by Carole Maso
“Natalie, don’t go,” Marta whispered. She felt herself sinking back into her body where everything slowed.
“Look at me,” Natalie said. “Look at me.”
“Why did you have to die?” Marta whispered.
Natalie shrugged. Marta watched her light a cigarette. “You’re almost with me now. You’re so close. Come on. It’s like swimming,” Natalie said. “It’s so easy.”
Marta thought of swimming. “Help me, Natalie,” she said.
“I am dead.” She held up her palm. There were no lines in it anymore. “I cannot come into life for you. You must come to me. Do not be afraid.” She stared at Marta. “In death things fall into place. We could be happy here. We could be together forever. There’s nothing to be afraid of. In one second, as soon as you cross over, you stop missing the world. Believe me.”
“Are you lying even now, Natalie?”
“No.”
“It was so hard to know what was true. It was so hard to love you. Do you forget now everything that went on between us?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten, Marta, but it’s like seeing from a great distance, a trillion, billion miles away.”
“Natalie, you were always so distant.”
“I realize now how much living we missed together,” Natalie said.
“You are as beautiful as ever.”
“No,” said Natalie, “it’s only because you still see me with the eyes of the living. When you are dead and with me you will see that none of that ever mattered. I do not look the way I did. My body is green, decomposed, bones in a grave somewhere—I’ve forgotten now, somewhere in Europe. You see the memory of me, not me as I look now.”
“You were so distant in life, so untouchable. You were never really mine—though I tried so hard to hold you. I never knew what you were thinking. One minute you loved me and the next minute you acted like you did not know me. I wanted you to be happy. I would have done anything for you.”
“I’m not beautiful anymore. I’m different. Believe me. I realize now, Marta, all the living we’ve missed together.”
“I love you, Natalie. I have always loved you. I love you now. I am dying for you. I have spent so many months dying for you.”
Natalie began losing her human shape; the cells in Marta ‘s brain fell into disorder, and her body began to break down.
“Die now, then. Die.”
Marta ‘s pulse began to slow. It was almost over. She could feel herself leaving her body. She could view the scene from above. She was being pulled down a long tunnel, but there was no light at the end of it. It promised nothing. It felt like falling forever. She stopped falling somewhere midtunnel. She hovered suspended in midair. There was nothing there, only darkness, silence.
“It’s so easy.” Marta heard a voice from the other end of the tunnel where Natalie was. “It’s like swimming.”
Swimming.
A great warmth flowed through her system. She felt her blood for the first time in a long while. She felt her blood moving inside her.
Swimming.
She began to think of Venezuela with what must have been the last part of her brain. She went back to an early, early time. She folded herself around these sensations: a wave, a smile, a ray of light, a hammock, a baby crying—bananas, the tops of trees, the heat. She curled herself around it.
Natalie panicked. “Please, please.”
“What?” Marta said slowly.
“You don’t understand. I was restless. I looked everywhere for a way to feel better—in Florence, in Nice, in Paris. All of this I am sorry for. I loved you and you never knew it.”
“I never knew it for sure. You never explained anything. You were always so difficult. You were always saying good-bye.”
“Come with me now.”
Tears fell from Marta ‘s eyes and dripped into her mouth. She tasted the salt. In Venezuela the natives made salt at the edge of the sea. The air was white some days with it. She breathed in: the smell of fish and salt and sweat, and the wonderful beach. She pictured three white pillars of salt.
“It was so lonely to love you.”
“In death you will finally understand everything. Things fall together. Believe me. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Hush now.” Marta began to sing the Billie Holiday song, softly at first. “Don’t explain. Just say you’ll remain. I’m glad you’re back. Don’t explain.”
“Please don’t sing that,” Natalie cried. “I’ll miss you too much.” Already Natalie must have known the ending as the dead must know endings, far in advance.
Marta nodded.
Natalie moved closer to Marta. “Come with me,” she begged. “If you ever loved me at all, come to me now.”
