The Girl Giant

by Kirsten den Hartog

  Elspeth thought she had read about all the giants—the one with no heart in his body, the one with the beanstalk, and so on. But she had never looked outside storybooks into the lives of actual giants. It hadn’t occurred to her that my condition was a condition. Her cache of giant legends was still tucked away in her half of the closet, disappointing because it had never offered what she’d sought: stories that might comfort me, or her, or all of us. Just as I did, for a long time she entertained the belief that once there had existed a race of giants. But she was not one for delusions. Even the Bible made her uneasy in that regard, which was why she had to pray so fiercely. In the end all the evidence told her that there had never been a race of giants. That giants have always come to us one by one. Rare, organic blunders pressed into a dollhouse world.

  With Franny and Bea put to rest, Elspeth traveled by bus and train, having no particular destination in mind, zigzagging up to Liverpool, then over to Wales and on down the coast. When it drizzled, she took the little rain kerchief out of her bag, unfolded it, and tied it on. She felt just like an old lady, sensible and prepared, and she remembered the handbags Franny and Bea had carried, with a special compartment for everything. The decisive sound of them snapping shut indicated that everywhere, everything would be okay.

  When your purse is clean, your mind is clear.

  One of them had said that, but she couldn’t remember which. That sort of tidiness was what she’d strived for in her own life, in every aspect, but she could never achieve it, nor let go of the fierce desire to do so. And James: so accommodating, so infuriating. The house looks clean to me. I’d love you even if it were filthy. Grinning and wiggling his eyebrows. He had never appreciated who she really was—he had never even tried to understand her.

  On through Wales, she couldn’t absorb herself in the scenery, and it rolled by in a green haze or a blue wash, depending. Once in a while she moved back in time to a moment in her childhood, but she could never tell why or what she might learn from the memory, for each time it was only the simplest thing: herself in bare feet finding seashells; or staring up at the hornets’ nest under the eaves outside her bedroom window—waiting and waiting for something to happen, like now. It struck her that a memory was different than a recollection, since a memory just came, unbidden, and a recollection was something you sought out; you invited it back. And then she tried to choose which moments she would invite back, and to recollect the details, but precious little would come. The day that James arrived. The day she gave birth. Those events were always somewhere in her mind, camouflaged by current worries.

  Sometimes she left the bus or train on a whim, and just walked. In the countryside she came upon a house entangled in weeds. It startled her at first to think that she might be trespassing on someone’s property, but then she noticed the tattered curtains that blew through the window, where there was no glass. The front door of the house hung crooked from the top hinge. She drew closer. Through the window in what must have been the living room she could see a stained mattress with the stuffing spilling out, and just beyond it a doll’s head, parted from the body. Nearby was a heap of everything: an old soup tin, toy trucks and cars, pantyhose, cereal boxes, a tube of toothpaste, and half of a game board. She had the impression that someone had swept it all into a pile, but couldn’t be bothered to dispose of it, and it made her think of the Malones’ house next door, of Margaret and Suzy, whom she despised, and of Patrick, who was still young enough to escape blame for the way he was.

  But then it seemed to her that her own house was in similar disarray; perhaps this was how she’d left things when she’d flown away. It was how the aunties’ place looked when she’d finished with it, and how the rooms above the hat shop appeared to her in her memory the day she’d turned her back on them, despite the fact she knew she had scrubbed the floors and the walls in both places until her hands turned pink; she had left both places so empty that her footsteps echoed through the rooms as she walked away. She could never do enough. She peered into the abandoned house again. The walls were covered in tiny pink flowers. There were nails there, and brighter squares where pictures had been. So, in with the things left behind, there were traces of what had been taken.

  On her way back to London, the train stopped at her little town, which had not quite been swallowed up by the city. There was nothing to do but get off, even though the act of doing so made her nauseous. Heart fluttering, feet on home ground, she thought of Richard Wilson moving toward her on the cobblestones. The rippled clay roof tiles and the enormous plane trees with their arms outstretched made her ache for a time she’d never admitted to missing. She was home. An excruciating, beautiful pain came over her with every step she took. It poured over her like buckets and buckets of water rushing down, but no one seeing her would ever guess she was feeling anything unusual. She approached the hat shop—now a bakery—the way anyone might, as if she had no connection to the place other than her human need for bread. She grasped the door handle, palm tingling, and pushed open the door, breath held with the hope or fear that one might enter the past so easily. She herself had hung the bell from the door, and well knew the sound it made each time the door opened—hadn’t it rung that way when Stan had come home, and when she’d left for the strawberry field, and then again when James had appeared, looking for something blue? Sounds were like smells; they snuck up on you and triggered memories, wanted or not.

  The old floor had been painted, but was made up of the original wood planks, and there was the square trapdoor that led down to the cellar. It looked like an empty picture frame in the floor. If she lifted the door now she might see the ladder steps and the crumbling concrete walls, and her mother and father there waiting, wringing their hands. Elsie, where have you been?

  The little door remained closed, and the place was almost unrecognizable. Customers chatted and sipped tea at pretty round tables that held vases of daisies. Loaves of bread sat where the heads used to be. She stood in line, looking as normal as she could, but when asked for her order she was speechless.

