Household #5: We think the Department should beef up its disaster series; this month’s offerings were ordinary fare and we’re getting bored with the show. The freak wave in Florida was a bust: an old woman toppled like a stick doll, a screaming ambulance, cars smashing against each other, a baby howling inside a semi-floating station wagon. Big deal. In our opinion, the Department needs to have death make an actual appearance. There needs to be bleeding bodies and hysterical, mourning mothers hurling themselves over the corpses. The closest the Department came to real-life disaster was during the earthquake: a car, a new Acura Integra, squashed under freeway overpass. The car was only eighteen inches high; a rescuing fireman said the car didn’t have a chance. Now, that’s a disaster!
Please add your suggestions to the preceding list keeping in mind that all disasters must be “natural”; i.e. not subject to political interference and not environmentally sensitive. Forthcoming disasters will focus on “killer” insects and reptiles, collapsing mountains—mudslides, avalanches, rock slides and the like—and freak windstorms, with an emphasis on toppling power lines and the spectacular profusion of life-threatening electrical sparks which can occur at these times.
SCAPE
WE ARE THE AMORPHOUS AUDIENCE NERVOUS FOR ANOTHER FUN FIX. WE DO NOT INTERACT, WE BEHOLD; WE VIEW, ARE TARGETED AS AUDIENCE, AS VIEWERS. WE ENGAGE AND DISENGAGE LIKE MOTORS. WE CLAP LIKE MORONS BEFORE SELECTED FUNNY MEN. THE FUNNY WOMEN ARE ALL UGLY. WE DISH IT UP; WE LIKE IT TASTELESS. WE COLOUR CO-ORDINATE OUR IDEAS TO MATCH THE PREVAILING WINDS, THIS YEAR NEON, NEXT YEAR RUST. THE ONLY RELIEF OCCURS WHEN FEAR BREAKS THROUGH THE FIFTEEN ALLOWABLE SHADES OF PLEASURE TO PANIC THE VIEWING HERDS OVER TV CLIFFS. WE’VE BECOME NO MORE THAN A CHIP OF AN HISTORICAL SOUND BYTE. NO MORE THAN EARLY BIRDS SHOPPING FOR THE ENDLESS BIRTH AND REBIRTH OF CELEBRITIES. THERE IS NO ESCAPING THE MARKET RESEARCHERS. WE ARE PIGEONS WITH A STARRING ROLE IN A VIDEO CALLED “TARGET PRACTICE.” WE ARE BEING TAPED BEFORE A DEAD AUDIENCE. TOMORROW IS A POP SONG.
SECRETS
The terrorist group SPEIV (Society to Prevent the Eradication of Inner Voices) has resurfaced. Printed messages have been appearing randomly on citizens’ home entertainment screens, on several of the giant television terminals which line the major freeways, and on work screens at the Department of Silence. Public exposure has been limited because the duration of these messages has been brief and, to date, the public’s distress level remains low. This, of course, could change in a matter of hours, erupting into the hysteria and gruesome public flagellations that occurred during previous SPEIV assaults. Officers should therefore be warned that a major SPEIV offensive may be in the offing. The following captured fragment may indicate the direction such an assault might take. It is reproduced and circulated under conditions of strict secrecy and will be the subject of the next departmental meeting. Department members may wish to take a reaction suppressant before reading it.
… the Department of Secrets says THERE ARE NO SECRETS. But we say there are many secrets. Here are some of them:
1. The idea of the unknown has been obliterated; what’s palpable has been made unknowable enough.
2. Your consciousness has been willingly limited; any “other” reality is now classified as mental illness.
3. Your consciousness has fled; your consciousness is in hiding.
4. The subversive wing of SPEIV operates under the name “The Rules & Regulations of an Institute called Tranquillity” in celebration of our spiritual mentor, William Hone (circa 1807), the great English satirist who pioneered the role of the public informer. Who throughout his works said, “conscience makes cowards of us all.” Who dared to ridicule royalty, self-serving governments and all oppressors of vibrant, questioning thought. We are proud to call ourselves Honers, to sharpen our wit, to perform our random assaults in his honour. To gather together voicing our rallying cry: EVERYTHING MUST BE QUESTIONED. We dedicate ourselves to splendour and diversity. We are the protectors of the unforeseen, the perpetuators and guardians of the novel. Join us. Imagine a strange singing, a mechanical choir erupting from the cities like the whistles and clanking of broken pipes. It is still possible for our silenced voices to be heard …
WORD OF MOUTH
1996
REFUSAL
SLAP
First there was a slap. Two slaps, one on either cheek. Don’t interrupt me when I’m on the phone! Slaps you’d see a princess give a nobody in a movie, or a maid, or a workman. Smack, smack. Like that. Quick. With the hand that fed, that washed the body, that brushed the hair. Slaps like the sound of sudden gunfire, unpredictable. And the war zone: the living room, the narrow hallway where the telephone rang.
She must have placed the phone under her chin, must have positioned it carefully so she could slap with ease. Come here while I slap you. No, it was the pulling at her skirt, at the long slim high-heeled legs that did it. Close enough for her to whirl around, one hand free. And a dummy child in place to receive it, not figuring it out in time, always too close, always surprised and shocked. A sudden slap like the slap of birth, or of insight.
ANGELS
There’s a house at the foot of a steep hill, a rented house with dusty passageways and hidden rooms, with balconies overlooking a large wood-panelled living room, a castle of a house. In an upstairs bedroom there are angels. Yes, angels, you’re sure of it. Three in white gowns, two in blue, with thick, waxy wings. Hovering at the end of your bed; one is floating near the ceiling, its golden hair brushing the overhead light. Angels living—if that’s what angels do—in your room. They don’t speak but their presence is so claustrophobic you scream. Scream and scream. Their presence is sucking the air from the room, but they’re smiling at you warmly, like Bible drawings of Jesus, and their smiles never change. Smiling while they eat your air.
Quit imagining things, you’re later told. Come down to earth.
HANDLESS
This woman who slaps. What of her? Oh, you keep away from her, at least you try, keep her at arm’s length, refused. Because a nightmare is having your arms cut off below the elbows. There’s so much blood when you push her away. But still she grabs, still she slaps.
Why won’t you call her Mother? Because the word sticks hard in your throat like a growl and won’t form into music?
Instead, you call her the slapping woman.
BROWN
What does the slapping woman look like? Is she beautiful? Is she a beautiful, wicked Queen? No, not beautiful though she has a certain grace, like the cold stiffness of a China figurine.
But everything about her is brown. Like dirt? Yes, like dirt. From her thin hair to her dull-brown eyes, from her tailored suits and her alligator high-heeled shoes to the fox-fur she wears when going out, draped around her shoulders like a live thing. Two tiny fox heads with yellow glass eyes staring at you from either side of her neck.
MUD PIES
In the back yard you mould the slapping woman out of mud and twigs, a whole family of mud-pie women, some larger and more fierce than the others, some small and helpless. When the mud is powdery dry, you have wars with them, smashing them together until they crumble, until armies of perishing slapping women are strewn in broken clumps about the ground.
You use twigs for their arms and legs because her bones are so sharp they hurt you when you’re held. Twigs that snap easily in half, then snap in half again.
LAPS
Tea in the living room. She pulls you onto her lap in front of a neighbour woman. Her knees are sharp through her brown skirt; it’s difficult to balance, to sit still without falling off.
She’s being careful with you, formal, slow. No, you couldn’t call it kindness, but her voice is even, a silky veil, a kind of song. She’s talking to the woman about her home, far away, across the ocean. The sun shines all the time in Australia. Just shines and shines. Not like here where there’s nothing but rain.
Warily you let her hold you, soothed by the delicious sound of her newly soft voice.
Her slapping
hands for the moment lying still.
MUSIC
A crowd of strangers with drinks in their hands have gathered around the piano at the far end of the living room. The slapping woman is playing “Kitten on the Keys,” “The Twelfth Street Rag,” “Hernando’s Hide-Away.” Everyone is singing. You’re sitting on the piano bench beside her plunking at the high end of the keyboard, at those shrill notes that are never used. Miraculously you’re at the heart of things, ignored.
