Fragile Animals, page 24
Her cheeks broiled magenta. ‘I think you would do very well to stay out of other people’s business and if you need to ask that question, it shouldn’t be to me.’
‘You think I should ask Donald?’ I laughed.
‘No. I think you should ask God.’
It was as though she had reached out and shoved me. Her eyes stilled.
‘That’s what you’re asking me, isn’t it? If I agree with God? If I think Father is an evil man for allegedly hitting his son, trying to scare him away from the consequences of a life led in sin? Am I a true Catholic or do I ignore Leviticus?’
I nodded minutely. The portal inside me opened all the way wide. The water in my stomach turned to blood and my skin felt like it was covered in lice. The angel on my shoulder was terrified of her. The devil was full of hatred. I empathised with him more. She scoffed.
‘What a stupid fucking question.’
We stared at each other, reeling. I was inside the blacks of her eyes and she was inside mine. In that moment, any good thing she had ever done, any soft maternal memory I held for her, was sucked into the hell portal of my aching intestines. Gone. Eviscerated. Never to be thought of again. The portal disappeared. I didn’t know if she believed what she said. She looked down for a second and when she looked back up, there was a terrified quiver in her eye, as if my hell portal had been transferred to her. As though she wanted to climb down and die on a different hill. It didn’t matter if she did. From now on this was our truth.
She must have loved him a lot.
Minutes bc. We walked into the church early as usual and when Father McBride came up to meet us, I shook his hand as usual. Then he and my mother disappeared to ‘tend to the collections’ as they always did. Her eyes clipped over me as they left. She still thought she was untouchable. When they were gone, I went to find the parish newsletter, because it was still my job to hand it out to the congregation as they came in. They were sitting by the organ on my usual seat. I shoved the entire pile into my bag and took out the revised copies I had made. It was amazing what you could do with a photocopier and a computer. From the front the newsletters looked identical. But on the back was the truth of our dear Father. My saccharine mother. The letters had been coming since I was ten years old. Sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly. Sometimes with so long between them I began to think they’d come to their senses, repented for their sins or at least gotten sick of each other. Long enough to feel relief. But soon enough the banana peels would appear in the food bin again and the little half smile would warm up her face. Cheeks bright from sucking on a secret. You had to commend their stamina – five years and still unable to keep their lust off paper. The scraps of his words were in our food bin, but what about hers? I knew they had to be somewhere. This was her art form. She wouldn’t send him a first draft. She would work on it, nudge words around, brood over her writing with the fine touch of an artist. To do that she had to risk keeping copies. It was behind our unnested birdhouses that I found them, protected from the rain by thick plastic wallets.
Driven by the realisation that there could be no waiting this out – she would delight in our unending betrayal for as long as the good lord let her – I photocopied her draft at school and printed it where the second page of the newsletter should have been. Instead of a recount of that Sunday’s sermons there was line after line of her tight disciplined scrawl.
The letter described the ways she loved him, ways she planned to love him, and at the end, perhaps the greatest betrayal of all, ways she enjoyed deceiving my father and me.
He didn’t notice the bed was unmade.
She dragged us through her heartlessness, dotting T’s and crossing I’s.
Alistair was on the other side of the church, staring at the ground as if he was thinking no thoughts at all. Since his two weeks off he had completely withdrawn, taking himself into a corner each week until he was little more than a shadow. I crossed the church in wide strides and thrust a newsletter at him. I turned it over in his hand and forced him to see.
Alistair looked at the paper, expressionless. ‘You’ve already shown me this.’
‘You got the one I put in your backpack?’
He nodded.
‘You read it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t ask him about it?’ My teeth clenched. I sighed. ‘Look, when I said that thing about your – you know – I didn’t actually know that you were...’ His body shrunk, as if he might disappear inside his altar boy robes, quiver like the chaffinch did that day. He gazed into his lap.
‘I’m going to put these out on the pews. Everyone will read them.’
