The Bleeding Heart

by Marilyn French

  Checking up on her while he was out there getting his ego stroked, telling her to park far away, or to stay in the room, hidden away, Rosamund. His wife too, plopped in her pumpkin shell and kept there. Very well.

  Jack, Jack, pumpkin eater,

  Had a wife and couldn’t keep her,

  Put her in a pumpkin shell

  And there he kept her very well.

  After the ball, after the finery, Cinderella’s coach turns into a pumpkin shell. Yes, that was what that was all about.

  She got up and stumbled to the bathroom and switched on the light. She returned to the bedroom, able to see by the bathroom light, and wandered around it, singing lightly under her breath, picking up her notes, her sweater, the shoes she’d kicked off hours ago. Bent and stood up and caught sight of a woman with a white face and disheveled hair and a strange expression. She moved back from the mirror slowly, and stood very still. There was something wrong with her. She could feel it. It was something serious. She’d have to be careful. It was going to be hard to live this way, she’d have to walk very carefully, a little at a list. She could do it if she tried hard. She’d slide by. She had to, because if they saw, they did horrible things to you, they grabbed you by the arm and stuck needles in you and locked you up and gave you electric shock.

  First thing was to get out. But if she went out carrying a suitcase, they might stop her. Pay the bill, please, they’d say. She didn’t have enough money to pay the bill and buy a railroad ticket. Where was this place, anyway. She stumbled over to the window and looked out. Melbourne, of course. Or was it Sydney? No, Sydney was in New Hampshire, learning to be a poet, growing alfalfa. She giggled at her brilliant pun. Sydney, running towards her over the grass, eyes bright, “You came, Mom! Isn’t it great!” Smiling, leaping into her arms as if she was still six. Sydney with callouses on her hands from farm work. “I love it, I really do! Can I show you my new poem?” Shyly, flushed cheeks, trying not to care so much, but caring. Yes, Sydney was all right. And Tony, he was in Omaha. Do you suppose it’s cold out there? Does he have a jacket? Well, by now he must know how to get jackets. He was all right, he was somewhere. And Elspeth too. She was dead, that’s where she was.

  Dolores stuffs all her things into her large canvas purse. Everything fits except a sweater and a robe. She’d leave the robe behind but she loves it, her children gave it to her. It won’t go in. Solution: wear it! She pulls it around her, over her clothes, and looks in the mirror. (Terrible, terrible, to look in the mirror.) No, something wrong. It wouldn’t pass. They’d catch her. She’s clever, she knows they pick you up for the slightest deviation. Takes off the robe, takes off her jacket, puts the robe back on and the jacket over it. No. Even though fashionable clothes these days are layered. Layered. A very funny word. She says it aloud several times, giggling.

  If she could pull the skirt of the robe up high enough so that it looked like those tunics they wear over pants, that would do it. Stuff the middle into the slacks, put the jacket over all. Oh, she is clever! Pulls up the robe, stuffs fabric into the waistband of her slacks. Takes time, effort. There’s a lot of fabric and it’s so thick.

  She looks in the mirror. She buttons the jacket but the two bottom ones won’t close. She looks odd. She is fat for Jesus. But she will pass.

  Everything is ready. Except the sweater. She drapes that over her arm. She eyes the Scotch. Nice to have it on the train. But not much left. Leave it for him. But he doesn’t drink Scotch, Marsh drinks bourbon. Anthony really is turning into an alcoholic, drinking from ten in the morning. If only she could lock him in a pumpkin shell whenever he is having a tantrum, lock him in and let him pound the door with his fists and cry until he was tired, then slump down at the doorsill, asleep. Yes, then the rest of them could be happy. They could smile and laugh even. They could play. The children out in the yard playing ball, voices light in the summer air, Tony and Elspeth taking turns trying to teach Sydney how to hold a bat, no, not that way you little Sydneybug, Elspeth would laugh, Tony pitching the ball to her ever so gently, not to frighten her, then racing around, bats dropped on the ground (pick them up before Anthony comes!), smiling, calling out, cheeks pink, hair falling in their eyes, Elspeth leaping high, oh, so high! little Elf, my little Elf, hair like a slow-motion wave against the green leaves, golden.

