Authors: Pamela Klaffke
I opt for vodka over wine—as a legitimate mourner, drinking hard liquor midday is permitted if not required.
I peel off my gloves and dial up my voice mail. I have fourteen new messages: first Eva in a panic saying Ted wants to talk to me
now;
then Ted saying he wants to talk to me
now;
Ted again; Genevieve cursing,
How could you?
; Ted; Ted; Ted;
Eva again; a filthy message from Jack describing what he wants me to do to him when we get to his place tomorrow. I replay this one three times and save it. There’s another message from Ted and another and another, then Eva and finally the shoe repair guy informing me that the boots I took in to be resoled are ready for pickup.
I order another vodka and suck it back before calling Eva.
“Oh my gosh, Sara, Ted’s really, really mad about the DON’Ts.”
“He’ll get over it,” I say, buoyed by the vodka hitting my system.
“Is that her?” I can hear Ted in the background. “Give me the phone. Sara? What the hell were you thinking? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Fucking relax, Ted. It’s funny.”
“It is not fucking funny, Sara, it’s
embarrassing.
”
“Oh, please. No one can even tell who they are—they can’t be
readily identified.
”
“That’s hardly the point. These are our friends.”
“
Your
friends,” I correct him.
“Yes,
my
friends, Sara. You should have run this by me. Gen is devastated. She won’t even go to the market she’s so afraid she might run in to someone.”
“Oh, fuck me, Ted.” I’m getting riled and people are looking at me. I cup my hand over the mouthpiece. “We used to do shit like this all the time.”
“Yeah, about a million years ago! And this isn’t the same thing at all.”
“It’s exactly the same.”
“No, Sara,
you’re
exactly the same—the rest of us have grown up.”
“Fuck you, Ted.” I press the end button on my phone and turn it off. I order a double. Ted’s words swim through the vodka. I push my sunglasses onto my face but the tears stream down past the frames. The waitress approaches me and asks if I’m okay. “I just came from a funeral,” I say.
“I’m so sorry,” she says and leaves me to drink in peace.
People are leaving by the time I make it to Lila’s reception. I try to slink in unnoticed, but Esther waves and walks across the room to greet me. She takes both my hands in hers and I shrivel into myself. I must have forgotten the gloves at the bar and I still don’t have a sympathy card. Esther escorts me to the kitchen, where I load up a plate with deviled eggs and pieces of quartered tuna sandwiches on white bread. I wolf down the tuna first thinking that if I eat enough I may die of mercury poisoning. This is a serious concern according to Gen, who read an article about it or saw something on TV and once said I had a death wish after she watched me eat eight pieces of yellowtail sashimi and Gen’s one of the grown-ups so she would know these things. My eyes well again with tears. Esther pours me a scotch and steers me into the living room. I sit on the sofa across from a high-end entertainment center that seems out of place against the flowery wallpaper. There are three remotes sitting atop the television and I wonder if I could inconspicuously grab them and take them to the bathroom and empty out the batteries and swallow them and all their mercury goodness to speed up the process I’ve started with the tuna.
Esther pats my knee. I’m crying again. “Lila had a lovely life, dear,” she says and offers me a monogrammed cloth handkerchief.
I wipe my dripping nose. I dab at my eyes and mascara stains the white material. “Thanks.”
I stare at the handkerchief balled up in my hand, unsure of where to put it or what to do. “You can keep it,” Esther says. “I have boxes of them.”
I change my mind about the battery swallowing—it wouldn’t be fair to Esther to die in her bathroom on the day of her best friend’s funeral.
“Now you just stay put, dear.” Esther pats my knee again. “I’ll get you another drink and just holler if you need anything else. Things will wind down soon and we’ll have a chance to talk.”
I do as I’m told and as the guests leave I begin to notice the wonderland of the apartment. Much of the wall space is covered with framed black-and-white photographs and signed fashion illustrations, though from where I sit I can’t see by whom. There are two columns of bookshelves, cabinets filled with ancient Barbies and porcelain curios. An enormous oval mirror in a baroque gold gilt frame hangs in the small foyer. I’m sitting on the couch on the far wall directly facing it. I catch bits of my reflection poking out around the others, who are standing and talking in the middle of the room. Finally it’s just me staring back at myself. Esther calls my name from the kitchen and asks if I like cognac. I like everything. “On occasion,” I say in my best polite grown-up voice.
