Honey Mine

by Camille Roy

  “Over the next ten years, the frequency of her letters diminished. I wasn’t sorry. They were troubling to me, those letters. She seemed to write whenever she’d met a new man and was bursting with enthusiasm over what the relationship promised for the future. But these relationships never lasted. Each letter described a new one, and as I said, they arrived less and less often. It became apparent that she was living off of a series of men. I’m ashamed to say that when I was invited to Paris for another conference, I did not look her up. I didn’t want a closer look. Three years had passed without word from Marjorie when I received notice that she was dead. It was a barbiturate overdose, whether accidental or intentional I do not know. She was forty-one. Jonathan had just turned twenty.

  “I went to Paris as soon as I could. I believe I got there about three months after Marjorie’s death. I was concerned for Jonathan, of course. He had no one. When I arrived, he was hopping mad, full of energy. He looked like a wild man, with that head of red curly hair. He must have gotten that from his father. Jonathan seemed to have absorbed Marjorie’s death without any effect. He’d become a Marxist, he told me. I accompanied him to various meetings and cafes, and I observed that he was treated with respect, despite his relative youth. He had such intensity. He was very articulate. Marxism lasted a few years, then he became a poet, and forswore politics. I wrote to him before I visited Paris again, and told him I would love to read his poetry. But he was in a rage when I arrived. He had just burned it all. He told me he was leaving behind every shred of his past, and I was never to attempt to contact him again.”

  Dr. Wittig opened a drawer in her desk and took out a shoebox. “Here are Marjorie’s letters,” she said wistfully, “You can read them if you like.”

  I looked at the box in horror. “I can’t believe that story is true.”

  “Every word is true.” She glared at me as if to say, Do you think you’re worth lying to?

  I said nothing. In fact, I bent my head humbly and received her contempt with the strange sensation of letting myself be chewed, of being nothing more than crumbs falling out of the side of her mouth. After a few moments, it became apparent that her spasm of bitterness had exhausted itself, and she rubbed her eyes wearily. “Well,” she sighed, “Have you made any progress with my data?”

  I confessed to having made no progress at all.

  “I’ve been distracting you.” Her tone was neutral, as though she were simply articulating a foreseeable and inevitable fact. So, I was surprised when she went on give me something like an apology. “Camille, perhaps a little extra attention would have helped you at the Institute. Perhaps I should add my failure to give you that attention to my list of regrets. But, nowadays, I’m bored by students and I never take special notice of any of them, including the boys. As I get older, the peculiar passions stirred up between teacher and student interest me less than tending to my squash plants.

  “Now you’ve failed… Try not to take it to heart. Physics prides itself on the lions at the gate. But the lions don’t matter. The field itself has become, for me, curiously discouraging. Fundamental physics is in danger of becoming, and perhaps has already become, merely a form of religion, albeit one motivated by mathematical aesthetics. What we study is either so small or so large, it’s intrinsically beyond the reach of measurement. We can speculate, but in our rambling and often awkward theories we are no more than priests, mumbling our secret language…”

  She ground the stub of her cigar into an ashtray. It seemed to struggle for life, releasing a few more puffs of acrid smoke. “It’s not what I wanted,” she said sadly, “To be a priest…” She collected herself and looked once again at me. “Perhaps next week you will make more progress with the data.”

  “I’ll just have to work harder,” I mumbled.

  Dr. Wittig said nothing. I got to my feet and bowed. I’d never bowed to anyone before. It felt awkward, but once I’d bent over, I found it even more awkward to straighten up. She watched me gravely as I backed out of the room. When she finally nodded goodbye, I leapt through the doorframe as though a spring had been released.

  Her front door closed gently after me. Cool sheets of river mist hung across the street. It felt like incredible effort just to get walking, so I sat for a moment on her stoop. I needed to stop and think. Especially I needed to think about Marjorie, her mysterious sex, being that. Juggling everything else. It choked me up. She must have had a beautiful mind. Then she went to Paris and dissolved in a glass of water.