  I don’t know what trains there are.

  Telephone. No. Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what train you take, they all go to the same place. All trains lead to death, all children are born with cancer, born dying, the round soft faces, the sober straight clear eyes.

  The eyes of a child look right at you. There’s nothing between them and you. No veils. And when they laugh! Children in Fiji, splashing you as your boat passes them swimming in the river, eyes black and shiny as onyx, delighted with their mischief, delighted with themselves, delighted with you. Pure joy.

  Little Johnny, Tony’s friend, barred from the houses in the neighborhood on grounds of stealing. But he didn’t steal. He simply took what delighted him—a pretty matchbox, a glossy magazine, a handful of long smooth shiny silver nails. And gave too, whatever he had: food, candy, money. He gave Tony his bike once. Same joyous black eyes. Probably in a penitentiary now. Penitentiary: sit and remord. You have sinned. You were born in sin and you will die in sin. All children are anarchists: Anarchism verboten hier. Sit and remord: Say twelve Our Fathers, and then go out and cut the ten acres with a hand scissor. Joy forbidden here. Joy not spoken here.

  We kill the children.

  She clutched her stomach, feeling a spasm, and as she bent, saw a person in the mirror. That was a pregnant woman there, holding herself as if she were in labor. But her face too old, no? Aha! It is a change-of-life baby! She approached the mirror, she touched it. It was herself, she was the pregnant one!

  “OH!” she cried aloud, her throat full of joy, “Elspeth, you’ve come back! You’re coming again! I hoped, if I waited, you’d come back!”

  She didn’t mind the spasms, they were coming faster now, but it was joy, joy, joy, Elspeth was about to be born again, born again! And this time she’d do better, would know better, would do something, somehow, it won’t happen the same way this time-Elspeth, I promise you, this time I will try harder, and she was crying out loud, crying for joy as the spasms came faster and lower and it was going to happen, her baby was going to be restored to her as she had been in the beginning, before she was made to swim at a list, before she was bent, the way she’d been at the very first, round and pink and squawling and hungry and opening her eyes and beginning to see and beginning to reach, and then one day, opening her mouth and smiling, ah! what a smile and a gurgle, it was for her, for Mama. Say Mama.

  “I’ve learned a lot, Elspeth, you’ll see! This time it will be different!”

  Then there was another thing in the mirror and she frowned, it was one of Them, yes, that suit and jacket and shirt and tie, she recognized the uniform, she knew Them, They would destroy her child, They all ate their children, and she whirled at him, she screamed as loud as she could:

  “DON’T TOUCH ME! GET AWAY FROM ME!”

  7

  THE MAN CAME UP to him and touched her and she screamed and he backed away, staring at her, saying something she couldn’t hear. She looked back at the mirror, she pleaded with the mirror.

  “I won’t let her hurt you Elspeth, I know how to protect you this time, I won’t let any of Them get near you, I promise, don’t go away Elf, I’ll take care of things better this time.”

  He stood near the door watching her and then there was noise, knocking, and the man went away. No, he didn’t go away, he was at the door, maybe he would go away.

  She turned back to the mirror, panting now as the baby descended. She felt her belly, to make sure all went well.

  Something was wrong.

  The baby didn’t feel as if she were in her: she felt extraneous.

  And it didn’t feel like Elspeth. It felt like fur. Elspeth had no fur. Elspeth was beau
tiful and delicate. She had slender delicate bones like her mother and great violet eyes like her father, except his were blue. Her laugh was a piccolo playing in the morning on a lane into town.

  And when she slumped and glared, as she had in those last years, she was eerie blue light in a dark corner, electric, terrifying, a leaping laser of hate.

  “Don’t hate me this time,” Dolores whispered to the mirror. “At least, not so much.”

  She was pinching her belly between her fingers. It was terribly wrong. She started to cry. “Elspeth? Elspeth?” And remembered calling like that night after lying in bed waiting for Elspeth to come, crying because Elspeth had died. Elspeth had died.