“Well, dear, this is certainly an occasion,” Esther says. “Follow me.”
She’s carrying an expensive-looking bottle and two glasses. I trail her into a bedroom off the living room. It’s Lila’s room. I sip the cognac and Esther motions to me to take a seat on the bed. The room is big with a wall of built-in shelving that
stretches to the ceiling. There are magazines, hundreds of them, probably thousands. Esther steps on a footstool and reaches up, pulling down a stack of large-format magazines. Each are tucked into plastic sleeves. “Lila spent a week last year fitting every one of them into these bags—some kind of special plastic, so they won’t deteriorate.” Esther shakes her head but her smile is wide. “I told her she was crazy, but she wasn’t hearing any of it.” She hands me the pile of magazines and I can’t help but squeal. I set my cognac on the bedside table and sort through the stack, making sure I’m seeing what I think I am.
“Those were her favorites,” Esther says. “I’ll admit they are quite pretty.”
I count them off in my head—all twelve issues of
Flair
magazine. I have three beat-up copies I paid too much for at a shop in New York, but these are pristine, their die-cut covers sharp and perfectly preserved. These are not simply magazines or collectibles, but art. Fashion designers and artists and writers scour vintage ephemera stores and haunt online auction sites for copies of
Flair
. Completing your
Flair
collection is a rite of passage for all the stylish style-makers.
“From what I understand there were only a dozen issues published,” Esther says.
I run my hand over the cover of the Paris theme issue from April 1950. I don’t dare remove it from the special plastic.
“Go on,” Esther says. “Open them up. Let’s have a look.”
“We shouldn’t,” I say.
Esther laughs. “Why not? Lila’s not going to rise from the dead and strike us down. Besides, they’re yours—and anything else in here you find to your liking.”
I scan the shelves—it’s all to my liking. “I couldn’t,” I say.
I’d need to get Eva to help me load it all in her car. It would take at least three trips. I could rent a van for a day. I try to calculate how much it’s all worth. I wish I could bang these thoughts out of my mind on the heavy wooden headboard without causing a scene.
I wonder if magazines are insurable and it strikes me that I am a woman who preys on grieving old ladies. I’m a
Crime Stoppers
reenactment in the making. I’m an evil Poe raven feasting on a spilled basket of onion rings to-go outside a highway truck stop. I’m a bitch and a fraud. I’m a terrible friend and a fucked-up baby who wants her gums rubbed with gallons of whiskey to put her to sleep. I’m crying on a dead woman’s bed.
I find the monogrammed handkerchief Esther gave me earlier. It’s hardened with salt and snot and it’s rough on my eyes.
“Sara, dear, what is it?”
“It’s…it’s nothing—everything.” I have reached full blubber. I bury my face in my hands but I can’t breathe. I inhale as deeply as I can through my nose. Mucous floods my throat and I start to choke and cough. Esther picks a box of disposable tissues off Lila’s dresser. No more monogrammed hankies for me. I clear my throat and a lump forces its way into my mouth. It’s viscous—not liquid, not solid and it’s tender like an organ. There is no delicate way to do this and the viscous organ lump has filled my mouth to the point that there’s no room to speak. I pull several tissues from the square floral box and cover my lips. I open my mouth and the lump oozes out past my teeth. I resist the urge to look at the thing, to find some science store on the way home and stop to buy a microscope and a lab coat and goggles and spend hours marveling at the lump like it’s the world’s fattest man making a
guest appearance at the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Museum on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. I quickly ball the lump up in the tissues and drop it onto my lap.
I tell Esther everything, about Ted and Gen and their baby and their Wonderful Friends, about Eva and Parrot Girl and Beefy Cartoon Pants Man. I tell her about Jack and about Rockabilly Ben—there’s not much to say about him, but I find myself liking to say his name.
