White Leather and Flawed Pearls

by Susan Altstatt

Yosh for hair. Just before closing. The tall young man assigned to me had perfectly sculpted golden curls himself. Harlan leaned across, and whispered in his ear.

  He let out a very unprofessional squeal. People turned around and looked. I bided my time until the hair was all wet down and he was snipping away, I asked him what Harlan had said to make him laugh.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Your friend was being witty.”

  “What?”

  “Really, nothing.”

  “Come on, or I’ll think you were talking about me.”

  “He suggested a name, and I didn’t expect it, and it struck me as funny, that’s all.”

  “What was the name?”

  And he must have thought it was really hilarious; he was giggling again.

  “Theda Bara.”

  I had only the vaguest idea who Theda Bara was, and no idea at all what made it funny. I clammed up. Spent the rest of the time vigorously loathing Harlan, whom I could still see perusing French glamour mags on a divan out front.

  But the hair worked, Theda Bara to the contrary not withstanding. When I was finished and dry and the guy put the mirrors around, it was minimal, durable, sculptured smooth and close to my head, a helmet of sleek seal brown.

  Harlan could take his black satin hair bands now, and stuff ’em.

  ———

  Besides, I now knew how to get away from him. Ha. Wait’ll he’s in the shower, and split.

  There was a really opulent bookstore a few doors up from the hotel. I strode in there and found what I wanted almost at once. Books on Hollywood, movie history, Glamour Gods and Goddesses of the Silver Screen.

  Find the index. Look up Theda Bara.

  And there she was.

  Dark hair, bangs. Eyes like two enormous smoky blazes consuming half her face. Shapely little mouth and a steel jaw. Impossible: I knew I couldn’t look like that; old Harlan passed for Theda Bara light years easier than I did. Incongruous. That’s why the guy at Yosh had laughed.

  Or was it?

  I found three pictures, and a short blurb on her: the original vamp (as is vampire), the “v” also standing for the vengeance of her sex, she was the woman who used up men, wrung them dry and threw away the rind. Could that be what Harlan thought of me? Maybe he wasn’t being funny. I had got his lover, and was set to suck him dry.

  It wasn’t funny at all.

  One other thing, though. She was actually this proper Midwestern Jewish chick named Theodosia Goodman. The studio promo guys concocted “Theda Bara.” It was an anagram for “Arab Death.”

  Now that was funny.

  Thursday, September 4

  I woke up, got up. Threw up. All over the bathroom. I wanted to mop it up, but I was too sick. Harlan found me trying. He rang for the maid. I rang for the Marines.

  Doctor Eldridge Curtis. OB Gynecologist. First saw him years ago; Mama panicked because I didn’t have periods. He said it was because I ran. After that I saw him once a year. A sandy, skinny, weathered, down-loose man, with a funny laugh not unlike Father ’Chi’s.

  He was standing outside his suite in the courtyard of the medical building when Harlan and I slid past. He was showing some expectant couple the plant.

  In among the tropical wonders growing in the long court is this big-leafed thing: it extrudes a bloom like one year in five. It had one now, a man-high jack-in-the-pulpit, or when open, dick-in-the-pulpit: an amazing shameless green phallus, like Audrey II with a hard-on. “How about that?” cackled Dr. Curtis. “Is that the sign for a gynecologist’s office or what?”

  I got the exam room I liked best, with the paper mobile twirling from its ceiling. There was the symbol for “male,” and the symbol for “female,” and two silhouette people, frank and primitive like Bushmen made them. The little guy was bowlegged and his penis was a tab sticking down. The little woman’s breasts sat out in cones, one to a side, and her crotch had a round paper-punch hole. The guy’s tab fitted perfectly.

  You could just tell: the nurses each time they tidied that room would routinely tear off the paper on the exam table and roll out more, pitch the used gown and sheet and set out clean folded ones, and take the little paper guy’s tab out of his little wife, letting him dangle free so the next appointment could have the secret satisfaction of reinserting him before the doctor came.

  Funny. Lovely. Wonder what minute percentage of women didn’t think to do it. Gloria in excelsis Deo.

