The Possessions

by Sara Flannery Murphy

  Her quick contempt is like a strike. I shut and open my eyes, letting myself become immune. “What do I have to do?” I ask. “Just tell me.”

  “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “What does Ana do?”

  Jane doesn’t rise to the challenge. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “If you’ll work with her, it only seems fair to work with me.”

  “Life isn’t fair,” Jane says.

  “You’re right.” My spine lengthens. “For instance, what you’re doing, it wouldn’t look good if it ever got out. You might not be doing anything wrong yourself, but life isn’t fair. Other people might not agree.”

  At this, Jane looks up. “You’re not trying to blackmail me, are you?” She laughs once.

  “How many other people know what you’re doing here?” I ask. “I’m the only uninvolved person who knows. The others can’t expose you without revealing their own participation. But if you won’t sell me the lotuses, I don’t have any motivation to protect you.”

  It’s a flimsy argument, but in my mouth, the words are unflinching as weapons.

  The silence builds between us. Then Jane stands abruptly, slides open a long drawer on the opposite side of the desk. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, anyway,” she says, brittle. “Suit yourself, if it means that much to you.”

  Glancing over the edge of the desk, I see the wastebasket, a nest of crumpled paper. And a pair of eyes. A photo that’s been torn into pieces, leaving the strip of face from forehead to nose intact. I recognize the style of the portrait: I’ve assumed this pose myself, once each year. Hair pulled back, face scrubbed clean, standing against an unadorned white wall.

  These images are arranged in a photo album for prospective clients, our faces collected between white leather covers. I’ve imagined strangers sitting in Mrs. Renard’s office, suppressing tears, taut with that stubborn pride people draw on in painful moments. I imagine them examining me and deciding, yes, she’ll do, or moving past me without interest.

  The eyes in the wastebasket prick at my memory. I know her. Even from this small section of her face, I know her. Cloudy blue irises beneath eyebrows fine as pen strokes.

  “Here we are.” Jane’s hand withdraws, clutching an orange plastic bottle. Thin silhouettes of lotuses cluster like fingerprints. “I’ll give you eight to start with.” She pauses, looking me up and down. “You’ve brought money, I hope?”

  When Jane tells me how much it will cost, I know she’s watching me to gauge my reaction, taking a mean pleasure in this. I duck my head to hide my face. It’s three weeks’ pay, easily. Ana hadn’t mentioned this side of the arrangement.

  “Don’t worry,” Jane says. “You stand to earn it back and more, if you’re smart.”

  As she counts the money, I glance again at the eyes. They hold a hint of a smile, a faraway quality. The closed-off wisdom of an old morgue photo or a marble saint.

  Jane tips the lotuses off the edge of the desk into the mouth of an envelope. “The one rule I expect you to follow above all others, Eurydice, is this.” She pauses to lick the envelope flap, her tongue a startling wedge of wet pink. “Watch out for yourself,” she says. “You go into this with your eyes open. Don’t come crying to me if it’s not what you expected.”

  “Of course,” I say. “I won’t. I wouldn’t.”

  Jane holds the envelope out to me. After the briefest hesitation, the knowledge of everything I’m about to do teeming in my head, I accept.

  “The real shame is that you’re not cut out for this kind of work,” Jane says then. She speaks so flatly that I can’t tell whether she’s making a prediction or a threat. “I always hoped you’d keep away from this. You’re going to be eaten alive.”

  I call his office. It’s seeping into evening, but calling him while he’s at a public space feels like a safe compromise. The phone rings five times before he answers. “Hello?”

  I was expecting the buffer of a secretary. For a moment, it’s as if my lips have been sewn shut. “Mr. Braddock?”

  “Who is this, please?”

  He doesn’t recognize me. “Edie,” I say. “From the Elysian Society.”

  Patrick is quiet. Then: “Right. Of course. Hello.”

  I want to hold his voice inside my mouth and savor it. “Is this a bad time?”

  “No, you’re fine.” A rustle on the other end. A creak, as if he’s adjusting his weight in his chair. “So what is this about? Just a social call, or am I in trouble?”

