Between Dog and Wolf Read online

  I love you.

  That was true. Whatever happened now, that was true.

  nine

  I didn’t go to the Health Centre. Instead I made an appointment with a different counsellor, one called Siobhán. I’m going to try it again, telling the truth this time, because I don’t want pills. Not yet. Once you go into that land, I bet you never come out. They just block the paths, you see, that take the information from your eyes to your brain. They just make you blind. They wreck your liver and turn you yellow. Particularly lithium. Helen told me that. Her dad takes it.

  Siobhán has also got impeccable nails. They are French manicured, so I know she gets them done. I have formulated good answers this time.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Because I’m having very bad nightmares, and my own thoughts are deafening and I feel sad all the time and panicky and I’m hoping that if I talk about things then I can sort a few things out in my head and not have those dreams any more.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Isn’t that what dreams are? Things that haven’t been worked out?’

  ‘Oh. Well there are a lot of theories and nowadays it’s hard to know what to think. It is impossible to gather empirical evidence on these things. Freud, of course, would have said that yes, you can, in fact, interpret dreams and heal the patient that way, but that’s not really my discipline.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Most people don’t buy that any more. Tell you what, why don’t you tell me a bit about you and we’ll go from there. Your family?’

  I’m trying this time, really trying, but it is just too boring. What I do, though, feels useful. It feels like the real reason I came was not to tell my story at all. I need to tell Helen’s story. I want it heard. I want this woman to understand the story of her source, her heart, normal and dull as it may seem, because Helen would never come here and tell somebody her story like this. Helen doesn’t even know her own story. I want this woman to see Helen.

  I know from spontaneous little statements that have spilled forth every now and then over the years, details she needs to tell, like the colour of her daddy’s pyjamas one morning when he was happy and laughed at her joke.

  ‘Knock knock.’

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Orange.’

  ‘Orange who?’

  ‘Orange you glad to see me?’

  They were green like hospital scrubs and the front was buttoned up wrong. When he laughed her daddy threw his head back and she could see his hairy belly.

  In his way Helen’s daddy loves her. He loves her as well as he can with the things that clamp his consciousness and make him a danger to love. I have met him, a grey man with sad dog’s eyes and faraway feelings. I know the story of her daddy and her mammy and of everyone who should have loved her, and I want to tell this woman their stories so that she can see.

  ‘My dad’s not well.’

  Helen’s daddy is not well. He is separated from the world by a film of grey cotton wool. Behind it, he bumps lower and lower to worlds that are unbearable, where the ground always opens. There is no bottom to this world. I say that to Siobhán.

  ‘The thing that makes him like this is not him. The thing is an evil thing.’

  She takes a breath to speak, to explain that they taught her at college about depression, and about that word ‘evil’, but then she glances at the clock and thinks better of it.

  Not very fashionable, I tell her, but there is no other word for this thing that inhabits some bodies until it breaks into the soul when he’s not watching. It rises and falls, wave upon wave. Each splash is a promise that it will rise again, it will never be exorcised and its final rise will be its victory, it will claim him in the end with an overdose or a jump from his office window. That’s its promise.

  ‘My daddy is very rich …’ There is an evil that blossoms in prosperity. Pain struggles to maintain its status quo. During the war, only those with very good reason killed themselves. Only those for whom a horrible death was inevitable.

  ‘Sometimes,’ I say, using Helen’s head-tilt and quizzical voice, ‘it seems like it doesn’t matter what state the world is in, pain seems to maintain a sort of … status quo.’ I enjoy this idea – it seems holistic – and I wonder if maybe the selfish lifestyle is right; maybe we should all just enjoy our relative goodness against things we cannot change. Keep your own soul safe, it’s all you can do.

  ‘How many children are there?’ asks Siobhán. My descriptions are good and she is enjoying the story now. I wonder if she’s guessed it’s not mine. ‘There are six of us. I’m the eldest.’ As for Helen’s mammy – but Siobhán looks at the clock.

