Eat My Heart Out (14 page)

‘Look.' She showed me a photo of a man on her phone. ‘That's my dad.' He did have red glasses. He was Hispaniclooking, bookish.

‘He looks nice,' I said.

Now she drew a floating entity above the stick people: it was a pink scribble that might have been a rain cloud or a ball of wool. In case there was any doubt, she wrote in spiked black letters across it:
Aunt Steph
.

Night was falling when Stephanie appeared in the kitchen, composed. She had changed into what appeared to be a Little Bo Peep outfit. Or maybe it was an old bridesmaid dress? It was satin pink with a puffball skirt. The edges were trimmed with white lace and she wore a white lace veil over her face. She had doused herself in so much tangy Florida Water that I was forced to cover my nose with my sleeve.

‘Auntie Steph,' said Raegan. ‘You look pretty.'

‘Why, thank you,' said Steph. Her accent had switched to Deep South. ‘Now will you two ladies please join the good and long-suffering Marge and I in the den. But, oh – wait.' She pointed at the red polo neck that I was wearing; it was hers. ‘You have to please take that off.' She pointed to Raegan's black jeggings. ‘And those. No red or black.'

We did as we were told.

A corner of the den had been transformed into some kind of pink ceremonial altar. Everything matched Steph's outfit.

Marge was sitting on the sofa, stony-faced. She looked like she'd been crying. A large picture of a goddess was propped in the centre of the altar, surrounded by looping French writing and the name
Erzulie Freda
. The goddess wore a more grandiloquent version of Steph's outfit, and she was black. Two paintings flanked her: one showed a horse, crying. The other showed a horse with wild eyes, gagged. There were other things on the table: a white candle and a pink candle, unlit. Some iced buns, an open tin of rice pudding, a goblet of water, a packet of Virginia Slims cigarettes, and a frosted pink Rimmel lipstick. Three gold rings had been laid out on a white doily. There was the bottle of Florida Water.

Steph put on The Crystals' ‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)'.

‘This was Amy's favourite song,' she said. ‘It inspired her.'

‘Erzulie Freda is the vodou Iwa spirit of love,' explained Marge. ‘Aunt Steph worked with and observed a lot of houngan priests and priestesses when she was in Haiti.'

‘Back in '86,' Steph said to me over her shoulder. She was busy sprinkling the Florida Water over the altar. She lay a pink cloth over the coffee table.

‘Erzulie is a very complex goddess,' said Marge, looking pointedly at Steph. ‘She is very flirtatious and full of love and affection. She is one of the most powerful goddesses going. But she wants you to spoil her – and you mustn't spoil her.'

‘And she sees other women as rivals,' said Steph, lighting the candles. ‘She greets women by waving her little pinkie at them but she greets men with a lot of hugs and kisses. Now.' She gave us each a printout from the internet. ‘Let's say together:
Maitresse Mambo Erzulie Freda Dahomey! Beautiful woman! Woman of luck! Woman of my house! Come here I beg you and accept these offerings!
' Steph repeated the lines several times; the rest of us trailed off.

Steph began to sway. She danced over to me and put her hand on my head. Marge lifted Raegan off her lap and put her hand on my head too.

‘Free this child, please, Erzulie,' said Steph. Her speech was cracked and warped. ‘Free this child from the spell of love cast by The Symbolic. Free her from the neo-liberal patriarchal web of incitements to fall in love.' I could feel the animal heat of their hands pulsing into my brain. ‘Free her from the masochistic need to wait. Free her from false consciousness and awaken her and make her see that true freedom does not consist in happiness which too often means being at rest. No!'

Steph reeled back as though struck by lightning.

Marge gripped Steph's hand and put it back on my head. ‘Go on!' shouted Marge.

Raegan had backed to the far end of the room.

‘True freedom consists in overcoming one's fallen state, not to fall some more, true freedom—' Steph fell back. She whacked her head on the corner of the coffee table.

The fire continued to roar behind her.

She was out cold.

Marge threw the goblet of water over her face. Steph woke up and castigated Marge for expending a gift to Erzulie so disrespectfully.

The music had stopped.

Steph staggered upwards, her veil askew, and opened a bottle of pink champagne; likewise a gift to Erzulie. She became frantic when she thought one of the candles had blown out. She cupped it, desperately. The candle burned back to life. ‘Thank god,' she breathed.

