Academy Street (9 page)

She felt him grow remote once more. She searched her mind for things to say. It was
all she could do not to touch him.

‘I have to go,’ he said.

She was stricken. She caught something in his eyes—confusion, anger—as if hijacked
by feelings he did not understand. She watched him walk away.

‘Will you be here next week?’ she asked his back, almost whispering. It took all
the courage she could muster.

He turned and walked back to her. She felt herself in the lap of the gods. He brought
his face to hers and kissed her. She could taste the cigarette.

And then he was gone.

8

MUSIC DRIFTED THROUGH open church doors onto the sunny street where she was walking
and stopped her in her tracks. She entered the vestibule and read a notice for a
lunchtime recital. She listened. First, she discerned piano, then cello. She stepped
into the dim interior and stood by the baptismal font at the back. A small audience
sat in the front pews, the musicians to the side. The notes changed, grew loud and
discordant, then softened again and ascended in a pure harmony. Alone, the piano
played slow and sombre. And then, from the cello, rose the most mournful sound she
had ever heard. Beautiful, melancholy, reaching every remote cell. She closed her
eyes. With his kiss he had claimed her. He had awoken her soul.

Days passed, each an eternity. She remembered every word, and was by turn exalted,
desolate. She had never lived so intensely. At night she sat at her dressing-table
mirror. She
felt his approach, felt him steal into her, leaving a cold shivery fear
at her centre, and afterwards a waning numbness. The only cure would be the sight
of him. She crawled into bed. In the dark her mouth shaped itself to kiss, re-kiss,
grasping at the air in little fish gulps. She bit back the reflex, the trembling
mouth. The things that had seemed indecent to think were no longer so: his limbs,
his skin, his hand pressed flat on her belly.
Please come back to me.

She looked out of windows. She drifted, distant and composed, through each working
day, the routes and rhythms of trains and subways, streets and corridors, already
set into her neural grid. Days off she spent in the library, vaguely dreaming, vaguely
sick, or in the park, staring at men walking home from work. In the apartment the
fan whirred and she looked out and examined the day.

One evening, alone, at twilight she rose from the table and left her hand on the
refrigerator door and felt its faint vibrations. She leaned against it and closed
her eyes. The radio was on, low. After what seemed a long time she walked to the
window and saw a man on the street below, smoking a cigarette. She thought it was
him. She had a vision of herself, dressed in his skin, her arms inside his, her head
in his. He raised his face but it was not him. She remained calm, felt herself possessed
of infinite patience. The man threw his cigarette on the pavement and turned and
walked away.

She moved from the window. She stood in the middle of the room. So this is love,
she thought.

She went down to the drugstore, desperate to be among people. Returning, she was
accosted on the street by a bag lady, a face thrust in hers, crazed eyes, wild hair.
A mad mouth screaming obscenities at her, shouting out Tess’s own thoughts. Shameful
thoughts. She froze, trapped under the woman’s spell, cursed. Then someone passed
and knocked against her and she came to her senses and ran, stumbling, into her building.

The incident shook her to the core. How had that woman known her thoughts—the carnal
thoughts that she, Tess, had harboured? This man, this love had become a disturbance,
an interruption in her life. She needed to put an end to it. The following Sunday
she visited Molly and Fritz. Oliver was there—she had not seen him in a while. He
sat red-eyed, hungover, depressed. Alone for a minute after dinner, she asked good-humouredly
about the raven-haired girl. He raised his listless eyes and shrugged.

Molly sat down. ‘Have you heard from Claire? I wonder if her arm is any better.’

‘What’s wrong with her arm?’ Tess asked.

‘I don’t think it’s much…She has it ever since Elizabeth was born. It could be arthritis—this
family is riddled with arthritis.’

She was ashamed. Wrapped in her own selfish fantasies.

That night she called Claire. She could hardly speak.

‘How are you, Tess? When are you coming to visit us?’ The voice was far away and
lonely.

‘I’ll come soon, I will. In October. I promise. How’s your arm?’

‘It’s much better. It’s nothing—just numb from carrying Elizabeth around. But now
she’s walking.’

‘And Peter?’

