by Bel Mooney
“Why don’t you and Tony go, honey?” Zandra said.
Miranda stuck out her lower lip and shrugged. “No room in the car, really. Anyway, I hate the place. Real tacksville. But, if you haven’t seen it, you should.”
I told them that I hadn’t, that I would enjoy it, and rejoiced privately at the thought of something to do. Alone with Miranda, I asked if I could help. We chopped onions and cucumber and peppers in silence. Then I said, “I watched you swimming this morning.”
“Why?” The question disconcerted me. “I suppose because you looked beautiful.”
She said nothing, then abruptly, “Do you approve of Dad’s magazine?”
“I don’t approve or disapprove. Why do you ask?”
She grunted doubtfully, tipping handfuls of crisp lettuce into two bowls and throwing in the shredded chicken. “Well, you know lots of people do disapprove?” I nodded. “Well, it’s like you just said. What I tell them. I say that everybody likes looking at what’s beautiful. It’s human nature.”
She flicked her hair back with satisfaction, as if she had just scored a point in a television debate. I thought of taking her on, but what was the point? She had not finished either. With the quiet zeal of the born-again she started on me, “I don’t know why you can’t say you approve – like, positively, I mean – because I’d have thought that you of all people would have wanted women to celebrate their own eroticism.”
“Why me of all people?” I wanted to smile.
“Because you take pictures.”
“Miranda, taking pictures doesn’t help me celebrate my own eroticism, or anybody else’s for that matter.”
She heard the laughter in my voice, and glowered at me. “What I mean is – you create images, right?”
“Wrong. I don’t create them – that’s what the artist does. I simply offer up what is already there, except that it’s often uglier. I’m certainly not in the business of making people look more beautiful than they are. Unless I have to.”
“That picture you took of Dad. That wasn’t ugly.”
“Yes,” I said slowly, “but you see, it only goes to prove what I believe, that the camera doesn’t go anywhere near capturing the soul.” Miranda smiled; she did not follow.
We drifted towards lunchtime, the tennis-watchers cursing and groaning because Chris Lloyd lost, Anthony making call after call, Zandra walking nervously from kitchen to dining room, clattering plates with Miranda. Pots of coffee were made and drunk. Luenbach sat with Emmeline on the terrace, silently working his way through a briefcase of papers. I walked around the swimming pool on my own, taking photographs of its light – ripples under the bright, yet overcast sky, and remembering the shapes Miranda made as she cruised so insolently beneath its surface. Besides, I thought ruefully, I was not doing very well. It was not that I had been rude about Americans in front of Emmeline Carl, and allowed Sam Luenbach subtly to get the better of me. It was simply that, in the space of a morning, I had twice become engaged in an absurd, pretentious conversation about photography, of the sort that I least expected, especially here. I felt like a damp polaroid that has been scribbled on; a caricature of myself. Something nagged me too … Annelisa’s bruise, her splintering nervousness, and an expression I had caught in her eyes which belied Zandra Carl’s critical explanation of her behaviour.
Marylinne and Lace were delighted at the prospect of the Atlantic City trip. Already I lumped them together as everyone else did: the big blonde one who did all the talking and the smaller one with the long black hair, like Chinese hair, who was never allowed (it seemed) to speak. As we all found places at the lunch table, it seemed to me that Peter Corelli, fat and sweating slightly in his brightly checked shorts and shirt outfit, attempted to seat himself between them, as if he had a right. Marylinne was too fast, and slid into the place next to Lace, who was next to Tony Carl. I sat down next to Marylinne, so that Corelli was forced to move to a vacant seat around the table, and I knew I was not imagining the flicker of triumph in Marylinne’s eye.
“Say we leave at 1.15, we’ll be there by three, and there’ll be plenty of time to hit the slots,” she said, nudging her neighbour playfully. Lace kept her eyes on her plate. “Great,” she said, in a completely flat voice. “Slots bore the pants off me,” said Annelisa, too loudly, so that I winced, anticipating Corelli: “Well, honey, that shouldn’t take too long. Better warn ’em on the boardwalk.” I sensed that Anthony Carl wanted us gone. He talked to his son about the tennis match, asserting that McEnroe would whip Connors the next day. They all agreed that it was harder to take sides in the men’s final. The girls said they wanted Connors to win, but Anthony grunted again that McEnroe would “whip his ass”. I told them that I admired McEnroe for his rudeness, simply because the British press always attacked him and Wimbledon officials fumed. General approval beamed in my direction, even from Miranda and Luenbach. I decided I liked it. So easy to please these people, easier than for them to please each other.
