Cheap Diamonds

by Norris Church Mailer

  “What story is that?”

  “It will be about plastic surgery.”

  “Wait a minute, here. Hold the phone. I am not going to be a before picture, or a picture of what a girl doesn’t want to be. And there is no way I am getting an operation for a magazine story. I just went through all this with a doctor friend of mine, and…”

  “No, no, no, no. Dear girl, didn’t you hear a word I’ve just said? I don’t want you to change one tiny bit of your nose. It is perfect. Your nose will be your trademark, too, just as mine is. The article will be about surgery, yes, for those who want to do that, but will also extol the virtues of noses that aren’t so…manicured.” She picked up the phone and dialed a number.

  “Dick? I’ve just found the perfect girl for our little nose essay.”

  45

  * * *

  THE UNBELIEVABLE

  Dear Cherry,

  I bet you were wondering when I would send you this letter, because you must have known for a long time it would be coming. I am so ashamed of myself, and I can’t tell you how angry I am at myself and at Leo, too. I made him choose, and guess what? You can guess. He chose the Church. What was I thinking? It couldn’t have gone on, though, like it was. I’ve come to realize I was just one last little fling in his life, the dying ember of his youth, before he gave it all up and finally submitted his will to that monster mother who eats her young. I really think of the Church like that. She takes young men and turns them into her drones, the ones that only live to service the queen and then die; after screwing her in the air, they spiral down to earth, dead from the experience. If you ask Leo, he might tell you that I’m the queen bee that cut off his balls. In any case, I don’t think he has any. I just don’t understand him. We had such a great thing going, but when push came to shove, he couldn’t leave the mother ship. The new excitement finally got worn off of the dusty room at the old mill. It was cold and not too comfy, and I never got over the feeling that there were ghost eyes looking at us the whole time. Plus, I wanted to be able to go out to dinner with him, hold his hand, and let everyone know we were together. Is that so crazy, to want everyone to know you are in love? His conscience was getting the better of him, too. I mean, how can you sit in that little screened-off room and listen to other people confess their sins and give them penance while you are full of sins yourself? That’s another thing I didn’t like—being a sin. I mean, okay, I’m up for a little naughtiness once in a while, but to be a black-hearted sin…well, that’s a whole ’nother level. That’s what he called me. His temptress. His sin. I really thought he was different, that he was more open-minded. He knows so much, he’s studied human nature, psychology, the arts—he can do anything! Except love a woman, I guess, although he did love me, at least for a little while. I’m sure of that. I think finally it was Father Bennett who got to him. I almost know when it happened, because one day we were doing fine and the next he and Bennett had to go to a conference in Little Rock. I can just see it now, the two of them alone in the car, Bennett working on him all the way. He never liked me, that’s for sure. I was up at the abbey once in shorts and he walked in while I was doing pottery. You should have seen the look on his face, like I was the devil himself sitting at the wheel with my hooved legs spread, throwing a pot. I admit the shorts were my white ones, the short ones, but still, it was summer and nothing had even started between Leo and me then. It was just percolating. But ol’ Bennett has a strong sense of percolating, that one, and he probably knew even before it started that it had started. Ah, well. It hurts. It hurts so much, but in the final analysis, I don’t think I’d want to be with a man who felt guilty every time he made love to me. That’s not what it’s all about. I want a man who is my equal, my partner, who can love me and not think of me as something dirty. I guess those Catholics are right when they say give them a child until he’s six and he’s theirs forever.

