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

by Robert Hough

  What happened next was this. I went inside the house and I turned on the TV and I turned on the radio and I opened windows so I could hear lawnmowers and gamboling children and the rushing noises made by the nearby freeway. Then I plunked myself down in my Laz-E-Boy and closed my eyes and let my head fill with noise.

  It took about three days of feeling sorry for myself to start figuring activity would be the best tonic (or leastways the only one I could think of), so I drove out to the garden centre and when it opened I bought myself a shovel and a trowel and some annuals and a bag or two of planting soil. I came home, unloaded the stuff myself and carried it all out to the little square of backyard I keep next to my parking spot. I'd been looking at that backyard for close to thirty years, and had always thought planting some flowers come springtime might be pretty, a chore easier said than done when you've got kitties that need tending each and every day, weekends no exception. With that excuse out of the way the time had come. I went out back and started rooting. Wasn't sure exactly what I was rooting for, so I just kept at it, copying what I'd seen my neighbours do, which was digging up weeds and tossing in soil and basically moving earth from bottom to top to back on bottom again. Eventually, the bed looked churned and black and ready, and I had memory scents of West Kentucky come planting season. Raked it out nice and smooth. Got on my hands and knees and planted the petunias and when I was finished went into the kitchen and got myself a Hamm's. Then I went back outside and stood in the backyard admiring my handiwork. Was then I checked my watch. It was 10:30 in the morning.

  Now this truly was a shock, how slowly time can pass when a mind and body's unoccupied. A minute passed, and I started feeling mouth-dry and fearful, which is how it always begins. I closed my eyes and rubbed them and none of it if helped, for it was all there, in my mind's eye, refusing to leave me alone: pelting rain, the green of springtime, smoky mountains and that knock on the door because May Wirth was sick and maybe I could help seeing as I was a nurse and all. Half crying, I choked down the Hamm's and got myself another one and took two of Dr. Brisbane's pills just to take the edge off. Then I got Parly on the phone and said, "Goddammit Parly. You're my agent now get me some work."

  He sounded delighted. "You bet, Mabel. Just you wait and see. You may not be working the tigers anymore but no one's going to hold that against you. You're still Mabel Stark. You're still the tiger queen. I was thinking something along the line of personal appearances. How does that sound to you?"

  "Will it get me out of the house?"

  "Yes."

  "Then it sounds good to me."

  I hung up and commenced to wait. Fell asleep and woke up and made myself some corn bread that wasn't as good as Pauline's and I watched the channel six daytime rerun of Gilligan I always used to miss: a spider the size of a hippo trapped them all in a cave and it looked like curtains until Gilligan accidentally tripped over it, accidentally kicking what the Professor figured was the spider's sensitive spot and killing it. When it was over I played solitaire. Went shopping. Buffed my corns. Oiled my scars, a practise making them more supple and less likely to bind. Later, I visited Pauline the cook and we had coffee and while I was sitting there passing comment on stupid things, like sewing and daiquiri flavours, I kept thinking, This is what women do? This is what keeps them busy? A day later I was standing in my garden, drinking a Hamm's and thinking I might rearrange the petunias just to keep me busy and stop my memories from kicking in, when the phone rang. I raced inside, or leastways moved as fast as a woman my age has a right to.

  Was Parly.

  "Good news, Mabel."

  "How's that?"

  "You're working again."

  "Thank God."

  "Now don't get too excited, Mabel. I'm telling you right now it's not much. In fact, I almost turned it down, thinking you might be too proud to take it. But it's a start, Mabel. But it's a matter of you not having done appearances before and having to build up a track record. You understand?"

  "Course, Parly. You don't go from groomer to trainer overnight. I understand that. Whatever it is I'll take it."

  "You're sure?"

  "Surer than sure."

  "Then be at the Exhibition Center by nine."

  "I need to bring anything?"

  "You still got your old costume? The one people think of when they think Mabel Stark?"

  "It's upstairs in mothballs."

  "Wear it."

  That night I didn't even need one of Dr. Brisbane's pills for I felt better than I had in a long long while. Went to bed at my normal time, just past 7:30, and as I drifted off I got to thinking maybe it really was ridiculous a woman my age training tigers, and that my whole dust-up with Ida was going to turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Personal appearances. I said it over and over again, as though rehearsing what I'd say when people asked me what I'd been doing since JungleLand.

