The Matter Is Life (10 page)

Then, when Mega was born the father expected to have another great beauty to show off. He smiled and waited. But, as she grew, her beauty was neat, plain, sweet. He might could’a grew to understand those was also wonderful things to love, but Vanity always movin between them, pullin on his arms when he played with Mega, wrappin herself round his head to shield his eyes from Mega. In time, he centered on Vanity again. The mother cried awhile, then smiled thru her tears and took Mega to herself. Mega grew up affectionate, patient, sweet and, I guess, just normally normal. The mother refused to have any more children. So they each had one!

But these things tells on a woman who loves her husband. She loved her husband, had dreamed of the perfect home. Her love grieved, her spirit grieved. She was alone in her home, in her marriage, in her life. She was a sad, sad heartbroken woman, whose daughter had stolen her husband, with a smile. A beautiful smile. A Guardian Angel grieved, I know.

In time, when Vanity was seventeen, Mega fifteen, the parents divorced. The mother could take no more, could not watch Mega’s confusion no more. The family had been divided too often and too long by Vanity’s demands on her father. The mother took Mega, naturally, and because I don’t have time to tell just everything, I’ll just tell you they did well. Mega had a normal life, I guess. She wondered, from time to time, about the family ways. She loved them all. She was patient with them all. Just like a real little lady. Her time passed that way, and she grew up strong in spite of all of them.

All this time Vanity was runnin after hearts … anybody’s.
Had great pleasure in takin the heart of a boy, or man, who seemed to love another girl, or woman. Even her closest friends’ beaus. Of course she ended up with no friends! But Vanity didn’t care, she was havin a good time. Just like a lady (she thought). And time passed. Don’t it always.

Her father bought her everything. Sometime being late, very late, with payments for Mega. Vanity explained that away to him by saying she gave Mega all her cast-off clothing and things, that Mega didn’t need as much right at that time of her life.

Also, at that time of Vanity’s life, she was twenty or twenty-one then, dancin, laughin, always goin out, riding, playin. Life was gettin dull to her. Same old crowd, growing smaller. Some gettin married. Women shyin away from her. Men already been burnt by her, keepin a distance. No magic around for her to play with. She turned her lofty head to look over the horizon for fresh life and dreams. Her Guardian Angel was in dread.

Vanity loved picture shows. Lookin at one, one day, she decided she had always wanted to be a movie star. She knew she looked as good as those up on that screen. She prepared her father a good meal (in her gloves). Set a beautiful table, candles and all, just for her father and her. His eyes just sparkled, he was so proud of his daughter and happy she had decided to stay home with him an evenin. Vanity didn’t waste no time tho, she just came right out and told him almost soon as he sat down to eat.

“Daddy, I need some money. I’ve made up my mind what I want to be, at last. I’m going to Los Angeles to seek my fame … and my fortune. I know I will be successful.
All they want is beauty! So … I am prepared.” She laughed, he frowned, started to say something. She thought she anticipated him. “You always wanted me to be serious about something. Now, I’m ready.”

He sighed. They argued awhile. He lost, again.

He said, as he sighed, “Well … if that’s what you really want. I’ll transfer my job … and we’ll move.”

She pursed her beautiful lips. “Noooo. I want to … I need to go alone. I’m over twenty-one now. I want to be on my own. Just send me some money. But I want to be alone.” She thought of allll the men there. And Dad was gettin old and showing it. Ugly comin. She didn’t like ugly.

He was hurt … and feared loneliness. “You’d leave me? You’d go alone? So far from me?”

She turned her beautiful lips down, and snapped, “What do you expect me to do? Be here under … with you the rest of my life?”

He stammered, “No … no … I … I thought …”

She stopped his thought. “Well, I am grown. I will go alone. You can’t be with me forever! I have to have my own life! I am your daughter … NOT your wife.” He groaned and twisted in his seat, dinner, candles forgotten. She continued. “You’ll … you’ll still have Mega … and Mama, if you can get her to leave her new husband and come back to you! But I …”

He bent his dumb head. “Your mother will never leave that man. He loves her … and Mega.” He looked up suddenly, angry. “He better not be doing anything to my child!” He looked sad again. “Let me get a house there and we …”

She threw him a disdainful look. “Dad. I … am … 
grown. I have to go alone.” Her tone softened, “I have to see if I can make it on my own. So you will be proud of me. Just a little money to help me til I am rich and can make it on my own.” She smiled brightly, beautifully. “Then I will send for you to come … visit me sometime.”

