Degrees of Nakedness Read Free Page B

driven deep into his foot, touching bone. They cracked off. Within seconds, his foot was swollen and red. A janitor at the hospital told my father the only cure was to pour heated wax over the foot. That would draw the needles out. He propped his leg on a pillow, both hands gripping his shin. Lloyd wiped the sand from Dad’s foot and spread the melted waxwith a piece of cardboard. I don’t know where my mother was. Dad’s face twisted with pain. The heat of the wax drew the inch-long needles out. The smell of salt water and hot paraffin. I remembered this when Mom called to tell me Lloyd had died. My father has been dead eleven years and I’m still discovering lost pieces of him.
    You’re unravelling fast, too. First love. When you cross my mind you’re like a composite drawing a police artist makes from the testimony of witnesses. I rarely think of you.
    Your mother left condoms in a pile on your bed next to your airline ticket. A few pamphlets.
    Your mother and father were brand new for me. For one thing, the house you lived in was rented. Property was bourgeois, your mother said. They were joking, but they were the only parents I knew who didn’t own their house or want to. They had art. Blue wine goblets, antiques. You could see a line down the side of the glass where two halves of the mould had been joined, but each glass was different. Wine at supper. Home-made salad dressing instead of Kraft.
    Once I saw your mother eat raw hamburger with a raw egg. The fork prying the fibres of cold pink meat, a peach fuzz of congealed fat, burst yolk. Popping it in her mouth.
    Your father wore a custard-coloured suit. A few shades lighter than custard. When I was nine I went with my father to shop for a suit. He wanted grey but I was to choose the shade. There were thousands of suits on the wall in two rows, one beneath the other, each suit a slightly lighter shade of grey than the one next to it.
    At art school there was a drawing exercise to get as many shades out of an HB pencil as you could. Only one of the grey suits was exquisite. Dad tried on the one I chose. He stood facing the mirror, then in three-quarter profile, smoothed his hands down the front. Touched the bottom edge of the jacket. He asked me if I was sure. After a moment he asked me again. Then he bought the suit with a large wad of money. It was the most money I had ever seen spent in one place. His only suit. He was buried in it. And there was your father, in something lighter than custard.
    If you’ve never experienced grief you don’t recognize it. When I met you I was full of grief. During an art history class we saw a slide of a sculpture, The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa . A woman arched as in orgasm, pierced with thousands of arrows. I closed my eyes and imagined my whole body covered with tiny needles, an ocean current making them sway gently, a sweet numbing pain.
    I took an interest in astral projection. I tried. It was hot and I lay on the army cot in the dormitory with my fists clenched. I tried to float off the bed. I believed in God until my father died.
    And I believed my body was the temple of God. This didn’t mean I couldn’t have sex until I was married, but that as soon as I was penetrated I’d be spiritually sewn to that man forever. Fated to him. If we had sex I’d be fated to you.
    I slept. Sleep was like oxygen. I couldn’t quite get enough to fill my lungs. At six in the evening I’d make excuses to go to my room. Ten minutes later I’d be asleep with my clothes on.I’d wake up late for school. I had hallucinations while I slept. I’d sit up and pinch myself as hard as I could. In the morning there’d be small bruises, but even while pinching I’d see the iron bars of the radiator melt at the bottom like knee socks that had fallen around the ankles, or the sky, filled with stars, force itself through the open window, float over the cot until I was looking up into the cloudy universe, terrified.
    I was volunteering at the