“Archangel! Do we have one coming tomorrow for the party?”
It was Phoebe, who had obviously just washed her hair, which streamed about her shoulders and almost to her hips. She was towelling it as she came into the kitchen and for a moment, as she bent her small head forward, her pale gold hair completely obscured her face. Then her lovely laughing features emerged again, a naiad from behind a waterfall.
Agnes registered the familiar, yet no less despicable, stab of envy at her younger sister’s beauty. Once again, she must confront the terrible unfairness of their contrasting genetic lots. Why, at the very least, could Agnes not also have inherited her mother’s small straight finely modelled nose, with its discreet little nostrils?
At the same time, she could never deny the warm tide of affection that drew her to her feet to embrace the guileless, sweet-natured sister who had never consciously done her any harm. The wrenching paradox got no easier to bear. In Phoebe’s actual presence, Agnes must continuously struggle to subdue a venomous jealousy that just would not die. She detested this malignant trait in her character, and now more than ever when she believed herself so much transformed.
“Oh, Agnes! I love your hair. It really suits you longer.”
“Thanks, Phoebe. I hear you’re the star of your drama class.”
“Have Mum and Dad told you, then?” She skipped forward and laid her small hand, with its pearly perfect nails, on her mother’s shoulder.
“What, Phoebe?”
“I got the part of Cordelia in King Lear. The Little Theatre is putting it on in February. Can you believe it, Agnes? There were sixteen of us who tried out for it and some of them even had professional theatre experience. I still can’t quite believe it. I feel so lucky.”
Phoebe beamed. Her parents beamed back.
“That’s terrific, Phoebe. Congratulations! I’m really sorry I won’t be able to get back for your performance.”
“Oh, Daddy says he’ll video it. We’ll send it to you.”
“Great. I’ll look forward to it. You’ll make a wonderful Cordelia.”
“I hope so, Agnes. But it’s funny . . . you know the part I’m really scared about is the death scene. What if I can’t keep still? What if I get a fit of the giggles?”
She looked at them all expectantly.
Agnes, seeing Campbell’s headless corpse on the road, said nothing.
“You’ll be fine, sweetheart,” their father said soothingly. “There won’t be a dry eye in the house. We’re so proud of you.”
A jolt of resentment shook her. She couldn’t remember her parents saying anything like that to her when she won her scholarship. She had been so happy and astounded at her good fortune, she hadn’t noticed at the time. Never once had they said, “We’re really proud of you, Agnes.”
How she wished she had not come back at all.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “I really would like to get a bit of sleep.”
“Oh, gosh. Wait, Agnes. I haven’t even told you about my boyfriend. His name is Georges and he’s a French exchange student. He’s from Montpellier and you’ll meet him at the party tomorrow. I think you’ll really like him.”
Agnes manufactured a smile that made the skin of her face feel tight and hot. “That’s wonderful, Phoebe. What time is the party?” She was hoping there was a way she could justifiably absent herself for most of it. But it would be Christmas Eve, with not even the public library open. And she had no friends here, absolutely no one, about whom she could invent the pretense of a get-together. Perhaps she could plead the need to do some late-night Christmas shopping, although in fact she had already purchased her gifts.
Georges from Montpellier. She grimaced as she went up to her room, picturing him as one of those impossibly handsome models who advertises costly colognes and designer jeans in the front pages of Vanity Fair. A chiselled indentation in the upper lip; a pouting sensual bottom one. A spray of fine mist to make the naked chest and prominent cheekbones gleam. People would look at him and Phoebe and immediately think what beautiful children they would produce. No one ever seemed to consider the random factors in genetic inheritance when they saw a flawless couple; that two perfect specimens might have a child with a cauliflower ear or a hare-lip. Or a child who looked like Agnes. Was it frazzling exhaustion making her run herself down so? Or the fact she still felt vulnerable from the inquisition about Fergus and her parents’ pressure that she leave Bremrose. Well, she wouldn’t! She would not let them chip away at the proud edifice of self she had created. She would protect her hard-won awareness and keep her vows. If that meant having to repudiate her family altogether, she would do so. Not necessarily without a qualm, but calmly and cleanly, because she had another family now who shared her cherished beliefs.
