Mary Gaitskill - Veronica

A lot was taken. But not everything. Not from Veronica, and not from my father, either. When we listened to Rigoletto together, he had not ignored me. He had sent me a signal through his music. A signal so strong that twenty years later, I finally hear it. I hear him crying out with grief for his daughter, who was taken away from him and violated by people he found alien and terrible. I hear him crying out for Veronica, too, another daughter taken and violated fatally. I hear him signaling a grief so private, I knew nothing about it, even though it hurt so much, it made him cry out.

On both sides now, devil trees escort me. I hear her. The sun has come out. I hear him.

I gave up on music videos and moved back to New York. Incredibly, Morgan was still able to get me work. But I was older and something had gone out of me. I arrived late for bookings and on two occasions slept through them. My arm had lost full range of motion, which put me off balance. I drank too much and took pills and played with heroin. The work stopped coming. John called me from San Francisco to say he was starting an agency there; I went.

The agency was up a narrow flight of stairs on a cold Mission District street, next to a taquería. Just before I went up the stairs, I spied a bag made of hot pink leather lying on the street with its gold clasp open. I thought I’d pick it up on my way out to see if it could be salvaged, but when I emerged, somebody else had gotten it.

The agency lasted a little over a year; then it became a modeling school (“… opening the door for potential models to enter an incredible career — or to make a splash in any field”), and I found myself telling nervous teenagers with bad skin and longing eyes that they might be models. After a month of this, I began drinking every night with a washed-up local musician and a former Playboy bunny who’d had an unhelpful face-lift. After two months, I had a terrible fight with John because I’d told an especially hopeless girl not to waste her money. I ran out, slipped on the stairs, and dislocated my shoulder when I grabbed the banister, hoping to break my fall. John drove me to the hospital. At a particular intersection, I could see unshed tears shining on his sideways eye.

I went back to temping, but my skills were dulled and the injuries to my arm and neck had traveled into my hand, making typing impossible. I saw a doctor, who said the problem stemmed from my neck and that there was an operation that might fix it. Years later, I read in the paper that, in addition to ruining my neck and arm, he had gotten into trouble for trying to perform cosmetic surgery on a horse. By that time, I had discovered I had hepatitis. Who wants to think about their liver or their hand? Now I have to think of mine — all the time.

When I come to the waterfall, I see someone standing on the rocks abutting it, looking into the rushing water — a man wearing a yellow rain slicker. We say hi and I stand near him for a minute, watching the movement of the water. I say, “Those trees there.” I point to a sick ocher tree visible in the canyon. “There must be something really wrong with them to make them look like that. But they’re so beautiful — it seems funny the disease would make them beautiful.”

“They’re not diseased,” he says without looking at me. “They’re madrones. They lose their bark in the winter. It’s normal.” His voice is faintly peevish, as if he wonders what kind of person would see illness in a tree just because it’s naked and ocher-colored. “It’s the tan oaks that are diseased. Not the madrones.”

“Oh!” I smile nervously. “But the color is so extreme; it’s amazing.”

“It’s not that bright usually. The wet brings it out.”

A month or two after Veronica died, I called David to see how her cat was doing. He said that she’d hidden under the bed for the first three days but had recently come up to sleep with him. The first time the cat came onto his bed was right after he’d wakened from a dream about Veronica. The dream had begun with David entering a mansion where a party was being held. The marble walls were veined with threads of purple, blue, and pink, and they were hung with paintings and treasures of all description. There were big windows draped with silk curtains and a skylight high above; the interior was full of light. In the center of the room was a live fountain, and guests were sitting around it. David was amazed at how beautiful they all were, how every detail of their clothes was perfectly done. Their faces were expressive, generous, and exquisitely intelligent. There was one woman he noticed in particular; even though he saw her from behind, there was something familiar about her. She wore a beautiful man’s suit, tailored to fit her. On her head of gold-blond hair sat a fedora, angled rakishly. She was talking to two men, and even from behind, her poise and intellectual grace were visible. As if she could feel David’s eyes on her, she turned to look at him. It was Veronica. She smiled at him, a dazzling smile he had never seen her smile in life. An elevator opened before her; she stepped into it and, still smiling, went up. When David woke, the cat was on his bed with its legs in the air, purring loudly.

When I got off the phone with David, I called Sara to tell her about it. I don’t know why. When I finished describing the dream, I said, “And that’s what Veronica was really like, under all the ugliness and bad taste. It’s so sad, I can’t stand it. She’d gotten so stunted and twisted up, she came out looking like this ridiculous person with bad hair, when she was meant to be sophisticated and brilliant. Like in the dream.”

Sara was silent, and in the silence I felt her furrow her brow. “I thought she was sophisticated and brilliant, Alison. I thought her hair was nice.”

Sara, the only one who saw Veronica the way she looked in her heaven. At forty-two she is now an administrator at the nursing home where she once worked as an aide. She was never married but she has a son, Thomas, who is autistic but also in the gifted program. She’s proud of him, but it’s hard. Daphne worries about her, sends her money. She worries about me, too, but I don’t let her send me money. She has three children of her own now, and her money is not unlimited.

Of the three of us, Daphne was the only one who did well enough to tell a happy story about. A story of love between a man and woman, their work and children. There are other stories. But they are sad. Mostly, they are on the periphery. If we were a story, Veronica and I would be about a bedraggled prostitute taking refuge in the kitchen with the kindly old cook. If the cook dies, you don’t know why. There isn’t that much detail. You just know the prostitute (or servant or street girl) goes on her way. She and the cook are small, dim figures. They are part of the scene and they add to it. But they are not the story.

On the way down the path, I have to crouch, holding the trunks of slim trees and bracing my feet in their roots. My red umbrella is closed and hanging from my wrist. Mother, Mod, modern, mod-el. That last syllable soft and unctuous. I think of my mother dying, her mouth small and sunken, her nostrils large and black. The four of us clasped hands and made a circle around her, standing at her bed or kneeling on it. We held it all between us: the sweet milk shake in the warm car, the blanket in the lamplight, the green chairs, the bright blue waves of the swimming pool, the Christmas tree jeweled with color. One by one, we bent our heads to hear her words. To me, she whispered, “My most beautiful.” Tears came to my eyes. She had never said the word beautiful to me as praise. “Mother,” I said. “I love you.” But she had faded again.