by Paula Fox
“What do you want, Annie?” her father had asked her some months ago. “You have to want something.” The outcome of the question—she had been unable to answer it—had been her father’s insistence she attend some kind of school. So she continued to go, even after his disappearance, several days a week to the Art Students League, where she played with clay in a back basement room under the casual eye of a short Russian sculptor. Sometimes she modeled for a muralist or a drawing class.
She was accustomed to having empty pockets; a dollar or two would keep her going from day to day. She carried nearly everything she owned in the pockets of her coat, a camel-hair coat given her by one of her father’s woman friends—she’d forgotten which one.
The sculptor once told her she had talent, then he’d laughed and said talent was itself a minor talent.
Her father had paid the rent on the apartment for two months —she’d seen the receipt. The apartment house, which was small and shabby, was owned by a Tunisian homosexual who occasionally gave Annie Arab dinners and told her his troubles in a high, hectoring voice. She often helped to tie or pin him into one of the female dance costumes he liked to wear at his parties. His favorite was a red ruffled rumba skirt, open all the way to his thick waist. Once he had awakened his few tenants at two in the morning, screaming, “Where are my TITS!” Up and down the hall stairs he had stumbled, weeping and cursing the bitch who had stolen his beautiful appurtenances with the molded nipples. Annie had observed him from behind the banister of the top floor—she’d been awake, listening to the Milkman’s Matinee on the radio—thinking of an obscure but terrible vengeance against something, someone. The Tunisian, Samuel, had staggered up to her—everyone else had locked their doors. He was drunk, his wig on backwards, his make-up streaked.
“You don’t know, you silly slut,” he moaned, and walking stiffly into her apartment, had slid at once to the braided rug, where he’d slept until morning. She made him coffee then, and he told her how he hated the United States of America and the Jews who ran it, how, if he hadn’t run away from home at fourteen, his life would have been sane and he would have had six fat children by now. From now on, he assured her, he was her friend, even if that bastard father of hers didn’t pay another cent of rent, and he’d let her stay on for nothing, well, nearly nothing. His promises made her painfully uneasy. From then on, he invited her to his drag parties—she didn’t go—and now and then slipped a dollar into her pocket. But he had moments of real-estate passion when he regarded her coldly, and she knew he was figuring on how long she might have the nerve to stay after the rent money ran out.
She received, within one week, two colorful cards from her father, who was in New Mexico. The second one asked, “Do you need a spot of cash?” But since there was no return address, the question was pointless. A young woman in her sculpture class gave her two cheap cotton dresses and told her she ought to try to get a job modeling in a fashion agency. People frequently admired Annie’s looks, but although she heard their compliments they did not penetrate an incomprehension of her own person that was central to her nature.
Dutifully, she went to a model agency on Park Avenue. The waiting room was crowded with girls, large black portfolios resting against their thin legs. They were so pretty! Eventually Annie was ushered in to the office of the head of the agency. He looked at her legs, the cotton dress, her braids. He told her to let her hair fall free and bend over, then back. Did she have any clothes? Any professional photographs? No, no, she didn’t. He said he’d send her out on a catalog job the next day. She left, flushed with excitement. She’d heard of the incredible money models made—five dollars an hour, sometimes even more.
The next day, wearing the other cotton dress and the camel-hair coat, she went to an address in the East Fifties. Through an iron grille, she looked at a pretty, marble-fronted little house. Inside the open door, she saw cameras mounted on tripods, clothes strewn over delicate-legged furniture, and several well-dressed young girls talking to two young men. She left, without pushing the iron gates open.
She saw a good deal of Walter after that meeting; he was waiting to ship out, he said. There was no acting work to be had. He frequently tried to make love to her but desisted at the slightest sign of resistance. She always resisted. He didn’t take her to any more meetings but brought a copy of the Daily Worker for her to read. Once he took her to the Stanley Theater to see a Russian movie, Potemkin. He spoke to several people in the lobby after the end of the film. She was silent, desperately silent; the movie had terrified her, but she took comfort from the terror; her troubles were nothing…there was a whole world of trouble.
