Fragile Animals, page 16
‘Don’t they look so smug,’ Miss Fraser says, setting the box on the coffee table. ‘I always want to lose a few pieces when I do this one.’
She helps for ten minutes then leaves to take a nap upstairs. Moses morphs all the pixie pieces together into one cheerful monstrosity of arms and legs and dimples. I think of his novelty taxidermies and see a glint of sick appeal. We play go-fish and skim over stories of a few more lovers as we put down our cards, but not with any real intensity. We are losing steam for this historical masochism and I’m running out of lovers I can bear to mention. Mid-day I walk to the shop and pick up teabags. I help Miss Fraser prepare a casserole and then a cake. She gives me the guilty eye and asks me to spread seed over her lawn for the hungry winter birds. I get alarmed by the phrase ‘spread seed’ and then I only pretend to do it, worrying the Reverend was right about me, that another swan will die from my presence. After dinner we return to the lounge and watch one of her VHS tapes. It blurs and skips to the point of being indecipherable. From what I can make out: a beautiful older woman runs a small town inn, provides board for a menagerie of boyfriends.
Over the course of the day, I keep an eye on the weather. The wind has cleared the way for frost, which arrives in the morning to point out all the cobwebs, then spends the day melting, ripping spider livelihoods down. By evening it is perfect smoking weather but with no cigarettes left and too much drowsiness to fetch more. I eat a bowl of cake and ice cream then go to bed at ten o’clock.
Then another day.
Then another night.
Washing myself hastily in the lukewarm shower, not washing my hair or looking in the mirror.
Walking up and down country roads, the wind fusing with the cold until there is no difference from the air in the sky and the air touching my face. Moses telling me about the challenges of taxidermising snakes.
Another day. I learn to eat a hearty breakfast and keep spare socks always on the radiator.
Another night. Moses kisses the top of my head after I hit it walking into a tree branch. The gesture is so smooth, so swift, that we’re both in stitches for forty minutes.
I have been here a week and I seem to accept that this is how I exist now. My life in Leith is a flicker, an annoyance, a winter mayfly crushed between forefinger and thumb. We are in the kitchen companionably peeling potatoes, and Miss Fraser mentions the possibility of extending my stay. I agree without even pretending to check my diary.
‘It’s the slow season from now until December,’ she says carefully. ‘There’s really no rush for you to leave.’
I know I can’t afford it, desperately can’t afford it, but I’m nodding, tears welling then falling before I can stop them.
Miss Fraser stares at me aghast, mouth open to reveal a silver filling. ‘You barely ever smile and when you do you’re also crying.’
She hugs me. She’s small and warm and there’s such sureness in her fingers that it shrinks me until I’m no taller than a ten-year-old, crying harder in the act of regression. Moses tries to come in. She tells him sternly to get out. I wonder for the first time if Miss Fraser was ever a mother. She’d have been batty, for sure, overbearing most likely, but her old hands feel so strong beneath their wrinkles and though she lives inside this stagnant bowl, no one can claim that she is not alive. The woman has a cackle. Maybe she’d fare better than most
I try to say it gently, respectfully, but my words are strangled by the tears in my throat. They emerge as a yelp, too piercing, too sincere. ‘Thank you.’
But, like an old broken bone playing up when the seasons change, something prevents me from relaxing completely. The puzzle pieces look wrong even when I slot them together exactly right and there are a weird number of birds on the lawn just sitting. Not singing or pecking or flapping or shitting, just watching. Doing nothing. I’m not unsettled, just distracted. There’s something that needs done and as soon as I do it I can cut loose and float weightless on the buoy of domestic oblivion, buffered by the grey mist that descends around us.
More than this I just want the birds to stop staring at me. They seem to know something I don’t. It’s making me paranoid.