  ‘I don’t like to interrupt you, but we’ve already gone over. I have someone coming in at three. I’d like to talk about your mother too though. If you want to make another appointment I’m here on Wednesdays and Fridays.’

  When I get home Helen is sitting in the kitchen, blowing on freshly painted nails and gazing at the fish. The bowl is on the table and they are swimming quickly up and slowly down, puckering at the surface of the water where Helen has sprinkled their food. My own nails are ragged from abuse and I decide to get a manicure, even synthetic nails or something, when I get the chance.

  ‘You want a cup of tea, Helen?’

  ‘No. Where were you?’

  ‘I went to the counsellor.’

  ‘Oh. Any good?’

  ‘No. She was all it’s hard to know what to think nowadays, like I’m interested in her post-everything crisis – Helen, do you think there is a link between postmodern thought and psychosis?’

  ‘Dunno. You should look into it …’

  She is bursting with something, the dimples irrepressible in her cheeks.

  ‘Cassy I really like Oisín.’

  I don’t want to hear it, but she starts to tell me anyway. She doesn’t need to. With her eyes, and the sex tingling around her like perfume, she says it all.

  * * *

  Your love comes suddenly and unexpectedly. You fought it half-heartedly out of fear, then gave in to it.

  It is the silly things: the way he pronounces ‘th’; the warm down at the back of his neck; when he shaves and misses three long strands clinging to his cheekbone. When at last he lays his head on your shoulder instead of holding yours to his, and you know that he trusts you, and you want only good for him. Only beautiful places and healthy meals and warm beds and jokes and kisses for him for the rest of his life.

  Your love is a series of images: spilling coffee on his duvet. Knowing he is watching you dress. Feeling happy and naked. Winter sunlight on his back and bum. Jumping on the bed and hitting your head on the lampshade. Laughing.

  It is a feeling like forgetting, like falling asleep. Your mind has turned to bubbles. Love makes every moment precious and fleeting. Love is missing your lectures for one more kiss or five more minutes to talk about nothing, wearing his T-shirt for two days while he is gone for the weekend, flushing as you piss so he doesn’t hear you.

  And fear. Fear and the ancient knowledge that this is not something you have earned.

  ten

  You can’t find any clean knickers and he raises an eyebrow in a way that makes something in you leap. ‘Go out without them,’ he says, and you laugh and continue to look. At last you give up and, as you reach the door, enjoying your nakedness under your tracksuit bottoms, he yanks a very short skirt from your wardrobe and throws it at your head. ‘No,’ he says, ‘wear this.’

  You go to the Student Union shop together for milk, which was the plan, and then he wants to go somewhere else, to lots of poky little shops that you have never been to before. He walks you into a shop that sells comic books and Star Wars models. There are some teenage boys there. As you leave he whispers that you have probably made their day and you think how crazy lust is, that it can make a man think everyone else wants you too. He fingers the end of your skirt. You walk through an alleyway with no shop doors, only a high, narrow window at the b
ack of a hairdressing salon. He thrusts his hand under your skirt, and in his touch you feel how lovely the curve of your bum is. He pushes you to a wall, presses himself into your buttocks. He is out of his trousers already, stiff and hot against the yielding fat of you. You can see the top of someone’s head through the small window, hair-dye and foil in it. ‘Feel that?’ he says, ‘That’s for you. You make me so hard, your perfect little ass …’

  On top of you, his eyes shutting and opening, gaze moving all over you, he looks as though he doesn’t recognize your face. His jaw is clenched. Your fingers are locked but he detaches one hand and puts it around your neck as you both move towards climax, four fingertips beneath your ear and a thumb pressing above the collarbone. You stretch your head back. As you come he brings the other hand to your throat, pushing on your windpipe, stopping your breath, his hands trembling with arousal and something else, something new: his eyes on your eyes but not looking. You don’t recognize him and you can’t speak – Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? – and you’re afraid of choking and your blood pumps faster like a loud passing train and you must like it because you come in waves, in platforms, up and up and up like a rising fever, and you shudder and moan and push into the mattress with the back of your heels.