There was no comradeship in that room. Annelisa was gazing silently at her plate, Corelli stared across the table at the other two girls with an expression on his face I could not fathom, Tony picked his spots sullenly, still thinking of his heroine’s defeat, and Zandra toyed with her food, glancing anxiously at Carl, who chewed morosely – clearly preoccupied. Miranda was arguing with her grandmother about clothes, tossing her head at the notion that “deep down men always like a lady to look like a lady”, whilst Marylinne and Lace nodded agreement with Emmeline. Their smiles rippled; preening, they uttered little sighs of delight, smoothing short skirts over thighs that glistened – Handmaidens both, acolytes at the altar of the sacred cow femininity, with a complacency that matched the old woman’s.
“The Supreme Court’s a load of punks,” Carl rapped out suddenly, looking down the table at Luenbach and Corelli as if no one else were there.
“They are too,” Zandra chimed, to be rewarded by a cool stare. He continued as if she had not spoken, “You tell me, you guys, what’s gonna happen to the First Amendment. Hey? You tell me!”
“It’s all wide open now,” said Luenbach slowly, “there’ll be a rush of prosecutions against films and books that deal in juvenile sex, but in an artistic manner.”
“Or educational,” Carl added, “I mean, what about pictures in the National Geographic?”
Luenbach nodded, “Sure. It’ll be a return to the fifties, with every Bible-basher in upstate New York crying Halleluia because they’ve got the peddlers of sex on the run. Next thing they’ll be banning Margaret Mead from the New York Public Library …”
I asked why. “Well, that Coming of Age on Samoa, it’s just plain dirty,” he grinned.
“I’m sorry?”
Carl thumped the table with his fist: “Let me explain to ya, honey … This guy Paul Gerber, owns a bookstore in Manhattan, gets busted for selling two films to an undercover cop. They showed young boys, you know, jerking off. He challenged the law under the First Amendment – said it was unconstitutional. Now the Supreme Court’s upheld the law, they say that what they call child pornography doesn’t come into the category of speech that should be protected by the First Amendment.”
Emmeline Carl was smoking now, watching her own exhalings with an uncomfortable expression. The girls looked blank.
“That sounds all right to me,” I said.
I was rewarded by a glower from Carl, whilst Corelli, beads of sweat rolling down his pudgy face, shook his head vigorously from side to side. “America – the land of the free,” he said. “And yet even liberal folk like you defend the taking away of free speech? I don’t believe it.”
“But we’re talking about kids,” I protested. Carl leaned forward with the air of a man whose soul is set on making a conversion. “Listen to me,” he said in a low soft voice, “we don’t do that kind of stuff at Emperor. The youngest chick we’ve pictured was fifteen, but she told us she was sixteen. That was trouble, but we were clear. The point is, we’re interested in freed
om as a concept. You got me? A concept. Magazines like ours, they’ve liberated women as well as men into the freedom to love their bodies, to love sex, to love each other. And there are a lot of different ways of loving, babe, you better believe it.” He was wagging a finger at me. I was reminded, unaccountably, of a small pink penis trying to assert itself.
“But children?”
Corelli laughed. “Some of those kids aren’t children. They were born mature. I once knew …” But Carl gave him a warning look, and he fell silent.
“What I’m saying to you, Babs, is that the freedom of the individual is sacred to Americans – or should be. This kind of censorship sets us back years, and I’m gonna fight it, sure as hell I am. Not for my sake” – he jabbed his own chest – “but for the sake of freedom, itself. Okay?” And he pushed back his chair with a look of finality, all of us jumping up obediently to do the same.
