The Americans, Baby

by Frank Moorhouse

  ‘Say, you must be an artist,’ he said, catching her signature on some of the paintings.

  ‘I did a course,’ she said. ‘I’m really only a passable sketcher, that’s all – nothing more.’

  ‘Impresses a cowboy like me.’

  ‘Are you really a cowboy – I mean from Texas or somewhere?’ she said, her words muffled by the sweater she was pulling over her head. He could see her through in the bedroom.

  ‘I sometimes see myself as a motel cowboy,’ he said, ‘but no, I’m strictly a city boy.’

  ‘How disappointing, that you’re not a real cowboy – not that I mean to be rude,’ she said, with a laugh, ‘it’s just that I haven’t met a cowboy.’

  ‘No offence taken.’

  ‘You’re going to my home town next week,’ she said, back in the living room, handing him a drink, apologising because she had no pot.

  ‘Is that a prediction of the stars?’

  ‘No,’ she laughed, ‘I was typing your itinerary.’

  Sam, please, not the rural. Becker, the motel cowboy, painfully rides his itinerary into the setting sun.

  ‘Oh, where’s your home town?’

  ‘It’s really a city.’

  She rattled on about it. Her father was a big shot.

  King of Jasmine, speed freak

  As he was taking off his trousers, he said, ‘I shouldn’t be doing this – I think it’s against company rules.’

  ‘You don’t really allow them to tell you who you go to bed with?’

  ‘I try to keep the contract.’ Of which Becker had his own interpretations.

  ‘You’re a victim.’

  ‘I keep the contract – I contracted in.’

  ‘But it’s a matter of personal freedom – and control of your own work scene. I only work when I want to.’

  Becker didn’t know precisely what she was on about.

  He kissed her. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  In the bedroom she had King of Jasmine burning.

  ‘I’ve never seen a man, a young man, wearing suspenders with his socks. Only my dad.’

  They lay on the bed.

  ‘Some socks need suspenders.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to take off your underpants and socks?’

  ‘I thought we’d lie here for a while, kind of talk, finish our drinks.’

  He held his drink to his lips with both hands. He studied the black and white print of the Archfiend in Goat form with the Satanic curse, ‘Palas aron Azinomas’.

  A voice, which he took to be Godly, called to him, ‘Becker, what are you doing?’ He shook his head.

  ‘Why are you shaking your head?’

  ‘I was shaking my head?’

  ‘You clown,’ she kissed him, and sat back, cross-legged on the bed, naked, staring at him, ‘I like you.’

  He attempted a lying down shrug. ‘I’m grey flannel commerce.’

  ‘I know – that’s why I shouldn’t like you – and American – but I do – you’re my sort of person.’

  Jesus!

  ‘I want an opinion,’ she said impulsively, rolling sideways off the bed, saying, ‘What do you think of a father who writes this sort of letter?’ She went to the dresser.

  Why me? Why Becker?

  He put a hand to his face, two comforting fingers on his eyelids.

  Why?

  ‘It’s supposed to be personal but he dictates it to his secretary and it has a file number. I’ll read the best parts.’

  She read: ‘“Our dear Terri, your mother and I were dreadfully disturbed to learn of your ‘illness’ (quotation marks for illness) “but are relieved to know that it’s now behind you and you have sought medical assistance. Many of these troubles are purely physical. I have enclosed an article on the subject from the Readers’ Digest concerning this.”’

  Why me?

  ‘“In my own life I have always placed the greatest value on fellowship and ethics and security” – he means money,’ she interpolated. ‘“Hope this upbringing will eventually pay dividends” – for whom?’ she asked.

  Why?

  ‘“The incident you so painfully bring up had all but been forgotten by me and I see no purpose in you raising it again or telling it to the psychiatrists. I feel those childish acts are best kept within the family. Our thoughts are with you, Father!”’ She threw the letter back on to the dressing table. ‘Keep it within the family,’ she screamed, laughing, ‘isn’t that too much – he wants me to conceal things from the psychiatrist.’