  When I awoke the sky was just starting to lighten in the east; I had time so I took my coffee into the yard and watched the sun turn from a thin band of violet to a deep red band to a low-hanging orange drape. I had my breakfast and headed up to the attic and dug out one of the old white leather costumes Rajah had liked to rub himself against so much. Course, I was nervous it wouldn't fit: as I've told you I'm itty- bitty, and given the chance weight just falls off me. In fact, my weight is the reason I drink at least two cans of beer a day; Dr. Brisbane once told me I needed it to keep my girth up, though at the time I wondered if he was just using my slightness as an excuse to tell an old woman what she wanted to hear.

  In other words, I was worried the damn thing would droop in all the places it used to grip and that I'd look like a fool as a consequence. I went to the bedroom and drew the curtains, looking at myself in the mirror being something I've always preferred to do when the lights are low. Then I took off my clothes, which at my age doesn't get done without a certain amount of creaking and cracking and grunting little expressions of breath. Pulled on the damn suit. Looked at myself in the mirror. Goddammit if I didn't look like a snake getting ready to shed.

  The overall looseness of the thing inspired a sudden withering of my enthusiasm, for the one thing I wasn't prepared to do was have others laugh at me. I was about to phone Parly and tell him the whole thing was off when a plan occurred to me. I peeled off the suit, enduring more creaking and cracking and grunting, and hunted through my chest of drawers for some old leotards and a sweater. Pulled those on and pulled the suit on top, and though I looked a little like a stuffed chicken I didn't look as ridiculous as I had earlier, so I figured, ah what the hell, if they can't handle a granny-aged woman dressed in leather, they don't have to look.

  Was then a funny thing happened. I walked away from the mirror to get my keys from the dresser. With keys in hand I turned, and saw my reflection from across the room. Remember: the lights were low and my eyesight's just starting to weaken and I was a fair distance from the face of the mirror, so that when I looked at myself my reflection was dim and slightly fuzzy. Suddenly it hit me: how I must've looked when I first wore my body suit. Saw it clear as day. Also saw it for the first time, for whenever I'd looked at myself in my prime it was with a self-judgment that made me think I was frumpy and plain and just a poor old thing from Kentucky. Well, I stood there for minutes and minutes, couldn't take my eyes off it, the thing in the mirror like an apparition from another time. Truth to tell, it looked like a ghost picking that moment to answer a question that'd always plagued and perplexed me.

  Well Jesus Christ no wonder so many men had wanted to fuck me.

  With this thought reverberating I jumped in my big old Buick. I got to the Exhibition Center early, really early, in fact, just me and my big old car sitting in the parking lot, though after a bit vans started pulling up to the loading docks, and men in overalls began hauling out stuff in brown cardboard boxes. It was just before seven in the morning. The only other vehicle parked in the lot was a truck supporting a Pixel sign flashing the words "Conejo Valley Home Show" followed by
a platoon of marching exclamation marks.

  The parking lot got busier and busier and I just sat there watching the activity, butterflies in my stomach. Finally, around eight o'clock, Parly showed up and parked next to me. He got out and I got out and good-mornings were exchanged. Parly had some kind of pass card that admitted us to the building, where workingmen were running wires and tacking down indoor-outdoor carpeting and hammering together displays. We set to walking through the hall, past booths advertising vacuum cleaners, blenders, hair dryers, floor polishers, car waxers, grout eliminators, pot holders you could wash under a tap, stereophonic sound systems, electric salad mixers, battery-powered wood polishers, even a whirring shoe-brush contraption that charged up when held under incandescent light. Seemed the more I looked around, the more I spotted devices existing for the simple reason people have to spend their money once it finds a way into their pockets.

  "Here we are," Parly said.

  We were in front of a table with some sort of contraption sitting on a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. Behind was a gallery of photos stuck to what looked like a bordello screen: a bunch of me from my Ringling heydey, plus others from the Barnes show, John Robinson, the Mills Circus of London. They were all arranged around a sign that could've come from the mind of old P.T. himself: "The Queen of the Tigers Meets the Queen of Food Processors-Mabel Stark Presents the All-New Stainless-Steel Slicing and Dicing Ronco Miracle Kitchen Whirrrr."

