Then I see what is written on the bottom on one, in small round script:
‘You’ve forgotten a lot of stuff.’
And on the second sheet: ‘But I haven’t.’
There’s another photograph. It shows the same girl as before, leaning cheek to cheek with a taller woman, both of them poised, pert, flirting into camera. The taller woman is wearing heavy make-up, a tight, busty sweater, a long satin skirt. Her blonde hair is teased and piled high.
I sit on the lid of the toilet. I hear a rustle and look down to see the airmail paper trembling between my hands. I remember.
I’ve never shaved a man before. Only my own legs, which I do religiously every morning, even if I’m planning to wear jeans. Michael lies back in the wooden chair, his eyes shut, his lips curved. His lips move.
‘Go on,’ he says, ‘shave me close. Real close.’
I have a basin of hot water, soap, the razor. I lather him up and begin to shave him with long smooth strokes of the razor, guiding the blade around the contours I know so well. I shave and rinse and pat his skin dry. Michael feels his jaw with his thumb. ‘Still feels like a man to me,’ he says. ‘You got to get in close.’
I stand in front of him, my legs straddling his jeans. I stand still and stare into his eyes, which are so close they have no meaning. I touch the skin of his jaw. There is bone there, under the flesh. Shaving can’t take out the bone under the surface. I wonder if the feel of a man comes from the inside, or whether it can be made up.
I lather him up again, and shave as close as I can. Jaw, cheeks, chin, upper lip. Then the blade drags and there’s a tiny nick and a bright bubble of blood springs up.
‘You cut me,’ says Michael.
‘It’s nothing. Just a little blood.’
I am getting into this. I wipe his face again and feel his skin. He is smooth and fresh as a baby. Michael opens his eyes.
‘Great,’ he says. ‘Let’s get going.’
First the foundation. It’s not mine, because I never wear heavy make-up, but I’ve been into a drugstore and chosen carefully, matching to his skin tone. I rub the dark sludge over his face and massage it in. His complexion grows eerily even. He looks like a vice-presidential candidate on TV.
‘Look up.’ I dip the mascara wand, flick it up under his lashes. He startles, and blinks. A woman would keep still. ‘Let this coat dry, and I’ll do another.’ Michael’s eyelashes are long and thick anyway, and with the mascara on them they spray out like Bambi lashes. Someone once told me that children with cancer have the longest eyelashes. Things like that stick in my mind. I line his eyes with kohl, elongate them at the corners, then shadow them. Now he has a Pharaoh’s face.
‘It’d look better if I plucked your eyebrows. More elegant.’
‘You kidding?’
‘No. I could tidy them up a bit, anyway.’
I get out the tweezers and start work. He flinches and sits up. ‘Jesus, Simone, what the fuck are you doing?’
‘Making you beautiful. Lie back.’
He subsides, grumbling. I pull out a few more hairs, each with a transparent oily globe at its base. He keeps his eyes shut so as not to see me coming at him with the tweezers each time. I grasp a hair between the tweezer, test it to be sure of my grip, pull with a firm smooth movement. The skin reddens. This feels like the most intimate thing I’ve ever done with Michael. My hands are sticky in the heat of my shuttered room, with the glare of electric light full on Michael’s face.
The blusher, then the lipstick. I leave the lipstick till last because I know it’s going to be the best part. I line his lips, stroke on one coat of ‘Ruby Ruby’, blot with tissue, coat his lips again. It’s an expensive lipstick, and it glides on smoothly, glossily, like no lipstick I’ve ever bought for myself. I don’t wear lipstick much, anyway. I like my lips pale.
His mouth is luscious. ‘Sit still. I’m going to get a mirror.’
I hold the mirror in front of him. He stares at himself, then he puts a forefinger to each corner of his mouth, and pushes his lips up into a smile. He wags his head from side to side like a clown.
‘Stop it, you’ll muck up the make-up. I’ll go and get the wig. This is going to look good.’
It’s a blonde nylon wig, coarse and cheap. Michael came with me to choose it, fooling around, cramming it on his head so the salesgirl laughed too. We told her we were going to a fancy-dress party. Now I feel like a surgeon, holding it, looking at the web inside it which holds the wig to the head. I prop the mirror so I can see what I’m doing and have both hands free. My face in the mirror is calm and ruthless as I ease the wig into place.
