Namedropper (13 page)

Manny looked excitedly up from his paper. “Why didn't you sleep with who?”

I should have slept with him because now he's dead and I will never lose my virginity and I will never, ever have a Drew-faced kid, which is the only thing that could have kept me sane. Like Priscilla Beaulieu—she's got a Presley-faced kid. Lisa Marie is undeniable proof that her mother did enjoy a long and passionate relationship with the King. Her black hair and Roman nose and weight battle are there in sharp focus in case Priscilla is one day loading the dishwasher and it suddenly strikes her that she might have made the whole thing up. That really she's just a housewife in Iowa who saw the newsreel of Elvis joining the army, and invented this story inside her head. If she ever thinks that, then she only has to see her baby to know she hasn't misremembered her whole life.

And America had JFK Jr., standing there, looking exactly like the best parts of both his parents. So if the country ever woke up fearful that they had dreamed Camelot, that John and Jackie were an invention, as intoxicating as the war against Communism and as comforting as Ronald McDonald, they only had to get the
National Enquirer
to stand outside his TriBeCa loft and get another shot of John-John putting out the trash. I don't know what they're going to do
now. Why is it that the most photographed and celebrated and media-documented couples always produce children who look exactly like them? In terms of ensuring a permanent place in the history books, they're the ones least in need of carbon-copy kids. It's just God being flashy. Manny says I don't look anything like my mum.

If only I had a tiny, dark, and surly Drew-faced kid to keep under my pillow. I wouldn't feel so lonely. It's not the sex I'm interested in, it's the genes. Okay, I am interested in the sex, so far as it's some proof that I knew him. Like when someone says, “Have you read
War and Peace?”
or “Have you seen
Jules et Jim?”
you either have or you haven't. No one's the least bit impressed if your answer is “Well, it's on my bookshelf and I pick it up and look at it sometimes” or “I've seen the poster.” If you've slept with someone, you have something definite, something containable. If you haven't, well, it's your word against the world. “I only spent one night with him, and we didn't even kiss, but we talked until he passed out.” You can hardly expect the nation to gasp, “Now we see why you're so upset.” I should have slept with him. There is no point in falling over and cutting your knee if you haven't got a scar to show for it.

But, my God, he would have been bad in bed. Rather, he would have been sad in bed, disgusted at the act and bewildered by how he got to it and desperate to know if he could get out of it. That night in Edinburgh, as his eyes rolled in their sockets, I asked him what he remembered of losing his virginity. He looked like he was going to be sick, then at the last moment he caught himself and smiled. “All I remember is that she made me a lovely bacon sandwich afterwards.”

Killing yourself is a pretty good way to get out of having to see someone after you've had sex with them. I shall have to become a high-class prostitute. If I'm not that bothered about sex anyway, why not make some money out of it? Being a slut is the best insurance against being gossiped about. If you sleep with everyone, then no one cares. No one is interested. But if you never sleep with anyone, when you finally do, it's all over town. And then you're a slut.

Men will pay me for sex and I will close my eyes and clench my fists and curl my toes, like I am having a tooth pulled. Treena says men prefer it that way anyway. She says if she ever gets too into it, they look at her funny. “Calm down,” said one, nervously, as she flung herself around the room.

Better to be paid. Why not be a kept woman? I treat myself like I'm my own mistress anyway. If Drew related to Blanche DuBois so much, I can do that, as they say in
Chorus Line
. Since he went missing, I spend all my money on gold-plated hair-grips and perfume and shoes that I only ever wear to watch TV. And they do make me feel brilliant. When I come home from school, take my Doc Martens off and put on fake satin mules with the marabou trim, slip into my dressing gown and my movie, I feel serene. I hold a glass of Coke to my cheek and pretend it is a glass of bourbon and I am in New Orleans. My bedroom door is the doorway onto the street and at night I can't sleep because of the heat and the commotion in this town.

