Under My Skin

by Alison Jameson

  ‘Music?’ he asks and I shake my head.

  We stand and face each other and my bare legs are touching his bed. He rests his hands on my shoulders and then tugs my t-shirt so it falls and he kisses my cheekbone and my lips and then my collarbones. His sheets are fresh, the bed neatly made. Everything tidy and in its place in his man’s world. He pulls the sheets up over us and we stay there together under the white light. He makes love to me and I make love to him and those feelings crash together somewhere in between. And afterwards we lie in silence and he can never know what I am thinking now.

  We promised. We promised we would give it all and then give the other person back.

  We eat straight from the omelette pan and he opens a bottle of wine. We have left the ordinary world now and will not talk about ordinary things. He never mentions his work and I never mention mine. Instead we talk about the tides, the boat and the sunset outside.

  He tells me that he loves nature, that he believes in living moving trees, the green of the leaves, the sounds the wind makes, and that water for him has always created a special magical place.

  After we make love again he sits and watches me, cross-legged at the end of the bed. When I pull the sheets up, he says, ‘No’ and ‘Please’ in a very gentle voice.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he says. ‘Please… just stay as you are, as you were, because after you’ve gone I will want to remember this.’

  ‘What happens after I’ve gone?’

  ‘We go on,’ he says, ‘like we said, free and on our separate ways.’

  ‘What if it’s different?’ I ask

  ‘Of course it will be different,’ he answers. ‘What did you think? – That we would collide like two stars and then just forget?’

  I turn on my side and he draws a line with his finger from my shoulder to my hipbone to my knee.

  We don’t speak for a long time. The little windows are misting and there is a soft orange spot from the sinking sun. I curl up with the sheets around me and listen then as he begins to speak.

  ‘After you’ve gone, I will still have Eclaircie. I will have the clouds and I will have the sun. But everything will be just slightly different. The trees will be another lighter shade of green. The water will be quieter to me and it might move in a slightly different way. And the sun will be different and at night-time, when I’m not able to sleep, because I won’t be able to now, I might not be able to find the usual full moon. So maybe you don’t believe that I love you. But you see, in my own odd way, I probably do.’

  And when I go to him he pulls me on to his knees and holds me tightly there.

  ‘It’s only September tenth,’ he says and he is grinning at me. ‘We still have nineteen days.’

  ‘A lifetime,’ I tell him.

  ‘Our life,’ he says.

  And then something happens in my stomach and then in my heart and I’m suddenly frightened in a way I was one September a long time ago.

  In the middle of the night I wake and in the second after waking I think, really believe, that I am back in the flat with Larry – and outside Doreen is rattling in the kitchen as another new day begins. Beside me is the man who can’t say ‘I love you’. The bull who reluctantly gave me one month of his life – and somewhere in the world is Larry, who is somehow still my husband and I am somehow still his wife.

  The bed creaks a little when I sit up and then I creep across the floor on tiptoe. He stirs in his sleep and turns over and I watch him and he doesn’t wake. I close his bedroom door quietly and begin putting my clothes into a bag. There is a red lipstick in the pouch pocket, my favourite red shade, one that Matilda recommended called ‘Rage’. It writes easily on his shining bathroom mirror and will probably be difficult to wash off.

  ‘I want you to stay with me.’ That was the last thing he said before he drifted off to sleep – and now – while carrying my shoes in one hand, I give him my best answer.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper into the mirror and then I write the words

  I can’t.

  ‘On days like this,’ Frankie says, ‘you go home and hug someone you love.’ He is standing on the street outside the agency and there are real tears in his eyes. His briefcase is held like a shield across his chest and at three in the afternoon he says he needs to see his wife and his boys. Beside us a girl with blonde hair flies past on rollerblades. She laughs when she sees us and calls, ‘Watch out!’

  It is a hot day in September and the news from America is breaking through.

  When I pass Jonathan’s office everyone is inside, lining the walls, and sitting in silence like Indians on the floor. The TV is on and everyone is watching. I can see through the wooden blinds, the half-open door and past the sea of faces to a small TV screen… and then I watch, with everyone else, as the first tower comes down. I can feel it fall, I can almost hear it – and with it, a soft ripple of goose bumps moves across my skin.

  Our receptionist sits on the floor at Jonathan’s feet and the telephones don’t ring.

  I don’t wait to see the rest. It feels like a new kind of world to me – a new world that has just begun – and so I go down to my office and work quietly until it is time to go home.

  At home Doreen sits beside me and we watch, terrified, from the couch.

  ‘This will be like the day they shot JFK,’ Mr Costello says. ‘We will ask each other, years from now, over and over… where were you and what were you doing… the day the towers came down?’

  The next morning our doorbell rings and the man on the steps is like a bookmark from my old life. He is wearing a wig and polished brown brogues and there is a notebook and pencil in his hand.

  Larry’s dad.

  ‘Mr Forbes,’ I say and he nods and bows slightly and then walks through the door.

  He refuses tea.

  He refuses food.

  He has been driving since early light.

  Then he writes down a simple question in his notebook and he hands me the page. When I read it my hand begins to shake and all the fear I have in me is beginning to scream out loud.

