Prologue
Tuesday, July 22, 1969
In her bedroom, she rubs a towel on her hair, grateful to muffle that loud male voice downstairs in The Grotto. She was at first horrified and is now indignant that he was in her home, intruding where he’d never gone before. She knew he would interfere, but she hadn't expected he would show up here, especially at the last moment.
Barefoot in a tee shirt and underpants, she stands before her full-length mirror, preparing to confront him. First, the tremors in her breath and in her fingers. Not fear, but adrenaline. Deep breathing through the nose, exhaling through the mouth. Using the rush, energizing her control. Then, steady fingers on the instruments at the sink, up to the face, quick delicate touches, brushing the thick dark brows into submission, dabbing the cheeks with blush, powdering the shadows under the pale green eyes, shading the lids with a soft hue, nothing needed for the long lashes, but a defining line around the orbs required for clarity, for penetration, which he will get from her, like it or not.
She swipes a stripe of rose on her lips and runs her fingers through her short auburn hair to even out the curls. She shrugs at her good fortune—hair that takes care of itself. Who does she owe that to? Her mother? Who would know?
She pulls off her tee shirt and searches her dresser for a bra. She spills underwear onto the floor, cursing to herself, and then turns to look at herself again in the mirror, this time covered only by the pastel blue bikini underpants. She ponders her body, its condition, the signs of her life there, the toll she has inflicted. Despite her best attempts to destroy herself, she decides she was dealt a durable body, an athletic form with smooth, toned, unblemished skin that she wonders about—the strength and resilience likely from her father, but no real idea what her mother might have looked like before she was ill, certainly not underneath all that bedding or in old photos under all those clothes she’d worn—who knew what women looked like naked back then, what they hid from the world. Why? Everyone knows why.
She grabs a bra from the pile on the floor, straps it on and pauses in front of the mirror. It’s another one of those damn torpedo devices—how many does she still have? Who thought two missiles aimed at you was a good idea? She doesn’t know, of course, but she’s certain he never tried one on.
She casts about in the pile, then straightens up before the mirror, pulls off the torpedo and puts on a beige bra—a newer type without the underwires and frilly decoration, more like a simple layer of skin. She finds a red silk long-sleeved shirt and, as she fastens the pearl buttons from the bottom up, she stops to consider her cleavage in the reflection and then decides to button the shirt all the way up to her neck. She pulls on a pair of loose-fitting black slacks and tucks the shirt into her pants, and then untucks it, then tucks it in again. She sighs in exasperation and stares at herself for a while, listening to the rise and fall of the voice downstairs, unwilling to know what he’s saying. She whispers to the mirror, “What is left of me? What has he not taken away? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
She looks at the painted face, the covered body. “No. I will present myself, finally, as just that. Nothing. He’ll have to peel the skin off my face and body if he wants any more of me.”
She rips open the shirt, pearl buttons popping off the reflecting glass. She tosses it on the floor and pulls off her pants, unsnaps her bra, shakes it off and pulls down her underpants, kicking them at the mirror. She stands naked before the mirror and takes in the form in a fog of disassociation, the entire shape before her a vague apparition in a soft blue cloud, a sallow moth too close to the light.
She blinks away the aura, focuses on the image and begins to scrutinize. She assesses the neck and chin: tiny suggestions of wrinkles but no sag yet, here on the threshold of forty; the arms and shoulders: still solid, muscles holding on, protecting the torso; the hands, long and slender, someone called them piano hands, and she’s kept that thought for years; the breasts: subjects of nurture, objects of desire, lower now than in the torpedo shackles, but in the natural place on her ribs, still proud, still standing at attention, whether required or not; the hip points, once prominent over concave slopes toward her mons, but now softer-edged and filled in, youth gone; the thighs long and lean, always an inch or so apart even with her knees touching; the calves strong and toned—these sturdy legs still holding her up, despite her best efforts to knock herself down. The feet: are there such things as piano feet? Yet, these look more weathered than the hands, squished at the sides from years of binding shoes, sore around the perimeter.
Then, turning around and looking over her shoulder, her back: in a flash from another dimension, she sees a fresh wound surrounded by scars from earlier stabs, but, in this conscious life, she sees smooth skin, shoulders and wings toned and strong, again thanks to someone before her, the father? The waist is soft in the back, but the rear is reliably solid, like her breasts, defying gravity’s angry pull here at the literal end of her young years.
Turning around again, she hears his voice rising, and she feels her heart thrum; her lungs fill, her breath escaping as she looks at her middle, once so lean and tight and now fragile, her waist softer than it ever was, bearing the punishment of her drinking. She pokes two fingers there, still solid under an inch of fat. Her eyes fall to her pubic bone pushing out below her navel, naked of hair and revealing the cleft beneath it, reminding her of her child body. She laughs a little at the odd feeling. “Marte’s idea. A present for me, she had said, but I know it was for her. So why do I still shave it?”
She makes a sweeping assessment of the face and body she’ll present. “So, this is what I’ll be—as untouched and innocent as the child I was born to be. And he will have nothing left to take from me.”
She strides to the bathroom, the voice downstairs now louder. She scrubs off her makeup, runs her hands into her hair and stares at her face in the mirror. “Fake up, gone.” She smirks at the image of her face. “Huh.” She’s heard others call her mouth puffy, but that always just made her laugh. Now those pillowy lips are pale, her eyes unburdened by goop, her dark eyebrows thick and feral, hovering over the wide green orbs, crystalline now, the pupils large, darkness at the heart of her light. Soft sweeps of tender skin underneath her eyes reveal her truth. And her hair? Ringing her face now like the mane of a wayward animal. No rules there, no boundaries; it goes its own wandering, swirling way, untamable.
She returns to her bedroom. She takes one more head to toe survey before the mirror and approves her presentation with a satisfied grin. “The original version. He’ll be disarmed. But I won’t be.”
She steps to her closet and pulls on her silk red robe, the feather light hem tickling the tops of her knees. She ties the sash in a careful bow and turns back to the closet and begins rummaging on her hands and knees past shoes until her fingers touch the cool glass. Her courage. She grips the smooth neck, so familiar, an appendage of her need. Then she stops, lowers her head and shakes it slowly, closing her eyes, her hand letting go and dropping the appendage to the floor. Tells herself the bottle is vestigial, a phantom limb now. Her head lower still, she slowly shakes off the urge, the need. The body and mind must be in sync for this.
She shuffles backward out of the closet and stands up, adjusting and cinching her robe, pulling her wings down to stand taller, chest out, middle tight, head over spine, chin up. She goes to the bedside table, opens the drawer. She pulls out the shiny silver pistol Marte had given her, checks the barrel, drops it into her robe pocket and walks out the bedroom door.
