Hair Side, Flesh Side

by Helen Marshall

  Clarissa, unexpectedly, has forgotten the art of dying and so she is here waiting for Paul.

  “You’re late,” she says.

  “Not that late.” His answer is well-timed, funny, and Clarissa is worried that she may be in love with him.

  II.

  Consciousness.

  Her body is soft, moving lithely, sweat-locked beneath a linen sheet. She can feel it rubbing against her back like sandpaper, and then hitched like a coarse rope around her hips as she leans back, into him.

  The body beneath her thrusts, sending a column of electricity up her spine. For a moment there are stars in front of her eyes, as the blood pulses. She can feel him within her, moving. It always starts like this.

  A thought: I am happy.

  This time her mouth jerks open and the muscles in her forehead tense. Her cheeks are hollow. Sound reverberates in them, the quick beats of her breath.

  She is leaning back, and his body lurches upward.

  She is in love. His hands are beautiful against her, fingers beautifully smooth as if he had no fingerprints.

  It is often at this moment that Clarissa awakes. That thought—I am happy—and the next one: I will die. But Clarissa is still nothing more than the whisper of consciousness. She is watching this scene, here-but-not, peering through the cracked doorway of this other body.

  The hips beneath her lift up one last time, and the blanket slips away entirely. She is lifted free, spasming blissfully, that tiny niggle of doubt disintegrating in the rush.

  I am happy, thinks the self that owns the body. I am happy. And I will never die.

  The doorway closes. Clarissa feels consciousness sliding sideways away from her.

  Then, nothing.

  III.

  The next time Clarissa wakes, she feels the heavy weight of a bookbag slung across her shoulders. She remembers: Lorna Crozier, P. K. Page, The History of Criticism. She is late for class, standing on the curb at Queen’s Park. The grass smells musty, and there is more mud than life here. Winter has only begun to thaw, and the scent of it tickles inside her nose, all those things falling apart and being put back together again.

  She has made this crossing many times. Everyone has. The City of Toronto never built a crosswalk at this particular juncture, but rather moved it twenty metres along the crescent. No one waits for that light. The most direct path is to cross here, racing the traffic.

  But it is easy. She’s done it for months. Just watch the lights two blocks away and you can catch the beat of the traffic flow, find your place to slip through.

  Today she is distracted. She is thinking about the taste of him, the scratch of the new lace bra rubbing her the wrong way since she put it on this morning. It’s a beautiful piece of work, all shiny black, the kind you see in movies. She knows he will like it. She is wearing it for him.

  And then she steps out.

  The cyclist swerves, nearly knocks into her with the front tire, but instead a flailing leg catches her in the thigh. The bike is off-kilter now, and the cyclist struggles to get his balance, his foot on the pedal, the wheels straightened. That’s when he hits the curb. Already there is a car racing past her, honking. She gasps and takes a step back.

  The surge of adrenaline brings Clarissa to life. Her eyes blink in that girl’s head. The cyclist is lying in the mostly mud of the park, and the back wheel is spinning.

  Clarissa sees it happening again. The bike speeding into her, her body crumpling or spinning, like that back wheel, out into the street.

  Air is suddenly difficult to find.

  “I am going to die,” a piece of her says, the I-am-in-love girl who had put on the beautiful lingerie this morning, had picked it out from the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, and who now feels the rawness of the skin circling her chest.

  Inside is a different kind of rawness. Clarissa can see, although the girl, the other girl, cannot: the train racing towards her. It is two months away, but they both know it is coming, something, death. “I am a piece of your death,” she whispers. And then: “Don’t be afraid. Please.”

  And that is why Clarissa is here. She knows how to die, like the other girl does not.

  Already, she feels synapses firing, the network of tissues responding to her thoughts, her impulses. The other girl is something fluttering in the corner of her ribcage. Clarissa calms her. Their shared heartbeat steadies. Clarissa recedes with the cool wash of restored composure. The other girl fills her lungs, bears the abusive shouts of the cyclist, mud-covered, starting to turn over his twisted bike.

  Air. Breath. The door is closing for Clarissa, the last sliver of consciousness knifing away. This time, something remains. Inside the girl is a hard kernel of knowledge, the kind that makes her skin bleed sweat, and brings a kind of tightness to her throat.

  She is going to die.

  Clarissa waits.

  IV.

  On Tuesday, as Clarissa wraps glasses and bowls in newspaper, she stares outside the window. A plane descends slowly toward Pearson Airport. The arrow-straight line of its flight pattern is beautiful. Sometimes chaos looks orderly from a distance, she thinks. From here, it is impossible to tell if the plane is making a controlled descent or tumbling through space, having lost power. You couldn’t tell, from down here, if the engines were working, the pilot calm, the passengers sleepy, or relieved, or anxious to be on the ground.

  She thinks about chaos, and flight lines, and the inescapable force of gravity. In that moment, she bitterly wants it to be over. Even if it hurts.

  This waiting is terrifying and she wishes it would just stop. Stop and be done.

  This is a new thought for her. She has never been scared, the other times.

  The phone rings and she picks it up.

