The Chrysalis

by Catherine Deveney

  “I know,” said Zac.

  “You have to eat,” said Conchetta, watching as he scraped the remains on his plate into the bin.

  “He’ll eat croissants, won’t you Zac?” said Elicia. “And French bread.”

  “And pâtisserie,” said Conchetta more brightly. “Beautiful cakes.”

  Zac tried to smile.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He couldn’t wait to be gone.

  Marianne was different, Zac thought, watching her. There was still a feverishness about her, a sense of anticipation.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Writing a letter,” she said. She looked up from the table. “Writing a letter,” she repeated, “to someone I have not seen for forty years.”

  “Goodness me! Who is that?”

  Zac looked at the sheet of azure writing paper and saw Marianne’s thin scrawl spidering shakily across the page. Her motor skills were deteriorating badly.

  Before she could answer, a figure from across the room started to walk unsteadily towards them, leaning heavily on a Zimmer and looking around her as she moved. Annie’s hair was wilder even than usual, a startled halo of white around her head.

  “Do you know where my mother’s house is?” she asked Zac plaintively.

  “Go away Annie,” snapped Marianne.

  “I want to go home,” said Annie. “Please.”

  Zac put his arm round her. “Come and sit down Annie. Shall I get you a nice cup of tea?”

  “You are wasting your time,” muttered Marianne, returning to her letter.

  “What do you think, Annie?” said Zac. “A cup of tea?”

  Annie brightened suddenly.

  “Oh that would be lovely, dear,” she said.

  Zac helped her over to the chair but Annie suddenly stopped.

  “Where are you putting me?” she demanded fretfully. “You’re keeping me from my mum. She’ll be angry with you.”

  “I told you that you were wasting your time,” said Marianne, without lifting her head from her scribbling.

  “No, no,” said Zac soothingly. “Your mother will be here soon, Annie. We will sit and wait for her here and I will get you some tea until she comes.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Annie, all compliance again. “I hope she comes soon.”

  “What are you telling her that for?” demanded Marianne.

  Angie popped her head round the door.

  “Zac. Mary-in-the-Blue-Room. Your turn.”

  Mary was never just ‘Mary’, always ‘Mary-in-the-Blue-Room’, her identity now defined by her location. Zac nodded but flinched inwardly. He hated having to feed Mary-in-the-Blue-Room.

  The Blue Room was the last room at the end of a corridor on the second floor. Mary never left it. For the three years Zac had worked here, he had never seen her downstairs and Shona said Mary had been there for five years before that without being out of the room. Not even at Christmas. Mary-in-the-Blue-Room had almost mythical status and new staff were always scared to go in there by the time they got appointed to look after Mary. Eight years, Zac thought, as he walked down the corridor. Eight years in one room.

  He opened the door hesitantly. Mary was propped up by pillows, a misshapen bundle of bones and shrivelled skin. How could you look like that and still be alive? Zac wondered. She was doll sized which made the parched wrinkles of her skin seem even more incongruous. The only part of her that moved freely was her eyes. Zac had never seen anyone who looked as old as Mary. Yet there were young people dying of cancer who looked like there was nothing wrong with them until the final weeks. Shona said Mary was 88, but she looked even older to Zac. Her eyes found him as he opened the door, following his movement.

  “Time for lunch, Mary,” Zac said loudly.

  He busied himself with the pillows trying to prop her up more securely, but she simply slid back after each attempt.

  “I wonder what there is today,” he said brightly. “Are you hungry?”

  Mary said nothing but her eyes followed him still. They had a vacant quality, Zac thought, were almost translucent in their emptiness. It was as if the colour had been washed out of them and meaning had seeped away too. He wondered if she was constantly trying to make sense of where she was because that’s the way it looked, as if she was constantly trapped with strangers in an unknown place. How frightening that place must be.