Once during these times she calls you Darling and strokes your hair. Darling!
Play us another one! Something we can get our teeth into. Play “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra.” Play “My Heart Is Like A Red, Red Rose.”
Darling! The music of that rare caress.
THE FATHER
She’s given him your plate with the cut-up meat. Then laughs and laughs. Standing at his side, she’s feeding him the meat, one piece at a time. Be a good boy and eat your supper! And he’s laughing too, his head’s thrown back, his wide mouth open. Oh, the bells of that private laughter! His paper napkin at his throat like a bib. He’s holding his mouth like a hungry bird, she’s teasing him with the meat. Don’t be a naughty boy! Making him bend after it, further and further, until he falls off the chair.
PRISON
The slapping woman is shouting. Throwing plates of food against the kitchen cupboards, a bowl of stewed prunes, a gravy boat against the kitchen door after the father’s retreating back. A white door, brown gravy.
Once again she’s crying. I want to go home. I hate this country, and all this rain. It’s a prison. I hate everything about it.
SAILORS
Dressed in a night-gown, you’re running circles around the edge of the living room rug, jumping on the armchairs, keeping time to “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic.” Play the record again! And again! The Father’s on the floor beneath a lamp holding a needle and pink thread, sewing doll’s underpants. And a cape! And a doll’s skirt made from a piece of cut-up pillowcase. Threading elastic with a safety pin through a crude waistband. I learned how to sew at sea, on the ships at night. We had to do our own mending.
You’re sitting on the living room rug with the Father eating toast and jam. Then the floor’s a heaving black ocean with orange circle islands made from the light of table lamps and you’re a sailor hopping from one circle to the next. Yo ho ho. The Father’s clapping his hands. And a bottle of rum.
GONE
Where is the slapping woman?
She’s gone.
Gone like a drifting fog because her departure is so quiet. She’s slipped out at night, floated through the bedroom ceiling with the angels.
You’ve looked up from your playing, turned around at the supper table and she’s not there. You weren’t watching and she stole away. You weren’t watching and she’s slapped you again.
BOAT
Why won’t you eat? The Father’s given you all your favourite foods: chocolate cake and ice cream, fish and chips, orange pop, jelly beans, marshmallows. You should be happy; this should be a celebration, she’s gone away. Why won’t you speak? Cat got your tongue?
But there are no words for this emptiness, it’s too large to name. You long for her slippery legs, for the hands that once stroked your hair. Without her presence you feel eerily alone.
The Father rocks you on his lap. He reads to you: Winnie-the-Pooh, The Owl and the Pussycat. You cry and cry, adrift in your sadness. You’re clinging to a ball that’s too wide for your grasp. Hold onto the Father, he’s a sailor, he won’t let you drown. Listen he’s telling you a story: She’s gone away on a boat, maybe never to return.
She’s sailed in a boat, in a pea-green boat, she’s slapping the ocean blue.
BOOK
In the living room of the castle house. You’re helping the Father put toys into a large cardboard box.
And where will I love?
You mean live?
Yes, where will I live?
With your Grandma on the Island. And I’ll visit every weekend. You can make me toast and jam, and we’ll take rides in the car and go to the beach.
And stand on the shore, and wave at the waves, and stare at the boats in the distance.
And what about your tricycle? Do you want to take that?
Oh yes. And the doll and the doll’s clothes and all the books. Hans Christian Andersen. The Princess and the Pea. The Snow Queen. The Snow Queen! There once was a child who lived frozen inside …
Pushing aside the toys you take hold of the Father’s hand.
WHAT’S TRUE, DARLING
1997
DOROTHY PARKER’S DOG
When I came home from the hospital I discovered my friends had redecorated my room at the Algonquin. They’d draped the bed and writing desk, the couch and chairs in black cloth and they’d hung things from the ceiling—framed pictures of condemned murderers, carving knives dangling from strings. There was even a length of rope draped artfully across my bed. And they’d placed an assortment of step ladders around the desk in case I felt like climbing. The effect was bleak but charming. Ironic decor.
