It wasn’t stage fright. An aneurysm had burst in Maxine Gros-singer’s brain. At first, the audience took her quick stagger and shocked expression to be part of the play. Titters had begun at the way the girl playing Ismene was hamming it up. But Maxine’s mother, knowing exactly what pain looked like on her child’s face, shot up out of her seat. “No,” she cried. “No!” Twenty feet away, elevated under a setting sun, Maxine Grossinger was still mute. A gurgle escaped from her throat. With the suddenness of a lighting cue her face went blue. Even in the back rows people could see the oxygen leave her blood. Pinkness drained away, down her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. Later, the Obscure Object would swear that Maxine had been looking at her with a kind of appeal, that she had seen the light go out of Maxine’s eyes. According to the doctors, however, this was probably not true. Wrapped in her dark robe, still on her feet, Maxine Grossinger was already dead. She toppled forward seconds later.
Mrs. Grossinger scrambled up onstage. She made no sound now. No one did. In silence she reached Maxine and tore open her robe. In silence the mother began to give the daughter mouth-to-mouth. I froze. I let the curtains untwist and I stepped out and gawked. Suddenly a white blur filled the arch. The Obscure Object was fleeing the stage. For a second I had a crazy idea. I thought Mr. da Silva had been holding out on us. He was doing things the traditional way after all. Because the Obscure Object was wearing a mask. The mask for tragedy, her eyes like knife slashes, her mouth a boomerang of woe. With this hideous face she threw herself on me. “Oh my God!” she sobbed. “Oh my God, Callie,” and she was shaking and needing me.
Which leads me to a terrible confession. It is this. While Mrs. Grossinger tried to breathe life back into Maxine’s body, while the sun set melodramatically over a death that wasn’t in the script, I felt a wave of pure happiness surge through my body. Every nerve, every corpuscle, lit up. I had the Obscure Object in my arms.
TIRESIAS IN LOVE
I made a doctor’s appointment for you.”
“I just went to the doctor.”
“Not with Dr. Phil. With Dr. Bauer.”
“Who’s Dr. Bauer?”
“He’s . . . a ladies’ doctor.”
There was a hot bubbling in my chest. As if my heart were eating Pop Rocks. But I played it cool, looking out at the lake.
“Who says I’m a lady?”
“Very funny.”
“I just went to the doctor, Mom.”
“That was for your physical.”
“What’s this for?”
“When girls get to be a certain age, Callie, they have to go get checked.”
“Why?”
“To make sure everything’s okay.”
“What do you mean, everything?”
“Just—everything.”
We were in the car. The second-best Cadillac. When Milton got a new car he gave Tessie his old one. The Obscure Object had invited me to spend the day at her club and my mother was taking me to her house.
It was summer now, two weeks since Maxine Grossinger had collapsed onstage. School was out. On Middlesex preparations were under way for our trip to Turkey. Determined not to let Chapter Eleven’s condemnation of tourism ruin our travel plans, Milton was making airplane reservations and haggling with car rental agencies. Every morning he scanned the newspaper, reporting the weather conditions in Istanbul. “Eighty-one degrees and sunny. How does that sound, Cal?” In response to which I generally twirled an index finger. I wasn’t keen on visiting the homeland anymore. I didn’t want to waste my summer painting a church. Greece, Asia Minor, Mount Olympus, what did they have to do with me? I’d just discovered a whole new continent only a few miles away.
In the summer of 1974 Turkey and Greece were about to be in the news again. But I didn’t pay any mind to the rising tensions. I had troubles of my own. More than that, I was in love. Secretly, shamefully, not entirely consciously, but for all that quite head-over-heels in love.
Our pretty lake was trimmed in filth. The usual June scum of fish flies. There was also a new guardrail, which gave me a somber feeling as we drove past. Maxine Grossinger wasn’t the only girl at school who had died that year. Carol Henkel, a junior, had died in a car accident. One Saturday night her drunken boyfriend, a guy named Rex Reese, had plunged his parents’ car into the lake. Rex had survived, swimming back to shore. But Carol had been trapped inside the car.