  Zac lifted the lid on the plate and his stomach heaved. The food was liquidised into different coloured heaps. There was a fortified cream dessert, too, but he left the lid on until the last minute because he knew from experience that the smell of it was disgusting. He placed a bib over Mary’s chest to protect the sheet and placed a teaspoon of liquidised carrot to her mouth. Her lips parted automatically.

  His nose wrinkled involuntarily as he spooned it into her mouth and he saw her shudder as she swallowed, before her face contorted. It was lukewarm, Zac thought despairingly. He slid the spoon back into the mush.

  “Is that nice, Mary?” he said.

  Her eyes bore into him. Zac pressed the spoon to her mouth again, hoping her lips would part but they stayed closed. A trickle of carrot coloured saliva dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

  “It’s been a beautiful day today,” said Zac, wiping her face gently. “Can you see from your bed, Mary? How lovely and sunny it is?”

  He tried a spoonful from a different coloured heap. Mary’s lips automatically parted slightly before she realised and turned her face from the spoon.

  Perhaps the dessert, he thought, pulling open the lid. At least it was fortified with vitamins and calories. He gazed down at the pink goo. Fruits of the Forest, it was supposed to be. Mary accepted a few spoonfuls, seemingly oblivious to the nauseating smell of it.

  “Come on Mary,” he coaxed. “Try another spoonful. It’s good for you.”

  Mary’s eyes swivelled up to his face.

  “All right, Mary?” he said, smoothing back her hair from her forehead.

  Mary opened her mouth to speak, but only a hoarse whisper emerged.

  “What was that?”

  “I want to scream,” whispered Mary.

  Zac felt his heart tumble.

  “I know, Mary,” he said gently. “I know.” He took her hand on the cover and held it between his own, rubbing her fingers. Mary watched their entwined hands intently for a minute, and then her eyes swivelled back up to his face with an intensity that made him instinctively shrink back. She looked up at him expectantly, as if waiting for something.

  “Go on,” Mary croaked, her eyes never leaving him. “You do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Scream for me,” she said insistently, as if bewildered by the delay of his response. Her eyes bore into him. “Scream for me.”

  Zac stroked her head, pushing the wispy hair back from her face.

  “I’ll put the television on, will I?” he said.

  Mary looked at him, uncomprehending, betrayed.

  Voices might help, he thought. Signs of life. He looked round the room. Was this it? Was this what life was, where it ended, what it amounted to? A wave of despair washed over him. Maybe it would have been better if he had succeeded in ending it all. Better than sloughing through the shit of it all, only to end up like this.

  He looked at the little pile of human rubble in the middle of the bed. He wasn’t the only one trapped inside a body, as Marianne had put it. Whoever Mary was, whoever she had been, was trapped inside this wreckage. Perhaps we are all trapped, Zac thought.

  He picked up the remote control on the bedside table.

  “Let’s see what’s on, Mary,” he said. He flicked through the channels, stopping at an old black and white film on channel 4. Mary did not even turn to the voices.

  “I’ll leave this on for you,” he said. “I’ll take the dishes away and you can tell me what it’s about when I come back.”

  Mary made no acknowledgement of the fact that Zac had spoken and he stood up, removing the tray from
beside the bed.

  As he passed the lounge, he saw Marianne still writing.

  “Not finished Marianne?” he asked.

  “Yes, yes I am. Do you think you will be able to post it for me?”

  “Of course.”

  He picked up the envelope.

  “South of France?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Marianne. “I want to let an old friend of mine know when I will be arriving. She has the key to the flat and will air it for us.”

  Her eyes were bright.

  “Her name is Jasmine. Jasmine Labelle. 1118 Rue Matin, Saint Estelle.”

  It was strange, Zac thought, that Abbie seemed so untroubled by his visit to France. She obviously thought that looking after an old woman would occupy all his time and prevent him doing anything stupid. Ironic that she thought Marianne was ‘safe’. She thought that he wouldn’t lose himself in France with such a responsibility - of course she had no idea that Marianne had promised he would find himself there.