They thought I’d be pleased. I was pleased, after a fashion. By the gesture of the thing. Who were these friends? I don’t know, the usual blur of revved-up people. Somebody this, somebody that. What does it matter who they were? Background music, bit players, atmosphere for the macabre piece.
But whoever they were they got the idea from me, from what I’d done while in hospital. You see, I’d attached a small orchid corsage to each of my bandaged wrists. Yes I did, nasty of me, I know, but it made me laugh at the time, gave me a kind of grim satisfaction. Perhaps I’d ordered the corsages from a florist myself, perhaps I’d sent one of my friends to fetch them. I don’t remember. But the orchids were pale mauve in colour and hard as wax. And I had this delicious thought: I will be a sarcophagus, flowers sprouting from my near-bloodless form. Cleopatra. That’s who I had in mind. I’ll be Cleopatra lying in my hospital bed, pale and calm, my corsaged wrists lying still above the covers.
I received my friends like this, visiting hours being the same time as cocktail hours, four to six. When they saw me they screamed with laughter. Oh, our Dotty’s so wicked! And opened the champagne bottles and the bottles of Scotch. We drank to my cleverness. Thirty or forty friends partying in my hospital room. All the twinkling New York gnats were there—writers, editors, the round table drunks, all the bright young things. I got fairly lit mixing the Scotch with the sleeping tablets; after that I was gone for days.
How many times did I attempt suicide? Every time a party ended. Every time I put pen to paper.
Doesn’t that sound grand? But it’s a full-fledged lie. Which, of course, I excelled at. Lies and more lies. Here she lies and I don’t mean Cleopatra. Oh the wordy girl! Suicide or murder; I was adept at both though it was by pure accident, this trickery with words.
For some reason I was called upon by the New York circle to train as their magician. And the first thing I learned was running with my nose to the ground. Oh, I could sniff out the idiots! You can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think. You see, I was a natural; spite and sarcasm flowed easily. This is where my fame lay—in the caustic line, harsh enough to wither any reputation! People were delighted, craved the personal insult. The more they laughed, the nastier I got until a party wasn’t a party until I was there.
But there were things I loved more than words: Scotch and dogs top the list. I’ve always preferred a dog to a man and I’ve had a string of both. I can remember all of my dogs’ names—but the names of the men! Not a one.
Robinson was my favourite dog, a Dachshund; he went everywhere with me. Our day began at five with cocktails in my room at the Algonquin. Now you’re not to believe the reports that Robinson shit on the rug. People assumed this because I never rose before noon and where would the poor dog do his business? Where indeed? On the pages of the New York Times, where else? Spread about the floor, awaiting Robinson’s anointment. Since waking up was not the
best part of my day, jittery and bitchy as I often was, inspecting Robinson’s deposits gave me a small pleasure, like a throw of the dice: Robinson the fortune teller; I was always delighted to see whose writing he’d chosen to shit upon—some upstart critic venturing onto my turf, some pathetic reviewer attempting a Parker line (everyone knew I was Constant Reader at the New Yorker).
So Robinson was my researcher. And the smell? There was no smell. Darling, that’s the beauty of hotel life: maids. Each day at four they’d come in to clean, air the place out. And then at five cocktails began. Twenty or thirty people would stream in bearing gifts—I loved receiving gifts—usually bottles of Scotch or little things to eat or a toy for Robinson. Everyone drinking and laughing, everyone so gay, and then all of us piling into taxis for a night at the clubs, Robinson tucked beneath my arm like an enormous sausage.
At the clubs he’d curl himself beneath the table. A group of us drinking and there Robinson would be fast asleep. (Something I’d always wished men would do: sleep at my feet.) But he’d start awake and follow me whenever I moved; he’d even follow me to the Ladies and wait outside the stall. Such devotion! I’d order waiters to bring him bowls of water or chopped meat, and many of the young men hanging about would be called upon to take him outside to do his business in the street. And they daren’t refuse me. After all, I had them by the short hairs: Refusal to do their duty by Robinson meant banishment from my terrible, envied circle. And not one of them would risk that!
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