Annie Oakley's Girl Read online

  After dinner, some of the guests drift into the billiards room and smoke cigars, and some of them drift into the parlor and fan themselves and eat after-dinner mints. Others dance in a tremendous ballroom where a small orchestra plays waltzes. I wander from room to room, lost, looking for you. When I open the door to the study, the lights are out and someone says “Sshhh” and hastily closes the door behind me. It smells like smoke and whiskey and sweat. On a screen in the back of the room, a movie is flickering. It’s a sex movie and I’m embarrassed to see it. I turn to leave but someone’s crowded in behind me and when I look for the door I can’t see it. I turn back to the screen and, in horror, I realize that I recognize one of the figures in the movie: it’s you. Then I recognize the other one: it’s me. I’m about to shout a protest or lunge for the light switch and put a stop to this when I hear your voice and you’re saying, “Here comes the best part,” in the same tone as if you were describing “Old Faithful” from a Yellowstone National Park vacation home-movie. Then, you slow the camera down and I hear your voice soothingly narrating our love-making with move-by-move coverage. I watch and listen, rapt, as you describe us. Then, when I feel the movie is about to near its end, I close my eyes and put my hands over my ears in shame.

  The next thing I know, all the lights are on and everyone is clapping. The smoke is heavy in the room and I hear folding metal chairs scrape against the floor as people stand up to leave. Men roll their sleeves back down and slip back into their jackets. The few women who are there dab their necks and foreheads with handkerchiefs. I try to leave quietly, but someone catches me, shakes both my hands and says, “You were marvellous, just really marvellous.” A young woman with tears on her cheeks comes up to me, stares deeply into my eyes, hugs me close, whisper s, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.” A middle-aged man with a five o’clock shadow grabs my hand and murmurs “All I can say is thank you. You have no idea how much this has meant to me.” Then he shakes his head as if he can’t find any words.

  When I look over at you, you’re smiling broadly, shaking hands with someone. Then you lean over the projector and patiently show him how it works.

  Our honeymoon house is full of people and they just keep staying on and on and on.

  In the evenings women wear satin and chiffon and men wear dark tuxedos. In the afternoons everyone wears tennis clothes and everyone looks sleek and tanned and has beautiful muscle tone. Some people play tennis and some people play polo in the field that’s materialized on the east lawn, or go yachting in the lake that appeared here mysteriously. Some people just play cards and sit on the veranda drinking cool, iced drinks.

  I wander from game to game, looking for you. Everyone always tells me I’ve only missed you by an instant.

  Soon I take to walking around with my clothes only half-buttoned, half-zipped, because I’m so eager to be with you when I find you, and you’re so hard to find and you move so fast that I want to be sure that, when I do find you, I won’t have to spend time unbuttoning and unzipping. Eventually, I take to walking around completely naked.

  Every night after dinner there is dancing and drinking and cigar smoking and the movie. Every night it’s the same film which you call The Joy of Marriage. The first part of the film is of our wedding and reception. This part shows the countless happy party-goers you invited to “share in the joy of the day of our communion,” as you put it then. I guess that the popularity of this part of the film is due to the fact that some members of the audience had been our wedding and reception guests and enjoy seeing themselves on film. We had packed out the cathedral, and then we’d packed out half the Fairmont. You and I had had an understanding about the social necessity of doing all this partying: we reasoned it wouldn’t be too much because we’d follow it with our secluded honeymoon. One scene in this part shows a shot of the bridesmaids standing right outside the cathedral door. I’m the diminutive figure in white, and though the print is perfectly clear, it’s hard to tell exactly who the dark squatting figure that catches the brilliant blue garter I throw is. Oddly enough, you too are in this sequence, crouching in front of us, then squatting and clicking the same still camera you’re carrying as you scurry about for the best angle. I don’t know who got this footage. But in the last few frames before the scene change, you throw your arm around me and point me to the camera, press your cheek to mine and smile broadly. You wave to the movie camera with your free arm, which holds your still camera. Then the movie camera zooms in to our two faces. This shot fades into the second part of the film, the part that gives the film its title, The Joy of Marriage; our two bodies familiar and comfortable and kind with each other.

  Gradually, word gets around, and the movie becomes so popular that it draws the crowds from the other evening activities. Gradually, too, the whole crowd increases and we have to move the film-showing into the theater that’s appeared in the basement.

  All the people who see the film come up to me and tell me how sweet I am in it. They also tell me they’ve never seen a pair like us and tell me we remind them of Valentino and what’s-her-name, Bogart and what’s-her-name, Gable and what’s-her-name. I think they mean me to take these things as compliments.

