The Darkness of Wallis Simpson (18 page)

I said to Pete: ‘We oughta let someone look at these wings, like a surgeon for example.'

But Pete said: ‘No way! We're keeping them hid and pray they drop off.'

Then a few days later I said: ‘Listen, Pete, you know this is a phenomenon unique in the world – the flying baby! All you gotta do is advertise and charge for entry and let Ricky fly around the trailer park, and in one month you'll be a billionaire.'

This got her thinking. Instead of keeping Ricky's wings folded away all the time inside his clothes, she let him use them to fly round the trailer. He liked to hover near the ceiling and he got dirty from all the dust and grease up there, but you could tell he was happy. Except he was lousy at landings. He had to fall down and roll over like a parachutist and this crushed his wings every time and there seemed to be no way to soothe the pain that he felt. We tried putting wych-hazel on his feathers, but it didn't do anything and soon after Pete said to me: ‘Annie, for nine-tenths of his life that child's in mortal agony.'

Pete was still considering becoming a billionaire with my flying baby idea, but she said she was going off it because really she couldn't believe – after what happened with Chester – that any human plan could turn out right. She said: ‘Annie, why can't everything just be safe and ordinary like it was before?'

I said: ‘Pete, this is one crazy time we're alive in. When was anything safe and when was it ordinary?'

Pete said: ‘I guess you're right. It never really was.'

We were in Kroger's supermarket in Knoxville when we had this conversation, with Ricky in our shopping cart and Lisa trailing along with a little carton of mango juice.

Pete and I were examining the thirteen different kinds of salad leaves you could buy at Kroger's, looking at all their names like arugula and radicchio and lollo rosso that never used to be part of life on earth. We were so caught up with the arugula that we forgot about Ricky for one entire minute and when we looked round at him, he'd tugged off his T-shirt and was pulling himself up, and before we could grab ahold of him he'd started his hummingbird thing and lifted off above the vegetable display. He hovered there for a moment, then went flying away down the supermarket aisles.

We just stood there. We couldn't think what else to do. And we saw all the shoppers struck dumb one by one and stand real still, gawping and pointing. In his usual way, Ricky had gone up to the ceiling which, in Kroger's, was chequered with big panels of light. And I shall never as long as I live forget the sight of him crossing these light panels and casting sudden little shadows across the store. I know a lot of people in Kroger's that day just didn't believe what they were seeing. They thought Ricky was an electric baby, operated by remote control.

We waited and watched and there was no sign of Ricky coming down. He was in his element up there. So I went to the manager and said: ‘Sir, what I suggest is you switch off the overhead lights and then maybe he'll decide to land.' So in a moment or two the store went dark, except for the fluorescent tubes above the food counters, and we all called to Ricky and held out our arms, and in a while he came circling down and landed in a box of apples.

Now, the local press and then the national press and then the international press crammed into the trailer park. You couldn't go out or come in because of all the ladders and tripods and people and Styrofoam cups of coffee and slabs of cold pizza and discarded paper tissues. Pete and I and Lisa sat in the dark of Pete's trailer, pretending we weren't there, and reading the offers of money from the media that were stuck under the door.

‘You were right, Annie,' said Pete. ‘I guess I could get rich now.' And so we began thinking about all the things she could buy, if she took one of these offers, like a nice home not too far from Kroger's and a leatherette couch and a doll's house for Lisa and a dog with brown eyes.

Pete was about to come to a deal with ABC news, to let them film Ricky flying round the trailer ceiling, when Chester arrived. He barged his way through the journalists and cooed at Pete through the window, saying: ‘Honey, I love you and I was wrong to leave, so let me in, doll, because I want to come back to you.'

I said: ‘Pete, don't listen. All he wants is Ricky.' But the sight of Chester's huge face at the window seemed to be more than she could resist, so she opened the door and in he came, all two hundred fifty pounds of him, and he took her to him and stuck his tongue in her mouth and held her ass in his fat hand.

Then he saw me. ‘Who's this?' he said.

And Pete said: ‘No one, just Annie.'

