The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book)

by Robert Hough

  Plus James had a car. Every morning, after a breakfast of oatcakes and black coffee, he'd put on a pair of goggles and a funny leather driving hat that clung to his skull like a bathing cap, and he'd head out to his Model T. Some mornings I'd watch him getting his exercise with all the crank turning and lever pulling necessary to get the thing going, and then when it was finally moving it travelled no faster than a cart pulled by pair of workhorses. Furthermore, the thing usually stoppped before making it out of the driveway (which admittedly was a half mile long) and I'd watch him, off in the distance, jump out and start lever pulling and crank turning to get the damn thing mobile again. Then, to demonstrate his appreciation for all things automotive, he'd give three long blasts on the klaxon before turning onto the road.

  He was in love with the motor car and often said it was going to transform the way America did business, that it was a genuine gift from the future and that he'd already invested money with Mr. Ford. As for me, I thought it a little suspicious he'd put so much stock in a sputtering heap of nuts and bolts when his very own Little Egypt was going untouched and unloved each and every night.

  My days? Whew. Slow as tar, they were. Some days slower. You'd think after all I'd been through in the last decade or so I'd be eager for a little peace and quiet. Truth is, I'd thought that's what I'd wanted, only to discover that movement has a way of getting into your bones and making you feel disjointed when it's not there any more. It's like wearing a hat. At first you put it on and it feels scratchy and warm and tight. You wear it for a while, and you stop noticing it's there. Then you take it off and your head feels scratchy and warm and tight all over again, even though there's nothing to cause the sensation. The same with the business of shifting your body from one piece of ground to another. After a while it starts to feel like the earth beneath your feet is stable and still and reliable only when it's rushing.

  To kill time I'd ask Melba to pack me a lunch ("Yes, ma'am," she'd say, her expression as flat as a board). Then I'd take long walks along country roads, making myself guess what was behind each bend, each gnarled and twisted live-oak tree, each rise in the camel-coloured earth. More often than not it was more of the same. I soon grew bored of this and started taking a blanket and setting myself in spots well away from anywhere in particular. I'd take a book and stretch out for hours. Sometimes I'd even unbutton my blouse and warm my flesh in the sun, all the while concentrating on the way air smells come autumn. For a time, I even managed to persuade myself I was happy, or at least that safe was a worthwhile substitute.

  After I'd been Mrs. James Williams for almost three weeks I decided I was going to make myself a sweater. Winter was coming, and I'd wear it in the evenings, when even a bayou can get chilly. James picked up the wool I needed from town, and I drew myself a pattern on crepe paper. Was nice-looking, I thought, with piping and a high collar to come later. The buttons would be silver.

  The next day I took my knitting stuff on one of my walks and started the sweater on the soft bank of a levee. I could feel the ground squish under the blanket when I sat. I did that for the next few days, until I got so intent on finishing I stopped bothering with the walks and started knitting on the front porch swing seat, letting Melba and Willa stay out of my way for a change. It took me a week to finish. I worked like my time on this planet was coming to an end. When the last pearl two was done I held the thing up to the light. Looked beautiful, it did, though at the same time something was wrong with it. Something peculiar.

  Then I realized the damn thing was too small.

  And not just small, but small, nowhere near big enough for an adult woman, even one of my slight proportions. I was astonished, for I'd followed the pattern to a T, and it'd come out looking exactly like it should except shrunk down. An eight-year-old would've had to exhale to get the buttons done up. I considered this fact for more than a minute, thinking maybe I really was crazy, when I recalled something Dr. Levine told me during one of our bathtub sessions. Seems we don't have one mind but two, one we know about and one we don't, and the one we know about isn't necessarily the one in charge. I kept holding up the sweater and scrutinizing it and thinking, What could this possibly mean? when suddenly my breathing went shallow and rabbit paced. Seems I didn't want to be knitting for an adult at all. I wanted to be knitting for a baby. I guess my two minds'd been duking it out the whole time and the sweater had landed somewhere in the middle.