  “Amanda, is that you?”

  She breathes in, says nothing. Amanda. That was the other self’s name.

  “Mandy, I’ve been calling you for days. Why won’t you just talk to me?” A pause. He is upset. “Did I—did I do something wrong?”

  Clarissa recognizes the voice. It the man whom she—Amanda—was in love with, months ago, perhaps even days ago. Richard. His name was Richard.

  Another disruption to the pattern. Normally, she would feel the residual emotion. She would care more, want to comfort him. To prepare him for what is to come. The other girl flutters in her mind, beating against the inside of her ribcage like a fly against glass.

  “Shhh,” she says. And she realizes she has spoken aloud.

  “Mandy? Mandy, are you there?” The voice is strained. “Just say something! You’re really scaring me. Everyone. Jamie said you’re packing up your apartment. Does that mean . . . do you want to move in, after all?”

  She puts the receiver gently back on the phone.

  The room is still now. Somewhere, kilometres away, the plane is on the ground and people are gathering their belongings.

  She puts a hand to her cheeks and finds unexpected tears there. She closes her eyes, counts to ten in a slow exhale, and turns back to the cupboard.

  V.

  Clarissa takes Paul’s jacket, and places it neatly on one of the few hangers in the otherwise bare cupboard.

  “Are you moving?” he asks as he surveys the place: a beautiful two-bedroom apartment right on the edge of Forest Hill. Mandy loved this place, the huge bay windows in the solarium, the tiny stained glass lily pad in the door, the way her feet moved drunkenly across the uneven, renovated floors. Sometimes, Clarissa sees it through her eyes. Normally, it is much easier but the contact is weak, broken.

  That is why Paul is here tonight. It should have been the man who had called her, voice panicky with concern, but it is not.

  Tonight it is allowed to be someone else.

  “Not me,” she replies. “A friend. I’m just helping her pack.”

  “She won’t mind me being here?”

  She smiles awkwardly, doesn’t answer, and takes a step toward him.

 
His hands are gentle as they take hers. She closes her eyes, breathes him in until her lungs reach their full capacity, ballooning in her chest. Their lips meet. He tastes sweet.

  Clarissa feels happy, like her lungs are filled with helium and she is rising off the floor until her head knocks gently against the ceiling.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispers after, a tiny smile. And then he cocks his head. “But you look sad.”

  “Moving pains,” she says. She kisses him again and steers him toward the couch. She packed up the bedroom two days ago and has been camping out in the living room with a blanket and a pillow. She wants to take up as little space as possible in this other person’s house.

  They make love, surrounded by stacked boxes labelled in steady handwriting.

  Something is knocking against her ribcage, but Clarissa does not allow herself to feel it. Instead, she feels Paul, his steady strength, the salty taste of his sweat in her mouth. He knows what he is doing, and Clarissa feels lightheaded as he urges her body towards climax.

  I am happy, she thinks. I am in love. And then: I will die.

  The knocking recedes.

  VI.

  On Wednesday, Clarissa opens the door to find Jamie. His clothes are characteristically wrinkled from a day at the office. He can never keep himself as tidy as he wants. He offers a half-shrug apology, embarrassed to be interrupting her unannounced.

  “Sorry for just dropping in. It’s been a couple of days, and Dad was wondering if you were going to be at the restaurant on Friday. You haven’t been picking up the phone.” His eyes re-punctuate the sentence with a question mark.

  Clarissa half-shrugs back, genetics taking over seam-lessly. She doesn’t let him inside.

  “I’ve been really busy with all these papers. But I’ll do what I can to make it.”

  “Listen, can I come in? I’ve been meaning to talk to you . . .” He puts his hand on the door to push it open.

  “It’s not a good time right now.”

  “Jesus, Mandy, do you have someone over there? Richard says you won’t talk to him.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him.”

  “Did the two of you have a fight?”

  “Well . . .” She bites her lip without knowing it. Mandy’s gesture. “It’s complicated. I’m worried about him. What might happen.”

  “So you’re, what, protecting him? By not speaking to him?”

  “It’s not that.” Clarissa doesn’t want the conversation to continue. Her body is already starting to slip from her control. “I love him,” she blurts out. “He wants to get married, and I want to marry him, really, Jamie, I want to marry him, but I can’t. I know I can’t.”

  She doesn’t know who is speaking anymore. “I want to move in with him. He just asked me. And I’ve got the key”—it had been sitting by the phone, waiting to be packed; Clarissa had almost forgotten it—“but something isn’t right. I don’t know how to explain.”

  Her hand slid off the door, and Jamie’s weight sent it open.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay to be scared.” He puts his arms around her, and all Clarissa can think is Paul, Paul, Paul while another woman sobs into his chest.

  “I’m not scared of moving in with him,” she whispers. “I’m scared of . . .”

  She does not finish the sentence. Jamie doesn’t notice. Clarissa can feel Amanda receding back now that the wash of emotions has begun to drain away, but she is angry. She does not want this body, this death.

  Take it, she thinks. I don’t want to live your life for you.

  I can’t, Amanda says. I don’t know how. Do it for me. I’m afraid.