‘He’s good. He’s busy, always busy—the company’s expanding. It’s all…great. They
have these family days—I meet the other wives. They’re all so pally with each other.
We go to parties. Oh, Tess…you wouldn’t believe what some people get up to.’ Her
voice trailed off.

‘Is everything okay, Claire?’

A hesitation. ‘Yes, of course. Everything’s good, Tess…Do come out. You promised!
I think of you every day.’

Anne Beckett’s wedding drew near. They had grown close, and Tess longed to pour out
her feelings for Anne’s cousin, but the dread, and the prospect of shame, if she
had misread the signs and imagined it all, prevented her. She contrived to steer
conversation towards topics in which his name might arise, but was struck dumb when
it did. One night in August, Anne was writing her wedding invitations at the kitchen
table, stacking them into a neat pile for posting. Checking names off her list.

‘Donal Brennan, my cousin, can’t come, but David is definitely coming—he was afraid
he mightn’t make it. He thinks he’ll be shipping out in October.’

Her heart took fright. ‘Has he been drafted?’ She had thought the draft applied only
to American citizens.

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think he just signed up for the Air Force. He’s
being sent to a base in New Jersey in the
next few weeks…’ She thought for a second.
‘I doubt he’ll be flying planes. Maybe paperwork or something.’

A while later, after Anne had gone to bed, she found his invitation in the pile and
memorised the address.

He was not in the church for the ceremony, or outside on the sunny street where the
guests overflowed afterwards. The reception was held in a hotel forty minutes out
of the city. When she saw him at the table, seated three places from her in a suit
and shirt and tie, and when he looked up and their eyes met, she knew that, for all
the times she had remembered him, he had remembered her too. She watched his hands
bringing the fork, the glass, to his lips. She saw his wrists and the fine hairs
under the cuff of his sleeve and thought of his skin, warm and smooth under the shirt,
and she had to look away. She ate little and genteelly, a new refinement arriving
of its own accord, as if every limb and organ and nerve was in obeisance, moved to
honour the beloved.

‘I thought you were a lawyer. Why are you joining the Air Force?’ They were on the
terrace. She was flushed from the wine. The light was fading and night-lights were
coming up on the lawn. She took the cigarette he offered and bent to his lighter’s
flame.

‘I am a lawyer. Anyone can enlist if they’re under twenty-five—which I am, just about—so
long as they pass the medical.’ She frowned. ‘So you’re not being drafted. It’s your
own choice to go.’

He did not answer immediately. She thought of the TV images, helicopters, a burning
monk, the words Saigon, Viet Cong.

‘Yes, it’s my own choice.’

He looked out across the lawn, into the twilight. In the silence that ensued she
arrived at a complete understanding of him. Recalling this moment later she could
not say how she had come to this understanding, only that she had, she had fathomed
something deep in him. It was more than fellow feeling. It was as if she had perceived
all the joy and fear and pain that had ever entered his heart, and he had let her.
For an instant he had let her love him. Her eyes began to fill with tears. It was
not with sorrow for his going that she wept, but with a new and gentle longing, a
wish that he would get all he had ever wanted. She had an urge to take his tender
feeble hand and cover it with her own. She saw him, a small boy again, at the burning
tree, standing on a street gazing after buses.

All evening they moved in and out of each other’s orbit. She was a little drunk.
When the tables were cleared and the band started up, he did not seek her out but
waited an hour, until she had grown almost distraught. Finally, she was in his arms,
being wafted across the floor. She looked up at his face, inhaled the sweetness of
whiskey on his breath. A line from a poem dangled just beyond her consciousness,
but she could not pluck down the first word.

‘I dreamt about you,’ he said.

At the bar they could not peel their eyes from each other. Around them, the beat
of the music, people dancing. Ice cubes
tinkled and sparkled in their glasses. She
sipped the amber liquid, felt its heat spread through her. She put a hand on his
arm to steady herself and his eyes smiled. They moved to a dim corner, sat on plush
red velvet, touching shoulders, arms, thighs. This certain love is melting me, she
thought, and leaned into him.

