Madame Mirabou's School of Love

by Barbara Samuel

  “I’ve been there,” Wanda said. “To Grasse? Just for a day, driving through. It was kinda neat.”

  “I’m jealous!” I said.

  “And I’m jealous of you going to college. I’d love to go. I’d study anything, I mean it.”

  “C’mon. Not anything,” Roxanne said. “Mechanics? Botany? Anthropology? All equal? I don’t think so.”

  Wanda chewed thoughtfully. Her eyes were a very clear, deep blue. “No, not anything, I guess. But I like the idea of being on campus, you know? Like with other people who like the same things and maybe like to read and, you know, talk about stuff?”

  She was capturing my mother side, this girl. “Where are you from?”

  “Nebraska. I met Tommy, my husband, when I was seventeen. He swept me off my feet and we got married three days after I graduated.”

  “And you’ve been married how long?”

  “Eight years come summer. The first four were so great! We were in Germany, and we didn’t have any kids yet, so we were pretty free, and got to go all over—Paris, Ireland, and even Rome.”

  “Wow,” I said, taking a gulp of wine. “That kind of travel equals college any day. My ex and my daughter are in London right now. I’ve always wanted to go.”

  “Do you think that’s why he took her now?”

  “Probably,” I said, pursing my lips. Shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “And how old is your daughter?” Wanda asked.

  “She’s fifteen. Her dad is living in Malibu, so she’s happy to go live with him.”

  “And his new wife?” Roxanne drawled, not really a question.

  “Yes.” It burned. “You, too?”

  “Oh, yeah. I would have thought my intense bitterness would’ve broadcast that fact all by itself.”

  “You’re not bitter,” Wanda said.

  “Believe me,” Roxanne answered, pinching off a two-centimeter measure of crust and tucking it between her lips, “I am.”

  “No,” Wanda said. “What she is, is crazy.”

  Roxanne looked at me, and I saw the tightness around her mouth that she was trying to hide with her smirk. “I’m also, as all the divorce recovery workshops will tell you, an example of everything not to do.”

  “Really.” That made me smile. “Now, that sounds interesting. How so?”

  “Well, I have been known to stalk them, follow them around town in my car, or go to restaurants where I know they’ll be, or sit in front of their house.”

  “Why? Doesn’t it end up making you feel bad?”

  “No,” she said, and took a long, deep swallow of her wine. “But it makes them crazy, and that makes me happy.”

  “That’s not the bad part, and you know it.” Wanda plucked another slice of pizza from the box. She picked off the mushrooms and looked at me. “Ask her how many men she’s slept with since she got divorced.”

  “How many?”

  Roxanne looked at the ceiling. “ ‘Slept with’ is not the right term here. I’ve fucked forty-seven.”

  A blister of heat worked its way down the edges of my ears— shock. Her language shocked me and the number shocked me. I blinked, put down my pizza, took a deep swallow of wine. “That’s pretty hostile.”

  “It’s not, though,” she said, and poured us each some more wine. I was surprised to realize I’d got to the bottom of my glass already. “I started out just being curious. I had a high school boyfriend, a college boyfriend, and then my ex, so I just wanted to see what other men were like.”

  “Still. Forty-seven?”

  “That’s not even one per week.”

  And for one brief second, I had a flash of desire to know what that would be like. A new man every week. Different skin, different kiss, different hands. “Where do you meet them?”

  “All over the place.” She waved a hand. “Supermarket, bars, restaurants, dating services, Internet, work. All over.”

  A ripple of curiosity pulsed in my chest. I thought of the men I’d noticed in the restaurant the other day. “And you just tell them you want to have sex with them?”

  She gave me a look like Get real. “Have you ever met a man who didn’t want to have sex?”

  “Well, no.” I thought of Dan, the last few months of our marriage, but in that case, he was having sex with someone else, wasn’t he? So it didn’t count.

  “I’ve only had sex with one person in my life,” Wanda said.

  “I am so surprised,” Roxanne said dryly.

  “Don’t be mean.” Wanda tore the dough very carefully, picked up the empty bread. “It’s not like I didn’t like guys. They just don’t like me that much.”