We passed Baker & Inglis, closed for vacation and succumbing to the unreality of schools during summertime. We turned up Kerby Road. The Object lived on Tonnacour, in a gray stone and clapboard house with a weather vane. Parked on the gravel was an unprepossessing Ford sedan. I felt self-conscious in the second-best Cadillac and got out quickly, wishing my mother gone.
When I rang the bell, Beulah answered. She led me to the staircase and pointed up. That was all. I climbed to the second floor. I’d never been upstairs at the Object’s house before. It was messier than ours, the carpeting not new. The ceiling hadn’t been painted in years. But the furniture was impressively old, heavy, and sent out signals of permanence and settled judgment.
I tried three rooms before I found the Object’s. Her shades were drawn. Clothes were scattered all over the shag carpeting and I had to wade through them to reach the bed. But there she was, sleeping, in a Lester Lanin T-shirt. I called her name. I jiggled her. Finally she sat up against her pillows and blinked.
“I must look like shit,” she said after a moment.
I didn’t say whether she did or not. It strengthened my position to keep her in doubt.
We had breakfast in the breakfast nook. Beulah served us without elaboration, bringing and taking plates. She wore an actual maid’s uniform, black, with white apron. Her eyeglasses hailed from her other, more stylish life. In gold script her name curled across the left lens.
Mrs. Object arrived, clacking in sensible heels: “Good morning, Beulah. I’m off to the vet’s. Sheba’s getting a tooth pulled. I’ll drop her back here, but then I’m off to lunch. They say she’ll be woozy. Oh—and the men are coming for the drapes today. Let them in and give them the check that’s on the counter. Hello, girls! I didn’t see you. You must be a good influence, Callie. Nine-thirty and this one’s up already?” She mussed the Object’s hair. “Are you spending the day at the Little Club, dear? Good. Your father and I are going out with the Peterses tonight. Beulah will leave something for you in the fridge. Bye, all!”
All this while, Beulah rinsed glasses. Keeping to her strategy. Giving Grosse Pointe the silent treatment.
The Object spun the lazy Susan. French jams, English marmalades, an unclean butter dish, bottles of ketchup and Lea & Perrins circled past, before what the Object wanted: an economy-size jar of Rolaids. She shook out three tablets.
“What is heartburn, anyway?” I said.
“You’ve never had heartburn?” asked the Object, amazed.
The Little Club was only a nickname. Officially the club was known as the Grosse Pointe Club. Though the property was on the lake, there were no docks or boats in sight, only a mansion-like clubhouse, two paddle tennis courts, and a swimming pool. It was beside this pool that we lay every day that June and July.
As far as swimwear went, the Obscure Object favored bikinis. She looked good in them but by no means perfect. Like her thighs, her hips were on the large side. She claimed to envy my thin, long legs, but she was only being nice. Calliope appeared poolside, that first day and every day thereafter, in an old-fashioned one-piece with a skirt. It had belonged to Sourmelina during the 1950s. I found it in an old trunk. The stated intent was to look funky, but I was grateful for the full coverage. I also hung a beach towel around my neck or wore an alligator shirt over my suit. The bodice of the bathing suit was a plus, too. The cups were rubberized, pointy, and beneath a towel or a shirt gave me the suggestion of a bust I didn’t have.
Beyond us, pelican-bellied ladies in swim caps followed kickboards back and forth across the pool. Their bathing suits were a lot like mine. Lit
tle kids waded and splashed in the shallow end. There is a small window of opportunity for freckled girls to tan. The Object was in it. As we revolved on our towels that summer, self-basting, the Object’s freckles darkened, going from butterscotch to brown. The skin between them darkened, too, knitting her freckles together into a speckled harlequin mask. Only the tip of her nose remained pink. The part in her hair flamed with sunburn.
Club sandwiches, on wave-rimmed plates, sailed out to us. If we were feeling sophisticated, we ordered the French dip. We had milk shakes, too, ice cream, french fries. For everything the Object signed her father’s name. She talked about Petoskey, where her family had a summer house. “We’re going up in August. Maybe you could come up.”
