In Her Day (6 page)

“Fuck!” Olive screamed.

Ilse shot her in the breast with the power stapler.

Louisa May Allcat and The Great Pussblossom rushed out to rub against Carole as soon as she opened the door to her apartment. Louisa May thumped down the carpeted stairs of the brownstone to the next floor and then raced back up again. Pussblossom had torn all the toilet paper off the roll and carried half of it onto Carole’s prized campaign desk. Carole fed them, picked up the t.p., read her mail, and then opened her folder, eager to pick up her work on “Pagan Images in
Tres Riches Heures du Duc du Berry
.” She lost herself in the voluptuous blues, turbulent reds, the purity of color in the Middle Ages. Even the Latin was refreshing after the tough prose of Tacitus or the monotony of Virgil. Some people paid analysts. Carole read Latin and it calmed her. She didn’t start out to be a medievalist. Initially, the Renaissance attracted her—once she got into college with the help of a rare scholarship from Vassar plus gifts of money from Richmond’s Daughters of the Confederacy, Catholic women, and others she forgot.
But she didn’t forget the Fan during the Depression and the hot Richmond Septembers when she’d trudge back to school and concentrate on her studies because she knew it was her only hope. Her mother used to tell her she’d be a movie star because she was so beautiful. But even if it weren’t the pitiable dream of an impoverished woman saddled with a husband crippled in World War I, even if it could have happened, Carole would have never become an actress. She was going to use her head. She told herself that over and over again, every time she looked at the desolate houses that comprised the poor white district. After that, Vassar and the Renaissance flashed before her like a dream come true. Here intellect was respected. Here women came to learn, to seriously apply their minds, and didn’t the Renaissance symbolize that great burst in Western life? So she thought. But as she entered her senior year and began the agonizing process of filling out applications for graduate school, form after form for fellowships, grants, scholarships, any kind of money, a wizened professor, Miss McPherson, told her to forget the Renaissance as a field. Women couldn’t advance there, she said. Try antiquity or the Middle Ages. It was a matter-of-fact statement, a weather report with no explanation and Carole, respectful of the old woman, wouldn’t have dreamed of asking for one. At first she thought Professor McPherson wanted her to get into the Middle Ages because the old lady spent her career trying to rehabilitate the reputation of a tenth century nun, Hrotsvitha of Gandershiem. And Miss McPherson was a classicist not an art historian. But as fellowships were the heart of the matter the professor who liked her so much was honestly trying to help. Carole changed her field and it paid off. She hated the other medievalists at graduate school. What
a dry lot. At least the people laboring under the shadow of Athens or Rome possessed a sense of humor, a glimmer of life. But she stuck it out and gradually another vision of lusty, violent, pious, contradictory people emerged and she found herself entranced by them. Adele had once explained the reason she got into the pre-Columbian period: “I became fascinated with those ancient stone faces peering enigmatically from the past.” So it was for her—a vivid, piercing recognition that once, seven hundred years ago, the dead were flesh and her flesh depended on their prior existence. Over the years she shied from departmental politics and withdrew more and more to contemplation of this other time. Her articles were incisive, revealing. She made a name for herself, was recognized as an authority. And she knew, thanks to old Professor McPherson, that one of the reasons was that men didn’t invade the field in huge numbers.

If I were Ilse’s age, she asked herself, would I make the same choice? The pressures are different now. Those young people I saw at Mother Courage have many more opportunities than we did. But I’d still be drawn to the past, to beauty, to concrete proof that even in our worst times we sought to make at least one thing beautiful, a chapel, a manuscript, a cloak. I’m not sure those women in their workshirts and little enamel stars understand that or even want to understand. Were I twenty-one today I’d make the same choice again. I’d still do it alone I guess, alone but for the help of Miss McPherson. She looked down at the first page of her paper:

She knew her work was good and she was glad to be alive.

“Then what happened?” Carole implored, reaching over to grab another pickled egg. “Delicious, Dell, give me this recipe before I go.”

“It’s Pennsylvania Dutch. Oh, yes, well it seems BonBon and Creampuff pulled every string they had …”

“Adele, that was a bad one.”

