The Fourth of July

by Bel Mooney

  “Wow, honey, you sure know how to freshen up.” Peter Corelli looked at her as a child looks at an icecream.

  “I guess it was worth waiting for,” grinned Anthony Carl, putting his arm around her waist. For the first time I noticed how small, almost insignificant, he looked beside the women who surrounded him. Carl was about average height, yet the high heels the women all wore, and their carefully teased and arranged crowns of hair, added to the illusion of Amazonian proportions.

  Marylinne sauntered up, closely followed by Lace. “Oh, my Gahd, Annelisa, that dress sure looks like the costumes we had to wear in Ardy-See-Us! Don’t it, Lace?”

  Lace’s giggle was tinny. “Almost the very same,” she said. Annelisa frowned for a fraction of a second, then her smile returned, broader than ever. “Didn’t you guys know? We’re not calling it that now. Tell ’em the new title, Anthony.” Her tone to him was cajoling, but imperious too. The cocaine had given her confidence; the queenly way she turned her head, and that stretched smile, reminded me of Nancy Reagan.

  “The Nights of Penelope” he said.

  Annelisa looked mockingly at the other two. “Be easier for youse all to remember,” she said, resting one hand on her hip, as if in challenge.

  “Oh, we all know what it’s called now,” said Lace, throwing back her hair with a quick toss, so that it caught the light with the blue sheen of a blackbird’s wing. Her expression was sulky. But Marylinne did not allow herself even to pout. She pulled at one of the long golden tresses that lay over her shoulder, allowing its curl to spring back, and looked at Annelisa with a sly, sidelong smile. “Oh, I remember so much about that movie, honey-chile, that I reckon we should call it, The Sights of Penelope. You know?”

  Anthony Carl’s guffaw echoed across the room, so that even his son was forced to break the television’s hypnotic hold for a moment. He and Miranda had not heard, so watched the inexplicable mirth with the pitying look of children who think their elders foolish, before turning their attention back to the screen. Corelli and Luenbach joined in the amusement; Zandra’s light laughter harmonised with theirs. Emmeline glided over too, and patted Marylinne on the shoulder.

  “I always say that a sense of humour’s a girl’s most precious asset,” she purred.

  “After her looks,” said her son.

  “Oh, sure,” chorused his wife and mother, still smiling approvingly at Marylinne.

  “But when your looks go …” I began.

  “Man, when your looks go you need your sense of humour!” said Marylinne.

  “Hey, Anthony, she ought to be on Joan Rivers,” said Luenbach, placing his hand, very deliberately, in the small of her bare back in a way that was familiar, and made me shiver.

  Marylinne affected disgust. “No way,” she said, shaking her head. “If I had to look at her face close up for more than a minute I’d gag. She got lines deeper than the Grand Canyon from laughing at her own jokes. Women over forty oughtn’ta go on TV – Lord knows.”

  Zandra gave her a furious look, but said nothing. I was watching Annelisa. The hand had dropped from her hip and dangled uselessly at her side. The aura of omnipotence, that had flowed with her into the room, had disappeared. Only the strong scent of Femme remained – mocking her now.

  “Over forty …” she mumbled.

  “That’s what I said.” Marylinne looked at her curiously.

  “Over forty … No …” Annelisa murmured, staring at us all with a vacant, unfocused stare.

  Marylinne and Lace exchanged glances; I saw Lace raise her eyebrow and tap the side of her nose very lightly with one sharp fingernail. The others had noticed nothing.

  “Don’t worry about it, babe!” Anthony Carl slapped her briefly on the bottom, making her rock, just a little, on her spindly heels. “You’re just a bee-ootiful twenty-four and I’m going to have you on TV coast to coast when our movie’s released. There’s going to be the biggest debate about censorship and freedom this country’s seen! An’ you and me – we gonna sock it to ’em real good. Ain’t gonna be no one in this country who don’t know about Annelisa Kaye. You’ll have your picture on the cover of Newsweek.”

  “Eat your heart out, Linda Lovelace!” crowed Marylinne.

  “Yuk – she jus’ white trash” added Lace.

