I’m not terrified.
We breakfasted at a place that served a full English tea on mismatched tables. Our table slowly became a jumble of flowered plates piled with sandwiches and cakes, flowered cups and pots of tea, and red jam in a porcelain pot. We were waited on by severe middle-aged women who wore their dowdiness as if it were a starched uniform. Veronica leaned back in her chair and joked with them about girdles.
“My mother used to say, ‘If he asks you what kind of underwear you have on, you tell him, “It’s up to my chest and down to my knees and I’ve got panels where you don’t need panels.” 1 And that’s actually what hers was like! Mine, too, until I could physically fight her about it.”
“What was your mom like besides that?” I asked.
“You need to know more?”
Veronica said her mother spent hours putting makeup on every day, then came down the stairs crying because it was all wrong. She abused laxatives for so many years, she eventually lost bowel control and had to keep emergency towels in various locations around the house—little hand towels she’d neady fold up and then forget. Veronica’s father would find them and hurl them on the dining table. There were showers of tears and furious Kabuki scowls. Her mother’s condition got so bad, she couldn’t go out for groceries. Because her father was an agoraphobic, he couldn’t do it either unless the perfect opportunity popped up in his drive-to-work plan.
“They would fight about who would go, until we were down to two frankfurters and a can of peas. Then they’d send me and my sister out across this huge intersection with our little red wagon. They’d be watching us from the window, waving.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten and eight. We’d get back and they’d accuse me of
stealing—‘skimming off the top,’ my father would say. My sister was no fool—she began telling on me before they would make the accusation. / was no fool—I took the hint and started stealing.”
The waitress brought us an ashtray. Veronica thanked her with a zesty simper.
“Do they know you could get sick?”
“Sort of. I mean, I told them. My mother said, ‘You’ve always been a hypochondriac.’ My father screamed, ‘You’re just trying to get attention,’ and hung up.” She shrugged. “Not enough sandwiches to make a picnic in that family.”
For the first time, it occurred to me that the unsaid things were not so bad after all. For the first time, it occurred to me that my parents had hidden their hate and pain out of love.
“Perhaps,” said Veronica, “perhaps that’s why I’ve always felt it’s my destiny to find respite, at the end of my life, in a safe, beautiful dwelling. It doesn’t have to be an actual house. It could be an apartment, or maybe a cottage.”
“I could see you in a cottage,” I said. “With flowers growing up the side.”
“Flowers on the side! I’d love that!”
“You could wear galoshes and make jam.”
“I could! It’s not too late—I’m in great shape! Who knows, I may not get sick. I could double-shift a few years and make enough to pay for a cottage near the ocean.”
The red jam in its porcelain pot was like a viscous jewel in the sun. I imagined Veronica in her cottage, among flowers and fallen petals.
“But you know, Alison—you shouldn’t listen to the things I say about my parents. You know me, I’ll say anything for a cheap laugh. They weren’t so bad.”
“No?”
“No. My mother had a beautiful voice and she sang to us almost every night. She put on plays with us when we were litde, wrote songs for us to sing. When we went to bed at night,
she would say, ‘Here are all the people who love you.’ And she’d name everybody, every cousin, every great-aunt. She built a fence of protection with those names. And my father would come and stand at the door and watch over us all.” She smoked and exhaled, making a tiny redness on the wet butt. “I can still see him standing there.” She smiled and put out her cigarette.
There were small flowers sprouting on bushes growing alongside the path. They were a flat tough red that paled as their petals extended out, changing into a color that was oddly fleshy, like the underside of a tongue. They grew on clay red branches, slick and shiny in the rain, and they had tough red-tinged leaves. Against the gray sky, they were startling, almost rude. Not the right flower, I thought. Veronica had been startled enough. She needed silkiness and softness.
