A Ticket to the Circus (12 page)

He proceeded to rape me.

At first I tried to reason with him. “Let’s talk about this. Let’s go sit down and talk,” I said. Then, “Please don’t do this, please,” and then I begged him to stop. In the moonlight from the open door, I could see that he had a glassy look in his eyes, and he kept repeating over and over, “I’m going to make you scream. I’m going to make you scream.” I somehow knew the worst thing I could do was scream, so I just gritted my teeth and endured. It was painful and lasted much too long, and then he left me, without a word, lying on the floor in the dark.

I was bruised and shaken, to say the least. Big purple marks bloomed on my arms where he had held me down. I was raw and burned. I pulled myself together, locked the door, and picked up the phone, but the receiver hung in midair from my limp hand. I didn’t know who to call. I couldn’t call my parents. They would have totally freaked out and probably tried to make me go to the hospital, and then the whole town would have known. I couldn’t call the sheriff’s office. They wouldn’t have believed me. Some of them had played football with him, and nothing would have been done to him anyhow. He would just have said it was consensual, that I’d wanted it, and then they would have asked me who else I had been sleeping with and it would have turned into a trial of my morals, which at that point couldn’t really withstand scrutiny. His family was prominent in the community, and I liked them a lot. They certainly wouldn’t have believed me, and if they
had
happened to believe me, it would have torn the family apart and they would have wound up hating me, not him. So I told no one, not even my closest friends. I just filled the tub with the hottest water I could stand and tried to soak all traces of him away. It was a classic case of rape, like I had read about so often. Only this time it was me.

The kicker was that two days later, a note arrived in the mail. It said, “Thank you for one of the most exciting nights of my life.” And he signed his name. I was so angry I shook as I burned it up in the kitchen sink.

He went back to his home soon after that, and thankfully I never
saw him again. I never said a word to his sister. If she spoke about him, I would just change the subject, which I’m sure she thought was strange. To this day, I would leave the room if he walked into it. He got married and had children, and I sometimes wondered what kind of husband and father he was, if this was a pattern with him, or if I had done something to make him attack me like that. I know in my heart I didn’t. I hardly even spoke to him all evening. I count myself one of the lucky ones who wasn’t affected so badly, but it took something off my confidence forever. I never got into a car alone again with someone I hardly knew without thinking of that night, and now, even after all these years, instead of my hell dreams, I sometimes have nightmares of strangers in the dark.

A
n English teacher at Tech named Francis Irby Gwaltney (who wrote the memoir
Idols and Axle Grease
that I had illustrated) was a soldier in World War II with Norman Mailer. While I never had Francis (or Fig, as Norman called him) as a teacher, I was friends with him and his wife, Ecey (E.C., short for Emma Carol), another English teacher at Tech. Along with B. C. Hall and his wife, Daphna, we all subscribed to
The New Yorker
magazine and considered ourselves to be intellectuals—Russellville-style, anyhow. After I started teaching at the high school, we’d all get together once in a while to have a glass of wine (Russellville was in a dry county, so drinking wine was totally avant-garde—we had to drive thirty miles to buy it) and discuss literature and
The New Yorker
articles. We were big Walker Percy and Eudora Welty fans.

Often, Francis mentioned Norman. They had kept in touch after the war, and every couple of years they managed to get together. Francis became a writer after Norman published
The Naked and the Dead.
He said that if
Norman Mailer
could write, by God, he could, too. According to Norman, Fig had been a much better soldier than he had been, and Norman looked up to him. Fig was the inspiration for Wilson, one of the characters in the book.

Sweet, innocent Norman, straight out of Harvard, had somehow been assigned to an experienced, battle-hardened Texas outfit, and he tried to play dumb and be as invisible as possible so as not to be perceived by the good ol’ boys as the Eastern Jewish intellectual he was. They were as tough as old leather, those Texans, skin burned a deep sienna from sitting around in the hot sun on the troop ship, endlessly sharpening their bowie knives on pieces of flint and painting their sores with iodine. One of them once said something about that “goddam New York Jew,” and Fig jumped to Norman’s defense.

“Who’re you calling a goddam Jew? I’m a goddam Jew, too!”

“You ain’t no goddam Jew, Gwaltney. You’re from Arkansas.”

“I am too a goddam Jew,” the big, blond blue-eyed Southerner said, his
chin thrust out, his fists clenched. He stood ready to jump in and fight, but the bully just said, “You a crazy sumbitch, Gwaltney,” and backed off.

Of course Fig wasn’t Jewish, but he endeared himself to Norman that day, and they became best buddies. Norman tried his hardest to keep a low profile, but once in map-reading class, when he was daydreaming, the harried officer who had been getting nothing but “I don’t know” from the men asked him a question, and by accident, before he could think, he blurted out the correct coordinates of a position. He was busted. (Life was a little harder after that, but the officer was thrilled that he finally had someone who could read a map.)

   
IT HAS BEEN
said that there are no coincidences in life, and I might just believe that. It was April 1975, and I had been divorced for more than a year. Frankly, dating a lot of different guys had begun to lose its charm, but I had no interest in getting serious about anyone. I liked having my own house and doing as I pleased. No man to clutter up my closets, no man to clean up after (except my big boy, Matt, of course). No man to tell me what to do, how to spend my money, what to cook. I was close to my parents, who adored Matthew and were thrilled to babysit for me while I worked. My life was pretty great.

Then I got a call from my friend Van Tyson, another teacher at Tech, who was having a film animation artist come speak to his class. He wondered if I wanted to bring my senior class over to the college to sit in. I was always up for something new to do with the kids, so we went, and it was interesting. But the most interesting bit of information I got that day was that Norman Mailer was next door in Francis’s class, and Francis and Ecey were giving him a cocktail party after school. To which I had
not
been invited.