His shoulder twitched. He didn’t look up.
‘Okay.’ I turned away and did what I set out to do.
Usually I stood beside Father McBride at the door as the congregation came in and handed out the newsletters one by one, but today I didn’t do that. Instead, I behaved like the stupid teenage girl I was, remaining recalcitrant at the wall until everyone had mostly taken their seats and my mother was stabbing me with her eyes for my insolence. Even then I dragged my feet, glared, seethed, buying myself if not minutes then seconds. I had to wait until Dad was settled on his stool at the organ. I needed him to play me in.
Father McBride swept in and down the aisle, the ends of his cream silk robe licking the ankles at the ends of the pews. As he passed, each row stood to sing, and I took this opening to follow him down the aisle. The first stack of newsletters was handed to Ms Beattie, the one who was stunned by the nature of my confessions. She took one and passed the stack on, giving me a tight smile when I didn’t immediately move to the next pew. I was in a trance, soaking up all the poisonous nutrients contained within this moment. She lay the paper, letter-up, in her lap, allowing me to graze one looping sentence: She woke up from her long sleep without any clue you had been here. I did the next pew. Then the next pew, until the whole church was filled with sound of shuffling papers. The congregation fumbled with their hymn books as the truth of my mother was dispersed across the church. Of course the parish believes that you belong to everyone – but the truth is you will always be mine first. Then came the first mumbles, tepid gasping. I rushed to take my seat beside Dad.
It was there I faltered. The last act was to give him the letter. The real letter – the only original I did not ritually burn. I knew he would need to see hard evidence, the physical indentations of her perverted love. I like best when you bend me over the altar. I like it when God can hear me yelp. This information wouldn’t shock him, would it? How bad could it really hurt? Who could look at my mother and even for a moment feel safe? She reeked of betrayal and though they’d been married long enough to get used to it, it’s a stench that doesn’t ever truly clear. My arm reached out in fury, the decision made before my heart could intervene with reason. I laid the paper, face up, on his page of sheet music. For a moment I watched his dumb fingers hit the organ keys. Then I closed my eyes.
Did I dare to pray?
The organ music didn’t stop. My father’s delicate fingers moved over the ivory keys, not missing a single note. I looked at his face. His eyes were cold as they moved slowly across the letter. I’ve never loved him. She’s never felt like my own. Yet sometimes I touch myself thinking of you and I know I’m the happiest woman in the world. He glanced at me and I wasn’t quick enough to look away. His pupils were black, light absent, hollow. A strangled cough escaped my throat. I want things to remain like this forever. The heavy breath of the ocean began to seep into the room. It climbed up the cliff on which our church sat and poured through all the cracks beneath the windows. I love you as much as I love God. It was a sound intensified simply by noticing it and I could barely hear the organ next to me for its silvered sound deep in my ear canals. The congregation before us began to gasp. They watched my father. My father watched my mother. Mother stared at the disarrayed congregation, eyes squinted in irritation. I suppose she thought Dad’s hymn had gone on too long or that there was a wasp in the room or something. She never read the parish newsletter because already knew all the news before it was printed. In this ignorance, she remained perched on her throne a moment longer. She rolled her eyes and turned her cheek and shared a knowing glance with Donald.
Someone at the front passed him a letter, and I watched his shoulders jolt when he saw his own name. It wasn’t only God who had been watching them. Even priests must face due punishment on Judgement Day.
Alistair keeled over and vomited into his own lap. It was a victory of sorts and I wish I could say that I did not enjoy it.
You’re Not Sorry If You Don’t Beg
The water is so cold it winds me even though only my feet are submerged. The ice bleaches my veins and turns my bones brittle. The numb comes and goes. In one moment I feel perfectly nothing, the next a shiver hits with violence, pain shooting up my spine. In the water I cannot see my own reflection. It’s too clear to use the surface as a mirror. Instead, I watch my sandy feet. Distorted by the refraction of light, they do not look attached to my body.
