'I write because it is a ticket into a community of artists.
Tampa or anywhere would be unbearably lonely if I did not feel a part of a circle of people
who speak a language of imagination.... The secret to writing is "bum glue."
I was told this at a writers conference, but not told where to purchase any. I found that
fear works just as well as any manufactured bum glue. Reruns was written for a class.
A week before the end of the semester I told the professor that I only had a few pages to
turn in. She said fine, but she would have to give me a D. I kept my bum glued to
the seat and wrote this story.' - Ann Bronston |
The marriage went south, the kids went north; I moved into a trailer on a side street of what's left of rural Tampa. My neighbor to the right lives in a trailer too and has two dogs and a goat. Her name is Barbara and she scares me because she looks old and worn out. But she is my age. My lasered skin and dyed hair don't impress her.
She feels sorry for me because I am always needing her handyman skills and because my home is always messier than hers and because I always look scared when she sees me. I don't know my other neighbors because they all live in solid homes, with pink and white flowers arranged around the doorstep. I live for the day one of them stops me in the supermarket, and never suspecting I am the woman from the trailer down the block, says, "Oh my God. Didn't you used to be on that TV show about the Revolutionary War, Yankee Doodle? You were so wonderful. I'd recognize you anywhere." But of course that will never happen, because I was just a background character and no one ever recognized me even when the show aired almost twenty-five years ago.
No one in Tampa knows about my Hollywood past. We moved here eight years ago. My husband was once a lowly Second Assistant Director on 'Yankee Doodle' while I was the 'talent' as the actors are called by production. Then he became an executive producer and I became the 'wife of,' as spouses are called. Universal sent him to Orlando. We hated Orlando and thought Tampa would be a better place to live. We were wrong. Though it was better for the kids. My daughter had friends for the first time who didn't have orange and lime hair. Their worse trait was that they wore crosses and went to church.
I don't go to any church. I don't belong to any organizations, and the friends we had in Tampa, we had because my husband had 'Hollywood' connections. Maybe he still sees them. I don't. I don't see many people. I don't work. I don't need to work. My divorce settlement gave me alimony and our home in Tampa, which I sold. I knew of rich Malibu wives who, after their divorce, though they could no longer afford mortgages and travel and facelifts, couldn't control their appetites. They ended up homeless, spending their days in museums and libraries and shopping malls and sleeping in BMWs. My alimony pays for my trailer home, my laser treatments, eyelifts, teeth bonding and weekly spa treatments. And thanks to the sale of my home, there is money for future facelifts.
It might be nice to work, to have a place to go, to have associates. But I can't think of any job I would want to do or could do.
I loved acting, but not as much as I loved being an actor. When I was young I saw some old character actor on the Johnny Carson show. He said he loved being an actor so much that if he couldn't be a working actor, he was still happy to be an out-of-work actor. I know now all he was saying was if he couldn't hang around a set eating free food and bullshitting with the other actors, he was just as happy to hang around a bar eating free peanuts and bullshitting with the other actors.
*
Once a month I meet with some 'bridge buddies.' That's how they advertised themselves, Bridge Buddies seeking new members, informal games, smokers okay. All levels welcome, no beginners. At fifty-six there is not much I'm a beginner at.
Two old ladies, Clara and Ruth, organize the games. I call them old because I like to think I'm much younger than they are, though I suspect we are not more than ten years apart. But they've lived in Tampa all their lives and that makes me think that they expected to grow older. They understood a certain order of the universe.
Clara is short and wide, short gray hair, wide large glasses, wide nose, short fingers. She is the doer. She serves the iced tea, with coasters. She adjusts the temperature of the room three or four times a game, and she whistles, a thin airy noise, without purpose or melody - or none that I can discern. Ruth is quiet and coiffed and seems to find everything just a little distasteful. Clara laughs at my jokes. Ruth doesn't.
There are about six other women who are members of this club. But there is no regularity to their attendance, and often only one foursome gets to play. The leftovers eat and smoke and watch television and complain about their husbands, if they've got them.
One afternoon only Clara and I are the television watchers.
"Can I ask you a question, Rachel?" Clara says, without looking up from the pistachio she is struggling to open with her short fingers.
I reach for my cigarettes. It's nice to be around other smokers. When I smoke alone in my home, I feel secretive, afraid some electric company man or some phone man will surprise me. Even late at night, I'm afraid of being discovered, seen as cigarette smoking, TV watching, beer drinking trailer trash. I drink good whiskey, but to the ignorant it still translates as trash. I come as much to play bridge as I do to smoke in a tidy, two story house, with other coughing smokers.
"Sure, Clara." I can't imagine what Clara has in mind to ask. We don't know each other well; I've only been a bridge buddy a few months. I partnered with Clara a number of times, and that is always a bonding experience, if you play well, and we both do.
She stops fighting with the pistachio and asks, "How old are you?"
Bitch, I think. "Fifty-one," I lie, what's a couple of years. A four o'clock news brief is coming on the television. I can't help myself; it would have been as if you'd spent hundreds of dollars on lottery tickets and didn't check the winning numbers. I have to ask, "How old do I look?"
