Veronica (27 page)

shyness. We rolled awkwardly on my sectional couch; it came apart and almost dumped us on the floor.

“You’re so beautiful,” he blurted.

“I’m not beautiful,” I blurted back. “I’m ugly.”

He reared away, frowning. He was taking it as an insult, and with reason. But it would not be taken back. “You’re beautiful,” he said angrily.

“No I’m not. I’m ugly.”

He slapped me. I fell off the couch. He sat on the edge of it and held my shoulders. I could see in his eyes that his heart was pounding. “Stop saying that!” he said intensely.

“No! I’m ugly, ugly!” My voice was ugly.

He slapped me again. I tried to stop him. He held my wrists. Now we were really in it. The room was buzzing with the energy of it. “Tell me you’re beautiful!” he said, coldly now. I wouldn’t. “You’re beautiful,” he said, and slapped me again.

“John, please stop.”

“Say you’re beautiful.”

But I couldn’t get the words out. He slapped me until my ears sang. Finally, to stop the hitting, I said what he wanted to hear. He let go of me and sat back as if deflated.

“Don’t you see?” My voice broke. I was nearly crying “Don’t you see how ugly I am?”

“No,” he said quiedy. “I don’t.” He crossed his legs and looked away.

I asked if he wanted a drink. He said no, that was okay. He said he was going to go but that he could tuck me in if I wanted. I said no, that was okay. I saw him to the door; we kissed quickly, on the lips.

We didn’t see each other for a few weeks. Then I called him and asked him to drive me to a job, and things went back to normal. Except I didn’t see anger in his eyes for a long time. I saw sadness.

When I (old Veronica about John slapping me, she said, “Ooh that sounds kind of sexy.”

“Maybe if it had been somebody else. With John, it was just weird.”

She didn’t seem surprised that I’d said I was ugly, nor did she act like there was anything strange about it. I appreciated that.

I went to New York every month for the next six. When I wasn’t in New York, I talked to Veronica on the phone. She complained about her doctor, her neighbors, her sister, people at work, people on the street, at the movies, in the store, and at the gym. She insulted David and fell out with George. She had a screaming match with the woman who lived above her, a “bitch” who walked on her hardwood floor in high heels, making a “murderous” noise. Her exterior became to me like a vast prickly thicket broken by patches of ice and tiny, weirdly pursed receptors built only to receive what they’d heard before. It was boring and ugly. You couldn’t talk to it. I’m sure she knew I felt this way. But she didn’t get angry. Probably she didn’t dare. If she’d lost me, she would’ve had no one.

“I’m always the one to call,” I said. “I’ll wait for you to call next time.”

“I understand, hon,” she said. “You’re setting your boundaries.”

“I’m not setting anything,” I said. “We can talk anytime. It’s just that you never call me, and I don’t want to bother you.” “I don’t have anything to talk about except my new disgusting aches and pains. It’s just depressing.”

“I don’t care if it’s depressing. I want to know what’s going on with you.”

“It may not be too depressing for you, hon. But it’s too depressing for me.”

And so, when we met, I talked brightly about nothing and she let herself be drawn into bright nothingness. But I could see dark shapes moving behind her eyes.

Daphne’s baby was born in June. They sent me a Polaroid of the delivery: a splayed leg, my sister’s extruded red flesh, a bloody cord; life caught in the doctor’s great mitt. My mother’s head between the open leg and the far border of the photograph, grinning from ear to ear. Later, I balked when they handed me the infant, a girl named Star. But when I held her, it was like two opposite electrical poles lit up inside me and discharged twin bolts that met and joined. It was a small place inside me and far away, but I felt it.

That summer was moist and hot. The city exhaled, farted, and sweated through the bars of its concrete cage like a massive animal of flesh and steel, glass and bristled hair. It sent up a mighty stink to carry all the little smells that played in and out of it—flowers, dirt, cars, garbage, piss, and food. I called Selina and we went to see a band. They played in a modest venue, a dark and delicious place with a copious flow of strange faces and a bar of colored bottles lit up like the Emerald City. I drank and bit the rim of my plastic cup and lost myself in the music on the sound system. I had succeeded. I had become like this music. My face had been a note in a piece of continuous music that rolled over people while they talked and drank and married and made babies. No one remembers a particular note. No one remembers a piece of grass. But it does its part. I had done my part.