  On the brighter side, I went up to Lost Acre Hollow and reconnected with Scipio Jones—remember me mentioning him? He was named after this famous black lawyer who helped a lot of young men who had been falsely accused of some stuff and they were going to hang them, which was the usual procedure back in the early 1900s. Scipio loaned me a book about it, which is really interesting. I invited him to come and demonstrate for my class, which he did, and was a big hit with them, even the Kluxer kids, who were amazed at how he could throw a perfect doughnut. He doesn’t talk like a black man at all, or even a southerner. He went to school up north in Rhode Island at RISD. What he’s doing down here is a long story I’ll tell you one of these days, but the bottom line is that we are friends. JUST friends, for now, although I guess we have to do everything as twins, you and me, even have black boyfriends. If it ever progresses to the point that I find out details, I’ll let you know if he is anything like Aurelius. I hope not—no offense. He isn’t as much a nut for bathing, I don’t think, since he works making pots all day and only has a cold-water shower at his cob house he built in the woods—remember I told you I once took my class out there to see it and we had a project of making little cob houses? The shower is in a little bathroom he sculpted off the side of the house. He says it’s good for the soul to take cold showers. It wakes you up, that’s for sure—at least I would suspect that it does, never having taken one there myself. I wish you could see the house. I’ll take pictures and send. It’s one big sculpture in mud and straw, and he has made it look like a giant face, if you can believe it. High up near the roof are two round windows he salvaged from the dump, set like a pair of eyes underneath overhanging eyebrows, and below them is a nose with flaring nostrils set with smaller windows he got from a wrecked car. When you’re working in clay, you can make the windows any size or shape you want. Right below the nose is the mouth—rather, the door—which is dark red painted wood, and a red wooden tongue spreads out into a small round porch. Inside, the walls are smooth white lime plaster, and the furniture and beams and everything else is made of wood, mostly kept in their natural tree shapes. A long twisting vine with the bark left on works as a banister, running along a curved staircase that spirals up the middle of the house from first floor to the top. The floors are made of clay, satiny gray, and have been burnished by a piece of fine leather and linseed oil. There’s not a straight line in the whole house; every room curves and flows into the next one. Upstairs is a bed with white linens like you get at flea markets, the beautiful soft old ones with crocheted edging that took somebody’s grandma a year to make. A crocheted hammock is slung across the chasm above the top of the stairs. I have no idea how he gets into it. Maybe it’s just for decoration. The kitchen has a neat wooden shelf full of dishes and bowls he made, and a cheery red water pump sits beside the ceramic sink, a blue-and-white-checked dish towel draped neatly across it. It’s like a big playhouse, only so much better. He just invited me and my class there once, but I know he will invite me again. I can tell. In the meantime, instead of hanging out at the abbey, I’ve been going to Lost Acre Hollow and watching him work. I think I must be a pottery groupie. Is that sick? Maybe I just miss Leo and the whole art scene at St. Juniper’s. I sure miss the love part. Anyhow, I’m learning a lot about throwing pots, and I get better all the time.

  What is happening with Aurelius? I wish he made you happier. We’re a pair, aren’t we? I wish I could see you and talk in person about all this. Maybe I can come up to New York when school is out at spring break for a visit. Would you let me? I miss you so much. No matter how many men come and go in our lives, you and I will always be together. We’re true soul mates, twins forever. Write soon. I know you are having the time of your life, but I dreamed you were in trouble and it was such a real, disturbing dream that I can’t get it out of my head. You were standing on the bridge over the Arkansas River, and every time you took a step, part of the bridge would fall in. I was at the end, trying to reach you, but couldn’t because of the falling debris. You kept reaching out your hands to me, and I couldn’t help you. Please write soon and let me know you�
��re all right.

