Venus Envy, page 14
Ru and Frazier respectfully fell silent as Mandy pushed her orange tee into the ground, topped with an orange ball. She slipped her driver out of the bag. The woods proved more difficult to handle than the irons for Mandy, so she’d psych herself out, worrying instead of simply hitting the ball.
Frazier read her mind: “Think of it as a fat iron.”
Fat iron, hell. The woods felt unwieldy. Mandy wished she made enough money to buy graphite clubs. She kept trying out the set in the pro shop and they felt fabulous in her hands. The price was equally fabulous. Now those woods—yes, with those woods she could accomplish miracles.
Mandy took a few practice swings. Then she stepped up to the ball. She tried to relax. Slowly she brought the club up over her shoulder, she paused for a moment, and then tried to do what Frazier told her over and over again: “Let the club head do the work, the club head and gravity.” Gravity was off today. The ball sailed way high like a balloon escaping, only to hook off the fairway.
“Damn, damn, double damn.” Mandy voiced her disappointment.
“Honey, if I could have hit a shot like that after playing two years of golf I’d have bought beer for everyone,” Ruru encouraged her.
“You’re in the rough, not the trees, so you’re in good shape.” Frazier called out from the higher tee.
Mandy and Ruru stepped off the ladies’ tee, out of the way of Frazier’s ball, and turned around to observe her swing. She made it look so effortless. She’d limber up, then stand still, lifting the club as though it were a feather, only to swing it down in an arc of grace and power.
The ball soared, climbing like a homesick angel, screeching in the distance even as it gained altitude. After what seemed a long time the white dot dropped into the middle of the fairway.
Mandy and Ru looked at each other and then at Frazier. They shook their heads in admiration and climbed into the green golf cart. Frazier joined them.
Now the second shot called for an interesting decision. Depending on where the ball rested, depending on whether one could really handle a wood without the help of a tee, there was an opportunity to use a four wood. It was tricky.
Mandy wisely chose her four iron. Even though she would be sacrificing distance, she was worried about getting back out onto the fairway. Ruru, in good position, grabbed her four wood, as did Frazier.
Frazier and Mandy studied Mandy’s predicament.
“Okay. See that hillock? You aim for that and you’ll be in good shape.”
Mandy, relieved that the grass wasn’t as high as she had feared, punched the ball out and hit stronger than either she or Frazier had anticipated. The orange globe disappeared over the manicured hillock.
“What a shot!” Frazier placed her hand over her eyes to shade the glare.
From down on the fairway Ruru cheered.
“I didn’t think I’d hit it so far.” Mandy blinked.
“You’re in Mom and Dad’s backyard,” Frazier said.
After Ruru hit her second shot, a straight clean strike but a bit short, she joined Frazier and Mandy as they clambered over the hillock. Frazier’s ball lay farther still up the fairway. The three women gazed down at the white brick Armstrong house. Perched like a brilliant oriole by the back door sat Mandy’s golf ball.
“Uh-oh.” Mandy despaired.
“There’s a creative way out of this.” Frazier rubbed her palms together.
“Well, if she takes her five iron she can pitch up and over Libby’s boxwoods. It will cost her a shot, plus another one to get on the fairway, but it could be a lot worse.” Ruru slung her wood over her shoulder.
“Ru, it will cost me more than a shot. I don’t know if I can get the ball up and over like that and think of the divot I’ll make in Mrs. Armstrong’s lawn. She’ll have a coronary.”
“We won’t be that lucky,” Frazier replied. “Follow me. I know how to do this. It will cost two strokes but it’s going to work.”
Frazier and Mandy strode into the backyard, followed by Auntie Ruru driving the golf cart.
“Seven iron,” Ru puzzled.
“Nope.” Frazier opened the back door. As this was a Federal-style house with a large central hallway, a clean expanse dotted with grotesquely expensive chairs along the wall beckoned the threesome. “Ruru, hold open the front door.”
“With extreme pleasure.” Ruru giggled, her gray curls dancing.
“Your mother will kill us.”
“She’s at Garden Club, so she’ll never know. Now you do what I tell you to do. Take your pitching wedge, because you have to get the ball over the lip of the back step. But it’s not much, see. So a soft, soft swing, using your wrist, or you’ll put a hole in the ceiling. Not that I care. In fact, I’d pay to see Mother’s face when she discovered it and I’d love to hear the explanation she’d concoct to explain the sudden depression in the ceiling.”
“Frazier, I don’t think I can do this.”
“Yes, you can. Remember, soft.” Frazier handed Mandy her pitching wedge, then held open the door, standing well to one side of it.
Mandy gulped and flicked her wrist. The ball popped up over the stairs and landed in the middle of the hall, where the heart-pine floorboards glowed with decades of waxing.
“Roll, you sucker, roll!” Ruru yelled from the other end.
The orange ball died by a Queen Anne chair but not under it, thank God.
Frazier grabbed Mandy’s putter. “Come on.”
Mandy dutifully followed. “I was too soft.”
“Hey, this is an original golfing situation. Don’t worry about it.” She handed Mandy her putter. “Aim for Ru.”
“Thanks.” Ru ducked her head.
