Psyche in a Dress Read online

  Francesca Lia Block

  Psyche in a Dress

  For Joanna

  Contents

  Psyche

  Echo

  Narcissus

  Eurydice

  Orpheus

  The Maenad

  Hades

  Persephone

  Psyche as a Dress

  Eros

  Demeter

  Psyche

  About the Author

  Other Books by Francesca Lia Block

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Psyche

  I am not a goddess

  I am my father’s

  My father had me mutilated twice

  He had my mother and sisters murdered more than once

  but he has never killed me off

  sometimes I think he only gave me life

  so I could be his muse, his actress

  They say he does things with me

  to work through issues he had with my mother

  I look just like her in the early films but

  now she is gone

  In the first film I had to take off my top

  I stood there, shivering

  with my hands covering my breasts

  as the cameras were rolling

  A million caterpillars crawled over my bones

  and my stomach was filled with the wings of dying moths

  But I knew what I had to do

  I am an actress

  I am my father’s

  I do my job

  It was easier after that

  I got used to all the crew watching

  My father watching

  People said that I was odd-looking

  not the typical face you see

  but my father tells me I am perfect, just what he wants

  My father says

  “These actors, they try to do too much

  You know how to just be

  Don’t try to do anything else

  You are an actress

  My princess”

  I live with my father

  in a dirty-white mansion

  made of the bones and teeth of actors

  It has been the scene of many atrocities

  in my father’s films

  There are crumbling columns in front

  and a dining room we never use

  with a giant chandelier from which

  one of my father’s characters hung herself

  There is a huge tiled pool

  surrounded by crumbling, headless, limbless statues

  ficus trees entwined with morning glories

  beds of calla lilies

  and oleander bushes

  I can see the pool from my window

  empty

  my father rarely fills it with water

  It was used for a drowning in another film

  I have a large room

  with a large bed draped in diaphanous fabrics

  I have my own bathroom with a sunken tub and a view

  through glass walls

  of my private, somewhat overgrown rose garden

  peeling white iron chairs and mossy fountains

  I have a walk-in closet of my mother’s designer clothes

  In one interview I read

  my mother said that she sold her soul for that wardrobe

  A black satin-trimmed smoking jacket and trousers

  a white satin-trimmed smoking jacket and matching satin

  skirt, a golden pleated chiffon Grecian gown, a golden

  sweater covered with gemstones, a white silk wrap

  dress covered with giant red peonies, a pink suit with a

  short jacket and skirt, shift dresses in white, black, red

  sapphire, emerald and tangerine silk or satin, some

  with large bows in back, piles of cashmere sweaters in

  lipstick colors, some with silk flowers from obis

  appliquéd on them, and many, many shoes

  When my mother left us, she took only a black suit

  a pair of jeans, a red silk blouse

  her jewels and five pairs of the shoes

  Sometimes I lie awake at night

  wondering how she chose them

  I knew which ones they were

  because I knew her wardrobe better than she did:

  black leather riding boots

  black lizard pumps

  strappy golden sandals

  ruby red flats

  emerald green satin dancing shoes with ankle straps

  I was so jealous of those shoes

  Sometimes I put on one of the dresses

  light candles

  and dance with my mother’s shadow

  Most of the time, at night, I use only candles in my room

  waiting for her to come back

  Even a wraith is better than nothing

  even a silhouette on the wall

  My father’s new girlfriend, Aphrodite

  wanted to be the star of his film

  and he wouldn’t replace me

  Once I heard him saying to her, “She’s seventeen!

  She’s seventeen!

  What do you expect?”

