She's
sitting on her balcony, sipping a mint julep and surveying her yard as
though she finds the view tiresome. Her clothes are carefully pressed,
obviously made of the finest linens in the creamiest shade of white. She
has the air of a woman accustomed to butlers with hot white cloths held
out on the ends of silver tongs. Her hair flickeringly gleams in the light
from the many candles she has set along the ledges of the windows behind
her. Half her face is missing. She's the best person I know.
I sit down next
to her on the porch swing. "Mortimer," she states by way of greeting,
and I reply, "Clarissa."
"I was worried you
weren't coming back," she says. She slowly sets our chair rocking. "I
do so enjoy your visits," she says in her cultured voice.
"I know," I say,
but I don't. She's so hard to read.
Her skirts swish
away from her legs, and then toward them. The tips of her red ballerina
shoes peek out from underneath her skirts. Her glossy hair is brushed
back to expose her neck. If her skin weren't wrecked, she'd look like
a doll. She always was a doll, always perfect and good. We swing like
that for maybe an hour, the chill of the evening creeping over us with
little wet hands, during which I look up at the magnolia above us. Just
you wait, I tell the moon. Pieces of it are just visible through the leaves.
Whenever I look at her, she is smiling her gentle Madonna smile, the one
that means nothing I've done has touched her.
From the deep pocket
in my leather jacket I draw a gift-wrapped box. "For you," I say, and
she says, "Not again," but she opens it and pulls out the soft, cured,
sturdy square of human skin within. "You know I can't accept this," she
says, and I say, "It's done now. You might as well get some good out of
it," and she nods. I smile: when she was alive, she would have refused
to so much as touch the leather. Also in the box is a traveling sewing
kit, the sort they sell at the dollar store. She puts everything back
in the box and places it carefully next to her. I stroke her arm, and
for once, she doesn't move away from me. I miss her living body.
I miss running my
hands down her back while whispering how I love her. I miss the way she
used to put me at arms length, her breath ragged as she refused me. "I'm
married to God," she'd tell me. I knew eventually she'd have to give in.
Nobody's that good all the time. But she died first, and where's her precious
God now?
The next thing she
says to me is, "Would you like some tea?" and I have to laugh at the ordinariness
of it. She likes to pretend nothing has changed.
"Sure," I say, and
she goes into the house to fix me a drink. Through the tall windows, I
watch her disappear into the kitchen. A pale ghost face looks back at
me from the window. It's wearing a black hat and has dark eyes and is
smiling grimly, like it knows a lot of things it shouldn't and would be
happy to know more. I give a little start before I realize it's me. Behind
it, in the room I can see, which used to be the dining room, are canvases.
They lean against every available surface, including each other. The ones
I can see are a confusion of lumpy color. They're a mess, and not an artistic
one.
We met because she
painted. I wanted to know this famous local artist who nobody had been
able to get close to. I called her for an interview. I still don't know
why she agreed. If I ask her, she just says I have a lovely phone voice.
I didn't know she was beautiful; I only knew she was talented and my friends
would be impressed if I seduced her. When we met, she was experimenting
with the human form, trying to work out alternative evolutions to give
us four arms that jointed in a way that made sense, or no legs. She asked
me to pose for her, and I stripped on the spot. She almost turned me away
then; she said she'd only wanted to do profiles of my face with two noses.
She turned her back until I put my clothes back on, and when she turned
around again, her skin was flushed and her hands shook. I left that part
out of the article I wrote. That was just for me.
I can hear her chopping lemons, and wonder what keeps her from just coming
out with the knife. In the shadow of the forest that rims her lawn, fireflies
are flashing on and off, like they're telling me to hurry up. Some of
the candles gutter out behind me.
"Here you are,"
she says. The tea is cold and unsweetened, the way I like it. I sip, and
we swing some more. An insect is caught by the high voltage wire grid
on the balcony's canopy with a faint zzzt. Her skirt swishes, and her
long, black hair gleams. The ice cubes clink against the glasses and each
other as they settle into the tea. I see the full moon hovering on the
edges of the tree, as if waiting for my cue. I nod at it, because this
is what I've been waiting for, and it finally strolls out from behind
the leaves and petals of the magnolia to cast its light everywhere. The
wood we're sitting on acquires a genteel patina. Clarissa's dress is bled
of its creaminess. The moon smiles down on us, and I think I should tell
it that all you need from beauty is a spirit to break, but I know it won't
agree. Look at how it papers over all the flaws and her skin becomes smooth
in its white light.