‘You’re not doing it right,’ says Michael. He adjusts the band of the wig gently, tugging it into place around his hairline. He looks as if he does this kind of thing every day. And the wig is suddenly right, part of the bold make-up and the sudden pout of his lips as he narrows his eyes at himself in the mirror. He stares into himself.
‘Oh my Lord!’ he flutes. ‘Aren’t you just gorgeous?’ And then in a voice as deep as a prayer, ‘Oh … my … Lord.’
‘You’re beautiful.’
‘Mm.’
Still holding his own eyes, he parts his lips, moistens the shiny red with his tongue. He starts to sing, clear and husky:
‘And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn …’
‘We’re fighting for you, Ma’am,’ he says to his mirror self. Only the eyes aren’t right. They are restless inside their ring of mascara fibre. I am behind him, staring too. I can’t tell if he is looking at me, or at himself.
‘Wouldn’t you fight for that, baby?’ he asks me. Wouldn’t you fight for a girl like me?’
‘I wouldn’t fight for anything,’ I say. ‘You ought to get dressed.’
‘You can say that,’ he says. That’s what a girl should say.’ He tries the words over twice. ‘I wouldn’t fight for anything. I wouldn’t fight for anything.’ The first time it comes out prissy, know-nothing, don’t dirty my skirts. The second it’s flat and hard. Then he says to me, ‘But you don’t believe it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’d fight for your kids.’
‘I haven’t got any.’
‘You’d fight. I know you.’ He looks at me. ‘You’re already fighting.’
‘Who?’
‘Calvin.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Yeah, it’s true. And you won’t win.’
He takes a cotton-wool bud, leans forward, eases a speck of mascara from the corner of his eye.
We’ve done things in the wrong order. Pulling the sweater over his head now will crush the wig and smear the make-up. I hook my hands through the sweater neck and hold it wide so it slips over his head. I unbutton his shirt and he shrugs it off. We haven’t got the bra yet, though we will when Calvin comes to take the photos. It’s hard to find a wide enough strap to go around his back, without a cup so deep no amount of cotton wool will stuff it so it juts through the sweater as it should. But I’ll find one. I’ve finished the skirt. I made it myself, cutting it out from an old Vogue evening skirt pattern I found in a thrift shop. I bought red satin, cheap and shiny and hard to handle, and made the skirt up on a hand-operated Singer. The satin kept slipping and bunching up under the machine’s foot so I had to rip out the seam and start again. I didn’t mind the work, though my eyes stung from the light bouncing off the fabric. I kept on and got it done.
I stroke the red satin as I bring the skirt to Michael. It snags on the skin of my fingers, which are rough from hauling up the boat onto the shingle. Michael steps out of his jeans and I help him slither his way into the tight skirt. It is floor length, but even so I think it would be better if we’d shaved his legs. More complete.
‘You can’t do that, Simone. How’m I going to explain that to the guys?’
‘You’ll make something up.’
He stands there in the red
satin, like a wolf dressed as a woman in a fairy tale. Everything is out of scale: the waist too thick, the hair is heavy, dead blonde like the thatch on photos of Myra Hindley. I see him as if he isn’t Michael at all, but a stranger hiding to trap me. I am intensely aware of what is under the skirt. His penis, his balls, the thighs that lie so heavy between mine.
‘How do you walk in this, for Chrissake?’ he asks.
But I don’t know how to tell him. I don’t wear clothes like that, anyway. I wear jeans and soft, flowing skirts. I wear cotton and cheesecloth. I have never bought a tailored garment in my life, or high heels. To me they feel like uniform. I have sat on my mother’s knee and felt her stiff bodice dig into me; I’ve tottered down the street in her stilettos. But they are not what I’ve chosen to inherit.
