Under My Skin Read online

  ‘Porridge, for breakfast. Tea. Brown bread and toast.’

  She thinks she will never get home. She has never been in hospital before.

  ‘Potatoes… Chicken… and peas.’

  A nurse with red hair comes in.

  ‘Yes. She has an appointment with a specialist,’ she says. ‘It is with a Mr Stafford and he will see you on Tuesday at nine o’clock.

  ‘They might keep her in and it is unlikely that they will operate straight away… but it is possible though.’

  And I listen to my grandmother’s questions now.

  ‘How will she get to Mr Stafford?’

  ‘Can she wear her own clothes and when can she go home?’ More than anything she wants to go home.

  ‘No one wants to be in hospital,’ I tell her, ‘but you have to be here to get well.’ I am trying to keep the ship afloat but when Juna becomes lonesome again I struggle not to cry.

  We are facing it at last. The inevitability of it, and yet why does everyone have to get old and die? Did I not realize that this was coming? She was always the leader and when I see her fear and confusion now I am frightened and unhinged by it as well.

  ‘You will need to leave here at seven,’ the nurse says. ‘The traffic will be bad.’

  ‘Will I be able to wear my own clothes?’ she asks again. Juna is like a child who had left her coat at school.

  ‘The traffic will be terrible,’ the nurse says, ‘and your clothes won’t make any difference to that.’ And here she smiles and it is the smile of an angel with crooked teeth, but an angel. We both look up at her. We stare her out of it. Needing answers. Needing hope.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ Juna says and now she is smiling up at her. ‘Thank you for bringing some humour to the situation.’

  And the nurse is lit up then. She likes my grandmother’s weathered face and her nice old-fashioned charm.

  Juna tells me about being on the ward with three other old women.

  ‘Those inhalers – you might as well have a lawnmower in the room with you,’ she says. ‘And there was a woman in the bed opposite… never took her eyes off me… not once… even when she had the oxygen mask on… it was very provocative.’

  ‘Will I be able to go home?’ she asks when the nurse comes back again. And the nurse sighs, but in a good-natured way.

  ‘I’m in the wrong job,’ she says kindly. ‘I can’t give you definite answers to anything. But I know you want to go home. I’m aware of your desires – and everyone’s are the same. Everyone wants to go home,’ she says and with this she leaves, probably going to say the same kind words to the elderly lady in the room across the hall.

  For a minute or two Juna has hope and today her mind is very clear. She gets up to walk around and she is almost light on her feet.

  ‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘At least there is something happening. I’ll be ready to leave at seven and I’ll able to put my own skirt back on again.’

  Her clothes – the cardigan I bought her at Christmas – her cream pleated skirt – her blue blouse – her shoes – have become armour. Cotton and wool that in the brief seconds after she puts them on, make her believe she can be well again.

  When the nurse comes back it is dark and I am curled up beside Juna on her bed. I don’t want to leave her on her own tonight and so I stay and know she will wake up with something to look at other than the wooden crucifix on the wall.

  I do not know how to tell her that I love her and the air is thick with it. I would like to say ‘Thank you’ to her, for everything, and yet I can’t. I wish I could just say it to her now or at least open the window and let it out. When someone is eighty-four and not feeling brilliant, it’s time to stop kidding around.

  Email to Hope Swann 22 June 3.02 p.m.

  From Matilda Vaughan

  Re: Men.

  Hope,

  I know it feels like you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s my whole point. None of us know what we’re doing. Love is irrational. It’s a yearning. An ache.

  That’s what love is like, Hope… it’s a runaway train… and we’re on it.

  Matilda.

  We drink wine from paper cups. We do not talk after the deed is done. There is nothing to say. We are not like normal lovers and we do not need to hear each other’s stories now. He does not need to tell me about his old girlfriends and how and why they broke his heart. And I do not need to tell him about my last boyfriend and besides there was only ever one. We are quiet. We are discreet. After this I will go home to the flat in Bray. And Jonathan will call Nina and go back to the office and work late.