Scottish November is known for her cruelty, her rain, her sleet, her wind, her razor blades. Once when I was a child there was a storm so powerful it blew a flock of birds right out of the sky and they came crashing onto our street. They lay there, dazed and strangely shaped, before one by one they opened their broken wings and were swept away by the next battering gust. I ran and expressed my terror to my father. He came to me wide-eyed and sat me on his knee by the window. We watched the storm together for an hour. My dad told me all sorts of stuff about birds. How their skeletons are made of hollow bones and they have little esophageal pouches that they use to soften food.
There is a hidden softness to the winter, though, like the underbelly of an old, matted cat.
In the winter the sand on the coast is undisturbed but for the lip of the tide that methodically makes and unmakes its bed. It rises now in airy clouds then resettles across my toes in a new pattern.
In the winter, the water looks so beautiful, longing for you to split ripples with the push of your arms, to swim out to where the world has no bottom and learn what it feels like to surrender. To just give up and let your lungs fill. The cold hurts me carefully. Each grain of sand is like glass between my toes. My feet are supermarket prawns, squiggling away from my body.
I try to swallow but my mouth is coated in sticky purple, teeth clogged, warm and sour. Behind me is what should be a pebbled beach, but it’s been sullied by the arrival of the dirty snow dissolving grey atop so much salt. My socks are jammed into my shoes and abandoned up the beach. The indentations of my footsteps leading down to the shore are proof that the past will always follow me. I’m high but pretending to be higher. I take the bottle out of my coat pocket and struggle with the child safety cap. I take a mouthful bigger than what you are supposed to take across a week, then hold the bottle out over the water. The liquid slides slowly. When it lands it separates like phlegm. I kick at the water to try and make the purple dissolve, but the sand becomes upset in the motion and I accidentally kick salt into my mouth.
A headache moves like a clenched fist through the front of my mind. Now the pain in my head matches the pain in my body matches the ice-cold pain in my feet. At first they all jostle for my attention, until I commit to feeling each sensation individually. I am glad that God has given us this mechanism in our consciousness which can focus like a camera lens. Pry the pains apart from each other so that only one is truly sincere. Now I’m really high and I stumble onto the beach not caring about the bite of the snow because it’s warmer somehow than the sea. I careen for a while, trying to find my shoes. I giggle as I yank soaking wet socks over my feet. The sound is disconcerting, as though it is not me making it. I giggle again, this time on purpose to try and tie the sound back to my body. I look down at my funny prawn feet, now bound in sopping fabric, to see if they are still a part of me. The conclusion is indeterminate.
It is normal for women to want to drown. Yet most who run toward the ocean in their misery fuck it up. They feel the love of the ocean and change their minds, then catch hypothermia and perish that way instead. That’s what my mother told me. Freezing is a boring death. As a child she would force me to swim even when the waves were throwing me sideways, even when I was throwing up salt on the shore. She wanted me to know how to let the ocean love me. That’s why, if I had started walking, I know I would never have turned back. What would have happened then? Singing angels, fire, and brimstone? Or a long nothing. An endless darkness. The main thing that prevents my suicide is that death will always be a gamble. Some escape. Some don’t. Given everything I’ve done with my life, what do I think are the odds?
I sniff like I’m catching a chill but I’m hot. That’s the syrup though. I shouldn’t trust it. I turn away from the water and start walking, brisk pace.
The high causes coins to jangle in my brain. The walk to the village goes quickly, entranced by their twinkling sound. In Rothesay I pass the butcher who gave me a lift on the first day. He is in his little van going somewhere, probably home. I wave at him and he waves back. He gives me a honk of his horn and it awakens my giggle again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to just be here forever. Maybe I should fuck the butcher and move in with him. I could wear a little hat as well and ride around in his butchermobile. It sounds as nice a life as any.
