He lurched forward and grabbed her hand. “Take it easy. Whoa.”
“I’m just being selfish and ungrateful. Lots of girls—I’ve been so lucky—and I don’t—I can’t prove—” She stopped.
“Prove what, Tiny?”
“Nothing. Nothing I can write down, anyway. Nothing that doesn’t sound like paranoia.” She bit back a hysterical sound. “Tell me about yourself, Cap. Tell me about your family. I want to know what that sounds like, a normal family.”
He tightened his fingers about hers, as if that could stop her slipping away. “I don’t know about normal. My mother died when I was eight. My father never remarried. We went from base to base, me and my sister and him. All around the world, no real home. Not very normal at all.”
She looked up. Her eyes were dry and white; she hadn’t been crying. For some reason, that seemed worse to him. As if her grief lay in some territory beyond tears, some unreachable region of despair. “Why didn’t your father remarry?” she asked.
“I don’t know. You don’t meet a lot of suitable women on a foreign army base, I guess.”
“I suppose he loved her. Your mother.”
“Yes. He didn’t talk about her much. But he kept her picture by the bed. On his desk. He took leave when she was sick, an extended leave. I don’t remember it very well. I was pretty young. But . . . yes, I guess I knew how much he loved her. I don’t think he ever stopped.”
“He never had any other women.”
“Not when she was alive. I’m sure of that.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I just am. That’s who he was, my dad. He mated for life. And my mother—well, she was exceptional.”
“And afterward? After she died? Were there other women?”
“If there were, he kept it away from us.”
She was looking not at Cap, but at their hands, roped together. “Of course,” she said. “Some men are like that, I guess.”
His knees hurt, pressed against the floor by the side of the bed. “What exactly are we talking about, Tiny?”
She shook her head.
“Look, I’m not here to break up anyone’s engagement. Not here to undermine a man I don’t even know. But I think— Hey, look at me a minute, all right?”
She looked up miserably.
“I want you to be happy, that’s all. With him, if that’s what you want. Or without him, if that’s what you want.” Him: Cap felt it should be capitalized, this unknown Him who bestrode the two of them, Cap and Tiny, like a colossus. Like a giant metal safe full of bullion. “You’re a beautiful girl, a—” He reached for words, words that sounded right, not too smarmy, not too melodramatic, not too alarmingly worshipful at a moment like this. “A girl in a million. So it’s not for you to prove to him why you shouldn’t get married. If he doesn’t deserve you, if he makes you unhappy, like this—”
“Oh, God, Caspian!” She tossed herself back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, her arms and legs spread out like a starfish. She’d found a pair of his pajama pants, thank Christ, which she’d somehow managed to fit to her frame by tightening the drawstring and rolling up the waistband several times. “Stop making this so easy for me. Stop showing me what I’m missing. What’s been missing from my life all these stupid fucking years!” She shouted the last words, making the windows ring.
He rose to his feet. “What the hell does that mean?”
She rolled her head on his pillow and smiled at him. “It means I’m ready for you to take my picture.”
• • •
She took off the pajama pants—I can’t dance in these things—while he opened the window shades all the way, letting the five o’clock May sunshine flood unchecked through the watery old glass.
“You’re sure?” he said. “There’s no pressure.”
She held up a disk from the pile and examined the label. “I want to.”
“All right, then.” He took out his camera, changed lenses, checked the film. No flash, this time. The sunlight was pure and plentiful. His fingers tingled: that rising anticipation of a perfect photograph hovering nearby, waiting to be snatched from the air and made real.
He heard the scratch of the needle, the first few notes as they emerged from the speaker, reedy and contained. He took off the lens cap and smiled. “The Pastoral?”
“You like it?”
“A favorite.”
She lifted one leg to the back of the sofa and stretched her body to a breathless length. Her fingers wrapped around her toes. “I didn’t know you liked musty old composers. I would have pegged you for rock and roll. No. Wait. Jazz.” She said it like a sex word.