As we ascended the stairs to prepare for our afternoon family outing, Marylinne and Lace glanced at each other wordlessly, raising their eyes to heaven. But Annelisa took my arm. “My Lord, Babs,” she whispered, “who’da thought so many big words would be used up on one cheap thought?”
I smiled at her.
“Anthony, he sure hates women disagreein’ with him. Oh boy …”
“Is that why you always do as he says, like getting your boobs done?” I said.
“What do you think?” For a second she looked sad. Then: “Hey, honey, this afternoon … what do you think I should wear?”
Chapter Four
David Sternberg was outside the house at the wheel of the stretch. Annelisa automatically sat beside him; I joined Lace and Marylinne in the back. Immediately Lace protested, “Hey, where’s your equipment, Babs? You gotta takes some pictures of us on the boardwalk.” And the surprise at hearing such a long speech from her made me dash upstairs for the bag. I did not want it; the feeling of rebellion was inexplicable, as I knew there would be some good pictures in Atlantic City. I also knew that unless I looked at the place through a lens I would not see it at all: half a person without the cameras … yet perhaps not so. Rodin believed – and Zola too – that you cannot say you have seen anything until you have seen a photograph of it. The sculptor used to take pictures of his work, scribble on them, then remodel according to what he had drawn. I bet he took pictures of women too, legs open, sprawling for him, like his drawings. The film exposed; seeing them for the first time – real at one remove.
When I returned, I noticed that David and Annelisa seemed to be arguing; in the car, with the panel closed to give privacy to the back, we could hear nothing but the purr of the air conditioning. Soon, I could see, they fell silent. Marylinne nudged Lace and gestured towards the two heads in the front. “Jeez, hon, wouldn’t you just steer clear of luuurv if you thought it would end like that?”
Lace affected to wipe her eyes, “Dear Ann Landers, my problem is that luuurv steers clear of me. What shall I do?” She made her normal voice high-pitched and babyish. It made me smile. Marylinne came back in gravelly, deep South: “Lordy, lordy, Miss Worried, I hear tell that a caytain Mr Corelli is just burnin’ with passion for y’all.”
“Oh, but Mr Corelli is so burnt up you just have to blow on his flames every night.” Lace formed her glossy lips into a perfect, suggestive “O” and exhaled a short breath, as if blowing a smoke ring, before collapsing into giggles on Marylinne’s shoulder.
“That’s the way to get a-head, baby!” crowed Marylinne, choking into laughter herself.
Each time they looked at each other fresh paroxysms began, so that it was a few minutes before they stopped. At last Marylinne puffed out an apology to me. “It’s sure a relief to get the hell out of there,” she said, jerking her head backwards.
“I can imagine,” I smiled.
She looked at me seriously for a second, then tucked her arm through that of her friend. “Well, I just wonder if you really can,” she said, “Lacey here, she could tell you a lot.”
“About what?” I asked, looking across Marylinne at the other girl.
“Aw, life … jes’ laif,” Lace muttered, twisting her own accent into that dry hick homespun.
There was a silence, then I asked them about Anthony Carl’s film. They glanced at each other. “We ain’t really supposed to talk about it,” Marylinne said at last, “though Lord knows why, since we’re gonna be expected to do publicity when it comes out.” Again a gushing, self-mocking tone: “I’d sure like all you press guys to know that shooting this movie was a deeply moving experience for us all.”
“Hollywood here we come!” Lace added, mockingly.
Surprised, I asked if they were in the film. Marylinne grinned sideways at me. “You got it! Me an’ Lace, we’re not big stars like ol’ Annelisa there, but we got our parts to play.”
“What’s it called?” I asked. She said something which sounded like “Ardy See Us”.
“I’m sorry?”
“Ardy See Us”.
She looked puzzled at my lack of comprehension. “You know, Babs, Ardy-See-Us …? Maybe you never heard of it, but I thought it was a real famous story. It’s about this Greek king …”
It was still a few seconds before I realised. “Oh, Odysseus,” I said, incredulously.
“Sure. That’s what I said. You ain’t gonna believe this, Babs … we’re sort of maids. Greeks. Handmaidens, you could say. And if you knew the things we do … ! I’d be real embarrassed to tell you.”
“Shut up about it, okay?” interrupted Lace, with no aggression in her voice, just boredom.