The sound system cut off. The band came onstage. The front man was rail-thin, with gaunt eyes and pale, pouchy cheeks. He carried himself like a dandy, but rawness hung olf him like the smell of meat. He picked up his guitar; dandified feeling came out of it. They weren’t good, but it didn’t matter. The

room was full of life that wanted forms to hold it, and it wasn’t picky. Neither were we. We watched as if we were witnessing the preservation of a place in our collective heart—a place that had once been primary and that now had become so layered with auxiliary concerns that we no longer knew what it was or where it was. And now we felt it: secret and tender, and with so many chambers. Some were dark, with bats flying out. Some were speed, light, and joy. Some were tenderness and soft red flesh. Some had babies curled inside them. Some were the places where all the others mingled. I remembered standing on the street with Lilet, eating ice cream off a paper plate and bags of hot cashews. I remembered rooms of strangers and people dancing and a boy who said, “And then I fertilized it!”

Selina put her arm around me and I leaned into her a little. In a chamber of my heart was Daphne, her open leg radiating triumph and pride, and my mother’s grinning face between her legs, a net of love to catch the baby when it came. In another chamber was Nadia, sailing like a ship, her scorn unfurled like silk sails. I saw the German woman from behind, walking alone down a dark corridor, almost disappeared. There was Sara, living in an enchanted shadow world only she could see. There was Veronica alone in her apartment, locked in full-engagement with forces the musicians lightly referred to. The song said nothing about any of them, but they were part of it anyway.

I wished I could tell them all about this, tell them what I saw. But I wouldn’t be able to find the right words for conversation. Even if I did, it wouldn’t make sense to them, any more than my father talking of his favorite songs made sense to the men he worked with.

The music turned the corner of a darkly baubled wall. I imagined Veronica alone in the dark, waiting for the brute that stalked her to show itself in full. I imagined her horror at the small eruptions of death on her body—the sores, infections,

rashes, yeast, and liquid shit. I imagined her holed up in the part of herself where all was still orderly and clean, insistently maintaining the propriety and congruence that had enabled her to get through the senselessly disordered world, and that was slowly being taken from her.

Even more than the others, I wanted to tell her this. I wanted her to know that even though she was dying, she was still included in the story told by the music. That she wasn’t completely and brutally alone. The music raised its lamp and illuminated its own dark interior. I will tell her, I thought. I will remember and I will tell her.

I went to visit Veronica the next day. She put out a tray of brownies in special pink paper, fruit, and cheeses. Her breathing was labored; it must’ve been hard to go out for the food, and she couldn’t even eat it. In her presence, what had been important and true the previous night seemed trivial. But it was what I had to offer.

“I thought about you,” I said, “because the music was so dramatic and a little dark and—first, it reminded me of the story you told me about being on the mountain with that Balkan guy?”

She nodded, a little dazed, an eyebrow cocked.

“But also the whole event was trying to create this experience, this feeling that these guys were great because they were really dealing with something. Compared to you, they weren’t dealing with shit. I don’t mean just because what you’re dealing with is bad, but because it’s real.”

Veronica’s face went from bewildered to hard. “This isn’t a rock song, hon,” she said.

“I know, I—” I felt my face reddening. “I know it sounds stupid, but I just mean ... I thought of you. I thought how

strong you are and how much guts you have. You’re the realest person I know. You are! Other people just write songs and strike poses and...”

Veronica turned and looked at the last cat. The gesture was more eloquent than any cutting remark. Silence fell, slow as dust. I realized I was holding my breath; with difficulty, I exhaled.

“Do you have a home lined up for her yet?” I asked.

“No. Not yet. I’m supposed to talk to someone tomorrow.”

“I could take her,” I said.

She didn’t answer me. I thought, In a minute, I will leave.

“Do you remember the nun who tended Duncan in the hospital?” she asked. “Dymphna Drydell?”

“Sister Drycrotch?”

“Yes, well, Dymphna wasn’t her name. It was Dorothea, but she said we could call her Dymphna if we wanted to. She was a lovely person. She sang to Duncan one night. She sang him a lullaby.”

Outside, someone shouted; gray car noise went down the block. In a minute, I would leave.

