“Who gives a christ what those cage liners say.” He twirls her deeper into the crowd. “Teddy would’ve been proud. I half expected him to bust out just to see opening night.”
“What do you think the coloured press will say?”
“I see your nigger-loving senator pal is here.”
She looks over her shoulder. “He’s a friend of Gene’s. I hardly know the man.”
“Sam’s rotting in Cook County because of that sonuvabitch.”
“Please. Not tonight.”
“I’m just saying it’s not right. After everything Sam did for—”
“Excuse me, may I cut in.” Kelly smiles off Rosselli’s shoulder.
Celia grins a thousand watts.
Johnny does his best imitation of gracious and moves off, only to be grabbed by Annie and whisked back onto the floor. “When you gonna learn to let a fella lead?”
Celia looks into Kelly’s smiling face. “I’m so pleased you made it tonight.”
“It was the young senator from New York who was most insistent. I jumped at the chance, of course, because I like being seen with you. The last time we danced, my name ended up in every rag in New York.”
“Oh sure.” She gives him a swat. “Talked to Miss Charisse lately?”
“You’re not even going to bite on that senator remark?”
“Fine. Aren’t the former president’s wife and the married Bobby keeping company?”
Kelly sighs in her ear. “Bobby always took care of her when Jack was busy. So it fell to him when Jack passed. He’s really rather fascinated by you. He thinks you’re—how did he put it?—a brave and cerebral performer.”
“Does he now?”
“Come join us for a drink.” Kelly dances her in sweeping turns to the table he and Kennedy share. Bobby rises. Kelly steps to the side and, keeping hold of her hand, he bows, presenting her. “Senator Robert Kennedy … Miss Celia Dare.”
Bobby stands uncertainly, arms hovering at his sides. She reaches out and he envelops her hand in his. “Thank you for the invitation Miss, uh, Miss Dare. It was, uh, it was an extraordinary production.”
Her second introduction to the senator and much like the first, she is struck with how slight his frame is, his nervous stutter. Nothing like his brother.
“Might I be so bold as to ask you to dance?”
On the floor, he calms. “Do you like Benny Goodman? I’m terribly fond of Goodman. Especially the songs Peggy Lee sang with him.”
She sings, “Why don’t you do right,” into his ear.
“Oh my goodness,” he chuckles. “I was raised a gentleman but if you keep that up …”
Over Bobby’s shoulder, she catches sight of Johnny back at the table. His head is tilted to Annie’s prattle but his eyes shoot directly into hers. She bares her teeth playfully and flicks her hand as though he were a bug. Setting his jaw, he heads for the door. Celia’s first impulse is to dash after him but it’s all so ridiculous.
“Sorry, what was that?” she asks.
“How long will your show run?”
“We’ll see what the critics think.”
He moves his mouth to her ear. “‘Seek roses in December, ice in June; Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff; believe a woman or an epitaph, Or any other thing that’s false, before you trust in critics.’”
Turning her head, she almost meets his mouth and they both avert their gaze. “I take umbrage with the woman part.”
“Byron.”
Celia puffs on a cigarette, studying a pile of dishevelled papers. “Nothing in the regular press. What do you think it means?”
Annie pours them another cup of coffee. “Except Winchell. Winchell liked it.”
“Read that thing in the Advocate or whatever it’s called again, the bit about savages.”
Annie riffles until she finds the review. “As American Negroes, are we meant to feel gratitude that a member of the whiter-than-white community has seen fit to romanticize the darkest periods in the lives of our most talented jazz artists? That a mediocre talent, from whom no one would hear a peep were she not undressing, feels the need to elucidate to the world how susceptible Negroes are to the seduction of narcotics is more evidence of the clearly racist agenda in New York’s theaters and nightclubs …” She lights another cigarette. “The blacks are pissed that you’re white and the whites are too chickenshit to say a word.”
The doorbell rings. “Are we home?”
“What the hell,” Celia addresses her slippers. “Perhaps it’s a singing Molotov cocktail.”
Annie scampers to the door and returns carrying a long white box. “For Miss Dare,” she announces, setting it in front of her.
