This Body (10 page)

There sleeps Anne sometime of the night,

Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight.”

He leaned forward over the table, and the candle flames danced up within his pupils. He whispered, “Am I thy lord?”

Anne remained seated, but she sat on the edge of her chair, her forearms stretched out on the table toward him. She was smiling,
her eyes joining in on the dance. “Then I must be thy lady.”

“Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.”

There was silence. They could have been the only ones in the room.

Quince quipped loudly to Katharine, “She's not well married that lives married long, but she's best married that dies married
young.”

The screen fragmented to a thousand pieces but, like a jigsaw puzzle, projected only one image.

All is pain. All is repulsion
.

I am attacted to Robert Bennet as a man. I am thinking of him as a man. I am taking his love and his pride of his daughter
and turning it into something perverse
. She stared between them at the vase of red roses.
I am the unloved. No one loved me like that. No one ever loved me like that. No one will ever love me like that. My own husband
couldn't even wait a year before he married someone else. I am twice dead.

Katharine bolted upright, knocking the chair over behind her. She felt as if she were going to be sick, her dinner detaching
itself from the lining of her stomach. She ran upstairs, leaving the babble of voices behind her. She made it as far as Thisby's
bed and collapsed on it, holding down her threatening stomach. The sounds of sobbing that seemed to belong to someone else
filled her ears. Over and over, again and again.

The door to the room was suddenly flung open. Katharine lifted herself up on her arms, and Puck seemed to explode into the
room, slamming the door behind him. He was yelling as he came in, “You goddamned, self-centered bitch. I'm almost tempted
to —” He focused on his sister's blotched face. “Jesus.” He stopped a pace or two from her.

Katharine couldn't stop to say anything. The sobs wracked her body with a godlike hand.

“You weren't playacting.” He sat down on the edge of the bed but didn't touch her. “Jesus, Thiz. I haven't seen you cry since
you were fifteen.”

He waited until Katharine could control some of the sobs. “Remember what you told me?” He didn't wait for her to answer. She
couldn't have, anyway. “'I have good reason for crying, but this heart shall break before I'll cry again.' You misquoted it,
of course. Butchered it, actually. God, that drove Dad nuts. You were his little chip off the old block, but you couldn't
get a quote right for your life.” He shifted his weight on the mattress, and Katharine's sobs softened. “Maybe you have changed.
You're crying, at least.”

Katharine could feel herself fading, like disappearing ink on paper.

“Sleep. Let sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye, steal you a while from thine own company,” he commanded softly.

In her receding mind, Katharine thought she heard him add, “Bless thee, Thisby. Bless thee. Thou art translated.”

Act 1, Scene 6

Was I part of this curious dream?

— F
RANK
P
ETTINGELL
,
Gaslight
(1940)

The moon hung framed in the window seat of Thisby's bedroom like a huge klieg light suspended from the sky. Katharine felt
reamed.
Again
. She wondered how many times she would have to go through this process. It was like trying to stay nourished during a vicious
bout of the flu, hoping to keep something down — anything — crackers, 7-Up, clear soup.

It's just a matter of finding out what you can stomach
.

For a long, melodramatic moment, she mentally swallowed all the pills in the plastic vials back in Thisby's apartment.
I can always finish what Thisby started
, but then she remembered Puck's last line before she fell asleep, “Thisby, thou art translated.” The way he had said it made
her wonder if, as opposed to having been translated into a more understandable form, he meant that she was somehow different
— as in changed.
He would have meant Thisby has changed, of course, but so have I. I am no longer just Katharine
.

So what's the Plan now? What do I want? I know what I don't want. I don't want a Plan. I want to just be for a while. I want
to find the right pabulum to stomach
.

And if I die again, then how will I find out how this megillah ends
?

Despite her aching head, she got up and leaned against the pillows in the window seat. She looked down on the side yard off
the kitchen to the tennis court beyond. The moon struck wicked shadows; it seemed otherworldly. She noticed a hedge that separated
the house from the pool area. It had a shape to it. It was a beast. It reared up on hind legs, and its head roared as it cast
a giant shadow, long and eager on the grass. Had it been shaped, this hedge, with just this purpose in mind — to be best seen
when the moon was full and bright?
I wouldn't put anything past this family
.

There was a small reading light on the wall above her head, and Katharine reached up and turned it on. Its narrow beam highlighted
the knees of her accordioned legs —
just where a book should be
— but didn't dispel the secret garden enchantment outside her window.

She leaned over and rummaged through the bag that she had packed, pulling out the
Complete Works
. She ignored the introduction and the background notes and turned to
A Midsummer Night's Dream
.

At once she was transported to the city of Athens and the surrounding forest, where lovers flee and are separated, mismatched,
tested, and then put to rights at the end.

Katharine found the ending curiously interesting. Oberon instructs his fairy troops to bless the bridal beds so their children
will be born without the despised blots such as moles, harelips, and prodigious marks. She wondered why Quince embraced this
play, or Shakespeare at all, for that matter.
Wasn't she despised then
? The one line continued to chant through Katharine's head like a mantra. “Never mole, harelip … nor mark prodigious … shall
upon their children be.”

Katharine tried to imagine the Bennets in the various roles. Robert seemed more suited as the suave but rather domineering,
self-righteous Duke than the Merry Prankster, Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck. The Duke smirked witty asides to the group of lovers,
now newlyweds, as they watched the play
The Most Lamentable Comedy and Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisby
performed by the workmen. Katharine laughed at one such remark, “Or in the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush
supposed a bear.” She looked down on the hedge again. The moon continued to illuminate the area.