  Memory pulled the plug, and all the fun drained out. There was that tiny sparkle of pain in my guts again. I hadn’t quite started to cry when Doctor Curtis came in.

  “There she is,” he said. Did his usual little double take. “They tell me you’re infirm.”

  I told him. I told him good. He didn’t say anything.

  He lifted up my sheet and pressed my soft parts solemnly all over, leaning his weight into his hand, first down the right side, no problem—

  “Ow.”

  “—That would be your—left ovary—” Then over in the middle, his entire attention centered in the kneading pressing fingers, while his eyes bobbed forgotten on the ceiling.

  “Find anything?”

  “Your uterus.”

  “Is it all right?”

  “It’s—quite hard—and a tad enlarged. Let’s go inside and have a look.” He warmed his little stainless instrument of torture in the sink—still that shock when he stuck it in and opened it, Whoop! Click! Like an umbrella going up inside me.

  On my last exam I asked him, just hypothetically of course, like rhetorically, for curiosity’s sake, whether anything he saw in my anatomy might make sex difficult. “If I can put this in all right—” (Whoop! Click! Yeeow!) he said, “your husband shouldn’t have much problem.”

  Now I was married, and here was Dr. Curtis again, looking up me with a flashlight. “Noticed any unusual discharge?”

  “What?”

  “Itching? Burning? Bleeding?”

  “No. No. No. Only a little—”

  “Juicy.”

  “Right.”

  He took a swab for evidence, saying, “Hardly need to do this, but I’ll send it to the lab anyway. I think I can make a visual diagnosis. Classic symptoms. Madam, you’re pregnant.”

  “You mean I’m all right?”

  “Assuming you like being pregnant.”

  “But what about the pains?”

  “We feel you’re entitled to an ouch or two.”

  “You mean I’m not sick?”

  “If you are, it’s not in the parts I look at.”

  “I’ve only been married three weeks!”

  “Come on, lady, you know where babies come from—”

  “I was only with him one week! Part of one week!”

  “So what d’you want me to say? A little dab’ll do ya? Your husband’s a good shot?” He reached for my file again. “Let’s see. Your last period must have been—and counting fifteen days (about) from there—When did you say you were married?”

  “The seventeenth.”

  “Gotcha the first night out.”

  “He’s in England!”

  “Give him a call. Get dressed.”

  In the office down the hall, white starched rumps swaying in unison, nurse and receptionist leaned across the desk, peering out through the receptionist’s window at the little lobby with its cozy colonial furniture and baby magazines.

  “Can’t be, that was a month ago.”

  “Don’t care,” whispered the other, “That’s him.”

  I knew just what they were seeing.

  “Well he must be with some band, it’s the only excuse I know for looking like that—”

  “Marta,” said Dr. Curtis in the direction of the prone nurse and receptionist, “Have you got Andy’s billing here?”

  I tackled him again. “Don’t I need some special diet?”

  “Do you eat meat once a week?”

  “Come on, be serious.”

  “Do you drink a lot? Smoke? Do drugs?”

 
“No!”

  “Young lady, you are a perfect physical specimen. You obviously know how to take care of yourself. Pregnancy is a natural condition. An ultimately natural condition.”

  “I run a lot. Shouldn’t I stop?”

  “Probably harder on your bod to stop abruptly than go on cautiously. You’ve got good sense. Your own comfort is the surest guide.”

  “What about sex?”

  “Same goes. The final week or so when things begin to open up, there’s some increased risk of infection, but I’ve seen lots of healthy overdues induced into the world that way. Why, it’s better’n climbin’ in the ol’ pickup and ridin’ down the railroad tracks.”

  “I’ll need to find a doctor in England, won’t I—”

  “Pas de problème. It’s a civilized country.”

  Doctors, it’s claimed, have the same speech defect as Las Vegas women, all they can say is “One hundred dollars.” My billing was all typed out, laid out on the desk.

  I went, “Sssst,” at Harlan through the waiting room door. He, being never slow, came through it wallet in hand. “That is Harlan Parr, by the way,” I breathed to the nurse, behind his back.

