Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish: A Novel

by David Rakoff

  How he came to her desk and leaned over her chair

  To look at some papers, and then smelled her hair.

  “Gardenias,” he’d said, his voice sultry and lazy

  And hot on her ear, Helen felt she’d gone crazy.

  “A fragrance so heady it borders on sickly,”

  He’d purred at her neck and then just as quickly

  Was back to all business, demanding she call

  Some client, as if he’d said nothing at all.

  She was certainly never an expert at men,

  But an inkling was twinkling, especially when

  The next day he all but confirmed Helen’s hunch.

  When he leaned from his office and asked her to lunch.

  Their talk was all awkward and formal to start

  He said that he found her efficient and smart.

  She thanked him, then stopped, she was quite at a loss.

  She’d never before really talked to her boss.

  They each had martinis, which helped turn things mellow,

  He asked where she lived, and if she had a fellow.

  He reached for her hand and asked, “Will you allow

  An old man to wonder who’s kissing you now?”

  It was close and convenient, his spare midtown rental.

  And after, more drinks at a bar near Grand Central

  To sit once again in uncomfortable silence

  Like two guilty parties to some kind of violence.

  They sipped among other oblivion seekers,

  While June Christy sang from the bar’s tinny speakers.

  He settled the bill and they got to their feet,

  And emerged from the afternoon hush to the street.

  They walked arm in arm in some crude imitation

  Of other real couples en route to the station.

  Such leisurely strolling, although it’s grown late

  Against her best judgment it feels like a date.

  His booze-cloud blown over, now happy, near beaming

  He stops at a window of cutlery, gleaming,

  He points out the wares, taking note of a set that

  He likes best of all, then he says, “We should get that.”

  She knows it’s a joke, all this idle house-playing

  But briefly she hopes that he means what he’s saying.

  Her presence, she thinks, is what’s rendered him gladder

  But really it’s just that he aimed for, and had her.

  The hideous reason behind his new glow is

  What Helen—and many just like her—don’t know is

  That men’s moods turn light and their spirits expand,

  The moment they sense an escape is at hand.

  He patted her cheek as he said, “I’m replenished,”

  Then off through the crowd for the next train to Greenwich.

  Helen pictured his house with its broad flagstone path.

  The windows lit up, a child fresh from the bath,

  And wondered if she might just smell on his skin,

  The coppery scent of their afternoon sin.

  At her desk the next Monday it was business as always.

  There were no words exchanged, not a glance in the hallways.

  With relief, Helen thought, Well that’s that. Nevermore.

  ’Til Friday (again) at his pied-à-terre door.

  And Friday thereafter, and each after that

  For close to two years, ’til their actions begat

  What such actions are wont to when caution’s ignored.

  The cure was a thing she could scarcely afford.

  They talked in his office behind the closed door.

  (She could tell from his face that he’d been there before.)

  In the envelope left the next day on her desk,

  Was two hundred cash and a downtown address.

  She’d never had visions of roses or cupids,

  From the beginning she wasn’t that stupid.

  What you don’t hope for can’t turn ’round to hurt you.

  Besides, she had long before given her virtue.

  There hadn’t been untoward coaxing or urging

  This wasn’t The Ogre Defiling The Virgin

  He’s older than she, but they’d both played the game

  Of never once speaking the other one’s name.

  Their mutual distance a plan jointly hatched

  To keep things unserious, flip, and detached.

  It was—truth be told, when she coolly reflected—

  Not all that much different from what she’d expected.

  Expected, she thought, and it sounded absurd.

  How long had it been since she’d uttered that word?

  And yet there were moments—unbarred, undefended—

  When Helen concocted, cooked up, and pretended

  She had all the trappings that go with the life of

  The thoroughly satisfied, marrified wife of

  A man who might keep her, despite the new battle

  That said wives were really no better than chattel,

  The difference too scant between “bridal” and “bridle”

  And girls who’d had everything, now suicidal,

  Finally finding their voices to speak

  Of their feminine fetters, this loathsome mystique;

  This problem that theretofore hadn’t a name

  And still, Helen couldn’t resist, just the same,

  To wonder, how might such a cared-for existence

  Feel after decades of hard-won subsistence.

  A mistress of manor, so calm, so serene

  To know that there nowhere was any vitrine

  Whose silvery wares would be ever denied her.

  She tamped such a rampant desire deep inside her

  And hoped if she kept the dream hidden and frozen

  She soon would forget that she’d never been chosen.

  But dreams scream as loud, whether thriving or dying

  And Helen despite herself never stopped trying

  With boxes of candy to New England camps,

  And weekly, she cut and saved all foreign stamps

  “I thought that your son …” and she’d leave it at that.

