Girl in Profile

by Zillah Bethell

  I stare at the grey hair curling in that strange way hair does after chemotherapy, remembering the sleek black bob she used to sport. “It doesn’t sound stupid. Are you sure you can drive?”

  “Yep.” She gets into her Mini. “I can see round the corners now.”

  We laugh and wave away.

  “Why does Jamie’s mum want to go back into hospital?” Dove asks.

  “They have tasty food in hospital.”

  “Do they have fish fingers and green custard?”

  “Probably.”

  I hold her hand very tight as we cross the road. Suddenly my eyes are stinging like mad.

  Elizabeth

  Death

  Dear James,

  It seems to me we teach children to count through metaphors of death. The speckled frogs that fall off logs after eating the most delicious grubs, the monkeys falling out of bed, the ducklings that swim away and don’t come back. They don’t come back. We go one by one with our doubts, our fears, our regrets, our loose ends, hoping death will tuck us in, hoping there are beds.

  Gwen

  My Property

  I bought that house in Meudon, with the neglected garden.

  Elizabeth

  What are Days For?

  Days pass by, full of nothing. A glass of red wine. A soap opera. And what happened to all the characters? What happened to him? What happened to her? What happened to that one? In the end, all narratives twist into one. All women become one woman.

  Gwen

  The Strange Form

  Turn gently back to your work. Take a leaf, a flower, study the strange form. Become God’s little artist, God’s little flourish. Be a saint in your work if you can’t be in your personal life. Too much vanity. Too much care for material things. Too much sensual reverie. I have said my prayers. I have fed the cat. I have tucked myself in. I have re-achieved a state of innocence. I should like to go and live somewhere where I meet nobody I know until I am so strong that people and things could not affect me beyond reason. Leave everybody and let them leave you. Only then will you be without fear.

  Technique

  Observation:

  The strangeness, colours, tones, personal form.

  Execution:

  Mixing of colours, lines in pencil, background, personal form out of background.

  Moth

  That Argument Carousel

  I wash, Drew dries. Ro’s in front of his Wii and Dove’s colouring in a mermaid on her new paper tablecloth. I enjoy these quiet interludes, Drew and I bent over a household task. I tell him about the photographic exhibition in Cardiff.

  “What sort of photographs? Snapshots of people’s lives?” He takes a dishcloth, poses ridiculously.

  The crack of grin I exhibit sets him off. We have hot guy at the oven in apron, hot guy cleaning his teeth, hot guy doing a dump pose…

  “I don’t know how you have the energy. I think the photos will be a bit more sophisticated than that. Adam thought Roan might like them.”

  “Adam? Roan’s at school.”

  “I know. I said I’d come with Dove.”

  His eyes are cool as a cucumber left in the fridge too long. Frozen in the centre. A little wet at the edges.

  “I wish I had time to go about to exhibitions.”

  And off we go on our old carousel of love and hate. He takes the chestnut Resentment and I hop on the dapple grey Taken for Granted. We must look like idiots, sound like idiots, chasing each other round and round, never catching up, never gaining ground. Roan turns up the volume on the Wii, Dove’s pen goes through the tablecloth.

  Yes, I’ve been looking after children for the last ten years, any fucking idiot can do that, can’t they? You don’t need a brain, you don’t need any physical stamina, never mind that I’ve produced two super brainy, super beautiful kids – that’s just chance, sheer fluke, nothing to do with the spinach I ate, the walks I walked, the birthing balls I rolled over, the fanny exercises I did, and I got through it all without a blemish to my body, not even a varicose vein, a single stretch mark, and believe me that’s no mean feat considering the other women I’ve seen with their tits down to their cunts and their stomachs like road kill.

  I’m so fucking angry I could punch the lights out of the stars, and I chuck the milk bottles in the recycling bin by mistake, which reminds me I have to pay the milkman tomorrow. That’s the kind of thing I have to hold in my head. If Drew had to do that his head would fucking explode. His dinner plate’s so full, getting up and going to work in the morning. How fucking awful having to get up every day and trot off in your little white van stringing up the lights in some attic. I wish one day you’d get fucking electrocuted – whizz bang, off you go – then I could go to all the photographic exhibitions I want, and I could have sex with whoever I wanted without feeling any guilt, and the mortgage would be paid off, which would be an added bonus. Sorry, Drew. Sorry, God. I didn’t really mean that. Maybe a small zzzzz just to jolt some respect into you.

