The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (14 page)

After I'd been Mrs. James Williams for almost three weeks I
decided I was going to make myself a sweater. Winter was coming, and
I'd wear it in the evenings, when even a bayou can get chilly. James
picked up the wool I needed from town, and I drew myself a pattern on
crepe paper. Was nice-looking, I thought, with piping and a high collar
to come later. The buttons would be silver.

The next day I took my knitting stuff on one of my walks and
started the sweater on the soft bank of a levee. I could feel the ground
squish under the blanket when I sat. I did that for the next few days, until
I got so intent on finishing I stopped bothering with the walks and started knitting on the front porch swing seat, letting Melba and Willa stay
out of my way for a change. It took me a week to finish. I worked like
my time on this planet was coming to an end. When the last pearl two
was done I held the thing up to the light. Looked beautiful, it did, though
at the same time something was wrong with it. Something peculiar.

Then I realized the damn thing was too small.

And not just small, but small, nowhere near big enough for an
adult woman, even one of my slight proportions. I was astonished, for
I'd followed the pattern to a T, and it'd come out looking exactly like it
should except shrunk down. An eight-year-old would've had to exhale
to get the buttons done up. I considered this fact for more than a
minute, thinking maybe I really was crazy, when I recalled something
Dr. Levine told me during one of our bathtub sessions. Seems we don't
have one mind but two, one we know about and one we don't, and the
one we know about isn't necessarily the one in charge. I kept holding up
the sweater and scrutinizing it and thinking, What could this possibly
mean? when suddenly my breathing went shallow and rabbit paced. Seems
I didn't want to be knitting for an adult at all. I wanted to be knitting for a baby. I guess my two minds'd been duking it out the whole time and the
sweater had landed somewhere in the middle.

I just sat there, looking at the garment, wheels turning, when finally
a plan of action entered through my ears and pretty much hollered.

All right mister, said the voice. Enough pussyfootin' around.

That night I told Willa and Melba to vamoose to the servants' quarters
once James had come home. I didn't even try to be polite; the other
conclusion I'd come to was Melba and Willa would be a whole lot happier if I was rude to them, they being the type of people to get chagrined when their expectations are violated. I ordered them to put out
the silver and to get two bottles of French wine from the cellar and to
make sure there were flowers in the centre of the table. With a game
hen roasting away in the oven, I shooed them away till morning.

Served dinner myself that night. I wore something loose so that
every time I bent over to offer James more bird or cranberries or
collard greens he could take a peek at the shapes that'd made me
famous all over west and northwest America. My eyes looked dreamy
and my lips moist throughout. Through opportunistic pouring, I made
sure he drank more than his fair share of wine, thinking maybe reserve
was the problem.

Afterwards I told him I had something I needed to show him
upstairs. He took the bait and we retired to the master's chamber.
There, I put my arms around him and told him I'd been lonely. He
apologized, his voice even deeper and quieter than ordinary, saying
there'd been craziness in the cotton markets lately and he'd been overworked and distracted by all the other things on his mind. This put me
at ease, for I'd started to worry he was bent in some serious manner. We
kissed. Kissed a second time. Everything seemed to going according to
plan when he pulled away. He was wearing that expression men get
under such circumstances, by which I mean half master of the universe
and half needy child.

Was then he said, "Dance for me, Miss Egypt."

At first I recoiled, for I'd figured one of the upsides of marrying
James was my days as a dancing girl were through. A second later I
talked myself into it, thinking we all have our secret likes and dislikes,
and there're sure a lot of things worse in this world than watching
a young woman wriggle. Meanwhile James'd got up and was putting a
cylinder on the player. He cranked the handle. Naturally it was frigolet
music.

To make a long story short I figured if I was going to do this I
was going to do this right, so I started dancing. And not just dancing
but dancing, every limb in a slow tiger flow, eyes closed, whole body
floating to music, soft sounds of delight coming from my painted lips,
and to make sure my husband got more than any rube in a Superba tent
I let the tension mount and then I ... well ... what it was was I started
touching myself through my clothes, rubbing myself with the heel of
my right hand, hard enough the veins on the back of my hand popped
up, readying parts that ordinarily stay hid, and enjoying myself, too, for
my dress felt soft and a breeze was blowing in the bedroom window and
then, still dancing, I filled both hands with hair and slowly pushed
blond curls off my forehead while at the same time running a tongue
over pouty crimson lips.

Then I heard a groan. Well not a groan exactly. Midway between
a groan and a grunt, like the sound a walrus makes when ready for dinner. I opened my eyes. My second husband, James Williams III,
Investment Banker, Far East Texas, had himself out and was doing the
job meant for me.

Was doing it frantically, if you must know.

I had to fight the inclination to leave the very next day, and would've
gone ahead and done it had it not been a time when the mark of a good
woman was the ability to endure. Truth was, I'd taken vows, and I'm a
person who takes obligation seriously. I stuck it out for another two or three months, though during that time I promised myself I sure wasn't
going to embarrass myself with another attempt at seducing my very
own husband. If he wanted some loving, fine. This time he was the one
who was going to have to come ask for it.

What followed was basically a repeat of the first month. James
was in town most of the time, though when he was at home he was quiet
and generally in his own little world. Melba and Willa padded around
like they owned the place, and I worked hard at avoiding them, figuring at the very least keeping out of their line of sight gave me something to do. No one talked unless they had to, and even then it was in
hushed tones. It wasn't long before I noticed how the house allowed for
this crazy system: because it was so big, everyone could live and work
and go about their business without ever crossing paths. Its very
grandeur seemed to enforce a sort of institutional glumness and pretty
soon I started to hate it, too.

