*
From the elevated position of both building and apartment, the view across the city was breathtaking. Characteristic grey slate contrasted sharply with the pale hues of limestone, softly toning with the even blue of clear skies above. Sat in an opened sash window, Ric lit a freshly rolled cigarette and drew in hot smoke with pleasure. It was a nice city, he thought, as he looked out. He liked nice places. One day he might even move on and explore others. As he exhaled he turned, lifting his eyes to the shrine, deciding that what needed doing couldn’t wait any longer. He reached out and around and extinguished the barely smoked cigarette on the outside wall, crushing the remains between his fingers and scattering shreds of paper and tobacco into the breezeless streets. He was a lucky man, he decided, heading then to the kitchen to gather a few critical items before climbing the ladder with a flutter of excitement.
This would mark a new beginning. Everything gone by, each trial still haunting him and cloaking him with embarrassment, would vanish into the ether. What hadn’t worked out before would surely work out with Grace; there was no mistaking this one as a possible True Angel. So far as he could tell, she was the real thing. Since seeing her, he had done nothing but think of her, his sense of acquaintance and friendship strengthening with every fantasy. He knew, of course, she was a sentient being – a living breathing mortal, as all his Angels were – but he believed her to be entirely unspoiled and in need of total protection. A bubble of warmth shuddered through Ric as he thought of her. Was Grace the reason for everything that had gone before? Ric wondered if it were possible to be virtuous beyond human, if in Grace he had found a paragon of goodness. A True Angel, he thought, again. Only time would tell.
Sitting on the gold cushion with legs crossed, Ric pulled out his treasured Zippo lighter from a pocket. Rising slightly, he shifted the gold candle away from the wall before lighting it and did the same with the Sabbath candles, finally lighting silver tea-lights brought up from the kitchen on a gold-rimmed porcelain saucer. Resting back on the cushion he drew open the middle of three drawers spanning the front of the antique travel box. In it was a square of frayed white silk and upon that rested a bar of soap. The whiteness of the soap accentuated the shining blackness of several pubic hairs, and he looked at them for a moment, angry at having lavished such affection on a useless prize. What a treat it had been to carefully wash using something so intimately hers, and now it was nothing more than a lie.
Placing it back in the drawer he lifted the central lid of the box and removed a single silver shoe from within. He inhaled the leathery aroma as he had the day he had taken it, and felt a brief tug of sadness while stroking the long elegant heel. Then he put the shoe in a carrier bag and tied up the handles, before dropping it carelessly to the floor below, all affection for the piece lost. Box by box, he slowly removed all the treasures so lovingly gathered, inspecting each one before detaching himself from partiality with a few muttered words. Box by box, the fallen one was ejected from his life. An earring, a fake fingernail, a pair of tights stolen from her bag, a hair-band plus single red hair, a used coffee cup. Each thing he tied up in a separate bag before tossing it down. He heard the coffee cup smash. Finally, Ric once more took out the soap and silk and after gouging the hairs free, placed these and the silk over one of the hot tea lights. The hairs curled and shrivelled, vanishing almost instantly, taking all memories of the fallen one with them. Only the smell of burnt keratin remained. The material resisted, reluctantly scorching only a little. After blowing out the tea lights, Ric made his way back down the ladder and poured the contents of the saucer into a big black bin liner, followed by the soap and the other bagged items. His manner was matter-of-fact, discarding all that had once been so important without further ceremony or sorrow. When finished, the bin liner was moved to the communal hallway.
His mind then moved to catch up with his heart. There was another hair to be prepared. A single dark strand skilfully plucked from the narrow back of his new love, as he brushed by on his way to wait for her outside the café. Fate had favoured him that morning, for he had taken his scooter when he could have walked, parking it nearby without knowing the very important purpose it would serve. From the café, he had followed Grace home and then onto a hotel in Clifton Village, a notable and affluent area in the neighbouring city of Bristol. It had been easy to trail her, and after watching Grace check in, he had sped home, his heart bursting with love.
