White Leather and Flawed Pearls

by Susan Altstatt

  I’d like to go through life that way: random access and refuse to edit. (People at school used to ask what I was smoking. Answer: nothing. I am entertaining myself.) Pray, “Lord, that I may see—” Then open the eyes, bang. And see what comes by, the most amazing stuff, not the dumb theories people make and like to call the really-real.

  Theories are only suitcases; you cram in all the “real” you can, and cut off what hangs out. But it’s the funny incorrigible things I always loved the most, the stuff that won’t be suitcased, the things I don’t know what they are. Antique whatsits with rusty moving parts. Holy medals to saints I can’t find in the book. Little books about strange days, in languages I don’t read. Matters that take penetrating.

  Take the Gospel of this Sunday’s Mass:

  —You think I have come to establish peace on earth? I assure you, the contrary is true; I have come for division. From now on, a household of five will be divided three against two and two against three; father will be split against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law—

  Which wouldn’t be so wild, you see, except they tell you, “God is Love.” Think about the five in my house: who would side with me if I managed to come home with Tommi Rhymer? Mother, father, sister, brother? Maybe it wouldn’t be three against two, but four against one.

  Another bus grinds to the end of the line. More pairs of pastel couples trot past laughing, seaward, over the brow of the hill. Well, for better or for worse, here comes the Lord of Love. Groovin’ up slowly.

  12:15 p.m.

  So I’ve asked the man to marry me: my fantasy since I was twelve. I’m back in the car alone (nothing changed except the scenery), down in the musty deep between two city buildings. Thinking: what about a household of four? Is it two against two? Three against one? And a household of three?

  Two against one, no choice.

  And a household of two?

  I fired up the bus, drove around the kink in the alley, and Oh God, there he was already. Same clothes. He’d added a white cloth English cap and shades. His left hand held a leather carry-on; a luggage-stickered fiddle case was in his right. Just delicious, thirty-two going on seventeen, fidgeting on the dock next to the garbage Dumpster.

  He saw me, too.

  A little run took him off into the air, heels tucked against his rear, arms flung wide with a bag in each hand, picture perfect, circa 1940s Hollywood musical.

  When he’d made it through the door I hadn’t unlocked, he said, “They must have rings and such in—where we’re going, won’t they?”

  I ground along in low to the end of the alley.

  “We could take whatever comes today,” he said, “and do it right next week in London—”

  “Next week’s stuff may be terrific, but it can’t ever be the same—” (God, why am I so stubborn? Why say that?)

  “Or, we could do it here,” he said.

  Side by side, we peered from the end of our alley into downtown crowds, crawling noontime traffic, jackhammers, open manholes, torn-up streets. The real world.

  “So what are y’doing now?”

  “Thinking.”

  “Tell me.”

  Can’t. Why not? Don’t know. I have lived a short life steeped in secrecy, so accustomed to censoring my mind for public consumption. I’m marrying my fantasy confessor, the inhabitant of my dreams who always understood. I have to get used to his reality. He is not a dream. He is not a pet. He inhabits the front seat of my mother’s VW bus. If he asks what’s on my mind, it better be safe to tell him. Or I better find out now. “I like old junk stores.”

  He said, “So do I. Wanta know a secret?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Never bought diamonds in my life. Not even for me.”

  “I like to walk in some old cluttered place and close my eyes and say: My thing is in here somewhere. God put it here for me. And wave my face around like a shut-eyed dish antenna, seeing if I can home in on it. Don’t laugh! I can, too!”

  “Hey, Green Eyes,” he said.

  “—And my favorite thing, you know what my favorite is? I’ve got like, this whole little collection of things I don’t know what they are—”

  “Now, now,” he said, “I want to see you do it: I know some chaps’ve got grouse dogs that work like you.”

  A block or two from Union Square garage is this tiny little shop that does estate jewelry. It has one glass door and one glass window, and inside is so narrow, the counter sits edge-on to the street. I’d always been enamored of the jewels in there, slightly tarnished by reality. They had their histories and mysteries; they’d all belonged to Mafia Dons, or Edwardian Divas who blazed scarlet careers across the princes of three continents and ended penitent days in a convent.

