‘Delete that,’ he says.
She had taken a photo of his unbandaged face. ‘Just in case you decide to press charges.’
Guthrie sits up on the tan pleather sofa and picks from a bag of unsalted peanuts, one nut at a time, like a garden finch. His hair is down still and messy from Gael’s toying with it. The Daily Show clip ends on a low note: a Freakonomics contributor is interviewed about his research on the economic disadvantages of being ugly. He demonstrates his data collection method by stalking a university campus, grading women’s attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 5. She’ll be lacking financially as she is aesthetically, his glib 2 portends. When it’s over, Gael says, ‘We’re both 5s. And fuck that guy.’
Guthrie points to the cornflakes Gael spilt on the floor from her cereal supper, but she can’t see them because they’re camouflaged on the florid brown, orange and mustard carpet (the sicked-up design might well explain Ronan’s perpetual space-out). Guthrie leans down to collect the flakes and put them in the bowl. The absence of a coffee table is for childproofing purposes. The absence of a TV, speaker system, shelving unit and any ornaments whatsoever, ditto. Though, the room is small enough to feel cramped with just the sofa, the twins’ playpen, a beach shelter tent, a box of toys and books and a beanbag. It’s a three-bedroom terraced house that’s been subdivided into two flats of fifty square metres. Someone’s galumphing around upstairs.
‘Can I cut your hair?’ Gael snips the air with first-aid-kit scissors. Guthrie stands. ‘Where’re you going?’
He pulls a ratty tissue from his sleeve – the first magic trick he ever mastered, a prelude to his nappy-changing skills – and dabs his nostrils. Though ice curbed the swelling, all along one side of his nose is lavender-coloured and the skin is glossy and taut.
Gael says, ‘That cardi’s a real lint magnet.’
‘Come here for a sec, will you?’
Gael frowns. ‘O … K?’ She puts the scissors and the laptop on the floor. ‘What’s up?’ Trying to recall Art’s forewarning, she follows her brother to the hallway door (the main entrance to his flat) and watches him put his slipper at its base to keep it from locking. They step out to the corridor. It seems as if the cupboard under the stairs is their destination. Guthrie disappears into it and, a moment later, a light comes on. The yellow, fuzzy light of self-delusion. ‘Hurry up,’ he calls. Gael takes a deep breath. She prepares herself for a flower-strewn shrine with tea lights, plastic disciples and a framed Sacred Heart. Or a guilty dynasty of moon-charged crystal skulls that he knows deep down are incompatible with Christianity and/or realism. ‘Is this where you keep Jarleth?’ she asks, hopefully, crouching through the doorway. ‘I figured the stench was just nappies.’
As soon as she’s standing upright inside, she sees what he wants to show her. She throws her arm out to push Guthrie back by his chest, holds her other palm to her belly.
‘Easy on the theatrics,’ he says.
She doesn’t speak for what feels like a mistaken length of time. Like the five minutes of crackling silence before the hidden track on Sive’s Nina Simone LP they discovered one Christmas Eve, when they let that vinyl silence play out – too full-bellied to lift the needle, Jarleth too boozed to give out. How they had jumped when the extra track started, out of nowhere. Out of the white, noise. Jarleth insisted on a manufacturer’s error, but Guthrie believed it to be a once-in-a-lifetime cue from Samuel himself: a lack of patience causes missed blessings.
‘It’s for your birthday,’ he says. She can feel him study her profile.
‘Guth–’
‘I know you don’t have a home for it, but,’ he says, ‘sorry. A house–’
‘Guthrie.’ Her right hand is still pressed against him and she can feel his heart-hit: the most resolute thing she knows. ‘This is insane.’ Dust swells and shifts like starlings.
They look at the gift.
Guthrie looks at what it is; Gael at what it could be seen to be.
And what she can turn it into.
