The Blondes (41 page)

I’ve lived through five major incidents and I am unscathed. I count them on my fingers and feel like I’m counting my blessings for whatever little sidesteps allowed me to steer clear of danger: the Eugenia Gilongos subway attack; the day at JFK; the little girl near the fountain in Washington Square; the woman on the side of the highway; room 3, just one hundred yards down the hall at the WEE. This is how I used to count
kisses; the course credits I needed to graduate; the number of pages in an essay; the number of music shows I’d gone to or films I’d seen in a month.

In some ways, so much has been taken from me that I haven’t even begun to fathom it. In other ways, I’m grateful just to be here, to have made it this far. I feel guilty saying that, guilty to have what I do. To have a bath and electricity, warm bedding, and a place to heat up cans of food. Even as the soap runs low, even as the cupboard supplies dwindle, even as I wonder whether the electricity will be turned off without Grace here—although I assume it’s paid automatically from some account of hers and Karl’s. I know I should think about the future, what will become of me, of you, but every minute is very long. Behind the sound of the kitchen clock, the minutes seem to tremble.

When the fox left, I sat very still at the kitchen table for a long time, watching the branch move, naked, where it had been, hoping it would come back.

Things come to me in bits and pieces, just impressions. It’s like being in the WEE all over again, minus the company. It’s like being in lock-up. Sometimes I feel that you’re very real, and that talking to you is like talking to a dog or a cat who’s in the room with me. Other times I feel that talking to you is like talking to my ass or my elbow, or even that can of sardines in the cupboard.

My mother used to insist that women were motivated by
the three Ms—men, money, and more men and money. Then she’d laugh like it was a terrific joke. Every year when she styled for prom, she called it “Do and Douche” season. These were girls, she said, who would lose their virginity in exchange for a limo ride. She wasn’t looking down on them, she was just pinning their hair up. She said she was no better; it was the way of the world. These were her truths, and certainly there was truth in her words—it’s just that I didn’t want those truths. I wanted to believe in a prettier picture. At the same time, whenever one was presented to me, I pushed it away.

The last email I had from Karl was signed
Love, Karl
. He said that things had been so crazy he couldn’t tell me about them, that he missed me terribly, and that perhaps he had been wrong to have sent me away.

Except the truth is, he hadn’t sent me away.

I had downloaded the forms for my grant months in advance of my leaving. And I went away. I went to the biggest city I could find, hoping it would take me far from what I’d done, accept me, gulp me into its belly.

I wish I had my computer now. I wish I could remember every word Karl wrote to me. I remember reading his last message in a Manhattan café after the attacks at JFK. I remember that it was grey outside but warm, and the breeze picked up dirt I couldn’t see and blew it into my face. That a girl was having her head shaved on the sidewalk. That there were sugar granules, and the way they felt beneath my thumb as I turned it across the surface of the table, collecting them.
That the café owner seemed impatient, as if I’d been there too long and hadn’t paid enough for my time. I remember the whipped milk clinging to the bottom of the white cup. But the words—they’ve evaporated.

Listen, there’s a car coming, driving through the pitch black out there. I can hear it, but I can’t see the lights. I know it’s not just in my head. Have I talked myself silly? I’ve been alone before. I’ve been alone my whole life. But you’re with me, my little barnacle. You can hear me, can’t you, through the skin? Can you hear that car sputtering out there a long way off? Yes, you can. There—its lights. I wish I could see … Karl’s glasses! They have to be better than nothing.

Ah, it’s closer, it’s closer. They’re round headlights, I think. Yes, they are. It’s turning in! It’s the Mini.

Grace thinks I’m crazy for talking to you, but she really can’t hear my words over the engine and the wind. She has to think about driving. There’s a hospital in Collingwood where you and I, little one, can get our vaccines. Grace had hers last week. There’s no guarantee to them, but early reports have been good. Grace didn’t want to come back until she was sure. She didn’t want to write a note in case she didn’t come back, she says, because it might have affected my actions. I might have waited for her beyond the point of reason. She checked into a hotel and waited to see if she’d have side effects. She
said she tried to call the land line at the cabin but the phone lines are down. Beautiful Grace, amazing Grace, Grace as I’ve never seen her, with a half-inch of fuzz sprouting all over her scalp. Grace who came back for us when she didn’t have to. Expect nausea, she says, lethargy, and some congestion.

When I asked her why she’s doing this, she said that there was nothing else
to
fucking do, that she hadn’t wanted to wake to a bloody mess one day, and find the progeny of her dead husband “getting shit out into the world all over her sofa.” That’s Grace, that’s just how she talks.

I told her it would be an excuse to change the decor, but she didn’t laugh at that joke.

You’re snug under my hand. You might yet be born, properly, in a hospital, or at least somewhere with someone to catch you, someone to trim the umbilical cord down to a thorn-like nub that will fall off and become your belly button.

When you’re born, I won’t tell you this story. I’ll kiss your forehead, what will become your eyebrows but will at first be just a cloudlike wisp. I’ll wiggle your toes, which will be minuscule and pink, like mine but unfathomably small. You’ll grasp my finger in all five of yours, and you’ll hold it so hard, Hazel Junior, like you’re hanging on to the world by a wire. You’ll be like a baby in a toilet paper commercial. I’ll name you. You’ll close your eyes and you’ll dream whatever babies dream.

I’ll tell you that I don’t know where you came from—you, strange small thing. I’ll tell you that you just happened. I’ll tell you all those beautiful lies—that a stork delivered you,
not that you were washed into the world on a torrent of amniotic fluid and blood.

What? Oh, but Grace says: Don’t lie too much. Don’t lie too much, or she’ll turn out to be a monster. Lie just enough, kiddo.

I am most indebted to my publishers Kristin Cochrane and Lynn Henry, who was also the editor of this book, designer CS Richardson, publicist Sharon Klein, department assistant Zoë Maslow, and all at Doubleday. Lynn and her team challenged me to work hard, but certainly no harder than they themselves were willing to work. Thanks to my agent Shaun Bradley who recognizes good ideas and pushes me to complete them. Thanks to my colleagues at ECW; everyone at Joyland; and my family, especially Mom and Dad (always) for patience and support, and Vicky and Mike. Thank you to my husband Brian Joseph Davis.

Some of the articles, films, and art pieces this novel references are real sources—they are used here to function within
a fictional world. Thanks too to the soldier who provided tactical advice and helped with jargon while we talked a four-hour flight away.

To blonde friends and readers, I quote Louis Aragon: “Blond everywhere: I surrender myself to this pitch pine of the senses, to this concept of a blondness which is not so much a colour as a sort of spirit of colour blended with the accents of love.”