The Land of Laughs (20 page)

“Okay, Thomas, you can come back in now.”

Without a word from me, Nails picked up his bone and walked to the screen door. He waited there with his nose pressed to the wire mesh. How did he know things like that? Nails the Wonder Dog.

“I’m not completely done with it yet, but I wanted you to have it today.”

From one of the photographs of Marshall France, she had carved a meticulously detailed mask of the King. The expression on his face, the color in his eyes, his skin, lips . . , it was all awesomely real. I turned it over and over in my hands, looking at it from every conceivable angle. I loved it but was also very spooked by it.

A Queen of Oil from Anna, a Marshall France from Saxony, my chapter done, and the fall had just about arrived — my favorite season of the year.

Anna loved the first chapter.

I gave it to her and spent an hour quivering and twitching and hopping around her living room, touching everything in sight and sure that she would hate everything that I had written and would want me out of town on the next freight. When she came back into the room with it stuffed up under her arm like an old newspaper, I knew that it was curtains. But it wasn’t. Instead she walked over, handed it to me, and kissed me hard on both cheeks as the French do.

“
Wunderbar!
”

“It is?” I smiled, frowned, tried to smile again, but couldn’t.

“Yes, it most certainly is, Mr. Abbey. I didn’t know what you were doing when I first began reading, but then the whole thing opened up like those Japanese stones that you throw in water and they suddenly blossom up like moonflowers. Do you know what I mean?”

“I guess so,” I was having trouble swallowing.

She sat down on the couch and picked up a black silk pillow with a yellow dragon on it. “You were right all along. The book must open up like a peacock’s tail — whoosh! It would have been wrong for it to start in Rattenberg. ‘He was born in Rattenberg.’ No, no. ‘He didn’t like tomatoes.’ Perfect! The perfect beginning. How did you know that? He hated tomatoes. He would have howled,
howled
with laughter if he had known that his official biography would begin like that. It is wonderful, Thomas.”

“It is?”

“Stop saying, ‘It is?’ Of course it is. You know that as well as I do. You’ve caught him, Thomas. If the rest of your book is this good” — she waved the manuscript at me and then kissed the damned thing — “he’ll be living and breathing again. And you will have done it for him. I am not going to say another word about how I think it should be written.”

If it had ended there, the credits would have come up over a picture of young Thomas Abbey taking his manuscript from the alluring Anna France, walking out of the house and down the road to fame and fortune and the love of a good woman. A Screen Gems Production. The End.

What happened instead was, two days after that, a freak late summer tornado whipped through Galen and made a total mess of everything. One of the only human casualties was Saxony, who got a compound fracture of her left leg and had to he taken to the hospital.

The townspeople were unruffled by the tornado, although the Laundromat was leveled, as were parts of the elementary school and new post office. Whether it was Midwestern stoicism or what, no one moaned or groaned or made much of a fuss about it. A couple of times people told me that you had to expect that kind of thing out here.

I missed having Saxony around, and I moped through the house for a couple of days doing nothing, but then I forced myself to create a daily schedule that would be both comfortable and productive. If nothing else, I knew that she would have yelled at me if she found out that I wasn’t working on the book while she was in the hospital.

I got up around eight, had breakfast, and worked on the book until noon or one. Then I made up a couple of sandwiches and drove over to the hospital in time to have a leisurely lunch with Sax. That lasted until about three or four, when I went home and either did some more work if I was in the mood, or started preparing my bachelor dinner. Mrs. Fletcher offered to cook for me, but that meant having to eat with her. After dinner I would type up what I’d written that morning, then round off my day with some television or reading.

The second chapter went very slowly. It was the one where I first started retracing my steps through France’s life. I knew that it would be best to go back to his childhood, but the question was, where in his childhood? Begin at the beginning with him howling in the cradle? Or as a kid collecting postcards, ŕ la Saxony’s idea? I wrote up two or three involved outlines and read them to her, but we agreed that none of them fit. I decided to change my tack — I would just begin writing, as I’d done with the first chapter, and see where it took me. I’d base it on his days in Rattenberg, but if it wandered off, I’d let it go, like a divining rod. If worse came to worst and it got crazy, I could always throw it out.

