Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather

by Jincy Willett

  I don’t like to contemplate images. Even the most benign make me feel nervous and inadequate. Give me a thousand words any day.

  Here was his ideal woman: fleshy, functional, mutilated, immortal, self-replicating. He’d probably been drawing her all his life. He had sketched them while we sat in our Agincourt “office” sparring and gossiping and playing word games and sipping Irish coffee and watching fat squares of sunlight inch across the wall. I admired his black leather notebook binder and his gold A.T. Cross pen, and I told him more than I had ever imagined telling anyone, even my sister. I showed him myself. And he did this.

  And they are all Abigail.

  Jason Mason Morgan Adam Bunyan Adam Heartstone stared up through slitted lids at the woman’s sumptuous flesh ass buttocks plump back. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she was his wife. But what was her name? There was something wrong with his mind. And where the hell was he? Stuffed into a white slip tight as a tourniquet, she sat in front of a huge chrome magnifying mirror, troweling orange pancake makeup on her face off her cheeks with thick slabs of cold cream. Atop her head was She was wearing a perky A nurse’s hat sat on her What was she doing in that nurse’s hat? “Don’t even think about it,” she said, without turning to look at him. “I know you’re awak

  He could remember only his name: Adam Heartstone. How he came to be here, in this glaringly white room, was the $64 question nagging mystery an awful mystery. A hospital, he thought, must be a hospital room. Must have been in an accident! That explains why I can’t feel my

  He couldn’t move, except for his eyeballs Only his eyes Apparently he was paralyzed from the ne He couldn’t move. No, wait—his eyeballs Why couldn’t he move? What was wrong? Frantically Adam Heartstone glanced around the sterile, steel-and-chrome enclosure, for some clue to his present condition.

  Must be some sort of operating room, he reasoned, but then, what was that dining table doing If this was an operating room, it was a pretty weird Wait, this was no operating room! Across from his gurney was a small table covered in white linen, and on it, instead of surgical tools, was a carefully laid place setting. He counted two forks, two knives, and three spoons. Well, he thought, my eyes still move. That’s something anyway.

  Why couldn’t he move? What was wrong? To his horror, Adam Heartstone soon realized that even his eyeballs were

  “And anyway, Sweetie,” she was purring, as she helped herself to what looked like a link of knockwurst in wine-dark gravy, “I’ll be right here, in front of you. Everything you want is right here.” He still couldn’t move, but sensation was returning to his body, which should have been reassuring, except that the sensation was searing, cauterizing pain. The worst of it seemed to originate below his waist. If only he could look down. If only he could ask her who she was. He wanted so badly to speak. A tear formed in the corner of one eye. He could feel it roll down the length of his face. The familiar woman glanced up from her meal. “What’s the matter, Darling?” She speared a piece of meat with her fork and twirled it in the gravy, then suddenly jabbed it toward his face. She grinned at him and her grin grew and grew until it split her face and she was all big square teeth and her lower jaw hung suspended in the air. “Hungry, honey?” she said. “Wanna bite?”

  Abigail also sent me a box of cassette tapes, ten hours’ worth. Her lawyers said these were of no use to her defense. The cassettes are neatly numbered, and on each side is printed

  BIG BITCH

  as this was apparently his working title. But of course they are his “interviews” of me. Deep background for a book he never intended to write. Whether my sister ever listened to them, I don’t know. It wouldn’t matter anyway.

  There should be more than ten hours, much more. But Abigail, who doesn’t withhold anything from me, wouldn’t have hoarded these. Besides, they are numbered consecutively, and the handwriting is his. I have kept them here, in my locked drawer. I have listened to them so many times that they have blunted my memory, stunted my imagination, and although I know they reproduce only a fragment of our conversation, they have become, in effect, definitive. And yet, surely, not representative. These conversations are edgy, rancorous. I remember rising, mid-morning, and looking forward to the day. I remember laughing and laughing, and making him laugh too. I just can’t recall specific occasions, and when you listen to the tapes, well, there really isn’t that much to laugh about. He must have erased the ones I mean. Or perhaps, most of the time, he didn’t bother to record. The evidence is gone. I know I didn’t imagine it. The laughter.