Marta closed her eyes. “I never thought it would be this hard to die,” she said. “Natalie,” she cried, “it means giving up everything.”
“Marta,” Natalie whispered, but it did not sound like Natalie really. “Marta,” the voice said. It was Natalie but her voice was smaller, softer. “It’s so lonely here,” she said. “There’s no music or bells. There’s no one we know here, Marta. Most everyone is old. There’s no brilliant light like we thought—nothing.”
In the darkness, her eyes closed tightly, Marta saw for the first time since she had fallen into the coma, not a black void but the Vassar campus, the chapel, the library, her small room in Cushing. And she remembered the story of a woman in a dress made of twilight fluttering across the lawn with another woman, some time ago. Then she saw Venezuela again: a house, a shell, a smooth, white stone, the ocean lapping in her ears, and the lovely clean coastline of an island in Greece, beautiful, blue and white.
And France, too, not Natalie’s France but a different one—a France filled with earnest faces, loaves of bread, bottles of wine; a cat on a fence and someone singing with a big voice in the street; an alley. And yes, Natalie, too, Natalie was there, too, but she seemed further away and she did not have the pull somehow, and Marta thought, I have her still but it’s different. It feels different. And with this recognition, that it feels different, with this letting go came not a release or a feeling of freedom but an unaccountable pain. She could never have imagined the pain that she now felt. It was a sharp pain, a shrill, horrendous scream of pain as if she were giving birth; it was a birth pain—one body pulling out and separating from the other. She was alive and she could feel everything, even her own death, her own mortality, and she shrieked again over her own inevitable death, not now, but some other time, far in the future.
She could still hear Natalie’s voice, but it was getting softer and she could no longer see her. “Natalie,” she cried, “Natalie,” and she felt the pain of what it means to be alive and, as she surfaced, she gave out a long, loud howl—a horrible, bloodcurdling scream that Natalie disappeared into.
She was alone. As she pulled herself up through oceans and oceans of pain into the air, she managed to say a few words.
“I love you still,” she whispered. Her body ached. “I will always love you, Natalie.” She was breathing light; she would live.
“Natalie,” she said. “Don’t look for me. Please don’t look. I’m not coming.”
In a blink the whole world had turned white, in a nod: the sky white; the church, the steeple, completely white, the cobblestones covered like a thousand graves; the butcher-shop window filled with the white heads of sheep, the frail bones of rabbits, white, all white; the cars buried in white like animals in the snow—winter’s fleece.
I barely heard the door open or recognized Jack when he came in. He looked different. I touched the snow that bearded his face. He smiled, looking past me out into the white.
“Isn’t it lovely?” he asked.
His voice seemed to pulsate against the snow. As I looked out the window I felt myself to be disappearing.
“Jack,” I said slowly. I looked at our hands, our faces, our clothes; we, too, were white.
I felt myself giving in. There are days like this in ev
ery season, days of such sensual intensity that they threaten to erase all else. They invite us to surrender to a single moment, they invite us to die. And what choice do we have? Trapped in the blood colors of autumn, caught in impossible snowdrifts or drifts of heat that melt men into the pavement and weaken hearts until they collapse, what choice do we have? Ask for courage then, for it is best not to look away, not to close our eyes. It is best to let our temperatures rise with the sun, to lose ourselves completely in the rhythm of rain, to let it in, to push the limits of what it means to be human, to force our boundaries, to change shape. This was such an evening for forcing things—an evening of excess.
Tonight I thought, looking out the window, Jack murmuring something in my ear, that we would never see color again, never smell flowers, never feel warmth or rain.