Michael steps forward and takes my hand. ‘Let’s dance,’ he says. When he stands his red, moist lips are on a level with my hairline. The blonde wig bounces against my cheek and the thick make-up is sweating off him. He lowers his eyes and then puts his arms around me and he holds me close inside his grip. Every time Michael holds me I can’t help thinking how hard it would be to break away. He smooches me up close to him and I smell the cosmetics, that sweet, cloying stink of department stores where girls in white stand behind counters looking as if they’re about to be operated on. His hipbone pushes against me. We start a slow circle. I shut my eyes and there’s nothing left but the movement, the heavy sweetness, and his voice by my ear crooning like it’s a love song:
‘And it’s one, two three,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates;
There ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopie – we’re all gonna die.’
He passes me across his body as we twirl and as our lips come close I smell his lipsticky breath. Round and round and round we go. The room is warm and there is stuff on the floor, underwear, shoes, books, coffee cups. I am not tidy yet. Our feet shuffle, our breath comes fast.
Michael stops. He puts his hands on my forearms and holds them tight. The wig is slipping. It’s not such a good wig. We should have spent more money. He looks hot and sweaty and tired. He lets go of me and fumbles for the waistband, where I’ve sewn in hooks and eyes. He tugs at the zip and tramples the skirt down. It looks like nothing on the floor. A red rag.
‘Don’t spoil it,’ I said. ‘Remember, Calvin wants to take pictures.’
Calvin is going to photograph us together. This is a rehearsal, because I want to know we can do it before we expose ourselves to Calvin. Michael slides his foot under the skirt and kicks it up into the air. I catch it, smooth out the satin, lay it down on the bed. Michael sits down heavily on the bed.
‘My head’s spinning around.’
‘You didn’t eat anything.’
‘You got something?’
We are in my room, in the house where I board, with a woman of forty-two who seems to know nothing and notice nothing. She is single and she works in the town library. I have the right to cook in her kitchen between the hours of five and seven, and to make coffee when I please. Otherwise, I keep fruit in my room and buy doughnuts and peanuts. There is a bag of bananas on the pine table.
‘No, I’m OK.’ He’s leaning back, head pillowed on hands, eyes narrow. The make-up exaggerates him. His lips purse up to whistle and I think of the film code that used to say you had to have one foot on the floor in every bedroom scene. I kneel by the bed. I put out my tongue and taste the foundation on his cheek. I want to wash it off to get at the taste of his skin, but he pulls away.
‘I don’t feel so good.’
We lie side by side, my body tense from fear of toppling off the narrow bed. The slight cramp in my leg seems to balance out the pain he’s feeling. It is a pain I know nothing about. I’m afraid of it, too afraid even to ask about it. Anyway, Michael has already made it plain to me that his past is not my place.
We lie there for a long time. Bit by bit Michael relaxes. We smoke cigarettes and I find some cans of beer in the fridge. I wipe the make-up off Michael’s face with cold cream and cotton wool, and he takes off the wig. The only sign left is a little redness around his eyebrows, where I plucked them. We put on some music, not too loud because I’ve already heard Miss Beecher come home. She’s in the kitchen, watching TV and making her dinner. Miss Beecher makes herself a three course dinner each evening, and sits down to it with a napkin at her place, and flowers in a white porcelain vase on the table.
I remember the way the noise of her TV bulged into our room. Michael turned up the music. ‘Let’s dance again,’ he said.
We hardly moved. We were tired and full of beer and we swayed on one spot, clasped close as if both of us were drowning. It was the lost wolf howl of the Doors and it made the room darken and throb. I was far away from myself, far from Michael even, though I felt the closeness of him. Then he was muttering, close and urgent as if it was the only true thing in the world: ‘Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn …’
We fell on the bed and he struggled with my skirt for a while, but halfheartedly, as if he didn’t even want to make it. The last thing I remember was that he cupped my face in his hands and stroked it smooth and then he said in a voice like stone, ‘You really don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.’
I certainly didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. I was eighteen years old, and this was the first time I’d been in America. The summer job at a children’s camp had lasted a month, then I met Michael. He could give me work in the boatyard over in Annassett. He hired out boats to summer visitors, took them on fishing trips, and gave sailing lessons. There’d be plenty of work for me. He knew somewhere I could board, too.
‘You look strong,’ he said.