  It is a child’s voice.

  Synapses fire. Clarissa can smell Jamie’s sweat, the faint traces of day-old aftershave. She knows he loves his sister, but he hates touching people like this. He never knows what to do with his hands.

  She pushes away him away, guiding him out the door.

  “I’ll be fine,” she says, shaking her head ruefully and sniffling against the back of her hand. “Thanks for coming. Really.”

  He looks uncertain, but also a little relieved. Poor man, she thinks. He’ll hate the funeral. All those grieving relatives to comfort.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Richard’s great, really. We’re great. I’m going to love living with him.” The words are stones.

  “I’ll see you Friday then? For Dad’s thing?”

  She nods and wipes tears from the corner of her eyes. Jamie is already halfway to his car by the time she opens her eyes.

  “Thanks,” she says. “It really was sweet of you to check up on me. Tell Richard I’ll see him soon.”

  She retreats into the house, and finds herself staring at the key. Her hand hovers over the phone. She remembers Richard’s number, his smile, the way Amanda’s heart hitched a little when he walked into a room.

  She dials.

  “Hi Paul. It’s me.”

  VII.

  “Where did you come from?” Paul whispers, teasing a tongue down the length of her thigh. “God, you’re an angel.”

  “I’m not,” she mumbles. Her arms are bent at a ninety-degree angle, propping her up on the leather cushion of the couch. She wants to be sad, but she is not. His fingers touch her again, and then his tongue.

  Clarissa cannot remember how many times she has folded clothes, placed them in boxes, written steepled messages in magic marker across the tops. She has lived inside of so many different bodies. She has died inside them all, sheltering that small, shuddering spirit and then gently releasing it once the pain has ended.

  People do not realize how early the body senses its own death. Time travels backwards, sending ripples from the shock that spin out in all directions. There is always a moment before when that sharp knife of fear seizes the mind. I will die.

  Time is moving strangely for her now. Paul is very gentle but very persistent. She rocks from her perched arms onto her back, and he follows, never stopping. Her body hums like a plucked string.

  “I’m gonna die,” Clarissa whispers into Paul’s hair, fine like cobwebs on her lips.

  He doesn’t hear. The unready body is taught to ignore those words.

  Death tastes strange in her mouth.

  VIII.

  It is eight in the morning on Thursday, and Clarissa is staring into the mirror. Paul waits, shirt off, warmly naked, in the other room while she brushes her teeth. Except her fingers have forgotten how to move. The water is running, and she stares at the face in the mirror. Pretty enough, even marred by sleep. Grey eyes. Hair like lace. The curve of a petite nose and a slightly stronger chin. She moves in the light, watching shadows fall in different places, over lips, cheeks, hands when she holds them up.

  “This is yours,” she whispers. “Come take it from me. You should be doing this.”

  Nothing. Amanda is silent.

  She remembers her first death. She was twelve years old, and there was something growing inside her brain. Her parents had nothing for her but brittle, plastic smiles and too many hugs. But she hugged them back, although they were strangers, and laughed and ate ice cream. Joked with the doctors. Befriended the other kids in the ward. Smiled as the tubes went in and the lights, slowly, went out.

  Her name had been Clarissa.

  She had thought that was what she was supposed to do. That tiny voice in the back of her brain had been so scared, urging her to make it all right. She didn’t want the people around her to be sad.

  “Hey beautiful!” Paul calls out from the other room. “I’m going to pick up some breakfast. The fridge here is empty.”

  “I’ll be out in a moment. There’s a great bagel shop down the block.”

  “Bagels it is!”

  And he is gone. Part of her drifts out the door alongside him, ethereally hooked around ankles and wrists. She can feel it unwinding like a garden hose inside her belly.

  She brushes her teeth, cleans the bowl, wip
es down the mirror.

  Ten minutes later, the apartment door opens, and Clarissa turns to greet Paul.

  It is Richard.

  His arms hang limply from sodden shoulders, and his face is hangdog.

  “Richard,” she says.

  “You wouldn’t answer my calls.”

  “I was busy.” She twists her hands. Amanda, she says, you must do this. He is yours. He is not mine.

  “You should’ve called back.” He is not moving, so she does, walks towards him, and takes his hand.

  “I know, sweetie. Richard.” She stumbles. “I should have. I was packing . . .”

  His fingers unconsciously link around hers, though she is intensely aware of their pressure, the feel of their smoothness. Her body remembers them.

  “You . . . you still want to move in?”

  She swallows and lies. “Of course, I do. I love you.”

  Relief. His frame slumps, reboots, becomes animated. “I was so scared. You wouldn’t talk to me. Don’t do that again!” And then: “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

  She kisses him softly on the cheek, and then again on the lips. Her hand snakes up along his side, runs along his jaw to his ear.

  Please Mandy, she whispers. I don’t want to do this.

  But his arms have already encircled her now, and his mouth is on hers, and she is falling, falling backwards into the couch, the nestled blankets where she and Paul had slept an hour or two before.

  “I love you,” he whispers. “I love you I love you I love you.” The sounds blur together, and she doesn’t answer back.