In Her Day (8 page)

The usual funeral extravaganza made Carole all the more determined to die on a remote island where no human could embarrass her into the afterlife. Smothered as the casket was with gladiolas, Carole swore she could smell burned flesh. Such nearness to death in its tactile form terrified her. Margaret, sparkling, so pretty, so full of the devil, reduced to unrecognizable, stinking meat.

Mother bore the whole social consequences of death with dignity. Carole stood by her, wondering at the woman’s patience. You can only hear tidings of consolation repeated so many times before you’re ready to snatch the damned black veils off their shining hats and stuff them in their mouths. Luke stayed mute for the proceedings. Overwhelmed by emotion he took a typical male retreat and drank alarming quantities of whiskey. He was of no use whatsoever to Mother. She bore him as well as her sadness. Carole stayed on a week, looking after her mother and finally smashing all of Luke’s damned bottles of booze on the side of his 1955 Chevy. Half in the bag Luke heard the tinkling of glass and roared out of the house.

“What in the goddamned hell do you think you’re doing, Carole Lee?”

“Are you so snookered you can’t see?”

“I’ll go buy more,” her older brother flared.

And I’ll smash every damn one I find.”

“I ought to wipe that smile off your face.”

“Go ahead, asswipe. You can beat me up but brother I am going to hurt you bad while you do it.”

Luke shifted, his arms dropped to his sides. He was eight years older than his sister. Margaret had been three years older than Carole. A World War II veteran, Luke was an American contradiction: he worshipped violence but he feared death. Margaret’s death upset him more than the organized brutality of his infantry days in the European theater. That was war and bad as it was Luke had a place for it. But Margaret, a sister he loved, a sister he helped raise—the death of that adored person was beyond him. He had no place for such pain and no one warned him such a pain existed.

“Did you scratch my car, you little shit?”

“Come and see for yourself, turd.”

At the sound of the word
turd
Luke had to laugh. Both his sisters stood up to him but Carole dipped more frequently into the English language for insults. At least this feigned hostility was better than the pain—for a while, anyway.

“You watch your mouth, Dr. Smartass. Women aren’t supposed to talk like that. Shows what comes of going up there with those damn Yankees.”

“I swore long before I became an immigrant.”

“H-m-m, you’re lucky this car ain’t scratched.”

“How about letting me drive it? I’ll take you for a little ride, hero.”

With a shift of the gears they rambled down the streets and Carole turned toward the rich side of town where she loved to ride along and look at how the other half lived.

“Luke, you must stop drinking. I’ve got to go back tomorrow and return to work. Mother needs you sober. You hear me?”

Luke grunted.

“You got a mouth, use it.”

“I hear you for christ’s sake. I hear you. I don’t need you telling me I’m an asswipe. I already know it.”

“Lukie, look at that house. My gawd, a small battalion could live in there. Can you imagine living like that?”

“Ah, shit, Carole, that ain’t nothing. You should see them castles in Europe. Now that’s the way to live.”

“While you were knocking the Nazis to hell maybe you should have liberated one little castle for yourself and the family.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, what’s this little microphone here by the steering wheel.”

“Pick it up and say something evil in it and find out.”

“You’re nuts. Is this another one of your jokes?”

“No, now come on. Say something—wait until we pass this old toad on the corner up there.”

As they approached the white-haired gentleman, Carole, at her brother’s urging, spoke one of their favorite childhood insults: “Fartblossom.”

To her amazement and acute discomfort the offending word blared for all the world to hear and heaven, too. The old man’s jaw fell like the gangplank of an amphibious landing craft.

“Luke!” Carole hit the gas and sped from the scene of her crime.

“Here give it to me.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. I know what you’ll do. Luke, gimme that back. Gimme that.”

“Giving you nothing.”

Always clever with tools, Luke had engineered loudspeakers
next to his horns. To his eternal delight he could wreck anyone’s composure.

“Watch me buzz this fucking Cadillac up here. Hey, you. Hey, you in that piece of expensive shit. Move over. Yes, you in the blue Cadillac, this is Richmond’s new police aerial control unit talking to you. You’re violating code number 84A. Pull over, an officer is on his way to greet you. Don’t try to run away. We have your license plate number.”

The driver of the automobile pulled over and stuck his head out the window looking for this new, low flying craft. As the little Chevy rolled down the road he still sat there waiting for the police. Luke bellowed, slapping his muscular thigh. “Dumb, dumb. God, people are so dumb if you wrapped up shit in red cellophane they’d buy it. Lookit that rich bastard he’s still sitting there.” His face shone red with victory and laughter.

