This Body (27 page)

Goodfellow disentangled the cord and rebound the towel around his waist. He saw that Katharine was staring at him. “Yeah,
the ol' fairy kiss.” He rubbed the spot. “I used to think it would lose its shape or, at least, lose its color as I got older,
but the ol' mark prodigious just grew right along with me.”

The mark prodigious
. She remembered that from
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. In the end the fairies bless the bridal beds so their children shall ever be fortunate. No harelips or skin blotches for
them.
None of the Bennet children were so fortunate, were they? Thisby's defect just wasn't visible, that's all
.

Puck left and came back wearing a pair of cotton drawstring shorts. He had run a comb through his hair, which lay slicked
back over the top, though the waves, refusing to stay straight, curled back on themselves. “So why the unlisted phone number?
The new locks?”

“Oh, that.” She gave him the short version, leaving out the X-rated parts, but no matter how she edited it, the censors were
still squirming in their seats.

He was silent for a long time.

Say something. Say anything
.

He was silent for a bit longer. “Well, I'm glad you've dumped this guy, but I gather you're still scared that he won't leave
you alone.”

“Yes.”

“So spend the night here. Maybe we can think about something else — some other way to handle it — later.” He came over and
stood near her. She could feel the moist heat coming from his naked torso. She leaned back, feeling uncomfortable. “We'll
figure something out.” He touched her hesitantly on the shoulder. His fingertips, like the cocaine, caused her skin to feel
hot.

They really didn't talk much more that evening. Katharine was waiting for him to go to bed, and Puck was, no doubt, thinking
about his troubles with Vivian. He and Vivian were fighting. “Not really fighting,” he told her, a little too cavalierly.
“She just gets silent.” He massaged his kneecap. “She's good at that. Silence.” He folded his arms over his chest and looked
at Katharine, his forehead bunched up over his eyes. “I know most people think she's a bit stiff, but, really, she can be
different. We haven't been together for all that long, but I like her. She hasn't had an easy life. I really respect her.”

“What's she mad about?”

“Oh, I don't know. I'm pretty good at the silent part too.”

“You're talking to me, aren't you?”

“Well, sure. You're easy to talk to.”

Katharine had to hold down the corners of a silly smile.

Puck shook his head. “You know, I don't know. There are a lot of times when I want to talk to her. Really talk to her. About
my job. What I don't want. What she wants. I think I must go about it the wrong way, though, because the more I try to get
her to talk, the more she clams up.

“She calls me the yin-yang man.”

“Does she?”

“She says there's not much gray in me. I want to talk. I don't want to talk. I'm serious. I'm not serious enough.” He stood
up. “I don't know.”

Puck's leatherbound copy of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
lay open in Katharine's lap, her fingers tracing Oberon's instructions to his fairy minions to bless the children of the
newlyweds and keep them from the despised blots of birth defects. Katharine was in that innerspace where she seemed to be
able to mind-walk within Thisby's life. It scared her, how easy it was to imagine herself standing at the bottom of the stairs
at the Bennet house, her right hand on the newel post, her right toe tap, tap, tapping on the first step. She's on her way
out to meet some friends downtown. Her parents are in the living room discussing Quince and one of her many illnesses. God,
her parents like to jabber. Always in the kitchen or the living room, gibbering. She doesn't normally care enough to eavesdrop,
but her father's voice catches her. “The fairies missed Quince, didn't they? Sometimes I think she is despisèd.”

The anger that has simmered under the bedpan of her brain for years suddenly boils over.
That fucking play. Our fucking lives have been scripted by that fucking play. Puck is despised. Quince is despised. So what
does that make me
?

She stomps into the living room. Her parents are surprised; they didn't even know she was home. She screams and yells at them.
Why can't you just accept me as I am — not as a fucking character in a fucking play. Why are we performing our lives against
some moldy text
? Her parents' faces are studied masks; she wants to slap them. Things then start to get jumbled. She's losing her focus,
but she can't stop the words.
And if Quince is so despised, how come she got all the attention? How come she got the dog and Puck and all the attention?
And Puck's despised too, isn't he? Poor Puck. Poor Quince. You can feel sorry for them, can't you? But me? I'm not despised,
or I'm not supposed to be
.

Well, she'll show them how to be despised. They ain't seen nothing yet.

Act 3, Scene 5

He told me I would forget. But how could I not remember?

— J
ANE
F
ONDA
,
Old Gringo
(1989)

Anne was making coffee in the kitchen, and Katharine and Robert were left in the dining room, the crumbs of their dinner still scattered over the tablecloth. Quince had gone off with friends, but promised to be back for Oberon's next feeding.

Katharine had driven Quince and Oberon home after her work at the clinic. Thisby had been invited to stay for dinner and spend
the night — only if she wanted to — and Katharine had accepted, much to Anne and Robert's surprise and wariness.

This was the length to which Katharine would go to avoid being alone, though it was a deceptive aloneness — her mind was alive
with the company of thought, fear, and voice.

She had spent one more night at Goodfellow's, making dinner for them. It was the least she could do. She had returned both
days to Thisby's apartment and found it undisturbed — no strange marks on the lock, no obscene messages shoved underneath
the door, no blinking lights on the answering machine.

Goodfellow and she had talked a lot over dinner, the bowls of their repast covering the small table. Goodfellow was a good
storyteller — like his father — making a soap opera out of the daily happenings at work. Katharine's husband had always cut
to the chase, and it drove Philip crazy when she wanted to stretch out the telling with prefaces and digressions and background
information. So it was with great pleasure that she had told Goodfellow, in lengthy detail, about her escapades at the concert
and in Ashland, even pulling aside the neck of her shirt to show him the now-faded tattoo.

