Primitive People

by Francine Prose

  The white atomic light of the mall made Simone’s eyeballs ache. It took all her bravery and resolve to put one foot in front of the other, and she couldn’t have done it had she let herself think how they looked—an Indian, an Eskimo, and two black rock-and-rollers. Her mini-skirt rode up on her thighs as she swayed on the needle heels.

  Rosemary said, “I love it! Look at us! I love going as the Third World contingent! Isn’t it like Carnival in Haiti?”

  But except for the fact that people wore costumes, it was the opposite of Carnival. Glaring and white instead of dark and hot, indoors instead of out, everyone in discreet little groups instead of jammed tight in one mass, and instead of a throbbing drone of music, drums, and voices, a watery stillness broken by bursts of mothers and children yelling. Though the mall was overheated its white glare suggested a freezer, with gangs of costumed little mites swarming over the shelves.

  Many women were dressed like cats, young mothers in black tights and pointy ears with curled tails and drawn-on whiskers, often with several toddlers dressed like a litter of kittens. These women seemed not to know each other or to be surprised by each other’s presence, or even to find it interesting that they’d all had the same idea. Each time they passed one of these cats Simone looked at George as if to say: Behold what you might have been, a fate far crueler than Eskimo furs in the steamy mall. George understood what Simone’s look signified, and their wordless communication made Simone feel connected with him and chosen.

  “Mom?” George ventured, without hope. “Carry my harpoon?”

  “I will not,” said Rosemary. “I’ve already got the guitar. Besides, it’s part of your costume. You could have left it home.”

  “It’s the only part of my costume I liked,” said George.

  “What did I tell you?” Rosemary asked Simone. “Boys! If the Eskimos had hand grenades, he would have liked that better.”

  In the doorway of every shop costumed teenage employees doled out candy. The children darted from store to store in an acquisitive frenzy while their toddler siblings stumbled after them, drooling and confused. The craving for foul-tasting sugar treats was irresistible and contagious. George and Maisie were soon drawn in, filling orange plastic bags. Rosemary dipped into Maisie’s bag, fishing for Tootsie Rolls. She tossed a candy to Simone; it was medicinal and delicious.

  “Admit it, Simone,” Rosemary said. “Black Orpheus, USA.” She was pointing to a tall figure carrying a sickle and wearing a long gray robe with a peaked hood over his domelike forehead. His lantern face was chalky white; his bloodshot, charcoal-encircled eyes were caked with the dust of the grave.

  They passed a child disguised as a computer desk, half hidden by a huge cardboard box topped with cardboard office equipment. A family of dinosaurs followed with backs and tails of foam packing material spray-painted like reptile skin. A woman in an eyepatch and a cocked hat pushed an old-fashioned baby carriage rigged with masts and flags, a rolling pirate ship in which an infant pirate lay sleeping. An elderly Indian woman in a white sari sat outside an import store, dispensing bright green coconut treats and having her photo taken with children. In Port-au-Prince there was a roti shop where Simone and Joseph sometimes ate. Once Simone took Miss McCaffrey there and watched with admiration as she mopped the curry with the roti and never spilled a drop.

  Rosemary cried, “This is the avant-garde cutting edge of American creativity! All the wasted talent, the buried gifts, the juice with nowhere to flow. One holiday a year for all this talent to come pouring forth!”

  Behind the window of the novelty store a teenage boy in black leather and spiked hair was flipping through greeting cards. George and Maisie watched, fascinated, as he searched for the right birthday or anniversary message.

  “Wouldn’t you know it?” Rosemary cried. “All this color and creativity and my children gravitate to the garden-variety low-rent teen heavy-metal fascist. God, I hate sugar and how it affects them. Look at all those poor kids zapped on Red Dye #2. All right, George and Maisie, that’s it. The minute those bags of poison are full, we’re out of here, I mean it.”

  On the drive home George said, “Did you see that guy dressed as Death?”

