His father died, much honored and little loved, one Christmas when Alder was in Palm Beach with his mother and Teddy. His mother was furious when Alder insisted on flying to Boston to put his father in the ground when she had already promised Gloria McMahon that he would walk out the first debutante at the Snowflake Ball. She didn’t see then, and nothing would indicate that she ever came to see, the claims of the dead over the living. When Teddy Shannon choked to death on magic mushrooms on Maui, she moved to Dublin, for the horses, and left the farm in Bucks County to her son.
Alder, with his austere luxuriousness and his sour wit, was like both his parents. If he had been asked to choose between them, to choose which one he would prefer to resemble, it would have been impossible for him to pick one over the other. Alder had disliked both of them.
“Alysse says he’s married,” Claire yelled from the living room.
“Did you hear me?”
Mamie did not answer.
“And there’s a kid somewhere!” There was a pause as Claire waited for Mamie to say something. Mamie still did not answer and Claire, with her own odd combination of malice and good will, did not press her point, but returned happily to her conversation.
Mamie knew that Alder Stoddard was married. She knew that his wife lived with their child, a one-year-old girl named Delores, in Florida. He had tried to keep the child. His wife belonged to a powerful and vindictive Cuban family and her three brothers had fought for the child in court, and they had won her.
One of the first things that Mamie learned from Alder was the futility of questioning behavior. “But why did you marry her?” she asked at Fifty-seventh and Park. “Why did you have a child?” she asked at Fifty-ninth Street.
He had calm answers to her questions, but they were logical explanations and did not satisfy her. She did not want facts: his wife was not a good mother; she was a compulsive gambler; she lived with her father in Coconut Grove and the baby was looked after by illiterate girl maids.
“Why don’t you just take the child?” Mamie asked indignantly.
All Alder said in answer to that question was a patient “Mamie …”
She had spoken to him on the telephone earlier that day, when Claire was at the market buying pineapples and dark rum. He was coming to the city in a few weeks and he would stay with his grandmother.
“Everyone in New York has a grandmother with an apartment on Park Avenue,” Mamie had said in wonder, and he had laughed. “At home, grandmothers collect ferns. They don’t wear diamonds and go out to lunch. I might as well be on Mars.”
“You might as well be,” he had said.
Felix Villanueve, of Spanish and French descent, claimed nobility on his mother’s side (“I don’t use my title in this wonderful country,” he often said). He had made an enormous amount of money for years, and those least favorable to Felix said that his clothes were patterned directly from designs he stole each season from the French couture. It was of no consequence. His clothes made American women happy and he liked making women happy very much.
It appeared that he only allowed very pretty girls to work for him, not just as models, but as accountants and secretaries. The girls called him “Mr. Feel” and it was obvious that many of them were old girlfriends who remained unusually devoted to him. The staff of young, well-dressed, beautifully made-up girls caused Mamie to think that she had been inducted into a very glamorous sorority house. It took her a few days of listening quietly, looking through old copies of Women’s Wear Daily while she waited for Felix to arrive, to understand that they were professionals, after all, and that Felix’s business was run by very able women. What she had at first taken to be a girls’ club now impressed her, and she realized that she had judged them by that prejudice she so hated, the distrust of her own kind.
She soon accustomed herself to the pleasant routine. She sat on the white carpet in the long, mirrored dressing room with a book, The Diary of “Helena Morley”, in her lap and listened to the girls. They were interesting to her. The other models accepted her without hesitation and began almost immediately to teach her some of their tricks: moustache wax smeared on the eyebrow to make each hair stand up straight; a tight, old-fashioned girdle with the crotch cut out, pulled up to flatten the breasts. The absence of rivalry made Mamie feel at ease and even happy.
When Felix did come in to look at the girls and give his approval to the shoes and gloves and jewelry that the pretty girl stylists had selected for each dress, he was polite and circumspect and did not single out Mamie for any special attention. He was very charming with her and had taken her around the first day, holding her hand, to introduce her to everyone (he called her “my hula girl”), but he was never alone with her and she did not experience again the embarrassment she had felt in the dressing room at Deardorf’s.
