Maniac Drifter

by Laura Marello

  Montana harassed a few more people in the audience, told Lydia Street she liked her Flintstones hairdo and then introduced Christianne and Paula. Whitney whispered to me she was embarrassed and I whispered back that she had picked the front row table.

  Christianne and Paula had been standing on the sidelines watching Montana. They both chain-smoked. Christianne kept throwing her shoulders back, jutting her chin out and clearing her throat, as if someone had told her to stand up straight. Paula practiced some scales and tried to get Christianne to join her but she just leaned her head on Paula’s shoulder and said, I want to go home! Then she took one last sip of her scotch; they extinguished their cigarettes, and went up on stage.

  They sang a medley of “Them Their Eyes” and “Dream a Little Dream of Me”; then Christianne stepped aside while Paula sang “The Man Who Got Away.” Whitney told me she thought Paula was much more attractive than Christianne, more genuine and down to earth. A lot of women thought so. If many had become outspoken, moony insomniacs over Christianne, an equal population harbored a private, undeclared crush on Paula. After all, she owned the bar with Falzano; she had been stolen away from Falzano; she was the mother of twin daughters, a New Yorker who had understudied to Barbara Streisand on Broadway. She was nervous, vulnerable and feminine, smoked cigarettes on long, ivory holders. Some of the locals thought the women’s community in Provincetown could be divided into those who had a crush on Christianne and those who had a weakness for Paula.

  When “The Man Who Got Away” was over, Paula left the stage looking relieved. The applause and hooting were deafening but you could still hear Christianne’s voice above it.

  Christianne positioned herself at center stage and sang “Teach Me Tonight.” The crowd was silent when she started. She was very serious; all the teasing had gone. She glanced at the music on the podium and treated the English words gingerly. Her diffidence was charming. After a while she seemed to be drawn into the music, and brought it out in the strongest, sexiest, romantic French voice, an Edith Piaf without the waifishness. The crowd started screaming as if she were Frank Sinatra.

  When she finished I leaned over to Whitney and asked if she believed me now. Whitney nodded and said she got the picture. The performers left the stage; the house lights came up. Everyone looked dazed, as if their houses had burned down and their lovers had left them. Friends avoided each other’s gaze. Except for Whitney and Elaine. They looked at each other for quite awhile, and then smiled and looked down.

  The next day Whitney and Elaine were seen having coffee at the Bad Attitude Café. After that they had dinner in Cosmo’s restaurant. Pretty soon they were a couple and invited me over for paella at Raphael’s house. That’s the whole story.

  But tonight at Paradiso’s it was a different scene entirely. Whitney and Elaine were together. Cosmo wandered through the room greeting people at different tables, as if he owned the establishment and wanted to make sure everyone was comfortable. At the same time he kept scanning the tables and entrances, as if he were expecting someone in particular, and wanted to be prepared when they came in. Falzano patrolled the room in a bowling shirt and pants, giving orders to the cocktail waitresses and jabbing friends in the ribs as she walked by their tables. The talk around the bar concerned Harper’s indictment: the hot-shot New York attorney, Ruth’s departure to work as a consultant on the case, whether or not the Benefit Fund would cover the legal fees if the case went to trial, and the fact that none of the collaborators had been indicted.

  Lydia Street stood in the back of the room talking to Edward the real estate agent and petting his blind collie. Edward held one end of the collie’s leash in his hand, and the dog chewed the other end. Lydia was wearing a black trench coat and sunglasses. She had made tiny cardboard sunglasses for Sydney Greenstreet, but they fell off every time the parrot moved his head. Sydney squawked: “That takes the proverbial biscuit!” at the collie, and the dog barked back, causing the leash to fall out of its mouth. When the two animals were finished, Edward bent down and reinserted the leash into the dog’s mouth.

