A Good Woman

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘Sandro…’

  ‘It’s okay. I’m not drunk. Just wanna dance.’

  We go to a small club a few blocks away, all jazz and smoky lights and rickety tables, and we make our way onto the crowded dance floor. Sandro holds me so tight that I can breathe in nothing but his smell. He is hard, so hard that I wonder at my coldness. Is it fear or is it the overwhelming sense of being trapped that makes me so cold? I don’t know, but I want to run and I can’t move, except to Sandro’s rhythm. Sandro’s marionette, the thought comes to me. Two wooden dolls with carved grimaces, our strings inextricably tangled. I play snapshots of our life together through my mind. They fall one by one like sheets on old-fashioned calendars. Sadness fills me. But nothing else. I watch Sandro drink and think that with any luck he will pass out. He is not a habitual drinker. At two, I persuade him home. He falls asleep in seconds, his arm over my chest like a vice. I wait a little, then quietly wriggle my way out and down to the sofa.

  In the morning, when I open my eyes, he is perched at the edge of the sofa and staring at me. I cannot read his face, but there are lines in it I haven’t noticed before, grim lines etched at the side of his mouth.

  ‘So beautiful,’ he murmurs, ‘the bones, the lines of your face. I’m going to try to sculpt you again.’

  ‘But now it’s time for work, Sandro. I imagine we’re both late,’ I smile stiffly. He looks at me as if he doesn’t remember I can speak.

  I leap up, busy myself with coffee.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ he says after a moment.

  ‘It’s okay. You were fraught. We’ll talk later.’ I rush into the bathroom and lock the door behind me.

  That evening, I try to explain to him calmly and fairly that it’s no one’s fault, but it’s no good between us at the moment, hasn’t been for some time, as we both know too well. Maybe it’ll change. Maybe not. In any case, we can’t live together. He has to move out. I’m going off tomorrow for a break and I won’t be back until a week Sunday. That should give him time to find a place, move his things out. I explain as if I am talking to a reluctant child. I tell him that if he’s short of cash, I’ll give him some, and when I see him shudder, say he can pay me back whenever he’s flush. I talk and talk and cannot bear the silent hunch of his shoulders. When I have run out of words, he says with a hoarse desperation in his voice, ‘Who says it’s no good between us, Maria?’

  ‘I say. You would say, too, if you stopped to think about it.’

  He passes his hand over his brow, rubs at it as if he wanted to eradicate something. He puts his arms round me, tries to hold me close. I am stiff in the circle of his arms. I shake my head. He lets me go. He sits silently hunched in the blue sofa, sits there all evening, as I pack my bag, sleeps there. I feel cruel. I am cruel. I cannot seem to be otherwise.

  In the morning, I take his hand, hold it for a moment. He looks at me as if billowing fog had to clear before he could see me. ‘Good-bye Sandro,’ I say. I kiss him lightly with the mad hope that it might wipe the despair from his face, wipe it clean, return that Sandro of innocent hopes. I wave as I pick up my bag.

  ‘Who are you going with?’ he suddenly asks with that jarring note I recognize too well.

  ‘That’s really none of your business. Nothing I do is any of your business.’ I reply coldly. I cannot help myself.

  I go to Martha’s Vineyard. I stay in a small hotel, walk miles across sand, let it wash through my toes, my fingers. The weather is clear, mild. I breathe deeply as if there cannot be enough air in the universe to fill my lungs. I read novels, dip into three at once, so that the stories grow rampant, confused. I try not to think and I begin to succeed. On the fifth morning when I go down to the dining room, I feel different. I realise it is because I have stopped looking over my shoulder. Sandro’s eyes have ceased pursuing me. I am free. I taste the freedom and like it.

  It is when I come back to the hotel around mid-afternoon that I see him, hovering like some sleek winged bird at the top of the steps. At first I think I have conjured him up out of my anxieties. But when he speaks I know he is all too real.

  ‘Having a good time?’ he asks in his insinuating tone.

  I stare at him for a moment. ‘A great time,’ I say and then I find I am hissing, ‘Go way Sandro. Go. Get out of my life. I never want to see you again. Never.’ I rush past him, run up to my room, lock the door, put my full weight against it for good measure. I stand there for I don’t know how long. Only the next day do I dare to venture out again. With relief, I find that no Mr. Jimenez has registered at the hotel.

