A History of Forgetting (25 page)

‘I've been thinking,' Billy said in a gentler tone. ‘Maybe you should see someone.'

‘Who?'

‘A shrink.'

‘There's nothing wrong with me.' There was, Alison was convinced, something wrong with everyone else. They were all blind, or wearing blinkers, remarkably unperceptive or just naive. As she had been, not long ago. She marked out another section to cut. In Billy's lap, smiles of curls.

‘Well, those pills aren't helping much. If things go on like this, you'll be a virgin again before too long.' He glanced back at her to see if he had made her smile and, while he was still looking at her, his expression changed. His face lit up, eureka-like.

He stood, scattering the hair and walked out of the kitchen. ‘That explains a thing or two,' he said.

She heard him rifling through the bathroom drawers, slamming cupboards. He reappeared a moment later, uncapping the bottle. The cotton stopper was still in place.

‘Why?' he asked. ‘Why aren't you taking them?'

‘Because I don't want to feel nothing!'

‘You won't feel nothing. You'll feel better, Shit-for-Brains.'

‘Don't call me that!'

He came towards her and fearlessly disarmed her, taking the scissors right out of her hand, dropping them on the table.

‘I don't want you to call me that any more!'

‘All right. I won't. Now open up.' His arm around her, he held a pill close to her face. ‘Come on, Ali. Open up.' She took it in her mouth. ‘Atta girl,' said Billy and, with his arm still around her, he led her off down the hall.

In the living room, he sat her down and began to stroke her hair. ‘I love you,' he said, ‘don't you know that?' She nodded, but did not look at him, so he pressed his forehead to hers, forcing on her his earnest gaze.

‘Do you love me?'

She didn't want to answer, didn't want to speak at all
because the pill was stuck up under her lip against her teeth—a little trick she'd learned from watching Roxanne pretend to take Christian's vitamins. He kissed her face, murmuring. Did she love him? She did. Of course, she did. She just wasn't sure if she liked him any more.

 

 

 

7

 

‘Very peaceful,' the photographer told her. ‘You look like you are dead.'

Alison stared at him, unflattered, though from his accent, she guessed he was unaware how his comment sounded.

‘I will retake it again.'

‘No, no. It's fine,' she said. The first hurt enough—the put-your-eye-out flash, then his jerking the picture out of the camera, flailing the air with it to dry it, ripping away the plastic coating. Apparently, though, the law prescribed that eyes had to be open in a passport photo, just as the law prescribed that a dead person could not be issued a passport. The photographer intimated that these two statutes were somehow connected as he raised her chin a second time.

As with the first, this picture developed mysteriously in
double behind the black coating. The photographer saw a satisfactory likeness. He wandered over to the counter, dropping the failed picture to one side as he raised the arm of the paper cutter. ‘Where are you going?' he asked, bending to align the good
picture on the cutter's grid. ‘On your trip?' His scalp through lank thinning hair was red and embarrassed to be seen.

‘Mexico, I guess.'

She looked away, to the walls crammed with wedding
photos, stiff-gowned and tuxedoed groupings under arbours, puff-sleeved brides with bad perms, circa
1980
, which could have been the last time he worked judging from the dinge of the place. She imagined his reputation souring after a few too many comments like, ‘It is your wedding day and you look like death.'

Her own twin photos were lying there. She went over to look at them again. ‘What do you do with the pictures that
don't turn out?'

‘I discard them.'

She picked up the picture at the same moment he brought the cutter's arm down. ‘You can't have it!' he said as sharply as the blade.

‘I was just—' Nothing. Just looking at herself. She saw the wastebasket behind the counter, was about to tear the picture up when he snatched it from her and stuffed it in his shirt pocket.

Now everything about him was jerky and furtive. Avoiding her eye, he opened a drawer and fumbled in it, took out an ink pad and stamped the back of the two good photos. Furiously. ‘Twelve dollars plus tax. Thirteen sixty-eight.' He slid them in an envelope across the counter to her.

‘What are you going to do with my picture?' she asked.

He twitched, then for a long moment neither of them budged until, finally, the photographer backed down. He took the picture from his pocket and, pausing first to determine if it was damaged, disappeared through the curtained doorway behind him.

She just stood there. Maybe he was hoping this was some kind of deal, that she would take the good picture away for free. But after a minute he pulled the curtain back and, glaring, motioned to her.

‘I am making an installation.'

Storage room close, dim, vinegar-smelling, it was lined with shelves of darkroom chemicals and supplies made inaccessible by four large panels leaning up against them. On the panels, glued in perfect even rows, were doubled passport images, hundreds of them, rejects due to blurring or a grimace or closed eyes. The photographer was brushing the back of her picture with rubber cement as he explained what he would do with the panels when he had filled them, but she wasn't listening. She was looking at the children, the old, the people of all ages in between.

‘Here. I put you here.' At the end of a row. He pounded the picture to make it stick. ‘What is the matter? Are you sick?'

Her voice wouldn't come. She had both hands on her chest where her heart was beating out its panic. It sounded in her ears like pounding fists.

‘Come,' he said, taking her arm and leading her back through the curtain and over to the stool. ‘Sit.'

Then she cried out. The pain almost knocked her flat. Surely, she would faint. A thousand fists hammering, fingers clawing, trying desperately to prise apart her ribs. The whole of her breast was being wrenched open from the inside and she couldn't even weep. She just sat there, bowed over, paralysed.

‘What is wrong?' asked the photographer. ‘Should I call an ambulance?'

‘All those people,' she whispered. ‘Those poor people.'