She smiles so sweetly that I know any answer under fifty would just be patronizing. Before she can speak, the anchorman on the TV says, "And on a sad note, Gabriel Turner, who started his career in the television series Yankee Doodle, died today. Mr. Turner earned two academy award nominations, most recently for Mister Fool, the bittersweet love story of a retarded man and an immigrant female cabdriver. He was sixty-one."
"I slept with him," I say, taking a drag on my cigarette. For a brief second, time wrinkles, and I am twelve years old, giving the finger to my bunkmates who are only ten and eleven years old, but all at least half a foot taller than I am. I did it to establish my superior worldliness, lest anyone think I belonged with such babies.
"Oh. Ruth's sister used to go out with him, but that was before he was a newscaster. Poor Gabriel Turner. I used to love Yankee Doodle. They don't have good shows like that anymore. Just such crassness. Do young people really think about sex all the time? I don't remember everything revolving around sex when I was in my twenties. That's why I loved Yankee Doodle, people were thinking about fighting a war, not hopping into bed."
Surprisingly, I don't mention that I was on Yankee Doodle, nor do I correct her misconception that I slept with Neal Mendino of WKPQ. "I think all this crassness about sex is just what we need. I think it is probably the best birth control society has ever offered. It makes sex so unappealing. I can't imagine any teenage girl wanting to say anything but 'no way.' We were lured by the scent of mystery and the promise of something called love, which was supposed to be the definition of great sex.Yankee Doodle I say all this as if Gabe were still alive, as if I am unaware of how the room seems to be changing, unaware of the silent, odorless, invisible vapor of sadness seeping through my pores.
"You have such a funny way of looking at things, and you are so right," Clara says as she walks to lower the temperature. Her steps are heavy as if she were limping on one leg, than another. Her walk in fact reflects her personality- direct and dutiful. Getting the coasters or changing the thermostat is never an inspiration or a moment's decision. It is a necessity, a task to be performed. I try to imagine her a young woman. Cast by Hollywood, her wideness becomes a supple innocence, her fingers childlike and eager. She is a milkmaid, her bright apron lifted by a breeze as she walks toward the barn, her steps deliberate, believing Master Peter's hands will guide her through a gray mist to some brilliant rainbow. But as Clara turns back to the couch, the movie becomes dark and gritty. I see only a stout milkmaid walking dutifully toward the cows, unaware that she is about to encounter real evidence of the great mystery that will leave her swollen and sore and cynical. But Clara can't play cynical, I wish she could. We might be better friends. Master Peter's rape will leave her character swollen and sore and dumbfounded.
I put out my cigarette. Clara clears my drink and ashtray from the glass coffee table. As she walks to the kitchen she announces to the others that Gabriel Turner is dead. "How did he die?" Ruth wants to know.
Probably fucking some twenty-year-old, I mutter to myself.
"They didn't say," Clara answers. "I guess we'll get more details on the five o'clock news."
"I loved that series, Yankee Doodle," Ruth says. "I don't suppose they'll ever show it again. You know, like the way they show The Beverly Hillbillies, or the old Fugitive.
"Rachel used to date Neal Mendino."
"My sister used to go out with him, that was a long time ago, after her divorce, before she married Douglas. I couldn't stand him. He was so insincere." I am out of Ruth's line of vision but I know she is speaking to me.
"No, I didn't like him much either," I say. I catch Clara's eyes on me; she looks slightly sad.
"Did you see Mister Fool?" I hear someone at the card table ask. I reach for another cigarette. My hand shakes as I try to light it. I feel very cold all of a sudden. As I exhale the smoke, my teeth clatter. I'm annoyed at Clara for lowering the temperature. I want to leave.
"Did you see Mister Fool, Rachel?" Sharon, who I know is younger than me, though not by that much, asks loudly. I don't like Sharon. Her fingers are grabby and she plays too aggressively. She likes to sound smart and uses too many words to say very little on too many subjects. She is the only one of us who has never been divorced, and though we see it as a failing on her part, she thinks we envy her.
"Yes, I did."
"Well? What did you think?"
"I thought they were badly matched. She wasn't very credible..."
"Exactly," Sharon interrupts. "I mean give us a break, she was way too young and beautiful for him. Plus, I don't know, I just don't enjoy watching retards, It's very unsexy."
"Gabriel Turner is sexy no matter what he plays," Ruth says. She doesn't like Sharon either, and her opinions are not to be argued with. But Sharon hasn't caught on to that yet.
"Well, to me, he's too old." She is smug about being the youngest. "I mean was too old... for the part. He was young to die, of course."
"He wasn't retarded." Clara has brought in a fresh pitcher of iced tea. "He was playing an innocent. I heard him tell Regis that when the movie first came out."
I had meant they were mismatched because she was such a bad actress and was so unbelievable in the part. I expect myself to mention my role on Yankee Doodle; I was the sister of Gabriel Turner's love interest. People remember the part if you describe it to them. I don't tell them though. When I was seven, I used to bring a small stuffed cat into the classroom. I hid it in my desk. I would look at it and feel my life become less ordinary. Dowdy and grandmotherly, Mrs. Miller was transformed to a menacing villain. And I was as courageous as any hero who hid their beloved from those that would separate them. Eventually I told my friends my secret. And soon after, it all seemed ordinary again. No matter how hard I tried I could no longer find any peril in Mrs. Miller's dim eyes. I knew I was just pretending.