  I walk. I walk and find I am looking over my shoulder again and I chide myself. I sit and I gaze out to sea. I try to read but my eyes won’t focus on the page, so I watch the waves some more. It is then that I see the old man. He is walking alone on the beach. His shoulders are slightly hunched and his trousers are turned up against the surf. The current tugs at him, bounding, pulling, so much vaster, stronger, than the disappearing shore and those pale wavering feet. I have a sudden acute sense of the old man’s fragility. I want to run up to him, take his arm, lead him away from the hostile waters.

  The old man haunts me that night and the next day I find myself drawn to the very same spot. I wait. I am afraid. I think the sea may already have swallowed him. But after a while, he appears again. His trousers are still rolled up, though his feet seem a little paler. The same odd feeling comes over me, and suddenly I have an image of Sandro as I last saw him in New York, hunched in the iridescence of that blue sofa.

  Restlessness fills me. I go back to the hotel and try to dispel it but it won’t leave me. It is still there the following morning and I know then that I must see Sandro one more time, speak to him, explain. I don’t want to hurt him. Not really. But I don’t know what to say to him. I lie on the beach and try to think this through. By mid afternoon, a sense of urgency takes me over and I can’t think anymore. My mind is all dull torpor. But my limbs move of their own accord. They impel me towards New York, groan that the quickest means of transport is far too slow.

  I arrive just after eleven, impatient with the Friday night traffic as my cab prods its way through the streets. Spring street is completely jammed and I pay off the cabby and walk the remaining block. I think I know as soon as I hear the sirens screeching. A shuddering takes me over. I run. In front of my building, a small crowd has gathered. I push and elbow my way through. I scream, howl, ‘Sandro.’ And then I see him, lying there on the pavement, his limbs awry, his head in an odd position, one hand stretched out as if in entreaty. The fragile carapace of his body broken.

  I don’t remember much of the following hours - the leap and thrust of the ambulance, Sandro a grey blanket beside me; endless questions; Steve suddenly there, taking over, perhaps I phoned him, leading me back to his place; a pool of amber light in a white ceiling; brighter streaks through slats announcing morning, coffee scalding my lips, my feet too white on the floor, the bones too brittle for movement. Sandro’s body on the ground. Life as frangible as the porcelain in my hand.

  At some point I am aware of Steve speaking. Steve believes in speech, the curative power of talk. He talks. He tells me a story; a tragic story. The word tragic is round on his lips. He tells me a story of a young man full of talent, of dreams, of ambition, of sensitivity, eaten up by the pace of the city, unable to live with the realisation of his dreams, made alien to himself, torn apart by their fulfilment, the new and unaccustomed glittering pressures replacing old familiar problems. He tells me a story of distances crossed, like an immigration from a well-known country to a promised land too rich to bear. He talks and I don’t believe him, then I half-believe him, since Steve knows how to talk. Some time it dawns on me that Steve is giving me a story for consumption, a story I will need in order to answer the questions that will inevitably be asked.

  Steve and Chuck tell me they will go to the loft for me and clear out Sandro’s things if I like, see that everything is in order, bring me fresh clothes. I am afr
aid to go with them, yet am drawn as irresistibly as moth to flame. I have already seen the note. The policeman, whom I gave my keys to, showed it to me on the night, right there on the sidewalk, so that I could confirm it was Sandro’s writing. Not that there was much of it. Four words, ‘All over. Loved you,’ under a vast X, which crossed out everything - himself, his life, me. But four words more than I want Steve to see. More than I wanted to see, too, accompanied by the policeman’s cynical shrug.

  When I open the door the loft looks exactly as I left it. Even the two scratched suitcases are standing by the door. It is as if Sandro had never risen from the sofa. Only when I move towards my office area do I spy the difference. The sculpture: it has been hacked at, defaced, battered. The nose is missing, the face is mutilated, fingers are gone and penis. Stone litters the floor. I turn away, say to Steve who is shaking his head sadly that I will wait downstairs. I have the sense that I will never be able to come back here again.

