Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales

by Mark O'Donnell

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  OUR LADY OF THE TAILSPIN

  Cliff won the election, and drove himself to his inauguration in a specially customized limousine, cutting more than a half hour off the ceremony’s previous record for speed. He raced the engine noisily whenever the motorcade was forced to pause along the way, and startled dignitaries when he slid across the polished floor on his stomach during the gala ball. Yes, Cliff was young, but not, everyone emphasized, as young as Van Walker had been. Win Woodhead had disappeared forever right after his defeat, either to seek out Van or to sulk without end, but August Dodd Woodhead came to the inauguration, to show that at his advanced age he no longer minded anything.

  Once in office, Cliff froze wages and encouraged the barter system whenever possible, since objects themselves were incapable of inflation. He made his father Secretary of Transportation, and they decreed hundreds of miles of highways to be public drag strips. He relished setting the limited fires his Secretary of the Interior suggested for the national parks’ sake, and he ordained frequent jet defense drills that shattered windows with sonic booms. He announced that prosecuting drug users was too costly, and as he had with Shep, declared that everyone who wanted to use drugs could do so, only now in a special reservation fashioned from the state of Oregon, a sort of national Smoking Section. He was a champion of deregulation, and gave heavy tax breaks to American auto manufacturers, but he seemed sullen and mistrustful whenever he had to speak to foreigners, even the English. His tough position on American defense provoked some killings of Americans in Europe, but he responded by recalling all Americans, civilian or military, from overseas. This “Americans in America” policy wreaked havoc with international business, not to mention international marriages, but as terrorism discouraged travel, and protectionism made importing and exporting complicated, slowly a gargantuan medieval insularity developed.

  True to his Manolog days, the new chief executive also liked dropping out of sight for days at a time, which thrilled people only at first, and his animal freedom started to seem as dangerous as Van’s angelic weakness. Although Nestor wrote speeches for him including allusions to family and sharing, Cliff seemed gruff and distracted, and Carlotta felt no closer to him than she had in California. He was growing away from her without ever quite being hers. He may have felt it would be weak to rely on her, sympathetic as she was, but whenever he disappeared, it was she who had to put on a brave face for the press while they wondered if there were other women or just a secret hideout.

  To complicate the national paranoia, a sexually transmitted illness began to ravage the population. It was eventually discovered to have begun in the lambskin condoms prescribed in Van Walker’s administration to curb venereal disease. Apparently the lambs had been grazed on radioactive former bomb test-site prairies, and the mutant virus they acquired was hard to shake. People immediately stopped using condoms, but it was already too late. Fatal Urogenital Carnal Kinesis claimed its victims without any right to such claims, and often drove them mad first. Even Nestor, who had been careful to protect himself in his dalliances with Mexican girls, went from merely garrulous to incomprehensible, and his last words were something about the Wagon Train heading ever westward to the Milky Way.

  So, not only travel but socializing was curtailed, with television as the safe alternative, and this was where Carlotta entered her truly legendary phase. Under the supervision of the secretaries of State and of Health, she made numerous cheerful videos in which she seemed not only to have a nice romantic date with the viewer, she went on simulated vacations to Europe, bought attractive furniture, went to friendly parties, and even raised several pleasant and appreciative children. She herself was childless, and the husband in her videos went unseen, but millions were grateful for the apparently fulfilled life they vicariously experienced from her tapes. Her greatest seller was a video in which she lived in a peaceful small town called Verdant Park, and everyone in it had a sweetheart and a job. People now referred to her as Our Carlotta, since it was hip to know her real name, and besides, it was more comforting than Charlotte.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DARING DAYLIGHT DESTINY

