Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys Part 44

For at least the ugly were given pity.

The plain were simply left alone.

At the bar a woman laughed a little too loudly at a joke told by the man sitting two stools to her left. The woman took a second to catch her breath and regroup, her eyes fixed solidly on the man's face, just long enough so he'd know she was appraising him, making a decision, then the moment of truth arrived and she gathered her drink and her purse and gracefully, promisingly, with perhaps a bit more stretch-and-wiggle than was needed, moved closer to him.

Amanda ordered another diet soda, smiling at the waiter who either didn't notice or didn't care.

She stared down at her folded hands. She had come to know her routines as well as her limitations: Fridays were for collecting a paycheck, going to the bank, then over to the pub for dinner and two weak c.o.c.ktails before heading home for a little television, then it was off to bed with a novel. She only drank on Friday, her wild day, her crazy day, her get-down-get-funky-Get-Real day, because too much alcohol might serve to soften her resolve, and after thirty-seven years of being eclipsed by others' smiles, others' eyes, others' voices and faces and figures, Amanda knew that soft was dangerous.

Her soda arrived. The waiter was perfunctory, abrupt, d.a.m.n near rude; he tossed down a napkin, set the drink on top of it, laid her check on the edge of the table, and cleared away her remaining dinner dishes. He never once looked at her, never once said anything.

The woman at the bar laughed again and slipped her hand under the joker's arm, and soon the two of them were gliding toward the door, compliments flowing freely, the scent of her too-expensive perfume mixing with the aroma of his cheap cologne, an augury of things to come.

G.o.d, and it wasn't even seven o'clock yet.

...the women come and go....

Amanda watched them leave, unaware that her grip had tightened around the gla.s.s.

Music oozed from the jukebox in back-a sappy love song, wouldn't you know? She checked her watch, took a few sips of her soda, and was reaching into her purse for money to pay the check when the woman came in.

Every set of eyes, including Amanda's, turned toward her.

Her physical beauty was breathtaking. Shimmering. Enviable.

Those women who were with a man suddenly reached for their partner's hand-just to make sure no one got any ideas; men who were alone casually glanced in the nearest mirror, straightening their ties and patting down their hair, readying themselves for the approach.

The woman herself seemed oblivious to any of it and looked for a place to sit. The pub was crowded and Amanda quickly realized that sitting on a barstool was too common and so held no interest for this woman- -who quickly crossed the room and, without a word, sat down across from Amanda in the booth.

"Please join me," said Amanda in a flat, irritated voice. The woman smiled without looking at her, then turned her attention toward a group of men cl.u.s.tered near the end of the bar.

Amanda's grip on her purse tightened. So. Much. More. It. Hurt.

It was one thing to see a man's eyes effortlessly dismiss you; it was another thing altogether when a woman like this so glaringly snubbed you because you couldn't compare to her.

I must be the perfect contrast to you, thought Amanda, and therefore the perfect accessory.

She swallowed back her anger, reasoning with herself. After all, there was no other place for the woman to sit but here. Fine- -but that didn't mean she had to act like this; she could have at least said something, a hollow greeting, but she'd chosen to ignore Amanda in the rudest way possible.

You have every right to feel offended.

Amanda was not a vindictive person, had always thought herself to be a level-headed pragmatist, but at that moment, in that place, with that woman and her beauty declaring they wanted no part of the plain creature sitting across from them, she felt a fury so intense, that stung so deep inside of her, she thought for a moment her bones might dissolve. It was the most violent, frightening sensation she'd ever known. Why tonight, after all this time, she'd felt a stab of truly unreasonable jealously was beyond her; she only knew that she did, and it was ugly, and diminishing, and she hated it.

She threw down the money on top of the check and left the booth, only to have her vacant seat immediately taken by a man who'd been hovering so close he actually b.u.mped her shoulder as she stood. The woman turned toward him and for the first time Amanda got a look at her eyes: the purest bright azure blue, an early summer sky, the type of eyes heroines in novels and on television always had.

G.o.d, those eyes!

On her way out the door Amanda glanced at her reflection in the long mirror behind the bar, noting with pride that she'd looked far worse in her day; her light reddish-brown hair still held its l.u.s.ter from this morning's shower and her face, though plain, yes, was a pleasant one, a compelling one, the face of someone who observed, who listened-and not just to the words that someone might say but to the unspoken meaning beneath those words as well. Hers was the face of a friend on whom you could always depend, one who did not expect to get something in return for her kindness and compa.s.sion.

