“I still can’t believe you were on TV.”
“Too bad it went so terribly.”
“I liked it,” I said. “Except the bit at the end. Where you called people hairy, thin-skinned lepers.”
“You heard that?”
“Your microphone was on.”
She sighed, pulled me under a tree, and made me look at her. In the middle of the park she opened up her jacket and unbuttoned her shirt and turned her naked torso to me, presenting the streaks of purple on her chest, the cat scratches of illness on her belly, the excessive hair all over.
“Take a long look at yourself, then take a long look at me, and tell me who is the hairy, thin-skinned leper.”
Tears filled my eyes. I should have known her muttering was directed at herself; I should have known she was berating her body like she always did. She cried too. The last time we had both cried together was even before we had stopped sleeping together. It was the night we had come back from the doctor the first time. Except then she and I held each other and cried as one, in bed, putting our lips like bandages upon each other’s eyelids. Now we were more than a foot apart, the blood from the eyes staining our faces, using the back of our hands to smear our skin.
I reached out and touched Marie-Anne’s hand. It was shaking in the cold. I buttoned up her jacket and tied her scarf around her head.
That whole day we held each other. There was nothing more to it than the reestablishment of tactility, touch. We didn’t say a word. The aim was only to show Marie-Anne that she hadn’t been shunted from the territory of the healthy. That even if the rest of the world found her a sad hog of a woman, I wouldn’t treat her like that. I had the past on my side. I had seen her as she had been before the transformation. If she sometimes forgot what she had been, I would be right there to remind her, to make rhyming verbal remembrances to be tucked away in her purse, her luggage.
Ever since she put on weight, became disfigured, she had started thinking of herself as a monster. This made her want to take revenge against all those who were able to remain beautiful — namely, all the petite and sprightly women who we came across. That was why Marie-Anne had been so intent on her ownership fantasies. By being able to render the Candaces and the Leilas of the world subservient to her, by imaginarily feeding on their blood, by owning them in their most vulnerable posture, by crushing them under her bigness, Marie-Anne had been able to destroy some of their beauty. And because I hadn’t known better, rather than putting a stop to it all, I had encouraged it, had actively participated in the vampirism.
“Who do you think is the most beautiful person?” I asked Marie-Anne after a snack of hazelnut spread and bread.
“In the world?”
“Yes, objectively.”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I hate to say it,” I replied. “But I think it’s your mother. I never saw a more beautiful woman in my life.”
“She always was. Is it wrong to say that sometimes I miss her just because I feel like I am denied being able to look at her?”
“We can’t help what we find beautiful,” I said and stroked Marie-Anne’s rounded-moon face.
I guided her to the living room and we slid down to the carpet, leaning against the sofa. I searched for the film with Isabelle Adjani and found it after a moment. I took it out of the case and slid it in. I didn’t show Marie-Anne the inside of the cover where her father’s inscription was written. I simply let the film get started. She watched with great curiosity in her eyes.
The opening scene showed Adjani arriving in Halifax by boat, in pursuit of the man who she loved, for whom she would eventually suffer madness. As the atmospheric darkness from the film washed over, both Marie-Anne and I became somber, our laughter bowing out from the room. I kept staring at Marie-Anne’s face, to gauge it for reaction, to be astonished by the way she was mesmerized. She was aware that she was quite drunk, so she was a little skeptical of what she was seeing.
“Is that.?” she pointed. “Who is that?”
“That is Isabelle Adjani.”
“It’s not my mom?”
“No,” I said. “It’s Isabelle Adjani.”
Her big, lightly rippling eyes went soft. Deep inside it seemed like there was a pile of petals in them. “That’s definitely the most beautiful person in the world.”
We watched the film together with a kind of college-era intimacy, drifting away from the scenes to kiss, touch, fondle, and grope each other. We remembered the film again and tried to seem informed about everything from Victor Hugo to Les Mis to Napoleon, only to realize we had no idea what was happening on screen. But somehow we kept blubbering to each other, a man and a woman after so long getting to be a boy and a girl.
A little while later Marie-Anne decided she didn’t want to watch any more. Her arms shook from the effort required to stand, but with some help from me she was able to get up. She took a deep breath and gathered herself and then, with an invitational finger, told me to follow her to the bedroom.
Inside she started to undo her clothes a little and asked me to tell her where she would meet Isabelle Adjani. She was ready, as always, to turn me into her ideal self.
“You won’t meet her,” I replied.
“I won’t?”
“No,” I said. “You will become her.”
“Me?”
“Yes,” I said. “And I will be with her.”
“But why?”
“Because you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be beautiful. Maybe by immersion you can remember.”
She said she was scared. I told her not to be. And so that day when I took off Marie-Anne’s clothes she wasn’t aghast by her body because she was Adjani and flawless. And when I kissed her softly she wasn’t ashamed to kiss back because she was Adjani and sensual. And when she yielded her being to me she wasn’t afraid because she was Adjani and there was nothing to fear. We weren’t the first people in the world to beat back the tyrannies of disease by imagining ourselves as more beautiful than we were, and we wouldn’t be the last.
* * *
That night we went to Bishop’s Collar for a drink. I remembered to take the multicolored pen to give back to the rude bartender. Before turning away I informed him that the woman he had mistaken for my mother was actually my wife. The bartender was so surprised by my statement that he straightened up and extended his hand. “I never caught your name.”
“They call me M.”
“Just M.?”
“Yeah.”
“What does it stand for?”
“Whatever you want,” I said. “M. is for man. M. is for menace. M. could be my name. M. is for madness. M. starts the name of my wife.”
The bartender grumbled, crinkled his noise, and took to attending other patrons.
When I came back Marie-Anne wore a smile. She held my stool as I jumped on it, my feet dangling.
“You’re so good to me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You seem to think that when you walk a few feet away from me I can’t hear you anymore. But I’m like a bird. I see and hear everything you do.” She raised her chin in the bartender’s direction.
After two Long Island iced teas each, which Marie-Anne pointed out was reminiscent of our honeymoon, we teetered our way home. It was hard to remember, in our mind-altered state, exactly what path we took back, whether up Pennsylvania, or through the alley next to Figs restaurant. But I remembered clearly what happened when we got inside.
Marie-Anne kept hold of my arm and took me to the bathroom. She had me sit down on the edge of the tub and lifted up the toilet seat. With a nervous nod she walked toward the medicine cabinet and took out the bottles of vitamins that had, at last, ended up in their appropriate place. She unscrewed their tops and one by one started plunking the pills into the toilet. Every time I asked why she was throwing perfectly good vitamins away, she shushed me and returned to the project.