“Saying it’s only human nature to cry is really not a comfort to me, darling,” says Angelica, feeling around for the book she keeps hidden under the sofa. She switches the phone to her other ear and pulls out her sister’s best-selling novel, Vice Versa. “Because then I have to face the fact I’m neither human nor natural!”
Angelica nudges the Lennon sunglasses up her nose and opens the book. Inside, a hole cut out of the pages. “What do I feel? Darling, I don’t feel a thing.” She pulls a bag of coke from the middle of the novel and holds it up to the table lamp - white static sealed in plastic. “Finding yourself without feeling really is unbearable, believe me.”
Angelica draws up her legs, stretching the nightdress over her dimpled knees. It is red with a chaste-looking teddy bear on the front, saying “I’m a little bare underneath.” The book slides off her lap and clatters onto the wooden floor. Seeing her face staring up at her, Anjelica quickly looks out the window, dark lenses making the early summer evening, night.
“Oh I don’t know, maybe some things only hit you when you’ve hit them first,” she says, pulling a picture off the wall behind her. It is a sampler made by her great-grandmother, the words “Blessed are the pure of heart” embroidered in neat stitches across the square of old linen. Angelica opens the small ziploc bag and cokes the front of the sampler. “I just can’t believe she beat me at this, too,” she says, chopping vigorously with the edge of her gym membership card. “And the thing is, when you’re a twin, if you come second, you’re last.”
Angelica stands up and starts to pace the kelim rug. “You can’t ask me that! Really, darling!” She wraps an arm around her waist, supporting the huge pendulous breasts unfettered beneath her cotton nightdress. “Yes, all right then, I admit it, I wanted her to die. Happy now?” Angelica slumps to the floor in the lotus position, hand pressed to her brow. Her head feels like fifteen miles of speed bumps, the rug scratchy against her legs. “Believe me, the worst thing that can happen in life is that you get what you want.”
* * *
Angelica has been standing in the kitchen gripping the edge of the Welsh dresser for the last ten minutes. She is staring at her bare legs and tanned arms emerging from the tight black mini-skirt and matching short-sleeved jacket. Their kindness has left scars on her skin. She had loathed the congregation, the way they’d crowded in on her, the way they’d cried her share of a grief that should have been hers alone. Angelica thought she might cry when she saw the coffin, her sister lying there in full-length oak. Or perhaps when the coffin began to disappear behind the curtain, but even then her eyes had remained dry. She’d felt only a painful anger, like the coffin was being slowly injected into her eyes. While the rest of the mourners had filtered out into the late morning sunshine, Angelica had walked round the back of the crematorium, overcome by a morbid curiosity to see the furnace. She’d stood watching the flames through a tiny peephole in the front of the chamber; the roar of the furnace was like pornography. Curiously, it had felt like she was the one being cremated, such was the hate that burned inside her.
Angelica presses a hand to the creped skin of her neck. On the kitchen table, the urn. It is gunmetal grey and painfully small. Beside it, the lilies she’d bought for the top of the coffin. She busies herself, filling a vase with water from the tap, arranging the long stems; the whole time, out the corner of her eye, the urn.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” she says and starts opening and shutting cupboard doors with a violence that shocks her. Eventually she finds what she’s looking for, a stone bowl. From a drawer in the kitchen table, she pulls out a polished silver tablespoon, pauses, then slowly brings it up to her face. There is a tremor in her hand. She can see her bloated reflection looming out the back of the spoon. Angelica turns her head and looks sideways at her profile. “Couldn’t you at least’ve let me die first?” she says, thinking about the two occasions when she’d sidled up on death but never quite managed it. “I wouldn’t have to be reminded of you every time I look at myself.”
She slides a finger down the length of her nose, feels the contours of each cheekbone and, not for the first time, thinks of the clinic in Paris. Eight thousand pounds, such a small price to pay to finally be oneself.
The seal on the lid of the urn pops then comes away in her hand. She buries her nose in the crook of her arm. The smell, she hadn’t expected that, a bitter dustiness and something else, almost flowery. Angelica upends the urn, coaxing her sister’s remains into the bowl with the tablespoon. When she is finished, it is barely half full. She peers inside the urn and then back at the bowl.
“See, darling, see how inconsequential you really are,” she says and takes the urn over to the pantry. “Now you know what it feels like to be practically nothing.” Angelica picks up a packet of shortbread biscuits, pushes it through the neck of the urn, then puts it on the shelf at the back of the pantry.
