Mississippi Sissy (39 page)

“How's Carl?” he asked, mentioning the bisexual advertising executive who was my one sexual constant in all my time in Jackson. Carl never went to the gay bar. The only time he really did anything gay was when he went to bed with me. He had even had affairs with many of his leading ladies at New Stage. In addition, he was carrying on a sporadic romance with my best friend at Millsaps, Lynn from House of the Rising Son. She had gone up to New York to study at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy but was back to get her college degree at Millsaps and had been Lance's latest version of Jean Cocteau's Jocasta. “I think Carl is really in love with you,” Frank said.

I shrugged and ate some strawberries off his plate. “He gave me a key to his apartment this summer,” I told him.

Frank smacked me on the arm with a quickly rolled-up arts section of the Sunday paper. “You scamp. Don't you hurt him. I think he must be Presbyterian. That's my theory, at least. He seems predisposed—predestined, whatever—to be a little tormented by his status as Jackson's resident sex symbol. I saw some of the photos he's taken of you. I'm telling you, the man holding that camera is in love.”

“He's really special,” I said.

“Uh-oh,” said Frank. “That means you're
not
in love.”

“I'm moving to New York in four weeks,” I said. “He's moving to Houston to join the Alley Theatre.”

“Non sequiturs,” said Frank.

“No, I'm not in love with him. But I think Lynn is.”

“Well, that's complicated,” said Frank. “Didn't you say she was going home with you to Forest today? What is that I see up your sleeve, dear boy, on that shirt you're not wearing? I think I've told you to wear a shirt when eating at my table, have I not? Though I really shouldn't be complaining about the view.”

“There's this guy in Forest. His name is Bobby Thompson,” I said, mentioning the person I was really in love with, who would always remain the unrequited object of all my fantasies. He had become friendly with Kim and Joe Rex while I was away at college, and through them I had reignited my friendship with him. I explained all that to Frank. “I introduced B-b-bobby to Lynn the other night when he was in town,” I said, my reemergent stutter signaling my unease at the subject. “There was a spark between them. She admits it. I figure it would even out the score. If I'm sleeping with the m-man she loves, then she should get a shot at sleeping with the one I do since he's sure not a homo. He's playing d-d-doubles with my little b-brother in a tennis tournament later today. My little sister is in the tournament, too. I think she might be a lesbian. I hope so. Then we're all going to church tonight. Joe Rex is in one of his religious phases,” I said, Frank having known Joe Rex slightly through another mutual friend. “There's a revival goin' on with some preacher he's high on at the First M-methodist church. It'll be like old times.”

“Doubles with your brother? Church? Jesus!” Frank said, shaking his head. “There's too much transference
goin' on
in that story for me to take it all in at this hour,” he continued, mocking my country accent, which also had a tendency to resurface along with my stutter.

“Huh? Transference?”

“Never mind. When are you leaving?” he asked.

“I thought I'd maybe catch an early movie first—I like going to the movies by myself—and then pick Lynn up and head on over there. Maybe I'll see
Jaws
again,” I said.

“I could sit through
Nashville
for a second time,” Frank said. “That's the only recent movie I could sit through more than once. Still deciding whether that's the masterpiece I think it might be. And I'm looking forward to Pacino in
Dog Day Afternoon
next month and Woody Allen's
Love and Death,
if it ever makes it to Jackson. I read a great line from it the other day. Woody says to Diane Keaton, ‘I was
made in God's image? Take a look at me. You think He wears glasses?' She goes, ‘Not with those frames.' Made me think maybe I should get some new glasses myself. These make me look like Gloria Steinem's ugly sister,” he said, pulling his big black-framed ones from a pocket in his kimono. “If
Love and Death
were playing here I'd insist you see that. But, alas . . .”

“Don't you think I've had enough of those fucking two things by now?” I asked.

