artificial.
Â
At last they are getting to know each other.
Anna asks: Tell me, Victoria, what do you remember of your mother?
Nothing, she replies. Nothing at all.
Anna takes another sip of the cocktail Victoria has prepared for her. She is becoming tipsy and feels emboldened.
I donât believe you. You must remember something.
Victoria also looks tipsy.
She brushed my hair. I donât remember her face at all, but I remember that it was my mother who brushed my hair. After each long stroke she ran the open palm of her hand fully down the length of my hair, as though its flyaway strands needed constant smoothing. I remember that gesture. It was rhythmic and ritualistic. I remember the sensation of her hand upon my hair. And the brush. It was of bone with an inlay of emerald green stone, in a design of ivy ⦠And so, what do you remember, my grand inquisitor, my sweet Anna-leptic?
Everything, says Anna. Every little thing.
What in particular?
She had a saying, when I was little. She would tuck me in bed, lean right over me, and whisper: My what big eyes you have! At that point I would close my eyes,and she would kiss both eyelids. It was a kind of game she invented to get me to sleep. After she left I found it hard to close my eyes at night. The absence of her kisses was almost intolerable. Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night believing I had felt her lips in the dark, softly touching against my eyelids. Brushing, just brushing.
The two women stare silently into empty glasses. Victoria holds out her hand and Anna places her glass on it. Then, in an act of comic distraction, Victoria puts the glasses to her eyes and says in a rough and wolfish voice: All the better to see you with.
Anna thinks her hurtful. But then she laughs.
Anna is delighted to find that they are both entering a state of drunken hilarity. Victoria is a skilled concocter of cocktails and alcohol tips her backwards into cushiony space of tell-tale and recollection. She raves â that is the word for it â on all things French: French pastries, French letters, French tenses, French poetry; so Anna tells her the story of her adolescent introduction to the experience of French kisses:
Moira Ahern and Beryl Ray were sitting on the bed with her, bragging.
He was all over me like a rash, said Beryl Ray. Talk about a member of the Wandering Hands Society.
Â
Moira and Anna both wanted more juicy details, so Beryl Ray obliged. They hadnât gone all the way, but had pashed on at the pictures. Pretty serious pashing. Nev had put his whole hand inside her bra and madeher feel his crown jewels, hard as a rock. She said he mucked up her hairdo and only bought one drink, the mingy bloody prick.
Her boldness was delicious. The girls exchanged excited glances.
Anna was thoroughly impressed by the worldliness of her friends. They possessed an entirely different vocabulary, concerning objects and things she knew nothing about: beehive, fishnet, backless dress, Eau De Cologne Number Four-Seven-Eleven. When they spoke of gropings in the back stalls, in that muffled darkness, with the flickering of movie-light and the promise of damp and illicit proximities, she could barely contain her inexperienced interest. And then? she would ask. And then? Then?
But she was not quite accepted. Other girls tittered in corners when Anna approached. Even Moira and Beryl performed gestures of exaggerated alarm when they discovered she had never used nail varnish and had no gossip or magazines or lovey-dovey contributions. It was from them that she learned that her mother had run off with some man â But absolutely everyone knows that! they cruelly chorused â and she was so engulfed by the knowledge that she feared she would faint, there in the schoolyard, in front of everybody.
A real looker, said Beryl, by way of compensation; but Anna was contorted with misery and could not utter a word in response. This was her most private
Â
At last they are getting to know each other.
Anna asks: Tell me, Victoria, what do you remember of your mother?
Nothing, she replies. Nothing at all.
Anna takes another sip of the cocktail Victoria has prepared for her. She is becoming tipsy and feels emboldened.
I donât believe you. You must remember something.
Victoria also looks tipsy.
She brushed my hair. I donât remember her face at all, but I remember that it was my mother who brushed my hair. After each long stroke she ran the open palm of her hand fully down the length of my hair, as though its flyaway strands needed constant smoothing. I remember that gesture. It was rhythmic and ritualistic. I remember the sensation of her hand upon my hair. And the brush. It was of bone with an inlay of emerald green stone, in a design of ivy ⦠And so, what do you remember, my grand inquisitor, my sweet Anna-leptic?
Everything, says Anna. Every little thing.
What in particular?
She had a saying, when I was little. She would tuck me in bed, lean right over me, and whisper: My what big eyes you have! At that point I would close my eyes,and she would kiss both eyelids. It was a kind of game she invented to get me to sleep. After she left I found it hard to close my eyes at night. The absence of her kisses was almost intolerable. Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night believing I had felt her lips in the dark, softly touching against my eyelids. Brushing, just brushing.
The two women stare silently into empty glasses. Victoria holds out her hand and Anna places her glass on it. Then, in an act of comic distraction, Victoria puts the glasses to her eyes and says in a rough and wolfish voice: All the better to see you with.
Anna thinks her hurtful. But then she laughs.
Anna is delighted to find that they are both entering a state of drunken hilarity. Victoria is a skilled concocter of cocktails and alcohol tips her backwards into cushiony space of tell-tale and recollection. She raves â that is the word for it â on all things French: French pastries, French letters, French tenses, French poetry; so Anna tells her the story of her adolescent introduction to the experience of French kisses:
Moira Ahern and Beryl Ray were sitting on the bed with her, bragging.
He was all over me like a rash, said Beryl Ray. Talk about a member of the Wandering Hands Society.
Â
Moira and Anna both wanted more juicy details, so Beryl Ray obliged. They hadnât gone all the way, but had pashed on at the pictures. Pretty serious pashing. Nev had put his whole hand inside her bra and madeher feel his crown jewels, hard as a rock. She said he mucked up her hairdo and only bought one drink, the mingy bloody prick.
Her boldness was delicious. The girls exchanged excited glances.
Anna was thoroughly impressed by the worldliness of her friends. They possessed an entirely different vocabulary, concerning objects and things she knew nothing about: beehive, fishnet, backless dress, Eau De Cologne Number Four-Seven-Eleven. When they spoke of gropings in the back stalls, in that muffled darkness, with the flickering of movie-light and the promise of damp and illicit proximities, she could barely contain her inexperienced interest. And then? she would ask. And then? Then?
But she was not quite accepted. Other girls tittered in corners when Anna approached. Even Moira and Beryl performed gestures of exaggerated alarm when they discovered she had never used nail varnish and had no gossip or magazines or lovey-dovey contributions. It was from them that she learned that her mother had run off with some man â But absolutely everyone knows that! they cruelly chorused â and she was so engulfed by the knowledge that she feared she would faint, there in the schoolyard, in front of everybody.
A real looker, said Beryl, by way of compensation; but Anna was contorted with misery and could not utter a word in response. This was her most private
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