“Don’t hold back.”
Mandy followed Frazier’s instructions and knocked the ball way out into the front yard. Ru shut the door and scurried around the back for the golf cart.
Cheering, Frazier and Mandy dashed out to see if Mandy had any kind of shot. She did. All she needed was a strong smack and she’d be under the green. She had to clear some hedges about twenty yards off but Frazier told her that was a piece of cake and after Ruru arrived with the clubs she discovered it was.
Laughing like grade schoolers, the three finished out the day rejuvenated by the situation, by the sport, and by one another.
That evening Libby called Frazier. When Frazier picked up the phone she groaned because she assumed she’d hear yet another chapter in “A Day in the Life of Carter Redington Armstrong and His Mother.”
Instead Libby fairly shrieked, “You’ll never guess what happened to me!”
“What?” Her mother’s tone worried her: sickness, money losses, more Carter troubles, someone at the club picking on her because of Frazier’s sexual orientation—such an interesting way to put it.
“My hallway floor has pockmarks! You can’t believe it—you just can’t believe it. That was the first thing I noticed when I came home from the club late because Florence Grissom had to tell me everything I never wanted to know about her vacation on St. John Island. Pictures too.” Libby’s voice shivered with distaste. “How many wild donkeys can you look at, I ask you? She must have shot five rolls of wild donkeys and the ocean. I know what the ocean looks like. It’s big, it’s blue, and it’s boring. Well, so I came home, my arms falling off from carrying the groceries—they were having a sale on steak at Giant so I thought it prudent to load up the freezer. Well, anyway, I barely had my toe in the doorway when I noticed these tiny marks, like teeth marks. I put the groceries down and I looked. Then I got down on my hands and knees. My hallway, from front to back, is pockmarked. Pockmarked!”
“Smallpox.”
“What?” Libby’s voice hit the soprano register.
“You said the floor is covered with pockmarks so I figured it was smallpox.”
“If that isn’t comfort to your mother,” Libby growled. “I’ll tell you what happened. Some of those terrible golfers walked through my house! My house! And in their golf shoes. I know that’s what happened. I am never leaving my house unlocked again. You can’t trust people anymore. I am sick, sick, sick, and believe you me, the country club is going to hear about this.”
“Mom, I am sorry,” Frazier lied through her teeth.
29
LOVE INSPIRES ME TO NAUSEA.” BILLY CICERO LEANED AGAINST his backup car, a metallic-silver Range Rover. Since he worked in Richmond, servicing the vehicle was easy and he really loved the car.
Frazier watched the numbers on the gas pump flip over. Gas prices were like slot machines—from week to week prices popped up or slid down. She’d run over to the station by Zion’s Crossroads early this morning because she needed to check on Carter’s truck, which was being repaired. The body shop was nearby. She’d noticed she needed gas, and as luck would have it, she pulled in as Billy was filling up his Range Rover.
Both parties were surprised at each other’s presence but Frazier figured Fate was throwing them together for one last roll of the dice, or a new game altogether. She asked Billy if he loved Kenny. Nausea was the reply.
“That’s too bad. He’s a good man.”
“Fray, I’ve never been interested in long-term deals. Why would I change now? Kenny became an exercise in monotony.”
“Ann too.” Frazier couldn’t resist a dig at her ex. “The Princess of Lingerie spends more money at Victoria’s Secret than most families spend on food.”
“I won’t be taking her out much.” He smiled. “I had to escort her to the Saint Patrick’s dance. She’s so petty, and it provided her with a lurid glory if only for a moment—then, too, I enjoyed the look on your face.”
“Billy, why are you so mean to me?”
“Because”—his lustrous eyes flashed—“you spoiled everything. I would have married you. It would have been perfect. Then you wrote those bleeding-heart letters. God, Frazier, I would never have thought you’d cave in to cheap emotion. Who cares if you tell the truth? People want to be lied to, cajoled, jollied along. Don’t disturb them with the facts. You made an ass of yourself and I’m going to make certain you don’t make an ass out of me.”
“Having a lesbian friend doesn’t mean you’re gay. Come on.” The pump rang behind her. She withdrew the nozzle.
“Why take the chance? Life pleases me right now. I had no choice but to dump you and Kenny.”
“Why is it so hard for you to tell the truth?” She gripped the nozzle until her knuckles were white.
He put his hand on her gas pump, leaning on it. “Frazier, people don’t deserve the truth. Look around you. Do you want to tell the truth to that bozo behind the counter in the store? His I.Q. hovers at his body temperature. Do you think the so-called average American thinks about anything else except his stomach and his dick? As for the American woman, she doesn’t think at all. If she did, there would have been riots during the Hill-Thomas hearings. You girls are conditioned to be fucked over. It’s normal for you. Why, tell me why, you would want to share precious information about yourself, about your business, about the world with these disasters on legs?”
Frazier’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “Maybe I don’t think the average American is so stupid. Maybe I think Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Washington were right.”