My insides are raw, I can feel them red and knotted and angry, and the blood is thick and can only seep slowly from the wounds I can’t see. The pain is strangling, not at my neck, but all over. My mouth is surprisingly loose. It’s the only way to release the pain, untangle the knots, and I’ve lost any control, any filters, and my thoughts push out of my mouth in such heavy heaves words trip on my breath. I may be making no sense. I may be speaking tenth-grade Spanish or reciting bits of a particularly hilarious story Ted and I came across in
Penthouse Forum
shortly after we’d taken
Snap
weekly and there were never enough hours and it was endless fun thinking of ways to stay alert as we worked through the night.
We’d read this piece over and over to each other and would stay awake every time, always laughing, as it involved a threesome with a double-amputee.
She was literally spinning on my dick like a record on a turntable
. I know the whole story by heart and so does Ted, or he did back when he was fun. I hope I’m not saying things like that to Esther but I could be. I know I’ve told her about Zeitgeist and Precious Finger and the fucking and the fries and mayo. I know I’ve said
fuck me
and
fuck Ted
and
fuck Gen
and even
fuck baby Olivier
, for which, if it was ever in question, I am without a doubt going to hell if sometime soon I start to believe in God and Satan and heaven
and hell and die of unnatural causes because I don’t think it’s natural not to have a soul. I say this and Esther assures me I do, but she doesn’t know me. She tells me it’s going to be all right again and again. It’s a hypnotic mantra and I almost believe her until the tears come again.
I refuse to have my body confront me a second time with a viscous phlegm ball so I shut my eyes tight until the tears have squeezed out. When I open them again and I look Esther straight in the eyes, which is hard since I’m drunk and my eyes are puffy slits, and unfocused, I tell her I’ve made my career by mocking people. I tell her I have no conscience—how can I? I’ve been doing this for more than fifteen years. It’s not a skill, it’s a personality trait. Esther isn’t buying it and continues to speak so softly and calmly and slowly in a way that sounds like she actually cares so it makes me want to smother her with her dead friend’s pillow, right there on the bed. She doesn’t understand, I can’t put it any plainer.
I tell Esther I’m a bitch and a brat, a hypercritical, judgmental fuck, void of empathy or sympathy. I tell her how it’s all been a fluke, a lucky break so undeserved. I do nothing good, I feel nothing good and sometimes just nothing at all. If I had to choose between Jack and my fuchsia swivel chair, I’d pick the chair. Esther’s still sitting beside me, still telling me it’s going to be all right.
I tell her I don’t care who’s a DO and who’s a DON’T—I expect this to shock her, my biggest reveal—but the moment I say it aloud I want to crawl out of the room, down the steps and into the night. I’ll travel through alleyways and low-traffic side streets, I’ll forage behind Dumpsters and befriend raccoons. I’ll learn their ways and their customs. A young girl will find me and coax me to her backyard, where she’ll feed
me berries from the trees and leftover steak she smuggles out of the house. We’ll be secret friends and I’ll never have to talk because she’ll think I’m a raccoon. But this will not have a happy ending. The girl will grow up and she’ll tell someone—a boyfriend—about me and he’ll tell someone else and soon there’s a documentary crew and a book deal and a reporter from
Vanity Fair
living with me in the corner of the girl’s backyard. It’s no longer quiet and I have no choice but to speak just to tell them to all to shut up. Then the girl figures out that I’m not a raccoon and we’re no longer friends.
“It wouldn’t be any easier to be a raccoon,” I say. I’m past the point of caring what Esther, or anyone, thinks. She laughs and curls an arm around my shoulder. She’s surprisingly strong. I want to push her arm off, ask her what the hell she wants from me, pull her Montreal red hair out of her head in clumps until her scalp is patchy and bleeding. I shirk away from her. Esther drops her arm and I glare into nothing.
She sighs and pours me another cognac. “You remind me so much of Lila.”
I wake up fully dressed in Lila’s bed. My eyes are sealed with a thick layer of crust and it hurts to open them. I’ve cried and then slept with my contacts in. I look at the clock on the bedside table. It’s not digital and it takes me a moment to remember how to tell time. It’s ten—no, eleven. My flight is in an hour. I have to go. I have to go
now
.
Esther is puttering in the kitchen. There’s a place set at the table, but there’s no time to eat or chat or play tea party. “I have to go,” I say.