One night, sitting in my chambers, twiddling my thumbs, thinking did I or did I not want to read a book, I finally decided I had to have
some kind of talk with James. I descended the curving marble staircase
and stood in the middle of the foyer. Though James was home, I didn't know exactly where he was and was readying to call his name. I'd
taken a deep breath and was about to call out when I stopped myself.
There was something about that house-its size, its stillness, its stuffy
authority-that communicated what I was thinking of doing was a
breach of decorum and therefore out of the question.

Instead, I went looking. I checked the parlour, the dining room,
the kitchen (where sometimes James would have a slice of rhubarb pie
while standing at the chef's table). They were all empty. I went back
upstairs, found all the rooms darkened and then came back downstairs,
heading through rooms I'd already checked till I reached the back of
the house where the billiard room was. It, too, was empty, though I did
notice the door on the far side of the room was open. This connected
with a hallway running along the rear of the house toward the solari ums. As it was almost twenty feet wide and therefore as much a room
as it was a corridor, James had lined the hallway with his paintings. For
this reason, he called this part of the house the "gallery"; everytime he
said it he smiled, thinking how clever it was the word described both the
room's functions in one fell swoop.

I moved toward the open door. James couldn't hear me, for the
billiard room was covered with Persian carpets, so he didn't look over.
He was contemplating a painting of a ballet dancer he'd bought in
France. Even if he had heard me, I don't think he would've looked
away, as his eyes were so busy following the soft, girlish lines of the
dancer's body. All admiration, he was, like a dowager who'd finally
found a vase that suited her sideboard. It was the same expression he
always got when admiring the contours of his motor car, and for a second I felt proud that if nothing else, at least my husband was a man of
discerning taste. The second after that, however, my heart skipped a
beat, and I suddenly felt a little ill. The expression he had on his facelips pursed, forehead creased, any pleasure residing in the eyes and the
eyes only-was the exact same one he used to wear whenever he
watched me dance in a Superba.

Next afternoon, I walked into town with nothing more than
clothes, knick-knacks and some cherry pie dollars I'd saved. James had
offered to give me some money, but I'd turned it down, saying I didn't
need his help or anybody else's, my being too young to understand the
difference between what was pride and what was just plain stupid. I
caught the dusk train west.

True to Con T. Kennedy's word, he'd soured my name everywhere. Didn't even matter what that name was. Haynie, Aganosticus,
Williams, I even tried Levine a few times before finally settling on a
handle that just popped out of my mouth in front of a carnival owner
in a place called Yuba City, California. I just liked the way it sounded,
I suppose, and I've kept it till this day.

It didn't help. It's not uncommon for carnies to have five, six, even seven aliases, depending on how many states they're wanted in. In
that world, you tended to go by faces and physical descriptions and reputations more than names, and everyone I talked to looked at me like
they knew me. Finally I resorted to a job with the Cosmopolitan
Amusement Company, that "Mastadonic Majestic Mighty Master of the
Carnival World," on a flat-out cooch: after the entertainment and the
grift we girls would come out and stomach dance and maybe do a balloon dance for good measure. After ten minutes or so, the educator
would run on stage and stop the show so he could do what they called
"the ding pitch," which meant any rube with another ten cents to spare
got to see us take our tops off. Those who didn't got shown the door.
Because the educator was the sort of man who could promise heaven as
though it was his to deliver, most of the rubes would ante up no matter
how much they'd already lost at three-card monte, and a minute later
I'd be standing there, the blonde on the far right, half naked and newly
named Mabel Stark, thinking how I'd once imagined a future for myself
that was much, much different. It wasn't even the humiliation that got
me down. Was the sheer lack of imagination involved. Believe me, it's
pretty hard telling yourself you're doing something requiring talent
when the whole point of your job is to stand in one place with your
chest exposed. It hardly even mattered what expression you had on
your face, for the rubes weren't looking there. The other four Harem
Girls of Siam mostly opted for bored.

This went on for about a month. I got so low I thought about having myself a little neurasthenic holiday and probably would've if I
hadn't been living so hand to mouth. Truth was, I didn't have time for
a nervous breakdown, which in some ways was a blessing and in some
ways a curse. In early February of 1912 the Cosmopolitan pulled into
Venice, California, which back then was still considered a railroad town
and not a part of Los Angeles. On our third date, I was standing up
there, ding pitch over, reaching behind to unhitch my halter, when I got
a cramp in my right thumb. This slowed me down considerably, and by the time the other four Harem Girls were topless I was still wrestling
with my snap. Was then I heard laughter from the middle of the tent,
the sort of laughter that doesn't so much rise as spurt to life, as though
the person laughing had been holding it in for longer than was comfortable. The Harem Girls of Siam all looked at one another, puzzled,
before peering into the glare. Owing to the magnified candle shining in
our faces, it was difficult to see who was doing the laughing, or just
what it was was so funny. Course, I was the one who figured it out first,
ahead of the other girls and the educator and the frigolet player and the
grifters who'd stayed for the show and even the rubes themselves, for
when he finally quit guffawing Al G. called out, "For Pete's sake,
Kentucky! How long is this likely to take?"