  Julienne appeared at the White House late one afternoon, sunken-eyed and weirdly dressed for a formal ball, with a huge handwritten manuscript that she wheeled in unwrapped on a dolly. When Carlotta came to her, Julienne confided too loudly that Culvert had committed suicide the day before. Depressed by his sickness, for starters, he had thrown himself from the highest finial of his father’s unfinished folly, Vertigo Park, the haunted palace of storm windows. Julienne had then decided she was finished with her biography and headed for Washington. It was called Carlotta Made, and she presented it to her sister with shaking hands. It bore no relation to reality, however, beyond its vaguely pornographic title, and though illegible, would have read more like a hack’s misremembrance of the Book of Revelation than like Carlotta’s actual rags-to-riches story. It seemed to presume that Carlotta, sometimes called Charlotte, was the cause of the sunrise and of springtime, of snowfall and rebirth. The text dwelled on a serpent called Horizon, and had no clear-cut beginning or ending, since the pages were unnumbered and Julienne seemed unconcerned about those pages that blew away when she moved the dolly from place to place. She announced that she was Carlotta, that Cliff was her husband, and that they were going away together forever.

  Carlotta was anxious, but invited Julienne to rest there for the night. Julienne spent it sleeplessly calling out her own name, which was difficult to call a good sign. Cliff, who was in residence at the time, and Carlotta could hear her cries even from their room, and though Cliff dismissed Julienne as self-chopped mincemeat, he was shaken, and for the first time in his experience, was sexually impotent. Carlotta was sympathetic, from which he recoiled, because it made him feel weak. She secretly hoped that this, his first unluckiness, might be a breakthrough to fuller humanity for him.

  Julienne came to breakfast late, still in her formal dress, and declared that her name was now Fury, which she hoped didn’t sound too much like a horse. She then produced a small handgun, which Cliff had insisted be provided in every guest bedroom, and rushed into the Rose Garden, where he was negotiating with Romulus and Remus Portonovo, the wealthy Italian realtors, for the sale of Rome as a movable theme park. She shot Cliff in the heart, and then herself, warning the Italians they would be next. Apparently she had been driven mad not just from jealousy but from the Fatal Urogenital Carnal Kinesis that had incubated in her since her performance in Will Wanda Never Cease?

  Aides screamed, and Romulus and Remus wailed Latinate expressions of horror. Carlotta rushed to cradle the dying Cliff, who shuddered with surprise. He had never felt pain before. He faintly joked that once the dick goes, so do the reflexes, and with his index finger tenderly, for once, tracing the scar on her cheek, he expired. Carlotta stiffened with confusion, and at this moment Shep Woodhead appeared, fresh out of Lilly Willow, and asked if there were any job openings.

  EPILOG

  As dazed as grieved, Carlotta and her attendant Congress tried to figure out what to do. Cliff had not named another vice-president after Nestor’s death, claiming it would be defeatist, and the public had lost its will to endorse anyone. August Woodhead offered to supervise business matters for the interim, and no one had the self-possession to object very strenuously. Carlotta’s old public service messages discouraging panic were brought out and aired again, and since she was identified only as Our First Lady, no updating was required. Now she was the public’s only symbol of continuity, or grace, or for that matter, survival, even if she didn’t understand or feel it herself. Her classmates, Culvert, her driving teacher, Van, Nestor, moviegoers, the terrorists, Julienne, and now the world had seen her as a necessary figure of salvation, her blood-red hair absorbing their sorrows. Cliff alone had never seen her symbolically, but as a fellow creature. He didn’t know her either, but he took her directly, which was his power over her. Now she was truly alone
, unwitnessed though universally watched, a living effigy of an unliving thing, a shipwrecked tourist finally too exhausted to go on denying her divinity to insistent natives.

  Without intending to, she was carried like a standard beyond her own battlefield of good and evil, into a mood historians call postmodernity and psychologists call middle age. She was, in time, swept beyond the polar griefs of Van and Cliff. A peaceful, almost embalming fluid of fatalism cooled her veins, and the world saw it as stateliness. Once he acceded to the presidency after his father’s death, Shep offered to be her consort, but Carlotta needed to be properly magnetized.

