Dear Digby

by Carol Muske-Dukes

  “The mail takes forever these days,” he said. He lit a cigarette and winked.

  I stood under a tree, conscious of the weight of the .38 in my bag. The only crowd in Central Park seemed to be around a street musician playing under a street lamp. No sign of Lupé or W.I.T.C.H. around Cleopatra’s Needle—but what would they look like anyway?

  I felt weak; my eyes weren’t working right. Ten minutes went by. A chilly breeze picked up and blew up my skirt (the first one I’d worn in months) against my legs. I closed my eyes, blocking everything out, and leaned against a tree.

  “Hi, Willis!” It was Lupé, right next to me. But when I looked it wasn’t. It was a white-haired Hispanic lady with a prominent, aquiline nose, bushy white brows, and bifocals.

  “Lupé?”

  “Yeah.”

  The old lady was wearing a jeweled W.I.T.C.H. symbol pinned to her bodice and a flashing light in a big transparent plastic diamond.

  “You like it?” the old lady said. “It reacts to and is synchronized with the heartbeat.”

  “Are you Lupé?” I asked again. “You don’t look like Lupé.”

  “It’s a wig,” she said, “and a putty nose and stuff. We got some theatrical makeup. One of the group is an actress. She’s well known like a few others here; they don’t want to be recognized.”

  She took my arm and walked me toward the Needle. Suddenly I saw all the other W.I.T.C.H. members. I hadn’t noticed them before because they looked old, and how often do we notice the old? Old women in shapeless coats and babushkas came out from under the trees, got up from benches. Others were dressed more stylishly, in furs and hats—all with wizened faces and shuffling feet, bent backs. Only the eyes looked youthful: sharp and searching—and the feet; they wore sneakers and trendy running shoes. One of them, in a long cape, was passing out more of the diamond heart-lights. The others (maybe fifteen or so) stood in groups of three or four, talking softly.

  The woman in the cape approached me with a heart-light.

  “Take it, Willis,” said Lupé, “you’ll need it later tonight.”

  The other women were clustering around. “Do you want me to introduce you?” asked Lupé. “Or do you want to remain anonymous?”

  “Introduce me, I guess.”

  “This is Willis Digby, everybody. Letters Editor at SIS.”

  There were murmurs of greeting, then some positive comments about the change in Letters. I noticed my heart-light, pinned to my lapel like a lavaliere mike, begin to flash quickly as my heart sped up. Praise. All the old ladies smiled. I reached in my bag, put on my rabbit ears, waved.

  “I’ll tell you everyone who’s here later,” said Lupé, “after you see what we’re going to do. Maybe you’ll enjoy it and want to come out on a run again.”

  The wind picked up again suddenly, blowing dead leaves everywhere. The moon chinned itself on the treetops.

  “It’s like Halloween,” Lupé said. “We go out every so often and ‘trick’ somebody who deserves it, man or woman. This week, for example, we’re going to settle a little score with Bob Hargill. Do you watch TV?”

  “Not much. But I know who he is.”

  Bob Hargill was the guy who told his female newscaster partner that she was getting too old to sit beside him and cast the news. He’d said that he needed a young, more personally appealing woman by his side or it spoiled the “psychology” of the TV relationship. “I don’t relate well to dogs,” he’d said off the record, but apparently not far enough off.

  We ran out on 81st Street—the moon was full up now. We ran loosely, like a pack of domesticated horses, debridled and set free on the plains. We gradually picked up speed, if not a collective sense of direction.

  The .38 bounced along in my Danish schoolbag. “What are we going to do to Bob Hargill?” I asked the woman running next to me, who looked like Ronald McDonald’s mom.

  “We’re not going to do anything to him—we’re attempting to alter his thinking a little.” She winked at me. “He’s having dinner tonight at Capistrano. We’re going to introduce ourselves to him.”

  Later, we were running down Lex, a flying squadron. The gun jostled me. I felt faint but vaguely satisfied—running in a pack of old women in a big city will do that for you.

  When we got close to the restaurant, we slowed down and huddled like the New York Jets Retirement League.

  “We’re going to do it the same way we did it to Norman Mailer,” Lupé said. “Digby, just look involved. You’ll see what to do.”

  The maître d’ greeted us just inside the door of the restaurant.

  He stared at the firefly diamonds. I noticed that many of the Witches’ hearts were beating fast; the lights flashed like strobes. Lupé’s blinked slowly, steadily, a beacon.