Celia runs her eyes over the length before she takes the lid off. A bundle of lush pink roses. Plucking the card, she reads, “‘They have tried their talents at one or at the other and have failed; therefore they turn critics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.’”
“Roses from a dead guy,” Annie clucks. “How romantic.”
Celia looks up quizzically. “Johnny?”
“Didn’t look like he’d be sending roses any time soon last night. And poetry? I doubt it.”
She reaches for the phone and calls her agent. “Hey, Marty … Just sitting here looking at these gorgeous roses … No, I thought maybe you … Yeah, I saw.” She shoves at the newspapers. “But Marty, the point was a tribute and if the Negro community … I’m just … okay. Bye.”
Phone down, she looks at Annie and recites: “‘Controversy can lay a golden egg. You threw down the gauntlet, now go after their goat.’”
“What the hell’s that mean?”
Celia shrugs. “I pay him 10 percent. I’m sure it means something.”
That evening, the Copacabana is packed again, loaded with mainstream journalists. Two mentions come out the following day. The New York Post’s story is more about diatribes found in the Negro press than Celia’s show. Supposedly they had called for comment but were unable to reach Miss Dare. The closest thing to an actual critique is the New York Times remark that the show is more likely to give one pause for thought than a desire to dance.
As the engagement goes on, the attending crowd evolves: academics both black and white come to observe her as a phenomenon. Anxious students approach her for the school paper.“I’ve researched you and your roots,” an earnest young woman tells her. “People forget that you began as an acti vist—baring your body as a way of laying the naked truth out for the world.”
Small-theatre actors try to engage her in an examination of the show’s artistic significance. “Doesn’t intent override reaction?” asks one hungry-faced young man, his eyes ferreting into Celia’s, his hair cut in such a way that he could be mistaken for Ringo Starr’s brother. “I’m doing my thesis on art, society and community reaction. What is rock and roll? Does the alienation of some necessarily mean the illumination of others? I mean, when you examine the lyrics to ‘Help!’—”
“Honey, can I get a word.” The Copa’s manager puts out his hand for Celia.
“Excuse me,” she tells the student. “Good luck. I’m sure it will be fascinating.”
Trotting alongside him, she moans, “How do they even afford to get in here?”
“You’re telling me.” He leads her to a quiet table. “Listen, kid, I love the hell out of ya but packed house or no, this show’s bombing.”
“Excuse me?”
“Where the bar’s concerned, I mean. It’s killin’ us. Your agent called about doing a hold-over on account of the crowds but, sonuvabitch, these little bastards don’t drink. They scribble in their notepads and say, The thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone. How do I get me an A and screw this singer-broad without spending any dough?”
“Screw me? I thought they wanted to stick me in a jar next to the dead babies.”
“You’re a good girl, Celia, you do a real nice show. But for me, an up-type show is better, no drug overdoses. No politics.” He curls his lip at the crowd. “Look at
the little fuckers … ordering water and coffee.”
1966: Timothy Leary; Tune in, turn on, drop out; Martin Luther King; Ku Klux Klan; one-man rocket launcher; space race; happenings are what’s happening; theater of the absurd; LBJ and Ladybird; Malcolm X; burn your draft card; Watts; burn baby burn.; the Warren report; Twiggy; Chargex; topless; bottomless; Bob Dylan; psychedelia; communists; Stokely Carmichael; napalm; Dupont; Victor Charlie; One-two-three what are we fighting for?; Beatles; Billy Graham; more popular than Jesus Christ; Are you like that: living in a vacuum, no -purpose, no reason, no challenge, just existing?
The sun was up when Frank woke me. I was on the couch, someone’s version of Bobby Kennedy splayed across my chest. The television was still on. The documentary had ended and the picture was in fuzzy limbo. I could make out a news broadcast. President Bush explained that the U.S. involvement in Iraq was as a liberator not a conqueror; they were going to win hearts and minds and bring democracy to the people.
“What are you doing?” Frank looked from me to the TV. “Didn’t you come to bed?”
I couldn’t remember. I’d been drunk the last six nights running. We were raking in the cash. Frank said I was a brilliant enticer, a master manipulator. More popular than Jesus Christ.