  “The Grim Reaper,” Rosemary corrected. “That’s what the sickle is for. The idea is that he goes around harvesting lives like alfalfa. Totally primitive, obviously. I don’t know where it comes from. Do you know, Simone? I know Mr. Bones is big in Mexico. What about in Haiti?”

  Simone said, “In voodoo there is Baron Samedi, the god of mischief and death. He wears a top hat and tails and plays evil tricks and comes out at night in the graveyard.”

  Maisie said, “In school they told us that if our generation doesn’t drink or smoke we’ll live to be a hundred and ten.”

  “Good luck,” Rosemary said. “But you’re interrupting. I asked Simone a question.”

  George said, “The science teacher brought a horse’s heart into class and we all held it and passed it around.”

  “How interesting,” pronounced Rosemary. “I didn’t know you had a science teacher. Considering the education budget up here, it’s probably a moonlighting dietitian.”

  “There’s this thing they’ve been saying in school?” George said. “About Bloody Mary? The Queen of England? The one who chopped people’s heads off? They say that if you go into the bathroom and don’t turn on the light and say Bloody Mary fifty-five times, you’ll see her face in the mirror.”

  “That’s absurd!” For some reason Rosemary was yelling. “You kids must like scaring yourselves into a state of abject terror. I guess that’s what Halloween’s about, the grisly pleasure children take in tormenting themselves with everything we try to protect them from all the rest of the year.”

  The next morning Simone heard Rosemary repeat this on the phone to Shelly, though in a calmer tone. She presented it as a theory that had occurred to her the night before, along with her searing vision of buried homegrown American creativity—two bursts of insight for which she could thank her fascinating Halloween at the mall. Then Rosemary said, “Oh really? Where was it? Who was there?”

  Even Shelly must have been moved by the longing in Rosemary’s tone. For the next pause ended with Rosemary saying, “Definitely! We’d love to!”

  “SHELLY ADORES YOU,” ROSEMARY said. “She insists you come along.”

  Adores, thought Simone, was a little strong. But it did seem that Rosemary and Shelly wanted Simone around. You couldn’t say they liked her, exactly—whom exactly did they like? Not once had Simone revealed one true fact about her past, and no one ever asked her, not even from politeness or when conversation faltered. In any case, it was extremely rare that Rosemary and Shelly stopped talking; and Simone, like the children, served as the still point they yammered around. Everyone here spoke so freely and confessed so much about their lives, as if they were strangers meeting just this once on a plane or a train. But where was everyone going, and how would they know when they got there?

  Simone sensed that the women valued her presence the way a lawyer might value an item of evidence—a convincing courtroom exhibit in their ongoing case against men. Simone was younger than they were, taller, beautiful, and black. The fact that she wasn’t living happily with a man proved that it wasn’t their fault. It could happen to anyone, it was simply how things were.

  At other times they saw her differently, which let them see themselves differently, too. Then Simone wasn’t a woman without a man but a woman with two men, a husband and a fiancé whom she had left to make a life for herself in Hudson Landing. In this version they were three independent women who had followed their own lights: Shelly had her decorating business, Rosemary her art, Simone her blossoming career as George and Maisie’s caregiver.

  Rosemary’s and Shelly’s need for Simone gave her a certain power that she tried to deserve and maintain by acting confident, even superior, though she felt that she was unluckier in love than Rosemary and Shelly combined. At least Shelly had Kenny, and Ros
emary had two children as proof of twice having been found attractive. All Simone had was an illegal marriage certificate, a ninety-minute cab ride with Emile, one small painting, and a stub from a plane ticket Joseph unintentionally bought her.

  Before they left for Shelly’s house, Rosemary smoked a joint. “The difference between a drunk driver and a stoned driver,” she informed Simone, “is that a drunk driver runs a lot of red lights and a stoned driver stops at a lot of green ones. And given the road conditions—Saturday night in Budweiserville—it’s better to stop on the green, don’t you think? So what if it’s paranoia?”