  “We’re Hot Flash, the singing telegram service made up almost exclusively of seniors!” Lupé sang out, with a quick look at me. The maître d’ pursed his lips, tight as a stitch. One of his eyebrows jumped, stilled, jumped.

  “Mr. Hargill is celebrating something special tonight, and this telegram is from his mother. We know he’s in one of the private rooms here—may we quickly deliver our little message to him?”

  “I will mention to him that you’re here. The name again?”

  Lupé put a hand on his arm. I saw a twenty peeping between her fingers. “Oh, noooo,” she said. “That would ruin everything. You can’t tell him we’re here. It’s a singing telegram—a surprise!” She gestured toward her elderly crew, and we all smiled. Someone curtsied. “From his mom,” she repeated softly. She looked sweetly into the man’s face. He looked the tiniest bit irritated that he was giving in—I thought I caught him glaring at my rabbit ears—but he pocketed the money and nodded, stepped aside. He turned his attention to a busy table, throwing over his shoulder, “He is in the far-right rear dining chamber. I’ll find a waiter to escort you.”

  Instead of waiting for the waiter, we moved en masse in the direction of the private dining rooms. I saw Lupé pulling a Minolta out of her pocket. We rumbled past low, elegant tables with flickering candles, banquettes for two, around a fountain, a heavy velvet curtain, rooms of seductive dining scenes, then into the final chamber.

  I was last in, but I caught a glimpse of the famous Bob Hargill, touched up by the intimate lighting: ruddy-faced, his hair blown into stiff peaks like egg whites. He looked mildly affronted but not alarmed. A take-charge guy. His dining companion, a young woman in a sequined, low-cut camisole, put down her gleaming escargot tools, fork and vise. She whispered in his ear.

  I caught part of what Lupé was announcing in a stage voice, facing Hargill.

  “ … a singing telegram for you, Mr. Hargill … Your recent comments about women and age … These women are Witches … Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell …”

  Suddenly everyone around me went into position. I knew what it felt like to be caught onstage in the middle of a Broadway musical. The Witches began circling, doing a soft-shoe.

  Hey, Bob, listen, Bob, women are great

  (Even after thirty-eight!)

  Even after fifty-eight, Bob—

  It’s amazing, they can still do the job!

  Bob had heard enough already. He tried to get up, but a big old woman in a gray wig-hat kept an iron grip on his shoulder. His date started to smirk. He drank some wine, refilled his glass. He was shaking his head, scornful. He put a protective arm around his companion. She pulled away slightly.

  I noticed one of the really ancient women doing a slow bump and grind in Bob’s direction.

  At sixty-two, Bob, a woman’s still strong—

  but statistics will tell you, something’s wrong

  with the guys: they don’t live very long!

  They’re fragile, it seems, and weak—while a woman is, let’s see, at her sexual peak:

  who knows when, Bob?????

  But you’ve made some guesses. …

  The ancient woman gave one last pelvic grind, tossed aside her cane, then
sprang suddenly, agilely, for Hargill’s head. The date jumped away. There was a tremendous tussle. He grabbed his head and held on for dear life. The old woman pulled hard, grunting. She looked like a mad brain surgeon. I moved in closer, to get a better look. Then there was a triumphant shriek, the old lady brandished a wavy chunk of Bob’s scalp. She waved the shag of fake-blond hair above her head. Lupé’s flash attachment framed them again and again—I was blinded temporarily.

  Bye, Bob, bye—

  you’ll see us in your dreams.

  You’ll never know a Witch

  from a Bimbo now—

  (she isn’t what she seems!)

  A waiter rushed in, then another. One shouted in Spanish and Lupé answered him, “Besame colo!” Bob Hargill’s bald pate, naked as a sexual organ, drew everyone’s eyes. He was thrashing around in his seat, shouting incoherently, trying to detain the old broad who’d dehaired him, but Lupé came up from behind and released his hold with a quick karate chop. Bob’s date looked as if she were about to wet her pants. In the middle of everything, she pulled the wine bottle out of its ice cradle and poured herself another glass. We began moving rapidly out the door—I thought I caught a wink pass between her and Lupé—or did I imagine it?

  We broke ranks now, running pell-mell—I wasn’t jogging too fast, however, to miss Terence Major and his beautiful co-star in the play Blind or Sightless? (or whatever it was) having a romantic little dinner.