  ‘Do you know where Larry is?’

  I shake my head and then, ‘He wanted some time… the diner is closed…’

  He looks at me and wonders how someone like me could be a wife. He writes quickly, it takes about two seconds to send my world falling, and my stomach turns inside out.

  ‘New York.’

  THREE

  13 The Last Man to Die

  Glassman did not know what to pack the day he decided to run away. He stood in his apartment in the warm afternoon sunlight and waited for something to call his name. He waited for the solid tick from the clock in the dining room, or the pale green flowers on the wallpaper in his bedroom to move, or for each well-thumbed book to flap a memory towards him. But his apartment and all its contents seemed frozen and outside the street was quieter than usual and as he waited the only sound was his own breath, in and out. And the closet door did not swing open as he had hoped and it did not offer any practical advice.

  ‘It’s cold on the Cape’ – that was his first real thought and somewhere was the idea of folding his burgundy sweater and his hands pulling a suitcase down from the closet in the hall.

  On the saddest day in New York City, Glassman knew he had found his chance to leave. In a few days he would be able to walk through SoHo again and hire a car in Midtown and begin his drive to the Cape. There was no electricity. The telephone lines were down. The streets were blocked off. No one could get in and out of Downtown Manhattan and somewhere on the Upper West Side Matilda did not know if he was alive or dead. He knew that he had seen his last dying face – and that he was no longer a prisoner and that he could in some strange way rejoice and be free. He went to his physician’s house in the Village and he told him to go. He said if ever he had a chance for recovery it was in fresh air and near the sea.

  ‘We’ve done everything we can,’ he said. ‘It’s over to you and your body now.’

  So Glassman did
not need to think about it. Not any more. He went to the basement and took down two fishing rods. Two sweaters. One that was old and grey to work in and the burgundy with its two rows of cable stitch. He did not take the black cashmere – the warmest one he had – because it was a Christmas present from Matilda last year – and he felt just the thought of this leave a small mark on him. But he told himself to get busy now and he left those old thoughts folded with the sweater in his bureau drawer.

  He packed jeans. Fawn-coloured corduroys. One pair of old green Converse sneakers and then he looked at his two crates, one full of books and the other full of broken glass. He had packed them the last night he found her inside his apartment, the same night she had threatened to kill herself.

  He walked through his rooms and he was careful to leave his toaster plugged in and not switched on. He left his bed slightly tossed. He put some laundry into the dryer and turned it on. He made it all look as if he was a normal living working person going out to work on September 11th and with every intention of coming home. He even left his kitchen window open an inch and he put some music on and left with it playing on a loop – the way he often did when he ran to the deli on the corner or walked for some air to the Park.

  He called his dealer and organized some pot and this went into plastic bubble wrapping with the broken glass. He pasted the ‘Fragile’ sticker on the yellow splintered wood and smiled at the joke in it.

  As he packed each item he decided that he would be well again. That he had been saved and that it was for a reason. He would go to the cottage and be well and happy and just… be.

  The boy who died had not felt pain.

  On the morning of September 11th Glassman had finished a shift at St Vincent’s and then without knowing what had happened he worked on one of the first bodies to come in. There was an elderly woman first and then a handsome young man. Only one had died. The boy – but there was no pain. Glassman could not explain the medical reasons for that. His face was grey with dust and the first thing Glassman did was wipe his eyes. He could tell that he was good-looking. His eyes were a beautiful dark shape and he had long dark lashes and black eyebrows slanting back. His face was not bruised and even though he was breathing, Glassman knew he was going to die. He had been crushed by something, inside and out, everywhere except his left arm and his face. But there was no pain and no fear. There was no look of it in his eyes and when he began to lose him, for the first time, and he knew now, for the last time, Glassman gave his own version of the last rites.

  He held the boy’s hand and whispered into his ear, ‘I’m sorry for any hurt that I have caused,’ and then after a moment as he felt the boy really slip from him, the boy’s eyes opened for a second and then slid gently sideways and his eyebrows seemed to lift, and Glassman wondered if he was laughing at him or if the boy had even heard. Then there was no breath. No pulse. No heartbeat. He left this life and dragged Glassman’s face and words with him like smudged ink on the page. He was just another dead boy but Glassman felt as if he had known him and that he had been a good son, a good husband, and that because of the faint white circle around his third finger he had, until recently, worn a wedding band.

  He could not feel sadness or any sense of mourning but he did feel that the world had lost someone good. And that this city, this place, this planet would not be the same without this young face. He blessed the boy’s forehead with his thumb and then closed his arms around his chest and wiped his face and tried to imagine a smile. And around him the news began to come through and the volunteer doctors began to pour in. They stood and waited in the sunshine for the ambulances and in the eerie waiting quiet they began to wonder if the silence was because there were no survivors, no one left alive, no one left to save.

  In the end everything Glassman needed fitted into one small bag. He pressed the delete button on his answering machine and deleted away the last unheard messages from Matilda and then he lifted the phone gently and left it off the hook. He opened his mailbox and he put her latest love words, in a handful of cream and gold envelopes, straight into the trash. He turned the keys twice and listened to the sound of his double locks, checked his pocket again for his keys and his wallet. And then Glassman picked up his one suitcase and walked down the two flights of stairs.

