The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (40 page)

"Thank God."

"Now don't get too excited, Mabel. I'm telling you right now it's
not much. In fact, I almost turned it down, thinking you might be too
proud to take it. But it's a start, Mabel. But it's a matter of you not having done appearances before and having to build up a track record. You
understand?"

"Course, Parly. You don't go from groomer to trainer overnight.
I understand that. Whatever it is I'll take it."

"You're sure?"

"Surer than sure."

"Then be at the Exhibition Center by nine."

"I need to bring anything?"

"You still got your old costume? The one people think of when
they think Mabel Stark?"

"It's upstairs in mothballs."

"Wear it."

That night I didn't even need one of Dr. Brisbane's pills for I felt better than I had in a long long while. Went to bed at my normal time, just
past 7:30, and as I drifted off I got to thinking maybe it really was
ridiculous a woman my age training tigers, and that my whole dust-up
with Ida was going to turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Personal
appearances. I said it over and over again, as though rehearsing what I'd
say when people asked me what I'd been doing since JungleLand.

When I awoke the sky was just starting to lighten in the east; I had
time so I took my coffee into the yard and watched the sun turn from a
thin band of violet to a deep red band to a low-hanging orange drape.
I had my breakfast and headed up to the attic and dug out one of the
old white leather costumes Rajah had liked to rub himself against so
much. Course, I was nervous it wouldn't fit: as I've told you I'm itty-
bitty, and given the chance weight just falls off me. In fact, my weight
is the reason I drink at least two cans of beer a day; Dr. Brisbane once
told me I needed it to keep my girth up, though at the time I wondered
if he was just using my slightness as an excuse to tell an old woman
what she wanted to hear.

In other words, I was worried the damn thing would droop in all
the places it used to grip and that I'd look like a fool as a consequence.
I went to the bedroom and drew the curtains, looking at myself in the
mirror being something I've always preferred to do when the lights are
low. Then I took off my clothes, which at my age doesn't get done
without a certain amount of creaking and cracking and grunting little
expressions of breath. Pulled on the damn suit. Looked at myself in the
mirror. Goddammit if I didn't look like a snake getting ready to shed.

The overall looseness of the thing inspired a sudden withering of
my enthusiasm, for the one thing I wasn't prepared to do was have others laugh at me. I was about to phone Parly and tell him the whole thing was off when a plan occurred to me. I peeled off the suit, enduring
more creaking and cracking and grunting, and hunted through my
chest of drawers for some old leotards and a sweater. Pulled those on
and pulled the suit on top, and though I looked a little like a stuffed
chicken I didn't look as ridiculous as I had earlier, so I figured, ah what
the hell, if they can't handle a granny-aged woman dressed in leather,
they don't have to look.

Was then a funny thing happened. I walked away from the mirror
to get my keys from the dresser. With keys in hand I turned, and saw my
reflection from across the room. Remember: the lights were low and my
eyesight's just starting to weaken and I was a fair distance from the face
of the mirror, so that when I looked at myself my reflection was dim and
slightly fuzzy. Suddenly it hit me: how I must've looked when I first
wore my body suit. Saw it clear as day. Also saw it for the first time, for
whenever I'd looked at myself in my prime it was with a self-judgment
that made me think I was frumpy and plain and just a poor old thing
from Kentucky. Well, I stood there for minutes and minutes, couldn't
take my eyes off it, the thing in the mirror like an apparition from another time. Truth to tell, it looked like a ghost picking that moment to
answer a question that'd always plagued and perplexed me.

Well Jesus Christ no wonder so many men had wanted to fuck me.

With this thought reverberating I jumped in my big old Buick. I got to
the Exhibition Center early, really early, in fact, just me and my big old
car sitting in the parking lot, though after a bit vans started pulling up
to the loading docks, and men in overalls began hauling out stuff in
brown cardboard boxes. It was just before seven in the morning. The
only other vehicle parked in the lot was a truck supporting a Pixel sign
flashing the words "Conejo Valley Home Show" followed by a platoon
of marching exclamation marks.