  “Oh God,” she breathed back. “Oh God. You’re—not?” (I shook my head.) “They said you were married, I didn’t think to check your record—” (doing it) “Miranda Rhymer?”

  ———

  Harlan had me outside already, next to the plant. From its tip, at eye level, hung a fat round drop of nectar. The whole world looked bright, flat glittery bright, like I was going to faint. “Harlan.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t hear what he said.”

  He searched my face in quiet alarm. “I assumed from their manner—No, I heard the doctor say you were well—”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Everything went black.

  At last I was inside Harlan’s charmed circle, with his hair over my eyes and the rest of me glued up against his warm rough linen suit. He was just like Tom, he kissed with his whole body. Tom said Harlan hadn’t known how to kiss very well the first time, but it was terribly sweet. That second part was true even now. Tom said they’d taught each other how to love. They sure were each other’s star pupils. I thought he said, “Now I understand—” (against my right cheek) “why—” (a kiss to the mouth) “I’ve felt Tom’s hand when I took yours.” Implausible as a dream he should be saying that, and convincing instantly, as dreams are—

  Then he backed off a little and said, for real and for sure this time, “Promise me, promise me you won’t tell Tom until the proper time. Please promise.”

  I was sure he said that. “When’s proper?”

  “I’ll tell you when the time comes.” He seemed so pathetically earnest. “Please trust me. I’ll show you how it works.”

  “Sure.” I would have promised him almost anything just then. Amazing how reasonable it all could seem. I’m well and I’m pregnant, God bless me, Tom would be kissing me, exactly the same if he were here: exactly the same—exactly the same—in the cool of early evening, presided over by the exuberant protuberant greenness of that enormous phallic plant, in the sweet smell of the blooming courtyard.

  ———

  Somebody cleared her throat, and queried in a genteel whoopy dowager’s voice like Julia Child’s—“Your first?”

  We were holed up in the next door down from Dr. Curtis, which was, in fact, the entrance to a dentist’s. An elderly lady in a red suit and hat was waiting to get past. We let go of each other and faced her in as total alarm I’m sure as if she’d caught us fucking in the bushes.

  “Er, yes, quite!” said Harlan, blushing and bobbing, doing an excellent job of looking young, flustered, upper class and English. Which, of course, he was.

  Hat Lady smiled benignly. “Well, I wish you many many more,” she said, patting his arm, then mine. “Small families may be modern, but the world needs beautiful people.”

  We abandoned the Porsche in the medical suites’ slowly emptying lot, and hiked around the corner into Stanford Shopping center. Gaylord’s of India. My hand that wore Tom’s rings traveled tightly enclosed in Harlan’s small, hard, comfortably warm one.

  We tried to rev up our old discussion about hot food, but talk kept lapsing. When the split of Chardonnay he ordered was almost empty, Harlan eyed the Mound of Despair and ordered another. And finished it.

  But his touch with the car felt smooth and sure as ever.

  I curled up in my bucket seat. The pain in my insides wasn’t. Oh, something was still there, but it wasn’t pain. Just something. Short ride.

  I was still half asleep when Harlan unlocked the door to the suite. He ducked into his room and came out with a small manila envelope. He handed it to me. It was addressed to Miranda D. Rhymer c/o the hotel. In the upper left corner it said U.S. Passport Services.

  “Harlan?”

  He was already on the phone. “Want to place a transatlantic call to England, please. London, England.” He used the delay transferring his body to the couch. “Yes, thank you. The number is—” he gave it.

  “Harlan, how long have you had this? When did you—”

  “Twenty-four hours after our visit to the bureau.”

  “But, they had to get my records from—”

  He had the phone to his ear, decorating the couch in lithe, half-potted patience; he wasn’t looking at me. “There are four wedding chapels in the street behind the licensing office in Carson City. They read me the numbers, I called them one by one. You were married at seven o’clock in the evening, in the Garden House of Serendipity Square, by one Reverend Milton Pritchard, Episcopal, retired. One hour to locate the right chapel and the Reverend Pritchard, one half-hour of genteel conversation to convince him that I hold Tom’s lasting power of attorney—”

  “You do?”

