This Body (13 page)

He chewed the inside of his left cheek slowly. “Does the family move in protective circles?”

It took Katharine a few moments to understand what he meant. “No, they're perfectly normal.”

“Will the family be expecting this kind of scrutiny?”

“No. Absolutely not. No.”

“You want to remain anonymous.”

It was actually a statement more than a question, but Katharine responded, “They can't know anything about me.”

“Okay. What else do you have on that little piece of paper?” He gestured to her hands.

“I want to know if the kids are working. If they like their jobs. Anything and everything, no matter how small or trivial.”
She looked down to check again. “I'd also like pictures.”

“Of the husband and new wife too?”

Katharine considered. “Yes, but not too many. I'd rather have more of the kids. Can any of this be done?”

“Some of it may be easy. Some, more difficult.” He leaned back in his chair, elbows on the armrests, fingertips together.
“I'll need to set up an informer and maybe a stoolie or two, to use an old police term. It may take a while to set up. Possible
contacts may object because of loyalty, suspicion.” He circled the air with one hand to suggest “et cetera.” “Money may not
be of any use. You sure the family and their friends won't already be setting up barriers?”

“I promise you, no. They're normal people.”

“Well, Miss —?” He pushed himself back farther in his chair.

Katharine was afraid he might topple over, and she imagined his legs wiggling in the air above the desk like some sort of
overturned giant beetle. “Bennet. Thisby Bennet.”

“Well, Miss Bennet, I would like to be honest with you. I do not like child-custody cases. Kidnapped kids, yes, but —”

“It isn't that kind of thing at all,” Katharine rushed in. “I just … want to know about them. I just want to know what's going
on with them. I don't plan to contact them.”
Not yet, anyway, and not in the way you would ever understand
. “That's all.”

Mr. Mulwray leaned forward swiftly and began writing on his pad. “Okay. It might take a while to set up. The bulk of the expenses
will be in the initial transactions. Depending upon what is eventually put in place, the cost will level out and should continue
at that price unless we need to add more informants. Now, if they are as normal as you say they are, there are advantages
and disadvantages. I take it you don't care about investments or financial dealings?”

Katharine couldn't help but smile.
Philip with financial dealings? That would be a new one
. But she thought that maybe Diana might have money. “I don't think you'll find anything of interest there, but I don't know
anything about the new wife. I guess I'd like to know what she brought to the marriage. I certainly need to know if they're
destitute. See what you can find, and I'll tell you whether it's of interest and whether I want to know more.”
This could be kind of fun
.

“All right. You'll need to write out as much as you know about these people: names, schools, family, friends, enemies. Addresses,
phone numbers if you've got them.”

Katharine had anticipated this and had written out most of it in Thisby's apartment. It was scary how little needed to be
put down to sketch out a person. It did not, of course, include how Ben hated mustard on his sandwiches or how Marion wouldn't
eat chicken unless it was boned. That Philip wouldn't clean the bathroom but would wash windows. That Ben loved babies, that
Marion thought of wonderful things to do on Mother's Day, that Philip had fallen in love with her when she thought no one
else would. These things would not help the investigation but were the things she held close to her soul.

She wrote out a check for his retainer that was more money than she expected but less than she would have balked at. He promised
to call her in a week to let her know what he had been able to get started.

And how about Thisby
? It also had been so easy to narrow her life down to lines on a piece of paper. She could feel the wad of paper with the
names of Thisby's family and friends in her back pocket. She realized she had been too hard on her just a couple of days ago.
But now I have a few things to hold close to my soul about Thisby too
…

…
I'm sure he could feel the Kleenex in my bra. I could just die
…

…
Why do I always have to share my birthday with Christ and Kewpie? They promised this year it would be different but it wasn't
…

…
What if I ran away and no one noticed
? …

She left exhausted, carrying the two souls, and with the added weight of it came a kind of stupor.

Act 2, Scene 3

You have a double tongue within your mask.

— L
ONGAVILLE
,
Love's Labour's Lost
, 5.2.245

Katharine existed in a state of suspended animation. Time did not seem to move, yet the days slipped by without a ripple.
She lay in bed until late morning and tried to take naps during the day. She felt like a teenager — not the teenager she had
been, for sleeping in was something just not done in her family. Sometimes when she had been young, she stole into the living
room to eat gumdrops from the cut-crystal candy jar with the chipped knob on the top. She would eat so many, heartburn would
crawl up from her stomach into her throat and smolder there. She would tell her mother she wasn't feeling well, and her mother
would allow her to be a daydreamer and lie on the couch. But not often and not for long. Philip always allowed himself to
take naps as well as sleep in, which had irritated Katharine. Never weaken! That was the motto she had lived by as an adult.
Mothers have to keep going, no matter how tired or sick they are. Never weaken
!

But it was becoming hard to keep up with her emotions, and they constantly confused her. Sometimes she would catch a scent
or hear a sound that reminded her of home and family, and a part of her would throb like an amputated limb that insisted it
was still attached. Then, just as quickly, she would revel in the silence, in the aloneness. The phone didn't ring. The TV
was not on, blaring MTV and baseball games, and radios did not duel from separate rooms.

Never weaken
!

But now she did.

