When we lost our heads, p.27
When We Lost Our Heads, page 27
The book was about innocence. It was about delight. It was about connection. It was about true love. It was about how the rest of the world does not exist for true lovers. They would murder, rape, and kill for their love, but it was celebrated nonetheless. And is that not a beautiful thing?
Wasn’t it beautiful? She was convinced she had written something of worth. So what if she used the female body and its sexuality as a metaphor for freedom and creation? She had liberated it from the shadows. She had used the language of female desire to create something great and unusual and beautiful. And even if she was in a jail cell, they could not convince her otherwise.
She had imagined Marie coming to see her after she wrote the book. She knew in many ways she had written the book all the while imagining Marie reading it. Marie had reached such heights, she felt the book had to be great to compete with them. She kept thinking, Is this good enough to compare to the wealth Marie has accumulated, to the social power Marie wields? She had found herself thinking as she had as a child, Are we really equals?
George had believed Sadie was writing the book with her as its principal reader. And that every time she made editorial choices it was with George in mind. But it was Marie. Nonetheless, it was George she was depending on now. She knew George was doing everything in her power to free her. George and Madame had always told her they had influence in the city. They had dirt on everyone who was in office. So many important men had come to the brothel and had let their guard down. They had enacted their most hidden and corrupt desires. Madame could blackmail so many men.
Sadie tried to have faith in George’s machinations and tried not to worry. But at the same time she was aware there were men who would be above blackmail of that nature. They had never been to the brothel and they would laugh at, if not be outright disgusted by, a young woman who dressed like a man and attempted to sway their position.
Sadie was concerned about Madame’s reach. If it were not for the fact that her father was in charge of the morality law, she would have been out by now. He was putting all his political leverage into having her locked up and punished. The only way he could protect his political career was to show he had defeated and silenced her.
George was up against men like her father and brother. They were cruel. And cruelty was not something George could negotiate with. There was nothing about their cruelty that made them vulnerable or that they could be called out on. They were men whose cruelty was domestic and was confined to women they possessed or were related to. This was largely socially acceptable and even encouraged. They were immune to the type of power Madame wielded.
When a guard came to the door and unlocked it, telling her she was free to go, she regretted immediately having ever doubted George. She felt such a flood of relief, it was akin to peeing in her clothes, releasing a bladder she had been brutally holding in. She rose from the bench, full of elation. It was such a relief, it was as though she were an air balloon. She felt the second she stepped out of the prison that the lightness might cause her to lift right off her feet and float into the air.
She was surprised to see an expensive carriage in front of the prison. She did not assume the carriage was there for her. Perhaps another well-to-do prisoner was being released, although everyone she had seen while incarcerated was distinctly lower class.
This carriage had definitely descended from the Golden Mile. Sadie thought she had best get as far from that carriage as was possible. She felt a presence inside it. A presence so intense and aware of her, it could only be dangerous. She was about to distance herself from the carriage and head back to the brothel on foot when the door of the carriage opened. It stayed open, clearly waiting for her.
At this point there was nothing she could do other than approach it. A shining head of blond curls was framed in the doorway. It was Marie. Sadie had never been so surprised. Her heart started fluttering. As though she were a moth and Marie were a giant flame.
She had relegated Marie to fiction, where she could visit her. She had never expected to see Marie in the flesh again. But there she was. Marie had come for her.
Sadie climbed into the carriage. She sat across from Marie. The two were silent. They would both have liked to control and contain the smiles on their faces, but they could not.
“Do I owe you anything?” Sadie said finally.
“No, I don’t even think I did this for you. I did it for myself. I did it for the future. What you are doing is so important. I have never responded to a book the way I did yours, and I am sure so many other readers felt the same way. No, Sadie Arnett. The world needs more books from you.”
She took her hand in hers.
“Was the book about us?”
“It is absolutely fictitious.”
“I found it so beautiful. It was so filled with pretty things. I very much like the way you write about sex. And the female body. When you want someone to touch you, when you allow someone to touch you, it is the most beautiful thing. Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve completely destroyed my reputation, you realize. It was filled with conjecture before. But you’ve put an end to that.”
“I can’t edit myself when I write. It exists independently of me. I can’t worry about what the consequences are. I have to write with an utter disregard for the idea that my work might destroy somebody else. In the same way I don’t protect myself. I mean, I put us in the same boat, didn’t I? In the book.”
“That you did. You made us eternally conjoined. Do you know why I’m not that mad at you?”
“Because you’re flattered?”
They both began to laugh.
“Will you take me back to the brothel? They’ll be wanting to know I’m released.”
“I’ll have the driver deliver a note. I would just like to spend a little more time with you. In any case, we need to celebrate this most amazing day.”
“Being released from prison?”