*
After the phone call ended, Ric threw up in the toilet. What cruel tricks were playing out today, he thought, as he stared miserably into the basin, and how harsh life seemed, rocking without rhythm, never quite still for long enough to allow him even the semblance of balance or peace. He felt as a puppet, half-cut strings pulling this way and that, feet never allowed to stop their fidgeting dance even for a moment. Earlier, he had been full of vitality, revelling in the pure joy of newfound love, savouring the exquisiteness of elation with a hop and a skip. And then without warning he was dragged from happiness and left wondering if the bleak monotony of death might be a welcome alternative to life, for feeling nothing would be better than having nothing to feel but uncontrollable emptiness.
With the last retches dealt, Ric wiped his mouth but stayed on the floor, exhausted. Having grown hot from vomiting he’d stripped off his shirt, and now prostrate on cool ceramic tiles lay motionless, eyes brimming with unshed tears held fast by a heart full of resentment. For the moment he could find no hope, because the only hope he could think of – an unforgivable mistake – was beyond possibility: his parents had identified the body.
After some time, he pictured having to make that telephone call himself, of contacting one child only to announce the death of the other, and with this imagined moment so the first tears broke free. They rolled not just for his lost sibling, but for his poor mother and the anguish she must be suffering and would go on enduring for the rest of her life. She was too frail, Ric thought, for any of this to be bearable. Part of him wondered if he should go to his parents and comfort them, by the same token making his personal loss more tolerable through opening up to the grief of others. But the greater part of him knew that to see them now would leave him drowning in emotion. He didn’t want to have to find the motivation, to dig that deep, to search out energy enough to do more than simply function. Just breathing for himself was difficult enough. Whatever he could muster would amount to no more than a flimsy sort of resolve, which would be knocked from him the moment he saw them. More particularly, because he would be in a house that was not his own; he needed the security of somewhere more intimately familiar. Besides which, moving from the bathroom floor was not an option; he felt so weak he was not sure he could stand.
Rolling onto his back, Ric stared up at the suspended ceiling; greying square foam tiles, the same as those depressing the average office space. Insipid. But Moira worked – had worked – in a studio of course and not an office, a fact always made abundantly clear as if one was somehow better than the other. Status, or at least others perception of it, had always mattered to Moira. How ironic, he thought, that with the absurdity of such distinction now at its most profound, the superior sibling would be unable to condescend and learn the lesson: a dead studio employee did not differ from a dead office worker, anymore than a dead boy differed from a dead girl. Ric felt a wave of bitterness rush through him, aware now that he was doomed to remember Moira as a person striving unhappily toward the indefinable, and therefore the unreachable. The driving force was not the proverbial carrot or the stick, but a carrot tied to the other end of a very long pole jammed in Moira’s hand. If nothing more, Ric supposed that in a sense, a certain release had finally come, but he wished for more positive memories.
He reached across and picked up a tobacco tin and papers, always kept in the bathroom on top of whatever magazine he happened to be subscribing to; such was the luxury of owning a home and living alone. Sometimes the tin held more interesting fare than tobacco, but today nothing th
at might better ease the pain remained. As his fingers deftly rolled without instruction, he pictured the moment his mother confirmed the body was exactly who she desperately hoped it was not. It would always be with her.
The conversation Ric had shared with his mother and then with his father, made no mention of the awkwardness the pair must have encountered, and no doubt they had meekly accepted judgement as they always did. Then again, he considered, perhaps due to the enormity of it all, the once central issue between them and their youngest child would seem trivial by comparison, and consequently, the embarrassing clumsiness of others may have simply slipped by unfelt. But still in his mind’s eye he could imagine his mother’s excuses as she tried to ease her husband’s private humiliation: ‘Well what else could they say, Dear?’ And it was true, for what could anyone say about a dead transsexual, or transitioned transgender, as Moira had planned soon to be, that wouldn’t be fraught with unease. I am sorry Mister and Misses Mancini, but your daughter … son …? In other circumstances – in a film – it might be amusing to portray an official nervously wondering how these lovely people might react on discovering their handsome son had ended his days trussed up as a frighteningly masculine woman. But in real life, in Ric’s life, it would never be funny.