There was stillness.

‘Those horse paintings are done by Gabriella,' she told me. ‘Can you feel the transition?'

‘What transition?' I said.

‘I can,' said Marge.

Steph lifted the painting of Erzulie and revealed another painting behind it. This one was Catholic. It showed a saint, crying. There was a sword through the saint's exposed and bleeding heart.

Now Steph seemed properly drugged. She pointed one woozy hand at the saint and fluttered her fingers. Her smile was inexact. ‘When you've given Erzulie all you've got and you don't have any more to give her, she changes into Mater Dolorosa,' she slurred. ‘Erzulie always leaves crying. She is the spirit who can never achieve her desires, that is her tragedy.' Steph traced the outline of the sword with her finger. ‘Mater Dolorosa holds the weapon calmly in place with her own hands. She accepts her fate.' She shook her head, muddled. ‘That's why things can never go forward.' Now Stephanie looked like she would cry. She was talking to herself. ‘That's why things haven't gone forward enough.' She turned to me. ‘For you. For your generation. You're caught between the housewife and the whore.' She shook her head savagely. The veil fell off. She twisted it between her fingers. ‘That bloody Nigella Lawson has got a lot to answer for.'

Steph slumped on the floor by the fire. I went over and put my arm around her.

We sat like that for a long time.

Eventually, she said: ‘We must wait until the candles have burned all the way down, on their own.' Her eyes looked young. ‘Did you feel something, Ann-Marie?'

‘Kind of.'

‘What did you feel?'

‘I felt – better.'

‘I'm doing it for you.' She gripped my hand. ‘You must believe that. I'm doing this to help you.'

I got up and lay down on the sofa facing the fire.

‘I want you to go through all the stages.' Steph was talking to the fire. ‘Knitting, stripping, cleaning, gathering, degradation, child-caring – hyper-feminine actions.' She seemed unsure of herself. ‘To see.'

‘I don't know what you wanted me to see,' I said.

The fire roared and roared.

‘To see that you're strong,' said Stephanie.

Thirteen

Dear Ann-Marie,

I can't pretend that what you said the other day about it being a nice dream didn't cut me like a knife. I told myself to man up Victor, and remember that you're a victor in life.

Love is eternal. I knew you were a slut but when I watched every single one of my pornos, you weren't there on the screen. None of the actresses had your face.

The sound of thunder that's not thunder. It's only what man is doing to man. Yes, I've become deep.

But when I went round to yours and Freddie's flat in the night, you and he wasn't there. No one was there. I waited for you to ring my bell at the crack of dawn like you did right before you humiliated me yet again but I hear only silence. I've quit my job.

If you don't show yourself to me soon in a film or a message on the internet or even the stars, I want to do it.

Vic

Steph had finally granted me internet access so I was able to read the deluge of emails from Vic. A pair of pink pyjamas scented with that nauseating Florida Water had been left on my bed after the possession.

I heard groaning and banging in the night.

Marge shook me awake at 7.30. She was wearing the same pink pyjamas as me. She said. She said that Stephanie had gone into a trance and wouldn't come out of it. Apparently Erzulie Freda had accused Stephanie of sleeping with one of her three husbands. Erzulie threatened to turn into a red-eye. Marge's hands were shaking.

The curtains were closed against the cold sun.

Steph looked like a Victorian hysteric. She had soaked the bed with sweat. Her teeth were chattering. Her eyes were rolling all over the place. Her skin was a sick yellow. She was wheeling around the mattress in a circular motion, thrashing her legs. Great handfuls of books had been torn from the shelves.

Marge tried to make Steph take Xanax but Steph screeched about Marge working in the service of The Symbolic, drugging her to nullify the radical implications of her insight. She screamed about Marge wanting revenge. She screamed about the sistahood wanting revenge. She screamed that guilt was just a neurosis concocted by Christians and mainstream psychoanalysts to punish people who were keen to selfactualise. She screeched about The Symbolic being like a whirly-pool that one must never look directly at. Like the sun. She whimpered that if one stares into the abyss for too long one becomes part of it. Then she seemed to fall asleep but her eyes remained open.