  When Cosmo noticed me, he took in a deep breath and looked beyond me, as if he expected someone to be following behind. When no one else appeared, Cosmo sighed, shook his head and continued to wander aimlessly around the bar. Elaine and Whitney waved to me; Whitney pointed at the table, and then at her tiger-striped knee socks, to remind me of their significance. I stood in the corner by the piano and watched Joe talk to Mary at the bar. Mary looked the same — tough and restrained. I marveled at the way the experiences of loss and death were not revealed in some people’s manner or expressions. Joe was talking fast and gesticulating wildly, then he leaned in closer to Mary and began to talk more softly, as if he were trying to convince her of something, or disclose a confidence. Mary laughed and looked up; she smiled when she saw me. Joe turned around and motioned me over to the bar.

  “I was right,” he said to me. “Fashion Espionage was really great. You shouldn’t have left.”

  “What are you drinking, honey?” Mary said, and smiled reassuringly. “It’s on me.”

  “I don’t need anything,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” Joe said. “I should have offered myself. What am I thinking about?”

  “The Fashion Espionage show,” Mary said, and began fixing a club soda with lime. “Tell her what happened.”

  “Slashette did an imitation of Paula singing ‘One of the Boys,’ and when the spies finally took off their trench coats they were wearing these little holsters with guns in them instead of G-strings.”

  “Cute,” Mary said. She slid my drink across the bar counter. I tried to pay but Mary ignored the money so Joe stuffed it in the tip jar.

  “Some truck driver from Brockton won the djellaba. And then, when everybody thought it was over, they opened the curtains on stage, there was a screen behind, and they showed a video of the Pierre Cardin Pre-Columbian Fall Fashion Preview. It opened in Paris yesterday. Can you believe this?

  “The costumes were amazing,” Joe went on. “The headdresses had feathers and jewels sewn into them; the snake belts came with Aztec suns on the buckles; and fur capes had hieroglyph designs branded around the edges, you know — like a Miro painting, and hoods designed as jaguar heads with open mouths. There were lots of bare legs and midriffs, lots of skin, as Lance would say. Now that I think about it, the costumes seemed more Egyptian than Pre-Columbian to me.”

  “It’s not costumes, it’s haute couture,” Mary said. “Haute couture. People are going to wear those outfits to the symphony.”

  “Oh my god,” he said. “I never thought of that.” He took a sip of his beer. “Anyway, then CBS asked the Mother of the Year to parade down the gangplank a second time in her Goddess of Sin costume, and filmed the whole thing, right down to the squid necklace.”

  “What will CBS do with this film?” I said.

  “Maybe they’ll use it in a special segment of Sixty Minutes,” Mary said, chuckling to herself.

  “Aren’t they doing a special report on Benefit Week?” I said. “Maybe that’s what it’s for.” I looked around for the television crews. “No cameramen here?”

  Mary pointed above their heads. “On the balcony,” she said. “Falzano didn’t want them disturbing the customers.”

  Joe took the pack of Gauloises out of his shirtsleeve and lit one. He watched Mary regard me, and then began to fidget and look around the room. “Well, I think Elaine is calling for me,” he said, and left the bar. Mary and I watched him saunter over to Elaine and Whitney’s table, pull two magazines out of his back pocket and spread them flat on the table in front of them, holding the edges down with their beer bottles.

  “Harper’s on the cover of Time and Newsweek,” Mary explained. “They were sold out at Ethan’s Pharmacy by noon.”

  “I saw,” I said. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, and then back again, unable to get comfortable, and twirled the straw around in the glass of club soda.

 
; Mary filled the drink orders for Slashette and Trudy, Paula’s daughter, who also worked as a cocktail waitress on busy nights. “You weren’t at the Karate show this morning,” Mary said. “Joshua was asking for you. He seemed disappointed you didn’t come.”

  “I was at the law office.”

  Mary nodded and gave me a wry smile. “Why don’t you come around here and rub my back?”

  “I can go behind the bar?”

  “Of course.”

  “Falzano won’t mind?”

  Mary laughed at me. “So,” she said as I rubbed her back, “I heard you made a fuss about bringing the car back after I’d left.”