  It was just ahead; I could see the small glass door. Also the closed sign through the glass.

  Can’t imagine a more embarrassing bleak impacted situation: shooting off my mouth and blundering around in search of special gifts from God, with my glorious white-and-ruddy Dulcinea like a dog at heel, watching me not find ’em. In present light, the weird old baubles in the window looked straight off the geegaw shelf at Goodwill anyway.

  “Not fine enough, is it?”

  “C’mon,” he said. “They got the better stuff inside.”

  “Closed on Sunday.”

  “Somebody’s in there.”

  Two somebodies, a man and a girl, bustling between the counter and a back room with lockboxes and ledgers.

  “C’mon,” I said, “let’s go. Please let’s go.”

  Tom already had a hand up, tapping on the glass.

  I saw the man jump (he saw us), his lips form, “Sorry, but we’re closed Sundays.”

  Tom fished inside his pocket for the wallet, extracted a hundred-dollar bill and flattened it against the window.

  Watch the guy begin to waffle. He approached the door, unlocked it. He had a gray suit, gray hair, and gray eyes, and a sleek gray-lavender tint to his skin, as if his grandmother was a Rajah’s daughter out of Ranchipur.

  He said, “We’re closed on Sunday.”

  “I’m gone on Monday. Would y’take a hundred dollars just to let us look? Who’ll ever know?”

  So he got his laugh, and got inside.

  “All right,” Tom had taken off the cap, put it in his belt; taken off the shades, put them in his pocket. Now he put a good preliminary grip on me: “I’m marrying her; she needs a diamond doesn’t she? I want it to be like no one else’s. Let’s start with the most costly ring you have.”

  “For a woman?”

  Tom looked suddenly very shy, about the most devastating trick he has. “Don’t know. Whatever she fancies.”

  Store Man thought. His focus shifted; more people stood outside the window, a group of girls. And they weren’t ogling the goodies in his case. Tom motioned at the door: “Y’might lock that up again.”

  “—the finest woman’s ring I have just now, is, in fact two rings, and can’t be disposed of separately. But should they be for you, the extra might be remade as a brooch—”

  Two girls scooted off along the sidewalk, and reappeared with half a dozen.

  “—The Dewitt sisters: Carlotta and Constanza Dewitt. Their parents were the pinnacle of Peninsula society in the ’20s, and the girls were twins, identical. They dressed alike, did everything together: they made their joint debut, a legendary blowout; they both chose extremely decorative and totally worthless young gentlemen (Tom laughed quietly) to marry, and were married together, double ceremony. After a few stormy years on the Grand Tour—”

  “Matching divorces, right?”

  “Right.” He opened the fragile leather box. Two objects of pure fantasy glowed in a green velvet heaven.

  Tom made a noise of appreciation, a kind of cockney fishwife squawk. “That’s diamonds, is it?”

  “That’s diamonds.”

  “What color woul
d you call that, now?”

  “I believe, officially, they’re canary.”

  They were Day-Glo orange if anything. They were little alien spacecraft with rows and rays of glowing lights, two genuine close encounters of the third kind.

  “—The twins never remarried,” he was saying. “They were fixtures of the San Francisco scene for, oh, years out of mind—I can remember them from the ’70s, tottering out of their limousine in Union Square, still wearing the most stunning identical couturier outfits. The matching engagement rings remained in the estate. The nephew, or grand-nephew, placed them here.”

  I made so bold as to take one from its velvet. Antique things are dainty and tiny: I couldn’t wear one away, even if Tom bought them; it’d need a piece spliced in—

  “—They’re an old-fashioned cut of course, what’s termed ‘Mine Cut’: less valuable, sorry to say, than if—”

  It fitted like a custom job.

  “The Dewitt sisters weren’t as tall as you, but certainly more—what? Zaftig.”

  Tom picked the extra little apricot spacecraft from the velvet tray. He slipped it on his own ring finger with a kind of shy finality.

  Tom’s are magic hands, immensely long and fine, like the outsize hands that bless and gesture across old mosaics. My hands are square, capable, I always thought embarrassing: hands of a twelve-year-old boy programmed to be a very big man. Who could have guessed at all? I was crying, and I hoped nobody noticed. Then Tom was poking something soft into my other hand below the counter’s edge. A Kleenex.

