A History of Forgetting (6 page)

‘Aren't you precious? Aren't you precious?' cooed Mrs.
Parker.

Mrs. Rodeck's pug thundered over, pop-eyed with jealousy, and knocked Grace aside. The ladies laughed and groaned and the pug looked around, confused. His lips were too large, loosest at the corners, almost fluted, pebbly-textured and moist, like blackened female genitalia. Malcolm looked away, to Grace splayed pornographically as she cleaned herself. He avoided ever looking at Miss Velve's Lady; she had a dangling growth. The chihuahua wandered in a seemingly inoffensive circle, except that in the few short weeks that Malcolm had been a dog walker, he'd learned to recognize the signs preliminary to defecation. He had a moment like this every day, when he didn't know
where
to look.

When the dogs had finished what they were there for, the pug kicking out behind himself with pride, plastic bags were produced from coat pockets and purses and Malcolm, ever the gallant, offered to do Mrs. Parker's dirty work. It was so difficult for her to stoop. Their rendezvous over, they said goodbye until tomorrow.

 

Last week Mrs. Soloff had told him, ‘This group you meet
when you walk your dog? They think you love dogs, too. They think you feel the same way they do. But you don't. You are an impostor. Am I right or am I wrong?'

Mrs. Soloff was long ago a Russian, before worse things happened to her; this lent some gravity to her words. Mal
colm, feeling both guilty and accused, asked, ‘Do you think I should confess?'

He had been bad-mouthing Grace, casting himself and the dog in comic anecdotes—some outright lies, others mere
hyperbole—with Malcolm playing a world-weary Jeeves catering to the childish and self-indulgent whims of Grace.
He was no kinder to her canine friends.

‘Confess?' She shook her head slowly, a pinched look on her face. ‘Why disappoint them? They're old and alone. Probably you make their day. But you
are
an impostor. Yes?'

‘Mrs. Soloff, you always call a spade a spade.'

She shrugged, then asked to know what had happened during walkies that week and seemed amused by what he said. At least she smiled and did not annul it, as she so often did, by shaking her head and wincing. Mrs. Soloff was barely out of mourning. Because of this, Malcolm saved the high jinks for Faye.

‘Here he is, the answer to my prayers. How are you this morning, Malcolm?'

‘Elated.'

Her pencilled-in eyebrows lifted curiously above the big white squares of her glasses frames. ‘What happened?'

‘It's Grace,' he said. ‘She has come through for me at last.'

‘Explain,' said Faye.

He hung up his coat. ‘You remember Mitzi?'

‘Elsa Parker's dog?'

‘Right. Well, you know she's legally blind.'

‘I didn't. Do you want a coffee? I think you have time.'

‘Do I? All right.' Faye started to rise.

‘I'll get it. You sit right there.' The coffee stand was in
the reception area. Malcolm plugged in the kettle. ‘And you
remember Hugh.'

‘The pug.'

‘Epileptic, or so Mrs. Rodeck claims. We have yet to witness a seizure. And then there's Lady with her growth.'

‘Where is this growth you're always talking about?'

‘On Lady.'

‘Where on Lady?'

‘Don't make me say. Suffice it to know that its placement brings into question her very name.'

Faye stared at him.

‘It's pendulous,' he hinted.

‘Malcolm.'

The kettle started to shriek. ‘Water's boiling!' he sang and turned away.

Already Faye was laughing. The phone rang and she answered, telling whoever was calling, ‘Is tomorrow all right? No, it's not you, dear. It's Malcolm. He's got me in stitches here.' Hanging up, she hissed, ‘That was Gwen Velve!'

‘Miss Velve! Get away!'

‘Her ears must have been burning!'

‘Not hers. Lady's!' He brought over the coffee and Faye lifted her glasses and daubed her eyes before she took a sip. ‘Please, Malcolm,' she begged. ‘Tell me where it is.'

He made a show of relenting. ‘All right, but don't ever mention it to Miss V. It's a teat gone berserk. A rear teat. It hangs
almost to the ground.'

