I stopped behind her and laid my hands on her shoulders. She took it as a warning, which in part it was, and hesitated, then brought her story to a clumsy conclusion and stopped talking. Energy was racing through her body like whitewater. I pushed myself into the stream. She winced. I massaged her shoulders tenderly, employing techniques I’d learned from Vonda to loosen tight muscles and release tension, but my purpose was not to heal.
“Oh,” she moaned, wriggling her shoulders sensuously. “That hurts.”
“Should I stop?” But I didn’t stop. I increased the pressure along her trapezius, then found a knot under her left shoulder blade and dug my knuckle in. She gasped and arched her back. I held steady. After a long moment she relaxed under my hands, I felt the underlying defenses of her body open to me, and we had the first of our exchanges. For me it was like a blood transfusion. For her, it was slow poison.
I released the pressure, swept my hands lightly over her back, and left her with a little pat of affection and regret. She said, “Wow, Madyson, you have really strong hands,” and just sat there for a while.
Kit asked Amy, in a voice strong enough to make me wonder if she might have something more to offer me after all, but, tellingly, with no energy to waste on segue,
“When do you get your baby?”
Amy hesitated and looked at me, not sure she ought to go there. I shrugged. “I leave Thursday,” she finally said, almost apologetically.
Denise, who’d been staring off into space, roused herself. “Baby?”
“I’m adopting a baby girl from China.” Amy kept glancing at Kit and spoke with some reluctance, but the excitement that broke through was contagious. “She was a foundling so they aren’t certain of her birth date, but she’s about eight months old.”
“A baby? At your age? At our age?” Denise shook her head in amazement and, I thought, disapproval. I disapproved, too, but not on the basis of age; while I doubted her weight was a serious health hazard, it seemed to me that one of the criteria for adoption ought to be appearance. After all, who would want a fat mother?
Amy started to defend herself, but I spoke first. “If you can climb fourteeners, at our age, why shouldn’t Amy be able to adopt a baby?”
“Climbing a mountain takes a long spurt of energy. Raising a kid takes energy 24-7 for at least eighteen years.” Denise raised her water glass in Amy’s direction. “I could never do it. I’m too old. More power to you, girlfriend.”
“Maybe,” I said, recklessly, “this is what they mean when they talk about women discovering new power and vitality in middle age.” Then, suddenly, we were all not looking at Kit, and I was ashamed of myself, and at the same time I was filing away for future reference the images of Amy’s reservoir of maternal energy and—daringly, appallingly—of the raw life-force this baby would bring.
Amy asked me quietly, “Do you see Vonda?”
“Every day at the gym. I saw her this morning.”
“How is she?” There was a wistfulness in her tone.
“Fine,” I said. “Great.”
Amy poked at the remnants of her salad with her fork. “She’s stopped calling.”
I didn’t know what to make of this. “She’s pretty busy,” I tried. “Don’t take it personally.” This admonition had always struck me as specious, since impersonality was exactly what the complainant was objecting to. But talk of lost connections seemed cruel in the presence of Kit, who was about to lose them all, and I didn’t want to encourage Amy to go on.
She went on anyway. “Vonda’s going to be my daughter’s godmother. She’s in my will as the person to raise her if anything happened to me.”
“I didn’t realize you were that close.”
“I thought we were. And, you know, she’s young.” She glanced wryly in Denise’s direction.
“I’ll tell her to get in touch with you.”
“No!” She was adamant. “Don’t do that.”
“I’ll tell her you said hi.”
“No,” she insisted, no less emphatically but lowering her voice. “Don’t do that, either. If she doesn’t want to see me for some reason that’s up to her. I still think she’d be a good mother for Phoebe if something happened to me. My lawyer would contact her. Not that anything’s going to happen to me.” She gave a nervous little laugh, the way people do.
“Well,” I said, “we never know.” My attention had swung back to Denise and to Kit, making this comment sound more dismissive than I’d meant it to be. Amy didn’t say anything more about Vonda; she didn’t, in fact, say anything more to me for the rest of the lunch.