Then Puck had gone to see Vivian. Katharine thought he would certainly not come home that night, but he did — and she was
glad. She wasn't afraid in his apartment, but it was nice to have someone else around, someone to talk to. It kept the whispering
down and kept her from thinking too much about the party at the Dentons. She didn't want to think about how it was going to
feel seeing Emily and Hank. It was enough to know that it was going to happen.

“I think we're okay now,” Puck told Katharine when he got back from Vivian's. “She's leaving for a few days to visit her parents
in Paris, Texas. She says she does this every year. It's not unusual. I think when she comes back, everything will be back
to normal. She just needs to get away for a while. I think it will be good for the both of us. Don't you?”

Anne returned with the coffee, which seemed to prompt Robert into speaking. “Hey, how's the exhibit going?”

“Great. Good.” Katharine bobbed her head. “It's going good.”

“Anything I can do, just let me know.”

“No, we're fine. We've got it under control.” But then Katharine remembered her last conversation with Max; he was pressuring
her about printing up the other photographs. “Well, actually, I take that back. You can help. I'm going to need some help
with the printing. Would you mind?”

Robert's face shone.

He's so easy to please
.

“Of course. I'd love to. No problem. Just tell me what you want done.”

Katharine nodded. Max had essentially told her what she wanted done.

“I got an e-mail from your Uncle Roy,” Robert continued. “He's coming up for your exhibit.”

“I know. I got a postcard saying he'd be there with bells on.” The postcard was of a Central American version of the jackalope,
half turtle, half alligator, the amateurish pasteup oddly affecting.

“Oh, God. With Roy that probably means he'll have bells on. Literally.”

From the corner of Katharine's eye, she saw that Anne was watching this exchange as if she were the chair umpire at a tennis
match, following the ball with incredible powers of concentration.

“Roy always did consider you his kindred spirit.” The way he said it made Katharine feel that Robert didn't think that was
such a special distinction, though he was trying to disguise it. He turned sideways in his chair and crossed his arms and
legs. “My brother was not an easy person to live with. I always thought you blamed me when he left the country — as if I had
something to do with it. Actually, he felt he could manage his investment business just as easily from Belize as from here.
He certainly could live cheaper.” He shook his head. “I've stopped worrying about what you kids are going to accuse me of,
because I figure it's going to be something I had no control over anyway. It's all in your perspective.”

Katharine wondered if Robert ever lectured for UCLA extension courses. She could see him at the lectern with his light pen,
emphasizing certain paragraphs on the overhead projector.

“I'm not being self-righteous. I was the same way as a kid too. I thought Roy got everything, and I got nothing. Roy might
say differently. No”— he paused —“I take that back. Roy would say he got everything too.” He smiled at Katharine as if to
convince her he was just trying to lighten everybody up.

Anne measured out her sugar with infinite precision, folded it into her coffee, then set the spoon on the saucer without a
clink. She picked up the cup with both hands and sipped carefully.

Robert glanced at Anne, but her eyes were looking into her cup.

“Puck carries this heavy burden of responsibility that he won't allow himself to give up, and somehow I'm responsible for
that. I guess he thinks I was never home when you kids were growing up. But that's not true at all. I was just gone the wrong
time — for him anyway.

“When you left home at eighteen, we know you hated us. Blamed us. For whatever. We could never quite figure out what you were
accusing us of. Did we, Anne?” Katharine could see that he wasn't really asking Anne for a response. He leaned forward. “I
don't know how to tell you this so that it will make any sense to you. You really have to have kids to understand. We found
out, perhaps too late, that we had to treat each one of you children differently. You were such different people. With Puck,
the parenting hand had to be so light, just a touch here and a touch there. We made the mistake of thinking that you were
like Puck, and we could treat you like we treated him. By the time we realized we shouldn't, you were on a road we couldn't
follow, couldn't even conceive of. We were chasing after you, and you were on one of those airport walkways, striding along
faster than we could ever run.”

He seemed to be on his own airport walkway, straining to keep up with his speech that was running along faster than the rest
of him. His weight returned to the chair, the belt of his speech slackening. “There was always a crisis — Quince being born
with the cleft lip and not being very healthy — and we were putting out small fires without realizing that the entire forest
was burning around us. Sometimes we thought the fairies had indeed missed us, but we thought we were doing a good job making
you all realize you weren't despised. How you ever thought that we — How absurd!” He drew his lips into a straight line. “You
… You slipped through our fingers, and we watched you fall. For years. In slow motion. I thought I would die. But I didn't.
And you didn't. And somehow it seems to be turning out okay. Is it going to be okay?”

The frustration that had been growing in Katharine while Robert lectured threatened to make her reckless.
What do you want from me? From Thisby? Why didn't you parent a little harder? Make that hand a little stiffer when she needed
to be put on her ass a couple of times
? The parental part of her knew that Robert wasn't solely responsible for Thisby. Thisby did what she did, was what she was,
because of the choices she made. But that was Thisby, not Katharine. She did not owe Robert.
You have the gall to demand retribution from me
!

Both parents looked at her, and Katharine could see that Robert wanted an answer. She wasn't sure what Anne, who remained
silent and closed off at the other end of the table, wanted. Katharine shrugged her shoulders and made a noise in her throat
that could have meant anything — anything they wanted to hear.