  And now I’ve stepped in dog shit taking out the recycling, so I suppose I’ll have to clean that up, even though it’s not my job, under the outside tap, which comes on and off like it’s got a massive prostate, which reminds me I’ve got to pay the water rates. That’s the kind of detail I have to hold in my head. If Drew had to remember that he’d probably discombobulate. He thinks he can see the big picture without studying the minutiae. Well, you can’t. You have to study the minutiae very very hard if you want to see the big picture.

  Elizabeth

  The Truth

  Dear James

  I am very old. I live in a home. I was never a ballerina, I was a mother. But do not think training to become a mother is inconsequential. There is sweat, sweat and more sweat. Behind every ethereal being is a surprisingly muscular sphincter/frou-frou/heart. My son makes documentaries. My daughter is a scientist. They flew so high and sang so loud and I’m just a stale old fart they shut the door on. Keep the door shut. Keep the door shut. Reducing, reducing to a room, to a book, to a picture, to a box. Don’t let her out. Did you know Margot Fonteyn never had any children? Anna Pavlova never had any children. How could they fly with all that weight?

  Gwen

  Regrets

  Children’s faces are secretive, mysterious. Their beauty is in the potential, the yearning. I sketch them in broad, thick, innocent strokes. Sometimes it makes me sad to think they will always be remote to me. They will never be mine.

  My Garden

  I cultivate my garden. Prepare the soil. Dig deep. Break up the hard, proud clods. Pull the sinewy, tightly bound weeds. Rake and sift till it’s fine grained as flour. Plant the good seeds. Tend. Water. Nurture. Await the sun, the birdsong. I’ll arrange flowers so you won’t know where the vase starts and the blooms end. I’ll achieve such a state of grace that you won’t know where my body starts and my soul ends.

  Moth

  Not Deep Enough for Snow Angels

  We get lost in the light blue gallery, the dark blue gallery, the dove-grey gallery. Squeaking and giggling over the parquet floor. A black-suited attendant puts her finger to her lips and tells us that if we leave our bag on the bench she won’t be responsible, which defies logic even for me.

  We stop by a painting of a Japanese doll with very big feet.

  “Has she come out of the musical box?” Dove whispers.

  “Probably. She can’t dance until the music starts.”

  And a picture of the artist’s room covered in a gauzy membrane of light like vernix.

  “Hi.”

  It’s Adam wearing a buttoned white shirt. Smart yet casual, same as me. Smelling very clean, just in case. Same as me.

  “Gwen John. She had an affair with Rodin.”

  “Who?”

  “The French sculptor, Rodin. Haven’t you heard of him?”

  “No.”

  “Did you get an education?”

  He’s an intellectual; the ghost of my mother chills the hairs on my neck.

 
; “It was a very passionate affair, though a little one-sided. Look at this one, Girl in Profile.”

  I look at a picture of a girl with a turned-up nose and pink tones in her hair like Tonks from Harry Potter.

  “She drew in a mauve ribbon then changed her mind and scratched it out. Didn’t do a very good job though. You can still see it.”

  I peer hard, struggling to see the details. Yes the ribbon’s still there. I imagine the process of painting, regretting, scribbling out.

  “Why not just repaint in a glossy new colour?”

  “We’re not talking Dulux in those days,” he smiles.

  “Yes, but why leave evidence of the mistake?”

  “Maybe she wanted to show her flaws. Maybe she thought her flaws could be beautiful.”

  He’s licking me out and I can barely breathe. This is obscene.

  “D’you want to get a coffee?”

  “Oh, yes please.”

  We trot down the stairs, past a statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa – yuk – to the cafeteria, where Adam orders a latte (I feel very cosmopolitan) and an apple for Dove.

