‘Widow,’ I repeated.
‘Still, I don’t suppose you’ll be long in staying. I imagine you’ve got plenty of things to be getting on with. Being alone’ll do me. But it’s hardly the ticket for a girl like you.’
I thought about my plenty as I wandered back to the caravan, lay down in its hovel.
There had been a baby there on the day of Michael’s funeral. Someone tacked on to the ‘family’ through one of his ‘uncles’ had come along with one, humping it late along the aisle against her leather skirt, smirched with reflux. She’d slumped down beside me, yanking an older child into the pew before her. The older girl came down clumsily—there was a hardbacked bible on the seat and she gripped her leg, tittering. All through the service I could hear mucus and misery squealing through the baby’s tiny face. The mother stuck it out on one knee, shook it back and forth a while, making its whine come up in waves. When she tried to swing it to her other knee for a break it bucked and made a grab for her, catching the ring in her eyebrow. The ring unclipped and dangled from the socket, joined by a tiny dash of blood. Cursing, she shoved the baby sideways onto the girl’s lap and stomped off down the carpet. But the girl only smiled, hauled the baby up by the armpits, and shimmied her ponytail down at it with jolts of her head. She nuzzled close, letting it suck on her hair. In its dirty stretch-and-grow the baby’s legs hung like little pipes.
Later, in the toilets, I was in a stall when I heard the mother laying the baby down on the tiles. Its stench choked the cubicle and it shrilled louder as she pushed its limbs in and out through its clothes. When I came out she had pulled paper down from the dispenser and was scratching at the dirty skin. She stuck the fresh nappy on wildly, then knelt back and stared, blank, at the baby. It was still thrashing. She shot forward suddenly, dropping her face down right over the kid’s. ‘Am I pissing you off, am I? Well, now you fucking know how I feel,’ she screamed at it.
‘Go easy,’ I said.
The mother looked at me. ‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘Well, it’s all yours if you want it.’
I said nothing.
‘Nah, didn’t fucking think so,’ she said.
I walked away. Around the corner from the stalls was a long bright bench of mirrors. Standing there was Michael’s mother, eyelid hooked down by a little finger, calmly tracing the pink band with a tube of silver grit.
If there was one word I’d have expected to find appearing under my breath it was his brother’s name. But if the caravan was death’s door, death’s windows didn’t have a mark on them. I don’t know why I kept looking. I kidded myself there might be some science to it, some principle of friction, the moisture content of exhalation, the differing qualities of light. I had no shortage of dreams of Michael’s fingerprints, traced on the window, on my face, or on the inside of his flask. But no good ever came of them. Except the surplus of shivers which made me grope for his container and hunch around it, or snarl at it and shake it.
When I left the caravan I’d really no idea what to do. The old girl just shrugged when I dropped her keys back, as if she wasn’t much bothered. But then she rambled beside me, out to the car, sinewy in a fresh frock. The cat toddled behind her at first, then darted off, shifty and primitive, flicking through the toetoe. When we got to the car, the old woman looked at the canister I had cradled in a jersey on the seat.
‘You mind?’ she asked me. I reached in and passed him into her hands.
‘Well,’ she said. She rocked him in her grip for a bit, weighing him. I think she was testing herself. I heard him in there, gliding along the surface.
‘I got my Bert back in a ruddy box,’ she said. ‘Fancy that. Cardboard. I suppose it was daylight robbery for this.’
Then she said, ‘He was a handsome type, your lad. Strapping, you know. I would have said, robust. Not likely to go down without a fight. Still, it takes all sorts, I suppose.’
She bent down and tucked him into his nest in the car.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘You want to come back for a spell, the caravan’s there.’
I would have reached out and touched the ridges of her cheek or knuckles, the streaks of scalp that shone through her hair, but she was too spry.
‘Off you get now,’ she grumbled.
I obeyed and drove away, Michael taking the corners beside me.
From time to time as I drove I thought about making a switch, a trade, about driving straight to his mother’s house and saying, Here, give me Smudge, I’ll give you Michael. But I didn’t feel like giving anything up.