"Are you all right dear? You look cold all scrunched up like that."
"Well, Clara, you keep lowering the thermostat, I'll have to bring a damn mink next time I come."
"The rest of us are comfortable." Ruth is unsympathetic. "Maybe you're sick."
?"I feel fine." The conversation moves on to dinner plans, recipes, engagements; neighborhood restaurants, best supermarkets, best meat packers, Deitz and Weston, or Healthy Choice. The cold flash passes-until the five o'clock news comes on. I know I must leave. I don't want to hear about Gabriel's death sitting next to Clara, so far away from where I once was.
*
I begin to gather my things, my lighter and purse. I crumple my empty cigarette pack and throw it away. I have no cigarettes for the drive home. Asking if anyone has a cigarette used to be a rhetorical question. Now no one volunteers, and if you ask by name, they actually count the cigarettes they have, and then decide if they want to give any away. I'd rather smoke a butt from my car ashtray.
*
It is the end of April in Tampa, and every hot day threatens to be the first wave of an unrelenting assault. But I am happy for the blanket of warmth I feel as I close Clara's door behind me. My jaw begins to relax. I search for a long-enough butt in the car's ashtray, spilling other butts onto the floor. I light it and drive home. I turn on the radio and hear again that Gabriel Turner is dead. A heart attack is mentioned this time. I knew he died of a heart attack, because naked and sweaty, his heart swooshing loudly under my ear, he told me of his father's death. Gabe, who was only six at the time, thought his father's heart had wrapped itself around the inside of his throat and choked him. How else would a heart attack someone? And then his voice trailing into long pauses, he'd told me that his brother died only a year ago, at thirty-four, of a heart attack.
I am shivering again. My bones feel jagged and sharp inside my body. The thought of a blanket and a bottle help me steer towards home.
My body is bent as I walk from my car to the trailer's door, crushing dead flowers along the path. My affair with Gabriel didn't last very long. I knew I was miscast. I was working too hard to fit the fantasy. With the second assistant director (eventually my husband) I could believe myself in the leading role.
*
I'm glad I have no pets to feed or walk. I undress as quickly as my shaking body will let me, leaving my silk blouse and Lauren blazer and linen slacks to lie on the floor like miniature landforms on a giant map. I put on stained sweat pants and a baggy tee shirt. I light up again. I pour eighteen-year-old whiskey into a glass. My daughter was five, eighteen years ago. My son was three. It wasn't so long ago. I take the blanket from my bed and sit in a fading yellow armchair. It wasn't so long ago....
I slept with him. That's what I said when I heard Gabe had died. I slept with him. Even if they understood whom I meant, they wouldn't have understood what I was trying to say. Clara would have simply said, "Oh." Sharon would have mentioned that while she was in college in California she dated Lee Major's younger brother. And Ruth would have told me her sister slept with Gabriel Turner when he performed 'Streetcar' in Tampa.
Whiskey is a secret place of misty gold fog, it creeps through my body, softening the edges of my bones, so that they no longer rattle against each other. I am warm again. My hair falls against my cheek, the whiskey makes my lips feel full and wet. I slide back in time, into a body with breasts that turn upwards and skin so new it is shy without clothes. It blushes at its power to draw hands towards it. Or perhaps it only pretends to be shy.
One time, before we had been lovers, Gabriel reached across a restaurant table to touch my face. I instinctively drew my head back. I made some joke about being a boxer in my last life. He looked at me as if he could see my father?s hand, with unexpected speed, hit my face. Then his breath turned to a soft, comforting, sshhh. He continued to move his hand towards my cheek, and said, "Yeah, we've all been boxers in one life or another."
My father, a high school math teacher, with delicate, almost effeminate hands, did slap me in the face a number of times, hoping my mother would feel the sting, hitting a child being more acceptable than hitting a woman. But I don't think I moved my head away from Gabriel's hand because I was afraid of being hit. I moved it because I knew a current of desire would run through my body if he touched me then. And because pretending to be afraid of it heightened its pleasure, made it a scene from a movie.
I breathe in the whiskey, my own aromatherapy. I love the rainy, woodsy smell of it. I drink it deeply.
A few months ago, I was in New York. I had read Gabriel was filming a movie there. I looked for him in every restaurant I went to, on street corners, in the audience of shows I saw. I fantasized running into him. He would remind me of my Hedda Gabler- done in a small sixty-seat theatre, near the beach, which nobody came to. He would tell me how wonderful I was. People around us would be listening, watching us, wondering who I was. Then he would offer me a cameo in an upcoming movie. And at fifty-six, I would hold, carefully cupped in my hands, like a child protecting a wisp of dandelion, that breath of what might still be.
But Gabriel Turner died today.
I take my glass of whiskey and with my firm breasts and supple skin, I walk to my bed, and again Gabriel moves to touch my face.