by M. E. Kerr
Whenever my mother told me we were having corned beef and cabbage for dinner, I usually asked Charlie over that night. It was his very favorite meal. He crooned and swooned over the anticipation of it every time, just as he was doing that night in my bedroom.
“Oh, and the way your mother does the cabbage,” he was saying, “not overdone, just crisp and with some green still in it, butter melting off it—” et cetera. Charlie can do a whole number on a quarter of a head of cabbage.
I was sitting there fondling the gold cuff bracelet, trying to figure out what to do with it, since there was no summer phone listing, no listing at all for Sabra St. Amour. She probably had an unlisted number; a lot of the summer people from New York City did.
I was also watching Charlie and wishing I was his height (6’3½”) and had his deep blue eyes and thick golden hair. The Lord gives and the Lord takes. I wouldn’t like Charlie’s high-pitched, sibilant voice, nor his strange, small-stepped, loping walk. When you first see Charlie walk, you think he’s into an impersonation of someone, or doing a bit of some kind, but he’s not. The walk is for real.
Charlie says ever since the movies and television have been showing great, big, tough gays, to get away from the stereotype effeminates, he’s been worse off than ever before. “Now I’m supposed to live up to some kind of big butch standard, where I can Indian-wrestle anyone in the bar to the floor, or produce sons, or lift five-hundred pound weights over my head without my legs breaking.”
“‘The media is trying to make it easier for your kind,” I argued back.
“They’re trying to make it easier for those of my kind who most resemble them,” Charlie said.
My sister, A. E., came into my room just as Charlie was finishing his drooling over the cabbage with the butter melting on top. She said, “Forget it. The menu’s changed.”
Like my mother, A.E. (for Ann Elizabeth) has lots of freckles. My mother uses makeup against hers, but A.E.’s not allowed makeup because she’s only ten. She tries lemon juice unsuccessfully, but mostly runs around covered with spots like a Dalmatian with very long orange hair and glasses because she’s nearsighted. In the summer she looks like a little ghost someone painted red, which was how she looked that night, with her sunburn, in her long white, cotton caftan. She wears white frame glasses, too, insisting on them for some reason the rest of the family has never figured out. Since A.E. was a baby, screaming out one day that she did not want manilla! as we were about to give her a first taste of vanilla ice cream, she has been emphatic about her likes and dislikes, always strong and slightly mysterious.
She did not like corned beef and cabbage, either, so there was a victorious smile curling the corners of her small, pink mouth. “Due to the not unlikely, but nevertheless unexpected, arrival of a guest, we have had to change the menu.” A.E. loved to talk like a book instead of like a ten-year-old, and she managed it for as long as she could sustain it at one time.
By “guest” she did not mean Charlie. . . . In our house, a “guest” meant only one thing. Someone had died, would soon be reposing in one of our Slumber Rooms, then off to the cemetery in our “coach.” . . . When guests were with us, we did not fix anything for ourselves to eat which carried a heady aroma. We did not want to chance offending the bereaved. Replacing corned beef and cabbage that evening, A.E. informed us, was meat loaf, new potatoes and a salad.
“Who’s our guest?” I asked.
“Old Mrs. Lingerman.”
“Ethel’s grandmother?” Charlie said.
A.E. nodded.
“Well hallelujah!” Charlie said. “Back to the dance floor.”
“Why don’t you just turn that gold bracelet in to the police?” A.E. asked me.
“ ‘Charles Gilhooley,’ she used to say to me, ‘your hair’s too light to seem natural.’ I’d tell her the truth, it was natural, and she’d say back, ‘Well it’s so light it don’t seem natural, and if it wasn’t natural then Ethel could not go out the front door with you even to cross the street, you realize that, don’t you?’ ‘Oh yes, ma’am, Mrs. Lingerman,’ I’d say, ‘but my hair is my own color, ma’am.’ ”
“Sabra St. Amour might remember my name and call me,” I said.
“Sure, sure,” said A.E. “Sabra St. Amour might remember your name and call you and I might grow up to be Queen of England.”