  I stood eyeballing the Kitchen Whirrrr, a big plastic doohickey with a blade somewhere inside, while Parly looked around for a hint of assistance. It finally came in the form of a woman wearing a green pantsuit and cat's-eye glasses, who rushed up and breathlessly shook our hands. Hers was waxy with cream.

  "Oh hello," she said. "I'm so glad you're here. I'm Theresa Gains, Ronco product representative."

  "I'm Parly Baer," Parly said, "and this is the Mabel Stark."

  This triggered another round of handshakes, though when Miss Gains realized she'd already waggled our hands, she flushed and got even shorter of breath. By this time someone had come by and dropped a white plastic basin, the kind busboys use in diners, beside the Kitchen Whirrrr. It was heaped with tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, turnips, carrots, onions, rutabagas-pretty much every vegetable you could think of.

  "These are for demonstration purposes," Miss Gains said. "My advice is you familiarize yourself with the device and put some sliced vegetables on one of the presentation trays you'll find beneath the table. I'll check on you a little later."

  She turned and was gone.

  Party and I looked at each other, amused, until Parly said, "Well, you heard the lady, Mabel. Let's do some slicing and dicing."

  We inspected the machine. On the front was a button labelled On-Off. Beside this button was a big dial, with settings marked: Thick, Medium-Thick, Medium, Medium-Thin, Thin, Wafer, Paper. It was set on Thick, Party saying Thick was fine by him so long as I didn't have any objections. I didn't, so he reached out and turned the thing on.

  Now it'd be an exaggeration to say the thing started chugging, though I'll use the word anyway, for the Kitchen Whirrrr hummed so much it shook itself slowly around the table. Parly grabbed it and held it in one spot, something made his cheeks waggle. "Feed it a tomato Mabel and we'll see what happens."

  I picked up a fat one and dropped it into a clear plastic chute that stuck out the top like a chimney. A second later came a sucking noise, like a drain unclogging itself, and a second after that three inch-thick tomato slices plopped onto the table in a pool of pulp and seed.

  "Well anyway it works," Parly said. I put the three slices on a tray and wiped away the tomato guts and suggested we try one of the other settings. Party put it to Thin. This time, the machine started to whine, and it tried to skip across the tabletop as opposed to slowly lumber. Party held it with two hands, and I dropped in an onion. Instead of a pained sucking noise we heard what sounded like an axe swiping air, the onion slices jetting from the Kitchen Whirrrr in an arc that could only be described as rainbow-like.

  "I'll be goddammed," Parly said. "Best keep it on a lower setting, Mabel. We're liable to hurt someone with this thing."

  I agreed this was a sensible idea, and with Parley's help I sliced up a bunch of vegetables, all of them done Thick or Medium-Thick, and then arranged them accordian-style on the tray in a way I thought looked nice. Around this time the home show opened, and peoplewell, women and their children-started to wander in and look at the tables. Parly checked his watch, and we both decided it was time for him to go, my never having been a woman who needed a lot of handholding.

  Standing there and smiling was slow work, slower in fact than I would've thought possible. Seems the Kitchen Whirrrr wasn't the only slicer and dicer at the Conejo Valley Home Show, and so it wasn't drawing people the way everyone had hoped. (Leastways this is what Theresa Gains told me on her next visit.) Still, every once in a while someone would come up and ask for a demonstration, at which point I'd thick-slice some cucumber or maybe some honeydew melon. If the woman was holding a toddler, I'd hand a slice to the child and say, "Here you go, sweetheart." Usually this would be followed by a question about whether I'd really been a circus star, to which I'd answer, "Sure as I'm standing here, I was on the Ringling show back when that meant something." Hearing this, they'd nod and then ask how much a Kitchen Whirrrr costs despite there being no fewer than three signs on the table saying "Yours for the Incredible Low Introductory Price of $19.99, All Blades Included."

