“What?”
“Well, that’s what I’ve heard.”
“I mean . . . when did you start using it?” I tried to look unfazed, compassionate.
“God, you’re out of it. Last month. My sister helped me get the prescription. Of course, my parents know nothing about it . . .”
I didn’t know what pained me more to think of: the fact that the pill keeping me without child could also be slowing down my metabolism or the fact that I was now as sexually active as Amanda. Sitting in French class, I was so preoccupied with this question that I didn’t hear the one Madame Rampling addressed to me.
“Quest-ce que vous avez fait en vacances, Laurel?”
She repeated the query, pursing her lips as I groped hopelessly for a reply. All eyes were upon me as I fumbled, Amanda’s included, telling me exactly how far I’d fallen.
I DIDN’T go to him with my concerns about my body, just as I didn’t go to him with my concerns about our future. Instead, I took it upon myself to make cuts at suppertime, and to suppress the thoughts that pained me most. Back in his arms that afternoon, I did everything as before—clinging to his neck and dulling my mind to all that lay ahead. He uncovered the new lace beneath my school uniform and smirked, “This is nice.” It was defiled within the hour.
We had agreed to tone things down in class after our weekend together, which suddenly seemed to me like a distant paradise, an age of innocence that I’d never get back to. As before, he spent most lessons reading to us from the front of the room; when he did come by, however, he made sure to divide his time equally between each desk and to address me and Marcelle together—something he’d done in the early days of our romance, before he knew me well enough to engage me separately. In this way, I came to find myself listening, chin in hand, as he recited snippets of Keats or responded to some query of Marcelle’s. I mostly stayed silent, taking note of the ties that he wore, of his cologne and the salty, manly musk that underlay it. I took note of how his hair fell over his brow, how long it had been since he last shaved, and a thousand other details of his nearness. I’d then match these details up with my memories as a fond lover: learning how to do a half-Windsor knot with his maroon tie; brushing my lips against the one-day stubble of his jaw; running my hands through his soft, dark chestnut hair, which showed no signs of thinning and only the rarest strand of silver. Now and then, I’d feel compelled to keep him there longer by asking him to explain something complicated. One day, I got him to stay for a full fifteen minutes talking about negative capability.
When it was time for us to start on William Blake, Mr. Steadman deviated by spending the better part of a lesson showing us the poet’s illustrations for Dante’s Inferno. He spoke of the lovers’ whirlwind, where the souls of those condemned for lust were blown about endlessly; of the wood of suicides, where sinners were caged in bark like Ovid’s nymphs. In the dimness of the classroom, with only the projector screen for illumination, his features were obscure. His intonations seemed to come from a deeper, more distant place, lulling me with the inevitability of my punishment.
Out in the hallways, he could still be seen walking alongside Mr. Wolfstein, Mrs. Poplar, and less frequently, Miss Kelsen. I passed him by without appearing to pay heed, though the mere sight of him had me itching with desire, nerves, and compunction over our most recent couplings. The physical evidence of these couplings was always increasing. After he gave me a large reddish-purple love bite, I was forced to powder my neck and wear my hair down over my throat for a full week. Undressing in the locker room, smaller bites could be observed at my clavicle, my ribcage, and my hipbones, as well as more enigmatic scrapes and bruises from the classroom carpeting and furniture. One morning early in February, I woke up to find myself afflicted with my first ever cold sore.
Weeks later, the same sore appeared at the side of Steadman’s mouth. I almost yearned for someone to take notice, to put two and two together, to see how the corruption of one lover was echoed in the other. Out of a similar impulse for sabotage, I would sink my teeth into his torso and suck until the blood pooled beneath his skin, until the vessels burst and he pushed me away, laughing that I was hurting him like a veritable lamia. I was proud of the bruises I left on him, which matched my own, and which he was forced to wear like badges of his infidelity, going home to his wife. Likewise, I was thrilled by the prospect of my scent—my warm, acrid, unmistakably youthful scent—announcing itself to her whenever they lay down at night. As much as I shied from the thought of him actually telling her anything, throwing away his marriage for a future that I had trouble contemplating, I wanted her to sense my physical claim on him. I wanted her to know that, though their lives were bound in every other respect, his flesh was mine.