When Raegan appeared in the same pink pyjamas, Steph arched her back like a cobra and lunged. She got a fistful of Raegan's pyjama shirt.

Raegan screamed, but Steph wouldn't let her go. Steph seemed to be hugging her and hurting her at once.

‘I'm sorry,' said Steph. ‘I'm so, so sorry.'

Raegan seemed to know what Steph was talking about. ‘Sorry for what?' she said, sarcastically.

‘Sorry for what happened with your mom and dad. Sorry for what I did. For hurting you, baby.'

Then Steph curled up like a satisfied kitten.

Marge decided that some chicken soup for the soul was in order so would I mind popping over to the Hampstead Butcher where I could pick out a nice well brought-up cornfed bird for the pot? She only had a £50 note.

‘Will you run away?' she asked me.

‘Do you want me to run away, Marge?'

‘Steph doesn't.'

I told her that I'd bring back the change.

Then I headed over to Tottenham Hale, where the chickens were cheaper.

I couldn't see any butchers in the vicinity of the tube but I had already checked the route to Walthamstow Reservoir online. I walked up a motorway that inclined into a frigid blue sky. A white cloud hung, broken. I passed a street cleaner in an orange vest and she told me that yes I was going in the right direction but it wasn't the season for chub. She said her friend's husband had caught a mirror carp that weighed 45 lb. I asked her if she'd seen a man who looked like a German Idealist with a savage blond beard and piercing Nordic-esque blue eyes but she said no. I went through an opening in a fence and entered a vast marshland. There was nothing and no one. The tourist information board listed the names of birds for birdwatching but nothing flew above. There was supposed to be
various insect life, meaning stocked fish very quickly turn into firmfleshed, fighting wild fish
, but I couldn't see any water, let alone fish, let alone insects. There was a car park. A man with a brown leather briefcase who wasn't Sebastian was hurrying into the bushes. I followed him. He turned right onto a canal. There were houseboats, laden with smashed furniture and flower pots. The windows were close to the water. The water ruffled against itself. The wind blew. The man turned right again. There was a river, shielded by trees, but no one was fishing. Warnings of electrocution and toxic shock. The river ran the wrong colour. The surface reflected the white sky. Birds flew up but no one was watching. There was nothing to watch. There was nothing here. There was nothing.

I was in another wasteland.

I climbed over a turnstile.

There was a white swan in another canal. Its head was underwater.

I found him.

He was standing on a small hill, tangled on all sides by weeds. He was wearing a long dark coat and it was open and blowing in the wind. He had his back to me. His stance was wide-legged and proud. He was holding a fishing rod.

I circled the hill until I could get a look at his face.

Yes. It was definitely Sebastian.

His expression was that of a man contemplating the sublime power of nature. But he was overlooking an empty children's playground. One swing had been unhooked from its frame. The seesaw was smashed in two. When he saw me, his frown got more metaphysical.

Then he smiled.

Now he was running down the hill. ‘Do you know that stalking is an offence?' he was shouting.

‘Were you trying to look like Caspar David Friedrich, posing like that?' I said.

He tried to give me a kiss on the cheek, but I folded my arms.

Lurid images of bacon and eggs ran above the counter. The man frying the eggs looked depressed. All the customers looked depressed. Sebastian was saying how much he loved the café because it was real.

‘My god,' I said. ‘She's put words in your mouth.'

Our coffees arrived; they were weak and instant.

A woman with a purple rinse dropped all her change on the floor.

‘I've become a lesbian,' I told him. ‘Yep. That's right. I'm gay now.'

He made a face.

‘You've made me gay,' I added.

There was a silence.

‘Lucky Allegra never found out about that time in the ball pit,' I said.

‘It wasn't in the ball pit.'

‘OK. In Jasper's father's apartment after we bumped into each other in the ball pit.'

