Almost Paradise

by Susan Isaacs

  While Dorothy laid his dinner on the table, Richard would say “Upstairs” and march behind Jane, pushing her forward with his index and middle fingers when she slowed or tripped, until they were in his and Dorothy’s bedroom. He’d shut the door behind them, pulling at the knob a few times to make sure it was properly latched, and then remove his jacket, loosen his tie, and open his collar button. Slowly, he’d lower himself onto the edge of his bed, so the springs contracted without a squeak. “Let’s get this over with,” he’d say. Jane would lie across his lap, awkward, the tips of her shoes and her fingers touching the floor, for she was nearly as tall as he.

  He would pull down her pants so her backside was bare and hit her. At the first smack, she’d let out a noise between a gasp and a shriek, a cry of horrible surprise, although she never had reason to doubt what would happen. Her eyes would dart frantically, searching for something to focus on: a castor on the leg of Dorothy’s bed, a bit of fluff under the dresser. She’d stare, trying to transcend the pain of the smacks the way she’d read an Indian swami can a bed of nails. But Richard’s hand cracking down—its speed and power increasing with each slap—soon overcame her concentration. Each smack made her jaw snap shut. Her teeth crashed together, sometimes biting deep into the spongy flesh of her tongue.

  Then, finally, pain took over; Jane began to scream. Her mind darkened and took in nothing more until her father stopped, apparently exhausted—slumped over, red-faced, perspiring.

  When her pain diminished there was further pain: going down and seeing Rhodes’s face, a sick-white oval, staring up at her from the bottom of the stairs, his eyes growing wider and wider to accommodate the tears he could not shed; hearing Dorothy’s “Jane, I need some help” from the kitchen, the voice buttery with generosity, allowing Jane another chance, but strained with the knowledge that such compassion was futile; looking at the juice glass filled with whiskey Dorothy placed beside her father’s plate, watching Richard—who did not otherwise drink—take small, fast sips as if it were a hot liquid he had to get down; watching Dorothy dish out the slaw or Jell-O, tapping the spoon on Rhodes’s plate to get the last morsel off, determinedly ignoring the explosions of coughing when the whiskey seared Richard’s throat.

  It was too much. Jane might have borne the spankings—many children do—but she could not tolerate the unspoken family knowledge that what went on upstairs was more than discipline and that, whatever it was, it was she who made it happen, again and again and again.

  By the time she was fifteen, she learned to take great pains to keep out of everyone’s way. She rarely came downstairs except for meals, to do her chores, or to leave the house. She stayed and studied behind her closed door. Better isolated in her own bedroom than risk having to go with her father to his.

  Jane’s bed—a mattress on a low wood platform—stood under a bulletin board. The board overflowed onto the wall. Childhood favorites—a picture of a kitten and a puppy, retouched so they appeared to be smiling—had been covered by fifth and sixth grade class pictures, which in turn were obscured by a newspaper photograph of Elvis Presley on which she’d penned ELVIS! and a Seventeen magazine article, “Flower Your Bower!” on making chrysanthemums and zinnias from crepe paper. All this, even her yearly certificates from the Junior and Senior Honor Societies, were finally hidden by theatrical memorabilia: Drama Club programs, ticket stubs, the ABC listings clipped from a Sunday New York Times, her membership card in the National Thespian Society, quotations from Shakespeare—“The play, I remember, pleased not the million; ’twas caviare to the general”—on index cards. She had told her friend Lynn, “The theater’s in my blood.” The legacy of the mother she could hardly remember filled her room.

  But by Jane’s last year in high school, her mother’s presence had faded. It had to, for there was no place in Dorothy Rhodes Heissenhuber’s house for even the ghost of a loving mother. Sally dwindled to a shadowy comfort, a vague presence who visited her daughter only in the dim, troubled moments before sleep.

  “O-u-t,” Jane said.

  “It’s okay. She went to the store,” Rhodes said. “Uh-oh, what did you do, stupid, steal that doily?”

  “I didn’t steal it, moron.”

  “You know your ass is grass if Mom finds out.”

