I wasn’t really surprised. I did think of how far it was from “Our dog is named Kartoffel” to “It was really just an affair I got bored with,” just as a matter of diction.
“You don’t think that I shouldn’t—I mean, you don’t think it’s shocking that I got bored?”
“No,” I said. “Sooner or later, I guess. I mean, having an affair.”
“That’s just what I thought.”
I said, “Do you—I mean, I assume you use …” She nodded her head quickly. It made her hair bounce along her cheeks.
“Well, don’t take any drugs,” I said. “Marijuana may be all right, but …”
“All right,” she said. She took my hand. “I’m glad you’re here. Did you think his film was good? It really is good, don’t you think?”
“It really is very good,” I said. “It really is.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here. Will you come tomorrow? We’re going to shoot the last scene.” Honorée laughed. “I get assumed into heaven.”
“What?”
“Oh, it’s sort of silly in a way. It’s a kind of Marx Brothers version of the gospel, and some other Catholic dogma. Phil was a Catholic and—oh, it’s too complicated to tell you the plot except that the apostles are sort of Keystone Kops and the Virgin Mary is really smart. Sort of like Snow White with the seven dwarfs.”
“Are you the Virgin Mary?”
Honorée said, “No. I’m Mary Magdalene. But in this version I’m really good.”
I said, “In the original, Mary Magdalene is good.”
“Well, yes—but in this I’m innocent. I mean, it’s good to make love and so no one minds except—oh, it’s too complicated. You’ll have to see it. I shouldn’t have tried to explain it. A lot of my part is just being chased by the apostles. In this I like men O.K., but I can’t stand beards, so I run away. When they finally catch me I turn into an angel and fly away. I know it sounds silly, but anyway it’s all over except that last part tomorrow, so there’s no point in worrying about it. They’ve all been just wonderful.”
All the while she was talking she held my hand. At first I thought I was embarrassed to be seen this way in the middle of the campus, but then I realized it was something else that bothered me—some sense of Honorée’s endless possibility of feeling and the small speck she actually now made on the surface of her life.
That evening I visited Elizabeth Mary in the hospital. She was under observation, since she’d had some dizzy spells.
She said, “Oliver, do you know what I think? I think I have actually got the vapors. The doctor is quite cross with me, as I won’t be a good little girl. I have just enough medical knowledge to know he’s completely at sea. I tell him not to be embarrassed that he doesn’t know, and that makes him even more cross with me.”
She gave me a list of little errands to do—I was to distribute various materials to her students and tell them to go to a lecture in another course if she wasn’t out of the hospital by Tuesday.
I felt very odd myself. I couldn’t tell if I felt more like Elizabeth Mary or more like her doctor. Some question was moving through my mind, troubling me by not taking form, by being at the wrong distance. The physical symptoms were exactly those of immediate embarrassment—a hot prickling stuffiness in my thought. But there wasn’t the cold internal condensing of shame that usually followed.
The next morning I thought it might just be the weather, which was both muggy and gusty. I had hoped for a sharp spring day, but the atmosphere was blurred. As I was about to leave my house, a bird flew under the porch roof and hit the front window. I was startled, then reassured that there was something wrong with the day if a bird could be so off kilter. The bird recovered and flew off, bobbing through the air in an unbroken line of Palmer penmanship i’s.
I wondered if there was a technical name for fear of spring.
Honorée had told me that her group would be in costume for the parade—one of the events of the festival, a parody of the football-weekend “homecoming” that Miss Quist was looking forward to. After the parade they would drive off with their pickup and wagon full of gear to do their scene.
In town the sidewalks were lined with people. The same little boys who sold Hawkeye pennants and black-and-gold pompons were selling balloons with “Love” on them.
And at first it was the duplication I noticed more than the parody. There was an Indian—that is, someone dressed as an Indian—in full feathers riding in front of a small brass band that played “Hail to the Chief.” There was a cowgirl on a pony, followed by a group carrying placards saying “Linda Zeckendorff for Sheriff.” Her calves bulged prettily out of her boot tops as she pressed her pony from one side of the street to the other.