I rang the hypnotist’s buzzer on my twenty-second birthday. Late because I spent twenty minutes avoiding her street while I thumbed for the end of a coil of dread, alternating between mentally apologising for my sins and reminding myself I wasn’t supposed to do that anymore. I kept the envelope from Lomie’s card, bearing Marlene’s address, in my wide coat pocket and stroked the smooth paper whenever I was about to bottle. God wasn’t looking and if He was, He wouldn’t mind. It was a gift. He wouldn’t mind.
Marlene appeared at her door of her basement flat, pierced and combat-booted and dripping with netted shawls. Purple eyeliner wept onto her cheeks and there was peach fuzz on her upper lip. Taking up the whole of one side of her face was a tattoo of a koi fish; on the other the name ‘Alan’ was written in tiny cursive on the bone of her cheek.
‘Alright, love?’
Her damp room smelled like marijuana, but she let me pick an incense stick before we started so eventually it smelled like marijuana and sandalwood.
‘Sandalwood is for melancholy and low libido. Funny you were drawn to it. Do you have a lot of sex?’ She spoke in a thick Yorkshire accent and the sound made sense to me somehow.
‘Not much,’ I told her honestly, because, spending so much time with Lomie, I didn’t. The melancholy made sense enough. As a post-teen I was doused in it. I thought we all were.
‘And what would you think if I wanted to burn patchouli instead, or lavender?’
‘I hate lavender.’
She nodded. ‘So, you’re hectic then.’
I shrugged and my guts squirmed. People were always diagnosing me with things like this, at family gatherings, at parties, at church. I didn’t deny there might be a reason. My body at all times held a nauseous feeling, more complicated than flu. Maybe I gave off a scent as well.
‘Lavender promotes calmness and wellbeing and so if you are instinctively opposed to it, that suggests you are prone to bouts of apathy, mania, and destruction. Does that sound accurate?’
I shrugged again.
‘It’s not altogether a bad thing. Some people find open flames quite enthralling.’
She sat me down and presented me a mug of something that smelled fermented and sugary. I thought back to Lomie’s description of Marlene’s practices. ‘Mostly above board.’ I’d been expecting at best a joint, at worst dolphin sounds – I didn’t know what this strange liquid was.
Marlene nudged me with her wrist. ‘Go on. It won’t hurt you.’
‘What is it?’
‘An elixir. It’ll just make you open. Less self-conscious. I don’t usually do one-off sessions, but Lomie’s sweet and she talked a big game about you. We need this to get a head start. Rip back a few layers.’
Marlene waited expectantly. I’m incredibly vulnerable to expectations so I took the cup with two hands and in doing so committed to trusting her. I held the cup up to my lips. The earthy aroma of the syrup reached out for me. My church bell brain clanged with apologies as I drank it, in the same manner that I drank the communion wine all those years ago in church. The taste was like the worst kind of medicine, acrid and chemical, badly disguised by an immense amount of glucose. I hoped that God wouldn’t see how the ball of dread in my stomach had changed to an acidic curiosity. The drink bit my throat all the way down but once it was sunk, I felt less ambivalent about the whole thing. It was in my stomach now and unless I excused myself to barf, I was in this for the long run.
Marlene played some music that was kind of like humming and kind of like growling but also had a bit of a beat and seemed like it could have come from anywhere. She took my hand and sat very close to me, tried to meet my eye but I struggled to look up. I hated looking people in the eye. I didn’t want to stare her directly in the koi fish.
‘Relax your hand. Touch is very important for this.’ She forcibly wrenched my fingers open and cradled them in hers. Then she took me by the chin, gentle yet dominant, and forced me to look her in the eye. ‘Now make your breathing slow.’
I tried. My breaths came out panicked as I struggled to do what she wanted. I was probably the worst person she’d ever tried to hypnotise and I suffered for some minutes beneath this self loathing thought. Eventually, something took me, maybe inner peace, maybe the weird syrup, but it was like a finger snapped and I suddenly knew exactly how to breathe. It seemed bizarre that I’d spent my whole life not knowing. All the way in, all the way out. It was that easy.