It had happened just after my non-graduation, last summer. I hadn't seen Sebastian for nearly a year. Freddie had forced me to go to a festival called A La Merced in Andalucia. Jasper invited us to stay in his father's holiday apartment. It was unfurnished. Of course he had purchased a king-size bed for himself that he was intending to abandon on departure. He invited me to get in it with him, but I said no. The three of us went to a restaurant and watched hedonists flow like an English Dragon towards the main stage, wrecking the tranquillity of the mountains. Teenage girls with vacant eyes were handcuffed and marched out by police. Jasper said he couldn't wait because Prodigy was headlining and ‘Smack My Bitch Up' was his favourite song. We made a human chain but then someone stamped on my heel and I lost my flip-flop. I lost Freddie and Jasper. Then I lost my other flip-flop. I ran around barefoot for a long time. Bits of glass and stones got stuck in the soles of my feet, but I didn't feel it because I was high. Next thing I knew I was on a bouncy castle. I went down a slide. I landed in a ball pit. Sebastian was in the ball pit. I had no idea that he was at the festival and he had no idea that I was at the festival. I thought it was fate.

He asked me what I was doing there and I said I was attending a conference on EU subsidised export laws and he said no, what are you really doing here? He was there because Olive's husband Hal was playing. Democracy of Sand was getting quite big then – before the lead singer had a schizoid episode. Allegra was at the Edinburgh Festival with Sue. I was coming down. My feet started to throb. They were bleeding. Sebastian offered to get a first-aid kit from his VIP tent but I said no, I'd rather suffer than let you help me at all. He said: ‘You always refused to come to a festival with me, I thought you didn't like loud music.' And I said: ‘Yeah, but it's different with Freddie.' And he said: ‘Different how?' And I said: ‘Different because I'm not in love with Freddie.'

Sebastian came back to the apartment with me. I didn't tell him that it was Jasper's father's apartment because he never would have come. I said it was Freddie's father's. He pulled the glass and stones out of my feet with my tweezers and poured Jasper's sherry from Jerez over the cuts. It was agony. He wanted to get in Jasper's king-size bed but I said no fucking way. I wouldn't tell him why not. We found a deflated air bed in the cupboard. It was dusty and stank of rubber. After two hours, he managed to pump it up. We lay together for a long time without talking. We must have fallen asleep because when we woke up there was no air left in the bed and we were on the floor and drowning in black rubber. It covered my face. All I could see was black and all I could breathe was rubber and the person lying next to me was a stranger. I tried to stand up but my feet had swollen in the night. I screamed in pain and fell backwards and then he had me, anyway.

Now his cheeseburger and chips arrived.

‘I don't believe in fate any more,' I was saying. ‘Since I moved in with Stephanie – my girlfriend.'

Sebastian was shoving the burger in his mouth.

‘She's famous,' I said. ‘She's like a famous intellectual.'

‘Yeah right.' Ketchup ran down his wrist.

I wiped it for him.

‘Get off,' he said. ‘You're right. It's not fate or coincidence. Because you stalked me into the ball pit like you stalked me today. Like you stalked me yesterday coming round to the flat and the day before that, coming round to my parents' house. Problem with you is that you don't even know any more what's real and what's fake because you're so much in your own fantasy world.'

‘What's real and what's true, don't you mean.'

Sebastian laughed.

‘The real is what everyone thinks is there,' I said. I didn't feel like eating my saveloy. ‘But the true is what's really there. But it's not always visible, or logical. But it is true.'

‘You pulled Allegra's hair out of her head.'

‘Fuck off,' I said. ‘I hate you. Leave me alone. Don't even talk to me. Don't even try and come near me.'

The depressed chef cleared away our plates.

‘Do you ever actually catch any fish in that lake?' I said.

‘It's a reservoir. No.'

‘Then why do you sit there all day?'

‘Because it lets me think,' he said. ‘Because. I like to think that one day I might catch a fish, if I sit there long enough.'

‘Just sitting doesn't get you anywhere,' I said. ‘That's what I love about my girlfriend, Stephanie. She's spent her whole life realising her ambitions. Just realising and realising them. She's a doer.' I picked up the salt.

Sebastian took the salt out of my hands. ‘I am doing,' he said. ‘I'm planning my novel in my head.'

‘And what's that going to be about?'

‘It's a monumental work. About modernity, set in Mexico. Yeah. I'm using Mexico as a paradigm for modernity.'

‘Please.'

‘It's for posterity,' he said.

I laughed.

He sat back. ‘This is why,' he said. ‘This is why. She doesn't laugh at me. She doesn't laugh.'

‘Yeah because she's got no fucking sense of humour!' I shouted.