I’M SURE I have her rattled now, the little wife. She’s like his face of respectability, his security, a form of adult comfort blanket. Deep down he, too, is insecure. That is why most men like to have their cake and eat it – sexual satisfaction aligned with emotional stability, but not always with the same person or at the same time.
I enjoy the feeling that we share something she doesn’t know about. It’s more intimate – being a secret. She doesn’t bring excitement into his life any more, not the way I do. I’ve learned over time to be a good receptor, knowing exactly what I want. I don’t meander.
I made another self-portrait today. I hadn’t planned to, but I found myself in a small grocery shop close to their house and caught sight of my reflection in one of those round security mirrors at the top of the store, the kind that obscures your shape, taking in as much floor space as possible. There was a man beside me reading the ingredients on a cereal box. I usually take my images in black-and-white. Colour is a distraction. The eye, the human eye, sees the world predominately in black-and-white, with endless grey scales. You think when you take a photograph you’re capturing everything, but you’re not. Parts go missing. With the human eye, our mind fills in the gaps. I like that the camera cuts to a kind of truth, the obscurities you create when you look in the mirror exposed. Yet no camera has the capabilities of the human brain: each has its own imperfections and deceptions.
In the self-portrait, I look small in the space, the image bringing me to an old memory, a photograph taken on a trip to Dublin, another reflection in a shop window. It was in O’Connell Street. I was seventeen. When I studied the image afterwards, I was surprised because I looked happy – my cheeks glowing, my pupils alert, my lips stretching to the point of a smile. The more I stared at the photograph, the more I saw. You see, I hadn’t realised a part of me was smiling. The camera can do that: it can tell you things you didn’t know.
Last night, I stood on their front lawn looking at the house, my shape caught in shadow. Everything was quiet and utterly still. There were no lights coming from the windows. I imagined her upstairs, perhaps peering out into the dark at nothing in particular. I visualised the troubled look on her face, part of her already knowing of my presence, and I could almost taste her fear.
They have a pretty house with a stone fountain tucked away at the end of their back garden. I laughed out loud when I looked at the two figurines, a little boy and girl – I named them the stone children. He has already spoken about her being infertile. He didn’t want to talk about it at first, but then the floodgates opened. I had to fake empathy, having no interest in his whimpering. It intrigued me, though, her putting a permanent reminder of what she cannot have so close. I decided to play a little game with the fountain. I placed pebbles from the drive in the bottom of the stone basin. When I did, the water ricocheted with tiny spatters into the bowl. I enjoy making subtle changes to a place I visit. It’s like leaving a mark. She might wonder about the pebbles, do a double take and ponder on the unexplained.
When she’s nervous, she tends to get flustered, fiddling with things. She can’t help it. Depending on what she wears, she can display that pretty-girl-next-door appearance, the kind of woman many men end up marrying. The attractiveness appeals to them sexually, while conjuring up goodness and potential home-making, prize maternal qualities for their offspring – sow your seed, reproduce yourself. I don’t want children. One of me in the world is enough.
I don’t doubt that men find her attractive and, on occasions, some may have allowed their imaginations to take flight, visualising a little fun, but they would never cross the line, not with her. She’s not the type. Women see much more than men when it comes to the fairer sex. Men can be foolish in that department.
I’ve been playing other games with her too – moving things around the house, putting objects in places they don’t belong. A few days ago I dropped an empty water bottle on their smooth lawn and placed flower petals near the front door, petals that couldn’t have come from their garden.