Teeth

fiction

I start to watch the clock. It is four pm, now four ten, now four twenty. I snap shut my laptop; the dancer on the screen disappears. I put on my coat, my gloves and my scarf but then my cheeks feel hot. I am burning inside and I realise I am going to need to cry so I put on a hat as well. As soon as I close the door behind me the tears well up and rain down my cheeks. My chest heaves as I try to expel what ever has built up inside me.
I keep my head lowered as I walk down five flights. I hear some heeled shoes approach and, passing a woman on the stairs, I stop the heaving long enough to say bonjour. It comes out as a whisper.
As I walk the streets, past the U-Marche, the fromagerie, the boulangerie, I let the hot tears drop. The paving stones are covered in dog shit, phlegm and cigarette butts. I must stop crying because, in the distance, I can see the parents and nannies assembled outside the big school doors of Rue de la Jussienne.
I think my husband is going to leave me.
I know that leaving me is not a thought in his mind but an action in the world, ever since he met her. That’s it exactly. If he were thinking about it I could confront him. As it is I must stay silent.
At home, I watch him. Is he aware of me watching him? How do I know what he is aware of?
I remember playing at the beach. It is windy in this part of Australia. I am young. He is watching me wade into the choppy water. He is watching me smiling and laughing and kicking foam into the air. His eyes follow me and I am happy to be happy for him. The sky that summer was very bright. The sky was bright and I was very beautiful under his gaze.
I look out the window and see the Paris sky is dove grey. The air is very still. I taste something dry and chalky in my mouth.
He looks up and tells me is going over to her apartment to help her retrieve some emails. He says he thinks it’s a lost cause. Inside I feel heat rising, and the rush of cold beneath it. I want to tell him not to go but I can’t so I just ask when. He tells me he is going over there later tonight and I can’t think of anything to say so I just nod.
Now I have a storm inside me, but I have closed the shutters and the windows and drawn the curtains and the storm stays inside. Outside me it is still and he has gone back to staring at his computer. I suppose he isn’t staring, but actually doing something. But I don’t know. I don’t know what he is doing.

He reads our child a bedtime story then tells me he is going over there. His nonchalance is a challenge to say nothing.
After, in the silence of the apartment, I see two pointed teeth hanging below her upper lip. Her lips are unnaturally red, as if she had been eating cherries. I see a cherry tree, beautiful against a cold blue sky. I begin to really cry, the snot flowing in an unbroken stream down my hard face. I lie on the floor, my body heaving out its burden in waves until I begin to feel soft inside.

In the mid morning light I click at the computer, seeing the same piece of dance over and over: a balled up fist flicking out to a flat palm on the end of a rigid arm. I look at the clock. I feel light, almost dizzy. The cold March air has been creeping through my mind. I can’t stay staring at the computer.
I put on green eyeliner and go hatless into the street, my hair flying out, grabbing at the world.

I sit in a cafe.
I sit under the awning and I face the street. I see the people pass. In the crisp air I begin to feel that my body is light and warm inside my clothes.
I cross my legs and light a cigarette. I am beginning to forget.
He stops walking and pauses in front of the cafe. He looks at both tables and sees that, if he is to sit outside, he must negotiate with the occupants, me on one side and a group of young women on the other. The young women, wearing their feminism in their clothing of coarse scarves and in their hairstyles of shaved patches and exposed scalps, tease him and talk back to him. I watch amused until they reduce him to silence and he is forced to look me in the eye. I invite him to join me by exposing my palm to the chair beside me.
He sits and faces the street. He picks up my lighter and makes eye contact with me before lighting his cigarette. He takes a letter from his pocket and smooths it out on the table. I must write a letter to my family in Italy he tells me. I say that families are very draining and he says that’s why he left Italy. We smile at each other.
I say I can’t get away from my family because I have created my own, and laugh, and he asks me would I like to get away from them, to which I don’t reply. We smoke our cigarettes and drink our coffee.
I am aware of his dark jaw beside me.
I ask him the time and he shows me the face of his watch. While I put on my scarf in preparation to leave, he rips a small square of paper from the body of the letter and writes his name and telephone number. I take it and slip it into my pocket.

