by Carson, Tom
Even if I’d brought a towel, to wrap myself in it would’ve been a mortal insult. Theirs were all over one shoulder or trawled. All gingerly meekness, I joined their shuffle into the shower stall, where at least we were a bit more spread out.
As they laughed and tossed their only bottle of shampoo (it was as harsh as lye) back and forth, anonymity wasn’t in the cards even so. Not only was the gal from Regent’s as anomalously gangly as a Manhattanized Schiele among Tennessee Boteros, but of course they had to tease me about my mere smudges of coal compared to its deep ingraining on them.
“Ain’t you a waste of good Ivory!” called Tess, herself the color of a Paris church from wrists to elbows and forehead to clavicles. “We ought to report you to the Production Board.” They all hawed with delight, and understanding that I was the object of that delight—not malice, delight—humbled me. They were tickled and pleased I’d stuck it out in the mine, but not because I could do what they did. They went back down to the ends of the earth every day. I hadn’t particularly earned their respect. So far as recognition went, I doubt any of them cared what I wrote in Regent’s.
I’d simply been somebody who wasn’t there normally and could have stayed away if I’d chosen to, and the wildcats didn’t expect much of a nod from the world up top. Mrs. Roosevelt I wasn’t, God knows. But as folks say in Tennessee, I’d do, and I was just catching on that I was surrounded by the most magnificent female beauty I’d ever see when Viv called, “Hey, New York! Think fast.”
While you might guess looking up at Eddie Whitling’s shout to see the tricolor break out atop the Eiffel Tower was pretty hard to beat, catching that shampoo bottle was your Gramela’s happiest moment of World War Two. I laughed and called back, “Not wasted on me?”
“Hell, it’s wasted on us,” Viv barked. “Ain’t you got eyes?”
“Ain’t on me yet,” Babe drawled. “Mary As-tor, read me ’n weep.”
To dry off I borrowed a towel still damp with Andean moisture. When I looked up from my bench for my stored clothes, the other women—still nude—were gathered under the outer stall’s lone light bulb. “Miz Buchanan,” Viv called, newly flinty, “would you please come join hands with us? It won’t take but a minute.”
As I stepped between Josie and Tess, I’m sure I was beaming. Couldn’t wait to find out what new treat of this companionship was in store! The tumble of imaginings had barely gotten to urine-drinking when I realized all the wildcats’ chins were lowered and their eyes closed.
“Babe, I think it’s your turn,” Viv murmured.
“Okay.” Babe bit her lip. “Um, Lord—we thank you for this day. We’re sure grateful nobody got killed or even hurt. We hope you don’t mind all our rough talk and foolin’. And, uh, we’ll be back tomorrow! You know we’ll stick at this. If it helps, we ain’t even gonna say a word about Oak Ridge.”
She didn’t call it that, since it hadn’t been named yet. That’s what she meant, though.
“And the swap is we pray you’ll send as many of our boys back in one piece as you can see your way clear to. But if you can’t, we’ll stick at it anyway. You know us. Amen.”
“Amen,” they all said.
“That was good, Babe,” Josie said quietly. Tears were streaking her cheeks.
“Wait. Don’t break the circle.” Troubled, authoritative, Viv’s eyes were on mine. “Miz Buchanan—please.”
“Oh! Amen,” I said for the first and last time in my adult life. But their looks stayed disturbed though they went on being polite. I wasn’t sorry to be handed Roy’s telegram.
Otherwise, I’m not sure I could have faced that night of killing loneliness. I had practice, but it’s different when however unreasonably—and I knew it was—you can vividly recall a moment of feeling its opposite.
Posted by: Pamhattan Hellodrama
Somehow I found myself down at the dockside. Nipped or should I say Japaned into a bar, Italian or Irish—Costello’s, McGinty’s?—and asked for a gimlet. Looking down a counter thick with hands resting steins next to shot glasses, the bartender said, “Ma’am, you bring out the artist in me.”
Despite my foolish choice of drink, though, Pam did know a bit about New York. I expected to nurse my gimlet undisturbed and did.
An hour or two later I’d’ve faced mauling. By midnight I could have risked being chained in the cellar. Yet it’s all about sunset. And stopping at one drink, since two would’ve announced I’d brought my chain with me and was hoping for some gents’ assistance. But I could stay here in safety for as long as I nursed one or it me. It was the color of cactus in Albuquerque.