He was telling me that the cold front had originated somewhere in Canada and was heading north when it suddenly changed direction and now whipped down the east coast. He spoke softly and it sounded to me like a children’s story. With the storm came sharp winds and heavy snow. Around Boston it picked up sleet and hail and by New York it had fully matured. Like a cartoon it raced around the skyscrapers, breaking the glass in the doomed Hancock Insurance Building and nearly blowing into the sky like kites the dogs that were out for walks. The storm was so bad, in fact, that it kept prostitutes from the street, moonlighters from the night shift, insomniacs from the coffee shops. “Imagine,” he whispered. Couples from the suburbs forfeited their tickets to Broadway plays. Underground the subway groaned to a halt between stations and a Puerto Rican woman with two children began to cry. Men on the Bowery without homes swore at the sky and futilely attempted to make fires. A young secretary took out her bunny fur jacket and laid it on the bed. Old women switched from one radio station to another for weather reports. Children jumped on their beds gleeful at the prospect of no school. Bachelors smiled, poured more wine, and dimmed the lights, knowing their dates would not be able to get home. Jack smiled, too.
Until now it had been a fairly mild winter—sluggish like the South. I thought Jack had begun secretly to prepare for a time when all the seasons would melt together, blurring into one another, impossible to tell apart. A coolish summer would turn into a muddy, green autumn. A snowless Christmas would begin a warm winter, and when spring came he would hardly even notice it. The mind would sleep forever in a homogeneous stupor, unchallenged.
But with this storm some hope for the diversity of the future was renewed in him. He seemed alive now with the possibilities. What had rested so long in him was now awakened. He paced around the room as if I were keeping him on this violent evening from some urgent, private calling.
Early on there had been signs that this would be an evening of supreme winter, irresistible winter, winter the Québécois know, winter the blind man sees. “Prepare,” the wind had whispered into my drowsy ear in the morning light as Sabine turned a corner and boarded her plane. “Prepare,” its freezing breath had said, but there was no preparing for what was to come. Those who assumed such a stance did so to reassure themselves and to calm those around them. I was reluctant even to feign a pose of readiness. Sabine had felt it, too, I thought. She had come just in time.
“Put on your coat,” jack said finally, going to the closet. He was clumsy in his boots and heavy clothing. Though he knew this place by heart, he bumped into things, as if he’d never been here before. Together we had explored every inch of my small studio. We’d been up against every wall, under every table; wedged between the police lock and the door we continued to reach new heights of ecstasy.
“But, Jack.” My voice curled around his chest attempting with its lowest and most seductive registers to pull him toward the bed. “It’s below zero.”
“I like it,” he said, putting his huge hand on the windowpane. “I like it a lot.”
“But we’ll freeze.”
“Put on your coat, Vanessa.”
“Where are we going?”
He held out the coat and I put my arms into the sleeves. I knew this was the night that all our other nights together had been a rehearsal for, preparation. Once my coat was on, I sat back on the bed.
“All right,” he shrugged. “I don’t need this. Don’t come. I’ll see you, OK?”
“Don’t leave me,” I said.
“Hurry up, then. Hurry.” He dragged out the word as he said it, in some way contradicting its meaning. I recognized the tone of his voice. He had spoken to me a thousand times before as I had clawed at his clothing. “Hurry up,” he had moaned, “please.” It was the way he sometimes told me to put in my diaphragm. His voice was a whisper, a cry. “Please, Vanessa, hurry.”
“Are those real boots?” he asked. “There’s three feet of snow out there already, Vanessa.”
“Kiss me,” I said with such authority that he obliged. As he slipped his tongue into my mouth, I could feel him beneath his coat, growing large. My hand moved through the layers of clothes.
“Not now, Vanessa,” he whispered. His mouth was hotter than any mouth should have been on such a night. “Not now.
“This is the night we’ve been waiting for,” he said, wrapping a scarf around my neck. Sure, I smiled, and locked the door.
Jack dragged me like one of those reluctant dogs through the crooked Village streets. “Isn’t this great? Isn’t this wild?” he kept asking. “This is what we’ve been waiting for,” he said, not without sadness, patting me on the back.
“You’re hurting me, Jack,” I complained as he pulled me across the icy park, “and I’m cold.”