Patrick came back to me at a party. It was a benefit given for an AIDS relief organization. Lots of rich fucks milling, and me standing there. Before I saw him, I saw a black supermodel named Nadia, a woman known for her arrogance and meanness. “Oh no,” muttered a magazine editor, “here comes Miss Big Bitch.” But, like everyone else, he watched her move through the room. She moved like a queen inside a twittering entourage that functioned like a parade float of feathers and papier-mache. She started conversations, then turned her back on them. She threatened relationships with a look. She made everyone either an extension of her or invisible. Her movements expressed a blistering scorn, which perversely electrified her beauty and made it even greater than it might otherwise have been.
I looked at her and saw her avenging the German woman who walked alone on the street with her arms wrapped around
her torso, staring with hollowed eyes. I heard her say, Is this what you people really want? Is this what so awes and impresses you? This? All right, then, I’ll give it to you.
“You better be careful,” I said to the editor. “Secretly, I’m a big bitch, too.”
That’s when I saw Patrick. Warm with borrowed anger, sex, and pride, I crossed the room, borrowed raiment flowing It sometimes takes a while for people to notice that borrowed things don’t quite fit, and so for the moment they do. He smiled, his expression sweet and broad, and flicked his head, casting off nervous feeling as if it were sweat. We bantered and joked, circling, gliding around each other like animals getting ready to play. We kissed against the wall, and in a closet, and finally in the bathroom, like people on soft-core TV me on the sink with my haunches up.
When we came out, Nadia had moved on and the air of the room had changed, like the sea in the wake of a great wave.
All the litde creatures and shells still stirred, fitful and chaotic.
An oyster sweating in his cream-colored shell was talking into a microphone about something nobody could hear. A laughing blond bit of seaweed rolled against a scudding black-haired pebble and they slid down the wall, laughing. Patrick said, “Honey, let’s go,” and we swam for the door.
On the street, everything was rushing and corporeal, and the sky was soft blue, with small salmon-colored clouds. We went into a deli and wandered giddily among the rows of cans and botdes, wrapped pastel sponges, and a flashing orange cat. Tiny pictures that had smiled at us as children smiled at us as adults: a tuna wearing sunglasses, a laughing green man wearing leaves.
We got potato chips and juices and went back out under the soft, glowing sky. A taxi shuddered to a halt and took us into its creaking dimness with a slam. A song came out of the radio, bouncing like balls of colored candy on a conveyor belt. “One more shot!” Bounce bounce! “Cos I love you!” The city rolled along, breaking against our driver’s stalwart hairy neck.
“I have something for you,” said Patrick. Smiling, he held out his bunched fist.
“Hmm?”
He smiled and opened his hand. I saw my wadded underpants. I blinked. The world opened its mouth and laughed like it was a baby being tickled. I’d forgotten to put them on when we were leaving the bathroom; he’d seen them come out my pant leg and fall on the deli floor. The cat flashed past; the green man laughed. We laughed, rolling around in the taxi, kissing. The city rolled along beyond the clouded bulletproof plastic that protected the driver with its hinged pocket for the wadded fare. It was stickered with advertisements for clubs and bands, and the stickers were doodled on with ballpoints and the radio drew its doodles on everything. Oh Miss Big Bitch
, even you are overlaid with doodles and radio songs.
“I love you,” I said.
He held me close and kissed me and his body said, Yes, and here we go.
He was still with the black-haired actress and her articulate shoulder. That was all right. If the entire world was going to open its mouth and laugh, there was certainly room for her. She could be in the world and I could be in the laughter that came rolling out and bounced away. There was room.
Once, I arranged for Patrick to come to my apartment right after a visit with Veronica; he arrived a few minutes early and so the two met.
“That’s the woman who has AIDS?” he asked incredulously. “That’s outrageous!”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because she looks like somebody’s maiden aunt! How on earth did this happen to her?”
“She is somebody’s maiden aunt, you idiot. Not technically a maiden maybe, but... it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“I know it doesn’t matter. I’m not an idiot. But you know what I mean. She doesn’t look like somebody who’d get AIDS from sleeping with a bisexual guy.” He took my hand. “Alison, you’re so sweet and human and you don’t even know. You weren’t friends with this person before she got sick, were you?”