“Oh, woe is me—the awful strain of being a nineteen-year-old,” he teased me, then cupped my face in his hand. “I'm sorry. You have had enough of the the latter in your life, dear boy, yes, you have,” he said. “More than I even. But one can never have too much of the former. Someone told me about a one-act comedy Woody Allen wrote recently, titled
Death.
Maybe he should write a one-act tragedy called
Love.
Who was it who told me that? Jane, maybe. I should make a note to try and order it from Samuel French,” he said and, putting on his glasses, he added it to his to-do list. “You really should start seeing Woody Allen movies, though, Kevin—especially if you're going to be a New Yorker,” he said, pushing the glasses up to where they rested atop his head. “A friend of mine in New York told me he did get a little bored at this one but he just closed his eyes and listened to the Prokofiev on the soundtrack.”

“Didn't you say it was like Woody Allen's version of Leo Tolstoy when you and Miss Welty were talking about it the other night?” I asked, sounding as wary of the description as I possibly could. “She's the one who told you about the one-act.”

“That's right. I remember now. She insisted it was probably more like his version of Bob Hope.”

“Worse,” I groaned. I cleared the table to wash the dishes.

“Let's see what's playing in town,” said Frank, unrolling the arts section.

“What's your column about today?” I asked him.

“Oh, it's a rather dry one, but important. It's about the live Russian launch of the joint Apollo-Soyuz space mission next week. NBC is broadcasting it live, as well as the Soviet Union. It's the first time Russia has allowed a live broadcast of a space launch, la la la la, on and on and on. I interviewed this John Dancy chap who's covering it for NBC. Let's see. That Paul Newman movie
The Drowning Pool
is playing.
Return of the Pink Panther. WalkingTall: Part Deux.
God! Gone
with the Wind
is at the Lamar, can you believe it? I always like to see what's playing at the Showtown East drive-in. Perfect. It's a double feature of
The Longest Yard
and
The Klansman.
Guess they won't be playing the new Woody Allen there anytime soon. Cabaret's back—but you've seen that too many times. I think you should see
Day of the Locust.
They're running quotes in the ad from Judith Crist and Rex Reed and Vincent Canby. Can you imagine them as a threesome?”

“Maybe I'll just skip the movie and head over to Forest and watch more of the tennis match,” I said, imagining what Bobby Thompson's butt was going to look like in his white shorts. Julian Bream and Bach had fallen silent. I began to hum “Alice Blue Gown” as I scrubbed the skillet in which I had made the pancakes.

“I know that tune,” said Frank. “It's from
Irene
. I've never been a big fan of Debbie Reynolds, but I have to admit she pulled that performance out of her ass. Have you ever heard the rumors about Agnes Moorehead and her?”

“Samantha's mother on
Bewitched
?”

“Well, I wouldn't put it that way, but yes. Wait. I think I have some versions of ‘Alice Blue Gown' other than that tiresome cast album of
Irene.
I'm pretty sure I do. I think there's a Teddy Wilson back there. A Chet Atkins version, maybe. Oh. Wait wait wait. I know—there's an amazing Irving Fazola.”

“Who the fuck is that? Fa-whata?”

“Fazola.
He was a big fat jazz clarinetist back in the thirties. I think he's better than Goodman or Pete Fountain or certainly Artie Shaw.
People called him ‘Faz.' His real name was Irving Prestopnik but he got his stage name, get this, from the solfeggio. You know—do re mi fa sol la ti do. Get it? Fa. Sol. La. It became Fazola because of that damn accent those
Yats
down in New Orleans won't give up. He's marvelous.
Marvelous
! Wait. You'll see.”

I chuckled at Frank's ability to get so excited about imparting his musical knowledge. Suddenly the house was filled with the strains of a version of “Alice Blue Gown” I never thought possible. I couldn't help myself. My hips and feet started moving with the music as Faz's fingers raced up and down his clarinet on the scratchy old album. Frank came swanning into the room, his kimono gathered in his right hand. “Come, come, come,” he said. “Dance with me, dear boy! Dance with me!” I dried my hands on my gym shorts and we half-waltzed, half-jitterbugged around the kitchen, laughing and twirling in each other's arms to Irving Fazola's toe-tapping rendition of my grandmother's favorite song. “Who's leading whom here?” Frank asked as his glasses went flying off the top of his head as I swept him around the kitchen.

“Does it matter?” I asked right back. I let go of him after one final spin. When he bent down to get his glasses I playfully kicked him in his kimono as I started to Charleston. “I never could quite get the hang of this,” I complained, trying to get my knees to bend inward as I kicked my legs out to the rhythm of the music.

