Viewmaster

by Ferdinand Stowell

Idle Hands are the Devil's Man Cave

  While I’d been down south living through the amazing circumstances of the previous three days, Maxine had by no means been idle.

  “Come here, I want to show you something,” she said as she led me back to the kitchen. She had painted a segment of one wall a bright tangerine and on it she’d hung plates in very pleasing tones of brown and blue in a strict grid: it was bright, peppy, contemporary; I liked it. I never would have believed a Southern Baptist with big hair and big tits could have done such a nice job redecorating the kitchen.

  “Wow, I like it,” I said. I wasn’t so pleased about some of her other projects.

  “Now, what do you think of this?” she wanted to know, as she unfurled a large chintz wall hanging with the words “Home Sweet San Francisco” over the banister to have it drape down to the first floor. The letters were painted on in an arty, old-fashioned script.

  “Did you do this?” I asked in a way that I hoped didn’t sound overly rude but still communicated my lack of enthusiasm. She smiled without saying anything, but after what seemed like an uncomfortably long time, she said, “ Yes.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Tip’s coming over in about 10 minutes, Roy,” she said as she rolled that thing back up.

  “I can’t believe you got Tip to work through his anger towards me so quickly. I’m impressed.”

  “Well, Roy, it’s a bit more complex than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he’s chosen a coping mechanism that’s a little unorthodox but it works for him.”

  “What do you mean by an unorthodox coping mechanism?”

  “Well, he’ll explain it to you. Here he comes now.”

  I did in fact get an indirect explanation by way of the following exchange with “Clemente”.

  “Hi, Tip,” I said.

  “No, I em not Teep. Teepton eeth too ahngry et you stho I sthpeak for heem.”

  “He’s in character, Roy; it’s like Brando. He is so good.”

  I had thought that a natural antipathy between Tip, the San Francisco homosexual and Maxine the Southern Baptist would prevent their conspiring and just barely keep them on speaking terms but I was so wrong. I didn’t recognize all they had in common, though it seems obvious with hindsight: They both shared similarly conservative social and political views, they both had big tits, and most telling of all, they both had a flair for the dramatic and the big mouths to back it up. I was gone a total of only two days and yet I could hardly keep up with their stories as they interrupted and gestured and finished each other’s sentences like some demented old married couple.

  “Well, after you drove off,” Maxine began, “I made a complete inspection of the house. I white-gloved it and tested all the appliances. Then I looked over the cleaning supplies and started formulating a plan of action. Then I implemented it.”

  “Joo know, Maxine find many ee-neff-eech-ensthiesth een joo or-gan-eezasthion,”

  Maxine interrupted, saying to Tip, “that’s right honey, get it out, good job.” And to me she said, sotto voce, “inefficiencies in your organization.”

  Clemente continued – “Like why you poot thee joog of laundry dee-ter-gent so far back on thee thelf? Eet dreepped all over end made a messth, oy carumba…..” Tip, I mean Clemente, couldn’t finish because Maxine butted in and said:

  “So I moved it over and pulled it way out so the spout dripped right into the drum of the washing machine. Works like a charm now, no muss, no fuss.” If I were to say this conversation wasn’t annoying in the extreme, I’d be lying, but it just seemed best to nod and simply get out of the way. I continued scribbling down the story.

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically, “I’m writing it all down.” Maxine continued:

  “When I was looking around Aldaric, you know the basement room…” Here I interrupted her:

  “Aldaric is not in the basement. It’s a street level suite with it’s own private entrance. It’s what the French call a sous-sol.”

  “Well, actually,” Maxine said, “the French called it the basement room also.”

  “It’s not a basement,” I said, a little too heatedly.

  “Oh,” Maxine started to say in the manner one uses with children lost in their fantasy world, “of course it isn’t, I knew that. What was I thinking? So, when I was looking around Aldaric, I noticed the walls were sweating, you know, because of the earth outside seein’ as it’s against the foundation there and all, so I went and got a de-humidifier, one of those fancy European ones, only paid forty dollars for it ‘cause I got it at a yard sale right down the way here. Made them write a receipt out for me, too – that’s a deduction.”