“I’ve made it so your books will never be challenged again. And they will be able to be sold in bookstores.”
“Marie,” Sadie said, and paused, visibly moved by this information. “You have given me the most extraordinary gift.”
“It was my pleasure. I enjoy being able to do things for you more than anything else,” Marie said. She looked at Sadie more closely, taking in how filthy spending a night in prison had made her clothes. “There’s a store I want to take you to. I know you probably haven’t been able to spend money the way you are supposed to. When I’m down, I spend money. There’s an art to spending money. I have the most beautiful packages that arrive from Europe and all over the world. I had a pair of shoes arrive from China this morning. I think we should go buy stockings.”
“I don’t need new stockings.”
“I think you do.”
“And what do you base this on?”
“Raise your skirts for me. And show me the stockings you have on. If they are perfect and beautiful, I will leave you alone.”
Sadie lifted her skirts. There were holes all over her stockings. Sadie laughed.
* * *
And so they went to a store that specialized in stockings. Everything about stockings and the purchasing of them was erotic to Sadie. The way that the shop was so small. Because you didn’t need that much room to display stockings. The way it was tucked away between two other stores. So that you walked by it without noticing if its contents didn’t interest you but if you were looking for it, it was very easy to spot.
The salesgirl was reading a copy of Justine and Juliette behind the register when the women walked in. She put it down, not recognizing that the characters from the book were in her store. The erotic effects of the book were evident in her sleepy, sensual movement. All her gestures were so soft. She walked in her high-heeled boots without making any sound. She put everything in the shop in such perfect order. If she had control of the universe, everything would be pretty and perfect.
Even the way Sadie and Marie sat together on the bench awaiting the arrival of the box of stockings was erotic. The way they described what they wanted to the salesgirl was erotic. There were molds of disembodied feet standing one next to another wearing stockings. These were weirdly erotic too. It was as though Cinderella’s foot had been cut off and was being preserved for posterity.
None of the stockings had any marks on them. There were no marks on the bottom. There weren’t five round gray marks where your toes pressed down. There weren’t any bloodstains on the heels. These were virgin stockings. They were as sweet and innocent as lambs.
Sadie and Marie both raised their skirts above their knees, admiring each other’s stockings as they tried them on. They were infatuated by what they were looking at. The stockings Marie chose to put on had a pattern of climbing roses going up the calves. They were the most expensive pair of stockings in the store. She kept turning to see the roses. There were no guidebooks for women’s pleasures. There were only guidebooks that instructed a woman on how to give other people pleasure.
“These are all so beautiful,” Marie exclaimed. “We can’t choose between them.”
“It is cruel to make us choose,” Sadie announced.
“We would like to have one of each.”
Sadie held up a mannequin leg. “Do you think I could have this? There’s something macabre about it that I quite like.”
“Yes. Of course. You should also take that painting on the wall of a dog.”
“You like that? I’m surprised.”
“Not at all. I want to destroy it so no one else will ever have to lay eyes on it.”
The women laughed. They left the store while the saleswoman quickly loaded the carriage with their purchases, including the mannequin leg and painting.
They had the carriage drive up to Sherbrooke Street. They spent the rest of the day on a mad shopping spree. They went to a large department store, buying whatever touched their fancy on each floor. They went to the dresses and bought at least twenty each. Their favorite part was standing in their underwear on risers facing each other while they were being fitted.
“Clothes feel magical the first time you wear them,” Marie said. “When you wear them the second time, they never work. I can’t wear the same dress twice.”
“I paid for six months of rent with a single dress.”
“Ridiculous. You must have been staying in a hovel. I think a month in a boardinghouse shouldn’t cost more than a pair of my bloomers.”
“Perhaps your bloomers. But I don’t think anybody else’s bloomers would do. Do you still have them imported from Paris?”
“My God. You remember that!”
“I’ve never been able to forget a single detail about you.”
“How I’ve missed you, Sadie.”
“We are so young. We have money and power. We don’t have husbands. We can really do anything we want now.”
They took each other’s hands.
* * *
They were little girls again. Their bodies no longer carried the baggage and scars of the lives they had both lived. Instead, they were luminescent. They were sharing an afternoon that had no past or future. They were back in Marie’s garden. Flowers grew between their toes and fingers. There were butterflies around their foreheads. The smell of roses was everywhere.
“There is something so peculiar I wanted to share with you,” Marie said. “I met a woman. She looks like me. She’s completely mad, though. I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Why do you bother with her?”
“She looks exactly like me. Exactly.”
“Let’s go and meet her.”
“I knew you would be curious about this phenomenon.”
“We live in peculiar times. Anything is possible. If you don’t have an open mind, you’ll miss out on the whole adventure. What is reality anymore?”