“You'd still make a better Daisy Buchanan than that Mia Farrow,” he said. “But I'm not sure you'd be as good as Betty Field.”

“Who?”

Frank dramatically sighed and rolled his eyes at yet another thing he was going to have to explain to me. “She played Daisy in the nineteen-forties version of
The Great Gatsby,
opposite Alan Ladd,” he said. “She's one of my favorite actresses. A George Abbott discovery. Married for a while to Elmer Rice. A hard-bitten kind of gal. You have a Betty Field quality yourself, dear boy, even in those gym
shorts. Yes, you'd make a pretty good Daisy Buchanan, come to think of it.”

“Fuck you. Just for that, I'm going to go see
Jaws,”
I told him, and boogied back toward my bedroom.

“Any cute boys at Mae's last night?” he shouted after me.

“Just me,” I said. “And the dashing Mr. Dowsing.”

Frank and I remained in our respective ends of the house for the next hour or so. That was one of the secrets of our getting along so well. We knew when to steer clear of the other. He hated that I was so messy—my room looked like a tornado had hit it—but he said that as long as I kept my door shut he didn't have to look at it. After I got dressed I found him in his reading chair. This was his favorite spot in the house, where he read the books he was going to review for his own column or for the Sunday book supplement of
The New York Times.
(Nash Burger, an old friend of his and “the girls,” was an editor there.) He and Miss Capers were in a bit of a competition to see who could write more reviews for the Sunday
Times.
Frank thought it somewhat distasteful to keep track of how many he had written, but always made sure that it was less than her tally since he knew it meant so much to her. Miss Capers wanted to get to 100, but at the time of her death she was, heartbreakingly, at 99. “Are you doing anything today?” I asked him.

“I might go into the office, but I'm more in the mood to have a lazy afternoon and catch up on these last two Esquires. There's that new Capote short story everybody's got their knickers in a twist about. And an Ann Miller thingamajig in one of them. Love Ann Miller. More Woody—can't get away from him. And let's see,” he said, thumbing through one of the
Esquires
after pushing his reading glasses down on his nose. “Oh, yes. This interview with Nabokov here. I'll see if I can wade through that. And I want to listen to that Margaret Walker Alexander album again,” he said, mentioning the author's spoken-word record he had written so
effusively about a few days before in his column. On it, Professor Alexander read many of her poems, Frank's favorite being the title work from
For My People,
her first published volume, for which she won the 1942 Yale Award for Younger Poets. “You do know her husband, Mr. Alexander—Firnist, to his friends—is an interior decorator,” said Frank, rolling his eyes a bit behind his glasses. He then attempted to take on the exaggeratedly dignified cadence and timbre of Margaret Walker Alexander herself but instead ended up sounding like his astonishingly good Malvolio did in New Stage's production of
Twelfth Night
back in February. “ ‘Let a new world rise,' ” he intoned, reciting a line from
For My People.
“ ‘Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky.' La la la la. On and on and on . . .”

I kissed him on the top of his head and started for the front door. “Drive safely,” he called over his shoulder. “See you later. Love you!”

“Love you, too,” I said. He was humming something when I left. It sounded a lot like “Alice Blue Gown.”

I couldn't shake the thought of Bobby Thompson's butt, so on the way to see
Day of the Locust
I turned around to go pick up Lynn and head to Forest in my little white Mercury Comet, having traded in my old Dodge Dart. The year or two she had spent in New York had given Lynn more of a sophisticated edge than the rest of us in the Millsaps theater department, but she was not so sophisticated as to put up with Carl's bisexuality much longer. It speaks volumes about her that she valued our friendship enough to let it weather whatever obstacles were put in its way because of my continuing inability not to sleep with him, though I knew it was hurting her feelings. “Look, I understand—he's pretty irresistible,” she said on the drive over to Forest when we discussed our sharing of him. “But it's time I moved on. Time we both did. Geography finally is going to force us to anyway. Though I'm not sure going to a revival at the Methodist church in Forest with yet another blond heartthrob is a step in the right direction
for me. I've never found prayers and hymns and an altar call the best preliminaries for sex,” she said.