  I thanked her for her efforts.

  Using her diary entries and having secured Tip’s permission to bare his painful secret, I interviewed Maxine at length and was able to put together the following narrative of their first meeting:

  Schisms

  “I told you, Maxine, I’m not having anything further to do with Golden Rules,” Tipton shouted into the phone, “so don’t call me, don’t ask me any questions, nothing, nothing, nothing. I built that business with his uncle Arthur and he’s going to run it into the ground. Well I say let him, good; I don’t care. He left me with 12 dog appointments these next two days while I’m going in for major surgery. I’m not going to be able to walk a Schnauzer, a Great Dane, a Sporting Lucas Terrier, a Dandie Dinmont Terrier, two Whippets, a Golden Retriever with loose bowels, two Cardigan Welsh Corgis and a Shar pei while having my polyps removed. I’m good, Maxine, but not that good. Nobody is!”

  “Oh, honey, you’re upset.”

  “No, shit, Sherlock.”

  “Tip, we’re gonna get you taken care of. Maxine is in the house – miracles performed 24/7. We’re gonna walk those puppies, we’re gonna rip out those polyps and you’re gonna get yourself some relaxation on top of it – I hear your distress and I respond to it with the Lord’s love. I’m your helping hand, honey, all you gotta do is grab it. Can you do that, Tip? Can you take hold of my outstretched hand?” Tip groaned:

  “Oh, well, you know Maxine, it’s not that simple…”

  “Course it is honey, really, it’s that simple.”

  “Well, I don’t know. Do you really think you can do all that?”

  “I know so, honey; I’m a one-woman love army.”

  “Well, alright, let me come by to get you and we can discuss it. But I’m not setting foot in that house! We’ll go to a café and talk. I’ll be there in about 20 minutes.”

  “Oh, good, I’ll be ready for you.”

  Seated at the café, apparently Tip could barely control his rage at me and my kind:

  “He is so selfish and irresponsible! He made a commitment to me and then he just blows me off at the last minute. Sadly, his behavior is typical of San Francisco. I’m so sick of this town; you have no idea what it’s like here. This is where the Sixties never died; you’ve got burnt out hippies in the Haight-Ashbury – not that I ever go there – playing covers of the Beatles on these weird looking foreign guitars. You can’t go anywhere without being overcome by marijuana smoke – everybody in this town is a pot-head. The city council is practically run by communists; they’re always passing these bonehead resolutions condemning the American government, the American people, white people, whatever. I just hate it, do you know what I mean?”

  “Oh, I do, the nation just lost it’s soul during the sixties and it’s still casting about for deliverance. But don’t be too hard on Roy; he may be a casualty of the culture wars but he’s a good man.”

  “No, no, don’t even start defending him.”

  “We’re all struggling in the darkness and the Lord is the light. You have every right to be angry but Roy has every right to expect your forgiveness. You forgive him and you know who benefits the most? You. We are all sinners and we all need to seek forgiveness and the Lord grants it if you only accept Him int
o your heart.

  “Yeah, but Roy never asks for forgiveness, he just assumes. And anyway, what about the wrath of God, huh? Whatever happened to that? What ever happened to people being punished when they don’t behave?”

  “I believe in a wrathful God, but at the end of the day it’s really about the power of his love; that’s what He wants for us, to bask in his love. That’s why he sent Jesus, to help us find our way back to his grace.”

  “Can we stop talking about God now?” Tip asked as he pressed his fingers against his temples, threatening a migraine. “Do you know dogs?”

  “Do I know dogs? Hold on to your hat,” Maxine said as she removed a wallet from her purse. She unzipped it and out fell an accordion stream of photographs. Most were of a great variety of dogs but three were of Jesus eating a hot dog, riding a donkey and arms outstretched crucifix style around the shoulders of some Japanese tourists who were mugging for the camera.

  “They’re all adorable, especially Jesus.”