She flung open her bedroom door with a sigh, as if she were about to rush into the arms of a trusted friend. This had been her secure redoubt for so many years, the refuge where the “monkey-girl with the hairy blue ass who liked it from behind” could drop her impassive daytime face and cry until her eyelids turned red-raw. It was her one place of safety where she could dream as indulgently as she wished about a future life purged of pain and aglow with purpose.
Dear room. She greeted it softly, as it deserved. But even as she set her bag on the floor, she saw everywhere the signs of infiltration. Her mother had obviously been busy. The grey-blue walls were now off-white with a faint pink blush. In place of her old quilt of hand-knitted squares, her mother had put on the bed a frilly comforter splashed with rather vulgar red roses. She looked in disbelief at these flamboyant blooms. She could not lie down peacefully on these blood-red flowers. She stripped the offending comforter off only to be assaulted by more pink in the underlying blanket, sheets and pillow case. Her mother knew she detested pink’s cloying pretty-girl associations. Or did she know? Was she over-reacting? Yet why did it seem that everything in the room declared: Agnes, be gone!
She pictured her mother humming happily as she did her “clean sweep,” pulling pictures off the walls and pitching the newsletters from PETA, the WSPA and the Jane Goodall Institute into the recycling box. It hit her hard that her portrait of Noona was one of the pictures her mother had banished. The morning she’d made her fateful decision to refuse the cosmetic surgery, she had carefully cut out and framed the cover portrait of Noona. She had hung it above her desk so that she would see those empathetic, yearning eyes whenever she looked up. She began wildly pulling open her desk drawers, heaving out books, bundles of essays, and almost-spent ballpoints in fasci-like bundles. She was getting frantic, when at last she opened the long middle drawer where, of course, she ought to have started, had she been thinking at all clearly. There she found the picture of Noona, still in its cheap plastic frame, turned upside down. Even when it was hidden away in a drawer, her mother had had to turn the picture over.
She was hurt and furious, her head full of words like Plunder, Despoliation and Disrespect. She struggled to do the Pinto-like thing and wrench her perspective around. She might well be misreading her mother’s intent. Perhaps she had simply wanted to “brighten the place up,” as she liked to say. But why did she have to take away the quilt, which her grandmother had made out of multi-coloured hand-knitted squares? She could remember her mother expressing misgivings that the cover was unsanitary, given that it was “thick with cat dander.” Agnes, on the other hand, cherished the idea that placid, dainty Cecilia had likely lain purring on the quilt while it was being put together.
When menstrual cramps had ground in her midriff like broken glass, the handmade quilt tented over her knees had emanated a radiant cure. The agility and tenderness of her grandmother’s hands, even the majestic, mysterious life-force of the cat, were knitted into those simple ribbed squares in primary colours. And now her mother had exorcized its spell, as she had exorcized everything in the room that spoke of Agnes and the things she loved.
She lay on the bed under the ugly comforter with its blowzy roses that resemb
led the greedy, open mouths of human carnivores and was reminded of the smell of meat on her mother and father’s breath, so much more evident to her now than when she had lived with them. Even Phoebe smelled of it. Why couldn’t they see how harmful and wicked their eating habits were?
She wondered if Pinto’s mother was a vegetarian. She hoped so for his sake; hoped too, that his Christmas in the familial home would not be as gruelling as hers looked likely to be. Thinking of Pinto, of his huge, kind hands and embracing smile, helped soothe her frayed spirit. She would be herself again, once she was away from this place that was home no longer. She would go back to Bremrose and be absorbed once more into the sacred body of the Ark.
Pinto’s mother did not own a computer nor did she write letters. Communication between them during the school year had been therefore limited to the calls Pinto dutifully made once every two weeks from the landline in the Ark. It had been in early November that he first heard about his mother’s new boyfriend, Mick. He could tell she was smitten. She’d spoken rapidly, with an uncharacteristic breathy trill, and managed, in the space of their four-minute conversation, to say Mick’s name ten times or more.