On my last night in the caravan I had dreamt of upending his ash. But instead of his silt there was a rush of birds and pages, pulsing out into the dark, my breath pouring with them, a part of their luminous thrash. When I woke up I remembered the last message Michael had sent to me, a text before he left, just a dumb saying I thought he tapped out for a joke: WHT DSN’T KLL U MKS U STRNGR. Sometimes at the point that you get a message, it makes no sense. What it means might get clearer, later, or you just have to breathe the meaning in for yourself. So I drove back to the city, choosing a vowel.
deleted scenes for lovers
They are the lovers. You can’t blame them. At night in your house you let them appear on your screen; you want them to do more damage. They are too good looking for the third-world streets they have driven to; you wish they didn’t have to hide. He gets his fingers in under her clothes, midsection, and you find it hard to exhale. You know it’s cheap; the rain on the passenger window beyond his head looks digitised. But you wind back, you lead their bodies through it frame by frame, to see how dark her eyes are with the tenement backdrop, how the thick base of his thumb is a brace for her throat. There is one shot, true, that is done so badly it distracts you: it’s her (it is always her) spreading her fingers on the glass, sliding open in the mist, a dislocating squeal too loud as they slip upwards. Like the sound some woman in an advert would make, demonstrating window cleaner, smiling as she bleaches everything. But you have control; you can edit. Hit >>X2 X2. You can set them up, there, in the shot in the alley where it looks like shrapnel is bedded in the door he steers her through, staggering, where her hairline looks jagged and perfectly white shot down from the slant stairs above, like her scalp is struck with fate. You want to see her pinned, a star on the derelict wall, where her shadow spills over. You want to see her shiver, open-legged. You do it, and do it again, let them break worlds open, alter lives. You push. You push the lovers. You feel you have to. It’s so sad, the odds against them.
He calls her. He says he’s wagging his conference. He should be in a session room right now, but he’s missing it. Missing what, she says. What are you missing. He tells her, Taking a personality test. You should, she says. You should be. He says he walked out, he tried to listen, but he couldn’t think straight. She asks, Did you do any of the test. He says, Yes. She says, What did it tell you. He says, That it’s too late. Why, she says. Because I’m already too deep. You, she says. You’re not deep. She tries laughing. But he says, I’m deep in this. In what, she says. In this thing, with you. Don’t say, she starts. He cuts her off. He says, But you know what it is.
She ends the call. She drops her hand and looks down into the phone as if she’s heard news of an accident. But as long as she goes straight home now, she can stop some crash occurring in advance. She goes home, and her routines are all waiting for her, the shake in her hands doesn’t change any of them. She toughens the way her teeth dig into her lip, and her husband sees new muscle in her cheekbone, vertical. He thinks she’s getting older. They run water, they wipe surfaces. They sip wine, they pay bills, waiting for the kids’ sleep to kick in. They feel all right, on the usual set of evening, moving in its dull patterns, its homely lull of joint need.
The children have beautiful torsos, pearly blue in the last hour of moon when she checks them. They have fistfuls of blanket in the silk of their grip and the rooms smell sour, angelic with the murk of their skin. She sits on their beds and thinks for a while s
he might go out and talk to her husband. But then a child wakes in a ripple of nightmare that only she can guard against. She sings, a shield against the side of his wet head, a lonely song that comes in small doses.
You don’t like the next episode. They have him in a high-rise and there’s too much light at the apex. He is deciphering things on file. There is too much paper and artificial light. He looks like a man in an office chair. He sounds like a man in an office chair. You don’t like the way he says break even. You don’t like the way he says someone will take the bullet. You don’t know who had the shooting script. Sometimes, you know, they switch directors. Which can make even the actors’ faces look wrong. You make a note to watch for that in the credits. But for now, you watch on. It doesn’t improve. The light does not get the job of hero done. It is fake and sharp and blocks you believing, even in the soundtrack, even in the mingle of bass and descending major chords that mark him tracking her movements down the central glass hallway, his iris targeting her, while he’s still on the call, while he’s closing the deal in a kind of vertically blinded light that looks cut-throat. The scale is off, like soundtrack stock they spliced in from metal leftovers on the cutting-room floor.
