Under My Skin (20 page)

Glassman would never know why Elsa Graham looked at him. He only knew that she came to class late and when she smiled at him and looked away, there was a soft rose blush on her face. He also remembered that she wore a cotton dress – primrose colour – and that it was the last day of the summer term – 16 June 1966.

Elsa was the prettiest girl in Nauset High and she was somehow always on her own. On that morning he had said goodbye to his mother. He remembered leaving her at the kitchen table and how she was drinking a milky coffee from a small pink cup. He did not kiss her goodbye because at sixteen he felt too old now and too proud for that. That morning she wore a fresh white cotton nightdress and her shoulders were already darkly tanned. Her cup rested on a pretty floral tablecloth and behind her, the remnants of pancake ingredients – eggshells, batter, a jug of milk – stood in a little circle around the stove. When her only son walked around the table behind her, she lifted one hand and he caught it, cool and soft, as she waved.

He walked into the barn to fill the watering can and, still carrying his schoolbooks, he watered the wisteria on the porch. There were three chickens on the back lawn then – black with white speckles, and their red combs were bright in the morning sun. From time to time, they flew over the wire fence and into the meadows and surprised themselves by landing on the beach. Mrs Glassman loved her chickens. She liked free-range
eggs and Arthur was used to bright yellow pancakes now. Every morning he watered the plants and then he dropped sunflower seeds into the parrot’s cage. He listened to the thud of the
Boston Globe
on the front lawn and inside he felt the weight of Mrs Glassman’s
Vogue
.

Today was the beginning of his summer and his last day ever at high school. He would read at the final assembly. He would find a quiet moment to stand still in an empty classroom and say goodbye. As the sun hit the waves in the distance, Arthur picked up his speech, folded it into a book, and walked, and even though he was not late for his bus, but because he felt his whole life suddenly stretch out beautifully in front of him, he began to run and run.

When Elsa came in she was behind the others. She was smiling and flushed and her golden hair was in a high ponytail. She always sat in the desk at the top of the room – near the map of the world and the glass-panelled door. She did not put her hand up ever but he knew her scores were always good. At lunchtime she would take herself away and eat her fruit silently, looking beautiful and a little lonely under some big green tree.

Arthur did not know then that he was good-looking. He only knew that he loved words and that he was a good swimmer and captain of the football team. But on that day Elsa came in and looked straight at him and then moved down and took a desk next to his. She did not look at him again, but when they walked down the corridor together, he felt her arm brush gently – and it felt cool – against his. He felt her fine bleached hairs, the short puff sleeve of her dress and her smooth suntanned skin.

The school gathered in the hall at three o’clock and Arthur took his place near the stage. He had chosen Walt Whitman for
his reading – when his English teacher would have preferred Robert Frost. But Arthur had already discovered the milkiness of poetry, and how his skin could ripple and bump with its every rhyming and un-rhyming sound. He did not want to read about mending walls or apple picking – he wanted to find words to describe beautiful women, waiting lovers, and a world full of possibilities now.

In Whitman he had found a friend and he chose ‘I Hear America Singing’ which his voice carried out across the room. And as he read the hall fell silent and the school listened and dreamed of future plans.

Afterwards his classmates got to their feet and clapped. They cheered and the whole school was suddenly swept up in the same bright moment. And as they clapped he smiled, and his eyes moved until he found her – and she was smiling – yes, and still looking up at him shyly – and using a small white notebook to gently fan her neck.

Arthur delayed and shook his English teacher’s hand and when the room was almost silent, he stood on the creaking wooden floor, in long shafts of sunshine, and said goodbye to his school. When the door flapped open a young boy came in and ran to pick up a forgotten book, and as the door opened again he saw Elsa sitting waiting on a bench in the hall. He steeled himself then and walked over to her, and she was just sitting, with her long ponytail down over one shoulder, and studying her white tennis shoes.

‘Hi, Elsa,’ he said and he felt his chest tighten with the words. She had become another person to him. Someone who was very beautiful and made of yellow and gold.

‘Want to walk me home?’ she replied, and when he smiled and said, ‘Sure, Elsa, I’d like that,’ she got up and gave him her hand. The other kids saw them leave and Arthur began to
make deadpan small talk. But inside he was puffing himself up like a parrot and he felt like John Wayne bringing his bride back home.

She told him about her brother who had gotten into Harvard and how she was planning on going to a Cordon Bleu cookery school. She said this and looked away blushing and the idea of her in a polka dot apron joined them in the school hall. It was Elsa who suggested the forest trail and as they walked they turned over the usual ordinary things.

Did his mom make him help at the church fête?
Which beach did she like to swim at?
Would he go to NYU or Yale?
Did he want to leave Cape Cod for good?
Would he be here for the summer?
Would she like to meet him tomorrow afternoon?

And the last question hung for a moment in the air, the air that was free now of school and full of new ideas and plans. Her left tennis shoe was scuffed. She had a small pink plaster on her knee. He noticed how the skin on the inside of her wrist was very smooth and pale. When she said ‘Yes’ and smiled again, her ponytail nodded at him and he did not realize that women could be so beautiful until then.

In the forest he kissed her – and it was a sudden gesture that surprised him more than her. She seemed very calm though, as if she was waiting for it, and Arthur put his arms around her feeling first her lips, moist and warm, the stiff cotton of her dress and then the rugged bark of a tall slender pine.

