‘I always wanted to be the villainess,’ Ava said. ‘But sometimes the heroine has dark hair.’
‘Actually, there’s another type,’ Iso said thoughtfully, ‘The asexual. You know, asexual Doris Day acting like a little boy clowning around with asexual Rock Hudson acting like a little bigger boy. Presley is like that too, and the Beatles.’
‘That’s true,’ Mira agreed. ‘Asexuality or maybe androgyny. Like Katharine Hepburn.’
‘Or Garbo. Or Dietrich.’
‘Or Judy Garland with that child’s face, wearing tails.’
‘Or Fred Astaire. You could never imagine him screwing.’
‘Why is that, do you suppose?’ Mira asked them.
‘Maybe because real women have to be either angels or devils. And real men have to be macho, can’t be sweet. Maybe the inbetween figures, the asexuals and androgynes are freed from the moral imperative,’ Iso suggested.
‘I always knew I was a devil,’ Ava murmured.
‘You act more like an angel,’ Mira smiled.
‘When I was five, I had a new party dress and I went out to the yard to show it to my daddy and I was so happy, I felt so pretty, and I swung all around to show him and my skirt flew out and my panties showed and my daddy picked me up and carried me into the house and beat me with his belt.’
They gazed at her. Val’s forehead was furrowed, as if she were in pain. ‘How do you feel about him now?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I love my daddy. But we fight a lot. I don’t go home much because we always fight and that upsets Momma. Last time I was home was Christmas two years ago and Daddy hit me because I said I didn’t like Lyndon Johnson, he just reached across and smacked me in the face real hard, it stung, you know, it brought tears to my eyes, so I picked up a fork that was lying on the counter, one of those long ones that you turn meat with, and I stabbed him in the stomach.’ She said this in her soft-edged Alabama voice, confiding the events the way a child would, her long-lashed eyes trusting, questioning.
‘Did you hurt him?’ Mira asked horrified.
Did you kill him?’ Val laughed.
‘No.’ Ava’s eyes danced. ‘But I sure made him bleed a lot!’ She burst into giggling, and kept laughing. She doubled over with laughter. ‘He was sure shocked!’ she added, pulling herself erect again. ‘And I told him if he ever hit me again, I’d kill him. But now I’m afraid to go home, because if he hit me – and he might, he’s such a bull – I’d have to do it. I’d have to kill him.’
‘Does he hit your mother too?’
‘No. Or my brother either. Anyway, not since my brother got bigger than him. But he always hit me the most.’
‘Love pats,’ Val said dryly.
‘That’s true,’ Ava looked up at Val. ‘That’s it. He always loved me the most, and I knew it.’
‘Training,’ Val added.
Ava was sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding the jar of carnations. She buried her face in the flowers. ‘Well, I don’t know what it trained me for, because I’m not good for anything.’
‘Ava, that’s not true!’ Iso protested.
‘I’m not! I’m really not! I want to play the piano but I get too scared to play for people, and I want to dance, but I’m too old. All I can do is pound on that old typewriter all day, and I do that pretty good, but it gets boring.’
Iso spoke to Val and Mira. ‘Ava only had a few years of lessons, when she was around twelve, and then again in college for two years. But she was so good, they put her on the stage and let her play with the Cleveland Symphony.’
‘Oh, Iso, I won a contest,’ Ava corrected irritably. ‘You make it sound so great. It was just a contest.’
‘But that’s great!’ Mira exclaimed.
‘No, it wasn’t,’ Ava curled her head down, examining the flowers. ‘Because I got so scared I knew I could never do it again. I couldn’t go through that again. It was too terrible. So that was the end of the piano.’
‘And why can’t you dance?’ Mira continued. ‘You aren’t old.’
Ava looked up at her. ‘Oh, yes I am, Mira, I’m twenty-eight. I only started dancing a couple of years ago …’
‘She’s great,’ Iso interrupted.
‘Well,’ she glanced at Iso briefly, then back at Mira, ‘I think I do pretty well for a beginner, but it’s too late.’
‘She should have had lessons when she was a child. She sat down in
second grade and played the piano. Just played something. The teacher thought she’d had lessons.’
‘Well, I’d heard it on the radio.’
‘You should have had lessons.’
‘Well, Momma and Daddy, they weren’t always doing too well. And I don’t think they ever thought about it. You know? It just never occurred to them.’