  But she believed Elspeth’s spirit would come back to her, would return to her mother who loved her so much, who had tried so hard, and who was so tired, would come back and lay her soft cool hand on her mother’s forehead and say Mommy it’s all right, I’m all right never had, the rotten kid.

  Leaving me here, knowing how it is for me. Couldn’t she have come just once, given me one soft touch, just a rustle of the air that I knew was her, just a sigh near my cheek so I knew she forgave never.

  Dolores pulled swiftly and roughly at the fake baby, a fake baby, that’s all it was, put on her to torment her. She pulled and pulled and it all came out, it was nothing at all, it disappeared as she pulled, it simply vanished.

  No baby.

  Dolores fell to the floor and sobbed. No baby. No Elspeth. A trick, a delusion. Elspeth gone.

  That person was back, he was standing near her, his legs loomed, and she reached out and growled and threatened to bite him and the legs retreated. She laughed. She was pretty clever. She’d scared him away all right.

  Not that he could do much damage now. There was only she, Dolores. No baby to kill, warp, deform, beat, scream at, twist in his hands like a chicken bone. Swallow: chump, chump. She sat there swaying, weeping more softly now, calling softly, “Elspeth, Elspeth,” feeling abandoned, why had she come so close and not come? “You still hate me,” Dolores moaned, “you still blame me.”

  A voice answered her, but it was the wrong kind, it wasn’t Elspeth, it was deep, one of Theirs.

  “You’re not Elspeth!” she accused it, and looked more closely. There was a man on the floor. He’d taken off his uniform, except his shirt and trousers. He was sitting on the floor over there. He was crying.

  One of Them, crying?

  Oh, he’d probably lost his job. Or his wife had left him. Wives kept doing that these days. Yes, Anthony never cried, not even when his father died, never cried until she left him.

  “Don’t tell me your problems,” Dolores said. “I don’t care.”

  “Darling,” the voice said. That wasn’t Anthony, he never called her darling. No, honey, or sweetie. Or the others….

  The figure inched closer. She held up her hand swiftly, hard. “No! No closer!” she ordered, and it stopped.

  “Dolores,” it pleaded.

  “What do you want?” Impatient “You always want something! I am busy tonight, you ought to be able to see that. I am communing with my daughter. I will not cook you dinner, I will not stroke your head, I will not listen to your problems, I will not laugh at your jokes, I will not screw you. So you might as well leave.”

  “Let me do something for you,” it urged.

  She sat straight and still, looking at it “What could you possibly do for me? I learned long ago to do everything for myself.”

  “Let me get you some dinner.”

  “Dinner! Dinner! Now you want to get me dinner! Well, now, I am communing with my daughter, who has finally come back!”

  The man put his head in his hand.

  “You needn’t cry!” she snapped. “There are lots of women who will give you whatever you want. Go find one!”

  He slumped. He made her tired. She didn’t want to have to worry about his pain, too, it was too much, she had too much of her own.

  “Anthony,” she said in a dead voice, “go away.” Her heart was breaking, she could feel it, it had been broken all along, but she had used egg and flour and glue to bind it up together like a hamburger, it seemed whole until you touched it with a fork, and then it all fell into pieces again. Damaged beyond repair.

  Anthony was still crying. She loved him for that, that he could cry, that he could let himself suffer. She wanted to crawl over to him and hold him, hold his head against her breast and smooth his back and tell him she loved him and it would be all right. But he had waited too long. If he had only cried before, everything might have been repaired somehow. But he waited until her heart was half hamburger, and that half was his. He waited until all she could see when she looked at him was a purple-faced automaton on crutches with his mouth open yelling yelling.

  And it could never be all right again.

  Yes, yes, baby, she wanted to say. Yes, you are my baby but you just don’t grow up the way the others do, you stay a baby, and you’re so noisy, and besides, you torment the other children. And they are smaller than you, they need me more. And there is more hope for them.

  “Dolores,” the voice said sharply, angrily, “I’m not Anthony, I’m Victor.”

  “Who?” She peered at him under her rain hood. It was raining hard.