  “That’s Billy Cannon, best Jesus we ever had at the Easter passion play, at least he was before he got busted for back alimony. That was such a shame. And these are my little babies,” Maxine said as she began pointing out and naming her dogs: “that’s Ringlet, see that cute curl on his forehead?

  This one here is Sawyer, as in Tom Sawyer, this one is Sometimes, as in sometimes he’ll mind you and sometimes he won’t; Rabid, Barney, Peter, Yoo-Hoo, and Shirley. Now on the back side we have H.R., short for Holy Roller and Princess and this is Benoxyl, got him when I was havin’ the rheumatoid, and Sissy and Cassie.”

  “They’re beautiful. So which ones do you have now?”

  “All of ‘em; these are all recent photos. My Goodness, if I had to carry a picture of every dog I ever owned, I’d have to get a trailer hitch attached to my tailbone and hook-up my backside with a U-Haul.”

  “Wow, that’s impressive.”

  “So I can handle those dogs, no sweat.”

  “Ok, I believe you.”

  “What else is goin’ on in your life, Tip? Where is the love?”

  “I don’t have any love in my life, Maxine and I’m not looking for any.”

  “No special friend?”

  “Well, there was my dom, but he dumped me.”

  “Your dom?”

  “Oh, you know, my dominating “friend”. I’m his submissive “friend.”

  “Oh, you mean like Sado-Masochism?”

  “Yeah, and he was such a Sado-Masochist. I mean that was the point, I know, but he was just over the top.”

  “I had a Sado-Masochist relationship once with my hair dresser. Oh, she was just awful to me. Jabbin’ me, yankin’ my hair this way n’ that – stimulates the scalp she said. Can you imagine? I’ll tell you, though, nobody in six counties around could get my hair lookin’ like she could. Stayed with that woman seven years until her damned husband blew her head off. Spousal abuse, his lawyer said. I testified but I don’t think I helped the prosecution’s case any; I still didn’t like her any more with her head blown off than I did when she was alive. The husband walked.”

  “Ok, but we were talking about my relationship,” Tip said impatiently.

  “Well, what happened?”

  “He says I talk too much and that I’m too demanding. I said, well, yeah, I’m a bitchy bottom and then he says bitchy bottoms don’t make good submissives. Then he told me not to call him anymore. Can you believe that? I told him I’d damn-well call him if I felt like it.” Maxine started to give Tip some advice but he continued before she could get it out of her mouth.

  “And then do you know what he says to me? – ‘You’re not a bottom, you’re just lazy.”

  “Oh, Tip, honey, now that’s terrible; that’s just plain rude.”

  “Yeah, well, he wasn’t exactly Emily Post.”

  Breaking down and up

  Who broke up with whom matters. People pretend it doesn’t, “Oh, what difference does it make, who broke up with who?” they’ll ask rhetorically, “The point is we’ve both evolved and we need to move on,” or something like that. If they do admit to being dumped, they’ll boast about their bad behavioral traits and habits, making one see that it was really their unconscious desire to break up the relationship by acting passive-aggressively that forced the issue. So, really, they were the ones that broke off the relationship, in a way, if you think about it.

  “What about you Maxine, is there a man in your life?”

  “You know,” Maxine began, apparently taking the long, Southern way of answering a question, “I have this English friend, real fervent believer, I tried to get her to come over here to do good work but she said, you know Maxine, that would be like takin’ coals to Newcastle – funny thing is she lives in Newcastle and man does she have her work cut out for her there; not many church folk like you find in Georgia. Anyway, you know Henry the Eighth? Course you do. She said to keep all those wives straight they tell school children a little rhyme, ‘Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.’ Well, for me it’s ‘Married, divorced; married, deceased and married, deceased and then divorced;”

  “You mean you divorced your last husband after he died?”

  “I did. I’m not carrying his name to the grave and beyond, I said to myself. I went to the courthouse and I said I want to file for divorce and they said, on what grounds? I said, he’s dead. They said, that’s no grounds for divorce and I said, well it ought to be ‘cause he’s in no condition to fulfill his conjugal duties and he was a damn cheat in this world and he’s sure to be in the next. They tell me this is unprecedented in the state of Georgia and I said I don’t give a damn; I want a divorce.”