Back in the apartment, still panting after five flights, I take out the small piece of paper and look at it. The letters and numbers are square and masculine, the lines inky and dark. I slip it back into my pocket and check the time.

Later, as my husband sits staring at his computer with the night sky behind him, I cannot believe that he and the paper in my pocket are not affected by each other. He sits at his computer while the paper sits in my pocket, and their indifference to each other infuriates me. I grow hot with anger and see the white tips of her teeth. I see him pressing her thighs open. I see her thighs white against dark cloth. In the bathroom I take the paper out of my pocket and look at the inky handwriting. My heart is racing. I look into the mirror. My eyes are dark and my lips are red.
I carry this image to bed with me.

When I wake, her lips have replaced mine in my mind. The sky looks dark and low and I stay lying down, hoping to delay that first meeting of the day with my husband. I know I will not be able to smile.
He returns from Rue Montorgueil with bread and soft cheeses. I search his face but see only the challenge to stay silent. I make coffee.
We work and are civil. Now I see, repeatedly, the silhouetted profile of a dancer. The dancer is static; the effect is gothic. I accidentally touch the piece of paper in my pocket, but remain unmoved.
My husband interrupts me. He tells me he is going to her apartment. I say I don’t like her and he says he doesn’t care. When he says it he juts out his lower jaw: ancient gesture. I feel cold. My eyes are narrow, but after the door shuts behind him my eyes widen and my stomach grows heavy.
I go out. I go hatless, letting the motion of my body spread my hair out behind me in the still air. My breath comes quickly as I cover more and more ground. I am beginning to forget.
As I re-enter the familiar territory of my quartier I begin to notice the flowers in the street. I stop to buy some violets which I know my husband likes. Walking fast, my hair obscuring my view, I see a man up one of the old winding streets, leaning against a doorway. I pause and immediately he to turns to face me, stretching to see above the moving heads of the crowd, trying to make out who I am. The recognition in his movement scares me. I look away and resume walking.

Breathing hard after five flights, I put the violets in the middle of the kitchen table, take out the piece of paper from my pocket and notice again the pressure in the handwriting. I see his dark jaw leaning in a doorway. I look into the mirror and see that my lips are red.
When he returns he says that the violets are nice and I smile back, but I can still see his dark jaw and my red lips in my mind.
I look at the clock. It is four twenty. I put on my scarf and my hat, walk down five flights and go to Rue de la Jussienne. Today I don’t notice the solidity of the doors. I do not see the nannies or the parents.
In the morning I wake and I can still see his dark face, and that body leaning towards a doorway. I see that my eyes are dark. I see that my teeth are white in my red mouth. I take out the piece of paper. On it is a name; underneath that is a telephone number.
I ring it.
I am in his apartment. I cannot grasp this. He is going to leave me. I am transparent as he touches my skin. He walked by my table. He sat by me and we talked and I saw his dark jaw beside me. Touch me. He is touching me. We are kissing and now his hands are on my neck, now on my shoulders and he is pulling off my loose top. I should not have called him, but now we are touching, and one of those closed doors, behind which eyes waited, is opened, and I am flying through doors.
It is over.
I wipe my mouth as I stumble from his apartment building onto a busy street. I smooth down my hair and feel heavy, like I have swallowed a stone.
I ask a stranger the time. It is four ten. The line inside a boulangerie is reassuringly long. A child’s hand pokes out from inside his puffer jacket and is held tenderly by a fatherly hand. I tuck my flute aux sesame under my arm and make my way to Rue de la Jussienne.
The doors of the school look heavy and sober in the darkening light.
My husband is going to leave me.