Yearn (32 page)

“I guess so. I can barely remember what he looked like.”

The weatherman smiled hopefully in Sara's direction. She smiled politely back, then continued on her way, Stephen leading. Just then Sara noticed an acquaintance of hers staring at them, a glamorous sixty-year-old who had made millions through her last divorce. A notorious manizer, the femme fatale had frozen in mid-conversation, champagne glass in hand, while her eyes traveled up and down Stephen's body, lingering at the crotch. Sara was momentarily reminded of a documentary she'd watched on the Discovery Channel about praying mantises titled
Deadly Females: Cannibalism and Sex
.

For a moment she felt deeply protective of Stephen—perhaps even maternal. It was fleeting, the emotion giving way to an immense rush of self-glory as the socialite gave Sara a subtle but definite thumbs-up and then mouthed, “Love the new boyfriend!” her cosmetically pumped-up mouth moving up and down like a fish's. Behind Stephen's back Sara returned the thumbs-up, then gestured to indicate the critic had a big penis. The socialite almost dropped her glass. Life was looking up, Sara decided. Without realizing it, the heiress straightened her back and began to walk taller as Stephen, oblivious to the exchange, led her to a table.

They sat over two almond croissants and a single cappuccino. For fortitude Sara had ordered a glass of decent burgundy, even if it was only eleven-thirty a.m. The wine trickled through her, casting an optimistic glow on the morning's events. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the socialite flitting from one table to another, no doubt spreading the rumor that Sara Le Carin—normally a rather conservative mouse of a woman—had wasted no time in getting herself a gorgeous new lover since her divorce. Several people had already discreetly glanced over, evaluating Stephen's assets. No doubt the gesture about the large penis was the clincher, Sara decided, and found herself wondering whether Stephen did indeed have a large penis. She was so distracted she found herself ordering another glass of wine. Still unaware of the excitement his presence was causing, Stephen dipped his croissant into his cappuccino, biting into it with a bestial gluttony that Sara found heartening.

“That last piece . . .” she ventured, hoping to engage him enough to prevent him from turning around and noticing the interest his presence had generated. “I suppose I was brought up to regard certain parts of the human body as sacrosanct. I mean, surely to remain erotic something has to stay at least a little mysterious?”

“I guess it depends on how you define mystery. Mystery can be internal, an implied narrative within, and not contained in the physical visual depiction.”

“We are talking vaginas?” she asked sweetly.

At this point Stephen nearly choked on his dripping croissant. Sara banged him on the back politely. He regained his composure.

“Here they are used very much as a symbol, above and beyond the need to shock—birth gates, death gates, the beginning and the end. To the male heterosexual eye, anonymous tight wet pleasure; to the female heterosexual eye, bald-faced vulnerability.”

Sara winced and crossed her legs. “But why this year? The last couple of years it's been dead animal parts, a sort of butcher's carnival, but now it's . . . pussies, or what my grandmother used to call the ‘la-la.'”

“They do seem to be the leitmotif of the season, and it does seem to be de rigueur to own one. Perhaps you should consider buying one of your own?”

I have one of my own, she felt like replying, but stopped just in time, now a little tipsy.

“It might be a little confrontational for me at the moment, given the current state of my own love life.”

“Confrontational is good. It's cleansing. Out with the old, in with the new. Perhaps it could be the start of your new collection.”

“I'll drink to that.” And she lifted her wineglass to toast his coffee cup. To the curious onlookers, of which there were now quite a few, they looked like a loving couple toasting their good fortune.

 • • • 

That afternoon, with Stephen's encouragement, Sara purchased a white china sculpture by a young Australian sculptress in the style of Louise Bourgeois that resembled a chintzy porcelain centerpiece of tulips and lilies, except when examined closely it was obvious the flowers were in fact vaginas, crinkly and delicately molded. A couple of the blossoms were decorated with the odd drop of clear glass dew sitting precariously on the petals/labia.

Sara couldn't decide whether it was too kitsch to be art or too arty to be kitsch. Either way Stephen convinced her it didn't matter—the artist was going to be “huge” and Sara could always resell at a profit if she found she couldn't live with it. In truth Sara was both fascinated and appalled by the piece; a gapingly feminine sculpture, it seemed to fuse two aspects of womanhood—the domestic and the intimate. She particularly liked the way each vagina/blossom was bespoke—not cast but individually molded with painstaking precision.