  ‘You go to an analyst?’ Becker asked.

  ‘I did, I stopped.’

  Why me?

  ‘Can you guess what the “illness” was?’

  Becker didn’t want to try. People always asked you to guess the unguessable. He had a personal policy of not trying to guess. Why did people want him to guess?

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘No, guess.’

  ‘I couldn’t guess in a million years.’

  The guessing challenge side-stepped, Terri was all too damn eager to tell.

  ‘I had a crack-up – really freaked out on speed – an incredibly bad scene – raving, and they put me in security with bars on the windows – where they put the really maddies and the “bad patients” – they didn’t treat me – just locked me away – and I looked out on a courtyard where all the maddies and morons walked about tearing off their clothes and eating their own shit – and when they undressed me I bit two male nurses on the legs – is that significant? Then they gave me a canvas night shirt and put me in this cell. It was a real cell and I pulled the bed apart to make a key – I don’t know why I thought I could make a key from the bed – and they took the bed away and made me sleep on the cement floor on strips of canvas.’

  ‘Hey now – wait on – you don’t expect me to believe this happened in these times – why, that’s positively medieval.’

  Before his very eyes, the kookie, swinging relief secretary from the agency had become a neurotic problem. Sexually, he began packing up.

  ‘I’m not lying,’ she said, begging belief, ‘and my parents knew what was happening to me – and they let them do it – as punishment for me being sick.’

  ‘How long did they keep you in this … hospital?’

  ‘Fifteen days.’

  ‘No.’ Becker was truly shocked. Wondering whether to believe all.

  ‘I was locked in the cell for fifteen days. After, I was put in an ordinary ward where I got off with a fifty-year-old alcoholic under the hospital on some old bags, in the foundations, you could hear the people walking on the floor above …’

  ‘Spare me the details,’ Becker said.

  ‘… we took librium to get high – ten milligramme capsules. I took a handful one day and they put me in the cell again for punishment – for another two days and shaved my head.’

  ‘No, they didn’t shave your head – Terri, that’s not credible.’

  Becker found he’d sat up and was staring at the girl – she was speaking in a torrent.

  She gulped her drink.

  ‘Well, not shaved – but they cropped it – they said there was a lice infestation.’

  Lice was one of the things Becker had not had to face in life. He was not going to face lice now.

  ‘They discharged me to my parents and as soon as I arrived home I took a bottle of chloral-hydrate and a packet of those tranquillisers you get from the chemists without a prescription – and they put me back in hospital.’

  Becker wondered how to get out without hurting her and whether there was anything Coca-Cola could do to help her. Whether there was the remotest possibility she had lice. Now.

  ‘The reason people are down on drugs is they resent people escaping and having a good time – like fantastically good sex – I was just having a bad scene. That letter from my father was his full-bit response – that was all he could say – do you know what the “painful incident” was? The one my father would rather I didn’t mention?’

  �
��No,’ Becker said, not wanting to know – not wanting to know a further item.

  ‘It was during my “active phase” as the shrink calls it – when I was younger, I stripped naked and got into bed with my father while he was asleep and slashed him with a razor blade – not badly – just superficial cuts – is that castration?’

  ‘… just superficial cuts,’ Becker said, nodding. Becker knew nothing of castration but he was having none of it. None.

  Protesting a backache he proceeded to remove himself from the situation.

  ‘You mean you’ve been kissing me and we’re undressed and now you’re going without making love to me?’

  She seemed not to believe that he could. He was sure he could.

  ‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’ she cried, complaining, wanting, he could tell, for him to say no. Which he couldn’t.

  ‘I’m concerned, Terri – maybe, I thought – maybe the office might be able to … a lot of people don’t realise how good Coca-Cola is … about these things.’

  He, too, had his doubts.