  On Monday, I insist that I want to go into the office. Steve tells me I am mad, that I should rest, let myself mourn, weep. I have no tears and I tell him that I don’t want to be alone, that there are piles of work waiting for me, that I need to find a new temporary place, arrange for all the stuff in the loft to be stored. I don’t know quite what I tell him. My mind isn’t working clearly. I am consumed by an emotion I don’t recognize. I think it is only later that I name it as guilt.

  I sit in my office and stare out the window. A soft rain is falling. The drops hit the pane and shatter into rivulets before disappearing. Where do they go? I would like to catch them in my hand, but my window won’t open. Why is it that the window in my loft opens? I veer away to shuffle papers on my desk. It occurs to me that the telephone hasn’t rung all day. I ask Andrea about this and she hugs me softly, confesses that she has been fronting my calls, putting others through to Steve. She looks at me sadly and I do not have the heart to chastise her. I try to busy myself with last week’s post, but my head is blank.

  It must be the following morning that Steve comes into my office with a harried expression on his face.

  ‘Look, I hate to bother you with this. But we have to talk.’ He places an open newspaper on my desk and murmurs, ‘Steel yourself.’

  I look to where he points and see the headline, ‘“Architect Murdered” Wife Claims’. I read. I read and find that Louise Jimenez sees me as a monster, thinks I have killed her husband as deliberately as if I had stabbed him with an eight-inch knife. I read and learn that Sandro Jimenez was a faithful husband and loving father, a dutiful man, a good Catholic, a great architect, and that I smashed up the family, tore him apart and murdered him. I stare at the photograph captioned Louise Jimenez and see a small pretty woman with dramatic eyes and too much hair.

  ‘She’s right,’ I say softly. ‘I’m a murderer.’

  Steve slams his fist on the desk. ‘And I’m Napoleon.’ He is closer to anger than I have ever seen him. ‘Look I’ve been fronting for you, but you’re gonna have to face the guys and gals of the press yourself tomorrow. Two strategically-placed exclusives, I think. That should do it. It’s important for all of us.’ He waves abstractly at the extent of the office, paces, as if that will focus me. ‘Just because Mrs. Jimenez has watched Fatal Attraction one too many times and swallowed the monster myth, hook line and stinker, doesn’t mean you have to vomit it up too. Got it? Sandro was not Mr. Victim of our Times. He was just one talented macho guy for whom the going got too rough. And you’re not Medea and Circe rolled into one. Okay?’

  I nod and he sits down again, calmer now. ‘The important thing is to remember your Jessica Rabbit.’

  ‘Jessica Rabbit?’ For a moment I worry that Steve has gone as awry as I feel.

  ‘Ya. Remember? Roger’s wife.’ He sketches a perfect hour glass figure in the air and heaves his chest forward comically. ‘Jessica utters the immortal lines, “I’m not really bad. I’m just drawn that way.” And you can’t allow Signora Jimenez and all our nice scandal-slurping media pals to draw you that way. You gotta do your own drawing. Now here’s the picture as I have seen it unfold before my own very wide and open eyes.’

  Steve tells me the tragic story he began to tell me a few days before, but this time the love interest comes into play. He tells the story well and if I didn’t know the pretty lady in the cast too well, tears would be clutching at my eyes. He underlines that Sandro never told me of his marriage, that I tried to break it off, that the poor man felt trapped, that we both suffered. ‘And don’t forget the good that’s come of it all. The reclamation scheme. Most people don’t get to do that much in a whole uninterrupted lifetime. Clear?’ He glares at me, all his strength of will in his eyes.

  I nod, but the only thing I can think of is that interrupted lifetime and how I interrupted it.

  Over the next days I play the part Steve has assigned me. I must play it well for Steve is pleased with the result. I don’t read the articles, not those or any of the others. I don’t do very much, unless Steve orders me to. Mostly I stare out the window. I am numb. Sometimes, I imagine what it might be like to make that leap. I look at my hands, at my feet, and see only brittleness.

