by Duke, Renee
“If I ever catch you even thinking about another man, I’ll beat you black and blue.”
“You’re joking. What about those other affairs you’ve had? Am I supposed to smile and say ‘goody’?”
“You do not understand me, Andrée. The night before we got married, I slept with Ben’s girlfriend and later I had a marvelous affair with Sue ... we went up to visit her in the house she and her husband were building, remember? Then there was your best friend, Winnie. We were deeply involved but she had the “curse” and couldn’t make love the night we were all out at sea. She still excites me. With all these women, I realize that you are not the type I should have married. I have always been attracted to the European type.”
“Judging from what you have said, the smaller the head and the bigger the bitch, the deeper you fall. So sorry, I’m just a great big healthy girl. Once, I even thought it fun to be alive. I thought we were perfect for each other, that’s why I got married. I didn’t realize that it wasn’t only bodies that have to match but minds, soul, attitudes toward life.”
Lucky I’m here at a social function–I could punch the son of a bitch on the nose. What am I stuck with? A little Don Juan from Cleveland, Ohio.
“We’re going, Andrée. I’m not going to risk having you overheard. You can be sure that all these women have gone through the same thing and I’m sure they have not made such a scene. They know what life’s about. You don’t think your great grandfather was faithful? How about all those half–breed children that call themselves by the same name as his? Honore is one of them, or didn’t you understand that in your pathetic Spanish?”
“You are good for nothing,” he continued, “with your silly pretensions, your family. There is nothing you can do but breed and have children. I shall make you pregnant again and again and you will stay with me. You are too afraid and dependent on me.”
“I work–I do, you know. I don’t have to stay with you.”
What if the things he says are true? Until I know, how can I ever leave him? I have no self. It is incredible that any human being can say these things to another, however hated. I feel as though it has nothing to do with me. He can’t be serious.
“Your work’s a joke. You couldn’t support yourself. I would never give you the children or money.”
“You’d have to. We are still Americans although you’re so tied up in the corrupt love affairs of the Europeans that you’ve forgotten I am still covered by the law in New York, and so are you.” What keeps me to him?
“You just try to leave me. You will see what I do to you. You will never take my children from me.”
We say goodbye to the cousins with gracious smiles and embraces. My agitation may be felt but how many feelings have these women had to block out to be able to survive and talk about stickpins in the middle of the end of their world?
Later, Evans attacks and attacks. A shark smiles in the water and comes in sideways, tearing the body with a sudden scraping from his rough skin. He wheels and turns for the attack, small eyes without expression, mouth open in the smile of death as he tears his victim, piece by piece, wheeling for each new limb, for each new death until the victim with sudden ecstasy joins in the sacrifice and gives him his bleeding body.
In the rage and the tears, I have a voluptuous feeling of totally abandoning my body, my beingness, to my husband. He is now responsible for me. I shall lie and be made pregnant until I die of it. I shall watch him with other women, hand them to him. I shall avert my smiles from others and wait at home, with the children hanging on to my full breast.
Total victim. Strange excitement, to try and win the game by losing. I glory in the loss of my love, in my loss of self-respect. Strange ecstasy of self-sacrifice. I feel myself flattened against the sky, insulated by glass as I watch my body and my mind give way to his attack. Voluptuous holding back of my true self. I shall commune in private, feeding the self that always exists with love from the children.
In bed, far removed from torn feelings, I shall tease him into making love to me as he does to all the others. I shall make him pay and pay. The children and I will create our world.
I have lost the courage to go out and create a world ... if this be rape, I’ll lie back and enjoy it …
Cuernavaca, Mexico
The days have passed and my resolution fails. Mexico, harsh and cruel, has shocked me to my senses. Too late. Now we are sitting in a charming hotel in Cuernevaca. I know that I am pregnant.
It’s evening. It drops fast and sweet in Mexico. Evans and I, seated next to the glimmering pool, are eating chicken with chocolate sauce and talking of Maximilian and his Empress. Now that I have given in, Evans treats me like an invalid, forcing attention on me, sweetmeats of conversation.
“Evans, does that man’s face look familiar, over there with the man and the two beautiful girls?”
“It looks like Anthony Quinn. Look at the girl with black hair. Shall we try and meet them?” His face sharpens.
“It would be fun.” I already know that Evans will try for the girl with black hair, but I can’t be bothered to consider it anymore. I am briefly exciting to him, pregnant. Then there will be many months of very little contact and he will always look for women.
“Hello! Would you like to join us for some cognac?” The movie star is smiling down at us in the half light, smiling at us!
“We’d like to very much.” Evans beams and so do I. Self- sacrifice and wife dominating are dull games. We are eager to play another.
