The Fourth of July

by Bel Mooney

  Then one day, when she had only been in Manhattan for two weeks, Mitch took her along to meet the art editor of Emperor (“This is my big chance, baby, so do what you have to do”). The office, on Broadway, was spacious and well-furnished, with fig plants in the window. Knowing Di Fazio’s reputation, Mitch had made her a six o’clock appointment. So Annie gladly smiled at the short, swarthy man who wore his hair long, and accepted his invitation to a drink at his apartment on Central Park West. She smoked a joint, and giggled helplessly when he carefully and reverentially undressed her, parted her legs, and inserted a chocolate – eating it out of her before it had completely melted.

  Tony Di Fazio told her that she should dump Mitch, because he was small-time and his pictures were no good. Annie felt a pang, briefly, for after all it was Mitch who had liberated her from the past. But she heard the sound of police sirens in the street, drowning the Rolling Stones on Tony’s system, and she realised with a flare of excitement that she was on her own now, in New York City, and must pursue whatever, or whoever, would give her what she wanted. In that second of self-questioning, when Mitch’s fate was in doubt, a little thread of steel crept along the backbone of Anna Karina Cvach, and she knew that she wanted money and fame as much as anyone else in this city, and that if Mitch Seaton was to be a liability he would have to go.

  “His pictures are lousy,” said Di Fazio, and Annie nodded wisely. “Anthony Carl is just gonna love you,” he added, and Annie nodded again, not knowing at the time that she had just heard the name of the owner of Emperor, the magazine Mitch wanted to work for. Now Di Fazio was squirting baby oil all over her, and there was not much time left for conversation, but she managed to gasp out, “Why?”

  “’Cos you got Marilyn Monroe eyes,” he muttered hoarsely, grinding his teeth into her mouth as if he wanted to tear out her tongue.

  At that very moment Mitch was eating cheap Chinese on Mott Street, imagining his by-line in Emperor. He told her so the next day, when she called him – bleary-eyed as he was with sitting up all night waiting for her to return to their place – to say that she had an appointment to see Anthony Carl. “Are you gonna show him my pictures?” he gabbled. “No, I’m going to show him my pictures,” she replied.

  Three hours later Anthony Carl sent his chauffeur for her stuff, and Annie moved into one of the many rooms in the Upper East Side mansion Carl and Zandra kept for “our girls”. She had never been so feted; Zandra showed her into a walk-in wardrobe and told her she could wear what she liked, and even gave her a brand-new make-up box, and a Lanvin spray. Annie felt like a child at Christmas, except that she knew this would not end. She was to be a famous model, and maybe a film star too, Carl said, and Annie knew it was all true. She wanted to shout across the miles to God-forsaken Wahoo, Nebraska, that she was going to be a bigger success than her brothers, that she was free – as free as Miss Liberty herself.

  But, when he put down her suitcase, David Sternberg looked at her with brooding possessiveness, as if some lucky stroke had just added another perk to his job.

  And the next day her grooming began, and Anna K. Cvach was transformed into Annelisa Kaye – who was dressed in pearls and lace or boots and leather, and, whatever she wore, spread her legs proudly before the camera.

  Still, Aj, já divka Pán … Only this time it was she.

  Chapter Eight

  Can I remember all Annelisa told me that night, so accurately, without a tape-recorder? Understand the nature of memory: it is something we are perpetually creating, each of us, within the private cutting room of our minds. I see spools of film edited and re-edited, and even the rejects from the floor taken up and strung together, and if all of this were to be shown in succession, even days after the event, who is to say how much of it was true? Yet none of it would be false. And the lack of absolute truth and equal lack of falseness remains, the balance changing according to what images we, remembering, choose to summon up.

