by Bel Mooney
Annelisa raised her glass to her lips, sipped delicately, then put it carefully down on the low table nearby. She folded her hands together, and let them hang loosely in the folds of her dress, standing back with her weight evenly distributed on both feet. “So it looks like I’m gonna be a movie star after all,” she said in a sweet, girlish voice, that rang as false to me as the voice of Monroe playing siren-waif.
“Just like you always wanted,” grinned Anthony. “Just like I always wanted,” she repeated. “So we sure have something to celebrate tonight,” he said.
“We sure have,” she repeated, with liturgical obedience. And then she smiled at him. Wide and bright that smile stretched, its pinkness intimate and almost obscene, a mouth-offering that left her eyes untouched.
She picked up her glass again, and raised it to Anthony. “I guess I should say congratulations,” she said, still smiling. “You must be very, very pleased.”
He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed: “Honey, let me tell you, this is the best news I’ve had in years. All I need to hear now is that Babs is gonna come over here and work for us, and then I’ll be really happy.”
Everybody looked at me expectantly, as if it were Christmas Eve and it was my job to distribute the presents. But I was only aware of the two faces in front of me, Anthony’s and Annelisa’s, speaking to me now in their silence of smiles, and waiting for my reply. Her face was unfathomable; whatever truth it once held gone forever now, even to the gaze I considered expert, my own. It might have been a carnival mask, concealing her feelings; it might truly have reflected a real absence of feeling, rendering false all she had told me on the beach that afternoon.
She stood next to Carl, staring at me as if, like him, she was willing me to gush agreement. And she belonged next to him, I thought, far, far from Nebraska, and the repeated Angelus, and the little shrine of Czech immigrant mementoes, and her parents’ nightly prayers. She belonged here – with the impotent lecher Corelli, and the homespun witch Emmeline, and the loutish, overweight Tony, and the spoilt, complacent brat Miranda, and the neurotic Zandra, and the greedy, powerful Anthony, and the conceited Luenbach, and of course with the girls, with Marylinne and Lace, who were waiting for the big opportunity to be stars, like her, at whatever cost.
Annelisa belonged here. I did not.
But of course I beamed at them all, with charm that sprang to my surface as naturally as the fresh pigmentation of a chameleon’s skin, and murmured, “Don’t rush me, Anthony. I’m thinking about it, okay?”
And then, in dizzy contradiction to that sudden rush of bitterness, I understood the people around me. Their faces were looking at me, I realised, not with any reprehensible eagerness, but with the blanket enthusiasm they gave to most things, and I wondered how I dared to set myself apart. They were not bad people; that private store of contemptuous adjectives had more to do with me than with them.
“You made her an offer she can’t refuse?” grunted Corelli. Anthony reached out, drew me across to him, and linked his arm through mine, doing the same with Annelisa. “Nobody, but nobody, refuses my offers,” he whispered hoarsely.
Hands on hips, laughing, Zandra contemplated the three of us. “That sure would be a terrific picture!” she said. Annelisa leaned forward slightly, to look at me across Anthony. “Oh, I can’t imagine Babs wanting to be in a picture with me” she said, winking with an utter absence of humour. “Why not?” asked Marylinne, somewhat sourly. “We were,” said Lace.
It was not long after that, when the little group was milling aimlessly, and more champagne bottles were emptied, that Peter Corelli sidled up to me. I could smell the faintly acid aroma of a man who is fastidious, and fears that all his baths and after-shave and cologne splashes will not disguise the immediacy of his animal sweat. His nose and cheeks were fleshy, the pores enlarged; his chin was shadowy although fresh blood from a small nick showed that he had shaved in honour of the evening.
“We haven’t really had a chance to talk,” he said. “You come to New York often?”
“No, not often,” I replied, unable to stop myself taking a small step backwards, as he leaned towards me.
“I’d be real glad to give you dinner in the restaurant before you go back home.”
He laid a small, pudgy hand on my arm; his smile was unctuous.
Instead of responding, I said, “Are you enjoying yourself here? I bet you like being surrounded by so many pretty girls!” I was sure he would sense the deception in my tone, but he merely grinned broadly.