  I just sat there, looking at the garment, wheels turning, when finally a plan of action entered through my ears and pretty much hollered.

  All right mister, said the voice. Enough pussyfootin' around.

  That night I told Willa and Melba to vamoose to the servants' quarters once James had come home. I didn't even try to be polite; the other conclusion I'd come to was Melba and Willa would be a whole lot happier if I was rude to them, they being the type of people to get chagrined when their expectations are violated. I ordered them to put out the silver and to get two bottles of French wine from the cellar and to make sure there were flowers in the centre of the table. With a game hen roasting away in the oven, I shooed them away till morning.

  Served dinner myself that night. I wore something loose so that every time I bent over to offer James more bird or cranberries or collard greens he could take a peek at the shapes that'd made me famous all over west and northwest America. My eyes looked dreamy and my lips moist throughout. Through opportunistic pouring, I made sure he drank more than his fair share of wine, thinking maybe reserve was the problem.

  Afterwards I told him I had something I needed to show him upstairs. He took the bait and we retired to the master's chamber. There, I put my arms around him and told him I'd been lonely. He apologized, his voice even deeper and quieter than ordinary, saying there'd been craziness in the cotton markets lately and he'd been overworked and distracted by all the other things on his mind. This put me at ease, for I'd started to worry he was bent in some serious manner. We kissed. Kissed a second time. Everything seemed to going according to plan when he pulled away. He was wearing that expression men get under such circumstances, by which I mean half master of the universe and half needy child.

  Was then he said, "Dance for me, Miss Egypt."

  At first I recoiled, for I'd figured one of the upsides of marrying James was my days as a dancing girl were through. A second later I talked myself into it, thinking we all have our secret likes and dislikes, and there're sure a lot of things worse in this world than watching a young woman wriggle. Meanwhile James'd got up and was putting a cylinder on the player. He cranked the handle. Naturally it was frigolet music.

  To make a long story short I figured if I was going to do this I was going to do this right, so I started dancing. And not just dancing but dancing, every limb in a slow tiger flow, eyes closed, whole body floating to music, soft sounds of delight coming from my painted lips, and to make sure my husband got more than any rube in a Superba tent I let the tension mount and then I ... well ... what it was was I started touching myself through my clothes, rubbing myself with the heel of my right hand, hard enough the veins on the back of my hand popped up, readying parts that ordinarily stay hid, and enjoying myself, too, for my dress felt soft and a breeze was blowing in the bedroom window and then, still dancing, I filled both hands with hair and slowly pushed blond curls off my forehead while at the same time running a tongue over pouty crimson lips.

  Then I heard a groan. Well not a groan exactly. Midway between a groan and a grunt, like the sound a walrus makes when ready for dinner. I opened my eyes. My second husband, James Williams III, Investment Banker, Far East Texas, had himself out and was doing the job meant for me.

  Was doing it frantically, if you must know.

  I had to fight the inclination to leave the very next day, and would've gone ahead and done it had it not been a time when the mark of a good woman was the ability to endure. Truth was, I'd taken vows, and I'm a person who takes obligation seriously. I stuck it out for another two or three months,
though during that time I promised myself I sure wasn't going to embarrass myself with another attempt at seducing my very own husband. If he wanted some loving, fine. This time he was the one who was going to have to come ask for it.

  What followed was basically a repeat of the first month. James was in town most of the time, though when he was at home he was quiet and generally in his own little world. Melba and Willa padded around like they owned the place, and I worked hard at avoiding them, figuring at the very least keeping out of their line of sight gave me something to do. No one talked unless they had to, and even then it was in hushed tones. It wasn't long before I noticed how the house allowed for this crazy system: because it was so big, everyone could live and work and go about their business without ever crossing paths. Its very grandeur seemed to enforce a sort of institutional glumness and pretty soon I started to hate it, too.

