Life Before Man Read Free Page A

an old country,” she said. “We want people to see that.”
    Lesje is against this eclectic sort of promotion, though she sees the need for it. The general public. Still, it trivializes, and Lesje registered an inner objection when Elizabeth asked, in that competent maternal manner of hers, whether Lesje couldn’t find her some really interesting fossils. Weren’t all fossils interesting? Lesje said politely that she would see what she could do.
    Elizabeth, adept at cataloguing the reactions of others, for which Lesje holds her in some awe – she herself, she feels, cannot do this – explained carefully that she meant visually interesting. She really would appreciate it, she said.
    Lesje, always responsive to appreciation, warmed. If Elizabeth wanted some outsize phalanges and a cranium or two she was welcome to them. Besides, Elizabeth looked terrible, white as a sheet, though everyone said she was coping marvelously. Lesje can’t imagine herself in that situation, so she can’t predict how she herself would cope. Of course everyone knew, it had been in the papers, and Elizabeth had not made much of an effort to hide the facts while it was going on.
    They all scrupulously avoided mentioning Chris or anything relating to him in front of Elizabeth. Lesje caught herself blinking when Elizabeth said she wanted to use a flintlock in the display. She herself wouldn’t have chosen guns. But perhaps these blind spots were necessary, were part of coping marvelously. Without them, how could you do it?
    To change the subject she said brightly, “Guess what? I’ve been getting anonymous phone calls.”
    “Obscene?” Marianne asked.
    Lesje said no. “Whoever it is just lets the phone ring and then when I answer he hangs up.”
    “Wrong number, probably,” Marianne said, her interest flagging.
    “How do you know it’s a he?” Trish asked.
    Elizabeth said, “Excuse me.” She stood up, paused for a moment, then turned and walked steadily as a somnambulist across the floor towards the door.
    “It’s awful,” Trish said. “She must feel terrible.”
    “Did I say something wrong?” Lesje asked. She hadn’t meant to.
    “Didn’t you know?” Marianne said. “He used to phone her like that. At least once a night, for the last month. After he quit here. She told Philip Burroughs, oh, quite a while before it happened. You’d think she would’ve known it was building up to something.”
    Lesje blushed and brought her hand up to the side of her face. There were always things she didn’t know. Now Elizabeth wouldthink she’d done that on purpose and would dislike her. She couldn’t figure out how that particular piece of gossip had slipped by her. They’d probably talked about it right here at this table and she hadn’t been paying attention.
    Lesje goes back to the living room, sits down in the chair beside her spilled coffee, and lights a cigarette. When she smokes she doesn’t inhale. Instead she holds her right hand in front of her mouth with the cigarette between the first two fingers, thumb along the jawbone. That way she can talk and laugh in safety, blinking through the smoke that rises into her eyes. Her eyes are her good point. She can see why they wore veils, half-veils, in those Middle Eastern countries. It had nothing to do with modesty. Sometimes when she’s alone she holds one of her flowered pillowcases across the lower half of her face, over the bridge of her nose, that nose just a little too long, a little too curved for this country. Her eyes, dark, almost black, look back at her in the bathroom mirror, enigmatic above the blue and purple flowers.

Saturday, October 30, 1976
ELIZABETH
    E lizabeth sits on the grey sofa in the underwater light of her living room, hands folded in her lap sedately, as if waiting for a plane. The light here is never direct, since the room faces north; she finds this peaceful. The sofa is not really grey, not only grey; it has a soft mauve underfigure, a design like