by Denise Dietz
“Then you don’t mean competent, Bon. You mean another tent. Impotent.”
“No, Frannie, impotent means incapable of sexual intercourse. Victor was capable.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. He has a marvelous body and his technique was flawless. The tapes were a bit disconcerting, but --”
“He played Disney while making love?”
“Uh huh. Cinderella.”
“Well, I suppose famous people have different turn-ons. Right?”
“Right.”
“Are you planning to see him again?”
“He’s flying back to California tonight.”
“Oh.”
“Hey, no big deal. The next time I watch Cindy get spiffed up for the ball, I’ll picture Victor Madison as Prince Charming.”
Inside my head, I heard a simple melody. Cinderella…no, Snow White singing Some day-yay my Prince will come.
“What’s new with you?” Bonnie said, then laughed. “I mean, aside from being cast in a major, no-expense-spared movie?”
I wanted to tell her about my nightmare, at least the tattered bits and pieces I remembered, but I couldn’t. It would be like a Brady Buncher telling one of her sisters that she’d lettered a poster EAT ME, DRINK ME instead of JAN FOR CLASS PRESIDENT.
So I told Bonnie things were supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Later, I remembered that supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was from Disney. Mary Poppins, who, in my opinion, is nothing more than a white, right-wing witch. Call me insensitive, call me an insurrectionist, call me a conservative Republican, but I hate the part of the movie where the mother forsakes her fellow suffragettes to embrace “family values.”
Staring at the empty space above my ersatz fireplace, I felt as if my life was a stick of lit dynamite, ready to explode. Everything seemed to be poppin’ ‑‑ except Andre.
Ever since the Night of Wine and Roses, he hadn’t touched me.
A BROOKLYN BROWNSTONE- 1978
Chaim Mostel stared out the window.
Rose Mostel hot-watered her instant coffee and added three spoonfuls of sugar. Then she returned to the kitchen table, sat in her chair, and stared at the back of her son Chaim’s head.
He had his father’s hair, she thought, black like a crow. Thank God he didn’t have his father’s devil-may-care sense of responsibility. Isaac Mostel, may he rest in peace, had been a real sonuvabitch. Dyin’ in the street. No life insurance. No money in the bank. No nothin’. Chaim was such a good boy, everyone said so, especially Mrs. O’Connor who lived next door (even if she did call him Kiang). Twenty-two years old, Chaim coulda’ left for greener pastures. Instead, he stuck around and took care of his family. Which meant he should be the first to hear, even though, for some reason, the thought made Rose jumpy.
“Peggy’s gonna marry Donald Blaustein,” she said, drumming her scabbed, swollen fingers on the table top.
Rose worked part time at The New U Beauty Shoppe. She didn’t wash, cut, color, or even touch the clientele’s hair (“Ick, you wouldn’t believe the cooties,” she always said), but she prided herself on her manicures. Although she tried to hide it, her eyesight was failing and sometimes she’d pierce her fingertips with her sharp cuticle remover.
Thank God she’d never cut a client!
Chaim heard his mother’s words, but he continued aiming his movie camera at the window while he collected his thoughts. If he had been gathering Easter eggs, he would have studied each one for its purity of color before he put it in his basket. Outside, the sky was shrouded by chromium clouds. Finally, he turned around.
“Peggy’s too young to get married,” he said. “She’s only fifteen. Donald’s what? Thirty? Anyway, Peggy can do better than Donald.”
“Better?” Rose stopped drumming. “Are ya crazy, Chaim?”
“Victor, Mother. I told you to call me Victor.”
“Donald has an inheritance! And a good job, civil service. He can support Peggy. He can support the baby.”
Chaim watched five scabbed fingers leave the table top and press against his mother’s chapped lips in an oh-shit-I-tattled gesture.
“Peggy’s knocked up?”
Silence.
“Is Peggy pregnant, Mother?”
Rose nodded.
“Donald’s the father?”
“No. Not yet.”
“What does that mean?”
“Chaim, you gotta promise to keep your yap shut.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Peggy plans to sleep with Donald. Tonight.”
“Was that her idea or yours?”
Lifting the chipped mug to her mouth, Rose seemed to forget what she was doing. “Peggy won’t tell who the papa is, Chaim. I think it’s that rich sonuvabitch who took her to see Ain’t Behavin’.”
“Ain’t Misbehavin’. Songs by Fats Waller. Which is kind of ironic when you think about it.”
“Peggy ain’t fat!”
Staring at the tired-looking woman seated on the rickety kitchen chair, Chaim wondered how such a dummkopf could have produced a Victor Madison. He knew for a fact that his IQ went off the charts; had figured he’d secure a scholarship to NYU or UCLA. Instead, up until yesterday he’d worked at the A&P, and if he never saw another package of browning hamburger meat or smelled another overripe pineapple, it would be too soon.
The A&P manager was a nice enough guy, even though he wasn’t the swiftest horse in the race and probably had the IQ of a Q-tip.