  “Your ass is grass if you open your big mouth.” Jane sat on the blue fringed oval scatter rug, the one warm spot on the linoleum floor. Her back rested against her bed and its spread of dotted Swiss, its white dots nearly invisible against the background of faded blue. She glanced from her sewing over to her half-brother, who was lounging against her chest of drawers. “And anyway, Mr. Sophisticated, it happens it’s not a doily, it’s an antimacassar and she won’t know it’s gone because it’s been in the back of the linen closet for the last nine hundred years and anyway it was Grandma Anna’s and Mom never used it because antimacassars are lower class, for people who don’t know enough to keep their greasy heads off the backs of chairs.”

  “That’s why I didn’t know what it was called, because it’s lower class and I’m not. Of course, that’s why you recognized it right away.”

  “Then how come your mother knew it was lower class? Hmmm?”

  “Would you stop calling her ‘your mother’? You know and I know that she brought you up since—”

  “My mother’s name happened to have been Sally Tompkins Heissenhuber, and she was an actress and a beauty. Your mother—”

  “How do you know your mother was a beauty? You never even saw a picture of her.”

  “Because Dad said she told him she played Juliet, and you can’t not be beautiful for that role.”

  “If she was so beautiful, what happened to you?”

  “Nothing happened to me, stupid.”

  “Ever look in a mirror? Six more legs and you’d make the perfect octopus.”

  “Four, you jerk. You didn’t count my arms.”

  “I was trying not to remind you.” Rhodes lifted his chin and adjusted the knot in the tie he was required to wear each day to the Cincinnati Country Day School. Although only thirteen, he was even handsomer than his infant beauty had intimated. He had a square jaw, lips just full enough to make his mouth alluring without cheapening the strength of his strong bones, and dark blue eyes like his father’s and sister’s; large and velvety. His beard had not come in and his skin was light with an underlying glow, like porcelain. He was tall for his age (although not the six feet he would reach) and looked like the star guard of the lower school’s basketball team that he was: graceful, strong, controlled. Girls his age telephoned the house several times a day, giggling or asking for him in silly, disguised voices. Older girls, sixteen-year-olds in tight skirts, offered him rides in their convertibles. So what might have seemed an affected gesture in any other boy—tightening his tie in the manner of a 1920s playboy—appeared suavely correct.

  Jane returned to her sewing, tacking the piece of lace she’d cut onto the neckline of a plain black blouse. “You think just because you go to Country Day you’re h-o-t-s-t-u-f-f, but you know and I know that all the boys in your class know you live in Edgemont.”

  “It just happens, tall, dark, and ugly, that they know exactly where I live and couldn’t care less. They like me for what I am.”

  “Then they obviously have no taste.”

  “They have enough taste to know you’re ugly. Beaky.”

  “Do me a favor, Rhodes. O-u-t. I have to finish my costume.”

  “That’s why you’re in such a bad mood. Because you’re playing Clementine and you really wanted the other part.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did too.” Rhodes crossed the room, which took three steps, and in a fast, fluid movement crossed his feet and lowered himself onto the rug. His knee touched Jane’s.

  “Get out of here.”

  “No. Anyway, you wanted the lead and—”

  “I have the lead.”

  “You know what I mean. The good juicy part. Whatever her name is.”
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  “Deirdre Brooks-Elliott.”

  “Sure. That was the one you tried out for.”

  “Read for.”

  “Why didn’t you get it?”

  “Because. Come on, Rhodes. Leave me alone.”

  “Because why?”

  “Because Mr. Gluck said I wasn’t the ingenue type. But it’s not really an ingenue role, and anyway I could play it. I’m an actress. By definition versatile.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?”

  “Nothing. Rien. Nada. I couldn’t exactly have a screaming argument with Mr. Gluck, could I?”

  “You wouldn’t have to scream. Just say, ‘Hey, look, Mr. Gluck, I really deserve—’”

  “It wasn’t worth it.”

  “It was too. I don’t get you. Why don’t you ever try?”

  “Mr. Gluck had his reasons, and there was no point in making things unpleasant.”

  “You’re so full of shit your eyes are brown.”