‘I am strong,’ I said. ‘I’m never ill.’
‘Sick,’ he said. ‘You mean sick.’
‘I mean what I say.’
We sat late round the camp-fire, after the kids had gone to bed. Flames bubbled off the logs and the crickets’ noise filled my head, echoing back into the deep woods that were full of poison ivy and snakes. They were not safe, like English woods. Michael had his hand on my breast, inside my shirt. We sat very still, for a long time, until the flames died down and we were left with stars, thicker and brighter than the stars at home. I knew I was going to go to the boatyard. Michael had a place there, and he could find me a rented room. There was the sea. How was I going to resist? I wasn’t going to resist. He was everything I wanted. And what he wasn’t, I made up.
You’ve forgotten a whole lot of stuff.
But I haven’t. It’s all in there somewhere. It’s just a question of finding it.
EIGHT
Only ten minutes have passed. Donald is knocking at the bathroom door, and quick as thought I pull aside the loose panel on the side of the bath, stuff the letter in among the pipes and dustballs, replace the panel, then open the door.
‘What’re you doing? You’ll be late.’
‘I’m all right. My list doesn’t start till ten-thirty today.’
‘What about Joe?’ asks Donald.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Have you looked at him? He can’t go to school.’
‘I thought he was still asleep.’
‘Well, he isn’t. He’s got a headache and he’s been crying. He wants you. And I’ve got my meeting with the bank at 11.30.’
‘What meeting with the bank?’
‘Jesus Christ, Simone. I told you about it. They’ve got a new debt policy and they want me to speed up the repayments. I can’t do it. I’m going to put on my suit and take the figures in and explain why I can’t do it. Does that ring any bells?’
He is pinched with rage and humiliation.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I remember. Isn’t there someone you could ask to kee
p an eye on Joe for a couple of hours?’
Donald sits on the side of the bath. I am the enemy. I see life flow into his face as the rage runs outward, hot and satisfying.
‘You have no idea at all, have you? Listen. You get your job. We come here. The kids don’t know anybody, I don’t know anybody. You’re out all the time. I’ve got no job. That’s what people here see. Some of these women round here, if they asked me in for a coffee their husbands’d knock their blocks off. This is a village, Simone. Everybody knows everything about everybody, but that doesn’t mean they talk to them. It’s not the city. I don’t know anyone.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –’
‘So one of us has got to be here with Joe.’
‘I can’t, Donald. You know I can’t.’
‘And I can, I suppose?’
And it’s coming up in me too, the same anger which brings us closer than we can bear to be.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ says Donald in a quiet voice, and lifts his hand and smashes it against the tiles. I am watching his face, so I see how the colour goes out of it.
‘You’ve hurt yourself. Donald, let me see –’
He nurses his hand, cradling it away from me. Tears of pain have sprung into his eyes, but he won’t even blink them away. He won’t acknowledge any of what’s happening.
‘Let me look at it.’
‘It’s not broken, if that’s what you think.’
‘It’s bleeding, look, where you caught yourself on the edge of the tile.’
The blood oozes out like jam, and thick drops run down his arm as he holds up his hand to look at it.
‘Perhaps we ought to go to the –’
‘No. We are not going to that Casualty department again. We’ll get the kids taken away at this rate.’ But he’s smiling, as if the pain has eased something in him. He holds the hand towards me, with the other cupped under it to catch the falling blood. ‘It’s all right. It’s not as bad as it looks.’
It takes me a long time to find plasters, scissors, a clean old cotton pillowcase I can cut up to make a pad under the plaster. There are no bandages in the tin that’s supposed to be our first aid box, but only contains an oozing tube of insect cream, a roll of plaster and some travel-sickness pills. Matt should have left for school already, but I tell him to stay with Joe. I fetch Donald a cup of coffee, then I clean and dress his hand, taking my time, doing it carefully, the way I used to do the boys’ cuts. The nice look of the plaster would take their minds off their injuries. Donald’s cut looks to me as if it ought to be stitched, but I say nothing. I push the edges of the cut together and plaster down the cotton pad, as tight as I can. I can’t face the hospital either. A scar on the hand won’t matter.