Verbal Magazine

Man Eater

Right from the start she made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  It was her voice – the sincerity of it, the luscious empathy of it.  Like being licked on the face by an over-friendly dog. 

And that bright nylon hair, like a doll’s.  It’s hard to say what colour it is.  Red Setter red?  Call me a bitch – lots of people do.  But that feathery fringe (precision cut) and the way she flicks it.  Flick.  Flick.  Flick.  And the way she draped herself around Daniel’s neck and whispered ‘sweetie’ in his ear that first time we met in the film studio where I sometimes direct and they both act from time-to-time.  The way she called my daughter ‘sweetie’ and bought her beach balls and T-shirts for her birthday, and the look on Lizzie’s face when she gave her that Barbie cake last week.  Mummy! Look what Zara gave me!  I spent three lunch hours searching every aisle in five supermarkets for that cake.
What kind of person has a name like Zara?  Angela asked me once.  Angela teaches in a primary school where some of the kids have pretty strange names but she’s never heard ‘Zara’ before.  I’ll tell you what kind of person, I said.  The kind of person who acts.  The kind of person who makes you suspend your disbelief when she plays the part of the vulnerable love-interest.  The kind of person who makes your husband suspend his disbelief so that he thinks she’s the perfect woman he has been searching for all his life. 
“What’s the problem?” Angela keeps saying.  She reminds me that
Daniel is my ex.  She reminds me that we were separated for a year before she
arrived on the scene.  Only she doesn’t say ‘she’, she says ‘Zara’.  (It’s not a
name I like to say out loud.) She reminds me that it was me who asked him to leave, which I did because he had a crush on an actress, his third infatuation in three years only this time it was making him ill and I was sick of it too. 
“You should feel sorry for her.” Angela says.
Angela sympathises with her.  My daughter compares her to me.  My colleagues admire her work.
“Get Zara”, somebody from casting suggested last week when one of the actresses was struggling with a script.  “You can rely on her.”
The other day in the café I told Angela about the swimming incident.  Angela tucked in her chin and lifted her eyebrows as if to say, Am I hearing this?  Then she told me I was being hysterical. 
The woman is dangerous, I insisted.  I explained how she took Lizzie swimming in the deep end without my permission and without armbands, and how Daniel shouted at me later for making his girlfriend cry, and how I yelled back, For God’s sake last month she cut Lizzie’s fringe because she thought it was in her eyes, and if she ever touches my child again, I won’t make her cry – I’ll do her an injury!
“I met Daniel and his new agent on the train last week”, Angela said.  “He was a bit distracted.  He always seems so lost.”
It’s an act, I told her.  Daniel is a good actor.
Poor Daniel, people say.  Daniel is lost.  Daniel is soft as butter.  I’m the
vicious bitch who forced him to leave Lizzie and me.  I mentioned some of this
to Angela yesterday in the gym, because it gets to me occasionally.
“Nice!”
“Laura, you’re lethal!” she said.  She almost fell off her
stairclimber.  “You’re such a good hater when there’s someone you don’t like. You put the evil eye on people,” she said, breathlessly.  She was really hitting her stride.  Once Angela starts, that’s it, she’s on a roll.  “You’re a scary person.” She gave me a mock-evil stare, then she held up her two index fingers in a cross shape in front of her face.
Sometimes she enjoys tormenting me, but when Lizzie has an accident, or when we both have temperatures of 102 and have puked three times each, who else is there to call? 
Take this morning’s emergency:
You can’t let me down, Angela, I told her on the ’phone. 
Lizzie had a day off school, so I had brought her to the recording studio to give her a treat and to show her Mummy’s new office and to make her proud of me.  Glen, the soundman, was entertaining Lizzie for me, when a colleague rang my mobile to say I was the only person who could take his place at the workshop that evening on the other side of town.
Come on Ange, I said, you know I hate ringing Daniel.  That woman
is always there. 
Lizzie was beginning to act up.
“I want the noise of a shark!” she was insisting.
Glen sat her at the mixing desk, and demonstrated sound-effects:
babies crying, dogs growling, every kind of music and every sound a seven-
year-old could have heard in her entire life.
“I want the noise of a shark!”
Lizzie!  I warned her, trying to listen to Angela.  I went out to the toilets to beg in private.
“Why do you feel threatened by the woman, Laura?” Angela was saying. 
“She’s in an awkward position too.”
Threatened?  I asked.  How could I be threatened by a person who advertises perfumed panty-liners for God’s sake?
“She’s just a woman like you and me.” Angela said.  “Lizzie likes her, doesn’t she?”
I can’t wait until you have a daughter of your own, I said.  I hope she turns out to be exactly like you.
Angela hung up then, and I called Daniel, only he didn’t answer.  She always answers for him.
“Hey!  What’s up?” she said.  (She spent a month in New York last year). Do I seem as if I have something on my mind?  Who asked her? And now she has my daughter sounding just like her.  Hey!  Mom, what’s up?  Zara says we’re going to Funderland.  It’ll be fun!  Fun!  Fun! 
“Sweeetie!” she called when I asked for Daniel, then I heard those disembodied slams that make their apartment sound like the set of a badly produced film.  Lizzie followed me to the toilets to drown her Barbie doll in the sink, making little yelps of ‘help!’, ‘help!’, when she allowed her to surface
occasionally.  It wasn’t Barbie I saw each time emerging from the suds with
those frantic eyes and that synthetic hair plastered all over her face.  Lizzie giggled when I put my hand over the doll to keep her down.  Then she said, Mum, Daddy told Zara she was like a broken record.  Is that good, or not good?  That’s very good, I told her.  Why? she said.  Why, Mum?  Why are you laughing?
I heard another ‘Sweeetie!’ and I pictured Daniel upstairs in his new bathroom searching for grey hairs on his chest.  Naked in front of the mirror with his glasses steaming up and a pair of tweezers in his hand.  Early middle age is hard on a sensitive man.  It hardened my soft-as-butter husband until he was able to walk into Lizzie’s bedroom one summer night to tell me that his crush (number three) had been consummated that afternoon.  I caught him looking at his tearful reflection in the mirror.  Daniel with sleeping daughter.  A study in grief.  I said, Congratulations, Dan.  If there was an audience there you’d be breaking their hearts.
We stared at each other in the moonlight.  Lizzie was all I could think.  Lizzie is staying with me.  I leaned my palms on the bed’s cool rail.  I wanted to put my head down, and rest my forehead there.  Daniel had recently got a part in a TV movie so he still had his make-up on.  All we needed were the scripts or at least a prompter to feed us both our lines.  I tried to stay calm, but instead I yelled and slapped his face.  Daniel began to cry then, making little white tracks from his eyes to his nose.
“You’re ridiculous.” I told him.
“You know what your problem is, Laura?  You’re not a normal woman. 
You’re hard.  You’re a hard bitch.”
There was one more ‘Sweeetie!’ then he came to the ‘phone.
“You okay, Laur?”
Oh, sure, I said.  I’m fine.  Then I explained about the workshop but he was on his way to meet his agent, so you-know-who came back on the ’phone and said she’d love to take Lizzie for the day. 
“Take it easy”, she said, just before she hung up. 