“She’s not sick now. We were friends. We were good work buddies.” :;
“But you know, most people, when something like that happens, unless it’s a really tight relationship, they run. That’s when you became her friend.”
“So what? I don’t think I should get a medal for acting decent,” I said.
Later that night, Patrick said, “That woman’s face was so bizarre. Veronica, I mean. She was just vibrating with bizarreness.”
I have not spoken to or seen Patrick for over twenty years. Still, on the mountain, I answered him. “Yes,” I said. “She was bizarre. She was in pain and she was all alone. That can make a person bizarre.”
But the thing was, I hadn’t always acted decent.
Veronica was alone because her friends left her. She said they left her because she was sick, but I don’t know what they would’ve said. She said, "They all told me, ‘Don’t sleep with him!’ But I did, and now they’re all angry with me. They want to think they’re right, because if they can think they’re right,
they can think they won’t get sick.” She shrugged. “I can understand that. It’s idiotic. But I can understand.”
The first New Year’s Eve after Duncan’s death, she was alone. When the next New Year’s Eve came, I decided I would take her to a party. I examined every invitation I got, looking for a Veronica-safe zone. There were two that I set aside: One was a party on the Upper West Side; hosted by a magazine editor named Joan, it was in honor of a New York filmmaker who’d directed a movie called Show Tunes. Joan was an anomaly in the fashion world. I remembered her, fat, smart, and keen-eyed, peering over tiny square glasses placed on the end of her discerning nose as she scanned a martini menu. I imagined her and Veronica drinking martinis together.
The other possibility was something called the Motorcyc]|| Party, at which, said the hostess, guys would jump over naked girls on their hogs. I knew one of the naked girls; she looked perfect in photographs, but in person she had drunken, filmy eyes and grainy skin and a hard little drum of a belly with a button like a curled toe. I’d told her about Veronica once and she’d said, “It’s so great of you to stand by her. It’s great and it’s brave.” r
It was not brave of me to go to the movies with her. But it was brave of me to invite her out that night. I’m embarrassed to say it. But it’s true. I was afraid to go out with her for New Year’s. I had to be brave to do it.
My catfarrived outside Veronica’s apartment at 9:00 p.m. She fluttered and waddled down the walk in a chiffon gown and a black leather jacket. Her head was square and determined above her waddling softness. Her smile gathered power with each step. “I’m so glad we’re doing this,” she said. “Otherwise,
I’d have put on my leather chaps and walked the streets.” I thought, I’m doing something good—a thought that was round with wonder and shy conceit.
The party was in a spacious apartment alive with ease and goodwill. People smiled at us, tilting their heads as if they were looking deeply, then deepening their smiles as if to show they were delighted by what they saw. The guests were old, young, and middle-aged people wearing good-quality clothes without fussiness or too much care. There were children, too, and they ran around holding spangled streamers high above them. Someone played show tunes on a piano, loosely, his big bald head erect and radiant.
“My God,” said Veronica. “I don’t deserve this party.”
“Oh stop.” But I wasn’t sure I deserved it, either. I didn’t see any other models. I didn’t see anyone I knew. I looked for Joan and found her in a large room, sitting before a fire burning in an enormous hearth. She radiated warmth, and I wanted Veronica to feel it. But when they were introduced, Veronica seemed to shrink into something small and hard. Joan responded by withholding her warmth. Her fat body became imposing as a fortress and she peered out of it with hard, watchful eyes.
“How long have you known Alison?” she asked.
“Years. We worked together.”
“You’re a stylist?” she asked doubtfully.
‘A proofreader,” I said. “From where I temped once.”
“I see.”
The dull conversation went on, becoming subdy hostile without anything hostile being said. Joan’s soft cheeks gradually hardened and I began to hear Veronica’s voice the way she must’ve heard it: stilted, shrill, willed into garish rococo shapes.
We were joined by a friend of Joan’s, a busy-eyed little man who said he was a literary agent. In the middle of answering a question from Joan, I heard him ask Veronica what she did.
“I write. I paint. I’ve done some acting”
Her voice was so unctuous that for a second I thought she was affecting it to mock him. Then I saw her false, pleading smile.