  “You just never thought you were pretty, that’s all,” Roxanne said.

  “That’s because I’m not.”

  “You have beautiful eyes,” I said.

  Wanda shrugged that away.

  Roxanne reached out and brushed a lock of Wanda’s hair away from her cheek. “You’re beautiful, sweetie. I wish you knew that.”

  “Thank you, but you think everyone is beautiful.”

  “No I don’t! That woman down in the building on the corner, with the black mustache, is definitely not beautiful.”

  I laughed.

  Roxanne looked at me. “Have you had your post-break fling yet?”

  I thought, fleetingly, of Niraj. His walnut-colored wrists and inky curls. “No. It’s only been eight months since we were officially divorced.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Tell her about penises,” Wanda said, her eyes glittering.

  “I’m sure she knows all about them,” Roxanne said.

  “No, I don’t think I do!” The wine was tickling my brain, melting my rigid worries about everything, everything, everything. I looked around the room at the stupid furniture and rolled my eyes. “Tell me about anything to keep my mind off the fact that my old best friends all just gave me their castoffs.” I slammed my head on the table. “God, I could just die.”

  “Give it all away,” Roxanne said.

  I raised my head. Turned my lips downward. “That’s a good idea. Wanda, do you want this table?”

  “Yes! It’s gorgeous.”

  “Done.”

  Roxanne smiled like a cat and spread her hands—See? I suddenly loved her more than I’d loved another woman in all my life. I would kiss her. I loved her so much I wanted to be gay. But— “What about penises?”

  “Nothing!” she said, but she grinned. “I just like them. Like, all of them.”

  “Big ones, you mean.”

  “No, not necessarily. They’re all beautiful in their own special way.” She fluttered her eyelashes and put her hands over her heart in mock modesty. “Big fat ones and little bitty skinny ones and plump short ones.” She grinned. “Black ones and white ones, and crooked ones and straight ones.”

  I laughed. “I hear a song coming on.”

  Roxanne laughed, too. “Big cocks, little cocks,” she sang to the hot-dog song. “Cocks that list to the left! Ripe ones, sad ones, clipped ones, squishy ones, scared and lost and silly ones!”

  Wanda and I snickered. Roxanne kept singing a little under her breath, working out the rhyme, and then broke out, “I love hot dogs, all those hot dogs, and they love them so much more!”

  She ended with a grin, and celebrated by eating an entire bite of pizza.

  “You are so bad,” Wanda said. Her cheeks were red as cranberries.

  “They do love them,” I said. “More than anything, they love their penises.”

  “You know what I really do like?” Roxanne said. “Uncircumcised.”

  “Really? I’ve only seen one. Why?”

  “More sensitive,” Wanda said slyly.

  “Exactly!” Roxanne laughed. “Aha! That’s kind of unusual, a white boy from Nebraska who didn’t get clipped. Is his family conservative Christians? Southern, maybe?”

  “Yep. The Evangelical Church of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, in Cedar Grove, Alabama.”

  “How did you know that?
” I asked.

  Roxanne shrugged. “Most American men of our age are circumcised, because it was the fashion when they were babies. The exceptions are some black men, and hard-core Christians.”

  “Why? I don’t get it.”

  “Muslims and Jews are all circumcised. The Gentiles are not.”

  Dan was not circumcised, but I’d never really thought about why. I laughed, a little uncomfortably. “Never thought about this before.”

  “Me, either, until I met Roxanne,” Wanda said. Her eyes were shiny with wine. “Now, though, watch—when you meet certain men, it’ll be the first thing that pops into your mind.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible!”

  Roxanne laughed. “Glad to know I’m doing my part to further the cause.”

  We fell into silence, all of us no doubt thinking about a particular man, maybe even a particular penis.

  Abruptly, Roxanne said, “So, what happened?”

  “What?” I said. “To my marriage, you mean?”

  She nodded, a slight heavy-liddedness giving away her inebriation. “What else?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and struggled for an answer that sounded more substantial. “Like, there should be something, right? Some moment of unhappiness, or a fight, or a really bad day, or even some sense that we were sort of drifting apart.” I peered into my wineglass, seeing a point of reflected light glowing in the pool of merlot. “But all I can say is, if it was there, I didn’t see it.”