“I’m full of surprises. Though I like jazz, too.”
“Hardy. Beethoven. What next?”
He lifted the camera to his eyes and observed the flex of her arms through the lens. “Ibsen.”
“Oh, a radical! Or are you trying to tell me something?”
He snapped the shutter. “What do you think?”
“For the record, I think Nora’s an irritation. Just because you’re a housewife doesn’t mean you lack any sense at all. Anyway, she was stupid to marry a man like that, wasn’t she?” She switched legs, and this time she faced him as she stretched, and her smile was relaxed.
“It was a hundred years ago, right? Things were different. Anyway, there wouldn’t be a play if she hadn’t made that mistake. And she does realize the mistake, in the end.”
“At least you call it a mistake. Some men wouldn’t. Some people wouldn’t.”
He snapped another shot. “Like who?”
She smiled enigmatically and turned about into an arabesque, bracing her hands on the back of the sofa. “Let’s start,” she said.
“Already have.” He snapped again.
The music was building now, the oboes revolving intricately upward to the crest, the violins answering back. Tiny rose up on her toes and lifted her arms into a graceful arc. Her hair was wrapped back with Cap’s monogrammed linen handkerchief, one of a set given to him by his grandmother several Christmases ago, and her exposed cheekbones attracted luminous stripes of sunlight as she held herself in position, smiling, waiting for the joyous wave to break.
Cap dropped to one knee, a few yards away, and adjusted the aperture. A little more light. That was it. Dazzling.
Just as he took the picture, she looked down at him and winked.
The violins burst free, and so did Tiny.
It was like a feast, like a hotel banquet, dish after dish placed before you, each one better than the last, until you almost lost track of what you were eating. Thank God for the camera, because he could never have found the necessary thousand words to describe Tiny’s grace as she danced the length and breadth of his living room, the flash of her legs in the sunlight, the liquid strength of her movement. More than that. The way each attitude presented itself to his lens in flawless balance, a ready-made composition. The art of the photograph, the science, the framing: Tiny accomplished all these by herself, and he, Cap, only had to open the shutter at the right instant, to manage the flow of light around her body.
Until he lay on his stomach, pointing the camera at an acute angle, trying to reveal the length of her neck, the line of her jaw, before the movement pounced to its end. Too late, he realized she was drawing near him, and too late, she realized it, too. She corrected her trajectory, dragged her toe an instant too long on the wooden floor, and staggered.
For an instant, it looked as if she’d recover. Her long legs assembled beneath her, sounding out her center of gravity, while the oboes and the violins exchanged a last conversation, a final farewell. But just as she pitched upward again, safe and sound, her face turned horrified, and she crumpled back down to land with a thud on the century-old chestnut boards.
“Tiny! Jesus!” He sent the camera skidding and leaped to her mot
ionless body.
She lay sprawled on the floor with her eyes ominously closed, one leg bent beneath the other. Here below the furniture, the windows were too high and the sun too low, and his light-blinded eyes couldn’t quite focus on her. He grabbed her hand. “Are you all right? Tiny, come on!”
Was it the shadow, or had her lips turned gray? He slapped her cheeks gently, once each side.
“Tiny! For God’s sake! Wake up!”
Her eyelashes wavered. A pathetic little groan emerged from her throat.
“Tiny! Talk to me, love. Wake up.”
The eyelids swept up, revealing the rich brown of her irises. Her forehead creased, bewildered.
“Thank God! Tiny, it’s me, it’s Cap. Can you hear me? You’ve had a fall.”
Her lips moved. “I don’t— I—”
“It’s me. I’ve got you. Just don’t move. Does anything hurt?”
“I—don’t understand—”
“That’s okay. You’re going to be a bit confused. Just lie still, okay? You were dancing, you fell—”
“No.” She pulled her hand away. “I don’t understand. Where am I? And who are you?”
As if his heart stopped beating.