And her eyes...hm, yes, well...not a pure bright azure blue but a striking enough hazel, sparked by a sharpness of intelligence-after all, becoming an insurance actuary (the type of math fool even computer geeks thought of as a nerd) wasn't exactly easy.

There.

Her silent pep-talk done, she made her way out to her car, feeling content with who and what she was, though no less lonely.

As she slid into the driver's seat her vision blurred. The world washed away like sidewalk chalk drawings under a great and sudden downpour. She blinked once, twice, then uncontrollably, leaning down and pressing her forehead against the steering wheel to kill the dizziness and disorientation. She took several deep breaths. After a few more frenzied, loopy seconds, it pa.s.sed.

That's when she heard someone screaming.

Loud, ragged, and shrill, the sc.r.a.ped-raw howl of an animal in agony blasted through one of the pub's half-opened windows and latched onto the back of Amanda's neck.

The scream was quickly underscored by several loud, panicky shouts, then the whump-crash! of gla.s.ses being smashed, maybe knocked to the floor by some drunk who'd fallen across a table but she knew that wasn't right, knew it as surely as her name because now the underscoring voices and panicky shouts were growing in density and volume and number, nearing hysteria as another, worse scream erupted and the upper half of a figure smashed through one of the windows, a familiar figure, a beautiful figure clutching at her lovely face, hands clawing at b.l.o.o.d.y, empty eye sockets. The woman screamed a third time, though not as loudly, as someone inside tried to pull her back in. Amanda watched horrified as two men with slashes of blood staining their shirts grabbed the woman's arms, trying to calm her. It did no good. Her pitiful screams quickly faded under the wail of an ambulance siren slicing through the damp night air.

Amanda closed her eyes, offering a silent prayer that the woman would be all right. Maybe she had been arrogant and rude and offensive, but no one deserved the kind of pain that produced a scream like that. No one.

Jesus Christ, what had happened to her?

As the ambulance roared into the parking lot Amanda blinked away a few tears-feeling more than a little guilty for the way she'd judged the woman so harshly-and sat back in the seat, pulling a few tissues from the box on the dashboard and drying her eyes. The police wouldn't be too far behind the ambulance and she was a witness, of sorts, and- -she looked into the rear-view mirror to see if she'd smeared her mascara too badly- -felt strangled by the cry that clogged her throat as she saw her eyes- -so blue so blue so pure bright azure blue, lovely and bright and sparkling in the night- The commotion of the paramedics and the chaotic shuffling of the pub crowd covered the sound of Amanda shrieking into her hands.

2. To Remain?

She had been forced to leave state college one semester into her first year because her father had gotten laid off from the plant and her parents needed her help. Though the letter her mother sent wasn't obvious in its manipulations, it nonetheless managed to push all the right guilt b.u.t.tons. Two days after receiving it Amanda withdrew from school and used her last forty-five dollars to buy a bus ticket back to Cedar Hill. It was during the four-hour bus ride that she began to wonder about the price a person paid for so-called "selfless" acts. From the moment she'd stepped into the iron belly of the road lizard her throat had been expanding, then contracting at an alarming rate, finally forcing her to open the window next to her seat so she could breathe easier. Her chest was clogged with anger, sorrow, confusion, and, worst of all, pity. Everyone knew the plant was on its last leg, that the company had been looking for an excuse to pull up stakes ever since that labor riot a few years back, and when it happened, when the plant went down, so would the seven hundred jobs that formed the core of the town's financial stability.

More than anything Amanda didn't, dear G.o.d, didn't want to end up like every other girl in town; under- to uneducated, with no dreams left, working nine hours a day in some bakery or laundry or grocery store, then coming home to a husband who didn't much like her and children who didn't much respect her, wearing a scarf around her head all the time to cover the premature gray hair, watching prime time soap operas and getting twelve pounds heavier with each pa.s.sing year.

As she stepped off the bus she promised herself that, regardless of what eventually happened with the plant, she wouldn't betray herself for anyone or anything. That alone was her hope.

"I thank G.o.d for a daughter like you," said her father, embracing her as she stepped through the door. "Come on in and sit down and let your mother fix you up something to eat. It's good to see you, hon. Here, I saved the want ads from the last couple days, maybe you'll find something...."

She wound up taking a cashier job at the town's only all-night grocery store. Amanda smiled at her late-night customers, and spoke with them, and tried to be cheery because there was nothing more depressing than to find yourself in a grocery store buying a loaf of bread at three-thirty in the morning in a town that was dying because the plant was going under and no one wanted to admit it.

Still, Amanda smiled at them with a warmth that she hoped would help, from a heart that was, if it could be said of anyone's, truly good and sympathetic.

