But then.
If he had really cared, he might have stayed alive just a little while longer. If you had a will to live, a reason...Night after night she ran it through her head like a film, but the ending was always the same, Max lying flat on his face on the pavement.
Then she would read till the first light broke through the leaves of the maple, childish books she hadn’t looked at in years: A Little Princess, long ago her favorite because of the heroic Sara Crewe, who should have been, happy and rich and loved for all her talents, but was exiled instead to the garret of Miss Minchin’s boarding school hungry and cold and alone—‘You insolent, unmanageable child,’ Miss Minchin called her; ‘How dare you! How dare you!’—until the Lascar brings her hot food and kindles a fire in her room, and his master, the Indian gentleman, becomes her friend. But even before her dead father’s fortune is discovered, even while she is still a beggar on the outside, Sara Crewe remembers that inside she is a princess. And at the end, when Mrs Carmichael kisses her, Sara Crewe ‘felt as if she ought to be kissed very often because she had not been kissed for so long.’ She read it with shame at the comfort it gave her, for she was too old for that kind of comfort. She ought to know by now that she was not a princess, inside or out.
In the middle of the night on Friday she woke, shivering, to the sound of rain. Her nightgown and legs were cold and wet. The curtains at the open window waved back and forth; the wind howled. She got up to kneel at the window. Wet leaves lay scattered on the street. Two plastic chairs on the lawn opposite were overturned. She thrust out an arm: soaked and cold. In the dark and the storm she felt wild, not asleep or awake but in a wild state far from both. It was coming down in torrents on everything—the whole earth was sodden, and the graves. He was wet and cold. He had always hated the cold. If only she could...if she were brave...Yes, if she were older and brave and wild enough, she would go with an umbrella and...No matter how crazy! She would stand over that patch of earth holding an enormous umbrella.
She shut the window and went downstairs. The grass of the back lawn chilled her bare feet. Wet hair hung about her face. Raising her hands, she made strange shapes with her fingers in the streaming dark. Her arms were like the trees, her fingers like the branches, swaying and twisting in the wind. She lay down on the grass. This is how it feels. The chill. The earth drenched and soft beneath you. The water pouring down on your skin. This. This is what he is feeling.
She tiptoed upstairs. Mustn’t wake them, for this could not be explained. It came out of the dark of the night and the dark of her head, and had to be done. Back in her room, she did sensible things—dried herself and put on warm pajamas, hung the wet nightgown over a chair, changed the wet sheet. Wrapped in a blanket, she sat up reading the book he had loaned her, And Then There Were None. The people were killed off one by one, but since you didn’t care it was very entertaining. Soothing: not real death at all, but a puzzle to be solved. She understood now why he had read them.
When she woke the tree was still against a pale-blue sky, every leaf suspended in a lush quiet, as though a mist had risen and vanished. It would be sunny and hot. On the bathroom mirror was taped a note: ‘Sat. 7:05. Dear Allie, Gone to Parkvale Hospital. Baby on the way! Will call as soon as there’s news. Take care and don’t worry. Love, Dad.’
It was nine-fifteen; she might not be an only child any more. She wasn’t sure if that felt good or bad. It didn’t change who she was inside, which was something private and apart from the baby. The baby was harmless. She might help Wanda with it over the summer, maybe, if there was nothing better to do. When they went out at night she could babysit. She would let it stay up as late as it wanted; they could keep each other company in the empty house. She would tell it things. The baby might like her even if she was slightly weird—it would be too young to know any better.
She went out to the back yard. There was the place where she had lain down during the night. The grass was almost dry now, in the sun. No evidence, except in her own mind. She looked perfectly normal—no one would ever have to know. She walked about fingering the leaves of trees and leaping to reach high branches, much higher ones than she could reach last June. What would it be like to feel yourself grow? Like stretching? Being pulled up by the shoulders? Or a slow expansion from deep inside, every cell pushing upward? Wanda’s stomach had grown so gradually that you couldn’t see the difference from day to day, yet over the months her shape had transformed. Now it would transform again in an instant, back to her real self.