So I go down to the river and dance as a man with scars on his face plays an accordion. People clap along and wolf-whistle and I whip my skirt around my thighs, which are long and lean because I barely get a chance to eat, what with all my
bourbon and afternoon baths. I dance until my mules get muddy, then I tiptoe home, followed by sailors and men who have won hundreds of thousands of dollars playing stud poker. Steve McQueen might be there. I can't remember. I get confused at this point. Too much drink. I'm sure Karl Malden is lurking in the background, gazing at me longingly. I am kind to him because his mother is dying.

Manny asks me to close my door if I'm planning on acting out Tennessee Williams all night. But I leave it open. That's the point. The door has to be ajar so that the town can see me, so the men can admire me and the women can gossip. Yes, I will be a kept woman and then I will be able to afford my designer black outfits. A new client may bring me a box of expensive chocolates or a bottle of scent, but the ones I've had for years know to bring with them ebony earrings or agate crucifixes or panties the colour of ink. A lover might sometimes tempt me to wear maroon or pale blue, but I will spin away from him. “How dare you insult Drew's memory? I may sleep with you, but there is only one man in my life and he doesn't like maroon. He watches us as you paw me and he laughs at you, because you are nothing compared to him. And as I grit my teeth from the weight of your foul body pressing into my lungs, he takes my hand and says, ‘Viva, black is beautiful on you.'”

And for two days after Ray told me about Drew's suicide, that's what I thought would become of me. That was my future, my life, as I rocked back and forth against Manny's armpit. Oh well, at least I wouldn't have any decisions to make: about university, about jobs, about lovers. My career was in my bedroom, lighting candles for a dead man who didn't know
me, who I hardly know, and who no one else had heard of either.

I cried in the morning, when I brushed my teeth, and couldn't help wondering what Drew thought about toothbrushes and teeth in general. I wept when I went to school, because Drew was an intellectual and I never would be. No matter how hard I tried to listen in French class, in tribute to Drew, all I could hear was a vague tinnitus ring reverberating around the classroom. I cried when I got home and fixed myself a peanut butter, jelly, and Fluffernutter marshmallow spread sandwich on white bread, because Drew was so thin and that was something else I would never be.

I cried when Manny tried to talk to me and when Manny tried to listen. Most especially I cried when I listened to the crappy vinyl Kindness of Strangers single Drew had given me that night in Edinburgh. It had a scratch straight down the middle. It sounded like Drew had hiccups. I laughed through my tears. Then I cried some more because I felt so guilty for having laughed. Drew did not, perhaps, have as many options open to him as I had at first imagined. He was smart, he must have had the world at his feet. But that's not how it works. He was smart, really, really smart. So he had nothing. His plans and his ideas and his theses and schemes backed him into a corner, held a flick-knife to his throat, and told him he had no choice but to leave town.

And then it struck me. If you're being forced out of town, if they're really going to get you if you stay, then you don't want to suffer the indignity of having them drive you to the state line. You want to find your own way out. You'll do what they
want, but you'll do it your way. In that second I saw that suicide wasn't his way. If you believe that people are more honest when they are drunk, then you also believe that you can get more truth out of someone in the first three hours of meeting them than in thirty years of knowing them.

Suicide was Jean Seberg or Brian Jones or someone in a seventies glam rock band, but it just wasn't him. I knew that Drew would talk about suicide for as long as he had the power of speech, even if no one was listening. For as long as he was conscious. But he would not do it. Of that I was certain. We were more similar than I had thought, although that brought me curious little comfort. Again, I felt uncomfortable because I knew for sure I was stronger than him. Because I wasn't ashamed. I am not ashamed to be all talk and no action. He was.

Treena was completely unhelpful. Like Ray, she resents me being interested in anyone but her. And she hates hysterics. So long as they're drug- or alcohol-fueled, they're okay. But real hysteria, from the pit of your stomach, turns her off so much that she can barely stand to speak to me.

