Venus Envy (21 page)

“My turn?” Mandy nodded and Frazier spoke: “I have never believed that I would marry anybody. The rest of the world seeks to rush in twos but this coupling holds no fascination for me. I figured that my life would be a series of discreet affairs. Every now and then I would find someone marginally captivating, sleep with her or him but most likely her, and when she pushed for a commitment with a capital C, I’d terminate the relationship with as much civility as possible. Ann reads, which is a big plus these days. She can carry on a healthy conversation, although she’s far too fond of psychoanalyzing herself and everyone else, but if you can get her off that self-indulgence she has a lively mind. She likes golf. She likes museums and she’s always happy to attend the
theater. Seemed like a good deal to me.” Frazier held her palms upward.

“Did you love her?”

“Of course not. She’s not very lovable but then again, neither am I.”

“Sean, too, and he would say I wasn’t lovable. How can I address that? What’s lovable … his definition not mine.”

“Hopefully, they’ll be lovable to other people. I mean, I’m not implying that Ann is permanently unlovable. She was just unlovable to me or for me or—I’m losing the preposition here. God, I hate grammar.”

“The kids who were good at grammar were like the kids who were whizzes at spelling bees. Real wienies,” Mandy agreed. “Anyway, here we are. What’s interesting is, whatever we’ve learned they will deny. They’ll have their version of the relationship which will cast us in as dim a light as possible.”

“Ann can’t very well do that, since her ovaries would shrivel if anyone knew. She can stew by herself.”

“Never underestimate the human capacity for revenge, as well as self-service. Everyone has pure motives. Everyone is the pure little daisy in a field of bullshit. There’s such honor in being a victim, especially the love”—she drew out the word
love
until it had three syllables—“victim. Women wallow in it and men, bearing their hurt with wounded virility, rise above it. Ah, how we rise to the heights of post-amorous recrimination.” Mandy’s hands spiraled upward. “Your phrase when people break up.”

“Like the four Bernini bronze columns swirling upward toward Michelangelo’s dome in Saint Peter’s.”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Your hand motion”—Frazier repeated it—“made me think of the columns but also how these angers, these
rejections, become the foundation of people’s domes, if you will. Their very identity depends on their victimization. Take away their litany of woes, their novenas of being done-to, and the dome collapses inward. Crash. Boom. Bam. They’d have to build from a new base. They’d have to be human instead of these befouled secular saints.”

“Girl, you’re on a roll—and I thought
I
was the one.”

“Mandy, I never was a conventional person. I was the kid in Catechism class who wanted proof of transubstantiation, how wine and bread can become blood and flesh, and if it does, then communion is a cannibalistic festival, primitive beyond belief. I now realize that this is my sin, this is my cross to bear, if you’ll allow me to continue in this vein. It’s not that I’m gay—that’s the stigmata. Everyone can see that and recoil from the wounds. No, the problem is that I don’t think like them, I don’t want what they want and they can’t stand it. They think that my life somehow detracts from theirs. I am a living reproach to their mediocrity, and maybe they aren’t even mediocre—just mainstream. How dare someone go on a separate journey? And my answer is, how can I not go on a separate journey? Someone has to push on.”

“The artistic impulse.”

“I’m not an artist but I’m fortunate enough to live amidst the work of others who are. It’s an impulse toward independence. Women aren’t supposed to be independent and if the truth be known, men aren’t either. We offer them up, fodder to the corporations where they are ground to a red pulp, pulverized by tedious meetings, diced by internal politics, frightened for their children and how to support them, and all too often burdened by the wife who was supposed to be the helpmate. She turns on him with a vengeance somewhere in her forties and
accuses him of stealing her best years. How we hear about women’s sacrifices. What about men’s? Don’t you see, the whole system is geared to make sheep out of us? We have children. We don’t live with an extended family, so each little unit needs a refrigerator and a stove and two cars and a house, and you see how it escalates. So we march lock-step to the bank and we borrow money for these necessities which further enslave us to the corporation or whatever it is we do to earn our keep. People drag home and open the microwave. There’s a generation out there that thinks hamburger tastes like cardboard! Independent? I feel like we’re squirrels in a cage—sure, some of us are in a gilded cage—but we’re still running, spinning and only going in circles. No wonder our emblem is the cowboy. He’s the furthest creature from our true reality. No home. No skills other than roping cattle. No family life. No therapist. No face-lift. No low cholesterol. Just a life of unrelenting labor—yet freedom.” Exhausted, Frazier grabbed a Coke and drained it in one gulp.

