This Body (14 page)

Katharine found herself looking at reflections of Thisby as she walked down the business section, her profile flitting from
one windowpane to the next. As she headed toward a glass door, she framed Thisby in it and watched how she walked, how she
held her head, what she did with her arms. Katharine used to make it a habit to walk straight at the seams around the doors
so her own reflection would be sucked into the trough. She avoided mirrored walls at fast-food restaurants and washed her
hands with head bowed in restrooms. She was always fascinated by the girls and women who could preen in front of mirrors in
restrooms, applying makeup, brushing hair and adjusting skirts and pantyhose. She was still watching in fascination, for now
it was an exterior that masked her interior.

And the mask was a young one. Here was an opportunity to be twenty-two again, though at twenty-two, Katharine had already
been a wife and a new mother. Katharine had to admit to herself that she wanted a second chance at that young blood. Thisby
wasn't a child: she was old enough to be on her own, with her own money and her own place. But she was still young and, therefore,
attractive. Katharine noticed that about her children's friends too. Their naïveté, their energy made them beautiful. They
all complained, boys and girls, about their bodies, big or small, and their skin, clear or pimply, and their noses and hair,
but Katharine found them all adorable — that young flesh with all its imperfections. It glowed with —
what? The full flush of their youth
?

What is youth
? She never knew. She was born with an old soul. Her parents recognized it immediately and took advantage of it.
Is youth the tasting of the infinite possibilities of being
? She definitely hadn't tasted that, since so many of the possibilities had been decided for her by other people.
What was my culpability in all of that? I was needed. I needed to be needed. But being needed is what drains youth, what pales
the flush
. Katharine realized, after her long hours on the balcony porch, that it was not just time and gravity that sagged the butt,
the breasts, the shoulders, but the weight of family, of tradition, of responsibility, of need. The roots, the tendrils of
that weight slowly dig in over the years and settle firmly in one place, holding fast, holding firm, binding.

Could she avoid that weight now, in her new body? Did she really have another chance at youth? Or would it just be new trappings
over the same old soul?

When she came home, the message machine was blinking.
Oh, God, what if it's Goodfellow, and he can't come tonight? What if he's going to be late for dinner
? She danced a bit out of frustration and then pushed the button. She was immediately relieved when the voice wasn't Goodfellow's,
but then she recognized it as the man who had left messages before. “It's Hook. Gondorff said he saw you on the street the
other day. When'd you get back? Haven't stung your old friends, have you? Call me.”

She erased the message quickly and went into the kitchen to open one of the bottles of merlot she had purchased that afternoon.
After a glass or two, she felt better and decided to start preparing dinner. She found that she was excited — her first dinner
guest. She needed onion-chopping music, so she found something that had a good beat.

While stirring the spaghetti sauce, she stopped and set down her wineglass. “Number, please,” she said in a caricature of
a man's voice. She held the dripping wooden spoon to her mouth, and answered in a teenybopper's voice, “Well, Dick, I give
it a nine cuz you can dance to it.” She laughed.

The doorbell rang.

He's here
!

Katharine opened the door without looking through the security lens, and Puck stepped over the threshold.

“Isn't it a little loud? I can hear it from the elevator.”

She paused to listen. “Yeah, I guess it is.” She walked back to turn down the music. “I'm so glad you came. Take off your
coat and tie. Do you want anything to drink?”

He removed his coat and tie and draped them across the couch. Katharine noticed how long his fingers were as he unbuttoned
the cuffs of his shirt and rolled up the sleeves to his elbows. “No, nothing. Not right now.”

“I've got some wine.”

“So I can see. No, thanks.”

She recited, “Good wine is a good familiar creature.” Puck looked stonily at her. “It's from
Othello
. So how was work?” she asked as she headed back into the kitchen.

There was a long pause. “When did you learn to cook?”

Katharine just looked back at him and didn't answer; she didn't know how to answer.

He shrugged and answered her question. “Work was good today. I actually got some things done.” He leaned against the counter.
“We have a case pending, and I tracked down some evidence to substantiate our claim of copyright violation. That's when the
law works for me.”

“It's like a paper chase, isn't it?”

“Yeah, I guess it is, but I like it. The rest of it, though? I don't know. But I gave Dad my word I'd stick it out for a year
or two. I won't bail like some of the others. But it's not exactly what I'd hoped it would be.”

Katharine thought about this for a while. “Yeah, I know. I was getting so bored with my job at the end, I felt sick. I mean,
I had been doing all that jazz for close to —” Katharine looked at Puck, his face like granite again.
You know, this is really getting old. I was just talking about work. No big … Oh, bloody hell
.

“What's this, Thiz?” Puck said sarcastically. “Pretending to relate to the common working girl? Give it up. You're a slacker,
and you know it. You haven't worked a day in your life.”

“She must … I mean …”
What's wrong with me? Why can't I control myself
?

“A couple of weeks at Mom's store and filing papers in Dad's office is hardly what I call work. I think Mom is right. We should
commit you.”

Everything froze.

Puck walked over to the counter and lifted up the bottle of wine and tilted it. A finger depth of wine sloshed to the side.
“Having a few drinks, are we? I thought …”

Katharine glared at him. Anger, at least, heated up the blood. “I'm not … I'm not …” She stopped to feel contact with Thisby's
body, but it wasn't there.
Drugs. Drugs. I thought it was drugs. Not alcohol. Never alcohol … I'm not an alcoholic. I've never been one. I've never had
any trouble with alcohol. Just a couple of glasses of wine at home. Margaritas when I was out
.