* * *
In the light from the table lamp, Angelica’s face is a war poem, the dark circles under her eyes like ruined petals pressed into soil.
“The irony is I’ve spent my whole life trying to say goodbye to her,” she says, holding the receiver between her shoulder and ear, “and now she’s dead, I still haven’t managed it.” Angelica reaches for her sunglasses and fumbles them back onto her face. “It’s like she’s gone without actually going anywhere, if you know what I mean.” The sound of the plastic card chopping the coke and scraping it across the face of the sampler fills the silence. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s not the drugs talking, really it isn’t. I haven’t done any since this morning and I swear it was barely a toot.”
Angelica puts the receiver to her other ear and reaches for the small freezer bag on the coffee table. “No, no, that’s not true, I’m not a drug addict, you’re quite wrong about that. I’m not addicted to drugs in the slightest,” she says, tipping a small mound from the bag onto the sampler. “I just happen to adore them, that’s all.”
Angelica stares at the pile of her sister and estimates that she is about the size of the brain tumour that killed her. “And anyway, what would it matter if I was an addict? I’m 59 years old!” The coke on one side of the sampler is all glittering white surprise next to the gray ashes. She scrapes the plastic card from side to side across the surface of the glass, resumes chopping the powder, then arranges it in neat lines.
Angelica reaches for a piece of paper on the coffee table. Sunglasses balanced on her head, her eyes flicker across the page. It is cream, the expensive kind, a branded watermark floating holographically across the middle of it. The heading, Memorial Service, is typed in an old-fashioned script-like font. Angelica rests the paper on her lap and begins rolling it up into a tight tube.
“Oh don’t be a bore, my therapist can’t help me find my grief,” she says, tapping the end of the tube on the coffee table. “I’ve been seeing him for nine years and the only thing he’s managed to find is my G-spot… and I had to help him do that.”
Awkwardly, Angelica gets down on her knees and leans toward a line of gray powder, breasts pressed uncomfortably against the edge of the table, paper tube to her left nostril. “Oh yes, do come over, darling, please,” she says then inhales deeply, snaking along the rail of powder. Sniffing sharply, her eyes start to well with tears. “I can’t tell you what a comfort it is having you to share this with.” Angelica wipes her nose with the back of her hand and sniffs. “This thing with my sister really is the most incredible blow.”
Angelica nudges the Lennon sunglasses up her nose and opens the book. Inside, a hole cut out of the pages. “What do I feel? Darling, I don’t feel a thing.” She pulls a bag of coke from the middle of the novel and holds it up to the table lamp - white static sealed in plastic. “Finding yourself without feeling really is unbearable, believe me.”
Angelica draws up her legs, stretching the nightdress over her dimpled knees. It is red with a chaste-looking teddy bear on the front, saying “I’m a little bare underneath.” The book slides off her lap and clatters onto the wooden floor. Seeing her face staring up at her, Anjelica quickly looks out the window, dark lenses making the early summer evening, night.
“Oh I don’t know, maybe some things only hit you when you’ve hit them first,” she says, pulling a picture off the wall behind her. It is a sampler made by her great-grandmother, the words “Blessed are the pure of heart” embroidered in neat stitches across the square of old linen. Angelica opens the small ziploc bag and cokes the front of the sampler. “I just can’t believe she beat me at this, too,” she says, chopping vigorously with the edge of her gym membership card. “And the thing is, when you’re a twin, if you come second, you’re last.”
Angelica stands up and starts to pace the kelim rug. “You can’t ask me that! Really, darling!” She wraps an arm around her waist, supporting the huge pendulous breasts unfettered beneath her cotton nightdress. “Yes, all right then, I admit it, I wanted her to die. Happy now?” Angelica slumps to the floor in the lotus position, hand pressed to her brow. Her head feels like fifteen miles of speed bumps, the rug scratchy against her legs. “Believe me, the worst thing that can happen in life is that you get what you want.”
* * *
Angelica has been standing in the kitchen gripping the edge of the Welsh dresser for the last ten minutes. She is staring at her bare legs and tanned arms emerging from the tight black mini-skirt and matching short-sleeved jacket. Their kindness has left scars on her skin. She had loathed the congregation, the way they’d crowded in on her, the way they’d cried her share of a grief that should have been hers alone. Angelica thought she might cry when she saw the coffin, her sister lying there in full-length oak. Or perhaps when the coffin began to disappear behind the curtain, but even then her eyes had remained dry. She’d felt only a painful anger, like the coffin was being slowly injected into her eyes. While the rest of the mourners had filtered out into the late morning sunshine, Angelica had walked round the back of the crematorium, overcome by a morbid curiosity to see the furnace. She’d stood watching the flames through a tiny peephole in the front of the chamber; the roar of the furnace was like pornography. Curiously, it had felt like she was the one being cremated, such was the hate that burned inside her.