Adele threw her head back and howled. “That one was so bad, honey, I didn’t even know about it.” The plain red turtleneck brought out Adele’s best skin tones and she wore a necklace of orange beads interspersed with tigers’ teeth. “Well, in fact, it’s the truth, they did pull every string they had to get Maryann the runner-up or second lead or whatever you call it in this traveling tent show. God knows where she is now but last night she was in Maryland right outside of Washington, D. C., and whoever was there will never forget it.”

“If you don’t get to the point I’ll open that damn bird cage and tie you under your Montezuma water wall!” Carole raised her voice and Lester thought it was his cue.

“Bwana, White Devil! Bwana, White Devil!” he shrieked at the top of his little lungs.

“Not now, Lester, Mother’s talking,” Adele called over her shoulder.

He put his crest down and shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“Okay, now in fairness to Maryann we have to admit she can sing a bit.”

“Agreed,” Carole said.

“She’s in ‘The Music Man’ playing a prim and proper character singing a song or two.”

“She is acting.”

“According to BonBon, when you’re working the tents you wear battery packs taped to some part of your body where it doesn’t show. You know, for the mikes. Maryann was wired for sound. She had an ariel running down the small of her back and another wire up to her lavalier.”

“Sounds dirty but I thought a lavalier was something dangling from your neck with Kappa Alpha Theta at the end of it.”

“Close enough. That’s what they call those little microphones you wear like a necklace. And they have switches so you can turn the sound on or off. If you’re going off stage for a costume change or whatever you turn your pack off otherwise everyone will hear what’s going on.”

“I think I know what’s coming. She walked backstage, started with her blue language and then stepped back on stage as River City’s bastion of morality.”

“Carole, it’s worse.” Adele’s sides were already heaving and she reached over and put her hand on Carole’s forearm, paused, then lowered her voice to try and keep from exploding. “Maryann exited all right and forgot to turn off her pack while she walked into the bathroom and let fly. It must have sounded like the ‘1812 Overture’ and she was making it worse by talking to herself about it while she was on the can. Honey, when that child walked back on the stage the entire audience suffered a fit of mass hysteria. And no one in the cast had the heart to tell her what happened for fear she’d be too mortified to continue. For the rest of the evening the audience laughed every time she even so much as breathed. Maryann thought she had comic genius because she received a standing ovation at curtain call. Wasn’t until she took her make-up off that the woman playing Marion
the librarian, oh what’s her name, some Hollywood star exhumed from the fifties? Well, it’s not important. But the great lady felt upstaged by a bowel movement so she informed Maryann in no uncertain terms to turn her pack off or she’d shove it up her ass which would certainly put an end to her troubles.”

“Adele, stop. You’re making my stomach hurt I’m laughing so hard.”

The two of them made so much noise that Lester started up again.

“Bwana, Bwana. White Devil. Balls, said the queen. If I had two I’d be king. If I had four I’d be a pinball machine. Bwana!”

“Cool it, bird,” Adele sputtered trying to catch her breath.

By now the community of birds was in an uproar and Lester sang, “Everybody’s doing it, doing it.”

“Damn that LaVerne. She’s been teaching Lester vulgar rhymes and he loves them.”

“I’m going into the bathroom to get a kleenex. After that tale I have to blow my nose and wipe my eyes.”

“Carole, be sure your battery pack is turned off.”

“I’m coming right back. No show tonight.”

“Doing it, doing it, picking their nose and chewing it, chewing it.” Lester was wound up.

“Stop it. Do you hear me? Stop it.” Adele shook her finger in his face and he shifted from foot to foot again, enjoying the attention.

The mynah attempted a song but Lester outshouted him, “Doing it, doing it. Bwana. Ack. Bwana.”

“Professor Hanratty, do something about this bird you inflicted upon me.”

“Maybe if we go back to the coffee table and ignore them all they’ll settle down. Right, Lester?”

Lester stopped his rhymes and was now into jungle calls.

“That’s an amazing sound. I’ve never heard him do that before.”

“For all I know that could be his natural call but with Lester nothing is natural. He probably picked it up off a Tarzan movie or LaVerne’s been coaching him again behind my back.”

“I’m eating another one of these eggs.” Carole plucked one out of the white bowl with her left hand, keeping her Coke at the ready with her right. “So did Maryann quit in a moment of embarrassment?”

