White Leather and Flawed Pearls

by Susan Altstatt

  Harlan turned on me that long, warm, gold-eyed look that can raise your internal body temp from the center out, like microwaves.

  “I meant food!”

  The look broke down under pressure of a grin. He whispered, “Okay, Missouri.”

  When the restaurant should be opening for dinner, and everyone was full of Princess Beef and Kung Pao Chicken, and the guys were mostly full of Tsing Tao, Harlan slithered away amid loving farewells.

  He had all their phone numbers. Nobody had his.

  Down the street, at a lingerie shop, he found what he’d looked for elsewhere, China silk-knit panty hose, brand-named archly (but not inappropriately) “Queen’s Wear.” They were twenty bucks a pair, and came in twelve colors. Harlan calmly bought me all twelve colors, three pairs each. $720 plus tax.

  I was flabbergasted.

  They also had silk-knit bikini briefs from China.

  Harlan, again, prepared to go for all the colors.

  I said, “Wait a minute, I happen to prefer white pants.” (Scared too many times by a hemorrhage of paisleys.) So white was what I got.

  They had all sorts of frisky stuff for guys, this being Polk Street. Silk knit briefs cut for the male crotch, black satin briefs with studs. And the most obnoxious joker jockstraps of pink satin; the pouch for the balls was an elephant face, complete with button eyes and ostrich-fluff forelock, and a quite unnecessarily large satin tube trunk poking out in front.

  Harlan bought something for himself. I didn’t want to know. I stayed as far away as possible. I mean, what if it was one of those elephants?

  And it could have been a giggle meant for Tom.

  Sunday, August 31 11:00 AM

  We motored down to Palo Alto and sang with the Saint Ann’s Choir.

  Marc Swann is a professor of early music. Marc Swann is also my godfather. He has directed Saint Ann’s choir since before I was born. The choir rehearses an hour before Mass.

  MARC: “What part do you sing?”

  HARLAN: (meekly) “All of them.”

  MARC: “Soprano?” That got a big laugh from everybody. Marc put him on tenor. He sang it, sweet and clear. He sight-read perfectly.

  MARC: “What about bass?” He had three tenors, and only himself on bass. Harlan switched. His bass was accurate but unexceptional. Marc squinted and glowered at him: you could see that Harlan had him just intrigued as hell. Next motet, he said, “Okay, alto.”

  Harlan’s alto was a natural extension of his tenor, full, rich, and loud. The rest of the women sounded like breathy kids.

  “All right! Soprano!”

  Out came this glorious blazing falsetto. Nobody was audible but him.

  Marc said, “Where did you study?”

  “King’s College Chapel Choir. Cambridge.”

  “Oh.”

  Harlan sang bass with Marc, neat, straight, I almost said to myself “inconspicuous.” Hardly the word for him. Every woman, girl, female whatever in the place cozied up to me in turn, goggling and gushing.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Ooooo, he’s wu-uhnderful!”

  “That’s Harlan Parr? The rock star?”

  Pray harder, and field his compliments for him. Try to keep my teeth from showing. Pray for insight. Some Holy Wisdom from the Mass to help me keep my shit together.

  When you are invited by someone to a wedding party, do not sit in the place of honor in case some greater dignitary has been invited. Then the host might come and say to you, ‘Make room for this man,’ and you would have to proceed shamefacedly to the lowest place—

  This is the Gospel of the Lord.

  I got out. Just cruised out the side door at the homily, and lay on the sunny lawn between the chapel and Newman House. My pain in the gut was there in force. I felt queasy, bloated, and weird. Infected. And it wasn’t all in my head: things were noticeably swollen out; I could feel it with my hands. Maybe I’d lie here till the Mass was over. When my parents found me, I’d say I was sick.

  Shadow fell across my face. The pastor’s big gold furball of a collie came, panting solicitous dog breath, darkening the sun. When he started to drool in my eye, I retreated to the house. Harlan found me.

  Harlan asked me no questions, I told him no lies. He took me away instead, and fed me jalapeno fettuccini. I scarfed it down embarrassingly fast, seeing as it wasn’t my first square meal in weeks. Gut pain still with me.

  Well, I could be getting my period. How about that?

