Innocents (15 page)

It only happened a few times, but it left me exhausted. I'd sit palely on the bed, catching my breath.

It left you intensely puzzled and worried.

I could always work with it, after the event. I could use those puffy cheeks and lips swollen with blood and darkly shining eyes to my advantage. In fact, those mysterious tears were good for hours of repatriations, inquiries, and soul-searching. For you, I mean.

Anxiety seemed to make you desire me more intensely. You always made the most careful love to me when I'd been crying.

I mixed utterly contrived emotions in with the real ones, just in case.

I made myself seem sad, when it suited me. I remember lying under you, doing my best to look sad and distant. And you above me almost burst with the effort of moderating your passion. It seemed that it was all you could do to keep from slamming into me with the force of your worry.

I kept my face very still, careful not to blink the moisture away from my eyes. The sudden squall which had showered those tears was long gone and I felt nothing except vaguely hungry.

There was always my status as the adolescent girl, who wasn't quite responsible for her actions—not yet—to fall back on. It was an easy act to put on. I did it effortlessly.

I'd gaze out the window, distant, silent.

‘What's wrong?’

Tracing the outline of one hand with the index finger of the other. ‘Nothing.’

‘Rubbish!’

‘Oh. I dunno. Sometimes I just get … confused.’

Against the reflective sky in the window, I saw familiar concern falling over your face, deepening wrinkles embedded by long years of sympathy. You said, ‘Look … if there's anything…?’

I exercised a trick I'd learned, and stayed silent. If I said nothing, you kept talking, growing more and more emotional as you did so.

‘I understand that you're very young.’ You shoved your hair impatiently away from your face. Pulling wry expressions, I looked at my hands.

‘The last thing I want to do is make you unhappy.’

I nodded.

You said, ‘I don't want you staying involved if you'd rather not be.’

Deftly, I made my whole momentary, assumed unhappiness your fault: ‘But you'd miss me. You
need
me, now!’

‘Oh, darling.’ You were an instinctively, compulsively truthful man. ‘Yes, I need you, I can't deny…’

‘It's okay.’

I'd made you wretched. ‘But if you're unhappy, if this is all too much! I'd rather die than think I was responsible for—’

You'd suffered enough. I let you out from under my paw. ‘Oh, shut up! Stop being stupid!’

You smiled ruefully, wiping at the corners of your eyes.

Impulsively, girlishly, I threw my arms around your neck and declared into your ear, ‘I'm just premenstrual. Ignore it.’

Then I dusted the length of your arms with kisses, and you cried.

*

Things weren't completely perfect, of course. I lived constantly on edge, keyed up with need; supersensitive; stressed. I slept badly.

You didn't mind. You said, ‘I love having you next to me. Twitching. Stealing the blanket. Smacking me in the face in your sleep.’

You suffered, like any man your age, from more physical pain than I did. You still had that wry shock of men just past their youth, who can't quite believe that their body really would decide that there are some things it will not tolerate.

Your knees cracked when you shifted position. You got indigestion and muscle cramps and your eyes hurt if you read under too bright a light.

I hated those ailments. To me, they always felt like the worst kind of aggravation—the only obstacle which I couldn't find a way around. Even the best general can't fight Acts of God.

I remember once you stopped right in the middle of things. ‘My back hurts.’

It seemed like the thinnest of excuses to me, despite your half-grin of pain. ‘Probably from all that painting,’ I suggested.

‘No.’ You moved clumsily off me, falling heavily, face down, onto your pillow. ‘Just arthritis.’

I didn't want you to have arthritis. That didn't suit me at all.

‘It's okay, isn't it?’ I said. Frowning, you felt behind your back.

There was no course available, it seemed, but compassion. I kissed your cheek. ‘You shouldn't be doing so much handyman-stuff,’ I told you, softly, sternly—the way you told me to eat properly and dress warmly.

‘I enjoy it.’

‘It's fine already.’ I stroked your backbone with the tips of my fingers. I was dying of impatience, choking with a lust for victory. It was terrible, after so much hard work, to have my prize snatched away. ‘There's no need.’

You said nothing. Your eyes were closed.

I waited by your side, infuriated. I was afraid to move, lest my action disturb your spine so badly that it fell completely to pieces.

