Annie Oakley's Girl (5 page)

FOLIE A DEUX

In the interest of security, we agreed to put out your eyes and burn out the insides of my ears.

This made sure we were always together. Each of us had something the other didn't have, something the other needed, and each of us knew exactly what the other needed and how to take care of the other. I read the newspaper to you and the
New Yorker
and your mail and the lyric sheets to our new albums. I held your hand everywhere we walked. I told you when you had on stripes and paisley. You wrote me notes about things on the radio. You described cadences of the new records we bought and tapped out their melodies on my thighs when you were sitting next to me. You wrote me notes about all the things I couldn't know about anymore. You took care of my phone calls.

I learned to read your lips perfectly and worked on my “strong silent type” image that could excuse me from taking part in conversation much. You got very good at sensing physical presences and only bumped into things infrequently. You got new glass eyes and tinted glasses. You cultivated an “imaginative genius” image that acted as your cover for your staring into space and missing out on physical details. You held my arm casually and easily so it looked like we were just young lovers, comfortable and excited and eager to be with each other constantly. We figured out Morse code between us. I read the book aloud to you; you tapped it out to me. What others would think was a nervous habit or a desire for physical contact was really the secret and necessary and only form of communication common to both of us.

We took things slowly and carefully. We stayed home alone together for a long time until we thought we were normal enough to get by outside and normal enough so no one could tell. We didn't want anyone to know; it was our secret.

You had told your public you were going to lock yourself up with your new work for a while. The day of your return concert was the first day we had left the house. We went to the Center to practice. I told the stagehands they must keep the piano and bench exactly where they were: “Not a fraction of an inch off,” I said. “Acoustics,” you said. They obliged. It was the first time we'd spoken with or seen anyone who'd known us before. We were each a little scared, but we pulled it off just fine.

We asked them to leave (you needed to be alone with the instrument), and they left. Then you practiced. You practiced getting from me, behind the curtain, to the piano. We walked through it together, first you holding my arm, then without my arm, me walking beside you, then by yourself. After several times you could do it perfectly. You didn't touch the keys.

That night I was with you until right before you went on. I let you go, then ran to my seat in the middle box on the right, the best acoustics in the house. When I got to my seat, I read the program over again, satisfied with the name we'd chosen for the first piece. When I finished reading and looked up, you were well into the first piece. I was sorry I'd missed so much. For a second I was afraid you'd forget something or make a mistake, but I needn't have worried; you always had all your concert work memorized perfectly and you knew your way around a keyboard perfectly. I watched your beautiful shoulders contract. I watched the way you snapped your head back at the end of the first piece. I saw the tiny points of gold on the bottom of your chin where the light caught your sweat. I felt the strength and stiffness of your thighs and calves when you pressed the pedals. I imagined the stiffness of your jaw and the way your teeth clenched when I had seen you practice at home. You were beautiful.

When it was over you stood up to bow. It was the best I'd ever seen you do. Everyone clapped. I saw hundreds of pairs of hands clapping and people rising to applaud. I stood up and clapped furiously. I shouted, “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!” I was beaming with pride and I kept shouting, “Bravo! Bravo!” You must have heard my voice because I saw you look for me. You turned your head toward every part of the auditorium trying to hear exactly where my voice was coming from. You looked like you were lost. I stopped shouting and ran down to get you. As I ran I noticed people glancing at me, then glancing away. I figured they probably knew I was yours, the one to whom the concert had been dedicated, as noted in the program. I went backstage to where I'd left you before the concert. You had just walked offstage. I grabbed you and held you. I felt the heat and moisture of your sweat through your clothes. Your muscles felt tight as they always did after a concert, but you sank into me as if you didn't have bones. Within minutes, friends and people from the Center came up to congratulate you. They patted you on the back and shook your hand. They did the same to me, smiling and talking. But there was too much at once and I couldn't see what anyone was saying; I wasn't used to reading anybody's lips but yours. You nodded and smiled graciously. You held onto my arm and thanked the voices. I nodded slightly and smiled. People shook my hand. Then I felt your fingers on my palm and I read, “Let's leave.” You leaned close to me. I smelled your flesh and felt the heat of your face against mine. I put my arm around you and we left. I walked straight to where they had a limo waiting for you. You kept turning behind to say, “Thank you.” As we got in the limo you told the driver to take us home, we weren't feeling up to the reception. I loved being with you and I loved your not wanting to be with all the other people who wanted to see you; I loved your needing me after you got offstage.

The driver closed the door behind us. The leather smelled like Windex. My hand felt squeaky against it. The limo pulled away. We could barely feel the movement. Everything was big and black and smooth and shiny. We held each other. Then you sat up and put your hands on my face.

“It was beautiful,” I said.

You asked me something, but it was too dark to see your lips. Your fingers tapped my palm. “How do you know?”

“You were,” I answered out loud. “You were beautiful.” I leaned over to hold you but you pushed me back. I put my hand on your lips. I could see your face directed towards mine in the flashing lights from outside as we drove through the city. Your face was lit by blue, then white, then red, then yellow, the colors of neon signs over bars and store windows and movie marquees and stoplights. You didn't say anything for several minutes. I felt the moisture of your lips where my fingers were on your mouth.

“What?” I asked.

You pulled my other hand toward you and pressed the palm against your eye. I felt the hard solid marble underneath your skin. You leaned against me. I read your fingers. “You yelled ‘Bravo'?”

“Of course it was me.” I looked at your face changing colors. “You mean you didn't know?”

“Not sure,” you continued, “sound different. Never heard you shout.”

You had been telling me for a while that my voice was changing. That was understandable, of course. I couldn't hear myself speak anymore, and I didn't speak much anyway. Hardly to anyone except you.