The light is even on the sex later, when they get to it. It is poured down, air-conditioned. It is harsh, on tap, a kind of burden on your gaze. Their bodies look caustic, and the grip they get into is upright, gaunt and catalogue. You don’t know what it is. Yes, you do. It’s the music, the formulaic scales and the light. It’s synthesised. It’s the apartment. They don’t look tragic in this setting. It makes them look like people with options, with plenty. Like they had plastic-coated choices. Everything they do, even their kiss, looks coded, somehow backspaced. Their fuck looks kitset, like the furniture.
She is in the kitchen. The children are staring at the things on their plates they don’t want to eat. She is cutting open the clear plastic circles on the six-pack ring off the top of the cans. She has heard that they drift out to sea and act like nooses. Sometimes she feels sick of recycling. The children are whining about things they won’t chew. She stands in the kitchen and looks at the tins she must rinse, the plastics she must check for numbers and crush. She feels tired of it. A tired that rises in her like a hum. So, she makes herself think of the birds. She closes her eyes and sees them, hanging at the surface, oily and limp, in a fine transparent snare set by her torpor.
Her husband is on the deck, fixing the chain on one of the children’s bikes. He can’t hear the TV, so he yells at her to crank the sound up. He uses that word, crank it. She doesn’t. He yells again, You’re closest. She does. There is a couple on the screen, taking part in a game show. They have come to the place where they have to decide to take the deal, or gamble on the secret prize that could wait in the woman’s briefcase. The briefcase is silver. There is only so much it can hide. The audience chants at them to take the risk. It is what the audience always does. Take the risk. The wife wants to play on. The studio can see it in the way she’s jigging on her heels, the way she tips her hair over her shoulder with one bold punt. It is not beautiful hair, but there is a gloss to how she throws it, a lack of caution. It almost makes her glint. The host turns to her husband, grinning. The husband does not like the spotlight. He pauses for a long time. Then he blurts, But she’s just not lucky, Geoff. She’s just not.
The children roll their food around their plates in cold grizzly circuits. She goes outside with the cans piled on the plastic, makes a ceremony of mangling all of it down into the bin. She can hear her husband still laughing from the deck. He’s hooting the words themselves, She’s just not lucky. She’s just not.
She will have to spray his clothes with extra cleaner after he’s handled the chain. He will end up with the imprint of black teeth tracking his clothes. She will have to. She will just have to.
He calls her. He says, What are you doing. She says, I’m in the Salvation Army. He laughs at her, You’re what. Are you trying to get saved. She says, No, I’m saving something. What are you saving, he asks. She says, Well, at the moment, I’m thinking of whether to save this figure of a woman. He says, A what. She says, It’s a figurine, they have a red sticker on it that actually reads statuette. He says, Oh yeah, do they. And how much are you saving her for then. Five dollars, her salvation is costing me. Big money. I think she’s worth it. She’s beautiful, she’s china, I think, and there’s not a crack in her, or none that I can see. There’s a crack in everything. Don’t, she says. Don’t quote that song. I love that song. Well don’t love that song, we can’t love the same things. You can’t stop me. No, but. I was telling you about her. She’s very white. Oh yeah, he says. So—what’s she wearing. Not much. Go on. Tell me. There’s not much to tell. Go on then. On her lower half, she’s wearing a sheet, or sort of, draped round, you know. And on top. She’s wearing her hair in a bun. Ha ha, what’s in between? What’s in between? That’s right. She’s hollow in between. She’s hollow so you can turn her over and breathe right up the middle. And she makes a sound. He makes a sound. He says, More. Tell me more. How about up top. Where. Tell me about her, mmmm, shoulders. She’s not wearing anything. Nothing. No. No. She’s not. And you’d have to dress her. Why. Well, because. She’s Venus. She can’t help herself. She’s not even wearing arms.