  I have been playing 21 with God. Not just asking, but begging, weeping, bullying a silent heaven to deal me one particular card out of the deck. And now it’s dealt, it’s face down on the table, I’m easing up one corner just to look—Jack of Hearts! All at once, a second card, uncalled for—not by me, at least. Ace of Diamonds.

  “How much?”

  Swift figures written on a pad, and held up where I couldn’t see. Store Man seemed almost apologetic.

  “Right,” said Tom.

  “Well, they’re not the most expensive item in the safe by any means.”

  “What is?” said Tom.

  “You mean, in the way of rings?”

  “In the way of anything.”

  “Ah.” Store Man cogitated; tapped the counter glass. “Oh! Of course. Marilee? Madame Hoang’s bracelet, please. Marilee’s head hung through the curtain from the back room: a piece of taxidermy, glass eyes fixed on Tom. “Yes, just get it out. As you’ll see, much more than starving fishermen came out of Vietnam. Ah—I think I’ll do as you suggested—” He locked the door. Kids scattered back, closed in again. Bolder ones began to tap the glass.

  Marilee’s head disappeared from the curtain. Her father pursued it to the back room, and, after much whispering, brought out a safety deposit box. A metal case inside that opened with a combination. A leather one inside that took a key. A shower of white spangles made good its escape, and rioted across the walls and ceiling.

  “About to ask a dumb question: that’s not diamant?”

  “Oh no! Oh no no no, God no. They’re perfectly matched blue-white diamonds, modern cut, over two hundred of them.”

  “Sorry, but I’ve been used to wearing things like this on stage, and they were diamant, and some of those could cost three hundred pounds—”

  “Oh doubtless.”

  “May I?”

  “My daughter, who is better acquainted with such matters, tells me you’re an entertainer.”

  Tom grinned, and the white fire in his hand cast fairy lights across his face. “I do get paid for it.”

  “By ‘Bill Graham Presents’?”

  “For one. But this came out of Vietnam?”

  “Madame Hoang spray-painted it flat white, and wore it out on her own arm. A real estate consortium has it from Madame and the General now, down payment on acreage, roughly the size of San Francisco, near the Mendocino coast.”

  Tom, bemused, amused, and thoughtful, was turning it in the air. He draped its flaming length across his wrist.

  I tried to image Madame Hoang. The original Dragon Lady? Or an antique fragile matriarch, and the General was her son. Or she could be a leggy Swede with platinum hair, kept by her oriental warlord in secluded kinkiness.

  “—It would make a proper piece for the stage,” Store Man was saying, “if expense meant nothing, and you didn’t mind the risk. Most women are intimidated. This is what you call a serious piece—No one would ever expect to find this here—I don’t have an international clientele—”

  “She’d expect it.” Tom gathered me in tightly, “She’s got a gift.”

  Wait a minute! I didn’t pray this out of thin air—I didn’t know it was here, I knew the store was here, I like to window shop—I’m accepting a hero’s medal for a rescue I never pulled, for great deeds only contemplated—

  “—if I hadn’t gone to Stanford with their mother,” the man is saying, “provincial loyalty, or what have you. Sotheby’s appraiser’s coming, possibly tomorrow. It’s my hunch this will end up broken and reset—”

  Tom dropped back to the real world. “No it shan’t, I want it whole. I believe I have the perfect use. How much for the three? The two rings and the bracelet?”

  Hardly the time to tell him I’m not a holy hero. Store Man wrote again. All delicacy aside, I craned. A definite six figures; was it seven? They were too fast for me.

  “Right,” said Tom. “Believe I can still manage. I’ll need to call my road manager, get him down here. We’re on our way to—where is it now?”

  I said, “Reno.”

  “Right. Reno, and—”

  Beaming, Store Man pumped my hand. “Congratulations!” He did the same to Tom, adding, “God loves a cheerful giver.”

  A telephone was served up on the counter’s warm glass top. Tom fought his patient way past information, the hotel desk, and a clutch of unwanted Belshangles personnel.

