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He traces over the word, just below her ribs. It’s in a typewriter’s print, careful and precise, just like her heart. Then, he leans down and kisses it. She lets him, for now.
“Special, aren’t I?” he says, looking up, grinning. She hums her reply, and continues staring up at the ceiling.
It never fails to delight him — this confession that’s been pried out of her. The word sits right there, ink black on her pale skin. Five letters and nothing else, but he’s not looking for anything more. He just wants an echo to his own feelings — I love you, Terry, and apparently, she loves him back.
He reaches up, slides his mouth over hers. She lets him, for now, too. But when his hand slips higher, brushes the underside of her breast, she pulls away.
“Ter-ry,” he whines.
She shifts closer to the wall, away from him. “Not yet,” she says.
He grumbles, lets out an exasperated huff and collapses back onto the mattress. And yet, in less than a minute, he’s already fallen asleep.
But, next to him, her mind is racing. Not yet. Yet. Because she’ll change her mind one day, yes? They’re comfortable together, safe, dependable. Even her body has signed off a written confirmation.
It’s in one of the tiny smudges on her body, almost like bruises. The names of everyone she has ever loved, everyone who has ever disappointed her. There is f a t h e r on her left shoulder blade, m o t h e r on her right ankle — she’s tried to scratch that off once and ended up limping for three days. It came back again anyway.
Then, there’s A l i c i a on her belly. She tells him that’s the name she gave the little sparrow she used to leave crumbs out for outside her window at the boarding house in Montclair. He doesn’t need to know about Sister Alicia — her pink, bony face and small blue eyes, her kind voice and the pair of green woollen gloves that she keeps in the first drawer of the cabinet by the door even now. She doesn’t think he’ll understand anyway.
Of course, there’s also S e m c o, just under the bony rise of her left ribcage.
“I’m telling ya, that means something,” he’d told her earnestly, back when it was a new discovery. “I’ve never seen a last name before.”
His expression turned sheepish a quick second after, guilty, like he was expecting her to be hurt that he even had an idea what any other body looked like. She only realised later, while brushing her teeth before bed. She'd found it amusing instead.
She traces the spot now, branded into her skin. It feels no different under her touch.
There’s father and mother, concepts rather than realities, figments of yearning she’s conjured up because it sounds nice, doesn’t it — to be the recipient of immeasurable love and unconditional acceptance? There’s Alicia, away in California or elsewhere now. It’s been years and yet she drifts into Therese’s mind every so often — surely that must mean something?
Richard brings her flowers on Saturdays and paintings she doesn’t know how to appreciate but they’re scattered all over her apartment. But above all, he brings her a roof to go to on Thanksgiving and Christmas, warmth and cheer and a mother who envelops her in a hearty embrace before she’s even crossed the doorstep.
Therese loves the idea of his family. She loves his family. But Richard Semco — no, she is most definitely not in love with him.
*
*
*
The woman materialises in front of her, sudden and startling, like a movie character stepping right out from the screen. Therese’s breath catches.
The woman smiles. She casts her gloves aside on the counter, reaches in her purse and pulls out a slip of paper.
“I’m looking for a doll…” she begins.
In that instant, Therese resolves to find whatever the woman is looking for, at any cost. She’ll do anything to see pleasure light up the woman’s features, to keep that smile on her face. She’ll even give the woman her heart, alive and still beating, if that’s what it takes.
From the corner, there's the mechanical clack clack clack of the miniature train set; around them, the murmur of voices and an occasional squeal of childish delight. Therese shifts from one foot to the other — restless, impatient. The distance between the woman and her is a yawning void, far too wide. All Therese wants is to find something to latch onto — the tiniest sliver of the woman’s being, anything.
Soon enough, the train set finds a proper home for Christmas and the woman is returning the sales slip to her, name and address filled in. One Mrs H F Aird from 3315 North Murray Avenue, Ridgewood, New Jersey. Therese stares at the words hungrily, tucks the details away in her mind for safekeeping. She watches the woman leave and when she looks back down, her vision refocuses onto a pair of gloves. A pair of soft, brown leather gloves that Mrs H F Aird has left behind.
That night, Therese sits in the kitchen, crossing out each sentence the second after she’s written them down. None of them feel right.
Wishing you a—
She draws a line ruthlessly across it. With her other hand, she reaches for her cup of coffee. Her right sleeve snags on the edge of the table and rides up. She sees it then.
For now, it’s just the faintest imprint trying to burst out of her skin. It’s there nevertheless. She thinks it starts with a C; she isn’t entirely sure.
*
*
*
“It’s beautiful,” Therese says.
She's seen it a million times now, every night after Carol flings her robe onto the chair and slips into bed. Therese stares every single time, just as enthralled.
It’s almost a cursive — the letters are slanted and there’s an air of impatience in the hurried e’s and the sloping stroke that is an l. But a dash of messiness, yet still elegance personified, and that is exactly Carol.
Therese lets her fingers drift over the letters. Two words, an entire name, hers. She doesn’t think she can love those five syllables any more than this.
Well, it’s not exactly own her name she’s grown to love, which stumps people yet and she ends up being Tereeza for whole months when she doesn’t bother correcting them. What she loves is her name imprinted on Carol’s skin, a lazy scrawl just under her collarbone.
She’s in love with Carol Aird, and this tells her, if everything else hasn’t yet made that evident, that Carol is in love with her too.
(She has learned to ignore the A b b y on the inside of Carol’s right elbow.)
Therese leans over, tastes the spot where her name has taken up residence. It tastes slightly sweeter, she thinks, and Therese nips at the unblemished space between the last e of Therese and the b that starts off Belivet. Carol shivers.
“Almost like you don’t see your name in print everyday,” she murmurs.
Therese shakes her head. That’s different.
That is pride warming her chest to see her name under Junior (for now) Photo Editor on the back of New York Times. That is a buzz of pleasure and contentment. But of this — joy diffusing through every crevice of her soul because there’s no space left in her heart; happiness distilled in a single teardrop slipping past her eyelid when Carol kisses her, deeply and generously, and Therese knows what it’s like to love and be loved in equal measure; there is just no comparison.
“Does it bother you?” Therese asks suddenly. She’s been staring so long that her name becomes an unfocused smudge. It reminds her of something else.
“Does what bother me?”
Carol shifts, lying on her back, and Therese tumbles forward, sprawled on top of her. From the corner of her eyes, she can still see the blur of letters. So near to Carol’s heart, so close to home.
“It’s…so far away,” Therese sighs and Carol understands at once.
“I think it’s lovely,” she says. She reaches out and grasps Therese’s right arm, lifts it up in the air.
Therese scowls.
“I don’t like it,” she declares. She feels frustrated, angry, betrayed by her own body that doesn’t seem to comprehend the depth of her love.
“Well, I love it,” Carol says, just as resolute. “And it’s ironic, don’t you think? You build entire worlds in your head and something like this just slips out. You can’t even try to hide it.”
Therese's frown deepens. She half-raises her head, tilting up to meet Carol’s gaze. “Why’d I want to hide it?”
Carol smiles. “Exactly. That’s why I think it’s marvellous — to have you wearing your heart on your sleeve.”
Wearing her heart on her sleeve.
The idea is a delightful one.
Just like that, Therese loves it too, at once and fiercely. After all, it’s just another way of loving Carol — to love the print of her name, small and neat but a solid script that’s hard to miss, on the inside of her right wrist.
C a r o l A i r d
And frankly, it doesn’t matter how near or far those nine letters are from her heart; she’s given it away a long time ago anyway.