  One night, sitting in my chambers, twiddling my thumbs, thinking did I or did I not want to read a book, I finally decided I had to have some kind of talk with James. I descended the curving marble staircase and stood in the middle of the foyer. Though James was home, I didn't know exactly where he was and was readying to call his name. I'd taken a deep breath and was about to call out when I stopped myself. There was something about that house-its size, its stillness, its stuffy authority-that communicated what I was thinking of doing was a breach of decorum and therefore out of the question.

  Instead, I went looking. I checked the parlour, the dining room, the kitchen (where sometimes James would have a slice of rhubarb pie while standing at the chef's table). They were all empty. I went back upstairs, found all the rooms darkened and then came back downstairs, heading through rooms I'd already checked till I reached the back of the house where the billiard room was. It, too, was empty, though I did notice the door on the far side of the room was open. This connected with a hallway running along the rear of the house toward the solari ums. As it was almost twenty feet wide and therefore as much a room as it was a corridor, James had lined the hallway with his paintings. For this reason, he called this part of the house the "gallery"; everytime he said it he smiled, thinking how clever it was the word described both the room's functions in one fell swoop.

  I moved toward the open door. James couldn't hear me, for the billiard room was covered with Persian carpets, so he didn't look over. He was contemplating a painting of a ballet dancer he'd bought in France. Even if he had heard me, I don't think he would've looked away, as his eyes were so busy following the soft, girlish lines of the dancer's body. All admiration, he was, like a dowager who'd finally found a vase that suited her sideboard. It was the same expression he always got when admiring the contours of his motor car, and for a second I felt proud that if nothing else, at least my husband was a man of discerning taste. The second after that, however, my heart skipped a beat, and I suddenly felt a little ill. The expression he had on his facelips pursed, forehead creased, any pleasure residing in the eyes and the eyes only-was the exact same one he used to wear whenever he watched me dance in a Superba.

  Next afternoon, I walked into town with nothing more than clothes, knick-knacks and some cherry pie dollars I'd saved. James had offered to give me some money, but I'd turned it down, saying I didn't need his help or anybody else's, my being too young to understand the difference between what was pride and what was just plain stupid. I caught the dusk train west.

  True to Con T. Kennedy's word, he'd soured my name everywhere. Didn't even matter what that name was. Haynie, Aganosticus, Williams, I even tried Levine a few times before finally settling on a handle that just popped out of my mouth in front of a carnival owner in a place called Yuba City, California. I just liked the way it sounded, I suppose, and I've kept it till this day.

  It didn't help. It's not uncommon for carnies to have five, six, even seven aliases, depending on how many states they're wanted in. In that world, you tended to go by faces and physical descriptions and reputations more than names, and everyone I talked to looked at me like they knew me. Finally I resorted to a job with the Cosmopolitan Amusement Company, that "Mastadonic Majestic Mighty Master of the Carnival World," on a flat-out cooch: after the entertainment and the grift we girls would come out and stomach dance and maybe do a balloon dance for good measure. After ten minutes or so, the educator would run on stage and stop the show so he could do what they called "the ding pitch," which meant any rube with another ten cents to spare got to see us take our tops off. Those who didn't got shown the door. Because the educator was the sort of man who could promise heaven as though it was his to deliver, most of the rubes would ante up no matter how much they'd already lost at three-card monte, and a minute later I'd be standing there, the blonde on the far right, half naked and newly named Mabel Stark, thinking how I'd once imagined a future for myself that was much, much different. It wasn't even the humiliation that got me down. Was the sheer lack of imagination involved. Believe me, it's pretty hard telling yourself you're doing something requiring talent when the whole point of your job is to stand in one place with your chest exposed. It hardly even mattered what expression you had on your face, for the rubes weren't looking there. The other four Harem Girls of Siam mostly opted for bored.