  He would pocket the packet while donning his hat

  And give her a friendly yet cursory nod

  In thanks for the postage that came from abroad

  With turrets and toucans, or archdukes, and antelope

  Carefully trimmed and then slipped in an envelope.

  She gave it her all not to trawl for his gaze

  And used just those words, thus ensuring the phrase

  Stayed tossed off, lest he find her maternal gesture

  Too avid, or larded with over-investure.

  A strategy subtler than some store-bought toy,

  The covert seduction of man through his boy.

  And as for less hidden campaigning, that too

  Reared its head. Only once, with a “This is for you …”

  When Helen presented a square of manila,

  The contents so personal she thought it might kill her.

  And if he suspected her ardor, he’d mock it,

  So she was relieved when it joined in the pocket

  The stamps. Her relief was compounded still when

  He’d never brought up Helen’s token again.

  The doctor’s door must have had five or more locks,

  With a sixth to secure Helen’s cash in a box.

  He lowered the blinds to block out the sun

  (Helen felt guilty before they’d begun).

  Just a knife-blade of rays now bisected the room,

  A useless divider twixt Sorrow and Gloom.

  His first words—as though not already quite clear—

  Were, “If anyone asks, you have never been here.”

  Helen, to show there would be no such slips,

  Turned a key at her mouth as she locked up her lips.

  She’d done it to combat
the scent of despair

  That pervaded the shaded, funereal air,

  That she understood and could always be trusted,

  But he curled his lip and seemed almost disgusted.

  As if she was flirting or being beguiling,

  He muttered, “I thought that by now you’d stop smiling.”

  She slackened her face, said “I’m sorry” and hastened

  Undressing and feeling quite thoroughly chastened.

  She lay back and placed her feet in the cold stirrups

  And faced toward the window, all birdsong and chirrups.

  A gauzy pad moist with some drops to sedate her,

  A red rubber bulb, and a plain kitchen grater

  He used on what looked like a brick of pink soap

  The color of dawn, the exact shade of hope.

  Waxy rose strands fell down into the water

  (To flush out a son or incipient daughter?)

  Woozy now, Helen regarded the basin

  And angled herself so she might put her face in,

  and leaned near the surface and took in a breath

  Of almonds and ether, of freedom and death.

  To help with the nausea, he gave her some pills—

  ’Though woefully few; she felt green at the gills.

  The trip back to Brooklyn, she stood on the train.

  She seriously thought she’d pass out from the pain.

  There were stories of girls, all summarily sacked, who

  Found out they no longer had jobs to come back to,

  At least she had that, but she started to feel

  That it hardly seemed worth it to work for a heel.

  For each passing day found her feeling less grateful

  Primarily ’cause he was hurtful and hateful.

  Some minimal kindness was not a tall order.

  Instead he was rude or he outright ignored her.

  Until she decided that this wasn’t right.

  And stood in the door of his office one night.

  She asked if he’d ever again say Hello,

  Fedora’d and coated and ready to go

  He took a step backward as if sensing danger

  And fixed her with eyes of a cold-blooded stranger.

  “I don’t know what your game is, and frankly don’t care,

  But don’t threaten me, Helen. I warn you, beware.”

  The very next Monday, from others she heard

  That, without her knowledge, he’d had her transferred.

  At least (tiny comfort) they didn’t demote her

  But Helen became what is known as a “floater.”

  Doing steno for this one, or helping with filing

  And through it all Helen made sure to keep smiling.

  The salt in the wound was the sight that then faced her,

  Those looks he exchanged with the girl who’d replaced her.

  She made herself steely, was ever the stoic

  She held back her tears with an effort heroic.

  But something was growing with each passing day,

  ’Til it burst forth the night of her shameful display.

  She’d figured they’d fire her within the New Year

  But Helen soon realized she’d nothing to fear.

  (What she didn’t know was the company’s bosses

  Viewed Helen as one of those typical crosses

  A company’s role it is—sadly—to bear

  A lazy one here, or a crazy one there

  And so no one made any move to relieve her

  But mostly because they just didn’t believe her.)

  Perhaps there are those who consider it shameful

  That Helen comes yearly, all dressed up and gameful.

  Just showing herself in the very same setting

  Cannot be a help to ensure folks’ forgetting.

  But she won’t stay home or remain out of sight.

  To do so, she thinks, would just prove that they’re right.

  She might have been drunk and too forward, uncouth

  But each word she’d spoken had been but the truth.

  Miss one or two parties and then, before long

  The general consensus would be, “She was wrong.”