The customers took no notice.

For eleven months she lived in a semi-somnambulistic daze, going to work, coming home, eating something, handing her paycheck over to her parents once a week, then shuffling off to bed where she read until sleep claimed her.

Outside her bedroom window, the soot from the plant's chimneys became less and less thick but still managed to cover the town in ashes and grayness.

She read books on sociology, countless romance novels and mysteries, biographies of writers and film stars, years-old science magazines, and developed an understanding and love of poetry that had eluded her in high school. Of course she went for a lot of the Romantics, Donne and Keats and Sh.e.l.ley, as well as a few modernists-T.S. Eliot and James d.i.c.key, Rainer Maria Rilke and the lyrical, gloomy Dylan Thomas. c.u.mulatively, they gave eloquent voice to her silent aches and hidden despairs.

Crime began to spread through the town: holdups, street fights, petty thefts, and acts of vandalism.

And in the center of it all stood the plant, a hulking, roaring dinosaur, fighting desperately against its own extinction as it sank into the tar of progress.

Amanda discovered Jane Eyre in the library one day. Over the next month she read it three times- -and the dinosaur howled in the night- -and her mother at day's end sat staring at the television or listening to her scratchy old record- -and her father's eyes filled with more fear and shame as he came to realize he was never going to be called back to work- -and somewhere inside Amanda a feeling awakened. She did what she could to squash it but it never really went away.

So sometimes, very late at night when shameful fantasies are indulged, she took a certain private pleasure as she lay in her bed, and usually felt like h.e.l.l afterward, remembering the words to a nursery rhyme her mother used to read to her when she was a child: "Mirror, mirror, tell me true Am I pretty or am I plain?

Or am I downright ugly?

And ugly to remain?"

No man would ever want her in that special, heated, pa.s.sionate way. She was too plain, and the plain did not inspire great pa.s.sion.

Mirror, mirror, told her true.

3. "...She Was Alone When I Got There."

Amanda finished giving her statement to one of the police officers on the scene (who failed to ask for her address and home phone number until she volunteered the information) and was getting ready to leave when she saw the man who'd taken her spot in the booth. His shirt was spattered with dried blood and his face was three shades whiter than pale. He looked up from his shaking hands for a moment, through the swirling visibar lights and milling patrons, past the police officer who was taking his statement, and stared at her.

It seemed to her that she ought to say something to him-but what?

Before she could come up with an answer she found herself walking across the parking lot and coming up next to him. He was no longer looking at her-if he actually had been in the first place. He ran a hand through his hair and turned toward the officer beside him.

"You say she just doubled over suddenly?" asked the officer.

"Uh, yeah, yeah. It was weird, y'know? We're sitting there talking and then she starts...blinking. I'm thinking to myself, 'Oh, Christ, she's lost a contact lens,' then she bends over, real violently, like maybe she's gonna throw up or something and I moved out of the booth to, y'know, help her get out and over toward the bathroom but she's making this sound, this awful sound like she's choking and now I'm shaking 'cause I've never had to Heimlich someone but she sounds in pain, serious pain, and I reached over to grab her and she pulls away and covers her eyes with her hands, and now she's groaning and wheezing and people around us are looking, so I reach for her again and that's when I see there's all this...blood coming out from under her hands. It was f.u.c.kin' horrible."

The officer finished writing something down, then said, "Was there anyone else in the booth with her?"

"No. She was alone when I got there."

Amanda turned away, biting down on her lower lip as if that would be enough to shield her from the invisible fist that had just rammed into her gut, and half-walked, half-ran to her car where she checked her eyes-no, not her eyes, not hers at all-again in the rearview mirror, then turned the key in the ignition, backed out, and drove away.

She had no idea how long or how far she drove, only that she had to stay in motion while the numb shock of realization ebbed into a dull thrum of remorse. She hadn't meant for anything to happen to the woman, not at all, but- -Was there anyone else in the booth no she was alone when I got there no she was alone no she was ALONE- -b.a.s.t.a.r.d had b.u.mped right into her. Right into her.

Twenty deadened minutes later, feeling very much like an etherized patient on the anesthetist's table, she parked in front of a church, stepped out of the car, then walked up the steps and through the doors, pausing only to dip her fingers in the marble font of holy water and make the Sign of the Cross over her forehead and bosom, then strode down the aisle, through a set of small wooden doors, lowering to her knees as she pulled the doors closed and a small overhead light snapped on- "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

Kneeling in the confessional, her voice that of a disembodied ghost, Amanda felt as if she were being operated by remote control, only vaguely aware of the words coming out of her mouth, mundane sins-cursing, l.u.s.ting, small acts of thievery like sometimes not putting a quarter in the box at work when she got a cup of coffee, sins of omission, white lies, I meant no harm, then she was whispering, humiliated, about impure thoughts that still moved her blood faster and still took her to a private place where moist fantasies waited for her...