‘I wish my mother was like that. When I was seven, I used to draw a lot so my mother goes tearing out and gets me an art teacher, some creepy guy who lived down the block and did it in exchange for a meal. What a creep!’ Chris held her forehead.
‘That was one of my few mistakes,’ Val admitted.
‘It was your mistake, but I had to suffer for it,’ Chris threw back banteringly. ‘The sins of the fathers …’
‘I’m not your father.’
Chris shrugged. ‘You have to admit, Mommy, you’re the only father I have permanently. The rest are just father figures – Dave, Angie, Fudge, Tim, Grant …’ She was counting on her fingers, grinning wickedly at Val.
‘Maybe you’re better off,’ Ava said wistfully. ‘Do you ever wish you had a father?’
Chris looked at her seriously. ‘Sometimes. Sometimes I sort of imagine, you know, somebody coming home at night with the paper under his arm,’ She giggled. ‘You know, like hugging you and shit.’ She giggled again.
‘That’s called a lover, Chris,’ Iso laughed.
‘Well, to take me places, you know, not like my mother, taking me on marches against the war, but real places, like the zoo.’
‘I never knew you wanted to go to the zoo.’
‘I don’t. It’s just a place.’
‘Good, because I hate zoos.’
‘Well, what about the circus?’
‘I hate circuses.’
‘You hate everything that doesn’t have words in it.’
‘That’s true.’
‘I love circuses,’ Iso said. ‘I’ll take you, Chris.’
‘Really?’
‘Promise. Next time it’s in Boston.’
‘Great!’
‘Oh, can I go too? I love circuses,’ Ava sighed.
‘Sure. We’ll all go.’
‘I was a real devil when I was little. I used to sneak into the circus without paying,’ Ava giggled.
‘You really do feel like a devil,’ Val murmured.
‘Her real name is Delilah. How would you feel if you were named after Delilah?’ Iso grinned.
‘Iso!’ Ava pulled herself up and glared briefly at Iso. Then she turned to the others. ‘It’s true. I changed it to Ava after Ava Gardner. My momma called me Delilah Lee.’
‘It’s who you are,’ Iso said lovingly. ‘A cross between Delilah the temptress and Annabel Lee.’
‘I’d rather be Margot Fonteyn,’ she said swiftly, in anger, her back like flexible steel, her eyes flaming at Iso. ‘It’s you who want me to be those things, it’s you who think I’m a temptress. Do you think I’m dying too?’
‘You are a temptress, Ava! You flirt all the time, you bat your eyelashes, you really do, and you smile and act coy. You even get your car greased for nothing. The whole gas station stops work when you come in.’
‘Good!’ came the flaming reply. ‘What else are they good for? Men are only vehicles for getting things. If I know how to use them, good for me!’ Her body was taut, her fist clenched, and her face looked suddenly ravaged, the pretty pouty shy look gone. She looked noble and powerful and beaten all at once.
‘Well, you sure know how to use them,’ Iso said grudgingly.
Ava bent her head back down into her carnations. ‘You make it sound as if I was always trying to get something from men. I’m not. That’s not very nice of you. You know it’s men always at me, even when I don’t look at them. You know what it’s like on the subway. Or that guy yesterday when we were walking to the grocery store. Or the guy in the downstairs apartment. I don’t ask them for anything. I don’t need them. I don’t need men, mostly. All I need is music.’
They were all silent, gazing at her.
‘And I’m uncomfortable because everybody’s looking at me,’ she added without looking up.
‘If you could do anything in the world, what would you do?’ Iso said in a new, cheery tone.
‘Dance. In a real ballet. On a real stage.’
Iso turned to Val. ‘What would you do?’
Val laughed. ‘I don’t want much. I just want to change the world.’
Iso turned to Mira. ‘I don’t know.’ She was a little surprised. ‘When I was young, I wanted to …
live
. Whatever I meant by that. Whatever it was, I still haven’t done it.’
‘Chris?’
‘I don’t know either.’ Her young face looked sober and almost sad. ‘I’d like to make everybody happy. If there was a way to do that. I guess I’d like to help people who are starving. All over the world.’
‘That’s a noble thought.’ Iso smiled at her.
‘What about you?’
Iso laughed. ‘I’d go skiing. Really. Whenever I think of intense satisfaction, I think about skiing. I’m not serious, like the rest of you.’
