Between Dog and Wolf

by Sokolov, Sasha; Boguslawski, Alexander;

  Sometimes we would spend the whole day in Helen’s bed, watching TV and eating snacks, only leaving for an hour while her room underwent its daily clean. They have a pantry full of goodies that her mother keeps locked, but Tatiana used to let us in to get treats. If someone rang for one of the sisters you never knew whether they were in the house or not, it’s so big and sprawling. If you didn’t wander into the kitchen around dinner time Tatiana would go and look for you, and if she didn’t find you Sally would put the dinner in the fridge. If we were hungry Helen would ask her daddy for money and we would order pizza or wander down to the village and eat in a restaurant called The Stables. Even so, if Helen’s mother got it into her head to have it out at Helen, she would think of any reason, and she would track us down.

  The incident I remember most clearly was when she pulled Helen out of bed at four in the morning by the scruff of her neck. I was sleeping in Helen’s bed. We had fallen asleep watching a Friends box-set. I followed as Helen was shoved down three flights of stairs and into the wide hallway.

  There her mother stood over a little pool of foaming vomit and screamed for a good forty-five minutes. ‘You sick little bitch, you asshole, you prissy madam, you ugly little skank …’

  The gist of it was that Jed, the ancient Labrador, who had been a Christmas present from Santa when Helen was nine years old, had been vomiting regularly at times when the staff were off. Helen, apparently, had never taken true responsibility for her own dog and was a prissy little bitch and could damn well clean it up herself. The dog was ill and had been whining at night, which was waking Helen’s mother, and why should she be up when Helen was sound asleep because of Helen’s fucking old bastard of a fucking shit-heap of a dog? Her accent began to shift into one I didn’t recognize. She had moved up in the world, Trina, her father was a farmer who had become rich suddenly when she was a girl, and then she had married Helen’s father, who does something I don’t understand with money and property and makes a fortune.

  She began to address me.

  ‘Why on earth are you friends with someone like Helen, Cassandra? You have no idea what she’s really like. Since the day she was born she has done nothing but take …’

  Then I was treated to an in-detail description of the stitches Helen inflicted on her mother, the taut stomach that the pregnancy destroyed, the un-shiftable weight she had been carrying ever since.

  ‘And you have no idea Cassandra, how I loved that child …’

  Her attacks always ended like this, with a profession of unbearable love. I always thought Trina’s behaviour towards Helen was that of an unrequited lover. There must have been some sort of love behind the will to torment Helen. It was a sort of attention-seeking, a way of staying present in her daughter’s life.

  These incidents didn’t affect me all that much. I loved staying at Helen’s. It was totally different to my grandparents’ house, where my every move was monitored, where we read together in the same room, and lunch and dinner were served by my grandmother promptly at one and at six. At meal times my grandfather would ask me what I had done that day, and I was at pains to make it sound like time usefully spent. If they noticed that I was still up at ten reading, my grandfather would say that really it was foolish to stay up late reading because your brain was getting too tired to work properly, and my grandmother would gently suggest that I had a good sleep, and I, totally incapable of willfully displeasing either of them, would switch off my lamp.

  I lie on the bed and look up at the setting sky through the skylight. I like being in this house again. It fills me with a sort of nostalgia, a familiarity that gives me a sense of belonging. The room still smells the way it always has: sweetly, of straw for some reason.

  I’ll have to start getting ready though. Opposite this room, through a wide landing done up like a girly den – pink sofa and wall-mounted TV – is the bathroom where Helen and I first shaved our legs. I walk across to it and look for a toothbrush. I didn’t bring anything like that. It’s a well-stocked house in that regard. There are three new toothbrushes by the sink, Molton Brown shower gel and shampoo, and some sort of anti-ageing facial wash.

  I open the window and lean out over the garden. The air is heavy and dark. Breathing it is like taking a long, cool drink of water. A marquee has been assembled on the lawn, and there are workmen in overalls climbing about, stringing up tiny lights that twinkle like millions of stars. It’s only then that I notice the yellow Post-it stuck to the windowsill. There is a smiley face on it, and a little note:

  Hi Cassandra! Have a good time. x Tatiana

  twenty-three

  When he came out of the bathroom, Oisín found Helen sitting at the mirror wearing a dress he had never seen her in before. It was the colour of wine. There was no back. Instead the dress was held on with a thick ribbon that cut red lines over her cream back. The nakedness went all the way down. It stopped just before the crack of her ass.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Are we fighting?’

  ‘No. I just asked you where you got the dress.’

  ‘Sorry. I thought you were angry with me for something. I’ve had it for years. I wear it for all these sort of things. I got it made for my pre-debs.’

  ‘It’s sexy. Stand up.’

  She smiled and slipped on a pair of high, green satin shoes that were under the stool. She stood and turned to face him. The dress was heavy and shiny. It was a corset on top, with the silk ruffled on the torso. The ruffles tapered into a peak at her abdomen, as though pointing to her pussy. Then it fell straight to the floor from her hips, with a lighter, see-through material over it. It pulled in her waist and pushed her breasts up.

  ‘Your tits look amazing.’

