She opened her eyes to watch the light flickering on the Colonel’s face. His eyelids were shiny; a swoop of hair draped his forehead. His jaw pulsed, and when she closed her eyes again, she felt a calmness wash over her. She thought of the way Madame de Fleur would hold her around the waist, a human belt.
What would it feel like to be Hazel? How might this man protect her? How tempting to relieve herself of her own existence for just a while, to let Hazel’s consciousness settle into her mind? She felt a body steal into her own. His wife.
It was easier to be someone else, anyhow. Freeing. Relieved of self, she had no inhibitions. She could do anything. Be anyone. She squeezed the Colonel’s hand. Her voice was high, clenched, melodic, a song restrained. “Darling,” she said. “At last.”
The Colonel gave no sign of surprise and, yet, no immediate signs of delight. He’d been fooled before. “If this is you, dear Hazel, straightaway, tell me, what pet name did I call you?”
Nobody wants to be played a fool. But desire hides in plain sight, in the details of one’s life, in where one places her gaze, what she notices. Opal surveyed the curiosities placed about the room, the metal contraptions, birdcages, the smoking hearth, the portrait above it. Hazel’s head was small, like the bird, but not in an ugly way. She wore a feathered boa around her neck, and now Opal studied the stuffed birds hanging about the room like trophies, or like reminders, or… or like a memorial. The birds were grouse. The Colonel was looking at one now. She recognized the bird’s small head and feathered feet, a bit like the common chicken, but more dignified.
“Grouse. You called me Hazel Grouse.” The Colonel’s hand squeezed tighter. “You spotted one—”
“—the same year I met you.”
His face relaxed, and he looked not so much at Opal as through her. Before he could say anything else, Opal stretched her body across the tiny chess table and touched his scar. He did not recoil, though something in him did startle. Her belly grazed the table. She pressed her lips against his, and they were warm. Until the day she died she’d remember this kiss, how the warmth held the memory of something familiar and distant. A woman can want so many things at once, but she has only one body. She clung to him. He let her kiss him until his body eased and, finally, he kissed her back.
Soon, they were upstairs, in a bedroom. He pressed against her bare chest. Hazel moaned louder than Opal ever had, always keeping her own pleasure to a stifle. She didn’t know who she was then, lying there, tangled in his limbs, her impulse to pull him closer and closer, despite the obstacle of her stomach. Though it was dark, she didn’t hide her body, nor did she feel the crush of the Colonel’s weight, which he carried in his arms, braced against the mattress. The Colonel was gentle, intertwining his fingers with hers, as though, together, they were praying. And, like a prayer, too, he sank into her while whispering her name, over and over, an incantation: Hazel. Hazel. Hazel.
January 26, 1986
Interview with Jane Doe No. 33
ByThe Cincinnati Inquisitor
CI:When did you first start using Earthshine Soap?
JANE DOE NO. 33:In 1978, after I got married. I’d seen the commercials, the one where the Earthshine Girl is wearing pearls and that glittery dress and she’s sitting at a table in some fancy restaurant, and her husband, who’s just off camera, arrives with a single rose and sets it on the table between them. He compliments her soft hands and says he loves her and she turns to the camera and says:Should I tell him he’s in love with the soap?
After we got married, my husband expected more of me, different things than before. I found myself not wanting to be… touched in that way. I thought it was just me. I thought maybe the Earthshine Girl was on to something. I bought the soap, and I washed our bedsheets in it. I loved the smell of it. Lavender. I polished our silverware we’d gotten as a wedding gift. I scrubbed coffee stains out of my husband’s favorite mug. I soaked the yellowed pits of his undershirts in it until they were white again. Earthshine worked wonders. I even bathed in it, because it was gentle enough for that—it said so right on the canister. It said it was “The Soap for Women.”
CI:How did your life change after using Earthshine?
JANE DOE NO. 33:Our apartment was spotless. At first my marriage improved. We were… very friendly with each other for a while in the bedroom. But after a while, I was doubling over in pain each month. It was like a cactus was growing inside me. The period flu. Three days became four, then five, then sometimes half the month, menses so heavy my doctor suggested a diet of red meat for the iron loss. A year in, our family asked: What, no grandchildren?
The worst part was the staining. Our sheets, my undergarments. I had to use towels on the couch. I could no longer leave my apartment formore than a few hours, or if I did I had to bring a change of clothes. I’ll never forget my husband’s look one day I came home from the grocery store with red saturated through the fabric of my skirt. I felt like Carrie from that movie. My husband looked at me as though I were some horrifying aberration. [Pause.] There’s nothing like Earthshine for stains.
CI:So you continued to use it?
JANE DOE NO. 33:No, I stopped buying it. I lived with the bloodstains. Everywhere I sat. Everywhere I lay. My clothes. My couch. My car. My marriage lasted two more years. My doctor told me I’d never have a child.
1986
A skin you love to touch.
—JOHN H. WOODBURY’S FACIAL SOAP
As I pulled onto my street after my drive back from Gallipolis, an unfamiliar silver car idled near my house. Through the windshield, I could make out the driver wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, a large coat zipped up to the neck. The driver honked at me, and I honked back, just laid on my horn with all my might.
The vehicle’s reverse lights flashed, and it backed up to my mailbox. At first I thought they were trapping me in my driveway. Maybe I’d be kidnapped, worse.Never let them take you to a second location, I recalled from my YMCA self-defense class, because a woman moving through the world must always be primed to the threat of sexual violence.
Finally, the driver’s side window lowered. Edith sat behind the wheel. I heard the thunk of my mailbox as she opened and closed it, stuffing something inside.
“For fuck’s sake,” she said, before speeding away. I watched her taillights shrink to red dots in the distance.
The hinge moaned as I pulled down the lid. Tucked in the back, a manila envelope that’d been folded:For you, Edith.
Jealousy rose up in me as I recognized Halley’s handwriting. For a moment, I resented Edith, just like I used to when she’d taken over as the Earthshine Girl. Then I felt stupid. I had no claims on Halley. I knew this. Love requires space; it’s not a constraint but a means to freedom. I loved Halley. I did. Of course she’d spent time with Edith. Of course they’d become friends. Of course she’d given someone else a way to discover the truth. How wise of her to do so, because she knew me—she loved me, too.
I opened the envelope and peered inside. A stack of envelopes. Letters, of some sort, addressed to Opal Doucet. The return address was stamped France. I pulled one out, and that’s when it dropped to the ground, the necklace. A simple silver chain, tarnished from age. From it hung a stone, translucent white. It seemed to glow in the dark.