“She says she is my sister.”
“Well, your father was a notorious philanderer. I’m sure you do have siblings out there. What does it matter? The factory came to you from your mother anyhow. You’d have to worry if she was your mother’s child too.”
Marie was bolstered by Sadie’s nonchalance. They climbed into Marie’s carriage and instructed the driver to deliver them to the Robespierre Bakery. When they entered and the baker stepped out from the back, Sadie was dumbstruck. She wanted to immediately berate Marie for not telling her about the physical resemblance. But then she realized Marie had indeed told her. She kicked herself for interpreting anything as metaphorical. Particularly in this age of invention where metaphors were daily being converted into reality.
Sadie knew immediately the baker was using this uncanny resemblance to her advantage. She was doing it because she could. There was no way anyone of the lower classes could stop themselves from taking a stab at Marie—wanting to hurt Marie in some way. It is in the nature of the weak to torment the strong for no good reason, while the strong exploit the poor for the advancement of the world.
She was curious to see whether there was anything else, other than a general mean-spiritedness, behind this woman’s relationship with Marie.
“Hello, I’m Marie’s friend. Sadie Arnett.”
“Yes, the famous pornographer. I know your work well.”
“You look a lot like Marie. I will immediately concede that point. But although the resemblance is remarkable, I don’t see that you have any other relationship to her.”
“I know your story from the book. I suppose that’s the joy of being a novelist, isn’t it? You write your life. But you do it in a way where you take out all the negative qualities. You and Marie once committed a grave crime together. There’s no mention of that in the book, is there?”
Sadie and Marie were quiet for a moment. They simply looked at Mary. Her baker hat was too large and was over her forehead, like a bag an executioner was about to pull down.
Sadie felt they ought to get the hell out of the shop. She took Marie’s arm and pulled her onto the sidewalk. “We should not in any circumstance have anything to do with that woman again. She is obsessed with you. So what? So she looks like you. It’s gone to her head. Don’t even buy any cakes from her. They don’t necessarily taste better than other cakes. I think she puts cocaine in the icing. They aren’t necessarily good, they are addictive. She’ll bloody well try to poison us.”
“I was hoping you would tell me I had nothing to worry about.”
“I believe it’s worse than you think. What are you going to do about her?”
“I’ve made it my habit to ignore women of the Squalid Mile. They are always slightly hysterical.”
“Not like that.”
“I can’t think properly when it comes to her. She shakes my sense of reality. I suppose I’ll figure out what to do about her soon.”
“Sooner is better than later. How does she know about what we did?”
“Who knows? She’s obsessed with me. She knows everything.”
“You have to deal with her, Marie.”
Marie glanced at the bakery with an uncertain look. There was something about Mary that told her just to get away as fast as she could, and learn nothing else.
“She’s from the Squalid Mile,” Marie said definitively. “She has no power.”
* * *
Mary Robespierre stood in the bakery watching the women through the window climb into Marie’s extravagant carriage. She felt she had to pack all her anger inside herself so as not to explode. If she hurled herself at the women, she would be arrested and she would never have her revenge against them. She would have to bide her time until she found the opportunity to destroy the two of them.
The moment the two women were gone, Mary felt her anger explode like gunpowder. She threw a huge mound of dough on the table. She began to pound it as though it were a punching bag. She smashed it over and over again. Then she stuffed her face into it and screamed.
If Marie and Sadie had witnessed this scene, they might not have been laughing once again in the carriage as though all their problems in the world had been solved.
* * *
Marie stepped out of the carriage and walked arm in arm with Sadie to the door of the brothel. “I used to be so jealous of you,” Marie said. She put her head against her friend’s shoulder. “I always thought you outdid me. No matter how much care I took getting dressed, I preferred whatever outfit you had on to my own. Whatever book you had in your hand seemed more interesting than whatever I was reading. If I was on my way to the zoo and I ran into you, I lost all interest in animals.”
“Even the zebras?”
“Even the zebras.”
Marie opened up the locket on her neck. She never opened it for anyone. And she wore it everywhere. Everyone felt a tinge of sadness and compassion for Marie when they saw that necklace. They supposed it contained a likeness of her mother and the only way she ever had any access to her mother’s face was when she opened that tiny golden oval. When she was slightly out of her element or felt slighted in any way, she would put her hand around the locket. She let it warm up in the palm of her hand. She held it as though it were a gold coin and she was imagining what treat she could purchase with it.
Marie leaned forward so Sadie could see what it was. There were two small girls on either oval of the locket. On one was a blond girl with curly locks and unmistakable apple cheeks. And on the other side was a girl with black eyes and a mound of black hair. And when she closed the locket again, it made the sound of two people kissing.
CHAPTER 38
Drive a High Heel Through My Heart