  What was your first time?

  You know I’m a virgin.

  I mean what was the first time you said no?

  I was twenty-one, apprenticing at the Rumford Library. He was a volunteer tutor who used to come in on weekday afternoons to work with illiterate adults. His name was Abe Marx.

  What did he look like?

  Funny little man, retirement age, shorter than me. Furry. He saw me reading Atlas Shrugged and demanded to know why I was reading that fascist tripe. We used to go out for coffee at a diner right across the Seekonk. He claimed to be on the Hollywood blacklist. I was young enough to believe him. I thought of him as a cross between André Gide and Norman Mailer, and because we were always discussing books, and because of the great difference in our ages, I was caught completely flatfooted by his sexual advance. You will find this freeing, he said, as though he were about to indoctrinate me, on the corporeal plane. It was a horrible moment.

  I was offered a permanent job in Rumford, but declined, because of Abe Marx. I can still hear the sound of my own voice when I ran away from him.

  What did you say?

  Next question.

  Come on. What was so terrible about the sound of your voice?

  It squeaked.

  Like a mouse?

  Like a mouse.

  What exactly did you say to him? You remember the line, don’t you?

  I said, What do you think you’re doing?

  Imitate it.

  No.

  Come on.

  No.

  And he said…

  He said, I’m liberating you from your bourgeois prison.

  And you didn’t laugh in his face?

  I might have, if he had been looking at me. But he wasn’t. He was looking at my blouse, the buttons on my blouse.

  He was looking at your tits. That’s looking at you.

  No it’s not. I’m not there.

  Too true.

  He was trying to unbutton my blouse, and his fingers were arthritic. He was concentrating so hard that the tip of his tongue stuck out the side of his mouth. He looked just stunningly exposed. I was paralyzed by pity.

  Hold it. He did this in a diner?

  Of course not, at a diner. He was walking me to a bus stop. It was nighttime.

  A bus stop? Jesus.

  Sordid, isn’t it? Ludicrous, isn’t it? This is tiresome.

  He tried to rip your blouse off at a bus stop, and his pickup line was “I’m liberating you from your bourgeois prison”?

  It isn’t funny.

  Abe Marx, studly bon vivant and Commie-about-town.

  Actually, he didn’t say “prison.”

  ???

  He said “oubliette.”

  What is that? Is that a bidet?

  A medieval prison cell, a basement room with an opening in the top, for throwing down food scraps. If you were sent to an oubliette, you were forgotten forever. Hence the name.

  He copped a feel at a bus stop and said, “I’m gonna liberate you from your bourgeois oubliette”?

  May we please change the subject.

  Gotcha.

  It’s not due to any wittiness on your part. You can forget about that.

  You’re laughing. A rare treat for me.

  It’s just the word. Oubliette. I always thought it would be a great name for one of Guy’s epic heroines. You know, how he always gives them French names—

  Oubliette LaVavoom.

  �
�Oubliette Sansculottes, Whore of Lourdes.”

  Next.

  “Oubliette Sans-Pitié.”

  Next up. What was your next time?

  What?

  Your next “no.”

  ???

  The next one you turned down, Dorcas.

  There was no next time.

  Not possible.

  Necessary. Therefore possible. The episode with Abe Marx was so awful—

  Come on. The guy was a klutz, he caught you off guard. Big deal.

  It was a very large deal to me.

  What were you afraid of? Rape?

  I wasn’t afraid of anything. It was…the exposure. His face was so naked. I was witnessing his inner life, his little soul. I shouldn’t say that. I shouldn’t comment on anyone’s soul, it’s not my business. Let’s just say it was unpleasant.

  Let’s not.

  ….

  Dorcas.

  ….

  You are so very interesting.