The parking lot got busier and busier and I just sat there watching the activity, butterflies in my stomach. Finally, around eight o'clock, Parly showed up and parked next to me. He got out and I got
out and good-mornings were exchanged. Parly had some kind of pass
card that admitted us to the building, where workingmen were running
wires and tacking down indoor-outdoor carpeting and hammering
together displays. We set to walking through the hall, past booths
advertising vacuum cleaners, blenders, hair dryers, floor polishers, car
waxers, grout eliminators, pot holders you could wash under a tap,
stereophonic sound systems, electric salad mixers, battery-powered
wood polishers, even a whirring shoe-brush contraption that charged
up when held under incandescent light. Seemed the more I looked
around, the more I spotted devices existing for the simple reason people have to spend their money once it finds a way into their pockets.

"Here we are," Parly said.

We were in front of a table with some sort of contraption sitting
on a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. Behind was a gallery of photos stuck to what looked like a bordello screen: a bunch of me from my
Ringling heydey, plus others from the Barnes show, John Robinson, the
Mills Circus of London. They were all arranged around a sign that
could've come from the mind of old P.T. himself: "The Queen of the
Tigers Meets the Queen of Food Processors-Mabel Stark Presents
the All-New Stainless-Steel Slicing and Dicing Ronco Miracle Kitchen
Whirrrr."

I stood eyeballing the Kitchen Whirrrr, a big plastic doohickey
with a blade somewhere inside, while Parly looked around for a hint of
assistance. It finally came in the form of a woman wearing a green
pantsuit and cat's-eye glasses, who rushed up and breathlessly shook
our hands. Hers was waxy with cream.

"Oh hello," she said. "I'm so glad you're here. I'm Theresa
Gains, Ronco product representative."

"I'm Parly Baer," Parly said, "and this is the Mabel Stark."

This triggered another round of handshakes, though when Miss
Gains realized she'd already waggled our hands, she flushed and got even shorter of breath. By this time someone had come by and
dropped a white plastic basin, the kind busboys use in diners, beside
the Kitchen Whirrrr. It was heaped with tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce,
turnips, carrots, onions, rutabagas-pretty much every vegetable you
could think of.

"These are for demonstration purposes," Miss Gains said. "My
advice is you familiarize yourself with the device and put some sliced
vegetables on one of the presentation trays you'll find beneath the
table. I'll check on you a little later."

She turned and was gone.

Party and I looked at each other, amused, until Parly said, "Well,
you heard the lady, Mabel. Let's do some slicing and dicing."

We inspected the machine. On the front was a button labelled
On-Off. Beside this button was a big dial, with settings marked: Thick,
Medium-Thick, Medium, Medium-Thin, Thin, Wafer, Paper. It was set
on Thick, Party saying Thick was fine by him so long as I didn't have
any objections. I didn't, so he reached out and turned the thing on.

Now it'd be an exaggeration to say the thing started chugging,
though I'll use the word anyway, for the Kitchen Whirrrr hummed so
much it shook itself slowly around the table. Parly grabbed it and held
it in one spot, something made his cheeks waggle. "Feed it a tomato
Mabel and we'll see what happens."

I picked up a fat one and dropped it into a clear plastic chute that
stuck out the top like a chimney. A second later came a sucking noise,
like a drain unclogging itself, and a second after that three inch-thick
tomato slices plopped onto the table in a pool of pulp and seed.

"Well anyway it works," Parly said. I put the three slices on a tray
and wiped away the tomato guts and suggested we try one of the other
settings. Party put it to Thin. This time, the machine started to whine,
and it tried to skip across the tabletop as opposed to slowly lumber.
Party held it with two hands, and I dropped in an onion. Instead of a
pained sucking noise we heard what sounded like an axe swiping air, the onion slices jetting from the Kitchen Whirrrr in an arc that could only
be described as rainbow-like.

"I'll be goddammed," Parly said. "Best keep it on a lower setting,
Mabel. We're liable to hurt someone with this thing."

I agreed this was a sensible idea, and with Parley's help I sliced
up a bunch of vegetables, all of them done Thick or Medium-Thick,
and then arranged them accordian-style on the tray in a way I thought
looked nice. Around this time the home show opened, and peoplewell, women and their children-started to wander in and look at the
tables. Parly checked his watch, and we both decided it was time for
him to go, my never having been a woman who needed a lot of handholding.