“Don’t think I’m angry with you, Allie.” She was still looking at the cat. “I’ve never been angry with you.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

I got up and sat beside her. Finally, she looked at me. Her face was stunned and drained. I put my hand on her breastbone. I felt her subtly respond. Shyly, I rubbed her.

The trail runs into a wide road on a high plateau overlooking the entire Bay Area. The rain is now a low drizzle. The fog is still very thick, but it is moving; to my distant right lies the ocean and the bony spangle of the Golden Gate Bridge. I lick my dry Ups. I try to imagine myself connected to Veronica even now,

but there is no weight to my imagining, I want to know who she was, but I can’t because I didn’t look in time. When I look now, I see a smile hanging in darkness. Then I tip over, pulled down by my own weight. I have the last of the water and tuck the bottle back in my bag.

I rubbed Veronica’s chest and then I left. I said, “Call me if anything happens,” and she walked me to the door. I hugged her and she said, “Wait a minute, hon.” She took a ring off her finger and gave it to me. It was a handsome sienna-colored stone set in ornate silver. “It’s a carnelian,” she said. “Duncan gave it to me the second time we saw each other. He put it on my finger and then he kissed it.” She put it on my finger. She squeezed my hand. She said, “Good-bye, sweetheart.” And she smiled.

Three weeks later, Veronica’s sister called to tell me that Veronica was dead. She had been found by the police, who had gone to her building when the neighbors complained about the smell coming from her apartment. She had died of pneumonia. She died peacefully,” said her sister. “She was watching television.” The last cat had still been in the apartment. Veronica had apparently torn open a large bag of cat food and left it in the kitchen so the animal wouldn’t starve before someone found her.

I fold my umbrella and rest it against my thigh. I take off my gloves, put them on my other thigh, and look at the ring Veronica gave me. It is beautiful against my cold-bleached fingers. I try to draw from it some wisp of spirit, some faint echo of

Veronica’s smile, her touch, her mad anger, a ghost of fiercely exhaled smoke. Nothing. I put the gloves back on.

Veronica was cremated. I went to New York for the memorial. The rented hall was filled with the coworkers Veronica had hated, including a supervisor. There were also a few temps I’d worked with five years earlier—among them the woman who had once called Veronica a “total fucking fag hag.” When I walked in, they turned to stare at me. I wonder if I looked like Nadia to them.

“I knew she was sick with something,” I heard the supervisor say, “but I had no idea it was AIDS. Somebody’d told me her boyfriend had had it, but she just never looked that bad to me.”

I found George and stood with him. His face was puffy and his eyes sad. A former lover of his had been hospitalized, probably for the last time. He had not seen or spoken to Veronica since I had last visited her. I asked what had happened to the last cat. He said David had adopted it.

“Where is David?” I asked.

“He decided not to come, I guess.”

“And you’re the model!” A woman had my hand and was shaking it. She looked like Veronica in a mask of terrible happiness. “Hi, I’m Veronica’s sister, June. I’ve been following your career, so exciting. How did you meet my sister again?”

George uttered a courtesy that sounded like a curse and

fled.

“Oops,” said June. “Did I say something? And there’s my mother. We’d better keep it down—whatever it is!” She winked as she pointed to an elderly woman with a hive of dry bleached hair, who was standing a few feet from us. She did not look like the kind of person who would abuse laxatives in order to lose weight.

When I stood up to talk, I told how I had met Veronica. I said that she knew I had been in Paris before I told her; I said that when I was looking for a job as a secretary, she’d told me I had to be like Judy Garland in A Star Is Bom. I said that once when I’d complained about a feeling of tightness in my forehead, she’d said, “No, hon, that’s your sphincter.” I said, “Veronica was very beautiful.”

Then George told a story about a party Veronica had given years ago in L.A., where a faded pop musician had walked into the room naked. Everybody laughed. “Naked?” said Veronica’s mother in a loud, querulous voice. “Naked!” she repeated. Everybody laughed.

The last person I spoke to before I left was Veronica’s mother. I didn’t mean to speak to her, but she grabbed my hand as I walked by. “You were my daughter’s friend?” Her voice was made of dead, still sparking wires. I looked at her face, swollen under her hive of hair, and, for a moment, saw her daughter. Except that this woman did not have Veronica’s armor of pain sculpted to look like sophistry. Her face reflected pain received with the simplicity of a child.