  After thesis and antithesis, she drifted not so much to a synthesis as to a tertiary finale. She became the mistress of the Portonovo twins, who had loved her as the Madonna from the moment they saw her hold her dying husband. They set up a rococo villa for her on the Mediterranean, and shared her unpossessively, for theirs was a Siamese ambition. She herself didn’t trouble to tell them apart, and they were simply identified internationally—insofar as that was possible with deteriorating communications—as the Brothers Who Sold Rome. They had acquired all the real estate in the Eternal City, incidentally obliging them to buy the Catholic church itself, to dismantle and ship its ruins and architectural beauties worldwide as accessible local tourist attractions, since terrorism had virtually ended recreational travel. Technically, they were the Pope, and they authorized the subdivision of cathedrals everywhere into prestige co-op apartments. Carlotta acquiesced to them without loving them, a sort of heart’s retirement. The villa was perpetually obscured to waking eyes by the sun on the sea, and she could distract herself with the art objects Romulus and Remus pilfered from their own museums for her. They were certainly doting and undemanding, and any shouting they did was over the phone to their construction—or rather, deconstruction—crews.

  When word came from the last surviving Walker son that the shell of Vertigo Park had finally collapsed, Carlotta was stirred by an unexpected pang of nostalgia. Sensing her wistfulness, the twins had Sacajawea High School brought over and reassembled for her on a hillside near the villa. She toured it with an enigmatic smile, as befitted an icon, pausing occasionally but finding no consolation in its familiarity. Her life’s plot eluded her, but when she sat to reflect in the cavernous old auditorium, she seemed to identify something in the now peeling mural of Sacajawea, Lewis and Clark’s young Indian guide, at their journey’s end.

  The mural stretched high across the front wall of the room, above the twin masks of Comedy and Tragedy that hung over the stage where so many hopeful diplomas had been distributed. Sacajawea stood on a gilded beach with the two explorers, bathed in a sunset that leapt as close as a bonfire, and she superfluously pointed out the limitless ocean before her. The two men were in darkness behind her, as if she were real and they were her halves in shadow. She seemed to be Lewis and Clark’s intercessor with nature, yet surprised by it herself, painted into a moment of perpetual and foregone discovery, the inlander awed at her first and continuous look at the Pacific Ocean.

  Carlotta breathed deep, and closed her eyes.

  THE SOLAR YEARBOOK

  MERCURY

  VENUS

  EARTH

  Small, dark, and speedy … “Race you round the furnace!” … No moon and doesn’t want one … Daredevil or homebody?… Party trick: fries eggs and freezes ice cubes at the same time.

  Mysterious, or thinks she is … “Welcome to our mist!” … Really bright, but looks aren’t everything … I C CO2!… Cute, but that cloud cover … Her oceans were notions … Who’s minding the hothouse?

  Cootie-catcher … Wet and wild … Talk, talk, talk … Oh those baby-blues … Air to spare, but smokes too much … Thinks the sun revolves around her.

  Track 3, 4; First Place, World Series.

  Morning Star; Evening Star.

  History 1, 2, 3, 4; Art; Choir; R.O.T.C.; Most Populous.

  MARS

  JUPITER

  SATURN

  Always blushing … Long time no sea … Eerie canals … Premature polar caps … Ever consider moisturizer?… Sick of little-green-men jokes … “Two Moons Have I” … and one is nuts.

  Big Joe … Bold and cold, with a tight hold … How many moons???… Don’t mention that big red spot … B.M.O.C.… Loads of ammonia, but nothing to wash … Slept through Remedial Atmosphere … Orbit: anywhere he wants.

  Beat the dress code … Showoff at hula hoop … Brrrrrr-illiant … Hope you like methane … Class clown, but don’t tell her.

  Most Likely to Have Had Life.

  Gravity (Captain); Biggest.

  Best Dressed; Biggest (Runner-Up); Most Moons; 1000-M.P.H. Winds.