Josh’s flower bed was full of weeds; she knelt to yank up a few. The daffodils were all dead and the tulips were dying, but still, the weeds might choke next year’s. It was right around this time, two weeks ago, that she had left the house and gone to his apartment. What a mess it was. Yet he hated disorder, he said. He wouldn’t go. He was sorry, it couldn’t be helped. He didn’t sound sorry. He was trying to keep his temper so he wouldn’t have another heart attack. But when he did have another heart attack he hadn’t been angry at all. He had picked her up in his arms like a child, and held her. As she sat back on her heels to wipe her face, the phone rang. Max! She raced to the door. Oh, but he was dead.
‘Allie? It’s me. You have a sister, sweetheart! She’s just about fifteen minutes old!’ She had never heard Josh so excited. His voice sang out like the circus ringmaster’s, introducing each new act. It vibrated along the wires, across the distance that separated them.
‘That’s great.’ What did Wanda say at moments like this? ‘Congratulations.’
He laughed. ‘Congratulations yourself! Look, I’ll get home as soon as I can and we’ll do something really nice to celebrate. I just want to wait here till Mom wakes up.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s fine. It was pretty quick.’
‘What’s the baby’s name?’
‘We don’t know yet. Maybe you can think of a good one. We were all prepared with boys’ names this time, remember?’ He paused. ‘Now, Allie, does this make you feel a little better?’
He was pleading with her, to feel better. If only she could leap across the distance into his arms and stay there, a baby forever. But that couldn’t be, especially not now. She swallowed and found her voice. ‘Oh, yes. It’s very exciting.’
He gave a brief sigh. ‘Okay, baby, there’s someone waiting to use the phone. Sit tight and I’ll see you soon.’
‘Maybe I could ride over on my bike.’
‘They wouldn’t let you up, though. They’re very strict about those rules.’
She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Wait. What does she look like?’
‘Oh, very pretty. Like you looked—long and thin, and hardly any hair. With a loud voice, they tell me. Allie, I’d better get off now. See you soon.’
She hung up. Now they could take the crib and carriage and Bathinette out of the garage and put them in the extra bedroom. Wanda was superstitious. Last Sunday, as Josh started carrying the crib across the lawn to the house, she had called to him, ‘No, wait!’ in a strained voice.
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know. It give me a funny feeling. There’s plenty of time for that.’
‘We don’t even have any toys for it yet,’ Alison had said, watching at the kitchen door.
‘Let’s just wait, okay? There’s plenty of time for toys too.’ Then, with a surprised stare, Wanda had smiled and spoken more gently. ‘Once it’s born and we see that everything’s all right, you can go and pick out any toys you like. How’s that?’
Wanda had probably worried the first time too, and been relieved when she came out looking like a normal baby. In her head, though, there must have been something different...
She shook granola into a bowl, sliced in a banana, and poured milk over it. While she ate she tried to imagine the baby’s crying filling the house. The cries little babies made didn’t sound sad, really—babies didn’t know enough to be sad. They sounded like angry protests against the world, whatever they could feel of it. Wo
uld this one protest a lot? Would it be the kind of baby you could have fun with, or a whimpering pain in the neck? It came from the same place she did, and had the same genes. A blood relation, while Max, actually, was nothing to her. ‘Blood is thicker than water,’ Wanda once said. That meant family ties were stronger than friendship: water flowed right out between your fingers, but blood stuck and stained.
When she finished eating she left a note for Josh on the kitchen table: ‘Be back soon. Shopping. A.’ On her bike, she sped round the corner.
After a few trips up the down and down the up escalators with the bulky gift-wrapped package under her arm, she stopped at the mainfloor counter lined with bottles of amber perfume. They were giving free sprays. She was nudged from behind by a large, soft bulk.
‘Alison!’ Lettie cried, and threw her arms around her and kissed her, in the middle of Bamberger’s.
Lettie’s hair was soft and freshly waved. Shiny pearl-drop earrings hung from her ears. Her dress was golden yellow with a low square neck, and on her chest, smooth and creamy, rested a loop of tiny lacquered seashells.