Worn down from the implications of this outburst, Mandy took one too. “Is there a way out?”

“I found it—for me.”

“You own a house and a car. Christ, you’re rich.”

“These things came to me because I followed my heart. The only time I did. But, Mandy, even if they were taken away from me, if I lost everything, I have me. Me! That’s what the hospital did for me. I’m not playing by the rules anymore.”

“You never did.”

“The hell I didn’t. I trotted everywhere with my rent-a-date. I rarely spoke from my heart but because I always spoke my mind people thought I was forthright. No, I wasn’t. I swallowed my own voice just to get along, to fit in with people I wouldn’t ask to my house for
dinner, to please my mother too. Bad enough that I secretly despised them for being so, so average. Worse, I hated myself for pandering to their prejudices. I laughed at gay jokes. I turned my head when someone made a racist statement. I covered my eyes when the drunks fell down on the mall. Little sins but they add up like those links in Marley’s chain.” She reached in for another Coke—a revolutionary act, as she only allowed herself two a day. “I hoped somehow you wouldn’t do as I had done.”

Mandy held the cold can to her forehead. She was burning. “I don’t know. Life gets away from you sometimes. I find myself flinching when another black person says ‘wif’ instead of ‘with.’ I don’t know.”

“Are we two peas in a pod or ducks out of water?” Frazier laughed.

“Both, maybe.” Mandy kicked off her shoes. “Life isn’t like I thought it would be. When I was little I thought that being ten would be Nirvana. So on my tenth birthday I discovered that that wasn’t enough. I wasn’t perfect. Then I thought being really popular in high school would do it. Didn’t. Okay. The best college, the best boyfriend, and then the best job. It’s harder than I thought but somehow maybe better. I just thought there would be this day when everything would fall into place, I’d be really smart, on top of the world, and the gods would smile upon me.”

“They have.”

From the next room thunder shook the walls. Mandy walked over to the window. “Not a cloud in the sky. That’s strange.”

“Came from the painting.”

“Frazier, you’re not knitting with both needles when it comes to that painting.” Despite her protest Mandy walked into the room, followed by Frazier.

The Mount Olympus painting seemed even larger than before, as majestic as Bernini’s columns in Saint Peter’s, as massive as a Rodin sculpture, yet light, filled with light and laughter. Zeus seemed especially expansive in this light. He defined jovial. Frazier couldn’t help smiling as she gazed on his joyful countenance.

Mandy whispered to herself, “May the Lord bless thee and keep thee, may the Lord shine his face upon thee and give thee … laughter.” Then she laughed, genuine deep laughter. “Frazier, where did you say you found this painting?”

“I told you—in a whorehouse in Venice. The man from whom I purchased it, uh, it was his house but he was two years older than God and he said when he was a boy, before the Great War—tells you how old he was—that it was a house of pleasure. His mother, apparently, owned it. Rather hard up, the poor fellow. I fell in love with it.”

“But who told you about it?”

“A gondolier as we passed the house. Coincidence.”

“Fate.” Mandy kept smiling at Jupiter. “It’s magic, you know. I hope you never sell it.”

“First, you don’t want me to sell the Ben Marshall—”

Mandy interrupted, “You can’t bear to part with that painting of Sir Teddy. It’s too wonderful.”

“I’m in the business to make money. If I keep every painting I buy or take on commission I’ll be in the poorhouse.”

Mandy shrugged. “Maybe ‘Mount Olympus’ is one of those paintings that changes the life of whoever owns it.”

“And you thought I wasn’t playing with a full deck. Now you’re going to get mystical on me. Has breaking up with Sean lifted the scales from your eyes?”

“Very funny.” Mandy placed her finger on Jupiter’s
lips. They felt warm. Must be the light on the canvas. “You know, I bet he knew the Wife of Bath.”

“Today she’d be the Wife of Shower.”

Mandy punched Frazier in the arm for that, then laughed again, harder and louder. Jupiter’s radiance curled around her nostrils, feathered down into her lungs. “Oh, what the hell,” Mandy thought. “We’re going to live until we die and we’ll be dead a long time, so better get on with it, just get on with it and let the drudges of the world worry about being silly. We’re not here for a long time but we’re here for a good time.”