“They were hardly average and every one of them was rich. Democracy, like most beguiling ideas, is impossible to practice. If you read the Bill of Rights to ten people, picked at random, off the streets of Richmond or San Francisco or Lincoln, Nebraska, for starters they’d tell you it was too radical. Secondly, the assholes wouldn’t even know it was the Bill of Rights. Shit, give them a Bill of Wrongs and Bill of Goods and keep the common man away from the voting booth. Tell them nothing. You had to go and shoot off your mouth or your pen. Damn, Fray, we could have enjoyed a fabulous life.”
“Lying?” She waved to the man in the store, indicating she’d be in soon.
“No, protecting our interests. Let me tell you how life works in America, honey. Michael Milken sits in prison. Bad. Right? Wrong? It’s not a high-security place so he doesn’t have to rub shoulders with the men who stink. He doesn’t have to worry if he bends over to pick up his soap in the shower. He has only to sit and wait because when he is released he will still have about a hundred and twenty-five million dollars and that’s after he settles the lawsuits. The savings-and-loan debacle is the theme song of the Republican Party and no one is batting an eye, Michael Milken least of all. Drexel Burnham Lambert, his former employers, will pay out about one-point-three billion on the lawsuits and the poor dopes in the streets will pick up the tab on the S and L con. And you want to tell the truth? Michael Milken has shown the way, along with a host of others. While they’re cleaning out the till the administration is making august pronouncements about economic recovery. The truth will not set you free. The truth will not win you any admirers. The truth just gets in the way.”
“Guess I agree with you about the National Administration of Federal Neglect”—she sighed—“but not about the truth.”
“It’s not even Federal Neglect unless you’re black or poor or female or all of the above. This is about greed and they haven’t bothered to legalize it, which at least the Internal Revenue Service has done about its thievery. This is outright bold robbery with barely any punishment, and as long as that wonderful average American you seem to trust doesn’t fight back, those folks will keep stealing. Wake up, Frazier. Only fools tell the truth.”
“Billy, I can’t live and be that cynical.”
“Okay, forget the larger issue. Think about being gay. Half the women you meet will be nervous. The other half will also be nervous but secretly furious that you haven’t made a pass at them. You will be accused of doing things, all sexual, of course, that you never did. If you date a younger woman you will be accused of being an older, manipulating, seductive lesbian who preys on the young and innocent. If you date an older woman they’ll say you’re looking for a mother. If you date a woman you’re own age they’ll say it’s like being sisters and won’t last. You can’t win. The Born Agains, those wonderful people with fish on everything, will assault you at every possible convenience and guess what, other lesbians will accuse you of not being gay enough. No respect. No support. No nothing. I don’t want that kind of life.”
“I don’t either but I’m not sorry I wrote those letters.”
“I am.” He glanced at the man in the store. “Look at that guy. He’s so ugly he’s a Dairy Queen.” That meant he fucked cows.
Frazier laughed. Billy was heartless yet funny in his cruelty. The fellow behind the counter would surely have difficulty attracting a female companion. “Billy, will you ever grow up?”
“The secret of youth is arrested development.” He grinned. “I know, you think I’m hard. I’m not. I see the world exactly as it is. Americans want an uncrucified Christ. In the meantime, they crucify anyone who shows the least bit of brilliance, the least bit of individuality. And, baby, that’s you. Even more than me, that’s you. How dare you be an independent woman? How dare you be rich? You’d better suffer.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “It would have been so perfect.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” She covered his hand with hers. “Because you didn’t love me. I don’t think I would have minded so much that you weren’t in love with me. Like you, Billy, I have always been suspicious of romantic love. It looks too much like a narcissism shared by two, but I would have liked to have been loved by you, loved for myself. So let’s part neutral. Don’t be angry at me, if you can help it. I’ll try to remember the good times and we had plenty of those.” She started for the cashier inside the store.
He reached out and pulled her back. “The higher emotions aren’t necessarily in my realm but I’ll try. I won’t be seeing much of you, for obvious reasons, so let me fill up your gas tank. One last present, okay?” Billy’s face, when he smiled, radiated such handsomeness.
“Okay.” A tear ran down Frazier’s cheek.
Billy pulled out a gas card. “I envy Christ. He was born before the credit card.” He walked to the store and waved with his back to her.
Frazier slid behind the wheel and drove away. She gave up fighting the tears. What the hell, no one could see her. She would miss him, miss his linguistic brilliance allied to total disenchantment, miss his take-charge attitude and I-can-do-anything outlook. She would miss the kisses even if they were Judas kisses. And she had to think about what he had said to her, because she lived in a country where her love was a felony.
How savage to be persecuted for what was best within you. Maybe Billy was by far the wiser person.
30
THE FIRST THING FRAZIER NOTICED WHEN SHE UNLOCKED THE front door of the gallery was the smashed window-pane. When she found the rock, which she picked up with a piece of paper in case of fingerprints, she recoiled in disgust. Painted on the rock in red letters was the word QUEER. Well, that was one way for word to get out.
She placed the rock back where it had landed and then double-checked her inventory. Nothing was touched. However, Dionysus’s wine cup sat on the floor in front of the Olympian painting. Frazier rushed over to the painting. Again she declined to touch the cup. But there it was, a handsome golden goblet filled with wine. In the painting Dionysus now held sumptuous grapes in his hand.
