Picture Palace (10 page)

Orlando said, “It's beautiful out.” Now it was darkening and the flakes were shifting slowly past the parlor window, made gold by our lights and swaying like feathers as they fell.

“Where's the party?” asked Phoebe.

“Wellfleet,” he said. “At the Overalls.”

We had always known the Overalls. Like us, they were year-round residents of the Cape, and had a house on Chip-man's Cove. My parents went to the uproar in Boston with Mr. and Mrs., and we played with the two children. I think they looked down on us a little because they swam in the cold water of the Bay and we had the warm water of the Sound; the implication was that they were hardy and we were effeminate and sissified, Standish Overall was about Orlando's age, and Blanche was somewhere between Phoebe and me. Papa didn't think much of Standish, and in fact said, “He looks like a girler,” which in Papa's eyes was the worst thing you could be (“I hear this Frank Sinatra's a fearful girler,” he said some years later. “How I wish that man would leave the building!”). Standish, who positively honked with confidence, was good at everything, had an athlete's bounce and like other wealthy boys I knew had begun to go bald at twenty. Blanche was a vain prissy thing who behaved like his wife and who had occasional fits of aggression, like a person who knows deep down her feet stink.

Orlando said that Mr. and Mrs. Overall were away for the weekend and that Standish—or Sandy, as he was known—had got his hands on some bootleg liquor and was giving a party.

“I can wear my new dress,” said Phoebe.

“Miss Dromgoole's not going to like this,” I said.

“I'll take care of the Ghoul,” said Orlando.

“What'll you say?”

“That I can't go to a party without my sweethearts.”

Phoebe smiled, but I knew what he meant.

The Ghoul raged, but off we went in the winter dark, the three of us in Orlando's car, the snow curling wildly in front of the headlights. And though we weren't that young anymore, I felt we were all about ten years old, because no matter what age you are, if you are related like that you feel truant and reckless if you're all sitting in the front seat of a car in a blinding snowstorm. Brothers and sisters never outgrow their past if it's been happy. Orlando told us about his English poetry course and how he liked Harvard, and then we sang “Clementine” and “She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain.”

The Cape was empty, the fallen snow was black, the trees looked stiffer in the cold; and if I thought anything I suppose it was about having spent the day photographing snow scenes from the window and how easy and untruthful it was compared with being in it. I sang, but I stared at the low wolfish woods and the toppling flakes and heard the tire chains doing a smacking rhumba on the mudguards. At the brows of hills the snowy sky and storm clouds hung like a shroud. It was coming down hard, but it wasn't freezing—this snowfall brought a somber warmth to the road, damp and temporary—so the car cut its own track and tossed the slush aside and I could see the flying blobs sink in the banks and plow-marks at the roadside. Every so often there would be a soft thud as a mound of wet snow slid down an evergreen bough; then the bough would shake itself and spring up sighing.

Orlando said, imitating Papa, “Gawjus.”

Outside Wellfleet, below the small village, the Overalls' house was twinkling on the cove. It faced the Bay, where a commotion of waves, whiter than the snow, was rising to meet the storm and traveling in to beat against the low jetty: flecks of white on the swells highlighting the turbulence, peaks subsiding and beginning, a sound at the sea-wall like icy digestion, and from the house, laughter.

There was something barbarous about all those drunken people raising hell in the house on such a beautiful night, and as soon as I saw them at the windows I wanted to go away. I said, “I hate parties.”

“You might meet a nice fella,” said Orlando.

“I've got a nice fella,” I said. I squeezed his gloved hand. “I'm staying with you.”

He said, “What about you, Phoebe?”

“You know damn well what I want,” she said.

Orlando laughed, then yanked up the hand brake. The motor shuddered, coughed, spat, and died.

Inside, there were mostly youngsters, tearing around and sweating. They were ladling some sort of orange poison out of a punchbowl which had hunks of bruised grapefruit in it. It was a fairly typical get-together for those years: if people weren't drinking there was a dead silence; if they were, they were drunk. There was no in-between.