  Abbie had clung to him since the suicide attempt, part terrified by the level of his despair and part mortified at what she considered to be a public declaration of her inadequacy. She hadn’t let him out of her sight since.

  “It wasn’t about us,” Zac had protested when he finally got home from hospital.

  “What was it about then?”

  “Me.”

  She had looked at him fearfully but had not dared to voice her true feelings.

  It would not last, Zac thought, this tiptoeing round him, but perhaps it would buy him some time.

  He was preparing to roast a chicken, rubbing oil into the skin and grinding coarse sea salt over the top when Abbie came into the kitchen. There was something soothing about the physical nature of the task, the way the oil clung to his fingers. He smiled at Abbie as he ran his hands under the tap.

  “Okay?” he said. He took a lemon from the bowl, halving it with a sharp knife and licking the juice that trickled over his fingers and onto the wooden board. He looked up at Abbie as he stuffed the lemon into the cavity and sprinkled rosemary on the top. She was transmitting something, a kind of optimism he hadn’t seen for a while.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “do you want me to take some holiday and come with you to help with the old lady? Will it be too much for you on your own?”

  Zac’s heart stopped. He could think of nothing worse. Going to France had become a necessary escape, a breathing space, and it could not be snatched from him like this at the last minute. He tried to suppress his horror.

  “Thank you,” he said, going over to Abbie and wrapping his arms round her so that his face was hidden, “but there is no need to do that. Much better for you to take some holiday when we can do something together without anyone else there.”

  “I don’t want you to take on too much.”

  “I won’t.”

  “If you are sure…”

  “Completely.”

  He kissed the top of her head and moved back to the chicken.

  “Zac…. I’ve been reading something today.”

  “Yes?”

  “About transvestites.”

  Zac opened the oven door and placed the chicken in carefully, glad to have his back to her. If that was all it was, things would be so much easier. As he closed the oven door, he felt Abbie beside him gently rubbing his back.

  “It’s okay Zac – really. I’m not… this article… it said most men who were transvestites were heterosexual.”

  “That’s true,” said Zac, before he could stop himself. It was true but…

  “Many of them are in macho occupations, like the police and the army and the dressing up is just a way of releasing tension.”

  “I’m hardly in a macho occupation,” said Zac, before he could help himself.

  “No, but…”

  Abbie put her arms round him, burying herself in his chest. The idea that he was gay was Abbie’s biggest fear. How simple it would be if he were, Zac thought.

  “Some people play sport to unwind and some play with train sets and some…well, some dress up. I can live with that Zac. I can.”

  He felt a sudden surge of affection for her, for the effort she was making. Given her first reaction to seeing him dressed as a woman, the instinctive disgust.

  “We can be good together, Zac. Grow old together, have children… I just want to see you happy. When I thought I had lost you…”

  Have children. He could say nothing and he ran his fingers over her hair to compensate. Maybe there was selfishness in her response, and fear, and a need for security but there was love too and whose motives were ever entirely pure? Were his?

  The picture she painted was, in its own limited way, appealing. But for how long? He wanted to let Abbie believe that this was just about dressing up, that he was a transvestite. But it wasn’t true. He wondered if she even knew the word transsexual. How could he explain? The truth was he didn’t want to be a man assuming a part for an hour, a day, even a week. He didn’t want to pretend. He wanted his body to match what his brain had always known that he was: a woman.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Marianne

  Sebastian had lost his power. I knew it and so did he.

  “Dirty trick, Marianne,” he said when we were alone.

  “Having a child with my husband is a dirty trick?” I said. “You just need to face facts, Sebastian. I have so much more to offer him than you have.”

  If Sebastian recognised his own words being thrown back at him, he betrayed no sign of it. He was not the most self-aware person at the best of times and most people have no idea of the bombs they release in what they say. He may have forgotten; I had not.