  ‘You’re too much,’ she said nastily, and began to laugh in a way which was like sobbing, which caused Becker to look again. Indeed she was laughing at him, and she continued to laugh at him, saying now and then, ‘Oh my God,’ and ‘Too much,’ shaking her head while he dressed. When he looked again she was masturbating with her two hands between her legs as he tied his laces.

  No Prayer

  Becker had a stiff Old Crow straight from the bottle in the motel and sang to himself, ‘Becker the brave, Becker the free’.

  He realised it had been a dumb thing for him to have suggested help from Coca-Cola.

  Anyhow, he didn’t think Sam would come at it. Sam believed in will and pep, and grit.

  No prayer came to mind.

  Coincidence: non-negotiable experience

  ‘We have with us tonight, as my guest, a visitor all the way from Atlantic City, Georgia, from the Coca-Cola company.’

  ‘Atlanta, Georgia,’ Becker corrected, with a good-big smile.

  ‘As you were, “Atlanta, Georgia”.’

  The Rotarians clapped.

  Becker was again introduced to yet another country Rotary club. He rather saw Rotarians as those who had the treasure that he was after. It worried him that they had the treasure but didn’t know how to eat well.

  Where is Rotary going?

  Rotary is going to lunch – to a bad lunch.

  The other thing he objected to was that in every damn town he visited and fell in with Rotarians – the local distributor in this case – they took him to the meeting … never invited him … never gave him an out … they took him.

  ‘My daughter, Terri, is at present working in your city office,’ Rotarian T. George McDowell, classification: catering, said, introducing himself across the table, half-standing, napkin under chin, arm outstretched. Becker didn’t like coincidences because they were an imposition, an infringement of the straightforward. They had the bad odour of mysticism about them. Coincidence led nowhere. Where do you go, what do you do with a coincidence? It was what Becker called non-negotiable experience.

  But strictly this was no coincidence. It was no surprise. ‘Pleased to meet you, sir, Terri mentioned you were in business hereabouts. I meant to get around to calling.’

  Becker had hoped to ride his itinerary in and out of the fibro town without so much as a glance towards T. George McDowell.

  ‘She shouldn’t be working in an office,’ McDowell said. ‘We put her through art school – has just thrown that aside – wasted it.’

  McDowell showed instant concern, injury, and then, placing a hand on Becker’s arm, changed to smiling. ‘I love Americans – both my wife and I love Americans.’

  ‘That sounds too generous a statement,’ Becker said. ‘You must have to make many allowances for some of us.’

  ‘Not at all – I and my wife love you all – how many times would you say I’d been to the States – as a guess?’

  No guessing.

  ‘You travel a good deal?’ he rejoined.

  ‘I’ve been to the States now seventeen times.’ McDowell sat there, travel-proud.

  ‘You must have a fascination for our country.’

  ‘You know what I admire about Americans?’

  Becker looked at him, resisting a no, and resisting a guess.

  ‘I admire your mental tidiness.’

  McDowell invited Becker back for a drink after the meeting. ‘Can’t have you going back to some miserable motel room – not that I’m saying the accommodation in this city is bad – how could I? I’m in catering myself.’

  The St Louis Rotary Convention 1923, recalled

  Becker wondered how he could fit himself into the McDowell house, so much carpet, so much bric-a-brac, so many pieces of furniture, so many clocks, so many standard lamps, so many souvenirs, so many barometers, pianos, and palms.

  ‘The house is too large for the wife and me now that the children have grown up and flown the nest.’

  His wife was in bed with backache.

  ‘What will it be?’

  They sat and drank.

  ‘My first trip to the States was to the St Louis Rotary Convention of 1923 – with my father – I wasn’t a Rotarian myself then but joined Rotary the following year.’

  ‘That’s a fine record.’

  ‘Oh that was some Convention – the pageant at the Coliseum – corner of Jefferson and Washington Streets.’

  ‘You remember the streets!’