Not a beast, but a bear. How easy is a bush supposed a bear. I'll be damned
.

Like father, like son, Puck wasn't right for Robin Goodfellow. It was Quince she thought of when the Merry Prankster dashed
about, streaking the eyes of Queen Titania and one of the lovers with the cupid juice. It was Quince she saw with elfin ears,
crowing with delight as he gave the pompous workman, Nick Bottom, an ass's head.

She saw Anne not as Thisby, but as Hermia, one of the lovers — the one who was tenacious and resolute.

This whole family is miscast
.

As she continued to watch the shadow play below her, she absorbed the tragic love story of Pyramus and Thisby, separated from
each other by their families' hate and the wall that was erected between them. Their planned rendezvous is upset by Cruel
Fate, and they meet — only to die in each other's arms.

Is it my fate, like Thisby's, to be separated from my love, to be reunited only in death? Only in death? In death
?

There was a knock on the door, and a voice commanded through it, “Awake. Awake. The morning has chased away the night.”

It took a moment for Katharine to orient herself; she was reclining stiff and sore on the window seat, the morning sun flooding
in on her face. Then she called without hesitation through the closed door to Quince, “I'll be there anon.”

Downstairs Thisby's mother was quiet and awkward, and Katharine had to remember why. She felt giddy and light. She was filled
with lions, fairies, and bears.
Oh, my
.

Thisby's father was aloof, as if he wanted to let her know that he was not pleased.

Jesus, lighten up, you guys
. “About last night … I'm sorry,” she said to both of them. “I seem to have chronic PMS these days. The mood swings are incredible.
Schizophrenic, even.”

Anne stopped short with a knife in her hand. “You're not pregnant, are you?”

That stopped Katharine short too. The giddiness seemed to drain away like sand in a wide-waisted hourglass. “No, of course
not.”

Of course not? How would you know? You haven't been in this body long enough to know that.

Well, the way TB looked and lived, she probably didn't even have periods anymore. She can't be pregnant.

Breakfast proceeded. Her denial was taken at face value.
As if I knew for sure.

The food smelled only okay to her stomach, but she knew it wasn't the disruption of pregnancy that made it that way.
She can't be pregnant. I can't be pregnant. This is not morning sickness
. During the entire first trimester of her two pregnancies, it had been a continual chore to balance the food going into her
body and the food being unceremoniously purged from it. She remembered intimately the symptoms of morning sickness, and this
wasn't it.
Or at least I don't think so
.

She didn't know anything for sure anymore. When she thought she had gotten a handle on things, it seemed only to mean she
was kidding herself. The play was going on around her regardless of whether she knew her lines or not, and the outcome, though
obscure, was already scripted.

Play out the play.

Puck came in and offered a general good morning. He looked tense. He sat down across from Katharine and awkwardly caught her
eye. She smiled and tried to make it appear natural. That seemed to surprise him, but he relaxed noticeably.

Her smile had been sincere. She had gone to sleep the night before liking him.
He isn't such a bad guy.

“So when are you two heading back?” Robert Bennet asked them.

Soon they were all outside, jumbled under the honeysuckle canopy. The sweet smell of the flowers pressed down upon Katharine.
She hugged Thisby's father with much more ease than yesterday.
That was a short infatuation, I dare say
. She felt close to him, though.
A good old family friend.

“Come back soon, Honeybee,” he said as he released her. “I've missed you.”

“I will. I promise.” And it felt like truth. “Thanks, Anne.” Katharine turned to Thisby's mother.

“God's mercy, maiden,” Robert scolded from behind her, “Does it curd thy blood to say that she is thy mother?”

Katharine felt herself redden, and she fishmouthed. “I —”

“Oh, don't worry about it.” Anne waved it aside. “I don't care what you call me. Just call me.” She hugged Katharine and,
as she was releasing her, added softly, “Think about the treatment center, won't you? Or, at least, seeing Dr. Mantle again.
I'm worried about you.”

Katharine looked around for an escape. “Where's Quince?”

She was nowhere to be seen, so Katharine excused herself quickly and went back into the kitchen. Quince was sitting on a high
stool, her elbows on the counter, her head cradled in cupped palms. She looked up but said nothing.

“I wanted to say good-bye,” Katharine said, lamely.

“Good-bye.”

“So what's on tap?”

“What's on tap?” The left side of her upper lip rose in an exaggerated sneer. “Well, like the pelican, I'm all tapped out.”

“Don't you have a job for the summer?”

“What would I want with a stupid job? Baby-sitting a bunch of spoiled brats? Being a lifeguard aide? I can't be a lifeguard
cuz I'm not sixteen. Mowing lawns? Nobody wants someone who looks like me hanging around outside their house. Maybe if I was
a Jap or a Spic or something, they wouldn't mind.”

“Come on, Quince,” Katharine said gently, as she realized that Quince was trying to impress her — impress Thisby — with her
talk.

“What? Okay, okay. Asian or Latina. Shit, you sound like Mom.”

Katharine stretched her mouth in an unspoken response.

“Maybe…,” Quince said slowly, not quite looking at Katharine, “Maybe I could find a job in Westwood, and then maybe I could
stay with you.”

Katharine stood very still, not even moving her eyes.
How am I going to get myself out of this one?

Bluff.

“Okay. Will you let me look around first?”

Quince's face lightened, but not too much.

“Does it have to be for money?” Katharine suddenly thought to ask.
What are you doing? I said, Bluff — don't get serious on me.

“A job without money? What kind of job is that?”