  It didn't take long to figure out the women at home shows come because there's free child care at the back of the building along with food samples you don't have to pay for. In other words, none of them were old enough to know who Mabel Stark was and if they knew the name Ringling at all it was only in a vague unappreciative sort of way-the same way I knew the names Copernicus or Ponce de Leon, say. Hours went by. Hours made all the more agonizing because Alan Hale himself, the Skipper from Gilligan, was two aisles over hawking some sort of carpeting that didn't stain even if you poured paint over it, which from what I heard was exactly what he was doing. At first I wanted to go over and meet the man and tell him how much I liked his work. I also wanted to ask him how the Skipper had felt being the only man on the island without a love interest, Gilligan having Mary-Anne and the Professor having Ginger and Mr. Howell having that fussy old prune Mrs. Howell.

  I never did go over, however, for after a bit I heard he was drawing quite a crowd, bigger even than Eve Plumb, the middle daughter from The Brady Bunch, who was flogging a hair flattener you plugged into a car lighter. I was hit by a wave of jealousy, and my desire to shake Mr. Hale's beefy hand got put on the back burner.

  Plus I was hot. Remember: I was wearing leather head to toe along with a leotard and sweater underneath. This was too much, seeing as I was standing under lights designed to make the Kitchen Whirrrr gleam. Course, by ten in the morning, the Kitchen Whirrrr was starting to crust with tomato pulp and cucumber innards, and my hands were cramped from wiping.

  I felt myself start to turn resentful, and unfortunately I've always been the sort of woman who has trouble fending off the arrival of a bad mood, no matter how much warning it gives me. Sometimes I think I even go out of my way to welcome it. I was getting hot and grumpy, and as the morning wore on I wanted nothing more than a can of Hamm's and a Snack Bar Annie leaned-on burger. As lunchtime approached the crowds thickened, all those bodies pushing against one another making the Conejo Valley Exhibition Center an even warmer place to be. I started smelling whiffs of game escaping from the tight collar of my uniform. By one o'clock my stomach was growling something fierce, and I started getting mad at Parly and Theresa Gains and the makers of the Miracle Kitchen Whirrrr for allowing an old woman to get so hot and foot-sore and hungry. It was practically inhuman, the way I was being treated.

  Then. Around a half-past one, and like I say I was hot and bored and hungry and starting to miss my life with tigers. A woman came by who'd obviously had a morni
ng as bad as I'd been having. She was baggy-eyed and pale, her hands full of what was no doubt causing her exhaustion: an evil little monster of a boy, maybe two and a half years old, who kept slapping the side of her face and screeching. His face was messy with what looked like chocolate pudding, and because his nose was running pretty much non-stop there was a stream flowing through the pudding, over his chin and down his neck into his baby suit. Apparently he liked the taste of it, for in between hollers he kept sticking out his tongue and taking a big swipe of snot pudding and then returning his tongue to his mouth. In other words, he was a child put on the face of the earth to make bystanders tut-tut and comment on what a handful boys can be.

  Meanwhile, he kept slapping his mother on the side of the head and shrieking. Apparently he'd been doing it so long she'd given up trying to stop him, for she just stood there, having her head pounded and her ear screeched into, the whole time trying to get the hair out of her face by jutting out her bottom lip and blowing. I felt sorrier than sorry for her. In fact, I wanted to take the brat off her hands and teach him some manners while she went and had herself a coffee and dealt with her hair problem. Was a sympathy that disappeared the moment she opened her mouth.

  "I want to see the damn thing work!" she yelled over the screeching.

  "Certainly, ma'am."

  I'd developed a technique: whenever I turned on the machine I'd let one hand rest on it as though was just a natural place to let a hand take a rest, disguising the fact the Kitchen Whirrrr liked to take a stroll when switched on. With my free hand, I picked up a turnip, thinking this might impress her for turnips are tough little customers and much opposed to being cut into bits. I dropped it in, heard the sucking noise and out popped four turnip slabs glistening with juice. For a brief second I was actually proud of the Kitchen Whirrrr and my role promoting it. The boy shrieked and wiggled and slapped, and the woman stared regretfully at the turnip sections as though I'd done something to offend her. She didn't even take her eyes off them when she asked, "How much?"