This parenthesis of a space reminds her of the confession preceding the sacrament of Confirmation, when her inventory of sins, mouth-watering and perverse, had the priest stirring in his robes and breaking in early with his absolution before she’d even had the chance to flex her imagination.
‘It’s for me?’ she says.
He nods, trying not to smile, she can tell.
‘How many are there?’
Guthrie shrugs, stiff-shouldered. ‘One for each fit since … the twins.’
Gael shakes her head. ‘I can’t believe it. I’d kiss your poxy face off if it wouldn’t make you bleed.’ She drops her hand from his chest and reaches into her back pocket for the $210 Sive had put there earlier. She hands it to him, but he steps back, as if from a flyer for Speed Dating Saturdays at Chapelizod Community Centre.
‘No, Gael. I’m not taking money. It’s your birthday gift and so is that money.’
‘Yeah. And it buys me a venture capitalist licence.’
She lets him absorb this. Now, she has a viable plan. Better than the others she’d come up with. It sounds as if the upstairs neighbours are doing Zumba.
‘First the licence, then the capital,’ Gael says. Clearly, the neighbours haven’t yet done enough Zumba to be light. ‘Come on. I know exactly what to do.’
An ‘A-line long bob’ YouTube tutorial plays on silent and Gael kneels on a towel in front of the sofa, in front of Guthrie. There’s a pair of scissors between them.
‘Above the mole or below?’
‘What mole?’
‘You know the mole,’ Guthrie says. ‘On your neck. There … on the bumpy spine bit. In the middle.’ He prods it with his finger.
‘Ow.’
‘The on/off button,’ he says.
Gael lifts her arms so that Guthrie’s knees are beneath her armpits. ‘I’m not that easy to turn on.’
‘No. Like a droid, I meant–’
‘I know what you meant,’ Gael says, with I-know-what-you-meant intonation.
‘Stay still.’ There’s a strange new baseline to the tone he takes with her – a tone newly solemn and off.
‘Above the mole,’ she says. ‘But just. I want it long enough so I can pin it up but short enough at the back so the angle down to the front is steep. Artsy.’
The snipping sounds and the dissolve of clippings falling to the carpet are restful. The black cut hair makes a sodden manuscript of the towel she’s kneeling on. Guthrie can’t afford the blood-loss of a yawn. Gael resists the urge to ask him, ‘What’s this healing hooey Art mentioned,’ because he’s exhausted and she knows the way to make him talk is not by asking. Also, she doesn’t want this to end. ‘The twins’ hair is so blond,’ she says eventually. Guthrie hums. ‘Not like yours was when you were small,’ she adds. ‘Theirs is almost white.’
He’s done the back and is on to the sides now, which should slope downwards so that the hair is longest at the front and brushes her collarbones. The lady on the video demonstrates how to level the comb at the shoulder and then keep it horizontal as you pull the hair around the back, to make for the perfect diagonal angle in one fell snip. The pregnancy-test ads popping up at the bottom of the video reckon Guthrie for a thirty-something female.
‘What colour’s Ára’s hair?’
Guthrie stops cutting. He puts his thumb into his mouth, as if to pick peanuts from the back of his teeth. Then, after a pause, he gathers the last thick section of Gael’s hair and shears it in a single slice. He lets the locks drop down across her face like a veil. ‘There.’ He stuffs the scissors into the first-aid kit and zips it shut. ‘I need to sleep.’ He presses Gael forward so he can get up.
‘No,’ Gael tries, ‘not yet. I’m sorry. For asking. That was dumb. You mustn’t want to think about her–’
Guthrie makes a noise for her to stop talking. The same noise he makes when he needs to listen for the twins’ cries. He’s up now and rooting in between his bottom teeth dangerously. ‘What time is it?�
�
She checks the computer. ‘Nearly ten. Don’t put your fingers near the wound.’
‘I’ll get the sleeping bag.’ He goes to the bedroom and returns after too long an interval, pulling the mummy-bag from its stuff sack.
Gael gets up and helps him drape it along the couch.