Kit died less than a week later. Her husband called me at work and said if I wanted to say goodbye I better come now. I went; how could I not? She raised up out of the bed toward me, her face already stretched into a rictus grin, and moaned as if in warning or terrible acknowledgment. She seemed to be reaching for me, but it was easy to avoid her grasp. Kit was my friend and I longed to be of comfort, but I couldn’t risk touching her now; who knew what might flow into or out of me?
There were things I might have said to her if Jerry hadn’t been in the room, silently distraught and furiously protective. “Goodbye, Kit,” I whispered. “Thanks for being my friend.” If she heard me at all, she would know what I meant.
The memorial service was several months later. Denise came back for it, and she and Amy and I went together. Amy brought her new daughter Phoebe, who’d been malnourished in the orphanage and sickly since she came home; solemn, dwarfed by her mother’s bulk, the baby fussed almost inaudibly during the service. Despite the panic that was making my skin crawl and my breath come short as the eulogies went on and on, I didn’t ask to hold her; it was too soon, I wasn’t quite that desperate, and her life-force, though pure and sweet because it was so new, wasn’t strong enough yet to be worth much to me.
Denise was pale and noticeably thinner than she’d been at Charon’s. Climbing the chapel steps, she had more trouble catching her breath than her tears would account for.
She said she hadn’t been feeling right and had a doctor’s appointment the next week. Probably nothing, she said, but she had a six-day, five-hundred-mile bike tour in less than a month, and she needed to be in shape for that.
I was one of the people who got up and spoke about Kit. I meant everything I said. I would miss her terribly. She’d had a profound effect on my life.
After the service there was high-intensity sort of mingling. I avoided the photo display of Kit on a lace-draped, daisy-laden table—Kit as a beaming baby, Kit in a high school cheerleader outfit leaping in a high split, Kit in a glamour shot—and made what I hoped was creditable small talk with people I knew. Phoebe got a lot of attention; it was good, someone observed, to have a baby at a funeral, to remind us all that life goes on. That the life-force is eternal and infinite, and infinitely available.
Meaning to introduce Amy to a man I’d known casually for years, I could not remember his name. The older I got the more frequently names were eluding me, but this was the most public example so far, and I was mortified. He laughed with a sort of pained graciousness, supplied the name, shook Amy’s free hand, made some wry joke about losing brain cells as we get older.
I thought but did not say, It is not going to happen to me.
“But you’re not as old as I am, are you, Madyson?” he amended, peering at me in admiration and, I thought, some bafflement, because we both knew I was.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “Anyway, you’re only as old as you feel, right?”
People said nice things to me all afternoon, a weird but gratifying phenomenon for a memorial service. “You look great, Madyson.” “You look younger every time I see you!” I thanked them lightly and tried to settle on just the right way to think about Kit.
At one point Denise said something about her grandchildren, and the woman she was chatting with affected shock and protested that she didn’t look old enough to be a grandmother which was patently false, and Denise just smiled a
nd said, “Well, I am. Twice.” There was an awkward silence while both the other woman and I waited for her to express thanks. When that didn’t happen, the conversation trailed off and the woman found somebody else to talk to.
“I don’t know why,” Denise muttered, “people assume it’s a compliment to say you look younger than you are.”
I was taken aback. “Well, nobody wants to look old.”
“Why not? Why is young better?”
Because it’s farther away from death. But saying that would have led us into a discussion I couldn’t risk. I put my hand on her arm and pointedly surveyed the fine wrinkles, the graying hair, the unreconstructed breasts, and told her with only mild sarcasm, “I wish I could be like you, Denise. It must be liberating not to care about such superficial things.”
She shot me a sharp glance but didn’t take up the challenge. I maintained the contact between us as long as I could get away with, and felt her shudder and sway. “It’s so hot,” she gasped, and, indeed, her face was suddenly glistening with sweat. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Are you okay? Do you need me to drive you home?” I asked boldly, hopefully.