  Her breath becomes weaker and I am at her side. Even a small signal of weakness is frightening and the great white tornado is losing strength. It is as if the house and all the trees around it are bending and, one by one, they begin to crack and break. The doctors come in. The nurses smile kindly. They say things like ‘She’s more comfortable now’. In the middle of the night she sits bolt upright and her eyes are bright and clear. She was young once like me. She fell in love and probably made a fool of herself over some stupid guy. Why can’t things stay the way they are and where do dead people go? She knows me in that last hour. Just when she sat up in bed. I lie on the bed beside her, her hand in mine. Her blue veins laced underneath her skin. Her breath rattling, like a great old train.

  The sun begins to come up at 4.15 and it fills the hospital room with a pale orange and pink glow. It moves upwards on the white wall, up and up until it sits like a coloured cloud over the bed. ‘It is the start of another perfect June day,’ I tell her and I want her to wake up and look at the light.

  I keep my arms around her and I lie there looking up at this strange coloured cloud. The nurse comes in and lifts her wrist gently. She looks at us without speaking and then she closes the blinds. All the usual blood pressure checks are not necessary and there is no need for food and water now.

  Today Juna is free from all of that. She has no need for material things. She does not need baby food and vitamins to keep her alive. Juna is free and it’s time, but I lie here not able to bear it, and know that for the first time, she will not be a part of a clear June day.

  The ashes are scattered over the green hill in the lower meadow. I try to see Juna’s face and imagine her smile and her laugh. I wonder where she is. There are things I wanted to ask her before she died but I was afraid. I wanted to ask if she could come back in some little way and tell me what it is like. If there are angels and if there is any God and if my brother Daniel is there and if he is as happy now as he was in his life. I would like her to check in on my pappy too and tell me that he’s happy and smiling there. I want to believe in something. More than anything I want to believe in something other than a man I meet in a square room with four white walls.

  Yesterday I asked Doreen if she would measure me because I feel as if I’m getting smaller now.

  Most of all I want to ask Juna if she can see Larry anywhere because for the first time ever I really don’t know where he’s gone. I try to talk to her about it and I ask her if she can stand up on the clouds with a giant white telescope and just try to spot him on Planet Earth. I imagine he would be a bright red spot moving silently like a plane on a long-distance flight. I ask these questions but there is no answer, not from the sky or the clouds or the waving beech trees. When the casket opens the ashes are swept away. A life that was full and plenty. One grey puff and Juna is gone.

  Mrs Kirk is standing at the door. She has turned the key and has walked up the two flights of stairs. She turns the handle and taps on the door jamb. Nina is wearing expensive perfume and she is tall and beautiful and polite.

  Jonathan is stretched out on the couch. He is not wearing a shirt but he is reading his newspaper and looking very relaxed. I am in the bathroom and I am looking through a crack in the door.

  Jonathan looks at her and he is very quiet and calm.

  ‘Johnny,’ she says, and he says, ‘Hello, darling.’

  She is
carrying a Burberry clutch and her hair is shiny and black. She looks like she goes to the gym every day and in my mind I see her lifting weights and then lifting me up and throwing me against a wall. She is the kind of woman who could leave a lot of bruises or maybe drown me in a barrel.

  ‘Who is it this time?’ she asks and she walks into the room and looks around. Jonathan does not speak. Instead he shakes his head and smiles.

  The bed is not made. It never is. We do not bother to change the sheets. They are twisted and turned and the pillows have fallen on the floor. There are empty wine bottles in the kitchen and the floor is covered in paper cups and take-out bags. I am wondering if I could step out into the room and reason with her. Just introduce myself and say ‘Hello’. And then there is the sound of glass breaking and she has picked up an empty wine bottle and flung it across the room.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ Johnny says, ‘be reasonable…’ and then, ‘She means nothing to me,’ and I step back from the bathroom door and when I turn, I see the sink is full of flowers – tulips, delphiniums and roses – that he brought here for me. The curtain flaps a little in the wind and the tiles are gleaming white.

