This Body (30 page)

As Katharine pulled up in front of the Dentons' house, she was warmed by the thought that her words, her admonitions, her
warnings of love —
drive defensively
— were being passed down by her son. It was a legacy of sorts.

In the three days since True's party, Katharine had managed to spend each night alone in Thisby's apartment, although she
made sure she was safe and locked up before nightfall. She would make herself wait until dark before pulling the blinds and
turning on every light. She couldn't expect Goodfellow always to be there to bail her out. Like now. Vivian had come back
from Texas, and Katharine realized he would spend his time with her.

She had hardly slept. She didn't really feel tired — more like wired, and that stretched sensation was beginning to feel something
like normal. But she also felt attuned, as if she were listening in on everyone else's lives, their bandwidths chafing her
skin to irritation.

The voice that whispered in her ear was more subdued. It wasn't silent, but it didn't nag at her. Sometimes, when she had
so many Classic Cokes that dingleballs swelled up all over her tongue and she knew with every fiber of this body that wine
would smooth out the phoofums, the voice would begin to hum, building up a wall of white noise against which it would broadcast
its next message:
Eat Me. Drink Me
. She would try not to listen, though often trying not to listen only made her listen harder, and she would waver from an
affirmation of another life to a resignation of a second death. It sounded so peaceful.

She had been surprised when Puck came over the night before. He didn't call first; he just showed up. She hadn't seen or heard
from him since True's party.

She froze when the doorbell rang. She didn't want to look through the security lens, as if whoever it was would nightmarishly
liquefy like mercury right through the hole and gobble her up.

After he came in, and she stilled her beating heart, she was not sorry for the interruption. A UCLA fall schedule of classes
had come in the mail that morning, and she had been looking it over when the doorbell rang. The descriptions of the classes
confused and frightened her. She had no idea how she should start. She didn't even know what interested her anymore. Here
was the opportunity of a lifetime — actually, twice in a lifetime — college, again, with years of adult experience behind
her and youth in front of her. But it just made her feel bad. She should be desperate to take advantage of it. Why else had
this whole thing happened?

She had slipped the material under the pillow on the couch, but Puck was preoccupied and wouldn't have noticed anyway. He
was upset and wanted to talk. Vivian, again. She had come back from Texas even more unsure of their relationship than when
she had left.

“What does she want from me?” He circled the furniture in the living room. Katharine could see the tension in his neck and
jaw. His hair fell forward into his eyes. She watched his long fingers comb it back over his forehead. “I don't know what
she wants from me.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” he said, exasperated, thumping down hard on a chair. “It's the same old thing. We're too different. We
don't think alike. I'm never happy. I'm —”

“Are you happy?”

“Me? Shit. I don't know. Look who's talking. Are you?”

She was taken aback. Her mother used to say when Katharine was growing up, “I only want you to be happy.” It wasn't until
her twenties that Katharine realized what a crock, what a set-up, that was. She was always feeling guilty before then because
she wasn't happy. At least, not all the time. When she was happy, she would try to wrestle it into staying, but it never would.
She would feel worse — she had achieved that mythical state but just couldn't sustain it. Then she realized that it couldn't
last. Shouldn't last.
Because in order to know when you're happy, you have to know when you're not. You have to get the reverse
. It was the natural reaction to an unstable state. Action-reaction. Yin-yang.

“On and off,” she answered. “But I don't go around trying to be unhappy.”

You don't
?

Katharine ignored that voice. “What about your job?” she asked impulsively.

Puck's face clouded over. “What about my job?”

“It makes you miserable. Anyone can see that. Everyone does see that. Your parents. Your father — Dad — especially.” He didn't
even notice her slip. “Even Vivian. What are you doing it for? Vivian's not stupid. She sees it's more important for you to
stay in a job that makes you miserable than to leave it and get a job that might make you happier. Maybe she thinks she has
something to do with that.”

“Vivian? She has nothing to do with my job. You don't know anything about it.”

