Venus Envy, page 2
Maybe she had made some people happy. She’d found them the right painting at the right price. That was something.
Outside her window a robin perched in a tree, the red buds swelling despite a light dusting of snow. Spring would arrive early in Charlottesville this year. Frazier loved spring. She closed her eyes and listened to the determined chirp. There was something obscene and truly offensive about spring coming, about people enjoying themselves and her being dead.
Carter’s visit had exhausted her. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. She didn’t want to miss anything. Not one second. And she hoped she’d be spared more emotional farewells. Emotional expression was all very well but she had made a life of emotional repression her very own and she might as well die as she had lived—with distance and reserve.
She dozed off. Her friends, the doctors, and nurses marveled at her ability to withstand pain but she felt very little. No wonder governments declared morphine and cocaine illegal; apart from being highly addictive, those substances made one feel divine. She had heard that for terminal patients a speedball of morphine and cocaine might be mixed, but she was kept to morphine.
When Frazier’s eyelids fluttered open, the nasty digital clock read 3:12. The ticking of the pendulum, the little click of hands as they swept the minutes and then the hours, had contented the human race for hundreds of years. The rhythm of the sounds gave signal not so much that life was passing but that all was regulated, harmonious, and in perspective. The great grandfather clock in the hall of her parents’ Federal house sang out every fifteen minutes, a longer note on the half hour, and joyous chimes on the hour. The moon phases, as exquisitely painted as the clock face was tooled, announced that time was decorous. But a digital clock announced a paucity of imagination and a break with tradition. No hands. Frazier thought of them as amputees. Well, had anything important ever happened at 3:12 in the afternoon?
Before she could answer her own question Billy Cicero glided through the door. Billy’s impeccable wardrobe kept a platoon of tailors busy on Jermyn Street in London. Today he wore a charcoal suit with a pale pinstripe, thin but not quite a chalk stripe. His vest was dove gray, his; bright-white shirt was made of the finest cotton, and his tie was plum with tiny gold snaffle bits embroidered throughout. Billy had attended St. Paul’s in America and then Oxford in England. He never wore a school tie because anybody who was anybody knew what college you attended at Oxford. School ties were for people who didn’t count, and in Billy’s book most people didn’t count.
“Precious, you look like shit.” Billy smiled and then pecked her on the cheek.
“Really.” Frazier agreed with him. “If I’m going to die I might as well be as attractive as possible while I’m doing it.”
Billy reached over and picked up the telephone receiver. His strong fingers punched in the numbers. “Terese? Billy. We need you over here at the hospital, east wing, room six twenty-five.” He paused. “Hair, brows, makeup, and”—he grabbed Frazier’s hand—“manicure too. On my tab, darling. Thank you so much.” He hung up the phone. “The miracle worker, Terese Collier, will arrive in this holding pen in two hours. Think you’ll live that long?”
“Guess I have to.” Frazier squeezed Billy’s sun-browned hand.
Billy Cicero possessed a catastrophic beauty. No one was immune to it, least of all Billy himself. He towered over most people at 6′5″. His shoulders were as broad as the continental shelf; his body muscular and well proportioned. His face was as if Michelangelo’s “David” had sprung to life with dazzling teeth, deep-brown eyes, and thick black hair.
People oohed and aahed whenever Billy and Frazier made an appearance. “The perfect couple,” bystanders whispered. Frazier stood 5′11″ in her stocking feet and when she put on heels she topped 6′2″. She was as golden and tawny as Billy was dark, and with her green eyes, catlike in color and shape, she cast a spell over people, as did he, but Billy was aware of his physical presence and used it ruthlessly. Frazier never did believe she was beautiful, no matter how many times she was told. What she did believe, however, was that she was a natural athlete and she drew more confidence from that than from her exterior.
“You’re not really going to die, are you?” Billy kissed her again.
“I tell you it’s almost worth it to get away from all these long faces. Mother pitched a hissy yesterday and Carter broke down today. It’s more than I can stand. Tell me anything that doesn’t have something to do with me. Tell me about work or the stock market or … anything.”
“Stock market’s in the toilet. Atlantic Tobacco is going strong, I’m happy to report. Thank God all those Europeans and Africans love their cancer sticks. Uh—sorry, darling.”
“I don’t care.” She reached into his inside suit pocket and pulled out a soft package of Muleskinners, the cigarette that put Atlantic Tobacco on the map during World War I. It was now enjoying a resurgence as a butch brand, in its original package design. Smoking Muleskinners meant to hell with the health fascists, and plenty of young men were lighting up. While Frazier preferred brown Shermans, out of New York, she smoked Muleskinners in public for Billy’s sake.
“Gimme a light.”
He plucked the cigarette out of her lips. “No.”
She plucked it right back and ran her hands over his body, searching for a lighter. She found the gold Dunhill in his left pocket. “You know, Billy, if I’m going to go I might as well go on my own terms. What’s the point of prolonging life if you’ve forgotten how to live? I could just as easily have gotten cancer of the lungs without smoking. Remember what happened to Sandy Faulconer? Never smoked a day in her life.”