  But Mrs Kirk is screaming at him now and a chair goes flying across the room and then she picks up one of the wooden elephants – the papa elephant, I think – and she aims it at his head.

  She is not someone who would welcome a friendly conversation. There is a loud crash, a thud, and Jonathan is behind the couch. I give up the idea of reasoning with her and do what any sensible person would do. I find the open window and begin to climb down the fire escape instead.

  Doreen is on the couch in the flat. She is eating a pizza and watching a keep-fit video on the TV. I am soaked from the rain and the heel has broken on my shoe.

  ‘Let me guess,’ she says after a minute. ‘You were chased by a dog.’

  ‘Mrs Kirk,’ I tell her, and she opens her mouth and turns and stares.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I didn’t wait to find out.’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Stronger than me.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She threw an elephant at Jonathan.’

  ‘Wow,’ Doreen says. ‘She is strong.’

  ‘Let’s cool it for a little while,’ Jonathan says. He is sitting at his desk and I am sitting opposite on the low red couch. The door is closed and he is frowning, with his tie off and hanging over the back of his chair.

  ‘I’m sorry she did that,’ he says, ‘but don’t worry, it will all be fine… Hope… it will be fine… we just need to cool it for a little while,’ and as I sit there I can feel icicles beginning to form under my nose.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he says and he is shaking his head and smiling. ‘We just need to be more discreet.’

  When I go back to my desk he has sent me an email.

  Email from Jonathan Kirk 9.36 a.m.

  To Hope Swann

  Subject: Don’t worry!

  By the way… you look lovely today… x

  Juna is smiling, I am sure of it. Sometimes you need to push the boundaries a little. That’s what Jonathan always says. ‘Hope… sometimes you need to take a little risk.’ I don’t mean to send the email but then my hand slips and I do.

  Forward email 9.40 a.m.

  To everyone

  From Jonathan Kirk

  To Hope Swann

  By the way… you look lovely today… x

  11 Arthur and Marilyn

  Because it was Friday, Chief Gallagher left Manhattan early and as he headed towards Brooklyn and his third wife, he listened to the Laurie Roth show. It was too hot even for July and the radio irritated him. ‘What a turkey,’ he murmured. He always said that to Laurie Roth and even now he could not get used to the sudden heat of the city and he seemed to have been fighting against it all his life. He had married a woman from the force two years ago but he had already known her for several years. The Brooklyn boys usually knew the Brooklyn girls and this time he was forty-nine and this wife was thirty-three.

  He had listened to her complain at dinner on Sunday. How she came home from work as tired as he was and then fell into the sea of laundry at her feet. He had four boys. Their football vests and shorts clogged her housekeeping system up and every second Sunday they had to take his mother out. They fought over it and lots of other things – but more than anything they argued over sex. He wanted more than she did and when he took a beer from the refrigerator and sat on the porch, he thought about this briefly – men wanted it more than women – and he shrugged as the first bubbles hit his throat and he guessed there was nothing unusual or revolutionary about this.

  When the doorbell rang he was wearing a NYPD t-shirt and shorts and as he walked down the hall, his hot feet sticking a little, he noticed that the houseplants were leaning and that the goldfish bowl looked too warm. When he opened the door there was another wave of heat and then he saw his friend Arthur Glassman standing looking up at him from the bottom step.

  They embraced with a smile and from The Chief, ‘Hey, man.’ The heat from Gallagher was obvious because in his arms Glassman felt chilled and almost cold. He smiled up at him and Gallagher, in spite of his bad mood, could only smile back. He wanted to slap him hard on the back but he was afraid he would knock him down the steps. He had been like a boy in Vietnam. Smaller than the other troops but somehow he had more life and spirit than the rest of the men.

