Under My Skin

by Alison Jameson

  The little sign says ‘Please do not play the piano’ – it is the one Cole Porter played after all. Around us there are photographs of Grace Kelly and John F. Kennedy but she seems to be completely at ease. She leans back a little then, her back slightly hooped and swaying, and she begins to play some far-off old-fashioned tune. Her cocktail is resting on some sheet music – just to show she is in no hurry at all – and beside her chair, her handbag has turned over and three bottles of pills have rolled out on to the floor.

  ‘Uppers and downers,’ she said casually as she broke one into her gin. She doesn’t care what people think and I already love her for this. Grief picks at us in different ways. There have been tears all over the city and now there are no more tears left. The businessmen walk through dust on Wall Street but up on Park Avenue, at the Waldorf Astoria, everything is art deco and covered in cream and gold.

  When Matilda called the waiter over and asked for afternoon tea it was as if nothing bad had ever happened in the world. She orders food in odd numbers.

  ‘Five tea sandwiches. Three pastries. One savoury tea pie. Three scones with Mascarpone and please – no Chantilly cream.’

  She says she likes odd numbers, she likes that they have pointed edges whereas even numbers are round. And the waiters tiptoe around us walking a fine line between humour and respect.

  When she orders tea she asks for ‘One silvertip’ and ‘One Darjeeling’ and I have no idea what any of this means.

  In the city there is talk about hedonism. She wrote about it yesterday in the New York Post. And how those who are alive suddenly want to live, and live and live. There is a new tolerance in New York, Matilda wrote – but when she sits at Cole Porter’s piano the waiters’ eyes are suddenly full of fear. They stand in twos and confer with their silver trays balanced casually on their hands. They could be talking about the weather but they are looking at my Converse runners with the hole in the toe, the rucksack, the black beret. The hat was a find this morning at her favourite thrift store on Angel Street – and this is the only sign of mourning she will allow.

  Beneath the palm trees and at white linen tables, the Manhattan girls have afternoon tea and cocktails and talk. They drift in and out of conversations and when Matilda starts to sing their words begin to slow down and finally stop.

  She is wearing a tight lilac cashmere sweater, a pale lemon pleated skirt and white high-heeled shoes. I have never seen anything like her. Her earrings are like pink seashells, angel wings or slipper shells. I can’t remember which. Her hair in a blonde bouffant style.

  ‘We are all misfits,’ I said after the third cocktail and she laughed and for some reason she seemed to really like that. The head waiter walks towards her but her voice, tiny and tired and without any real tune, begins bravely to come through.

  ‘As I lie in my bed in the morning, without you, without you,’ and around us in a matter of seconds there are eyes filling up with tears. When the maître d’ appears he signals to the waiters to leave her be. ‘Let her sing,’ someone says and her voice begins to ring out into the carpet and chandeliers. And around us people are beginning to join in and sing. When Matilda sings she is lost to the world, she seems to lift herself up into the sky and float, and everything I have ever been sad about, in all my life, comes out in her soft voice. And when she finishes there is a round of applause and she beams at her audience and bows. Then she lifts her glass and empties it and bows again before stepping away.

  ‘I lost someone too,’ she says and her voice is tragic and full of pride and pain.

  After tea we walk together from the hotel and the doorman rushes to the door and bows. And she links my arm and we walk down Park Avenue, in the still warm autumn sunshine, in a ladylike and old-fashioned way. We browse in shops. She buys a pretzel and insists I have a real hotdog. We call into a small boutique on Broadway that only sells hats and gloves. She buys her Christmas cards. Small and with a simple black and white photograph, showing a couple holding hands and walking over Gapstow Bridge in the snow.

  ‘Isn’t that the most romantic thing you have ever seen?’ she whispers. And I nod and turn away because her eyes are filling with tears. Then we take a cab to Barneys where she has an appointment at Robert Sweet William. ‘My brows,’ she says as if they are a matter of life and death, and I wait like a child while they work on her and when she sits up, her face breaks into a beautiful smile and there is no trace of tears.

