String Bridge

by Jessica Bell

  “And you’ve been exercising?”

  “Yeah. I thought it might, you know, make you more attracted to me.”

  “You worry I’m not attracted to you anymore?” I ask, looking up, the tip of my nose touching the dimple in his chin.

  “Yeah.”

  “Me too.” Is this for real?

  “You do?” He rubs my upper back as if burping a baby.

  I nod, grinning as wide as Tessa draws smiles. I want to believe him. No. I do believe him, but the blister isn’t bursting. There’s no ‘pop.’ No instinctual psychological reflex to relieve my suspicion. There should be. If there’s anything my mother is right about, she’s right about a woman’s instinct. But, I’ll let it slide. I let it slide because the desire to believe Alex right now is as strong as my umbilical cord to Tessa. And, he did admit he lied. So that’s good. That’s one foot in the right direction.

  “I should get dressed. Wanna help me choose some clothes? Maybe, you know, you can dress me?” I wink, pulling away from his embrace, so I can see his face.

  “Er, not really.” He scoffs. “Got a few emails to write. Sorry. Might have closed a deal with Samantha Fox, though. Wanna be her support act?”

  “Um …” I can’t make this decision now. I can’t. What if we have to move to London? “If you book her, let me know when it is and we’ll talk about it.”

  “You seemed more enthusiastic last night. What happened?”

  “Um, nothing, nothing at all.” My cheeks tingle like aftershave on open pores. “It’s just that book exhibitions are coming up soon and I have to be there this year. Just want to make sure they don’t collide. I’ll just be too exhausted after standing on my feet all day.” Phew. Nice save, Melody. He doesn’t know that they’re tomorrow. Does he? Oh God, if I told him, I’m—

  “Okay, cool. I’ll let you know.”

  Tessa’s sitting cross-legged on the balcony, trying to accessorize Doggy with purple sunglasses with star-shaped frames, but Doggy keeps shaking them off. Totally void of frustration, Tessa chuckles and licks Doggy’s nose.

  “Tessa! What are you doing?” I walk out and lift her off the ground. The shoulder of her white T-shirt is drenched with drool, her sandals are on the wrong feet, and she has a smudge of dirt above one eyebrow in the shape of an adult thumb.

  “What?” Tessa squeaks in chaste, cocking her head to the side, just like Doggy does when I give her an order she pretends not to understand.

  “Don’t lick Doggy’s nose.” I put her back on her feet. “You might get sick.”

  “Why? She licked me. Will she get sick?” Tessa frowns.

  “If she jumped off the balcony, would you follow?”

  “Don’t be silly, Mummy.”

  “Yes, you’re right. I’m a silly mummy.” I hold out my hand. “Come on. Come help me pick a dress to wear.”

  In my bedroom, we stand staring at my open wardrobe, hands on hips, as Tessa tends to enjoy the stance, inspecting its contents—an array of wrinkled black, gray, and olive green. Remind me—do we even own an iron?

  I pull out a short black taffeta body-fitted dress that is pancaked to the far right side of my wardrobe with short sleeves and a high neck line. I hold it up against my body, my floppy man’s clothes, and look in the mirror. The coat hanger hook is almost digging into my neck. I envision thrusting it into my skin and piercing my carotid artery. Gushing blood. Nice. Quick. Death. I blink. Jesus!

  “Put it on,” Tessa says, shaking her head like a disapproving sales assistant. “It looks silly like that.”

  I nod, stripping myself bare. Tessa’s face goes pale.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, stepping into the dress.

  “Your legs have got … lots of holes,” she whispers, protruding her bottom lip as if she has just understood what’s in store.

  “It’s called cellulite. That’s what happens when you sit at a desk all day and don’t do enough exercise.”

  “Will I have to sit at a desk all day when I’m all grown up?”

  I laugh, bend down and kiss her cheek. “No, Blossom, you won’t.”

  Tessa smiles and smacks her lips together.

  “Zip me,” I say. Tessa holds the zip and I lower my body to the floor so she can reach up to my neck. It fits!

  I turn to the mirror with my eyes closed. It’s been so long since I’ve worn a body-fitted dress that I’m afraid seeing myself will just dampen my self-esteem to a point where I’ll never want to step foot out of the house again.

  I open one eye.