Then she says, "The
moon is full," as though she's surprised, as though she hasn't noticed
that's the only time I come. I just look at her. The moonlight slides
over her face like a slow tide. "I don't want to hurt you," she murmurs.
"Please go away."
I ignore this. "Do
you remember that time you painted me with no head?" I intend to follow
this up with an anecdote, to make her laugh, but she just nods and says,
"I was right," in an angry voice, and this is such an odd thing to say
that I turn sharply to stare at her. The moon is fully overhead and I
can see it reflected in her eye.
"You should go now,"
she says.
I take her hand.
"I want what you want," I tell her. "I miss you."
I'm remembering
the night she died. I was in the garden of her house, a breath away from
where I am sitting now, watching her through the sheer curtains of her
room as she changed into her bedclothes. I loved her utter unself-consciousness.
I thought I might let myself in through the back door she always left
unlocked, and make her see that we were meant for each other. I was tired
of her always saying no.
"You don't want
this," she says now. "I can remember why it's wrong. I remember that very
strongly. Sometimes I dream of it -" and I must make some kind of noise,
perhaps because she is gripping my wrists so hard her fingers will break
at any moment, because she says, "-yes, zombies dream too. Sometimes I
even sleep," and then she lets me go. Her skin is like the powdered wing
of a moth.
"Don't say that,"
I tell her. "You aren't a zombie. You're the woman I love."
"I can't tell the
difference," she says. "I mean, look at me."
I remember how her
outline disappeared, and how I heard the thump of her body hitting her
bedroom floor. I raced up the stairs and gathered her up and put her in
the car and took her to the hospital, where they said she's dead, heart
attack, she was dead the minute she hit the floor, we're very sorry, what
relationship do you have to the deceased, and then I had to break in to
steal her back. I don't remember much about that. I took her to a man
I knew, somebody I'd interviewed for an article on the occult, who brought
her back to me. All he took was her heart, which I'm pretty sure she doesn't
even know is gone.
"You don't know
what it's like," she's saying. Her voice is still low, still controlled,
my sweet doll. "I can't eat because I'd have to kill. Animals aren't cutting
it anymore. I caught a mouse with a trap in the basement, and it didn't
help at all. I need brai-" she catches herself. "You don't know. I can't
even paint anymore. My eyes don't see properly."
"I said I'd never
leave you," I say and she pushes herself out of the swing to get away
from me.
"It's wrong," she
says. She's nearly shouting. I half expect her to weep, though I've never
seen her cry. I would love to see her cry. She has such a pretty mouth.
"It was wrong of you to do this to me and it would be wrong of me to -"
but I have pulled out the knife I brought, and the gleam of moonlight
on the blade has caught her eye, and I see her black tongue dart out for
a moment. I know she wants it. I can't help but smile. "Put that away,"
she says, but what can she do to me that I don't want?
I slide the knife
down the length of my arm, quick. My blood looks black in the moonlight
and gleams like her hair. She hesitates for a long moment, looking at
the blood welling up on my arm and running down its sides, and then she
stoops to lick. It must take terrible self-control not to bite into the
flesh too, and turn me. I miss her tell-tale ragged breathing, now that
she has no need of breath, but her muscles are knotted with tension as
she laps at my blood, and that's almost as good. I close my eyes, and
after a moment I hear the swish of her skirts as she settles herself at
my feet. I feel the silky fall of her hair over my arm, and her tongue
darting into the wound. One of these moons, she'll break down, and then
we'll be together forever.
I look out at her
yard plush with dogwood. A grasshopper chirps near the edge of the balcony.
The moon reflects off the edges of every blade of grass. The cupped flowers
on the trees quiver from some errant breeze. She should be painting this,
I think. I'll have to get her some new eyes.
I stop at the emergency
room on my way home and they stitch up my arm. I refuse to answer any
of their questions about the ribbons of overlapping scars.