  It will change according to mood. During the last four years I have often thought of that night, but sometimes perhaps I invent detail, because of the very ordinariness of the story. Stupid small town girl with more beauty than sense rebels against her decent, repressive home and tries to make it in the city. It’s the stuff of cliche, like most advertising shots. “She’s leaving home,” the Beatles sang, with approval, but we did not hear the end of the story of the girl who went to meet a man from the motor trade. All we knew was what they told us, that she was “having fun”. And I must add here that Annelisa told me her story with no self-pity. She too had fun. I have never heard anyone convey so vividly, as she did, the first thrill at seeing Manhattan’s skyline. So when I’ve run through this story to myself (sometimes when I’m reminded by the face of a girl in a magazine or on a video), I’ve tried to remember that side, carefully building the strength in the memory. Her choices. To be plain, I did not seek to see her as a victim. Then I look in the mirror and wonder at the origins of my determination: to create dignity for Annelisa or for myself? The strange thing is, as I lose that defensiveness, the sound of her voice remembering becomes all the more clear, and (I suspect) more accurate.

  Anyway, true or false, at last I have reconstructed my memory of that night into a long, low sad moan.

  Was he called Malone? Probably – though I may have made mistakes in detail. But before I went back to the States, on that odd little pilgrimage, I saw a Czech priest in West London and copied from his prayer book the Angelus. It seemed important to get that right.

  There is another thing to confess. After she had finished, and I left her falling asleep in her silk dress, I went to my own room, took out my address and diary file, turned to the blank pages at the back, and scribbled down everything I could remember, whilst it was fresh. I had never done it before, and not since, although I have worked with journalists who talk to unsuspecting people, no notebook or tape-recorder in sight, then escape to the lavatory to write down details and quotes. There was something equally predatory about my action. I thought it might be useful.

  But at least I did not take a picture of her, in that crumpled silk, with the wrecked face, pulling her little pendant to and fro on the gold chain. Why do I think that would have been worse? Because, I suppose, the girl lived only for what she looked like, and so for me to have caught her like that would have upset her deeply. Of course, I did catch her, my eyes saw, and her physical image tugs at the rim of my memory still, as powerfully as her words. It doesn’t matter that there is no photograph, no proof of that brief time. I carry the truth, both of phrase and of light, although at the time its meaning was unimaginable. I did not dream Annelisa Kaye aka Annie Vack aka Anna Karina Cvach, any more than her mother dreamt her, or Bobby Newman, or Anthony Carl, or the millions of readers of Emperor, or the millions more who would see The Nights of Penelope. Yet perhaps all of us dreamt her, her different facets cut and stuck like a Hockney photo-portrait, to make a whole that was far more tantalising in its fragments. None of us know who will recognise us in the end, seeking to fit the fragments together and reveal the little tedious “truth” that cowers in its corner. None of us know who, in the end, will carry with them our image in all its profound ordinariness and stupidity.

  For Annelisa it was to be none of those others, it was to be me.

  The point is this: the mystery of my ignorance (or innocence, perhaps) at Miami Beach four years earlier, and at New Jersey that weekend, is the mystery at the heart of every photograph. Already the future was pointing its finger at Annelisa and me, as a child points at a photograph of its parents. It was encapsulating us in a little package of time and coincidence, just as the future transcends the present reality of each snapshot, tinting it with irony. And sadness.

  The long night told on me, and I awoke late, at 9.30. It was already very warm, and I opened my curtains to see a clear blue sky. Miranda and Sam Luenbach were lying reading by the pool; as I threw open my window as wide as possible, he looked up towards me, and waved. I waved back. This da
y, I decided, was to contain no tension. Annelisa had unburdened herself to me and now I would not allow her to clash with the others. I would be polite and charming to Corelli and Luenbach, take lots of photographs, and enjoy Independence Day. There was a case of champagne in the kitchen, delivered while we were in Atlantic City, and a fridge full of food for tonight’s barbecue. Nothing would spoil it – not even Annelisa.

  Absentmindedly I returned the little salute Miranda gave, as she looked up in turn. I looked out for a few seconds more before turning back into my room, uneasy. Because I heard again my inner voice asserting with confidence that Annelisa had unburdened herself. Emmeline’s bland complacency was catching; for in fact the girl had told me only of the past, describing rather than analysing, and leaving the present alone. Why had I let her? And why should I betray her by implying that the tension in the house was her fault?