‘I thought I’d sample the perfume.’ Lettie tilted her head down as if with a secret. ‘Let’s see what aromas they’re pushing today.’
Together they offered their wrists to be sprayed, and went through the revolving doors in an aura of Narcissus Reveries. ‘It’s so good to see you,’ Lettie said outside. ‘How about a soda in Highet’s, like we used to?’
Highet’s was exactly the same: the polished wood floors sparkled, and the glassware behind the deep counter gleamed in the mirrors above. The rosy ladies in flowered hats on the posters looked something like Lettie. At their usual table they were greeted by the waitress with a face full of freckles and one bright-orange pigtail hanging down her back, and when she brought their ice cream sodas she said, smiling, ‘Enjoy it, ladies,’ as she always had. Yet it seemed centuries had passed since that other time, before it happened. She didn’t feel like the person who used to have ice cream in Highet’s with Lettie.
‘What’s in your package?’
‘Toys. My mother had the baby, at last. This morning, in fact. It’s a girl.’
‘Well, congratulations!’ Lettie beamed. ‘That’s wonderful! And how is your mother?’
‘She’s okay, my father said. They won’t let me up to see her, you know.’
‘Yes, I certainly do know. Well, I’m very happy for you. And give your parents my best. Tell them I hope she’s every bit as nice as you.’
‘Oh, I doubt if they’d want another like me.’ She licked coffee ice cream slowly off the long spoon. ‘I got her these soft blocks—they’re big cloth cubes stuffed with cotton, and they have letters and matching pictures on them. Like an A, with a picture of an apple, and so on. I bet a baby could learn to read pretty early if it gets familiar with the letters. Do you think so? I mean, I might teach her, if she seems smart.’
‘Sure, why not? But give her some time. The first few months they can’t do much except eat and cry.’ Lettie’s face changed. She stopped smiling, and a shine came to her eyes as she put down her spoon and leaned across the table. ‘You can still drop in and see me if you like, even though he’s gone. I want you to know you’re welcome.’
Alison looked down and sucked bubbles loudly through the straw.
Lettie leaned back. ‘Only if you feel like it, of course. Maybe you’d rather not.’ They were both silent. ‘There is one thing, though. Alison? Come on, look at me for a minute. I thought maybe I could give you a plant. He left me with so many to take care of, my window sill is overcrowded. Would you like to take one home?’
‘I don’t have any instinct for plants. It would probably die the minute I got it in my room.’
‘Nonsense. They’re not that fragile,’ said Lettie. ‘All you’d have to do is sit it in the light and give it water when it’s dry, and then leave it be—it’ll take care of itself. You can come back with me and get it.’
‘I don’t know. I have this big package to carry home on my bike...’ She paused. ‘You mean have it sort of like a—a souvenir, right? But it seems so...He didn’t even like the plants, Lettie. He was always grumbling about them.’
‘You’re mistaken—he did like them.’ She went back to eating her ice cream. Her earrings and necklace gleamed in the sunlight shimmering through the window. The yellow dress glowed golden. ‘But it’s up to you, Alison. Whatever you want.’
Lettie had always dressed in bright colors, but somehow they didn’t seem right any more. In books, old ladies in mourning went about in black crepe and veils, with handkerchiefs damp from weeping clutched in their pale fingers. Of course, she didn’t expect that, but still...
As she watched Lettie so calmly eating, a coldness drifted over her. She was sitting with somebody, yet she was secretly alone. All the people nearby, sitting together at tables and talking, might be secretly alone, too, and just pretending. They hid their lonely faces and pretended, the way she did with the kids at the swimming pool. All of them two-faced: inner and outer.
Lettie looked up abruptly, with a glance that slid through her like a beam of muted but extraordinary light. ‘Alison? What is it? What’s the trouble?’
Her hands trembled. But it was only Lettie, who had never been shocked by her. ‘I don’t understand how everyone can—how you can look so—Aren’t you even...lonesome? Don’t you even miss him?’