  Okay. Disgust is not spreading through me like tear gas. That’s good.

  I open my other eye. Hey, I don’t look too bad.

  I slide my hands down my thighs, smoothing out the edges of the dress, semi-consciously checking for unflattering bumps. Maybe I’ll snazzy it up with those psychedelic beads I used to wear. Yeah.

  I straighten my back, suck in my stomach and turn to inspect my profile. Big ass. Ugh.

  “Whatcha think, Blossom? You like?”

  “Mmm …” Tessa scrunches her nose. “Nup.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with it?” I ask, looking myself up and down, as if Tessa’s opinion means life or death.

  “Put the pink one on.” She points to some purple-pink fabric sticking out of a plastic bag behind my shoes. How she even knows it’s a dress is beyond me.

  I pull it out, and hold it up. Yep, it’s a dress—a jersey dress, wrinkle free—off-the-shoulder sleeves and a low-cut neckline. I can’t even remember owning it. Was it Serena’s? God! What would Alex say?

  “Honey, I can’t wear this.” Of course, you can. Why do you need Alex’s approval?

  “Why not?”

  Why not? Well. Trash, trash, trash. Or sexy? Can’t wear a bra with this thing either. My boobs will look like saggy bread dough. How do you explain trashy to a four-year old girl? How do you explain the woes of Earth’s gravitational pull?

  “Because … Look, I’ll try it on, but that’s all okay?”

  Tessa nods, runs on the spot and jumps onto my bed giggling. Usually I’d tell her to get off, but I didn’t make the bed this morning, so there doesn’t seem to be any point.

  I put the dress on.

  My boobs are a little lower than they should be, but that can be fixed, I think, with Alex’s two-inch wide sticky tape. I could pass for a twentyfive-year-old, I suppose, with a little make-up, not too much, I don’t want to look like a prostitute, and a little straightening of my hair … Do I still have that thing? Hmm, maybe …

  I look at Tessa, who is staring at me the way she stares at her Barbie dolls.

  “You don’t want to hack my hair off do you?” I ask.

  “What?” Tessa asks, looking at me as if I’ve totally lost it.

  “Never mind. You win. I’ll wear it,” I say expecting some sort of vocal parade.

  “Cool.” Tessa nods and jumps off the bed, landing a little too hard. She hurts her ankle, but tries to hide it, stands up, brushes off her hands and says, “My job is done.”

  She walks out of the room, wagging her bottom like “the stick ladies on TV.”

  In the bathroom I find the hair-straightener in the towel drawer—under the towels—and complete the picture of Melody/ teenage clubber. I feel absurd—eyes embossed with black liquid liner, eyelashes curled, eyebrows darkened with a layer of brown lip pencil, lips glossed in shimmering pale pink. Who are you?

  I take one last look at myself in the full-length mirror, wondering how I should present myself to Alex.

  Sexy, yet demure?

  Shy and insecure?

  No.

  Better not hesitate. No signs of weakness.

  “Vogue! Vogue!” I leap in front of Alex’s desk, striking a pose, “let your body mooove to the muuuusic. Hey, hey, hey!” I move my hips to the rhythm, roll out his chair and sit on his lap, all the while thinking: Please let that interrupted frown turn into an impressed smile.

  “Wow.” Alex scratches his head. His penis twitches on
my thigh.

  “Stand up for me. Spin around,” he laughs, waving his finger in a circular motion. I spin around, curtsy, wink.

  “Will you be home in time for me to have a piece of you?” Alex asks, biting his bottom lip.

  “If that’s what you’d like … ” I whisper all feathery-voiced. I bite his earlobe, breathe softly into his neck, massage his groin, taking my role to an entirely different level—a level I would ordinarily cringe at if I observed another woman doing it. Sexual manipulation. Others might call this foreplay. Why do I see it as something negative—cheap? What has happened to my femininity? Has motherhood sucked it dry? Marriage? Lack of aspiration? Libido detached, cloudy, like a used condom.

  He moves in for a kiss, slides the tip of his tongue between my lips. But no goose-bumps. No heat between my thighs. I remember when the mere caress of his gentle fingers on the inside of my wrists made me shiver—made me want to slam him against a wall and fuck him until I could fuck no more—until it hurt to walk.

  “YUK!” Tessa screams, and runs down the corridor yodeling like a turkey.