  On Madison Avenue she calls a cab and takes me to Grand Central and we stand there on the steps and watch as everyone rushes for their trains. One of her favourite places in New York is Whispering Gallery and she even gets me to stand in one corner and she runs to the far end and whispers something to me. I will never know what she said but already she is the kind of woman I would hate to disappoint, so when she waves I just smile and wave back.

  Her apartment is on the second floor in a tall brownstone on W78th and Columbus. Inside there is a narrow mosaic hallway and a tiny kitchen and a new red pullout couch under a bay window. Even now in the almost winter she has left the window open and the white curtains float back into the room. The cat glares at me from under a radiator and I envy him his simple life and how he greets her, lazy with his manners and himself. She has a small spare bedroom and in here she has already made up the single bed.

  ‘It’s actually a closet,’ she says, ‘but there’s a window and it’s cosy and warm.’ And around the walls there are pictures of old movie stars – Rock Hudson, Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe.

  She makes tea in the kitchen and we sit on two blue-painted stools at its old-fashioned stove. She tells me what she has in New York and what matters to people here – the black and white floor tiles in the kitchen, the exposed brick wall in her bedroom, a cat that does not ask for much, a nice neighbour downstairs, and because of him, she tries not to make noise, and because of him she has put down rugs. She has a Steinway piano, inherited from her mother, a proper bathtub, and a bay window in her living room that gives good light. ‘I have a good life,’ she says, and as I look through her stack of sheet music I think she must be one of the loneliest women in the world.

  When she sits on the red couch, the autumn sun begins to go down behind the brownstones across the street and it is red and gold. She says she loves the Fall and that tomorrow she will take me to Central Park to see the leaves. She curls one leg under her then and says –

  ‘I became an orphan when they put my momma away,’ and this is offered up with a sad little smile.

  ‘I was angry… bereft,’ she whispers and there is silence in the room and it is just us in the small apartment that is growing colder now and losing the light from the sun.

  ‘It is difficult for me to talk about him,’ she says then, and I am looking around the room for a prompt. I can only presume she is talking about the man she loved and lost. And then she begins to talk quickly and the words spill out and embarrass us both. At first he was like a father to her. A very attractive older man. He was the first man that she trusted. ‘The first man ever in the world.’

  And every day something new happened, something that made her want to say, ‘Thank you, God.’

  ‘Every day – there was another joy. It was love – one big love –’ she says. ‘That’s what everyone gets. And to remember each day that he gave to me – I would make a little mark – it was like keeping a diary about a woman and a man – one big love,’ and she says it again.

  And I nod and listen and I am beginning to feel cold and sad inside.

  ‘What sort of mark?’ I ask.

  ‘On my skin,’ she answers simply.

  She reminds me of a broken bird, hopping around, trying to live and eat with one wing hanging down.

  ‘And he’s not dead. I know that,’ she says quietly.

  ‘How do you know?’ and my voice is gentle.

  ‘He’s pretending,’ she says and she smiles at me.

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘It’s a little game,�
�� she says and she is still smiling.

  The marmalade cat gets up and walks across the room and his tail is held high and proud.

  ‘He was the kind of person that could walk into a room and everyone just wanted to stand near him,’ she says and then, ‘Sometimes I think he was an angel. You know, not quite real.’

  That night I hear the sirens of New York inside my head and now and then the door opens and Matilda floats towards me wearing a pink negligee. She says I have flu and that my temperature is 103. She makes green tea and honey and she finds fresh cotton pyjamas. She makes toast and gets up in the middle of the night to find a deli that is open and selling chicken soup. And when she leaves I find myself repeating the names of all the buildings I know in New York. The Empire State – the Chrysler Building – America International – the Flatiron – the Woolworth Building – 53rd and 3rd – the Waldorf Astoria – and the next time she comes in I am hallucinating that there is an ostrich wearing glasses in my room. She takes the next day off work and we watch old movies in bed. My favourite is The Odd Couple and hers is Some Like It Hot.