“Sorry, Vic, we gotta letcha’ go,” he’d said. “Too many complaints. The ladies say you got X-ray vision, like Superman. Mrs. Ginsberg swears you was rapin’ her with your eyes. It’s all that pretend picture takin’. And it ain’t just the customers. The checkers and bag boys say the same thing. Personally, I ain’t got nothin’ ‘gainst ya, Vic. You’re a good worker, never came late. You want I should write a recommendation?”
Chaim hated being called “Vic.” Almost as much as he hated working in a supermarket. Over the years he’d saved a few bucks, but never enough to finance film school (even with a scholarship), because “emergencies” kept draining his escape fund. Chaim would bet his last dollar, and he didn’t have many dollars left, that if you found yourself a dictionary and looked up the word emergency, its definition would state: {Yiddish} : of or relating to Peggy Mostel / var of chutzpah.
First, Peggy’s piano lessons. The damn house was falling down around their ears, but they had to have what his mother called a “piana.”
Then, Peggy’s tuition and school uniforms. “Peggy ain’t smart like you, Chaim,” his mother had said, “and she needs private school, else she’ll run wild.”
Peggy’s tonsillectomy. Peggy’s broken wrist (which had killed the “piana” lessons, thank God). Peggy’s bas mitzvah, more expensive than a debutante’s fancy-dress ball, and kind of funny when you thought about it since she went to a Catholic school.
And don’t forget Peggy’s fucking ballet lessons. “All the girls take ballet,” his mother had said. “You want she should be an outlaw, Chaim?”
“The word is outcast, Ma.”
Then there was Peggy’s theatre gown, so she “shouldn’t look like a refugee.” She’d worn it to impress her upper-crust date, misbehaved, and now there was a bun in her oven.
Or rather a flaky, rich, crescent-shaped croissant!
Tonight, as Simon and Garfunkel would say, she’d be “Fakin’ It.”
Would Donald buy premature? Maybe, maybe not, but by then it would be too late. He was crazy about Piglet, and he wasn’t bad looking, once you got past the body odor. If he had hair and weighed…oh, say seventy-five to a hundred pounds more…he’d look like Harrison Ford in Star Wars.
Donald Blaustein had seen Star Wars ten times. Donald Blaustein loved movies. Donald Blaustein had promised to invest the inheritance from his dead grandmother in Chaim’s experimental film, Anthophilous. If Peggy Mostel became Peggy Blaustein, Chaim could kiss that money goodbye. Peggy would insist
that Donald invest in Peggy.
“Where ya goin’, Chaim?”
“Victor!”
“Where ya goin’, son?”
His mother sounded nervous, itchy, so he smiled and held up his movie camera. “I’m going out, Ma. I want to shoot the sky.”
Later, he watched his curly-haired, pink-cheeked sister, looking like Disney’s Snow-fucking-White, as she sat on the porch steps and waited for her civil service prince. Supper smells ‑‑ kreplach, kielbasa, souvlaki, fajitas, fried chicken, corned beef and cabbage ‑‑ drifted through open windows, flavoring the warm evening with the scent of multi-racial, multi-ethnic cuisine.
Someone’s stereo blasted Hot Fun in the Summertime. The lyrics were meant to sound sly, and they did.
Half-hidden behind a sidewalk tree, Chaim squinted through his camera lens. Peggy made a pretty picture, bathed in the glow from a street lamp. The low-cut bodice of her baby-blue dress, tasteful rather than sluttish, enhanced her slender body. Shadows flirted with the deep cleft between her breasts.
She waited and waited. Every so often, she’d glance down at her watch. Then she’d look up and down the street, both ways, as if she were a little kid and needed to cross the street. As Chaim watched, she shook her watch, looked up and down the sidewalk, rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, and yelled, “Hey, Ma, what time is it?”
Some high school girls sauntered by, then backtracked.
“Yo, Peggy, we’re goin’ to the movies, wanna come?” said one of the girls, flipping long, sleek bangs out of her eyes.
Peggy smiled, her teeth white and straight (her braces had been the biggest emergency of all). “I got a date, Evvy,” she said.
A prune-faced Hispanic man stopped near Chaim, blocking his view. “Ain’t them Dodgers somethin’?” the old guy said, his accent more Brooklyn than P.R. “Them bums’re gonna win the series this year. I been to Ebbets Fields t’ree times a’ready, seen Duke catch a fly an Robinson steal a base, right in’fronna my eyes.”
“Them bums moved to El Lay in nineteen-hundred-and-fifty-seven,” Chaim said. He wasn’t being mean or anything. He just wanted the old amnesiac to move out of the way, move on, shoot the freaking breeze with the freaking street kids playing freaking stickball.
Finally, when the smell of weed and cigarette smoke had replaced supper smells, when James Brown had replaced Sly and the Family Stone, Chaim hunkered down beside his sister.
“Donald’s not coming tonight, Piglet,” he said.
Wincing at her brother’s innuendo, she said, “How do you know that?”
He grinned.
“What did you do, Chaim?”
“Victor!”
“What did you do, asshole?”
He handed her a piece of paper.
“What’s this?” Peggy held the smudged carbon copy as if she’d just captured a wasp between her thumb and first finger.
“Donald has the original,” Chaim said. “You want I should read it, Piglet?”