Two weeks before Christmas, her father wrote he had decided to stay in Taos for a while. It was wonderful painting country. He enclosed a money order for fifty dollars but still no return address. Feeling rich, she went to the League cafeteria on the top floor and ran into the Summit high-school teacher, whom she’d not seen since the party where she’d met Walter Vogel. The teacher had been taking classes with Kuniyoshi. He greeted her laconically. While she told him about the modeling job she hadn’t taken, thinking to amuse him, he drew a picture of her in his notebook. “Let’s have dinner together tonight,” he said, pushing the drawing across the table to her. The girl he had sketched wore an insipid smile but she held her head in a lofty way.
He had bought her good dinners in the past and besides, although he was not a very attractive man—his eyes were muddy and he tended to speak out of the side of his mouth—he was kind to her in an impersonal way. He took her to a nightclub where a reddish-skinned obese Negro woman sang off-color songs, accompanying herself at a small studio piano in the middle of the dance floor. “From the old days in Paris, she was famous then…” said the teacher who had already told her he’d never been to Europe. “But you wouldn’t know about those days,” he added.
He took her to her apartment. “You have allure,” he said and kissed her. His saliva was abundant and sour. She fought him off, thinking she might have to scream for Samuel. But abruptly the teacher let go of her. “You’re a poor wild thing,” he said in his dry flat voice. “You’re not serious.”
A nearly irresistible impulse made her clamp her mouth shut. His disappointment shamed her; she was ready to say “I love you” to this sandy old stranger, even now tidily arranging his shirt, which had escaped his belt during their struggle.
“Why aren’t you in school? Why don’t you live in a real home?” he asked, as though these elementary considerations had only just now occurred to him.
She hastened to explain. She hadn’t always lived this way, alone. It was true that her father was a wanderer and his arrangements for her welfare were erratic and tended to break down, but she had been to school, even high school. It had just petered out, and she guessed her father thought she was old enough to be on her own now.
“How does he expect you to eat unless you’re fed by men?” he asked her shrewdly. The question was like a blow; she had no answer.
“You need a mother,” said the teacher. Then he told her he wouldn’t be seeing her again. He shook her hand formally. He had certain needs, he explained. Someday, she would understand.
A few days later, in sculpture class, a middle-aged woman confided to Annie in a loud whisper that she was going to California. “Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again, but I can. I’m sick of this insane climate and all these rotten people. I’ve been watching you. You’re not rotten, that’s why I’m telling you what I’m telling you.” She invited Annie to tea that afternoon.
Her name was May Landower, and she lived in a cluttered, birdseed-smelling basement apartment on the East Side. Two canaries clung to a narrow perch in a cage set near a dirty window which looked out onto an interior court piled high with trash. In the middle of the room, on a round table, sat a Ouija board. A grand piano lurked in the shadows like a dark, stunned animal. May poured them each a shot of whiskey.
“No tea,” she said. “Not when I’m planning. T
ea is for permanence.” She spoke grandly, waving her hands about slowly, as though her thoughts were too lofty for mere words. When she walked about the room, objects fell off tables; she picked them up, grunting, swaying, her full skirt gathering dust from the floor in its folds. She was drunk, Annie saw. In an earlier time of her life she might have been good-looking, in a pinched midwestern way, with her narrow nose and hairpin lips, the large faded blue eyes, a curling-iron frizz of henna-colored hair above her broad low forehead.
She picked up a pack of cards, holding them daintily in her thin hands. A small diamond ring on one finger glittered in the light from a rickety lamp. “What isn’t foolish?” she asked rhetorically. “A dear friend of mine chose a camp for his son by tossing a dart at the New York Times camp list page. It turned out for the very best. I tell my fortune every morning with the cards. Every evening I consult the Ouija board. Does it make any difference? Fate is fate. I have a few dollars saved, enough to purchase a secondhand automobile. There are children in Hollywood, California, waiting to learn their scales.” She gestured toward the piano. “I have even found an elderly woman to take my dear little birdies. My husband left me at the height of the Depression—of course, it was all height. No matter. I’ve made my way. He died two months ago, a lonely death. California is clear for me now, now that he is no longer there.”