“I might, too,” Charlie said.
“I’d just as soon she didn’t call here, anyway,” I said.
“Why?” Charlie said.
“Because then she might come here,” A.E. said, “and there’ll be Easy Ethel’s grandmother, open coffin, too.”
I groaned and sighed appropriately.
A.E. was delighted with my misery. “It’s not a P.O., either,” she added.
In mortician jargon, a P.O. is a Please Omit—meaning no flowers.
“This place will stink of lilies and roses and stock; it’ll stink around here good!”
Even Charlie said, “Why don’t you leave the bracelet someplace where she can pick it up? How about Current Events?”
“Wait until she finds out what you’re helpless to prevent yourself from becoming when you grow up!” A.E. said, always making my father’s profession sound even worse than it was, sound like vampirism which has to be passed on to each succeeding generation.
“There are female morticians, you know,” I threatened A.E. for the umpteenth time.
“I’ve already made up my mind that I’m going to be an internationally renowned poet,” A.E. said, “and besides it isn’t woman’s work.”
“Where is women’s liberation when I need it?” I said.
“You ought to be glad you’ve got something to look forward to being,” said Charlie. “I’ll end up like Mr. Sigh if I stay in this town.”
“I’d rather be Mr. Sigh any day,” I said. “Any day!”
“Mr. Sigh lives with his sister,” A.E. said, “and I’ll probably live in Paris, France.” She swung through my door, letting in Gorilla, our enormous Persian cat. Gorilla walked across to my small round rag rug and swooned across it, stretching out full length with her tail whipping slightly at the tip.
I picked her up. “We have a guest coming, sweetheart,” I said, in my best imitation of the old-movie actor Humphrey Bogart. “Try to stay out of the coffin; it repels certain people.”
“Are you and Harriet going to The Surf Club Saturday night?” Charlie asked me.
“When don’t we go to The Surf Club Saturday night?” I said.
“Maybe I could call Ethel and we could go double.”
“Charlie,” I said, “you said you were through dating girls.”
“I can’t take Legs Youngerhouse to The Surf Club,” he said, “even if he’d go with me.”
“What am I going to do with this bracelet?” I said.
“Go back to the beach tomorrow and look for her?” Charlie said.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“So it’s okay if I invite Ethel along for Saturday?”
“Do what you want to do,” I said.
“I like to dance,” Charlie said. “Shoot me.”
My mother called upstairs, “Dinner, everyone.”
“Charlie,” I said, “I’m sorry about the meat loaf.”
“ ‘Charlie Gilhooley,’ Mrs. Lingerman used to say to me when I’d go over to pick up Ethel, ‘Charlie Gilhooley, you walk as though you’re trying to hold on to a fifty-cent piece with your bottom. I never knew anyone to take such teensyweensie steps, leastwise not a member of the male sex.’ ” We headed down the stairs to the dining room. “Well, Mrs. Lingerman, rest in peace,” Charlie said.
I still hadn’t decided what to do about Sabra St. Amour’s bracelet.
6. Sabra St. Amour
Mama and I like hot foods like Indian curries and Mexican tamales, which was why she picked The Frog Pond for dinner that night—there wasn’t anything spicier on the menu than rib roast. I was supposed to watch my diet very carefully.
The Frog Pond loo
ks like an old-fashioned, gingerbread farmhouse, with a small lily pond behind it, and huge weeping willows on the bright green lawn around it.
You’re not supposed to hear anything there but comforting, country sounds: the birds, the breeze ruffling the leaves, idle summer-night chatter, the chink of silver against china and ice cubes against crystal. Off in the kitchen was a whir of a blender beating butter and cream and salt into mashed potatoes . . . an oven door opening to pull out popovers . . . absolutely no music . . . and the waitresses whisper when they ask if everything is all right.
“Honey, show Fedora your bracelet!” Mama shouted across the table at me.
“You know, I’ve been giving this situation of yours a lot of thought,” Fedora was saying at the same time.