  It’s the carefully cheerful tone that keeps other people at bay. Politeness as armor. “I wanted to—” I start, but the words lodge in my throat. “I want to make sure you’re doing all right,” I say instead.

  “Well, I am, thanks.”

  “We haven’t seen you lately.”

  “Things have been busy at work.” There’s silence for a moment, and I bite the slippery underside of my lip. “I wasn’t aware that I’d been gone long enough for anyone to notice,” Patrick says.

  “We’ve missed you at the Elysian Society,” I say.

  “How long has it been? A week?” His voice lightens even further, that false friendliness as sharp as a needle.

  It has been two weeks. It’s nearing the end of April now. Once, I would have agreed with him that fourteen days is nothing. Since I met Patrick, though, the passage of time has taken on a startling weight.

  “Mr. Braddock—” I begin.

  “Just Patrick. We don’t have to get formal.”

  “Patrick,” I repeat. “I’m calling because our last conversation concerned me, and I wanted to address that.”

  “All right.”

  “When you asked how long people stay at the Elysian Society, I could tell you were disappointed in my response.” It could be risky, saying it aloud. It’s possible he wasn’t disappointed at all, and that my words will plant that seed in Patrick’s mind.

  “I wouldn’t say disappointed,” he says after a moment. “Surprised. Maybe.”

  “You don’t feel closer to Sylvia,” I supply. “And you’re afraid you never will again.”

  A long silence. “I guess that’s true.” He laughs under his breath. “Am I that transparent?”

  “I’m calling you because I have an idea.” And I tell him, presenting everything to him as cleanly as possible: a business proposition. A legal contract.

  When I’m done, there’s silence on the other end. I rub my thumbnail against my thigh while I sit cross-legged on my bed, pressing the nail down hard into my flesh. I close my eyes and colors flower against the back of my eyelids. I open them again and look at the indented circles on the tender insides of my thighs.

  “I’d like that,” Patrick says at last.

  The next afternoon, I find Ana in the waiting room. She’s slumped and staring at the TV, dark brown eyes catching a reflected hint of the rushing waterfall on the screen. She runs a lock of hair through her fingers again and again; I watch the shiny black strands slide through her fingertips in a hypnotic rhythm.

  When I sit beside her, Ana starts, looking at me as if I’ve woken her from a deep sleep. “How have you been?” I ask.

  “Oh, fine, thank you.” She matches my formal tone with enough exaggeration to slip from sincere to mocking.

  I study the fine fan of her lashes, and her short, blunt hair held back with pins. She looks exhausted, shadows collecting underneath her eyes. “What happened with your client that night?” I ask, dropping my voice to a hush. “Are you still seeing him?”

  “God,” Ana says. She laughs under her breath. “One favor and you’re my mother?”

  “If he’s still bothering you, you can go to Mrs. Renard. I’d vouch for you, I’ve seen the way he acts.”

  “And you think she’d help me?” Ana asks. “Thanks anyway.” She sighs. “It’s not a big deal. Rob just wants more from me than I can give right now.”

  “What more could he want?” I ask.

  Ana visibly shakes herself, a quick
movement, as if she’s working an ache out of her muscles. “He wants me to go full-time,” she says. “Go permanent. He’s been riding me about it for a while, but it’s worse lately.”

  On the TV screen, a vast field of yellow flowers lies ringed by distant mountain peaks. Thousands of blossoms, so uniformly bright that they hurt my eyes.

  “He wants me to be her,” Ana continues. “Live with him. Wear her clothes. For a few months. Enough that he can be with her day in, day out, not just for a night at a time.”

  “Ana—” On the screen, a breeze blows across the surface of the blossoms, stirring them into a froth. Like waves moving over the water.

  “I need the money. I can’t even answer my phone anymore because I’m afraid of creditors, and—” Ana stops, a stubborn look pulling over her face. “Anyway. That’s why we fought. Now you know. Happy?”

  Ana, her hair dyed dishwater blond or flashy red, curling up next to a stranger at night and waking to kiss his cheek, changing into a too-small blouse that she never chose for herself. A wild sensation overwhelms me: too many doors flung open at once.

