I described to Leon in full detail my adventure that involved little Emily; how I was pursued, alone and hurt, how she gave me sanctuary and nursed me back to health. I noted that she was a young actress of both stage and film, and a gifted songstress as well, and that when I had met her, she was preparing feverishly for her role as the eponymous character in the musical Little Orphan Annie, which surely must already have come and gone by now. And I did not fail to mention that she appeared to come from a family of ample means.
“Perhaps,” I said aloud, “perhaps, perhaps…”
“Of course,” said Leon, licking beer froth from his mustaches, clapping and rubbing his hands together and slyly arching one eyebrow in villainous collusion.
The following day found Leon and me seated in Leon’s ex-wife’s Wagoneer, exploratorily driving around in the village of Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, looking for little Emily’s family’s big house. We had put on our best suits and ties, and Leon carried an officious-looking attaché case he had dug out from the bottom of a closet for the purpose of looking officious. We kept reminding ourselves that we were not dressed up as fancy Broadway casting directors, but that we were casting directors. We were casting directors who happened to have seen little Emily’s (I cursed myself a thousand times for failing to learn little Emily’s surname) genius, dazzling, etc., performance as Little Orphan Annie in the musical play of the same name, and we hoped to cast her as Miranda in The Tempest, which would mark the debut production of the avant-garde theatre troupe the Shakespeare Underground, and by the way we are looking for backers, so perhaps, perhaps…?
“This is the neighborhood,” I said. “I remember it very clearly. I think I’ve seen that house before. It must be around here somewhere.”
Leon piloted the wood-paneled Wagoneer through the narrow roads, runs, drives, lanes, and culs-de-sac of the posh Westchester suburb. One after another, we passed Tudor-style mansions surrounded by oaks and sprawling swaths of green lawn and topiaries.
“Ignorant baboon!” grumbled Leon. “How in the blazes could you possibly know? All of these stately pleasure domes look nearly identical to me!”
We had been driving around for hours, and it was about six in the evening when we rolled past the house, and the telltale wave of déjà vu I’d been hoping for finally came to trigger my recognition of it. There indeed stood the white and brown and brick Tudor-style house, which I was certain was little Emily’s.
“There! That one!” I shouted, the tip of my long purple index finger squished against the glass of the passenger-side window. “I’m sure of it!”
We parked a little ways down the street, out of sight around a bend in the road, in order to avoid raising any undue suspicions as to why two fancy Broadway casting directors should arrive in such a déclassé mode of transport as Leon’s ex-wife’s Wagoneer. The lights in the house were on, and there seemed to be human activity going on inside of it. We saw the shadow of a person moving in the ground floor windows. It was autumn, and the trees lining the road were ablaze with color. We hiked down the leaf-scattered road, past a mailbox—noting the name GOYETTE printed on the side of it—and up the walk that led through the lawn and garden to the front door, Leon with his hair neatly combed back and his beard freshly trimmed, the officious-looking attaché case swinging freely in his fat fist, and I beside him. Leon depressed a sausagelike finger into the doorbell, and soon that same tiny yellow dog appeared in the narrow frosted-glass window beside the front door, yapping its miserable little head off. In a moment a woman’s face peered out the same window at us, her hand cupped against the glass to see outside, her eyebrows knit in an expression belying confusion tinted faintly with apprehension. She opened the door just a tiny squeak ajar, and the dog shot forth as if from the muzzle of a cannon, and commenced to scurry circles around our feet, growling, yapping, baring every tooth in its small furry head.
“Good evening, Mrs. Goyette,” said Leon in a voice as officious-sounding as the attaché case looked, offering a moist pudgy paw for a handshake.
“Hello?” the woman said, opening the door slightly wider. Her voice had a slight rasp. We could tell by the change in her face that we’d gotten the name right. Mrs. Goyette was in her late forties. She was short and considerably fat. Her clothes were clean and fashionable. A fleshy neck supported a roundish head with dark-dyed hair and a broad face with a sharp nose and a wide mouth that inclined toward elastic shifts in expression.
“I am Leon Smoler, and this is my associate, Mr. Bruno Littlemore.” I nodded in assent. “We have come on a very important and exciting matter of business concerning your daughter, Emily.”