Faye grimaced. ‘Why doesn't she have it taken off?'

‘It's benign! I don't believe that's the reason. She wants to fuss.'

‘Aren't they silly?' said Faye. ‘What about Grace? What's
the matter with her?'

‘This is why I'm so overjoyed. Up until now I've had to stand there every day adding nothing to the conversation. You can imagine how difficult that is for me. “Poor Hugh,” says Mrs. Rodeck.' He imitated Mrs. Rodeck's Britishness. ‘“He had another fit.'' “What about Mitzi?” Mrs. Parker counters. “She fell down the stairs.'' You get the picture? Well, Grace, she has an annoying habit, but it never occurred to me before that I might elevate it to a condition.'

He paused, toying.

‘What?' asked Faye.

‘She piddles,' he said.

Faye slapped her knobbly hand down on the desk and snorted.

‘Particularly when she's happy. She dribbles everywhere. When you call her name, she positively gushes. I'd put it down to youth or excitability, but now I see it's much more serious. Grace is incontinent, Faye. Incontinent. She simply cannot hold it.'

‘Oh, Malcolm,' said Faye, wiping the tears off her cheeks.

‘I plan to make an announcement this afternoon and
eclipse them all.'

But he didn't say anything to them. He would never have risked hurting their feelings. For all he knew, they might be similarly inconvenienced. And after Mrs. Rodeck and Miss Velve had left and he was helping Mrs. Parker back on her scooter, he was especially glad he hadn't.

Balanced in her rear basket was a garbage bag stuffed full. ‘What's that?' he asked.

‘Just a few old clothes I'm giving away.'

‘Ah,' he said, offering her his hand.

‘I thought I might give them to you.'

‘To me?'

‘Yes. You're about his height. I can't throw them out. I'd like to think someone nice got some use out of them.'

He untied the bag, reached in and pulled out a tail of yellowed silk. It was an aviator's scarf. As he wound it around his neck, Mrs. Parker smiled.

‘It's monogrammed. Here, see? A.E.P.'

‘Albert?' said Malcolm.

‘That's right. How sweet of you to remember.'

 

He found Denis and Yvette as he'd left them when he'd picked up the dog a half-hour before—Yvette reclining on the couch, her doughy feet in Denis' lap, Denis rubbing worms of dead skin and dirt out from between her toes. She wore a badge now, with her name and a surely ironic happy face.

Denis looked up, saw Grace and immediately let Yvette's feet fall. ‘What have we here?' his delighted cry, Grace responding in a volley of yaps and dampening the doormat.

‘Elle est mignonne!
Who does she belong to?'

‘You.'

‘Moi?'
cried Denis. He swept her, still trickling, off her clawed feet.
‘Mais tu n'aimes pas les chiens.
What in the world possessed you?'

‘I did it for you.'

‘Tu n'aimes pas les chiens.'

He let her lick his face all over with her pink tongue and Malcolm, watching, felt a tinge of jealousy.

‘Who does she belong to?' Denis asked.

‘You. What are you going to name her?'

He clutched her shaggy muzzle and turned it left and right. Grace whimpered. ‘She looks like a Mireille.'

‘Very nice,' said Malcolm. ‘Grace suits her.'

‘Oui.
Grace Kelly.'

Denis took her into the living room to show Yvette.
‘Regarde. Voici Annabelle. Elle est mignonne, n'est-ce pas?'

Which reminded Malcolm that Denis' condition did have its element of bliss. Every time Denis saw Grace, he saw her for the first time. With each encounter, he was freshly smitten. And the mileage Malcolm had got out of the Phil Epstein joke! He told it to Denis in translation almost every night. At the punchline, ‘So Mr. Epstein? You're single?' Denis nearly died laughing.

