Helen Oyeyemi - Mr. Fox

Mary Foxe sat in the chair at my dressing table and I stood beside the chair and she stared at me and I stared at her. It was just interesting to see what St. John wanted in a woman. Her hair hung over her shoulder in a wispy plait, clumsily done. Someone should show her how to plait her hair. I wondered what would become of me. I didn’t see him turning me out, not exactly — but I might be too proud to stay. He’d make me some sort of allowance, I suppose. I couldn’t go back to my parents, though. Pops would forbid Maman from giving me a piece of her mind, and she wouldn’t — not while he was there. But she’d give me that resigned look— Messed up again, Daphne? Just what I expected. The look I got when I quit college, only ten times worse. I should fight this, make some kind of threat. Greta would fight like a hellcat. Twice now, some girl has tried to get Pizarsky to fall in love with her, and each time Greta’s seen the girl off. She’s not above fighting for her man. How do you threaten someone like Mary Foxe, though?

“I’ve never seen you this close up,” Mary Foxe said. “I like looking at your face; it’s a good face.”

I couldn’t help laughing at her formality. I wanted to say I thought the same about her, but I couldn’t make myself do it. Greta would have risen up in my mind like a ghoul, sneering. That’s right, pay her compliments while she replaces you. I was always weak in the head — that must be it. I can’t seem to care anymore about what I’m supposed to do. This is not a typical scenario.

“What are you thinking about, Mrs. Fox?” Mary Foxe asked.

I laughed again.

“You’re thinking of something funny?”

“He said you were British.”

“Mrs. Fox,” she said. “I think I’m more like you than not.”

“How can you know that?” Anger began to kick in. “How can you know that?”

Mary Foxe looked up at me with big, thoughtful eyes. “I’m glad there isn’t a stapler around.”

Abruptly, I asked her if she knew whether I was pregnant. I’d cancelled my appointment with the doctor. It’d be a bad scene if I was pregnant and a bad scene if I wasn’t.

“You don’t look pregnant,” Mary Foxe said.

“Do you mean you don’t know? If you don’t, just say so.”

“I don’t know. Of course I don’t know. How could I know that? I’m not a doctor.”

“I thought you were. . magical or something. Like a spirit.”

She opened her eyes very wide, wondering at me. “No, I don’t think I am.”

“Okay. Not magical and not a doctor. Got it.”

She was really too amusing. Now that I’d asked if she was magical, I could see her wondering whether she might be magical, after all. What was this, me finding myself wanting to look out for this girl, thing, whatever she was?

“What do you want, Mary Foxe? My husband?”

“I believe in him,” she said slowly. I wondered if she’d ever told him that, and if so, what he had to say about it. Someone you made up turns around and tells you they believe in you — what response could you possibly make? The scenario is just plain weird. And really kind of impertinent on her part, too. If it happened to me I think I’d be speechless for the rest of my life.

“I love him,” she added. That simple tone again; she thought this was something that was all right to say to me.

“That’s nice. So do I.” We sized each other up again.

“Mrs. Fox.” Mary put a hand on my arm, and we jumped away from each other in a hurry. The static, the awful static of her touch, it was exactly the way I imagined I’d feel if I ever brushed against an electric fence. My knees knocked together in a frenzy.

“That caused an unpleasant sensation and I won’t do it again,” said the little comedian across the room.

“Good. Well, you were about to say something. Go on.”

“I wondered if you had eaten today.”

“No, I haven’t. What’s it to you?”

“I wondered — I wondered if we could go out to dinner together. Someplace fancy. And if I could wear a nice hat.”

She wondered if we could go someplace fancy for dinner and whether she might wear a nice hat. One of mine, I suppose, since there weren’t any other hats to hand. For all her shapeliness, this wasn’t a woman I was dealing with. This wasn’t the M. I’d pictured when I’d looked over that list of things in her favour. She seemed a girl barely in her teens, mentally speaking. What if I worked on her a little, taught her a difficult attitude and sent her back to her master with it?

“I know a place,” I said. “Let me just get dressed.”

She turned her back while I dressed. Then we tried all my hats on and I got caught up in the excitement of taking someone new — a brand-new person, almost — out to do something new. She got the giggles and so did I, so loudly that I thought St. John was going to hear from all the way downstairs and come up to see what was going on. He didn’t. She decided on a hat. Then changed her mind. And changed her mind and changed her mind. Very indecisive about hats, that Mary Foxe. Maybe she’d tire of St. John and slope off somewhere. Maybe she’d vanish the moment I set foot in the restaurant and asked for a table for two. How foolish I’d look. But I was prepared to risk it. I wanted to see a smile on her face — some people make you want to see them smiling. And I like a project. I do like to have a project.

After about twenty minutes of hat changing, I’d insisted she stick with the black cloche hat she had on. She pinned on a brooch of mine and moved this way and that so it glinted at her in the mirror, eager magpie of a girl. We rang for a taxi, and I let her give our address — she recited it carefully, and looked so excited. She waited out on the porch, hopping, though she said she’d try to be patient, and I knocked at the door of St. John’s study.

“Daphne?” he called out. But not at first. He had begun to say “Mary” and stopped himself. I went in, stayed near the door. He dropped his pen and stood up, strangely gallant. What for? It was only me.

“You’re really something, you know that?” I told him. That wasn’t what I’d meant to say, it just came out. It was the audacity of what he was doing, and the fact that I couldn’t fathom how the hell he was doing it.

“Well, so are you,” he said, and looked admiring, turning his reply into a comment on the way I looked tonight. Our exchanges always seem to turn into whatever he wants them to. I don’t think any woman can get the better of him. Keep things brief, Daphne, keep things brief, and you’ll get out with your head still on your shoulders. This man is a deadly foe.

“I just wanted to say I’m going out to dinner at the Chop House.”

“Great. We haven’t been there in a while, have we? Let me just finish my sentence, and—”

“Oh, no, you take as long as you need. I’m going with Greta.”

“Oh, then don’t worry about my dinner, I don’t need feeding at all. I get by on liquor and flattering notices in the newspapers,” he said evenly. A dark man, my St. John, tall and broad-shouldered and full of force he doesn’t exert. I’m only just starting to see him clearly.

“Stop it. She asked me centuries ago.”

He inclined his head to show that he had heard. He mumbled something. Against my better judgment, I asked him what he’d said.

“Just Greta?”

“What do you mean, ‘Just Greta’?”

St. John sat down again, scanning the page he’d just been working on. As he read he began to look baffled, as if someone else had snuck in and scrambled his sentences while he’d been talking to me. “Wondered if she’d make Pizarsky tag along, that’s all.” He attacked his page with short, exasperated scratches of his pen, crossing out. He didn’t seem to like a single word he saw.