I go to the high street, to the ATM, and shove my card into the machine. The number on the screen is much lower than I was expecting, which was already predicted as a negative. More time passes as I slot the card in and out, trying to get the number to change. This probably shouldn’t be such a realisation, but I haven’t worked for a month so that means my funds get lower and stay that way. When I think of Miss Fraser trying to take the money out of my account for my extra days at Baywood I feel guilty, suddenly painfully sad. I’ll need to get someone to help me pay for it because otherwise the guilt will probably kill me. That would be a boring death too. Miss Fraser was so good to me. I have to pay her. I have to get someone to pay her. First there are other things to do.
I take a tenner out and break it into change by buying a pack of gum and more cough syrup. Then I rattle to the phone box beside the pub. I pat its lovely walls as I try to think of who to call. The same shards of glass are on the ground as a few days ago; the carvings the same depth in the plastic walls. Is it someone’s job to clean this phone booth? I’m glad they do not. I am glad it is so small in here, so cloaked with the fragrance of piss. I look for the cockheart and feel comforted when I find it. Maybe now is the time to be brave. There are so many phone calls I could make that have nothing to do with money. Have I just started crying or have I just almost stopped? The guys smoking outside the pub are disappearing behind the condensation of my breath. None of them are even slightly fuckable. Tears fall, trying to climb into my mouth.
I haven’t spoken to Her since that day in church when I was fifteen and She hissed at me to hand out the newsletter. Then she drove away in Donald’s un-crashed car, never returning for her things. I spent the next year checking our post for letters but it was always a hopeless gesture. She never came to get me or talk to me. She never tried to call. No word from holy mother again. She might as well have died.
I slot the coins in and punch in the number. When the dial tone sounds, I put the phone down and take a swig of syrup. Then I add more coins and punch it again. It rings, rings. No one picks up. I slot the last of my coins in the machine and stroke the cockheart for comfort. I dial and try again.
The line crackles to life. Out of the ether comes a voice.
‘Hello?’
I wait, palms clasped around the phone like it is precious, so precious.
‘Hello?’
Lorne’s voice is gruff, a tone lower than the one he usually speaks in. He worries that his normal voice is too camp for business calls and modifies it to hide the insecurity. The result is something stern and unfamiliar.
‘Hi,’ I breathe, heart breaking, tears falling swiftly now. I wanted to call my mother. I still want to, so badly. I want her to ask for my forgiveness. I want a reason to be able to forgive her. But it’s pointless. I know it’s pointless. There is nothing left to be said. I need love. Truthful love. Even if truthful love is still complex.
‘Noly?’ Lorne asks.
I grunt. ‘Yeah, her. Listen. I have a question and I need your help with the answer. Do you think… I mean – sorry. Do you think I pretended to be a lesbian to spite my mother?’ My breath recoils down the phone line, running through him and back to me. ‘Or do you think I stopped being a lesbian to try and please her? Or both? Is there a difference?’
There’s fumbling on the end of the line as he readjusts his body for a different type of call. He must be able to tell I’m not sober, but if so, he doesn’t mention it. I feel embarrassed having called him from a strange number after weeks of radio silence. I blurt into the receiver, ‘I’m high by the way. On syrup. In a phone box. But I’m over the peak of it now and I’ve actually just thrown the rest away.’
‘Where are you, Noly?’ he asks softly.
‘I’m on the Isle of Bute. I’ve been here for a while – like a week? Longer? It’s nice. There’s nice… nature. It’s like holidays. There’s this woman, Miss Fraser. You’d love her. She’s crazy! She almost got me exorcised. She drives a baby pink Mini Cooper and she makes the best mince and tatties!’ As I speak the words jump away from me like tiny slippery fish in my mouth. ‘There was a psychic priest who kept thinking I was the anti-Christ but it turned out it was the other guy I was staying with. An easy misunderstanding. It didn’t bother me much.’
