“Who’s that?” Mr. Korman asked me. He looked interested.
“A friend of my mother’s who used to be a makeup artist. He’s retired here now. His name is Jean de Jehan. He’s French. He told me that he once worked with Gloria Swanson and at first he didn’t think she was, but finally she was. I’d hate to have people say that about me after they met me.”
“Well, you can’t control what people say about you,” Mr. Korman said. “Maybe they’re just jealous.”
“Yeah, and maybe they’re right, too,” I said.
“Maybe there are worse things than being an asshole.”
“There’s always Hitler, I know. But even so, it’s not too cool knowing people think you’re an asshole.”
“Maybe that’s what you kids think about me,” Mr. Korman said.
“We think a lot of things about you, Mr. Korman, but that’s not one of them,” I told him. I felt this whole meeting was getting a little out of hand. I certainly wasn’t going to tell him we all thought he was gay but we didn’t care. People of his generation like to think that nobody knows just because they haven’t been caught in some porno theater with their head under somebody’s raincoat. Weird, weird, weird, huh?
Mr. Korman is very okay. He didn’t ask more about what we thought of him. He’s a real gentleman because he realized that this little conference was about me and he was not going to turn it into a conference about him.
“Thanks, Mr. Korman,” I said, getting up and pulling my books together. “You made me think about writing more than I usually do and straightened out a lot of my thinking. I really do want to be a writer. I want to go to Columbia University in New York and study English and see what happens.”
“You’re okay, Hugo. You’re going to be just fine. Where did you run across writers like Jean Rhys and M. F. K. Fisher anyway?”
“Around the house. My mom reads a lot. Wait until you come over to dinner. Then you’ll really get an earful.”
“It sounds like you have a pretty interesting home life, Hugo. We weren’t all so lucky. My mother never read anything but the Ladies’ Home Journal. Well, it would be a great pleasure to meet your mother, and I’d be delighted to take you both out to dinner if that’s easier for your mother. You never mention your father so I’m guessing there isn’t one around.”
“Never has been,” I told him. “He’s in South America, I guess. Mom is completely out of touch with him and I’ve never seen him.”
“And your mother never remarried?” Mr. Korman asked.
“Not so far,” I said. “But maybe, maybe. You never know. Maybe when I go away to college she’ll get lonely and grab off some unsuspecting guy.”
Mr. Korman was leaving, too. He had another class to teach. “You wouldn’t mind?”
“Oh no,” I said. “I’d like that. Sometimes I think I’m going to have to go and get one for her.” Mr. Korman got a little nervous. Maybe he thought I was talking about him. Some people really don’t get it, even if they’re smart.
“Good-bye, Mr. Korman,” I said. “It was really great talking to you.” And it was. He waved good-bye and headed down the corridor with that kind of shuffly walk of his and slumped shoulders. He is really okay.
hugo thinks about france and other things
I rode my bicycle home slowly from school. One of those Miami Beach winter end of the days. The sky lavender, the clouds pink, the water in Indian Creek sometimes turquoise, sometimes lime green. Wiggling under the neon falling on it. Palm trees shaking their heads stupidly this way and that, as though somebody just socked them. The wind coming off the ocean not smelling salty but sweet. I wondered if Mr. Korman thinks it’s pretty here.
And then I thought all of a sudden of how when we were in Europe last summer and in a restaurant in Milan there was this very well-dressed young father at a table with some other people and his baby sitting in a high chair beside him and he sat there and talked about stocks and bonds or something and sort of absentmindedly fed the child with his own fork off his plate. And the baby sat there like a little bird with his eyes fastened on his father, opening his mouth when that fork came swinging over. It was kind of loving in such an easy way. That’s my idea of a father’s love.
And then we were in France. Because I’ve always been so interested in Marie Antoinette, we looked for her tomb. It’s in a little square not far from Madeleine Church. It’s in sort of like a stone tunnel kitty-corner on the square, crossways on an angle from corner to corner. Strange, there’s no real front. And inside on one end is a statue of Louis the Sixteenth and at the other one of Marie Antoinette.