Anyway … she got her way. Her Guardian Angel shook its head … and waited.

Vanity went to Los Angeles expecting to have heads and hearts rolling in the streets. Instead she found so many beautiful women everywhere she went to seek a job. Everywhere she walked, ate, sat, looked. She got nervous and was throwing up every night. Got sick even, but didn’t get a job in films. Men had so much pretty to look upon. She was just one of them. Beauty was five feet deep in Los Angeles. Talent wasn’t. Vanity didn’t have much talent. In two months she called home for a ticket back. Back to safety and some kind of throne. In Los Angeles they didn’t even know she was gone, cause they hardly knew she was there.

Her daddy smiled sadly, gladly sent the money, borrowed money. He had been sending her so much to keep her in the style she thought she had to have, to keep her happy, he was most broke. But he was happy he was gonna have his “baby” back! Her Guardian Angel must have smiled with relief cause a whole lotta things wait for pretty girls in them big busy cities.

She returned to her little three-legged throne. Told everybody she didn’t like it in L.A. because the people had no class. But she read that writin on the back of that throne, looked at the horizon again, saw “marriage.”

Now … one man, Robert, really worshipped Vanity. You know right there he was a lightweight fool. He had done
gone to college and had a future, but the future wasn’t there yet, so he was still in the strugglin stage. He sure knew how to talk tho. And he could kiss her from the feet up … she had to have that! He wrote her poems. Sent her flowers. Kissed her feet. Used his eyes as mirrors for her. Since she saw herself so much in his eyes, and thought he had a future, she married him. Her daddy surely did go into BIG debt for that weddin. I blive he still owe some on it and he dead and gone now!

The mother and Mega came. The mother lookin sad, Mega smiling with joy for her sister. She wasn’t asked to be in the weddin. She was married now, with one child. Vanity said she needed a pretty matron of honor with some money so she could get a better present from her. She seemed to understand Vanity, didn’t seem to mind, but I knew she was hurt cause she was a family person. She cared. She knew how to love people for real reasons.

Anyway, the Guardian Angel must have held its breath, but the marriage lasted only three years. Til Vanity was twenty-five. Turned out Robert’s struggle was lastin too long … and the kisses didn’t last long enough, cause they got borin and all tied up with cookin (in gloves) and eatin, going to the bathroom and snorin, his dirty clothes, underwear and all, and blowin noses and payin bills (she made). He be tired and she need another dose of worship. She took to leavin him snorin and going out to get what worship she needed, in them expensive clothes she charged on him. Her daddy was still payin for some of her clothes too, she sure could spend money on herself. He was still livin then, poor fool. She never did buy nobody else nothin!

Now, Vanity didn’t go too far out. Not very much adultry,
cause that wasn’t what she was after. Just more love and worship. A few times she did commit adultry was cause her worship bank was low and she couldn’t get that worship no other way. She ended up have two abortions for two reasons. One, she didn’t quite know whose baby it was. Two, she was never gonna mess her body up with nothin! Her husband never knew. Her daddy never knew. Even her hairdresser never knew. Just her and the one who gave her the pills and things, and me, cause I had to help her, care for her.

Now that took a little toll on her looks, but it didn’t show right then at the time. That little bit of drinkin, she loved champagne, didn’t do much harm, but it did some. She liked to smoke cause it made her look classy, she thought. That took a toll, too. But you couldn’t see it cause she made-up and dressed-up so good. But … she still got bored after awhile. Her Guardian Angel used to whisper things to her conscience to make her life fuller, more satisfying to all. But it found nothin there to listen to it.

She got divorced. She didn’t get no job tho. She lived off the money from her father and what she could get out of her ex-husband. She could work with that money. Somebody else’s! Cause she wouldn’t work FOR it.

