Mary Gaitskill - Veronica

I was going to show myself to my father, living big and bold. Mostly when I called him, I was stilted and hidden. Now I would show him something. I didn’t know what. But I would show him. Jean-Paul had fucked me shallowly a long time before finally sticking it in. I was still drunk with feeling between my legs. The room blurred and swam in my eyes. I heard myself murmur, “I love you, Daddy.” But when he answered the phone, I couldn’t speak. His voice was a mild voice, tired and kind. There was nothing big in it. I didn’t know how to speak to it. I was abashed before it. “Hello?” said the voice. “Hello?” Darkness spread around me, and in it I was tiny. “Hello?” Across the ocean, my father sighed. “Hello?” He hung up. Comforted, I went back to the party.

Sometimes, Alain and I still slept together. He would come into my room in the early morning, when it was still dark. He would bend over me and cover my face with tiny kisses, his rough coat brushing against me. He stroked my face with his cold hands and spoke so gently that I couldn’t hear him. I thought I heard “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He was so drunk, his eyes were finally quiet, swollen and rolled back in his head. He would lie beside me, and I would kiss his hands and his temples, shivering with the night air on his clothes. He would kiss me back and touch my body and then fall asleep. I would put my back against him, then pull his arm around me and hold it there. Little gusts of morning air made the shade tap against the window frame. Sunlight crept under the shade and across the floor. Strange to think it was the same sun the cat and I had watched on the dining room floor a long time ago.

But mostly, he didn’t sleep with me. Sometimes he didn’t sleep at all. Sometimes I’d wake up and find him in the living room with Jean-Paul and some girl, watching TV with red eyes and open dry mouths. Once I came out and saw Cunt Face bent over the kitchen table with his pants down so that Alain could give him a clap shot. Alain didn’t look up. Jean-Paul smiled wanly, then winced when Alain jabbed him. He must’ve asked for the shot; Alain didn’t give them away. Even friends had to pay.

Heather and Trisha are almost asleep before the TV. Joelle is standing at the sliding glass door, looking at the sky. The sun has broken through somewhere; the tops of the trees are glowing, almost gold with sunlight. Everything else is gray. A piece of rippling fish tank is reflected in the glass, like a mysterious heart in a gray body. A tiny fish flickers across it. Joelle stretches up a hand. “This is my eyes.” She stretches up the other. “This is my ears.”

Joanne stands beside her. The sun plays across her sideways face. I can see the white down on her skin. I can see the tiny crosshatch marks in the softness of her cheeks, the acne scars pocking one side of her face, the dark pouches under her eyes. Liver, weariness, bile. The weight of her cheeks just starting to pull her mouth into a severe shape. Sensitive lips now sensing death mingled with all the tastes of life. All her pores opened and saturated with waning life. Still sending out the message of Here I Am. The little girl stretches her face up to receive it, drinking in with her own perfect skin what it is to be. Joanne turns to face me. Behind her eyes, she is going from room to room, turning on the lights.

“What are you thinking?” she asks.

That you are beautiful. That not everyone could see it. I almost became the kind of person who could not. I missed being that kind of person by a hair.

“About the way I used to be. Things I used to do. You know. Stuff I can’t understand anymore why I did it.”

The girl pricks up her ears. “What did you do, Alison?”

I turned into a puppet with a giant hand inside me. Not a particular hand. Just a hand. During a fitting, a client jabbed my crotch with her long nails. She was supposedly smoothing the wrinkles on some pants. She snapped, “You keep sweating!” then twisted my leg so hard, she hurt my knee. I went into hysterics and was fired for the first time. I insulted Alain in public and arrived home two days later, to find myself locked out of the apartment. I ran to the bank, but I was too late — two years too late. I could only get fifty thousand francs. The rest was in a Swiss bank account in the agency’s name.

I look into the child’s eyes. She meets my look, takes it in. She frowns and looks down, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. At that age, they know about doing things you don’t know why you did. When I was five, I slammed Daphne’s leg in the car door. We were having a fight and she said something I didn’t like. I was in the car and she was just getting in and I slammed her leg. She screamed. My mother yelled, “Why did you do that?” I was too shocked to answer. I stroke Joelle’s lowered head. The shine of the sun follows my hand on her gold-brown hair.

We were stupid for disrespecting the limits placed before us. For tearing up the fabric of songs wise enough to acknowledge limits. For making songs of rape and death and then disappearing inside them. For trying to go everywhere and know everything. We were stupid, spoiled, and arrogant. But we were right, too. We were right to do it even so.

Drew walks in. Rough face flushed and sensate. Eye sparkle rooted in the slow, low body. The spry feet of a dandy. Long graying hair fluffy and touched with rain. He stops and his eyes zero in on me. I sit down and take his socks off my feet. I have to go. Heather and Trisha wake for me to kiss their cheeks. Trisha hugs my legs and shouts, “Good-bye!” I bend and kiss her forehead. Ten years from now, I will be a kiss in a great field of faceless kisses, a sweet patch of forgotten territory in her inner country. Joanne hugs me, too, her heart against mine. Nice to think that in her dreams Trisha might run through that field and love it without knowing why. Drew puts out his hand and I clasp it. There is a ball of heat and feeling in his palm. The same feeling as when he pressed up against me that time. If I asked him why he did that, what would he say? I still have this. Do you see? I am sick. One day, I could be very sick. But in the meantime, I still have this and it’s still good. Do you see? I do see. It’s not just sex. It’s why he can help other men without making them feel like bums. Why people will listen to him when he’s not saying words. Yes, I see . I tell him that with my eyes. He thanks me with his eyes. He lets go of my hand.

The rain is out again, hammering the puddles full of holes, pocking the black-and-silver world with shining darkness. Rain soaks each leaf and blade of grass, bloating the lawns until they seem to roll and swell. Houses recede. The wind rises. The eyes and ears of God come down the walk.

I should go home. I’m tired and weak. Should take the bus. Should call my father. He is alone in an apartment with junk mail and old newspapers spread all around. Looking here and there in bafflement while dry heat pours out on him from a vent in the ceiling. His radio with a bent antenna on the dining table is tuned to a sports channel. People on magazine covers smile up from the floor and tabletops — a flat field of smiles blurred with slanted light from the cockeyed lamp. My father doesn’t listen to his old songs anymore. They finally went dead for him. Instead, he has these people in magazines and on TV: actors, singers, celebrities. He knows they are vessels for a nation of secret, tender feeling, and he respects them. I think he tries to cleave to them. But I don’t think he can.

Above me, the treetops wave back and forth, full of shapes, like the ocean. Wild hair, great sopping fists, a rippling field, a huge wet plant with thousands of tiny flowers that open and close with the wind. Form recedes. All the smiling television faces blend to make a shimmering suit that might hold you. I see my father trying to put one of them on. Reaching for it trustfully, noticing the poor quality but letting it pass. Smiling like he doesn’t see when it falls apart in his hands. Still wanting to believe. Afraid not to.