“Now, don’t you go rushing off, dear. Take your time. There’s a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cupboard.”
“You don’t understand. I have to be at the airport—I’m flying to Toronto in an hour.”
“Oh, my. That is going to be tight. We’d better get a move on. I’ll drive you.”
“I need to go home—my things…”
“No time for that. You hop in the shower and I’ll take care of the rest.”
My hair is loose and wet. My eyes sting and I have no
makeup except lipstick in my black satin clutch. Esther knocks on the bathroom door. She turns the handle and extends her arm inside. She holds out a dress on a hanger. “This should fit,” she says and clicks the door shut.
I don’t have time to consider the dress. It’s black and shiny cotton and miraculously, it fits. It’s sleeveless but I try not to think about that. I know it’s Lila’s and do my best to block that out, too. It’s a short flight. I have a few things at Jack’s; anything else I can pick up at the
Snap
store on Queen Street.
Esther hands me a short beaded cardigan—the kind Eva wears—and I shrug it on over the dress, relieved that my wobbly upper arms are covered. I force my feet into the pair of pointy snakeskin heels Esther has laid out. They’re a half size too big, but I can walk and they don’t pinch my toes. Two brown leather suitcases and a matching carry-on bag stand in the entrance. “Take these,” Esther says. A corner of the cardigan is folded into my neck. Esther pulls it out. “That’s better. Now you are dressed to travel.”
Esther speeds to the airport. I take my sunglasses out of my black clutch and check my wallet for cash. There’s no time for drawn-out thank-yous and goodbyes. Esther pops the trunk of her old Mercedes and I haul the luggage out. The heavier suitcase causes me to stand lopsided. I promise to call when I’m back. She tells me to take care of myself, that a nice warm cup of tea will be waiting upon my return. She wishes me a safe flight and I rush through the sliding doors.
I am the person on the plane whom the other passengers hate. I’m last on and breathless and even though there’s ten minutes before scheduled takeoff time, I sense they’re a hostile bunch who blame me for not getting them there faster.
The flight isn’t packed. There’s an empty seat between me
and a bald man in a suit. He’s scowling at the financial section of the newspaper. There will be no small talk.
Once the seat belt sign pings off I unzip the brown leather carry-on Esther packed and start rooting through it. There’s a makeup bag with an unopened jar of a pricey Swiss wrinkles-away face cream, a stick of creamy concealer—a cheap drugstore brand—and a red Chanel lipstick that’s never been used. There’s a mirrored compact with a translucent pressed powder by a cult beauty brand from Sweden, a pot of rouge, Maybelline mascara and a miniature spritzer of Jean Paul Gaultier eau de toilette. I release the tray from the back of the seat in front of me and spread out the tubes and bottles. I hold the compact mirror in one hand and start work on my face. I swear I can feel the expensive Swiss face cream repairing my haggard skin, and the cheap concealer is a miracle—how could I not have known about this?
Satisfied that I look somewhat presentable, or at least not so gruesome as to frighten Jack at the airport, I replace the makeup, clip the tray back into place and dig back into the brown leather carry-on.
Esther has packed a pink suede pencil case with pens, multicolored fine-tip markers and a package of ultralight cigarettes. There’s a worn, illustrated copy of
Alice in Wonderland
and a two-week-old issue of
Us Weekly
that I read at my desk on a particularly uninspired day. But it’s four thick notebooks that take up most of the space and weigh the bag down. I wrestle them out. The pages of the first notebook are unlined and crammed with sketches and notes, photographs and newspaper clippings. The second is the same, as is the third. The fourth is blank. I return to the first and open it to a random page. There’s a sepia-toned photo of a woman in a beauti
fully tailored black dress with a jagged neckline sitting on a stiff-backed chair. Her dark hair is up. She looks to be in her late twenties but it’s hard to tell. She doesn’t like the photographer or perhaps having her photo taken at all. I know this look from my work. She’s smiling but her eyes are pensive if not a bit sad and that gives everything about her away.
Beneath the photo in a swirly hand is written
Portrait of a Lady Undone, 1958.
