by Anne Enright
So although I had no words for how new it was, I saw it all and remembered it all. At least I remember it in bits, how solid his chest was as it gave under the weight of my hand, the awful lightness of his fingers, the light of his eye, the surprising weight of his head, the weightlessness of his mouth, how substantial he was outside of me, though inside there was no end to him.
I came all over the place, as was only to be expected. So it was some time before I worried for him, for the sweat, for the gathering lightness and the fear on his face. I worried for him as he slipped into the helpless and surprising centre of himself, the air over his shoulders fluttering in agitation and his eyes on mine. I did not know what might happen. I thought he might die or weep or disappear. I did not stop it.
I felt it first, a tidal bore, running with unexpected slowness into the very heart of me. A kind of bark from Stephen. Then silence. For the first time since he touched me, I felt frightened. That last wave of his was still going through me. I don’t think it stopped. I think it is going through me now.
*
He is cheerful in the morning and sane. I can’t believe it was that simple. The sound of the bath water running, the smell of toast and Stephen talking to the toaster saying ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to give it up now. I’m afraid you’re going to have HUP! Sorry about that.’
I wonder if my body might be blank as a sheet, but in the bath I am all there, soft and tough, blood and bone, each breast jealous of the other and the kisses it remembers. There is a hopeful glow of pink fighting back through the white where Stephen left his mark.
We are shy in the kitchen. I wonder if I might be pregnant. He looks at me in the way you might look at a woman who is pregnant.
We drive into work, while my body secretly remembers all the lettermaking on the white sheets. M was one of them, a touching O, an informal kind of R, for Rumple or embRace, a hilarious K which was just too complicated.
Most of the words made no sense. KORMA for example. There was also DATA, a more reciprocal DATTA, and a very fine HAT of which the T was so distinctive I fell out of the bed. All this as we drive into work—that was another one, with a hip-popping W and an R where Stephen cried. Oh he cried.
He cried. So I made love to him carefully; using my hands carefully to remind him where his body was and where it stopped, to remind him where it stopped and where it turned into something else. Because he was so substantial outside of me but inside there was no end to him. There was no end to him and no telling so I just lost it instead and nearly crashed the car.
‘Watch it,’ says Stephen. He seems solid enough now. He seems fine. I would have said he was a new man, if I could be sure that man was the right word. He talks to me about buildings we pass, wonders what an office block would look like if the glass just melted, if the carpets started growing, if the phones started ringing like Angelus bells.
‘No tricks,’ I say.
‘Sorry?’
‘Just. When we get there. When we hit air. No tricks.’
‘Who me?’
‘Promise.’
He leans over and kisses me until the lights go green. The shock of his mouth is like everything we did last night all at once. If this is his promise I believe him, though in retrospect, and I have had quite a bit of retrospect, the lights stayed red for an unnaturally long time.
The Colour of Skin
THESE DAYS I have plenty of time to think. I swim every morning in the sea and pull myself through the ebb of the wave, because the sea is hungry and wants me back. The sea is heavy. I feel the suck of the wave in the morning and water seduces me all day, because it is something to lie on. Water that makes you spread just to look at it, that wants you, small as you are. I cannot find the edge of myself, which is why I have to be inside things now, so that the walls will hold me in, so that I can lap into corners and seep into carpets and carry like a bowl the noise of the sea.
I have plenty of time to tease it apart and fit it together again, what happened on the show and where Stephen went. I have spoken to everyone concerned. I tie it all together and then I cut the string.
Last night I dreamed that Stephen was dead, and that he came into my dream to tell me that he was dead and to tell me something else, which I can’t remember. I should not have been surprised. These are things that I already know, in a way.
The Stephen in my dream was the same, though his eyes were larger. His eyes were larger but still the same colour, or so the dream told me.