Three times a week, I’d be anointed with his fluids—fluids that had their origins in the knotted system of ducts and glands inside him, and that came out smelling mysteriously of chlorine. On Wednesdays, when we habitually made love during lunch hour, I would bring this smell with me to history class and dwell in its alkaline dankness as Mr. Henderson’s chalk scraped on the blackboard and Kaitlin Pritchard’s lovely neck hovered before me. It was plain to see that I was no longer pure, that I was tainted in more ways than the fastest girls at school. Nevertheless, it all took place without comment. Nobody cared enough to acknowledge my contamination.
UNLIKE MY spiritual decline, my academic decline was acknowledged. Before winter break, a special assembly was held for twelfth-graders, where the phenomenon of “Senioritis” was addressed. Mrs. Faherty, trembling with indignation at the thought that any S.C.C.S. girl could be willing to endanger her future prospects (and the school’s reputation), called up a procession of witnesses. There was a tragic character called Donna Sibley, an ex-student whose acceptance into Berkeley had been rescinded when she got a D in AP history. There were department heads, who spoke of the scores of bright students they’d seen letting their grades slip as soon as their college applications were in. There was the school psychologist, Dr. Lisa Bakewell, who invited us all to drop by for a chat if we ever had trouble coping. Finally, there was Kaitlin, who gave a pep talk about the virtues of supplementing study with wholesome social activities and exercise—all the while tossing her golden hair and shifting her weight from one long leg to the other.
The whole thing was a farce, redeemed only by scenic views of Steadman. He sat on the podium in a purely decorative capacity next to Mr. Wolfstein, looking bored and slightly haughty. At one point, he said something behind his palm to Wolfstein, causing the older man to convulse with silent mirth. My lover, it seemed, was something of a comedian.
We were only able to eye each other from afar, shuffling out of the auditorium: Steadman, talking with his hands while keeping in step with bearded Mr. Wolfstein; me, turning my head to look at him as the crowd carried me off in a swell of gray and tartan. From there, it was straight to second-period math class, where Mr. Slawinski grilled us for an hour with equations. As we were clattering out for morning break, he made an announcement.
“Not so fast. Libby Cloud, Laurel Marks, Ella Massie, Mary-anne Rhymes, Jenny Smith . . . I’d like you to all stay back a minute.”
There was a collective moan and exchange of eye-rolls. We settled back behind our desks, crossing our legs and cupping our chins in our hands. He remained standing, short and utterly sexless with his pocket pen and striped necktie. With a pang, I thought how much better my Steadman looked in chino pants.
“As you may know, the five of you scored below the class average in your latest test. In light of this morning’s assembly, I think you could all benefit from a few hours of extra tuition. How does Tuesday afternoon sound?”
It didn’t end there. In French class, Madame Rampling called us up individually to discuss how we might improve our proficiency in the language. “Laurel, you have a wide vocabulary and a good understanding of French grammar, but I feel you lack confidence in speaking and aural comprehension. Have you heard about the French conv
ersation group after school? You can’t make it on Mondays? Quel dommage. Perhaps you would like to borrow some cassettes. . . ?” Meanwhile, before last period, I received a memo from Dr. Bakewell recom mending that I pay her a visit. I promptly tore it up.
That afternoon, entering Steadman’s classroom for our first tryst of the week, I unpinned my hair and told him of my woes.
“Your mind is too beautiful to be wasted on mathematics,” he declared. “Or on high-school psychologists, for that matter.”
HE WAS due to turn forty-three at some point between the twenty-eighth of February and the first of March. It didn’t matter when exactly: either way, the event fell during winter vacation, the better part of which I’d be spending down at Carmel-by-the-Sea with my mother. On Saturday morning, she would pick me up from Saint Cecilia’s and drive straight down to the Waldens’ cottage, Yellow Leaf. That same day, Lee Walden would take us to inspect Arcady, the cottage he’d described to my mother. Lately, she’d been raving about this cottage to me over the phone and in her letters.
