“No reason to think this will stop before midnight—maybe not before morning,” Blanche says. “Good thing we’re set for supplies. Wheee! Snowbound!” She and Estelle bounce on their knees on the sofa bed, hair and breasts flouncing.
“We’ll keep the coffee hot and make muffins,” Estelle offers, lashes fluttering, “if you decide you want to shovel now, you know, so you won’t have to do it all at once tomorrow.”
“Twenty-four to thirty inches, then clearing; temperatures dropping into the lower teens, maybe single digits. With the anticipated high winds, near white out—” Blanche stops. She smirks at me with my wife’s lips, parodies Estelle’s lid-flutter. “Of course, we don’t really believe in windchill. If it’s cold, it’s cold, right? But you’d better not put it off.”
So the sisters want me outside. I turn dejectedly to the hall closet for my shoveling clothes.
“If you are going out now, would you make us a snow angel?” The request strikes my back like a snowball. I’m breathless. Which sister asked? I focus on the closet and raise my hand in acknowledgement. “A nice round one!” one of them adds as I zip my parka over my firm gut.
I’ve cleared the porch, and I’m nearly done with the sidewalk. I pile the snow in heaps that mark my progress. Too much effort for too little reward. Even ditch diggers have a permanent ditch when they’re done. One good thaw and the lawn and cars and trees will be as bare as the sidewalk I’m laboring to clear. Nobody shovels the forests or the beaches, but they’ll be snowless in a matter of months. It’s a trick of time, I decide. I invent an objective as I dig and throw: maybe I’ll uncover a genie’s lamp or pry off the lid of Pandora’s box. In what movie did scientists defrost a frozen alien in the Arctic?
The sisters sit inside, drinking my coffee, eating my muffins. I picture them plotting my demise— (“Shall we poison him? Cut his throat in the night? Or should we just lock him out. Or just let him shovel out there—his heart can’t possibly take much more!”) Their laughter surely spins into the thread of blue smoke rising from the chimney.
I pause, shivering. The wind penetrates my layers and chills my damp T-shirt. Down the street parked cars squat like buried bison. I’ve always pitied bison—so powerful, but such easy prey. My car will be entombed in our back alley garage until the city plows it out, probably tomorrow.
Last night, anticipating the storm, the sisters returned from the supermarket with bags of snack food. Blanche stood tiptoe to shelve a package of Oreos, and my gaze accidentally slid down the curve of her back.
“Don’t expect to do any driving for a couple of days,” she said, as if she felt my eyes. Arms circled my waist from behind, my wife’s. Her fingertips couldn’t quite touch. She laid her cheek on my back.
“We bought you that sweet coffee you like,” she said. “The hazelnut cream.”
“Exotic tastes,” Blanche mocked.
Since it’s Saturday, it shouldn’t bother me that my car is trapped, but what would I do in a crisis? Ten feet of shoveling will end the job. With the resolve of a tunneling convict, I throw myself into the task.
People think I’m my wife’s age, but I’m really as old as her sister. Chubbiness smoothes the lines from my face. Maybe I’ve got youthful mannerisms.
What would have happened if I had met Blanche before Estelle, let’s say in college. I couldn’t have competed with the brilliance of someone like Don. What social context would we have shared? Blanche would have been in classes that I can’t imagine myself sitting through, classes I walked by, peeked in the windows of—blackboards covered with numbers, disconnected letters, and symbols—and always a skeletal professor, with his back to his attentive students, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling. I see my wife’s face among the students, but of course it’s Blanche. Then I am with her, Blanche, my cheek nestled in the cloud of her exploding hair, the soft flannel of her nightgown between her breasts and my chest, her bare thigh lifting, sliding higher, climbing over my thick legs and broad hips, her perfume as dizzying as fermenting wine…and on our bed upstairs Estelle, dew fresh, lies like the petals of a flower, a gossamer breath from waking. I hesitate, naked, in Blanche’s embrace.
I’ve stopped again. Spinning flakes absorb my breath. Through them I see the wildly waving figures of Estelle and Blanche. They press their identical faces against the window, transform into grotesque creatures, then pull away and become themselves. They trace hourglass figures in the air, and their hands flutter like wings where the shoulders would be. Then Blanche and my wife flap their arms with such energy that Blanche’s nightgown lifts to her hips. Estelle leans upon her sister’s back, her teeth bared with inaudible laughter. They want their snow angel.