  There was no next time. I kept myself to myself. It was that easy.

  But you go to bars a lot. There must have been opportunities.

  I certainly don’t go to bars a lot. I go to the Blue Moon and the Tap on occasion. I go to bars a lot with you.

  No drunken passes?

  Certainly not. Where I go, everybody knows me. Half of them think I’m a lesbian.

  By design?

  In a sense.

  Ever been approached by a woman?

  Yes, but women are so subtle that they don’t make scenes.

  For a full thirty minutes Conrad roots around after sapphic truffles. There was a woman once, on an overnight train to an ALA convention in Chicago. She made a discreet overture, I declined in kind, that was it. I could have told Conrad about it but saw no point in rewarding his effrontery. We were allies now, but he still could offend me, and he did on this occasion. Sex was, is, Abigail’s territory. If he wanted to talk dirty he could talk to his wife.

  Let’s talk about power and dignity.

  We did that one already.

  Yes, but then I was just twitting you.

  And you’re not now?

  I was curious then; I’m just as curious today. I acted like a jerk because I had to get a rise out of you. You really hated my guts.

  Yes.

  And now you don’t.

  I guess not.

  You announced, over a plate of greasy lobster, that your sister had power, but no dignity.

  I don’t remember saying that. That sounds pretty pompous. Why would I say that? I don’t announce things.

  You were explaining how you and she divided up the world. Sacred and profane, you said. Mind and body.

  It’s not that simple. I probably said all that—

  You actually said all that.

  Because I was upset. There’s nothing wrong with Abigail’s mind. She’s just lazy. She takes everything in, the same as I do. Nothing gets past her. She just doesn’t bother sorting it out.

  We’re talking about you.

  I bother. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You can put that on my tombstone. She bothered.

  And is bothered. Everything bothers you.

  You should talk.

  What do you mean?

  You’re the angriest person I ever met. Everything sets you off. Do you know that sometimes you actually make me want to defend Guy DeVilbiss? What do you get out of batting him around?

  It isn’t what I get. It’s what Guy gets. I’m just performing a service for my old chum.

  Please.

  What do you think he keeps me around for? He gets his loving from everyone else. I’m the anti-Hilda.

  Guy’s a masochist? I don’t see that.

  Guy’s an artist. Artists are ruthless. He takes what he needs, and he needs my contempt. Plus I’m his model. I’m everything he despises.

  Professes to despise. Underneath it all he doesn’t have any more use for women than you do. You both look at us and see what you need to see.

  Some day he’s gonna cut me loose. I’m too much of a political liability.

  Which brings up the obvious question: What do you keep Guy around for? What’s in it for you?

  …

  What? Quit it.

  …

  I said knock it off.

  How can you ask me that, Dorcas? Without Guy, there are no Gorgon Twins. There is no dark lady. I’d be out there in the void, snarling and gnashing away all by myself.

  You were friends from college. It didn’t have anything to do with us.

  We were the kind of friends who got together once every couple of years, for a drink at the Plaza or at some international airport, and once for a lost weekend at a Famous Writers Retreat. I’ve seen more of Guy and Hilda in the past year than in all of the previous thirty.

  Lower your voice.

  They can’t hear me. They never hear anybody.

  His voice is suddenly petulant. In fact, throughout all the recordings he sounds twenty years younger than in real life. Everybody sounds young. I guess the cheap mike didn’t pick up the lower register. We sound young and offhand and as if we have all the time in the world.

  In the background there is never silence; always some sibilant scratchings, paper sounds, as though our “office” had been infested with little sheets of animated paper shuffling about by themselves. Sometimes you can hear my sister come in with refreshments, or a request from Hilda that we “keep it down, dears, Guy’s trying to nap.” (So Conrad was wrong about not being heard. Except he was right too: They heard us only as ambient noise, potential muse-blockers.)