“Yeah. You ask Annelisa about it, Babs. I tell you one thing though, it’s a good job me an’ Lace is friends. Real good friends.” They both started giggling again, shutting me out. Then Marylinne leaned forward to switch on the television, in its cream plush-covered console, and we spent the rest of the journey watching soap operas, idly switching channels.
At first I had an illusion of skyscrapers sprouting from the sea. A tangle of wide anonymous roads led from nowhere, through scant suburbs, to the long line of tall, bizarrely-shaped buildings which faced the ocean, forming the gamblers’ mecca. Atlantic City had no beginning; it loomed on the horizon, and there was nothing to it except that strip – its ending. I knew it had been reborn in the late seventies, when the gambling was allowed, and big money moved in to demolish the hotels and guest houses of the forties and fifties hotels and create instead Caesar’s Palace and The Golden Nugget. Atlantic City was a raddled old actress who had been given a face-lift and some new, flashy clothes: improved beyond all dignity. We drew nearer, passing the bus station crammed with Greyhound coaches and slowing in the holiday traffic. Marylinne and Lace grew excited, switching off the television and chattering about casinos. “… Rally’s is real good … I like Resorts though … they don’t pay out enough … Anthony always gets comped … ya hear that he’s talking with Marvin T. Peck Junior about making one like a kinda Eastern temple – they’ll call Emperor or sumthin’? … Hey, I’m gonna be lucky today. I just know it …” and so on.
I stared at the back of Annelisa’s head. The red curls did not move; she could have been a blow-up doll. But from time to time David Sternberg would give her a curious sidelong glance, as if to make sure she was still there.
We parked in the Dreamdeck, and walked along a side road in the direction of the Boardwalk and ocean. “Will ya look at that!” We all glanced across the road in the direction of Marylinne’s pointing finger. At first, because of the width of the street, the eye could take in nothing but the abstract horizontals and verticals of scaffolding and pipes, and the squares of concrete slabs. It was rather like being too close to a Mondrian. We were looking at the side of a massive hotel development, which towered above us like a monster with vacant eyes, topped by motionless crane-antennae. Yet the thing bore a small parasite, a pretty growth, a flowering thorn in its side. For there in the centre of the picture, steel scaffolding pressing closely each side, above and immediately behind, was a tiny
house. A real house. An apple-pie and gingham sort of house, with pinkish pantiles covering the porches which sheltered the first-floor balcony and the squared-off bay window on the ground floor. It was made of mellow beige brick, with white windows, and doors painted a pearly grey; four brick steps led down to street level, and a low, neatly-clipped box hedge divided the sitting room window from the dusty street. There was even a flourishing shrub behind it, stroking the white windowsill with glossy green leaves. I noticed with pleasure non-utilitarian patterns of tile in the parapet and beneath the front window – small, perfect abstracts in blue and grey. The small building had a beauty and harmony that caught my throat.
“Gee, it’s cute,” Annelisa said, “a real small-town country house, like your grandma would live in. What’s it doing here?”
“Wouldn’t sell,” replied Sternberg shortly.
“Uh-huh,” nodded Marylinne, hands on hips.
“Stoo-pid,” added Lace.
“I guess it was all like that once … in Atlantic City,” said Annelisa slowly, fingering her chain. “Gee, that’s kinda sad, really.”
“So what happened?” I asked. “The developers bought everything in the seventies, paid people off, to build the casinos? Yet this lot held out?”
David Sternberg nodded, and involuntarily flexed his muscles beneath the light seersucker jacket. “Sure, but you can bet they ran into trouble. Like I mean, there’s some real big time bad guys in this city and they had a lot to lose, okay? Go take a walk. Look at the windows.”
Annelisa and I crossed over. Then we could see the closed Venetian blinds behind wire-mesh-toughened glass, and the steel bars across the front door. As I stared up at the house, taking out my camera, I thought I saw the blind at the bedroom window part for a fraction of a second then fall back into place: an infinitesimal nervous twitch. We returned to the others in silence, and I photographed the house surrounded by the hotel, wanting at the same time to display a notice, or knock on the door and tell them that I was no threat.