I told Steadman about my plans with the greatest indifference, remarking that I was only sorry to be passing the week so far from him. As an afterthought, I added, “And now our ages will be further apart too. Twenty-six years.”
“Oh, don’t remind me,” he groaned. “I’m well aware of how bad this would look, in a California court.”
“ ‘Statutory rape.’ ”
“ ‘Corruption of a minor.’ ”
“ ‘Criminal congress.’ ”
“ ‘Unlawful carnal knowledge.’ ”
“How many years, do you think?” I asked, only partly in jest.
“Five, six years. Maybe less on probation.”
“I’d visit you,” I ventured.
“You’d better.” He laughed. “It could be worse. Peter Abelard was castrated for bedding Heloise.”
I’d been given the love letters between Abelard and his nineteen-year-old pupil earlier in the month, and was amused by a perceived similarity between Abelard’s smug, cultivated tone and that of my teacher. This tone was something I also found in Byron, who—beyond the mood swings, the hot blood, and the indiscriminate appetites—seemed to me quite a cold character: the epitome of the rational, hypocritical male. Naturally, I was attracted to this. Nevertheless, it didn’t escape me that such men had a habit of turning their women hysterical: Heloise continuing to be plagued by lust as an aging nun in her convent, Lady Caroline Lamb starving herself and running around London dressed as a pageboy.
It was Lady Lamb who inspired me to make him a special gift before we parted at the end of the week. In class, he’d told us a salty story about how Lord Byron’s craziest girlfriend had once enclosed her pubic hair in a love letter. After bathing and perfuming myself the night before, I took out my nail scissors and made a clipping from my own delicate brown triangle. This was placed in a green marbled envelope, along with a note that I’d been agonizing over all week.
LAUREL STEADMAN
NEXT TO LAURA DEAREST
& MOST FAITHFUL—GOD BLESS YOU
OWN LOVE—RICORDATI DI DAPHNEA
FROM YOUR CALIFORNIA NYMPH2
“Perfect! It’s perfect,” he effused when I handed it to him. “And, of course, I will remember Daphne. I could never forget Daphne.”
“Or Laura?”
“Or Laura.”
“Or Lady Caroline?”
“Or Lady Caroline.”
“Or Heloise?”
“Or Heloise. Let them castrate me; I’ll never forget my Heloise.”
I WAS in a pleasant if languid state of mind, making the two-and-a-half-hour trip south the next morning in the passenger seat of my mother’s Peugeot. She still wore mourning. She had packed a suitcase full of elegantly mournful clothing, including a bathing suit of black nylon. For all this, her conversation was far from gloomy. She told me of the scandalous amount of money that our neighbors, the Pratchetts, had spent adding another turret to their Châteauesque monstrosity. She asked me if I recalled my father’s colleague, Alan Hancock, and informed me that he was leaving his wife of fifteen years for a grad student. “Poor Jemima. I must go see her when we get back,” my mother frowned—practicing, rather than expressing sympathy for the other woman’s plight. Prematurely widowed, it was a plight she’d never have to suffer through.
It was after midday when we arrived at Yellow Leaf. We were greeted at the door by Lee and Jillian Walden, along with a fat old spaniel, which plodded up to me and sniffed my ankles at length. “What a terrible bruise you have on your leg, Laurel!” Jill gushed over a bit of Steadman’s handiwork. I told her that it was nothing, merely an injury from gym class. Lee grinned a large-toothed grin and, with some swagger, offered to take our bags to the guest bedroom. “I’m afraid you’ll have to share, girls! Josie is getting in from Pomona tonight.”
“Josephine! How nice.” My mother glowed, responding favorably to that “girls.” “We don’t mind sharing a room, do we, Laurel?”
In fact, I could think of few things I wanted less than to share a room and, as the case had it, a bed with my mother. All the same, I was a well-bred young lady and could put up no objections. At Jillian’s invitation, I followed my mother and herself out to the patio, to take some post-travel refreshments.
“Cake, Lizzie? Laurel?”
“Oh!” My mother leaned forward to better inspect Jillian’s offering, then bit her lip modestly. “Just an itty-bitty slice for me.”