Again Lettie laid down the spoon, and sat back clasping her hands on the table before her, utterly still. ‘Sure, sweetheart. Sure I’m lonesome.’
‘But you—’
‘It’s private,’ Lettie said almost in a whisper. ‘Mine. It’s too precious to parade in the street.’
Alison pressed her fingers to her eyes. She had not cried since that night she slept in his bed, and she would not cry now.
‘This has happened to me before, Alison,’ said Lettie quietly. ‘I know all about it. For you it’s the first time, but for me it’s probably the last. You have years and years...This will fade, you see. You’ll look back with a—’
‘Oh, no!’ she shrieked. How could Lettie say such trite things? It would not fade! She didn’t want a vague memory. What she wanted was him. Now! She stood up and ran to the back.
In the bathroom she splashed cold water over her face and pushed a metal lever for the liquid soap. When she finished washing, there were streaks of blood on the towel—three slashes smeared pale across the grainy paper. On the tip of her third finger she found a slit a half-inch long, an arc drawn fine in the flesh. She looked around: it was the soap container—yes, a razor-sharp metal strip torn away from the lower rim. She put her finger in her mouth and sucked. More blood dripped down to her palm. There was no pain, only a slow streaming out of her body. She watched, mesmerized, as though the blood were someone else’s.
It was her own, though, and she couldn’t stop it; a part of her self oozing out, as it would all her life when she became a woman, as Wanda called it. She didn’t want to become a woman. Bleeding was a little bit of dying, losing your own self. Everyone died their whole life long, then. Even the newborn baby would bleed and die. Poor baby.
She looked closely in the mirror and was frightened: her cheeks were as pale as the sickly soap and her eyes were huge, the pupils, dark and dilated, crowding out the greener part. Her mouth hung limply open. She looked like those photos in magazine ads of faraway orphaned children—abandoned. Is that how I am? she thought. That was her image. He said to become the image. But no, please, not that!
The image in the mirror wasn’t necessarily the real you. The real you was trapped somewhere inside with the blood and the muscles. Still, what you looked like, what you saw in the mirror, had to be you, didn’t it? It wasn’t anyone else. It was the you people saw, at least, and naturally they treated you as if that you were the real. If you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, show them who the real you was, how would they ever know?
As she stared, the face in the mirror began to pucker and crumpl
e, dissolving. He knew! Savagely, she dashed water on her hand, enraged at her tears, her blood. ‘Max,’ she whispered, ‘damn you! Go ’way and leave me alone!’ But the words didn’t make any difference. There was still only him. Maybe another miracle would happen: he would climb up out of his stifling grave and find her again. When she stepped outside the door he would be waiting. He would heal her finger and see what was behind her face and take her away.
The door opened but it was Lettie, carrying the package of toys. ‘I thought you got lost in here,’ she said. ‘You’re pale as a ghost. You don’t have to sneak off to a bathroom to cry. You think I’ve never seen anyone cry?’
‘I cut my finger on the soap thing. It’s still bleeding.’
‘Let me see.’ Her hand was small in Lettie’s. ‘It’s a deep cut. Did you wash it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’ll be all right. The bleeding is good for it.’ She pulled a yellow handkerchief from her purse. ‘Here, wrap this around and hold it up; we’ll get a Band-Aid in the drugstore.’
‘Thanks. I didn’t even feel it when it happened.’
‘You’ll feel it later. Well, come on, you don’t want to stay in here sniffling all day, do you? Believe me, you can be just as unhappy outdoors—only it’s nicer.’
‘I’m looking in the mirror.’
‘And what’s so fascinating in the mirror?’ Lettie tugged her lightly by the hand. “You’ll have plenty of time when you’re grown up to look in mirrors.’
‘Do you think it’s all right to...I mean, it is really possible to...’
‘To what?’
To be who I am, she meant. But that was too foolish to say, even to Lettie. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘Why don’t you figure it out later, sweetie? Meanwhile the sun is shining. Let’s not waste it.’
So she went, reluctantly, into the sunshine and among the secretive people. There was no place else.
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Balancing Acts Page 19