“We’re going to Turkey,” I said unhappily.
“Oh, right. I forgot.” And then: “Why do you have to paint a church?”
“My dad made this promise.”
“How come?”
Behind us married couples were playing paddle tennis. Pennants flew from the clubhouse roof. Was this the place to mention St. Christopher? My father’s war stories? My grandmother’s superstitions?
“You know what I keep thinking?” I said.
“What?”
“I keep thinking about Maxine. I can’t believe she’s dead.”
“I know. It doesn’t seem like she’s really dead. It’s like I dreamed it.”
“The only way we know it’s true is that we both dreamed it. That’s what reality is. It’s a dream everyone has together.”
“That’s deep,” said the Object.
I smacked her.
“Ow!”
“That’s what you get.”
Bugs were attracted by our coconut oil. We killed them without mercy. The Object was making a slow, scandalized progress through The Lonely Lady by Harold Robbins. Every few pages she shook her head and announced, “This book is sooo dirty.” I was reading Oliver Twist, one of the assigned volumes for our summer reading list.
Suddenly the sun went in. A drop of water hit my page. But this was nothing compared to the cascade that was being shaken onto the Obscure Object. An older boy was leaning over sideways, shaking his wet mop of hair.
“Goddamn you,” she said, “cut it out!”
“What’s the matter? I’m cooling you off.”
“Quit it!”
Finally, he did. He straightened up. His bathing suit had fallen down over his skinny hipbones. This exposed an ant trail of hair running down from his navel. The ant trail was red. But on his head the hair was jet black.
“Who’s the latest victim of your hospitality?” the boy asked.
“This is Callie,” said the Object. Then to me: “This is my brother. Jerome.”
The resemblance was clear. The same palette had gone into Jerome’s face (oranges and pale blues, primarily) but there was a crudeness to the overall sketch, something bulbous about the nose, the eyes on the squinty side, pinpricks of light. What threw me at first was the dark, sheenless hair, which I soon realized was dyed.
“You were the one in the play, right?”
“Yes.”
Jerome nodded. With slitty eyes glinting he said, “A thespian, eh? Just like you. Right, sis?”
“My brother has a lot of problems,” the Object said.
“Hey, since you gals are into the thee-a-tah, maybe you want to be in my next film.” He looked at me. “I’m making a vampire movie. You’d make a great vampire.”
“I would?”
“Let me see your teeth.”
I didn’t oblige, taking my cue from the Object not to be too friendly.
“Jerome is into monster movies,” she said.
“Horror films,” he corrected, still directing his words to me. “Not monster movies. My sister, as usual, belittles my chosen medium. Want to know the title?”
“No,” said the Object.
“Vampires in Prep School. It’s about this vampire, played by moi, who gets sent off to prep school because his affluent but terribly unhappy parents are going through a divorce. Anyway, he doesn’t get along too well out there at boarding school. He doesn’t wear the right clothes. He doesn’t have the right haircut. But then one day after this kegger he takes a walk across campus and gets attacked by a vampire. And—here’s the kicker—the vampire is smoking a pipe. He’s wearing a Harris tweed. It’s the fucking headmaster, man! So the next morning, our hero wakes up and goes right out and buys a blue blazer and some Top-Siders and—presto—he’s a total prep!”
“Will you move, you’re blocking my sun.”
“It’s a metaphor for the whole boarding school experience,” Jerome said. “Each generation puts the bite on the next, turning them into the living dead.”
“Jerome has been kicked out of two boarding schools.”
“And I shall have my revenge upon them!” Jerome proclaimed in a hoary voice, shaking his fist in the air. Then without another word he ran to the pool and jumped. As he did, he spun around so he was facing us. There Jerome hung, skinny, sunken-chested, as white as a saltine, his face scrunched up and one hand clutching his nuts. He held that pose all the way down.
I was too young to ask myself what was behind our sudden intimacy. In the days and weeks that followed, I didn’t consider the Object’s own motivations, her love vacuum. Her mother had engagements all day long. Her father left for the office at six forty-five. Jerome was a brother and therefore useless. The Object didn’t like being alone. She had never learned to amuse herself. And so one evening at her house, as I was about to get on my bike and ride home, she suggested that I sleep over.