  Beep beep. Beep beep.

  I get up off Alex’s lap as he reaches for his cell. He opens the message and almost instantly presses delete.

  “Who was that?” I snap, with my arm already in one sleeve of my light blue denim jacket, ready to pounce, to reveal all, find an excuse to get meticulously inebriated.

  “Oh. No-one. Just my father.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “Hmm-hm.”

  “Why’d you delete it?”

  Alex looks me right in the eye, not a flinch, not an ounce of hesitation.

  “Trying to keep my inbox clean. That’s all.”

  The lights in this underground club are kaleidoscopic enough to bring on an epileptic fit, and the music is so loud that Heather and I have had to revert to lip reading. My face sets in concrete; my body stuck, numb against the prickly walls of a theme park Graviton. I lean against the bar, trying to avoid eye-contact with the sleaze in the unbuttoned luminous shirt.

  “Loosen up, Mel. Just pretend you’re eighteen again. You look hot!” Heather screams, looking me up and down, a treble shrill sharpening her voice.

  “And how do you suggest I do that?” I scream back into her ear.

  Heather reaches for a glass of something that looks like toxic waste and hands it to me. “Here. Slam this down.”

  “Jeez. How? What is that?”

  “Can’t remember what it’s called. Just made a fool of myself asking for it. Typical—the gorg bartender had to take my order, didn’t he?” she screams into my neck.

  “What did you ask for?” I question with a flick of my hand.

  Heather leans in. I can hear the indulgent squint in her eyes through her hot, moist, rebellious breath. “I said, ‘You know that beer drink with the shot glass inside? Can’t really remember what kinda alcohol is in that shot glass, but it made me drunk. Can you give me one of those?’ Ha!”

  I tsk, hang my head in my hands, wonder what I have got myself into. But there is also a twinge of hunger for a reckless, thoughtless eventide of poppycock. Heather’s right. I should loosen up. Swallow this bomb in a glass—sooth my pharynx.

  “Yeah, well, you know Heather,” she winks. “She don’t make small talk ’bout weather! Ha-ha!”

  We clink glasses and imbibe our juicy backbones. Heather asks for two more, winks at the bartender and almost falls off her stool. Her chortle pacifies the compressed punch of retro beats. Non-music to my electronically fused ears.

  Three more bombs later and we’re slow-dancing to disco beats. Heather proclaims to be the man in this relationship because she’s taller. This triggers a flurry of slurred feminist opinions on my part. I’m drunken and disorderly and as soon as my anti-sexism theories have exploded like verbal shrapnel, I sob and slobber on Heather’s shoulder.

  “Alex doesn’t love me anymore,” I whimper.

  “Of course he loves you, Smel. You’re just goings through rough time.” Heather tries to sooth, slurring in my ear, on the verge of licking it like a lollipop.

  “Nope. He doesn’t love me. I know it. Something’s going on. He’s hiding something from me. I know it.”

  “Smelody. He loves you. It takes two to make a relationship work and it takes two to break one up. If you really want your marriage to last, the two of you will work something out eventually. Believe me. I’ve been there before. Anyway, what are you doing sobbing on my chest when you should be having fun? I feel like I’m leaking breast milk.”

  Heather’s words, though uttered at the rate of a tortoise’s saunter, race through my head in search for some sort of validity—a sign, memory, something to deem her words true, when I actually get one. A dance version of “Sugar Pie Honey Bunch” comes on and we both burst out in song, our heads wobbling on our shoulders like dashboard bobble head dolls.

  Wanna tell you I don’t love you, Tell you that we’re through, And I try, But ev’ry time I see your face, I get all choked up inside, When I call your name, ALEX, it starts to flame, Burning in my heart, Tearing it all apart. No matter how I try, My love I cannot hide …

  It’s been a long time since I’ve been out like this. I mean, properly out, doing girly claptrap, rather than eating a respectable meal in a reputable restaurant. The last time I spent a night getting sloshed at a club was a few months before moving to Greece. Life was one big experiment then. I’d go through phases of goth, punk, intellectual, muso, introvert, extrovert, comedian, poet, and sometimes bitch just to see how people would react to me. A subconscious effort to fit in with my mother’s mentality? Who knows.