  “Right,” Roxanne said. “Me, either.”

  Wanda said, “That scares me. If you don’t know, how can you do anything to stop it?”

  Roxanne lifted an eyebrow.

  Wanda’s expression of panic made me say, “I’m sure there were lots of things, if I wanted to look hard. Like, we never did anything together, really. Well, except movies and special meals. I liked those.”

  “Not helping,” Roxanne said.

  “I know.” I shook my head. “Maybe there is no reason. Maybe it just doesn’t make sense to one person anymore, and then there you are, dead to it.”

  “Sorry, but it was bad character,” Wanda said.

  “Bad character?” Roxanne echoed. “Have you been hanging out with those Baptists again?”

  “I’m a Presbyterian.”

  “Same difference.”

  “They aren’t, actually, but that’s beside the point.” Wanda’s chin jutted up stubbornly. “I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I mean it. It’s not right. If you give a vow, you’re supposed to keep it.”

  Something in me shifted. A sensation of cool relief wafted through me, erasing some of the heat of my confusion, my fury, my despair. “That’s a good point, Wanda.”

  “Oh, I don’t buy it,” Roxanne said irritably. “Just because a person falls out of love doesn’t mean they’re a bad person.”

  “If you stick with it, you’ll fall back in love eventually,” Wanda said. “That’s what my mother says.”

  I blinked. “Have you fallen out of love?”

  “It’s not that.” She turned her wineglass around in a perfect circle. “I hardly know him now. He was gone with the first deployment for over a year, then he came home, then he was down-range, then he went back. It’s been like three or four years that we’ve barely been together at all. What are we going to talk about when he comes home?”

  “Oh, sweetie!” Roxanne said, and put her hand over Wanda’s. “It’s going to be just fine, you’ll see.”

  I wondered. Sometimes, it probably wasn’t all right at all. “I bet it’s hard for everybody. What do the other wives say? What did you say last time?”

  “I don’t know.” She brushed bangs from her eyes. “I don’t really want to talk about this. Do you have cards? We could play rummy.”

  “Rummy!” Roxanne rolled her eyes. “Poker is what we need.”

  “I don’t think I have any cards.”

  “I do,” Roxanne said, standing up. “I’ll get them. Pull out your change, ladies.”

  When she came back, she had donned a velvet shawl in many colors. Wanda said, “No readings, Roxanne. You know how I feel about that!”

  “I won’t read for you, then.” She put a large cookie tin down on the table, and pulled the lid off to reveal ceramic poker chips and two decks of bicycle cards, one blue, one red.

  I picked up one of the chips. “These look old.”

  “They belonged to my ex’s grandfather,” she said, raising one pointed eyebrow. In her other hand, she carried a bundle wrapped in something fringed. “We’ll play in a few minutes, but first, do you want a reading?”

  “Reading?”

  “Tarot.” She unwrapped the bundle to reveal a much-used deck of tarot cards. “I am Madame Mirabou, darling, and I can see the future.”

  Recklessly, I said, “Oh, sure. Pull a card.”

  She shuffled, her sleeves sweeping over the cherry tabletop. Wanda shook her head. Roxanne gave her a look. “It’s just a party game,” she said. “Lighten up.”

  “It’s tempting fate.”

  “Whatever.” Roxanne turned over three cards. “Past. Present. Future,” she said. Then, “Hmm, check it out.” With a fingernail, she tapped the past card that showed a castle on fire and somebody falling out of a window.

  I snorted.

  “The Tower,” Roxanne said. “Quite right.” The middle card was a picture of three women dancing, cups held high. “Appropriate, isn’t it? Here we all three are, celebrating.”

  “Cool.”

  The final card, a single hand reaching out of a cloud, like God’s hand, holding up a branch. “Fresh starts,” she said. “In many ways, but it’s especially a spiritual fresh start.” She fixed her eyes on me, and there was a fierce penetrating blaze to them, as if she really could see into my heart. “What have you left behind that you need to bring into your life?”

