Under My Skin

by Alison Jameson

  ‘Mum…’ he says and his voice is low and calm, ‘Hope is my wife. I don’t care what you think of her. I don’t care what you think of me. But I expect you to treat her with respect.’

  ‘We…’ she says and her mouth is in a straight stiff line, ‘… are your family.’

  And Larry looks over at me and takes my hand.

  ‘Hope is my family now.’

  Larry’s father comes in and pulls up a chair at the head of the table. He takes off the wig and puts it on a plate near the bread. In my mind are the words ‘Holy Mary Mother of God’ and I haven’t wanted to say them for years.

  Then from nowhere I want to say it – and it is just because it is the one thing I am not supposed to say.

  ‘Who owns the rug? Who owns the rug? Who owns the rug?’

  ‘Another egg?’ Larry asks and now we are trying not to laugh at his father’s bald head.

  ‘Pass me the bread, please,’ his mother says and Larry lifts up the plate and passes her the wig instead.

  A dog wanders through the yard and sniffs. When I turn I find a little blond boy smiling up at me.

  ‘What age are you?’ I ask kindly.

  ‘Four,’ he replies but his cherub face stares sadly out the window instead. When the dog lifts his leg the boy keeps on staring and then both of us look.

  ‘He’s taking a piss,’ he says.

  Tonight we lie side by side without speaking. There are no curtains on the window and the stars are dotted across the night sky.

  ‘This was my room,’ he says softly. ‘I would sit up here, with the leaves at my window, and read and read and read.’

  ‘What did you read?’

  ‘Anything I could find, anything that took me to another place.’

  We don’t speak for a little while.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then…’ he replies.

  ‘You met me,’ I answer.

  Larry turns over and puts his arms around me.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I met you and I lived happily ever after.

  The End.’

  He sits up on his elbows and asks me what I think of his family.

  ‘They’re a bit like The Munsters,’ I tell him and we both start to laugh. Then he throws back the covers. It is cold now and it’s almost 3 a.m.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he says suddenly and he’s still laughing and pulling his jeans on.

  ‘Now…?’ and inside I’m thanking my lucky stars.

  ‘Hope,’ he says and he sits beside me on the bed, ‘I promise you will never have to come here again.’

  ‘Thank you, Larry,’ and now we are both packing our things and laughing as we begin to tiptoe down the stairs.

  ‘And if you ever lose your hair… Larry… I want you to know…’ And here he turns in the stairwell and says, ‘I know… you’ll still love me when I’m bald.’

  The hotel is in Galway. It is a two-hour drive and it seems a little longer because there are two of us in the bubble car. Our heads are close together and we are like goldfish driving around in a goldfish bowl. There was no hot water for Larry’s shower and he still smells a bit like sausages and chips. We have all our things in one carrier bag. I have just brought underwear and Larry has brought his razor and an REM CD.

  We stop and ask for directions in Galway.

  ‘Excuse me, please,’ Larry says, ‘we’re looking for the Clarinbridge Hotel.’

  ‘Oh,’ the woman says, ‘that used to be the Mental Hospital,’ and now there is silence from the car.

  ‘Do you know where it is?’ I ask.

  ‘Turn left,’ she says. ‘It’s on Mental Hospital Road.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Larry says and he turns the Ladybird around on the street.

  It is a tall grey stone building and there is a nice red and yellow creeper growing on one side. Larry manages the check-in and I wait in the foyer with our carrier bag. In the room, the windows seem to be very high and there are no sharp objects and no minibar.

  At six o’clock there is a knock on our door and the manager comes in and stands with his back to the TV. We are lying on the bed watching some ice-dancing from Bulgaria.

  He tells us that he is very sorry but he had no idea we were on our honeymoon. He says ‘a lady’ called Doreen rang and asked for a bottle of champagne to be delivered to our room. ‘The honeymoon suite is booked,’ he says but he would like us to take the penthouse and have a complimentary dinner and a bottle of wine. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again, ‘I hope this will help and that you will enjoy the rest of your stay at our hotel.’ I sit up and look at him. ‘It’s a bit like a hospital,’ I tell him, and he looks back at me and cannot think of any reply. Two chambermaids come to the door to help us to pack.