Who are the girls? One seems to be a starlet, the other a singer. Her boyfriend is a bullfighter, Paco, well known in the Mexican ring.
“He taught me how to fight the bulls for my last film,” Quinn tells us. “Paco is my dearest friend. He’s Mexican, like me. We are here to recover from my last film, which I shot it in the neighborhood. Would you like to drive with me tomorrow and see the location? We can have lunch at the lake and do some water skiing.”
“Great. Do you play jai-lai? There’s a fronton[12] in the middle of town.” Evans loves sports.
“Yes! Let’s include the two Americans over there.” We seem to have ignored them before, sitting in the shadows, tolerating each other as we do. Older. The husband, Randy, plays jai-alai too. Looks like an odd conglomeration of women will be admiring an even odder conglomeration of men.
It’s the closest I’ve come to group enthusiasm since our touch football games, by the East River, just after we were married.
“We’ll put a long table together now. Evans, you sit between my friend Linda and your wife. Music!” He summons a guitarist in rapid Spanish and suddenly La Galeñana comes to life.
Quinn has directed a fiesta kind of life and we help him create it! I look at him with incredulous admiration, he is creating fun! What have we been doing? I must learn this trick.
Linda, I see out of the corner of my eye, is stroking both of her neighbors’ legs, ever higher. Evans looks surprised, pleased and somewhat glazed.
“Excuse me, I must call my wife and children in Hollywood before they all go to bed.”
He telephones, talks long and lovingly to his five children. I feel no pity for his wife, more pity for the starlet. She really has only gasps of life from whoever gives it to her. I think I’ll talk to these girls. What an ideal situation, to be able to talk to two professional mistresses and find out what they think.
“Linda, stop getting all the men here excited. You are here for me,” Quinn says. She flounces off to the bathroom, long hair flicking back and forth. My mouth is open in admiration of so much sex appeal.
“She’s a nymphomaniac, you know.” The movie star turns his famous face towards me. I still feel shocked by his flesh and blood.
“She is? Does she wear you out?” I feel bold. He laughs.
“She does! She will try and feel up every man here. I’d better take her upstairs before she has more to drink and gets uncontrollable!”
Evans smiles joyously. Sex should be fun. It doesn’t d
o too well with threats and tears. Look! He knows it.
Paco’s girlfriend turns to me. “I’d like to talk to you early tomorrow morning. I think that the men will be playing jai–lai and we could see each other at breakfast.” Blonde. Fragile. How could I help her?
As we go upstairs, each to our private sex life, we wave goodnight. A movie set, love and kisses under the stars, frightening and starving Mexico kept out. Evans. I’ll make him feel better about me. I kiss his ear, still faintly soapy.
***
Patricia, Linda and I are having breakfast in the sun by the courtyard swimming pool. We talk of Linda’s haircut, very short in front, long in back. Designed in Rome for her, she says, trimmed with nail scissors.
“I escaped from Hungary.” She looks at me, not quite expecting me to believe. But I believe. True or not, who cares. It is such a good story.
“I do not have large breasts.”
“Oh?”
“No, my muscles on the side are very strong. I can be made up easily to look very large.” Ah. My friends have never talked about the body as a commodity to be pampered and exploited. It is a matter of pride that our minds are developed, not the breast muscles.
“Linda, let me talk to Andrée before the men comes back.” Patricia looks lovingly at Linda, who leaves, touching her on the shoulder.
“Perhaps she can help.”
“Linda and I feel you understand how hard it is to be a woman. You have children. You have a handsome husband and your eyes, if you will forgive me, are sad.”
“It must be my sad Spanish eyes. How can I possibly help you? I know very little.” I always feel instantly timid and protective when anyone sees my sorrow.
“But, you are married. I wish to be married to Paco but he is married already. We do not divorce in Mexico, but I would like him to leave his wife for me. What can I do to get him to marry me? He treats me like a woman of the streets but I am a singer. I could be a good singer. Now I just sing in a small club.”
“Patricia, men don’t leave their wives very easily. They say they will, but it takes a long time and by then you might be tired of each other. He will want his wife and children.”
I pause. “Look, Patricia, are you really a good singer?”
She looks surprised to be taken seriously.
“Yes, I am good and I like to sing. It is just that I have fallen in with bad men.”
“Patricia, I think I could get you to sing at the Hotel Avila in Caracas. I have good contacts. Would you like to sing in Caracas?”
“Yes, Andrée, but I must be sure I can move on. One does not want to end up in an Army brothel and I am what they are looking for.”
I feel the great shark of sacrifice grazing her. She has been made an instrument of sex for so long that she has forgotten how to be with herself, to do what she really wants to do.
“Really, I will help. Paco is nice but if he doesn’t want to marry you now, how will he change?”
