This Body (6 page)

Sometimes the photos had captions, sometimes not. Katharine found out that Thisby had a dog named Snout and a best friend
named Maxie Glenn. Her neighborhood cronies were named Curt and Steve and Laurie and Falfa — the most interesting of their
photos, a lineup against a mural of the American flag almost obscured by gangland graffiti. There were pictures of cousins
and aunts and uncles and grandparents and various boyfriends she captioned “Jack,” “Ryan,” and “Jake.”

Rob was often a subject by himself, hamming it up with odd postures or silly faces. Sometimes the captions underneath read
“The Merry Wanderer” or “Goodfellow” or what looked like a P with a great flourish underneath. But the pictures of Rob slowly
decreased. By the time he looked to be in high school, there were hardly any at all, and it appeared as if Thisby had gone
out of her way to distort the ones she did take of him. Sometimes he looked to have a tree sprouting from his head, or a shadow
like a cancerous growth crawled up his face. Sometimes he looked like a mannequin. One photograph she had entitled “The Freshman,”
and he had shadows like thick horn-rimmed glasses around his eyes. He looked like some sort of diddlebockian nerd, and Katharine
couldn't tell if the effect had been intentional.

People were replaced by buildings in the last album. The photographs were even more distorted by strange lighting and odd
angles. Katharine realized the photos in the living room had been taken by Thisby, and these were their precursors. They were
black-and-white, but Katharine had a sense that color wouldn't have mattered; everything was made up of grays: dirty, smoggy
skies, grimy concrete and stone buildings, rubbled streets. It took Katharine a while to realize, however, that there were
people in the photographs, but they could be mistaken for a part of the landscape, the architecture. They were slouched against
the walls of buildings like rumpled gargoyles or stood stock-still like extra support for the columns. One photograph, taken
at a slant, was of a low billboard with one side sagging to the ground. The advertisement was for a housing community called
Pacific Heights, and in the corner a palm tree waved in the breeze over the swimming complex. Only it wasn't a palm tree but
a wafer-thin black man who stood leaning against the billboard, his dreadlocks sticking out in a frond of spikes.

She was reminded of a children's perception game she used to like to play — Hidden Pictures. The goal was to find the incongruous
items hidden in a larger landscape. Find the barnyard animals drawn into a city street. Find the kitchen appliances in a forest.

Find the vagrant
.

It was as if humanity were hidden, masquerading as the inanimate, and unless viewers wanted to take the time and effort to
find it, they didn't have to.

And I don't
.

Act 1, Scene 5

I am a feather for each wind that blows.

— L
EONTES
,
The Winter's Tale
, 2.3.154

By the time Katharine woke up Saturday morning, the flame that had burned since Tuesday had consumed the insides of this body.
The fury had turned her entrails to ash, and they swirled away in the hot summer breeze. Now there was nothing — no emotion,
no feeling — and she felt as calm and logical as a mentat. She could fill this body, this husk, with any emotions or feelings
she so chose.
I can be forgiving. I can be vindictive. I can be … Oh, the hell with this … I need to know what I'm going to do. I need a
Plan. I need a goal. A mission
.

I need money and I need to know where I stand. With my family. With my husband
. Was she going to fight for her husband? Could she even win him back, if she wanted to? She did have some rights, some claim
to his affections. But whether she could wrest him from this Diana would have to be decided by trial. Did she want to do that?
Yes. Yes
. What else was there for her to do?
He is the only man I have ever known. He is the only man I have ever loved, who ever loved me … I don't know anyone else but
him. I don't know anything else but him
.

She remembered how Philip looked the first time he held Ben in his arms, how amazingly comfortable and confident he looked,
already rocking from side to side, a motion, even seventeen years later, he duplicated if he held anything in his arms for
long. Philip had looked down at Ben, then over to her, and there was such incredible awe in his face. “We created this,” they
said to each other virtually simultaneously, which made them laugh, though Katharine's lower half protested such use. Katharine
had loved Philip so then. It was a moment in her life she had framed and reverently centered on the mantelpiece of her mind.

That's what she wanted back.

Katharine could feel the fury seeping back into her, but it had a direction.
To go back home
. She would be the lioness fighting for her family. She would be out for blood. She would tear the interloper limb from limb.
What else was there for her to do? She needed to arm herself, though, with information and money. She would infiltrate Thisby's
family, find out how to finance herself back into the world, and find out what that world had become.
And go back home
.

What else was there for her to do?

She worried about what to wear for her introduction into Thisby's family. Out of habit she had looked for a dress and stockings,
namely Hanes Alive to help alleviate the varicose veins that had plagued her as a result of her two pregnancies. But this
body had no varicose veins, as Katharine had discovered while shaving in the shower, one heel propped up on the soapdish.
These legs were not webbed with the purple lumps she had hated so much that she wore midcalf styles and pants — never shorts
or miniskirts. She had run her hands up the inside of Thisby's smooth calves, feeling an almost absurd sense of joy.
To be rid of those … It's almost worth it
.

She had to root through the dresser to find a decent bra — not that Thisby really needed one. Her breasts barely stuck out
from beyond her rib cage. Perhaps with a bit more flesh, they would be more prominent. In Katharine's teenage days, her peers
didn't wear bras regardless of their breast mass, but Katharine had taken to heart the articles she read in the more conservative
fashion magazines. If she could not pass the pencil test — if her breast sagged low enough to hold a pencil between it and
her rib cage — she must wear a bra. Almost right after puberty she could put practically a whole box of pencils under her
breasts, and they would be held fast.
Okay, an exaggeration
. She had tried to go without a bra a couple of times, but it had always felt so uncomfortable that it wasn't worth it. Her
husband never seemed to mind her less-than-upright boobs, but she often eyed with envy the actresses on the screen. Even as
large as they were, their uplifted breasts would have passed the pencil test.
What kind of breasts does that Diana have
?