The art dealer handling the sculptress promised to have it installed the next day, after they'd packed up the art show.

That night Sara had a terrible nightmare in which her own vagina grew so large it folded out and up over her head, incarcerating her in her own labia. The sensation, which was not the slightest bit erotic, was like being smothered to death. Convinced she was about to die, she woke herself up and found herself in the middle of a scream. Forgetting recent events, she reached across expecting to find the comforting body of her husband. Instead she encountered nothing but cold sheet. Memory rushed in, intermingling with the dream so that for a moment Sara wasn't sure what was real and what was fantasy. Pitch-black, the bedroom felt stiflingly hot. It had been a muggy London summer night and the humidity had continued on relentlessly. The silence was broken by the faint wail of a police siren followed by the screech of brakes; a car was parking outside. Sara, fastened to the bed with fear, listened as she waited for her pounding heart to slow down. She glanced across at the bedside clock—it was only two a.m., still a civilized time on the West Coast of America. Without dwelling on what she was about to do, she reached for the phone and dialed the one mobile number she'd never been able to erase from her memory.

“Hugh?” There was a beat, a silence on the other end in which she was convinced she could hear her ex-husband thinking. He then burst into full baritone.

“Sara, darling!” It was his actor's voice, the one he put on when he was being overheard.

“Are we friends?” Sara asked tentatively; she badly needed a truce.

“Of course we are,” he replied warmly, “what's past is past.”

Suspicious, Sara pushed her ear closer to the receiver. In the background there was the excited crescendo of a party going on. It was interrupted by a young female voice asking Hugh who was on the phone. As if answering both her and Sara simultaneously, Hugh said, “My favorite ex-wife.”

“Your only ex-wife,” Sara growled into the receiver.

“So far,” Hugh replied cheerfully. He sounded as if he'd been drinking or was stoned.

“Are you alone?” she couldn't help asking, although it was evident he was not. Immediately the background ambience began to grow fainter. She glanced up across the bedroom, catching a faint glimmer of her reflection in the mirror, a ghostly outline. Somehow it made her feel pathetic, but she still did not put down the phone. There was a crackle on the line as Hugh returned.

“I am now. Are you all right, darling? It's rather late for you, isn't it?”

“I had a nightmare, Hugh, a very bad nightmare, involving labia and dying.”

“Sounds like a bad case of vagina mortis,” he chuckled.

She decided to ignore the comment. Sara had always hated Hugh's boarding school sense of humor.

“Hugh, just answer one question—am I pretty down there?”

“Down there?”

“You know—down there.” Sara bit her lip, Hugh's obtuseness suddenly reminding her of darker times—and then there was the constant frustration of him only speaking English, for Sara's natural inclination at this point would have been to break into French or Italian, which were somehow more suitable languages in which to discuss such matters.

“Oh! Down
there
.”

“Exactly.”

“Oh right, I see. Sara, does it really matter? I mean, it's not like us men look at a woman that way. I mean, smell, lick, taste, and touch, but do we spend hours looking at the old Bermuda Triangle? No. Besides, I seem to remember you looked fairly decent, normal, pretty if you like. Jesus, Sara, what is this, some kind of female hormonal crisis?”

“And we had a good sex life, didn't we, Hugh?”

“Christ, we've gone through all this before—sex was not our issue. Listen, Sara, I have a house full of guests; I have to get back.”

“It was this nightmare, my labia kept growing and growing and then I was lost in my own sex.”

There was a beat of silence in which Hugh's incredulity seemed to rush down the phone line.

“Should you be discussing this with your ex-husband?” He suddenly sounded wary, as if he was worried Sara was setting some kind of trap.

“Well, who the hell should I be discussing it with? My great-aunt?”

“Sara, I think you need to see a shrink, I really do, but if you're really worried, go and see a cosmetic surgeon to get yourself tidied up—a lot of chicks do it over here. Not that I give a fuck, but apparently they all like to look like porn stars—you know, nice tight boxes with no dangly bits.”

Sara's heart sank. Was it possible she did have a problem and Hugh was just being polite?

“So you do think I have a problem?”