  Much love,

  Baby

  Well, Baby was right about one thing. I wasn’t at all surprised to hear Leo had not given up the Church. Some guys just like having their every waking moment dictated, living in a community where they know more or less what their days are going to be like in advance, having total job security. Kind of like a career army officer. I could see why he wouldn’t want to leave St. Juniper’s, too. On a smaller scale, it was a little like the European churches we studied in art history class—a big open space where sound echoed off the stone walls, with gothic arches and full-color life-size statues of Jesus on the cross and Mary in a beautiful blue robe wearing her heart on the outside, like a big, bleeding brooch. There were graceful little marble bird-bath things full of holy water that you dipped your finger into and then crossed yourself as you came in the door, red velvet padded pews, and the most incredible stained-glass windows that lit up like jewels as the sun beamed through them. A high domed ceiling held up by marble pillars was the centerpiece hanging over it all, painted with angels flying up to heaven in blue and white and gold clouds, their toes rosy and clean from never having touched earth. I loved the robes and incense and little boys carrying candles in procession. I loved the ceremony and the feeling of being close to God, the tradition that went back almost two thousand years. I nearly always got weepy during mass, even though I was an Apostolic Holiness Church of God and couldn’t take communion. I could see how Leo would be reluctant to leave that world and strike out on his own, with no experience for anything but teaching in the Church. It was a world in itself and I understood why he couldn’t give it up. Frankly, I was glad it was over, and Baby seemed not much the worse for wear. Not if she was already interested in Scipio Jones. I’d always loved Lost Acre Hollow, too, just over the border in Missouri, about ten miles from Buchanan. It was a tourist place, built to be like a pioneer mountain town, with shops in little log cabins that were set up to demonstrate and produce all the old hill crafts like quilting, fiddle and dulcimer crafting, blacksmithing, gunsmithing, pottery, soap making, sorghum-molasses making, log-cabin building, and everything else you can think of that the pioneers had to do to survive when they settled in the mountains. Mama and Daddy first took me there when I was a kid, and my favorite was a woman making apple-head dolls out of real apples that dried and shriveled up into old people’s faces. I still had mine, and every year it got smaller and darker and more wrinkly. Every night in the big auditorium they had a show of the old-time hill music, most of which had been preserved from the early English and Celtic settlers, and went as far back as Elizabethan England. The performers did jig dancing, which the audience could join in on, and it was the best place in the world I could imagine to work. No wonder Baby was smitten with Scipio. What an odd name.

  Ah, well. I’d wait with interest to see what happened next. But I wish Baby hadn’t said that about her dream of me being in trouble. I hate things like that. We truly believe we were twins in a past life, and it is no surprise she knows everything about me.

  The worst of it was, the day the letter arrived, my period was two weeks late.

  46

  * * *

  CASSIE AND RICHARD

  Richard Avedon reminded Cassie of a Chihuahua, not in an unkind way, but he was small and feisty, full of energy, with prominent eyes behind big glasses. He had a nice smile, though, and tried to put her at ease, taking her coat and ushering her into the studio.

  “Welcome, Cassie. Diana tells me this is your first photo shoot.”

  “I don’t know what I’m even doing here, Mr. Avedon. I’m from Arkansas and I’ve only been in New York two days. I didn’t come here for this, and I don’t know about this whole picture thing of my nose, anyhow. Frankly, I’m scared y’all might be making fun of me and there’s no way to tell.”

  “Well. That was pretty direct. First of all, Cassie, let me assure you, there is no way Diana Vreeland or I would spend our time and energy to make fun of you. You don’t know us, but what possible good would we get out of making fun of a perfectly nice girl? A pretty, perfectly nice girl from Arkansas?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think of a reason. But I’m still not sure. I was told that New Yorkers were all crazy, and frankly, putting me in a fashion magazine seems pretty crazy to me.”

  “I suppose a fair number of them are, and I don’t blame you for being wary. I bet you were also told that the minute you set foot in New York you would get mugged, weren’t you? Did they tell you to get pepper spray?”

  “Not pepper spray. But I heard you can get mugged here. Somebody said I should get a gun.”

  “A gun. Did you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That’s good. You’re not going to need a gun, Cassie. What on earth would you do with it if somebody did try to mug you? By the time you rummaged around in your purse and found the gun, took off the safety, aimed, and shot the attacker, he would have already mugged you and be gone. In fact, he would probably have taken the gun away from you. No. No guns.”

  “I guess maybe you’re right. I’ve never shot a pistol anyhow. My brother taught me to shoot a twenty-two, though. He can shoot the head off a turtle at fifty yards. I’m pretty good myself—I can do it at thirty.”

  “Forget guns. Did you walk over here? What did you see on the streets?”

  “People. A lot of people walking, shopping, and going to work, I guess. Families. Kids. There were some tough-looking guys, though.”