For as long as he could remember his mother had maintained a certain distance with the men in her life. “I’ve been a fool too often, Peter,” she would say. He regarded the make-up she wore for her work at the casino — the bold red lipstick, blue eye shadow and false eyelashes — as elemental to her tough, worldly wise persona. It disconcerted him when on the phone she’d sounded more like a gushing girl than the mother he knew. She has put down her guard, he thought. She has made herself utterly naked for this man, and I am afraid for her.
Mick was living with his mother. Pinto had considered breaking with their longstanding habit of spending Christmas together — a tradition grounded far more in convention than any ardent wish to spend time in each other’s company — and staying in the Ark, reading, meditating, taking long walks in the snow imagining he was with Agnes; then coming back to listen to Arvo Pärt and to pray for the untrammelled passage of Campbell’s soul, and for poor Fergus.
“I’ve told Mick how smart you are, Peter, and what a fine man you are. He’s looking forward to meeting you.”
His scruples had prevented him from asking if she had told Mick that her son had an unusual skin pigmentation. It was the humiliating “rituals” of his childhood that prevented candour. His mother still laboured under a burden of regret for all the times she had asked him to hide when she had friends visiting. He had kept his part of the bargain, staying “quieter than a mouse,” never coming out to use the toilet no matter how great his need, making do with the plastic bucket she provided. He had complied with all her wishes and been a good son. But that enforced exile within his own home had struck at his heart and fed the self-loathing he so much wanted to surmount. He’d tried often to extend her an unqualified forgiveness, but a residue of resentment made this impossible.
“If you and Mick would like Christmas alone together . . .”
“Oh no, Peter!” She’d sounded genuinely affronted. It was her guilt talking, he thought. They were both still too tangled in its coils. “When you are coming?”
Any cautious optimism foundered the instant he saw Mick. Everything about the man was repellently flashy, from his razored white-blonde hair to the exaggerated pointed toes of his sleek boots. He had what appeared to be a rhinestone embedded in one of his eye teeth. When he parted his lips, its dazzle made his mouth look cruel, if not inhuman. He was wiry and muscular, although a good foot shorter than Pinto. He wore his narrow jeans so tight it was difficult not to stare at the prominent bulge at his crotch. Pinto blinked. He did not like to think of his mother being touched by this person, let alone having sex with him. This thought exacerbated the queasiness brought on by the smell of Mick’s aftershave, and the tanned-hide reek of the obviously new leather jacket he had draped over his right shoulder. But the thing about his mother’s lover that most shocked Pinto was his youth. He guessed Mick was barely thirty.
“Aren’t you going to say hello to Peter, babe?” His mother sidled up to Mick, who stood staring hard at Pinto.
He found it hard to watch as his mother’s arm snaked around Mick’s waist.
Mick pushed her away. “Nadine, a word.” He jutted his jaw toward the kitchen door. “Now, Nadine!”
Nadine was his mother’s “casino name.” It went with the azure eye shadow and kewpie doll eyelashes; with the stiletto heels and the tight black skirt with the provocative side-slit. But it was Colleen who sent him a look of sorrowful shame as she followed Mick out of the kitchen and closed the door behind them.
Pinto sat down at the table and pressed his knuckles against his eyelids. Why had he come? Why hadn’t he obeyed his instincts and stayed away, for this Christmas at least? He knew that for his own sake, and his mother’s, he must try not to overhear what Mick said. He was so weary of people like this and fed up with contorting himself to excuse their willful prejudice. But he could not help the fact the walls of his mother’s house were thin and he too slow at stopping up his ears.
“You should have warned me, Nadine,” he heard Mick hiss. “Did you really think I could sit opposite that and eat my dinner?”
Pinto balled his fists. Was he a disaster-made-flesh from which decent people must shield themselves? He studied his fists. He wanted to smash something, anything. It was a despicable urge.
“I’ll be back by six, Nadine. And he better be gone by then. Or I’m out of here for good. Understand?”
