Hunger's Brides (50 page)

Crack the door to the chain end—Why didn't she phone? Hello darling. She didn't
phone
first—that was the agreement—no she didn't, because I wouldn't have answered, wasn't that so, wasn't that true? It drove her mad it really did, what if there were an emergency—but Mummy there always
is—
god forfend her fable should end.

Okay she was sorry, she should have, but there was a good reason. Was I going to keep my dear old mother standing out there forever in the hall?
Open up
—yes time to get this over with.
What
good reason—and what the hell is that for? A little TV—television silly they invented it in the fifties, I'd heard of it? Here.

No
.

Take it for company.
I'd rather die
. It isn't my birthday. She knew that, who would know better than she? Give your mother a kiss—were those cold sores again honey you never had them as a kid. Christmas either—
why is she here?

She just knew this would be upsetting for me … but we were going to have to put our crucifixion dinner on hold. For just this Easter. She promised. Promise #1, here we go.

My fath—Jonas was taking her on a cruise—to the Levant!

Oh mummy le vaunted Levaunt. Turkey Syria Palestine Israel—mummy's own unchosen people—book a day trip a faery passage a Joppa-hop to Tarshish. Meanwhile I could just find myself a substitute family—
on TV
. Why didn't she do this twenty years ago? When it might have done us some good, she could have remarried a TV.

Here, let's just put it there, move the coffee table—My, what a lovely view of the park from here but this apartment—sorry hon but what a dump so dark. All these books everywhere, it looked like a riot in a
library. At least let her throw out these plants—her dear daughter, the brownest thumb in history—how was it going, my thesis my … book?

Swimmingly.

They'd always known I would do something extraordinary—something dread strange uncanny she meant—but look at overworked me—my colour was good but those eyes I couldn't be sleeping well. Here, take a few of her sleeping pills—the doctor's wife, my somnambulant dispensary. I had to get more rest. Really honey. Tender motherlook nurture-hand raised to cheek, caressy. Beulah, honey, if you could see what I see …

If she could only see what I feel.

White-blond hair almost natural but for the blondrusted peroxidated superannuated tips, and thin! that Grace was grace itself so thin her name was destiny. Haunches stairmastered, flanks tanned, ultrasuede-jacketed—no dowdy dowager she—nay aging Gracefully, sloely, courtesy of gin. Matron's veins natron-thinned, inner weather bombayed and balmy. Just the faintest whiff of camphor and balsam but such an exquisite corpse had the bride of doctor Frankincest—his addled and bridled bride all stitched, faintly riddled with a fine-welterwork of tummy tucks liposucks and lifts. Why for doctor daddy cardiology was such a waste, with all this cosmetic surgery spruce up so close to the back forty.

If she could only feel what I see….

Never mind all that now, dear. She was here to spend the afternoon together it'd be our Easter. Let's have lunch come now don't pull that face. So many good restaurants near here. Come now young lady, even scholars had to eat occasionally didn't they?
No lunch
. All right all right you win Beulah as always. How about a walk? She was not leaving here without spending quality time. Fresh air, come, please? pretty please, contact with the outside world, that couldn't be such a bad thing could it for a writer? Reality—life …?

A walk then. Down to the Bow banks our unmusical procession—buzz of grasswhips, moan of mowers—past boxy little houses, window washers in kerchiefs. Smileygreetings between strangers—howdy neighbour, incredible weather, init? Blame it on El Niño again, blame it on The Child. Nay we see naught sinister in March's green grasses and trees full-leaft.

Come on, Beulah, let's run for it!
—bolts over to the river across four lanes of traffic big horsey laugh leaving all in her wake. Such good fun
so tenniscourt nimble so full of sport is nimbussed blond-haloed Grace. She looks back at me from the far side of the street, smile fading face paling. She's still scared of what I might do.

Sky a psychopathic blue, the riverpath a Grimm freakshow of bikers skaters weaving—you call this in-line?—stay on your
side
. Blank-faced joggers on endorphin drips scuttling to fix. Skateboarders—flailing grunge-herons on asphalt dream quests. With each heathen faceplant, another tattooed communicant kisses Stonehenge.

Lonely as immigrants we the few walkers. In the park now we are the foreigners—among the strange-tongued families lolling around barbeque spits. How can kids so beautiful look so sad? Toddlers chasing goslings—insideous sinus hiss of geese. Starlings an oily weave of colours like cheap plastic wallets. Two black squirrels—bushy-tailed golems, their clockworks overwound.

Rodent frenzy, manic horror in the grass.

Come on—just two more blocks—let's do some serious window shopping. Right, quality time it was her dime her loonie her dying afternoon.

Kensington—urban planning's village idiot—slackjawed, adrool, oxymoronic. Toyshops loveshops health food humidors lumped under awnings in promiscuous congress. Let us stroll now you and I, scrawl doubt across the neon sky like a pornqueen bowdlerized in a stable. Let us wrinkle lordly turned-up noses at glo-bowlization's rich smorgasbord: gimmicked Greek restaurants, a Vietnamese sweatshop back of each gleaming Acropolis.

