with it he touched my mouth and said, “see, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for.”
isaiah, 6:7
as soon as she gets home, therese takes comfort in all the scraps of her lost self, before disgust, churning in her stomach, sets in. she inhales the smell of marseille soap, clinging to the air, the only luxury her small boarding school in jersey could afford (and the only one she allowed herself); she thinks of sister alicia’s hands wrinkling and reddening like tomatoes under the water as she scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, until the fabric was clean and pure and therese would pass her the next item and won’t sister alice tell her about judith again, pretty please? and her blue eyes (a deeper, softer shade than carol’s) would shine with mischief and amusement and she would narrate again the story of the princess whose devotion was so deep she would kill for her god (would therese have killed for carol?).
the same smell now makes her sick.
she drops off her suitcase, suddenly hit with the realisation that it was carol who gifted it to her, and hears it slam on the floor with gusto. she would rebel to her god, she thought, and that would serve her well.
-
it takes her three days to stop smoking, and forty to stop craving cigarettes. she still misses carol and how the smell of tobacco clung to her fingers and hair, silent and unrelenting like sickness, like her very own passion for carol.
-
the suitcase goes under her bed, where the monsters hide. she briefly considers throwing away the canon camera, too, stroking her thumbs on the ridges circling the lens, trying to convince herself she doesn’t need it, after all, that she doesn’t want charity from someone who is so deeply afraid of losing she threw away therese first. she looks at the pictures on the wall (her eyes skim over carol picking out christmas trees with surprising ease), considers the superior quality of the ones she took with the new camera. besides, if she were to take out the old one, she would think of richard and his well-groomed hands brushing her shoulders and his voice nagging her for never taking pictures of him («am i not handsome enough, terry?») and the way annoyance and and uneasiness made the hair on the nape of her neck rise up (he laughed amusedly at that, almost flattered for all the wrong reasons it was him who did it). she’d rather suffer about carol thank think of richard, she decides, and sticks to it.
next to go are all the pictures she took of carol. there’s one million variations of her, infinite mirrors that could never reflect her as a whole: there’s carol smiling, carol sleeping, carol looking straight into the camera and carol looking three hundred years away, carol driving and carol smoking. she finds one shot of herself, messily spread on the front seat, burrowed in carol’s fur coat, her eyes closed and her face peaceful. the picture is messy: it’s a hazy, off focus, and not properly centered, something between dream and reality. therese puts carol’s pictures in a shoebox, and burns the one of herself, for one should never throw away religious iconography,
-
her name flows more surely, now. she tried to fight it, the string of syllables that spills from her mouth almost unintentionally, but after hearing it whispered in hotel rooms so dark not even the moonlight could peek in, it’s the only thing that feels natural about herself. at least, it’s better than “terry”. sister alicia used to say she remembered her baptism, and how she had screamed for whole of the ceremony, the strongest set of lungs to ever have graced their church, so loud it almost seemed she wanted to let god know she was there, she existed, she deserved to be heard.
her second baptism had been so silent, she almost regrets it now. no hymns, no candles, no scriptures, only the clutter of silverware, the smoke of cigarettes and an address. maybe if she had called for god then, had she unmasked her, she would have spared her.
-
«do you pray, still?», carol asked once, as therese laid on her stomach, tracing carol’s collarbones and freckles with her index fingers, studying the faint shadows the lamplight casted on her fair skin.
therese had thought about it. «in a way.», she said, at last, moving her finger to draw a cross on carol’s chest, from the hollow of her throat to the end of her sternum, from one side of her ribcage to another. «i worship.»
«i see.», carol whispered, a bit breathless, as if she had just understood the gravity of the feelings harbored in therese’s chest.
therese kissed the center of the cross. carol laughed airily.
-
the seventh day, as therese is sitting idly at her dinner table, cold drink in her hand sparkling with the energy she doesn’t have, the phone in the hallway rings, stubborn and insistent. she can hear her landlady’s tired, irregular steps approaching it, mumbling something, her words fumbling and muddling with one another just like her feet do. her monotone tune stops for a second, enough to rap sharply on therese’s door four times.