I wondered what I sounded like now. I had almost forgotten what I had sounded like before. But I didn't want to dwell on things or miss things. Besides, I had you. And what I didn't have, you did.

When we got home you called the hostess of the reception and told her you were too exhausted after your big return to party, but thanked her graciously. It was going to be just a short conversation, but you stayed on the phone a long time, unconsciously unbuttoning your shirt as you talked.

I watched your face as you undressed. I tried to read your lips but it was hard because the phone was over your mouth. But I saw your face light up. During the first part of the conversation you didn't say much. You just listened and smiled and said, “Oh, thanks, thanks,” nodding. You always nodded your head slightly when you said this, and put your lips together. “Oh thanks, really.” In the latter part of the conversation you started asking questions. You were sitting on the side of the bed and your right hand motioned in those little forward circles, the way you always did when you asked anything. You asked short questions then long ones prefaced by statements. You nodded slightly, unconsciously, to the answers. Your whole face looked like pleasure and I thought that, now, your being unable to see other peoples' faces, somehow made you forget anyone could see yours. Your face hid nothing anymore. Your flesh colored and shone. Your eyes were like cloudy steel balls.

When you got off the phone you stood up and faced me. You were beaming.

“What was that all about?” I smiled to see you so happy.

“It was good. It was really, really good.” Your right hand was straight, the fingers together, chopping slightly in the air towards me on “good” and “really.”

“The conversation?”

Your head shook. “No, the concert. She said it was really good.”

“Sure it was. I told you it was. It was beautiful.”

“Yeah, yeah . . .” you said quickly. You lifted your head as if you were looking at something. You didn't know how I was looking at you.

“Didn't I tell you it was beautiful? You heard me clapping and yelling.”

“Of course, baby,” you said, more to pacify than to agree with me. You put your hand toward me. I took it and guided it to my stomach. I was lying down, you were leaning up on your side facing me. “Of course, baby, you loved it.”

I reached up to your cheek.

“Not the acoustics, not the piano. She said it was me — my work.”

I wondered what you were looking at. Your skin shone with warmth. My hand slid down your cheek, cupping your chin, then down your neck.

You leaned over me to flip off the light by the bed, but I grabbed your hand and put it on my ribs, pulling you down against me.

“I have to see you,” I said.

This was the first time we had done it since we'd done it.

Your body eased up next to me. It was warm against my skin. Your left hand moved over my ribs. You had told me how you liked the leanness of my body, the way the ribs were hard and near the surface of my skin, and the spaces between them soft and giving. I ran my hand up your spine slowly, then onto your shoulders. You put your head on my neck. I felt the movement of your stomach and chest as you breathed. I looked up through your hair to the overhead light. Its two bulbs were hidden by a square, curved, milky-white shade. I saw the small black dots of dead bugs dropped in the shade, the plastic white button that screwed the shade to the fixture. I felt a film of moisture on the small of your back.

That time you were quicker. I'd never noticed the way your skin changed color from your neck up. Your face got pink, then apricot. Your lips read out my name over and over. You put your lips together then dropped them, blowing out. Your tongue fell behind your bottom teeth. Then you inhaled with your mouth and I watched you say my name again and again, faster, until you didn't say it anymore. Your eyelids shook. Then you sank like a rag. Your mouth was open. Your whole body was pink. I looked up at the ceiling. The light was still on. You hadn't seen anything and nothing had happened to me.

Our second excursion out, we went to the travelling exhibit of Turner's work. We walked close, our arms around each others' backs. I read the guide notes and described the paintings. Your fingers asked questions on my arm or hand.

We stopped in front of the first painting.

“You know, his later stuff is so different. You can see where he comes from, like that sky, but . . .”

You squeezed my arm. Your fingers tapped, “What?”

This was the first time I'd had to describe something new to you, something important. Everything else was around our house; you remembered.

“Well, the light is nice, the canvas is sort of cluttered . . .”

You pinched me, then tapped my hand, “Picture?”

“Oh, boats, ships, I mean, and people . . .” I stuttered.

You squeezed my hand. I hadn't spoken loudly enough. This had been a problem with me lately. I said again, “Ships and people.”

You pulled my hand. “Title.”

I leaned forward to read the card at the side of the painting. I turned you to face the painting as if you could see it. I whispered, “It's called “The Battle of Trafalgar as seen from the Mizen Starboard Shroud of the Victory, 1806–1808'.”

I paused. I didn't know what to say. “Well, it's got lots of ships, a dozen or so, and a dock going out. Some people on the dock, a priest kneeling down, not really kneeling though, and six or eight soldiers, red uniforms with white stripes across their chests, a guy with a George Washington hat, and a bunch of yellow steam, gold really, morning light, and stays hanging down.”

I stopped talking and just looked at it, then stepped back, pulling you with me, to see how it looked from three feet away.

“I didn't even notice that from up close.”

You tugged my arm quickly, then released it, “What?”

I whispered, “Some of those stays go exactly like this.” I dropped your hand to make a pyramid shape with my arms, but you snatched my arm back before I could gesture. I was surprised because always before, whenever you were afraid and needed to grab me, I would know it first. You would gasp a little and I would hold you before your fear had a chance to set in.

“What?”

You grabbed my palm and tapped frantically while you whispered in my ear. But I was so distracted by your mouth next to my ear that I couldn't understand your fingers on my hand. I clasped your hand and moved my head away from yours.

“Don't let go of me.” Your teeth and lips were tight. I could barely read you.

“I'm sorry, I just wanted to — ”

Your fingers scratched my palm: “Don't let go.”

I looked at you. Your eyes were looking somewhere behind me.

When we got to the next painting, I was thrilled. I inhaled through my teeth.

You tugged my arm again.

“Sorry. “Hannibal Crossing the Alps.” You know.”

You shook your head.