When I woke it was with the grief of everyone who has ever seen a dead friend in their dreams; the same want; the same ache to sleep again; the same need to hear what they were saying, or about to say, the memory of which is spread through all of you, but gently, like water, like something you cannot pick up.
And the joy that he was there and that he was real. All the dead, they smile or sit or lean forward in just that way. They sit in a way that you had forgotten and lean forward in a real way, just to remind you they are not a dream. ‘Yes. It’s me.’
They lean forward to tell you what they have come to say and they let you look in to their eyes, which are larger than they used to be, but still the same colour.
You want to see them again but you don’t want to die. You just want to sleep again, to be in that place again, where the dead and the living can talk to each other and look into each other’s eyes.
I woke up grateful and sick with grief, as if I could not carry my heart anymore; it had burst and spread, like an old yolk.
So I pick up the clues again, as if they mattered. I remember the blur when we arrived in the office, the residue of the night before, or the excitement of going live. Whatever I focused on was simple enough; Frank being calm, Jo being calm, but the LoveWagon was hovering on the edges and every time I looked away from him, Marcus seemed to smile.
I remember Stephen coming to sit with us; with my colleagues, none of whom slept with him the night before, and with me, who did.
He talked to Jo. He talked to Jo as if I wasn’t there. He took her stopwatch and handled it, clicked it on—let it run—reset—let it run. His hands looked like a builder’s hands. I remember the awful dryness of his palm last night, the lines deepening in the creases, even as I looked at them.
He wraps the stopwatch in its thong and gives it back, still ticking, to Jo, who switches it off casually, as if she didn’t know. The year they added an extra second to the clock Jo was the woman up in the studio gallery, counting down for the nation.
‘So where did you put the extra second?’ Stephen asks. Did she have the old midnight and then a new one a second later? Or did she scrub the old one and just go for the new? Did she say zero twice, and if so which was the right zero? If both were right, what would you call the time in between the two?
Jo smiles and seems to know what he means. He smiles back, as if to thank her for giving us all a little extra time.
Michelle in make-up had never seen such beautiful skin. She looks at him for a while, then looks at him again.
‘I’d leave you as you are,’ she says, ‘except you wouldn’t be able to go on without’, and Stephen smiles like a cat.
‘Slap it on,’ he says. ‘You need a thick skin for this show.’
So she picks up some foundation with regret, then puts it back down again, picks up a different one, mixes a little in her hand and as he closes his eyes, sponges slowly under his chin and in thick even strokes down his neck. He opens one eye as she works on his face. It worries her, this perfect skin.
‘I’ll be in to you later to see how you look under the lights.’
She says it firmly, as if the camera would never intervene, as if the guys in Master Control didn’t tweak the colour after the man at the lighting desk tweaked the colour after the guys in Maintenance set the colour on the cameras, and all of them with graphs that go up and down to tell them what colour skin is, somewhere between this wavelength and that wavelength of blue or green or red. So they stand back and fix it the
re—where skin is just honest to God skin, and red is the red they like, the red on the inside of their heads; Manchester United red, blood red or the red they see when they kiss in the dark. Then everyone at home starts fiddling with their own set as if to say, to each man his own kiss. She says it with conviction, as if the sum of all those tweaks and shifts made it true, a kind of skin by consent.
How do you make a decision about colour in that kind of environment? How do you make a decision about red if you have forty shades there set out in a row in front of you, from Burnt Rose to Burgundy to Flame and every single one of them not quite right?
‘It’s a question of tones, isn’t it?’ said Stephen and she seems relieved. ‘Did you ever work in black and white?’
That is how I remember him, the air blurring around him as his body settled on his bones; as pores opened and age crept in. I should not blame myself. I don’t even know what happened when the cameras switched on and he walked into the propellors; when his flesh hit the airwaves. I think he put up a fight anyway. Because, it would seem, we all saw our own show. And here is the best that I can do.
Rehearsal
EDEL ARRIVES AT 4.15. She is already early. She gets a little bit earlier all the time. She is worried that some day she will meet herself coming back. But the woman at reception isn’t surprised.