‘Do you need a pillow?’ he asks.
‘A cushion’s fine. But come here, Guth. Come here to me–’ She goes to embrace him, but he’s wincing, pressing the bandage to his chin like a surgical mask. ‘Are you headachy? It’s been a few hours. Take more drugs.’
Guthrie ties up his hair and glances at her. ‘Don’t make a big deal of it.’
‘What?’
He’s working his gums with his tongue now, frowning in concentration.
‘Sorry?’ Gael bends for his cautious eye contact.
One of the twins starts sobbing on and off, at a sliding pitch, as if tuning up and Guthrie goes to the door right away.
‘Wait, make a big deal of what? When I see my hair in the mirror? Is it fucked?’
‘Just … Sleep in in the morning. Don’t answer the door.’
‘Guthrie?’
‘Soraca’ll wake Ronan–’
‘What the hell?’
‘–and they’ll start knocking on the floorboards upstairs. They’ve peeled back the carpet just so they can knock.’
‘If it’s the healing thing,’ Gael says, hoping to take him off guard, ‘Art already told me. I wanted to ask you about it. Burp the kid and let’s talk. If it’s some kind of business, I can help. I’m good at getting people to pay for shit that … Let’s just say, I’m good at–’
‘You’re good at lots of things, Gael. All the things.’ Guthrie holds the door frame as a shield. ‘And that’s great for you. It’s a blessing.’ For a moment, he looks valiant. The sobbing sounds redouble for their Doppler effect of an approaching father. ‘Whenever Dad’s in Ireland, he takes us to mass. Tomorrow’s Sunday.’
Gael crosses her arms and rests her lips on the knuckles of one hand, or rather, presses her knuckles as hard as she can against her mouth. Her jaw is clamped. Who the fuck is Dad. You’re Dad. The whimpering from the next room loudens. He comes to this house in his family man car and he puts his wank rag cash in the fucking Collection the waste paper bin in the wicked basket waster fucking wicker-dicked provider Himself the philanthropher philandering–
‘Night, Gael. Happy birthday.’
She stays up for hours and hours watching the news and sending emails. A couple of bites from oboists, but dammit more nibbles than bites. She can see this had been a weak approach. It presented itself too much as an offering, requiring assessment. Wanting approval. Look, world, at these pages: they speak for themselves. But they can’t. She knows better than to think that skills are securities. She must overstep the process of evaluation, take the worth as a given, conceal her signature’s sex. Researching a thousand things, she doesn’t feel in the slightest bit tired. Because she skipped her evening run.
Why, though, had mentioning the mother had the same effect as that dog leash to the face? Surely he sees her every time he looks at the twins and slides his thumb along their upturned noses. Remembers the lovemaking of which small humans had been the upshot. Is it that the Bible rebukes their unwedlocked existence? Hadn’t he been pardoned? That’s the kind of thing Jarleth could see to. Make a large enough donation to heaven.
When she gets up to piss and wash her face in the fugue of night, she throws a cotton pad in the wastebasket and sees it. The long, elegant incisor. Its single root slick with bloodstained saliva. Its enamel pure and intact as a principle – no sign of a crack. It is not a baby tooth.
6
The Art of Integration
September 2011
If London Business School had taught Gael one thing, it was that if you don’t really want something and you try to get it just to prove you can have it, if it’s a coveted thing, you won’t get it. Even though all you needed to do to get it was not to have needed it.
Coveted things include: capital, confidence, access, assumed status, say-so, no invitation, no introduction, nothing needing, no regrets, physical prowess, risks for a lark, bets coming off, undreamtof options.
