been staying at the house, which has been really good, her staying I mean. Send money ha ha. PS Mum, have you already forgotten how to e-mail?? How’s life in paradise? Ex ex ex, Vic. Well,” he said, refolding the letter, “she sounds good. Really upbeat.”
“Definitely something new in her tone.”
“Yes, no arrows of guilt, no slings of complaint.”
Jean let this pass. “Can I see it now, please?”
“Hang on. Doesn’t it say, here at the end?” He unfolded the letter again, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and turned it over, looking for whatever it was he’d left out. “She says she met someone. Remember I went to the Hobsbawm lecture? Well Vikram was there and we met in the queue for the free glass of wine. I hope when you visit you’ll meet him. When are you coming? El oh el. Exclamation mark.”
“Hey, you didn’t read that. Let me see it.” Jean tried to snatch the letter but he held it tight to his chest. She began to complain, then stopped to watch his face change. She saw him hating the idea of Victoria with a boyfriend. He hadn’t even wanted to convert it to fact by reading it out loud.
“Come on. Let’s wait and see,” she said. “You’ve been wondering all year why she hasn’t got a boyfriend.”
Mark looked troubled, as if he hadn’t heard her. He didn’t reply: he really did mind.
Victoria’s letter was unrecognizable, not her usual tally of private grievances and public complaint (demanding friends, injustices committed against the rate payers of the great borough of Camden), nothing at all, in fact, about her feelings. And then this surprise, tacked-on ending. Jean thought she knew what the change in her was, the source of her new lightness, the awkward chattiness in the letter. She’d had sex.
Jean didn’t imagine Vic was a virgin; in fact she was pretty sure she wasn’t. But anything before this would count as a technicality. And so, to distract Mark, or maybe to give him something worth brooding over, she told him about her stop at the clinic.
“And I have to go back. They want to do another test—une échographie. That means something’s wrong.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What else can it mean?”
“They want to be sure. It’s their job; that’s just a sonogram. Maybe things are unclear, that’s all.”
“That’s what I said. Something’s wrong. God, I’m exhausted. I’m going to lie down for an hour.” She brushed past him. Despite her huge sleep the night before, she was suddenly hit by a fatigue of gale force—the final proof, she thought, of her symptoms. She didn’t want comfort, and she’d had enough of comforting him.
Jean sat on the bed, taking off her earrings—fat silver stars, a present from Vic. She took off her Moroccan silver beads, the only jewelry of hers Victoria coveted, and as she rolled them in her fingers like a rosary she thought about her daughter’s letter. It wasn’t sex. Victoria was in love. Typical of Jean’s mental squalor that she’d fixed on the first—purple teething cock ring, indeed. What would Giovana be sending next? Turquoise butt plugs? Three months ago, I didn’t know what a butt plug was, Jean thought, too downcast to renew her fury against Mark. She dropped the necklace onto the night table and put her hands over her breasts and pressed. Then she lay down. And her breasts lay down, too—unleavened, spread, sliding to the edges of the flat earth. Hardly there anyway, she thought, trying not to cry.
She heard a bird cooing outside the window, beyond the closed curtain, and wondered who it was. Echo-shay, echo-shay—that’s what it sounded like. Écorché: the word came into her mind before she could re
member what it meant. A painting of the body with the skin removed. To show what lies beneath. The French for “flayed”—now how do I even know that word? Already dozing off into a deep and dreamless sleep, she remembered the book bag on the shelf and realized who it was from—the small, neat handwriting. Larry Mond. It was Larry’s book.
By early evening Jean had decided she’d go to London. She’d cancel her échographie—ultrasound, just like Mark said. Perhaps he was right, they were just being sure, but she wanted to see her own doctor, and she wanted to see Victoria. Mark was again sequestered in the study and talking on the phone: the fridge campaign, this time with the client. He’d offered to prepare a meal when he was done, a welcome gesture. Her pleasure in “getting dinner” (shopping, cooking, and then clearing up afterward), never high, had also been canceled by Giovana; apparently she and Mark spent almost as much time eating as fucking. It was all one thing: appetite. Something she not only didn’t have but couldn’t imagine ever having again.
When she went to get a drink, she saw the corner of Vic’s letter sticking out from a high shelf where Mark had left it—deliberately putting it out of the way, or merely inconsiderate (and tall)? She poured a glass of cold white wine and stood on a chair to get Vic’s letter, grabbing, on the way down, the remaining package: Larry’s book. She found a yellow legal pad (the only trace of her wasted education) and went out to the terrace. And as she read the letter she thought she’d been right: it was love. Maybe sex, too, but that was the wrong emphasis; of this she must find a way to convince Mark—though possibly the diverting of Victoria’s love away from him, as he seemed prepared to view it, would upset him even more.
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