These statues were done long after they were guillotined. And the bones were identified by some person living beside the burial ground who claimed to have seen where their bodies were buried. Seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Particularly when all those headless bodies were just thrown into one big pit together. Sort of like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier really. It could be anybody. Or any woman at least. I suppose they could tell that much. Pelvis bones and all.
Anyway. When I saw the statue of her it really stopped me. She wasn’t even pretty. I always imagined this little blond doll in hoop skirts and a high wig, covered in diamonds. At Malmaison we’d just seen the carriage she came to Paris in, from the French border. When she arrived at the border from Austria the French officials bathed her, changed her clothes, sent all the Austrians back to Vienna, and put her in this little gold carriage filled with royal blue velvet cushions. She was like a precious little jewel in a beautiful jewel box. And only fourteen. Younger than me.
Her statue showed her with this long jaw, beaky nose, and one of those skulls where the face kind of hangs off the front end and the skull itself is rather small. No wonder she needed all that hair. Right then and there I got this completely different picture on her. She wasn’t this spoiled little beauty at all. She was like the new girl who arrives from a not-so-good school and a lot of the girls in her class are prettier than she is, but she’s determined to make it and she’s rich. So she wears fancier clothes and lots of jewelry. And acts wild.
I’m sure Marie didn’t think she was so hot. She was a German, for God’s sake, in Paris! So she went all out to be liked. And probably went to the guillotine thinking it was just what she deserved for trying to put it over on them all those years. Trying to convince them she was the most beautiful of all. When she was just a big-jawed kid from out of town. She was the first big glamour girl, and probably always thought, just like all the models you see around here, this really isn’t me.
Another thing surprised me in France. About me. We were driving down a little, winding road in the country and I saw three men on bicycles ahead of us. In all that professional gear. Tight stretch shorts, bright-colored team shorts, little helmets like halves of cantaloupe, and nice legs, churning along.
But when we passed them I saw they were all old, gray-haired men. I don’t mean old. But beyond that kind of funky, early middle-aged look that can be kind of cute. And I had this fantasy that they’re cycling along, feeling like young studs. And a young woman in a car passes them and waits for them at a country intersection and asks them if they want to go off into the woods with her. One of those real porno scenarios.
And would they? If she called their bluff would they try to act like young studs and go in the woods and peel down those shorts and have at it, sucking and fucking? Or would they feel embarrassed and ashamed because they were too old and cycle away, never being able to pretend again that they were in the marketplace as horny dudes. It being France, they probably would have done it. I’d love to have been there. I guess I’d love to have been the young woman.
mr. korman visits
When I got home, Mom was already there. She was feeling good because the big 1950s house up on Pine Tree Drive she has been showing looked like it was going to go to some people in New York. She looked real good. She was wearing her navy blue skirt and white linen jacket that always looks so great on her. And her hair was
a little shorter. She has bangs and straight hair. Kind of that Louise Brooks look. But she always had that. When she shows me pictures when she was modeling she wore her hair like that then, too. And she has wonderful eyes, my mother. They are the kind of eyes that look like they should be brown, but they’re blue. You know how most people with brown eyes often have big round eyes? Well, she has these big, brown eyes, but they’re blue. Kind of a dark blue and sometimes in some light they look like they’re made out of metal. They kind of shine like the finish on a new blue car. I’m very proud of her. I only wish I had those eyes. I know it’s unusual to be a blond with brown eyes, but even so it would be nice to have the eyes that she has. So we could look back and forth at each other out of the same eyes. And no matter how much I might love Glenn—I will never love him more than I love my mother. Call it sick if you will. She’s the one person in the world I know I can always count on.
I told her about my talk with Mr. Korman. She said, “Korman, Korman? I don’t remember ever knowing anyone named Korman. But I met so many people in those days.”