  “I bet there are some tough-looking guys in Arkansas, too. You know, all those people who live here and walk around on the streets don’t get mugged every day. True, once in a while somebody does—I’ll be honest about that—and that’s what hits the papers. But the chances of that happening to you are about one in a million. Pretty good odds, I’d say.”

  “One in a million?”

  “There are almost eight million people in New York. I don’t think there are eight muggings a day. Even if there are, that’s still pretty good odds.”

  “Okay. I feel better. I wasn’t really worried about it anyhow. Snuffy tends to exaggerate a lot. He’s the one who told me all that stuff.”

  “Good girl. Now, have something to drink, and let’s talk about the picture. What would you like?”

  “Do you have any Tab?”

  “I don’t think so. How about Perrier?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sparkling water. Like club soda, only fancier. They drink it in France. I brought a case of it back from Paris.”

  “Okay. With lemon?”

  “Sure.” He got the drink for her. She took a sip, licked a fleck of lemon off her lip.

  “Thank you. This is real good. Refreshing. I’m trying to stay off of Cokes and things like that, and Tab has no calories. I’ve lost a lot of weight recently and I’m not looking to gain it back in a hurry.”

  Avedon had been dancing around, looking at her from all angles, holding his hands up making a square with his forefingers and thumbs, like a picture frame. It made her a little nervous.

  “I didn’t bring any more clothes. Mrs. Vreeland said you’d have things, if I needed them.”

  “This is going to be good. It’s a beauty shot, not fashion, but yes, Diana sent over some clothes. And I have a man here who’ll help you with makeup and fix up your hair. He’s the best.”

  “Mr. Avedon?”

  “Call me Dick.”

  “Okay…Mr. Avedon…Dick…I want you to know right up front, I don’t know how to be a model. You’ll have to tell me everything to do. I don’t want you to be disappointed in me.”

  “You don’t have to be a model, Cassie. We’ll just make a pretty picture, and then you can leave here and be anything you want to be. You’re young and beautiful and healthy. You can use that to buy a ticket to anything.” He called out to someone in the other room. “Sal? Come on in here. I have a lovely young lady for you. Let’s get the show on the road.”

  47

  * *
*

  THE TALK

  Aurelius said he would cook dinner for me the night I came back from Miami. We hadn’t talked since I left—it was just too hard on a pay phone—and I didn’t know when he’d be at home anyhow. I sure wasn’t going to call Mrs. Digby and have her go get him in the middle of the night. I would have to get my own phone one of these days, and so would he. He said he didn’t need it because he was hardly ever there, and he had an answering service, a girl who took messages for him who he called several times a day. I thought about getting one of those, but I usually called the agency enough that it didn’t matter. If anybody wanted to get in touch with me, they could call them. In a way it was nice not to have to be at the mercy of the telephone, but finding pay phones was hard and keeping a bag full of dimes wasn’t easy, either. My purse already weighed a ton.

  I had relaxed, unpacked, gone through the mail, read Baby’s letter, and just sat with it in my hand, looking out the window. Back home, we used to say, “That girl is in trouble,” meaning she was pregnant, and that’s just how Baby had put it. I’d never thought about getting pregnant before, which was strange, but somehow I just didn’t think I would. I couldn’t think of going to the doctor to get birth control pills in Arkansas—they frowned on single women doing that—and Doc McGuire had been my doctor since I was born and I was sure he’d tell Mama and Daddy about it, and probably wouldn’t give them to me anyhow. Tripp and I had always been so careful to use something, and Aurelius and I were, too, but there was a time or two when I thought it would be safe, since the only time you could get pregnant was right in the middle of your cycle and this was just after a period. Maybe I’d been misinformed. Maybe the schedule wasn’t foolproof. Maybe that’s why Catholics had such big families—they had to rely on the rhythm method. Aurelius had rhythm, but I obviously didn’t. I didn’t know for sure I was pregnant, but I was never late, and my nipples were getting sore. I didn’t know if that was a sign or not, but something in me said it was.