“Sara, that is not what I said, I just said—” Hugh was interrupted by the same young female voice asking when he was coming back to the party.

“Hold on a minute, Sara. . . .” Faintly Sara heard the words “. . . I'm just having a conversation with my ex-wife; she's worried about her box! Yes, you heard right—friggin' box!” The two then broke into peals of laughter. Humiliated, Sara shrank into the bed, feeling more alone than ever. She contemplated hanging up but before she had a chance Hugh's voice came back on the line.

“Sorry about that, Sara, but listen—on the sex front, sweetie, we're divorced now and you're not meant to be ringing me in the middle of the night.”

“I miss you, Hughie. . . .” Sara slipped into that baby voice that Hugh had once found irresistible but now found irritating. She waited for his reply, hating herself for still wanting him, for demeaning herself in this way, but it was like an addiction. She couldn't help herself. She did miss him and she still found it hard to accept the reality of his departure.

“Sara, don't start with the pleading again, please.”

“But, Hughie, we were so great together. . . .”

“No we weren't. Now please, we have no intimacy anymore and my psychologist told me it was bad for me to be in communication with you, so move on, Sara. I'm getting remarried, remember?” He hung up.

In the silence of the bedroom Sara found herself holding the receiver up like a wand, the buzzing dial tone a tiny beacon in what felt like a gathering storm. Finally she replaced it in its cradle. Feeling pathetic and unbelievably lonely, she got up and wandered into the en suite bathroom. As she sat perched on the toilet, she found herself staring at her mother's portrait hanging on the opposite wall. Slim in a bikini with long, perfect legs and a high, full bosom, stretched out on a rock beside a turbulent sea, the eighteen-year-old future Mrs. Le Carin seemed to stare down at her daughter with all the arrogance of impossible female perfection.

“Fuck you,” Sara told the photograph, then wiped herself and flushed. Back in the bedroom, she wrapped herself in a dressing gown, sat down at her desk, and booted up the laptop. The screen flickered into life. Sara pulled her dressing gown closer around her shoulders, then hit the Internet key and typed “VAGINA” into Google. She selected the first link on the long list that appeared and found herself on a site for a charity campaigning against female circumcision and mutilation of female genitalia. There were several photographs of the crotches of young girls who had had their clitorises cut off and, in some of the images, their labia. Their stories appeared beneath the images and they were all heartbreaking and poignantly provincial in tone. Sara noticed the cases ranged from Turkey to Ethiopia. Reading it, it was as if she could hear their voices, soft, matter-of-fact, none of them self-pitying. They hung in her head. It was all too confronting, and not what she was looking for.

She exited the site and typed in “XXX.” Within seconds a list of porn sites appeared. Steeling herself, Sara began to plow her way through the group orgies, young women with legs splayed, men opening the legs of young women, women opening their own legs, bending down, leaning up, on their sides, upside down, in swimming pools, in baths, on fur rugs, on beds, in hotel rooms, in fields, on the beach, perched on the back of horses, on the back of ponies, on the back of goats . . . Sara stopped noticing the context as she surfed through images that were free to download. She even stopped looking at the rest of the women's bodies, her eyes obsessively fixated on just one body part. She was on a mission, a search for the perfect vagina. Big outer lips, small inner lips, big clit, thin outer lips, big inner lips, tiny clitoris, no lips at all, barely a clitoris . . . The variety was endless, but after a while she began to notice a hierarchy—an elite of symmetrical, younger-looking vaginas that were neat, with the inner lips barely visible and the outer lips plump but not protruding—as she gazed at the genitalia, assessing each one for beauty.

She bookmarked several, then put them up on the screen in a line, trying to decide which was her favorite. She settled on one belonging to a blonde—a natural blonde, she assumed. The vagina was neat, pink, with no inner labia showing at all. Sara highlighted the image and hit Print. In the study next door the printer whirred into action. She got up and collected the printed image from the machine. Back in the bedroom under the lamplight it looked garish. After drawing a neat square around the vagina and the spread thighs of the porn star, she stapled to it the business card of a plastic surgeon that a girlfriend had recommended a couple of years ago. She glanced over at the alarm clock—it was nearly five a.m. She collapsed onto the bed, then reached into the side drawer, and after taking a couple of sleeping pills, fell asleep cradling herself.