This Body (33 page)

Katharine had held her breath the day before, wondering whether Marion would bring up the fiasco with Ben dyeing his hair.
But she didn't, and Katharine was eternally thankful. She didn't want Quince to hear that story. She didn't want Quince to
think badly of Marion's mother.

“Marion can't say enough nice things about you and your sister.”

“She's a great kid,” Katharine managed to say, when what she really wanted to do was pick up the glass of wine and … and …
throw it in his face.

Diana looked at her, chagrined. “I'm jealous, though.” She paused. “I'm still feeling my way around Marion, and I'm having
a hard time deciding whether I should be a mother or a friend to her, or whether she'll allow me to be either. We do like
clothes. One of the things we have in common.”

“Except that one time,” Philip prompted.

“Oh, that.” Diana now looked embarrassed. Everyone waited, and she reluctantly continued. “I told her she could wear anything
of mine she wanted to. She said the same. So once I went into her closet when she wasn't home and found an outfit I really
liked. A simple A-line skirt and short jacket. It was a little snug on me, but not too bad, so I wore it. I thought Marion
was going to either faint or kill me when she saw me. You see, the outfit had been one of her mother's. Marion liked it and
had kept it for herself. I will never forget the look she gave me. Of course, I had no idea, but …”

That outfit was snug on her
?

“But Diana and Ben get along famously,” Philip said. “Don't you?”

“Yes, but with Ben, it's different.” Diana turned to Katharine, as if only another female would understand. “He doesn't need
me to be a mother right now. Maybe later, but not now. I can get away with being a pal. We've got too many years left with
Marion, I think, for me to be a pal. But I'm jealous anyway. I'm jealous that you can be her friend. She obviously needs one.”

The waiter came by and notified them that dinner would be just a few more minutes. Diana stood up and announced that she was
going to the bathroom. Katharine realized that Diana was one of those women who liked a mass exodus to the powder room, but
Katharine pointedly ignored her, and Diana left slowly.

“Sometimes,” Philip said, drifting along, “I hear Katharine's phrases coming out of the kids' mouths. It's the strangest thing.
Maybe they were saying them before, but now that Katharine is dead, it's very startling. I don't say anything to them about
it, because I don't want to make them self-conscious. Plus I like to hear them. It keeps her alive.

“That doesn't mean I don't love Diana,” Philip continued after a pause, looking guiltily around to make sure Diana hadn't
returned. “I do. Passionately. It's wonderful. I feel like a teenager again. Katharine was a little solitary for me, now that
I look back on it. I didn't know then how much I like being needed by my partner. Katharine never asked for help. Ever. She
was so used to doing things for herself, she seemed to even resent my asking. So I stopped.”

I did need help, even though I always did everything by myself. I just had trouble asking for it. Then I'd get mad at you
for not realizing that I needed you to just do whatever it was I wanted or needed you to do … though I probably would have
resented that too
. …

She picked up the glass of wine, and the white noise in her head muffled the conversation between True and Philip. Her eye
caught several dark presences at separate tables. She looked to her right, and a shadowy shape raised a glass and took a healthy
sip. “Good wine is a good familiar creature,” she heard it whisper.

She gripped the bowl of the glass tightly.
I want this. I want this so badly, my blood simply sings with it
.

Another voice, so familiar, yet never so clear, came up from the depths of this body. It implored her,
Don't. It's not what you want
.

But it is. It is
.

Diana returned, dinner came, and the conversation eased into small talk. Katharine didn't say much. She didn't care. She felt
uprooted. She realized then that she had hoped, more than just a little bit, that at the moment she and Philip met again,
he would look into her eyes and would see Katharine shining through. In a moment of passion, the room would fade away and
they would be the only ones in existence, locked into each other's heart and soul. Theirs would be a true romance, an undying
love that withstood time, death, reincarnation. Mate for life; mate for eternity.

Always. Happily ever after
.

What a lot of Harlequin romance bullshit
.

She watched Philip and Diana, their heads touching as they spoke quietly to each other.

Does he play DJ for you while you're doing the dishes? Does he come into the kitchen and dance for you — the Funky Chicken,
the Frug, and a very bad but energetic Running Man
? He could make her laugh so, grabbing her hands encased in soapy, industrial rubber gloves. “Here comes the dip,” he'd warn
her.

It had been years since he'd dipped her, and washing dishes had become yet another drudge.

Do you bake him chocolate chip cookies
?

Katharine rested her fingertips on the inside of her other wrist and thought she had flatlined again. There seemed to be no
vital signs at all, but then she realized there were entire oceans between her heartbeats. She had to do something, or she
would drown.

“Marion would like a dog.”

Everyone started, and Philip blinked, trying to digest this bit of information. “Diana's afraid of dogs.”

Diana's mouth opened.

“All dogs?” Katharine upstaged her, ignoring Philip.

“I … Big dogs scare me.” No one spoke, though Philip appeared to be wrestling with himself in order not to elaborate for her.
Diana looked trapped, and struggled to explain. “I was bitten one summer when I was about seven. We had rented a cabin up
in the mountains.” She spoke directly to Katharine again, as if she were the most important person to convince. “I got surrounded
by a pack of dogs. They weren't wild or anything. Not always, I mean. I was walking around the small lake, and they charged
out from the trees. I had been told to stand still around charging dogs, so I did. They ringed around me. It made me dizzy,
trying to keep all of them in my sight. And they kept moving, circling to the right, then to the left, weaving from side to
side. Then one jumped at me.” She bent up her right arm, and there was a jagged edge of puckered skin. “He drew blood, of
course. Even at seven, I knew the smell of the blood would drive the others crazy. I screamed. That backed away all of them
except the one who had bitten me. He was crazy. Not rabid. Just mean crazy. He was going to bring me down, and I was going
to die. I knew it, and I didn't know how to stop it.”