The forest trail was silent.

Around the next bend they would find Herman’s Cottage, an old stone house where no one lived now. He had planned to walk her there and then sit with her on the swing on the
back porch. But instead she pulled him closer and they slid down on to the forest floor.

He did not know how to make love to a woman. He did not even know that this was what they were doing now. He did not know that she was going to give him three memories that would stay with him for ever. That after this day he would spend his life looking for a grown-up woman who was still somehow young and innocent like her.

First she gave him the picture of her face and how her blonde hair was full of pine needles. Then she gave him a sound, it was the light little sigh she made – of surprise – of joy – of hurt – of pain, when he entered her. And lastly he would remember how their hands were, joined together, in a small circle of sunlight that had speared its way through the trees and lay with them on the forest floor.

Because of a girl he felt new and different and yet he was somehow still the same. It was as if making love had rearranged all his thought patterns and brain waves and then gave them back to him again. He did not remember taking the bus home. He only remembered finally reaching his house and that the screen door gave the same little creak. He wandered into the kitchen and ate a red plum looking out the window behind the kitchen sink. He turned the dial on the radio and stopped when the Monkees came on. He did not know anything then except that this one moment in his life was perfect. He could still feel Elsa. He could smell her all over his skin. The next day was a Saturday and every day would be a Saturday from now on.

He noticed that the coffee pot had not been refilled then. He saw the pancake ingredients, still gathered at the stove, and then he heard a fly buzz, caught, snared inside a spider’s web. His mother would usually meet him in the hallway or
come in from the garden or the porch. She would be wearing one of her lovely cool summer dresses and carrying a jug of iced tea or homemade lemonade.

The house was too warm. The windows were closed and the fresh breeze from the beach was locked outdoors. As he picked out words from the song on the radio, he noticed the drip from the kitchen tap and he could hear the fly twisting and dying in its grave.

He walked up the white painted steps and noticed how the net curtains on the landing moved in the wind. He saw how his bedroom door was closed, and how hers was open and that she was still in her white nightgown and lying near the stairs.

And Arthur stood for a moment and checked himself. He saw how she lay on her side as if she was sleeping. How her left hand seemed to wave. How there was no breath or movement or warmth around her, and he did not know if he would rush towards her or begin to cry like a little boy and run back down the stairs.

Glassman left the library without Matilda and in his mind he hurried home and put her diaphragm into the trash. Instead he went to Fifth Avenue at 27th Street and visited the Museum of Sex. Inside he shared the darkness with a middle-aged couple and he let the images dance and wash over him. His favourite porn movie was
The Yum-Yum Girl
. An Indian girl offering herself up in black and white, over and over, all innocence and warmth and without any logic or sense. She wore flowers around her neck and seemed to smile a lot. The old movies jumped and jerked so it was like Mickey Mouse doing Minnie for porn. He liked to go here once a year to see
this movie and feel that he would be warm and safe in this girl’s arms and that with her, things would be simple and he would just feel something again.

A man in a raincoat sat on a bench and studied it. And Glassman was glad that he was here. Someone needed to point out the fine line between art and pornography, after all.

He avoided the room full of plastic breasts and machinery and walked out into the snow. The sign at the door said, ‘Please do not touch, lick or mount the exhibits’, and there was a quote from
Hamlet
about men which he liked and he was glad it was still there.

A normal man would leave the museum and want to call an ex-girlfriend and book into a seedy hotel room. A younger man would come out and feel ready to mount a lamp-post. And again Glassman mourned the loss and the losing of himself. He did not use the payphone on the corner. He went into Harry’s diner on W30th and ordered fruit salad even though he felt cold. He met Alan Alda at the bar and spoke to him. He told him, unselfconsciously, that he loved
MASH
and had seen every episode and they both agreed that Loretta Swift was a love-her, hate-her kind of girl, and on days like that Glassman knew he should feel real love for New York.

At home he found Matilda sitting on his steps waiting and she said ‘Hey’ and ‘Hi’ as if this was all perfectly OK. He stood and towered over her and somewhere deep inside he began to hate her now.

‘I need you to stop calling me,’ he said gently, and he watched her face change and he saw in brief little flashes, love, hurt, anger and pain.

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said and the lie lifted up over both of
them and laughed out over the street. During their first week together she had told him. ‘
Reproductively challenged
’ were the words that she used but she had said them very softly and as if they were an apology for something he could not have. And even so they were careful. Somehow even then the idea of making children with Matilda did not seem like a sensible plan.

Lately he had a strange feeling of being watched by someone. He had felt a new presence in the subway. On Fifth Avenue and standing in line at Starbucks, he always wanted to look around. And when he did he felt foolish as there was just the next person asking for a double cream chocolate latte, as alive and as ordinary as himself.

On Saturday mornings he liked to sit in Washington Square. It had become a small ritual of his, like his whisky at Michael’s and a movie on Thursdays at Angelika. He would sit and look at the Vietnam vets busking, enjoying their long loose hair over weathered faces, and how they passed the drum and tambourine, like food to be shared, and sang out Simon and Garfunkel as if it was the word of God. And then he would walk to the Farmers’ Market near Union Square and buy something ridiculous. Holly berry and pine cones and once something exotic called Kangaroo’s Paw. He shopped at the deli on Canal Street and once a month he walked into an expensive hair salon and asked the most beautiful woman there to cut his hair.