“Maryann? Leave that role as the mayor’s wife? She opens the refrigerator door and does twenty minutes.”

Lester had calmed down to an occasional screech although he muttered, “Balls, said the queen,” a few times in a low voice.

“How’s your paper coming?” Adele inquired.

“Sensational, I think. I’m essentially finished with it except for polishing the writing itself.”

“Am I going to get to read it?”

“Of course. Would I submit something for publication without the scrutiny of my most esteemed colleague?”

“That’s right,” Adele answered, her mouth full of egg. “M-m-m.” She swallowed. “Today I got a call from that young guy down at University of Pennsylvania and he wants me to go on his dig in the Yucatan next summer, all expenses paid.”

“Oh, Dell, that’s wonderful.” Carole put her Coke down, got up, and just missed slamming into the coffee table in her haste to get to Adele sitting in the huge wing chair. She hugged and kissed her. “God, that’s exciting. Have you told Verne?”

“No, I thought I’d wait until she gets home and tell
her in person. I know she’ll be happy for me but she won’t want to spend close to three months alone next summer.

“Maybe she can take a few extra weeks off around vacation time and join you.”

“That’s what I hope she’ll do. Since we know this early, she can make arrangements at work. They love her at Bloomies anyway and you know LaVerne, she’ll come back with a whole line of something hot from Central America. That girl’s a fortune teller. She senses what people will buy. She’s usually a year ahead of
Women’s Wear Daily
.”

“True. While I’m up want anything from the kitchen? I’m getting another Coke.”

“Yeah, bring me a Coke too and potato chips. I feel like shit food.”

“Okay.”

Carole’s activities in the kitchen attracted Lester’s attention, particularly when she opened the noisy potato chip bag, and he chattered a whole row of something unintelligible although the last word was distinctly
snot
.

“Here’s your drink. What’s that on the record player? With all the commotion around this place I didn’t hear it.”

“LaBelle. Remember when LaVerne and I took you to the Baths? This was the group singing there.”

“They were heaven,” Carole recalled. “What a wild night.”

“How’s Ilse?”

“Fine. She’s responsible for a big dance at the Firehouse tonight so she’s busy with that.”

“Been about two months now, hasn’t it, that you’ve been seeing her? You getting serious?” Adele looked directly at Carole.

“She’s likeable and you know the attraction between
us is incendiary. I’m getting a crash course in women’s liberation though. I could do without some of that. Anyway, Adele, if I were serious you’d know about it.”

“Sometimes people are in deeper than they realize.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s happening. I’m wary. There are times when it’s
deja vu
. Here she is saying something that’s absolutely a new thought to her but it’s the same thing we said or went through twenty years ago.”

“I hate to admit it but there do seem to be phases, stages of life.”

“I’m beginning to think we’re all conscripts of civilization.” A wry smile appeared on Carole’s face.

Adele pointed a finger at her, “Conscripts or not, oppressed or free, honey, the conspiracy of the living is to help one another carry on.”

“Adele, you’re marvelous.”

Adele nodded. “Yeah, I even think so myself, sometimes.”

“If Ilse were here she’d say you should think that all the time. Women have a low self-image, too little ego. We need to bring that out in each other. I get so bored with the stuff Ilse tells me to read—fallopian tubes, ovaries, uteruses. Jesus Christ, I’m not interested in my plumbing.”

“I read the ‘Woman-Identified Woman’ paper you passed on to me. Made a lot of sense but then it was written by lesbians. I can only take the doomed-by-our-ovaries ladies for so long myself and most of the other stuff I’ve looked at all had that complaint quality about it. And the incredible emphasis on sex, gay or straight. Maybe it’s their age or maybe it’s that the more repressed you are the more interesting sex is as a topic. All I know is I don’t want to hear it.”

Carole sighed, “I know. Half of the stuff she gives
me to read is so badly written or run off so fuzzy I can’t make it out. Doesn’t apply to me or to you. I don’t feel inferior to men. I can’t remember ever feeling inferior. I knew as a kid that boys got all the breaks but it made me mad—just made me fight that much harder. I’m not sitting home with three bawling kids and I have other things to do besides complain about how awful men are. Bores the hell out of me.”