  She’s watching me. “Well, you look awfully calm,” she says. “Aren’t you going to tell me not to do it? That I have so much to live for, that I shouldn’t throw my life away for some heartbroken asshole?” When I don’t answer, she tries for a smile. It comes out a wince instead. “Yeah, I guess not,” she says. “Maybe it is a good plan for a girl like me.”

  “I never said that.”

  But Ana’s lost to me, her mouth crimped into an inflexible line, staring at the TV screen. After a second, I rise and leave, and it’s not until I’m moving back toward Room 12 that I realize I meant to ask her about the pale blue eyes, discarded in the wastebasket.

  SIXTEEN

  I sit on Patrick’s sofa, my bare feet tucked beneath me. It’s evening, the final day of April. I could reach out and wipe everything away: the cream-colored living room, Patrick’s body beside me, the dusky world beyond the window. But I’m here. The world is here.

  I wear a new dress, the one I tried on with Dora. I returned to purchase it just this morning. The fabric is the green of a furled bud, the neckline plunging low enough to expose my breasts. My mouth is dark and full with Sylvia’s lipstick.

  Patrick holds the slim stem of his wineglass. His fingers are long and thin, the fan of bones clearly visible. I lift my gaze to catch him watching me. He smiles and I turn away too quickly.

  The Braddocks’ house has enormous windows dominating the front, like a dollhouse with one side opened to the world. It’s a showy home, valuing pride over privacy. Where we sit now, anyone could look inside and see us arranged here. An ordinary couple. A man and a woman after a first date. A husband and a wife with a baby upstairs asleep. Lovers reconciling; lovers breaking apart.

  Up close, the rough edges show. I can tell that Patrick is attempting to make it a home again, and to a casual observer, nothing is too obviously out of place. It’s as if Patrick is a museum curator, rebuilding a convincing replica of a past he only knows through books. But the telling details present themselves one by one the longer I gaze around the room.

  The house has an unused smell. The light bulbs in the hallway don’t work; we had to pick our way through the gloom. The hard, shiny shell of a dead wasp, ruffled with legs and wings, curls against the leg of the coffee table.

  When Patrick lowers his wineglass, there’s a light stain on the chapped skin of his lips. I have the impulse to press my mouth against the mark.

  “Do all of your coworkers make house calls like this?” he asks.

  I smile, unsure, but his eyes over the edge of his wineglass are light and conspiratorial, inviting me in. “What I’m doing this evening is a service I’m providing on my own time.”

  “Well, I respect a woman who can take initiative.” Patrick lifts his glass in a brief toast.

  Framed photographs scatter across the bookshelves and against the wall. Sylvia smiles at me in duplicate. Music playing in the background covers the brief silence that hangs between us.

  “Your home is lovely,” I say.

  “Sylvia is responsible for most of the decorating,” Patrick says, glancing around as if noticing his living room for the first time. “I can’t take credit.”

  I imagine what Sylvia must have felt, during parties, during quiet evenings, surveying the home she’d designed. A child with a dollhouse, choosing the decorations she liked. And the husband smiling beside her.

  “Should I give you the grand tour?” Patrick says. He sets down his wineglass; it’s already empty. “I probably remember how to do this.”

  The entire house is beautiful, though I spot needling signs of neglect. In the kitchen, a cluster of amber bottles stands on the counter, a single fly buzzing greedily around one open mouth and then the other. A cupboard door hangs open, revealing empty shelves. I notice a thick pile of mail on an end table, envelopes flaking onto the floor.

  But I focus on the monuments to Sylvia’s taste that still stand: the rug so exquisitely soft that I shiver when I cross it in my bare feet. The windows are tall and bare, slicing up the outside world into private works of art.

  My mind returns to the photographs. The way I first saw the Braddocks’ lives, offered up in small pieces. A corner of a doorway, an edge of a window. I spun together my own version of their home. Walking through the reality now, the differences keep catching at me. The living room is larger than I expected. In the kitchen, the hallway branches off to the left instead of the right. I feel the other version of their home flickering, fading.