  He inched closer, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying, the rain was so noisy, maybe it was the wind. Then he was next to her, he put his hand on her arm, she shuddered away, don’t touch me, but then there was thunder and it terrified her, it was very close and he put his arm around her. Did he think that would solve everything, that he could pull her close to him and the other would go away, the rain and the wind and the thunder? Did he think that if he had his arm around her, she wouldn’t still be frightened of the rain, the wind, and the thunder? How could he protect her from them? He couldn’t. If the thunder came, if the lightning struck, it would get them both and his arm wouldn’t mean a thing.

  He didn’t seem to understand anything, because he did it, he put his arms around her and held her and he did not smell like Anthony, he smelled like rain, maybe he was the rain, and she looked at him and there were tears on his face, what a crybaby, crying about an ordinary thunderstorm. She was terrified of thunderstorms, but she wasn’t crying.

  VI

  1

  WHEN SHE WOKE, THERE was light in the corners of her eyes. She lay like a trapped animal, not moving a limb but straining all her senses, lying still and quiet.

  A floor. Yes, she was lying on a floor. She was bundled up in all her clothes, and had a pillow under her head and a blanket over her. On the floor. Some floor. She turned her head slightly. Victor was lying beside her, his arm was thrown across her body (why she felt trapped). His mouth was open a little and he was sleeping. There was a pillow under his head too, but all of the blanket was over her.

  She moved a little and his eyes opened and looked at her. They were a stranger’s eyes. He did not smile, he did not speak. Neither did she. Why did she feel some chasm had opened between them? He turned over on his back, pulling his arm away from her.

  She got up and went into the bathroom to pee. For some reason, she was wearing her robe under her jacket, over her pants. It was strange. And she was hungry, terribly hungry. She looked in the mirror. God. She removed her jacket, her robe, her pants. Sleeping in clothes! They were stiff and smelled musky, like her. She returned to the bedroom.

  Victor was standing up, buttoning his trousers. He did not look at her. He went into the bathroom and he closed the door. Closed the door! She went and sat in the chair by the window. She felt shaky. Victor came out of the bathroom and walked towards her. He did not like her, she could tell. He sat down opposite her on the bed, he looked at her.

  “How do you feel?”

  She looked at him dumbly. “All right,” she said, although she felt frozen, her face was frozen and her voice sounded frozen too. Could you have a frozen voice?

  “Do you know who I am?” Voice low, but demanding. Oh, he was angry! />
  She hesitated. Why should she not know who he was? Something peculiar going on here. Retreat or attack? When in doubt, attack. “Of course I know who you are. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Last night you thought I was Anthony.”

  Aha. Last night. Yes, she remembered. Anthony had come back, invading her space again, crying. Anthony had been here last night, but—Victor had not!

  “You weren’t here last night! You went off and left me! You beg, you plead, you insist I come with you on these fucking trips of yours and then you go off and leave me in this hideous hotel room, leave me alone, to eat by myself! Why do you want me! I’m just a convenience, something to come back to. You never think about me! Never again, never again, Victor!”

  His face was saying never again to her, too. “Last night you screamed as if I was killing you. The hotel sent people up, I had to make up some story about your having nightmares. They wanted to come in here and cart you off to the loony bin.”

  “Maybe they came up to see if you were killing me. Maybe you would have.” That’s what they did. They knocked at your door, you opened it, you were glad to see them, you let them in and they walked in carefully enough, but in ten minutes they had their boots up on your cocktail table and in half an hour they were in your refrigerator. In an hour they were in your bed, and after that WHOOSH! they’d taken over your space, your life. Just like that. They did it because they thought they had rights over you because you are a woman. Didn’t matter what you said or what you protested: they simply assumed that because you are a woman you are sitting there waiting for them to come and take over your life, to tuck you into a pocket of theirs, where, they assume, you will be very very happy. At least, they will be, knowing you’re safely in their pocket.

  There were steps: first, they crush your ego: streaks on the wall, creaky leather suit; then, they instill the behavior they want: park far away, Dolores. Then, when you had it down pat, they were satisfied: you were an appurtenance. But then they got bored because you were dull and docile, so they had to go out and find somebody whose ego was still intact and start all over again.