Madeleine knows that while she had Christine, she could be the unfucked-up one. Now, in the wake of Christine’s departure, Madeleine’s friends and colleagues will see through her crumbling facade, smell the bodies amid the rubble and turn away. Anyone foolish enough to stick around would have to be an idiot.
“No, McCarthy,” says Olivia, “you’re the idiot.” They are on the phone. Olivia says she’s coming over.
“No, I’ll come over to your place.”
Madeleine climbs the fire escape, past a cat or two. Dingy bricks cooking in the mellow light of five o’clock, peeling black of the iron stairs that ring out low like church bells; visible between the slats below, drift of garbage in the grease-slicked alley, old cushions, dog-torn plastic bags, smell of pot and lilacs; the bar and grill at the front is playing Annie Lennox…. Look up. Olivia is sitting at the top of the steps, on a milk crate, in a slant of sun, smoking Drum tobacco, roll-your-own.
“Success without college,” says Madeleine.
Olivia reaches down her hand.
The housemates are out. There is half a bottle of bad white wine in the fridge, along with blocks of tofu, mysterious Asian greens and murky tubs of things.
“How many people live here?” asks Madeleine.
“That depends,” says Olivia.
How can she bear communal living? The bathroom alone. Madeleine sips and is ambushed by a complete happiness. What are these unreasonable happinesses? Like the lilies of the field who neither toil nor weep. The way the light leans in from the balcony down the hall to lounge against the walls painted pale pink, the softness of a gust of air, one’s sudden weightlessness. Ecstasy. State of grace in a friend’s apartment on a Sunday evening in May. Everything is going to be all right.
Olivia walks past her with a watering can. After a moment, Madeleine hears music. Strings — attenuated, patient. Baroque strands like hair drawn through a comb, untangling the market sounds outside. She follows the music to the front room. Olivia is on the rickety balcony watering the plants.
Madeleine joins her. Olivia turns to her.
“No,” says Madeleine, “it would be like kissing my sister.”
“You don’t have a sister.”
Olivia’s secret identity is revealed in the kiss. The amazing transformation works in both directions: she turns back into Madeleine’s friend when they are talking. Colleague, critical, argumentative. They go inside. They kiss against the wall outside Olivia’s bedroom. They stay standing for quite a while, in deference to Madeleine’s desire to avoid a “rebound” relationship.
“We don’t have to have a relationship,” says Olivia, “we can just have sex.”
“Is that what you want?”
“No, but I think it’s better if we think of you as a swinging bachelor for the time being. You should date for a while.”
Madeleine sees herself in a Matt Helm apartment — remote-control bed and bar, shag rug. “I don’t think so,” she says.
Olivia leans, one shoulder against the wall, shirt open, devastatingly sensible underwear. The Maidenform Woman — you never know where she’ll turn up.
“‘Date,’” says Madeleine. “I don’t even like the word.”
“Okay, then we can just have sex. And be friends.”
“That’s called a relationship.”
Olivia kisses her again. “You’re not ready for a relationship.”
They lie down on the dreadful futon, field of lumps and crabgrass, and Olivia resumes her secret identity, pink-tinted titan.
“I’m actually in crisis,” says Madeleine, looking up into the most familiar, most radiant face — most amused too. “In pain. I’m on the brink of a nervous breakdown. How come I’m having such a good time?”
“Because you’re a happy person,” says Olivia. “That’s your guilty secret.”
Madeleine smiles. Closes her eyes, tastes sweet water. “You’re so sweet,” she says. You run so sweet and clear. She opens her eyes, keeps them open. “C’est pour toi.” Don’t talk. Take what you want.
In between, there is the guided tour of small scars. Have you ever noticed that many people have a tiny one over an eye? At the outer edge of brow, the bony orbit doing its job, taking the brunt of whatever was hurtling toward the eye — a branch, a ball, hockey stick, a paw—
“I got this playing badminton when I was nine,” says Olivia. “My mother put a butterfly Band-Aid on it and I felt really important.”
“Wounded in action,” says Madeleine.
“Where’d you get this?” She holds Madeleine’s left hand, palm up, tracing the lifeline and its pale shadow with her finger.
“Ci pa gran chouz,” says Madeleine. Olivia smiles but doesn’t ask what kind of French that is. “A knife did it.”
Olivia raises an eyebrow. “Presumably someone was holding it at the time.”
On guard! “Colleen.”
“Who was Colleen?”
“My best friend,” says Madeleine. Says her heart. “We became … seurs de san.”
Olivia hesitates, then, “Blood sisters?”
Madeleine nods. “When I was nine. Colleen Froelich.” Pellegrim. The name arrives from the back of her mind, dusty but intact.
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have a sister out there somewhere.”
Olivia smells like sand and salt, a tang of sweat and Chanel. Old-fashioned feminine. Skilfully juxtaposed with the pink hair and multiple earrings.
The aroma of smoked sardines floats in. Olivia joins Madeleine at the window, chin on the sill. On the next balcony over, small silvery bodies hang pegged like socks to the clothesline. Olivia calls, “Avelino! Hey, Avelino!”
A stocky, charred-looking man in car-greasy overalls steps onto the sardine balcony and squints in their direction.
“Toss me one, pal,” calls Olivia.
Pal.
Avelino plucks two fish from the line, turns to her, rehearses a toss, then releases them. Madeleine ducks. Olivia catches one fish, the other lands on the floor. “Obrigado!”
They eat off a ratty bamboo placemat on the futon, with bread and olives and the rest of the bad wine.
Being lovers with Olivia is like wrapping the present and tying on the bow after you have been enjoying it for years. Backwards, perfect. Everyone should fall in love with a friend.
“Why did your parents call you ‘Olivia’?”
A loaf of bread, a smoked sardine and thou.
“My father loved Shakespeare and my mother loved olives.”
Here is love’s guilty secret: it doesn’t hurt. It has been right in front of her.
ASSEYE DE TI RAPPELI
“‘If I don’t take this child away with me,’ thought Alice, ‘they’re sure to kill it in a day or two; wouldn’t it be murder to leave it behind?’”
IN MY DREAM, I am travelling through woods at night. The vegetation is very green despite the darkness. Leaves and branches swish past with the intimate indoor clarity of movie sound. Rex is walking beside me, I can hear the crackle of his paws through the undergrowth, smell his breath, meaty and warm, feel his fur. I know the trees are watching. There is a level of dread but I realize it’s part of the ordinary condition of dogs and trees. I think to myself, dogs and trees are very brave. We come to a clearing. A canopy of mist — no, light — over a child lying on the grass. A girl in a blue dress. Rex looks up at me. His face so kind and concerned. Expectant too. I recognize the child. It’s me. The grass around her begins to bend and flatten. I wake up, terrified.