  I reach out and brush my fingertips along a wall to reassure myself.

  We reach a second hallway. Patrick flips a switch and the recessed lights glow like flat halos above us. We stand together, his elbow nearly touching mine. My breath comes quick and shallow. I feel an uncoiling inside me, something tight and inflexible finally loosening.

  “These are all photographs she took,” Patrick says in a hushed voice. It’s as if Sylvia is sleeping nearby and we might wake her. “Every year, we went on vacation right around our anniversary. Sylvia picked her favorite photo from each vacation.”

  The six framed photos take up half of the hallway, trailing off like an unfinished sentence. One photo shows terracotta soldiers, their faces static but alive and alert. In the next photo, the ungainly lines of Stonehenge rise against a mute gray sky.

  Patrick stops in front of a narrow cobblestone street, wet red pansies in the windowsills. “I wanted to show her everything she’d missed before we met.” He reaches out to wipe dust from the lip of the frame, leaving a streak of shiny darkness.

  When he speaks, his voice is careful. “Anyway. To finish the tour.”

  There’s a door at the end of the hall, hanging open. I follow Patrick, but he pauses at the threshold, pushing the door so that it swings inward. I see a bed that seems to take up most of one wall.

  If there’s a moment to turn back, it’s now. Patrick and I look at each other. We don’t look away. I feel at once as if I’m not here at all and as if I’m the only woman who’s ever lived on this planet. In my years working as a body, I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be desired.

  And I want him back. It’s a pure greed that cuts through everything else. I want him. It seems impossible that I could channel what I feel into any other pursuit, any other direction, without destroying everything in its path.

  Patrick pulls me into his arms. For a moment, the fierceness of desire fades, and I’m astonished by the simplicity of being held against another body. My contact with other people has been so stingy, doled out in accidental touches. This close, I can feel Patrick’s heart beating through the fabric of his shirt. His chin is rough against my cheek.

  I’m the one who kisses him first.

  When I pull back, he stops me, holding onto my wrists. “Where are you going?” he asks. Although I’m already breathless, his voice stays soft and unhurried.

  “I thought you wanted her
.”

  “I want to be with you first,” he says.

  I hesitate. “That wasn’t part of the agreement.”

  “But it’s what you want?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It’s what I want.” It feels as if I’ve never said anything this true before. Even just admitting that I want something is arousing.

  Patrick’s grip tightens. He pulls me toward him. “If it’s what you want, then you should have it,” he says, as if it’s always been this simple.

  My shorn dress on the bedroom floor is iridescent green, like the husk an insect leaves behind. We’re on the bed. The sheets are thick with his scent. The pillows indented, blotchy and misshapen. I can’t get enough. It’s thrilling how used everything feels. Compared to the cool anonymity of Room 12, Patrick’s bedroom is opulent with odors and clutter.

  In the mirror across from the bed, my hair is tangled and my eyes are wet and luminous. I’m feral. A creature awakened from a long slumber.

  Afterward, I lie across the bed. I’m dazed and pulsing, someone cast up on an unfamiliar shore and slowly returning to consciousness. When I glance down the length of my body, I could be encountering a stranger. I didn’t recognize the voice that issued from my throat while we were together.

  Patrick strokes my hair away from my forehead. When he kisses me, I catch an unfamiliar taste on his lips and realize that it’s me.

  “I liked that.” I’m still unguarded enough to say such naked things.

  He laughs, low and intimate. We lie together, Patrick loosely embracing me. The uncurtained windows overlook the backyard. An impression of thick foliage, the night pressing up against the glass, as if we’re alone in the middle of an enchanted forest. I’m tired, suddenly, my eyelids weighted.

  Dark water leaks at the edges of my consciousness, then swells from a trickle to a roar, rushing over my head.

  it can’t last

  it never does

  “Edie.”

  With effort, I open my eyes. Patrick looks down at me, face half in shadow.

  He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t have to. I remember. And while I was compliant before, now there’s a glimmer of stubbornness. I don’t want this to end just yet. The two of us.