“Well, honey, I guess any man would think he was pretty lucky. And I’m as normal and red-blooded as the next guy.”
As he spoke I tried to imagine him naked, with Lace’s head between his fat sweating thighs – but it was too repulsive, and I blinked the image away.
“Mind you,” he was saying, “I’m a family man myself. Not like some guys. Some guys, they play around, but me, I like to get home to my wife and kids. Not every night, ’cos, like, I have to work and they live upstate. Weekends I see them, and a guy couldn’t want better kids. You wanna see a picture? Look …”
He flipped open his wallet. I inspected the colour print: small dark-haired woman of indeterminate age, with a face of faded prettiness. At her feet, beside her and behind her, four stocky dark-haired boys, all wearing sweatshirts in primary colours, which contrasted with the pale flower-printed frock their mother wore. Her smile was proud.
“Very nice,” I said.
“Cara – she was the prettiest girl in Queens,” he said, “and my boys, they’re real good to their Mom when I’m not there. Tough kids. Take anybody on. Cara, she’d have liked a girl of course. Me too. A girl now, you can dress her up real pretty, and take her around with you, Cara says, but boys – boys go their own way. What can you do?”
He was still holding out the photograph to me. The woman I would never meet smiled up at me from the frame of male children, and I gazed back at her, helplessly.
“It’s a really nice picture,” I said again. Satisfied at last, he nodded and put it away, patting his breast pocket as if in benediction.
“Daughters,” he said, “they’re more hassle, anyway.”
At that moment Tony Carl called for food, and even Emmeline murmured that she was hungry, so the serious business of the barbecue began. Corelli took charge, with the intent, slightly superior appearance of the professional, and throwing the first steaks on the grid with a savage sizzle. Luenbach carried across the dish of drumsticks, holding it carefully away from his white trousers; then, using tongs, he placed each piece of meat on the wide grid with fastidious precision. The smell that rose in hot air and snaked about us, catching in noses and throats, and drawing saliva into the mouth – the raw, enticing aroma of charcoal and singed flesh – was heady, even slightly sickening. It forced a feeling of hunger where there was no need, no desire even for that mountain of food; it tickled the taste of emptiness in mouths that would be filled as time itself would be filled that night – by the process of eating.
We stood or sat, with our plates and glasses, as the light began to fade into blue, and the crickets started their rhythmical routine.
I watched Tony Carl with disgust; it seemed impossible that one person could eat so much: slowly and deliberately as a piece of old machinery, his hands went from mouth to plate and back, taking up even the fat on steak and the skin on chicken. His chin was shiny with grease, and his fingers slipped on the can of Coke, so that it nearly fell to the ground.
“You’re a pig,” said Miranda to her brother.
“Srriou,” he replied, through a sausage between two hunks of bread, oozing tomato ketchup.
“What?”
“Ahshedsrryousapig,” he grunted, a piece of sausage dangling from the corner of his mouth like a severed finger.
“Yuk,” shuddered Miranda, picking up a chicken drumstick delicately between finger and thumb.
“Okay, kids, okay,” warned Anthony.
“C’mon, who wan
ts this last steak?” Corelli called, holding it up with the tongs. “C’mon, little Lacey, you need more meat on you …”
“I’m fine,” she said flatly.
“I know you’re fine, but I’m sayin’ you could be better. Now come over here and get this steak.” The girl rose to obey, not bothering to disguise her sigh, and flicking the long straight hair back to swat persistent trouble.
“That’s better,” said Corelli, as she held her plate out mutely. “Now just you get your pretty little mouth around that.”
“You better do what you’re told, honey,” said Annelisa, “’cos we all know that the man knows best.”
“Just me, or all men?” grinned Corelli,
“Why, all men a’course,” she smiled. “Wouldn’t you say, Marylinne?”
“Oh sure, an’ us lil ol’ gals just lu-urve to be guided,” was the reply. “Uh, wouldn’t you say, Lace?”
“All the time!”