  I’ve had moments, occasions really, separated from all other moments, when the ground tilts. It surges up, then seems to pause as if to make conversation. Perhaps it’s physiological—just another one of my brain vessels breaking and then waving frantically at all the other brain vessels, who are still quiet and neatly tucked in, sound asleep. I had a moment like that, sitting on the stoop. A ripple moved across Dr. Wittig’s sidewalk, then something like long fingers or hairs curled under my breasts. A cool sigh down my neck. There was a little jerk as two nearly weightless legs settled around my waist. I sat up straight.

  “What is it?” I spoke loudly.

  “Don’t look,” murmured the icy violet. “But it’s me, Marjorie.”

  Can lips be vacant? Made of nothing but breath. I was listening to the air running up and down Marjorie’s throat as her chin rested lightly on my shoulder.

  “I think we’re twins.” A sweet voice slipped like a breeze into my thoughts.

  Ohhhhh, twin-ship. The word tugged at my eardrum, as though attached by invisible thread. It calmed me. “All right,” I said, softly. Somehow, I was ready for this. I relaxed my spine and told her amiably the first thing that spun off the top of my head, “You can be my twin until I take off my hat.”

  “You’re not wearing a hat,” she pointed out.

  “Yes,” I said. The point was inarguable. “Come with me, then. But just until I get to my next job.”

  I got to my feet. I clasped my hands together at my belly so that her stick legs, rather like the legs of a skinny nine-year-old girl, protruded from the crook of each elbow. At first, I lost my balance, although she was nearly weightless. So, I stopped and started over again, more slowly, placing one foot ahead of the other, then carefully shifting my weight. Gradually, I picked up speed and we made steady progress past the bungalows that peeked up behind mounds of squash plants. She kept one hand around my throat.

  “Where are we going?” she asked. Her voice had the trusting lilt of a child.

  “To work,” I said, sternly. “Happy Hour. I’m going to dump you at the door.”

  “You tend bar,” she said thoughtfully. “Is it an interesting life, Camille?”

  “Life is just whatever happens. And if it’s not something I want, does anyone care?”

  “Camille needs a bright spot,” Marjorie mused. “Paint your toenails. That’s what I always did.” She stuck her little foot forward so that I would be sure to see the tips of her wiggling toes. They glimmered an opalescent pink.

  “Nice polish,” I said. I observed that her legs consisted of cold white fuzz. White stockings have a different effect, because they veil the meat that you know is there. Marjorie was entirely without meat. Suddenly I had to ask her. “What is it like, being what you are?”

  “Shabby. Just another way of being sick and making trouble. Why do you think I came here? I was tired of hanging around my son in Paris. I sat in the middle of his every dream like a spider, talking to myself and wet with the effort. Poor boy. Each day, he had to sweat out adrenaline from the nightmares of the night before. It was time for me to leave him in peace. So, I came here to bother Dr. Wittig, and now I’ve found you. I’m not heavy, am I?”

  I paused to consider this, then I had to confess I was enjoying our walk. Carrying a weight, even one that was mostly imagination, gave my steps a little stagger. It was a town of science, and so clean. So spartan. What could be better than to watch my shadow stagger through it, with a ball of peach fuzz resting on its n
eck?

  In this manner, we followed the street as it curved down towards the center of town and the river, which ran through it. We passed the insurance office, gold lettering on a black window, a barber shop. As usual during the summer, no one was on the street. It disappointed me. I wanted everyone to see whatever it was—the face I hadn’t seen myself, so I staggered and wove with a little more frenzy. It must have disturbed Marjorie, because she sounded breathless when she said, “I need a story. An ordinary story. About anything, but you have to be in it, and it has to be true.”

  I don’t know why I picked the story I did. Why does a dog wag its tail? I reproached myself later for not choosing a story that highlighted some interesting feature of my history or personality. Perhaps I chose this one, about a girl with a deformed face, because I wanted to see the face that rested on my shoulder, small and pink and filmy. A lozenge with pretty features. That’s what I’d imagined, but I hadn’t dared to look.