  Corelli, Tony Carl, Lace and Marylinne were watching television, joined this time by Anthony and Zandra too. Jimmy Connors was playing well; everybody was on his side, yet the atmosphere was relaxed. Whichever American won would be all right for this group. Corelli leaned forward, his elbows resting on widely spaced fat knees, the light catching his pink scalp between carefully combed strands of black hair. His mouth was slightly open with eagerness, like a schoolboy watching his team. He looked better in that instant, more human, than I had seen him all weekend.

  He glanced up at me, as if he sensed he was being watched.

  “You wanna sit here, honey? It’s a great game. C’mon …” and he reached out an arm in welcome.

  I smiled at him, shaking my head, and immediately his eyes were fixed back on the game.

  “Oh yeah!”

  “That boy is terrific!”

  “Yup.”

  “Best-looking guy on the circuit.”

  They all agreed with each other. It augured well for the day.

  The room was too hot, so I went outside. The beach stretched clean and empty, apart from some tiny figures in the distance, but first I walked around to the pool.

  “Hi. How was Annelisa last night?” Luenbach asked, with no trace of irony in his voice.

  “Oh, she was fine. Just tired,” I said.

  “And the rest. Come on!” Miranda put down her Alison Lurie and smiled up at me.

  I asked what she meant.

  “She was high, and she came down, that’s all I mean. We get used to it. Once I went into her room at home, and there were roaches all over the floor.”

  “She means the ends of used joints,” Luenbach explained.

  “Er … I know” I said. The urge to appear sophisticated makes us eager to claim knowledge of all weakness, all human junk.

  “Dad’s been worried about her. She snorts too much these days.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” Luenbach shrugged.

  “Do you, Sam?” Miranda’s smile was as arch as Zandra’s, when she looked at Luenbach, and I knew why. He didn’t have to try; he was one of those men who ease themselves into the admiration of women with the certainty of a snake following its path of instinct through undergrowth.

  “Miranda, honey, I do whatever gives me the most pleasure, most of the time,” he said, reaching out to pat her arm in a gesture which was, nevertheless, far more paternal than flirtatious.

  She missed the distinction. “And what gives you the most pleasure? Let me guess … it’s not coke at all, it’s women, Sam. Go on, tell us.” She giggled, and seemed much younger than the self-possessed young woman I had seen swimming twenty-four hours ago.

  He stretched. “Sure, it’s women, Miss Carl, but only a certain sort of woman …” He looked up at me. “Maybe Barbara can guess.”

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t presume.”

  “That’s the whole point.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The thing is, Miranda, that I admire women who don’t presume that they turn a man on. Everything they do is designed to put you off, and yet you hang in there, waiting.”

  “Hard to get?” she asked, in a faintly sulky tone.

  He grinned. “No – easy to get, once they realise, and once you decide. It’s a little game, and well worth the waiting. Wouldn’t you say, Barbara?”

  Miranda’s eyes darted from Luenbach to me, then back again. I felt awkward; exposed. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Sure you know,” he replied, in a soft, crooning voice.

  “Well, I guess I ought to go away right now,” said Miranda sharply, swinging her brown legs down to the ground, “I sure wouldn’t like to feel in the way.”

  Appalled, I stooped to pick up her fallen book, and laughed as if Luenbach had just uttered a witticism. The noise sounded tinny. “Stay there, Miranda, for Heaven’s sake. I’m going to see if Annelisa’s up, and tell her to come and sunbathe with me on the beach.” Something made me look up at that moment, as I placed the paperback back in Miranda’s lap. There at her window stood Annelisa, as if answering a cue. I waved, but she made no response.

  “Come on down!” I shouted, but her window was shut tight and she could not hear. The other two looked up as well. Then at last, after a few seconds, she raised a hand to us in a gesture that was almost regal, her face impassive and moon-like still, distorted by reflections on the glass.

  “Man, her room must be hot!” Miranda said, opening her novel once more.