  That would have been the moment (your moment of perfection, Mr Weston) to take Annelisa’s photograph. One hand plucked at the fabric of her dress, crumpling, then letting it drop, crumpling, then letting it drop. Her mouth gaped slightly, a bead of moisture in the centre of her lower lip, in a terrified version of the sultry, open-mouthed expression that was the hallmark of Emperor photo sets, inviting oral sex. Her eyes had widened, their gaze blank, but now with disbelief, as she stared at Anthony Carl. She looked more unreal than ever. The perfect moment – as her body sagged slightly about the shoulders. For a second I could have fancied that someone had pulled out the stopper, and the blow-up creature, the instrument of lonely gratification, (an advertisement in Emperor said “CANDY FANTASY DOLL. A new process and heavy duty construction creates CANDY with exciting new skin textures and enormous firm breasts, hard nipples, open mouth, ready pussy, willing ass. You won’t believe it till you feel it. GET HER. GET DOWN. GET GOING”) was about to collapse before my eyes, starting with those breasts which would sag and diminish with a long sad hiss.

  Nobody noticed, of course. They had all drifted off into talking and drinking – or at least, Carl, Corelli and Luenbach were talking about the Atlantic City project, Marylinne and Lace were standing with them in silence but with practised looks of interest on their faces, whilst Zandra suddenly strode out to the kitchen, with an angry mutter, “God knows what that woman’s doing!”

  “Come on outside,” I said to Annelisa, gently taking her arm. We walked out through the french doors and on to the terrace, where the light was already blue and misty. For a few moments we stood there in silence, listening to the waves, as I wondered what to say. She had allowed herself to be led by me, as if her body no longer functioned on its own, and now stood meekly next to me, waiting for something.

  I led her round the side of the house in the direction of the pool. There was a rasp of crickets, and rustling from the shrubs in the faint evening breeze, as we made our way across the paving and sank down in creaking cane chairs. For a time we sat and stared at the water, ice-blue and grey and charcoal as the light caught it, and the surface shifted away in another direction. To my surprise she spoke first. “Okay, Babs, go on and tell me.” Her voice was flat.

  “Tell you what?”

  “I shouldn’t snort.”

  “That’s your business, Annelisa.”

  “Oh yeah, you say that, but I know what you think.”

  “What do I think?”

  “You think I’m just some dumb broad who’s gotten hooked and is making porno movies to feed her habit.” The voice was angry now. “Yeah, I know what you think.”

  “Look, Annelisa, don’t tell me what I think, all right? It’s just that I didn’t know, that’s all. So I didn’t know what to say.” She said nothing, just stared at her bright pink toenails, which protruded uncomfortably from those crippling sandals. Hesitating, I added, “Anyway, I didn’t know it could be classed as a porno movie.”

  “Aw, not really. Not hard … Anyways, I don’t wanna talk about that, okay?”

  “Fine. I didn’t bring it up.”

  Another silence, then she turned to me. “D’yever do a line, Babs? Makes you feel so good inside … like you could take on anything or anybody.” Her face bobbed like a pale balloon in the dusk.

  I shook my head. “I just told you. It never appealed to me. As I said upstairs, I don’t like feeling everything slide, losing control.”

  “Of yourself or other people?”

  “Myself. I’m not interested in what other people do. Where do you get it from, in any case?”

  “Billy.”

  I made a questioning noise. “He’s this guy I’ve been seeing. He’s a jou
rnalist – a freelance. You heard of him? He told me he’s quite well-known – William G. Stevens? He came up to me at this party and we got on real fine and he took me out. Behaved real nice too – which makes a change, that’s for sure. He told me he wanted to write a story about me for the National Enquirer”

  “For what?” I almost shouted.

  “Oh, I said no. I told him I didn’t want to be in that junky paper.”

  “Good,” I said with relief, but she shook her head. “Not so good. ’Cos now … Well, anyway, we started seeing each other regularly and he’d stay with me or I’d stay with him, and he’d get me coke, and we’d turn on together. I thought I loved him, you know? For a while. But I don’t know any more … these days …”

  “So?”

  “He interviewed me once or twice. With his tape.”

  I groaned.

  “He told me that he collected interviews with people, about their jobs, for a book he wanted to do one day. Then on Friday …” Her voice faltered, and she rested her head briefly in one hand, so that I could not see her face. “On Friday he told me that he wouldn’t see me anymore. And, Babs – I think he’s gonna write …”

  “Oh yes, I can see the headline: ‘My Life with the Emperor’s Sex Queen’,” I said. “Jesus Christ, Annelisa, you were stupid enough to believe him! When were you born?”