  On Tuesday Matilda takes me to the wall at St Vincent’s. We stand side by side and find Larry a space. And here he is now, in the middle of a thousand other smiling faces – Larry’s eyes, his smile, and when I lean in closer, I can see his faded-out scar. I miss him so much now that I can hardly breathe and somehow Matilda instinctively puts one hand on the small of my back and I need her now, to protect me and to hold me up.

  The photo was taken outside Vertigo. He is wearing his chalk-stripe apron and a reluctant smile. He liked that photo best. He has his hands in his pockets and there is some ketchup on his apron and a cigarette behind his ear. ‘Go on… get it over with,’ his face says. The day we took that photo there was an east wind coming up from the beach. I can remember the sound the camera made and how it felt cold against my cheek. How I wish for it now. Why did I not run towards him and give him a hug? Just one more, to have an extra memory now, and for luck.

  ‘Larry,’ the words say. ‘My husband. He might be wearing his wedding band. My name is inscribed inside, Hope.

  He has a scar across his top lip.’

  The girl is crying as she pins her flyer. ‘I spent my whole life looking for him,’ she says and she is crying harder now. ‘My whole life – and I just don’t know how to start again – without him and without our life.’ Her flyer shows a boy in a graduation cap and gown. His parents on either side, flanking him. And now I go here almost every evening. There is something about being here, in this quiet, sad, mourning space – where people feel what the bereaved feel and silently move on. I don’t know why I want to read the flyers. I only know that I do. When I see a face taped to a lamp-post or in a phone booth or in the subway window I stop and understand that this face is here because there is someone else behind it who is in an awful lot of pain.

  ‘Caesarean scar.’

  ‘Wedding band engraved “Nick”.’

  A watch ‘Truly madly passionately T’.

  That night my mobile rings at 4 a.m.

  ‘Is that Hope?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that Hope?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Caitlin.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Caitlin.’

  ‘Caitlin who?’

  ‘Caitlin. I’m Franklin’s girlfriend.’

  ‘Who is Franklin?’

  ‘He’s a firefighter.’

  ‘A firefighter?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why are you calling me?’

  ‘I’m calling you because I’ve just found out that my boyfriend is cheating on me and your number is in his phone.’

  ‘Who is your boyfriend?’

  ‘Franklin Gallagher – he’s a firefighter.’

  And now I remember this is the man who wanted me to slide down the pole.

  ‘I’m really sorry to hear that he’s cheating – but he’s not cheating with me.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Do you know that it’s four in the morning?’

  ‘Yes. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Then I hang up and lie back on my pillow and I think about how things used to be before it all got this crazy on me. I turn on the light and take out my wallet but there are no pictures of Larry left. I work my way through it. There are till receipts. A subway ticket. Eighteen dollars. A photo of me and Juna and Daniel in the garden and it seems like a hundred years ago. And then I find something I didn’t even know I had. It is a note from Larry written with his favourite black fountain pen and hidden in there for me to find. He liked to sketch a little heart in pencil and put our names on either side. It was usually something like ‘Dinner is in the oven, xx Larry’. Or ‘I miss you, Larry’.

  It was supposed to fall out in the supermarket. Or in our flat. Or at my desk. But this one didn’t work out like that.

  Our days were long, I really believe that now. Bright bands of happiness stretched out smooth and sweet. And I can only remember the best of us and that the weather was always fine. The first regret is that I didn’t know what I had then. That I took him and me and what we had for granted, because I didn’t know then that he was – that we were – the one. It is a note that tells me how much he loves me – and because there is no date I have no way of knowing when.

  Matilda sits in her green armchair and the air conditioner buzzes over her head. Outside the traffic is backed up on Broadway and the whole world has been shrunk down into this one warm place.

  The summer has appeared again briefly and only the nights are cold. ‘An Indian summer,’ she says quietly, as if this should comfort me. But I want to say, ‘Let’s walk. Let’s run. Let’s take this problem outside.’

