The Mannequin

By Andrew Clusker

 

She was perfect as she was.  That’s what John had said last night, as Sam cradled his head in her hands, while wiping sticky vomit from his stubbled chin.  Several days of nothing, then a meaningless comment.  How typical, Sam thought, when he did speak, it wasn’t clear what he meant.  The amber velvet depths of his whisky replacing the sunrise and replacing conversation.

 

A submissive whimper came from the bedsprings as Sam turned onto her side.  An invisible barrier kept her to one side of the bed.  Half expecting him to return.  He had returned so often in the past after arguments, during what the counsellor called the ‘Honeymoon Phase’.  Red, pleading eyes.  Letters of explanation.  Dinners filled with jokes.  A magician would have been proud.  But then, their relationship was a magic trick.  Flowers seemed to grow from the furniture.  He always went back to flowers in times of need.  She had been pulled round so often, he probably thought he could solve world peace with a bunch of them.  

 

Not any more.  His efforts had wilted like a flagging hose.  Fainter and fainter until even the memory had dried up.

 

Violence. 

 

That bloody word again.  It always squeezed itself in, like a rigid needle lodged between the flesh and skin of her temple.  Sam scrunched her forehead into a landscape of valleys.  The room squeezed tighter.  Tighter, until she became the magnified centrepiece. Her hands steel balls. Knees tucked under her chin.  A wave of warmth came up from her stomach and vomit peeked over the back of her throat, and then tiptoed back. The counsellor said when the word arrived to think of sunshine and the last time she had laughed.  But the parental hands of recollection never led her far enough away from thoughts of John.

 

She met him during a hot July.  The exact date she didn’t recall anymore.  The sun tormented the crazed shop window glass, casting confusing cobwebs across her vision.  A mannequin stood there, hands on hips, polystyrene nose upturned.  Silk wrapped around the shoulders and down to a slender waist, lapping against crisp, cropped trousers, faintly pin striped.  Neat polystyrene ankles framed by tiny brass buckles on the latest delicate shoes.  Sam looked away, catching her unpainted reflection in the window.

 

And there he was.  John.

 

On display.  He looked like a John would look.  Except the…well…window dressing.  Kneeling in front of her, watching. She felt like a child stealing sweets.  How embarrassing.  Didn’t he have anything better to do?  Like adorning dripping jewellery on his gorgeous, submissive mannequin.  He smiled, amusement flickering across his expression.  As Sam turned away, flicking a sweep of hair in as blasé a fashion as she could muster, he beckoned to her to wait.  Reassuring almost.  But confident.  Knowing.   

 

Sam tucked a loose ribbon of dark hair behind her ear and clasped her hands. Then unclasped them.  Clasped again.  Her shoulders pushed back, the shoulder blades straining to touch.  They stood in the street, faceless passers by in black and white.  Sam held his gaze.  He was nice to look at.  If you like that tanned, blonde streaks thing.  She moved a loose hand to her hip, becoming very conscious of the pimple on her cheek and her dull, chaffed lips.  Distaste seemed to radiate from the mannequin.  Damn it!  She couldn’t believe she felt in competition with a bloody doll.  Sam looked away.  Her throat seemed to be vacuumed dry.  She raised her hand to protect her eyes. To hide her blush and frown.  She nipped his offered phone number from his fingers, glanced sideways at an invisible audience and tucked the damp piece of paper into her bag.  His teeth sparkled as she stepped away, her faltering heel catching between paving stones.  Not very elegant, she thought, her steps quickening.  Lost in the crowd again.

 

But Miss Mannequin didn’t get the number.

 

Each time they met after that was like the first time.  Icy awkwardness thawing to reveal attraction. Little butterflies bouncing off the walls of her stomach.  Sam would watch from afar as he straightened his tie, the flowers in his hand rubbing against his chin.  Checking his reflection.  He was interesting.  A bit vain maybe, but…different. She smiled, casting a last squirt of perfume on her neck.  It dripped like lacquer.  A quick check of the lippy.  Improving. The first few times had been a bit of a smudge job.  He was cute.  Worth a bit of extra time, she thought.  Sam loved the mixed perfume of shampoo, toothpaste and shaving foam she always caught a whiff of when she kissed his cheek.  An awkward silence would follow.  Why would he be interested in her anyway?  Gradually the shyness fell away, like splinters of chiselled stone. 