And Lace lifted a piece of steak on her fork, and waved it at Corelli, as if making a mocking toast. Annelisa’s voice was light: “Only trouble is, it’s usually like the blind guiding the blind. That’s why we all end up in the dirty ol’ ditch.”
The three women laughed together.
“Oh, oh, we seem to have a little bit of female solidarity here. I think that’s vurry, vurry dangerous,” said Carl, looking from one girl to another. Although the tone was playful, I could not tell if he was joking. “What shall we do about it, Sam?”
“I think we should just let them get on with it,” said Luenbach in his laziest voice, “because in my experience no women stay agreeing with one another long, if there’s a job or a man at stake.”
“Did somebody mention steak?” called Corelli. “There’s plenty more waiting to be cooked!”
Later, whilst Zandra, Miranda and Emmeline were fetching icecream from the house, and the Spanish woman was taking the plates indoors, I glanced around and patted the place next to me on the most distant cane sofa, placed at an angle so that it looked out towards the darkening beach. Annelisa sat down without smiling, holding a bottle of white wine in one hand and her glass in the other. I had noticed how much she was drinking.
“How’d ya like our Fourth of July barbecues?” she asked, as if I were a stranger to whom she had been steered, in order to make feel at home.
When I said nothing she splashed some wine into my glass, then her own, and drank for a few seconds, before filling her own glass again. Her head was thrown back.
“Man, does that feel good.”
“Don’t drink too much, Annelisa,” I said.
“Why not?”
“It won’t make you feel better, it’ll make you feel worse.”
“You sound like my mother,” she said, looking at me with sharp dislike.
I said I was sorry, and immediately she changed, slipping her arm through mine and nestling close to me, whispering with girlish intimacy, “Honey, you know what your trouble is? You worry too much. You shouldn’t worry, about anything, okay? Nothing’s worth worryin’ about, not ever, no how. And me, I’m just fine – spesh’ly if you pour me some more.”
“Are you really?”
“Sure!”
“But what about …?”
“The movie?” She burst into a shrill peal of laughter that made me wince. It seemed to go on for ever, exaggerated and metallic. Then she gasped at last, “Well, I guess I’m gonna be a superstar now. You want my autograph, honey?” And the terrible giggling began again.
I noticed that one or two of the others were glancing at us curiously. To stop her I put my hand firmly on the one that was threaded through my arm, and whispered, “Shut up, Annelisa, you’re making a fool of yourself.”
The hand immediately turned round, like a small wild creature acting on immediate instinct, and grasped mine fiercely, so hard that her nails dug into my flesh and I had to stop myself from yelping.
She panted shallowly to halt the laughter, catching at the air like someone pulled from water – and as if my hand, the one clutched so tightly, was the hand that had pulled her out.
I found myself making small soothing noises, as one might to a small child, little shushing sounds near her ear that calmed us both. “You’re feeling terrible, aren’t you?” I said at last.
“I’m not sure I can stand it,” she whispered, so faintly I could hardly hear.
Before I could reply Zandra was standing in front of us, holding out two dishes of chocolate icecream. “You want these? There’s banana and chocolate chip, or strawberry over on the table, help yourself … Anyway, you don’t want to hide away from the party, now.” Annelisa had removed her hand from mine as quickly as she had grasped it, and reached for the icecream. Aware of the note of instruction in Zandra’s last remark I rose.
“Would you like me to take a group photo, before it’s completely dark?” I said to Zandra, but loudly so that everyone could hear. There was an immediate buzz, as if I had suggested something marvellous and strange. As always, I marvelled at this human need to see itself recorded, to gather the proofs along the way, in case, in the darkness one night, nightmare awakens into doubt that one was ever there at all.
When I came down with the equipment, they had posed themselves. Anthony sat in the middle in a cane chair, with his wife and mother on similar chairs each side of him. At their feet sat Tony and Miranda, with Luenbach, Marylinne, Corelli and Lace standing behind. David Sternberg stood on the left side, Annelisa on the right.
“That looks good,” I said, setting up the tripod and squinting.
Eleven faces smiled at me prematurely.