“Don’t give up now,” he said. “You’ve come so far already.” His breath had shape; I saw three white pillars in the cold. “Let’s have a drink,” he said, motioning up the block. Light from a sign spilled through the snow. It blinked, “Corner Bistro, Corner Bistro, Corner Bistro.” Neon made me sad. It reminded me of people who had lost their way—drifters, the homeless. I was more lonely than I can ever remember being before, standing under that sign in the snow while Jack lit a cigarette. I thought we paused too long under it, and I pulled at his wool coat. I hated to think of that sign lighting the freezing night for no one. It was a small, inexplicable grief, an uneasiness that lingers long after the actual thought has passed and is replaced.
As we walked into the warmth of the bar, the few people inside turned and stared at us. Lonely, they seemed jealous of what they mistook in our faces for love. In the lines of our bodies they read a great romance, but they misread badly. They missed the point. It was something else that had brought us together, something far more immediate than love, less abstract.
Sitting at the bar, I thought I saw disgust, even hate, in Jack’s face, but it was only a passing shape. And in my face I knew there was great weariness: I wanted now only to rest.
“What would you like to drink?” he asked.
“I don’t want a drink tonight, Jack.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Are you sure?” In snow light I saw the passion that contoured his face.
“Yes,” I said. We slid along the freezing streets, moving more and more quickly. Desire was the terrible friction between our bodies. It syncopated our conversation. It propelled us into places we could not get out of. We followed it forward, dragging ourselves through dangerous terrain.
Who was he, I wondered? Whose life was this that I hung on to so tenaciously? He had refused to tell me even the smallest details of his life—what his real name was, where he lived, where he worked, what his family was like.
Did he have children? “Invent me,” he had said. “I will not exist if you do not invent me.”
It was snowing harder now and the wind kept changing direction. We were nearing the harbor. Our boots made black tracks in the snow. The ice was smooth and thick and treacherous.
“I can’t go any further, Jack,” I said, collapsing.
He pulled me up. “Believe me. You can.”
The violence of the seasons invigorated him. I pictured
him energetic in the brutal heat of the city summer, concentrated in autumn’s excessive beauty, sexual in the torrential rains of spring. But we would never see the spring, I thought.
“Come on, Vanessa,” he said.
I was up to my thighs in snow. It was exhausting to walk through so much white. I was so tired. “You’re leaving me tonight, aren’t you? Why are you leaving me?” I said numbly.
He stopped. He was breathing hard. “Oh, Vanessa,” he gasped. “Don’t you see?” We had reached the water. “It is you who is leaving me.”
The wind whirled us in a convulsive dance. We staggered around each other in hopeless circles.
“No!” I cried, looking up at the ceiling of stars.
“Vanessa,” he said, weaving, swerving. “I have invented your life so many times. But usually the ending is sad.”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” I said. We neared each other, then pulled away. “I’m not surprised!” I shouted above the wind. We collided. He took me by the arms. “You can change the ending, Vanessa.”
We walked out onto the crystal pier. Water rose and fell around us in violent waves. I was freezing to death. I heard the lighthouse’s lonely snow tone. Ice floated by. “Look,” I said. “I see a white light.”
“Where?”
“Out there. I see a white light. A red light. A white light.” The water calmed.
“Yes,” he said. “I see it now, too.”
I was at peace. I turned around. Before my eyes the West Side Highway seemed to open like a field. I arranged the last few objects on the landscape. I looked at Jack. His eyes gleamed like ice.
The headlights of a car came up from behind. “No,” I cried. I felt something hug me like a vice. On impact the man in the car must have been hurled forward. I screamed and screamed, feeling some excruciating force enter me again and again in the snow. I was being slammed over and over. “Oh, God!” I cried.
“Live,” he said, “or die!”
There were flames everywhere: flames in my mouth, flames in my hair. There was no stopping this. Blue flames, orange, white—everywhere. “Why?” I shrieked with the last part of me before the brain closed down. “Oh, God,” I sighed. “Why? Why?”