There were several floats and another brass band. One thing I noticed about the Midwest—brass bands are easy to come by. I think it may be the German tradition. Almost all the children learn to tootle along on some kind of horn.
There was a float mocking the student health service—a patient swathed in red tape. Various bandaged students carrying crutches struggled to climb aboard and were beaten away by a nurse and a doctor holding huge plastic thermometers. As far as I could see, it was the style and wit of the Beat Purdue floats of the fall.
Following that there was a man on a bicycle decked out with American flags. He was a figure about town—a harmless sparse-haired fellow who wandered about on his fat-wheel Schwinn with a large basket, picking through the trash baskets behind the stores. He was meant to represent the motorcycle escort for the homecoming queen, who followed in a convertible. She was in fact a store-window mannequin with a blond wig. She—or it—wore a large silver cape which had a phone number in orange Day-Glo numerals on the back.
Honorée’s group came next. The twelve apostles were in harness, pulling a farm wagon. They all had grotesquely long false beards. In the wagon was a large globe, on top of which sat the Virgin Mary, in a blue robe over a white gown. She had a halo of stars. Honorée, who was behind her, helped her to stand up on the globe and arranged a large rubber serpent under her feet. There was some laughter at this; I was surprised at first that so many people recognized this emblem. Then I thought it was simply that everyone was having a good time. I was envious for a moment. Were their sources of unhappiness so easily dealt with?
Honorée saw me, and we waved to each other. She was wearing a metallic halo like a hat brim without a crown. It was tilted back so that it shone around her face. She pointed with her free hand behind the wagon to a pickup truck. Rising out the bed of the pickup was a partly inflated balloon. She pointed to herself and then pointed up. I suddenly caught her mood. It was a kind of glee that was almost too sweet, almost too large. It seemed to burst behind my senses, pressing them into a fever.
I went back to my car and down out of town to the field where the “guerrilla theater” had been and where Honorée’s group would now shoot their scene.
The pickup truck arrived with the balloon, compression tanks, and valves, and the wagon full of apostles, Virgin Mary, and Honorée. Another station wagon followed, with the director, two cameramen, cameras, and tripods. Then another car, with several more people and mechanical devices. The entire caravan lumbered up a grassy slope to a barn.
It took a half hour before they stopped milling about. Honorée was being fussed over in the barn. She finally emerged. Her dress was now a Roman gown of soft muslin held up by ribbons tied across her bare shoulders and loosely belted below the bust. She eyed the balloon, which was now fully inflated. Suspended from the shrouds there was, instead of a basket, a device that looked like the seat of an infant’s swing, called, I later learned, a bosun’s chair.
There was a burst of activity. The crowd of assistants cleared away, and Honorée and the apostles came running up the hill. The director began to instruct them through a bullhorn. The apostles surrounded Honorée. The director said, “Fog! Now the fog!”
A machine spewed out a pinkish fog around the swarm of act
ors. The camera seemed to stop every ten or fifteen seconds. At last all of them regrouped under the balloon. The Virgin Mary came out and fitted a pair of huge wings over Honorée’s arms. They were fully feathered on both sides—Honorée’s arm went inside the envelope of feathered material through several rubber rings.
Then the fog again, as the apostles began to swarm around and then on top of Honorée. But then she was suddenly lifted up in the balloon seat as the apostles clasped her about the knees and ankles. Her dress slithered down in several pieces. Honorée rose another yard, her wings crossed in front of her. The director said, “Blinding light!” and several spotlights mounted on the truck began to dart their beams into the fog. “Higher!” Honorée rose again above the lifted arms of the apostles. “Fly!” Honorée leaned forward against the seat belt and, lifting her face, uncrossed her arms and spread her wings.
“Apostles, consternation!” The apostles began to fall to the ground.
“O.K., move her toward the barn camera.”
The man holding the line attached to the balloon seat began to walk toward the barn.
“Flap your wings!”