He set his palms on the floor, next to her shoulder, and tried to keep his voice steady. “It’s Caspian. Caspian, from the coffee shop. We’re in my apartment. You’re staying here, remember? To think things over.”
Her brow was still puzzled. She tried to lift herself on her elbows, winced, and eased back down.
“Lie still, sweetheart. It’ll come back to you. Just rest for a second.” He wasn’t even sure what he was saying. Like he’d speak to a hurt dog or a startled horse or an injured soldier. The words didn’t matter. Just the stream of them kept her calm, kept him calm, kept the whole world propped up around them long enough for him to gather his wits. To start his heart beating again.
With a single weak finger, she motioned him closer.
“What is it? Do you need something?” He bent his head toward hers and inhaled his own scent, his soap and his laundry and his bed. The peculiar scent of his apartment, absorbed into Tiny’s hair.
She whispered in his ear. “Are you still crazy about me?”
He closed his eyes. “Christ.”
Her laughter was golden, like the aging sunlight above them. He grabbed her with both arms and hauled her delicate form against his chest, while the last gentle chords of the opening movement dissolved into scratches.
Tiny, 1966
The tuft of hair on the nearby pillow might belong to anyone.
Oh, you know how it is. You crack your eyes open into the dawn, and your senses are still so crusted with sleep, your brain is still so immersed in the Stygian netherworld of the unconscious, that you don’t even know your own name. You don’t know who you are, or where you are, or whose bed and whose life you now occupy. You don’t know if you’re four years old or a hundred and four. You don’t know if this is yesterday or tomorrow, America or Pangaea.
That tuft of hair, you know, represents some sort of clue. Tugs an association of some kind. Something to do with the day before, or the night before.
“Caspian?” I whisper. The first name that pops into my head.
The hair doesn’t move, not by a ripple.
But I’m on to something, I know it. If I keep on staring at the tuft, the idea will take shape. A glass of water and an aspirin. Hands adjusting me into the white sheets. Yes. Caspian’s hands. The light clicking off. The familiar voice, wishing me good night.
More.
Caspian standing next to me in the space just outside my hotel room door. I am opening my pocketbook to find the key. What’s in that envelope, he asks, and Wouldn’t you like to know, I say. This memory is astonishingly clear, in fact. Caspian is frowning in the dim overhead light of the elevator car. I am waggling my finger at him. Just whom did you give those photographs to? And he shakes his head. We’ll talk when you’re sober, Tiny.
Sober, Tiny.
Sober. Jesus. I was drunk, wasn’t I? That was what drunk was, waggling my flirtatious finger at my husband’s strapping cousin, hoping he might take me to bed with him.
I heave myself upward, to the displeasure of my head. Oh, my God. The champagne. The ballroom. The pretty faces, sliding past; the sympathetic knowingness of that Globe reporter. Caspian’s hand on mine, pinning me down against my satin pocketbook. Caspian’s hand on my bare shoulder.
There is movement from the bundle of masculine hair and limbs lying beside me. The owner flings out an arm, finds me, and makes a noise of possession. “Tiny,” he says.
Frank’s voice.
I sink back down under the weight of my husband’s arm. My eyes are wide open, staring at the far-away ceiling; I think my heart must be about to beat itself right out of my chest. The covers open, releasing the familiar warm smell of Frank’s skin, the scent of matrimony.
He rises a little, hovering over me.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters. He pushes back my hair from my face.
“Sorry for what?”
“I meant to . . . last night . . .” He kisses my chin, my throat. “You’re such a good wife, Tiny, you’re perfect. You looked so beautiful. It was the drinks, I guess. The pressure. You can’t imagine the pressure right now. My dad—”
I lift my hands around his head and smooth his hair. “It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. Shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. Gone off in a huff like that. You don’t deserve that, you don’t deserve any of it. I promised myself I’d . . .” His mouth climbs on mine, soft and unwashed and comfortable. “That was the last time. Promise you.”
My heart is cold. My head pounds. I need another aspirin, another glass or two of water. A cigarette, a drink, anything.