“I don’t have my toothbrush.”
“You can use mine.”
“That’s gross.”
“I’ll get you a new toothbrush. We’ve got a box of them. God, you’re such a priss.”
I was only feigning squeamishness. In actuality I wouldn’t have minded sharing the Object’s toothbrush. I wouldn’t have minded being the Object’s toothbrush. I was already well acquainted with the splendors of her mouth. Smoking is good for that. You get a full display of the puckering and the sucking. The tongue often makes an appearance, licking from the lips any stickiness imparted by the filter. Sometimes bits of paper adhere to the bottom lip and the smoker, pulling them away, reveals the candied lower teeth against the pulpy gums. And if the smoker is a blower of smoke rings, you get to see all the way in to the dark velvet of the inner cheeks.
That was how it went with the Obscure Object. A cigarette in bed was the tombstone marking each day’s end and the reed through which she breathed herself back to life each morning. You’ve heard of installation artists? Well, the Object was an exhalation artist. She had a whole repertoire. There was the Sidewinder, where she politely funneled smoke away from the person she was talking to out the corner of her mouth. There was the Geyser when she was angry. There was the Dragon Lady, featuring a plume from each nostril. There was the French Recycle, where she let smoke out her mouth only to inhale it back through her nose. And there was the Swallow. The Swallow was reserved for crisis situations. Once, in the Science Wing bathroom, the Object had just finished taking a long drag when a teacher charged in. My friend had time to flick her cigarette into the toilet bowl and flush. But what about the smoke? Where could it go?
“Who’s been smoking in here?” the teacher asked.
The Object shrugged, keeping her mouth closed. The teacher leaned toward her, sniffing. And the Object swallowed. No smoke came out. Not a wisp. Not a puff. A little moistness in her eyes the only sign of the Chernobyl in her lungs.
I accepted the Object’s invitation to sleep over. Mrs. Object called Tessie to see if it was all right and, by eleven o’clock, my friend and I went up to bed together. She gave me a T-shirt to wear. It said “Fessenden” on the front. I put it on and the Object snickered.
“What?”
“That’s Jerome’s T-shirt. Does it reek?”
“Why’d you give me his shirt?” I said, going stiff, sh
rinking from the cotton’s touch while still wearing it.
“Mine are too small. You want one of Daddy’s? They smell like cologne.”
“Your dad wears cologne?”
“He lived in Paris after the war. He’s got all kinds of fruity habits.” She was climbing up onto the big bed now. “Plus he slept with about a million French prostitutes.”
“He told you that?”
“Not exactly. But whenever Daddy talks about France he acts all horny. He was in the Army there. He was like in charge of running Paris after the war. And Mummy gets really pissed when he talks about it.” She imitated her mother now. “ ‘That’s enough Fran-cophilia for one evening, dear.’ ” As usual, when she did something dramatic, her IQ suddenly soared. Then she flopped onto her stomach. “He killed people, too.”
“He did?”
“Yeah,” said the Object, adding by way of explanation, “Nazis.”
I climbed into the big bed. At home I had one pillow. Here there were six.
“Back rub,” the Object called out cheerily.
“I’ll do you if you do me.”
“Deal.”
I sat astride her, on the saddle of her hips, and started with her shoulders. Her hair was in the way, so I moved it. We were quiet for a while, me rubbing, and then I asked, “Have you ever been to a gynecologist?”
The Object nodded into her pillow.
“What’s it like?”
“It’s torture. I hate it.”
“What do they do?”
“First they make you strip and put this little gown on. It’s made of paper and all this cold air gets in. You freeze. Then they make you lie on this table, spread-eagled.”
“Spread-eagled?”
“Yep. You have to put your legs in these metal things. Then the gyno gives you a pelvic exam, which kills.”
“What do you mean, pelvic exam?”
“I thought you were supposed to be the sex expert.”
“Come on.”
“A pelvic exam is, you know, inside. They shove this little doohickey in you to spread you all open and everything.”
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