‘The Dom Pérignon or the Krug, Ms Foess?’ The steward presents both sweating bottles, which might as well be her breasts. ‘The ’04 Pérignon has a rich taste of toasted almonds,’ she adds, ‘and the Krug is an aged champagne with a nose of croissants and frangipane. Or perhaps you’d prefer a mandarin mimosa?’ Her lipstick is mimosa-coloured and absolutely matte, as is her skin and beehive hair, as though she’s been blotted so as not to outshine the clientele. She’s not much older than Gael, whose skin is dewy from the facial she agreed to endure ‘to prehydrate the skin’ in the First Class Lounge Spa and in so doing had left off observing her mark: a buffet-loitering elderly man in a baseball cap. As the mud had dried and tightened on Gael’s face, she felt, for a moment, what Anna Livia’s cast-bronze life might be like – or her mother’s, if she doesn’t play this right.
‘I’ll go with the Dom.’ In contrast to the crew’s Received Pronunciation, she can hear the twangy Dublin diphthong that a few months at home has drawn out. She’ll have to straighten her vowels.
‘Lovely. We’ll begin the lunch service once we’re airborne. You’re welcome to browse the menus in the cabinet.’ The bubbles sound of rain on pavement as she pours. ‘Just for takeoff, Ms Foess, I’ll move this item to a secure location, if I may.’ She nods towards the package. The respect for privacy in the choice of words – this item – isn’t lost on Gael. Getting this item through security had entailed thorough hand-searching and screening of her preapproval for oversize carry-on luggage. Restricted articles, Gael had had to remind the security personnel, included guide dogs, mobility aids, musical instruments and sports equipment. There should be no surprises. She had paid her dues.
‘Please don’t rest anything against it.’
‘Of course,’ the steward says. ‘I’ll return it the moment we’re in the air.’
‘That’s fine.’
Another crew member, a man with eyebrows like correct-answer ticks in a child’s copybook, comes to assist in carrying the package towards the cockpit. The item is the size of a fifteenth-century door. They carry it as if it’s just that. Of course, the only other passenger in the cosy eight-seater first-class cabin notes this odd carry-on. He’s sizing Gael up for an envoi. It’s the elderly man Gael picked in the lounge for a first-class passenger by his worn-to-bits baseball cap, unironed slacks and the pin worn proudly on his breast, which she hasn’t quite been able to make out but can imagine him pinching free each night, setting it on his bedstand and pinning it into a fresh sweater each morning. The business-class passengers had all worn fine suits, heavy watches and targets on their foreheads.
He has the window seat to the left. Gael had the window seat to the right, the row behind, but she asked to move forward with the excuse that she wanted to rest her luggage against the partition. Just the two of them today, so they could do as they pleased. Still, two lamps, more than a metre and one dedicated crew member all threaten to keep them divided. She doesn’t have long to set things in motion. He could turn on his entertainment system at any moment (flat-screen TVs and a touch-screen tablet in a docking station on the sill); he could disappear into the distraction of Wi-Fi; he could avail himself of the noise-cancelling headphones, or draw the curtains, closing off his private sanctuary for the duration of the seven-hour flight and then Gael’s six-thousand-euro ticket would boil down to bubbles (a toast to Jules and Citibank), some very fine dining, a facial, chauffeur service and the general comfort of travel, which is all very well and good and utterly do-without-able.
As soon as the seat belt sign switches off, Gael gets up to remove her dark-green blazer, rolled at the wrists to reveal cream silk lining with minuscule black polka dots. Underneath, she’s wearing a crisp cream bodycon dress with a belt of plaited black a
nd cream leather strands, gold buckled, to match the gold buttons of the blazer. She’s bolstered her five-six stature to five-nine with nude pumps. Her luggage contains a handful of suchlike costumes, which fit her like crossed fingers to the underside of a tablecloth. They weren’t clothes she liked so much as the investment required. She hangs the blazer in the jacket closet where the steward has already hung her coat, and she makes a show of considering the pyjamas and slippers inside. They’re tied together with a ribbon.
Pulling on the ribbon to undo the bow, Gael says, ‘I will if you will?’ to the man, who she can feel observing her. She turns to catch his eye. He gives her a startled look.
Orchid & the Wasp Page 18