Ric had never viewed Moira’s extraordinary gender as something to be ashamed of. Even when they were no more than children and Michele – the Italian version of Michael – was obviously not what he appeared to be, Ric accepted without question the person his sibling really was. With a large frame and chiselled good looks, Mike seemed destined to be a man more likely to be removing frilly underwear from his pocket than his own backside. But Ric had never teased, not even in fun, for if Mike was more female than male, so be it.
If ever nature had made a mistake, then in the early days, Ric believed his brother was it. In time, however, Ric came to see that it was not a mistake, not exactly, because even nature’s flaws are natural. Mike was exactly who he thought himself to be, he was herself, and if transgender could be classed as a mistake then it was only in the sense of any number of natural wonders. Four leafed clovers were not feared for their rarity, but valued, and as Ric grew and learned, so he wondered at what point in history did people like Mike stop being revered and start being victimised?
The reckless few that attempted to bully young Mike met with Ric’s balled fists, but he soon realised that not only did his not-so-little brother not need a protector, but much of the time it was Mike instigating trouble. Michele. Ric smiled ruefully as he thought of it. How many times had he asked his brother why he couldn’t just add an ‘l’ and change his name to Michelle, or even to Michela if he wanted to stay true to his roots. It would be so easy. What did the name Moira have to do with anything? The response was always simple and always the same: ‘I am not Michele.’ Even the name Mancini disappeared.
Ric wished he had been with his parents to see for himself what had happened to Moira, perhaps then the image floating in his head would be less gruesome. He had once read that families often needed counselling after a violent death, because the fictional picture they created in their mind was worse than the reality they never saw: fearful uncertainty feeding anxiety. Whilst seeing the mutilated body of a loved one might bring about terrible nightmares, at least it provided a foundation from which to rationalise. His father had remarked that externally poor Moira had not been too badly injured, but even so, Ric would like to have seen his sister for himself, because lying on the bathroom floor, he could not conjure up an impression of her without the splattered mix of crimson blood and grey shattered brain obliterating her face.
As Ric’s thoughts ambled morbidly on, he soon realised what the next cause for concern would be: burial clothes. Despite an extremely conservative dress sense, what Moira would have wanted to wear was not likely to match anything their father would consider acceptable, or the church for that matter. But a simple shroud-like gown might be a good compromise, he decided, making a mental note to speak to his mother about it. He knew that already she would have started worrying.
Ric noticed his father had used Moira’s chosen name quite freely when they’d spoken on the phone. Why wait until Moira was dead to accept that which had always been? He would be sorry now, of course, for all the rejection, but death makes for regret, Ric knew, already recalling things he had done or said that he wished he had not. His mother and father would be doing the same thing, even though Moira had never been particularly pleasant to any of them. She had been bossy, opinionated, demanding and overly sensitive. On the extremely rare occasions when Ric became disillusioned with women, he felt it was this disagreeable aspect of Moira that gave her transgender credibility, proof that the boy should have been a girl. She was the embodiment of what he saw as the negative side of women, the stiff, prickly stem holding up the flower.
The fact he considered her not in the least bit sexually attractive was a more difficult view to accept. She was, in so many ways, fruit ripe for plucking, but setting aside the fact she was his sister, Ric had never been able to imagine the act, never been able to picture a man wanting her entirely. When Moira first started the move towards womanhood, she’d blossomed instantly, as any girl might when discovering for herself what is meant by that term ‘womanhood’. Heavy makeup, coy glances, playing the part of a lust-filled lady or an angry lady or an aloof lady. Moira did it all, and like all, she slowly found her place, understood what it is to be female in a world dominated by men. But she did not grow, instead settling into the role she knew best: outsider, hardened and alone. She was a virginal warrior, and he loved her for it. She was true to herself, even if that self had been born of circumstances.