  Rosemary drove so slowly that Simone found her own foot bearing down on an imaginary gas pedal. Braking several times for every stop, Rosemary jounced them toward Shelly’s house. Simone blamed the marijuana. Rosemary wasn’t the most confidence-inspiring driver, but this was something special. Anyway, Simone asked herself, who was she to criticize?

  Rosemary said, “I’ve noticed a funny thing. I’m a better driver when the children are around. I’m more confident in general that I won’t fall off the edge of the world.”

  Simone was amazed that Rosemary should have experienced this, too. She herself took it for granted, how much safer she felt with the children. But she so rarely knew if Rosemary was even registering the children’s presence.

  “One good thing about dope,” Rosemary said, “is that it makes me more aware of the children even when they aren’t around. Thank God for Shelly inviting us over tonight, anything to take my mind off the idea of those poor little funny bunnies in their father’s so-called care. It’s so sick, I feel as if they were a man out with another woman. Actually, it’s worse. I never felt like this when Geoffrey was off having his adventures. You know, Simone, I never asked: What did you think of Geoffrey?”

  Simone searched for a single word that could function as either compliment or insult. “Interesting,” she said.

  “Interesting!” Rosemary cried. “Certainly you don’t mean interesting to talk to! You can’t even gossip with Geoffrey because it’s not about himself. His intense self-involvement is such a perverted—and successful—way of ensuring your devotion. You’re so honored just to show up as a blip on his radar screen!”

  They turned a corner and Shelly’s house popped out of a field like the Victorian cottage in Maisie’s book, which indeed it resembled. The house was lit so that every scrolly detail stood out against the dark sky.

  Dressed in black pants, a red silk shirt, and high heels, Shelly greeted them at the door and gave them each a dry, perfumy peck on the cheek. She seemed impatient for them to begin admiring the house, to notice how crossing the doorstep had rocketed them from gingerbread to ultra-modern. The entrance hall was a windowless black tunnel with pink-and-violet neon tubing denning the edge of the walls.

  “It’s marvelous in the daytime,” Rosemary explained to Simone. “You creep through this dark little hall and then the sunlight in the living room slams you in the head. It’s got a funhouse-entrance feeling: butterflies in your stomach.”

  “I worship you, Rosemary,” Shelly said. “Not only is that exactly what I was trying to do in this hall, that is exactly what I told you I was trying to do in this hall.”

  Beyond the hall the living room soared; one whole wall was glass. Lighting from some invisible source bounced its high beams off Kenny, reclining like an odalisque on a black leather chaise lounge. The rest of the furniture was kidney-shaped, in shades of turquoise, gray, and pink plastic, except for a large rectangular glass-and-black-wrought-iron table.

  Kenny jumped up and kissed Rosemary, who in turn kissed the air through which she regarded the table, obviously disappointed to see only four places set. She had been counting on Shelly to introduce her to new people who in the future might have parties and save her from another Halloween at the mall with its thrilling social insights.

  Shelly said, “I gather you all know each other. I thought it would make things more comfy to keep it family and small.”

  Kenny leaned close to kiss Simone. “We are in hell,” he whispered. “Dinner party hell.”

  Shelly led Simone over to an immense wooden sculpture, not unlike the ruined children’s swing set on Rosemary’s lawn, only more deteriorated and overgrown with creeping ivy.

  “My jungle gym,” said Shelly. “My solitary bit of wildness. I’d go mad without it. You don’t think I would choose to live with Formica and all this tacky fifties detritus I made my mama throw out thirty years ago! The only thing that gave me the heart to go on was the visual joke, all this cartoony-colored plastic constipated fifties junk against the soaring late-sixties space. Twice, a writer from Architectural Digest almost came; both times he got sick and canceled. Meanwhile, I’ve got about two more years and it’s time to do it all over. In my old age I plan to have a house that is not also a place of business.