  Abigail says

  Want a G and T, honey?

  and

  Hey, Baby, can I freshen that?

  and

  Damn, those two are driving me crazy. Could I just hang around you guys for a half hour or so?

  and in my memory he answers her, and I do, of course, and we chat about this and that, and we thank her for her kind attentions. And of course we let her hang around us guys for a half hour or so. But on the Big Bitch tapes all you hear is glasses clinking, papers dancing, the soft click of a closing door.

  Surely we at least made eye contact with her. Nodded thanks. Smiled in a friendly fashion. Surely we did that.

  He wasted hours on my childhood, my adolescence, trying to find his way in there, the fool. Finally he asked me about my first book. My real first time.

  The Hidden Staircase, the best (I was soon to discover) of the Nancy Drews, and though I soon outstripped them, even found them funny, I still have my copy of that first one, bound in blue and orange. I read for myself all the books my mother had read to me, and then I went to the Scituate Library, there being no Squanto yet, and took out every fairy tale collection I could find, Andersen and Grimm and then Perrault, the French tales, stories from all corners of Europe and Asia. Soon I graduated to world mythology. The Norse were unbearably depressing; even their gods were mortal; but the Greek gods and heroes gave me a bridge, a lens through which to view the people around me, the forgettable face in my bedroom mirror. I read about Io and Tantalus and Athena and Phaeton, and my world achieved solidity and color. The gods were both petty and divine; they acted just as the rest of us would if we had the power. Eventually of course I outgrew them too, put away my homemade paper dolls, but I can still recall how brightly they burnished my inner life. They were like Father’s old View-Master, a favorite toy of my preliterate days, which when you held it up to lamplight flooded our ordinary rooms with exotica. King Beaudoin, the Oldevai Gorge, the Apollo Fountain at Versailles.

  When we hit adolescence, our parents had their hands full with Abigail and couldn’t stop to worry about me. Every now and then one of them would ask me, especially on long car trips, to please put down my book and look out the window at something, and once Mother burst into tears at the dinner table and observed that life was passing me by. A shocking moment: I think she was entering into the change. Later she apologized, and I assured her that life
was doing no such thing. I don’t think she ever truly understood, and this still hurts me, as she of all people should have appreciated what I was doing. There were a couple of years then, in my teens, when I wavered; when I wondered if indeed something were wrong with me, and when my life was going to start. One summer I went for a whole week without reading anything but cereal boxes and shampoo bottles. It was a grim ordeal, and to this day the phrase “lather, rinse, repeat” is a tiny Pavlovian trigger of anxious dread. Then my favorite high school teacher, Mr. Bliss, mentioned C. S. Lewis to me (“You might look into Surprised by Joy”) and soon all was right again. Lewis never sold me on mere Christianity, but he did assure me that I wasn’t neurotic. It was possible to live an imagined life, and to live it fully. To dwell within one’s own mind and, through books, the minds of others.

  You escape, said Abe Marx, into your books. I didn’t have the wit then, quite, for the obvious riposte: I escape, when I feel the need, into what all you bullies insist is reality. I study birds, library patrons, local politicians. Sometimes I garden. Sometimes I watch the Sox. Sometimes I drink. I keep a neat house and I pay my taxes, all in the real world. But I don’t live there.

  Of course, Lewis was a scholar, and I am not. I do have a reputation, locally, as something of an intellectual, but this is wrong. I am simply an omnivorous reader, and like all good omnivores I take my pleasures where I find them. In my real life, my inner life, I am as great a sensualist as my sister.

  How does that work, exactly?

  What do you mean?

  It’s not that I don’t believe you. I’m your greatest admirer. But most of us plebes do our sensing through our senses, if you get my meaning. Your sister, for instance. Me too, I must admit. Right now, for example, I’m looking at you. There you are. I’m not imagining you. I couldn’t. I’m not that clever.

  Well, of course, but what is your point? I’m not claiming to be a spiritual entity.

  Your speech is clipped, precise, and low. I hear you clearly. You have a unique scent—

  Aren’t you cute.

  —of Castile soap and lemon polish, and today…