Under My Skin Read online

  The bar was closing by the time she got there and she had to plead gently with the bartender to let her come inside, and she found him then, as agreed, sitting in the second booth. She began by smiling at him and he responded by looking away. Then she apologized for being late and he raised his hand and asked for a tequila. So she stopped speaking then and nodded at the bartender to say she would have the same.

  He was Mexican and she did not know his name but when she handed the envelope towards him under the table, she could not avoid touching his thigh and the denim felt greasy and warm. He took his tequila and gave her the Village Voice and then he got up and left.

  Matilda felt a gentle buzz of excitement and she knew it was there in her hand and that it was done. In the end her friend in Queens had agreed to help her but he had only offered when she told him she would do it by mail order instead. She took the newspaper and went into the restroom. How many times, she asked herself in the mirror, had a woman done this before? She stood and remembered her friend’s words.

  ‘Don’t try getting a gun by mail order, honey, that will only bring you all sorts of trouble,’ and ‘The gun that you choose should feel comfortable in your hand.’

  She sat on the toilet and took it from the newspaper. It was heavier than she expected and when her red nails wrapped around it, she felt a sudden sexual thrill. She curled her long slim finger around the trigger and said in a whisper, ‘This is what it’s like to be a man.’ She put it into her purse and closed it with a little snap and then walked back and instead of leaving she took a stool at the bar. The gun had calmed her and she was no longer feeling abandoned and afraid. Her friend had recommended a handgun that would fire a .38 calibre bullet or bigger – because anything smaller, he said, would ‘not reliably stop a large violent man’.

  The man at the bar looked sadly into his drink. He was going a little bald and he was younger than her. She wanted to sleep with him. She wanted to take him outside against a brick wall, surrounded by trashcans and squalling alley cats. He looked up at her and then took a second longer to look deep into her eyes. And he saw it all, the hurt and the damage and the pain.

  ‘I like your hair,’ he said simply.

  ‘My name’s Matilda,’ she replied and she offered him her hand. He said nothing for a minute and then said, ‘There are two reasons why a woman like you comes into a bar like this.’

  And she raised her eyebrows at him.

  ‘You want to fuck someone and don’t want your husband to catch you. Or you want to buy a gun.’

  ‘Maybe it’s both,’ she answered and she leaned in and took a sip of his beer.

  ‘Lady,’ he replied, ‘I’m married.’

  The bartender watched them for a second and then he turned the sign on the door and said, ‘Folks, I really have to close.’

  ‘And there are two reasons why a Manhattan girl wants to buy a gun,’ he said.

  ‘I need to protect myself,’ she said quietly and her eyes were big and dark.

  ‘It’s to kill someone or to kill herself.’

  And here Matilda changed the subject.

  ‘You know a lot for a young guy.’

  ‘Can’t you see I’m going bald?’ and he was smiling softly at her now and then he paid for her drink and left a lot of money on the bar.

  ‘Bald men get more head,’ she said and he frowned a little and then smiled at her.

  ‘Great,’ he replied, ‘I’ve got that to look forward to.’ He walked with her to the subway and told her to take the R.

  And on the last train into Manhattan, Matilda began talking out loud. And she knew she was different now because other people looked blankly over her head or just looked away.

  ‘I know the A, the D, the E and the F… but take me out of Manhattan… why have we stopped?… why is this train so fucking slow… are we going back into Brooklyn?… I need to be in Manhattan… I have a friend there… he promised to meet me in Manhattan… why the fuck would anyone want to go to Brooklyn?… are we going to Manhattan?’ she asked the empty carriage again. And then she took off her scarf and looking into her own face in the black window, she took a comb from her purse and fluffed her hair. Her lipstick was in little smudges and there were tiny red bleed veins at the corners of her mouth.

  ‘Does this train go to Manhattan?’ she asked again of the empty carriage. ‘I need to get into Manhattan. When I’m in Manhattan I know where I am.’

  17 The Glass Heart (November 2001)

  Heart n. – 1. A hollow muscular organ that pumps blood around the body. 2. The source and centre of emotional life, where the deepest and sincerest feelings are located and an individual is most vulnerable to pain.

  Attwoods store is on the corner of Wellfleet’s Main Street. The faded-out sign says ‘Stoves – Hardware – Paint’. Inside there are boxes of breakfast cereal, red apples in a barrel, loose flour, Ritz crackers, cookies in tall glass jars. On the other side there are white shelves filled with light bulbs, matches, nails, paint – and the owner stands in a starched white apron and glares at me as the bell rings from the door. Any minute now and I’m expecting Nellie Olsen to appear. When the owner sees me, his mouth and the corners of his eyes, in fact his whole face, turn down.

  ‘Ma’am,’ he says, and I stand for a moment and look around. This morning I took the bus from Truro and travelled five miles to the nearest town. There’s just one food market in Truro and a lighthouse, and a post office and not much else. I wanted to see the library at Wellfleet and after borrowing my first book, I forgot about walking the beach and instead came into the warmth of a hardware store.