 

Sam would walk past the store at lunchtime, hoping to see him in the window. Her reflection smiled back at her, all bright and blushing.  Silk draped across her shoulders.  Neat, crisp tailored trousers.  Petite shoes on her, lets be honest, not so petite ankles.  But they fitted.  The bare mannequin waited in the window, forefinger on chin.  John had bought Sam the outfit in the window for her birthday.  Sam remembered the dinner together.  Her laughter had gurgled up from deep inside, where it had been chained for so long.  Water happily hopped down her cheeks.  John had accidentally dressed the bare female mannequin in male clothes, instantly boosting transsexual sales in the store, much to the dismay of the store manager.  No one knew why the lobby was filled with many of the local gay community. 

 

He wasn’t just nice to look at, she thought, gulping down cool, crisp water to douse her insides.   

 

Then came the comment. 

 

Just as the last tear of happiness dried to a fond memory.

 

He said he would help her develop fashion sense.  Him! A man! She left him that evening with the precious silk in his soup and a red wine stain splashed on his shirt, like a gaping bullet wound.

 

But he wouldn’t let go.  Maybe he thought she was some sort of challenge.  Maybe he needed help.  Real help.  The sort she couldn’t provide.

 

Sam reached out and wrapped her pale doughy fingers around her dark, heavy glasses.  Her office clerk ones he called them.  The selotape holding them together grated against the bridge of her nose.  A tear peeked out from the edge of her eye to hide in her pillow.

 

She pushed herself out of bed, the stiffness in her elbows like rust on an old neglected hinge.  Sunlight hopefully probed its warm fingers between the curtains, seeming to retract in defeat against the coldness of the room.

 

The clock on the wall announced noon and memories of running, in afternoon time trials, seeped into her mind. Legs burning, her blood like acid.  Her dark hair laden with sweat, slapping on her back, like a jockey’s whip.  John in the distance, partly behind the boundary tape, like a man leaning out of a window.  The sponge draped over his shovel hand, a distant promise of comfort.  The exploding ice water seemed to hiss over her face like water poured onto a frying pan. “Go on Sam! Keep fighting!”  Faster still.  Resurgence.  Her pulse, pounding against her temples, seeming to stretch the skin.  He would jog with her, mud splattering his khaki trousers, occasionally an outstretched hand sinking into the mud to help him to his feet.  He would then wait for her at the other side of the track once again.  Expecting something. Extra. 

 

Like he always did.

 

Five hundred yards to go.  Less.  Seizing muscle.  Someone else gaining. John’s clenched fist loosening.  His gaze wavering.  He turned away as she hit the ground, exhausted. 

 

Second place. 

 

He came over and helped her to her feet.  But she didn’t need his sympathy.   She pushed him off and ran home.  Later he came back with her second place medal.  He said it was a great run.  That the bravest runners led from the front and the colour of the medal didn’t matter.  That people remembered her. 

She wasn’t listening.

 

Maybe it was true.  That finishing in second place wasn’t important.  Maybe it wasn’t important to him.  It didn’t matter now though.  Now she was on her own.  In a race she could never finish, let alone win.

 

Why did her mornings always start this way?  The past seemed to whisper an explanation for the present, yet always fell into a guilty silence when questioned. 

 

She lifted an old woollen jumper from the floor, where shirtsleeves embraced trousers, dotted with odd socks.  It was the kind she used to wear.  It fitted snugly.  She stepped into the hallway, the balls of her feet playing hop scotch with the loose floorboards and stopped, her breathing seeming to bounce off the walls. A faint snore rose and fell from the back bedroom. He still slept thank God.

Violence.  There it was again. Knock knock. 

 

Bruises are little pools of blood.  Sam never knew that before.  When you scar or bruise you examine.  Stare in the mirror.  The image constantly shifting, but never true.  Sometimes a bruise in the thigh could cause another bruise in the ankle as the blood moves around.  After a while, you forget where the blows land.  Maybe all the bruises are caused by one blow.  Maybe one blow isn’t so bad.  

 

The counsellor called the acts themselves part of the ‘Acting Out Phase’.  His hands trembled in excitement as he showed her a well-worn page in his favourite book.  Sent her off with her life summarised by a flowchart.  Then again, what would you expect from a service called ‘Good Grief’? 

 

The first blow, or act rather, wrenched a lump from her soul, as though pulled by giant saw toothed pliers.  Ragged, ripped edges.  Irreparable damage.  No amount of laughter years later. No counselling.  Nothing could fix it.  Like that patch of cream carpet you spilled red wine on, then tried manfully to clean.  But it’s still there.  That dark hue.