Another time: ‘I can't breathe.’ You rolled over, wheezing slightly. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from clucking in annoyance.

‘What's wrong, darling?’ I asked, laying one hand on your forehead.

‘I get asthma.’ You put one fist across your chest, breathing carefully. ‘Just sometimes.’

I tried to coquette it all away. ‘Come on!’ I said. I made huge kissing motions in the air.

‘I can't,’ you told me plainly. ‘Sorry, angel.’

I stuck my tongue out at you, making wicked eyes.

You coughed steadily. Phlegm absorbed you. You weren't even looking at me.

‘Come on!’ I said again. But my voice was lost in the harsh sound of your coughing.

So once again, I was left with no route to follow but the sympathetic one. I drew my hand down over your cheeks.

My sympathy took the form of yours. I suppose that's because your sympathy was the most potent and bewitching that I'd ever known. ‘Poor little boy,’ I said.

‘I'm an old man!’ you laughed, slapping my hand away.

*

The world reminded me, once in a while, how little I had in common with the rest of creation. After shopping one morning, I realised exactly what an isolated and unnatural creature I was.

‘Raggle-taggle gypsies,’ you said, rounding the corner. ‘Poor freaks without mortgages.’

We slowed to a standstill behind a red-light queue. I saw from the car window the man playing the ukulele for silver coins, with his trailing dreadlocks knotted Oriental-style on top of his head, an oversize chopstick skewing the arrangement. I saw his moth-eathen poncho decorated with stylised llamas, through which his hands emerged like butterfly wings, afire with obscurely significant rings flashing silver Nordic symbols and purple healing crystals. I saw his filthy bare feet and his bedraggled mongrel dog in its iron-studded collar.

I felt jealous.

You see, his girlfriend, sitting by the patchwork hat laid out to receive coins, tickling the dog under his chin, was dressed in exactly the same style. They were really
together
.

You went on, as the lights changed and the queue began to move, ‘The girls at school called them crusties.’

I knew the people that he meant.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘They're sort of aesthetic Luddites.’

With your indulgent, what-a-clever-girl smile, you asked: ‘Are they, my darling?’

I slapped your knee, saying (because I knew you'd love it), ‘Don't patronise me! I can use a word like Luddite if I want.’

‘Course you can, angel.’

I tasted an acidic bitterness as we swished away from the kerbside crusty bivouac. Nosestuds and dreadlocks. Pierced lips. Ankle tattoos of the Chinese character for courage. Eyebrow rings. These seemed such empty gestures of freakishness. They served, I thought, only as identification marks, so that great tribes of the alienated could recognise each other and gather together. At the weekend, second-hand markets in the old primary-school grounds, the vendors of ancient silk dresses and ratty seventies cup-and-saucer sets would instantly all recognise the busker and his girlfriend as fellows. They would share joints and discuss incense and herbal remedies for chronic fatigue syndrome.

I was acutely jealous of their camaraderie. I was born a freak. I lived without hope of fraternity. I carried my perversion with me like a cancer.

‘And what are those?’ You nodded out my window as we passed the CD shop.

Pressed against the glossy glass, a couple squirmed, kissing.

Strait-jacketed by traffic fore and aft, we slowed to a halt.

‘Goths, I guess.’ I looked more carefully. Under that knee-length cloak of scruffy velvet and the tatty home-dyed lace, familiar features flashed. ‘It's Anita,’ I said. ‘From school.’

Glancing across, you said, ‘Oh, so it is. And she seems to have hooked up with Lord Byron.’

The Gothic stick of a boy Anita was kissing wore a flounced pirate shirt and a tight black waistcoat. A slick foppish fringe hung down over his face, obscuring his eyes.

‘Although,’ you added, ‘I don't know that Lord Byron would've had
quite
that many earrings.’

‘She was the school freak,’ I told you.

‘Poor girl. She always seemed a bit misunderstood.’

‘Misunderstood?’ I said. ‘She was persecuted. Everyone thought she was a lesbian!’

‘Ah, well. That's the price you pay for looking different, I suppose.’

Oblivious to our nature-documentary, Anita and Lord Byron kissed elaborately on, twisting to some silent music of their own.

She who was persecuted was innocent, after all.

There was a cloistered, claustrophobic air to our house. I cultivated this. It was just you and me. Do you realise that no-one else has ever set foot in this house since we moved in?