  There is a man with silver and black hair sitting near the stove. He is drinking hot chocolate and reading a copy of the New Yorker and he does not look up when I come in. Outside a school bus turns the corner past the church and the library into Main Street. A woman with a blue muffler takes a child’s hand and the child looks up at her, telling her mother everything about school, and she does not want her to miss a word.

  The man with the silver hair turns the page and folds the magazine back. His eyebrows are raised and questioning on his weathered face. We are both here for the same reasons, to see other people and to get warm. My hair is too long now and after one day on the beach it became impossible to comb and I have windburn. My skin is on fire even though I am freezing cold. The beach house was a romantic idea but I needed to escape any further madness from Matilda and New York.

  I ask the owner for a coffee – and he nods towards a chair and I sit down. There are three chairs around the stove and then another man – I recognize him from the library – comes in and takes off his woollen hat and says, ‘Arthur’ to the other man. And Arthur puts down his magazine and his face breaks into an easy, happy smile and the room is suddenly full of good humour and charm and he replies, ‘Jake.’

  But before getting up to speak to him he says, ‘Here’ to me and puts the New Yorker into my hand. It seems he wants me to read a Gary Larson cartoon.

  The coffee arrives in a white mug and I put both hands around it and stay near the warmth of the red stove. There is a steel bucket full of split logs and without a word Arthur comes back and opens the little door and throws on a log. We watch together as a shower of red sparks flies up the chimney and are gone.

  ‘You staying long?’ Jake asks and he pulls up a chair to mine and I tell him I’m staying in a house near Long Nook beach, near Truro.

  ‘My oh my,’ he replies, ‘and you know the story of Herman Dill?’ and I look back and for some reason I say ‘Nope’ instead of ‘No’.

  ‘He drowned in a cottage near that beach.’

  ‘He drowned in Wellfleet, in a lighthouse,’ Arthur says and he frowns at the other man.

  When Jake goes, Arthur sits down again and he looks at me for a minute over his small silver glasses which he has pushed down on his nose. I don’t know what he is thinking or if he is taking me in, but when he speaks again his voice is lyrical and warm and what he says is simple an
d in a voice full of kindness.

  ‘Sweetheart, you’re gonna freeze.’

  At that moment the winter sun blinks out and the sky – through the vast skylight – is a brilliant cold blue and when the single shaft of sunlight comes in and floats down over me it makes a warm spot on my head. And here we both smile at each other and he holds my gaze and then I look away. Jack’s house is made for summer. There is no way to block out draughts. One solid fuel stove. An immersion heater that hisses and threatens to explode. A sofa covered in damp striped ticking. A single lamp. A whistling kettle. A stool covered in chipped white paint. A pirate chest used as a coffee table. A wooden duck inside the door. A picture of a ship about to go under and it is called ‘Brig on a Stormy Sea’. A telescope. Why? One blue enamel mug. There is no furniture or TV but I can sit on the floor beside the stove and watch the moon and the stars. The floor is made from wide chestnut boards and the wind blows up under them and this morning there was a small sand dune inside the front door.

  The man is right – I will freeze but I am not going back to sympathy and tea and home.

  What would Larry do?

  And this morning I stood in the middle of the room and asked this question of the sea and the mug and the single white chair and like me they were silent and sad and did not seem to know.

  Arthur gets up then and walks without a word on to the porch and I take my groceries and stand outside with him. There are three identical white painted rocking chairs parked in a row and he is sitting on the edge of one rolling some loose tobacco for a smoke. He turns one shoulder a little to fend away the sea breeze.

  ‘Smoke?’ he asks and I find myself saying ‘Yes’. He is a stranger to me and yet since I met him I can feel a warm feeling beginning in my chest. He is older than Pappy was but there is something magnetic about him. And he is older than anyone I know and yet with those strange eyes, that seem to keep a big secret, and his lined and weathered face, he is somehow beautiful too.

  He wants me to sit beside him now and I recognize the basic primal need from him to me and back. People who find themselves alone and need to hear the sound of another voice. Two people who stand and stare into the rough dashing waves of New England and listen and listen as if the sea could actually keep them company and talk.

  He only wants a chat.

  That is all and I can give him that.

  When he gets up he goes into the shop to buy some matches and I start rocking over and back. I am thinking of old men with raggy beards who spit tobacco and have names like Isaiah and Jethroe. Old-timers and now a young-timer like me. The chair starts to rock faster and then faster again and the next thing I crack my head on the stone wall behind and when he stands over me again there are little silver stars and blue birds circling around my head.

  ‘Wow,’ he says and at first he looks shocked and then I can see he is actually trying not to laugh.

  ‘What was that?’ he asks.

  ‘That was my head. On the wall.’

  And when he comes towards me laughing he puts both hands around my head to nurse it and inside I am thinking, ‘All my life. All my damn life. Why does this sort of thing always happen to me?’

  And he is still laughing and saying, ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor.’

  ‘Here,’ he says then and he hands me a neatly rolled cigarette and then he strikes a match. We sit side by side, quietly smoking and looking out towards the beach.

  ‘I’m not able to sleep,’ I tell him suddenly and my own voice surprises itself so that there is a tiny upswing at the end.