  There are two white fluffy bathrobes. The heat is turned up and the bathroom is full of hot water and steam. Larry has a shower first and then we have a bath. This is the first time we have done this. In the bathroom we have a conversation about hotdogs and Larry says he ate his first hotdog ever after visiting the Empire State Building in New York. Then we have a chat about which is taller, the World Trade Center or Sears Tower, and he says, ‘The World Trade Center – it measures 1,368 feet.’ Then we talk about our favourite cities and I already know Larry loves New York so I tell him my favourite city is Baghdad and he starts to laugh. We talk about memory and why we remember some things but there are others we completely forget.

  ‘It’s something to do with the hippocampus structure,’ Larry says and he is sponging soap on to my back.

  ‘I want to tell you something about me,’ I tell him and I am saying the words out into the steam.

  ‘Is it about your dad?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him, and he kisses my shoulders and his arms move down into the warm water and around my waist.

  ‘It’s about Dad and Daniel – but I’m going to tell you about Elvis first.’

  ‘OK,’ he replies, and we stay there for a very long time, talking and talking together and Larry adding more hot water by turning the tap with his foot.

  When we fall asleep under the white sheets we seem to melt into each other and when we speak again it is as if we are both in the same dream.

  ‘Larry?’ I ask and my voice comes out into the dark of the quiet hotel room.

  ‘Yes, Hope.’

  ‘What’s your favourite word?’

  He pulls me closer.

  He kisses my lips.

  My cheeks.

  My hair.

  The moon casts a long white shadow across us.

  ‘Canoodle,’ he replies.

  4 A Wedding in St Bart’s

  On Saturday morning Glassman walked down Park Avenue with Matilda. She put her hand into his coat pocket to warm it and together they saw the first tight green buds of spring. His friend, who was four years older than he was, had decided to marry the Parisian – who was only twenty-three. He had planned a springtime wedding for her. He had invited Glassman and The Chief. He had bought his black morning suit at Barneys. He believed he could turn the clock back for her and he had even dyed his hair.

  ‘He looks like a crow,’ Matilda whispered, and Glassman felt her lean closer and how her breath was warm on his ear. He smiled because he was enjoying the charade of a wedding and because The Chief had just lifted one eyebrow to say ‘Hello’. The two couples smiled at each other and when Matilda sat down again she took Glassman’s hand.

  In the nave of St Bart’s they listened to Mozart and watched the young bride as she glided up the aisle.

  ‘What does he expect?’ Glassman wondered. ‘In five years’ time, making love to her will give him a heart attack… and waking up beside him will give her a heart attack.’

  The bride had asked them to blow bubbles after the vows were exchanged and he tried not to laugh as he began to whip the mixture up. When the groom put his ring on the Parisian’s finger, Glassman looked up and saw the bride’s mother throw her head dramatically into her hands. And in ce
lebration of the madness of this love and of love in general he scooped and blew a giant bubble up over their heads. Both he and Matilda watched as it wilfully brushed over hair and clothing and seemed to grow and grow until it landed, elegantly and in complete silence, on the groom’s left shoulder, like a second glass head. And Glassman and Matilda and even The Chief, who sat on his other side, began to laugh helplessly over this.

  On the way home they went to Zabars and bought smoked salmon and cream cheese and chocolate croissants and with every item she put into their basket he wanted to tell her it was over, and then he would see her eyes, and soften and think, not yet. And for a moment he stopped and saw that all of New York was there and shopping – one person to represent each member of their world – all moving in perfect time as if choreographed and on the ice-rink in Central Park.

  And there was Matilda holding up a jar of pickles for him to see and she wore that look of eager anticipation on her face. She was also on the ice but she had stopped because he had, and he hated her for loving him in that puppy dog way and then another thought crashed right into this one – why would he hurt her and why would he break her heart?