  On the street he turned and looked up at his own windows and he could remember taking her there that first afternoon, and now, in his current state of illness and fear, he marvelled at that. How he had been attracted to her and how he had, so willingly then and with such innocence, allowed a lunatic into his home. He stood for a moment and looked at the devastation that surrounded him and the veil of grey dust that seemed to disguise his old life. He lifted his suitcase and turned to look over his shoulder – and in that instant as he felt his neck click he told himself to get moving. He told himself that it was time to stop living his life through his own rear-view mirror and this time, he forced himself to look straight ahead and to walk on.

  14 The Falling Man (October 2001)

  Hope n. – 1. (sometimes plural) A feeling or desire for something and confidence in the possibility of its fulfilment: his hope for peace was justified; their hopes were dashed. 2. A reasonable ground for this feeling: there is still hope.

  The barman can’t find the bottle of Bombay Sapphire. ‘Not much call for that here,’ he says. So I stand up and then up again on the low counter foot rail and point it out to him and the men from Brooklyn join in and help.

  ‘Right – right – right – right,’ they say and when they speak they nod under faded baseball caps. The bar is called The Blue Haven, a long tired stretch of mahogany on Berry Street where men smoke a lot and then lean into their drinks. The gin and tonic arrives, big and overflowing and no slice of lemon, but I am afraid to ask. Yesterday I arrived in New York. I emailed Matilda and I telephoned Jack and I told no one where I was going, not even Doreen.

  The barman has been in New York for eighteen years and he has the strongest Kerry accent I have ever heard. He has no citizenship and ‘I don’t want to go there,’ he says. ‘Afraid of what they might find.’ His green card is good until 2011 and he tells us that by then he will be dead.

  Jack drinks his beer by the neck and we listen while the barman talks. He stands and drinks with us and now and then he gives a reluctant service at the bar. He tells us that The Blue Haven has been sold and he smokes Dunhill cigarettes and blows their blue smoke at us.

  ‘I don’t know where I stand with the new owner,’ he says and he is talking to me like we’ve always been friends. ‘All I know is that I still come into work every night. I don’t give a fuck. Do I give a fuck? I don’t. They could just get rid of me. I see it all. I know everything about this place. I don’t want to leave here. It’s home. But do I look like I’m panicking? Do I fuck? My wife has a great job. She’s making a thousand dollars a week. Do you see tears in my eyes? Am I panicking? I don’t give a fuck.’

  He is fifty-five and terrified he will lose this job. He buys the Irish Independent every morning. His wife listens to Radio One on the Internet when she works. She is his second wife and he’s been with her now for twenty-five years. Last week she rang him at work to tell him about something she had heard on the Marian Finucane show. ‘There’s a lot of VD in Kerry,’ she said, and he watches us and waits for a response and really we just want to have a drink and a quiet talk.

  ‘Stay out of Kerry,’ Jack offers and then someone else calls for a drink. He tells me that you would need a stick of dynamite to blow the barman and his wife apart but the barman comes back again and he is still talking at us from behind his bar.

  Jack looks at me and grins.

  ‘Or maybe just a stick of dynamite,’ he says.

  In a while the barman is drunker than we are and he comes back carrying the Bombay Sapphire again.

  ‘It’s funny but when you’re drinking you see everything behind the bar; you’ve got a better chance of finding the Jack Daniel’s or the Kentucky Bourbon or the Jim Be
am than me.’ He pours another beer for himself and serves another round we have not asked for. I am not sure which side of the bar we are on now. There are no sides in here.

  He serves another customer. A lonely-looking man with a cowboy hat and grey hair and I’m watching my Kerry man and this is my question for and about him just… why is he here?

  Jack explains that when he came to America he came with 100,000 other Irish people.

  ‘A lot of them don’t make it,’ he says. And here there is silence.

  ‘He didn’t make it,’ he says simply. The words are awful as they are, dropped now from a height.

  ‘He can’t go home.’

  The barman lives in a two-room apartment on 59th Street. There are no Irish left in the area. It’s almost empty. Only Chinese and Lebanese.

  ‘So they go home for three weeks in the summer,’ Jack continues. ‘Throw their money around Kerry and hire a good car and then come back. His wife works in New Jersey and he spends every night in here.’

  The Kerry man is getting busier now. He serves two new lonesome soldiers and there are now five customers at the bar. The music comes on and everyone’s spirits are lifted for a moment and then they seem to fall back down. But the barman is back and talking about how great his wife is now.

  ‘She plays poker better than any man. She’s entering the “Bet’em or Lose’em” in Vegas next week.’ He tells us that her name is Elizabeth and the sound of her name seems out of place in here. She’s known as ‘No Face’ by the other players and she can talk just like the poker-playing men.

  ‘Fold is it? Listen, dude. I’ll fucking fold when I fucking feel like it.’ He pretends to be her and we glance at each other and laugh. Then he talks about the Christmas hamper she got and how at the end of the working year this is her reward.