«miss belivet,» she squawks, «it’s for you.»
therese drags the chair out with a squeak, and pours her unfinished drink into the sink before opening the door. «who is it?», she asks, her own voice instinctively muffled, the way all noises are in the middle of a warm and indolent afternoon.
her landlady stares at her for second through her fish-eye glasses, squints. «how ya doin’, miss belivet? country don’t seem to have done ya a lotta good.»
«i’m fine. i’m well.» she answers, faster and surer than she meant to be, trying to hide the way her fingers clench and her fingernails set into her palm. «who is it?»
«what do i know? speaks like a proper lady, real posh.»
therese’s heart flutters. foolish, she thinks, thirteen times judas.
«thank you, mrs davis.» she says through the blood rushing to her ears, feeling like the victim of a shipwreck, lost in a storm, vexed by the waves, struggling just to stay afloat; and just when her burning muscles are about to give in, here it is: the tide, right in front of her, ready to devour and engulf her. she prays her last goodbye to the sea.
mrs davis, blissfully ignorant to all except the way her joints ache faintly when the rain is about to fall, goes back to her hideout. therese sees her struggle to make the keys work. she doesn’t help her.
«hello?» she says into the handset, trying to keep under control the shaky vibrato in her voice.
«therese? is that you?», the metallic voice answers from the other side. therese’s heart, suddenly made of cold and unfeeling lead, plummets down to the bottom of her stomach.
«abby?», she spits. «what do you want?».
abby laughs that raspy, little laugh that reminds therese of chalk screeching on a blackboard, or the way sister joan declaimed bible verses, all high-pitched and out of breath. she managed to make sister alicia’s favourite prophet, isaiah, feel like a little mouse squeaking and struggling to be heard. he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, she would say, and sister alicia’s face would twist into a frown of disgust, immediately concealed when the mother superior looked at her; but therese would always catch it, that grimace, and she would feel the corner of her mouth twitch with ilarity. sister joan was transferred two years before therese left the boarding school, as was her best friend, sister benedetta. therese always thought it was because they used to talk, during mass, in the benches way back, their heads so close their veils almost touched: now, she starts to think that talking was the consequence of something bigger.
«always the charmer, i see.» abby’s steel voice hisses into her ear, and therese is abruptly thrown back in the real world, just as a car, outside, honks, cracking the silence.
«what do you want?», she repeats, more forcefully this time. isn’t the separation enough? hasn’t she suffered enough for her sins, does she really deserve to be stabbed with every word?
«i’m just checking on you.» abby offers, suddenly softer. «how are you doing?»
therese’s hands fist with righteous fury. «i do not need your compassion, abby, thank you.»; she hears her voice breaking on the last word, hates herself for it.
«it’s not compassion, hon.» abby voice lingers for a second. «i wonder if it’s some kind of fondness. like one might feel for a kitten.»
«you’re incredibly out of place.» therese answers, shoulders sagging. she’s going to let abby have her way, poke fun at her, ridicule her feelings. she wonders, idly, why she doesn’t have the strength to hang up: maybe it’s because a prophet still sings god’s words, although the phrasing is tainted by humanity, and the harmonies dissonant and imperfect.
«i’m sorry.» therese hears abby take a deep breath. «i do care about you, therese, - because carol does, is what goes unsaid - i actually want to know how you’ve been doing.»
«i’m fine. i’m well.» she says.
«and your job at the times?»
«i’m starting soon.», she lies. she hasn’t spoken to danny, yet.
abby hums in understanding. the conversation languishes for long instants, like a pond flattening after a rock has been thrown into it. therese plays absentmindedly with the hem of her dress, waiting. she wants to ask abby about carol, she realises, and abby is surely waiting for her to do so, offering her space, silence to fill with question marks and apprehension. therese resists the temptation.
«take care, therese. i’ll be in touch.»
and just like that, her martyrdom is over: the desert is behind her, and she hasn’t eaten nor drank, nor listened to the devil. she wonders what she’ll do with herself, now that she’s free.
-
«i loved her, you know.» she says as she paints over her wall - over her old self - with bright and vibrant new paint; up and down, up and down, up and down, until it’s all gone. danny slowly lowers his roller, his brows furrow. therese can see his hand moving towards his pocket to retrieve his notebook, like he wants to look for a proper answer in all the movies he’s seen, but it doesn’t go all the way, instead falling inert at his side.