“Luke, you beat all. Now gimme that back.”

“I’m not giving it to you. I’m gonna have me some fun.”

“Give it to me. I promise to play.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Honest, Luke. See that middle-aged lady walking up there in the feathered hat?”

“Yes, I see her. I ain’t blind.”

“You say you’re the voice of God and talk low like the preacher. I’ll go slow. Then when you’re done sanctifying her, give me the microphone.”

Luke got so excited as they approached their target, his voice hit his shoes. “Sister. Sister, this is the voice of the Lord calling to thee. Do thee read me, sister?”

Carole winced on the word
read
. “This isn’t a bombing mission.”

Luke took the hint. “Sister, do thee hear the voice
of the Lord, thy God, the Lord of Hosts, the Father of the Lamb?”

The woman’s pink hat bobbed up and down with recognition. As they still had not drawn even with her they couldn’t observe the look of wonder on her round face.

“Sister of the pink hat I have shown myself to thee to tell thee, thee—yes, thee, thee—good woman, must save this godless country. Turn thy brethren from the worship of Mammon, turn thy brethren towards the path of righteousness. Consider thy past life as blackness, as Jonah swallowed by the whale of greed, selfishness, and spitefulness. Now come forth, good woman, come forth and spread my message to all America.”

Coasting past the struck woman they noticed a look of utter shock. Luke started to giggle but he had the good sense to put his hand over the microphone.

“Sister, if thee will do my will fall on thy knees and praise my glory.”

She sank down like a shot doe, threw her hands over her head and ripped off a quavering, “Praise be the Lord.”

Carole snatched the microphone from Luke’s paw and put the frosting on the cake. “Sister, this is the angel Carole speaking to thee now. Obey the message of the Lord, thy God. Save this nation from sin and destruction. I am leaving thee now, sister, to struggle with the Prince of Darkness and his servants. Sing along with me as my voice fades. No, no, down on thy knees, sister, don’t get up yet. As my voice fades, remember thou hast been touched by the Lord.” Carole, in a surprisingly spiritual voice, sang “Nearer My God to Thee” and as they turned the corner, there she was down on her knees, hands clasped to
her ample bosom, singing the hymn, sweat running over her forehead.

Hysterical with glee, sister and brother drove back home barely in control of the car or themselves. As they pulled in front of the run-down but clean house, Carole punched her brother in the arm, “Jesus, that was fun!”

“I bet that woman starts a tent show right on that very spot.” Luke doubled over and said before he realized it, “Shit, I wish Margie could have seen that.”

“Oh, hell, she’d of passed herself off as Virgin Mary.”

“Yeah, I know.” Luke turned to Carole with tears in his eyes. She put her arms around him and kissed him gently on the cheek.

The next day as Luke saw her off he vowed, “No more boozing, Sis. I’ll take care of the old girl. You come on home more often. I mean it.” He was as good as his word.

On the long ride back to New York she thought of her brother and the price men paid for being men. She thought of Luke’s gentleness and sense of humor. He looked like a grizzly bear and used his fearsome image to ward off others from seeing what rested within him, an incredible sweetness. Of all three of us, Luke is most like Mom, she thought. Margaret tiptoed into her thoughts. Margaret, the dark-eyed, the imaginative, the shining imp as bright as a dragonfly—we Americans want happy endings and death denies us a happy ending. I’ve rejected death all my life but you, Margaret, true to yourself as in life, made me see how silly I am. It will come to me too just as it came to you, my adorable, big sister. Carole leaned against the window and saw the reds and yellows of the fall. The East Coast bedecked itself before wearing the subtle clothing of wintertime.
Reeling from the impact of the color, Carole thought against her will for she no longer wanted to think, “She’ll never see this. Why? Why? I don’t understand it. I can’t understand it. Why should Margaret die? Why should any of us die? What a cruel joke. Well, I’ll live double. I’ll live for Margaret and me. I’ll live for every young and bright and laughing person cut down before her time. If there’s a secret of the dead come back to me and tell me, Margaret. If there’s a secret of life, oh tell me. Knowing or not knowing, I shall live, I will live, I must live. Life is the principle of the universe. Life!”

Exhausted by this undisplayed emotion she fell asleep and did not awake until the conductor nudged her. “New York City, Miss.”

When Carole drowsily collected her luggage and trudged out of the hissing train she saw, to her surprise, a waiting Adele, arms full of flowers, books and records. That was one of the happiest moments of her entire life.

