The Best Disguises (Part I)

Face value is only what it is worth.

Her fate ran like rivers across her palms, mapping out the list of endless possibilities, but eventually confining her to just one, like how tributaries eventually ended up in the sea and sediments eventually sank to the bottom.

 

It seemed like there was no point in having dreams. What the use of building every detail up like how countless little charged ions built up a thunderstorm, when every shot would be a near miss to everyone – not good enough, could have been better, there is always room for improvement. When was it finally going to satisfy everyone? She had grown too used to seeing her own eyes dimmed with tears, the crushing weight of disappointment of her chest, and the feeling of her accomplishments being reduced to dusty flakes that meant nothing to the world.

 

“Good?” she could not help but spit. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”

 

She watched as her mother turn slowly to face her, halting her forage for her car keys. Her mother tilted her head, as though trying to fathom her daughter’s atypical eruption of indignant outrage. She held up her dark penetrating gaze, remembering how she used to enjoy it when they focused on her and her only: it made her feel like she was the only one in the world worth looking at.

 

“What else should I say?”

 

She glanced down. “Nothing more than has been said,” she said softly to the ground.

 

 

*

 

Intangible things were useless. So was hope. What was not said sometimes hurt more than what was said, and what was invested took up so much of her that she did not even ask for any interest now; she just wanted her deposit back.

 

“You know, I would kill to have half your brain capacity,” he said, upon eyeing the paper she had in her hand when she met him at their usual spot. It was getting a little tight for them, the little shaded area between his dog’s kernel and the tree in her yard. He never had a dog, so she never quite figured out what the kernel was for. They used to hide in there for hours and pretend to have been kidnapped by a wizard that took them on his magical but dangerous adventures.

 

Now, the wizard was dead, and bright red paint on the kernel was fading, upon being left out under the elements for eighteen years and counting.

 

But, though a lot more cramped, the large root of the tree still spooned her like it had when she was younger, like it had grown in tandem with her.

 

“Pity it doesn’t matter very much,” she said, throwing the paper a short glance, and turning away quickly before the tears she knew were in her eyes fell free.

 

His head snapped up and he frowned. He had not been her best friend and neighbour for eighteen years for nought, after all, and knew immediately something was wrong. A long silence swelled between them before he finally said, “Why do you always live for everyone around you? Why can’t you be happy for yourself for once?”

 

“But what is the point if you only live for yourself?”

 

“What is the point if you live your life for everyone else that your forget to live for yourself?”

 

She turned and glared at him through the hot tears that were burning her eyes. She hated it when he was right, when he thought he knew her better than she knew herself – and was right about it. All the same, she was not like other girls who poured their souls open for the world to dissect and try to make sense of.

 

Snatching the paper from his hand, she tore it up with the vehemence of a heart consumed by gut-burning rage and disappointment that had accumulated over the years, like leaves left unswept on the pavements. Without stopping to see what she had done, she pushed herself from the tree root and tore out of the yard.

 

He was not mad at her. He knew all too well what went on in that house, in that family, in her mind. He just felt, as he watched her run, most likely without knowing where she was headed, that it would be the greatest regret she would have to live out – even if she did not wish to admit that to herself now.

 

He looked down at the letter, filled once again with awe at her intelligence and aptitude. We are pleased to inform you that you have been awarded an early admission into our faculties.... Those were the only words left on the shard of torn paper he held in his hand, before a great rip that broke off the rest of the sentence.

 

*

 

You had to constantly remind someone of your presence. Otherwise, eventually, you would fade away like paint being left out in the sun too long; you would recede into a lonely darkness where the only voices you heard were those from the memories of yourself; you would shrink into something inconsequential, like the white lie you told so that you would not have to let someone else hear the brutal truth. Eventually, you would be dwarfed by the remainder of your existence – however small it might have become, it would be the size of the world to you.

 

He knew his existence did not mean much anymore. It never really had, after the holes had become too big to cover up and nobody bothered to do so anymore. It was the main reason why he did not take himself seriously all the time. People said he was a natural, the life of a party, everyone’s best friend – no-one ever knew that if he did not make himself those things that they called him, there was nothing else he could become.

 

*

 

Once, when she was little enough to squeeze herself into the laundry basket, she had hidden there during a game of hide and seek. He was taking a long time to count and find her, so out of boredom, she riffled through the basket of smelly clothes, turning them inside out so that they looked as though they had not been shed.