I said, “He never met you. He only saw pictures of you. He said you were very famous. And he remembers seeing pictures of you in the newspaper dancing on a platform in a nightclub.”
“Doesn’t it sound wonderful?” Mom said. “Just like you’d always wanted to be remembered. Dancing on a platform. It really wasn’t all that great. My friend Monique—I used to model with her in Paris—opened this club and asked us all to come on opening night and it was so crowded you couldn’t move. I got very exasperated with all the crowd, and I decided if the only place to dance was up on a platform, I’d get up on a platform. I was wearing trousers. It wasn’t as though I was stripping or anything. Did you ever hear of Frances Faye? She used to come out and say, ‘Shall I sing or shall I strip?’ She was quite plain and everyone would shout ‘Oh, strip, strip, strip.’ I wonder where she is now. I loved her. She used to say, ‘I’d like to dedicate my next number to my ex-husband, who’s the drummer here in the band. We were married for a couple of years out in Chicago. I was a little heavier then, but always a swinging chick.’ So great. So great.”
I loved it when Mom would wander completely off the track talking about things she’d done, places she’d been. I asked her once if she was happy and if everything was okay and she said, “Sometimes I look in the mirror and I can’t believe I still look as good as I do. I’m surprised I don’t look seventy. Sometimes you wake up at night and you realize you’re all alone in the bed and you say to yourself, ‘Thank God I’m all alone in this bed.’ And you think of who you could be lying there with and you count yourself lucky.” That’s all she’s ever said on the subject.
I said, “What about the picture in the paper?” She said, “Imagine my surprise the next day when everyone started calling me and were talking about my dancing on the platform over at the Chez When. Some dope from The New York Times was there and I guess I was the closest thing to a celebrity Monique had there. It was nothing.”
“Mr. Korman remembered it,” I told her.
“Well, if it was so thrilling a memory for Mr. Korman we’ll have to invite him over and let him see what remains of the real thing.”
And we did. But he insisted we go out to dinner with him at Tiberio’s.
“So,” my mother said, “What do you think about love, Mr. Korman?” She was being provocative. Mr. Korman stared at his fettuccine Alfredo and said, “What do you mean?” stalling for time. He was already in love with my mother. Not that way, but the way everybody is when she sets out to be fascinating, which she definitely was tonight. “I mean, what do you think about great love, like a love of the century, like the love between the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, when he gave up his throne for her.”
“Well,” said Mr. Korman very slowly, “truth be told, I think she probably gave a great blow job.”
“Not even great,” my mother said. “But you hit the nail right on the head.” Mr. Korman looked pretty pleased with himself. The people at the next table looked around real hard for their waiter.
“Have you thought a lot about this, Mr. Korman? I think I’ll call you Bill. Otherwise I’ll feel as though I’m one of your students, too.”
“My name is Harold,” Mr. Korman said.
“Harold? That doesn’t suit you at all. Too studious. Too academic. I don’t see you that way at all. I see you more weird. More hidden depths. More surprising.” Mr. Korman blushed with pleasure. I wondered how this was going to affect my grades. Either really well or really badly. “I think I’ll call you Mr. Korman, like those Victorian wives who always called their husbands Mr. so-and-so. What do you think? What did your mother call you?”
“Do we really want to do this?” Mr. Korman said. “This is going to get back to every single student in school.” He looked at me knowingly. “No,” I said raising my hand. “I swear, Mr. Korman, your secrets are safe with me. Totally.”
“You’re quite a pair,” he said, looking back and forth from my mother to me. Do you ever have those moments when you wonder what the person you’re talking to is seeing? If you were inside his head looking out, what would you think of this nice-looking lady and her teenage son? Does Mr. Korman glamorize us because my mother was a famous model? Do we look sleeker and slicker and more fabulous than we really are because of what he’s bringing to the party? Or does he see us looking even worse than we think we look? Does he notice there’s a button off Mom’s blazer? Or that I have the beginning of a zit on my neck under my right ear? Maybe our act of the attractive witty mom and her intelligent, good-looking teenage son really isn’t being bought. Actually, I think Mr. Korman is pretty smart and he probably can have his little rush of being with the once well-known and still be able to see us as we really are. I wish I could see us as we really are.