  I began: When I was fourteen, I had a job working in Bernie’s ice cream shop. The manager, Louie, hired me. Louie despised Bernie. It was the murky hatred of Polack for Jew, plus Bernie was Louie’s boss. I heard about it and felt it, but I never saw it directly until I came into work one day and there was the new girl that Louie had hired, her arms already deep in the vats, crusty with dried ice cream. Between her nose and lip, there was a cracked vertical snarl. It drew you to look into it, like a car crash on the street. It was lined with fresh blood that seemed to have worn its own path into her mouth. Lisa, for that was her name, had no upper lip.

  Later that morning, Bernie walked in. He had to push his way through the crowd of ladies with strollers who’d collected near the entrance. When he saw what they were murmuring about, he fired Lisa on the spot.

  Lisa ran sobbing into the basement. Louie, who’d set the situation up, ignored the whole business. He stood at the sink and rinsed out all of the rags. Bernie turned to me. He slapped his arm around my shoulder and squeezed with such warmth he almost lifted me off the ground. “Go make her feel better, Camille. Be a woman to her.” My gut fluttered; I was so thrilled. No one had ever called me a woman before, and the mystery of that, being a sex. I wore it down to the basement like my princess crown.

  Lisa was in the corner curled up on a big case of chocolate syrup. The lower half of her face was all shadow; it was her forehead that I saw, wide and clear, and her eyes, bright with resentment. I sat next to her on a carton of peanuts. “You’re a pretty girl,” I said, “except for that one part.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said.

  “You’ll get another job.”

  “No, I won’t,” she said.

  “Why don’t your parents get that fixed. Stitch it up or something. Then you can come back and work here.” Lisa pulled her knees to her chin and sat there, fiercely silent.

  “Bernie had to do this,” I told Lisa. “But actually, he likes you. Everyone likes you…”

  Marjorie’s laugh turned like a worm in my ear. “Everyone likes you,” she echoed. “That’s what Dr. Wittig used to say to me. She never understood how I could get myself into such a fix, time after time. ‘You’re a nice girl,’ she would say, and hand me money to prove it. God, it was never enough money. I’d see how much there was, and I’d swallow a shout. But then the money stopped. When things got really bad, she didn’t want to see me anymore.”

  “Marjorie,” I said, “I’m dying for a look at you.”

  “Please don’t,” she said. “It’s my voice that you should remember. That’s the main thing left after death; didn’t you know?”

  I trudged on, frustrated. I had been hoping a peek at her face would tell me whether her looks were a mark that had drawn her life to her. Some people are target practice for their era; it’s important, I thought, to understand the wider causes and effects of personal disaster. “Were you pretty?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I never knew what to make of myself. At least I died before I lost my looks.”

  “Something you had in common with Marilyn Monroe…”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “Well,” I said hopefully, “I’m a dyke. At least I think I am. So, none of this will matter for me.”

  “Surely not,” Marjorie said, “It doesn’t even matter to me anymore.”

  I settled into a firm rolling stride. As we cruised along, I found myself rifling through my filing cabinet of dilemmas. There must be one which needed supernatural assistance. “Can I ask you a question?”

  She said of course, and I kept looking, and eventually I found something. Wouldn’t you? It was lodged deep in the recesses, a thorn. Pulling it out, that would feel good. One drop of my brain blood could fall from the point onto the pavement and break into a million bits. Why hold onto these things?

  I began to murmur the story, the one I hadn’t told.

  Six weeks ago, I got the call. Come to Dean Ratcliffe’s office, I was told. This was it; he was going to throw me out in person, as well as via certified mail. Well, why not. At the appointed time, I walked right in and sat down on the fat leather chair that faced his desk. It was a substantial desk, mahogany with brass. Rain streaked the window. He had his back to me, and his hands were in the pockets of his slim well-cut suit. His head gently nodded to the beat—try to imagine the strains of a Mozart flute concerto as prelude to disaster. Then he turned to me. His eyes were pepper, gray and black. “Camille Weed, is that you?” he said.