‘Now grip my fingers. That’s right. Don’t be afraid to really hold them. You’re not going to hurt me. You’re a prawn. I could squish you no problem. So, if I tell you to go tight you can squeeze the shit out of me, darling. Go on. Tighter.’
She began to count backwards from one thousand, commanding me to squeeze tighter every second. I focussed only on my hands and the sound of her voice snagging against the fabric of the music. It was hard at first, because I was suddenly quite worried about being a prawn she could potentially squish. Then I was caught in a net of distraction, attempting to squeeze her hands but being freaked out by my insensate hands. The pins and needle sensation had given way to either everything or nothing. I could no longer tell if I was holding her tightly or holding her at all. Somewhere around the six hundred and sixty sixth second I stopped caring. In the same way my janky lungs had overpowered my traumatised nervous system, retaught themselves to breathe a way a baby breathes upon the moment of birth, my mental space experienced a cataclysmic landslide – except in reverse. All the rubble rushed up the mountain and returned to its natural place. Suddenly, I could see my hands clasping Marlene’s through the back of my closed eyelids. Could see them because I could feel them, truthfully. The coarse texture of skin, human weight.
Next came more words, which I understood without recognising their language. Occasionally my lips would part, and a huff of air would escape like steam along with a gasp or a grunt but mostly I just clutched Marlene and felt my knuckles growing whiter. She spoke one indecipherable order and my hands dropped slack in my lap. Then hit the side of my head, just by the temple, using the same force with which you might crack an egg. My neck dropped slack, suddenly boneless. Despite my warped position, I was immensely comfortable. The dark behind my eyes was different, as if I’d fallen through its fourth wall of existence, found the backstage of consciousness in its perfect empty state. Yet I was also fully alert. Her words now were clearly understandable. She asked me to conjure an image.
I saw Lomie. Her pearlescent scars, the childish charm of her hand drawn birthday card – cartoon versions of the two of us with orange slices for smiles. I couldn’t help but wonder if she died, would she go to heaven? Would I? Marlene’s hands had returned to holding mine, an unwavering grip that felt weirdly like my father’s. Time seeped through my body, and I could no longer tell if my eyes were open or closed. Her voice droned in the background as if behind the glass of a fish tank, me bobbing around in the water. She was there, distantly, but every other sensation was just one at a time. The bones in my arms. The tension in my teeth. Marlene was asking me difficult questions and I tried my best to answer them, at least to myself.
‘Who do you love? Who do you hate? Who are you scared of?’
My brain pinged around from question to question, but I realised there were two people in my mind. They’d never met, didn’t look the same or talk alike but somehow, I was certain they were comparative in smell. That when I thought of one, that memory scent stirred and bumped into the other. Lavender and oranges. They were both beautiful women.
Then I thought: I am in hell. Or I guess in my head what I meant was, I am dying, and therefore in the process of going to hell. With one last chance to plead and beg. I grasped for a hand which was already in mine, and I clenched it, hoping that whomever it belonged to would know my good intentions. Know that I tried to live my life with love, the way that Jesus wanted, but that it’s so fucking hard out here in a world made to be so mean. Why was She cruel to me? Why did She hate me? Why did She only ever look at me from that place far-removed inside herself? Why did She only ever hug me in church? What was I for? What would Satan have in store for me? I wanted to plead. Though my heart was carried in my body as it carried out my sad, sacrilegious actions (honour thy mother and father), all it ever wanted was to love. It could have loved so well. So deeply. I fell through the ash and smoke and felt the demons waiting to snatch me out of the air.
My world reeked. Of wood and salt and lavender and orange and hatred and dressing gown and lust. Crying out in pain, I finally gripped God’s wrists.
I woke up with my face pressed against the cushion of Marlene’s slippery leather couch. Drool pooled beneath my cheek. Below me on the ground was a ceramic bowl, obviously handmade, holding a neat yellow puddle of sick.