  The flour machine had pulled up at H&H Bagels across the street and they both stopped and wondered at it. ‘Look, the flour machine,’ she said and they watched the floating cloud of magical white dust, but when she said ‘flour’ he thought ‘flower’ and imagined a million pink petals falling into the street, and Glassman wondered if this was the beginning of his first real feeling or thought. They stood side by side on Broadway and 80th Street and she talked about H&H bagels and how they were shipped to San Francisco and Chicago and Seattle and she spoiled it so that his petals turned back to white, never-settling dust.

  Matilda talked about her Irish friend over breakfast and how her husband ran a diner and how she worked in advertising – and how funny she was – and Glassman listened with one ear as he usually did now when Matilda talked. He liked the idea of a young couple in love without knowing anything about the complications of it. He liked the idea of diapers flapping on a line and no money for food and how at night they had no radio or TV and got into bed to read books and keep each other warm. He liked the idea of a woman who could not spell but wanted to write anyway. Matilda told him that her friend had a scar in the shape of a star and even this fact could not sink into him and he did not understand why she could not see that he was really somewhere else.

  He knew that she was taking things. And that for everything she took she left something of hers in its place. His pyjama top – lime-green silk – for a box of Tampax in the medical cabinet. His black sweater – for homemade meatballs made at her place and left in his refrigerator. Three pieces of glass from his studio – for a pair of socks left under the bed. His copy of The Good Soldier – for her copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. He let it all slide in and out like a game of checkers in his head – and he let it happen because as usual he did not want to hurt her. He did not want to hurt anyone at all. And he let her stay out of kindness, and allowed her to steal from him, and this he believed was the last remaining shred of his good self.

  It happened with Matilda as he expected.

  After they had made love.

  That was how every real conversation happened with her. For five months they had been sleeping together, and breaking up and then sleeping together again, and that morning she wanted what he would describe later to The Chief as a ‘personal statement’ from him. She needed to hear ‘I love you’ and ‘I miss you when you’re gone’. He knew about this from other women and he knew how to answer it now. Simply and to the point but in a gentle voice. And he was gentle with all of them, he hoped.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said.

  And she turned her face into the pillows and then pulled her legs up, and rolled over to take every part of herself away. He knew about this too. The action women used, curling inwards towards their wombs, bringing their hearts downwards so they could be nurtured. The blood changing direction and going into a colder, more needing place.

  At first he could not understand any of it. How he wanted sex and then felt nothing at all. It was the disease, his doctor reassured him. The devils that attacked his pituitary gland affecting, controlling, heightening and then diluting every mood. It meant that words like ‘love’ and ‘need’ were missing from his vocabulary now, and it was funny but women were never put off by his pain. They seemed to think that it was sent to him because he was able for it. That with it, bizarrely, he was somehow a stronger, more magnetic man.

  So Matilda turned from him. And he was ready to explain. He knew the answers because he had tried to explain it before. To Boo. And she had listened – and then she had laughed, and he liked her more for that.

  ‘The disease has taken my endorphins’ – that was how he explained it to her, and the black woman who actually towered over him listened carefully.

  ‘I have no ardour,’ he said quietly, and with great sadness he gave the final part of his excuse.

  And she looked at him with her eyes laughing and said, ‘Well, it’s a hell of a way to get dumped.’

  Now with Matilda he waited and they both lay there apart and listened to the cars and dump-trucks of New York. Outside two jays were in courtship and he watched with sad dead eyes and envied their mad flapping wings and their screeching and their lust. And most of all he envied how they stayed together on the ledge after they made love.

  The next day Matilda moved her things out as he knew she would and his apartment became empty again, and when he sat on his kitchen floor eating a carton of raisins and yoghurt he felt nothing, only the cold of his mosaic floor, and some lower back pain.

  Later he finished some cottage cheese and noted with some mild questioning and wonderment that she had left her diaphragm in the refrigerator.

  On Tuesday he called The Chief and asked him to meet him for lunch. On his way to Franks on Sixth Avenue the wind felt cold and it got in through his coat and clothes. He waited at the counter and as he drank a black coffee he tried not to think too much about his life. He wanted to shut off the memory of her last sad monosyllables and turn up the noise of New York. Any minute now and The Chief would appear, his broad shoulders and surly face reminding him that life was still OK. Today he would feel safe with Gallagher because he had no time for self-pity and he had no time for romance.