  “Rhodes, the only reason he wouldn’t let me have Deirdre is that Bucky Richards is Aubrey Weston and he’s five-five, five-six if he’s lucky.”

  “Well, he is lucky. He got the part he wanted.”

  “I know, and he’s a junior. This is my last year. But instead Gluck gives the part to Vicki Luttrell just because she’s short. Oh, well, water under the bridge and all that rot.”

  “Listen, you’ll be okay as Clementine. You’ll probably wind up outshining them because they’re even worse than you.”

  “I don’t want to outshine them. This is my last Senior Drama Club production and I wanted it to be special. And here I am, playing an eighty-year-old British dowager in a production that absolutely screams Cincinnati. Bucky Richards thinks all you have to do to put on a British accent is stick out your front teeth, so all he sounds like is a stupid talking rabbit. And that Vicki! Do you know how many gestures she has in her repertoire? One.” Jane rested her sewing on her lap and looked up at her brother. “I have to finish this. Would you please leave me a-l-o-n-e?”

  “You think it’s chic to spell.”

  “Rhodes, go play in traffic.”

  “You better sew nice little stitches. Otherwise Bobby Spurgeon won’t like your costume.”

  “What does Bobby Spurgeon have to do with anything?”

  “Are you kidding? ‘Oh, Lynn, I can’t quit Noble Hearts because I couldn’t bear not seeing Bobby Spurgeon every day at rehearsals. It’s my only contact with him, with his darling little nose and his big strong hands and—’”

  Jane reached out to grab Rhodes’s upper arm, but he sprang up. “You absolute creep. You were listening in on my phone call.”

  Rhodes backed toward the door, holding an imaginary receiver to his ear. “Lynn? Jane. Hi. Listen, Bobby Spurgeon actually looked at me in Latin today. I mean, with both eyes. Just for a second, but—’”

  As he backed out the door, Jane clutched her sewing in her fist. “I’ll never speak to you ever again.”

  “Ta-ta, Lady Clementine. Break a leg.”

  Lynn Friedman gazed up at Jane. The student director of Noble Hearts was just five feet tall and appeared fragile, with delicate bird bones protruding under her pale skin. Her hair, a pixie cap of dark brown, and her huge eyes, black and bright, only made her seem more the waif. But a well-dressed waif. Her aqua cashmere sweater coordinated with an aqua and cream plaid skirt and thick aqua wool socks her mother had sent for to Bergdorf Goodman’s in New York.

  Jane stood on the Woodward High School stage in costume and full makeup, her long hair pinned up and gray with talcum powder. Lynn looked like her granddaughter.

  “Jane, move about four inches right. Stop. God, this lighting is terrible.” Lynn made a megaphone with her hands and shouted to a boy in the control room in the back of the auditorium. “Bobby! I didn’t ask for high noon.” The spotlight on Jane turned from brilliant white to blue. “Is this unbelievable? Bobby, this is a dress rehearsal!” She turned to Jane and in a hushed voice said, “I honestly can’t understand your crush on him. Except that he’s tall. Is that it?”

  “Lynn, quiet.”

  “He can’t hear me unless I scream at the top of my lungs.”

  “But Vicki’s standing right there. Would you look at her, staring at us? I bet she heard every single word. God, I’m going to die.”

  “You can’t. We open tomorrow night. Now listen, you’ll come home with me after and my mother will force-feed us, but then we can talk and then I’ll drive you home by ten so Dorothy the Hun doesn’t kill you. It cannot go on like this, Jane. You’re a senior and you’re really neat-looking if you’d ever do anything with yourself, and there’s no reason why you can’t have a boyfriend and a date to the prom, especially since there are literally dozens of boys who aren’t going with anybody.”

  “I don’t want to be fixed up with anybody.”

  “Then do something about Bobby Spurgeon.”

  “Do what? I’ve been saying hi. I let him copy all my Virgil notes and I was wearing bright red lipstick, just like you said, and if it brightened me up totally he sure didn’t notice. Anyway, I think he likes Gail Renner.”