  Eventually, everyone is in the theater from morning to night and you run the film continuously. You run the film for weeks, months. Sometimes I try to make my way over to you and talk to you, but, with all the expansion, you’ve had a projection booth built and you’re sealed inside. Once I get close enough to tap on the glass, but either you can’t see me in the dark or you just choose not to respond to me.

  After a while, you sense some restlessness on the part of the audience because, arty, strange, and beautiful as the film is, even the most interested audience tires of infinite reruns. So you decide to do a retrospective show and run all the films you’ve ever made that led up to this film.

  This night you show films of you and all of your exlovers. You preface the progam with an introductory statement, the theme of which is an homage to me, a grand testament to our love. Your tone is that of an evangelical sinner saved by grace, and your showing of these films is your confession. There are countless films, and we watch them for hours and hours and hours, starting with your first lover when you were fifteen. The print is Technicolor and everything looks fake. Then you show a succession of lovers before me, black and white, color, a couple of slide shows, a multimedia presentation. Then you end with the three other lovers you had during our engagement. These last three films are very painful to me. Then these three are followed by footage of you speaking into the camera, confessing the error of your ways and sharing with your audience how much you’ve learned, especially about faith and patience, through me. You look so innocent and sincere, and this makes me realize that this is one of the reasons I love you. The soft lighting behind you makes you look like a novitiate. I hear several soft sighs in the audience.

  But much as I am drawn into these films, I keep glancing back up at the projection booth to see if I can see more than the orange nub of your cigarette burning above the machines.

  After the confession footage, you again show The Joy of Marriage. The applause following this is deafening. Clearly, everyone is moved by the honesty with which you present your difficult struggle. People admire you and identify with you. I think I could even say they love you. Yes, they do, they idolize you.

  After this showing several people come up and draw me aside by my naked arm and tell me first how moved they were by the presentation. How proud I must be to know you, to be part of you, they say. They ask me to tell them what you’re “really like,” no really, what you’re really like. Their eyes are greedy and full of desire. Naked as I am, I find myself sweaty and hot and shaky, not the way I used to feel when I used to rip my clothes off in desire for you during our engagement, but in a different way. People offer me money to tell them about you and I tell them I can’t. They sigh and say how good and noble it is of you to tell me to keep our special, private selves to us alone. They tell me
I’m sweet for not selling out and telling the delicious secrets of our honeymoon.

  And this is our honeymoon, isn’t it? A bit extended, sure; a few more honeymooners, sure, but it is, as I tell myself repeatedly, our honeymoon.

  During the day sometimes I leave the showings and walk around and try to imagine the place before it grew, before the theater, when I still felt like wearing clothes. When I walk into a room now, I feel invisible or, rather, I feel fully clothed; that is, no one comments on my exposed flesh, though I feel heat and chill and the brush of others’ bodies against my body more.

  And at night when I go back to our room alone, as I have done since the first day we arrived here, I dream of a small cottage in the country, a honeymoon cottage. And I dream of you, despite the fact that I’ve forgotten what you look like in 3-D, the flesh.

  Sometimes I even prowl around the house and grounds to see if I can find you. Because, though everyone else thinks you are with me, I know that that’s a lie. I wander through the gardens where the cool night air tingles on my skin. I wander through the rooms and even through the theater.

  You must take a break some time. And this is when I hope to catch you some time, alone, off guard, without your loving audience, without the perfect face you are on film.

  FOLIE A DEUX

  In the interest of security, we agreed to put out your eyes and burn out the insides of my ears.

  This made sure we were always together. Each of us had something the other didn’t have, something the other needed, and each of us knew exactly what the other needed and how to take care of the other. I read the newspaper to you and the New Yorker and your mail and the lyric sheets to our new albums. I held your hand everywhere we walked. I told you when you had on stripes and paisley. You wrote me notes about things on the radio. You described cadences of the new records we bought and tapped out their melodies on my thighs when you were sitting next to me. You wrote me notes about all the things I couldn’t know about anymore. You took care of my phone calls.

  I learned to read your lips perfectly and worked on my “strong silent type” image that could excuse me from taking part in conversation much. You got very good at sensing physical presences and only bumped into things infrequently. You got new glass eyes and tinted glasses. You cultivated an “imaginative genius” image that acted as your cover for your staring into space and missing out on physical details. You held my arm casually and easily so it looked like we were just young lovers, comfortable and excited and eager to be with each other constantly. We figured out Morse code between us. I read the book aloud to you; you tapped it out to me. What others would think was a nervous habit or a desire for physical contact was really the secret and necessary and only form of communication common to both of us.