  She didn’t conceal her disappointment. The heat rose to her cheeks as she looked down at the cleavage. ‘They’re fake. I have these gel pads in. You can’t wear a bra, obviously …’

  She gestured over her shoulder to the strap-revealing back. There were mirrors behind her and on either side. She looked lonely, standing there with her back to herself, waiting for his verdict. The colour of the dress made her skin look translucent and emphasized the colour in her lips and cheeks as though she were burning with passion. She looked like a woman. He loved her again suddenly and wished he hadn’t said it. ‘Baby, you look so hot! Okay, now I want you to take it off …’ She grinned and shook her head, ‘No way. It’s impossible getting it on and off. Today was the first time I got it on without help.’

  She sat down at the mirror and began to apply blobs of yellow cream to her chin and forehead. She had never done her make-up in front of him before. She had applied lipstick in the morning and things like that, but she had never done the whole thing.

  ‘Do you think my suit is okay? I didn’t know this was such a big party.’

  She nodded. ‘Dunno. I suppose so. A suit is a suit, Oisín. I dunno.’ She was putting something else on now, something white under her eyes and under her eyebrows. Then she brushed brown powder under her cheeks. He had no idea make-up was so complicated.

  He got dressed quickly. He didn’t like being naked when she wasn’t, and he hated the sight of his flaccid penis lying off to the side like that. Then he sat on the bed and watched. Who was she doing all this for? Surely it was cheating – fake boobs and all this make up? How come women were allowed to do that? As a man he could see that a girl was wearing make-up but he still fancied her because her eyelashes looked long and her lips were red. If he wore make-up under his eyes to cover up the dark circles no one would take him seriously. And women had no scruples about strapping on fake boobs and taking them off once they’d got you into their beds. If a man took off his shirt to reveal arm padding he’d be a laughing stock. It must make women feel powerful to know all those tricks, to build another face onto their own, to transform their bodies. He would like to know what it felt like to be inside that silk dress. The fabric would be cool and soft, wrapping lovingly around every curve and dip of the waist and ab
domen. That must be why it made Helen glow like that. No one could help but feel beautiful, lapped all over by that precious fabric. It must make a woman feel powerful to walk into a room and know everyone is gazing at her wiggling bum or her naked back, to know she is setting off all kinds of involuntary chemical impulses.

  Helen turned to him and made a kissing shape with her lips, ‘Do my lips look any bigger? I’m wearing this new stuff, “Fat Lip”. It’s meant to puff them up.’

  She ignored his silence, turned back to the mirror and continued to plump her lips using pencils and paints and lube. The result was obscene. Her lips were just right as they were; any bigger was ridiculous. All the fake shadows and shine made them look like cartoon lips. Still, the thought that they were Helen’s lips but also different to Helen’s turned him on. They belonged to him, those fattened red sex organs. He could fuck those lips if he wanted to. He knew what they looked like naked.

  ‘Okay, don’t take it off. Leave it on.’

  ‘Hmm?’ She had forgotten what they had been talking about. They had been in silence for so long. ‘The dress. Leave it on. Tell me not to fuck you and I will anyway. Tell me I’ll crumple your dress.’

  Still facing the mirror, she looked at his reflection and laughed. On either side, her profile laughed too. Then she got up and approached him slowly. She put her face very close to his but she didn’t kiss him. She smelled different. It was some other perfume. It wasn’t girlish like the stuff she usually wore. He looked into her pushed-up breasts, and kissed the part where they met. He could feel the warmth from her body on his face. She grinned as though what she was about to administer were not pleasure at all but some atrocity, and began to open his trousers. It was not a gesture of affection, she was proving something. The trousers were cheap. He had never thought that before. He thought they were a bargain but they weren’t. They were cheap. They were thin and unlined. The threads all hung loose inside and scratched his skin. When she undid the catch they fell open and he pushed them down until they dropped to his ankles. She kissed his abdomen and then drew little circles with the tip of her tongue around his navel and downwards. His cock was against her face. He hit her cheek with it and she smiled kindly, but as though he was interrupting her. He hit her again and it made a dull thud. ‘Suck my cock baby.’

  While he came he put his fingers to her throat to feel her swallow it all in. He held her head to his crotch until he turned to a soft little slug on her tongue. He didn’t feel victorious, the way he should have. Despite the continuing flush of cum, the thick hard cock, despite the sight of her dress spread like a red pool at his feet, her naked white knees, her uplifted chin, he felt humiliated. With the same act that should have degraded her, that should have made him feel like a lord, pumping all his cum down this beautiful throat, she had conquered him. Whatever unspoken, obscure battle it was that they had been having since the bus ride, she had won.

  She planted a satisfied kiss on his flaccid penis. He hated being spat out into the cold. When she stood up he cupped it and pulled up his jocks. Her lipstick had worn away. All that was left was the outline of the cartoon pout under and over her real lips. What he felt, along with his defeat, was a vague sort of pity for her.

  He lay back on the bed while she sat in front of the mirror again and re-applied the mouth. He rolled his head to the side and noticed that the door was unlocked and very slightly ajar. She must have left to get the dress while he was showering. He was too spent to care. He let his eyes close and that thing he had felt by the window came over him again: that, lazy, almost-pleasant desire to cry.

