Under My Skin (35 page)

Early on the morning of 9/11 Matilda had felt a new wind on Broadway. It lasted a few seconds and there was no hint of
summer in it. The heat had stayed on into September but on this day, it carried a chill and she thought suddenly of wet red leaves from New England and freshly fallen Nova Scotia snow. Another New York fall. And soon the leaves would turn and turn, and fall and fall, a monsoon, a flood, a blizzard of red and yellow and gold, and all – without him to hold. ‘What was different?’ she would ask herself later, ‘different to the September mornings that followed,’ and she would answer, ‘I wasn’t afraid.’

She fed her cat and he turned away as she cleaned his litter tray. Then she took her dry-cleaning over her arm and a subway map and she guessed that Godot went back to sleep.

‘When I go out,’ she told her friends in a hushed voice, ‘I am sure Godot turns on the TV, and sleeps on my bed, and does not put the CDs back into the correct cases, and I know he borrows my clothes and shoes, which he wears when he visits his private cat club on 72nd Street – and I’m sure he has other cats round,’ and here her friends would laugh and inside think, ‘She’s been on her own for too long.’

But each evening when Matilda came home, he was always there to welcome her, curled, and rolling over to greet her, from a single patch of sunlight on her floor.

On that day Mrs Schwartz said, ‘Good morning, Matilda’ and she was wearing her white Persian cat like a stole. She was also polishing the number on her apartment door and she was wearing her cultured pearls. She did not tell Matilda that she had an appointment with her optician that morning and because she was going downtown for it, she would also meet her daughter for lunch. She did not know then that her train would get in earlier and that she would wait at a diner on Wall Street, looking up at the office where her youngest daughter worked. She did not tell Matilda any of it. It was all
so important but how could she have known? Now that she was gone Matilda could not stop thinking about her. At night when she closed her eyes she could still see those pearls and her smile. Before 9/11 fear had not moved into her. It did not belong inside her. It did not take over her space, sit on her couch, eat her food and refuse to get out.

In the same way Matilda did not tell anyone that she took the elevator instead of the stairs. That the fire extinguisher had fallen on its side and that she put it right. That she bought her newspaper from a vendor and her coffee at Starbucks on Broadway, instead of on Amsterdam. How all of these small details combined to weave and map out
her
day. Did the flower-sellers notice that she wore a new navy dress on September 11th and that she had not washed her hair?

The girl in Starbucks gave her a mocha in a hot orange cup and when she smiled she said, ‘Have a nice day, ma’am.’

She did not know that it was a day to stay at home – under the bedclothes, or in a closet under coats or in an apartment under the floorboards.

And when her friend in Queens told her that he was washing his car when the news came through on the radio, it sounded strangely American and therefore more noble and patriotic than the story she had to tell. As he spoke, his voice breaking with emotion, she lost any real will to explain – that as the first tower fell she was pushing a $20 bill into a tipping envelope in a hair salon in the Village after having her black hair dyed peroxide blonde.

One week later when she rode the subway to Brooklyn Matilda wanted to talk out loud. She wanted to be one of those blonde crazies who carried a shopping bag filled with old newspapers
and made other people look around. On 20 September she ran down the steps as the heavens opened and heard the other feet rattling in behind. It was so New York – for everyone to have the same sort of problems, like losing a love or getting caught in the rain, and no one would ever say a word to the same suffering citizen at their side. The train began to move and Matilda felt that she was going backwards and moving away into a deeper, darker place. She was going to Brooklyn and she was suddenly frightened and confused by it.

‘What have you done with Manhattan?’ she wanted to ask.

When Matilda thought about Manhattan, she thought about bright yellow taxis that could float through the air. And the green leaves of early summer, and people who always remembered to carry umbrellas and still dashed like rabbits into the subways at the first sign of rain. She thought about doughnuts from a vendor in Washington Square, yoga mats and a little hat shop in SoHo where the hats in the window looked like iced cupcakes. When Matilda thought about Brooklyn, the only colour she could think of was ‘brown’.

She knew the A train and C, the D and the F… but take her out of Manhattan and Matilda felt like a child who did not know where she was going. She opened a copy of
Time Out
and looked again for the bar called Madisons. It was close to midnight and she did not know where she was going and as fewer passengers got on and more and more got off, she found herself in an empty dripping station deep in a foreign borough and she wondered quite seriously if she would lose her life.

She wore a pair of high heels and a white belted mac, and her scarf, a red and pink Hermes, was pulled up loosely to cover her hair. Yes, it was different to be blonde. It was simple; men always looked at her now. When she stepped into a room
it was as if a light bulb had gone on. They saw her and she liked it – except that in Brooklyn she did not want to be seen. She followed the map along Atlantic Avenue and of course no yellow cab in its right mind would cross the Brooklyn Bridge. She stopped and asked directions from a young couple who were walking and sharing a pizza slice. It smelt warm and good but now when she saw a couple in love she always felt a pang of jealous pain.

The bar was closing by the time she got there and she had to plead gently with the bartender to let her come inside, and she found him then, as agreed, sitting in the second booth. She began by smiling at him and he responded by looking away. Then she apologized for being late and he raised his hand and asked for a tequila. So she stopped speaking then and nodded at the bartender to say she would have the same.

He was Mexican and she did not know his name but when she handed the envelope towards him under the table, she could not avoid touching his thigh and the denim felt greasy and warm. He took his tequila and gave her the
Village Voice
and then he got up and left.

