Veronica

by Mary Gaitskill

  “They’re not diseased,” he says without looking at me. “They’re madrones. They lose their bark in the winter. It’s normal.” His voice is faindy peevish, as if he wonders what kind of

  person would see illness in a tree just because it’s naked and ocher-colored. “It’s the tan oaks that are diseased. Not the madrones.”

  “Oh!” I smile nervously. “But the color is so extreme; it’s amazing.”

  “It’s not that bright usually. The wet brings it out.”

  A month or two after Veronica died, I called David to see how her cat was doing. He said that she’d hidden under the bed for the first three days but had recently come up to sleep with him. The first time the cat came onto his bed was right after he’d wakened from a dream about Veronica. The dream had begun with David entering a mansion where a party was being held. The marble walls were veined with threads of purple, blue, and pink, and they were hung with paintings and treasures of all description. There were big windows draped with silk curtains and a skylight high above; the interior was full of light. In the center of the room was a live fountain, and guests were sitting around it. David was amazed at how beautiful they all were, how every detail of their clothes was perfectly done. Their faces were expressive, generous, and exquisitely intelligent. There was one woman he noticed in particular; even though he saw her from behind, there was something familiar about her. She wore a beautiful man’s suit, tailored to fit her. On her head of gold-blond hair sat a fedora, angled rakishly. She was talking to two men, and even from behind, her poise and intellectual grace were visible. As if she could feel David’s eyes on her, she turned to look at him. It was Veronica. She smiled at him, a dazzling smile he had never seen her smile in life. An elevator opened before her; she stepped into it and, still smiling, went up. When David woke, the cat was on his bed with its legs in the air, purring loudly.

  When I got off the phone with David, I called Sara to tell her about it. I don’t know why. When I finished describing the dream, I said, “And that’s what Veronica was really like, under all the ugliness and bad taste. It’s so sad, I can’t stand it. She’d gotten so stunted and twisted up, she came out looking like this ridiculous person with bad hair, when she was meant to be sophisticated and brilliant. Like in the dream.”

  Sara was silent, and in the silence I felt her furrow her brow. “I thought she was sophisticated and brilliant, Alison. I thought her hair was nice.”

  Sara, the only one who saw Veronica the way she looked in her heaven. At forty-two she is now an administrator at the nursing home where she once worked as an aide. She was never married but she has a son, Thomas, who is autistic but also in the gifted program. She’s proud of him, but it’s hard. Daphne worries about her, sends her money. She worries about me, too, but I don’t let her send me money. She has three children of her own now, and her money is not unlimited.

  Of the three of us, Daphne was the only one who did well enough to tell a happy story about. A story of love between a man and woman, their work and children. There are other stories. But they are sad. Mostly, they are on the periphery. If we were a story, Veronica and I would be about a bedraggled prostitute taking refuge in the kitchen with the kindly old cook. If the cook dies, you don’t know why. There isn’t that much detail. You just know the prostitute (or servant or street girl) goes on her way. She and the cook are small, dim figures. They are part of the scene and they add to it. But they are not the story.

  On the way down the path, I have to crouch, holding the trunks of slim trees and bracing my feet in their roots. My red umbrella is closed and hanging from my wrist. Mother, Mod, modern, mod-el. That last syllable soft and unctuous. I think of my mother dying, her mouth small and sunken, her nostrils large and black. The four of us clasped hands and made a circle around her, standing at her bed or kneeling on it. We held it all between us: the sweet milk shake in the warm car, the blanket in the lamplight, the green chairs, the bright blue waves of the swimming pool, the Christmas tree jeweled with color. One by one, we bent our heads to hear her words. To me, she whispered, “My most beautiful.” Tears came to my eyes. She had never said the word beautiful to me as praise. “Mother,” I said. “I love you.” But she had faded again.

  Later, I asked Sara and Daphne what she’d said to them. Each of them looked embarrassed. She’d said the same thing, of course. Each blade of grass is beautiful to the one who made it.

  But there is another story, too. There is the story of the girl who stepped on a loaf of bread because she cared more for her shoes than for the flesh of her family. She sank into a world of demons and suffering. Her mother’s tears didn’t help her. The tears of a stranger did. In the fairy tale, a mother tells her daughter the story of the wicked girl who stepped on a loaf, and the innocent girl bursts into tears. Far away under the bog, the wicked girl hears this and for the first time begins to feel. Years later, the innocent girl is an old woman and she is dying. As she dies, she remembers the wicked girl and she enters heaven crying for her. The wicked girl is filled with remorse and gratitude so strong, it breaks her stony prison. She becomes a bird and

  flies from the swamp. She is tiny and gray and she huddles in a chink in a wall, trembling and shy. She cannot make a sound because she has no voice. But still she is full of gratitude and joy.

  I sank down into darkness and lived among the demons for a long, long time. I became one of them. But I was not saved by an innocent girl or an angel crying in heaven. I was saved by another demon, who looked on me with pity and so became human again. And because I pitied her in turn, I was allowed to become human, too.

  I come out of the ravine into the neighborhood. The sun is bright and warm even through the wet trees. A child is coming down the walk on his way home from school. He looks maybe eight years old. We are about to meet, when he turns to walk up a long flight of stairs leading to an enormous multilevel house. The air is prickled by wind chimes.

  In the story, the gray bird feeds the other birds with crumbs until she has fed them an amount equal to the loaf. Then her wings turn white and she flies up into the sun.

  The child mounts the stairs, his gaze fixed on the house. Even with his big eyes and the baby softness of his face, there is maturity and intensity in his gaze, a suggestion of private responsibility taken on willingly and with determination. Not my child, but a child—the future. My eye falls on a torn piece of foil in the gutter. The sun strikes it; an excited ghost leaps up out of it and vanishes in the air. I leave the canyon and walk down a street of shining puddles. I will get something to eat at the Easy Street Cafe and talk to my friend who works there. I will take the bus home and talk to Rita, standing in the hall. I will call my father and tell him I finally heard him. I will be full of gratitude and joy.

  Table of Contents

  I turn off the main street and enter a residential

  His name was Jamie. His soft voice was desiccated

  When we were in the cab, he said, “So that’s what they’re saying in the street—‘You’ve got AIDS.’ That’s the worst thing you can say.”