A half-an-hour later I watched as she led Lizzie into the office lift.  The last thing I saw was Lizzie looking up at her while she explained in her grown-ups-are-idiots-voice.
“I know sharks don’t make noise.  That’d be stupid.  It’s the noise in the film that the music makes when the shark is getting near.  It’s the noise that makes mummy put her hands over her eyes because something terrible might happen, but you can never tell!”
She clasped her hands against her T-shirt as if she was terrified then she pressed the lift button like I showed her before. 
“Zara, can we go swimming?  Can we?  Can we?”
They both looked at me and I nodded, then the doors of the lift snapped shut.

It was almost 11 by the time I pulled up outside our apartment block. 
I was still talking to Angela who rang me on my way home. 
“He was with that woman”, she told me.  “His agent.  You know the one.  Only he didn’t see me because she was hoovering the mouth off him.  I swear!”
I was elated by the time I stepped into my hallway.  It was time for revenge and I had my weapon now.  I couldn’t wait to stick the knife in.  I heard squeals from my sitting-room.  The sound of it made me shudder.  ‘The shark!’ ‘The shark!’ Lizzie shrieked while the din of the soundtrack vibrated the walls.  Who told her she could let my daughter stay up late to watch frightening videos?  I pushed the door open. 

The first thing I saw was the thick white bandage on Lizzie’s small hand resting on the blue cushion balanced on her lap.  Then I heard: 
“Hey, Laura!… The swimming pool… The shallow end… She had her armbands on…”
A vision sprung up in my mind of Lizzie’s tiny fingers floating beside her yellow armband in the bloody water of the pool.  I rushed over to her.  She held up her hand and I took it, dreading the sight of blood.
“I had an accident.  Didn’t I Zara?”
“Poor sweetie.”
She stroked Lizzie’s plait, then she said in that warm voice of hers.
“She had a bit of a fright.  She caught her fingers in the door of the
changing-room, but don’t worry.  The doctor says it’s fine.  Danny wanted her to
stay at home with me, but I thought she’d prefer to wait here for you.  I told him
you’d prefer that too.”
“So where’s Danny now?” I said.
“He’s with his agent,” she said, then she looked at the floor and her back and her shoulders sagged.
Really?  I said, feeling a surge of pure joy.  I was about to continue when she stood up and turned away with her fists in her eyes, like Lizzie when she’s upset.  So I said, Lizzie, bedtime, instead. 
Lizzie said ‘Sssh!’ then.  She was still staring at the screen, so the two of us sat down beside her and watched the last few minutes of the film.  I couldn’t see what was so scary about it now. 
When the credits rolled, Lizzie said,
“Zara, it’s okay you can go now ‘cos Mummy has to have her supper and iron a blouse and go to bed.”
We stood up and Lizzie took my hand.  At the front door I said, Lizzie, say thank-you, now.  Lizzie said thanks then she yawned and stretched and leaned against me in the doorway. 
Bye, Sweetie!  echoed across the car park, then the thud of her car door.  The light over her rear-view mirror came on and lit up the inside of her car.  I saw her red hair sticking out and I imagined the mess of teary mascara and make-up on her dainty face.  She pulled out then, smiling and waving cheerily.  Lizzie looked up at me, waiting for her cue, so I said, Go on then, give your friend a wave.

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