“I don’t think I’ll be as brave as you are.” He clicked open the top of the lighter and rubbed his thumb over the barreled dial. A medium-sized flame shot upward and Frazier inhaled with reverence.
“God bless the American Indian.” She closed her eyes in ecstasy. “Billy, I’m not brave. I’m accepting the inevitable. Oh, this burns my throat but it burns good. I took that damned tube out which was rubbing me raw and I made the nurse turn off the oxygen machine.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Otherwise we’d have been blown to bits.” He joined her in a cigarette. “Deep down I guess I don’t believe you’re leaving me. If God should grant us a miracle, you and I are going to get married. I mean it.”
Frazier coolly appraised him. “Then aren’t you glad miracles are in short supply?”
“Baby darling, we should have done it years ago. You go your way and I’ll go mine and who’s the wiser? I suppose I could even sire children on you, and our respective parents would froth with joy. You want to get along, you go along.”
“Doesn’t sound like you.” She decided to allow Billy his grand gesture. “But we’d make a good team. We always have. I don’t guess Kenny would turn somersaults of happiness.”
“Oh, Kenny. Kenny played Nothing in Much Ado About Nothing. How much more boredom can I stand? I’m a martyr to Kenny’s tedious quest for meaning. Life doesn’t mean anything. Just do something to keep yourself off the streets, to keep your two brain cells filled with electricity.”
“Ah, come on, Kenny’s all right.”
“We should get married and Kenny and Annie should get married. They’d be perfect together.” Billy laughed. “Poor Ann, with her torpid resentment because we don’t take her to parties in New York, or even on the west side of Richmond for that matter. But”—he drew a long drag—“I’m being uncharitable. She does love you and I suppose she’s good in bed.”
“And I know that Kenny is not hung like a hamster.” Frazier put another pillow behind her. “Nor are you, my sweet.”
“You know, there are people out there, millions of them I suppose, who don’t like sex, who don’t think we should do it, or that anyone should do it, and I guess they don’t do it at all. Can you imagine that? Night of the living dead. I mean, honey, a man could at least lash it to a toothbrush or something. You’ve got to try.”
“Not everyone can be as accomplished an explorer of libido as yourself,” Frazier purred. “You know, I always thought we should organize a sexual Olympics. A gold medal for best all-round love-making, best rear entry, best blow job, longest distance for ejaculation, most perfect breasts. What’s the discus compared to that?” This overheated thought was making Frazier feel woozy.
Billy murmured, “Are we judges or participants?”
“Ummm, how about both?”
“Frazier, you’ve got to live. Where will I find anyone like you: your general depravity, your sharp eye for a brushstroke, your appreciation for the refinements of the male member? Besides which, no one can dance like you, or play golf like you, and I ask you, who will be in charge of the Dogwood Festival and the Fourth of July fireworks this year at the club? You’re going to live and we’re going to get married.” He leaned over and kissed her on the lips, a long deep Muleskinner kiss, which, although pleasant, kicked over neither of their engines. “You look tired. Why don’t you go to sleep, and when you awaken, Terese will be here to fuss over you. I’ll try to stop by tomorrow.”
After Billy left, Frazier tried to sleep but his left handed marriage proposal rolled around in her mind like a loose ball from a pinball machine. She’d never have to worry about money for as long as she lived. Billy wouldn’t dream of interfering with the gallery. And the thought of being Mrs. Cicero wasn’t horrible. What caught her, a tiny golden fishhook to the heart, was that if she married him it would feel as if she’d given in. Ever since she could remember, her mother had pounded at her about the advantages of a “suitable match,” the whole country shivered in a spasm of heterosexuality. After a certain age an unmarried person became an object of scorn or pity. Funny, because to Frazier they looked free and she wanted to be free. She never saw the romance part of marriage. To her it was legalized fucking: the correct penis is inserted in the correct vagina and the issue from this moment of hydraulics is declared legal. The issue for those illegal couplings were bastards, a term not used in polite society but a condition perceived and felt.
Movie stars could have children out of wedlock and welfare mothers could have children out of wedlock but other women better damn well watch their step. Actually, it wasn’t a step they could watch.
Mrs. William Bennington Cicero. This bothered her also. She’d spent her life as Mary Frazier Armstrong. She had no intention of losing her identity. Armstrong-Cicero might not be so bad but she liked her name and intended to keep it.
Billy was bullshitting. She tried to squelch the turmoil with that triumphant realization. Then she wished she hadn’t, because her mind turned to her forthcoming demise.
“How imaginative is Death, how versatile his methods,” she thought. “He can snatch you from a sound sleep, or a bullet can shatter your skull. You can drown in water or in your own blood. Then again, you can fall off a bar stool. Really, people fall off bar stools, kaput, every year. AIDS shows Death at his best, teasing, tormenting, and killing by degrees. Momma’s family leans toward the furious and fatal heart attack. But oh, the ways to go. You can slip on a banana peel, you can choke on a green pea, you can lose control of your car or die of alcohol poisoning or the nifty and speedier coke slide into oblivion. One has so many choices, or does Death choose? What about multiple sclerosis or an inoperable brain tumor or, then again, that old standby syphilis, a real killer. Death will not fail. If we cure one disease he’ll invent another. And he’ll hunt you down using surprise and cunning.”