The woman’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes bugged as she gasped: “Oh my God—is something wrong?”
Leon summoned a belly roar of dismissive laughter.
“Of course not! Quite to the contrary. We represent the Shakespeare Underground, an experimental theatrical production company.”
The look of alarm on the woman’s face was replaced with a look of hesitant distrust.
“We are extremely interested in your daughter’s considerable acting talent.”
“Are you talent scouts?”
I shook my head no and was about to speak.
“Yes,” said Leon, “in a manner of speaking.”
She invited us in. Leon and I seated ourselves on a couch by a fireplace, and she asked us if we wanted coffee.
“Yes, please,” Leon called. She was in the kitchen. Leon and I waited on the couch in silence, looking around at the various bric-a-brac in the house and listening to the ticking of a grandfather clock and the chains jangling against its pendulum. The room was partially lit by the frenetically flickering bluish glow of a TV, but the sound was muted. Bill Clinton, who was the president of the United States at the time, was fidgeting on the TV. Mrs. Goyette returned with cups of coffee, which she placed on the coffee table, and took a seat in an armchair directly across from us.
“We are preparing to stage a production of The Tempest,” Leon began. “The Bard’s swan song, in which he breaks his staff and frees his magic to the four winds.”
The woman pensively sipped her coffee.
“Upon having the pleasure to see little Emily’s purely genius—”
“Dazzling,” I said.
“Yes, dazzling, genius, dazzling performance in Little Orphan Annie, we have determined that no other actress would be as well suited for our female lead.”
“Why were you watching a high school musical?” said Mrs. Goyette. “How did you find us? Why did you come in person instead of calling? I don’t know how I feel about—”
Leon raised a judicious hand to silence her, which gesture was accompanied by a friendly smile to indicate that all would soon be explained.
“Excuse me,” I said, “may I use your bathroom?”
“It’s down the hall, second door on your right,” and she pointed.
I rose and left the room, and behind me I heard Leon hoisting the sails of his rhetoric in preparation for a long and possibly stormy voyage. The request to use her bathroom was, of course, a ruse. I stole down the hallway and crept up the stairs to little Emily’s bedroom, and softly knocked on her door.
“What!” she said, much, much too loudly. I quickly opened the door.
“You can’t come in unless I SAY so, you stupid bitch!” she began to scream, as she wheeled around in her chair, away from the pile of homework spread before her on her desk, before she saw who it was who stood at the threshold of her bedroom. I put a finger to my pursed lips to beg her silence. It is remarkable how quickly a person in the throes of adolescence can change. It had been, I think, about seven months since I had last seen little Emily—and lo, she had very nearly become a woman in that time. I wondered if she remembered that evening we had spent together, and if so, if she remembered it fondly. Her bedroom had now been mostly cleansed of its childish affects: the dollhouse, the rubber women, etc., were gone. The stuffed animals, however, were stil
l present, and all else looked the same as it had when last I saw it. The stuffed animals—among the few remnants of little Emily’s childhood that steadfastly remained—seemed to have shifted meanings: they had fallen totally from innocence into experience, and they no longer represented childhood but now represented a consciously ironic retrograde sexualization of the childlike.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” she hissed.
Briefly, I explained the situation to her.
“That’s so stupid,” she said, when I had brought her up to speed. “It won’t work.”
“Please help us!” I blubbered. “Think of the glory of starring, at such a tender age, in a major stage production of Shakespeare! Just come downstairs and play along.”
Then I fled the room to rejoin Leon and little Emily’s mother downstairs. When I found them, they had switched from the living room to the kitchen and from coffee to white wine, and little Emily’s mother was laughing buoyantly and feeding Leon squishy pastries with her fingers. Leon’s coat was off and his tie was loosened.
“Why hello, Bruno,” said Leon, with a touch of derision in his voice. “We thought you’d fallen in!”
I cleared my throat.
“I’m just charming Mrs. Goyette into submission,” said Leon, and opened his mouth to accept a cube of chocolate that the woman had been trying to push past his lips. Her arm was around Leon’s gargantuan waist. She lit up the room with a spell of half-drunken laughter. “Vivian has invited us to stay for dinner!”