  He stared, openmouthed, as I ran past, following the herd of grandmothers in Nikes and flashers. It did not seem entirely out-of-mood for me to thumb my nose at him.

  At the door the maître d’ was wrestling a Witch to the floor—she was striking feebly at him with her walking stick. Lupé was having some trouble extricating her—customers were getting in the way, shouting at the maître d’ to leave the old woman alone. In the general confusion someone pushed me hard from behind, and I staggered forward. My bag slumped off my shoulder and the .38 slid to the floor. The maître d’ saw it and jumped away like a kid on a pogo stick.

  “They’re armed!” he cried in a strangled voice.

  Everyone drew away from me, silent, as I picked the gun up and slipped it back in my bag.

  “Let’s go!” Lupé snarled, and we went.

  “Jesus, Digby,” she panted, after we’d run about forty blocks. Everyone stood under a tree in the Park pulling off noses and wigs, laughing hysterically as breath came back, slapping palms.

  “Why are you carrying a piece?”

  The Witches were doing imitations of Hargill, the struggle, his face as his hair came off. The ancient attacker, transformed into a person I recognized from TV, a news anchor, held up the toupee like a scalp, whooped, and did a war dance. Then she got into a cab and disappeared. I thought I saw Betty Berry in white hair and glasses, smoking a cigarette. I wanted suddenly to run over and hug her, but the moment was lost.

  “Why do you carry a camera?”

  “Evidence. Blackmail. Yuks. Whatever. This one we’ll mail into the News anonymously—we have a Witch on the inside there. She’ll run it with an appropriate caption.”

  I shook her hand. “Thanks for asking me, Lupé. I haven’t had such a good time in years.”

  Lupé smiled enigmatically. “Why you carryin’ it?”

  I stopped smiling. “You know that letter I printed? From the crazy guy?”

  I decided to sleep at my mother’s apartment. She had a place on York and 66th she’d kept since my father died. She also had a house on the beach in Carmel, where she spent most of the year. But she couldn’t quite give up New York. I felt a little guilty about pretending that I wanted to see her—but I couldn’t tell her about The Watcher. She would have begun by putting the National Guard on alert.

  I came in, offering the heart-light as a little gift (she loved to jog and it was a great pulse monitor), chattering on about my busy schedule. It turned out that she was preoccupied. She’d taken up painting the last few years, and a gallery in Carmel had mounted a show of her work along with that of four other local artists. A month ago the gallery had been broken into and paintings by every one of the artists except her had been stolen.

  “That’s what I just can’t fathom,” she said, sipping her decaf from a Cats mug. “They were systematic about rejecting my work. They’d pull three paintings in a row off the wall, then they’d leave one of mine. Take four more, leave mine. It was an absolutely critical reaction. Do you know how the local papers put it? ‘Left behind was work by Eleanor Digby …’ How do you think I feel, Willis?”

  “Not good, Mom,” I said. I was trying to find something in the refrigerator to eat. Everything was Weight Watchers. Finally I settled on some low-fat cream cheese and crispbread.

  “Did they catch the guys who did it?” I wanted to keep her on the subject; otherwise the conversation could take a dangerous lurch in the direction of Terence.

  She frowned. I hadn’t looked up from my sandwich, but I knew she was frowning—she knew me well enough to have recognized the feigned interest in my voice. Like all mothers, though, she took what interest she could get.

  “Who knows?” she snorted. “I flew East to nurse my ego.”

  She sighed and stared morosely through the kitchen door to the living room wall where a painting of me at four hung. She’d taken it from a photograph; I was naked at the beach, holding a sand bucket in one hand, scratching my left buttock with the other. Next to it hung a painting of a beachcomber with a walrus mustache. The colors were brilliant, but the sense of proportion was just a little off in each one. I loved them.

  “The thieves had no taste, Mom,” I said.

  She smiled ruefully. “Thanks dear. Now. Have you seen Terence?”

  Twelve

  THE NEXT MORNING I went out (scorning my mother’s breakfast of Weight Watchers’ granola and low-fat yogurt) and bought the papers, some Danish, and espresso. Mom had gone out jogging along the river with a friend—another over-sixty in peak condition.