  It is nearly three months now. And I don’t want to but I have to ask someone when I should begin to let go. And how can I anyway? It is like slipping under water, fingers losing their grip on a raft. Sliding down into deep water and beginning to drown. And lastly, I remember and regret that I didn’t say ‘I love you’ to him that day he left – and because I was so sure he would be back again soon, I didn’t even say goodbye.

  ‘Where are you?’ I ask as I look out the window over Columbus but there is no response from the yellow taxis, and the leaves that are changing colour fall silently from the trees.

  Hope,

  You know what’s great about being married to you?

  … Being married to you.

  Love you always.

  Larry x.

  It is noon when my mobile rings. It rings once and I look at it from across the room. The apartment is empty and Matilda has gone to work. It is the middle of the day and the sun is high over Broadway and today the cabs are flying and glowing on the Upper West Side. The phone rings and I sit on the red couch under the bay window and watch it. The phone rings and I know it is not Matilda or Jack or Marcia or anyone else I know.

  The phone rings and in two steps my hand reaches for it and I can hear the voice of The Chief.

  Today he has news and he says it out to me, one word holding the next word’s hand, so they are joined together and making sense, and the voice he uses is that of a tired old man.

  He has seen everything before and still he waits quietly for the words to fall into place.

  And inside my head, the building is suddenly tumbling downwards and the top floor slides down into the next, and that floor slides down into the one below. There are rafters and floorboards and clouds of snow-white dust. People dropping downwards, floating, falling, gliding and without any noise at all. We are all floating and falling together and now and then I hold on to another word. The Chief tells me that they have found Larry’s wedding ring and that my name is inside and the date we got married – 4 January 2001.

  Goodbye to New York City. I have one small rucksack and my husband’s ring on a chain around my neck. Jack sits with me on the steps and we wait for a cab. The house in Cape Cod is his idea. He bought it last year and he u
nderstands that I need to escape.

  ‘I’ll come down and check in on you,’ he says and I know he needs to escape sometimes too. ‘It’s going to be very quiet down there. No one goes to Truro at this time of the year – but there’s a phone – and email – so you’ll be fine.’

  He puts one large hand around my shoulders and then he turns my face into his chest. A small dog starts to bark in the distance and a bum begins to work his way through the trash.

  The bus leaves from 41st Street and 8th and the traffic holds us up. The city wants to hold on to me and it will not say goodbye. Soon there will be a freeway lined with red and gold trees. Then there will be small towns with white fences and porches and swings that move in the wind. ‘Goodbye,’ I whisper out to the yellow taxis, and the bus moves – one inch towards the coast and New England and one inch further away from New York. I am not ready to say goodbye to Larry. Everyone says I have to but maybe I never will. I take the notebook from my rucksack and I ask the lady beside me if I can borrow her pen. There is a new word inside me and I have to write it down. I will never forget this one though and I know exactly what it means.

  Heartbroken

  And beside it I write his name.

  15 Wellfleet, Cape Cod

  Dawson Cottage was hidden by trees. It was built back near the forest away from the sand dunes and the lonely sound from the sea. Glassman would learn that as much as his mother loved the ocean she had also heard the stories about dangerous tides and New England winters and of children and sailors and even houses that were swept away by the sea. He would also learn that Dawson was the name of the man who had never been her husband but had fathered him and then went his own way. He was not hurt by either of these things. His mother and father lived apart but they had really loved each other once which was more than a lot of people could say.

  Whenever he thought about the cottage in New York, he remembered how happy they were there and he could only see the wooden porch at the back and the stonework dappled by summer sun coming in through the leaves. He could remember how dark the kitchen became in a deep summer afternoon and how cool and welcoming the floor was under hot running feet. He remembered very clearly the dog that sat at the front door and never moved as if he was being paid to keep the ghosts of dead sailors away. Glassman kept this picture in his mind when he handed his credit card over the counter in Hertz and as the car swung out on to W29th and Broadway he put dark glasses on and glanced with a small tingle of pleasure at the suitcase on the back seat.