‘Certainly,’ she says. ‘They’ll have someone over right now:’
*
Over in the office they are running late. Frank is putting in some last minute changes. Jo tries not to care, but she follows them all the same.
‘The script has already gone to printing,’ she says. Frank doesn’t hear. He puts his hand over his back pocket and freezes. His wallet, his pictures are gone.
*
A man comes into the reception area and asks her her name. When she tells him he says ‘That’s great’, as though she had a great name.
‘Follow me,’ he says and walks through a door. She looks over at the woman behind the reception desk and the woman smiles at her. The smile is for her, but it is also for the row of television sets on the wall, where a cartoon is showing with a cat and a bird. The cat is walking a telephone wire over to the bird’s nest. He has an umbrella in one hand, stretched out for balance.
*
Frank enters the studio through the wide scene-dock door, big enough to fit a plane through. He walks across the floor and looks at the lighting rig which creaks and blinks, as one lamp descends on a telescopic hoist. The lamp turns around to look at him with a whirring hum and switches itself on.
‘How’ya,’ says Frank.
*
Edel follows the man through the door and finds herself in a corridor. It is surprisingly narrow and busy. She doesn’t have time to see it all. A man goes past with a dirty duvet cover knotted at the top like a sack. As he goes past she smells something rancid and does not know whether it comes from the man or from the sack. She looks over her shoulder and she sees the sack move. There is something moving inside the duvet cover and it smells.
*
Marcus is editing the interview from last week’s date. The girl on the tape is saying ‘Lovely eyes, big smile, really good pectorals, but the best bit is … well you know … all girls really … but me now … I really go for …’
‘Say it,’ says Marcus, under his breath. ‘Say it.’
‘I’m a …’
‘You’re an …’
‘I like …’
‘You like a nice …’
‘I like a nice …’
‘arse.’
‘personality.’
‘What?’ said Marcus. ‘That’s not what she said this morning.’
‘Women,’ said the editor. ‘Always changing their minds.’
*
The man brings her down the corridor and around the corner where someone is shouting ‘Run. Run now.’ A woman turns around and collides with her and five tapes land on the ground, their cases burst open, one of them goes skittering across the carpet and hits the wall. Edel bends down to pick them up.
‘Sorry,’ she says and the two women’s heads bang off each other. The woman who was holding the tapes doesn’t say anything to her, she says ‘Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus.’
*
Up in the box Frank dials a number and says ‘What’s the story on Camera 3? We are going live in three hours’ time. What do you want me to do? Cut to black?’ and his wife’s voice says ‘Frank? Who gave you my number? Is this a joke?’
*
She follows the man through a door and into make-up.
‘This is Edel’, he says, ‘for the LoveQuiz.’
‘How are you?’ says a woman in make-up. ‘Take a seat.’ She climbs up into what looks like a barber’s chair, the woman takes a pink bib, snaps it into the air, twists the top around her neck and lets the rest drift down onto her chest.
‘Nervous?’ says the woman.
‘No,’ says Edel. ‘I mean yes.’ She looks down at her knee and sees a ladder in her tights, running up under her skirt, even as she watches it.
*
‘When I saw her first… Ready? OK. When I saw her first I thought Nice face, Shame about the dress. No. No. The first thing I saw were her eyes which are green, a really witchy, seductive green. Brown. Let me try that again. When I saw her first I thought Hello … We’re going to have a good time.’
*
Stephen waves at the camera, just like he is told and the light around his head separates out into red and green and blue.
*
The man sitting in the next chair to Edel gives her a wink. She thinks it might be the Minister for Health and Social Welfare.
‘Mmmmnn,’ says the Minister. He closes his eyes. ‘That’s lovely’ he says. ‘You know there’s nothing so lovely as being made-up.’ The make-up woman leans across him. Her breast touches his ear.