  Luenbach rose, and stood next to me. “I’ll walk with you a while.”

  “I need breakfast.”

  “Let me fix you breakfast.”

  He was smiling at me, showing even white teeth, but there was nothing threatening or mocking in his manner, and I felt disarmed.

  “Go ahead,” said Miranda, flipping her sunglasses down from her head to her nose. Her mouth was petulant.

  “I owe you an apology,” he said, as he fitted the filter into the funnel, and took the coffee from the cupboard. I asked why. “For how I was with you yesterday. It was as if we were like fighters circling each other. I don’t know how it happened; I guess you misunderstood me at first. But it’s not how I wanted it to be.”

  “Oh?” I was wary, yet (with the euphoria of that first glimpse of blue still with me) felt small-minded for being so.

  “Sure. You and me, we have a lot more in common with each other than with anyone else in this house. It’s not just because of the photography, but … The fact is – I think you’re a very, very attractive woman, Barbara, and a clever one too, and that appeals to me, I can’t help it but it does.”

  “Does it really?” I said, trying to sound sardonic, but aware, as soon as the words were out, that they sounded false: naively incredulous and almost flirtatious as a result.

  Though it is still humiliating to confess, I was flattered by his words. I could not help it. I haven’t reached my thirties without knowing what kind of men are shooting what kind of line, and mostly I reject it all. But only later, when the novelty has worn off.

  It has always been that way. I was engaged once, briefly, to a solicitor who specialised in radical cases, but I thought of my parents and decided that marriage would be a mistake. He married a girl called Rosemary who bore him three children, and I think of them in their house in Richmond with distant curiosity, imagining that it might have been me. After him there were many affairs, but after three months or so, in each case, I grew tired and wanted them to move on. I used to lie in bed, with, the man beside me, and listen to the clock, longing, with a deeper desire than I have ever felt for sex, for him to go on his way, out into the cold, leaving me alone.

  Angry, one of them once asked me if I was capable of feeling any love at all. The question puzzled me. It was like opening a little wooden box, in which you expect to find familiar objects, and discovering instead that there is no bottom, that you are peering into an abyss of white light. How could I know if I was capable of feeling love if I lived out my life in negative? Can you know what love is, in its absence? I wrinkled my brow and thought of my parents and my brother, trying to remembe
r how I felt about them, trying to see love flare in the ashes. But they retained the familiar monochrome tones I like: soft and grey.

  “I don’t know,” I told him.

  “Christ!” he said, throwing his clothes in a case. Then he pulled my photograph from his wallet, and threw it on the bed. “You’re about as real as that,” he said.

  I picked it up, and threw it in the waste bin, and stood for a few seconds looking down at myself smiling up from used tissues, crumpled envelopes, empty film boxes, and corks. He was watching me. We had been together for six months. I was afraid he might cry.

  “I don’t care,” I said, “you mustn’t expect me to care.”

  I couldn’t confess to him that I had only stayed with him for the sex, and when that staled I grew bored. To tell him would have been cruel. Yet a part of me rebelled at the deception: there he was muttering about love when it had nothing to with anything that I knew, least of all with the contact between his penis and me. I realised then that I needed flattery, not love. I wanted to be lured through strange doorways with sweet words, just to see what I would find there – even though I knew, after some years, that what I would find would be my own picture staring up at me from the waste.

  Still, I would weaken at times and begin the gavotte. So, “Does it really?” I thought, making a dry statement. But, “Does it really?” I said, as if amazed and delighted that I could appeal to him, the silly little question mark sliding in to change my meaning – or maybe, on the contrary, to identify it.

  I am sure Annelisa felt the current in the air when she came in, just as he was about to speak again. “What’s this? Toast, juice, and coffee? My oh my, Babs, you sure know how to have a guy look after you.”

  She looked at me as though weighing me up, then snaked across to Luenbach, and draped both arms around his shoulders, moulding herself to him as though she were made of plasticine. She was wearing a tiny orange bikini, under a voluminous blouse of fine white cotton, open down the front. She pushed a knee against his leg.