Barry Hannah - Airships

“Can’t you see it? Can’t you see the charm?” I demanded.

“Whatever, it don’t sweeten me,” he said, setting down his glass.

He went out the study door.

There, leaning on the piano, in her perfect cobalt gown, was Patricia. She was waiting for Underwood. Near her, as I have intimated, I sometimes have no sense of my own petty mobility from one place to another. I appear, I hover, I turn. Her lush curls burned slowly round and round in the fire of the candle of the mantel. A blaze of silver came from her throatpiece, a lash of gemmy light bounced from her earrings.

Not a soul was in the room with her.

“Underwood’s left,” I said.

“Music gone?” she said, holding out her hand and clutching her fingers.

“It would be cooler upstairs with your little window unit. You could read. What were you reading tonight?”

“ Heidi . Such a sugar,” she said.

“Oh, yes. Much sugar. The old uncle.”

“Mountain,” she said.

By this time only the priest was left. He was having an almost rabidly sympathetic conversation with my wife. The man was flushed out and well drunk, a ship’s captain crying his full speed ahead in the stern house of a boat rotting to pieces.

I looked over the long table of uneaten fish tasties. The heat had worked on them a couple more hours now and had brought them up to a really unacceptable sort of presence.

“Well. Ho ho. Look at all the stuff. All the cost,” I said.

“Just garbage God knows who, namely me, has to haul off and bury,” said my wife.

“Ah, no madam. I’ll see to all. Trust me. I’m made for it,” swore the priest.

With that he began circling the table, grabbing up the fish dainties and cramming them in his pockets, coat and pants, wadding them into his hat. He spun by me with a high tilt of adieu. But then he bumped into Patricia, who had come in, and spilled some of the muck in his hat on the front of her gown. She didn’t move. Then she looked downward into her bosom to the grease and fish flesh that smeared her gown.

“Fishies,” she said.

“What a blight I am! On this one, on this innocent belle! Strike me down!”

The priest wanted to touch her and clean her off, but could not. His hands trembled before the oil and flakes of fish on her stomach. He uttered a groan and ran from the house.

After he’d gone, the three of us stood there, offering no movement or special expression.

“You ought to go up and clean yourself,” Carolyn said to Patricia.

Patricia put her foot on the first stair and looked at me with an appeal. But then she went rapidly up and we could hear her air-conditioner going when she opened her door and then nothing when she closed it.

We straightened up awhile, but not very thoroughly. Then we got in bed.

“You’ve ruined my life,” said my wife. “This party showed it.”

“What’s wrong ? What do you mean?”

“Stop it. What’s to pretend? Your twin goddamned sister. Your wonderful spiritual feeble-minded sister.”

“Not! Not! It’s just not our language she speaks! Don’t say that!”

“ You taught her all the goddamned English she knows. Oh, when you explained, when she first came, that she was just silent, different! We went through all that. Then we’ve had her out of pity. . ”

“She doesn’t need anybody’s pity! Shut your mouth!”

There was a long hot silence. Above us we heard rocking sounds.

My wife hissed: “She’s never even cleaned herself up.”

“I’ll see.”

“Oh, yes, you’ll see ! Don’t bother to wake me when you come back.”

Carolyn had drunk a lot. I went to brush my teeth and when I came back out she was snoring.

I rose on the stairs.

The cool in Patricia’s room had surpassed what is comfortable. It was almost frigid, and the unit was still heaving more cold into the room. She sat in the rocking chair reading her book. The soiled gown was still on her. She raised her hand as I passed her to turn down the air-conditioning, and I held her hand, coming back to stare over her shoulder.

There was a picture of Heidi and her goat upside down.

“Let’s get you in your little tub,” I said.

I stripped the gown from her. Then I picked her up and put her in the tub, turning on the water very slow as I lathered her all over.

I gave her a shampoo. Pulling an arm up, I saw what was needed, ran the razor gently over her pits, then saw to the slight stubble on her legs. This is when she always sang. A high but almost inaudible melody of the weirdest and most dreamlike temptation, it would never come from another person in this world.

I began sobbing and she detected it.

“I love you with everything that lives me,” she said. “You love me the identical?”

“Everything. Yes.”

“Mickey,” she said. She clutched one breast and with the other hand she raised the red curls and lips of her virgin sex. “Are you like me?”

I looked away and was getting a towel.

“Yes. I’m exactly like you. We’re twins. We’re just alike,” I said.

“That’s why we can love each other everything,” she said.

“Exactly. Just the same.”

“Show me you.”

“We can’t. I can’t because of the rules.”

“Oh, yeah, darling, the rules!”

She’d always shown a peculiar happiness about the rules.

When I got her in bed, I wound up downstairs, no memory of having traveled anywhere.

I was breathless. My heart was big. Sometimes like this I thought it would just burst and spray its nerves into the dark that would not care, into the friends that would not care.

In bed again I found Carolyn was not asleep at all. She was sitting up.

“Did you finish with her?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t tell me what went on. I don’t want to know. I love you too much to do anything about it. But look what you’ve dragged me into.”

“I know.”

“You can’t sleep with me tonight. Get out of here.”

“I know,” I said.

I got the flashlight and got in the closet again, pulling the door to. I went through all the newspaper notices and the college term papers and picked up the love letters. They were on lined paper, grammar-school paper. It was the summer after I’d taught her to write.

Mickey I love you. There isn’t anything but love of you for me. I see the way you walk and your shoes are nice. I desire to thank you with my tongue and my legs too. The tongue and legs are good places. But the most is under my chest where it beats.

Sincerely yours,

Patricia

I held all the others, her letters, as the handwriting improved, and saw the last ones with their graceful script, even prettier than I could write on a good day. My essence yearned and rose from the closet and my roots tore from me, standing up like a tangled tree in dark heaven. My mother gave Patricia to me before she threw herself into what she called her patriotic suicide — that is, she used Kentucky whiskey and tobacco and overate fried foods in a long faithful ritual before she joined my old man in the soil near Lexington.

I thought heavily and decided I’d go back down South.

I was tired of Washington, D.C.

I was tired of my vocation.

I was tired of me.

Somewhere near the sea we’d go. Carolyn and Patricia both loved the sea. I’d find a town that would appreciate me for my little gifts and we’d move there. Have new friends, more privacy. I might turn back into a Democrat.

Changes like that never bothered my heart.

We were very fond of Mrs. Neap’s place — even though it was near the railroad. It was a rambling inn of the old days, with its five bathrooms and balcony over the dining room. We had been harboring there for a couple of weeks and thought we were getting on well enough. But then she comes downstairs one morning holding a swab, and she tells me, looking at the rest of them asleep on the couches and rug: “This is enough. Get out by this afternoon.”