Bumped by a woman with frizzy hair and silver stars painted all over her face, Carole crashed back into the present, astonished at her journey. She put her arms around her body more to convince herself she really was here in 1976 in this scene of colliding costumes, than to keep them out of the way. Yes it was the present, vividly so. No time in the past could have ever looked like this. As her fingers grazed her rib cage she realized how finely made she was. For one second she could trade places with Ilse, sensing what it must be to touch these ribs, the muscled abdomen, the miracle of the flesh.

“We’ve got to stop meeting this way.” Ilse kissed her.

“You’ve been watching too many old movies,” Carole said, glad to see her.

“No, I’m imitating you.”

“Your dance is a huge success.”

“It always is. We do it every other week. This was my turn to take it on; you know, rotation.”

“Do you have to stay through the whole thing?”

“No, I made all the preparations and womaned the door for a couple hours. Jean O’Leary will take care of the tail end.”

“Will she be able to shoo them out?”

“So many of these women have a crush on her they’ll hang around. Maybe I should go home and bring back my recorder so I can pipe them out. Do you want to go right away or can we dance a bit?”

“Let’s go.”

“Okay. I’ve spent too much time here the last few weeks as it is.”

Louisa May Allcat zoomed down the stairs and leisurely trotted back up again, satisfied with her routine of escape.

“Louisa, don’t be slow about it. In the house.”

Naturally, Carole’s urging produced the opposite effect and the animal sat down on the third step from the top, content in her ability to irritate.

“Ilse, hold the door a second. Louisa May’s getting grand again. The later I come home the longer she sits out there.”

Carole scooped up the rotund beast and put her down by her dish. Louisa May revelled in the attention and at the sound of a food dish rattling, a sleepy Pussblossom emerged from under the sofa. Ilse patted her vertical tail and looked around the apartment. As many times as she’d come here, Ilse couldn’t get used to it. The place was too thought out, too lush. Although far more imaginative than her parents’ home in Brookline, Massachusetts, there was something in the completeness of the apartment that
bothered her. The front room looked out on 73rd Street, the windows had shutters on them from the original time of the building’s construction, which must have been around 1890. An oriental rug warmed the floor. A beige nineteen-thirties sofa with huge curling arms was flanked on either side by two beige Barcelona chairs. A glass and chrome coffee table positioned between the sofa and chairs had on it one pink chambered nautilus cut in half to reveal the flawless, pearly chambers. An upturned, polished tortoise shell served as an ashtray. The subtle color scheme drew her eyes to the wall, where color blazed. A magnificent feathered flag from Peru hung on one wall, the deep green and teal blue throbbing. Adele, who had one herself, had given it to Carole to remind her that the Incas were more civilized in the Middle Ages than the barbarous Westerners. Carole pointed out to Ilse the first time she visited the apartment that, of course, it was not an original. If it were its price would be a handful of rubies, she laughed. This breathtaking work rested between two medieval manuscript pages, the gold glittering and the Latin crisp even now after all these centuries. On the opposite wall hung three paintings by new artists Carole had discovered this year: Betsy Damon, Judy Chicago, and Byrd Swift. The works, startling in conception and execution, harmonized with her flag and manuscript pages.

Ilse couldn’t figure how Carole put things together but clearly the older woman possessed an unusual visual imagination. Perhaps it was the naked sensuousness of the room that jarred Ilse.

The apartment had a strange layout. You walked into a tiny hallway and faced an equally tiny kitchen. The front room was to the right and to the left was a wide workroom with a marble fireplace and off that
was a small bedroom that also shared space with the bathroom. Ilse loved Carole’s workroom. Whenever she came into it she thought she could sit down and write shatterproof position papers for the movement. The fireplace was in the middle of the room and over it hung a huge carnival wheel of chance. The cats loved sitting on top of the fireplace spinning the wheel and listening to the little metal pins tick against the rubber stopper. All the walls, even the walls up to the fireplace, were floor to ceiling bookshelves crammed with books. A polished, simple campaign desk commanded the middle of the room opposite the fireplace. The brass handles shone and the wood seemed deep and rich with the years. Carole used to wonder who had it, Napoleon or Wellington? She wanted to know which side to be on. An impressive unabridged dictionary was left of the desk, on a small podium and within reach. A Smith Corona electric typewriter occupied the right side of the desk and the middle of the smooth surface held two neat piles of papers. A brass inkwell with two Montblanc pens glittered. Even with all the bookshelves, huge stacks of books silently waited on the floor for Carole to build bookshelves all over her bedroom. A big window behind the dictionary looked out into the garden of the apartment below.