  I unlocked her door, panting, after sprinting up five flights, just to prove to myself I could breathe heavily, and dropped the papers on the entry tiles. A headline: BROOKHEART SCANDAL, blah, blah—my name leaped out at me. Holly had given them some info yesterday:

  Willis Digby, editor at SISTERHOOD magazine, first contacted the Mirror with information sent to her by Iris Moss, a patient at Brookheart. In a letter to Ms. Digby, Ms. Moss described herself as a rape victim and named a staff member as the perpetrator. Ms. Digby approached the city desk with these facts, which led to the Mirror investigation …

  The phone rang. It was Terence.

  “I thought you might be there! I called your apartment about ten times last night. What are you doing at your mom’s?”

  “Avoiding a guy.”

  “Oh.”

  “A guy who wants to kill me. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  There was a pause. “Is he one of those wackos you get letters from? I saw the thing in the paper—”

  “Yeah.” I cut him off wearily. “Listen …”

  “Speaking of wackos, Willis, do you mind my asking what you were doing running through Capistrano last night with that big gang of … grannies, ripping off Bob Hargill’s toupee and threatening the maître d’?”

  “Nobody threatened the maître d’.”

  “He said the one with the blond hair—the only terrorist under seventy, he said. You were the one who kinda fit the description.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “He said you pointed a gun at him.”

  “That’s a lie. The gun fell out of my bag.”

  “What gun? What the hell are you doing with a gun?”

  “To protect myself from the guy who wants to kill me. Aren’t you listening?”

  He asked to see me, he said it sounded like we needed to talk. I wouldn’t mind, I said, having someone with me when I went back to the apartment.

  I decided to take the morning off, and we met at the Plaza fountain. He looked wor
ried. He kept stealing glances at me, as if I were about to put on a pinwheel beanie and swallow fire. The worst part of it was—he looked sorry for me.

  The night before I had leaned over to my mother, who was seated in front of the TV doing isometrics. I asked her if she thought I was crazy. I mean, I’d said, had she ever noticed when I was a kid, any signs of real instability?

  She shook her wrists free of invisible shackles and turned to answer me in characteristic fashion, with a non sequitur, an anecdote from my childhood. Talking to her was something like studying with a Zen master. You got answers but you never knew until later what their connection to your question was.

  “You were such a strange baby,” she mused. She brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes awkwardly, with the back of her hand. “You didn’t talk for the longest time—you were like a meat loaf: no ‘mama,’ no ‘dada,’ no ‘bye-bye.’ I was beginning to worry—you were two and a half, I think. I took you to Dr. Townsend—remember him?—and he said, ‘Don’t worry, Mrs. Digby, she’ll talk up a storm when she’s ready to!’ Boy, was he right. You were sitting in your high chair late one afternoon. …” I smiled at her, trying to look interested, but I’d heard this story about four hundred times.

  “I was feeding you some typically disgusting baby food—strained peas, I think. The peas were very hot. I put them down steaming in front of you, and then I started to daydream, you know, just kind of drifted off, with a spoonful of this stuff suspended in the air between us. You got this very annoyed look on your face—I’ll never forget it. Then you nodded at the spoonful of peas. ‘Blow on it, dummy!’ you said.”

  She laughed helplessly; tears came to her eyes. She patted my hands and shook her head. I chuckled a little, trying hard, but I’d lip-synched the punch line with her, and anyway, the story had always made me a little nervous. Now I wondered: Did this precocious wise-cracking indicate the first signs of juvenile dementia?

  She saw my expression finally. “You’re not crazy,” she said emphatically and patted my hand again. Then I saw her face change, darken. I heard her voice, in memory, behind the door of the bedroom, berating my father, who sat staring into space, a drink in his hands. “Whose fault was it?” the voice, hers, asked. I remember pushing open the door. She wore a satin dressing gown and her hair was piled on top of her head. I thought she looked beautiful, but her expression frightened me. “Are you all right?” she asked me, looking terrified, as if she’d seen a ghost. Something in her tone, I remember, made me think that I was not. Her voice went too high at the end of the question, and she didn’t seem to really want an answer. She’s afraid of me, I remember thinking. She thinks I’m a crazy person, a murderer. She’s not sure what to do. I looked past her to my father, sitting (so unlike him!) slumped at the edge of the bed, his feet on the floor, head in his hands. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s lit red gold from behind by the night-table lamp. On the wall the family pictures: Mom’s watercolors, a framed newspaper photo of Dad and me in hunting clothes, holding up our booty.