“I don’t like it when I wake up and you’re not there,” he pouted.
Colour and sight and sound squiggled through my head. My dreams were psychedelic. “Five-six-seven, open up the pearly gates,” rang loud against the back of my skull while Billy Graham drawled from a London stage at my forehead: “Are you living in a vacuum, no purpose, no challenge, just existing?” No reason, no vacuum, just challenge, flopsy, mopsy and cottontail. I felt nauseous.
“I need a piece of toast.” I swung my feet down on the rug. “How do I get my money for this stuff I’m doing?”
“What do you mean my money, Kemosabe?” He grinned. “I showed you our account last night, remember. We’ve already cleared almost three grand American.”
Are you living in a challenge: all vacuum, all pearly, all sixes and sevens?
“You look like shit,” Leonard said to my back from his couch. I was in his kitchen.
“Ah pipe down, y’big flirt,” I said.
“Seriously, Viv. It’s one in the afternoon for chrissake, what’re you pouring wine for? And you’re into this shit you’re into and you look it. I thought you cut your hair and went back to your natural colour because you wanted to … and you’re just …”
“When the hell did you start casting the first stone, pally?” I sat down on the couch and handed a full glass to him.
He shook his head a bit maniacally, I thought, as he said, “You’re fucked. I’m fucked. It’s all fucked.”
“It’s a glass of wine. Relax. I did some X last night and I just need to mellow out.” I exhaled slowly in the hope it might entice him to do the same. “So. Tell me what happened.”
His look of incredulity dissolved as he considered his own problems. His head shook again with something in the neighbourhood of bleak fear. “I went over there last night.”
“To Eunice’s?” I asked. The wall opposite us was no longer blank. Len had painted it an evening-sky violet. A hooded man stood in profile. It was hard to tell if the intention was a monk in prayer or the Grim Reaper contemplating his navel at dusk.
“Yes. And—ah, forget it. I can’t …” He sucked a breath and hurled it back out. “Maybe everyone’s right. Maybe I’m a fag.”
“I read that somebody saw Bobby Kennedy in a nightclub necking with Rudolf Nureyev.” I attempted to hand him the second glass of wine I’d poured.
“No,” he said sternly as though I were about to pee on the carpet. “Okay, I was over there and we were drinking—The only time I ever do it with her is when I’m drinking—And we start making out. And we’re down to, well, we’re taking off our clothes and she was rubbing her chin against my shoulder and I was a bit turned on but then I was getting kind of turned off … grossed out in a way because … she has …” He paused, embarrassed. I wasn’t sure for which of them. “She has whiskers, kind of. Definitely, she has whiskers and she was rubbing her chin against my shoulder. And then,” he sighed, “she opened her blouse and she pushed my head down into her boobs and put one of them into my mouth.” Len’s face flushed red back to his ears. “And I started, you know …”
“Suckling?” I offered cheerfully.
“Yes.” He looked as though he’d been betrayed by the masses and I’d just joined the club. “Yes, suckling. I was suckling like a baby and she’s old enough to be my mother. And, and I was totally doing it, you know? It was a mother thing.”
“Len, it’s no big—”
“Would you let me finish? And so I started to get freaked out because all I can think is, I’m fucked up. This is just like Mrs. Eisman. ’Member Bonnie Eisman?”
“And how.” Len’s stories about Mrs. Eisman kept me sane when I was in Tokyo. My letters to him described rats and cockroaches. His told me about his friend Donna’s mother, Bonnie. Donna and her mother went to Burnaby Foursquare Church, the same one Len’s family went to. When Donna went off to university, Len and Bonnie became close, I gathered, as a sort of consolation for her empty nest syndrome. Len would go over there and drink tea or sometimes they’d go to the symphony together. Eventually Eisman made a pass at him. Meanwhile on the other side of the planet, I sat in crowded anterooms, usually in a bikini, waiting to audition for some drain cleaner or laxative commercial as I read Len describing his third-base grope with Mrs. Eisman at which point he had drawn the line. He simply couldn’t bring it on home. Mrs. Eisman flew into a rage. Hiking up her pants, she stormed into the kitchen, called one of her other swains and made plans to go away for the weekend as Len stood in the doorway, bewildered. When she hung up he apologized. She said, “I’m sorry too, Len. But you just can’t take a woman to the edge like that and turn back. I have my needs. Sex is a normal bodily function. Like having a bowel movement.” Huddled over the pages I burbled into laughter. My name was called by a small young Japanese woman: “Bibian.” I continued giggling right into the audition room where I was led with four other models and told to dance like crazy gaijin (which I thought meant American, was later told meant foreigner and still later told meant barbarian). I credit Len with landing me a job that got me out of debt and paid for my ticket home: a billboard for cherry-scented tampons.