  At the end of the bed the kitten kneads the duvet with its claws, and purrs.

  You must like it: his face like the face of a sleepwalker, his grip stopping your breath. Is he imagining he is murdering you? Is this what sex is like? He comes but it isn’t enough. He stays hard, pushes deeper in, spreading your lips, hitting the cervix, teeth locked, jaw set, trembling, and his hands, wet from sex sweat, still pressing into your neck. His clenched teeth are moist. His lips are cracked and drawn back like a growling dog’s and he pushes in and in, determined: ‘I want to make you come again.’

  He watches you undress for him, pumps himself slowly. You think he will plunge into you, hold your wrists and fuck you, looking at your belly and your breasts. Wordlessly he takes you by the hips and turns you over, holds you in a handstand position on the bed. You know how ugly you must look, your breasts flopping towards your chin, your chin doubled by the position. ‘No Oisín, stop.’ But he holds you like that, ‘I just want to try something’, and begins to lick you. It makes you pity him. He can never do much for you with his mouth. You can tell he doesn’t like it. Maybe you taste funny. Something about the position creates a vacuum and your vagina fills with air. ‘Put me down, Oisín, come on.’

  ‘I just want to try something,’ he says, ‘Fuck Helen can’t I just try something?’

  You see how fervent he is with desire and you think, ‘That’s for me,’ and you are grateful, and he pushes into you, in and out and it makes a squelch sound because your pelvis has filled with air and the top of your head is pressing on the springs of the bed and you feel heavy and clumsy as though you might fall soon and he keeps pushing in – and then he stops and lets you down. There is a loud sound like a fart as the air comes out. He sighs, ‘I just wanted to try something.’

  You sit naked on the bed, waiting for him to kiss you, make love to you, but he’s not turned on any more.

  ‘Gotta go baby,’ he says in a voice from a Hollywood film, kissing you on the cheek. ‘I have work in an hour, want to pick up some stuff at my place first.’

  On top of him, touching yourself. He likes that, told you to do it; ‘Baby, perch on my cock and touch yourself, baby.’ Then you pivot around so your back is to him, your bum at his eyeline. He will like this, you think. He reaches forward, puts a hand on each shoulder and pulls them back gently.

  ‘Keep your shoulders back,’ he says, ‘you’re hunching – doesn’t look nice. That’s better. That’s sexy.’

  ‘Tell me you love me, Oisín ... ’

  eleven

  Helen’s curls were spilled over the pillow. He knew she was awake from the way she was breathing.

  Before they’d fallen asleep last night he’d heard her murmur, ‘I’m never alone with my body any more.’ He had kissed the back of her head, and fallen asleep. She didn’t say it like a complaint. Why would she? Why be alone with the protrusions and orifices that are so obviously meant to fit with someone else’s? After all, women never appreciated their own breasts, did they? That’s why lads made that joke, squeezing their imaginary tits. If I was a bird I’d be doin’ this all day, that’s all I’d need in the world. Me and my knockers … That’s what Oisín felt now, in a different way, Me and my Helen.

  Come to think of it he had been neglecting the lads lately. They were starting to notice. The last email from Aengus said: ‘Here’s some barely legal pussy to brighten up those student days. No word from you in an age. Too good for us losers now ur a trinners head. Trinners 4 winners eh man?’

  Helen was becoming his girlfriend now. It had been three months and Oisín had grown used to her body. The first sensation of the day was her skin against his lips and hands, her scent, the familiar shoulders, the wispy ringlets. They were what he looked for on waking.