The Redingtons, her mother’s family, kept a book of pedigree reaching back to 1640 and Frazier loved to read about her ancestors. As a child she’d pore over each page, but one incident always seized her imagination. Rachel Redington, aged twenty-three in 1843, was shelling peas in a large tin bowl one blistering August day when a thunderstorm rolled over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Either the storm appeared with blinding speed, and those summer storms can, or Rachel, sitting on the porch, assumed it would blow over as quickly as it came. A bolt of lightning struck the metal bowl of peas, killing Rachel instantly. This story so impressed Frazier that she would never set foot on a porch during a thunderstorm.
“Like a stalking tiger, Death will pounce,” she thought.
“Maybe I’m lucky to have these few days to consider my life. Maybe Death is like a punctuation mark, a period at the end of a sentence. It means the sentence is over and you’ve been correct. Who wants a run-on sentence?” A tear ran into the corner of Frazier’s mouth. “I do,” she cried. “I do. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be brave, goddammit. I don’t want to miss the spring, I don’t want to miss the golf season, I don’t want to miss anything.” She buried her head in her pillow.
When Terese Collier tiptoed in, Frazier was sleeping so soundly that she didn’t wake up until Terese had applied the second coat of Raging Raspberry to her nails.
2
TERESE COLLIER SHOULD HAVE TAKEN PHOTOGRAPHS OF Frazier to prove her handiwork. Frazier’s shoulder-length hair curved casually forward, smooth and shining. Her eyebrows, plucked to perfection, served as accent marks to her extraordinary eyes, and her nail polish gleamed. Because she felt sorry for Frazier, Terese threw in a pedicure as well. Raging Raspberry startled Frazier each time she popped her toes out from under the covers.
The long twilight surrendered to night. The hospital corridor quieted down and Frazier was grateful that no other family members visited. She didn’t miss Ann either, which might have provoked self-questioning in a person more focused on her emotions. Since she didn’t miss Ann, she didn’t give her absence a second thought.
Tempted to turn on the television, she decided against it. The vacuousness of the shows offended her far less than the relentless juggernaut of commercials. The tinty music of those commercials filtered into the halls, as other patients lacked her standards.
“Boss.” Mandy walked in.
“Hey.”
“You look good, girl,” Mandy’s smile was incandescent.
Odd. Frazier thought to herself that she and Mandy had worked cheek by jowl for three years, yet only now did she notice the high cast to her coffee-colored cheekbones.
“Did Mrs. Thornburg come to a decision about the Isidore Bonheur?”
“She’s a whirlwind of indecision. However, the small hound picture sold today.”
“Good.”
Before Frazier could ask, Mandy added, “Darryl Orthwein from New York. I expect he’ll roll it over in a year or two but that’s okay.”
“Shrewd collector, that one.”
“I brought you something.” Mandy reached into her voluminous bag and pulled out a box of fine French paper. “Here, write letters to Tomorrow.”
Frazier opened the box and ran her forefinger over the smooth cotton finish. The pale-blue paper sported a tiny darker-blue freckling. “This is gorgeous. Mandy, where do you find these treasures?”
“Picked up the phone and called Paris. Fortunately, they believe in Federal Express. I love paper and I remembered the time when your father sent you reams of rice paper from Japan. The stuff was so beautiful it took you six months to work up to writing on it.” Mandy laughed.
“Had to learn to use a brush.” Frazier held the paper on her lap. “This is very kind of you.”
“I figure if you write a letter each evening for the next day, there will always be a next day.” Mandy fought back the tears.
“Oh, Mandy …” Frazier choked up, then gained mastery of herself. “None of this makes any sense. I feel okay, sort of.”
“What about the coughing?”
Frazier shrugged. “What bothers me is that every now and then I can’t breathe, but I’m not in pain. That’s what I hate about the morphine. I click this button here and presto, more drips into my veins. It feels great but how do I know how I really feel?” She turned her face to the window for a moment. “Well, maybe I never knew how I felt, period.”
“I have this theory”—Mandy leaned forward, beginning her sentence with a favorite phrase—“that feelings are the essence of being human but it takes probably fifty years to trust them. Most of us are living from the neck up.”
“Not Billy Cicero.”
“His sex stuff is just another escape,” Mandy stated flatly. “Anyway, I’m not sitting here in judgment of anyone in particular. I’m guilty too.”
“You know, I was thinking when you walked in the door about how I spend more time with you than anyone but I don’t know much about you, other than that you graduated from Smith, top of your class, did your graduate work at Yale, and worked in Rochester after that.”
“You met my mother. To meet a woman’s mother is to know what you need to know.”
“Thanks, Mandy. Mine was in here yesterday sobbing because she wants me buried. My God, I can’t even have control of my body when I’m dead. It’s my body and I’ll do with it what I want.”
“Tell that to the anti-abortionists.”
“You know what I mean.” Frazier placed the stationery on the nightstand. “Is there any subject before the American public today more overworked than abortion?”