...and in one of these private places where plain-faced fantasies lay hidden, she was as beautiful as she wished to be and with a man who not only loved her but desired her as a result of that love, his lips moving down the slope of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, his tongue tracing soft circular patterns around her nipple- She was suddenly, awkwardly aware of the claustrophobic silence in the confessional, and wondered how long she'd been quiet.

On the other side of the screen the priest asked, "Are you all right?"

She pulled a compact from her purse, opening it to examine her eyes in the mirror. "No."

"What's really wrong?" His voice was soft and velvety, like Burt Lancaster's in Atlantic City. She wondered what the priest looked like; maybe he was young, perhaps handsome and- -stop it right now, you're bordering on pathetic.

She almost rose but hesitated for some reason, and in that moment the soothing male voice on the other side said, "Please, ma'am-uh, miss-if you can, try to forget that you're talking to a priest. I know that sounds trivial but you might be surprised how much it helps some people. You could pretend I'm a close friend-"

"-don't have any real close friends-"

"-then your mother or father, maybe a sister-"

"-my parents are dead and I don't-"

She blinked, realizing something. True, she had no siblings, had been an only child- -but she did have sisters, nonetheless.

In restaurants, in the lobbies of movie theaters, standing in the checkout line at the grocery store or wandering the aisles of video rental stores twenty minutes before closing, they were there, her sisters, waiting for something that would probably never come along, waiting alone, always looking toward a place not imagined by the beautiful or ugly, a spartan, isolated place reserved for the plain, for those never noticed, not bothered with; every so often their eyes would meet her own and Amanda would detect a glint of recognition in their gaze: I know just how you feel and just what you're going through, and I'd smile if I could but it'd probably look awkward, if not absurd, so I'll just go on my way and promise you that I'll remember your face, one much like my own, and I'll wish you well, and good luck, you'll need it.

Then it was through the checkout, down the next video aisle, into the darkness of the movie theater, or out of the dining room and into the night, never speaking, never allowing for a moment of tenderness, keep that guard up because it's all you've got, and it should be enough, that guard, but sometimes it wasn't, sometimes it slipped and something painful leaked inside, or something ugly slipped out- -she was snapped out of her reverie by the ghost of her voice.

"When I was a child my mother used to play this one record over and over, I don't know where she got it, Dad had bought the record player for me-it was one of those models that came in a carrying case, it had this really heavy arm-but Mom, she had this one record, the only one she owned, an old '78, a Nat King Cole song called 'There Will Never Be Another You' or something like that. It was one of the sappiest songs I ever heard, I never understood why she liked it so much. But she did, she loved it, and she used to have a few shots of whiskey after my dad went to bed, then she'd play that record over and over, until she got this dreamy look on her face, sitting there in her chair and listening to that song and pretending she wasn't who she was. Sometimes I could see it in her face, that wish. She was someone else and the song wasn't on a record, it was being sung to her by some handsome lover come to court her, to ask for her hand and take her away to a better life than the one she had, the kind of life she'd dreamed of when she was the age I am now. I used to sneak downstairs and watch her do this, and I'd laugh to myself, you know? I'd laugh at her because I knew that my life was going to turn out differently, I'd never be so stupid as to wind up marrying a man who didn't really love me like a husband should but I stayed with him anyway because that's what the Church told me I was supposed to do. I'd never do that. I'd never spend my days working around the house, doing the dishes and the laundry and the dusting, having no life of my own, no hobbies, no interests, spending half the afternoon fixing dinner, then half the evening cleaning up afterward, only finding time for myself after everyone went to bed and I could sip my whiskey and play a G.o.dd.a.m.n record by Nat King Cole about there never being another me. I mean, I was just a kid, I was only in grade school, and Mom was old and used up and kind of funny at those times. But now it's twenty years later and here I am, just like her- h.e.l.l, I even have that record of hers! It's the only thing that was really hers that I have, just like my dad's old straight-razor. A couple of award-winning keepsakes, huh? I look at these things of theirs, then I look at my life and...I try to keep the bad feelings at bay but sometimes it doesn't work. I've turned into her. There's no man who loves me, all I've got is my work, and instead of whiskey and Nat King Cole I've got two weak c.o.c.ktails on Friday night after work and Jane Eyre or well-thumbed collections of poetry or a ton of videotapes, most of them romantic comedies. My G.o.d, if I had any kids they'd be laughing at me now, sneaking down after I think they're asleep and watching Mom get all teary-eyed over a book or movie or poem. They'd look at me and laugh and say, 'Look at her, she thinks she's Katherine Hepburn or something.' Most of the time I can get by but on nights like tonight I...I feel so lonely I could scream, so I tell myself that at least there's my job, at least there's a place I can go where I won't have to think about how I feel, except now I work with a bunch of other people, most of them women-and younger than me-and they all want to tell me about their love lives. 'You've got a kind way about you,' they say, or 'You're such a good listener.'