“My mother called me Harold Teen, actually.” he said. As though he had decided to go for it. “After a comic strip when she was young. I was always kind of flattered that she thought I was like that, a little goofy and running around with average kids doing average things. I think she wanted that kind of life for me and that calling me that wove us into the American middle class a little tighter. So that was me, Harold Teen.”
“I don’t know. I think you’re a little too mature for that.” Mom said slowly, staring at him. “I think I’ll call you Kor, sort of a caveman-type name, completely confusing for people when they overhear it.”
“Whatever you like,” said Mr. Korman, now sort of suave and in control. Mom had momentarily pushed him off balance but he was recovering himself now. “Let’s talk more about love and the great romances. That’s a subject that has always fascinated me. I mean, if you’re going to fall in love shouldn’t it compare to the romance of the century? And what were those romances like in fact? Think of Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson, and the Austrian Archduke and his mistress Marie Vetsera in their suicide pact at Mayerling, and Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, and the Duke and Duchess, of course. What was really going on?”
“And Demi Moore and Bruce Willis,” I said. They both gave me looks that would have burned holes in the tablecloth if they’d landed there. “Of course,” Mr. Korman said. “Of course, Demi-clothed and her hair-losing hubby, of course.”
“Of course,” my mother said, as though she wasn’t sure who I was.
“But let’s get serious,” Mom said. “Imagine the poor Duke of Windsor. He’s the King of England. He’s not too smart. He’s always had girlfriends who looked like skinny boys, and probably there were any number of skinny boys thrown in there for good measure, too. I saw highly suspicious pictures of him sitting on Lord Mountbatten’s lap during some kind of cruise in the South Seas. All in fun, yes, but! And then he meets another skinny little thing with a big head, sort of like himself, and she’s very self-confident and bosses him around and probably in bed he doesn’t have to climb on top and act like a man, she does all the work, and he can relax. At last he’s found someone who’s just his type. People forg
et how small he was, and she was. They were minuscule. And she was coached through the whole thing by Lady Mendl, who was another one of those little large-skulled folks who clawed their way to the bottom in those days.”
“Is Hugo old enough to hear all this?” Mr. Korman asked.
“Oh, Hugo could give lectures on this kind of stuff. He’s a big reader, you know, and I’m not about to edit what he reads.” She looked at me quizzically. “What he does, I’m in no way of knowing, but what he knows I’m sure is pretty much everything. I think he should hear this kind of thing so he doesn’t advance into adulthood or adultery without knowing what really goes on out there.” I was trying to look modest but at the same time I was sort of startled. Mom and I had never really talked about sex directly as pertained to ourselves and this was the closest we’d ever edged on it. I wasn’t sure how much closer I wanted to come to the whole thing. That I slept with guys I think she could handle if she thought they were my own age. Glenn was something else altogether.
“What you’re saying, if I understand it correctly, is that great love affairs may be based on somebody’s presence solving some of your problems, more than a great overwhelming drive to share their body,” Mr. Korman said.
“Very much so,” Mom said. “I was rereading some Hemingway the other night…” Mr. Korman looked very surprised. “That’s right, Hemingway,” my mother went on. “I think he’s very interesting but not for the same reasons men do. He was always married to these little, wizened-up, bad-tempered blondes. You could just tell by looking at him that he was the kind of big guy that just gets drunk and goes into the bedroom and falls on top of whoever is there. Then rolls over and goes to sleep. No subtlety. None. Afraid of sex, but felt no big guy could admit he’d rather shoot animals. And his much-talked-about affair with Marlene Dietrich. You know that had to be largely fantasy time for both of them. She said as much. No, he obviously was very drawn to those tough little ladies that saw marriage to him as some kind of penance. He called his last wife Poor Old Mama. That says it all. No June, moon, spoon there.”
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