  “Shall I chop it up?”

  “No, I can just bite into it, Mummy.”

  We sit on a table next to two middle-aged women, one very hunched, talking about their dog, Bruno, and a man reading a bird-spotting book. I wonder if people think we’re a family and the thought kind of pleases me.

  “Whenever I come to Cardiff I’m always surprised how the pavements are buckling with tree roots.”

  “Roots too big for their boots,” I grin.

  “Oh, very good.”

  We stare at each other. Those hands. Those eyes. That hair. We’re making love already in the dark-blue gallery. I’m unbuttoning that white shirt by the thumb-smudged statue of The Earth and Moon. In front of onlookers.

  Dove nibbles at her apple.

  “What do you do? Apart from looking after the kids.”

  Apart from guiding their spiritual, physical, mental growth? Apart from keeping everything in my head from their haircuts to their shoe size, their IQ to their eyesight? Every atom of their cells’ health. Whether they should do Mandarin or Cantonese, ballet or t’ai chi. Whether I’m too controlling, not controlling enough. Whether in the end I’ll fuck them up. “Nothing.”

  “But you must have done something before. Wanted to do something.”

  “I wanted to be a dancer.”

  “Oh, of course, you’ve got the body for it.”

  He has to say that. He has a little bit of cream above his top lip like in those romantic films, and the person has to indicate that there’s a bit of cream on the top of the other person’s lip but they can’t find where it is, so in the end the person has to wipe it for them in that intimate caressing way. But he just wipes it with the back of his hand and the moment’s gone.

  “My life revolves around the kids.”

  “So where do you fit in?”

  I’m the crux, the fulcrum. The piece of the jigsaw without which you can’t see the picture. I’m the small detail without which their lives make no sense. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you want to find out?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Look.” His hands touch mine. Those long-fingered hands. The woolly mammoth must feel that touch in the frozen pipes of the ice age.

  Dove bites her apple and spits the pips, and I feel the drunkenness of all things.

  “I’m going to Tenby next weekend. I was wondering if you could get away.”

  Get away? I haven’t got away in nine years. How can I get away now? What excuse could I give? Who would brush their teeth properly? Their hair properly? I think of Drew on the mat ready to comfort them if they wake from a nightmare and I know I can’t take this step. My whole body is suffused with Drew and these children. How could I forget my history with them even for an instant?

  “It’s like that ribbon,” I say in the end, after those smashed sapphire eyes have penetrated me again and again and again in a Tenby motel overlooking the sea. “You can scratch it out but it’s still there.”

  We’re done before we’ve begun and he knows it. “What about the photographs?”

  “You see them. I don’t need to.” I don’t need to see pictures reminding me of my own life, reminding me of lives I’ll never have.

  I take Dove’s hand and walk out of the museum. Snow is falling, frosting Lloyd George punching the air and two children trying to make snow angels, but it’s not deep enough for that yet. Not deep enough for snow angels. It falls like the sound of a small animal scurrying home. In my white shirt I’m camouflaged. Invisible.

  Elizabeth

  Cigarettes are Cool

  Hi young one,

  Hope things are in your favour. We had a little excitement here as nine guys got locked up over a kite (letter) someone put in to staff. Supposedly a plan was being made to assault the chaplain, our unit manager, and one officer I believe as well. Three people anyhow. Conspiracy to commit a felony is what they’re in suspicion of. Most of the nine people were Muslim and they thought the chaplain had it in for them. The chaplain can be a jerk who thinks we shouldn’t be allowed anything. I don’t care for him, but I sure don’t want him hurt or dead. To be honest, he came down on all the religions here. He has no favourites.

  The Christmas season is upon us. It gets crazy as heck over here with all the shoppers, people decorating inside and out with lights, lamps, sleighs and reindeer. There’s a lot of time and money spent on decorations and such.