  “I always wanted to be a divorcee, a Norma Shearer type divorcee,” Tipton said, “I’m kind of romantic that way.”

  “Oh, sugar bear, we need to find you some love.”

  “Maxine, can I tell you something personal?”

  “Of course, you can honey, we’re old friends by now.”

  “I have a difficult relationship with men, probably on account of I was raped and abused when I was a boy. I’ve never told anybody about that, except Roy’s uncle Arthur.”

  “Oh, you poor lamb.”

  “It was my father’s brother. I was only eight years old. Let me show you a picture of me when I was eight.” Tip reached into his wallet and held it up for Maxine like undercover policemen do when they show their badge. Maxine gasped at the sight of the little boy.

  “Oh, my stars! What a beautiful boy; what an angel. Whatever…”, Maxine stopped herself. She blushed.

  “It’s ok. Everybody has the same reaction,” Tipton said. “What happened to you? Everybody asks or wants to ask; don’t feel bad. I was a beautiful little boy. I should have grown into a beautiful man. My uncle happened; that’s what happened.”

  “Oh, I feel so sad all of a sudden,” Maxine said.

  “Me too. He had a wife and kids; can you believe it? Who would have thought? Don’t know if he ever touched them. I noticed him paying more attention to me when I was around seven or so. It started when he got laid off. The factory said they could probably call him back in a few months but my aunt went back to work temporarily as an office worker to pay the bills in the mean time. He started telling my parents that he’d watch me after school, that it would be good for me to have a male influence since my dad was working two jobs then and didn’t spend much time with me.

  “My cousins were real young, just babies really and he’d lock them in their room during nap time. He told me it was just so we could spend a little time by ourselves. Then he’d show me something he bought me, just some cheap something or other but it was fun to get gifts. He’d have me sit on his lap, hug me and tell me how good I smelled. It was nice at first, I liked that.” Tip paused and was silent for a few moments.

  “But then he wanted to do other stuff and I got really uncomfortable. It just didn’t seem right; I was only eight,
but I knew it wasn’t right. Then he wanted to penetrate me and it hurt so much. I was too small. I was just a kid. Why would anybody do that to an eight-year old kid? He wanted to do it every time we were alone. He’d call me his skinny little boy over and over while he was using me. Skinny little boy – that really turned him on. I kept hoping my cousins would wake up and start making a lot of noise, but they never did. I don’t know why.

  “I didn’t know what to do, Maxine. I was so ashamed. I’d been a pretty joyful kid, always running through the tall grass fields behind our house, collecting insects, collecting frogs from the wetlands just beyond the fields. He’d put a tampon in after to stop the bleeding.

  “I got really depressed and I started eating a lot, every chance I got. I stopped running around. I got really fat and that made my uncle mad; he started yelling at me. He didn’t want to touch a fat boy, so he told my parents he couldn’t look after me anymore, even before he was called back to work.

  “Everything changed. Maybe if he would have just been happy to cuddle with me and be nice to me it would have been ok but he should never have used me like that. He raped me and I feel like he split me in two.”

  Maxine and Tip sat and looked at each other from across the café table.

  “I share your pain,” Maxine said, after a long silent while. “and I’m going to tell you this so you know how much I do – I was raped too.”

  “Oh, no. You too? What happened?”

  “A man in our town; a drifter but a charming one. I’d call him a young man now, must have been younger than thirty but at the time he seemed worlds older than me. Wasn’t so hard to get me alone; we lived in a sleepy little town and half the population were sleepwalkers just roamin’ about with their minds somewhere else. He followed me on one of my perambulations in the woods. I was 14. He wooed me at first but then when it was gettin late he wouldn’t let me excuse myself to go. He grabbed my wrists, those thin, elegant wrists I used to have and dragged me down to the forest floor. He started hurting me, ruttin’ on top of me.