Honorée’s bare bosom had somehow not been surprising until then. She’d looked like the figurehead of a sailing ship—her face blank and thrust forward, her shoulders flexed back so that her collarbone, bust, and rib cage were a compound curve carved out of a single block. But as she began to flap her wings she became flesh. Honorée’s legs, emerging in a straight line below the bosun’s chair, were firmly held together, her toes pointed, as though she were diving forward.
She passed directly over my head on her way to the barn. At every flap I could see the movement of the muscles in her shoulders and stomach. Her joined legs moved in a sort of dolphin kick. Each slow downward beat of her wings seemed to lift her upper body slightly.
The director shouted encouragement. The two boys holding the cameraman on the barn roof cheered.
The balloon hovered over the barn, twenty feet above Honorée on its long shrouds. There was some confusion as the man holding the line reached the barn. Honorée’s feet touched the barn roof. One of the boys holding the cameraman moved to grab her, but the balloon sailed past. Honorée seemed to leap into the air off the other side. She sailed free, the line to the ground sliding past the cameraman, who grabbed for it with one hand, holding one leg of the camera tripod with the other.
She swung from side to side very slowly as the balloon moved away. The director shouted through the bullhorn, “Pull up the line! Don’t let the line hit a wire! Pull it up!” Then he got in the back of the pickup and thumped on the roof of the cab. The driver started off, but then the director stopped him to pick up a camera and tripod.
They got to the fence at the bottom of the field just as Honorée passed over it, but the balloon had stayed at the same height and the fence line was in a hollow.
The wind was not steady, but the gusts moved the balloon at a smooth pace, as though it was a paper boat gliding down a bubbling stream.
I got in my car and drove out the gate. The balloon didn’t seem to be very high, but it wasn’t coming down. One problem of getting under it in a car was that almost all the roads ran either north-south or east-west, and the wind now was out of the northwest, so that Honorée was crossing the fields diagonally while we had to drive at right angles, like rooks on a chessboard. The other problem was that we had to detour at first, as the roads crossing Interstate 80 were far apart.
The pickup truck crossed the overpass right behind me, but we diverged just after that. I headed south and they turned east. I turned east after two miles and at the next intersection we almost collided. I now had to keep an eye on the plume of dust they threw up as well as watch Honorée.
I got east of her after another two fields, and I stopped at what I hoped would be the point she crossed the dirt road. She had shaken one wing off in order to gather up the line with her hand, but she had her eye on the pickup truck, which was beyond me to the southeast. I yelled to her to drop the line, but it fell too far away. As I ran up to it, it slithered across the fence. She gathered it back up. She had not only shed her right wing but had somehow punched her left hand through the material of her left wing.
She crossed the corner of the field. The director was running the camera in the bed of the pickup. When she drew near, it was clear she would pass astern of the truck. He yelled to the driver to back up. The driver overshot the line, which flapped past the windshield.
A new problem presented itself. The balloon was now passing just east of my house and toward the Iowa River. I knew there was no road across the river for several miles. Where the balloon would cross the river the bank was lined with tall oak trees. The river itself ran more or less to the east-southeast, so the balloon was only slowly angling toward it. I drove onto the first bridge. I saw the pickup hurtle past the turn to the bridge, a half mile away.
I now saw the balloon, still on the north side of the river. I backed off the bridge and followed it. The balloon crossed in front of the truck. Honorée held the coil of rope in her hands as she drifted over the telephone lines. She dropped it in the field beside the road. Both the director and the cameraman climbed the wire fence and ran after it, but it slithered over another fence before they could reach it. They turned around and ran back to their truck.
I drove back to the bridge, crossed it, and drove downstream. The balloon was now over the oak trees on the north side of the river. I was relieved at this. There were no power lines for a good distance on either side of the river. I was driving slowly now, since I’d got ahead of the balloon. The pickup passed me and turned toward the river on a farmer’s road. They opened the gate and passed through. I thought perhaps they knew of a bridge, so I started to follow them. The dirt road turned into a grassy lane as it entered the woods. The pickup jounced several times and then stopped. As I drew closer I saw that the rear wheels were spinning in a deep puddle between the roots of an oak tree.