“The last time what, Frank?”
“Nothing.”
In that instant, as Frank tugs down the straps of my slip and starts making love to me—good, warm, respectable married sex—I know exactly what Frank was doing last night.
Well, it isn’t as if I haven’t always known, haven’t I? The clues were all there. The history of infidelity was there, discreet maybe, but adding up and up into a number that couldn’t be dismissed.
And that word—nothing—confirms it. Nothing can only mean one thing.
I wonder where they did it, he and his latest girl, his campaign girl—her name escapes me right now—when they had sex last night. Did they do it in her room? In the stairwell? On the elevator, while the emergency alarm rang in the background? Did he use a rubber when he had sex with her, or did he release his reckless Hardcastle sperm directly into her pagina?
Or her mouth. It might have been her mouth. I remember the look in her eyes last night, the puppylike adoration, and I know she’d do anything to please him, anything he wanted. Girls like that, they didn’t play fair.
“You have the nicest breasts,” Frank says, kissing them. “I love those sweet little tits of yours.”
Now, Tiny. This is the exact moment when I should kick him off the bed, headfirst (either head would do). God knows he deserves it. God knows I’m angry enough.
But you know me. I do what I’m supposed to do, damn me to hell, damn my goddamned innate stupid nature, my guilt, my yearning to please. I do what a good wife should, even a betrayed one. I sublimate my anger into something more suitable. I take Frank on with a defiant passion instead, I clutch his head and call out, I thrash and rock and heave with the best of them, because maybe—just maybe—I, Tiny Schuyler Hardcastle, am no slouch either. Maybe I’m not Frank’s brand-new girl Friday, voluptuous and vibrant, desperately devoted. But beneath my porcelain exterior, I, too, am packed tight with sexual longing, with a craving for sexual release that my anger—pure, frustrated, helpless, perverse—only intensifies. I imagine Caspian’s dark head, Caspian’s looming s
houlders, Caspian’s sure and rhythmic hips, and release—oh God, release!—ah, yes, gorgeous long-lived release is my revenge.
It’s only afterward, as the orgasm recedes and my husband slumps his panting body across mine, that the nausea climbs into my belly and the headache returns to throb between my ears.
Josephine. Her name pops up like a cork into my hangover.
And I’m no better than Josephine, am I? I succumbed to the Hardcastle allure. I made my own bargain with the status and the promise of it all. The razzle-dazzle. Being Frank Hardcastle’s wife, being the chosen one of the chosen man. Pepper had me there. Politicians are sexy, Tiny. It’s a fact. The price of marrying the man everybody wants.
You don’t complain when the bill arrives. You rise above it all, pure and perfect.
I push Frank away and slide across the mattress to safety.
• • •
Now, when I say I’ve never been drunk before, I don’t mean to imply that I’ve never had a bit more than I should. Everyone does, don’t they, from time to time? I’ve gone to bed a little tipsy, I’ve woken up a bit hairy the next morning. But this is something else. I want to vomit.
I stagger around the bottom of the bed and find the bathroom, where I do just that. Vomit, into the elegant white porcelain toilet, just missing the elegant white marble floor. I kneel down carefully after the first heave or two, one tender patella and then the other, and I heave a little more, nothing too voluminous, until I reach a burning concentration of bile and call it a day.
How strange, that a body can feel so muddled and cloudy, and yet so exquisitely sensitized. The marble floor penetrates my kneecaps, cold and hard. A distant thumping from some other room knocks against my eardrums like an iron mallet. I can identify each individual follicle of hair on my skin, and they all hurt.
I grip the toilet seat and lever myself upward. I flush without looking and turn to the sink. A washcloth has been laid out on the counter, and a pair of toothbrushes on either side of a small untouched tube of Colgate. I run my furry tongue along my furry teeth and set to work, avoiding my reflection in the mirror, scrubbing my face with the dampened washcloth and scrubbing my teeth with a pungent excess of toothpaste.
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