Standing there and smiling was slow work, slower in fact than I
would've thought possible. Seems the Kitchen Whirrrr wasn't the only
slicer and dicer at the Conejo Valley Home Show, and so it wasn't
drawing people the way everyone had hoped. (Leastways this is what
Theresa Gains told me on her next visit.) Still, every once in a while
someone would come up and ask for a demonstration, at which point
I'd thick-slice some cucumber or maybe some honeydew melon. If the
woman was holding a toddler, I'd hand a slice to the child and say,
"Here you go, sweetheart." Usually this would be followed by a question about whether I'd really been a circus star, to which I'd answer,
"Sure as I'm standing here, I was on the Ringling show back when that
meant something." Hearing this, they'd nod and then ask how much a
Kitchen Whirrrr costs despite there being no fewer than three signs on
the table saying "Yours for the Incredible Low Introductory Price of
$19.99, All Blades Included."

It didn't take long to figure out the women at home shows come
because there's free child care at the back of the building along with
food samples you don't have to pay for. In other words, none of them
were old enough to know who Mabel Stark was and if they knew the
name Ringling at all it was only in a vague unappreciative sort of way-the same way I knew the names Copernicus or Ponce de Leon,
say. Hours went by. Hours made all the more agonizing because Alan
Hale himself, the Skipper from Gilligan, was two aisles over hawking
some sort of carpeting that didn't stain even if you poured paint over
it, which from what I heard was exactly what he was doing. At first I
wanted to go over and meet the man and tell him how much I liked his
work. I also wanted to ask him how the Skipper had felt being the only
man on the island without a love interest, Gilligan having Mary-Anne
and the Professor having Ginger and Mr. Howell having that fussy old
prune Mrs. Howell.

I never did go over, however, for after a bit I heard he was drawing quite a crowd, bigger even than Eve Plumb, the middle daughter
from The Brady Bunch, who was flogging a hair flattener you plugged
into a car lighter. I was hit by a wave of jealousy, and my desire to shake
Mr. Hale's beefy hand got put on the back burner.

Plus I was hot. Remember: I was wearing leather head to toe
along with a leotard and sweater underneath. This was too much, seeing as I was standing under lights designed to make the Kitchen
Whirrrr gleam. Course, by ten in the morning, the Kitchen Whirrrr
was starting to crust with tomato pulp and cucumber innards, and my
hands were cramped from wiping.

I felt myself start to turn resentful, and unfortunately I've always
been the sort of woman who has trouble fending off the arrival of a bad
mood, no matter how much warning it gives me. Sometimes I think I
even go out of my way to welcome it. I was getting hot and grumpy, and
as the morning wore on I wanted nothing more than a can of Hamm's
and a Snack Bar Annie leaned-on burger. As lunchtime approached the
crowds thickened, all those bodies pushing against one another making
the Conejo Valley Exhibition Center an even warmer place to be. I started
smelling whiffs of game escaping from the tight collar of my uniform.
By one o'clock my stomach was growling something fierce, and I started
getting mad at Parly and Theresa Gains and the makers of the Miracle Kitchen Whirrrr for allowing an old woman to get so hot and foot-sore
and hungry. It was practically inhuman, the way I was being treated.

Then. Around a half-past one, and like I say I was hot and bored
and hungry and starting to miss my life with tigers. A woman came by
who'd obviously had a morning as bad as I'd been having. She was
baggy-eyed and pale, her hands full of what was no doubt causing her
exhaustion: an evil little monster of a boy, maybe two and a half years
old, who kept slapping the side of her face and screeching. His face was
messy with what looked like chocolate pudding, and because his nose
was running pretty much non-stop there was a stream flowing through
the pudding, over his chin and down his neck into his baby suit.
Apparently he liked the taste of it, for in between hollers he kept sticking out his tongue and taking a big swipe of snot pudding and then
returning his tongue to his mouth. In other words, he was a child put
on the face of the earth to make bystanders tut-tut and comment on
what a handful boys can be.

Meanwhile, he kept slapping his mother on the side of the head
and shrieking. Apparently he'd been doing it so long she'd given up
trying to stop him, for she just stood there, having her head pounded
and her ear screeched into, the whole time trying to get the hair out of
her face by jutting out her bottom lip and blowing. I felt sorrier than
sorry for her. In fact, I wanted to take the brat off her hands and teach
him some manners while she went and had herself a coffee and dealt
with her hair problem. Was a sympathy that disappeared the moment
she opened her mouth.