I look closer—it must be Lila, but what the caption means is a mystery, nothing else on the page offers so much as a hint, not the drawings of black dresses, not the ad for fine uncultured pearls, nor the detailed recipe for Hungarian mushroom soup.
“What the hell
is
all this stuff?”
“I have no idea,” I say. I’ve laid the two brown leather suitcases out on Jack’s bed and am unpacking. I hang up three black cotton dresses, all different from the one I’m wearing. There’s a fancier dress, too, the one from the photo in the notebook with the jagged neckline. It’s creased from packing so I dart to the bathroom and hang it on the hook on the back of the door. I pull the shower curtain closed and blast the hot water—the steam will lift the wrinkles out. I find a strand of pearls in a velvet box. I can tell by the clasp that they’re very old; the color and the way they’re knotted makes me think they’re real. In another velvet box there’s a gold necklace with a red jewel cut in the shape of a teardrop. There are earrings to match—the kind that you fasten to the earlobes by screwing them on. Maybe it’s time to rethink not wearing jewelry. There’s a black lightweight suit with a sleeveless shell, cropped jacket and a choice of pencil skirt or wide-legged sailor-style pants. There’s a shoulder bag and an evening bag, a pair of
patent ballet flats and low-heeled sandals. At the bottom of the second suitcase are the twelve issues of
Flair
. No wonder it was so heavy.
I’m going to have to figure out what to do about my glasses. Jack wears a prescription slightly lesser in strength and has about ten pairs so I can make do that way if I have to. I have a duplicate set of toiletries here—shampoo, body cream, contact lens solution, that milky facial cleanser from France I like. All the things that take up too much space and weigh down your carry-on when you’re off to visit your long-distance boyfriend. But I’m going to have to nip out and buy underwear. Jack can come along—he’ll like that.
“She just gave you all that stuff? That’s kinda weird. Are you sure she’s, you know, okay, up here?” Jack taps his head.
“She’s not sick or anything—I don’t think so.” It hadn’t occurred to me that Esther might be actually demented or senile and that’s why she’s giving a stranger her dead friend’s things, but I can’t think about that right now because I have to think about shopping.
We’re walking to a lingerie store in Yorkville, which means uncomfortable lacy thongs and embellished super-lift bras for the next two weeks. I won’t complain. Jack says he’s buying and he’s bounding along Bloor Street like a puppy. He talks like he can’t get the words out fast enough, telling me about the drama of the music video he shot last week and the technical challenges of the one he’s booked to shoot starting Monday. “There’s
a lot
of prep,” he says and I take this to mean that he’s not going to be around much for the next week. I’m not disappointed. I don’t really care.
Jack picks out bras and thongs and I try them on. Every
thing is red or black or red-and-black and it’s all either totally sheer or lace. He keeps asking how I’m doing in the dressing room and I know he wants me to invite him to take a look. The curt Russian saleswoman is monitoring us with a strict eye. There is nothing I can do about this and wouldn’t even if I could. The thought of standing in tarty lingerie under white lights with Jack trying to fuck me in front of a three-way mirror makes me recoil, and recoiling does nothing for my jiggly stomach. I’ll let Jack think that denying him a peek is part of our game. It’s the same every time. I put him off and put him off and I let him believe it’s all part of some sexy control game. I don’t tell him that a little shopping, a pint or two at the bar, snacks and a glass of wine at his place is what I’m going to need before I’m ready to let him on me or in me. He’ll do everything I say and I’ll still keep my bra on and insist the lights are out.
We finish shopping, have drinks, then drinks and snacks. I think of Rockabilly Ben the whole time Jack is fucking me. This makes me feel guilty and slutty but it also makes it hot. I remind myself that thinking of Rockabilly Ben while Jack’s cock is inside me is in no way a violation of our unconventional relationship rules and promptly grant myself absolution and permission for another glass of wine. Jack, however, has other ideas. He arranges himself so we’re facing each other, noses almost touching.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says. His voice is slow and syrupy. This is my cue to flee, but I’m wearing only a bra. And I can’t leave Lila’s stuff behind, especially if Esther does turn out to be demented and her old-people friends hunt me down at night wearing masks and cloaks and carrying torches and demanding the return of Lila’s things. I close my eyes and hope
I look dreamy, not stressed. Men always do this. They say they’re cool, they’re great with the perma-casual unconventional long-distance relationship. They don’t want to get married, they don’t want to have kids. And then they do, then it’s all let’s-take-it-to-the-next-level and I’m forced to play the villain, the soulless girl with the frozen heart.