“Well,” I muttered, testing the waters. “We wouldn’t want to inconvenience you—”
“Please stay!” she squealed to Leon.
“But of course,” said Leon.
We stayed. Dinner was Cornish game hen. Mr. Goyette, little Emily’s father and Mrs. Goyette’s husband, was out of town on business.
“As usual,” added Vivian—little Emily’s mother—with the rolled eyes of bitterness. The chicken was indeed delicious. We ate at an ovular dining table—Leon, Vivian Goyette, little Emily Goyette, and myself. I sat across from Emily and Leon sat across from Vivian. Little Emily and I were both a little nervous and out of sorts. Our eyes kept darting to the other two and then back to each other to trade looks of uncertainty. Over dinner, at first we all talked about the upcoming production of The Tempest. We toasted to the production. We toasted to our success. We toasted to little Emily’s preordained fate as a celebrated actress of stage and screen. Then talk became general. Much wine was drunk and all pretenses of table manners were soon discarded. Leon and Mrs. Goyette planted their elbows on the table and slurped the chicken from the bones with noisy, lustful abandon. Leon ate with his hands, smacked his jaws, licked his fingers, gulped his wine and roared between bites with thunderous eructation, and the more grotesque his table manners became, the more directly they were mirrored across the table in the behavior of little Emily’s mother. Leon and Vivian Goyette locked eyes as they slurped the juicy meat from the slick slender chicken bones, frequently knocking their glasses together to toast (often forgetting entirely to include little Emily and me), refilling one another’s wineglasses with increasing frequency throughout the meal, uncorking one bottle of wine after another, often uncorking another bottle even before the previous had been depleted of its contents. Leon grew flushed, unbuttoned his collar, whipped off his necktie and threw it over his shoulder. Vivian unpinned her hair and undid the first two buttons of her blouse. Both of them ate and drank to bubbling crapulous excess. Vivian grew as pink as a carnation and sticky with perspiration. Leon’s rosaceous face beneath his beard grew deeply enflamed, and his shirt became glued to his torso with sweat. Both of them were exploding and melting at the same time with laughter, sweat, and glee. More wine was opened and drunk. Little Emily and I were ordered to the kitchen to wash up while Leon and Vivian ate chocolate cake.
Little Emily sullenly passed the dishes, glasses, and silverware under hot water at the kitchen sink and handed them to me to put in the dishwashing machine. Leon and Vivian finished their cake and retired to the living room, where we heard their mirth continue.
“So you live with that big fat douchebag?” said little Emily. I had taken off my suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of my shirt.
“We’ve been performing Shakespeare in the subways and doing magic shows.”
When we finished washing the dishes, Leon and little Emily’s mother had disappeared from the living room.
Little Emily plopped down on the couch, snatched up a remote control and turned on the TV in a single fluid motion, with the muscle-memory of a well-practiced hand.
“Where is your mother?” I said. Little Emily shrugged and rolled her eyes.
“Ptf. Dunno.”
I sat down next to her on the couch.
“What are you watching?” I said. I scooted a little closer to her.
“Friends,” she said.
We watched the program for a while. I had never really seen much “grown-up” TV before. Lydia would only let me watch educational programming on PBS, or cartoons sometimes. Leon only liked golden-age Hollywood movies, or else he liked to turn on the news and yell at it. But this? Something new to me. People were doing things on the screen, and it didn’t make any sense to me. There seemed to be an electric current in the air in the universe where these people lived, a gathering of invisible voices that would laugh at them, sometimes at such mysterious points in time that it was very difficult to determine what these disembodied voices found so funny. It also seemed that the people who lived in this world were themselves unaware of these voices—or if they were, they had grown so used to them that they no longer found it strange. What would it be like to grow up in the world of prime-time sitcoms? To come of age under the watchful eyes of these audible but invisible gods that live in the fabric of the air, a chorus of judging voices sadistically laughing at you from infancy, at your every mistake, your every misfortune, your every shameful secret, your every foible and error of judgment? It would drive you insane!
Where were Leon and Mrs. Goyette?
