The Pillow Friend

by Lisa Tuttle

  London looked old and gray and unwelcoming. After Houston it felt cold, but no less humid. She took the train from Gatwick to Victoria, and then, unwilling to struggle home on the underground with her suitcase, took a cab. During the long, slow journey out to Harrow she tried to cheer herself with the London views and oddities glimpsed through the window. But she found no pleasure today in pub signs, Victorian architecture, eccentrically dressed pedestrians, or advertisements exhorting her to “Try a saucy faggot!” Those were a tourist's pleasures, and what she wanted more than anything now was simply to feel at home.

  Leaving Alex's yesterday morning she'd gone straight out to the airport with the intention of simply staying there until she could get a seat on a flight to London. There had been one available that very evening, and she had taken it.

  At the airport, she'd bought a small mirror, and had spent several long sessions locked inside a toilet cubicle examining her vagina. She couldn't see anything unusual, and her own fingers encountered no obstruction, but she was still uncomfortable. She had a slight sensation of heaviness, a faint genital irritation, a little like having a constantly full bladder, yet without the urge to urinate.

  Gray didn't know she was coming; she hadn't been able to reach him. She hoped he didn't have plans for tonight and would be coming straight home after school. She had been attacked by a kind of waking nightmare while trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep on the plane, and she couldn't quite get it out of her head. In the nightmare she came back to discover that Gray did not exist, had never existed outside her own mind. Her marriage to him had been a fantasy, like her mother's acting career, like Marjorie.

  The little house had never looked better to her. The honeysuckle around the front door was in bloom: even in a city the English spring made itself felt. Indoors it smelled, as always, of damp paper and stale smoke, only now that smell made her heart beat faster, and she was possessed by a yearning nostalgia for her early days of living here, as if she had been happy then.

  Now she was home, and could relax. She made herself a cup of tea and sat down to look through the small stack of mail and magazines Gray had left for her, but halfway through she felt impelled to rush to the bathroom and check her vagina again, this time with the aid of a larger, magnifying mirror, and a small flashlight. When she had assured herself there was nothing there, she had a bath and washed her hair. The water was only lukewarm, because she hadn't left the heater on for long enough, but she felt compelled to have a thorough wash, in case any trace of either the pillow friend or Alex had survived the shower she'd had before leaving his house. Nothing that she had done in Texas could be allowed to contaminate her life here, or her marriage. She was convinced her only safety lay in forgetting. It had been a time of madness, but it was over now. Graham must never know, never suspect.

  After she had changed into a clean, if slightly musty-smelling, sweat suit she found in the bedroom wardrobe, she unpacked her suitcase. Everything in it would have to be washed, and she noticed that the laundry basket was full. A trip to the launderette at the bottom of the road was obviously called for. She didn't really feel like leaving the familiar safety of their house until she'd seen her husband, but it would be hours before he got home, and those hours had to be filled somehow. Gray would be pleased she'd done his washing, she thought; he hated the launderette more than she did.

  She was exhausted and finding it impossible to concentrate by the time she got back. Some of the images which came into her head unexpectedly were as vivid as flashbacks, and frightened her badly. She made herself a cup of coffee and tried to eat some bread and cheese, but when she dozed off with her mouth full of bread she decided to stop fighting it. She put away the clean clothes, stripped off her own, and crawled into bed. She was asleep in seconds.

  A high, shrill scream of terror sliced into her sleep.

  “What is it?” She sat up, heart pounding, and felt around on the bedside table for her glasses. Without them she could only see Graham—even in dim and fuzzy outline she knew him—standing stock-still in the middle of the floor.

  She got her glasses and focused on his face. “What's wrong? Did you scream?”

  “Jesus Christ! You might have told me—I wasn't expecting—I thought the house was empty, I thought I was alone, and then I see someone in the bed—Jesus!” He seemed to be trembling, patting at himself; not until he located the pack of cigarettes did she recognize the familiar gesture.