But she shook her head and made her way out of the room, pausing only to hug Kit’s husband. Refreshed, I scanned the crowd for somebody I hadn’t talked to yet who would tell me, verbally or otherwise, how good I looked. I was one of the last to leave. When I embraced Jerry, he was weeping, but I also felt him having to force his gaze away from my cleavage.
A few weeks later I called Denise in Austin to find out what the doctor had said. I wanted to know, and I wasn’t likely to hear through the grapevine since she lived so far away and the only mutual acquaintance we had now was Amy. “It’s my heart,” she told me in an affectless voice. “There’s something wrong with my heart.” My own heart was pounding; I laid my hand over it in a sensual caress.
“Oh, Denise, honey, I’m sorry.”
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” She gave a bitter laugh. “There I was thinking I was saying goodbye to Kit, and I was already sick and didn’t even know it.
“It can happen to any of us,” I said, lamely and disingenuously, adding silently, not me.
When I called her again a month or so later, there was no answer, and I have never heard from her again. Since there’s nobody I know to call or who would know to call me, it’s not likely I’ll find out what happened to her, although certainly I can guess. It haunts me. I can only hope she had someone with her, children or grandchildren, climbing partner or a better friend than I.
After Kit’s memorial service and Denise’s departure, I felt great for quite a while. I increased my workouts to three hours a day, and Vonda was pleased with my progress. I started going to a spa once a month for a full-body cleansing. I had my colors done and was shocked to discover that the particular shades of blue and green I’d been favoring actually could make me look older; the recommended adjustments made a huge difference, and I replaced almost all my wardrobe. I embarked on a new relationship with a thirty-year-old man I met at the gym; he thought I was thirty-five and joked incessantly about how much better older women were in bed.
I also started doing brain exercises, crossword puzzles, and foreign language tapes and repetitions of number sequences forward and backward before I fell asleep. This was less successful than the efforts to keep my body youthful. I still seemed to be forgetting names more than I used to, if someone spoke to me while I was on the phone I’d lose both conversations, and about once a week I seriously misplaced my keys. This would not do.
Amy seemed glad to hear from me and readily agreed to meet me for a drink. I went to her office, enjoying the chance to stroll across the campus. Critically observing every young woman I passed, I repeatedly judged myself acceptable, and more than one young man barely out of adolescence glanced at me in a way I took to be admiring.
Amy was with a student. Through the half-open door she saw me and raised a hand in greeting. Her smile, I had to admit, was radiant, even within the excess flesh. She looked exhausted, though, and I worried that I might have waited too long, that the demands of her life might have used up her reserves and rendered her inaccessible to me. I took a seat in the hall outside her office, like any student in need of intellectual transfusion, and passed the next quarter hour considering my options for a contingency plan. Now and then, I caught pieces of their dialogue; the fact that it was almost completely incomprehensible to me was both frightening and reassuring.
When the student emerged, I took his measure, wondering somewhat wildly whether I’d be able to find him again if I needed him. Studying notes he must have taken during his session with Amy, he hardly glanced at me. Amy came to the office door, even bigger than when I’d seen her at the memorial service, but surprisingly graceful. She held out her hand. Breathless at my good fortune, I rose and took it. Her grip was strong. She covered my hand with her other hand. “It’s so good to see you, Madyson,” she told me with more fervor than I’d expected, and it crossed my mind to wonder what it was she wanted from me.
It didn’t take long to figure it out. After months of single motherhood and freshman physics classes, she was craving adult conversation. But it was more than that. Amy was lonely. Having a child had made her more rather than less aware of how much she ached for a partner. She wanted us to be friends, not just friendly acquaintances; she wanted us to be lovers.
I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t have been close to someone who looked like that anyway, and my own circumstances made it completely unthinkable. What I had to do to survive was bad enough when love wasn’t involved. Which was why, for me, love was never involved.