Don't I
?

He had resumed his widow's walk pacing around the coffee table. “I like to finish what I start. And, unlike some people, I
like to keep my word and honor the commitments I make.”

One of the lords of discipline. How I know the signs
.

“I know what I'm doing,” he said curtly. He slowly sat down in the chair again and seemed faraway for a long time. He drummed
his fingers noiselessly on the table, his forehead deeply ridged. He raised his head after a while, his forehead smooth. “Okay.
I take your point. You know, I think I even know where the problem is. I think I know what to do now.” He stood up to leave.
“You know, I'm really glad you're here. You've been a lot of help to me lately.” Katharine watched — when he twisted to look
for his car keys — how his shoulder blades were defined by the creases in his shirt. He turned back around and looked at her
with some confusion. “But sometimes it's like you're a completely different person. Sometimes I don't think you're really
my sister. Quince says you're a changeling.” He gestured forward with his hands. “You even look different. I've never seen
you look” — he stopped in embarrassment and ended lamely — “so good.”

Katharine felt confused too. She knew what he meant, though. She had been filling out like Marion, the boyish lines softening
into slight curves, and she was feeling more womanly. But it scared her. It was the first time she had ever been thin, and
now she was putting on weight.

At the door, she touched him, the tips of her fingers spread out lightly along his forearm. He turned toward her and awkwardly
hugged her, one hand pressing her head lightly against his chest.

Katharine strapped Marion's small overnight bag on the luggage rack over the Porsche's trunk. They were going to pick up Quince
at the Bennets and then go back to Thisby's apartment. It had been easy to get Emily to agree to the scheme, and Quince, though
not overly enthused, did not vehemently object.

Katharine and Marion made sporadic small talk over the street noises. The top was down on the Porsche, since Quince was going
to have to scrunch herself in the space behind the seats. Katharine desperately wanted Marion and Quince to be friends, just
as she had wanted her parents and Philip to like one another when they first met. Katharine could tell that Marion was nervous
too. She remembered that Marion had never really liked going to playgroups, knowing uncannily of parents' odd belief that,
by virtue of being a kid, she'd automatically get along with all the other children.
Play nice, now
. But Marion had always been a self-contained, self-sufficient child who didn't need to be surrounded by playmates — unlike
Ben, who needed constant outside stimuli.

As they pulled up in front of the Bennet house, Katharine wondered whether an automobile was discreetly sliding past the driveway
while the driver jotted down,
At two-fifty, the two females exited the automobile, the elder self-consciously tugging at her shorts
.

She forgot about it when she saw Marion at a standstill, awed by the structure and grounds in front of her.

“Wow,” Marion said.

“My sentiments exactly.”
I always wanted to give you something like this. At least, I always thought I did
.

They walked around the side to the kitchen. Katharine loved the fact that the Bennets didn't enter through the front door.
In her childhood neighborhood, friends always entered one another's houses through the back door, no matter how long the driveway
or how many windows they passed by.

Going to the back door somehow connected Katharine with this house.

No one was in the kitchen. Katharine went through the swinging door into the dining room and called, “Quince. We're here.”
Then she heard the stereo upstairs. “I'll go get her,” she told Marion.

She returned with Quince, who was dressed in her finest down-and-out-in-Beverly Hills look, an oversized T-shirt, baggy jeans,
and military-looking boots. They found Marion almost comatose in the living room, perhaps overcome by the warring perfume
of the roses.

“Your house is very beautiful,” Marion whispered, as if she were in a museum.

This did not impress Quince, who, no doubt, would have preferred to hear that it was decadent and ostentatious. She grunted.

Katharine hustled the two girls quickly into the car, and the conversation on the way to Thisby's apartment was strained and
stilted.
Whose idea was this anyway? I must have been demented
.

They parked in the garage, and Katharine put the top up while the girls gathered their stuff and waited over by the elevator.
She kept an eye out for Hooker, as if he would drop down from the max headroom sign swinging across the exit. It made her
feel faint just to imagine it.