  Without warning she sat at the edge of the bed and stood up. Her sudden nakedness, free from all ritual, her breasts and arms and bum lifting themselves unceremoniously out from the covers, up from the bed, shocked him a little. Usually Helen lay in bed with him first, she kissed him when she woke up, and they touched each other. Usually he got up before her and she was half-dressed when he came out of the shower, or she got into the shower with him. He had never seen her so brashly naked before, her legs, her sleep-creased breasts, that little triangle neither asking for sex nor inspiring any sort of arousal; fleshy and functional. He had never seen her naked before unless he was about to make love to her, or had just done so. Separated from him like that, her body repulsed him. He thought: She shits, she pisses, I am only one part of her body’s many activities. He felt betrayed. To remedy the situation he began to pump his morning hard-on a little. He groaned to let her know he wanted her, though for the first time, he didn’t. She turned. Her soft face made that question mark she could do by arching one thin brow, and he stopped. She knew. ‘We don’t have to have sex all the time. Go back to sleep.’

  He must have looked hurt because she came over to him, sat on the bed, her bum near his face. Something he had noticed before was that her bum had little red dots, like goosebumps, though it didn’t feel bumpy. ‘You’re my man,’ she said. He closed his eyes. She kissed the lids, then his forehead, ‘Go back to sleep, baby.’

  When he felt her lift off the bed again he opened his eyes a little and stared at the wall, hearing her move around his room. What was she doing? She didn’t usually behave like this. You’re my man. Maybe he could like that. I’m your lady, you are my man.

  He heard his wardrobe door open and peered over the duvet. It was the door with the mirror on the inner side. She was standing in front of it in the neutral pose of a dancer: feet slightly apart, hands by her side. She was looking at her naked body, at the neck, the sloping shoulders, the belly. The belly. Sex and piss weren’t the only occupations of a pussy. There was a Polish woman who lived in the flat opposite his, with two men who Oisín thought must be brothers. Her belly had swollen suddenly and she began to waddle. He felt terror whenever he saw her coming. She had been such a hotty, with such a smooth, tiny waist. It was monstrous, pregnancy, the way it could transform the body so suddenly, the way it destroyed the very sexiness that made it possible, and that looming threat to burst the woman open at the end.

  They seemed to like it, women, they seemed to think it made them powerful. On the bus people got up for them and they plopped themselves down with their thick ankles, stroking their bumps with pride. If I was a woman, thought Oisín, I wouldn’t make such an exception of myself just because I got knocked up, I’d stand on the bus, I’d get on with it, and I wouldn’t make men feel bad about being men.

  He watched Helen watching herself, evaluating her body parts the way girls can. If he were to look at himself in the mirror, he wouldn’t be able to say, this thigh is g
ood, this bit here ought to be underplayed with suitable clothing … but women could do that. Always, thought Oisín, if a guy got a girl naked, he would find that she had some flaw that she knew about, a floppy belly that she had somehow managed to hide with the large breasts she pushed into his face, a flat chest that she had padded out with a special bra. Even in bed, even after she knew the truth was up, she would still pose as though he were a camera. The fat ones took cock between their breasts so that the guy forgot about the belly, was grateful for it even, for facilitating such expansive cleavage. The ones with no breasts perched on top and swung around so the guy could see his cock sliding in and out of them from behind, and all he could think about was their tight little asses.

  Helen tilted her head and put a hand on her abdomen. It was obscene, this privacy in his room, with him there, this communion with her own body. It was rude. She was taking him for granted. She thought he was all hers, her man.

  In revenge he thought of the letter he had received last week from Petra. She was coming in six weeks to see him, she’d said. He hadn’t replied because he wasn’t sure what he should do now that all this stuff was happening with Helen.

  Petra had sent him a picture of her breasts and torso with him fucking her. She had bought a disposable camera on her last trip to see him, and she had asked him to take photos while she took him in her mouth. While she bent over and he entered the second place where no man had ever been, she had said in her manly German accent: ‘Photograph you focking me in de asshole,’ and he had. The next day she had handed the camera to him while she sat on top of him, the way he had shown her, and rocked herself back and forth until she came.