  The three-way mirror was very unusual. He had never seen anything like it. It was like something from the Victorian age, or a fairy tale. He wondered what his mam would think of it, whether she would like it. She would be too embarrassed to sit at it like that. She would refuse to meet her own eyes.

  He wished he could give something like that to his mother, some beautiful fairytale mirror that she would sit at and like her face in. She was no good at putting on make-up though. It wasn’t really her. He had never forgotten her eyes the day she had collected him from school with bright candy-pink lipstick pasted across her mouth. At first he had thought it was some sort of medicated sun block. ‘What’s on your mouth?’ His brothers were there too, but they had known better than to say anything. Instead they had looked at one another, suppressed laughter twitching in their cheeks. The lipstick really did look silly, especially as it was the only make-up she had on. It glowed against the naked, wrinkled skin. She looked a joke. His mother’s eyes were the only thing alive about her. They were always occupied with something faraway. There was always something they were about to express but didn’t. He would never forget the way they shrank as her three sons climbed quietly into the car. He was in the back. He watched her in the rear-view mirror. He had felt he couldn’t breathe anticipating it, the flinching resignation, humiliation, even anger, all about to burst out of her. But it didn’t. She rubbed her lips violently with the back of her hand. ‘Lipstick. I was trying it out.’ She released the clutch and then jerked the gear stick forward. The car jolted to life. ‘The girl in the chemist gave me a sample. She said it looked nice.’

  Helen was finished her make-up. She lay down carefully beside him, restricted by the tight dress. He rolled onto his back and took her hand. They lay like that for some minutes. Both hungry, both dressed, listening to hammering and shouting as the marquee was built on the ground outside.

  * * *

  When i step out of the shower the atmosphere of the house has changed. I can hear the mumble of faraway chatter from downstairs, but it’s calm up here in the sanctuary of the attic. I open the bathroom window to let out the steam, and watch the white haze hit the cold air and turn whiter, forming itself into slow, curling ribbons, vanishing into the night then like something frightened and alive.

  Down on the grass the party is brewing. There are Russian and Philippine women rushing back and forth between the house and the star-spangled marquee with large platters and bowls. The guests have seeped onto the grass, or else they have not gone into the marquee yet. Maybe it’s not ready. The men are all in suits. They look like figurines. Women who have just reached a long staved-off middle age have chosen glamour in place of sexiness, and draped their ageing bodies with layers of expensive and unusual fabrics. Even their sleeves drape. When they lift the glasses to their mouths the cloth pours from wrist to curtained waist. The glasses look fragile and precious in their colourless simplicity, glinting respectably amidst all that cloth. Many of these women have sparkling things sewn into the cloth that make them glisten in the quiet sheets of light cast from the house. They look like great sea creatures, magnificent, ugly humps wading on the surface of the lawn.

  It feels as though this scene belongs to me, as though it is mine to watch: the jewel-barnacled women, the fake stars and the sad waft of expensive perfume and cosmetics and marinated chicken skewers moving sluggish through the night air. I almost feel I own it, the little millings about, the tension in all the shoulders, the sense of disappointment already tickling its way into the relief after all the preparation has been done. I almost believe that I can see through to the workings of it. Then I remember how rude that is, that it is not my party at all, it’s not even Helen’s party, it’s her parents’, and I am their guest. It took me a long time in life to realize how rude it is to stand back from something and watch it like that. How disrespectful it is, that watching, because it can rob anything of its validity, make anything ridiculous, because a person can’t gaze on life like God. God infuses meaning. This sort of looking takes meaning away.

  My grandmother would hate this. ‘Pomp’, she would call it, in honour of my grandfather, who would use just that word. I can hear the way he would say it, the thick Brussels accent: ‘pomp and frrrrills’. She was invited, of course. That’s what most of the guests are, people Helen’s mum knows just about well enough to invite. I don’t think she has friends, not really.
Except maybe that couple, Mary and Denis. Helen’s parents have known them since before they started going out. They are her friends, I think.

  Out-of-fashion pop music explodes from the marquee. The guests turn their heads. It stops and something darker begins, something classical and dramatic with lots of wind instruments. It suits the scene well. It suits the lavish costumes. Then that stops and one of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons begins to play at the right volume. The guests go back to sipping their wine, and begin to drift towards the marquee. The party has begun.

  I go into my room and take my dress out from the suitcase. It’s the one I wore to Brian’s launch years ago, the one with all those marine colours, that seaweed effect.

  I’m still getting dressed when Helen comes in. She doesn’t knock, just walks in. She looks beautiful. She is wearing the blood-coloured silk dress she wore for our pre-debs. The sight of her face, the cheeks and lips brightened with make-up, makes me think of the word ‘blossom’, which is a silly word but seems apt. She looks tall in that dress. I am standing in a thong, no bra over my nubs of breasts, trying to get the dress on over my head, which is tricky because it’s all strings and zips.

  ‘I don’t want to go down on my own. Oisín is shaving and Mammy keeps screaming for me to come down and meet Uncle Raymond. She says I know him but I don’t.’