True shuddered next to Katharine. “Shit.”

Philip sat silently, holding Diana's hand, watching her closely.

“Then one of the neighbors came and scared them away. He drove me down to the county hospital with his shirt wrapped around
my arm. Forty stitches. A couple of days later I had to pick out the dogs that had attacked me. A doggie lineup.” She tried
to laugh. “I couldn't. They all looked alike, and the dog that had bitten me wasn't there. Him, I would have known. My mother
was told later in the summer that they had found him. He'd gone completely feral, and they destroyed him.”

Philip looked up at Katharine with a see-I-told-you-so challenge.

“I know Marion would really like a dog. … I don't think I'd mind a small dog,” Diana finished softly, and Philip swung his
head around to make sure he had heard right.

“A small dog?” Philip exclaimed. “I don't think so. She wouldn't stand for it.”

Who in the hell is he talking about? Marion or me? Marion was right. I had the whole family convinced that the only dogs are
big dogs
. “It doesn't have to be a rodent, you know.” At Katharine's choice of words, Katharine noticed Philip shiver.
Good
. “As a matter of fact, there's a Sheltie to adopt where Quince works that's full-grown but only about twenty-five pounds.
She's the sweetest thing. Marion already loves her.”

Diana smiled shyly at Philip. “Maybe we could go by tomorrow. Just to look.”

He shrugged and looked almost threateningly at Katharine. She stared right back at him.

Take that … Phil
.

He looked away.

Tears welled up in her eyes.
So that's it
. She wasn't even worth a sarcastic retort. He had no connection with this young woman across the table from him. Why waste
energy on her? She was not part of his family.

Philip had indeed been a bit of a fuckup when she first met him, and he had wasted energy on so many useless or impossible
things. Admittedly, that was what had initially attracted her. But he turned solid on her — so respectable and responsible
— it was as if being a fuckup were only a passing fad to be dragged out at appropriate times to show her up in front of her
own children.
See how right-on and groovy I was
?

But maybe it was all her doing. Maybe it was she who took all the fun out of Philip.

She picked up the glass of wine and tilted it to her mouth. It was like swimming: once learned, never forgotten. The wine
burned her throat, and the voice that whispered was roaring gleefully in her ears.

The evening was over, and the four people stood up, gathering their individual belongings and their individual thoughts. Katharine
felt eroded; parts of her had been forever sluiced away.

The men were a little ahead when Diana stopped her. “Thank you for bringing up the dog. Phil wouldn't talk to me about it.
I really think I can handle a small dog, and Marion knows so much about them already. She really would like one. And maybe
she would feel more comfortable in my house. Maybe my house would seem more like a home to her then.”

Katharine barely looked at her.

I don't give a rat's ass about you. I did it for Marion, not you. You can make your own fucking way with Marion
.

As Katharine was driving home, the evening whirled and barked around her like Diana's dogs, snarling and encircling her, making
her dizzy as she tried to keep all of them in her sight and under control. They herded her toward the dark waters.

I was too proud, too stubborn to let people know when I needed help. What an image I projected
.

Oh,fuck the self-pity
.

My daughter wouldn't talk to me because she thinks I never made any mistakes. My own husband felt unneeded and unappreciated;
I could do it all with or without him
.

You did the best you could. What else can you expect
?

My family was falling down around my ears, and I wasn't going to change. I couldn't see a damned thing. I was too busy hanging
on to what I thought was the only way — rigidity, rules, conformity, rightness.

Don't worry. It will turn out all right. It always does. It was just meant to be.

I can't be strong anymore. I don't want to be strong anymore.

Never weaken! That's always been your motto.

What a joke. What a theater of the absurd.

She gave up and slipped into the drowning pool, letting the voices close in over her head.

The best thing I ever did for my children was to die
.

Act 4, Scene 5

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;

And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

— H
ELENA
,
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, 1.1.234

She knocked on his door. It opened so quickly, she jumped back. It was only him, but he looked crazed, and it took a moment
for his eyes to synchronize and focus.

“God, that was fast.” He blinked myopically. “I just left the message. I didn't know what else to do.” He wandered back into
the apartment, leaving her to follow.

She had to shout down the voices that continued to thunder in her head. “What's wrong?” she said, now frightened. “What's
happened? I haven't been home yet. I didn't hear your message. Is everyone okay?”

He turned and looked at her blankly for a second. “No, everyone's okay. I mean, yes, everyone's okay. No, I don't mean that
either. I'm not okay.” He sat down heavily on a kitchen chair, almost missing the seat. There was a nearly empty bottle of
Jack Daniels on the table. “I called because Vivian left me. Irreconcilable differences.” She watched him fill his glass,
how the tawny-colored liquid gathered and reflected the light. “That's what she said we had. Irreconcilable differences.”
He had trouble with the word “irreconcilable,” and it came out “irrecable.”

“She's moving up to San Francisco. She's leaving this weekend. Just like that. Already subletting an apartment. Has a job.
She probably already has a fucking boyfriend. What do I know? She says it's best this way. She says she was dying in my arms.”

It felt as if she were suffering from hypothermia, stripped down and exposed, shivering from the center of her being. One
voice that she had kept so successfully dampened, the voice that had watched and studied him — the way his hands looked while
buttoning his shirtsleeves, how the line of his jaw changed when he was thinking, the curve of his pectoral muscles — that
voice now had access and came forward softly.