L
ENT DRAGGED ON, AS LENT ALWAYS DOES, AND FRAZIER
found herself giving up far more than she intended. She bought Carter’s Ford F150 four-by-four flare-side pickup. He needed the money and once she satisfied herself that the frame had withstood the carnage, she forked over $16,000 which was really more than it was worth, considering.

Carter laughed and told her that now she would be a mothertrucker, a true dyke in her pickup. She fired back that it was Miss Dyke to him. No matter how feckless or destructive he was, Frazier couldn’t help but love her brother.

She then paid an impromptu visit to Dr. Yancey Weems, who, still fearing she would come to her wits and sue his ass into next week, leaped up to greet her with open arms. He sat down fast enough when she bargained for Carter. If Yancey would forget this episode
and accept the repairs being picked up by Carter, then Frazier wouldn’t dream of suing him for malpractice. He accepted this bargain, which wasn’t so damned hard. If he sued Carter what would he get? Blood out of a turnip? Carter’s house? It wasn’t even in Carter’s name. Frank, knowing his son was a spectacular fuck-up, had kept the property in his name when he gave it to his son, so to speak, for a wedding present. That preyed upon Laura’s devious mind. What if Carter walked? What if he filed for a divorce? She certainly couldn’t file, no matter what that bastard did. She’d lose her house. Sooner or later Frank, a decent man but a businessman nonetheless, would sell the house.

Meanwhile Ann, riven with fear, whispered about town that Frazier had once made a pass at Laura, but Laura, blessed art thou amongst women, never so much as breathed a word because poor Libby and Frank would die and Carter would kill his sister. This smear campaign showed a certain vulpine skill in Ann. Had she told the tale on herself it would make a few of the smarter residents of the burg scrutinize her. This way Ann, perceived as a handmaiden to the beleaguered Laura, would gain points as a dear friend, and Laura would emerge with even more luster around her name. No doubt about it, Laura was on her way to becoming president of the Garden Club, to being raised up by the hagiolatry of suffering women, a splendor all the more shining because she herself never complained.

This dreck finally reached Ruru as she was buying flats of pansies at Elzroth’s Nursery. Wilfreda Gimble, the tiny stalwart of the hunt club, intoned the gossip as though sharing a sacred sacrament, the bond of female victimization. And what a joy, Laura Armstrong was victimized by both brother and sister, and utter ecstasy, it was sexual. This was scandal too good to be true. Wilfreda
gained her status by being the first in the community with news, bad news. She specialized in it; she reveled in it. She made Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson, and the other tarted-up boys and girls on television look like pikers. The theater of her ambition, to be the first with the worst, gave rise to a performance of high caliber. She lowered her voice as she sidled over to Ru. Wreaths of concern wrapped around her tiny brow.

“Oh, Mary Russell, getting an early start for spring?”

“And you, too, Wilfreda? How are your horses?”

“Fine. Now if I could just get you on a horse, Mary Russell. You’re only as old as the horse you’re riding, so it’s a way for us girls to stay young.” Hearty laughter. “Say, I am sorry about this terrible triangle with Carter, Laura, and Frazier.”

Ru set down the flats of purple pansies. “Triangle, as in Bermuda?”

A flutter of hand to heart completed the stylized gesture. “Oh, dear, you haven’t heard?”

“Apparently not. You’re dying to tell me. So go on. I’d rather hear it from you than someone else.” Ruru was telling the truth because she marveled at Wilfreda’s inauthentic emotion. She studied her much the way an entomologist might examine a cockroach.

“Frazier made advances at Laura, poor dear.”

Ruru tilted back her head and howled. This disconcerted Wilfreda, who was depending upon a response of shock and deep concern, depending upon it so she could trumpet Ru’s reaction to everyone she saw for the next week. Something was wrong with the script. “Laura flatters herself.”

“I beg your pardon?” A chill came over Wilfreda’s voice. She might have to back-pedal quickly and act as though something was wrong with Ru or else that Ru had misunderstood.

“My niece has better taste, Wilfreda. I doubt she’d make a pass at Laura if she were the last woman on earth. I still can’t figure out why my nephew married that calculating bitch.”