When she joined the girls, Quince was exclaiming, “You mean you actually saw them? In concert?”

“In this small theater, the Circle K. It was so cool. I could practically touch Ted Logan. What a hunk. I'm sure he winked
at me. I even got a guitar pick he threw out.”

Quince turned to Katharine. “Marion got to see Wyld Stallyns.” She swung back. “You're so lucky,” she said enviously, and
the two girls proceeded to name-drop groups and concerts they'd been to.

“I went to Shoreline too,” Marion told her. “Which day did you go? Sunday? Me too. We could have seen each other. My brother
took me.”

They were there? I could have seen them!

“Did you see that fight when Led Astray was playing?”

“Yeah, that was cool. The guy with blood all over his face. His nose was really busted.”

What fight? I didn't hear anything about a fight
.

As it turned out, Katharine never did get a word in edgewise before the two left for the veterinary clinic, hardly waving
to her as they went outside — Marion in her squeaky-clean catalog wear and Quince in her bag-lady couture.

Katharine was making the girls root beer smoothies after dinner. Marion sat on a kitchen stool watching her, and Quince was
in the shower. Katharine poured a small amount of soda into beer mugs, then added the ice cream and stirred the mix into a
thick pudding. Then she slowly poured in the rest of the root beer, stirring constantly.

“My mom did that.” Marion broke the silence. “She made smoothies like that.”

Katharine clattered the spoon against the side of the mug.

“It's funny. Sometimes you remind me of her,” Marion added.

Katharine stood still against the counter and looked into the grain of the kitchen cabinets until the lines separated and
floated away. She closed her eyes wearily.

“I mean, you're not at all alike, but … oh, I don't know. You talk like her sometimes.” Marion paused a moment, then offered,
“I don't think she would've liked you, though.”

I wouldn't?
“She wouldn't?”

“Nah, I don't think so. For one thing, you're too different-looking.”

Katharine looked down at herself. She had never made it to the Goodwill to drop off Thisby's clothes. She found herself raiding
the piles in the closet but didn't think she looked all that different. Yes, she had dyed her hair a couple of days ago, but
it wasn't the flat black color Thisby's had been, but a deep, rich, glossy brunette. Katharine thought it looked good.

“She was weird like that. Anyone who didn't look, you know, right, she was suspicious of. She cared too much about stuff like
that. It was hard on Obi — you know, my brother, Ben — because he didn't know what he wanted to look like.”

Katharine turned around slowly. “Do you miss her?”

You just keep flogging yourself, don't you?

“I have good memories of her when I was a kid. You know, taking us to the park, reading to us. My friends liked to come over
to our house because we could pile cushions from the couches on the floor and dive on them. Our couches were really old and
ugly, and my mom didn't care. Your house is beautiful, but it made me sad. I bet you guys didn't get to jump on the furniture.”

“No.”

“Then something happened when we got older. She got different. Nervous. She suddenly had all these rules, and we couldn't
do anything right. We were always messing up something. It was like she was scared. Scared of our friends, of strangers lurking
outside the door, of the music, the clothes … of us. I was okay with it. I mean, it didn't bother me all that much. But it
bothered Ben, you know. I talked to my dad about it after she died, and he said when we were younger he was the one who worried,
you know, about us climbing trees and running with pencils in our hands, and she wasn't. But then they made a switch, Dad
says. He said it was because she didn't have much of a life when she was a teenager, and she saw a lot of people change with
drugs and stuff. She grew up when there were hippies. Her best friend died while they were still in high school. OD'd and
Mom didn't even know she was a junkie.”

Eve wasn't a junkie! Philip ought to keep his goddamned mouth closed, especially about things he doesn't know anything about.
She wasn't a junkie. It was just that one time. That one damned time. It took only one time, and I lost her. And that's just
it. Can't you see? If you mess up once, just once in a lifetime, you could die!