  “It’s just my body, I kept telling myself, that’s all he’ll ever get, just a hundred pounds of my flesh, wasn’t really me. It’s hard to say what I was feelin’, a girl who’d never known a boy but had the fever. I didn’t ask for it and I said no, but somethin’ else told me not to resist the power of a man; I was perspirin’ and in heat but from desire or fear, I couldn’t tell then. Both, I can say now. Oh, but after it I was enraged; I knew what he took from me with nothin’ offered in return. He didn’t give up nothin’ of his-self. I was a hellcat that year; there was no controllin’ me. I had murder in my heart, and don’t mistake me, I was truly plannin’ to murder that man. And I kept on plannin’ for it when they sent me up north to the clinic in Virginia. North for us was still the South.

  “We never told Mama, it would be the death of her my Aunty May said but that would have been overkill: you see my mother was already dyin’a cancer. Left this world right after my 15th birthday, she had enough strength for that anyway. To see that strong woman just whither away to nothin’, to see that bedrock of my life ground down to powder and ash – well, the world had nothin’ left to offer me after witnessin’ that spectacle.

  “They made the South for pearly white women like my Mama and her sisters; oh, I know it’s harpin’ on clichés to sing that song, those high-minded useless belles of the old South, but the truth of it is stereotypes walk this earth and breathe its air and any family worth anything at all had their collection of ornamental daughters from one generation or another. No Georgia family tree was complete with out a branch bearin’ those white-flesh peaches, vyin’ with each other for a place in the sun but stayin’ out of it’s glare so’s not to ruin their complexion.

  “Mother married down; nobody in her family would let anybody forget that. Not like they were so special, please. You know what she said to me? “There ain’t no reason a woman can’t be useful and beautiful”. She liked to talk colloquial like that, just to poke a finger in their eye, her family. That woman worked hard and she still had the softest, creamiest hands you ever seen. Before gettin’ into bed at night she’d cover her hands and forearms with Vaseline. Then she’d put on these long white gloves, the kind you’d wear to the opera or a ballroom dance. It all seemed so elegant to me, with her silky nightgowns and those white gloves, like she was dressing up for her dreams, like they were someplace really special where she’d be out cavorting all night.

  “What did your father make of that?” Tip asked. “It sounds messy, but I wonder…”

  “I know, me too; I used to think about how exactly that fit with their marital relations, if you know what I mean and I know you do.

  “Anyway, I missed her, missed her even more than my virginity. I didn’t know where to turn with all my anger and hurt. Certainly not to my aunties; their feet barely touched the ground. My daddy had done with me. My brothers were away from home. I turned to the church; not to the preacher, he was an old blowhard, but his wife, she was the one with the ear of God, she had that healin’ gift and practiced it quietly behind her husband’s back, in the wake of all his bluster.

  “She took my hand and without even a bit of fuss brought me straight to the Lord, just as though we were goin’ the rounds of visitin’ after church. It was mere kindness of the homeliest, humblest sort. That was Edna-Ellen Foster all over. People’d try to get talk goin’ about her, you know, some people can’t stand the quiet, the peace of certain other people; they want to tear into it and make an example of it. You know the kind I’m talkin’ ‘bout, people who make nice but want to undo good. But mud wouldn’t stick to her because she was goodness personified and when trouble struck your family in our country, black or white, you wanted Edna-Ellen to hold your hand.

  “Oh, my, Tipton, why have you let me run on like this? All I really want to add is that I didn’t murder that man, I forgave him. Forgive Roy, dear. He’s a lost soul, a confusion caught in a conundrum, and in that he’s no different than you and I. Jesus forgives us our sins, the least we can do is forgive each other. There’s a spark of the divine in each of us, Tip. Let it set your soul on fire.”

  “Alright, I’ll try to forgive him, but I’m not there yet. Please don’t rush me.”

  “Honey, Maxine doesn’t push, she gently pulls you along in the wake of the Lord.”

  “I don’t care if you are a cliché, Maxine, I love strong Southern women with the gift of gab. I feel like you’re my soul sister. You’ve reduced me to tears”

  “Oh, me, too. Should we have a good cry, you and me? We’ve earned that haven’t we?”

  Chapter XXII: The Busy-Body of Christ