Then she made friends with a wealthy older woman, Snity. Snity spelled her name “$nity.” Her new friend was almost just like her, so $nity didn’t let Vanity round her husband too much. $nity did go all the way with her admirers. She was growin old and losin her beauty from livin so hard and much. She did introduce her to other wealthy men tho.

Vanity was a good catcher for $nity and was used as such for a long time, til she was thirty or thirty-one. She got to
travel, go places she never could have gone before. She was lonely, so she was sleepin around a bit. But you had to give her some money then, cause she needed clothes to keep up with $nity. Her Guardian Angel weeped.

Finally a older man came along who $nity didn’t want. Name Edward. The man had some little sense cause he had made a lotta money. But, between $nity talkin him into it and Vanity bein so beautiful (still), he asked Vanity to be his wife. Vanity opened her arms wide, showin all her beauty at once, and flew to his side like a Condor jet! Guardian Angel held its breath again.

As life would have it, Edward got bored early with the kissin from the feet up. Wanted hisself kissed from the feet up. But mostly he wanted someone to share his mind with. He took a clear, longer look inside his beautiful wife and … HE got bored!

The man still had some sense, so he took the good from the marriage. Vanity was a good hostess, handled his business meetings at home well. Could socialize successfully. He kept her. And she kept him. In time, tho, she became bored, less men paid attention to her. She became lonely. Edward wasn’t often interested in makin love and worship to her. He became lonely. No one to really talk to in his home. She didn’t care for his grown children. They were uncomfortable, so they just gradually stayed away. He had to visit them. He was welcome, but it wasn’t like bein at his own home. Guardian Angel shook its head in sorrow.

Edward liked Mega, even did some business with her husband who was moving right along with his business, using elbow grease and brains. But even Mega didn’t come
round much cause she had three children that Vanity didn’t like.

No, Vanity didn’t seem to like children at all. Edward didn’t know it, but Vanity had already had one abortion with him. It was his child and he sure would have loved it. The child would have tied them closer, into a family. Guardian Angel wept again.

Another thing Edward didn’t know, Vanity was workin with a doctor to plan a appendix operation which was really goin to be a historectory. She told me she could not keep up them abortions. She had got real sick from the last time and thought Edward might find out why, for real, if it happened again.

She looked over at me, over that glass of champagne she had brought over to my house and said, “I simply cannot afford to ruin my body. Not for any baby, nor any man! My body is all I have, and I am not sharing it! The baby will end up with all my looks and all I will have is a ‘baby.’ ”

The woman was a lonely woman, very lonely inside all her beauty and didn’t know how much a baby, her own child, could mean. But the baby might have been lucky not to have been born, after all. I don’t know, cause I don’t know everything. So, historectory it was.

When Vanity got to be round thirty-five she was runnin round like she was crazy. Going to every party, every show, every night club, about every night. Driven dissipation. She was desperately trying to be rich and happy. Sometimes her despondence and dissipation was pitiful. She cried. But not too long, cause it made you ugly. Her tears musta been champagne cause she drank it all the time. Carried a bottle in her car. Opened. Guardian Angel asked to be relieved of
its duty. Devil grinned cause he likes destruction and confusion.

She kept that up til she was round thirty-eight years old. Beauty goin cause beauty ain’t somethin you can beat to death every night. Edward was so bored, disgusted, tired of everything so empty, he was in pain. When I say, “bored,” don’t take that word lightly. “Bored” can be miserable, miserable. That is what he was, miserable. And each month the bills were higher. He was payin plenty to be miserable. Divorce came on his mind, naturally, cause he never was a real stone-fool.

Mega’s husband died round that time, too. She was broken nearly to pieces by his death. She truly loved him. Theirs was a good marriage. She had the children tho, and he left her pretty well fixed. Edward, of course, went to console her. In her innocence, he was consoled. She looked healthy and warm, too. And her house had lots of love in it.

Vanity’s and Mega’s father died round bout then. Death comes like that sometime. In threes, people say. His heart was probly broken, cause it sure was starved. Vanity didn’t never have no time for him in her fast life. He was like some child she didn’t want to be bothered with. She was in New York partyin at the time. Called and told Mega to decide everything and take care everything, see bout the insurance money. That she would TRY to get back in time for the funeral. Guardian Angel tried to quit.