“Are you interested in sculpture?” asked Annie as one of the canaries ran through a limp repertory of disheartened trills.
“Something to get through the day,” replied May. “Like you, my dear, so what are we waiting for?”
“My father, I’m expecting him back at some time. He’s just remarried—”
“No, no…if he’s not back yet, he won’t come back.”
“But you don’t know anything about it!” protested Annie.
“You’re an orphan,” said May positively. “Like me. Your aura is sickly. All orphans have sickly auras. They have to generate their own energies. It’s hard, hard…drink up! I need a traveling companion. If you can get fifty or sixty bucks together, I’ll take care of the rest. I was not meant to have children, only loyal friends.”
She dropped the cards on a table and went purposefully to the piano, where, still standing, she ran her fingers over the keys. “I knew Gershwin,” she shouted above the elaborate cadenza. The canaries hopped to the bottom of the cage.
May returned to the cards and looked intently at Annie.
“It’ll take me a little time. The modeling at the League hardly pays. But my father might send me another check. Well, I’ll try to get the money.”
May made a cage of her fingers through which she peered at Annie. “I’ll take you to see Swami Besharandi. I’ll regret leaving him, almost as much as my two birdies. He’ll give you the repose you need to raise the money.”
That evening, Annie met Samuel coming down the stairs from her apartment. He looked ashen. As soon as their eyes met, he began to sob dryly. “I think I’m going to be arrested,” he cried. She clutched the bottle of milk and the loaf of bread she had bought to her chest and started to pass him.
“Wait!” he begged. He followed her into the apartment and fell into a chair.
“Danny’s threatening to turn me in.”
“Danny?” she asked.
“Danny!” he shouted. “You know goddamn well who Danny is! He’s been living with me for five days!”
“I never saw him,” she said.
“The little bitch! Seventeen and as evil as an old hustler…”
“Do you want some beer?” she asked, hoping to mollify him.
“I had tea. I suppose you know what tea is? A little broad like you? The kind of tea that isn’t tea? And he wanted to try it. It made him sick. Everybody knows it makes you sick the first time! Now he’s screaming I’ve poisoned him and he’s going to call the cops. It’s blackmail! Just because I own a little real estate, he thinks…For God’s sake, I’ve lived off my own fat since ‘35. And that stupid little twat who’s got a mother and an estate and goes to some shitty famous prep school, who never washes his armpits, he’s going to turn me in because he stuck a reefer in his ugly face!”
“Samuel. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Marijuana. My Christ! Don’t you know anything?” If anyone ever asked her that question again, she would kill him. That’s all, just kill him. Samuel sighed. “You think he’s serious?” he asked.
“No,” she said shortly.
“You’re smart,” he said. “I always knew that. Will you talk to him? I’ll take you to dinner after. Will you?”
Annie didn’t turn down meals. Since the departure of the teacher, she hadn’t had a really good dinner, only bits of food here and there. The faint gnawing in her belly was persistent, like something imprisoned trying to get out. If only, she had often thought, she’d known where her next meal was coming from, the night fears and the day fears might be softened into bearable alarm.
They went downstairs together, into Samuel’s large apartment with its red velvet drapes and soft pillows, its smell of incense. She knew the room well. A thin boy rose from a corner of the large couch. Samuel turned on a light.
“Talk to him,” he begged Annie.
The boy’s eyes rolled upward. “Christ!” he shrieked, and fell back into the couch, covering his face with his hands. Annie sat down, close beside him. A pungent smell of sweat made its way through his thick tweed jacket. She took one of his hands from his face. Although he shuddered, he allowed her to hold it. “What’s the matter?” she asked softly.
“Oh, God!” he moaned. Samuel began to cry.
“I can read palms,” Annie said.
“Jesus! She can read palms,” cried the boy.
“You have a beautiful hand, like a little fish,” she said.
“Do you know what he did to me?” asked the boy. “That one with his dirty opium?”