Everyone cheered, seeing Orlando, and they swept him away from Phoebe and me. For the next hour or so it was a madhouse, the noisy college crowd making a night of it, one enormous brute pounding a ukulele with his knuckles, couples canoodling on the sofa, and some out cold and making a Q-sign with their tongues hanging out of their mouths.

I was deeply shocked. It dawned on me that I was seeing another side of Orlando: this person had been hidden from me, and I wanted to take him, then and there, and go home. Boys in crimson sweaters kept coming over and asking Phoebe to dance. She said no, but at last I said, “You might as well,” and she began dancing with Sandy. Then Orlando, who had not been dancing, snatched a girl's arm and whirled her around in front of Phoebe. The dancers were jumping so hard the pictures shook on the walls. I sat there with my feet together thinking: I'm a photographer.

Later, Orlando came over to me. His eyes were glazed and his other self smirked. He said, “Where's Phoebe?”

“Dancing her feet off.”

He made a face. “Why aren't you?”

“No one asked me,” I said. “Anyway, I don't want to.”

He dragged me out of my chair and whisked me to the center of the room. Then he did a kind of monkey-shuffle; I imitated him and we were dancing. I heard someone say, “That's his sister,” and I tried even harder.

Orlando knew a trick that took my breath away each time he did it. It was this: he stood in one spot, clenched his fists at his sides and did a backward somersault, landing on his feet. He had done it for us in the garden or on the beach—I had a photograph of him where he appeared as a pair of whirling trousers above an admiring Phoebe. That night dancing with me he did three of them in a row and caused such a sensation that everyone stopped to watch him. He very nearly took a spill on his last somersault—he backflipped and I thought he was going to land on his stomach—but he came up smiling on two feet.

Phoebe said, “Stop it, Ollie, you're going to be sick.”

Orlando, who was red in the face from all those jumps, said, “I'm all right—I can prove it.”

“Go ahead,” said Phoebe.

“Give me room.”

People had gathered around to listen, and after that wild dancing and those somersaults Orlando's curly hair was damp with sweat and lying close to his head. He blazed with energy, his shirt half unbuttoned and his teeth gleaming. Someone kicked the phonograph and it stopped yakking “What'll I Do” and Orlando said in his growly voice,

 

They flee from me, that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber . . .

 

There was a hush—he had silenced them with his superb poem, one I had never heard before. And I knew why he was saying it. I was proud: he was declaring his love for me. I saw everyone watching, and even Phoebe, who had criticized him for his somersaulting and acted as if he was showing off—I saw her rapt attention. Her dress was open at her neck and she was breathing hard, her breasts going up and down. I tried to catch her eye, but she faced Orlando, her mouth rounded as if she were saying, “Ollie,”

Orlando's voice teased and swelled and dropped, became emphatic on one word and nearly sang another. Each syllable had a different weight. Now he was hunched, and seemed to be listening as he spoke.

 

When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall
,

And she me caught in her arms long and small
,

Therewith all sweetly did me kiss

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

 

I heard
It was no dream
, and I knew, I remembered that summer night when I had stolen along the hall and thought the house was going to fall down, and he was in the dark waiting for me. So it had mattered to him, too, although he had been so young. What a beautiful memory he had made it in the poem. He had cast his spell over everyone, and outside the snow dust sprinkled at the window and the waves gulped as they tucked into the sea wall. He loved me. I stepped back so that no one would see my tears.

Phoebe was beside me. She said, “Don't cry.”

But she was crying herself. It did not surprise me: we were sisters, and wept or laughed together.

“Let's take him home now,” I said.

There was applause. Orlando had finished, but before we could get to him a boy stepped between Orlando and us and said to him, “You think you're something.”

Orlando smiled at him, his bright devastating smile that shut people up.

The boy said, “I loathe the Elizabethans.”