Standing in the kitchen, I clutched a grease-stained fish dish in the half-full sink and listened attentively as my breath started to quicken. I was so caught up in the sound of my own breath that I didn't hear the dish smash. I do not suit doing the washing up. I have never particularly cared for kitchen-sink drama. It is no place for a girl like me. Manny, who was skimming over the paper, stood to attention, terrified that I was going to start crying again. I couldn't have even if I'd wanted to. Even if I'd imagined that I had a pet puppy and it had been run over and then bitten by a rat, I couldn't have wept another
tear. All the tears were gone, as if sucked out by a tiny dental vacuum. Who needs professional medics? How clever the human body is by itself. The absence of tears was a medical precaution. I couldn't cry or I wouldn't be able to think properly. Manny gripped my arm, but my arm was stronger than his grip and he let go.

“Viva, please, I'm trying to understand. But you're making yourself hysterical. You're making yourself ill with your
schreying
. Your body can't take anymore. The skin around your nose is peeling off and you've burst a blood vessel in your cheek. So please, try to stop. Try to stay calm. Or at least let me be excused. You come and knock on my door when you're finished and we'll have a cuddle. I don't want you to be unhappy. But I'm obviously not helping. And I can't watch you do it again.”

“I'm not going to cry,” I sniffed. “There's nothing to cry about.”

“Viva, there had better have been something to cry about. Tears aren't like Marks
&
Spencer's nighties. You can't get your money back if they don't fit you.”

“Listen, okay. Wait. I … I shouldn't have got myself so distraught. It isn't as bad as I thought.”

“Good girl. Smart girl. There are lots of tortured, unsuccessful artists in the world to choose from.”

“No, that's not what I mean, although I take your point. Okay, Manny. The thing is, I don't think he is dead.”

Manny took my hand in his. “No, baby. He is. He's dead. He jumped off Brighton Pier. Although I'm sure he'll always be alive in your heart.”

I gripped his hand tight, digging my little fingernail in not
so much that he'd know I was doing it deliberately but enough so he would wake up and listen. My melancholy had wrapped us both up and cosied us down like the quilt Manny throws over us when we watch
Seinfeld
on cable.

“No, he's not dead. He didn't kill himself. He wanted us to think he did so we wouldn't try and find him. He's alive.” I drew a breath but didn't look up.

“But, the thing is, he won't always be alive in my heart, not unless I can find him. I haven't got enough heart anymore. I haven't got enough of him to keep alive. He never gave me anything. I asked if I could borrow one of his books, but he wouldn't let me, said he was still reading them. All of them. Even if I had stolen just an eye pencil, I'd have enough to last me another year.”

Manny pulled me to him, gripped his arms around my shoulders, and started talking quietly into my hair. “Viva, listen to me.” I wasn't listening because his grip was alarming to me. It was a very heterosexual, Jack Nicholson thing to do—bear-hugging me and breathing into my ear at the same time. “People were always obsessed with me, not the other way around. Are you sure that's what you want to be? Once you start on that track, it's very hard to get off. And as much fun as it looks to be the obsessor, it takes more guts to be adored, trust me.”

“I do trust you, but I know what I feel. I know my destiny. This task has my name on it.”

“No, it has someone else's name on it. It always will. You're setting yourself up for a lot of tasks.” He looked very sad. I felt, for probably the first time in my life, that I had let him down. In the past he'd said I had let him down: when I left all the
dishes in the sink for a week when he was in Florida, or when I decided to cut my own hair, based on a photo of Louise Brooks, and ended up looking like Prince Valiant. That's not really a letdown—adults expect that of you.

There have been little failures on a daily basis. Broken soup bowls, congealed yoghurt, turned orange juice, jelly in the peanut butter, shoes pulled off without untying the laces, overflowing laundry bin, expensive sunglasses with one lens crushed, chocolate for breakfast. And not just chocolate—bad, cheap, nasty “chocolate-flavoured” corner-store confectionery.

Most often, there are aesthetic differences of opinion. For instance, an adult's perception of a room as looking like a pigsty, versus a child's belief that a mess is the best place to hide happiness you want to come back to later. Use the pile of dirty knickers and odd socks to conceal the ring Treena swapped with you, the necklace Manny gave you for your fourteenth, the report card where Mr. Edwards says you have a natural flair for Chartism. You thought they were gone for good? Think how delighted you'll be when you see them again. Childhood is tiring. You have very little actual power. You need the controlled chaos of your bedroom to keep you going.