Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales (9 page)

As dazed as grieved, Carlotta and her attendant Congress tried to figure out what to do. Cliff had not named another vice-president after Nestor’s death, claiming it would be defeatist, and the public had lost its will to endorse anyone. August Woodhead offered to supervise business matters for the interim, and no one had the self-possession to object very strenuously. Carlotta’s old public service messages discouraging panic were brought out and aired again, and since she was identified only as Our First Lady, no updating was required. Now she was the public’s only symbol of continuity, or grace, or for that matter, survival, even if she didn’t understand or feel it herself. Her classmates, Culvert, her driving teacher, Van, Nestor,
moviegoers, the terrorists, Julienne, and now the world had seen her as a necessary figure of salvation, her blood-red hair absorbing their sorrows. Cliff alone had never seen her symbolically, but as a fellow creature. He didn’t know her either, but he took her directly, which was his power over her. Now she was truly alone, unwitnessed though universally watched, a living effigy of an unliving thing, a shipwrecked tourist finally too exhausted to go on denying her divinity to insistent natives.

Without intending to, she was carried like a standard beyond her own battlefield of good and evil, into a mood historians call postmodernity and psychologists call middle age. She was, in time, swept beyond the polar griefs of Van and Cliff. A peaceful, almost embalming fluid of fatalism cooled her veins, and the world saw it as stateliness. Once he acceded to the presidency after his father’s death, Shep offered to be her consort, but Carlotta needed to be properly magnetized.

After thesis and antithesis, she drifted not so much to a synthesis as to a tertiary finale. She became the mistress of the Portonovo twins, who had loved her as the Madonna from the moment they saw her hold her dying husband. They set up a rococo villa for her on the Mediterranean, and shared her unpossessively, for theirs was a Siamese ambition. She herself didn’t trouble to tell them apart, and they were simply identified internationally—insofar as that was possible with deteriorating communications—as the Brothers Who Sold Rome. They had acquired all the real estate in the Eternal City, incidentally obliging them to buy
the Catholic church itself, to dismantle and ship its ruins and architectural beauties worldwide as accessible local tourist attractions, since terrorism had virtually ended recreational travel. Technically, they were the Pope, and they authorized the subdivision of cathedrals everywhere into prestige co-op apartments. Carlotta acquiesced to them without loving them, a sort of heart’s retirement. The villa was perpetually obscured to waking eyes by the sun on the sea, and she could distract herself with the art objects Romulus and Remus pilfered from their own museums for her. They were certainly doting and undemanding, and any shouting they did was over the phone to their construction—or rather, deconstruction—crews.

When word came from the last surviving Walker son that the shell of Vertigo Park had finally collapsed, Carlotta was stirred by an unexpected pang of nostalgia. Sensing her wistfulness, the twins had Sacajawea High School brought over and reassembled for her on a hillside near the villa. She toured it with an enigmatic smile, as befitted an icon, pausing occasionally but finding no consolation in its familiarity. Her life’s plot eluded her, but when she sat to reflect in the cavernous old auditorium, she seemed to identify something in the now peeling mural of Sacajawea, Lewis and Clark’s young Indian guide, at their journey’s end.

The mural stretched high across the front wall of the room, above the twin masks of Comedy and Tragedy that hung over the stage where so many hopeful diplomas had been distributed. Sacajawea
stood on a gilded beach with the two explorers, bathed in a sunset that leapt as close as a bonfire, and she superfluously pointed out the limitless ocean before her. The two men were in darkness behind her, as if she were real and they were her halves in shadow. She seemed to be Lewis and Clark’s intercessor with nature, yet surprised by it herself, painted into a moment of perpetual and foregone discovery, the inlander awed at her first and continuous look at the Pacific Ocean.

Carlotta breathed deep, and closed her eyes.

M ERCURY	V ENUS	E ARTH
Small, dark, and speedy … “Race you round the furnace!” … No moon and doesn’t want one … Daredevil or homebody?… Party trick: fries eggs and freezes ice cubes at the same time.	Mysterious, or thinks she is … “Welcome to our mist!” … Really bright, but looks aren’t everything … I C CO 2 !… Cute, but that cloud cover … Her oceans were notions … Who’s minding the hothouse?	Cootie-catcher … Wet and wild … Talk, talk, talk … Oh those baby-blues … Air to spare, but smokes too much … Thinks the sun revolves around her.
Track 3, 4; First Place, World Series.	Morning Star; Evening Star.	History 1, 2, 3, 4; Art; Choir; R.O.T.C.; Most Populous.

M ARS	J UPITER	S ATURN
Always blushing … Long time no sea … Eerie canals … Premature polar caps … Ever consider moisturizer?… Sick of little-green-men jokes … “Two Moons Have I” … and one is nuts.	Big Joe … Bold and cold, with a tight hold …  How many moons???… Don’t mention that big red spot … B.M.O.C.… Loads of ammonia, but nothing to wash … Slept through Remedial Atmosphere … Orbit: anywhere he wants.	Beat the dress code … Showoff at hula hoop … Brrrrrr-illiant … Hope you like methane … Class clown, but don’t tell her.
Most Likely to Have Had Life.	Gravity (Captain); Biggest.	Best Dressed; Biggest (Runner-Up); Most Moons; 1000-M.P.H. Winds.

U RANUS	N EPTUNE	P LUTO
“C’mon, guys, it’s pronounced You’re a niss’ ” … And he is … Green mien, clean scene … quiet, wisely … Hydrogen fiend … A five-moon man … “See you next century!”	“Which one are you again?” … Not exactly molten … Far out, but only technically … Never volunteers … Solid … “No, it’s Uranus that has the five moons!”	Loner type … Recent transfer … Easy to miss … Small as a moon, but those long midnight joyrides … No curfew … “My folks say he is bad, but I know he is sad.”
Metal Shop; Most Average.	Ice Show; Outer Solar System Monitor.	Strangest Orbit; Most Days Absent.