Let's go in. What
here?
A
walk
she said. She promised me. Promise #2. It was okay they had a salad bar. How did she know that—she phoned ahead didn't she? So did we have a reservation already, something cosy for two? At last she unveils: ever our mistress of fun and diversions, Mummy capo, ever the camp doctor's collaborator. O arbiter of tabled entreaties, architect of the imaginal line—black underground pipeline siphoning off the rank swamps of our family romance. Eat what your stepfather oh so logistical has provisioned—four place settings, four players on an edible altar. Doctor daddy's two square metres of European soil under a chessboard tablecloth—checked aggression, advantage to white. Spanish Conquest of the New World same channel at six each night—
provecho,
take profit from your meal—
provecho
eat if you know what's good for you eat if you love your mother eat….

Mother and child walk on, lost in their reveries, stop down the block before a little prairie church between the parking lots. Oh look honey, they haven't torn this one down yet. Chapel of Abundant Living. Looks like some kind of cult now.

I had only to say the word and she'd cancel their cruise just one word we'd all spend Easter together. And miss le Levaunt! And spoil such a nice coincidence? Wouldn't hear of it, vouldn't vant that at all. Don't cancel for me no please take an extra week or century. Bye-bye, mum, gotta run. Say so long. No don't cry mummy too graceful for tears too old for new tricks. Thank U4 dTV, thanks for the day, thanks for the memorex. No really, gotta go now. LuvU2.

Where were you then mum?—swamp-hid twenty years cowering in the delta sunkdrunk in the family muck. Eat, child, what I have prepared for you. Garbage in, garbage out.

I will not eat in your house.

The local-colour cruises, disasters of the month in four-colour separation / racial harmony by Benetton. The rhinestone volunteerism on the sadsad soup-lines one day a month. The heartfelt human interest stories, all the seize-the-day literature all the bittersweet inspiration—when I hear the word
lifestyle
I think handgun, I think hangin, reach for my lasso. FUCK your penny-epiphanies isn't life a marvel, turn the page.

Never met a pagan I couldn't make my best friend at the stake.

Come, mum, let's step into the chapel a while instead, where it's cool, like the one you used to take me to. No need for reservations here. No it's not a synagogue but you're not a jew anymore, and yes confession is not protestant but it was a church once, what do you want? Let's not protest let's both CONFESS. Who goes first—my turn?

I do love you.

How's that for a shocker—does that make me a fool? Isn't that Christian of me after all we've been through? I love you still, sweet stitched bag of skin. Unto stillness itself, unto the stilling of days….

I shouldn't have left you back there alone in the street.

I am so tired. Tiredimetiredimetired. So very tired. Of fighting. Fighting you. Even him. I'm almost ready to take your offer. Denial. Forgetting, suspend belief, make disbelieve. Who says it's a cult—garbage in, garbage out. Deprogrammer's logic.

I only wanted you to make it go away. I wanted you to make me good. I want still to be good. I want

To be still … to be good.

How you tried. To make everything nicelypressed sweet-smelling tastyclean mannerly. Not just for yourself. For us all. For me. How I wish I could hate you even now. Making what's to come so much easier. Cleaner. Clearer.

You are the one mountain I cannot lift cannot clear away. I thought to move mountains lift them in my mind. I'm so tired inside my head I just want to rest. So empty now.

Here, I'll rest awhile, here, I wait for you. On the church step like a child … feel your cool palm on my cheek, your fingers smooth my hair. I see now that you are tired too. Not much longer, we're almost there. We're in the homestretch now.

T
HIS
N
EW
E
DEN
²³
        

11th day of July, 1667

Ixtapalapa, New Spain

My dearest Juana,

By now you know I have given up trying to persuade you and have left Mexico City. And if they have not told you already, you should also know I lied. I did not leave the Jesuit college willingly. I was expelled.

Seven and a half years ago voices—angelic voices, I thought—began flooding my mind, imploring me to study with the Jesuits, to enter into their service and care. But over the past few years another voice has come to haunt my sleep. It has returned almost every night. Indistinct yet imperious it leaves me no peace. Eventually the college had to find out that I'd taken to wandering the streets of Puebla, after everyone was asleep. It was not what they thought, what they tried to get me to confess, but it would have been too humiliating to try to explain. I said nothing in my own defence.

If I say now that I left because of you, Juana, it is not to lay blame….

But enough of this.

As you well know, the Viceroy's cousins are returning to Europe, speaking of nothing but you. You were a splendid success at their farewell party. They showed me the verses you composed for the occasion. You have done better work.

Tuesday, I came upon them in Mexicaltzingo just as they were having the last of their trunks hauled across the river. The girl is slightly more intelligent than her brother and the rest of their playmates. She remembered me as a friend of yours and has invited me to travel with them. How lucky to have had some of your fame rub off. I will grant it has been fascinating to journey with the lesser nobility. How many times have I made the trek between Mexico and Puebla and never once had an entire Indian village turn out to entertain me with dances and song.

It would have been uncivil and a little stupid to travel just ahead of them all the way to the coast. With my luck we would have ended up making the crossing to Havana, or even Cadiz, on the same small ship.

We in our position cannot afford the luxury of making enemies among the ruling classes, can we.

There. Go ahead and laugh. Here I am, travelling to Spain with the
very class of Spaniard that is driving me from Mexico. Yet I know you can understand how much less painful it will be for me to watch these parasites sucking their own country dry. Well you know my feelings; and now you know my plan, which is to leave this strangling, benighted continent. I say it again, Juana. There is nothing here for us.