He was carrying her shoes. Her hand was inside his as they climbed stairs. A corridor
of crimson carpet, deep, under bare feet, and then the sinking softness of his bed
and his face swimming into view. His chest, the glow of uncovered skin. She left
a hand on his sternum, his collar bone. She thought of the word
clavicle
, how beautiful
it was. Her eyes opened and closed and opened again and she was gone, drifting, lightheaded.

And then, woozy, half dreaming, she gasped at the first hot stab and cried out in
pain. She pushed at his chest, tried to pull herself from under him. Frightened,
he looked into her eyes, and rolled off. He stroked her cheek tenderly.
Shh, I’m
sorry.
A look of sorrow came upon him. She began to crumble. A tear rolled from the
corner of her eye. He kissed her eyelids, whispered something she did not hear.

They lay in each other’s arms. She did not want to lose him. She pressed herself
to him, felt herself yield again. He searched her face, kissed her. He began to move,
slowly, gently, his hands caressing her until she felt the swell and ache of her
body, the longing to fuse, to be subsumed. She turned her head to the side, repositioned
herself under his weight. He
seemed to forget himself then, and her. She did not
care. She closed her eyes against the pain, both shocking and stirring. She was offering
herself to him, and to something larger. She felt herself topple and a point of light,
of bright sensation, opened and spread, spacious within her, and pushed her perilously
close to a precipice. She had the feeling that he might after all save her, save
them both, but then he gasped and shuddered and collapsed on top of her.

She lay there like a stone. She heard footsteps, voices on the corridor. From somewhere
far off came the sound of music, as if reaching her through water. She hauled herself
from the undertow and staggered to the bathroom and knelt at the toilet bowl. Strands
of her hair fell into the vomit. She sat on the floor, trembling, the walls spinning.
She ran hot water and sat into the bath, scalding herself.

When she went back to bed he was deeply asleep. She began to shiver. After a time
she drifted off. When she woke he was gone, and everything was silent.

9

SHE TRIED TO make good what was terrible. She tried in her mind to tenderise it,
beautify it. More than anything she wanted to cast off shame. She sat in the dark
of her apartment and covered her head with her hands. She did not know how to reassemble
herself.

She took refuge in the routine of work, in the care of patients and the ordinary
talk of her colleagues. For brief interludes she forgot. She arrived on the ward
early and left late, speaking and moving with a slowness, a soft remote kindness
in every action. An acquiescence, an atonement too, as if relinquishing all claims
to the earth. Everywhere, she watched her step, fearful of walking into doors, trees,
people. She lowered her head and walked hard and fast on the pavement to beat down
words.
Sin. Shame.
In the hall each evening she opened her mailbox with trembling
hands,
and each evening there came nothing, no word from him. She had thought she
had known him. She had known only a small corner of him. Is it possible to know anyone,
ever? Taking the stairs in one deliberate step after another, she felt her resistance
fade. Hours later, with the TV turned down, fear turned to anger.
Suffer
, her heart
cried.
Suffer a little of what I suffer.

Weeks passed. She was late. She had known from the start—amid the confusion of shame
and fear she had expected this too and now it was almost a relief to be right. To
know the worst had come, and the wait was over. In those first nights she had lain
awake visualising the swim: the millions of spawning sperm racing upstream inside
her and her mountain of eggs—her twenty-five years’ stockpile of ova—waiting to receive
them. She said the word aloud,
impregnate
. He has impregnated me. She had the thought
that she might be multiply, copiously, pregnant. Her breasts grew tender and swollen
and she woke to the taste of metal in her mouth. She sat on the toilet and willed
herself to expel it. Nauseated, she leaned over the edge of the sink. She ran the
bath and sat in boiling-hot water. In her mind’s eye she saw diagrams from her biology
books, altered and nightmarish now—blown-up uteruses housing grotesque bodies with
large heads and bulging eyes and torsos enfolded in dark creaturely skin.

At the mouth of sleep she tried to reach him, to dream him back. She could bear anything
if he appeared. She listened to the ticking of her brain, hyper alert to the minute
register of cells dividing and multiplying in the new body, the new brain,
inside
her. Then dawn arrived and with it the calamity of a new day.