The director jumped out of the pickup bed and ran toward me. I would have let him in if he hadn’t been carrying his camera, which he’d unscrewed from the tripod. I backed away. He chased me all the way to the road. I backed onto it. As I started forward, he jumped on the hood. His rear end made a dent in it, but he slid off to one side.
I drove down the road to the next turn toward the river and reached a one-lane bridge. The balloon, sailing over midstream, was now much lower. (Honorée later explained to me that the air was cooler over the water, and this created a down-draft.) Honorée lowered the rope when she was a hundred yards upstream. It splashed into the water in a coil. The rope seemed to act as a sea anchor for a moment. I ran one way and then the other, unsure of where the line would drag across the bridge. I then was afraid the line might drag over the girders at the midpoint and be out of reach. I climbed up on the downstream girder, which was wide enough to stand on. Honorée floated toward me. I moved a step to the left. The balloon, then Honorée, passed over the upstream girder, the rope trailing behind her. She reached down with her wing, and I grabbed it. She spun into me, and I started to fall. I grabbed her around the hips, and she grabbed the shoulder of my jacket with her free hand. We balanced for an instant. Honorée swung her knees up under my armpits and held on to me with her legs. We toppled slowly at first, then plunged into the water. My face pressed into her stomach as we splashed. I felt a second of terror. I let go, but she was still holding me in a scissors grip. I suddenly relaxed since we seemed to be floating up, and since Honorée, from the movements of her body as they reached me, appeared to be paddling with her arms—or rather with an arm and a wing.
In another instant we were at the surface, moving downstream in the smooth muddy current. The balloon was floating ahead of us, slightly collapsed. Honorée was trying to undo the strap of her bosun’s chair. I thought it would be better to get to shore first, so I swam, pulling two of the shrouds. We were by now a hundred yards downstream of the bridge, entering a curve of the river. Th
e balloon floated into the branches of a tree leaning over the water. The webbing around it snagged, and we drifted by, as though we were skaters at the end of a snap-the-whip line. Honorée floated on her back, held in place by the taut shrouds and her chair. We’d been swung in toward shore, so I could now touch bottom, though the water was up to my shoulders. Honorée held me in place against the current while I unbuckled the canvas strap around her waist. She slid out of the chair and bumped into me again, as she had on top of the bridge. We turned once and I swung her toward the steep mud bank, which she grabbed by plunging her fingers in, up to the first joint. It was very hard to move, and I realized I was terribly cold. Our mouths were drawn so tight that neither of us could speak for a moment. We crawled up the crumbling bank, dislodging black clods. We reached the top and lay full length in the green weeds.
Honorée was shivering. I took off my jacket and held it out for her. She raised herself on her elbows and said, “I’m too stiff to move. I can barely talk.” She rubbed her mouth and jaw with one hand.
I got to my knees and floundered around to her other side to pull off her wing. Struggling with the wing revived us both. She sat up and I handed her my jacket. She got to her knees and wrung it out. There was something so domestic about the gesture that it was even more modest than if she’d put it on. She squeezed the water out of the loose hem of her gym shorts too. She put the jacket on. It covered her shorts, right down to the Wapsi Valley High School insignia. She rolled the jacket sleeves up and lifted her hair from inside the neck.
Honorée said, “Mr. Hendricks, your mouth is blue.”
I said, “Honorée, you’re wonderful. You are a heroine. You are a—”
“Oh, shsh,” she said. “Oh, just hush.” I didn’t understand. She didn’t say it crossly. I felt exhilarated inside my daze. In fact, we were both dazed. I felt the sphere of my attention condense around us, as though we were in a grove of feelings, flowering to celebrate Honorée’s rich, thick body. She was innocent of its fact, of its appeal. The disconnection between her submissive fondness for me and her suddenly triumphant beauty was wonderfully mysterious. But the beauty itself was even more mysterious: all that I knew about other women’s beauty was now chaos, and her sweet chunkiness became the only true form.
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