"Oh G.o.d, when I hear them going on about their love lives, how it's so hard being in a relationship because they don't agree on...on what kinds of toppings to get on a pizza or who should make the first move or how truthful they should be or why they don't feel comfortable making a serious commitment just yet...when I hear all this, I really want to slap them sometimes, you know? They have no idea how it feels to be the 'nice' girl who's always there, always willing to listen, the girl you can call anytime because she's always home, who's friendly and reliable like an old dog or five bucks from Grandma in your birthday card every year. I know I'm not the most stunning woman ever to walk the face of the Earth, but...." She reached into her purse for a tissue to wipe some of the perspiration off her face. Unable to find one, she kept searching around while she spoke.

"It's amazing how relaxed a man can be when he's in the presence of a woman he thinks doesn't need or want pa.s.sion. I don't know how many times I've had a guy I know make a mock pa.s.s at me, then we'll both laugh like it was no big thing. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, that's too d.a.m.ned easy, and I know that I'm plain, but the thing is, because I'm plain, I'm safe. And safe means being rendered s.e.xless."

She took a breath, weighing the truth of that word.

"s.e.xless. And sometimes I'd like to pull all these people aside who are so overwrought about their shaky s.e.x lives and whisper that word to them, because it's a feeling they'll never know. Because with all their whining and crying and b.i.t.c.hing and all their melodramatic romantic suffering, they'll always be able to find someone who wants them, even if it's just for one night. And I'd like to know how it feels from their side, just once. To be wanted that way just once, to be that beautiful for just one night."

She looked toward the small tinted gla.s.s separating her face from the priest's, caught sight of her face, saw the azure eyes, and remembered the other woman's screams.

"It hurts, Father. Sometimes it physically hurts! I don't know how but I...I did something tonight, caused something to happen. I didn't mean for her to get hurt, to suffer like she did, but I-"

The words clogged in her throat when her hand brushed against something inside of her purse.

Something small.

Soft.

Moist.

And round.

"What is it?" asked the faceless priest.

Amanda couldn't answer.

She opened the top of her purse wider, then slowly looked down inside, tilting it toward the dim light.

Then she saw them.

Saw them and gasped and snapped closed her purse and leapt from the confessional and ran down the aisle sobbing, the sound of her grief echoing off the wide arches above as she kept running, wanting to rip the purse off her shoulder and throw it away and never look inside again, wanting to close her eyes-not her eyes, not hers at all, just different eyes in her head-close them forever and not have to face her reflection or see the way other people looked at her, close the eyes and make everything go away, deny that what had happened was real and make everything better by that denial but she knew it was true and didn't understand why, and now she was outside the church, running down the stone stairs, the priest following and calling for her to stop, please, stop, but she couldn't, she was too frightened as she threw herself in the car and flung the purse into the back seat, slammed the door, and pulled away, the houses and street signs blurring as she sped past, lights melting, images flowing into one another like paint on an artist's canvas, blues into tears into yellows into aches into reds- ...Talking of Michelangelo....

-into greens into curses and back to blues, signs guiding her way, STOP, YIELD, ONE WAY, ROAD CLOSED AHEAD, rounding the corner, finding detours, familiar trees, lonely trees and this empty street, dark houses, dirty fences, take a breath, there you go, calm down, take another breath, slow down, breathe in, out, in, out, that's good, that's a good girl, slow it down, pull it over, close to the curb, there ya go, here we are, home sweet, ignition off, keys out, all stopped, all safe, alone, alone, alone.

She stared at the front of her house, then turned around and lifted her purse as if she had only- -only- -only one way to know for sure.

She took a deep breath, exhaled, then opened her purse and looked inside.

Silence; stillness.

She calmly reached in and took them out, holding one in each hand like a jeweler examining uncut diamonds.

They were still quite moist, sheened in corneal fluid.