They’re begging me to frolic. I flap my arms, shovel in hand, to let them know I’ve got the idea, then shrug and point at the snow I haven’t cleared. But they’ve left the window, probably gone back to the kitchen for more coffee and muffins. I’m ravenous. I keep flapping because the motion loosens my back and shoulders and warms me up. My arms are so hammish the angel idea is absurd. I need a temperate climate, an azure sea, like in one of Blanche’s postcards, where I can bob weightlessly while native boys with glistening dark skin float me trays of food and exotic drinks.
If I peer like Superman through the walls of my house will I see the sisters in the kitchen, cheeks like chipmunks, eyes moist with choking laughter? Blanche puts down a steaming mug and a muffin and draws a circle, adding wings. She hooks a thumb toward me through the invisible wall. I’m the round snow angel. Estelle gags on her muffin. Is this what I mean to these women?
They’re back at the window, hands and arms flapping. I could give them the moment’s harmless play they crave, but I’m freezing and starving and my job isn’t finished. If I refuse, will Blanche leave? Exactly how long is she intending to stay? I could clear the last stretch and be done. Muffins, French toast, sausages beckon. Salivating, I shrug off their muffled rapping. Let them make their own angels!
My shovel rips into the snow, but I strike something. It gives slightly, like a bundle of rags. I pull, but the shovel sticks fast. I try again, leaning back with all my weight. I risk toppling onto the sidewalk, already disappearing under fresh inches, if the shovel jerks free. But it doesn’t budge. It feels as if something’s holding it, answering each of my tugs with a yank of its own. I strain mightily, my eyes squeezing white into black. Stars swirl as I gasp and pull even harder. Gaining a bit, I peek, and the shovel is torn away! I see two hands the size of a baby doll’s drag it under the snow.
I stand paralyzed, my hand over my heart, but I feel nothing but the vacuum of terror. The snow where the shovel has disappeared shifts and crumbles, and I bleat and churn toward my house, my legs dream heavy. I stagger and fall forward, arms flailing, and I glimpse the house and the sisters at the window.
I’m face down in the snow. Flakes settle on my neck. I’ll leave a crater if I’m removed, a deep scar in the shape of a fat angel. Something the size of a cat steps on my back and treads with careful paws. I play possum, while the hair at my nape is picked at. I see stars again from holding my breath. Whatever is on me is patient. It drapes itself over my shoulders like a fur collar. It whimpers, and I respond with a moan.
Then I hear my name, echoing across a mountain range. The weight on my neck pins my head in the snow. Strong adult hands pull at me, lift and slap snow from my belly and legs. Slender figures murmur encouragement, guide me up the porch steps and into the bright sudden warmth where darkness melts over me.
I wake to Estelle’s smile. “You’re okay,” she says. “Blanche says your heart is fine. You had a panic attack from over exerting. You hyperventilated.”
But I’m not in my own bed—no Brueghel on the wall—only an uncurtained window, alarmingly white. I’m on Blanche’s sofa bed. “You’ve got to lose a little weight, Saint Richard,” my wife’s sister says, and she sits beside me. I feel her hip. “That hole yo
u left hasn’t even filled in yet.” A piercing whistle startles me.
“That’s your hot water,” Estelle says. Her eyes sparkle. “Blanche says tea would be best. I’ll bet you’re starving. Could you eat a muffin? I’ll bring you a blueberry muffin.”
“We’ve got to warm you up,” Blanche says. She shifts closer. I let my eyes close. “Like sled dogs around a tired hunter.” A hand settles on my belly, as if to tame my hunger.
“Shhh,” my wife whispers in the kitchen. “Shh, now.” Is she talking to me? I haven’t said a word. It sounds like she’s calming a pet.
“Shh,” Blanche hushes. I feel her nails through the blanket. “Don’t get excited. Everything’s perfect.”