“It’s not opium,” sobbed Samuel.
“He tried to kill me. I’ve had nightmares, falling, falling, falling…”
“Do you play the piano?” Annie asked, gently, insistently.
Danny let his other hand fall from his face. He looked intently at Annie, so close to him. Samuel was snuffling, bent over in his chair.
“Well, yes…I do. I’m musical.”
“I can tell,” said Annie.
“I haven’t been home for days! My mother would die if she knew what I’d been through.” He closed his eyes; his head sank back against the curve of the couch. His Adam’s apple was like a little tent of flesh staked out on his thin boy’s neck. He looked, Annie thought, even younger than seventeen. Such long black lashes. For an instant, Annie imagined him dead, a little corpse, someone weeping.
“But you’re all right now,” Annie said, patting his hand.
“I’ll never be all right,” the boy said, sighing. He turned toward her languorously and smiled. “Last year I was only home on Christmas Day. I told them I’d never do it again.”
Startled, Annie looked to Samuel as though for confirmation. The store windows, the tinsel—she’d been walking through Christmas for a month and not even known it.
“Christmas,” echoed Samuel in a melancholy voice. “Yes.”
“And soon, I’ll be going back to school in Massachusetts,” Danny said, his eyes on Samuel, “where I have two roommates. One is an oaf. But not the other.” He smiled winsomely and lowered his beautiful lashes. When he opened them, he looked indifferently around the room. “I’m so bored,” he said quietly, “I wish I were dead.”
“So do I, sometimes,” Annie said quickly. Samuel hugged himself and stared silently at the boy. She supposed he’d forgotten about dinner. She stood up. Samuel looked at her.
“Wash your face. I told you, didn’t I? That I was going to take you out? Haven’t you got another coat? Look at your legs! They’re all red from the cold. My God! Don’t you wear stockings or anything? I’ll give you a pair of socks. Wait…”
He disappeared into the
bedroom, where, Annie knew, he would pause a moment to draw his hand across the black velvet bedcover. Danny said coldly, “Where did he pick you up?” On a sudden impulse, Annie hit him in the arm with her fist. He laughed almost affectionately.
Samuel returned, a pair of socks in his hands. “Here. They’re not the right color for that gorgeous coat of yours but at least your feet won’t freeze. My God! You could get gangrene!”
“Good-by, Danny,” Annie said.
The boy had sunk back into himself. He waved a finger at her. “Oh…Merry Christmas,” he said derisively to the world at large.
“Come back in twenty minutes,” Samuel said at the door, already turning back into the room.
He took Annie to a French restaurant a few blocks away. “Now get a good meal,” he ordered. There was a trace of powder on one of his cheeks. He ate lightly and looked thoughtful, unlike his usual self. He asked the waitress for tea and shook his head when Annie requested a second cup of coffee. “You don’t take care of yourself,” he observed. “You insult your body. Too much coffee —you smoke too much. Who ever taught you anything?”
“Everybody teaches me,” she said ironically, “as if I were the world’s village idiot.”
“Never mind,” he said. “You ask for it.”
Spoiled boys drove him mad, he said, those boys with their handmade shoes and mothers who gave marketing lists to servants. They knew nothing of the wrench of life, the truth he had dimly sensed so many years ago, standing on the shores of Chott el Djerid, the great salt lake of Tunisia, beyond it the desert.
“Nothingness,” he said. “That is the name of the truth.” Then he smiled. “Money, money covers nothingness.”
After they had eaten, he took her to a movie, looking indifferently at the marquees that lined that section of Broadway, saying captiously—“Oh, this one. What’s the difference?” It was a French movie, the first Annie had ever seen, Grande Illusion. Later, walking back to Seventy-third Street, Samuel said, “I always wanted to meet someone like that aristocrat, the thin one, not the German. But you and me, we don’t have that kind of luck.” They passed two young men idling in front of shopwindows. Samuel giggled faintly, saying the blond member of the couple was wearing a toupee, having lost all his hair at an early age, “all over his body—oh, it’s too much!”