At night, in between shows like
The Streets of San Francisco
and
Charlie’s Angels
, I also began thinking about doing the book on my father. Since Saxony had mentioned it, I realized how often I did talk and think about him. Literally every day some kind of Stephen Abbey ectoplasm materialized, whether it was an anecdote, one of his films on television, a quality in him that I’d remember and then recognize in myself. Would I be exorcised of Stephen Abbey if I wrote about him? And how would my mother react? I knew that she was in love with him long after he drove her away with his manic looniness. If I wrote about him, I’d want to tell everything that I remembered, not like those offensive “I Remember Daddy” things that famous people’s kids write all the time and are usually the worst kind of phony adoration or ghost-written hatred and abuse. I called my mother to wish her a happy September 1 (a little tradition we had), but I didn’t have the nerve to broach the subject.

I was sitting in the kitchen at the table one night writing down some memories when the doorbell rang. I sighed and capped my pen. I had filled four sides of my long yellow paper and felt I’d only gotten started. I gaped at the pad and shook my head. “Life with Pa-Pa,” by Thomas Abbey. I got up to answer the door.

“Hi, Thomas, I’ve come to take you out on a midnight picnic.”

She was dressed all in black, ready for a commando raid.

“Hi, Anna. Come on in.” I held the door open, but she didn’t budge.

“No, the car is all packed and you have to come with me right now. And don’t say that it’s eleven o’clock at night. That is when picnics like this get started.”

I looked to see if she was kidding. When I saw that she wasn’t, I turned off all the lights and got my jacket.

The days were cooler, and some of the nights were pure fall-cold. I’d bought a bright red mackinaw at Lazy Larry’s Discount Center. Saxony said that I looked like a cross between a stoplight and Fred Flintstone in it.

The moon was a werewolf’s delight — full, gravel-white — and seemed half a mile away. The stars were out too, but the moon held center stage. I stopped before I got to the car and stared up at it while I buttoned every button on my coat. My breath misted white on the still air. Anna stood on the other side and propped her black elbows on the roof of the car,

“I can never get over how clear the sky is out here at night. They must have filtered out all of the impurities.”

“Ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths pure Missouri sky.”

“Exactly.”

“Let’s go. It is cold out here.”

The station wagon smelled of apples. I turned around and saw two bushel baskets filled with them on the backseat.

“Can I have an apple?”

“Yes, but watch out for worms.”

I decided not to have an apple. She smiled. In the car’s blue darkness, her teeth were as white as the stripe on the road.

“What’s a ‘midnight picnic’?”

“You aren’t allowed to ask any questions. Sit back and enjoy the ride. You’ll see everything when we get there.”

I did what I was told. I let my head fall back on the seat and looked down my nose to the night road moving by.

“You have to be careful out here at night. There are always cows or dogs or raccoons on it. I once hit a female opossum. I got out of the car and ran back, but it was already dead. What was worse was that all of these little baby possums came crawling out of her stomach pouch as soon as I got there. Their eyes were still closed.”

“Nice.”

“It was ghastly. I felt like such a murderer.”

“Uh, how’s old Petals? Nails sends her his love.”

“She’s in heat, so I have to keep her locked away for two weeks now.”

The road snaked up and down and around. I was tired, and the heat blowing up from the floor made my eyelids feel like heavy velvet curtains.

“Thomas, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure. Can I turn down the heat?”

“Yes, press the middle button. Do you mind if it’s personal?”

I pressed the wrong middle button, and the blower huffed into high gear. She reached down, and going over my hand, pressed the right one. The huff died away, and I could hear the sound of the engine and the wheels for the first time.

“What’s your personal question?”

“What is your relationship with Saxony?”