Smooth
She expected the tattoo parlor to smell like seared flesh and hot tar, but it doesn’t. It smells like hand sanitizer, and a little like nail polish remover—probably the ink. It doesn’t look like anything now because she’s got her eyes closed. Not everyone does lids. Almost nobody does lids. Laser, of Laser’s Tattoos and Piercings does lids, but Jenna had to take two buses to get here. And she knew the minute she stepped onto the first bus outside her gated community that she’d forgotten her smart phone: no calls, no texts, no tweets. She might as well have forgotten one of her senses. But since it’s never, ever happened before, leaving her phone behind is a kind of message, isn’t it? Laser says nothing when Jenna says she’s eighteen.
“Stars of David,” she says. “One on each eyelid.” Twenty-five dollars per lid. Duct tape covers rips in the arms of the chair she’s settled into, as if customers had been tearing at them. “Won’t you hit my eyeballs? I heard that you slide a spoon under.” She shivers, imagining the spoon she plunged into her breakfast grapefruit cupping her naked eyeball, its handle pressed into her cheek, her lid stretched spoon-shaped.
“No spoon. I’m careful,” Laser says. He’s squat, but a big squat, like a giant dwarf. He’s neckless, and his head is square. Before she shut her eyes, he was fiddling with his inking tool, checking its sharpness on stiff paper. The apparatus works with a foot pedal, like her grandmother’s sewing machine.
“Yeah,” she says, “because you don’t want me leaking out my viscous fluids.” She imagines her cheeks wet with something like egg whites, like thick, sticky tears. “I wish I could watch.”
“Should I tape ’em down? Hard to do that and tattoo ’em.”
“You don’t have to. What will it feel like?”
“Weird,” he says. “You’ll love it. Stars of David.”
“Yeah. Yes,” she says, and holds her breath. Laser hasn’t got a single tattoo, has he? Cool. It makes him more of an artist somehow. Does he notice her lack of eyelashes? That she has no eyebrows? Can he guess that her pubes are shaved? That under her hot pink wig her head is as smooth as a beach ball? Could he guess that she’s devoted to the spunk and spirit of Annabelle Hadley?
“I’m starting,” Laser says.
“Okay.”
“See you later,” someone, a man, calls. Jenna doesn’t remember anyone else having been in the parlor when she got there, and she nearly peeks. Whoever it is must have been in the back—there’s a door, isn’t there?
“Later,” Laser says. The front entrance jangles when it opens and shuts.
There’s a hum, and Jenna pats her thigh, but there’s no phone. Then her lid is alive with the crawling feet of bees. On YouTube she’d seen a man’s face dripping with a live-bee mask. Through the tickling she feels the push and nip of Laser’s tool: the first star is being formed. Intersecting triangles will make a Star of David for each wink, double stars when she blinks. Annabelle Hadley is Jewish and probably had a bat mitzvah. Jenna’s Jewish, too; her parents aren’t religious, but she’s been to the bar and bat mitzvah’s of relatives. She imagines Annabelle Hadley’s sweet voice filling the sanctuary as Annabelle chants her Torah portion. Those lucky enough to have been there must have died listening, but been reborn as something better—flowers or butterflies. Or stars. Annabelle has made two record albums, but her lovely voice drowns in guitars and synthesizers.
“Hummm—” Jenna buzzes along with the tattooing.
“Hurts?” The pressure of the tool’s point lifts, and the bee dance stops.
“Un-unh.”
“Then shush. Shush unless it hurts.”
“I thought you’d use a spoon.”
“No spoon,” Laser repeats. The hum resumes. Annabelle Hadley is smooth. Slick as a seal. Alopecia universalis. No hair at all—that’s the “universalis” part—perfect, because it’s total. Annabelle’s total baldness is a one in 100,000 shot, which is a sign of her blessedness. The wigs no one knows she wears are made of natural hair, grown by young women hired to grow it for her. Annabelle pays them with money from her Scaredy-Cat clothing empire and whatever she’s saved from the movies she used to make. They live in a special house, these girls, but nobody knows where it is. Growing their hair long for Annabelle is their sole occupation. They’re like priestesses. Once their hair is shorn, they never allow it to grow again; they shave themselves totally smooth, out of devotion to their employer. Then they move to upper floors in the special house, which is in a gated community, Jenna believes, much like hers. Jenna wishes she could give up her hair for Annabelle’s wigs, but she can’t. Jenna has alopecia, too.