  His voice is cool and easy and he does not look up straight away and when he does it is over his small silver glasses again.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asks simply.

  He sits back and waits and then, because it is a difficult question, he says, ‘I go for a long walk every evening, right down Newcomb Hollow Beach, if you would like to come with me tomorrow.’

  ‘Great,’ I answer – and then I come out with something really dumb.

  ‘Walking is a good idea. It’s good for your body… and your brain.’

  ‘My brain,’ he says with some mild wonder. ‘I gave up on that years ago.’

  Arthur is waiting for me in Wellfleet. He is leaning on his car with both hands deep in his pockets. The sun is gone and we are surrounded by a misty grey afternoon. When he sees me he pulls on a woollen ski cap and then he opens the car door without any words. He drives towards Newcomb Hollow and then we take the sloping path down through the sea grass meadow and on to the sand – when I pause he points the way.

  ‘I do it in one hour every day,’ he says.

  His eyes rest on my green army jacket for a second and he asks, ‘Will you be warm enough?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you like some gum?’ and he offers me a Wrigley’s Spearmint.

  ‘Thanks.’

  And the only sound is the crunch of our boots on the long stretch of shingle and how it slopes down at first and then stretches upwards into more damp mist and wet sea grass.

  New York is mentioned early and he says that 9/11 has passed and people need to start rebuilding the city and to try to move on.

  ‘Did you lose anyone?’ I ask him.

  ‘Only myself,’ he says and when he catches my eye he is smiling and there is no hint of sadness in his voice.

  We pass an old beach shack with boarded-up windows and there is mildew covering the outside walls. He tells me that this is what the disease inside him is like and as we fall into step again he talks.

  He starts with a nurse holding the first syringe up (‘A very attractive woman,’ he adds, ‘in a low-cut blouse.’) and how he looked at her and said, ‘Hello, I’m James Bond,’ and he ends with the day he looked at himself in his own mirror in Manhattan last January and thought that he was already dead.

  When he describes his disease it is like poetry, or some Shakespearean tragedy he has to perform. He plays out each part beautifully. The awfulness of it. The weakness. The fear and the pure comedy that suddenly surrounded him when he thought he might die. And there is nothing even close to sadness or embarrassment in his voice. His spirit seems to crackle inside him. And he is thin. Wan. I hardly know him and I am suddenly worried that he might die.

  ‘And are you feeling better?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he says and he stops for a moment and smiles at me. ‘I am feeling better today.’

  He loves New York. He loves everything about his city – and suddenly here on a cold beach in New England his city is so different to mine. There are sticky green buds in springtime, long walks in Central Park, the first fall of snow in November and a date with a woman he later wanted to marry on top of the Empire State.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask.

  ‘She had a weak heart, she died.’

  And then he says it – bringing us back to real time and bringing us together again.

  ‘Mortality has always been a big part of my life.’

  When we pass a house two terriers come tumbling out and they run to him as if they are all old friends. These are his buddies whom he meets every day on his walk – and then we turn and I ask him questions about the Cape and he describes the seasons and the cool blue sky over the ponds at night. And I continue to question him because he seems to be able for it and because it helps me to avoid having to talk about myself.

  Wellfleet is his real home and he knows and loves every inch of it.

  ‘Before the pilgrims, there were Punanokanit Indians,’ he says and with these words his voice warms with pride and then he says, ‘We have sandy soil here… sometimes the old bones rise up,’ and his eyes are twinkling at me, teasing, and making me laugh.

  I notice that he does not mention his family and I do not mention mine. He says he left New York because one day he looked into his bathroom mirror and ‘The face looking back was green’ and he shakes his head and blows smoke into the wind and laughs again at his own poor health. He was being followed by a woman whose heart h
e had broken and here his voice is level and without emotion and then he meets my eyes and says, ‘She was beginning to frighten me.’ We do not talk about my life because he senses that I can’t. Then he tosses the cigarette into the wind and we begin to walk again.

  We take the road past Gull Pond and then over the long narrow boardwalk and he points out his house to me. It is not made of wood like the others. It is tall and made of cut stone and there is a bright red barn behind it and tall waving trees. He offers to drive me back to Truro and we talk again in the car.

  ‘Did you know anyone when you came to New York?’ Arthur asks.

  ‘Only Jack – the guy who owns the beach house – and a woman I met through the Internet and she was nice… but a little weird.’

  And here Arthur pulls a tired face.

  ‘You were in New York,’ he replies and he salutes a woman who stands at a street corner and she smiles back and gives a little wave.

  He parks near the post office and we cross a narrow sandy path and then we are walking over the dunes and over soft sliding sand towards the beach. There are three cottages in a row. Two are empty and Jack’s cottage is at one end. He walks in and looks around. He knows I have no hope here but he tries to help. He tells me he will bring me fuel from his shed. He points out window shutters that I didn’t know I had. He looks at the broken-down couch and tells me I would be better sleeping on that and not to even try going upstairs.

  And then his face breaks into a smile and he suddenly looks like a little boy and he is really excited now and pointing to the high shelf and I am looking blankly at the old green box beside the wooden duck.