Had she needed him, not as a child but as a woman? Ric didn’t know. But he wished he knew more of why he pondered her virginity so often, though he never questioned why he believed in it so absolutely.
It became clear to Ric that the only way to draw something positive from Moira’s death would be to support his mother and father, after all. To show them he could be a worthwhile son given the chance, and that even if one child was gone, the other remained. It would take a lot of emotional energy to go there and be with them, but it was all he could do. He loved his sister and missed the comfort of knowing she was there, feeling his heart would be forever out of rhythm. His parents would feel the same way. They should be together.
But there was another love that should not suffer neglect because of his loss, another innocent love that required his attention, a love that could not be left waiting. Grace needed him and he would go to her. Lying on the bathroom floor, Ric had come to view the simultaneous giving of Grace and taking of Moira as a test, and what he needed now was a means to understand the purpose of this exchange. But where to go first? Anguished, he began crying once more, curling up on the cold tiles and sobbing bitterly, desperate for one final moment with his long lost brother as much as his beloved sister.
Chapter 7
GRACE
Apart from an almost overwhelming feeling that she were not in possession of her own senses, Grace felt at ease sitting alone in the lounge of the hotel. As she admired the view of Clifton Suspension Bridge, with a glass of white wine in hand and a trashy book to read, Grace looked as if she lived that way every day. But to her, it felt to be nothing more than the temporary measure it was, the consequence of allowing her flight instinct the freedom to secure a degree of emotional self-preservation. And in part, she was punishing her husband in the most fitting way she could think of. Would he worry? And if he did, would he be right to? She couldn’t bring herself to think about it, or to think about exactly what she was punishing him for.
After seeing her daughters that morning, Grace had gone straight home and packed a bag. The first note written to her husband was accusing and angry, and she’d torn it up before burying the shredded remains at the bottom of the kitchen bin. Accusations were pointless, since there was evidence only of lies and of change. So she settled upon penning some
thing without vitriol. Let him stew for a few days, she had thought, let him suffer as she had suffered, not knowing, constantly wondering, fearing the worst before something worse than the worst finally revealed itself to be the truth. His was a betrayal not only of loyalty but also of self, and Grace was not sure something so fundamental was forgivable. Then she reminded herself that no betrayal was proven, that she did not know anything at all.
In the bag beside the comfortable chair in which she now sat contemplating the fairness of her decision, her mobile telephone remained switched off. Grace had dutifully informed her daughters that she would be unreachable for a few days while she considered what to do, although for much of the time so far she had only managed to pick over the recent past in a dismal summary of suspicious moments laid bare. The girls were not to tell their father anything of where their mother had gone, with permission to call the hotel only in the event of a genuine emergency, and Grace emphasised that their father’s distress would not count as such. But already she wasn’t sure if running away was really her cup of tea. Shouldn’t she just ask him what was wrong? Grace wished she could just hold onto one view; she wanted to stay cross.
The book in her lap was no more than a prop, an excuse to be alone; a reason to fend off any friendly but mistaken tourists who thought a woman by herself must be in need of company. When Grace first sat down, she caught the glance of an elderly couple and smiled politely. How long ago it was, she mused, when as a young woman touring the country and staying in hotels she was unsettled by the attention of strangers; especially those thoughtless enough to ask if she was safe travelling alone, unwittingly intimidating her with their concern. Like so many junctures, that time could have been only yesterday. Strange then, she thought, that the scene witnessed that very morning also felt as if it were yesterday. She assumed that the human brain had no use for chronology, and that once an event had drifted into history, its sequential position was unimportant and therefore forgotten. What use did the average caveman have for remembering the moment he killed a mammoth, when it was only the fact he had killed it that truly mattered. And how many memories did anyone have that could be easily ordered, unless they were attached to some specific event or place? But if more than thirty years gone by felt as real as eight hours, Grace decided it was just because the past and present were equally bonded to the same accumulation of random stuff.