  My first thought was, My daughter. The next was a vision of my perfumery. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “You do know. Trust yourself,” she said, and there was authority in her tone. As she gathered the cards into her thin hands, I wondered at the disparate angles I’d glimpsed of her in a very short time: a teacher, a tarot reader, a mother who fixed her children French toast and gave them a day off the day before spring break, a woman who’d slept with forty-seven men since her divorce.

  Oh, sorry. Fucked forty-seven men.

  “I’ll just do a quick one for myself and we’ll play poker.”

  Shuffling, shuffling. Her sleeves swept back and forth, and then she plopped the deck down, divided it, and put three cards down in a row, slap slap slap. She scowled.

  I knew tarot a little. It was something my mother loved and used. This was not a good string of cards. The Lovers, reversed, which made sense—the divorce. Then the present-day card: Page of Wands, reversed. Then Temperance, reversed.

  Wanda tapped the third card. “See? You’re supposed to practice moderation in all things.”

  Roxanne rolled her eyes, but it was clear she wasn’t pleased with the cards. She slapped down three more in a row. Wheel of Fortune, reversed. A woman tied up and blindfolded. The ten of Cups, the family happiness card, reversed.

  “Oh, never mind,” she said, and swept the cards into a pile. “Let’s play poker.”

  “Oh, no you don’t, Madame Mirabou,” Wanda said, putting her hand out. “If you want to play with fate, you have to pay attention when it gives you a warning.”

  Roxanne looked at her. “I haven’t had any sex in a month, okay? I haven’t followed Grant or Lora-Lies-A-Lot in at least two months. I’m actually seeing a counselor, and she’s helping.”

  Wanda’s expression cleared. “Really?”

  “Cross my heart,” she said.

  “Good. You’re a good person, Rox. I want you to be okay.”

  “I want you to have this table.”

  “Me, too.”

  I poured more wine. “It’s yours, honey. First thing tomorrow.”

  H
eart Notes

  Hast thou not learn’d me how To make perfumes? distil? preserve? yea, so That our great king himself doth woo me oft For my confections? WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Cymbeline

  7

  Nikki’s Perfume Journal

  Magazine clipping,

  dated August 8, 1999

  The Max Factor Sophisti-Cat was a big hit with girls in the mid-sixties. The perfume came in 1⁄4 oz. bottles held by a flocked cat with rhinestone eyes, a necklace, and a feather boa, all covered by a clear plastic dome. The perfume came in several varieties, including Golden Woods, Hypnotique, and Primitif, but the true lure was the cat, sitting mysteriously, an example of all things female. The colors of the rhinestone eyes matched the feather—blue, pink, yellow—and each one had a necklace of pearls or ribbon. —Vintage Perfumes, vol. 3

  I must have dreamed about Daniel, because when I woke up, for one long moment, I was confused. My hand reached for the place he used to sleep, as it had done for six thousand mornings, all in a row. When my fingers found smooth, cool sheet, I remembered all over again.

  Oh, yes. We divorced.

  How did that happen? We were so in love. Everyone who ever knew him always talked about how insanely attached to his family my husband was. Lying in my bed in the dim, empty apartment, I rolled onto my back and put the back of my hands to my eyes, willing the images to stay away, to leave me alone.

  But they didn’t.

  We met when I was twenty-three. A cook at the restaurant where I worked had helped me fill out all the financial aid and application papers to go to school at UCCS, the local branch of the University of Colorado, and I had a year under my belt in chemistry, which made me feel like maybe I was about something, after all.

  Daniel was taking business courses, but I didn’t meet him at school. He worked for a remodeling company that had been hired to overhaul the apartment building I was living in. He showed up one afternoon when I had an exam the next day, to take some measurements and make appointments to fit our windows.

  The minute I opened the door, I was knocked sideways. I’d had plenty of boyfriends by then, but Daniel was in a league all his own, and I was tongue-tied in his presence. As he took measurements, I pretended to study. He didn’t make small talk, but I felt him looking at me. Finally he said, “You look familiar.”