«i sorta guessed.», he says just as the silence sets again, resuming his own mechanic movement. «do you love her, still?»
therese thinks about carol’s eagle-like eyes turning lazy and languid as they kissed sloppily first thing in the morning, limbs still heavy with sleep and heads filled with the soft cotton of dreams and carol squeezing therese impossibly close for warmth and the unbearable need to be one and two and the same.
«i don’t know - she says; stops; takes a deep breath - i don’t know how to stop. how not to love her.»
therese lets her brush drop, splattering paint all over her shoes and pavement. «i want it to stop.», she sobs, suddenly feeling far too young and far too stupid to be feeling all of this. she feels, more than hears, danny coming closer, gently raising his hand to grip her shoulder, the hint of a hug.
«my dear girl, you can not keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there. »
therese snorts despite herself. «what’s that from?»
«vertigo. alfred hitchcock.», danny says. he smiles.
«but your iniquities have separated you from your god; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. »
he lets out low whistle. «you always have to outdo me, eh?»
«would you stay to work on my portfolio, later?»
«of course.»
-
the twitch in carol’s mouth reminds therese of their first lunch together, reminds her of that very same nervousness that inexplicably flooded carol’s words as she was invited in her house. how different she feels, now, like steel suddenly quenched by cold water.
«i love you.» carol twitches, and therese’s time stops and reverses, and out of the blue she’s the old therese - theresa - terry, and she wants nothing more than to reach across the table and hold carol’s hand and let all the words tumbling on the back of her teeth spill out. but she wants to tell carol that she’s not the same person, no, she has left her far behind and she has burned the path that leads back (she should have guessed that carol would be the will-o’-the-wisp to unknowingly guide her to that same place, to that same person). she wants to tell carol of all this, and more, but god doesn’t allow her to, and so there’s nothing she can do other than let carol’s fingers sink into her shoulder and burn her, once more.
later that night, when she’ll see that very same mouth curl into a smile, slowly and surely like dripping honey, therese will think that she was wrong, but also a bit right.
-
«auntie therese?» rindy tugs on therese’s dress, and she puts down the pictures in her hand.
«yes?»
«mommy laughs a lot more now that you’re her roommate.»
therese looks up at carol where she’s leaning against the doorframe, poise casual but jaw tighter than it should be.
«does she, now?» she gets up and picks up rindy, tickling her. «must be because i’m an excellent tickler.»
carol’s laugh, cristalline and genuine, joins her daughter's.
-
«darling, darling, darling.», carol says. it echoes inside therese’s ribs like a chant in a cathedral. therese props herself up as carol’s fingers finally untangle from her hair, and lays down next to carol, close enough she can actually see the faint freckles under the smudged make up. carol, eyes still closed, turns towards hers, lazy like a cat, and unhurriedly raises her hand to meet the soft curve of therese’s hip, tracing shivering arabesques on the small of her back.
«look at me.» therese whispers, too reverential to break the silence completely: and carol obliges her, with a delicate flutter of eyelashes and a twinkle in her eyes that shines like trapped fireflies.
«i love you.», therese lets out with the breath she’s been holding too long. she lets her shoulders relax, lets the erratic rhythm of her heart set into something akin to the solemn marching of drums. «i love you. and i need you to understand, even though i’ve changed, i’m… » she lets her words trail off, she falls in the pit of the lions like funambulist on their debut night, like daniel thrown in the den.
she looks up at carol, wordlessly apologising.
«therese.», carol says. the grip of her fingers tenses. «every me loves every you.»
«every me loves every you.» therese repeats, tasting the inevitability of those words on her tongue. she’s not sure those five words are enough to encompass her love, her devotion, the red thread that starts from her right ring finger, circles her neck and runs through carol’s arm before joining her heart.
«every you loves every me.» she says once more, and carol smiles without armors, for once, the lines around her eyes wrinkling, her hands relaxing once more. the anxiousness in therese’s skin, her constant companion, seems to finally settle.
they kiss. and if therese can’t find the words, right now, there’s a promise in the warmth of carol’s skin that she has the rest of her life to do so.
i will bow down toward your holy temple
and will praise your name
for your unfailing love and your faithfulness,
for you have so exalted your solemn decree
that it surpasses your fame.
psalms 138:2