There was a pause. His eyes filled with scorn and the pleasure of feeling it. He raised his chin. “Really,” he said. “How interesting,
I ran for the hors d’oeuvres table. I thought, If she wants to act weird, it’s not my problem. I won’t baby-sit somebody sixteen years older. But when I looked again, she was standing alone, the same terrible smile fixed on her face.
“Oh, I’m fine, hon,” she said. “Somebody just came up to me and said, ‘Who invited you here?’ ”
“They might’ve really wanted to know,” I said hopefully. “Sometimes people ask you that as a way of placing you.”
Her smile became more terrible. I could smell her sweating.
A man approached. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m about to leave and I just wanted to tell you that it’s been a delight to be in the same room with you. You are just so pretty.”
“Thank you,” I said.
‘Just so pretty,” he repeated. He turned to leave, and in passing, he put his hand on Veronica’s shoulder. “And you ain’t bad yourself.”
“Thanks for the bone,” she said.
His retreating head flinched.
“Let’s get a drink,” I gasped.
After that, Veronica was more relaxed. Biting someone had probably taken a lot of tension out of her jaws. Now I had it and could calm it only by drinking. I wandered in and out of bland conversations and my heart beat, Where am I? We sang “Auld Lang Syne.” We yelled “Happy New Year.” When I turned to Veronica, she kissed me, and for an instant I knew where I was.
We left the party in a cheerful mood. A cab even stopped when we hailed it. But as soon as we were inside it, I did not want to be with Veronica anymore. I wanted to be at the Motorcycle Party, wandering through the crowded rooms by myself, watching strange haughty faces reveal themselves. I didn’t want to hear Veronica say weird things to people. I didn’t want to worry about her happiness. I didn’t want to be judged because I was with this strange, badly dressed, badly made-up
woman. She was talking and talking about how a little girl at the party looked exactly like her niece. Light rose and fell on her face, harsh, then soft. She will soon be very sick, I thought. And she isn’t going to have much pleasure in the meantime. The cab stopped at a traffic light made brilliant and fiery in the cold. Clumped people with gentle, expressive faces leaned against the wind. Frail special dresses stuck out from under the women’s lumpen daily coats.
“Veronica,” I said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I think I’d like to go to this other party by myself. I hope you don’t feel insulted. I just feel like being by myself.”
I dropped her off at her apartment. She kissed me and said, “Happy New Year.” I remember it as though I’d shoved her from the car.
It wasn’t always like that. One night, we went out to dance. She had said, ‘Just once I’d like to go to one of those chic places to dance. Just once.” So I found one that had only just stopped being chic and we went. She wore a red jacket that had been fashionable five years earlier, a lacquered hide with gold buckles, shoulder pads, and trick pockets. She wore it defiantly. She wore it as if to say yes, it was ugly, yes, it was tasteless, but right now only the forceful character of tastelessness and ugliness could help her shake her booty one last time. She danced the same driven way she moved in aerobics class— leaping and kicking with manic propriety. As if to show a disbelieving someone, once and for all, what she could really do. But with each repetitive movement, she seemed to wind more deeply into a place where she didn’t have to show anybody anything, a place where there was no propriety. I looked up; on crude stages, fat men in wigs haughtily, expertly danced. Hot colored lights crashed down around them in waves. Sirens went off and clown horns honked as they danced in the face of death and in the face of life. The music blared gigantically, as if it were propelling a baby into the outrageous world and bellowing with shock at what it saw. The queens danced and Veronica danced, and their dancing said, World, kiss my fat middle-aged butt.
The narrow path winds against the mountain. It is surrounded by thick, dripping vegetation, and the foliage seems hostile, gluey, weblike, and humming. I remember my mother reading to us, her arms warm and glowing in their fragile nimbus of hair; the jaws of the nature-show lion; the cub’s helpless paws. The camera crew filmed the lion eating the cub’s guts, then scared him away. Or shot him. They let him eat one for the TV show, then scooped up the others.
Veronica Page 18