Matilda felt a gentle buzz of excitement and she knew it was there in her hand and that it was done. In the end her friend in Queens had agreed to help her but he had only offered when she told him she would do it by mail order instead. She took the newspaper and went into the restroom. How many times, she asked herself in the mirror, had a woman done this before? She stood and remembered her friend’s words.

‘Don’t try getting a gun by mail order, honey, that will only bring you all sorts of trouble,’ and ‘The gun that you choose should feel comfortable in your hand.’

She sat on the toilet and took it from the newspaper. It was
heavier than she expected and when her red nails wrapped around it, she felt a sudden sexual thrill. She curled her long slim finger around the trigger and said in a whisper, ‘This is what it’s like to be a man.’ She put it into her purse and closed it with a little snap and then walked back and instead of leaving she took a stool at the bar. The gun had calmed her and she was no longer feeling abandoned and afraid. Her friend had recommended a handgun that would fire a .38 calibre bullet or bigger – because anything smaller, he said, would ‘not reliably stop a large violent man’.

The man at the bar looked sadly into his drink. He was going a little bald and he was younger than her. She wanted to sleep with him. She wanted to take him outside against a brick wall, surrounded by trashcans and squalling alley cats. He looked up at her and then took a second longer to look deep into her eyes. And he saw it all, the hurt and the damage and the pain.

‘I like your hair,’ he said simply.

‘My name’s Matilda,’ she replied and she offered him her hand. He said nothing for a minute and then said, ‘There are two reasons why a woman like you comes into a bar like this.’

And she raised her eyebrows at him.

‘You want to fuck someone and don’t want your husband to catch you. Or you want to buy a gun.’

‘Maybe it’s both,’ she answered and she leaned in and took a sip of his beer.

‘Lady,’ he replied, ‘I’m married.’

The bartender watched them for a second and then he turned the sign on the door and said, ‘Folks, I really have to close.’

‘And there are two reasons why a Manhattan girl wants to buy a gun,’ he said.

‘I need to protect myself,’ she said quietly and her eyes were big and dark.

‘It’s to kill someone or to kill herself.’

And here Matilda changed the subject.

‘You know a lot for a young guy.’

‘Can’t you see I’m going bald?’ and he was smiling softly at her now and then he paid for her drink and left a lot of money on the bar.

‘Bald men get more head,’ she said and he frowned a little and then smiled at her.

‘Great,’ he replied, ‘I’ve got that to look forward to.’ He walked with her to the subway and told her to take the R.

And on the last train into Manhattan, Matilda began talking out loud. And she knew she was different now because other people looked blankly over her head or just looked away.

‘I know the A, the D, the E and the F… but take me out of Manhattan… why have we stopped?… why is this train so fucking slow… are we going back into Brooklyn?… I need to be in Manhattan… I have a friend there… he promised to meet me in Manhattan… why the fuck would anyone want to go to Brooklyn?… are we going to Manhattan?’ she asked the empty carriage again. And then she took off her scarf and looking into her own face in the black window, she took a comb from her purse and fluffed her hair. Her lipstick was in little smudges and there were tiny red bleed veins at the corners of her mouth.

‘Does this train go to Manhattan?’ she asked again of the empty carriage. ‘I need to get into Manhattan. When I’m in Manhattan I know where I am.’

Heart n. – 1. A hollow muscular organ that pumps blood around the body. 2. The source and centre of emotional life, where the deepest and sincerest feelings are located and an individual is most vulnerable to pain.

Attwoods store is on the corner of Wellfleet’s Main Street. The faded-out sign says ‘Stoves – Hardware – Paint’. Inside there are boxes of breakfast cereal, red apples in a barrel, loose flour, Ritz crackers, cookies in tall glass jars. On the other side there are white shelves filled with light bulbs, matches, nails, paint – and the owner stands in a starched white apron and glares at me as the bell rings from the door. Any minute now and I’m expecting Nellie Olsen to appear. When the owner sees me, his mouth and the corners of his eyes, in fact his whole face, turn down.

‘Ma’am,’ he says, and I stand for a moment and look around. This morning I took the bus from Truro and travelled five miles to the nearest town. There’s just one food market in Truro and a lighthouse, and a post office and not much else. I wanted to see the library at Wellfleet and after borrowing my first book, I forgot about walking the beach and instead came into the warmth of a hardware store.

There is a man with silver and black hair sitting near the stove. He is drinking hot chocolate and reading a copy of the
New Yorker
and he does not look up when I come in. Outside a school bus turns the corner past the church and the library into Main Street. A woman with a blue muffler takes a child’s
hand and the child looks up at her, telling her mother everything about school, and she does not want her to miss a word.

The man with the silver hair turns the page and folds the magazine back. His eyebrows are raised and questioning on his weathered face. We are both here for the same reasons, to see other people and to get warm. My hair is too long now and after one day on the beach it became impossible to comb and I have windburn. My skin is on fire even though I am freezing cold. The beach house was a romantic idea but I needed to escape any further madness from Matilda and New York.

I ask the owner for a coffee – and he nods towards a chair and I sit down. There are three chairs around the stove and then another man – I recognize him from the library – comes in and takes off his woollen hat and says, ‘Arthur’ to the other man. And Arthur puts down his magazine and his face breaks into an easy, happy smile and the room is suddenly full of good humour and charm and he replies, ‘Jake.’

But before getting up to speak to him he says, ‘Here’ to me and puts the
New Yorker
into my hand. It seems he wants me to read a Gary Larson cartoon.

The coffee arrives in a white mug and I put both hands around it and stay near the warmth of the red stove. There is a steel bucket full of split logs and without a word Arthur comes back and opens the little door and throws on a log. We watch together as a shower of red sparks flies up the chimney and are gone.