  “Made a fuss? But — ”

  “No buts. I told you to bring the car back by Tuesday. You didn’t. Maybe you had a rough week. Anyway, I forgive you. So just get over it.”

  “But — ” Even though Mary did not interrupt me, I didn’t finish. I did not understand how Mary forgave me, or Raphael forgave Antaeus or Nello forgave Cosmo or the owner of the Zanzibar forgave Getz. And yet they did. They did.

  It had happened this way. After our trip to Boston, Mary told me I could borrow her car while I got mine fixed. So I did. I didn’t return it on time. While I was late her mother had a cerebral hemorrhage and went into a coma. She was gone in three hours. Mary went up the next morning. She flew up. I still hadn’t returned the car. But if I had brought the car back when I was supposed to, Mary would have seen her mother before she died.

  Elaine and Whitney were at Mary’s when I returned the car, to break the news. They knew I’d blame myself. Whitney said it wasn’t my fault. Elaine said Mary couldn’t have gotten there any faster in a car. I said I could have sped and gotten her there in time. I asked her where the hospital was. I was calculating the speed I would have had to drive. Whitney said she could have borrowed a car but I couldn’t think of one she could have borrowed. Whitney said nobody was blaming me. Falzano and Raphael had cars she could have borrowed. I said if I had brought the car back when I said I would she could have gotten there in time to see her mother alive. That was the bottom line. Whitney said maybe Mary didn’t want to see her mother in a coma. She said maybe I did her a favor. I said I had let her down. Elaine insisted it wasn’t my fault. The night my mother died I had refused to go to the hospital. I was terrified to see a person die. My mother told me I didn’t have to go. She knew she wouldn’t be able to breathe on her own. I took my mother’s advice and didn’t go. I had always regretted it. I was a coward.

  “You have to forgive yourself,” Mary was saying, at the bar at Paradiso’s.

  “I can’t.”

  “I know. But that’s the problem. And I’m sorry about Grace.”

  “This is absurd. You don’t have to — ”

  “I told Grace she was completely out of line yelling at you like that. I don’t care what she learned in AA. I told her not to come tonight.”

  I had stopped massaging Mary’s shoulders. I didn’t say anything. I wanted to say, If I had brought the car back in time you would have been able to see your mother alive, but I was afraid to say it. I knew it was not Mary’s way to address things directly.

  “Are you pouting?” she said.

  “You sound mad.”

  “I am mad, but not at you.”

  I began to rub her back again. “So what about you?” I said. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing okay. I’m okay.” Then: “I’m worried about him. I may have to go up there for the winter and keep him company. But that would be alright.”

  She got up to make more drinks. The room was full now, there were people standing up in the back. Falzano was cueing the lights.

  “Better sit down,” she said. “They’re going to start.”

  “Mary. I’m sorry about your mom.”

  Mary ran a glass through the ice bucket and looked up. “I know you are.”

  The lights went out, Montana Devon came on stage and announced that Harper Martin had been indicted for U.S. trade violations. Then he noticed Elaine and Whitney, sitting right in front of him with their arms around each other, and began to squeal in his falsetto.

  ***

  Friday

  When I woke up Friday morning I had no idea where I was. The bedroom seemed nice enough; it smelled of newly sawed wood and fresh paint. I was alone in a big bed, underneath a thick quilted coverlet. A hope chest stood at the foot of the bed. The closet door was open, and a dozen pairs of running shoes sat in neat rows on the floor inside, like couples waiting to dance. I read the inscription on the t-shirt I was wearing, it said, 14th MARLBORO INVITATIONAL. Why am I doing this? I thought.

  In another room a food processor whizzed and a stern voice came from a television set. Then a real voice yelled, “I made you a protein shake!” I got out of bed and walked down the hallway toward the voice.

  Mary was standing in the kitchen holding a glass of brown liquid out to me. “I put papayas, kiwis and protein powder in it,” she said. “Go ahead.”

  I sat down dumbstruck at the table and stared in stupefaction at the television set. Mary? I thought. Mary?