‘But that’s serious,’ Ava said sweetly. ‘It’s as serious as dancing.’
‘No, one’s art and one’s just pleasure.’ She sipped her wine. ‘But it makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing here.’
Val groaned. ‘Do we have to go through this again?’ She turned to Ava. ‘All day long, every day, everybody sits around in Lehman Hall drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and beating our breasts and probing our souls trying to decide what the fuck we’re doing here.’
‘Well, I wonder what you-all are doing here too. It’s such a terrible place,’ Ava shuddered. ‘Nobody talks to anybody else and when they do, it’s always about such strange things.’
‘Why don’t you all leave, then?’ Chris looked at them. ‘Why don’t you,’ she turned to her mother, ‘buy a big farmhouse in the country? I’d love to live in the country with all the cows and pigs and shit.’
‘Literal,’ Iso shot in.
‘And we could all live together. I really liked living in the commune except some of the people were so spacey. But it would be cool with all of you. We could take turns chopping wood and shit.’
‘Chris, did you know that
shit
was not synonymous with
et cetera?’
her mother said.
‘And Ava could dance all day, and Iso could ski all day, and Mom could go out every morning and change the world and Mira could sit around and figure out what she wanted to do and I could ride the horses.’
They all agreed that would be wonderful indeed, and set about planning it: the size of the house, the location, what animals they would have and who would be responsible for which. They got into an argument about pigs, Iso insisting they were clean and Ava insisting she would not have them. They had another argument about household
chores, all of which Ava refused to do. In fact the only thing she was willing to do was feed the chickens.
‘I love chickens,’ she sighed, ‘when they go cluck, cluck!’
The arguments ended in screaming laughter and a few wry comments on the bleak possibilities for human social harmony.
When they had gone and she had finished the dishes, Mira took the bottle of brandy into the living room, turned out the lights, and sat beside the window, breathing in the chill damp October air. Footsteps passed on the sidewalk below, a man’s footsteps. She listened until they vanished.
She felt swirled up in something rich and alive but also strange. She wondered about the relationship between Iso and Ava. It was almost as if Iso were Ava’s mother. And about the list Chris had ticked off: were they the names of Val’s lovers? Did Val bring men right into the house in front of her daughter? Did Val not mind the language Chris used? Of course, she used it herself. But Chris was only sixteen. She thought about Chris’s suggestion they all live together. It was a thought: she was not particularly happy living alone, yet it had never occurred to her there was any alternative but marriage. It could be fun living with a group of friends like these, so full of ideas, so full of life, not like men, always trying to insist on themselves and their dignities. Norm would have been horrified by the evening she had just spent, at the subjects discussed, the language used, at some of their notions – especially Val’s – and at its frivolity, its playful pleasure. He would have stood up looking disapproving, looked at his watch, spoken gravely of tomorrow’s important schedule, and left at eight thirty.
Yet it had been so much fun. She felt rich, full of energy, she wanted to plunge into her work. She felt as if things were continually being freed from her, as if her imprisoning those things had made her tired all these years. But what things they were she did not know. It was just that somehow with these friends you could be
honest:
that was the only word she could come up with.
She thought about Val and Chris. Under their banter or squabbling you could sense the closeness, the trust. It seemed enviable. Her own sons, those babies who had come out of her own body, whom she had loved so much once, she hardly knew now. She remembered how her heart had felt as she gazed at them when they were toddling, when they came home from school able to read the first pages of a book, when they looked at her with a child’s clean gaze and told her a story about
school. She remembered burying her nose in their sheets, smelling their bodies.
And now. She wrote them every week, short polite letters telling them about the weather and what she was reading and where she had gone. She had had one short note from each of them at the beginning of school, nothing since. They were probably not sorry to be away from her. She’d been distant since. It was all so mixed up: her rage at them for being Norm’s children, for resembling him; her guilt toward them for failure – for surely if she had been better, the marriage would not have dissolved: and resentment too. Once Norm had gone, her position was clearer than ever: servant to a house and two children. And did they appreciate? Yes, she had felt all that, and more too, probably. So she had abandoned them not physically but psychically. And now physically too.
Suddenly she was overwhelmed with grief. There was no way to apologize, no way to go back, no way to wipe it all out of their memories. There was no justice, she remembered. But maybe there could still be love.