  ‘Walk away.’ That was his favourite piece of advice and when the glass door squeaked open he saw him, his grey hair brushed straight back from his forehead and his face red with cold. He nodded to Arthur and then stopped for a moment and spoke to someone he knew.

  ‘Hey, buddy,’ he said to Glassman by way of greeting, the words coming out quietly under his breath, ‘… decided to come up higher than West Houston, huh?’

  And Glassman grinned and felt himself slip comfortably into the male pattern that they both already knew. They would order lunch. Rare hamburgers. Fries. Coleslaw. Black coffee. Vanilla ice cream. All the things their women and their doctors told them to avoid. They would talk about The Knicks. They would talk about the cold. They might venture towards Glassman’s new heating system or The Chief’s new barbecue flown up from Maine. They would not mention blood pressure – or cholesterol – or their women. But in the last few minutes of their conversation, as Glassman walked beside his big bear friend, the problem would finally surface – and only for a minute and then it would die again. That was what he needed. He wanted to ignore it. To downplay it. He needed hamburgers and basketball and vanilla ice cream and none of the drama of his female friends.

  ‘So you and Matilda…?’ That was how it would come out. The question barely tagged on at the end.

  And that was how it did come out and at the same time Arthur felt the gentle slap on his back from his friend.

  He stopped and over the noise of the traffic he looked up at Gallagher and only had to shrug and shake his head. At times like this he loved his friend’s company. No more questions. No more emotion. No mo
re analysis of things that should never have been said.

  The Chief looked away. He put his gloved fist deep into a coat pocket again. He squinted in the cold. He turned quickly for an instant as a police siren flew past.

  ‘Probably better off,’ he said and his words were spoken up into the wind. And Glassman nodded without looking at him. They watched the street for a moment, both wondering what the other man would say.

  ‘Are you watching the fight on Friday night?’ The Chief asked then.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I’ll guess I’ll see you there.’

  And with that The Chief turned and walked towards the Precinct. He had said exactly enough to leave his friend feeling calm and safe and on that day in February Glassman felt normal again.

  The next day there were three messages on his answerphone and they were all from Matilda of course. He knew as soon as he opened his hall door and stood with the key still in the lock and the red number 3 flashing in his face.

  He listened to the first one.

  It began with her taking a slow deep breath.

  ‘Hey… it’s me… I know we said we wouldn’t do this… I miss you, Glassman… could you come over?… I’m just finding this really hard.’

  He knew he shouldn’t listen to the second message but he did.

  ‘Arthur, why didn’t you return my call? Look. I’m sorry. I just… I’m having a hard time with this. I miss you and I don’t understand why we can’t be friends. I love you – Arthur? Are you there? Please pick up…’

  And the third message was just the sound of her breathing and an angry little click as she put down the phone.

  5 Elvis Has Left the Building (June 1991)

  Melancholic adj. – 1. Feeling or tending to feel a thoughtful or gentle sadness 2. Experiencing psychiatric depression (archaic).

  Pappy stands behind the counter of our shop. Behind him there are white chocolate mice, clove drops, bonbons, Love Hearts. On the other side there are boxes of red apples, cooked ham, stacks of eggs, today’s bread. The morning sun comes through the open door in a long white beam, like a searchlight. It is Saturday so we stand in a row behind the counter but no one says a word, not my pappy, not my brother Daniel, not me. There is a red leather barber’s chair in the corner of the shop and next to it a small white sink. There are three pairs of rusty scissors standing in a glass and an electric clippers. But since summer we only sell sweets and groceries, we do not cut people’s hair. In the background The King is singing and outside our shop seems to overflow and spill itself on to the footpath. We live in Oldcastle, on the Main Street. The shop is painted shiny red and outside there are two chewing-gum vendors, four cylinders of gas chained together and a plastic ice cream. And Elvis croons. He is always with us, a sort of wallpaper, a fourth member of the family now.