Queenie (13 page)

And from the girls. Who soon are all weeping to one another. And describing my bassinet. And counting the pearls in the chain.

Nila says, “Queenie, it’s like my pearl rosary! It goes with anything.”

Alba says, “And before you
do
anything—kiss God.”

Unless, after all,
He
wants to kiss Schubert.

Let him. I owe the girls a thank-you weep. Soon it isn’t hard. How touching they are, even Martyne! How can I tell them my whole age group underplays it? And that most of us already
are
thugs.

But Aurine knows me best. I can’t ever cry without putting in a little for myself, Father.

“Queenie, is it that boy?”

I can lie to the public easier than to her. “Aurine—if he were
your
first—
would
you?”

They and us should never communicate. It knocks us off our own beeline. Even if it’s only four older women in a bathroom, looking back.

“Thanks all,” I say quick. “Gotta go.”

But I don’t get off that easy. It’s me made them look.

What a crooked-cozy smile on them!

Martyne says, “Hon—his father that kook billionaire won’t
do
anything?”

Nila says, “Billionaires can be very high-minded. Even stingy. Bert hates to book them. Sweetie, maybe you should start lower down?”

Alba says, “She’s young, she’s ambitious, God will watch over her!”

Aurine has on her cobweb black, which always brings out her happy chestnut coloring. Brightens the world, Oscar says, like a sorrel mare on a dreary Sunday. And takes to autumn’s tarnish better than the brunettes. Her smile is her usual.

“And I’ll watch Him,” says Aurine.

Always believe a believer.

Though as I close the door and lean against it working up my confidence, they’re back to norm. I can hear Nila first moaning the loss of the tackroom, then advising Alba to turn it into billiards, which Bert loves! And I hear Alba’s double reply. “Ducks I can shoot, ducks I can eat, but he kept score in a book they have—we spend the whole afternoon with that
book
.” And then, “You crazy? You think I want Candido should spend his time shooting
pool
?”

Down the hall, there’s a faint little glow from the canary room. In the distance, like in a play of Sam Newber’s, there is the distant throng. While life dawns on Alexandra Dauphine Raphael.

There could be worse sets for it; I’ve been in them. The park mall at midnight. The backs of Connecticut cars.

A pajama party at Deirdre’s, on a slightly crowded terrace with a thirty-two-floor drop. Or a guy’s own apartment, hung with those life-size gorilla masks, on Eighth Street.

When I look back on all my experience that isn’t experience yet—well, I look back. Looking forward, what’s serious? It’s my party, and I’ve already cried at it. And all the doors in Alba’s house lock.

Besides, my own music is serenading me. Those breastplates, they push what you’ve got. Right back at you. The church is right, dressing seductive is a trap. And I’m not struggling. And here is the door.

Does anybody notice rooms much, Father, until something happens there? I don’t. What exactly happens anyway, in a room with mirrors all over it, even on top? The pictures are on painted panels between. Risky ones? Sure, but just grotto effects. No Marquis de Sade, or even Forty-Second Street. Nothing modern, nobody even screwing. Just fleeing nymphs peeking back over their own behinds. Fleeing must be about the right aphro for a banker, Father. Disiac.

I guess the Fishes have some banking blood.

And it’s my favorite room, I can’t deny.

All’s quiet there, except in the birdcages. Under their cloths, I can hear them shuffling, in the not quite dark. I’m nearsighted, but I can see Schubert is still sitting there. In a mirrored room there’s always a little light. And I see a candle’s burning in one of those portable shrines Alba has everywhere. It’s on the coffee table, in front of him.

So he’s sitting there. And at first I think he’s holding another candle between his legs, until my eyes clear. And that’s no candle. It’s Schubert.

He sees me of course. He’s waiting for me. And that’s the mindblowing shock of it.
Eerie.
If he’d just’ve taken all his clothes off maybe, or grabbed me
Wahoo!
any old way. Or torn mine off. I’ve been through all that. But no, he just sits there kind of drawing-room style, with his trousers open, looking down at what he’s got there, kind of doting, like at a rare plant. He knows I’m there of course. Look what I’ve got here, his smile says. For you.

They say an old-fashioned girl can always find an old-fashioned boy. Or is this God’s will on me, complete with wall-to-wall mirror repeats for my wishing to see the male organ plain?