  “Well, I don’t think he does, unless he just loves retard cheerleaders, and I also think he would definitely like you if you just—I don’t know, played up to him.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Oh, God, Jane. You’re seventeen.”

  “Sweet seventeen and never been kissed.”

  “When I’m finished with you you’ll be kissed so much you won’t be able to stand it.”

  It was five minutes before Jane’s ten o’clock curfew and they were parked on Section Road, just a block and a half from the Heissenhubers’, so Lynn said, “Let’s go through it one more time.”

  The front seat of the car was pulled up as far as it could go, and even so, Lynn sat on a cushion to see over the wheel. It was a convertible, a two-tone blue and white—Woodward High School’s colors—with a tiny brass plate with LMF, Lynn Marlene Friedman, on the driver’s door. Although it was March, the top was down, the heater warming the lower halves of the two girls.

  “It’s tomorrow night. You’re at the cast party, and Bobby Spurgeon is standing in a corner drinking a Coke and looking lonely. What do you do?”

  Jane shifted, but the car seat was so near the dashboard she had little room to maneuver, and all she could do was move her knees, which were nearly at chin level. “I say, ‘Hi, Bobby. Whew, am I glad it’s over!’ and sort of collapse into his arms.”

  “Not collapse. He’ll think you’re some kind of spaz. Just lean against him for a minute. So he gets the idea you’re a girl. Now okay, what happens if he doesn’t say anything?”

  “I ask him if there were any problems in the control room.”

  “No! That calls for a yes or no answer. You ask him what was the absolutely worst moment in the control room all night. Then he has to talk.”

  “I’m cold.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re absolutely paralyzed that you’ll be two seconds late and the Blob will go ‘Naughty, naughty.’ God, you’re a senior! What can she do to you? You don’t have to be perfect, you know.”

  “Come on, Lynn.”

  “I mean it. You’re so busy being wonderful you can’t relax. Smile, smile, smile. Work, work, work. Oh, Jane. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. But just—I don’t know. You get so panicked if you get less than a ninety-five on a test or if you forget one thing on a shopping list out of fifty million things the Wicked Stepmother asked you to buy. No one’s going to think any the less of you if you’re not perfect. You’re a super-neat kid, and if you’d just take it a little teensy bit slow you’d make things much easier for yourself. You’d probably get a billion boyfriends if you didn’t seem so—you know. Imposing.”

  “Just like that. One, two, three.”

  “I’m not saying it will be easy. If it was easy you would have been pinned juni
or year, for God’s sake. It’s hard because you’re always being Best Person of 1957 and that takes work, and also your self-confidence quotient with boys is minus one million, for some weird reason that’s absolutely beyond me, and you give off waves of insecurity. I mean, you can be the most charming person in the world. But the minute, the absolute second a boy gets close, you freeze. Rigor mortis of the personality.”

  “Maybe I’m frigid or something.”

  “That’s dumb. You’ve never even had a boy kiss you, so how can you tell? Maybe deep down you’re a real nympho and that’s why you’ve been avoiding it all these years.”

  “Lynn, please listen to me. First of all I did not have the good luck to be born cute like you. Really. You’re cute and dainty and everyone in the world wants to buy you an ice-cream cone. I’m big and gawky and have an awful nose—”

  “You don’t. You have a wonderful nose. Perfectly straight and in proportion. What would you do with a little teeny baby one? Look, I know about noses. Didn’t half my sorority get nose jobs?”

  “Rhodes calls me Beaky.”

  “Rhodes is a younger brother. What do you expect?”

  “And my clothes aren’t nice.”

  “You’re crazy. They’re fine.”

  “I only have orlon sweaters.”

  “Do you think any boy who’s interested in your personality and wants to—um, get really friendly is going to care whether there’s orlon down there or cashmere? Not that you would do anything like that, except maybe if you were pinned. I can’t believe you. You’re absolutely statuesque, plus you don’t have to wear falsies, and you’re worrying about orlon. Boys don’t know about these things, so stop it. You’re number three in the class. You’re a terrific actress, and you’re the only girl who got over seven hundred on the math boards. And you’re my best friend.”