 

That first time, Sam collapsed in the corner of the living room, wedged between the sofa and the wall, in the foetal position.  No sound came at first.  Searing heat seemed to rise up, chaffing her insides, warm water rising to her eyes.  Cascading down her face, around her gaping tunnel mouth.  Then freezing. All night.  Shaking.  Terror trickling through her veins, like little cold running spiders. 

 

God, I wish I had a sister, Sam thought.  How disappointed her parents would be.  Or parent at least.  Dad was dead.  Who could she speak to?  Mum was…well, mum really.  The woman with selective hearing.  Only mum could respond to the statement ‘We’ve been having problems mum’, with ‘Have you seen my new azaleas in the garden?’  She didn’t even cry when dad died. Just stood there. Graveside.  Staring at her bloody flower arrangement.  Probably thinks he is still alive, but a bit late back from golf. 

 

If only that were true.  He’d know what to do.  He would put his big arms around her. She could still hear his calm words, carried on the wind to her ears. Calming and soothing.

 

Sam stepped into the living room. The cold air prodded at her and she hugged herself. Chatter from the television next door came through the wall.  Cardboard walls for cardboard people.  With cardboard relationships.  The neighbours probably heard…they probably remembered more than she could.  The swearing, breaking of glass. 

 

She could feel them looking over the fence.  Expecting to see something, which told the real tale.  Her discomfort twisted and distorted, during coffee breaks.  Their knowing glances, tearing barbs against the veil of their excuses.  Sam always had to do the explaining.  John’s pride covered him in a little protective blanket.  He came up with the excuses and Sam conveyed them to the neighbours with a smile.  Their pathetic, obscure teamwork. The world had simply cast them another dose of misfortune, with a great shrug of indifference.  The black eye happened in the new Kai-Bo class.  The hobble caused by a stubbed toe.

 

An odour of staleness and something else pounced, as she lumbered into the gloom of the kitchen.  Light switch dead. Tins littered the worktops as though a kid had been collecting them to build something.  A giant tin rocket.  The sink spewed forth plates cemented together with dried pasta sauces.  A half eaten loaf of bread with green splattering of fungi.  The closed fridge door restrained a tangy, sour sharpness.  Daring to be opened.

 

Cupboard doors lay open, showing empty shelves.  John would prise food out of jars and tins with his fingers, and leave it to rot around the sink.  Dishes could pile up for weeks on end.  One or two had been dropped on the floor, pasta smeared across the tiled floor like modern art.  Straws were propped in solidified liquid foods.  John had stopped caring for himself the day Sam stopped caring for him.  And who could blame her?

 

John always said you don’t want someone to become so immobile they can’t fend for themselves. 

 

His little smart comments.  So often followed with a slap or a punch. Sam grimaced as though tin foil had struck a filling, sending little jolts of electricity around her head.

 

A thump echoed through the bedroom floor.  John was awake.  “Saaaammm…”  Sam steadied herself against the wall.  Her vision became a kaleidoscope of colour and, hand on mouth, she lumbered from the kitchen, colliding with the doorframe.

 

Another thump followed like a closing drum.  Then another.  Scraping.  He really must be in a sorry state after last night.

 

Sam took the bundle of clothes she had ironed and placed them in her holdall.  Her mind was made up.  He wasn’t a bad man. He just expected too much. 

 

It was time to let go.  To jump off the runaway train.  To face the fact that she would never change.

 

Her eyes crept up the stairs.  John was poured over the edge of the balcony, like pale melted wax, a damaged leg failing to support his bodyweight.  His smooth, bruised purple face made her think of the grey mannequin again. 

 

Striking him with the iron poker was too much.  Too much for her to live with.  This was the final box on her flowchart. The end of the Acting Out Phase.

 

Sam hesitated as she lumbered past the storage room, considering whether to retrieve his wheelchair. That damn metal frame of immobile misery, she had to occasionally push around.  He would probably need it after all.

 

She moved the wheelchair to the bottom of the stairs, where he could see it.  He held up his hand, his old plaster cast hanging loose. 

 

He beckoned her to wait once more. 

 

She picked up her bag, unlocked the front door and stepped into the embrace of the night. 

 

It was a cold embrace.  Welcoming and familiar.

 

 

 

Author’s Bio: Andrew is a member of the Faculty of Actuaries, Edinburgh.  He currently lives and works in Dublin, Ireland.

 

He has been writing in his spare time for about a year and has won a number of short story competitions.  Andrew has also had some stories published both on-line and in magazines, most recently the summer edition of the Irish literary magazine, Crann6g.