Then it dawns on me, like it does on any girl. I’m being exposed to, of course. I’d’ve known at once, Father, if it was some poor old tramp behind a bush in the park. But Schubert is rich—at least he always has cab fare. And this is Sixty-Ninth Street. East.

A week later, I’m telling Nosey about it. He’s come to declare his love for me, and he’s just so cute. And so scholarly. And so sore at me for bringing Schubert. But he says loyally, “Any other girl it would have turned lesbian.”

I say “Nosey, if I didn’t know you since you slid down Nila’s drainpipe, I’d call that a very lesbian remark.”

He laughs haughtily; his laugh’s getting very mature, and of course his nose has always been. He still has to take care his feet don’t dangle, but the buttons saying “Suck!” and “Marcel Proust is a Yenta” are gone from his T-shirt. And it doesn’t smell.

“No,” I say, “we have to analyze this.” I can’t wait to. “Exposing himself was Schubert’s male
pride
. Plus all those films we were seeing; on a vegetable background that couldn’t’ve been easy. And on his first real meal.”

“And with yo-ou,” Nosey muggs it quick so I’ll be sure he means it nasty. “Poking yourself out at that pervert.” He squints at me like an uncle.

“He wasn’t perverted,” I say. “Not a bit more than any of you, if you could manage it. He was merely being psychological. In his way, Nosey. In his way. If he’d been a great reader like you—Freud, Krafft-Ebing,
Playboy
—it might’ve been different.”

Nosey says low, “Queenie…I’m not reading around much, just now.”

I say kindly, “I suppose getting it up is always a source of worry to all of you. You wait and see. Oscar says, ‘In youth an inconvenience, as age comes on, a pride.’ Nosey dear, what you men do or don’t do can’t be hidden, like with us. So you have to make a thing of it.”

Nosey says, “Blow that ‘Oscar says’ bit. You think maybe college will cure it?”

“Oh nuts, it’s just a fucking father-image.”

With these ten-year-olds, you have to lay it on the line, Father. One nice word about you older people and they’re screaming “Fink” at you.

“It’s true though,” I say, “I can’t see myself ever saying, ‘Schubert says.’ Anyway, it wasn’t really me that poor boy was—
addressing
himself to. Not at all.”

“You’re killing my love,” Nosey says. “Just when I was planning a big surprise.”

We’re up in my room; maybe even at age ten that isn’t wise. “Don’t you get perverted with me,” I say, “I diapered you, once. You want to hear, or don’t you? Okay. And keep your hands at your sides.”

He folds his arms and stares out the window. “Ad
dress
ing. Bullshit, in the key of C. Okay, what was he?”

“My penis envy, that’s what. What he
thinks
it is.”

Nosey says, “Well, isn’t it?”

“Now lis-sen here,” I say. “Just let me tell you about that envy.”

I have to tell someone, I have to start somewhere, it’s still like a vision opening out.

“Nosey, it’s you men who envy penises. The one you never can be sure of is there. Till it’s there. Then of course you admire it. And envy your
self
. Because between times, all a man can do is admire his penis-image. And pretend we do. Penis envy is really
male.
”

Nosey has his head in his hands, he has a cowlick. I suppose it’s some dose for a ten-year-old; I suppose I could be giving him a trauma, but what can
I
do?

I feel awful for him of course. But great. “Honest, Nosey,” I say, “Our feeling is—we just want to borrow it. For where it
belongs.
But I just can’t locate any feeling in me that wants the silly thing around full-time.”

By now I know I’m being a prick, Father, but who can blame me?

“For a personal possession?” I say. “To play with and treasure in private? Nosey darling, what’s a treasure which is neither a secret, nor sure to be there when you want it—or out in plain sight when you don’t? And what a hell of a nuisance, if I just wanted to take a walk!”

Nosey says through his fingers, “I walked up here.”

“Well——” I say, “all I know is, the minute a man is sure of his treasure he has to hide it in mine.”

And he lifts his head. That’s what he came to tell me, he squawks. “I can get it up! Queenie! I’m not precocious anymore!”