Within a few days, she was comfortably walking through the dressing room in her brassiere and pantyhose, and although she never attained the confidence clearly achieved by the models who sat around bare-breasted in silk G-strings, she was no longer ashamed.
There was one older woman who worked for Felix. She had been his first model and he had designed his collection on her for years. She was now manager of the salon. She was just called Toni, without a surname. Her eyes, her skin, her mouth were all the color of honey. She used no makeup, not even lipstick, and her face was very wrinkled. Her blond hair was chopped in hunks and patches. She had very short, dirty fingernails. She wore the same thing every day—a beige cashmere sweater and beige unlined cashmere trousers, and leopard-skin flats. She was never without an old, enfeebled Schnauzer named Pépé. She was the only one who made no effort to be nice all of the time and it was by watching Toni, cigarette held in dirty fingers, yellow eyes squinting to keep out the smoke, that Mamie realized that she preferred Toni’s objective bad temper to the indiscriminate sincerity of the others.
Toni paid no attention to her. She withheld her approval from everyone and Mamie saw the power and exclusivity that this aloofness gave her. Toni had no favorites and no preferences, so her friendship had extreme value. Mamie, who made up her mind quickly to form passionate attachments and not so passionate dislikes, admired that Toni revealed nothing about herself.
Toni spoke to Mamie only once that first week when she overheard another model advise Mamie to remove the hair on her arms.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said abruptly to Mamie. She held an unlighted Camel cigarette between her teeth. “I never did any of that shit.” She walked away, Pépé limping after her, before Mamie had time to say a word.
So Mamie left the hair on her arms, and learned how to walk up and down a runway, and how to rip off one dress and put on another in twenty-five seconds. She was busy at Felix’s, and although she did not delude herself into thinking that what she did was useful or important, she had less the feeling that the world was watching her, silently and impatiently waiting for her to understand it. She read her books and wrote to Mary once a week and drank tropical rum drinks at home at night with Claire. She did not know it, but she was in a state of suspension, waiting for something to happen, waiting for it all to be made clear.
After the lazy, comfortable weeks with Alysse, Claire, too, was full of energy and ready to direct the lava-flow of her charm into the business community. She answered an advertisement in the newspaper for a hostess at a Japanese karaoke restaurant. She was interviewed in the dark, sticky bar at ten o’clock in the morning by the proprietress, Mrs. Hadashi.
Mrs. Hadashi slowly circled Claire, studying her carefully, and Claire was surprised when the short, elderly woman did not pull apart her lips to examine her gums. Claire had already passed the inspection, but she really impressed Mrs. Hadashi when she spoke several phrases in Japanese. Claire so delighted Mrs. Hadashi with her remarks (“Good morning, it’s a hot number-one day”) that she wanted Claire to return that very evening. The job was not demanding: Claire must wear makeup and sexy clothes; talk to the Japanese men who came into the
club every night after work; and, if requested, join the men at the microphone to sing along with the recorded music. It did not seem difficult to Claire. She explained to Mrs. Hadashi that she needed some time to get her very sexy clothes together and it was agreed that she would begin in two days. Mrs. Hadashi said to Claire as she walked her to the door that she was not expected to entertain the men anywhere but in the restaurant. She would be paid a percentage of the charm charge that was added to the customer’s bill.
“Charm charge?” Claire asked.
Mrs. Hadashi nodded and said, “Hai.”
Claire went straight from the restaurant on East Forty-fifth Street to the 92nd Street Y. She took a taxi. Unlike Mamie, she did not believe in wasting her time on social experiments like the subway. As she would not begin work until five o’clock each day, she enrolled herself in a course entitled “Car Repair and Maintenance” that met twice a week in the early afternoon. Then she walked downtown.
Claire had arranged a surprise. She was meeting Mamie at an apartment building on Gracie Square. When Mamie arrived, running from Eighty-sixth Street because her bus had been slow, Claire, who had already spoken to the doorman, took Mamie by the hand and led her into the elevator.
Still holding her hand, she waited with Mamie in front of an apartment door. Mamie was not allowed to raise her eyes from the floor lest she discover their destination, and she was able to study the mail that lay on the doormat. There were many letters from museums and opera companies and ballet troupes, and copies of The Nation and The New York Review of Books. She thought she recognized the name of an American writer. Mamie bent down to pick up the mail just as the door was opened.