“Laurel?” Jillian gave me a sly look, her knife poised over the cheesecake. “It’s very good.”
“No, thank you.”
“You can certainly afford it,” she said teasingly, with a maternal cinch of my waist. Jillian herself was a short, fat-bottomed woman with a disproportionately long neck and a head full of sleek, dark hair.
“Jill can’t afford it, but she still puts away more than all of us.” Lee slouched out from the house, crossing the deck and setting his trim, stonewash-jeaned behind on the arm of his wife’s chair. He gave her a genial, faintly condescending pat on her thick thigh. “Don’t you, my dumpling? Actually, I think I might have some of that . . .”
With only a touch of sadness, the woman lowered her small, indistinctly colored eyes and cut him a wedge of cheesecake. He took up the plate, remaining spryly poised on the arm of her chair, his legs in a constrained figure-four. Lee was a tallish, tannish, fit forty-something-year-old with an all-American look about him: rolled-up sleeves, oversized white teeth, square jaw, and wavy once-blond hair. For all this, I found him repellent.
“Are you sure you don’t want any, Laurel? Just a little slice like your mother’s?” Jillian insisted.
I shook my head.
“She’s worried about gaining weight,” my mother said in the stagy, catty manner that parents use with other parents.
“I’ve gained three pounds,” I defended myself lamely.
“I can’t see where. In hair, probably,” Jillian reached for my tumbling locks. “Her hair has grown since the funeral, hasn’t it? Look at it. She’s like that painting. You know, that Pre-Raphaelite one of the girl with all the red hair. Lizzie, help me out?”
My mother shrugged helplessly, showing her pale wrists and licking the crumbs from her fork. Lee gave her an appraising glance. “They both are. Regular Pre-Raphaelites.”
I scowled at his misuse of Steadman’s terminology and took a sip of my black coffee.
Later that day, Lee drove my mother and me around town in his convertible: pointing out cypresses and famous residences while expounding—ostensibly for my benefit—on the virtues of living in such a historically and artistically rich community. For my mother’s benefit, he referred to the two of us collectively as “girls” or “young ladies,” and talked endlessly of architecture: drawing her attention to the echoes of Antoni Gaudí in this or that Carmel cottage; speaking of the treasures of Barcelona, and pronouncing the city’s name, to my disgust, with an affected lisp. Despising his pomposity, I sta
red out the window until we arrived on the doorstep of Arcady.
The owners had flown to Greece for the winter, leaving a key in Lee’s possession. He ushered us inside with hushed exclamations about the quality of the redwood flooring, the exposed beam ceilings and the distribution of light. As the adults wandered from room to room, studying the architectural features, I could see my mother’s mind working, imagining which of her objets d’art could be transferred to this comparatively rustic setting.
Bored of interiors, I strayed out to the gray-cobbled, mossy, shadow-plunged back garden. I descended from the porch to a pergola, overgrown with pendulous pink and purple wisteria. I ran my fingers through the soft, trailing blooms. I spied a series of verdigrised bronze nymphs and, further into the garden, a gloomy green pool, deeper than it was wide. At the far side of it was a slanted willow, casting strange shadows over the depths.
I crouched on the gray cobblestones and dipped my pale hand into the greenish pool water. It was cold yet clement to the touch. Unthinkingly, I pressed my dripping digits to my lips. I tasted salt and chlorine; Steadman. Head-swimmingly, half-swooningly, I raised myself from the poolside to squint at the glaring white sky. Below it, the roof was gray and shingled. The second-story window gaped open, exhaling white drapes. I heard a buzzing. I looked down to the white-framed pergola and perceived, hidden amongst the wisteria, a festering hornets’ nest.
THAT EVENING, we sat out on the Waldens’ patio, awaiting their daughter’s return. The adults were drinking wine, which I was permitted as well, being almost eighteen and in the company of affluent liberals with European aspirations. I accepted a glass of red, hoping that it would alleviate something of my boredom. While it did take some of the edge off, however, it also induced a pang of longing, as I recalled that night on Steadman’s sofa back in Marin County.
The Wood of Suicides Page 13