“I’ve been thinking that we should do something together—a project. I’ve been e-mailing with Ted about maybe working with you guys on some videos or an online show.”
Get me some
Cosmo
and some
Glamour
magazines. Tear out the pages that purport to tell readers
what he’s thinking
and wrap me up tight. Blindfold me, gag me, douse me with gasoline. Invite Jack and Ted and every ex-boyfriend I’ve had. Invite Eva and Esther and Rockabilly Ben. I insist—I demand—that Gen bring the baby and her Wonderful Friends. Let Parrot Girl light the first match. “You’ve been e-mailing with Ted?”
“We’ve been bouncing some ideas back and forth. Oh—I had a couple messages from him this morning. He said to tell you he wants you to call him.”
“I’m sure he does.”
“Of course he does,” Jack says. He kisses me. My eyes are still closed. My sarcasm has gone undetected. “So you’ll think about it?”
“What?”
“Working together?”
“Yeah, sure. I guess I could give it some thought.”
“Awesome. What time is it?”
I open my eyes and glance at the clock. “Five to six.”
“Shit. We’d better get moving.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“Dinner.”
I shower and change into the Lila dress with the jagged neckline. I take out my contacts and borrow Jack’s glasses, a pair with chunky black plastic frames. The glasses are wide on the bridge of my nose and keep slipping down. If I keep my head tilted the smallest bit up they’ll stay put. And I’ll have to remember not to squint.
I use Lila’s makeup and wear the pearls. As I’m stuffing toilet paper into the toes of the patent ballet flats to prevent the shoes from flapping when I walk I realize my birth control pills are in my medicine cabinet at home next to the economy-size bottle of Advil.
I drop the toilet seat cover and sit. I could call Eva and have her courier the pills to me overnight. I could find a clinic in the morning and get some more. I could ask Jack to wear condoms for the next two weeks or fuss with sponges and spermicide or not fuck him at all. I could absolutely not give a shit because I’m thirty-nine years old and as anyone who’s caught even a moment of a daytime talk show knows, I’m most likely a barren crone.
I choose to absolutely not give a shit and if by some preposterous fluke I do get pregnant, I’ll carry the mutant two-headed, harelipped baby with Down’s syndrome and no hands, then drop it off at Jack’s. Maybe he can e-mail Ted for parenting advice or make a video for the sappy French ballad Genevieve will write in honor of my fluke, abandoned, mutant baby.
I’m in no mood for this dinner and Jack is vague about the details. I sit in the taxi with my arms crossed. I press my body against the door and look out the window, away from Jack. I’m
resentful for the imaginary pregnancy that’s his fault and huffy because I will forever have to shoulder the guilt of not having the strength or humanity to raise the mutant baby myself.
We jerk-and-stop through traffic to a loft somewhere way down Queen Street West. “It’s just a group of creative couples who get together for dinner once a month.”
“Creative couples?
Sounds fun.” I’ll bet they’re those people who talk about how they don’t watch TV and then after two drinks you overhear them lamenting the cancellation of
Everybody Loves Raymond.
“It really does, doesn’t it?” Again, my sarcasm moves through Jack unnoticed. “I’ve wanted to go for ages—it’s an awesome networking opportunity, but it’s couples only.”
“
Creative
couples.”
“Exactly.”
A woman with long curly hair greets us. She hugs Jack and he hands her a bottle of wine. “This must be the famous Sara B.,” she says. She looks at my hair. She looks at my dress and shoes. She smiles and I know I’ve passed her entrance exam. “I’m Michelle,” she says. I shake her hand. “I was delighted when Jack said you two would be able to make it.” A man with a shaved head and slim black jeans approaches. He puts his arm around Michelle’s waist. “Dave, you know Jack. And this is his artner, Sara B. Sara’s one of the founders of
Snap
—right?”