  “No, you won’t do. I need Garfein. I love you, but y’won’t do.” Listen. “God, Margot, I don’t care where he is, have him open a crack, and pop the fucking phone in with him. He can manage the two at once.” Pause. “Sim. Bless you.”

  Longer pause. “I’ve just spent a lot of money. Yeah. Right, love. Like a lot of money. Right. Like London, Switzerland. So get off it, and get down here.”

  He turned back to us helplessly. “Where am I?”

  ———

  Finally Sim arrived.

  “My road manager.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “Sim. We’re taking the rings; the bracelet I’m leaving with you. He’ll explain. One thing, you’re not to show that piece to Harlan. I don’t want him to see that toy, or know that it exists. Okay?”

  The answer to my question I supposed, a chill and sobering answer, about Love’s entry to the household of two.

  “Got it,” said Garfein.

  “Ta,” said Tom.

  Halfway to Union Square, he stopped, dismay all over his face. “We still’ve got no wedding rings!” Most of the store crowd had gone, but a few stayed watching. Their patience was repaid when we plowed in. “Wedding rings!” said Tom.

  “To complement your apricot extravaganzas?” Store Man didn’t look surprised. Sim looked frazzled: if he’d had more hair, he might be tearing it.

  “A plain gold band like old country people wear: that’s what I want. And I mean to leave it on, until at last it won’t come off at all.”

  So I said “Same for me.”

  Tom put his arm around my hip, not the waist, the hip, as I’d seen guys do in the Castro (each with a hand down the friend’s back pocket), and yanked me hard against him. I nearly fell over. I didn’t have any back pockets, but he did. My hand went in as far as the ring.

  ———

  Tom slid down, till the back of his head engaged the car seat and his knees were wedged against the dash. His white cap met the top of his dark glasses; not much of him was visible. His sweet cream cheek. The brash littl
e tough-kid thrust to his jaw and lower lip. He said, “I’ve known for two years I’d get married.” Most Americans say married “marr-ied,” almost “mare-id.” Whether it was the Londoner in him, or just the him in him: he said “ma-rried,” dainty and precise, a small boy making his cautious curtsy to an adult explosive word.

  I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t say anything.

  I knew why I was marrying him: a Grand Passion, conceived in childhood, nursed in solitude, pursued with total lack of self-preservation through adolescence.

  Yesterday, this is what I did.

  7:00 a.m.

  I turn up in the kitchen dressed for action, and wait for Mama to say, “Where to?”

  So I can answer, “Mountains.”

  “Alone?”

  “Kaye Lyttle would like to go with me.” Which is true; she’s said so many times. Didn’t say she was going with me.

  “May I have my old key to the cabin back, please?”

  “Baby, I still don’t think that’s safe. Besides,” she adds tellingly, “I don’t know where it is.”

  “I am eighteen, and it’s in Papa’s dresser drawer, like everything else he ever took away from me.”

  “Three years,” she says. “You’ve known where it was—”

  “Hey, I’m honest.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if we all went? That way you’d have people to cook and wash up for you—” Very long-suffering.

  “I have my own food.”

  “You’ve only been eighteen for a week and a day.”

  One year’s all that anybody’s got to be eighteen in: not exactly a discipline you can give a lifetime’s practice.

  ———

  One week earlier, caviar and champagne for me at Saint Ann’s after Mass. I mean Beluga and the French stuff, too. My parents and their crew don’t mess around. There is always a spread of food in the Newman House after Mass. For birthdays, weddings, baptisms, and major feasts there is an unconscionably ginormous spread of food. The Saint Ann’s High-Mass crowd take those scriptures about the “Heavenly Banquet” and the “Supper of the Lamb” quite literally.

  So I can observe from where I stand, two Benedictine monks smearing Brie on baguettes and laughing, three tenured professors, one doling out Russian caviar, sweet butter, and minced onion in minute, sacramental amounts (mine being the only authorized seconds: my birthday)—and any number of emeritus professors, visiting professors, foreign students, graduate students (not all Catholic, but getting there), parents, wives, husbands, lions and lambs together, everyone drinking wine and eating cold roast beef with horseradish sauce.