  ‘Not bad for an old fellow – how is it that I can remember the address of the St Louis Coliseum from 1923 but I forget the name of someone I meet ten minutes ago? Why is that?’

  ‘It’s an often remarked characteristic of later years, sir.’

  ‘I remember the flowers – the Rotary Garden of Nations – and they had young girls and boy scouts – and the Rotary Band and the singing of a choir – the Italian Choir of St Louis – don’t know why an Italian Choir – do you know St Louis at all?’

  ‘No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t.’ Becker shook his head, readying himself to be out-knowledged on America throughout the conversation.

  ‘There it was in this vast auditorium, massed humanity – you know how many delegates and observers attended that Convention?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘… that’s with wives, guess?’

  ‘No, I really have little idea.’

  ‘Six thousand – nearly seven thousand – and this was 1923.’

  Becker moved his head, impressed, liking a good crowd.

  ‘It was almost pitch black when we went in. The light gradually brightened for each part of the opening ceremony until the whole spectacle ended in a display of electric light. Now at the beginning there was the sound of a trumpet.’

  McDowell made a trumpeting action – imitating the sound of a trumpet.

  ‘A spotlight then revealed a single figure up there on this long flight of stairs – I think if I remember it was meant to be Columbia – standing on top of these stairs. The stairs were covered with green carpet leading to a terrace filled with potplants. We had the chorus of welcome sung by the choir – that Italian choir – then a shrill whistle brought the boy scouts into the hall through the audience, each bearing a flag of the nations represented in Rotary.’

  ‘It must have been truly impressive,’ said Becker from behind an empty glass, thinking, especially, of the spaghetti choir.

  ‘Oh, that was just the beginning – another fanfare.’

  McDowell again made the trumpeting action and the sound.

  ‘Another fanfare and from the top of the terrace in sets of four trooped twenty-eight girls – twenty-eight nations in Rotary then – all dressed in those classical robes and each wearing a band of flowers around their head – they represented the national flowers of the nations of Rotary.’

  ‘Twenty-eight.’

  ‘Twenty-eight – each girl being one of those nations – they carried on thei
r shoulders a huge garland – like a rope – which they carried down to the main stage and presented a dance which was a salute to the visiting nations and an expression of their joy and exhilaration at being present at such a gathering. At the end of the dance the maidens – the girls – went back up the stairs to the terrace and their garland was twined among the flags – the flags that the boy scouts had carried up – can you picture that?’

  ‘Yes, sir, you certainly remember it – more trumpets?’

  ‘No, no more trumpets – the strains of the triumphal march of Aida – the rope of flowers was drawn up to the top of a gold flagpole now – with your flag, the Stars and Stripes – this was the main feature of the spectacle – and at the same time a huge Rotary wheel in gold and blue – Rotary colours – glittering, was lit up, twenty feet above our heads – can you imagine it?’

  ‘You are describing it vividly, sir.’

  ‘John Henry Lyons – I think if I remember he was from Tacoma, Washington – led the singing – do you know Tacoma?’

  ‘No, sir, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘I’ve been there – have been to the States now seventeen times, but I’ve told you that. John Henry Lyons led the singing – we sang the “Star Spangled Banner”, “God Save the King”, “America”, and “Old Black Joe” – we had song books of course – but I have never heard men sing out like that since.’

  ‘It must have been some occasion.’

  With a mustering of fervour, McDowell said, ‘I have never seen anything like it in my life – it has never been equalled in my experience.’

  McDowell sat there, back among the fanfares and the dancing maidens and the boy scouts.

  The he returned, the host, to fix the drinks – but again paused, mid-flight, both empty glasses in his hands, before the ice bucket, finding the return from 1923 difficult.

  ‘Rotary,’ McDowell held on to the word, ‘Rotary is my religion,’ he said, re-engaging – putting down the glasses and going on with the getting of drinks. ‘I hope you don’t find that sacrilegious, me saying that, but Rotary has guided my every adult act,’ McDowell said.