Talk. Talk. How can I help her find herself? All I can do is be here and listen to her story, a horror story of white slavery. Only she doesn’t know that it is slavery. She thinks this is the way of the world. I must tell her of other worlds, where men stay married to women for love and children are protected. True or not, it’s better to think there’s a world like this than to be degraded into passing sex.
I should talk. I have given up. Perhaps that is why I can help her. I’ve let myself be a victim too.
“Andrée, you are my first real lady friend. Here take these earrings, they are seed pearls and gold. When you wear them, remember that I am always your friend.”
I look at her, standing small and blonde against the bright blue square of the pool, squinting up at me. My God, I could weep for us women who have compromised our honor.
“Thank you, Patricia. You have helped me too. I shall remember.”
Every time I wear the gold hoops with pearls hanging down, I shall remember the whore who woke me up.
Chapter 5: Courage
Back to Caracas. The party is over. We have spent a week of waterskiing in emerald lakes, green from copper in the soil. We have drunk tequila, stirred up clouds of dust in small Mexican villages and heard the marvelous story of the star’s life.
A bigger dimension has come into my life. On the one side is the blood sacrifice and ruins of an old culture around Mexico City, on the other is the freedom of knowing more about many people.
The cool dimness of the house wraps me up, the boys come towards me. They look so big! Sean is running, at nine months, sliding on the polished terrazzo floor.
“Evans, can you believe it, they look terrific! Thank you Annie, for taking such good care of them.” Annie’s face, beautiful with pleasure, reminds me of Patricia. Annie, our French nanny, is a victim of her husband, who left her, took the children and abandoned her, a penniless French lady, in Caracas. I see her better.
The phone rings.
“Evans, would you get it while I give the children their presents? I’ll dump the bags here, boys. This is for you, Eric, and this is for you, Jock and for you, Sean.”
The boys are jumping and laughing, we love to give them presents.
Evans walks towards me, pale.
“What is it, Evans?”
“They let my friend out of jail but I have been too active in politics. We’re moving, next week, to Paris!”
Stand up, more room for the news to sink in. It’s what he’s always wanted. I’ll leave the projects I’ve started. We’ll all learn French and I’ll learn more about the world. I’m almost afraid to change, why? I’ll still be the same person in new surroundings.
Relief, no more secret police.
“Evans, how wonderful!” I hug him and hug him. Perhaps, when he’s living where he’s always wanted to live, we will be happy.
Paris, France, 1957
The Paris light filters through the curtains in a blaze of orange fabric. Further down the hall I see the reflection from green curtains. How well planned. Abstract painting. The rickety heirloom table beside the bed is peeling.
At last I can rest with the baby, asleep for a few minutes, before the children come in from the park.
Blast! The telephone.
“Cara[13]!” Must be Angelica. Only she would speak Italian to me when she knows I can’t speak it back. “How are you doing with the baby?”
“Not so good. You?”
“My dear, I’m exhausted. The embassy insists I come to the reception tonight for the Shah of Iran. They don’t understand.”
“That’s ridiculous. The baby’s only one week old. Don’t they have something in the Catholic Church about women after childbirth? Aren’t they unclean?”
“Wish I knew more about it. What if I stun them all by giving the baby the breast in the middle of the reception?” She laughs, a little wildly. “The thought of putting on all my makeup exhausts me.”
“You’re not going to a photo shoot, you know.”
“The only reason Roberto married me, when he found out I was pregnant, is because of my model beauty.”
There is a faint sarcasm in her crisp English voice. She is beautiful, with a veneer that frightens Evans. Underneath she has a burning intelligence. She could be a prime minister.
“Come on, Roberto couldn’t be that bad. Not every Italian marries a cover girl, although they all try.”
Roberto sounds strange. He never came to the hospital to see the baby. Angelica and I only met there, so I don’t know much more.
“What am I going to do, Andrée? I want to leave him and if I do, he takes the baby.” What can I say?
“You’re the one that always gives me advice. How do I know what to do with a husband? I never could manage mine. Think about it later. You’ll just ruin your milk and the baby will scream.”
“He’s running through my money, my inheritance will be gone.”
“Angelica, you’re beautiful and intelligent enough to make money again. Now, please tell me where I can get Am
erican milk. I hate this evaporated French stuff with a passion.” I’ll start talking like her if I’m not careful.
“My dear, I hate milk but you can get it at the American Commissary. They import it from Holland. I don’t want to go back to work. I’d have to diet and I hate dieting. I just want to nurse the baby and be a mother.”
“Good for you. I think I’d feel better about motherhood if I had a dress to wear. Our trunks are still in customs. I’ve got the post pregnancy drearies. I’m sure I’d feel better about Paris if I had some cake mix and Jello.”