  “Heather!” I grab her arm and point toward a man standing at the end of the bar with a young, tall redhead. “Who’s that? Does he look familiar to you?” The red/blue lighting effects distort my view. I hold my hand over my eyes as if protecting them from the sun.

  “Er, nope. But don’t think anyone would look very familiar to me right now … oops … where’s my shoe? You seen my shoe? Oh, there it is … is … is my shoe … stay here, I’ll just fetch my shoe ….”

  Heather stumbles to the middle of the dance floor, almost colliding with the open-shirted man doing the limbo.

  The guy at the end of the bar catches my eye, whispers something into the redhead’s ear. She nods, walks away. He heads toward me. Me? I wasn’t eyeing him off. Does he think I’m flirting?

  “Hi, Melody, you never called,” the guy says, imitating a sob.

  “Right,” says Heather, leaning heavily into my shoulder. “Found my shoe … er, hi, pleased to make your acquaintance, sir, and you might be?” Heather slurs, hopping on one foot in attempt to put the missing shoe on at the same time. I point to the button on my shoulder of my jacket, pretending to scratch it, and raise my eyebrows.

  “Oh! Button boy! I’ve heard—”

  “Heather!” I cry, putting my hand over her mouth. “I’m terribly sorry, Mr—”

  “Richard. Call me Richard.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Richard, for my friend’s behavior here, I-I—”

  “No problem at all, Melody,” Richard touches my hand. “Just nice to know you actually didn’t forget about me.”

  “How could I forget? My button bull’s-eyed you!”

  What am I saying? You idiot! Melody, YOU IDIOT!

  “Oh, you noticed that? You seemed so calm and collected I thought you hadn’t realized.” Richard laughs.

  “Yeah, well, my career was on the line.” I scratch my brow despite not feeling any itch.

  “Yes. Indeed. Well, now that your friend, um … ”

  “My name’s Heather, Luv.”

  Oh, Heather. Could you embarrass me more? Luv? You’ve gone into hick mode.

  “Heather here,” Richard interrupts, gesturing apologetically with his hands on Heather’s shoulder, “has implied that you spoke to her about the incident. May I ask why you didn’t call? I assume you have been told you have the position in London? Correct?”<
br />
  “Yes. How embarrassing. For a second, here, I thought you were trying to pick me up.”

  “I was.”

  “Oh.”

  Queasy. Knots. Stretching. Fraying. Lubricating. Draining. Fraying. Breaking. Don’t pull. Stop!

  Wait.

  Richard?

  His name’s Richard?

  Richard Viadro, academic director in London? Is this man my potential boss?

  Thirteen

  Television light creeps beneath our bedroom door, igniting the corridor with liquid sleep waves. I tiptoe to my office to get undressed.

  As I fumble for the light switch, Doggy appears between my legs and trips me. My handbag flings toward my desk, knocks off an empty water glass, and smashes on the floor. Tiny glittering shards of clumsiness float around my feet, threatening to spike me with lament.

  Alex calls, “Eh!” I freeze, cold with guilt for not putting the glass in the sink before I left. I examine my blurry surroundings, making sure there’s nothing else I might hit, before I attempt to switch the light on again.

  It’s only Monday night and I feel like this relationship/ career/dream—and now fatal Richard-attraction-dilemma—has been brewing since yesteryear.

  Time drags on and on, and on … (One more! Clap your hands!) and on, but there is still not enough time to make rational decisions anymore. Life is just one big rush. There is never enough time for anything anymore. I don’t make any sense to myself anymore. I don’t understand what I’m thinking anymore. I don’t understand why I’m having so much trouble making this decision. Anymore?

  Why can’t I just be mature about the whole thing and do what’s right? But what is right? And I am being mature about it, right? Write. I should write all of this down. Keep a journal. Maybe it’ll free my mind of all this … stuff. I’ve slipped off the beaten track. Yes. I should keep track of my thoughts. Then maybe at the end of the week I can backtrack and come to some sort of logical solution. Have I been brainwashed with Dad’s philosophical ramble?

  I nudge Doggy onto the balcony despite her resistance, sweep the glass to the wall with a magazine, and pick up the cordless phone. For a moment I think it’s sticky with Heather’s vomit. But no, that was in her house. Not here. How did I get her home? I don’t remember the cab ride at all.