Mary Gaitskill - Veronica

A car pulled up to the curb. We glimpsed our mother’s boyfriend as he dropped her off — a dark mass of lust and need who kissed her in the car and drove away. Don’t bring me down, I pray . My mother came in wearing a pantsuit that was too short for her high heels. Her eyes looked like her leaping voice, and she walked like she was trying to go three ways at once. Here was the jealous, furious one: She was wearing big earrings and lipstick, and when she hugged us, sex came off her like a smell. Her jacket flapped open, showed hide with bristles on it, then flapped back: Here was the one who lay where she fell, moaning like a cow.

But then she sat down and crisply opened the plastic menu, and here was the true one: Mom, boss of food and treats. Our minds went blank and our bodies remembered when we were little: She was the one who bought us our first milk shakes. She carried them out to the car, holding all four huge shakes squeezed together in her hands. The four of us sat drinking the shakes in deep silence, until we had to get the last bit up from the bottom; then we all slurped together. The warm, close air of the car on our skin, cold sweetness in the mouth: It was a wonderful reversal of warm breast milk and cool air, and this was a breast we could all experience together. Just seeing her open the menu brought that feeling back without us knowing it. You’re just too good to be true . A slim white arm stirred the gold pudding. We went into a trance, staring at the things on the menu.

But then there were the three directions and the bristling hide. As soon as we got our food, she started talking about how hard she knew it was. How hard it had been for her not knowing whether I was alive or dead for weeks on end and getting no support from our father. She ate her rhubarb pie. She had tried her best to understand that things were different now, and she hoped we would, too.

“Do you want a divorce or not?” asked Daphne.

Inside our mother’s eyes, an expression opened like a mouth and then snapped shut while her normal mouth prissily ate the pie. “It takes time to know something like that,” she said. “A relationship of so many years is complicated.” She ate with her prissy mouth. The bristling hide swelled out.

“It’s not fair,” said Daphne.

She sat up. Under the earrings and lipstick, she was a plain woman, and she knew the dignity of plainness. “Do you judge me?” she asked quietly.

Yes, said Daphne’s face. I judge you and I hate you.

In my mind, I looked over my shoulder and pouted at a camera while the song played. Can’t take my eyes off of you . Invisible eyes on me were like an endless ribbon of sweet music. I don’t know what my face said.

“No,” said Daphne. “But I want to know if this is permanent, and so does Daddy.”

“So do I,” said our mother. “So do I.” And she looked sad. Her entire body looked sad. Daphne could do nothing against this except be sad herself.

The waitress came by with a sound of rasping and rubbing underclothes. She left the check on the table and disappeared through a swinging door. I glimpsed a bustling kitchen of steel tables and orderly movement, sandwiches and dishes laid out. A sharp-eyed little man in an apron suspiciously returned my look. What would it be like to work there?

Our mother opened her frayed wallet and wondered aloud how I’d make a living while I was writing poems.

“I could work in a restaurant. Or maybe I could be a model.”

“Right.” She sighed, got her wallet out and counted the bills carefully, figuring the tip on her fingers. “That sounds like a beautiful life.”

Inside Daphne, I felt something tremble like it would break, then hold steady.

Then came routine. My father drove Daphne and Sara to school on his way to work. I slept until noon, then got up and drank tea for hours. It was late November and light moved from room to room with the active silence of a live thing. The cat lifted her head and blinked the deep black slits, the active green of her eyes. I paced from light to shadow, feeling my way back into the fleshy place I’d torn myself from. When I got there, I’d sit in the dining room and study for the GED with the TV on the rerun channel, volume off. I used to watch these shows with my family. The black-and-white people were so full of memory and feeling that they were like pieces of ourselves, stopped in a moment and repeating it again and again, until it became an electronic shadow of the fleshy place. Sunlight ran over the table and onto the floor. I’ve touched you all day, it said, and now I have to go.

Sara would cut school and come home early, then leave. I’d see her outside, kissing some boy who’d slap her ass when he said good-bye. Or whispering to another chunky girl with saucy goblin eyes, who offered her tits to the world in a sequined T-shirt. In the street, boys rode their bikes in slow swooping curves and called to one another. I’d strain to hear them; I was afraid they were jeering at Sara. But she’d come in like a cat, with an air of adventure about her, inwardly hoarding it. She’d get some food and sit in the room with me, watching TV with one big leg slung over the arm of her chair. She didn’t ask questions about anything that had happened while I was away. She looked at me like she already knew and that it was okay. It felt good to be with her.

Once I asked my dad about her nose, and he said, “It’s broken ? Are you sure?” He seemed shocked, and then he said, “Are you sure it hasn’t always been that way?” Maybe he felt like everything was broken and he didn’t have time for one more thing. Maybe that’s why Sara was so mad at him. When he would ask her to help Daphne make dinner or clean up, she’d yell, “In a minute!” and then she wouldn’t do it. Or she’d yell, “We’re not your wives, and it’s not our fault if you don’t have one!” Then she’d run upstairs, sobbing with rage, and our dad would stand there like she’d gut-punched him.

Daphne and I hated Sara for acting like this. But it was hard to hate her all the way. Her rage was like gentleness trapped and driven crazy with sticks. It was flailing and helpless. It made Daphne’s measured goodness seem somehow mean. Maybe our father felt this, too. He never chased Sara up the stairs to shout back at her. He just stood there in pain. Then later at night, I would walk by his room. He would be lying in his pajamas and Sara would be sitting on a chair at the foot of his bed, rubbing his feet. Even just walking past, I could feel her concentration; it was huge and fleshy, like her yelling. And his feeling for it was huge, too. Once I heard him say, “You have good hands, Sara. You should be a nurse.” And she said, “Thank you,” her voice small, like a child’s.

I didn’t tell them about the modeling contest. I only mentioned it to Daphne while we were driving to the store. She half-listened, because she was mainly concentrating on smoking her cigarette and dropping ash out the window. I lied and said the photographer was a guy I got high with, and it just flew by her as one more piece of sad crap.

I still thought about modeling, but it was like something I’d masturbate over without expecting it to happen: A door opened and I was drowned in images of myself, images as strong and crude as sexual ones. They carried me away like a river of electricity. Electricity is complicated, but on direct contact, it doesn’t feel that way. It just knocks you out and fries you. The door would shut and it would be gone, except for a fading rim of electric fire, an afterimage burning a hole in normal life.

But mostly, I studied, watched TV, helped with dinner, wrote, went for walks with Daphne, saw friends who were still in school. On the weekends, there were beer parties in apartments with older kids. My friend Lucia was beautiful, even though she had bad skin and bleached hair. She was three months pregnant. When she graduated, she was going to get married and work the cash register at a store where we used to steal candy. I didn’t have disdain then, and so when I told her about the contest, I lied to impress her. I said I’d slapped Gregory Carson’s face, and that John had followed me out, begging me to enter the contest. We were sitting on a concrete stoop outside an apartment complex, drinking beers and watching cars drive in and out of a strip mall across the way. She smiled without looking at me, and I knew she could tell I’d lied, and that she forgave me. Music and laughter tumbled from the apartment in a snarl. Headlights flew past Lucia’s face and she gazed into nothing with a contentment that I didn’t understand. I saw it and I fertilized it . For a second, I pictured her eating dirt. Then I went home and half-listened to my father talk about what had gone wrong with the marriage and what might be done to “bring it back together.”