  At the funeral I wear a veil and hold Steve’s arm and wish I were invisible. I haven’t wanted to come. I cannot bear to think of Sandro’s body in that box. I cannot bear the gawking eyes, the looks of pity or suspicion, the pointing fingers. There are two distinct groups in the cemetery, the people from the Project, and the people from our side of town - a few friends and supporters, a few journalists. I do not like the glances either group casts my way. Valeria and José can barely restrain their hostility and march past me with their chins high. Carmen stops to squeeze my arm, but rushes away. I realise why a moment later as a small woman steps up to me and tears the veil from my face. ‘That’s her,’ she shouts. ‘Murderer, Bitch,’ she starts to pummel my chest. I don’t know whether it is those fists or the sound of a camera’s click, but I push her, push her hard, as if I were once again a girl in a schoolground. A child shrieks and I see a small face, Sandro’s face atop a pudgy body held by an old man, and then Steve is pulling me away, urging me towards the car.

  Two days later, the letters start, raging, raving, incoherent, but clear enough in their intent. Like furies in ceaseless pursuit, they proclaim me a murderer.

  My dreams corroborate the claim. In the nondescript furnished studio I have rented, I dream of Sandro. We are standing in the loft. I hold a hammer and I am hacking slowly, deliberately, at the sculpture he has given me. He looks at me sadly then walks toward the window, hoists himself up onto the ledge, lifts his hand towards me. I can take his hand, save him. I don’t. I walk towards him menacingly and in a harsh voice mutter, ‘Jump.’ There are many variations on this dream. Sometimes Sandro is hanging from the ledge and I pry his fingers away, one by one, until he drops. Sometimes, his hand is clutching my wrist and he pulls me with him, but I grasp at the fire escape and kick him away, watch him tumble. Once, I kiss him softly and smile before I say, ‘Go.’ I wake from these dreams shivering, wreathed in perspiration. And I cry. I cry as I have never cried before.

  At the office, I wait for those letters to arrive, read them obsessively, then tear them up into tiny pieces as if this could eradicate the murder. I cannot work. I have neither the courage nor confidence to convince anyone I might ring of anything. When Steve forces me to come to openings or events with him, I am only aware of the voices gossiping behind my back, the false little gasps of sympathy, the fingers too smooth on my shoulder or arm.

  One day Steve tells me I really have to have a holiday, a change of some kind. I look at him for what feels like a long time and then I say, ‘You’re right, Steve. I’m no good to anyone. I think I need to leave, go somewhere else. You’ll have to find someone to replace me, buy me out.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  He tries to convince me otherwise, but having said it, it is now the single thing I know for c
ertain. I must leave New York.

  It takes some months to sort matters out, but the knowledge that I shall soon be gone makes activity possible. And in the activity, brick by brick, a wall begins to appear around my life with Sandro, a part of myself entombed like him, dead, unreachable because I cannot allow myself to reach it. Just before it is finally in place and I leave, I go to visit his grave. It is early morning, I don’t want to see anybody, and there is a chill in the air. The leaves swirl round as bright and carefree as they were on the day Sandro first appeared in my office.

  The tomb is plain stone and on top of it, by some macabre irony, someone has chosen to place the winged figure Sandro chiselled of me. It still doesn’t look like me, but it weighs down his tomb as heavily as I weighed on his life. I stand and stare at the grave until my legs and eyes seem to have grown into it. I think I say I’m sorry. I know I make a vow. I will do penance. There will be no more hazardous affairs of the heart and the body.

  When I get home, I send a note to the Padre at the mission, together with a cheque, the proceeds of which I ask him to give to Sandro’s family. I do not feel particularly better. Writing a cheque is not a difficult thing to do. Living is harder.

  -26-

  Sun slants through the window and falls on the graceful sandalled feet of the walking woman. From the position of the light, I know it must be late afternoon. What I don’t know is how long I have sat here, paced, dreamt my life with Sandro. I am wearing a white towelling robe I don’t recall having donned. The pockets are stuffed with soggy tissues and there is a half-empty mug on the table in front of me, so at some point I must have cried, must have made some coffee. The bed, when I look at it, is rumpled, so perhaps I slept.

  On the floor, by the sofa, lie the pages of Louise Jimenez’s letter. Like a more powerful force, she has found me out in my distant shelter. The line of defence I constructed with Andrea - the instruction to return all envelopes bearing that inimitable script with a Forwarding Address Unknown - has been broken. There is no easy escape from my past, no way of eradicating it forever.