But Jenna’s alopecia isn’t perfect like Annabelle’s. Jenna’s is “totalis,” a funny word for “partial.” Jenna’s hair is patchy, and her mother shaved her head and fitted her with her first wig before she was five. That first wig was like a golden helmet, the wig of an aging Broadway diva, or a grandmother. Now Jenna chooses her own wigs, shocking pink and purple, and shaves herself smooth.
It’s Annabelle Hadley’s alopecia, not her problems with drugs and alcohol, that has kept her out of movies since she turned twenty. She’d grown tired of hiding it. Her addictions are a front. Her disease is probably the most closely guarded secret in Hollywood. Jenna might be the only one who knows. Hairlessness changes the way you see the world. You learn about hiding and intuiting.
Fifteen is paradise! Fifteen and smooth, and she’ll have stars and stars and stars every time she blinks. Jenna has an idea for a tattoo of a pair of baby lips about to take her nipple. Unlike the voluptuous Annabelle Hadley, she’s flat-chested. Jenna’s mother and her Nana are also small-breasted women. But though a tattoo of a pair of baby lips about to take a nipple is a beautiful idea, how do you do it? Could you tattoo the indentation in the breast made by the baby’s cheek? The tiny lips would be hovering in the air. How do you tattoo the air?
“Unh—”
“Sorry.”
Jenna’s eye tears—not from pain, but for Annabelle and her secret suffering.
i am the little girl of svidrigaylov’s dream
This was the first tweet she read of Annabelle’s, before Jenna understood. She’d loved Annabelle in Super Siblings, the first movie she’d ever seen, and had worshipped the young star in her last hit, Cool Girlz. But what was this tweeted “svidrigaylov’s dream”? Jenna Google-searched, and found:
1. Svidrigaylov: a Russian noble in Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment; Svidrigaylov’s moral decay is illustrated by his dream of rescuing an impoverished little girl who transforms into a prostitute before his eyes.
2. Svidrigaylov’s Dream: a film begun by director Raymond Walchuk (see Son of Kong, Teddy); production was terminated when Walchuk was accused of making “inappropriate sexual innuendoes” to ten-year-old costar Annabelle Hadley (see Journals of a Princess, Super Siblings, Cool Girlz, “Celebrity Rehab,” Scaredy Cat Enterprises.) The subsequent scandal, settled out of court, effectively ended Walchuk’s career and launched Hadley’s.
“First one’s done. Need a break?”
“Un-unh.” Jenna smells blood now, faint, through the odors of sanitizer and ink.
“Okay. Keep ‘em closed.”
Tickles and nips on her second lid—Jenna again reaches for the phone she forgot.
i am the little girl of svidrigaylov’s dream
That tweet, the beginning of history, is seared like a beautiful scar onto Jenna’s brain. Accompanying the movie reference Jenna found a photograph of Annabelle Hadley at ten dressed and made up as the dream prostitute. The brassy wig Annabelle wore was identical to Jenna’s childhood wig! (That wig had frightened her classmates. Why else had they avoided her?) The young Annabelle’s Scaredy-Cat green eyes, her lids, lashes, lips, cheeks and brows, all painted provocatively, had mesmerized Jenna. Poor Annabelle! Had she been bald already? Or had the trauma of playing a prostitute at ten, of suffering the director’s inappropriate advances, shocked her system into rejecting her hair? Jenna has studied Annabelle’s subsequent films; she has poured over celebrity shot after celebrity shot. Everything is a wig! Jenna knows: swathed in borrowed hair, Annabelle Hadley mourns her stolen childhood.
Late afternoon is the prickliest time for Jenna, and sitting in Laser’s warm chair is nearly unbearable—so many hours after she’d risen at five a.m. to complete her first shaving. Before bed she’ll shave again, every square inch of skin, polish herself with creams, and luxuriate in the coolness of her sheets. And each morning, dark, bristly islands will have re-surfaced.
There would be new tweets from Annabelle if Jenna hadn’t forgotten her phone. The messages are a disguise, nonsense about “clubbin” and “parteez,” each tweet like a Band-Aid strip covering a wound. Jenna peels away the Band-Aids and translates the tweets into feelings: Annabelle needs something to nurture. A baby would make up for the childhood she’s lost.
Women of Consequence Page 14