  “Meanwhile”—Shelly picked up a bottle—“join me in an experiment. Ginseng-flavored wine. Genghis Khan brand. Look at this red-and-black Last-Emperor-death-of-the-Dowager-Empress label. This paramecium in the wine store guaranteed a special sort of high.”

  Kenny toasted the wine with his beer bottle. “This paramecium in the wine store,” he mimicked. “The woman’s totally fucking bananas.”

  Shelly didn’t smile. She said, “I don’t suppose this is the time to discuss who here might or might not benefit most from ginseng’s supposed aphrodisiac qualities.”

  Simone took a sip of greenish liquid that tasted like fermented mothballs.

  “Okay, okay,” said Shelly. “I can see from your stricken faces.” She whisked away their glasses and replaced them with new glasses of ambery cold white wine.

  “An unpretentious little California Chardonnay,” she said. “The ginseng was just a test.”

  “A test of what?” Rosemary said. “Did we pass or fail?”

  “As they said in grade school,” Shelly said, “you know who you are. And it goes on your permanent record.”

  “What permanent record?” said Kenny.

  “I love this guy,” said Shelly. “He believes there’s a permanent record.”

  Shelly shooed her guests toward a grouping of black couches so aeronautic Simone felt compelled to sit quickly before the furniture took off. The couches were set at oblique angles: any attempt at conversation ensured an instant stiff neck. Rosemary and Simone sat at opposite ends of one couch, Shelly and Kenny in the center of another. Kenny massaged Shelly’s shoulder with absent-minded pincering grabs.

  Rosemary sighed piteously. “The children are with Geoffrey.”

  Shelly said, “Are we talking about the children or are we talking about Geoffrey? I mean, we can talk about the children—for a limited amount of time—but not one minute on Geoffrey. There must be another topic. What about the proposed county dump? Can’t we get something going on that?”

  “We can try,” said Kenny. “But Geoffrey probably fucking supports it. Geoffrey’s family probably owns the land that the dump’s slated to be built on. Probably through some Wall Street WASP lawyers, Smith, Peabody, Smith and Asshole.”

  “Don’t be silly, Kenny,” said Rosemary. “Geoffrey and his family can afford to be ecological.”

  “They can feed the world population,” said Kenny. “It’s just not in their business interests.”

  “Dinner’s served!” Shelly tip-tapped into the kitchen and returned with four elegant salad plates. She set the plates on the table. “Y’all come and eat,” she said. Simone sat next to Rosemary, across from Shelly and Kenny.

  The plates were painted with landscapes of a tropical beach at sunset, and each held baby asparagus stalks bent to look like swaying palms. “In honor of Simone,” Shelly said. “Our new friend from the islands.”

  The asparagus demanded much covert but focused ripping and shredding. Over the noise Kenny asked Rosemary, “Did Shelly tell you we saw Geoffrey?”

  “I was sparing her,” Shelly explained. “The very definition of friendship and tact.�
�

  “Saw him where?” With studied casualness, Rosemary popped an asparagus tip in her mouth.

  “At a horrid party,” said Shelly. “Actually it was the party I told you about, at that creepy photographer’s house.”

  “Was he with anyone?” asked Rosemary.

  Shelly said, “I believe the photographer was with some unfortunate twelve-year-old nymphet.”

  “I mean Geoffrey,” Rosemary said.

  “Geoffrey?” said Shelly. “Who could tell? We were all too busy being forced to watch botanical pornography.”

  “Slides,” said Kenny “Art shots of flowers. Can you believe that shit?”

  “Apparently,” said Shelly, “our host is a famous flower photographer. You know: glossy calendars and upscale seed catalogues. It turned out we’d been invited for a show of his new work. As if my being a decorator had nothing to do with it. His new work! Flower genitalia projected six feet tall, every poppy or iris like peeking up somebody’s skirt. We sat there meekly, helpless prisoners of giant hollyhock organs. My grandfather all over again, the gynecologist-slash-camellia breeder. The grotesque thing is that women are still falling for it. After the slide show our host was mobbed. Women were sticking to him like pollen to a bee.”