  Sounds like my dad’s not doing real well. My aunt keeps me up to date on him. He refuses to have anything to do with me as well as my kids. Spent his life smoking cool cigarettes, when he got about sixty he wound up in hospital with gallstones. Doctor told him then if you want to live a little longer he needed to quit. It’s your choice, live or die, it’s up to you. I should add he drove a truck, and it was as much a nervous habit as well as a physical. I’d say he smoked between 4 to 5 packs a day. I don’t remember him without a cigarette in his hand or mouth. Never had much to do with my brother or me. He’s got emphysema bad, and he’s on oxygen. He’s a likeable guy, but he never took care of the ones who’d take care of him one day. I hate to see him suffer, but we all make our choices then we have to live with them. How well I know that.

  Around here you get a little stir-crazy. I read and write, listen to music on my iPod. My ex-wife writes me once in a while, she never speaks of my kids or my relationship. She tells me how they’re doing, sends me a few pictures. She said I could call but I had to pay for it. I guess it’s a sad world all round. Guess I’m done rambling…

  Gwen

  Gloria

  The girl in a blue dress brings eggs and milk from the farm. I call her Gloria though it is not her real name. But she is glorious. She has the kind of beauty that could live in a sonnet – that dark wing of hair, the straight brows, heavy lidded eyes, lily delicacy of skin. She is so fresh she reminds me of a clean-swept room. Promise of a new day. The chortling dawn. Her lover is a soldier. But he will not return, she says, which is why she wears blue – his favourite colour. Wherever he is, we are looking at the same sky. She has cried a river of tears over him. I shall paint her waiting for her lover, her soul and body dry as chalk, her dress the riverbed.

  Moth

  Punching Air

  “Did you get an education?” The words still bite me and I spend the rest of the week researching Rodin and Gwen John. Order thirty-two postcards of the Kiss and then, two days later, thirty-two postcards of Girl in Profile. Show them to Drew.

  “Why thirty-two?” His eyebrows are halfway over his scalp.

  I shrug. “My age.”

  “So you’re telling me,” he sighs, “that by the time you’re sixty-five we’ll have a hundred and thirty of these fuckers in the house?”

  I try to laugh but I can’t and, seeing the look on my face, Drew does the clichéd thing and takes me in his arms.

  Gwen

 
Spinsterhood

  To persist through all wrong turnings, dead ends, false starts, set backs. TO PERSIST IS EVERYTHING.

  I’m so fucking lonely. I WAIT AND WAIT FOR GOD’S GRACE AND HE DOESN’T SHOW UP. HE DOESN’T COME. HE DOESN’T WRITE ANYMORE. HE IS TOO OLD AND DECREPIT TO GET IT UP.

  I’m a middle-aged spinster. Uptight. Loose down there. Very loose. Oh God, give me some moral fibre.

  Moth

  First Day

  Gruffalo rucksack. Plaits. Slightly too large uniform. New shoes. I flick an imaginary speck from her red cardigan.

  “I wish I was coming with you.”

  “You can’t. You’re an adult. You’re not allowed.”

  “I know.”

  “You will be a little bit bored. You will walk Freckles,” (we settled on Freckles), “probably have a cheese sandwich for lunch. I will have fish fingers and green custard.”

  “Probably.”

  We stand aloof amidst a maelstrom of mothers shouting, weeping, wailing, snotting – not to mention the children. When it’s time to go, Dove allows me to pat her on the head then walks quickly to the open door. I raise my hand to wave, but she doesn’t look back. I strain to see beyond the door. I think that’s her hanging her coat and bag on the peg. Her small shape moving away down the long dark corridor. To a new world. As if all her life’s been leading to this point. This new world. This death.

  Turning to go, I remember how she kicked like fuck in the stomach. Testing her boundaries, her parameters. Wanting to get out even then.

  Elizabeth

  Meds

  The urge I got every spring to go mushroom hunting. You may not have them over there, but in warm wet weather it makes the mushrooms explode out the ground, and for a few weeks every spring there’s a mad rush in Missouri to go and pick mushrooms. They’re the best eating thing on the planet. At least a lot of Midwest USA people think so. I used to turkey hunt every spring and fall as well, and fish some in the summer. I was active once a year round fourth of July in our annual illegal hand fishing get together. Like I say, changing seasons I’m reminded of my past life.