The Water Cure(22)
‘You can go ahead of me now,’ Llew says. ‘Who knows whether you were planning to kill me all along, trailing behind me there?’
When we reach the back of the house I lead him through the peeling ballroom doors, into the room’s shadowed interior. Nobody saw us, nobody sees us. We walk through the dim of the corridor together, the falling sun casting washes of light against the walls, and he hovers his long body a safe distance from mine. We no longer touch.
‘I’d like to be alone with you,’ he says, the same way he might say, I’d like to go for a swim.
I finally swallow the saliva collected under my tongue, imagine a dark syrup sliding somewhere towards my stomach with a calm that surprises me.
Before bed, I brush my teeth four times. When I first spit into the sink it is stippled lightly with blood. By the fourth brushing it is mostly blood, and I do not know whether it is his fault or mine, the toothbrush gouging at my mouth. Then I rinse with plain water, not wanting to risk going to the kitchen for salt and seeing anyone, gargling and gargling until every trace of toxin must surely be down the plughole. I cannot rinse the feel of it, though, and I do not want to, despite everything. When the bleeding stops, my gums are pale where I bare them but otherwise unchanged.
I should be thinking about atoning. But all I can think about is how when he kissed me for the second time he put a hand to the back of my head as if conscious of keeping me upright, and he was right, I did think I would fall, the swing of the sky as if I was on the edge of drunk, of something – and how did he know that I felt like that, how did he know to hold me upright, my tilting body, my eyes open wide?
At early dawn, I think I hear the strange bird return. Its song is an echoing call through the sky. And yet when I look there is nothing, no bird and now no sound either, though I’m sure it was not a dream. I go back to bed and hold my hands pressed very tightly between my knees and count to one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, the bones in my hands moving, a manageable pain that lulls me eventually to sleep.
My initial strategy was to adopt the men’s behaviours. I exposed myself to the bad air to try and make myself stronger, still lay on my usual park bench with my top rolled up an inch or two, exposing my ribs. I made my voice louder, so that people winced away from me. I walked with a rollicking, rolling gait.
We spied on Mother and King in the old days, their weekly dinners alone, followed by pecking at each other like birds on the sand, embracing on the recliners, followed by their move upstairs where they were not to be disturbed. The public acts of their bodies as important as the private, a demonstration to us that they were still very much in love. This ritual comforted me. It happened like clockwork, a scheduled intimacy that Mother explained was how intimacy should be, in a perfect world – never overwhelming, never lacking in joy. Small portions of love, held in the palm like a gift.
In the morning, Mother watches me watching him. Possibly she can read my thoughts, which are considering the possibilities of alone. At the end of breakfast, she makes me stay as everyone else files out.
‘You’re getting sick,’ she tells me. ‘You have to stay in solitary confinement until the afternoon.’
‘I feel fine,’ I tell her. She frowns, takes the thermometer from its case on the sideboard and offers it to me. I keep my tongue very still over the glass.
‘Like I thought,’ she says, frantic, holding it up to the light. ‘You’ve been spending too much time with them already. When will you learn to look after yourself?’
I follow her up to the bedrooms. We go into hers, not mine.
‘Meditate upon the irons,’ she tells me. ‘Sit on the floor and look at them.’
She leaves the room and locks me in behind her, so there’s no way out. I stare at the pieces of metal until my eyes water. Even I have no patience with myself, no actual interest in loving the sack of bones and guts that makes me up.
And yet – there in the garden, with the dirt caking the fabric at his knees and my body balanced on the balls of my feet, ready to fall over at any second, was something new. In a hot rush I realize that love may not be off-limits for me after all. An opportunity.
I know that without being touched I will die. I have known it for some time. It has always felt like I need more touch than the others anyway, my hands brushing over their shoulders or the tops of their heads as they shy away, because nobody is assigned to me. I am not anybody’s loved-most, have not been for some time. I have gone days, weeks, without touch and when that happens I can feel my skin thinning, I have to lay my body against grass and velvet and the corner of the sofa and rub my hands and elbows and thighs against anything until they are raw.
Later, released from confinement, I return to my room and the door snags on a scrap of paper. A note on the carpet. It’s a page torn from the Welcome Book in reception, lined in a faint gold. On one side, blue ink in cursive starts, Thank you for opening your home to me. On the other side, a black scrawl says, Meet me at the pool tonight, late. Llew.
He has been watching to see which room is mine, I realize with disbelief. I read the note five, six, seven times, then start to laugh, quietly, until I have to press my face into the pillow to stop the sound.
At evening prayers, I stare Mother right in the eye. I look at her the whole way through. She seems gratified, smiles and smiles at me. It is easy to please her, sometimes.