And there she was, among them.

 

Her chest still ached. It would hurt her the whole day. On her way through the gallery to get the broom, Alison paused to watch Malcolm pump the chair. Mrs. Soloff ascended, a towel over her head. When he lifted it off, the fine white floss that was her hair seemed to have all but disappeared. In two broad hands, he enclosed her skull, moved it very slightly, as he would move something exceedingly precious. He took up the comb and in one smooth gesture drew it over her crown so the hair showed again, silvery.

‘How are the grandchildren?' asked Malcolm.

‘Oh, marvellous. They can do no wrong.'

‘And how's your niece?'

‘Elaine?' A weary sigh. ‘Still single. How is Grace?'

‘Irrelevant.'

Mrs. Soloff laughed.

He was not the sort to leave his client unattended even for a moment while he rooted around at another station; neither was he one to make off with another stylist's clips. His were fixed to his jacket cuff. All the tools he needed were close by and he needed only the essentials: scissors, comb, end papers, rollers, clips. Mrs. Soloff's hair fixed at her nape with the ibis beak of a do-all, he began to trim—less than a half a centimetre, in a perfect line.

‘Did you try that concoction?'

‘What, dear?'

He removed the clip and returned it to his cuff while he marked out the next section with the comb. ‘The Chinese liniment I recommended.'

‘Oh, yes! I meant to thank you! It helps a little.'

Alison got the broom and started sweeping her way back through the gallery. When she neared Malcolm's station again, she saw the cut was finished and he was pausing to change Mrs. Soloff's towel. He brushed clean her neck, placed a fresh towel around her bent shoulders and pulled the curler trolley close.

‘Now, Mrs. Soloff, you will tell me if I roll too tightly?'

‘Yes.'

‘I think you don't, though. I see it on your face.'

She sighed. ‘Malcolm? For me, everything hurts.'

All at once Alison realized why she could not get over Christian. It had only really been about him at the start. She looked down at her feet and saw the hair, all colours, gathered by the broom.

Malcolm's fingers folded the end paper, then deftly rolled the curler and snapped it shut. In the mirror, Alison saw Mrs. Soloff's head tip back. With closed eyes, all the lines dropped from her face and she looked to be at peace. Malcolm didn't move, just stood there, very still, trying not to wake her. With Mrs. Soloff's sleeping head against his chest, he closed his own eyes and bore her weight.

 

At the end of the day, she sat at the desk watching him put on his trench coat and wind the monogrammed scarf around his neck. ‘Those aren't your initials,' she said as he was tucking in the tail.

‘You sharp-eyed thing, you.' He actually smiled. ‘You're
staying late.'

‘I'm waiting to talk to you.'

How extraordinary, thought Malcolm, taken aback. A
person under the age of sixty-five who was not a member of the health-care profession was actually suggesting that they engage in a conversation! What in the world could she want? ‘I have to take Grace out,' he told her. ‘Would you like to join us?'

They left together. Too late, he realized he would have to invite her up, and while they walked the few blocks in silence he tried in vain to think of an excuse for how he lived. The truth prettied up occurred to him: we are maintaining separate residences. The expense?
Mon Dieu!
In the end, he let her in without saying anything and pointed up the stairs.

If, when he opened the apartment door, she was taken aback by what she saw, a bachelor's suite so crowded with furniture and boxes there was little space left to stand or move, she didn't show it. What she saw was a life diminishing and pushing the furniture together. Strangely, the mirrors were all covered, but she didn't have time to ask why; just then a rattish dog came out of nowhere and lunged at her shins. Alison, who in the great divide of humanity fell squarely on the side of cat people, barely managed not to scream.

‘Grace!' Malcolm roared. ‘Down, you idiotic thing!'

The dog collapsed and began to writhe in supplication on the mat. Malcolm squeezed into the kitchen and from under the sink took a greying rag. Grace stopped swimming, sat up, and licked her private parts.

‘That is unconscionable behaviour,' Malcolm told her. ‘What will our visitor think?' He dropped the rag over the wet spot on the mat and pressed it with his shoe. ‘She is dissolute,' he told Alison. ‘Unreformable. God knows I've tried.'

Alison didn't know whether he was serious or joking.

‘I have concluded,' he said, bending to fasten the lead, ‘that her blood is bad.'

‘I like the little bow,' Alison said. ‘It's really cute.'

‘She insists I put it on her. I think it's going too far, considering her proclivities. Out, out, damned tart.' He opened the door, holding Alison back by her elbow. ‘Let Grace go first. She always has to be first.'

Christ, he was babbling. What would the girl think of
him?
Yet he was happy to take her along. His old dears would be delighted to see her. They knew her from the salon and liked her. They would appreciate the change of face.

After a short walk, they neared a park and Malcolm let the dog off the lead. She tore yapping across the grass, and when they had caught up to her Alison saw three familiar faces, all of them exclaiming when they saw her.

‘Good heavens! Whom have we here?' Mrs. Parker called from her scooter.

‘And what do you think of Malcolm's Gracie?' Mrs. Rodeck asked Alison.

Malcolm answered for her. ‘She saw immediately her
striking resemblance to the late Princess of Monaco.'

‘Oh, get away!' cried Miss Velve. ‘I don't believe she said that!'

Alison hoped they would not ask her opinion of their own creatures. One had the torso of a pig. The chihuahua kept running into things. The other was dragging along the
ground what appeared to be its penis.

Miss Velve came up beside her. ‘It's only a growth, dear.'

‘I suppose he told you Grace understands three languages,' said Mrs. Rodeck.