Wagner - Seizure

T HERE is a lipstick on the dresser, by the cracked and clouded mirror. A tube of mock-tortoiseshell, twined with a relief of blossoms, a dull gold band where the lid can be drawn off with a sucking pop. In faded letters, just legible, on its base: Miss Firecracker. Two twists and then a finger of scarlet wax: red as blame. My breath blurs the air. It is cold here. The fire makes only a little warmth.

Whose face in the glass? It could be hers. I have tucked the photograph into the wooden frame: a black-and-white portrait, formal, a string of pearls, eyelashes retouched with a long fine brush. A closed-mouthed smile, like mine. A dark clean gaze: you would call it candid, perhaps, unless you knew it was not. Our bones. Our eyes. Our throats.

I take the lipstick and press it to my mouth. Age has congealed it, made it sticky and chalky all at once, but I stretch my face and press, staining my lips with the color. How easily we read wavelengths into monochrome: I know my lips match hers. I dont remember that mouth kissing me. I dont remember the smell of her perfume; I dont remember the click of those pearls near my ear as she kissed me good night. I have none of it. A sweet, chemical taste on the edge of my tongue.

I have something else, now.

My eyes half shut, I tilt my head. Twins. The sky is leached of color so that out of the little window there is only black and white, the trees shadows against the shrouded sky. This could be a cutout landscape, a set. The sea, with its secrets and seals, beyond. Here is my red mouth, here is blood unwashed from the blade of his knife, and his perfect stillness, his closed eyes.

S TEPHEN whispered into her ear as quiet swept across the gathering in the vaulted chambers below the street: Vintage, that dress? A question, but the kind of thing he would know. The place lit with tall iron candelabra and tea lights serried against the edges of the brick. The slight smell of damp was not unpleasant; it was cool and pure. There werent many of them, sixty or so guests gathered on a sweep of black seats; she held her hands in her lap, nodded in answer to his question, her hair brushing against the line of his jaw.

The bride took her place in the center of the aisle, her long back with a fishtail of ivory silk flowing down it, an exclamation in the muted light. Here I begin, here is what is new, here is the truth. Janet shifted; her shoulder pressed against Stephens and then she leaned away, took a deep breath of the moist air.

He turned his head, looked at her, raised his eyebrow. She smiled.

No dearly beloved . The groom, his thick beard oddly lupine on his youthful face, reading Whitman. One of the candles on the floor guttered out, and pale smoke floated up past the brick. The greatest of these is love .

She felt it all begin to recede. A breath of cold metal, high in the back of her throat. The wrong end of a telescope. Was he watching her? She dug her nails into her wrist to hold herself in place, felt her chest rise and fall. She would not go over the edge of it. She would resist.

He was not watching. Janet saw his lifted face, his carved profile, his comfort that had made her so comfortable, the ease that had brought her ease. She could see it all, but from a distance, the distance of herself as she made her own electricity, this lightshow that she couldnt control. It flickered and ticked, thrummed in her, danced itself. She remembered the long metal tube shed lain in, the hammer of magnets, frozen in the noise and then the picture of her brain, laid out in gray and black slices against the blinding fluorescence of a hospital lamp.

She must have moved, or drawn breath: he heard and shifted. What did he see? Even in this opening of time she could imagine her face changed into some other, an animals, a creatures, something not human. Her eyes wide, the long slits of pupils, her teeth against the air. No. He put his hand over hers where she cut at her own skin; hard , she whispered, and felt his pressure increase, holding her still, holding her down, holding her into herself. The greatest of these is love.

There was applause. Something had happened. The metal breath drew back, a steel sea receding, and Janet relaxed, her body let out of itself, suddenly tired, suddenly warm. His arm around her shoulder, his mouth on her temple. Again? And she nodded.

Her hands flat and limp. He pushed a lock of her hair behind her ears, as if she were a child. There was enough noise now, a scraping back of chairs, they could speak. Do you want to go? he asked. Was it bad?

Its always bad, she said. And not bad. I know what it is. Theres nothing to it. Its justbad, thats all. Not good. She sighed. I didnt think theyd start again. I thought they were over.