Here’s where Father begins to say maybe my life and times are gone beyond what a local man can handle. Especially for a girl who ever since her first communion thinks she can bang any time on his study door. And who thinks she can have all the joys of confession without the pain of it. Confidentially, he’s mad at me because I won’t go in the box. I say, the day they let women in on the other side of it, I will. Of course I never talked to a monsignor before.

Monsignor, where would you go, if a boy got you in a grotto where he’s sitting with a votive light all aglow on his male parts?

Because from here on in, there are still a lot of religious references…

First off, only two days before, that boy and I are at the Frick, in front of “The Education of the Virgin,” my favorite picture there. Where the little girl is holding the candle to the book, and the nurse is looking down at her like
she
already knows all the recipes? It’s a trick one, but it’s really together. The Virgin is like any real girl. Young for what’s coming to her. And the light shines right through her finger making it flesh for you. And, Monsignor, do you suppose that reminded him?

The second reference, I didn’t tell Father. Some things are more for the laity. But the hierarchy like you probably hears things like this all the time. It’s one of the limericks this other boy Giorgio and I made up,
Frigid Brigid.

No work of art but it says something to a young girl….
Fri
gid
Bri
gid rem
ains quite ri
gid, Even under
her
own
di
git,
Breathes
there the
Man
or
maybe
the
Midget
…Whocanmakefrigidbridget
fidget
?

There. And if you ever think of another rhyme for
igid
, let me know.

Now—go back to Schubert. Because when I see him sitting there like that, that’s what starts going through my head like a freight car. Idgety idgety. And right behind it, on and off like a three-way flash bulb, the Frick. Plus a rhyme for that.

Schubert’s not doing anything though; he’s not really a pervert. I can’t even tell whether he’s looking at me. Those eyeballs are no cinch to pinpoint. What they’re saying to me doesn’t need it. “Baby,” I’m saying to myself, “will this be your trauma from now on!”

Well, it will in a way. Only, on comes another complication.

I hear birds. And that’s the eeriest. Because they seem to be behind me—you know that little shuffling sound they make? Yet I can see quite well, they’re all out front. Twenty or so birdcages, and not a tweet out of them. Then I freeze rigid, all right. Because that bird shuffle is strictly to my rear. Maybe like Saint Joan I’m hearing voices, and who could blame her in my case? Or maybe it’s me kicking myself. But then, standing very still, in a pause Schu maybe takes for pose, it gets to me.

These birds wear perfume.

Bye-bye nothing! Behind me, I’ve got my whole background.

I even fancy I can hear Gran. “Dark as the inside of a cow here,” she’d say, “Queenie, watch that lollytrap between your legs; this time o’ night the mice come in.”

I can’t hear Oscar. He’s only a father-image. And he’s said enough.

Even my own little music man has quit. Mum’s the word, he says. Or Mom.

Because—by the twenty-dollar-per-ounce smell behind me I’ve got four live ones standing ready to do right by me: a muguet ingenu, a southern gardenia, a triple essence of tuberoses from the pharmacia attached to the sacristy of Santa Maria Novella in Firenze—and a Joy.

When I get to this part of my life is when Father and I disband for the moment, on a technological argument. Over whether the girls should have gone on standing there.

He says, “For every poor soul who shows himself, there’s ten women willing to watch.”

I say, “That’s unfair, Father, there’s that many more of us. And we only want to compare.”

He says the pure in heart will take what comes to them.

I say, what would I be doing in his study if I was pure in heart? I only came to tell him why there’s no envy in it.

“If you were to show me your
self
, Father, and I looked—who would be wrong?”

It’s then he stands up quick from his chair and gives me a blessing for free, saying he’ll take the penances. Saying the Dominicans have done all they can for me. It’s time for the Jesuits.

So I think, maybe just as well. Father is very pure in heart.

…And I don’t mind moving up. Though I see even a monsignor doesn’t shut the study door. The view from up here is very impressive though. All those clouds…

So is Schubert impressive by then. He doesn’t seem to see or hear or smell. He’s in the highest state of self-preservation I guess a man can be in, except one. Which he’s clearly counting on me to join in on. And I’m giving it the more serious thought.

Not with the girls there, of course. But one waggle of my hand behind me, signaling, “Bug off!” and they would’ve, I know them. They’re only waiting for me to make my value judgment. And I’m thinking, at last Queenie, going on seventeen you poor doubtful titivated creature—you’ve got it made.