‘Tell her to get out,' he said, ‘and take Lisa. We need some privacy here.'

I know what happened next, but I dunno if I've got everything in the right order. I guess Chester screwed Pete so hard that afternoon that her brain stopped functioning. I guess she let him make any deal that came into his mind, provided he swore he'd never leave her again.

Press guys came and went from Pete's trailer. I held on to Lisa and we made a salad that was five colours of red and green. Towards evening, Chester came out, holding Ricky in his arms, the proud father, and all the photographers went flash flash and Chester held Ricky up to the TV cameras to show the world his feathers.

Then they followed him and Ricky down to the cluster of live oaks at the north corner of the park. It was getting close to sunset, so they got some big lamps and shone them up into the trees. Pete was there, but hanging back out of sight. Lisa and I tried to get to her, but we were cut off by the crush of people and cameras so I said to Lisa: ‘Don't worry, sweetheart, I guess everybody just wants to see Ricky flying around under the oaks and then they'll be satisfied and go home and things will be back to normal.'

She said: ‘What if he won't come down, Annie?'

And I said: ‘Don't worry, kid, Ricky came down in Kroger's, remember, he came towards the light.' And I guess we were both thinking about the way Ricky had landed in among the fruit when we saw him go.

The crowd gave a gasp like they do at a NASA launch and there he was, flying higher and higher, and I could see insects in the light beams fluttering upwards, like they wanted to join him on his journey to the dusty trees.

Well. That was in summer and it's winter now and the bare branches of the redbuds are grey with frost.

Lisa refuses to go to school, so she comes with me to Secco's, where it's warm, and the manager, Mr Borzoni, lets her help sort out the clothes by colour and fetch water for the steam presser. It's lucky he's Italian and has compassion. I bring him chocolate, out of gratitude.

He knows the story. Everyone around here does. What no one knows, including me, is what was in Ricky's little heart that evening when, instead of flying near the tree ceiling, he made for the open sky and disappeared from view. I think it must have been that he saw the shimmer of the lake. The light was almost gone, but even at dusk there's some brilliance left on the water and Ricky flew towards that, and no one ever saw him again. They sent frogmen down into the depths to search for his body with its baby wings, but that lake is deep and they never could find it.

So I guess what Pete said to herself was that if no one could bring him back to her, she'd just go and try to be wherever he was. I dunno. I've stopped trying to guess what was in her exhausted mind. Chester was gone too, back to the young girl's bed with his bank account stuffed with media dollars. So perhaps she killed herself because of this and not because of Ricky. I'll never know. All she said to me by way of warning was: ‘Annie, if anything happens to me, take care of Lisa and don't let Chester take her away.'

They dredged Pete up. She had her sewing machine roped to her waist. Some bitch on the trailer park said it was a waste of a good machine. But what got me was the thought of all that appliqué she'd done, all those hours and hours of working at one consoling thing and how this just hadn't been enough.

We had a little ceremony for her and some of the TV people came, but fewer than those who came to see Ricky the Flying Baby. There was no sign of any mountain man with a grey waterfall of hair.

Lisa cries for Pete. I stroke her forehead and hold her close and call her my angel. My angel falls asleep with her arms sticking straight up in the air and gently I lay them down.

The Cherry Orchard
, with Rugs

I was wearing a blossom-white suit that day. No tie. My number on the Eurostar train was seat 19, coach 04.

It rained all through Kent, but when the train pulled clear of the tunnel, there was a cold February sun shining on the grey earth of northern France. I caught sight of a church steeple, which looked turquoise on the far horizon and, in my usual (some would say banal) way, I had a fashion thought: that particular turquoise was the perfect new colour for my kitchen walls. This cheered me more than I can tell you. I laid back my head and wished I were in First Class, with greater calm and comfort to enfold me as visions of my transformed culinary environment began to pleasure my mind.