Although I’ve always loved literature, books were a luxury I treated myself to sparingly, but I had been a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club for several years, getting things such as Joseph Heller’s
Catch-22
, or James Jones’s
The Merry Month of May.
But for some reason, even though Fig knew him, I had never read one of Norman Mailer’s books. Occasionally, I would forget to send in the Book-of-the-Month response card saying I didn’t want the selection that month.
One such time was when Norman’s
Marilyn
was offered. It was twenty dollars, more than I could afford, but there it was in my mail, and I couldn’t resist opening it. After looking at the pictures and reading a few pages, I was hooked. “She was our angel, the sweet angel of sex, and the sugar of sex came up from her like a resonance of sound in the clearest grain of a violin…” Oh, my. This didn’t sound like a rowdy war novelist at all. It sounded like a man who was sensitive and understood women, and who could write like the angels themselves. I read some of the sentences over several times, just to feel the words.

Now Norman Mailer was in Russellville! I called Francis and asked if I could stop by the party, just for a few minutes to get my book signed, and he said no, that he didn’t want to bother Norman with that fan crap. Fig never minced words. One always knew exactly what he thought.

“Oh, come on, Francis,” I said. “Don’t be like that. I’ll leave it in the car and won’t bring it in if it doesn’t seem right. I just want to meet him.”

I had heard over and over from Francis what a genius Norman was and I figured I’d never have another opportunity to meet a famous writer. I had aspirations to write myself. Maybe he could give me some tips or something. So, reluctantly, Francis said I could come. Since they had all been in the war, I knew Norman was as old as my father (in fact, he was one year older), just as Francis was, not to mention that Norman had been married a bunch of times and had a lot of kids. The
last
thing on my mind was romance, I swear. I was just going to stay for a minute to see if he minded signing the book, and maybe have a teensy little conversation with him. I didn’t even bother to change. I was wearing bell-bottom hip-hugger jeans and a soft cotton voile shirt tied at the waist, showing a bit of my belly button. I was also wearing huge platform shoes called Bare Traps that made me about six feet one. (I’m five feet ten in stocking feet.)

I was a little nervous when I walked in, realizing that everyone else was dressed up, and I wished I had gone home and changed. And then I saw Norman. He was sitting in front of the window, his curly, silver-shot hair lit by the sun as though he had a halo. (Saint Norman!) Amazingly, he was also wearing jeans, the most patched jeans I had ever seen in my life. There were patches on top of the patches. In fact, they were
nothing
but
patches. His clear blue eyes lit up when he saw me. He had broad shoulders, a rather large head (presumably to hold all those brains) with ears that stuck out like Clark Gable’s, and he was chesty, but not fat, like a sturdy small horse. (I once drew him as a centaur, which delighted him.) He didn’t look old at all. Nor the least bit fatherly.

Me in the outfit I wore the day I met Norman.

He stood straightaway, came over to me, and to his surprise had to look up into my face. He always said he was five eight, but I personally think he was a hair under that, and I towered over him in my platform shoes. I introduced myself, we shook hands, and then he turned on his heel and walked out of the room. I was a little taken aback, but I figured he must have had a thing about tall women, so I just sighed and decided not to go out to the car and get my book.

I knew everyone there—all the English faculty, the men dressed in coats and ties, the women in little dresses or suits with tidy bows on their blouses and sensible low heels. Someone handed me a glass of white wine, and I started talking to Van. Then Francis came over and said, “Stay after the party and go out to Van and Ginnie’s for dinner with us.”

“Ginnie’s making pizza,” Van said. “Why don’t you come?”

“Thanks, guys, but I think that’s a bad idea,” I said. “I don’t think Mr. Mailer liked me much.”

“Liked you?” Francis said in his gravelly voice, full of displeasure. “Hell,
he’s
the one who wants you to go, not me!”

I didn’t know why he was being so grumpy to me. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was jealous over Norman, that Francis was angry that Norman liked me and didn’t want to share him or something. Anyhow, I didn’t care. The fact that Norman wanted me to go out with them was a nice surprise.

The women teachers were all atwitter because Norman had brought along another pair of jeans just like the ones he was wearing, or even worse, which needed another patch, and they were all taking turns sewing on them, so pleased with themselves to be able to say “I sewed Norman Mailer’s pants!”

But there was no sign of the great man. I guessed he was still in the kitchen, for whatever reason. I couldn’t believe he was that shy. I went and sat on a low couch by myself, and finally Norman appeared. We looked at each other and I smiled. I patted the seat beside me, and he came and sat down while the other women gave me the evil eye, looking at me as though I was the hussy I was.

I don’t remember the conversation we had on that couch—something trivial, I’m sure—but I do remember the intensity of his blue eyes, and his charisma—not unlike Bill Clinton’s. He concentrated on me, that’s for sure, and he radiated energy like a little steam heater. He couldn’t sit still. Then, too soon, Francis came and got him so he could talk to the others, fearing I had trapped him long enough.

After a while, people started to go, but I stayed put. Another teacher had just polished off her fourth glass of wine and was determined to wait me out. We chitchatted until everyone else had gone, and then, in an awkward silence, knowing she had to go, she grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me toward the door.

“Come on!” she said. “They need us to leave so they can go to dinner!”

“I’m going with them,” I said.

“Oh, no, you’re not!” she countered, pulling harder.

Thank goodness I was bigger, because she was determined to haul me out of there.

Ecey, bless her, stepped in and explained that I had been invited, so all the poor thing could do was sadly turn and leave on her own,
weaving a little as she walked down the driveway. Norman and I piled into the backseat of the car with Francis and Ecey and headed to Van and Ginnie’s house in the woods.