  I nodded casually.

  “You have been causing some consternation around here. How do you feel about that?”

  Without waiting for a reply, he launched into my various misdeeds. “You are an incredible girl, in all the wrong ways. Being at an institute of higher learning, especially on a scholarship, means first of all you must follow A Code of Behavior. We all do that around here, Camille Weed. It is a requirement.

  “You and your pal—Mr. Don Silver, isn’t it?—the one who flunked out last year, why did you two think you could just rampage through the dorms smashing bottles in the middle of the night? Making a ruckus. Creating a hazard for our tender-footed students who stumble to the bathroom in the wee hours. Two people went to the infirmary with glass splinters that night, Camille Weed, only because they were trying to answer nature’s call. Why did you think you could do that?”

  His brow was flat—ready aim fire—and he pushed each word out like some sort of turd. What could I say? The drugs were good. Once we’d started it was impossible to stop. The bottles burst silently into ice blooms and hung like that in space for what seemed like hours. So, of course, we ripped them one after another at the walls, looking for that same moment. It was so perfect. Why couldn’t Dean Ratcliffe understand this? He was one of the physicists at the Institute who had done the original work on the atom bomb. He knew the value of a good explosion.

  I said all this to Marjorie, or maybe it was just my thoughts rushing in a flood. She murmured something faintly, only breath perhaps. I became anxious. “Are you okay?”

  “Don’t worry about me.” But her voice didn’t break a whisper. “As for your question: this is what I think. Stop worrying points like a dog. You have a point Camille, but from where I sit, points don’t matter.”

  With that, I felt a slither down my back. Dazed, I looked around. How had I made it this far? All the way to the parking lot of the mini mall… There, in the right-hand corner, was Tommy’s Tried and True Tavern in black script under two neon martini glasses. They blinked erratically. And, in front of the bar, was parked a single car—Ricardo’s big blue Buick, with whitewalls and a gleaming red and chrome interior. That old fag was my one regular and, usually only, customer. He was waiting for me.

  I pushed open the big wooden door and walked through pools of honey slush, kicking the dust. It was late afternoon, and the light filtered through panels of amber glass that were stuck high in the walls and around the door. Tommy’s was a cheesy diva kind of bar, vaguely homosexual. Happy Hour was always drenched in that piss
y yellow light. Sticky pop numbers flowed from the speakers, covering everything: the cracked vinyl booths, the chairs with stubby legs pulled up to empty tables. On that day, I looked around. I listened: my life was talking to me. I found myself thinking about Don Silver, my partner in crime and Patti Smith concerts. Big shaggy Don who played his saxophone like a greedy dog chews a new bone. He was my best friend, and I was his only friend, but he would have to go. That was something Dean Ratcliffe and I could agree on. If I was going to switch from being a wannabe physicist to some sort of full-fledged dyke, I needed to learn things—stuff I could pick up if I was just around the right people: how to carry on a conversation, remembering to wash regularly. I needed a girl gang.

  Ricardo was sitting at the bar in his usual place, languidly sipping gin, straight up. He was the kind who drank extremely slowly, all day. “Happy Happy Hour,” he said solemnly, after I slipped into my post. “How’s my girl?” “I’ve had a long day, Ricardo. This is my second shift.” I crouched and began searching the miniature refrigerator on the floor for an empty among the cans of pressurized whipped cream. At the beginning of my shift, it was my ritual to do a nitrous oxide hit and then take a moment to contemplate my Future.

  “Ahh, Camille,” sighed Ricardo, “I don’t even work anymore. I paid that debt to society by selling insurance for twenty-eight years. Now with every passing day I roll deeper into that retirement rut.” He leaned over the counter and peered down. “What were you working hard at today, Camille?”