“So, I stopped it,” he told me now. “I said, I can’t do this, I’m sorry. And she jumped up and took off into the kitchen, just like Mrs. Eisman, and I went in there thinking she was calling a guy but she wasn’t, she was crying. Like unconsolingly. And I started apologizing. And she was saying, I’m an old stupid woman, and then she touched her chin and she felt the whiskers, and then she screamed, Oh god. I forgot to shave. I’m getting electrolysis. You must think I’m hideous. And I said it wasn’t that, even though it kind of was, but not really, and I felt like shit but I couldn’t handle it. Her emotional stuff, I mean. I got freaked out. I said I had a dentist appointment, but she knew I was making it up …” He sighed and stared at the floor a second. “A couple hours later, I got a call from her. She said she took pills and now she changed her mind and she didn’t know what to do and I told her not to go to sleep and to drink coffee and then I went over and the ambulance was already there. She had this look on her face like the way dogs look at the SPCA. And I caused it. She’s okay now, but fuck … it went from an idealic-type situation to this.”
“Len, she was probably depressed before you showed up … and it’s idyllic.”
He turned his face to mine and looked at me for what seemed like forever.
“What?” I said with a half laugh. “I don’t mean to be a hard-ass but she was your employer. If she was a man, my mother and her cronies would’ve been saying how he abused you and took advantage because he had all the power and money. She had all the power and money. But she was depressed.”
He hadn’t turned his head. He hadn’t blinked
. He finally said rather matter-of-factly, “I am taking responsibility for my actions.”
“Excuse me?” I replied a bit defensively.
“I’ve talked to the Benedictines.”
“What is that? An antihistamine?”
“The Benedictine order. Benedictine monks? I’m going to join a monastery.”
“Oh, come off it. You’re not even Catholic. You’ve been listening to too much Leonard Cohen.”
“‘It is better to abandon practises if they are not assisting one to greater openness and love of God and neighbour.’” He rose and returned with a printout of some monk page from the Web. I took the paper from his hand. Monastic living was explained in its different forms. Celibacy leapt out at me both for my rejection of it since age fourteen and Len’s general practise of it. For those who choose to embrace a monastic life in a more formal way, in a monastery or hermitage, monastic spirituality includes celibacy, it said.
I looked up at him, searching for words, then back at the page. Many married and single Christians outside the formal setting of a monastery also look to monastic spirituality as formative for their lives, passing days or weeks each year there, participating in the prayer, silence and work, and for the rest of the year living ordinary lives. These people are often called oblates, from the Latin word meaning to give oneself as a gift.
“Are you going to be an oblate?” I asked, a bit spooked. I snatched what I could from the printout. “Len, it says right here, Monastic spirituality is not a running from but going toward. And you, buddy-boy, are running from.” I nodded as though that settled it. I gave a short burst of laughter. “You’re not going to be a goddamn monk.”
Len was silent. Already participating it seemed.
Sixteen
1966. CELIA AND ANNIE SHOW UP AT THE APARTMENT DOOR, Annie doing a last double check of her cleavage. She got drunk with Truman Capote one night last week at Le Club and now they’re about to be his guests at a Kennedy party. Celia looks down at her shorty black-and-white vinyl dress, wondering if it’s appropriate. Suddenly the door opens. It’s Bobby. Celia hadn’t expected him to open his own door. “Miss Dare, what a surprise.” He doesn’t look surprised.
Cease to Blush Page 36