It was possible that I’d already got what I needed from her long handclasp, and I considered pleading sudden illness and making my escape. But I reminded myself of the alarming memory lapses, the decreased ability to concentrate, all the unmistakable symptoms of intellectual decline. I had to take care of myself. I had to take advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves.
Amy took my hand again as we strolled the few blocks to her house. My embarrassment at being seen holding hands with a fat person was outweighed—but only just—by the infusion of energy tingling through my palm and up my wrist. I longed to kiss her, my tongue a siphon in her mouth, although the image repulsed me. I longed to take her head in my hands.
Phoebe was asleep. We were both displeased, Amy because now the child likely wouldn’t sleep through the night. After the babysitter left, Amy invited me to make myself comfortable in the living room while she went to check on her daughter, but happily agreed when I asked if I could come with her. We went into the little girl’s room hand-in-hand, like proud parents who couldn’t quite believe their good fortune.
I’d read that the brain development of a child in the first two years of life is so dramatic that if we could keep up that pace for the rest of our lives we’d all be mental giants. I gazed at beautiful little Phoebe in her crib. I reached to stroke her hair.
“Don’t!” Amy’s whisper was explosive, and she caught my hand. For a moment I thought she’d somehow divined that her child was in terrible danger from me. But she just squeezed my hand affectionately and murmured close to my ear, “Don’t wake her. She’ll be up all night.” I nodded, and we tiptoed out of the child’s room together.
Despite intense arousal—part horror, part need, and gratitude that it would be met, part a disturbing kind of joy—I could not bring myself to respond to Amy’s good night kiss. I allowed it, though, another moral compromise. Her mouth lingered softly on mine. I all but sank into the billows of her body. I maintained the physical contact as long as I could stand it, absorbing so much from her that I was weak and trembling by the time I pulled away. She smiled tremulously at me and murmured, “Call me.” As I left I heard Phoebe cry out for her.
I hadn’t seen her since then, and now I never would. When I emerged from the steam room and had settled myself onto the massage table with my face in the terry-covere
d cradle and my open-pored naked body ready for Vonda’s manipulations, I asked, “Where’s her daughter?” I’d hoped never to have to ask this question, but it had probably been inevitable. “Phoebe,” I added, gratified that I had not forgotten her name. “Where’s Phoebe?”
“She’s with me.”
Her thumbs and then her elbow found that deep tender spot under my left shoulder blade, and she bore down. Through the exquisite pain I hoped I wasn’t inadvertently taking anything from her through this kind of contact; I needed my personal trainer and massage therapist to be strong and focused. As the muscle started to loosen and warmth seeped into the pressure point, I gasped, “Are you raising her?”
“I’m her godmother and guardian. It’s in Amy’s will.”
The massage wasn’t as good as usual; Vonda’s mind was obviously somewhere else, and so was mine. My various aches and pains—iliac crest, glutes, lower back, feet—seemed to have multiplied and amplified and become more resistant since the last time. I kept thinking about Amy, and Kit and Denise. I kept thinking about Phoebe, whose primal will to survive must be fierce.
“Okay,” she told me after a while, without, I thought, much interest. “Flip over on your back.”
I didn’t draw the sheet up over my beautiful breasts. She gave no sign of noticing. Her fingers shook slightly from the pressure she was putting under the back edge of my skull, stiffened fingers relieving tension in my head and neck as if they were holes drilled into the bone, but it was the weight of my own head that generated the response rather than any direct intention on her part. She let go too soon.
“There you go, Madyson.”
I lay on the table for a few minutes after her hands left me, noting with resentment and panic that my body felt neither relaxed nor supple. I was paying her good money. She owed me more than this.
“Now that I’m a mother,” Vonda said, as though she were talking about the weather, “I’m not going to work here anymore. We can get by without what I make, and Phoebe needs me. She’s just lost her mother.”
The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women Page 48