  The Chief had not wanted to see anyone that evening. Not even his sons or his wife – and yet here he was, unexpected and uninvited, and with him a gentle bright calm came into his life. Suddenly his warm house was better now and he was proud and when they walked through the hall, he pointed out trophies and photographs of his sons and his wife. He smiled when he opened the kitchen door and he went to the yard for more beer and some ice.

  ‘I’d prefer some hot chocolate,’ Glassman said.

  ‘Man, in this heat,’ and he laughed and shook his head.

  He found another photo of his wife and handed it to his friend and watched his face.

  ‘She’s a looker,’ Glassman said

  ‘And… Matilda?’ The Chief asked and he smiled as an image of her formed in his mind.

  ‘Matilda,’ came the reply and the voice was low and level with just a hint of humour behind it. ‘As it happens. She’s quite a piece of work.’

  Here there was silence and only the kettle began to hum and whistle and neither man spoke as Gallagher whisked the hot chocolate up.

  ‘Are you in some kind of trouble?’ he asked.

  ‘You could say that,’ and here The Chief put one hot bear paw on his old friend’s shoulder and walking him out on to the high back porch he told him to ‘spit it out’.

  So Glassman spat. He told him about the letters and the phone calls, every day and every night.

  ‘And what does she say?’

  ‘That she loves me.’

  ‘She’s only human, Arthur.’

  But Glassman couldn’t manage a smile.

  ‘That I still love her.’

  Here The Chief barely nodded. So far this was no good.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I come home from work and she’s sitting on my steps.’

  ‘Every evening?’

  ‘Most evenings.’

  The Chief lit a cigarette and they both fell silent and outside the small dogs of Brooklyn began to bark.

  ‘Those fuckin’ dogs,’ he murmured.

  ‘She’s actually beginning to scare me,’ and Glassman’s voice was slow and careful and there was no hint of embarrassment in it.

  The Chief nodded.

  ‘She says she’s pregnant.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘It’s a fantasy. Before me she had three miscarriages. We were careful and she told me herself… she’s reproductively challenged – go figure.’

  Here The Chief lifted his eyebrows and took a long swallow
of beer.

  Glassman told him that she had been into his apartment even though he had changed the locks.

  ‘Maybe I’m being paranoid,’ he said quietly and he looked out over the trees to the church.

  The Chief’s face was without any expression.

  ‘She’s blowing the Super,’ he said.

  ‘It’s breaking and entering,’ Glassman said.

  ‘Not if you have a key. And besides we need to catch her doing it.’

  And Glassman told him about the perfume which he believed she was spraying around every room. And there was no response at all now and he felt mildly humiliated by that.

  They fell silent then and this was only because The Chief did not want to tell him what he already knew. They waited and they were both deaf to the sirens and the barking dogs now.

  Then Glassman took a deep breath and laid out the contents of his pockets. There were all gold-trimmed letters. Each one carried a quote and was written in black ink with a red lipstick kiss at the end.

  ‘I don’t understand why people aren’t a little nicer to each other.’ Marilyn

  and

  ‘All little girls should be told they are beautiful, even if they aren’t.’ Marilyn

  and

  ‘I don’t mind making jokes, but I don’t want to be one.’ Marilyn

  The Chief read each one with a look of concentration on his face. Then Glassman handed him another. ‘This one came this morning,’ he said.

  ‘A career is wonderful, but it won’t keep you warm on a cold night.’ Marilyn

  Arthur could still remember the night he told her about it. How he had noticed her that first day in the swimming pool and how she had reminded him of Marilyn Monroe and how he then foolishly, romantically told her and how she had held on to it. How it had become their thing and in her head their ‘raison d’être’. How they had drunk and got a little high and made love to the thought of it. Those first weeks were like going back in time. When women wore felt hats and heels and skirts that fell below the knee but also had real breasts and an ass. And her lips were beautiful, always beautiful, and Glassman, even now on The Chief’s back porch, could give her that.