  Enraging her even more

  They screamed at each other all night

  Until the chandelier shattered

  And a thousand swallows flew through the open window

  whirring their wings

  In the morning she was gone

  but she was not finished

  One night I was lying in my bed

  wearing an antique cotton nightgown

  white as a bride

  My father was out drinking with his producer

  It was completely dark

  Not even the candles were lit

  I could have been abandoned

  on a mountaintop—

  the wind in my chest

  was that cold

  That was when you came

  Through the open window

  with the night-blooming jasmine

  that grows up the old stone garden wall

  You knelt beside my bed and put your head near mine

  You whispered, “I just want to lie beside you tonight

  I won’t hurt you”

  I was afraid at first

  Lay very still, waiting for pain

  It felt like a scene from one of my father’s movies

  The killer with the beautiful voice

  For a moment I wondered

  if my father had staged the whole thing

  If he had a camera somewhere?

  I wouldn’t put it past him

  You only talked to me

  You said, “Tell me”

  You asked, “Do you think Love and Soul are the same?

  If not, how does the Soul earn Love?

  How does Love find his Soul?

  Can one exist without the other?

  If Love and the Soul had a child

  what would her name be?”

  “Tell me your name,” I said

  “You already know

  If you are Soul

  I am the other one”

  I heard the sea in your voice—

  sheer waves breaking on pale powdered sand

  I heard the glossy rustlings of the cypress and olive trees—

  the footsteps of maenads and panpipes playing

  echoing caves in the mountains—

  cloven hooves striking the rock

  At their approach birds took flight into the white skies

  After a long time I fell asleep

  In the morning you were gone

  But you came

  again and again

  I asked to see you but you said


  that was the one rule

  I couldn’t put on

  the light

  Even so, I asked you to lie beside me

  After a while I reached out

  and held your hand

  “I’m so crazy,” I said

  “What’s wrong with me?

  You come through my window at night

  I haven’t seen your face

  And I want you”

  Even in darkness

  your lips taste of sunshine

  They leave a slight stinging spray on my lips

  Your skin melts over me

  I feel you enter like a shaft of light

  My bones dissolve around you

  We become liquid, eternal

  I am released

  from my mortality

  You wiped my body with a cool towel

  I told you what my father shot today

  You said, “If you were my daughter

  I would just sit you in front of a camera

  and let it watch your face for hours, every expression”

  “He cut off my mother’s head,” I said

  “He made it keep talking

  She had to have a mask made of her face

  plaster and bandages

  She is claustrophobic

  and she said she almost died

  breathing through those little straws”

  You held me in your arms

  and pressed your lips against my hair

  After a long time you whispered

  “The wild girls cut off Orpheus’s head

  He shouldn’t have looked behind him

  His music could have brought

  Eurydice back from the dead”

  “But he didn’t hear her footsteps,” I said

  “You can’t doubt your gifts”

  “Maybe he didn’t doubt himself

  Maybe he doubted her, his love for her”

  You were quiet, thinking

  “My father doesn’t doubt,” I said

  “What about you?”

  I shook my head

  Doubt tastes like sand in the mouth

  “Philomela was raped

  and her tongue cut out so she wouldn’t tell

  She turned into a nightingale and sang

  her story”

  You told me all the myths, one after the other

  night after night

  my beautiful, brutal bedtime tales

  As you spoke I closed my eyes and saw them come to life

  the miniature figures acting out their parts

  When we fell asleep

  my dreams were more vivid than they had ever been

  As if I were watching your dreams in my head—

  The man who got to be a flower with a hundred petals

  admiring himself in a pool forever

  while the girl who loved him was only a voice

  unable even to choose her words

  The girl who crashed through the earth

  in a chariot drawn by black steeds

  punished for just one red pomegranate seed

  unable to choose where she lived

  a queen

  only in darkness

  a princess, her mother’s daughter

  weaker

  in the light

  Love’s mother, the jealous one

  who sent his beloved on a quest

  carrying her heart in her hands

  like a broken urn

  Love the shining god with wings

  Love the monster

  “I love you,” I said

  “Please let me

  see you”

  And you said, “You can’t doubt so much, Psyche”

  But my half sisters were wearing black dresses

  and big sunglasses

  Their skin was tan

  They came to visit me

  I heard their heels click wickedly on the marble floor

  “Tell us about this lover of yours”

  “There isn’t anybody”

  “Bullshit,” my oldest sister said

  “Your skin never looked so good”

  They wouldn’t stop asking

  “I’ve never seen him,” I told them finally

  “What?”