  “I tried to call you, but . . .”

  “You couldn't have tried very hard.”

  Guilt settled like a heavy quilt around her shoulders. “I'm sorry. I was staying—out in the country. My aunt's old place, you remember. And there's no phone. I did try to call as soon as I got back to Houston, but there was no answer.”

  “You should have tried again.”

  “I know. I'm sorry. I thought I'd wait until I knew what plane I was going to be on, but by then you were out. I didn't want to wait; I got the first plane I could.” There was a burning sensation in her throat; she wished he would smile at her, put his arms around her, hug her, tell her he was glad to see her. The words came out in spite of herself. “Aren't you glad to see me?”

  He looked at her. “Of course I am. Just a bit—shaken. You don't know how I—how worried I was, not hearing from you, especially after I called your sister and she didn't know where you were. She said you'd vanished. Where were you?”

  “I told you. I went to East Texas. My, my aunt's house. Where my mother was headed when she died. I didn't realize—I didn't mean to be gone long; time just kind of . . .” She trailed off, realizing, as she spoke, that she still didn't know how long she had been away, how many days she had spent in the old house in the woods. She was reluctant to ask, to be precise about her sins and remind him of her guilt; later she could find a newspaper, discover today's date, get out her desk diary to find out when she had left, and reconstruct her time away for herself.

  “You've lost weight.”

  She remembered she was naked and pulled the sheet up over her breasts. “I'm sorry.”

  Finally he smiled. “Well, don't apologize! It looks good. You were just a little bit plump, before. I have missed you, you know. And I was worried. But now you're here and everything is all right again. Come on, get dressed and I'll take you out to dinner.”

  It turned out to be her birthday. Graham thought it was funny she'd forgotten. “It's supposed to be the husband who forgets things like that, not the wife—not her own birthday!”

  He had no presents for her: he hadn't expected her back. He promised to take her out shopping on Saturday, to find something she liked, but in the meantime they would celebrate with a meal out. He suggested that, as it was a pleasant evening, they walk to a nearby restaurant. Everything looked strange to her, hyper-real and glowing from an invisible source of light, like an airbrushed painting. She couldn't get a fix on what time it was: he had just come home from school, and the angle of light seemed that of late afternoon, yet they were going out to dinner.

  “It's summertime,” he said patiently. “It'll be light until nearly eight. Even later next week. Don't you remember from last summer?”

  “It's too cold to be summer.” She had put on a dress in deference to his idea of celebration, but then had to go back for a sweater.

  “Not for an English summer. You're still on Texas time, that's all.”

  She was hungry, but when she looked at the menu in the restaurant she saw nothing she wanted to eat. It was all meat, it seemed to her, all the unequivocal meat and potato dishes he liked. She wished she had thought to suggest the Italian or the Chinese restaurant; she could just about manage a plate of noodles. But now that they were here she couldn't say anything. This was his special treat for her and she mustn't spoil it.

  “Why don't you have a steak and a glass of wine?”

  “Oh, I don't really feel like a steak . . . my stomach's a little . . . I want something a little less . . .”

  “Well, I'm
going to have the gammon steak. With the fried mushrooms to start. Will you have a starter?”

  She went for the leek and potato soup, to be followed by fillet of plaice.

  Her soup was very salty, but she managed to get it all down, not wanting to make a fuss. She could feel him willing this evening, their reunion, to go well. She wouldn't let herself think about what it would mean if things did not go well.

  When the main course arrived she could hardly believe her eyes. Set on the table before Graham was a real-life, grown-up-sized version of the dollhouse meal she'd found so compelling as a child. There was the mysterious pink meat, filling almost the whole plate. It also had the strange round circle on top; a circle she could now positively identify as a ring of pineapple, fresh from the can.

  “What is it?”

  “Gammon. What does it look like?”

  She told him, eager to share, but she could see that he did not understand.