  “Ma’am, I said what would you like?”

  Silence.

  “Ma’am?”

  Like a crazy woman she backed away, feeling for the door handle behind her, bumping into strangers and making her way out with the bell clanging.

  Near the end of Elspeth’s weeks away, the little jar of deodorant had been wiped clean, and James was perspiring more than ever. He tried to tell himself that this was only because it was hot out, and his postal suit was dark and heavy. But the sweat gushed out of him even on weekends, after he’d showered and put on his light summer clothes—the seersucker shirt that made him think of nurses in the war. He was effusing guilt, especially in his dark, private areas, and he felt convinced that Elspeth would come home and smell his guilt the minute she walked in the door. She could always tell when something had gone off in the fridge, even with the fridge door shut, and from down the hall she knew when he had failed to close the lid to the laundry hamper, his dirty socks stinking on top of the heap. And how would he answer, how would he defend himself once the accusation had been made? He knew he wouldn’t, that he was too much of a coward for anything more than denial. But the lie would rot his insides.

  Worse was when he thought of Elspeth returning to work at the suit factory, and spending her days with Iris, whom he understood now was exceptionally fragile, and therefore dangerous and unpredictable—the enemy, no less. And every day the trepidation would be with him as he came home from work, waiting to find out if Iris had said something to Elspeth about their affair. (Could it be called an affair? He was new to the realm of adultery, and didn’t know if three times counted as such, but it seemed important to name the thing in his mind. To end it, yes, but also to define it.) He didn’t know if he could live with the constant worry of did she already know, would she find out tomorrow. He doubted he was strong enough.

  And if he could tell her, was it asking too much of her to forgive him?


  Life was not unlike war, he decided. There was the constant need to protect, defend. Confusion regarding the enemy, and from which direction they might attack. Chaos when the rulebook was lost or illegible, and one had to make one’s own way through the battle, without specific commands from superiors. Only once before had his own weaknesses been so acutely apparent to him, and inwardly he underscored the fact that he had gotten through that other time, thus he would come through this one too. But the realization felt nothing like a light at the end of a tunnel.

  Nor was there a glimmer of that light when he stood in front of Iris, ending things, the night before Elspeth’s return. He’d contemplated sending Iris a letter, and even pictured the man on her route, Harv, delivering it, but letters left trails. They always turned up as evidence in the movies, and beyond that he wanted to behave as decently as was still possible. He stood near the door without taking his shoes off, and was aware of the fact that he kept rolling up on his toes the way his father did. It was a habit that had always annoyed him, and he wasn’t sure when he’d made it his own. There was a mirror at the opposite side of the room, above the fireplace, and he saw his head pop up and drop down as he rolled. He looked ridiculous. He felt ridiculous.

  “Are you coming in?” asked Iris.

  “Well, I—” He let his voice fall, rich with meaning. “No. I’m afraid not.”

  Was that enough?

  Did it make things clear?

  His eyes darted around the room, taking in the ordinary things: a winter landscape hanging crooked on the wall; the door reflected in the mirror, and the glass knob glinting in the low light. He only had to grasp it and open the door, then take himself down the stairs and back outside and never, ever return. He waited for Iris to say something but she stayed unbearably quiet, and he was sure this was a tactic designed to make him more uncomfortable than he already was. What should he say? He might try to tell her the truth, stammering through it like good old King George. Everyone had revered George, who had so dutifully accepted a job he didn’t want and was ill prepared for when it was thrust upon him. And he had come through shining, a knock-kneed stutterer riddled with shame and insecurity, transformed into the King of England. Perhaps he’d had something to hide?

  He thought of all the days he had chewed over the sentence I’m leaving you, and it seemed preposterous to him now that he’d ever had that idea about the only woman he had ever loved. So perhaps he could say just that: I’m sorry, Iris, but Elspeth is the only woman I have ever loved. Or simply: This is good-bye. That was corny, but there were occasions when corny really was the best way, such as that time so long ago when he had compared Elspeth’s eyes to topaz. He felt sorry for Iris that even as he stood inside her home, Elspeth was foremost in his mind.

  He glanced at Iris again. Her skin was shiny and her hair stood out in a frizz exacerbated by the humidity. Her pubic hair was just like the hair on her head, red and abundant, and it embarrassed him to know that about her—to know he would always know it when so few others did. She had put out a bowl of chips and placed a wine bottle in a Tupperware container of ice, just over there, where the fan was blowing, and those little gestures, the thought of her preparing for his arrival and squirting the perfume that still hung in the air, pinched his conscience. She was as predictable to him as he himself must be to Elspeth, and he wondered if love was always unbalanced, if indeed it had to be—or if the balance shifted back and forth over time. On his last visit Iris had called him gorgeous. He was definitely handsome next to her, whereas beside Elspeth he dipped below average. And he liked feeling good about himself. Gorgeous, she had said, and he felt it to be true.