I was jealous.

In Religion once, we read this part of the Bible where God says, ‘The Lord your God is a jealous God.’ Everyone laughed because Rachel McCormac said, ‘So he means, like, don't be a Buddhist.’ And the teacher explained how God extended this to mean he was jealous of, not just other gods, but any image at all, except his. And that's why we're not supposed to make graven images (even though we do) and why Muslim art is geometric and doesn't represent anything real.

I was jealous like that, like God.

I couldn't bear you to have friends. You spoke, occasionally, to your brother on the telephone. My stomach used to twist in on itself, gushing acid, if you laughed during these conversations. I hated you, briefly, while you swapped anecdotes and inquired after your mother.

I used to pretend to be all courteous and adult. I'd make a show of respecting your privacy, leaving the room as soon as you picked up the phone. But I listened to every word, pressed against the wall outside the door.

*

You loved buying me things.

You'd come home from work with a book, giftwrapped and be-ribboned: ‘I thought you might like this.’ You brought me expensive boxes of chocolates: ‘Have you tried these? They're delicious.’ You offered up exotic cakes and CDs like gifts to a benevolent idol.

I really wasn't used to this much material attention.

‘I'm home!’ you'd call. ‘I've bought you some new socks.’

‘Is that a hint? Are you sick of me stealing yours?’

‘No. I just like to get you presents, that's all.’

Any service you could perform for me you seemed to count as a privilege.

I came home through the late afternoon from Art class. I swung the door open on darkness and chamber music.

You were in the lounge room with a bottle of champagne and a box of expensive liqueur chocolates. As soon as I entered, you jumped up and helped me off with my coat.

‘Candles!’ I crowed.

‘D'you like it? I've made dinner, too.’

Stretching up on tiptoe, I kissed you on the cheek. One perfect rivulet of golden hair wisped by my eye and down my cheek. You stroked it back behind my ear. That's what it was there for. ‘Can I have a drink?’

‘Sit down.’

I did.

‘I shouldn't really give you alcohol’ Your eyes were twinkling; your mouth pursed sheepishly.

I yawned expansively, noisily. Grinning, you poured me the drink. As I reached up to take it, you snagged your foot under the rug and lost your balance.

Sudden cold streams of champagne ran down my legs, under my thighs, and collected on the couch in a sticky pool.

‘Oh!’ You sounded heartbroken. Standing like a pantomime character, with the upraised bottle still in your outstretched hand, you wailed, ‘It wasn't meant to be like this!’

But you were wrong. It couldn't have been more perfect. Standing crooked with your own clumsiness, you belonged to me more than ever.

‘It's all right,’ I said, kissing you, bestowing forgiveness like a knighthood, the gift of a gracious monarch. ‘I still love you.’

Here is a snapshot of perfection.

I had gone upstairs for a book I'd left by the bed. It was Saturday morning. It was sunny. I went over to the window, opened it, felt the new-minted air on my cheeks, looked down on the green garden below. I let my eyes drift, unfocussed, over the great divine mass of leaves and lawn.

Silently you followed me up the stairs; silently you stood in the doorway, watching me.

And then I felt your kiss on the back of my neck. You encircled my waist with your arms, hands butterflied on my belly, drew me into you. I melted against your chest, catlike rubbed my head at your chin. All my instincts whispered,
Take me take me take me
.

I turned at last in your arms.

You said, ‘I want you.’

You were driving out the demons with every thrust.

*

Afterwards, we lay together.

‘Vulnerable,’ you said, not moving.

‘What?’

‘Men. At this point in the, er, proceedings…’

Kissing the top of your head, arching my stomach to feel yours, gliding my hand over the vastness of your warm damp back, I said, ‘Don't worry. I'll look after you.’

‘Oh, my princess, you've already done that!’

‘Mmmmm.’

I can't possibly write down the sound.

You know the one I mean.

I came downstairs after my shower, dressed in your pyjamas—to emphasise my shortness and the slenderness of my waist—and found you lying on the couch. I knelt in front of you, and kissed you on the mouth. Without a word, as though responding to a deep, infantile need, I unbuttoned the pyjama top, guiding your mouth maternally onto a nipple, stroking your hair as you suckled.