Well, now she had breasts that could pass the pencil test —
they could pass a toothpick test; be careful what you wish for, you just might get it
— but it still felt uncomfortable to Katharine to go braless. She found one that looked like a training bra and put it on.
The feel of the straps, the closure hooks, felt
right
.

She couldn't bring herself to dress as she imagined Thisby would, yet she couldn't make herself dress as Katharine would have.
That was for a body that …
sleeps with the fishes
. She finally settled on an outfit her daughter would have liked: jeans, a white T-shirt, an oversized sport coat with contrasting
turned-up sleeves, and white socks and penny loafers she found in the back of the closet. She looked at TB's reflection in
the full-length mirror hung on the inside of the closet door and felt she was looking at a catalog ad.
Studied casualness
, but it suddenly seemed to fit the current symbiosis between this body and her mind.

The doorbell rang at twenty minutes to one. The airy sensation she had felt all morning suddenly solidified, and she crashed
jarringly to the ground. She looked through the aperture in the front door, and the fish-eye lens revealed a young man, tight-jawed
and rigid, half turned back toward the elevator. This was another version of the brother in Thisby's photographs.

This is it. This is not a screen test. This is real life
.

She opened the door, and Rob turned around. He had grown into a handsome young man, though he still retained that stiff, controlled
look that was evident in the last of Thisby's pictures. His blondish hair was thick and slightly curly. It was brushed back
off his forehead and looked as though it often had ideas of its own, no matter what the cut or the volume of hair mousse.
He was taller by half a head than TB and was dressed somewhat similarly to herself: jeans, a maroon T-shirt, and worn deck
shoes over bare feet.
At least, I'm close
.

“So you didn't skip,” he said, and walked into the apartment. He looked around, and there was thinly veiled surprise on his
face. “I figured I'd better catch you before you did.” He turned toward her and raked her up and down. “Don't you ever eat?”

Katharine opened her mouth to speak but then realized there was no answer he wanted to hear.

“Well, at least you don't look like one of the brides of Dracula like usual.”

His sanctimonious tone bit hard. He had no right to speak to her like that, or to Thisby for that matter.

“You don't have to be so rude,” Katharine demanded before she could check herself.

He turned and stared coldly at her. “What do you mean? I'm the very pink of courtesy.” He turned once more as if to check
out the apartment. “Come, recreant, come thou child. I'm parked illegally.”

She grabbed Thisby's purse and followed him out.

His car was electric blue and looked as though it could ride the slipstream easily.
Marion would love it
. When she felt the band around her heart start to squeeze, she shook herself.
Not now
.

“Do you want the top down?” he asked.

“No.” They had to talk. She didn't want to postpone it. She didn't want to get cold feet. She needed to know now whether she
was going to be able to pull this off.
How much do these people really know about Thisby? Will they see me as the impostor that I am? Probably not, considering what
I've seen … How much do I know about my own children? Would I know them? … Of course I would. A mother can sense these things.
She knows. … Then perhaps Anne Bennet will be my ultimate challenge
.

“So, Rob,” she began but stopped when she saw his face freeze up.
Oh, wonderful. This is not a great way to start
.

“Listen, Flute”— he said it as if it were an obscenity — “I didn't agree to drive you to Mom and Dad's so we could kill each
other on the way. I am not my father, no matter how you see it.”

“
I am not my father.” Geezus, does that mean more than the obvious? Father … Father … Robert Bennet. Ohhh. Robert. Rob. I'm
not supposed to call him Rob
.

“Well, what should I call you?” It was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

He glared over at her. “You know, you can be such a bitch,” and he fell into a rigid silence.

Well, so much for Attempt Number One, but at least he hasn't called the men in the white coats. Thisby-as-bitch is obviously
within character
.

They turned left onto Hillcrest Road from Santa Monica Boulevard. The street was lined with grand houses in a hodgepodge of
architectural styles, and palm trees flanked the sidewalks like security guards.

The houses on Hillcrest Heights were set farther back from the street, hidden behind tall trees and scrub. They turned into
a gravel driveway, drove around tall boxwood hedges, and stopped under an attached overhang. Honeysuckle twined in and out
of the latticework, its sweet yet heavy fragrance spilling into the warm air. Katharine walked to the front of the house and
stared up at its facade. It was two stories tall with a steeply pitched roofline. The lower level was brick, and the top story
had cream-colored plastered walls with dark crisscrossing half-timbers. Small diamond-shaped panes in the long, narrow windows
glittered in the afternoon sunlight. The flower beds bordering the house were filled with pansies, violets, daisies, primroses,
and cowslips.

I would have loved to have been able to plant a flower garden like this at home
.

She followed Rob through a side door into a kitchen filled with soft pale light. Honey-colored cabinets lined the walls, contrasting
with the gray slate flooring and the gray-blue walls. There was a freestanding island sporting a double sink and a large cutting
board. Copper pots hung overhead from a dropped-lighting fixture surrounded by batten.
A cook's kitchen
. The counters were tiled with large apricot-colored squares, and everywhere there were flowers and herbs in hanging baskets
and in pots on shelves. Katharine could identify parsley, rosemary, and thyme amid the profusion.