 

She found some coins and notes in pockets, and laid them on the floor outside the basket. Then, upon digging out a pocket from a pair of dark grey pants that she knew belonged to her father, she found herself pulling out a piece of official-looking letter that had her father’s name on it. Edward. She liked the sound of that. When she played Marco Polo with him, she would call out, “Edward!” and he would reply either “Backward!” or “Forward!” to lead or mislead her.

 

At the top of the letter were the words Gleneagles Hospital. Her father did not work there.

 

Hospitals are where sick people go, her mother had told her.

 

She remembered being seized in a grip that had no intention of letting go at all. She did not quite understand what she was reading, but she could make sense out of some words. Condition, a long word that she could only make out the head of, worse… Return to the hospital for further exam…

 

She pulled at the clothes that were covering her from plain sight. Her head popped up from the basket like an attraction at the carnival. She stared wildly at the letter, trying so hard to make more sense of it she was squinting at it.

 

Her mother had told her that morning that daddy was going on a vacation and that they could only visit him once a day.

 

“Ha! Gotcha! I thought I’d never find you,” he said, jumping out from behind her. She screamed and leapt out of the laundry basket, the letter fluttering to the floor.

 

His eyes widened. “I’m not going to eat you up, dummy,” he said. Then he grinned. “That was a good hiding spot. I almost couldn’t find you.”

 

She stared at him blankly, not knowing what she had been doing before to land up in that basket.

 

*

 

Death. A masculine sound made: emphasis on the single syllable, the heavy consonant in front, laying weight in the word like earth being heaped.

 

Something that took away those you loved. Something that came on heavy wings that only beat when you touched them. Something that portends finality like the rich reverberating chime of the organ. Something that uprooted all that you had ever held to be true, till the moment after forever.

 

Something that took what was yours without asking, and without ever giving it back, leaving in its wake a trail of useless rose petals for you to sweep up.

                 

*

 

Whoever said success only went to those who sought it had been lying when he said that. Either that, or he had never met her, which he had not. For her, who had spent her whole life seeking success and achieving it on some scale, no success had ever been impressive enough to fill those eyes will colour or light again. Those eyes that always reminded her of maple syrup, rich and warm, had turned into black pits that reminded her of tar that glistened too much and was so viscous they looked restrained. Could eyes change colour according to your moods? Once, they seemed to reflect the prickles of sunlight that got caught in her eyes when she closed them, red and bright, its brilliance glaring. Now the absence of colour was what she found herself slowly growing used to. If eye colour dimmed with age, then how was it that babies did not have white eyes, the combination of colours in the spectrum?

 

“The graduation ceremony starts at seven. Guests will have to be seated by six-thirty,” she told her and left the invitation on the table she was sitting at, the contents of a ring folder and a manila file splayed before her.

 

She glanced up at the invitation. “When did this come in?”

 

“It’s been in your day planner since last week. I guess it fell out of it. I found it on the floor at the foot of the stairs,” she replied, her voice wavering like her heart was, the way a dam might tremble before the volumes and volumes of water held behind burst forth, a battalion of horses charging forward after being held captive for as long as anyone bothered to remember.

 

*

 

He was there as the events recorder that evening, which was just a fancier-sounding title for photographer and receptionist.

 

“How would you like me to write something nice for your leaving testimonial?” he mimicked, putting on the saccharine falsetto of the events manager for the evening.

 

Clarissa, standing beside him at the reception foyer, laughed. “As if! You would do anything the prettiest female teacher in school asked you to do, James Dean.” She called him James Dean because of his ability to speak with natural warmth to everyone – especially girls – he met.

 

He grinned. But when she was busy directing a middle-aged couple to the auditorium, he looked at the line of cars snaking up to the foyer. He would do anything the prettiest girl on earth asked him to do. But she was not the one who made him events recorder for the evening.

 

He recognised the car immediately. She had insisted on sticking the little rag doll on the dashboard, even though her mother hated that thing that she called ‘sinister-looking’. She had found it in the dog kernel when they were young, and laughed at him for hiding a doll there. Even after his frustrated insistence saying that it was not his, she continued taunting him about it.

 

It was not until after she left and he was about to throw the stupid thing away, when he realised she had taken it home with her. 

 

Reviews

[Dianne]

This is an intriguing story. I'd like to understand better what is going on here. It is a bit choppy and jumps around with out leaving any clues as to how the events are related. I'd work on the flow and the relationships so that things become clearer here. This has so much potential. I'd really like to read it again after a rewrite. Good start.