She starts to laugh into the phone. Then stops. She buys Venus and takes her outside to the Salvation Army carpark. The carpark has constellations of birdshit and chewing gum everywhere. It is empty and hot. Venus has not been wrapped and it would be so easy to drop her.
This is better. There’s a shot of her bare feet stretching down to meet the floorboards. It’s a morning shade of floor. The contact is slow so you can feel the cold her skin would be stepping into. Her toenails are unpainted. This feels right to you. This says history. The bed is red too, the old red that is rich and heavy with heritage. The mess of it is sculptural. Her steps are smooth and you can hear her skin, lifting away with soft baroque whispers from the ridged surface of the boards. You like the knots, deep and coarse, coiled and secret as a series of muscles. The camera rests a long time, among those knots. She does not cast her hand around for her clothes; you may be able to say garments, but you’re not sure yet. They are ornate. She does not need them. In this shot she will walk naked to the window and be herself and glory in it. There are tall amber bottles on a table, there’s a quill, there may even be rosary beads. It is natural light. It is beautiful and distant. You think, Tower. You think, Hooves. The theme could be vampiric. You can feel how everyone is sleeping. Except the man whose eyes are just beginning to open, in close-up, lash by lash. You can smell his skin, waking up, medieval, in the room.
She sees a man walking through her back garden. Her spine feels very tight at the stem of her neck. Two areas of buzzing start just behind her ears. The pitch is off-key. What is he doing here. It is summer in the room she watches from, high and airless. She is freezing.
It is only a repairman. She goes out through the slider and he doesn’t seem to be bothered. He’s been dealing with her husband. It’s sorted. It’s the tank, he says, when she insists. The tank is leaking, into next door.
Her husband has not told her anything.
The workman shrugs. Your old man said you’re hardly home. It can’t be left, it’s leaking into the next house.
He goes on driving a stake into her dark grass.
She says, Why are you calling now. He says, It’s at the point where I can’t stop myself. But just this second, she says, I can’t believe you’d call now. Why, he asks her. Because—I’m at my desk, I’m trying to work and I just went to type the word ‘him’. But my fingers must have been at the wrong place on the keyboard, so instead I wrote ‘gun’. Why have I never seen that. They’re exactly the same pattern on the keyboard. Your hand just has to be off, just wrong by one space. He says, Well, you know what they say if there’s a gun in the story. She says, But this is life. Do you think this is a story. She pushes the button three times, like she could
dial their talk backwards, hit blank, delete.
Tonight, there is going to be a war. But you don’t mind. You know the lovers do well in these conditions. The camera will be aerial, gliding. They will run to each other while the freeze-frames of dirt blast up. The fallout of history will shower down around them, but they will struggle to each other, in strangely clean clothes, amidst the shocks. High-definition haloes of soil will ignite from their footsteps but they will still kiss. The buildings are blistered, the faces of an unnamed cast are fragmented and buried in a gush. But it’s the kiss you watch. The violins will sing above the slow-motion minefield—of everything love conquers.
He says, Do you dream of me. She says, No, I’m too tired out by this to dream. She says, I close my eyes and the only things left of my body are the last places you have been. He breathes on her belly, a line of proud graffiti, hooks the leap of her rib with his tongue.
When she gets home her husband is hanging a mobile up in their little girl’s room. It’s a silver hoop with strings of mermaids attached. She’s been asking him to nail it up for weeks. But now it’s done, drifting, she stands in the doorway and doesn’t like the swim of them. Their sheen hovers in the closed room. The walls go under in the sway of their scaly shadows. She says, Take it, take it back down. Her husband is aggravated. He says, Why the fuck. She can’t say, Because it makes her feel slippery. She says, It’ll keep her awake. But he won’t remove it. She stands and argues with him until she feels a channel of her lover’s fluid slip like a thumbprint out between her lips. No one has noticed her dress is off its axis, no one knows she’s wet beneath, clumsy with the aftershock of coming, inside studded with another man’s come. She stares at the suspended women and wishes they would all drown from their leashes.
Deleted Scenes for Lovers Page 3