‘You could have told me you had such a sensitive stomach,’ Marlene said. She sat with her back to me across the living room, which was all posters promoting anarchy and mandala tapestries and spider plants sprouting loads of little babies, reaching them down at the ends of their leaves. There was no soil on Marlene’s cold floor though, so there would be nowhere for the spiders to root down. Marlene was at her table with her laptop browser open to eBay, a myriad of ugly trinkets on screen.
I tried to speak and my voice was a croak. ‘At least it’s contained,’ I offered.
‘Actually,’ Marlene said. ‘I’ve had to put the rug in the washing machine, and you’ll notice I’m wearing different clothes. I’ve charged Paloma’s card an extra cleaning fee.’
Paloma, not Lomie. I must truly have been the worst client.
When I could hunch my way over to sit at the table, Marlene reported her findings which she had recorded in a fluffy notebook. Notes taken with a similarly fluffy pen. She used the fluffside to tap at the page, pointing out sentences of childish cursive. She gave me a herbal tea to sip on while we went through it but I hesitated at its mushroom scent.
‘You went under very quickly,’ she told me. ‘I barely got through the first hundred and you were out.’
‘Was I? At that point?’
Marlene nods. ‘You’re a highly suggestible individual. That must cause some problems for you.’
I took a sip of my tea. It tasted like soil.
‘I suppose,’ I said.
Then she spoke about my aura or chakras or something and said they were very confused and I was likely not getting enough sleep and also quite constipated.
‘That information was so easy to uncover, Noelle. You should be very wary of that. People can be selfish. Not everyone is as careful as me.’ I looked at her fingers which were nicotine stained and calloused like toes.
‘How do I un-confuse them? My chakras?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I’m an interpreter. Not a mechanic.’
‘Did you find any… good things?’
‘You want something to write home about? Well, you have a very powerful imagination. And you mostly think in full sentences which is unusual. Usually, clients just give me grunts and single words. Oh – and your gag reflex is fully functional.’
‘Did I say any funny things?’
She didn’t respond. Instead she tore out a page from the folds of her notebook and set it on the table before me. On it were some half-notes; things I said I suppose but things that had no real meaning to my life above water. However, in the margins, underlined twice in sparkling purple, was a number. I recognised it immediately.
‘Why is that underlined?’
‘You said it four times. A whole phone number. Do you know how unusual that is? If you’d like to feel a bit less hectic, I suggest you work out who this person might be and contact them, or else contact an exorcist and see if you can have them forgotten.’
Have them forgotten. Ha.
That thing I said to Moses about the past being the past? That was a lie. The most agonising bullshit.
Cockheart
I ask Miss Fraser if I can use her phone but she seems suspicious even when I promise her I won’t make any international calls. Instead, she writes me some directions to a phone booth in Rothesay town. She draws me a map even though I know the booth is just next to the pub. She takes pains to mark out the lampposts and the trees. I leave with her map spraying from my fist like a ticket.
The brooding grey of the weather presses down on my skin as I walk, like a kind of cold marijuana high. It makes my body feel heavy and points out all of the parts where I hang like a pendulum. The sensation isn’t muddled, the way I used to feel when I smoked fat, buttery joints with Romero. Instead I am crisp and clear-headed. Attuned to all the breezes that are finer than air. Steady enough to take them. My earlobes burn softly in the breeze. My lungs vaguely remember how to breathe.
I can’t see more than a metre in front of me, which stops my thoughts from wandering too far afield. I’ll just get to the phone booth, punch in the numbers and talk. Nothing crazy. I’m not trying to achieve very much. Just need to give my life a nudge so that maybe birds will stop roosting on my shoulders.
Inside the booth, with the plastic phone pressed to my cheek, I take a moment of pause, wondering if this is the right thing. Urges such as want and need always seem to elude me, leaving me solely with action and consequence. The coins I slot into the machine are rejected again and again, as if something cosmic is offering me an out, but I just push them in again until I hear a little click. In my ear a soothing female robot instructs me on how to operate a phone.
