She read books on sociology, countless romance novels and mysteries, biographies of writers and film stars, years-old science magazines, and developed an understanding and love of poetry that had eluded her in high school. Of course she went for a lot of the Romantics, Donne and Keats and Shelley, as well as a few modernists—T.S. Eliot and James Dickey, Rainer Maria Rilke and the lyrical, gloomy Dylan Thomas. Cumulatively, they gave eloquent voice to her silent aches and hidden despairs.
Crime began to spread through the town: holdups, street fights, petty thefts, and acts of vandalism.
And in the center of it all stood the plant, a hulking, roaring dinosaur, fighting desperately against its own extinction as it sank into the tar of progress.
Amanda discovered Jane Eyre in the library one day. Over the next month she read it three times— —and the dinosaur howled in the night— —and her mother at day’s end sat staring at the television or listening to her scratchy old record— —and her father's eyes filled with more fear and shame as he came to realize he was never going to be called back to work— —and somewhere inside Amanda a feeling awakened. She did what she could to squash it but it never really went away.
So sometimes, very late at night when shameful fantasies are indulged, she took a certain private pleasure as she lay in her bed, and usually felt like hell afterward, remembering the words to a nursery rhyme her mother used to read to her when she was a child:
"Mirror, mirror, tell me true
Am I pretty or am I plain?
Or am I downright ugly?
And ugly to remain?"
No man would ever want her in that special, heated, passionate way. She was too plain, and the plain did not inspire great passion.
Mirror, mirror, told her true.
3. “...She Was Alone
When I Got There.”
Amanda finished giving her statement to one of the police officers on the scene (who failed to ask for her address and home phone number until she volunteered the information) and was getting ready to leave when she saw the man who'd taken her spot in the booth. His shirt was spattered with dried blood and his face was three shades whiter than pale. He looked up from his shaking hands for a moment, through the swirling visibar lights and milling patrons, past the police officer who was taking his statement, and stared at her.
It seemed to her that she ought to say something to him—but what?
Before she could come up with an answer she found herself walking across the parking lot and coming up next to him. He was no longer looking at her—if he actually had been in the first place. He ran a hand through his hair and turned toward the officer beside him.
“You say she just doubled over suddenly?” asked the officer.
“Uh, yeah, yeah. It was weird, y’know? We're sitting there talking and then she starts...blinking. I'm thinking to myself, ‘Oh, Christ, she's lost a contact lens,’ then she bends over, real violently, like maybe she's gonna throw up or something and I moved out of the booth to, y'know, help her get out and over toward the bathroom but she's making this sound, this awful sound like she's choking and now I'm shaking 'cause I've never had to Heimlich someone but she sounds in pain, serious pain, and I reached over to grab her and she pulls away and covers her eyes with her hands, and now she's groaning and wheezing and people around us are looking, so I reach for her again and that's when I see there's all this...blood coming out from under her hands. It was fuckin' horrible.”
The officer finished writing something down, then said, “Was there anyone else in the booth with her?”
“No. She was alone when I got there.”
Amanda turned away, biting down on her lower lip as if that would be enough to shield her from the invisible fist that had just rammed into her gut, and half-walked, half-ran to her car where she checked her eyes—no, not her eyes, not hers at all—again in the rearview mirror, then turned the key in the ignition, backed out, and drove away.
She had no idea how long or how far she drove, only that she had to stay in motion while the numb shock of realization ebbed into a dull thrum of remorse. She hadn't meant for anything to happen to the woman, not at all, but—
—Was there anyone else in the booth no she was alone when I got there no she was alone no she was ALONE—
—bastard had bumped right into her. Right into her.
Twenty deadened minutes later, feeling very much like an etherized patient on the anesthetist's table, she parked in front of a church, stepped out of the car, then walked up the steps and through the doors, pausing only to dip her fingers in the marble font of holy water and make the Sign of the Cross over her forehead and bosom, then strode down the aisle, through a set of small wooden doors, lowering to her knees as she pulled the doors closed and a small overhead light snapped on—
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."
Kneeling in the confessional, her voice that of a disembodied ghost, Amanda felt as if she were being operated by remote control, only vaguely aware of the words coming out of her mouth, mundane sins—cursing, lusting, small acts of thievery like sometimes not putting a quarter in the box at work when she got a cup of coffee, sins of omission, white lies, I meant no harm, then she was whispering, humiliated, about impure thoughts that still moved her blood faster and still took her to a private place where moist fantasies waited for her...
...and in one of these private places where plain-faced fantasies lay hidden, she was as beautiful as she wished to be and with a man who not only loved her but desired her as a result of that love, his lips moving down the slope of her breasts, his tongue tracing soft circular patterns around her nipple— She was suddenly, awkwardly aware of the claustrophobic silence in the confessional, and wondered how long she'd been quiet. On the other side of the screen the priest asked, "Are you all right?" She pulled a compact from her purse, opening it to examine her eyes in the mirror. "No."
"What’s really wrong?" His voice was soft and velvety, like Burt Lancaster’s in Atlantic City. She wondered what the priest looked like; maybe he was young, perhaps handsome and—
—stop it right now, you're bordering on pathetic.
She almost rose but hesitated for some reason, and in that moment the soothing male voice on the other side said, "Please, ma'am—uh, miss—if you can, try to forget that you’re talking to a priest. I know that sounds trivial but you might be surprised how much it helps some people. You could pretend I'm a close friend—" "—don't have any real close friends—” “—then your mother or father, maybe a sister—" "—my parents are dead and I don't—" She blinked, realizing something. True, she had no siblings, had been an only child— —but she did have sisters, nonetheless.
In restaurants, in the lobbies of movie theaters, standing in the checkout line at the grocery store or wandering the aisles of video rental stores twenty minutes before closing, they were there, her sisters, waiting for something that would probably never come along, waiting alone, always looking toward a place not imagined by the beautiful or ugly, a spartan, isolated place reserved for the plain, for those never noticed, not bothered with; every so often their eyes would meet her own and Amanda would detect a glint of recognition in their gaze: I know just how you feel and just what you're going through, and I'd smile if I could but it’d probably look awkward, if not absurd, so I’ll just go on my way and promise you that I’ll remember your face, one much like my own, and I’ll wish you well, and good luck, you'll need it.
Then it was through the checkout, down the next video aisle, into the darkness of the movie theater, or out of the dining room and into the night, never speaking, never allowing for a moment of tenderness, keep that guard up because it's all you've got, and it should be enough, that guard, but sometimes it wasn't, sometimes it slipped and something painful leaked inside, or something ugly slipped out—