They hadn’t yet decided who would go first. I managed to slip in a lie. “I forgot to wear the bracelet, Mama.”
“You forgot to wear it!” Mama said. “I reminded you, sweetheart, don’t you remember?”
“I didn’t sleep very much this week, for thinking about everything,” Fedora continued. She was a little woman with a very militant posture and a great deal of authority in this deep voice which seemed to come from someone behind her or above her.
We were sitting at a round table in the center of the dining room under the apprehensive eye of the proprietress. Both Mama and Fedora had second-balcony voices. Fedora was drinking her usual, a bright red Campari on the rocks, with a twist of lemon; Mama was having her Manhattan with the two cherries. I sometimes think Mama invented that just to be different, though she says she craves a taste of something sweet immediately before and immediately after whiskey.
I was toying with a ginger ale. Before I got my ulcer, I used to nurse a rum collins through other people’s cocktails; on holidays, I’d have a glass of champagne.
Mama said to Fedora, “I gave her the most exquisite cuff bracelet, with a verse inside that’s to die, and she forgets to wear it. Do you love it?”
“I finally came to a decision,” Fedora said, ignoring Mama.
“About what?” Mama said.
“About what do you think? I’ve been trying to tell you that I’ve been going over this thing in my head. I’ve had some very sleepless nights.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mama said, “but when exactly were you trying to tell me all this?”
“At the same time you were carrying on about some sort of bracelet.”
“Some sort of five-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bracelet!” Mama said. “And I paid wholesale at that, and that’s minus the expense of the engraving.”
I always had the idea when we were out that everyone was staring at us, Mama always talked so loud, and always about money.
Fedora sighed.
Mama heard the sigh and sat forward like an obedient child. “Please continue, Fedora.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” said Fedora, patting her short black hair to comfort herself, letting her fingers touch her own cheeks affectionately.
Fedora lived alone and liked to say in interviews that the cast of Hometown was her family. Fedora’s face was very pale; she wore dark eyeliner and mascara, a touch of blue eye shadow and no lipstick. Mama said it was her style. I would tell Mama it was also most mimes’ style, and Mama, who knew very little about anything to do with theater before the 1940’s, would say Lord, Fedora had been around before mimes even thought of not talking.
Fedora was getting along, though nobody knew her true age. She had worked on radio soaps as a young girl, writing for some of the most famous.
She seldom wrote scripts anymore, but she rewrote them after finding the right writers, and she blocked out all the action.
“First of all,” said Fedora, “Sabra, dear, how are you?”
“Doesn’t she look well?” Mama asked.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I said.
“No, no, no, no, no!” Fedora said. “I want to know really and truly how you are.”
“I sent you Dr. Baird’s report,” Mama said. “It was all in there.”
Fedora picked up my long, thin hand with her short, stubby one, the fingers of which sported great long, thick nails which curled over slightly like a parrot’s claws, only they were painted luminescent white. She leaned across toward me and said in a hushed tone, “Now. How . . . are . . . you?”
“Fine,” I said. “Just fine.”
“She was on the beach for an hour today,” Mama said. “She took a little hike all by herself for over an hour.”
“You see, Sabra, I really want to know and really must know, what your thoughts are, your fears and hopes, and all there is to know about you.” She paused. Mama was opening and shutting her purse, looking for a More, then deciding not to have one.
Fedora continued. “Did you hear me say that I not only want to know, I must know?”
Fedora was talking to me, but Mama answered, “Yeah, I heard that.”
“Aren’t you curious as to why I must know?”
“Is the Pope Catholic?” Mama said.
“Sabra?” Fedora said.
“Of course I’m curious,” I said.
Fedora touched my sleeve. “I know news of this internal trouble has taught you not to get your hopes up, or your curiosity riled, or your wishes focused, because you are suddenly aware of your own fallibility.” Fedora always sounded like the synopses of future episodes she often put together for the writers.
Mama said, “I wish you’d pee or get off the pot, because the suspense is killing yours truly.”