She heard a woman’s voice say, “Hi, Claire. Hi, Mamie.”
She stood up. It was one of the sisters. It was Courtney.
“Aren’t you surprised?” Claire asked, turning proudly to Mamie. “It took us months to find you, Courtney. I finally had to steal Alysse’s address book.”
“We’re in the phone book,” Courtney said, smiling apologetically, as if it were her fault that they could not find her.
As Mamie embraced her, she felt Courtney pull away, as if Mamie’s hug were too enthusiastic.
“But we didn’t know your married name,” Claire said.
“Oh, I use my maiden name and his name. Hyphenated,” she said shyly.
Mamie was thrilled to see her. She had thought about her for years, wondering what tortures she had suffered at her Swiss school and at Alysse’s irresponsible hands. Mamie studied her for clues of damage, but Courtney, surprisingly, seemed rather ordinarily well. She had very blond, well-kept hair which she wore held off her smooth face with a black velvet Alice band. She wore patent leather low-heeled pumps, Pilgrims’ shoes, and a plaid dirndl skirt and a white high-collared blouse.
She took Mamie and Claire into the living room and they sat on a brown velveteen sofa and drank Earl Grey tea with honey. The room had that especially neat look that no maid could ever give it. Courtney did her own housework.
“Courtney’s married to a writer,” Claire said to Mamie.
“I thought so,” Mamie said, looking around. There were books, and black-framed caricatures of Faulkner and Hemingway. There were bottles of St. Edmund’s Hall port and good sherry on a tolle tray on a table.
“He’s in the Park. He visits the parrot tree every day for inspiration.”
Mamie and Claire looked at each other.
“There is a tree in Central Park where all the escaped birds roost. Parrots and canaries and budgerigars,” Courtney said quickly. “More tea?”
“I think I’ve read your husband’s book,” Mamie said. “Highs and Lows?”
Courtney nodded and blushed.
The book was about twenty-four hours in 1969 in the back room at Max’s Kansas City. Edwin, who was admired for his ability to cover all the bases, had dedicated the book to “You Know Who You Are.”
“We’re very eager to see Brooke,” Claire said.
“Yes,” said Courtney, a little primly.
Mamie saw that she was not particularly interested in Brooke.
“Where is she?” Claire asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, she works for a photographer, you may have heard of him, and they’re on location somewhere. He’s the one who does all the animals.”
“Is he the man who takes those pictures of animals with erections? God!” Claire said, showing interest for the first time. “He’s an artist, not a photographer.”
“Well. Yes. I suppose.” The conversation made her uncomfortable. “Edwin says not,” she said timidly, as if she were afraid of both Edwin and Claire.
“Do you think at all about the time you visited us?” Mamie asked quickly. She felt sorry for Courtney as she watched her fidget with the tea strainer and the spoons. “The time the baby sharks frightened you? And the flumes?”
Courtney looked at Mamie. She hesitated. “It was the happiest I have ever been in my whole life.”
“It was?” Claire asked, amazed.
Mamie thought for a moment that Courtney might cry.
“How is Jimmy?” Courtney asked.
“Jimmy died my second year at Punahou. He was buried in the palm grove. Quite a few toads showed up for his funeral.”
“Claire was so distraught when Mother called to tell her, she was allowed to go home for a week. Mongoose grief.” Mamie was surprised and a little ashamed by Courtney’s nostalgia for the time at Waimea. Mamie was so used to being teased, or scolded, for her own attachment to the past that she had been swayed into thinking that remembrance was a weakness, rather than an act of love.
“Shut up, Mamie,” Claire said. “It still makes me sad.”
Courtney said, “After Waimea, I was shunned at boarding school because the other girls thought I was a liar. And when Brooke backed me up, they said she was a liar, too. They didn’t believe Hawai‘i was like that.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mamie.
Courtney smiled. She seemed more at ease, and more trustful. “When people don’t believe you, you begin to think maybe they’re right. At least, that’s what happens to me.”