Here we are — Saxony safely ensconced in the hospital, my little black night commando at the wheel right beside me … I could have answered her question so many different ways. What did I want her to think — that I was a happily unmarried man? That I was just passing time with Sax until the right someone came along? That I wanted Anna to be the right someone, even if that was taking the whole thing too far?

“My relationship? Do you mean do I love her?”

All alone. If something happened out there between the two of us that night, no one would ever know. There was no way Saxony would be hurt if I told a small lie about what went on in that darkness. Impossible. It was eleven o’clock at night, Anna was there and I was there and Saxony wasn’t there … and what I ended up saying was, “Yes, Anna, I love her.” Then I sighed. What the hell else could I do? Lie? Yes, I know I could have, but I didn’t. Aren’t I wonderful?

“Does she love you?” She kept her hands on the top of the steering wheel and her head facing forward.

“Yes, I guess so. She says she does.” With that, I felt something in my body let go and deflate. It made me feel calmer and less on edge. As if the jig was up and my main energy center could shut down for the rest of the night because I wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

“Why are you asking, Anna?”

“Because I’m interested in you. Is that so surprising?”

“That depends. Professionally interested or personally?”

“Personally.” That was all. That was all she said in this Lauren Bacall-deep “if-you-need-anything-just-whistle” voice. “Personally.” I didn’t dare turn to her. I closed my eyes and felt my heart beat throughout the upper part of my body. I wondered if I would die someday of a heart attack. I wondered if I was about to have a heart attack. Two seconds before, I had been about to fall asleep.

“Uh, what am I supposed to say to that?”

“Nothing. You don’t have to say a word. I was only answering your question.”

“Oh.” I took a deep breath and tried to find a comfortable position on the plastic seat for both me and my eleven-foot-long erection.

I am pretty inept at seducing women. For years I thought that the best way to do it was to have three-hour-long heart-to-heart talks where you ended up saying right out front that you wanted to go to bed with her. That way wasn’t completely successful, however, especially when I was in college and the girls that I liked were mostly “intellectuals” who carried around copies of
Nausea
or Kate Millett and used a Renoir postcard to mark their place. The great problem that arose then was that I would have drunk so much image-building black coffee or poisonous espresso that if the magic moment ever did arise, I would have to keep slipping off to the toilet to piss it all out. I’m sure that I also bored any number of them to tears, because one day a girl said, “Why don’t you stop talking so much bullshit and just
take
me?” It was a good lesson at the time, although I often tried it later and was pushed away more often than I was welcomed. As a result, even at this late date I never knew if (1) a woman wanted me or not, (2) if she did, how I was supposed to “take her,” (3) … It’s not necessary, because I think the picture is pretty clear. Luckily, with Saxony it had been mutual — and, God, I was thankful for that. But Anna? Anna France, sweet-mama daughter of my hero? Was she saying here that she wanted me, or was she flirting and trying to see how far she could go before I made my move and she would have to shoot me down?

“Anna?”

“Thomas?”

“I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t know if you’re saying what I think I’m hearing. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I think so.”

My hand was shaking when I lifted it toward her. It was my left hand. I chose it because if she didn’t want me to touch her she could push it away and I’d have it back on my side of the seat quicker. Then I didn’t know where it should go when it reached her, now that it was halfway there. Her knee, breast, arm? But it knew that it had to go to her face. Slowly, still shaking, I touched her cheek and found it hot. She took my hand in hers, and bringing it around to her lips, kissed it. She squeezed it tightly and brought it down to rest on her right knee. I felt as if my head was about to explode. We rode the rest of the way to her “picnic” like that.

The best description would be to say that Anna totally gave herself to me. Not that she was into any kind of bondage or kinky stuff, but when I made love with her I instantly got the feeling that she would let me do anything I wanted to her, or that she would do anything I asked her to. She didn’t leap around or set fire to the ceiling, but she was so
there
that sometimes I felt I had gone all the way through her and would have to work all the way back before either of us was done, much less satisfied. Later, when I asked her if this had been the real purpose of the picnic from the beginning, she said yes.