  The trip to Boston had been entirely innocent. When Mary finished work at Paradiso’s, I got in her car on the driver’s side and she gave me a set of keys. Mary let her seatback down and curled up on it. I started the car, fastened the seat belt, turned the defroster on, adjusted the mirrors, inspected the dials, and gauges. I felt comfortable in a car. This was my territory. After all, I had grown up in Los Angeles. Behind the wheel I was in control.

  Mary asked me why she had to work so much when her mom was sick. She worked every night at Paradiso’s and every day at the video rental counter at Ethan’s Pharmacy so she was too tired to drive herself to her parents’ house. That was why she was allowing me to drive her. Even so I had to insist; Mary was one of those people who was always helping others, but would not take any help from anyone unless they forced it on her.

  Mary’s mom had been dying of a brain tumor. She lived with Mary’s dad in a suburb of Boston, where Mary grew up. Mary’s father had been a bartender, until he retired. Both parents were in their seventies. Mary was around 40, the age my mother had been when she died. Mary was quiet, tough and restrained, but sweet and tormented, like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. She had a plastic hip, so she walked with a limp sometimes, but that was much better than her childhood, which she spent part in a wheelchair, part in a cast, part on crutches. They did not have plastic hips then and they did not know what to do for her. Now she played basketball, and went running every day in her Marlboro t-shirt. She got involved with the cute young girls, “tinker dykes” as Grace called them, and took care of them through the winter. When summer came they left her to model, or lift weights or join the karate championships or whatever they left her for. Mary always got another one; she was the most popular bartender in town. I said it was her James Dean appeal — tough, tender and restrained.

  Mary was asking me what was happening with me. People were always asking after each other’s news. The event was not really important; it was the exchange of information that mattered. I told her I was worried about Harper and she asked me if he had fallen off the wagon. Almost everyone in town was either in Alcoholics Anonymous or Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous. Different groups met together on different nights. The lesbians met Thursday nights. The painters met Wednesday. If your girlfriend or boyfriend was in Alcoholics Anonymous, you had to be in Friends of.

  Mary said whatever was happening with Harper I should just let it happen. It would come to me. I couldn’t help him if he didn’t want me to. That was Alcoholics Anonymous talk. Mary was in Friends of. I knew the jargon. I never quarreled with Mary or anyone else when they were using their AA talk. I never got anywhere then. Everyone seemed to belong to a group: Alcoholics Anonymous, Jane Fonda’s Aerobics Workouts, Outward Bound. Each group had its own private jargon, which made outsiders feel as if they did not belong. They were like country clubs for poor people, with the fervor of a
religious cult thrown in to the mix. I wondered how Mary would react if I told her about my amnesia, confided to her the way I might tell a mother, if I had one. Mary was something like my mother, restrained and brooding. I wondered if Mary would address me like they did each other in Friends of AA, if she would use the jargon.

  The Cape highway was almost deserted at night, so the drive was easy. I caught glimpses of the lights on the marshes and inlets as I drove by, negotiated the rotaries with diligence since these circular traffic ways with their onramps and off-ramps seemed chaotic to me. Mary had fallen asleep; sometimes I looked over to make sure I had not woken her. It seemed it would take a lot of trust to give your car to someone you hardly knew and then fall asleep in it while they drove you out of town. I could never do that. But Mary was exhausted, and I was willing to drive. It was the practical solution.

  The neighborhood where Mary had grown up had big trees and modest houses. I parked in the driveway behind Mary’s parents’ car and we went in through the kitchen door. It was a homey place with yellow tile and cantaloupes on the counter.

  Upstairs all the doors and windows were open. The two twin beds in Mary’s room were turned down, they had pink flowered sheets and solid pale pink spreads. While Mary was in the bathroom, I wandered around the room, inspecting the basketball and bowling trophies on the dresser and tables. I changed into a t-shirt and climbed into the bed nearest the door. Then I noticed the cigarette butts in the ashtray on the nightstand next to me, and the pillow smelled like Mary.