  Later there would be chocolates, he felt quite sure of it, because Iris loved to indulge, not just herself but him. (In his own defense he had done without chocolates for so long.) He felt a pull toward her, when he thought of being wanted, of drinking wine in the afternoon with a melting ice cube, of acting on impulse. She must have seen some change on his face, some moment of opportunity, because she stepped toward him and slipped her hands under his shirt. Soft arms wrapping around him, her body like a pillow or a cloud. Tongue invading.

  Afterward it seemed cruel that he still had his shoes on—or maybe it was just spontaneous, something he’d never really considered himself to be. He felt quite certain, as he lay on the sofa with Iris sleeping on top of him, that four times constituted an affair, and that the tenderness after the act, lying snuggled this way, was worse than the act itself. But what could he do? He owed it to Iris to stay put, at least for a little bit while she finished her sleep, though it did occur to him that she wasn’t sleeping at all, and only wanted to keep him for that much longer. These were the subtle maneuvers women excelled at, and that had taken him the better part of four decades to recognize. A flicker of anger with that thought, just slightly. Could it be that Iris was using him just as much as he was using her? He had been coerced and manipulated all his life, as a soldier, as a husband whose chores got done before he could even get to them, and as a father who had not been able to insist on a second opinion for his daughter. She isn’t normal. His eyes brimmed at the certainty. He had known what was best for his child, but he had acquiesced. He was the king of acquiescence, or the joker.

  Again his gaze fell on the army picture of Iris, and he had the urge to wake her and tell her about those pathetic hours at Dieppe—the pebbles in his nose and mouth, the body on top of him, the weight just like now if he closed his eyes, and the warm, wet feeling of blood on his skin, not his own, but something he needed to atone for. He pulled himself out from under Iris and sat up, heaving to catch his breath, and then weeping into his hands. Huge, loud, unhinged sobs. And the fact that it was Iris comforting him only made him sob more, because of how good it felt, because of how much he longed to be held.

  Chapter 9

  The words linking me with David were washed away by rain, and I tried to act as if they’d never existed. But in reality, the phrase was etched in my thoughts. And David himself was everywhere, even where he wasn’t, meaning that any boy of a certain size and shape seen from a distance brought on that sense of dread in me. Whenever we saw the real him, Suzy would nudge me, and say, “Wonder if he loves you, too.” And then, “Teasing, Ruth, I’m teasing!”

  One Saturday we were walking downtown, and Suzy pulled me into a record shop and showed me the albums she wished she had. I saw him walk past the store as she was flipping through them, and felt grateful she didn’t seem to have noticed him.

  “This one especially,” she whispered, pulling the album out and admiring the cover. She traced her finger over a red swirl at the top right-hand corner. “If it would fit under my top I’d take it right now.” She giggled, and glanced at the clerk, but he was staring out the window eating popcorn. “It would fit under yours, Ruth.”

  “What?!”

  “He’d never see it.”

  “No way!”

  Suzy shrugged, still smiling. We wandered back outside, and I was glancing around for David when she asked me, “Ever steal before?”

  “No—never! Of course not. Have you?”

  Just as I remembered the chocolate bar, she said, “No. Never had the guts. But I bet it would be fun. Give you that zing, you know? And who would miss one silly album? I love every song on that album, every one.” And she started singing.

  So had she stolen or had she never stolen? Did she discount the chocolate bar because she’d been caught eating it? Or had she just forgotten about it? Or maybe she’d forgotten she’d told me, and she was ashamed, and didn’t want me to think badly of her, which of course I never could. But what about the bees? Or the cat and Aunt Dodie and the kittens? Again the chilling sensation of looking at her and seeing a stranger.

  “Look,” said Suzy. “There’s David.” She waved.

  He waved back, and glided toward us just as he had at the beach. I felt my face burning.

  “Maybe he’ll do it,” she said, and paused as her gaze traveled up to
mine. “I mean if you won’t.”

  “Okay,” I said, pulling at her sleeve. “Come on.”

  “You mean it?” Suzy clapped her hands and jumped up and down. “Listen, it’s maybe better if I stay out here. You’ll be less nervous without me.”

  It felt wrong that I was going into the store alone, to do something I didn’t want to do, and leaving her outside with David approaching. But I went willingly. I couldn’t look at David—maybe he’d be gone when I returned.

  I walked in the store, I went right to the album she’d shown me, and I looked at the boy at the cash desk, who looked at me. He had seen me around school and town often enough to be unimpressed by my stature, and he quickly went back to his window and his popcorn, looking out on the day going by as if watching a movie. I saw my old friend Grace with the thick glasses pass the store window, and I thought to myself, If she turns and sees me, I won’t do it. I absolutely won’t. But Grace didn’t turn, so the decision was out of my hands. I lifted the album out and slid it under my top. My stomach was sweaty and the cardboard stuck to me. Suzy was wrong, there was no “zing,” only a queasiness. But Suzy was right, too; you couldn’t tell I had anything concealed. I thumbed through a row of albums, and left again. It amazed me how easy it was to break a law, just like breaking a rule, but bigger.

  Outside, Suzy was sitting on the bicycle racks and David was still beside her, smoking a cigarette. He had eyes like opals, hard and pale, and he winked at me without smiling. My heart thudded in my ears and my fingertips, and I looked away.