  Quick hike to the ladies’ room. Nothing.

  On to the thrift shops.

  Silk blouses.

  Oh wow. Some kid’s junior ROTC Marine’s dress jacket. It fit me perfectly. Midnight blue with red piping, brass buttons, and epaulets. Stick daisies in the epaulets, I’d look like Sergeant Pepper. Get myself a jarhead haircut, I’d look like a Marine. A very small Marine.

  It also fit Harlan. He didn’t look like a Marine.

  I am the Monarch of the Sea,

  (my inner voice suggested)

  The Ruler of the Queen’s Navee,

  Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants—

  I went and found myself an item he couldn’t wear: a shirtwaist frock in Thai silk, very proper with a self belt and self buttons, blue and white all over pattern like Tim the Tailor’s Chinese dishes.

  I took that back, and he said “God, no. Sorry, but it’s strictly Princess Margaret.”

  Princess Margaret is known to have a penchant for rock stars. Going off to the Caribbean with ’em. Shit. Harlan might know Princess Margaret. I wondered how well.

  ———

  Sunday night dinner.

  I ate, and didn’t hear what was said to me. Everyone who knew my family must have been there. They pushed the two long tables together and had to bring another from outside. People were eating off their laps in the living room. Every damn Stanford musicology student came to hear Harlan hold court: those intellectual Ph.D-bound women especially, simpering and dangling on his every word.

  I got my Choosing the Wrong Side glass full of milk, and went off.

  Mama has a little bookcase by her side of the bed, all favorite stuff, some of it kid stuff, like Milne’s Now We Are Six. Something in there I’d wanted to remember, about dressing a bride.

  Here. A poem called “Shoes and Stockings.” I got to the part about all the old wives “weaving gold stockings for her dainty feet,” and put the book back where I’d found it.

  Unreal. Totally. My feet are very practical, nothing dainty about my feet. And as of yesterday I am the owner of enough Polk-Street silk pantyhose to last for life.

  You can’t mend anything with sugar frosting. Nothing quite so unpredictable as anchoring one’s whole world view to half-remembered poetry. And I wanted cosmic glue so very badly.

  Finish the milk. Back to the bookcase.

  Now here was input of a different kind, The Lost Books of Eden. Hokey title, but the contents aren’t: all the early church stuff that didn’t quite make it into the Bible. Here was the Gospel of Mary, and the Protevangelion, with the stories about Saint Joachim and Saint Ann.

  I did the random access trick. Close eyes, open page, finger in the middle, smack.

  What I wanted—was where Joachim met Anna in the city gate, and they kissed (so nothing would fall, like the song says), and both lived (like the other song says) happy ever after in the marketplace. And that’s not the way to do it, need I say; you can’t go looking for what you want, only for what’s there:

  —At this Anna was exceedingly troubled, and

  having on her wedding garment, went about

  three o’clock in the afternoon to walk

  in her garden.

  And she saw a laurel-tree, and sat under it

  and prayed unto the Lord—

  And as she was looking toward heaven she

  perceived a sparrow’s nest in the laurel.

  And mourning within herself, she said “Woe is me,

  who begat me? And what womb di
d bear me that I

  should be thus accursed before the children of

  Israel and that they should reproach and deride

  me in the temple of my God: Woe is me, to what

  can I be compared?

  I am not comparable to the very beasts of the

  earth, for even the beasts of the earth are

  fruitful before thee O Lord! Woe is me, to

  what can I be compared?

  I am not comparable to the brute animals, for

  even the brute animals are fruitful before thee,

  O Lord! Woe is me, to what am I comparable?

  I cannot be compared to the waters, for even

  the waters are fruitful before thee, O Lord!

  Woe is me, to what can I be compared?

  I am not comparable to the waves of the sea,

  for these, whether they are calm or in motion

  with the fishes which are in them praise thee,

  O Lord! Woe is me, to what can I be compared?

  I am not comparable to the very earth, for

  the earth produces its fruit and praises thee—

  I roosted on the edge of my parents’ bed (which Papa regularly told me not to do for eighteen years because it breaks the mattress down) and cried in the dim bedroom.