  This went on for about a month. I got so low I thought about having myself a little neurasthenic holiday and probably would've if I hadn't been living so hand to mouth. Truth was, I didn't have time for a nervous breakdown, which in some ways was a blessing and in some ways a curse. In early February of 1912 the Cosmopolitan pulled into Venice, California, which back then was still considered a railroad town and not a part of Los Angeles. On our third date, I was standing up there, ding pitch over, reaching behind to unhitch my halter, when I got a cramp in my right thumb. This slowed me down considerably, and by the time the other four Harem Girls were topless I was still wrestling with my snap. Was then I heard laughter from the middle of the tent, the sort of laughter that doesn't so much rise as spurt to life, as though the person laughing had been holding it in for longer than was comfortable. The Harem Girls of Siam all looked at one another, puzzled, before peering into the glare. Owing to the magnified candle shining in our faces, it was difficult to see who was doing the laughing, or just what it was was so funny. Course, I was the one who figured it out first, ahead of the other girls and the educator and the frigolet player and the grifters who'd stayed for the show and even the rubes themselves, for when he finally quit guffawing Al G. called out, "For Pete's sake, Kentucky! How long is this likely to take?"

  CHAPTER5

  THE HUNGARIAN MILITARY OFFICER

  THREE WEEKS LATER, I PERFORMED A SLIDE FOR LIFE ON opening day of the all new Al G. Barnes Wild Animal Circus, a show A] G. really was calling "The Show That's Different." Was one o'clock in the afternoon and the parade was just returning to the lot. A goodly number of people had followed, the idea being the free act would keep them there and make them want to buy tickets for the matinee, which was always a harder sell than the evening performance. I started climbing a ladder anchored by guy wires. There were exactly two hundred steps of "Height-Defying Hysteria" and back then just seeing a thing stretch that high into the air was something. Meanwhile, the whole contraption was wavering and teetering and circling in the breeze, and with each step my legs grew weaker and my stomach more air filled and I promised myself if I survived I'd attend church and give money to the poor. All of this ran through my head as I climbed farther and farther into the heavens, seemed I'd never get there, though finally I reached a rickety little wooden platform at the top. Here I focused on Al G.'s suggestion that you didn't look down, even for a second, no matter how curious you got, though when you're that frightened advice tends to turn into a senseless string of words that function more to keep your mind occupied while you're standing knock-kneed and trembling and dizzy as a weathervane.

  Around the time I began to wonder if a person can die from overstimulation I reached out and squeezed my little hands around a padded triangle. It was attached to
a metal pulley, and this pulley sat on a long, twisted metal cable that travelled from the platform to the ground at an angle not quite forty-five degrees but pretty damn close. Eyes clenched shut, I stepped off the platform, let rip a blood-curdler, and hurtled toward earth, my body twisting and kicking and jerking and flailing. I truly thought I was going to die for it didn't seem possible a mere pulley could hold a body gathering that much momentum, and because I figured I was a dead woman, time slowed and my head cleared and I had myself a moment to wish mine hadn't been a life in which survival had always seemed such an imposition. This got me sad as hell, so sad I almost forget why it was I was having such thoughts, it all coming back pretty quick when the cable took a dip at the bottom and headed back up skyward and then stopped. The triangle was wrenched from my hands, practically tearing my arms out of the sockets, and I went soaring, limbs akimbo, eyes clamped so hard they hurt. After soaring for about half the length of a baseball outfield, I felt netting strands go taut on my backside, dip me down low and hurl me straight back into the air, though with far less velocity. As I kicked and flailed, I started suspecting maybe I really would survive, a wonderful sensation when seconds earlier you were thinking for sure it's curtains. I crawled from the net, beaming, eyes teary, nose snotty, shaky from adrenalin and yearning to puke. People were cheering and laughing and pointing and saying, "Jesus Christ, you see that?" and was then I saw Mr. Barnes and his Negro valet, Dan, emerge smiling from the sideline.

  "What did you think?" Al G. asked his assistant.