“Do you have anything to drink?” Claire asked.
Courtney looked confused.
“You know, a drink drink,” said Claire.
“There’s port,” Mamie said, trying to help.
“Oh, yes,” said Courtney. “And sherry and white wine.” She stood to pour Claire a small glass from one of the bottles on the tray.
“I’ve never had port,” Claire said.
“This is Edwin’s special vintage from Oxford. He brought a case back from England. He was there to lecture on the ‘Lawrentian Life Force.’ ”
“How nice,” Claire said. Mamie nudged her. “The port, I mean.”
“How did you meet him?” Mamie asked.
“He was my English teacher at Vevey.”
Mamie did not want to look at Claire, but she could see Claire take the tiny glass from her mouth and turn to stare at Courtney. “You know,” Mamie said quickly, “this is something that has always interested me. I don’t know why it doesn’t happen more often in high school. So romantic.”
“It wasn’t really. I mean, for him it wasn’t. My mother was killed in a car crash and I had all this money. He could stop teaching.”
“But what about you?” Claire asked.
“Oh,” Courtney said. She didn’t know how to go on. She smiled in embarrassment. “I never thought anyone would ever want me without it. The money, I mean. So, in a way, I was lucky.”
Mamie watched as Claire drank the port in two gulps.
“Edwin will be returning from his walk to the parrot tree and he likes to get right to work when he comes in,” Courtney said.
Edwin had a very precise schedule. He headed a reading group, of which Vivi Crawford was an enthusiastic member, and they read and discussed the Bible, which did not leave him all that much time for other worthwhile activities, such as his well-known in
terest in pre-Columbian glyphs. He also monitored a prestigious writing class in which the teacher, a book editor, allowed students to bring their psychiatrists. It was also said that the teacher expected certain acts of obeisance from the girl students, but Edwin was not a part of that. Edwin’s novel, which he was rewriting, took place in Machu Picchu.
They embraced and Mamie gave her their telephone number at the Crawfords’ and Claire wrote down Brooke’s number and they all promised to have tea again soon. Courtney said that there were still many things she wanted to ask them about Waimea.
Mamie and Claire walked home across the Park, through the Ramble. The sky was flat and milky. There was a smell of musk from the umbrella flowers of the elder trees.
“I hope we don’t run into Edwin,” Mamie said. “Ever.”
“We won’t.” Claire was so certain of this that Mamie turned aside to look at her.
“How do you know?”
“He’s got a girl. He’s not at the parrot tree, he’s at the pussy tree. Alysse told me when she found I’d stolen her address book to track down Courtney. She knows the girl. She works in a rock store on Madison Avenue. You know, selling gigantic purple stalagmites to Arabs.”
“Alysse shouldn’t have told you.”
Claire shrugged, without interest, and they took the path down to the lake. Mamie was quiet the rest of the way home, even though Claire told her about her job at the karaoke bar and her car class, and asked if Mamie would advance her a little money to buy a miniskirt, garter belt, and green eye shadow.
“You got it,” said Mamie, meaning she would lend her the money, and they crossed Central Park West under the static white sky.
Mamie lay on her camp bed listening to Gabby Pahinui sing of the trees and coves of Kaua‘i. She tried to think again about her Theory of Heroines and Private Incomes, for her tea with Courtney had left her confused. It is not that she ever thought that money alone would allow women to make their way in the world, but she hadn’t fully taken into account just how much courage and luck were also needed. As was customary when she was troubled, she moved back and forth between the two disparate worlds through which she was still trying to find her way: the mokihana is blooming now in the rain forests of Koke‘e. Their resinous, sweet smell of anise and orange leads me to them in the maile vines. “I kahi ‘e no ke kumu mokihana: though the mokihana is at a distance, its fragrance reaches me here,” lying on a French nineteenth-century bed covered with pieces of Kashmiri shawls, in a borrowed apartment full of museum reproductions, worried about a woman who once thought she was being eaten by sharks and is now being eaten by her husband. My rain forests are so lovely, Mamie thought, shimmying between West Sixty-seventh Street and the ancient footpath to the Sugi Grove. No snakes, no predators, no thorns.
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