  A version to which she refused to be pliant,

  So each year, she stands there, alone and defiant

  While others quaff cocktails and gradually lose

  The strictures that slowly dissolve with the booze.

  There’s tippling and coupling, embracing with brio.

  And all being scored by the hired jazz trio.

  Helen just stands there, observing it all,

  Sipping her gimlet against the far wall.

  The evening progresses, the room now quite loud

  And here’s Kay from Accounting! She weaves through the crowd.

  A man on her left arm, a drink in her right.

  “All alone are we, Helen? No fella tonight?”

  Kay wears on her face an expression of utter

  Concern, like her mouth couldn’t even melt butter.

  And here is the truth Helen long had resisted

  In most of their eyes, she just barely existed,

  Except as a source of some acid-tinged mirth,

  A punch line, it seems, is the source of her worth.

  They don’t think of that time, indeed, they don’t care.

  She has always, to them, barely even been there.

  The time when this might have been painful is past.

  Nothing hurts Helen now, her heart has been cast

  In bronze or in iron, or chiseled from lime,

  Or some other substance as adamantine.

  Her biggest regret is the five wasted years

  That she’s chided herself over shedding those tears.

  Instead of her wishing for eyes that stayed dry

  She should cherish that Helen, so able to cry,

  That Helen who felt things and then wasn’t scared

  To air them in public. That Helen who cared

  Enough about things she could speak them aloud,

  That Helen of whom she might ever be proud.

  Taking both of Kay’s hands with no rancor, no bile,

  Helen looks in her eyes and breaks into a smile.

  “You’re right,” Helen says, “I should call it a day.”

  Helen smiles one more time, and then adds, “Fuck off, Kay.”

  Helen takes off her dress and gets ready for bed.

  There is peace deep within her, where once only dread.

  And there, in the comforting nocturnal gloom

  An image took form in the air of her room:

  Was it really as distant as sixteen long years

  Since Clifford had handed her two golden spheres

  He’d plucked from a fruit-laden tangerine tree

  And holding his camera had said, “Look at me.”

  He posed her, half naked, like some Aphrodite.

  Helen felt marvelous, brilliant, and mighty

  The picture he’d taken was her at her best

  The oranges, one each to cover a breast.

  She’d never felt better than she did that day

  And rued that she’d given the picture away,

  She shook her head, pained, for this hardly distinguished

  Itself from her many gifts she had relinquished.

  She watches the window for most of the night,

  Turn from deep black as it gathers up light.

  And as the panes bloom to a beautiful blue

  She lights on a theory, although it feels true:

  Babylonian, Aztec, Gregorian or Julian

  All calendars must know those hours when cerulean

  Skies seem so pure and to go on forever,

  That one feels each dream and one’s every endeavor’s

  Success is as sure as the coming of dawn.

  She gulped in the air with a satisfied yawn.

  A calm had descended around five a.m.,

&nb
sp; Which made her immune to the power of Them.

  Gets up, quite refreshed, sets the coffee to perk.

  For once looking forward to going to work.

  She pours out a cup, adds a stream of cold milk

  And smiles as it swirls just like taffeta silk.

  O, just like the song says, my heart’s San Francisco’s!

  (Suck on that dear, while I work out where this goes…)

  From the very first day, Clifford couldn’t conceive

  Why anyone ever decided to leave.

  Hills, Bay, and art, ineluctably bound

  To make Clifford feel, I was lost, now am found.

  And crowning it all was the chief among joys:

  The liquid, ubiquitous river of boys.

  Fuckable, kissable, dateable, rentable,

  Faeries and rough trade, or highly presentable,

  Stupid as livestock or literate in Firbank,

  All of it galaxies distant from Burbank.

  O, San Francisco, I’ve left you my heart!

  (Tug those two down while you rub on that part…)

  A boy on a stoop who was palming his crotch,

  It seemed impolite, Clifford thought, not to watch

  Then up to his flat where they diddled for hours,

  Another one’s rump had near-magical powers;

  Clifford the bull and that ass the torero

  That led him for blocks the wrong way on Guerrero

  A mouth like a summer-ripe plum, or a calf

  Fuzzed with gold hair, or a neck, or a laugh

  Could make Clifford fall (and might leave him with pubic lice),

  And still he felt like he had landed in paradise.

  In you, San Francisco, my heart’s what I left

  (Make your tongue rigid and poke at that cleft…)

  Smoke a fat spliff and then off to the Castro

  Where, blissed-out and bonelessly slumped in the last row

  They felt simultaneously boneless and vital

  And jazzed by the Wurlitzer’s pre-show recital.

  Just one more trip taken en masse to the washroom