  “1958,” she replied, perfectly seriously.

  “1982, more like,” I said angrily.

  She had not realised; I saw it now with perfect clarity. What I called stupidity deserved the name, yet it was innocence too, and had no place in her world. I turned to her to point this out, gently, but she was glaring at me. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you? You think I’m just some dumb broad who believes everything everybody tells her. Well, maybe I am. And maybe I don’t care about it, right? ’Cos since every goddam person I meet tells me nothing but crap – you got that? Crap! – then there ain’t no reason in the world why I shouldn’t believe it.” Her voice was rising in near-hysteria: “You hearing me? The big dumb broad is speaking, man, her mouth’s good for something besides giving head. Ain’t that something? Ain’t that just the funniest damn thing you ever heard?”

  “Stop,” I said quietly. She was breathing very shallowly now, and I could hear silk slither as her hands played with the fabric of her dress. “Stop, Annelisa.”

  “Oh, I’ll stop, I will too,” she whispered.

  “Good,” I said, “because it’s no use getting hysterical. And don’t start crying either …” (I could hear the little panting breaths turning into sobs) “because I won’t be able to understand what you say if you’re crying.” I knew I sounded hard. I made my voice steely, to act like cold water on her hysteria. It worked. She drew in her breath sharply once or twice, then sniffed, raising the back of one hand to her eyes.

  “Oh my God, my make-up’ll look terrible.” Back to normal, I thought, relaxing. I wanted to change the subject. I did not want her to cry or to tell me any more pathetic stories of trust and betrayal. Feeling myself withdrawing from her, I saw her tiny in some distance far from me, waving at me for help I could not give.

  “I’ll have to go upstairs and fix it, but I don’t want anyone to see.”

  She was patting her hair, and smoothing her dress: preparing herself for battle. I jerked my head towards the house behind us. “Use the fire-escape,” I said, “and I’ll go upstairs and open it from the inside. Just do me a favour, kid,” I added. “Don’t spend the next half-hour sticking tubes up your nostrils. You might forget and come down looking like a walrus!” She giggled. Even in that light I could see the wreck of her face, incongruous, around that chirrupping mouth.

  Turning the corner to the terrace, I met Miranda. “It’s ready,” she said. “Where you guys been hiding? Where’s Annelisa?”

  “Oh, she’s just coming,” I said vaguely, walking purposefully into the sitting room, so that she was forced to follow me. “I tell you what – tell them all I just want to go upstairs and get my flash, so I can take a picture of us all around the table.”

  She grinned. “Sure I will. Grandma’ull just love that.”

  I ran upstairs, unlocked the little door outside which Annelisa hovered, like a moth, and pushed her into her own room. I left her dabbing, patting, brushing, grimacing into the mirror, and went to my own room for the camera and flash. I knew I would have to take a couple of snapshots, for the sake of appearance, and suddenly relished the idea of throwing them away afterwards.

  By the time I returned she had already repaired most of the damage. I had not noticed how dark her eyes were – not the make-up around them, but the eyes themselves – glittering inarticulate pinpoints of life in that mask of a face, looking out at me from unfathomable depths – and in pain. There was a memory for me in those eyes. Unaccountably they reminded me of a hedgehog my brother and I once found, caught in a tennis net in the garden of a neighbour. It had blundered there in the darkness and, feeling its prickles enmeshed, had pulled back and forth, and round in circles, winding itself more securely into the meshes. When we arrived it was perfectly still, lying there on its side, the twine holding the four little claws out at awkward angles, and cutting deep into the prickles of the neck.

  “Quick, quick,” said my brother, panicking, “run and get some scissors. Get Mum, get Mrs Murray – quick.” I ran faster than I had ever run, awed by my responsibility. Hard to remember now, but I suppose I was about eight. Mrs Murray was out; we had free access to her huge garden, because our parents were her bridge partners, and sent us across the road from time to time to ask if she wanted errands. I tore over to our own, much smaller house, and round to the kitchen door. “Mum, come quickly,” I shouted, “something terrible’s happened!” She looked tensely up from the sandwiches she was cutting for lunch.

  “What! For heaven’s sake, Barbara, who’s been hurt?”