Little Emily went into the kitchen and returned with a sack of Cheetos. And so we ate the Cheetos and watched Friends. After Friends, there were other TV shows much like it. Some of them were set in offices, and some of them were set in the homes of the characters, or in comfortable locations like bars, coffee shops, restaurants. The characters usually worked at interesting but decidedly white-collar places of employment, like radio stations and magazine offices, jobs that apparently involve a lot of standing around drinking coffee and playing petty practical jokes on unsuspecting coworkers. The characters in these TV shows, despite the derisive cackles of the maddening crowd that hangs in the luminiferous ether between them, do not have to worry. They might have sexual relationships with one another, they might fall in and out of love with each other, they might have conflicts with each other, power struggles, or squabbles over resources. They are free to love, to hate, to go to work, and do all the things that people do, except worry. They are supernaturally free of true worry, because these characters know that at the end of the episode everything will reset itself, and the world will be as new. These people live in a candied reality, where all the conflicts of real life appear and disappear in joyful simulacra free of the possibility of permanent consequence. All of these TV shows were like a single, soothing lullaby voice, holding up a hilariously warped mirror to the middle class and whispering to them: Do not worry. Do not worry. Do not worry.
At some point during our TV watching and Cheeto eating, little Emily slipped her hand into mine. So, as we waited for Leon and Mrs. Goyette to return from whatever rabbit hole they’d disappeared into, little Emily and I sat on the couch downstairs, watching grown-up TV and holding hands as we ate Cheetos. The big crinkly cellophane sack of Cheetos we situated between us. I held her left hand in my right hand, and with my left hand I periodically reached into the Cheetos bag to grab some of the flavorful orange sticks, and she did likewise with her right hand, such t
hat in time both the fingers of her right and my left hand were covered with sticky orange Cheeto-dust, while my right hand and her left hand were wet with the sweat produced from the heat of our pressed-together palms. We watched the grown-up TV shows where the world laughs at the inconsequential lives of its characters, and I didn’t understand much of it, but I liked the Cheetos and I liked holding little Emily’s hand, I liked to hold her slender little heated hand in my long purple freakish hand. And, once, each of us with one hand hot and wet and the other orange and sticky, we turned our faces toward one another, and our orange and sticky lips met in a long, profound, salty kiss. We were young, we were Americans, it was the late twentieth century.
XXXIX
It would not be quite accurate, I don’t think, to say that funds were wrongfully pilfered from our production budget to pay for my nose surgery. We wrote it up as a production cost because that was, after a manner of interpretation, what it was: there was no way I would have dared grace the stage as Caliban without my new nose; it was the nose that completed the effect I wished to achieve.
When we left the Goyette household that evening—very late that evening, after Leon and Vivian, little Emily’s mother, had finally descended the stairs to join us again, both of them with damp hair, for they had apparently showered; and after Leon had collected his jacket from the living room and his tie from off the dining room floor; and after Leon and Vivian Goyette exchanged a parting embrace and she deposited on his cheek a more-than-friendly smack that left the impression of her lipsticked lips on his bearded face, which rose to definition as soon as enough of the pink had drained from Leon’s face that the pink lipstick could be discerned against the surrounding flesh; and after we bid good-bye to little Emily, who was in a sullen way, unsharing in her mother’s high spirits; and after we walked outside and hiked back up the hill to where we had parked Leon’s ex-wife’s car out of sight in order to conceal our embarrassing poverty; and after I had interrogated Leon as to the particulars of what had happened when he and Vivian Goyette, little Emily’s large mother, had remained out of sight for well over two hours; and after I had interrogated in vain, for Leon uncharacteristically clammed up and wouldn’t offer a word in the way of detail, thus forcing me to guess the worst; and after we had climbed back into the car; and after Leon started up the engine and began to try to guide us back to the Cross County Parkway, which would carry us home—Leon smiled wryly at me, as I sat beside him, slipped his fingers into the breast pocket of his shirt, extracted a once-folded rectangular slip of paper and handed it to me, whereupon I inspected it, read the writing printed and scrawled upon it in the shifting light of the streetlights we were passing beneath, and saw that it was a check, in the account of Mr. and Mrs. Goyette, signed by Mrs. Goyette and made out for an impressively large sum of money. I was shocked by the figure written on the check.
The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore Page 43