  “I always wanted to know what it tasted like, I always wanted to be able to eat it, and I couldn't. It was like fairy food, and now I see it's something real. . . .” As she bumbled on, elaborating, trying to make him see, she found it becoming less clear even to herself. Wanting to eat a doll's food? What kind of nonsense was that? Yet as she watched him carve out a piece with knife and fork and lift it to his mouth she was almost overwhelmed with envy. That he should be able to eat it when she had never managed to, when it didn't even matter to him—

  “Please, could I have a bite?”

  She had known he would look like that. He couldn't stand sharing a plate or a glass, would never offer or accept “a bite”—it was one of his “things.” He had told her that in Texas, instructing her in his idiosyncrasies, and had reminded her very firmly on the occasions when she'd slipped up and offered him a bite of her sandwich or asked for a taste of his ice cream.

  “If you wanted gammon you should have ordered it. I said you could have whatever you wanted.”

  “But I didn't know gammon was what I wanted! I don't even know what gammon is! Oh, please, Gray, I just want to taste it—I wouldn't ask if—please, it's really important to me.”

  “And my feelings aren't. How can you do this when I've told you, when you know how I feel—here, take the bloody thing.” He lifted up his plate and thrust it at her across the table.

  She moved her own plate of fish, untouched, to one side, and put the plate of gammon in its place. His anger had already settled as an indigestible lump in her stomach but not even that could overwhelm her curiosity, her long-standing desire to taste this impossible food. Trembling, she ate.

  “It's ham!”

  He shrugged.

  “You said gammon.”

  “Gammon is ham. That's a gammon steak. It's the cut, I suppose, or maybe the fact that it's cured. I don't know why it's called that. Don't you like it?”

  “Well—it's ham, that's all.” She felt a great, sad disappointment. “I'm sorry, I—”

  “I don't want it back. I've told you before. It's yours now.”

  “Well—we can trade. Is the fish all right for you? I haven't touched it.”

  “It'll have to be, won't it? If I want any dinner at all.”

  She passed her plate across to him, pleading with her eyes. “I'm sorry, Gray.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “I am! I didn't want to spoil your dinner.”

  “But you did, didn't you? Who made you, then? If you didn't want to, why do it?”

  “I told you—I tried to explain—when I was a kid I used to have these fantasies about what that meat was and how it would taste—I thought it was an imaginary food, not something I'd ever get to see in real life. And there it was—I had to try it, I had to taste it—don't you see? Can't you see that?”

  “I could if you were seven years old. But you're not a child. You're supposed to be grown up. You're thirty years old.”

  Before she went to bed she locked herself in the bathroom to examine her vagina once again. Having annoyed Graham, she knew he would not be interested in her sexually tonight, but she was still wary. As before, she could see nothing and feel nothing with her fingers. She thought that even the faint sensation of blockage was gone, although after so much poking and prodding and worrying it was hard to remember what “normal” felt like.

  By the next morning, she had convinced herself that everything was back to normal. The last physical trace of the pillow friend had vanished, dissolved inside her, she supposed, and all she had to concern herself with was forgetting.

  She called Alice, hoping they could meet for lunch or for drinks after work. Gray would be home late—after school he was going into the West End to have dinner with his agent. He'd apologized: he'd made the appointment thinking she'd still be away, when he was looking for alternatives to another lonely night in. Agnes didn't fancy a long day on her own, but Alice was rather abrupt on the phone, saying she was very busy, finally agreeing to lunch on Wednesday.

  Hanging up, Agnes wished she could think of someone else to call, but she hadn't made any other friends in England. She imagined that the people she had worked with so briefly in her publicity job would already have forgotten her; she couldn't think of any real reason for trying to arrange to meet any of them.

  She went into the bedroom and sat down at her desk. The sooner she got back to her work, the better. But although she tried to start writing something, anything, even to answer a letter, the bed loomed at her back like a ghostly presence—she kept imagining that someone was in it, and had to turn around to look. If she didn't turn around to look the feeling got worse. Concentration was impossible.