  Both my wedding garments are hanging in a gay tailor’s shop in San Francisco. It’s nine o’clock at night. I don’t have a sparrow’s nest. I don’t even have a laurel tree.

  Papa, instincts firing on all cylinders as usual, came looking for me and told me to get off the edge of his bed.

  I got into the middle. Still, what a ride I was embarked on. Not the product of my own imagination this time, but, as A.G. Bell said when he produced the telephone, “What God Hath Wrought.” I am an observant flotsam in the fierce throes of reality. Praying like crazy, Lord: that I may see. Lord: that I may see.

  And while You’re at it, heal me. Please.

  Papa stuck his head back in. “What nationality did you say he was?”

  “Who?”

  The head jerked toward the laughter in the dining room.

  “I’ve carpeted this place with fan mags for six, almost seven years, and you haven’t got that much by osmosis?”

  “Not required. It’s fairly obvious.”

  “What?”

  “Spanish aristocrat. I went to Berkeley with a couple of brothers like that.”

  “Nope. Wrong.”

  “What d’ya mean ‘Wrong’?”

  “He’s half English, half Arabic.”

  “Well? Doesn’t that about describe what I said?”

  My mind strayed momentarily down the genealogy of Spanish princes, Northman and Saracen bred into one, like the night of southern climes and starry skies, with all the best of dark and light met in their hair and in their eyes.

  PAPA: (unflapped) “So which side are the nobility on?”

  “The Arabs, I think.” Horribly sober thought: the English might be as well; Parr is a super old name, after all. Like Catherine Parr, the wife who outlived Henry VIII.

  “You sure you married the right one?” said Papa.

  Monday, September 1

  “This,” he said, standing in the middle of the living room carpet in the hotel suite, graphite bass in hand, “was the basic movement of the minuet. I trust you’ve done some dance?”

  I’d have to lie to say no.

  “Levé—French for ‘up’, a step on tiptoe—Plié—”

  “French for ‘squat’?”

  Didn’t quite break him up. His face shimmered, but stayed straight. “Relevé—up again, and stand. Up, down, up, stand—” All the while he’s holding that bass and circling the carpet slowly to the left. Freaking eighteenth century must have had the strongest thighs in history.

  Levé, plié, relevé, stand,

  Levé, plié, relevé, stand—

  The bass began to speak in rhythm:

  Dum di-dum-dum

  Dum dah—

  Dum di-dum-dum

  Dah—

  “Also familiar, I trust?”

  Not the minuet for sure, any more than this is Kansas.

  It was the bass to “Holy Names.”

  “Holy Names” was off the Sundog album. All it said on the lyrics was, “Since the Names of the Almighty are infinite, no one knows them all.”

  Even wordless, it was several shades more exotic-erotic than “Calling Sister Midnight” or Led Zep’s old “Cashmere.” Even with the amps down, “Holy Names” should be meaner than Ravel’s “Bolero.” We’ve been playing electric rock for two weeks in this hotel room; either they’ve got totally great insulation, or total indulgence with the rich and famous.

  It’s the first Belshangles piece he’s chosen. No excuses, I’ve survived the rest, he has me cornered. He hands me the bass, and settles into the Morocco strap of his electric Oud.

  One-and-ah Two-and

  (Rest) and Four (and)

  One-and-ah Two-and

  Three (and-rest-and)

  step left, behind, left, point—

  right, behind, right, and point—

  My knees shook. My pelvis gritted. Round and round we went, rhythmic follow the leader, like the old camp game Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Like the old joke: “Know what happens if I unscrew your belly button? Your ass falls off!” My belly button’s not just loose, it’s gone. All my insides, from the ribs down, are gonna drop out on the floor.

  My friend Mimi was a volunteer, answering phones for the VD Hotline. Said some guy called in and told her he had things dropping out of his rear, like grains of rice, only they wriggled. He was scared to death.

  “So what did’ya tell him?”

  “I told him he didn’t have VD.”

  “You dummy! The poor guy had a tapeworm! Those were tapeworm sections! You mean you didn’t recognize he had a freaking tapeworm? You got his number? Call him back!”

  Maybe I have a tapeworm.