The front door slammed. He knew he must attempt to inhabit his mother’s distress if he was to salvage his affection for her. Her silence in the face of Mick’s remarks told him how deeply she was in his thrall. At the same time, he knew she would be suffering acutely on his behalf, and perhaps be disgusted at her own pusillanimity.
He stretched his fingers out into the empty space beneath the table where Yangtze used to lie while he did his homework. Her presence would have comforted him in this perplexing dilemma and gifted him a quietude in which he could puzzle through how best to speak to his mother so that she was not laden with even more guilt on his account.
He was afraid for her, and of the ultimate consequences of this new love affair. There seemed to be precious little love in it, at least from Mick’s vantage point. He supposed their relationship was grounded in sexual need and this worried him because of what he perceived as Mick’s innate cruelty. Or was he being unfair? Wouldn’t it be possible for Mick to be redeemed, with the right teacher and exposure to salutary, enlightened ideals? If nothing else, surely he could be taught a modicum of civility? His character was so undeveloped, more boy than man; he seemed a self-obsessed and heartless child.
The understanding jolted him when it finally came. Mick was the kind of son his mother wished she’d had. Not saintly, studious, shy Pinto, but a good-looking, narcissistic, wild boy who often got into trouble but was instantly forgiven because he was so endearing. A son on whom she could dote, foolishly and forever. He had never before considered that he had let her down in this way as well; that she would have preferred him rude and rough-and-tumble, rather than considerate, well-mannered and contemplative. He yearned at that instant, in the kitchen of his childhood with the memory of Yangtze so near, to confess all his sins to his mother; to show her the naked violence of his heart.
She came back into the room with wet eyes and an imploring look.
“I’m so sorry, Peter.” She extended her arms toward him, her hands clasped as if she were a disciple asking his blessing.
His mother wanted his absolution. What choice did he have but to give it?
“It’s all right, Mom. I shouldn’t have come. We didn’t think it through.”
We. Yes, he will include himself in the culpability. He put his arms around her. He was so large, he engulfed her. He had the momentary illusion she was a tiny child in his keeping. If she were a child, he could forcibly hold her back from the degradation and p
ain he knew Mick would cause her. Mick would one day depart, with many ugly words and seek out someone younger and more nubile. His mother would then sit many hours at the pitted metal-topped table and smoke until her chest ached.
Yet he could not interfere. He had seen how she looked at Mick; the light of passion in her eyes was undeniable.
“I don’t want to lose him, Peter.” She wrung her hands, even while he held her. He felt them twisting against his belly. Were he a different kind of man, he could gleefully pummel Mick’s face until the flesh hung in strings from his bones. But he is not that man. He is the virtuous and understanding son who says: “It’s all right. Really. I have friends in Bremrose who invited me for Christmas Day. I can be back there in time easily.”
This too was a lie. It would take him ten hours by train and then bus to get back to the Ark. Where, at least, he would be at peace.
He wished he could say to her: “How can you love this stupid boy? Can you not see that he has traduced me; that his behaviour is beneath contempt?”
Instead, he stood holding her, against the pain to come.
“If I can ever make it up to you, Peter, you know I will.”
These were her last words to him as he went out the door, where barely a half-hour previously he had come in. The sharp-pointed snow stung his face. He put on his wrap-around sunglasses, raised the hood of his duffle coat and launched himself headlong into the wind. He longed to see Agnes, to be in the force field of her innocent, questing nature; to gaze on her dear face; to be cleansed and renewed by her quick presence. He would suggest she walk behind him so that, with the great bulk of his body, he could protect her from the wind’s teeth and the snow’s minuscule daggers.
Most of the young people at the soirée, as Phoebe persisted in calling it, were from her acting class, or so Agnes surmised, based on their remarkable self-possession. As she observed them, she understood this gilded presentation was to some degree cultivated. Here and there she saw evidence of long-studied gestures, perfected with much mirror practice. Some of their affections verged on the comical: the chin lifted just a fraction too high to better show off an elegant little nose; the aristocratic sweep of the head to bestow a winning smile on everyone and no one in particular.
Hunting Piero Page 18