  URANUS

  NEPTUNE

  PLUTO

  “C’mon, guys, it’s pronounced You’re a niss’ ” … And he is … Green mien, clean scene … quiet, wisely … Hydrogen fiend … A five-moon man … “See you next century!”

  “Which one are you again?” … Not exactly molten … Far out, but only technically … Never volunteers … Solid … “No, it’s Uranus that has the five moons!”

  Loner type … Recent transfer … Easy to miss … Small as a moon, but those long midnight joyrides … No curfew … “My folks say he is bad, but I know he is sad.”

  Metal Shop; Most Average.

  Ice Show; Outer Solar System Monitor.

  Strangest Orbit; Most Days Absent.

  MARRED BLISS

  The front porch of JANE’s family home. JANE arranges roses in a vase. DINK sits on the glider, reading the paper or just enjoying the evening. A typical midwestern scene. JANE is a pretty, prissy, inhibited young woman, wearing starched, modest clothes. DINK is a regular lug who’s been talked into marriage but is willing to turn himself over to it.

  JANE: Darkling?

  DINK (looking up from his paper): What is it, dulling?

  JANE: I thought we’d have ruses for the centerpieces. For us, and for all the guest tables. Ruses are traditional.

  DINK: Ruses it is. (He continues reading.)

  JANE (after a restless pause): Oh, honey, just sink!

  DINK: What do you want me to sink about?

  JANE: In less than forty-eight horrors, you and I will be moan and woof! (Grins.) Isn’t it amassing?

  DINK: It is amassing! (He lowers his paper thoughtfully.) So much has harpooned in just a few thief years!

  JANE: It steams like only yesterday that you were the noise next door.

  DINK: And you were that feckless-faced cod sitting up in the old ache tree!

  JANE: And now we’re encaged! I can hardly wait till we’re marred!

  DINK: Oh, hiney! (He rises and makes to enfold her in his arms.)

  JANE: Now, now! I’m sure the tame will pass quickly till our hiney-moon! (She eases out of his grasp.) I’ll go get you some of that nice saltpeter taffy that Smother brought back from A Frantic City.

  (JEERY, a sexy, slouching sailor, appears at one corner of the stage.)

  JEERY: Hello?… Any him at home? (He carries a tiny bouquet.)

  JANE: Oh, my gash! It’s Jeery, my old toyfriend!

  DINK: Jeery! That bump! What’s he brewing here?

  JANE: Oh, dueling! Try to control your tamper! I’m sure he means no charm! Don’t do anything you might regress!

  (JEERY approaches.)

  JEERY: Hollow!—Revised to see me?

  JANE: Hollow, Jeery.

  DINK: Hollow.

  (Pause.)

  JEERY: I’m completely beware that I’m out of police here. But (looks to JANE)—for old climb’s sake, Jane, I brought you this little bunch of foul airs. A token of my excess steam. Lots of lack to you. And much lack to you, too, Dink.

  JANE (unsure): Wail … (She decides to accept the flowers.) Spank you, Jeery.

  DINK: Spank you very much.

  JEERY: My shaft is at rancor in the harbor, and they gave me whore leave. I heard you were engorged, and I just wanted to slop by and pave my regrets.


  JANE (uncomfortably): Well, blank you!

  DINK: Blank you very much.

  JANE (uneasy with this standoff): I think you two have already messed, haven’t you?

  JEERY: Oh, we’ve thrown each other for years!

  DINK: We went to the same cruel … till Jeery dripped out to join the Nervy.

  JANE: Of course, I remainder all that now! (She is eager to lessen the awkwardness.) Um—do you haunt to sit down?

  JEERY: Well, only for a menace. (They all sit down on the glider.) I’m hooded over to Pain Street. There’s a big trance at the Social Tub. I’ll probably go and chick it out. (There is an awkward silence as they sit on the crowded glider.) Wail, wail, wail … So when do you two tie the net?