  She went out, finally. She took the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square and found a newsstand where she could buy The Bookseller and Publishing News , and then she browsed in the bookshops on Charing Cross Road. Cappuccino and gooey chocolate cake in Soho, a visit to the British Museum, and the day was nearly gone. She thought about going to a movie or maybe even to the theater. Touts were selling cut-price tickets to Les Misérables in Cambridge Circus as she hurried past. She'd skipped breakfast and forgotten about lunch. She was hungry. In the streets around her the posher restaurants were opening for the evening; others had never closed. Fast-food or slow, she ignored them all, drawn by the memory of one not far away, on Tottenham Court Road. It was inexpensive and served hamburgers and pasta dishes, and featured a huge salad bar where you could eat all you wanted for a set price. Gray had taken her there a couple of times—good times, she remembered, because she had enjoyed it and he had been so pleased with himself for discovering this “American-style” restaurant. The waiters barely spoke English and it was full of tourists, singly and in groups. It was a place she knew she would feel comfortable eating alone, an easy, anonymous place.

  Arriving, she paused before the restaurant's big, plate-glass front to check the availability of tables. And she saw them, a few yards away on the other side of the glass, a man and a woman, her husband and his wife, Graham and herself.

  Her eyes slid away in denial—couldn't be, impossible—and fastened on the undeniable, on the man whose face and body she knew better than her own. It was unquestionably Gray, those long fingers resting on one side of the angular face, the deep lines around his mouth, the eyes slightly hooded and intent upon the woman he was with. And then, as he moved, leaning back in his chair as his hands began to grope for a cigarette, his gaze also shifted slightly and he saw her, his other wife, the one outside staring at him through glass.

  There was no denying the shock on his face, the shock of someone who has seen the impossible, a ghost, a doppelgänger. It was like seeing her own shocked face looking back at her. Before that could happen (she would not survive it) she turned and ran away.

  On the train going home she came to terms with what she had seen, and what it meant. She knew she wasn't a ghost, so if Gray was going out with somebody who looked exactly like her it had to be—it could only be—his pillow friend.

  “We have to talk,”
said Graham.

  Terror and exhilaration. All along he was the one she had wanted to talk to, but the subject had been impossible to raise. It was no longer impossible; she was no longer alone.

  They sat together in the poky little lounge in their usual places: she on the couch, he on a chair nearby.

  “This is so difficult,” he said. “I don't know how to start. You saw us; you must have some idea—but probably not the right one. I don't know; I don't want to hurt you; this is so difficult to explain.”

  Sympathy leaped up to meet the agony on his face. She wanted to take the pain away.

  “You don't have to explain. When I saw you this evening I knew—you have a pillow friend, too.”

  She could tell, as soon as she spoke, that he wouldn't have used the term “pillow friend.” But it didn't matter, because he'd understood.

  “You, too?”

  She could feel the dizzying heat of a blush but made herself sit still and look at him and say, “Yes. In Texas. It was such a strange thing, I didn't know how I could ever tell anyone, especially you, but when I saw you there at that table with me, I knew the same thing somehow must have happened to you.”

  There was such a strange look on his face: bewildered pleasure, triumph. He was happy, she realized; she had made him happy; she had finally done something right.

  “You screwed somebody in Texas?”

  “Well—not somebody—it was—”

  “She was right. I'm astonished. Alice said you would. She said it always happens at funerals, that it's some kind of hormonal imperative. She said I should have gone with you, and since I didn't it was my fault, I couldn't blame you for having it off with whoever happened to be available. I said you weren't like that; she said everybody was like that under the same circumstances.”

  “Alice? When did you talk to Alice?”

  “It was because I was feeling guilty. I thought she was just trying to make me feel better.”

  “You called Alice?”