Fedora flinched slightly at Mama’s vulgarity, then recovered and said, “Peg, in order to keep Sabra with us, we’re going to forget about extending the show a half hour.”
“Really?” I said.
“Now hold your horses,” said Mama, “an hour, a half hour—she’s still got an ulcer, and we made our decision.”
“Peg, Hometown needs Sabra, and Sabra needs us.”
“And I need to know my kid’s healthy,” Mama said.
“She’ll get every attention, Peg. There will be a nurse on the set when Sabra’s present, a full R.N.”
“An ulcer isn’t like that,” said Mama. “I know because Sam had one, too. She just needs rest. She needs an easy schedule.”
“Which she’ll get,” said Fedora. “From now on we’ll cut back her appearances, and we’ll depend a lot on just her voice, for telephone scenes and reveries. And listen to this—are you ready?”
“Shoot,” Mama said, as though we were at the opening of a new war.
“I am going to add an entirely new dimension to Sabra’s character. The way I intend to do it is the way my public would want it done: very honestly, no punches pulled, nothing held back: the truth. Sabra in Hometown will discover that she has a duodenal ulcer!”
“She will?” Mama said.
“She will,” said Fedora, “and whatever happens to real-life Sabra will happen to Storybook Sabra. The stopping smoking, the gaining weight because of it, the—”
Mama interrupted her. “Fedora, Storybook Sabra never smoked.”
“That will be taken care of. It will be discovered that she was a secret smoker for some time. We cannot settle for less than the full truth. I might have gotten away with a little blarney ten years ago—God knows twenty years ago it’d be three-fourths blarney—but I have to level with Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. America in this day and age.” She reached out and gave my knee a squeeze. “Well, honey, what do you think?”
“You mean I’m supposed to gain weight on television?” I said.
“Be our guest,” said Fedora.
“I don’t want to gain weight on television, Fedora. I’d hate that a lot!”
“So we’ll stuff you with a pillow, honey,” Fedora said.
“I thought we were going to be perfectly honest.”
“Oh, sweetheart, the public doesn’t want that,” said Mama. “I mean, the public is tuned in to you because their own lives are unbearable and realistic, how long do you think we’d last if we im
itated their own lives right down to the letter?”
“I don’t see how you can be honest and then stuff me with a pillow,” I said.
“Don’t be sidetracked by insignificant details,” said Fedora. “This new Sabra is going to receive a lot of attention! There hasn’t been anything like this on daytime since Melanie on My Life to Live had a facelift.”
“We can’t go one step further without asking Dr. Baird about it,” said Mama, who hadn’t even asked me. But I could feel the stirring of excitement starting somewhere in the vicinity of my ulcer, not an unpleasant feeling for a change, a certain uplift.
Fedora said, “I’ve already talked with Dr. Baird. He’s agreed with me that if her schedule is cut down, and the tapings are done with minimal effort and no tension—a registered nurse will be on the set—and if Sabra wants to do it, then it’s okay.”
“He said you needed a registered nurse on the set?” said Mama.
“He didn’t say that but we’ll provide that. We’re going to get a lot of mileage out of this, Peg, and it’s positive: It instructs, and warns and helps viewers.”
“Well I can tell you right now not to go to the expense of a nurse on the set. I mean what is the nurse for?”
Fedora gave another one of her long-suffering sighs. “We want any reporters or interviewers to know we’re taking utmost care of Sabra.”
“I get it,” Mama said. “Publicity.”
I was beginning to feel the way actors said certain agents made them feel: like a piece of meat, little more.
Fedora got my vibes and put her hand on my wrist. “Dr. Baird said if Sabra wants to do it, so I think Sabra has the floor now.”
“Do you want to do it, honey? You don’t have to. We’ve got plenty in the bank,” Mama said.
Fedora said rather smugly, “I doubt that money is the motivating force behind Sabra’s superb talent.”
“We’ll expect some additional clams, say five hundred extra clams a month,” said Mama.
Mama put her hand on my wrist, and for a moment I looked as though I was being held down, one on either side pinning me to my seat.