  Sebastian’s hold over Raymond annoyed me. He was no Patrice and I knew it, so in that sense, he did not threaten me emotionally but I could not understand the appeal. In a way, I recognised the level of stability he offered Raymond which was why I didn’t make more of a fuss. He was a convenient outlet for a part of his life that needed to be fulfilled. Turning everything upside down with a child was a risk. I thought I knew that, that I was taking a calculated risk, but it was only when I told Raymond I was pregnant that I realised quite how much of a risk I had taken. I began to doubt how in control I actually was.

  At first, Raymond’s reactions were all over the place. Shock, euphoria, fear, depression… it was I who had to be the stabilising influence on his emotions.

  “Our life,” he said one night when we were lying in bed. “How can we bring a child into this life?”

  “We are no less capable of looking after a child than anyone else.”

  “Sebastian…” he said, and sighed.

  “Sebastian may have to be around a little less,” I said carefully. “But I think we will survive.”

  “Shall we ask him to be godfather?”

  I felt enraged.

  “No we shall not!” I said tightly.

  Raymond turned onto his side to face me.

  “Marianne I can’t suddenly turn into someone else. I can’t be Mr Average reading ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ at bedtime every night. You know that. We agreed…”

  Our agreement was longstanding and it was this: he would stay with me if I let him be who he was.

  “I’m not asking you to be someone else,” I protested.

  Raymond rolled onto his back again and looked broodingly at the ceiling.

  “How can I be a father, Marianne?” he asked eventually, his voice small and despairing. “Me… a father? What if it’s a boy? What can I teach a boy about being a man?”

  “Stop thinking about being a father and think of being a parent,” I said.

  “Can we be two parents instead of a father and a mother?”

  “Of course we can!”

  Raymond turned and looked at me curiously.

  “You really want a child Marianne? Really, really?”

  “Not a child. Your child.”

  “Why?”

  Before I could answer, I felt the
baby kick for the first time.

  “Quick, Raymond,” I said, so urgently that I gave him a fright

  “What is it,” he asked, sitting bolt upright

  “Give me your hand.”

  I placed it on my stomach and watched his face.

  He looked startled, then a smile spread slowly across his face and he gave a little hiccup of laughter.

  “Oh my God!”

  “Look!” I said, looking down at my stomach and laughing. The small bulge of my stomach was moving, the baby writhing inside.

  “Oh my God,” repeated Raymond in wonder. “It’s like a little animal is trapped in there!”

  “It IS a little animal,” I said. “OUR little animal.”

  Raymond stayed stock still, in a state of wonder, feeling the movement underneath his hand.

  “I wish,” he said, “that I could experience what that feels like.” He looked at me with a mixture of wonder and pain. “I would love to be a mother.”

  Life is about power, gaining it and losing it. The only power I have now is the power of memory, retreating inside it to a time when I was whole, deliberately shutting out Shona, and Annie’s relentless screams for her mother, and the incessant buzzing, and the furtive whispers about the horrors of Mary-in-the-Blue-Room. I don’t want to consider that one day, and before too long, it might be Marianne-in-the-Blue-Room.

  But this trip with Zac has changed things. For the first time in years, I am content to live in the present as well as the past. I have a sense of longing and anticipation. I feel alive in a dead body. The past is meeting the future. When the smell of cooking lunch unfurls from the kitchen, wafting its silent way up the stairs and into the lounge, I no longer simply gag at the vile stench of cooked cabbage or baked fish. I am conscious, too, of the nice smells, the warm vanilla filled scent of biscuits baking for afternoon tea, and my mind turns greedily to the thought of France, and the afternoons we will spend there in the flat above the pâtisserie.

  Everyone disapproves, especially Shona with her limp, colourless, concern. I know she has tried to talk Zac out of it. If she managed, I swear I would kill her. I spent so many years refusing to think about that flat in Saint Estelle but in my final years it consumes me and I long to go back. There is nothing left to fear there except finality. It will almost certainly be my last trip on earth, though Zac got flustered and uncomfortable when I said so.