Malcolm took the bag of clothes to the bedroom where he found the bed, as usual, unmade—no hope that Yvette might have, on a whim, straightened it. Out of the bag he pulled a camel-hair overcoat and laid it across the rumpled covers, then a cashmere sweater ruined by moths. Ties and shirts, camphorous, but otherwise in good condition, a maroon dressing gown with broad quilted lapels, then something really fine. Peering into the bottom of the bag, he saw the tangled black sleeves and legs and tails of what turned out to be a tuxedo.

‘Malcolm?' Denis was calling.

‘In the bedroom.'

He heard Denis in the hallway opening the door to the linen cupboard, looking for the bedroom.

‘Ici!'
Malcolm called and when Denis appeared in the doorway, he was just slipping the dressing gown on over his clothes.

‘My!' said Denis. ‘Where did you get that?
Mon Dieu, que tu es beau!'

Malcom lifted the towel off the dresser mirror and saw for himself how distinguishing a garment it was. All he needed was a pipe and a leather-bound copy of Proust.

‘Did Yvette leave?'

‘Oui.
Are you angry?'

‘Not yet. Try something on, why don't you?'

Because of the clumsiness that had infected Denis' fingers, Malcolm undid his buttons for him, lifted the shirt off his shoulders and helped slide his arms out of the sleeves. He could still get out of his trousers on his own, but didn't know when to stop, kept on going, stepping awkwardly out of his briefs. Trying to shake the snare of them off one ankle, he teetered and Malcolm reached out to steady him.

‘My God. What happened to your ass?'

‘
Quoi ?'
asked Denis.

‘It's disappeared!' He had noticed the same thing about himself a few months ago getting out of the shower. ‘First we lose our looks, then we lose what's left behind.'

Denis looked over his shoulder at his flattened, diminished buttocks reflected in the uncovered mirror—so it was only his face he objected to. He grabbed a cheek in each hand and pumped them like bellows, laughing.

The shirt that Malcolm lifted off the bed was much too large for Denis. He had to roll the sleeves and, with Denis balancing against his shoulder, help him step into the trousers.

‘À gauche, n'est-ce pas?'

He tucked the long shirt tails in, then, surprised, he drew back his hand from inside the band.

‘Denis.'

This had not happened in such a long time, not during waking hours, only early in the morning as Denis slept against Malcolm's back. If Malcolm happened to wake to that gentle, involuntary nudge, he would grapple with himself, then smear his own semen on his face. If he had had fewer scruples, he could have involved Denis in the tussle, but how to exact consent from a person who, in a moment, might forget what he'd consented to? He tried not to hope now, tried to put it out of his mind, yet the thought of being tenderly buggered by a man in a tuxedo, while wearing a dressing gown of maroon silk, simply engorged him with hope.

He went on dressing Denis, got down on his hands and knees to roll the trouser cuffs, his hands trembling as he touched Denis' feet. His feet were the only part of him that really showed his age. Crusted around the heels with flaky rinds, toe knuckles like knobs, they were the feet of an ancient. Clutching each slender ankle, Malcolm began pressing his lips to Denis' insteps.

The first time he saw Denis was in a Paris train station in
1959
. He was coming over from London, where he'd trained,
on a recommendation from a friend who knew a certain Denis opening a new salon. If, back then, Malcolm ever found himself in a crowd, he would scan it and in his imagination pick someone out to love. He saw among the throng there a man of boyish build with a woman's wrists and fair hair cow-licked up and falling over one eye. He did not know he was the very man he'd come to see. Then, like in all Malcolm's romantic dreams, the one he had picked chose him too, came right up and said, ‘Ello.' The dropped “H” was an indulgence Malcolm would never have allowed himself in his already too dubious dreams.

Gallantly, Denis lifted up his suitcase. He jangled when he walked. It was the music of loose change in his pockets. Leaving the station, he fished out the coins and gave them to a beggar. Malcolm would remember that they left in a procession, Denis radiantly in the lead sowing his beneficence, Malcolm, already besotted, trailing him. Denis was beautiful. Denis was good. He was touchingly hairless. He taught Malcolm how to love.