Puck still held up the bottle, displaying it. It seemed to throb.
I drank that entire bottle, and I don't even remember doing it. I was spilling my guts to Goodfellow about my other life,
and I wasn't even aware of it. I may not be an alcoholic, but TB is. … And, therefore, I am … one … too
.

Katharine slumped down on the kitchen stool, the pressure building up behind her eyes.
I don't want to play the crying game
. But this body was taking over again.

“When are you going to figure it out?”

There was such self-righteousness in his voice, the Puck of old, that Katharine stood up, yanked the bottle from his hand
and whipped it against the utility-room door. It shattered, and the red wine dripped down to pool at the base of the door.

Katharine was stunned, the anger immediately dissipating. She looked at the glass scattered over the floor. She was too petrified
to look sideways at Puck. “I'm so sorry.” Puck made no sound beside her. She got a broom, and Puck started to pick up the
large pieces. Katharine saw the hard line of his jaw twitch.

“You know,” she confessed slowly, “I've always wanted to do something like that. Just like in the movies.” She ran a hand
through her hair. “Funny. It helps too.” She looked around again at the floor. “It makes a mess though, doesn't it?”

He didn't respond. Breaking a bottle like that was something Thisby would have done, and probably did, regularly.

By the time they sat down to dinner, Katharine was not feeling too terrific, but she didn't know whether it was the wine or
the shock of almost exposing herself that soured her stomach. Puck seemed willing to fill the silence, and she was willing
to listen as best she could through her raging headache. She did find out that he was a lawyer at his father's studio. His
new girlfriend, Vivian Ward, was “a very pretty woman, but a hard-ass in the courtroom.” The firm she worked for was prestigious
and recruited only the best and the brightest and the most ruthless people. They both billed long hours and didn't see much
of each other. “I admire her,” he told Katharine. “She knows what she wants.”

Puck refused wine with dinner, and the thought of it alternately called and repulsed her. The world was shrinking in on her.
It was as if she were in a daguerreotype, and the edges of the image were being eaten away by shadows and fog. She tried to
hide her distraction from Puck, and by the time he left, after she had silently handed him the unopened bottle of wine and
he took it without comment, she was almost reeling but promised to call him “real soon.”

Katharine slowly finished cleaning up, trying to shore up the barriers between her mind and this body. The distinctions were
getting blurred, had been getting blurred, slowly, unevenly, but without her knowledge. She was losing the sense of what was
her, Katharine, and what might have been Thisby.

There's a price. There's always a price. Maybe in order to be the exorcist — to get her out of my head — I must perform a
sacrifice. Maybe before I can go home again, I must accomplish a feat, a labor
.

Then maybe she'll leave me alone, and I can live my own life
.

. . .

It was a little after 11:30
P.M
. when she called Quince on her own line. Katharine figured she wouldn't be asleep, and the sound of the music in the background
proved her correct.

“Are you doing anything this weekend?”

“Lie abed till noon, then I shall be dogged with company.”

Katharine smiled weakly, not having the strength to respond out loud. “I was wondering if you could come over Saturday or
Sunday.”

“What? Hath your grace no better company?”

“I need your help.”

“With what?”

“To go through some photos here.”

“Why?”

“To help me pick out the good ones.”

“Why?”

“Because I need your help.”

“Why? Okay, okay. Can I spend the night?”

Christ
.

Oh, go on. Why not? Play the sister act
.

“Okay. I'll come pick you up around two o'clock on Saturday.”

“I can get there myself.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Katharine was not overly anxious to see Thisby's parents for a while.

Katharine lay in bed.
It's been decided
. Katharine's family, no doubt, had given her body a funeral or, at least, a memorial service.
Some sort of last rites
. Even if they didn't, people knew she had died. They mourned her.
I assume
. But there had been no funeral for Thisby, no memorial. Not even any grief.
Thisby's dead, and no one knows but me
.

And maybe this would be enough for atonement. Maybe this would be the right offering to deflect all the Bennet women. She
would take Thisby's father up on his offer of a photographic exhibit. It would be Katharine's memorial to Thisby. She would
produce an exhibit, “The Photographs of Thisby Flute Bennet.”

A posthumous retrospective
.

Act 2, Scene 4

I will not permit you to have two families, no matter what their problems are

— S
HANNON
W
ILCOX
,
Six Weeks
(1982)

Quince appeared about three o'clock, decked out in faded jean shorts and a T-shirt with
SAVE THE WORLD
across it and shod in purple sneakers. She had attached a chain from her nose ring to an earring, and it swayed across her
left cheek like a jump rope. Katharine cringed as she imagined the chain getting caught on something, and the nose ring ripping
apart all that cosmetic surgery.

Quince threw her overnight bag in the bedroom and looked around. “You've cleaned up.”

Katharine was unsure whether Quince thought this was a good thing. “Yeah, I did. Did Mom bring you over?”

“Yeah, right.” Quince gave her a withering look. “I hitched.”

“You what?”

“I hitched. How'd you expect me to get here? By taxi?”

“There's a bus stop right out in front.”

“Gimme a break.”

“I never would have let you —” Katharine stopped.

A hitcher
?

You are not her parent
.

“I'll come get you the next time.”

Quince shrugged. “So what are we doing?” she asked, eyeing the boxes lined up on the floor in the dining area.

“We're going to go through those and pick out the photographs we think should be exhibited.”

Quince looked up sharply. “You changed your mind?”

“It just happened.”

Quince shrugged and knelt down. “I never could figure why you were such a wench about it. You could be famous. The Lewis Hine
of Slummed LA.”