  Keep the beat. Keep the spare, bony faith:

  One, ( ), ( ), and-Four,

  One, ( ), Three, ( ),

  For Harlan’s guitar line to wind in and out of, purr and rub its sides against in endless orgasmic variation: cough and moan, wheedle and hyperventilate like a tigress in heat.

  I hurt all day.

  ———

  “What say,” said Tim, “we lower the V back.”

  “It’s down to my shoulder blades already.” Tim and Harlan, side by side, no response. “Any further and I can’t wear a bra!”

  “Pardon my ignorance: why should you?”

  “Cause I look like a fourteen-year-old guy if I don’t.”

  Tim and Harlan, side by side, fixated on my chest in thoughtful silence. “Slip the bra from under that and show me,” said Tim. “You can do it in the next room.”

  “This silk’s got show-through places.”

  “Mmm,” said Harlan.

  Tim said, “Clever, those Chinese.”

  Next room, hell. It’s full of giggling Pearl Ladies. Downstairs I go, to the claustrophobic bathroom.

  The bathroom is full of Thai food memories: “Garlic,” says Tim. “Fish sauce. Call it by its rightful name: Nam pla! We eat it and thrive, we also wash it off.” After their meals, he washes his Pearl Ladies’ fingers personally. By now that sink has a Nam Pla ring.

  Jettison the useless little bra. Slip the unfinished top back on. What an amazing thing it is already: elegant, priceless, and funny all at once, not the least bit like my old dress. Tim’s security works; it doesn’t smell like Nam Pla. It smells like Sam Wah’s treasure room. Like Harlan, only older.

  Harlan’s taste.

  Me and mine getting all made over to Harlan’s taste. I want to scream and fling it, like a spider I’ve picked up by mistake. Yet what a flaming hypocrite I am. I’m head over heels in love with Harlan’s taste, always have been.

  How much of Belshangles was Harlan’s taste?

  How much of Tom was Harlan’s taste?

  H
arlan’s taste infected and infested everything he touched. Rare luxury, cheap luxury, found luxury, hard-won luxury, awesome luxury, funny-as-hell luxury, exquisite and down-at-the heel dirt-comfortable luxury sprouted around him like a garden of delights.

  I started out of the bathroom, leaving the bra on the floor, and heard Tim’s voice above say, “I still have the sense I’m missing something.”

  “Oh, assuredly.”

  “It isn’t a joke?”

  If Harlan said anything, I couldn’t hear.

  Tim persisted. “He is marrying this child? I’d hate to butcher Sam Wah’s silk and find the whole thing wasn’t on the up-and-up.”

  “As up-and-up as Thomas gets.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking: Why, O Wise Effendi?”

  And that would be the question, wouldn’t it? The very thing I wanted most to know.

  And sure as I was that Harlan knew, I was even surer that I didn’t want to hear it. Scared to, scared to, scared to! The bathroom was suddenly unbearable. I was going to get sick. In the top half of my wedding dress. I pounded up the stairs to sunlight and fresh air. I made as much noise as possible.

  Tim and Harlan. Side by side in grave inspection as I spun slowly before them, a jeweled Imperial treasure above the waist, Levi’s below. “Hormones and silicone away from any boy I know,” said Tim.

  “I know.”

  “‘If you can’t hide it, decorate it!’ Corollary Two of Tim’s law: ‘If the truth hurts, wear it.’”

  Harlan choked on his piroshki.

  Tim had me stand facing from him, while his big bright shears took another three inches off the back neckline.

  ———

  I had a dream that night about the hem of my dress. The white leather discs became all the full moons of summer inherent in the dragon’s blessing; the pearls, an August meteor swarm of strange sky wealth sifting down among them.

  Tuesday, September 2

  My Harlan problem, I decided, was a guilty conscience. I took him to the beach, across the Golden Gate and out to the headlands of Marin through windy green valleys like the Braes of Scotland. We stopped at Rouge et Noire for a Brie, a French bread, and a bottle of Chardonnay.

  Drake’s beach. Long, straight, almost empty on a weekday afternoon. Behind us, the chalky bluffs that had made Drake homesick for the cliffs of Dover. In front, a mile or two across a placid sea, the fog bank lurked. In the narrow sea alley between fog and surf commercial salmon boats tended their wet business, back and forth. A queue of gulls screamed hopefully after each.