“Stop making fun of the way Ma talks! And stop calling me Piglet!”
“I’m not making fun, I’m having fun. I’ve got my glasses, you never wear yours, even though they cost me a month’s pay. Do you want me to read what it says? Never mind, I know it by heart. ‘Dear Donald, Peggy Mostel is pregnant and she’s going to pretend it’s your baby.’”
“Bastard! You bastard!”
“You want I should pay for an abortion? I’d consider that a tangible emergency. You might even say an in-the-flesh emerg ‑‑”
“Go to hell, Chaim! I’ll call Donald and ‑‑”
“Tell him what? That you’re not knocked up?”
“No! Yes! I’ll think of something,” she said, rising to her feet.
The phone’s not working, Chaim thought, as he heard the door slam.
Much later, hours later, he heard his mother scream. Still half-asleep, he ran to Peggy’s bedroom; a pretty room filled with stuffed animals, doll collection, crumpled baby-blue dress, and a nude body stretched out on the ruffled bedspread. A razor blade lay next to the nude body’s fingers. Blood from a slit wrist soaked the spread while an empty container of sleeping pills lay on the floor next to an empty container of aspirin. Vomit stained Peggy’s face.
Inserted up her vagina was a ceramic Donald Duck. Chaim could see the webbed feet and fan of tail feathers, even a small portion of blue sailor suit, but he couldn’t see Donald’s face and sailor hat. The miniature duck had once strutted on top of a music box, right next to its friend and faithful companion, Mickey.
Ignoring the bizarre dildo, Chaim felt for a pulse. Wrist…throat… nothing thumped except his own heart.
“Call an ambulance!” his mother shouted.
“Phone’s dead, didn’t pay bill, no money, cashed paycheck, Peggy’s shoes,” he babbled.
Picking up the music box, he absent-mindedly wound it, thinking a dramatic scene like this required background music. Then, listening to the familiar theme, he began to sing along. “Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck ‑‑”
“Shut up!” his mother cried, trying to staunch Peggy’s blood with the baby-blue dress. “You gotta call for an ambulance, Chaim. I can’t see the numbers on the ‑‑”
“Now it’s time to say goodbye ‑‑”
“Chaim, borrow Mrs. O’Connor’s phone!”
“M-i-c, see ya real soon ‑‑”
“I think maybe your sister’s still alive!”
“‑‑ k-e-y. Why? Because ‑‑”
“Chaim, for the love of God!”
“‑‑ we like ya. M-o-u-s-eeeee….eeeee…eeeee…”
“Chaim, stop screaming and do something!”
Her hand smashed against his face and his head spun, just like that scene in The Exorcist; he’d seen the movie seven times.
Snapping his mouth shut, Chaim bit his tongue. He ran down the stairs and outside, onto the sidewalk. His legs were still churning when he reached Mrs. O’Connor’s front door. He knocked until his knuckles felt like raw hamburger meat. She inched the door open, stared at his face, and shook her head no.
“Fuck!” he shouted, muscling the door ajar and racing toward the phone. Then he waited for the ambulance, his thoughts whirling like a pinwheel.
I think Peggy choked to death on her own puke. If I filmed it, the razor would be more dramatic because, except for The Exorcist, blood plays better than vomit.
His mouth was full of blood from his bitten tongue. Standing beneath a street lamp, he spat, and watched a gob of bright red saliva stain the cracked sidewalk.
Spit on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back. Step on a quack and you’ll break…
His laugh was half sob as he spat again.
If/when he shot the bedroom scene, he’d have to hold auditions, find the right kid to play Piglet. Too bad Elizabeth Taylor couldn’t have stayed young forever; she’d be perfect. In fact, had she not tried to commit suicide, Peggy Mostel could have played herself.
W.C. Fields once said an actor should never work with kids, but the old coot hadn’t said anything about a director, and kids were so naïve, so obliging, so…impressionable.
Leaning against the street lamp, Chaim wept, then spat, then wept some more.
Chapter Fifteen
There’s this scene in one of my favorite movies, When Harry Met Sally. Everybody remembers the fake-orgasm scene, but the scene I’m talking about is the one where Meg Ryan drags a Christmas tree home to her apartment. It reminds me of my trips to the Laundromat.
“Frannie, why do you always wait until the last minute, when you’re out of clean clothes?” Andre has said at least a million times.
“We’re out of clean clothes,” I reply. Jewish subtlety, meaning he has arms and legs and could wash the damn clothes himself. But either I’m too subtle and he doesn’t get it, or else he chooses not to.
The Laundromat isn’t far, just a few blocks, but the walk home reminds me of Meg Ryan wrestling with that Christmas tree. Except my g
reen Girl Scout duffel bag, filled with neatly-folded jeans, sweats, sheets and underwear, doesn’t have sharp green pine needles.
By the time I reach my five flights of stairs, I feel like I’m dragging a corpse, and by the time I reach my bedroom, I’m too pooped to put the clothes away. So the duffel slumps against Nana Jen’s genuine, hand-carved dresser, and I end up fishing for clothes, like that carny game where you fish for a prize and you don’t care what you win as long as you win something.