“Hang on, I’ve got a slow film in – so I need to use all the light. You mustn’t move. Okay – hold it … Ready?” All the formulae.
The smiles continued, fixed already without my click, and symbolising all that those people thought should be shown as true. It was Emmeline’s happy family weekend once more, coalescing before me; even Tony Carl obeyed the ritual of the photograph and twisted his lips into a grin.
Click.
“Again.”
The smiles stretched once more. This time Anthony spread his arms to embrace Emmeline and Zandra, and they each leaned towards him slightly. “You girls at the back, link arms too. Make it friendly,” he called, and Lace and Marylinne obeyed. This left David Sternberg on one side, and Annelisa on the other standing alone. I saw Luenbach gesture Annelisa that she should link his arm, but she looked away.
Click.
“That’ll do,” I said.
“Don’t you want to set the timer, and get yourself in the picture?” asked Zandra.
“Yeah, we gotta have one with you in it. I want you to send me these,” said Carl. “C’mon, honey, come and join us. Just for me.”
I had no choice. When I looked at that print much later, the first thing I noticed was Annelisa’s expression. Rather than have the time-consuming fuss of rearranging them, I chose to dash in and sit next to Tony, at Annelisa’s feet. In the picture everyone, including myself, is looking straight at the lens, some with smiles that are visibly growing tired, others (Luenbach, me, Zandra, Tony) with a direct, impassive gaze of the sort you see in all early photographs.
Only one person has eyes elsewhere, and the dynamics of the picture are such that, looking at it, you have to follow that gaze. Annelisa is glancing down at me with a look of astonishment mingled with sheer, harsh misery; the downward sweep of those eyelids, dark with make-up, is echoed in the lines that turn down the corners of her mouth. There is something of the ugly realism of a Giotto in that face – its breadth the breadth of suffering, deserved and undeserved.
And it was me she was looking at then, as if wondering what this person was doing, rushing in to sit at her feet and yet ignoring her, concentrating on the camera’s automatic gaze.
It is me she still looks at, in the photograph I have pulled out to lie here before me on my table. To interpret that look, to decide (finally now) if she was questioning my capitulation to
the group, or just simply asking me for help … is beyond me.
Or perhaps she was so certain I must not join the clan, because through me, in her imagination, she might escape …? God knows. I wish the accident had not happened, that the shutter had clicked a second earlier or later. Yet although I may not like the evidence I have never been able to destroy it. Something prevents us throwing away photographs of people we have known, unless in white hate, as if we fear truth in the primitive belief, and it is their souls we cast casually into the waste bin.
It grew darker and darker. In the distance a rocket zipped into the sky, scattering its tail of gold. Anthony announced that it was time for the fireworks; the main display prepared around the corner by the pool, with the rockets set up on the terrace, to be let fly over the beach.
“You realise we’ll even see some of the ones off Liberty Island, down here?” Zandra said to me. “The real big ones go so high folks can see them for miles and miles.”
I said I’d forgotten how close we were to New York City, as the crow flies or as a rocket soars – the sense of being cut off in this house an illusion.
“Yes,” she murmured, standing next to me in the indigo light, so that I could smell her light, woody perfume, “you have the feeling you’re nowhere – that’s why New Yorkers come here. They don’t like to wander too far from the city, it makes them nervous. Here is far enough.”
“Far enough for me too,” I said.
“I don’t know – sometimes I think of Africa. All that space … so beautiful. I guess I still miss it. We never get to go anywhere like that.”
I turned to her, surprised. “But don’t you travel, you and Anthony?”
“Only in the States,” she said regretfully, “he’s too busy otherwise. And he wants me with him all the time, so I can’t go on my own.”
When I asked why not, she smiled at me, her teeth blue-white in the gloom. “You’re not married, Barbara, so you’re free to do what you want, go where you want. When you’re married, you have to … Well, I don’t mean it to sound like you’re in prison, but you aren’t free, you know? I mean, if your husband needs you to be right there, that’s where you gotta be.” All this was said in an almost-melancholy tone, as if she had just been sentenced to life on Alcatraz.