  They were appalled

  “He only comes at night”

  “You’ve never seen his face?”

  He smells like night-blooming flowers

  Crushed, juicy petals on the pillows

  His voice is full of ocean

  Humming like the surf

  He kneels before me like I am his goddess

  He is a god

  They laughed at me

  Then their faces turned

  grave

  “You must make him show himself,” they said

  “He may be a monster”

  Why did I listen to them?

  They have long white-blonde hair

  large breasts

  and brown skin

  like their mother

  I have my mother’s black hair, blue eyes and pale skin

  full features and large hands like my father

  My breasts are small with large aureoles

  my legs long and too thin

  I know there is something odd

  in the way my knees touch and my neck strains

  I am not sure why you chose me

  Maybe you are a monster?

  One night you came to me

  I hid in the shadows and waited

  I saw a dark figure go to the bed

  feel around for the shape of my body

  Your movements became more agitated

  when you did not find me

  You called my name

  lay down on the sheets and searched for my scent

  moved restlessly for a while like a baby or an animal

  and then became

  very still

  I crept over to you and lit the candle I held

  It was a tall taper that smelled of melting honey

  In its light my lover was revealed

  Is beauty monstrous?

  If so, then my sisters were right

  His beauty was so sharp it could have cut

  out my heart

  He lay naked, sleeping on my bed

  How could it be?

  Why had he chosen me?

  I wanted to run and hide from him

  As I stood, amazed, a drop of wax from the candle fell

  and touched his bare shoulder

  He cried out and leapt up

  His face filled with pain

  “I told you not to look at me,” he said

  “My mother was right”

  No girl wants to hear those words

  He was so bright, a conflagration

  And I

  I had seen too much

  I had seen the god

  I was not

  a goddess

  I dropped to my knees and covered my eyes

  “Don’t come back here,” I said

  “Why do you doubt so much, Psyche?”

  He reached to touch my shoulder but I pulled away

  And then he was gone

  My room has never been so empty

  There is only one monster

  Here

  She is ready to do anything to be forgiven

  She has been mutilated

  (On film, but still)

  Her mother has been murdered more than once

  Now the monster’s mother is just gone

  What more must monster girl do to find the god again?

  Echo

  The film my father put me in was called Narcissus

  He saw that I was broken

  and he thought it might work well for his next project

  I went to the set without any makeup

  The ladies frowned at my skin

  turned my face this way and that

  in the harsh lights

  “What are you eating?” they asked me
r />   “Dairy? Sugar?”

  “Do you get any sleep?”

  “Supplements? Facials?”

  “You’ve got to start taking care of yourself”

  I shrugged

  I said I was okay

  I had just inherited my father’s complexion

  And now of course

  I didn’t have the benefit of sex with a god every night

  At least in this film no one gets raped, mutilated

  or murdered

  Unless you count vanishing as murder

  It’s what you assume in this world these days

  when someone

  disappears

  I was supposed to vanish

  turn into a voice

  Narcissus came to the first reading late

  He didn’t apologize

  My father didn’t say anything

  Anyone else

  he’d have fired on the spot

  Instead he just scowled

  at me

  I turned away so he couldn’t see

  Narcissus had long, gold ringlets

  chiseled features

  and a body like a temple

  Don’t look too deeply into his eyes, though

  You will never find your reflection

  I’ll probably be fine if he doesn’t touch me

  I told myself

  But that was not my father’s plan

  Narcissus and I went out for dinner

  My father set it up

  There was a bar of red-veined marble

  with spigots spurting wine like blood

  Stargazer lilies stained the white linen tablecloths

  with their rusty powder

  A woman was covertly nibbling the petals

  The food had no scent

  Beautiful people sat staring at themselves in the mirrors