The Vanishing Half(39)
She couldn’t tell him the real reason; he didn’t even like her to pay for dinner, always reaching for his wallet as soon as the check came. He would never agree to let her pay for an expensive surgery. And what if he misunderstood? What if he thought she wanted him to have the surgery because she wanted him to change? She could never tell him, not until she’d saved so much money that he would be foolish to refuse it. She slid into the crook of his arm, touching his face.
“I just thought it’d be nice to have some extra cash,” she said, “that’s all.”
* * *
—
THAT SEMESTER, she thought of bodies.
Once a week, she sat on the edge of the bathtub, holding a hypodermic needle while Reese rolled up his plaid boxers. On the counter, a glass vial filled with a liquid that was yellowy clear like chardonnay. He still hated needles; he never looked when she flicked the tip before squeezing the fat part of his thigh. Okay, she always whispered after, sorry that she’d hurt him.
Each month, he paid out of pocket for a vial small enough to fit in his palm. She barely understood how hormones worked, so on a whim, she enrolled in an anatomy class that she enjoyed far more than she’d expected. The rote memorization that bored the rest of the class thrilled her. She left flash cards labeled with body parts strewn all over the apartment: phalanges by the bathroom sink, deltoids on the kitchen table, dorsal metacarpal veins squeezed between couch cushions.
Her favorite organ was the heart. She was the first person in her class to properly dissect the sheep heart. It was the most difficult dissection, the professor said, because the heart isn’t perfectly symmetrical but so close to it that you cannot tell which side is which. You have to orient the heart correctly to find the vessels.
“You really must experience the heart with your hands,” he told the class. “I know it’s slippery but don’t be shy. You have to use your fingers to feel your way through the dissection.”
At night, she placed her flash cards on Reese to quiz herself. He stretched out on the couch, reading a novel, trying to remain still while she propped a card against his arm. She traced a finger along his biceps, chanting the Latin terms to herself quietly until he tugged her into his lap. Skin tissue and muscles and nerves, bone and blood. A body could be labeled but a person couldn’t, and the difference between the two depended on that muscle in your chest. That beloved organ, not sentient, not aware, not feeling, just pumping along, keeping you alive.
* * *
—
IN PACIFIC PALISADES, she carried platters of bacon-wrapped dates around a mixer for booking agents. In Studio City, she served cocktails at the birthday party of an aging game-show host. In Silver Lake, a guitarist hovered over her shoulder to ensure that the crab salad was made from real crab, not imitation. By the end of her first month, she could pour a martini without measuring. At the laundromat, she found crushed water crackers in her pockets. She could never wash the smell of olives off her hands.
“Why don’t you see if the library’s hiring again?” Reese said.
“Why?”
“Because you’re always gone. I barely see you anymore.”
“I’m not gone that much.”
“Too much for me.”
“It’s better money, baby,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “And I get to see the city. More fun than being stuck in some old library all day.”
She worked jobs from Ventura to Huntington Beach, Pasadena to Bel Air. In Santa Monica, she carried a tray of oysters through the home of a record producer, pausing in the foyer to admire the pool that spilled endlessly toward the skyline. From here, Mallard felt farther away than ever. Maybe, in time, she would forget it. Push it away, bury it deep inside herself, until she only thought of it as a place she’d heard about, not a place where she’d once lived.
“I just don’t like it,” her mother told her. “You oughta be focusin on your studies, not servin white folks. I didn’t send you all the way to California to do that.”
But it wasn’t the same, not really. She wasn’t her grandmother, cleaning after the same family for years. She didn’t wipe the snotty noses of children, she didn’t listen to wives complain about cheating husbands as she mopped the floor, she didn’t take in laundry until her home crowded with other people’s dirty underwear. There was no intimacy here. She swept through their parties, carrying trays of food, and never saw them again.
Late one night, she lay in bed holding Reese, too hot to fall asleep so close to him but unable to let go.
“What you thinkin about?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Just this house in Venice. You know they had centralized air? And didn’t even need it. So close to the beach, they could just crack open a window and cool down. But I guess that’s how rich folks are.”
He laughed and then climbed out of bed to bring her a cup of ice. He slipped a cube through her lips and she swirled the ice around her mouth, surprised by how normal this all felt. Months ago, she couldn’t even admit that she had a crush on Reese, and now she was lying naked in his bed, chewing ice. She peeked through the blinds at a police helicopter whirring overhead and turned back to find him staring.
“What?” she said, laughing. “Stop that.”