  “It’s a poor little hedgehog, in Mrs Murray’s tennis net. It’ll die unless we get it out. Can you come? James says can you bring the kitchen scissors and come and cut it out?” Her face lightened. “Is that all? Don’t be so silly, child, I’m not coming all the way over there for a dirty, flea-ridden hedgehog!”

  I screamed at her, “How can you be so cruel?”, jerked open the kitchen drawer, and ran away with the scissors before she could protest. James was crouching over the creature, but looked up at me with his odd, evasive eyes, saying flatly, “She wouldn’t come. She wouldn’t bother. We’ll have to do it.” So we took turns, one to hold the creature and disentangle the twine, very, very gently, and the other to cut. At each dull vibration of the scissors the animal winced, and its black eyes closed with terror. Every few minutes it would utter a tiny, high-pitched squeak of pain and fear, but without moving its mouth, the sound coming from its imprisoned throat. The prickles hurt us, and as each limb was freed it instinctively rolled up, making the job harder. “Will it die?” I asked him fearfully.

  “Probably,” said James.

  “Then why … I mean, are we wasting our time?”

  Cut. Little scream. Cut, cut, cut.

  “Probably,” he said again, to tease me.

  “Ohhhhh,” I groaned, half in anger and half in pain from the stabs in my hands. “You, James, you don’t really care. Nobody cares. But I do. This hedgehog, he’s one of God’s creatures, he is, so we have to look after him.” At Sunday School there was a poster of Jesus, with a sweet face of intolerable sadness and forbearance, surrounded by the animals: birds on his shoulders and about his head, rabbits, mice, dogs, cats, and a foal at his feet. I was sure I had seen a hedgehog too, a creature who might have stepped from the pages of Alison Uttley books, Fuzzypeg on his way to school. Or Mrs Tiggy Winkle in her apron. Already, though, it had started to puzzle me that God did not always look after his creatures: he stood by and watched whilst hedgehogs blundered innocently into traps.

  It was free at last. The tight ball lay on the grass, and to my horror my brother made as if he would kick it, as if it
were a football. When I cried he grew irritable and took me home. “I was only joking, stupid crybaby. Whose idea was it to save it, anyway? Mine. As if I’d really go and kick the thing, after all that! You can’t take a joke.”

  Our mother was tight-lipped. She threw the scissors in the dustbin, made us take off all our clothes, and dunked us into a bath in which she had poured a liberal amount of disinfectant, “to kill the fleas”. She shuddered at the thought. I could not stop crying, although it was impossible to explain way. It must have been a mixture of relief that we had given the thing its liberty, and sentimental pity at the thought of those little black eyes, looking up at us uncomprehendingly. My mother said she could not see what there was to cry over. But then she never did see things the same way as I did.

  But her eyes were dark and penetrating too … I never saw fear in them, not even when my father died and she knew she would be left alone, the consummation she had devoutly wished, unwelcome when it came. Not fear, not ever, for she was too proud and difficult for that; but horror, perhaps. I think I saw in her dark eyes the horror of all that was contained within our living room, with its red plush three piece suite, the oak sideboard with a blue and white china biscuit barrel on top, the mahogany radiogram matching the television set with its closed doors, and my father’s pallid watercolours on the new wallpaper, eau-de-nil with discreet gold spots.

  Much later I realised why she had no interest in hedgehogs gaining their freedom (and if I saw one now what would I do but photograph it?), since she knew quite well that those foolish enough to blunder into little traps do not deserve to be rescued.

  And maybe Annelisa too was unworthy of liberty.

  They all looked up as we entered the dining room, but with no curiosity. There was a smell of garlic bread, and the fragrance of sweet peppers, onion and tomato rose from the bowls of gazpacho in each place. Ice clinked in the soup as people stirred it round with their spoons; the sound was echoed when Peter Corelli poured the wine – his hand slightly unsteady from all his pre-dinner drinks. Places had been left for Annelisa and me on each side of Sam Luenbach. The seating plan meant that I was on Zandra’s right, whilst Annelisa slid, somewhat awkwardly, into the chair next to Miranda – who said nothing to her. Nor did Carl, nor Marylinne and Lace, who were opposite. It was as if she was a stranger in a cafe. There was an odd unsocial silence at that end of the table, whilst at ours Zandra was making conversation as if it had just been invented.