Mornings found her on the balcony, a place in the sun, the corners of the unopened newspaper on the deck snapping in the sporadic
breeze. She had planned on reading more than just the front page, the movie reviews, and the gossip columns, but she ended
up reading nothing at all. She had also resolved to go farther afield in her walks around Westwood, but she found herself
remaining on the balcony, both hands gripped tightly around a mug of microwaved water. It was the heat of liquid that she
wanted — not the flavor of coffee — and holding something warm kept her hands from twitching. She just sat and thought and
discovered that she missed the strangest of things. How, although Philip was gone by the time she got up, his presence lingered
with the smell of his well-browned toast. How Marion would show her the Far Side cartoon to enjoy, but, in truth, to drop
her a hint so Katharine would get it. That Ben, despite his cool and detached demeanor, in times of stress would often be
betrayed by his own body — a cold sore blossoming overnight on the side of his mouth. Katharine remembered how she would receive
this sight with almost maniacal glee — she realized that he indeed was not as nonchalant as he appeared.

It's a deception that being stripped of memories is the cruelest fate. Living with them is
.

She often felt that she was her own contradiction. She sat at opposite ends of herself. What she loved, she hated; what she
wanted, she didn't deserve; what she missed, she didn't want.

It was so much easier to go through the motions for a while and not think too much.
Play out the play
.

She continued to go through Thisby's things. Entries from her diary kept surfacing in her mind like cue cards. She looked
through the pictures that were stacked on the bookshelves, seeing them with different eyes. She even found a photograph that
Thisby had taken on a trip to New York with her father when she was fourteen.

…
I'm back. What a trip. We stayed at the Hotel New York in Manhattan. It was old and it had these gargoyle heads along the
top corners that you couldn't even see unless you had a telephoto. I got some great pictures. I've already developed them
and they look awesome. In one picture there's this woman looking out her window. You don't see her right away. And then when
you do, you realize she looks like a gargoyle herself. She's got this fleshy face and she's mad, like the bellhop brought
her coffee cold or she's been told bagels don't come on the menu. She's thinking about how to get back at him, like she's
not gonna give him a tip or she's gonna write the hotel editor at the
New York Times
and tell them about the shitty service. Dad says it's good. Real good
…

One day she systematically went through all of Thisby's drawers, pulling out each item and scrutinizing it. She felt like
some sort of pervert even though she knew she couldn't get arrested for fondling essentially her own stuff. She found herself
looking for something. Did Thisby have a hiding place where she put things — things like sexy lingerie that she would never
wear because she looked ridiculous in it, or maybe a vibrator that was sold under the auspices of a weight-reduction miracle,
disappointed on one front but satisfied on another,
or — maybe, maybe … like … well
— underwear she wore when she had her period? Old ones already so stained from previous leakages, she didn't care?
Am I sick? Is it just me
? But this wasn't the kind of thing Katharine would have asked anyone. Certainly not her own mother, nor her daughter. How
did other women not let themselves bleed all over their underpants?
They can send a man to the moon but they can't make a good sanitary napkin
. Dry weave, wings, flaps.
You still bleed all over your underpants, waking up in the morning with crusty elastic along the crotch and your thighs flaking
with red rust
— leaving the underpants to soak on the floor of the shower, or in the toilet like a diaper. Or was it only her old body?
Was her old crotch not within the range of the anatomically average?
Is Thisby's
? Or was this something her mother never taught her growing up? Was it a learned skill? Marion never seemed to be concerned,
using tampons or napkins with seemingly equal fluency.

Katharine never quite got over the toxic shock scare in the seventies. She was never fond of tampons to begin with, having
inserted her first one in secret, incorrectly, with the cardboard sheathing still on, her mother having thrown away the directions.
After all, she didn't need them, and who would have thought ten-year-old Katharine would start her period so soon?

Later on Katharine was tired of sticking things, or having them stuck, up her — the IUDs and speculums and cervical scrapers
and fingers and even penises. The toxic shock scare took care of ever using tampons again, even when they were deemed safe.
When Marion asked for her first tampons, Katharine had kept her mouth shut. She was proud of herself. To tell Marion of her
fears was too much of a burden for a young girl, and anyway, what if Katharine was wrong? Maybe it was just her. It wasn't
as if it were going to change anything anyway. She never saw Marion's underwear soiled. Did even her daughter know the secrets
she didn't? Did Marion learn from her friends or just know — an inbred skill of which Katharine was ignorant, a certain gene
that skipped a generation?

Katharine knew that Thisby had problems with her period —

…
I still haven't started my period. Maxie did this year. I'm getting boobs and there's a little hair under my arms. Everybody
at school has started. I'm the only one who hasn't
. …

…
My mother made me go to the doctor about my period. I've got pubes but no period. I had to lie on this table and stick my
feet in these baskets so the doctor could stick his hand up my cunt. The doctor made some remark about my being a virgin,
which pissed me off royally. Then he told me I didn't have anything to worry about and he put me on the Pill, supposedly to
bring on my period and regulate it. Well, I mind as well put it to its other use
…

— and maybe Thisby's drawers would reveal something.

But Katharine didn't find what she was looking for.

I guess I was a freak
.

Thursday came, and she was glad. She felt that it was time for the sleeper to awaken, to come out of the coma. It was time
to come back to the living.

She went out to buy food for her dinner with Goodfellow. He had called the night before to make sure it was still on. It was
lovely to hear a real voice. She could carry on only so many conversations in her head.

As she walked to the store, that uncertain feeling of being at a perpetual masquerade continued, but she began to feel a sense
of freedom. She was in costume, playing a part, and having had that part sketched in, she could now develop the character
while remaining anonymous herself.