Angelica presses a hand to the creped skin of her neck. On the kitchen table, the urn. It is gunmetal grey and painfully small. Beside it, the lilies she’d bought for the top of the coffin. She busies herself, filling a vase with water from the tap, arranging the long stems; the whole time, out the corner of her eye, the urn.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” she says and starts opening and shutting cupboard doors with a violence that shocks her. Eventually she finds what she’s looking for, a stone bowl. From a drawer in the kitchen table, she pulls out a polished silver tablespoon, pauses, then slowly brings it up to her face. There is a tremor in her hand. She can see her bloated reflection looming out the back of the spoon. Angelica turns her head and looks sideways at her profile. “Couldn’t you at least’ve let me die first?” she says, thinking about the two occasions when she’d sidled up on death but never quite managed it. “I wouldn’t have to be reminded of you every time I look at myself.”
She slides a finger down the length of her nose, feels the contours of each cheekbone and, not for the first time, thinks of the clinic in Paris. Eight thousand pounds, such a small price to pay to finally be oneself.
The seal on the lid of the urn pops then comes away in her hand. She buries her nose in the crook of her arm. The smell, she hadn’t expected that, a bitter dustiness and something else, almost flowery. Angelica upends the urn, coaxing her sister’s remains into the bowl with the tablespoon. When she is finished, it is barely half full. She peers inside the urn and then back at the bowl.
“See, darling, see how inconsequential you really are,” she says and takes the urn over to the pantry. “Now you know what it feels like to be practically nothing.” Angelica picks up a packet of shortbread biscuits, pushes it through the neck of the urn, then puts it on the shelf at the back of the pantry.
* * *
In the light from the table lamp, Angelica’s face is a war poem, the dark circles under her eyes like ruined petals pressed into soil.
“The irony is I’ve spent my whole life trying to say goodbye to her,” she says, holding the receiver between her shoulder and ear, “and now she’s dead, I still haven’t managed it.” Angelica reaches for her sunglasses and fumbles them back onto her face. “It’s like she’s gone without actually going anywhere, if you know what I mean.” The sound of the plastic card chopping the coke and scraping it across the face of the sampler fills the silence. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s not the drugs talking, really it isn’t. I haven’t done any since this morning and I swear it was barely a toot.”
Angelica puts the receiver to her other ear and reaches for the small freezer bag on the coffee table. “No, no, that’s not true, I’m not a drug addict, you’re quite wrong about that. I’m not addicted to drugs in the slightest,” she says, tipping a small mound from the bag onto the sampler. “I just happen to adore them, that’s all.”
Angelica stares at the pile of her sister and estimates that she is about the size of the brain tumour that killed her. “And anyway, what would it matter if I was an addict? I’m 59 years old!” The coke on one side of the sampler is all glittering white surprise next to the gray ashes. She scrapes the plastic card from side to side across the surface of the glass, resumes chopping the powder, then arranges it in neat lines.
Angelica reaches for a piece of paper on the coffee table. Sunglasses balanced on her head, her eyes flicker across the page. It is cream, the expensive kind, a branded watermark floating holographically across the middle of it. The heading, Memorial Service, is typed in an old-fashioned script-like font. Angelica rests the paper on her lap and begins rolling it up into a tight tube.
“Oh don’t be a bore, my therapist can’t help me find my grief,” she says, tapping the end of the tube on the coffee table. “I’ve been seeing him for nine years and the only thing he’s managed to find is my G-spot… and I had to help him do that.”
Awkwardly, Angelica gets down on her knees and leans toward a line of gray powder, breasts pressed uncomfortably against the edge of the table, paper tube to her left nostril. “Oh yes, do come over, darling, please,” she says then inhales deeply, snaking along the rail of powder. Sniffing sharply, her eyes start to well with tears. “I can’t tell you what a comfort it is having you to share this with.” Angelica wipes her nose with the back of her hand and sniffs. “This thing with my sister really is the most incredible blow.”
About the Author