  “Of course. As he does mine. How else?”

  “I understand,” I said, “around here some guys adopt each other—”

  He flopped his head back over the arm of the couch, to regard me upside down. “What—adding incest to injury?”

  Somebody must have asked the number again; he repeated it, with emphasis, and continued “—then he, being a gentleman, walked across to the State offices, expedited the issuance of a certified copy; a local courier service carried it in a sealed official envelope to the passport office in San Francisco, which had this issued and delivered to the hotel desk in twenty-four hours.”

  “How long would you have hung on to it?”

  “Until I knew if I could live with you.”

  “What if you’d decided that you couldn’t? Harlan, answer me!”

  Tom said Harlan had tried his hand at suicide. I found that hard to believe. With all his poise and self-assurance, he was the least suicidal-looking creature in the world. Still, Tom said Harlan had come for him with a knife, and that was even harder. But what did I know about crimes of passion? Wasn’t it all an act, a gesture? You know, fling himself bodily over the edge, force his lover to catch him, save him. Hot stuff: kissing and making up in hospital emergency. That was more the Harlan style, I guessed, but oh God, what if I was wrong? So who would it have been this time, himself or me?

  “Maggee.” Both halves of the name so evenly accented, you couldn’t tell if it was “Maggie” or “McGee.”

  He giggled. “I know.” Sinking to an ominous guttural, he rasped “A voice from the dead! Listen, have you a pencil handy?” The person hadn’t, evidently. “I’m coming home. Yes. That’s right. I’ll have Thomas’s new bride with me. As soon as I have the flight details, I’ll let you know.

  “First. I want the lads at Heathrow. I’ve tried Thomas. He’s not to be found. That’s right. With one of the Mercedes. Make that both the Mercedes.

  “Second, Thomas will want to be at Heathrow. I have no idea. Somewhere between London and Norwich, like as not. Locate him.

  “Third, Thomas will want the world to be at Heathrow. Tip the fan clubs. Oh no, of course not. Anony
mous will do. You have the numbers. (Pause) Those are indeed the ones. Next. Reservations: a suite, or better still, two, in one of the larger, more impregnable tourist hotels, Strand Palace, or the like. At least through the first of October.

  “Right. Expense no object. We’ll make a grand pretense of installing the lady there. They’ll do for her family later.” He giggled again. “Nothing but the finest red herring. Yes.

  “And lastly—that’s right. Lastly, Thomas and his bride will be coming home with me.” Whatever was suggested on the far end, Harlan looked perfectly aghast. “Oh no, it isn’t that at all: you’re to make as much of them as possible, or he’ll be terribly hurt. It’s not the other bit at all. Thomas is well and properly married; give the dear boy his money’s worth.

  “No, his own room. But do turn it out for a bridal chamber. A fire in the grate, lavender between the sheets. Well, whatever you think appropriate. That’s the ticket. The office should know when they open. It is six o’clock in the morning. Five-thirty. Thank you, Maggee. So, goodbye, dear. Much love.”

  Whom does Harlan love? Besides Tom. That’s what I’m thinking now. Who loves him, lives with him, does his errands for him? Laughs and jives with him at five-thirty in the morning. Older or younger? No clue. Male or female? Female, I imagine somehow. Oh God, I hope that’s not just prejudice! It might be like Tim’s boys.

  Before ringing off he’s smiling anyway, murmuring again, “Much love.”

  I’m off to sleep with both hands under my pillow, and my official U.S. Passport, issued to Miranda Dolores Rhymer, in both hands.

  Friday, September 5

  Harlan has taken to the phone already, and I’m not out of bed. Remedy that. Two glasses of orange juice this morning, and an almond tart Kit delivered from the coffee shop.

  The first available fight to London is a red-eye with a plane change in New York. That gives us one long day and most of an evening to get packed.

  Trunks. Bags. Tissue paper. I spread it out one last time and looked at all my wonderful collected stuff. And it was certainly my stuff, all right. No one else’s.

  Dead people’s clothes.

  Rings from old ruined marriages.

  Mourning silk for an Emperor’s concubine.

  Castoffs lovingly restored by outcasts.