“Wyatt wasn't an Elizabethan,” said Orlando. “He was dead before Shakespeare was born.”

The boy spoke at large: “He's a Harvard man!”

Orlando said, “I don't think I know you.”

“Charlie,” said the boy, and put his hand out, and when Orlando didn't shake it he said, “It's trite and sentimental.”

“I like it,” said Orlando.

“
Like
it? What kind of literary judgment is that? Let's take it line by line and see if it stands up.”

Orlando looked sad. I wanted that boy Charlie to stop.

Charlie said, “You don't have the slightest idea of what it means—you're just seduced by the tumpty-tumpty rhythm.” He looked around for people to agree with him. “It sounds important, but underneath it's just Dorothy Parker.”

“Lay off,” said Orlando quietly.

“He's getting mad,” said Charlie.

“Just shut up.” Orlando started to walk away.

“Look at the professor now,” said Charlie.

“You've had too much gin, sonny,” said Sandy, trying to quiet Charlie down.

Charlie said, “It's the cadences that get me.”

I knew Orlando wasn't going to say anything, because he never talked about poetry like that. He had been so happy, and now he looked as if he was going to walk into a wall.

Phoebe said, “I'll get his coat.”

But Charlie said in a wuffling critic's voice, “He wanted to impress us. It sounds very sweet, but it's just artifice, low cunning, a kind of trick—”

And Orlando, who had been walking in circles, went over to him and grabbed him by the lapels and flung him across the room.

Blanche screamed.

Charlie got to his feet. Orlando hurried over to him and hit him hard in the face, and as he fell back someone opened the door and out he tumbled, doing a frantic tap dance on the steps and struggling into the snow. Orlando descended the steps, waited for him to rise, and knocked him down again.

Orlando said, “It's time to go.”

Seeing that we were leaving, Charlie picked himself up and laughed—a rueful and defeated snicker. He had snow on his back and snow on his head and looked punished, like a tramp in a storm.

Orlando's was the best reply I had ever seen, and it taught me everything I needed to know about critics: a critic was someone you wanted to hit.

“I'm sorry,” said Orlando, when we were in the car. He started the engine and chuckled. “No, I'm not sorry.”

I had never loved him more. His poem had kindled a fire in me where there had been warm ashes. It was unlike him to fight, but it was unlike him to do somersaults in public or recite poems. He was full of surprises.

 

Frank said, “What's the matter?”

“Nothing,” I said. “You're sure you want to go to Provincetown?”

“It was your idea.”

We were now beyond Truro, the road had widened, the sky was everywhere, propped magnificently on shafts of sunlight that held the clouds high. And soon we were sailing across the dunes into Provincetown. It had saved me before; it saved me again. I'd done it.

11

A
PLACE
I had plumbed with my camera had few memories for me. The pictures were definition enough, done at so many angles that the photographs were the whole; more was presumption, mere lies. If a person said, “I've seen your pictures—now I want to go there,” I knew I had failed. Only bad pictures made you look further. A great portrait to me was intimate knowledge, ample warning that there was nothing concealed, nothing more to say. I knew from
Mrs. Conklin, Frenise
, and
Slaughter
that my camera recorded surfaces, but that surfaces disclosed inner states: a person wore his history on his face, past and future, the mortal veil of lines and the skull beneath. There is a self-destruction, suicide's wince, in the eyes of my
Marilyn
and my
Hemingway
, and my
Frost
shows an utter egomaniac. I never denied the truth of the savage's complaint about photographers, that in taking their pictures we were stealing their souls.

I had always been interested in what people called savages. I thought of them as boogie-men. They bulked large in my first exhibition, which was held in a boathouse, formerly the Wharf Theater, in Provincetown. Frank wanted to see the place and hear about the show. I could tell he was rather let down by its size, the dinginess that gave it the look of a little chapel. If you didn't have the faith you wouldn't hear; you'd just find the acoustics awfully echoic and the stage too narrow and the whole building a firetrap.