*
‘Stand by for rehearsal,’ says Frank. ‘In five. Get wardrobe to do something with that guy’s white shirt—it’s flaring all over the place. Cue Damien. Cut two. What?’
All the screens have gone to white.
*
Stephen looks up and sees me on the gantry, looking down. He seems scared. He smiles anyway. Pop goes a light, showering the floor with sparks and glass. Bang goes my heart. Pop goes my breast.
And at last I know the difference between one and two.
‘One. Tchuu,’ says Stephen into the mike. ‘One. Tchew.’
* *
Frank leaves the studio while they fix the cameras and he goes to the toilet. There is a smell in the next cubicle and a man is making a noise in there. It sounds like he is feeding hens, or a calf. He is making wet clucking sounds deep in his throat. Frank hears the toilet flush and the man say ‘Oh no you don’t.’
* *
Maybe he isn’t the Minister for Health and Social Welfare. Edel notices that he is sliding his hand up and down the back of the make-up lady’s knee. Every stroke of his hand goes a little further up her skirt.
* *
‘Well let’s eat in the hotel,’ I said. ‘If you want me to wear a dress.’ I just thought he didn’t like my legs. That said I thought well here’s a lovely person, kind eyes and a good listener, maybe it was because his mouth was always full. No I didn’t say that. Don’t put that in.’
‘Leave it in,’ says Marcus.
* *
The Head of Current Affairs comes into the toilet and goes up to the urinal. Frank edges away from the cubicles. His back brushes the back of the Head of Current Affairs, who looks over his shoulder. Frank catches his eye. They listen. There is the sound of the piss of the Head of Current Affairs hitting the urinal and, from the cubicle, the sound of a man saying ‘Come on. Come on you little sweetheart, you little bastard. Come on.’
* *
The make-up woman is leaning across the Minister for Health and Social Welfare. She is patting his face with a soft, dry, firm powder puff. He is stroking the top inside of her thigh. She says ‘How’s
that now?’
‘Lovely,’ he says and opens his eyes. ‘Just lovely.’ She smiles down at him.
* *
‘Great kisser. I mean classic kisser. And he says “Listen, come on” because I wasn’t really interested to tell you the truth but he was really hot to trot. Talk about Russian hands, talk about Roman fingers! Anyway. It was a beautiful night. Very warm. And “Fuck you” he’s saying.’
‘Out on “fingers”,’ says Marcus.
* *
The only sound in the toilet is the sound of the piss of the Head of Current Affairs and the sound of the man inside the cubicle, who is saying ‘Eat it, you little bastard. Eat it.’ Frank bends down to check how many pairs of shoes are visible under the door. The toilet seat falls with a clatter and the man says ‘Damn.’ A stained sheet is thrown over the cubicle door and a small white mouse runs from under the partition and across the shoes of the Head of Current Affairs, where it gets very wet.
‘Damn,’ says the Head of Current Affairs.
* *
‘Just lie back there,’ says the woman from make-up.
‘Take as long as you like,’ says the Minister for Health and Social Welfare.
‘I’ll just neaten you up a little,’ she says, taking up her tweezers. ‘You know what they say about men’, she says, ‘whose eyebrows meet.’
* *
‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ says the camera-man to Frank. ‘The pictures are back, they’re just coming in upside down.’
‘Well stand on your head, why don’t you,’ says Frank.
* *
‘This big prick with a vein in it and I’m saying Just please let me go to the toilet, I have to go to the toilet, I’ll be back in a minute I swear, I swear and he just says nothing and I can’t move and this big ignorant looking prick pushing.’
‘Rewind,’ says Marcus.
* *
‘Aaargh!’ says the Minister, as the woman from make-up examines the tuft of hair in her tweezers. His body stiffens in the chair, his hand under her skirt makes a fist.
‘You BITCH!’ he screams and the Special Branch man runs into the room with a gun in his hand.