I've always adored transformations. I was born (thirty-four years ago) Darren John Sands and at work, in the carpet department of Peter Jones, people call me Darren or Daz. But I have other personae I can adopt without difficulty. One of these is a Cuban or Mexican sort of person, named Diego. I'm a good mimic and I speak a little Spanish. I have no difficulty pronouncing the word ‘
cerveza
' correctly. My hair is naturally thick, dark and shiny, and sometimes, if I'm in a Diego mood, I risk gluing on to my baby-soft upper lip a pencil-thin moustache, which certain types of submissive men find devastating in its lethal little way. The only thing I dread, when I'm Diego, is meeting an actual Cuban and being accused of wounding and disrespectful racial impersonation. I have absolutely no desire to wound. I become Diego to amuse myself and to enable me to meet different types of people.

When I go to Paris – which I do as often as I can afford to – I usually travel as Daniela. Daniela is the antithesis of Diego. Some people find this female persona too extreme for their tastes. I once had a lover called Bernard who hated Daniela so much, he tore a silver earring out of my ear and threw it down a drain in Wimpole Street. My ear was bleeding and I was in terrible pain. I said: ‘My God, Bernard, now I'm going to die in agony, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning!' But Bernard, who never laughed at any joke of mine, just walked off and bagged the only cab with its light on in the whole colossal darkness of the Marylebone night. I was left alone, shivering and in shock, and with half my ear hanging down in shreds.

But I didn't abandon Daniela. I abandoned Bernard. And today, there I was, Paris-bound, as
she
. My make-up is always restrained: brown eyeliner, with just a smidgen of mink shadow; a lovely matt foundation on my flawless, studiously exfoliated skin and a pale lipstick, never gloss. My hair I gel into a kind of gamine Audrey Hepburn style and then just finish off the effect with some good jewellery: sometimes one, sometimes two earrings, depending on my mood. I like silver a lot. I buy the real thing from PJ's, using my Staff Discount.

I should explain that I never take Daniela to extremes. I don't wear a padded bra or try to disguise my Adam's apple with polo-necks. I'm not impersonating a woman in any comprehensive way. Not at all. The delight of being Daniela lies, precisely, in the ambiguity I strive to create. And then I watch the world look at her and wonder. I move through my universe with the perfume of people's astonishment following me like a scented cloud wherever I go. And this scent is addictive. Because, as Daniela, I know that I'm totally beautiful. And how often, in a human life, does one experience the absolute beauty of one's own being? I ask you. Not often at all.

In Paris, then, city of bridges, city of love, I like to walk around as Daniela. Do you blame me? But the train was still quite far from its marvellous destination when I had my encounter with Ross.

It was a chance thing. I'd wandered down to the buffet for a caffe latte. Ross was there, smoking. When he saw me, he inhaled an enormous
gorgé
of smoke and started to cough. The cough was horrendous. Everybody began staring. I asked the steward for an Evian water and took this over to Ross with my latte and poured it out for him, and he sipped it gratefully.

He was a gingery kind of man, with freckles on his hands. I put his age at about forty-three. His eyes were blue and trusting, and his lashes long and pale. He wore a wedding ring on his left hand and I could imagine the kind of wife he had, whose laundry smelled of Comfort, who ate boiled sweets on car journeys, whose hair might even be permed.

When he'd recovered from his coughing fit, I said, in my soft Daniela voice: ‘I'm sorry if I upset you.' I touched his sleeve.

‘No,' he said. ‘No. But thanks for the water. Let me pay you back.'

He counted out some English money and I took it. I didn't want him to be in my debt in any way. I considered moving away and having my latte at another table, but I was enjoying the effect Daniela was having on Ross and thought I'd just see how far I might be able to take her. At my back, I could feel the stares of the other people in the buffet; their outrage, and their yearning.

Ross was a schoolteacher. His subjects were drama and English. He was travelling to Paris, alone, to see a production of
The Cherry Orchard
a t some small theatre where the actors worked for nothing.

‘Why do they work for nothing?' I asked.

Ross explained that they did this for the amazing experience of being directed by somebody called Patrice Boniano, a shit-hot French director who liked to ‘break everything down into its simplest components, to – in Chekhov's own words – “rid the theatrical experience of everything that's petty and unreal”.'