Nurse Harmony, Nurse Cass, Nurse Sandy, and Nurse Sigourney. Had I really called them that in “The View from Ward Three”? I had and now it was too late to take back from print. Just my millionth or so reason since “Chanson d’automne” to never attend a Purcey’s reunion. Oh, bikini girl: as in Harmony Preston, Cass Lake, big Sandy Hingham, and Sigourney Keota. I’d kept imagining they were the new Clara Bartons bandaging, splinting, sponging, and comforting the gal posing as a casualty.
Their St. Paul equivalents would have fried me in oil and called it a transfusion. Especially now that they knew. Forgive me, Panama: that gimlet was muddling.
On my way back from New Mexico, I’d stopped off as usual in Washington for a chinwag with Jake. We were still planning Sharon’s materialization in court, and his wife was terrified. Then a visit, my last, to Edith Bourne Nolan. As she and a smiling plump fortyish bespectacled woman looked up, Edith beamed: “Pam! I’ve wanted you two to meet for so long. This is my daughter Ariel.”
“Big date?” the bartender asked as I stood. Oh, I knew New York, where lies are appreciated for their artistic effect. Truth’s poor reputation is that it’s got none. “The biggest,” I said, and he said, “Good luck.” Nice man, McGinty.
I’d missed the cellar by inches, the measure of the fringe of newly embattled light cuffing the Jersey side of the river. Heavy ships slogged toward the Narrows, then still bridgeless, and Manhattan’s massed buildings were suddenly women saying goodbye. I cut back in to Greenwich and then went up Hudson; south of Abington Square and near the corner of Bleecker, I gazed at a remembered window. Who knew who was living there now or why or anything much, really, and I had no idea if the Pam I’d hatched over a gimlet to put on new armor in my awful and unending war was a betrayal of or way of staying loyal to its two former occupants. But I made my small adieu.
Posted by: Pam
As I think I’ve said before on daisysdaughter.com, every supposedly brave act I’ve performed has been your Gramela’s plea for a smoke as I glare at the firing squad. Far from being any exception, my journey to the Second Front exactly a decade after thirteen-year-old Pamelle saw New York’s skyline materialize from the Paris’s prow stands as the proof. To stay in the United States would’ve meant deciding with nobody’s help whether to take the Declaration of Independence at its word, and Joy Sterling could’ve told me that’s long been an invite to madness.
“Roy, I could stand to get out of town for a while.” It was Monday, June 7, 1943: 364 days before D-Day. I was in his corner office at Regent’s, perched Rosalind Russellishly on my editor’s desk with gams crossed at the ankles and my back to the Hudson. The nails on my cigarette-forking hand were as ragged as red surf.
“I thought you might.” Did I dare guess my editor’s owlish expression was hiding relief? As things turned out, our handshake without clothes had lasted all weekend. We’d teetered right on the verge of transition from the kind of confusion that staves off a decision to the kind that demands one.
“I’ve been wondering whether maybe it’s time we did something on Hollywood’s contribution to the war effort,” Roy mused. “It’s not your standard topic, but would you be interested? I know he’s washed up, but Ronnie Rea—”
“No, no! I�
�ve had it with the home front,” I said and felt a twinge as I noticed Murphy was getting his wish. “Wherever they’re fighting, that’s where I want to be.”
Tom Carson is the author of Gilligan’s Wake, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2003. Currently GQ’s “The Critic,” he won two National Magazine Awards for criticism as Esquire’s “Screen” columnist. Before that, he wrote about pop culture and politics for the Village Voice and LA Weekly. He has contributed essays and reviews over the years to publications ranging from Rolling Stone to the Atlantic Monthly as well as publishing fiction and poetry in Black Clock. He lives in New Orleans with his wife, Arion Berger, and can be found all too often at Buffa’s Lounge on Saints’ days.
Glenn Arthur is a self-taught visual artist from Orange County, California. Born in February of 1979, he grew up in a conservative, religious household with little to no influence in art. Although he constantly doodled and sketched as a child, Glenn did not come to painting until later in life when a friend forced a paintbrush into his hands and said, “You need to do this!” Since then Glenn has been diligently working on creating his own brand of beautifully painted images. Using acrylic paints on wooden panels, he adds elements and influential symbols of his past and present to each piece. Beyond the aesthetics of his artwork, Glenn brings an overwhelming sense of passion to his paintings. Touching on themes of love, death, conflict, and duality, Glenn’s art tells stories of strength and hope through emotion and sentiment with his sensual beauties and signature hummingbirds. www.glennarthurart.com/; www.facebook.com/artist.glennarthurart.