  We took things slowly and carefully. We stayed home alone together for a long time until we thought we were normal enough to get by outside and normal enough so no one could tell. We didn’t want anyone to know; it was our secret.

  You had told your public you were going to lock yourself up with your new work for a while. The day of your return concert was the first day we had left the house. We went to the Center to practice. I told the stagehands they must keep the piano and bench exactly where they were: “Not a fraction of an inch off,” I said. “Acoustics,” you said. They obliged. It was the first time we’d spoken with or seen anyone who’d known us before. We were each a little scared, but we pulled it off just fine.

  We asked them to leave (you needed to be alone with the instrument), and they left. Then you practiced. You practiced getting from me, behind the curtain, to the piano. We walked through it together, first you holding my arm, then without my arm, me walking beside you, then by yourself. After several times you could do it perfectly. You didn’t touch the keys.

  That night I was with you until right before you went on. I let you go, then ran to my seat in the middle box on the right, the best acoustics in the house. When I got to my seat, I read the program over again, satisfied with the name we’d chosen for the first piece. When I finished reading and looked up, you were well into the first piece. I was sorry I’d missed so much. For a second I was afraid you’d forget something or make a mistake, but I needn’t have worried; you always had all your concert work memorized perfectly and you knew your way around a keyboard perfectly. I watched your beautiful shoulders contract. I watched the way you snapped your head back at the end of the first piece. I saw the tiny points of gold on the bottom of your chin where the light caught your sweat. I felt the strength and stiffness of your thighs and calves when you pressed the pedals. I imagined the stiffness of your jaw and the way your teeth clenched when I had seen you practice at home. You were beautiful.

  When it was over you stood up to bow. It was the best I’d ever seen you do. Everyone clapped. I saw hundreds of pairs of hands clapping and people rising to applaud. I stood up and clapped furiously. I shouted, “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!” I was beaming with pride and I kept shouting, “Bravo! Bravo!” You must have heard my voice because I saw you look for me. You turned your head toward every part of the auditorium trying to hear exactly where my voice was coming from. You looked like you were lost. I stopped shouting and ran down to get you. As I ran I noticed people glancing at me, then glancing away. I figured they probably knew I was yours, the one to whom the concert had been dedicated, as noted in the program. I went backstage to where I’d left you before the concert. You had just walked offstage. I grabbed you and held you. I felt the heat and moisture of your sweat through your clothes. Your muscles felt tight as they always did after a concert, but you sank into me as if you didn’t have bones. Within minutes, friends and people from the Center came up to congratulate you. They patted you on the back and shook your hand. They did the same to me, smiling and talking. But there was too much at once and I couldn’t see what anyone was saying; I wasn’t used to reading anybody’s lips but yours. You nodded and smiled graciously. You held onto my arm and thanked the voices. I nodded slightly and smiled. People shook my hand. Then I felt your fingers on my palm and I read, “Let’s leave.” You leaned close to me. I smelled your flesh and felt the heat of your face against mine. I put my arm around you and we left. I walked straight to where they had a limo waiting for you. You kept turning behind to say, “Thank you.” As we got in the limo you told the driver to take us home, we weren’t feeling up to the reception. I loved being with you and I loved your not wanting to be with all the other people who wanted to see you; I loved your needing me after you got offstage.

  The driver closed the door behind us. The leather smelled like Windex. My hand felt squeaky against it. The limo pulled away. We could barely feel the movement. Everything was big and black and smooth and shiny. We held each other. Then you sat up and put your hands on my face.

  “It was beautiful,” I said.

  You asked me something, but it was too dark to see your lips. Your fingers tapped my palm. “How do you know?”

  “You were,” I answered out loud. “You were beautiful.” I leaned over to hold you but you pushed me back. I put my hand on your lips. I could see your face directed towards mine in the flashing lights from outside as we drove through the city. Your face was lit by blue, then white, then red, then yellow, the colors of neon signs over bars and store windows and movie marquees and stoplights. You didn’t say anything for several minutes. I felt the moisture of your lips where my fingers were on your mouth.

  “What?” I asked.

  You pulled my other hand toward you and pressed the palm against your eye. I felt the hard solid marble underneath your skin. You leaned against me. I read your fingers. “You yelled ‘Bravo’?”

  “Of course it was me.” I looked at your face changing colors. “You mean you didn’t know?”

  “Not sure,” you continued, “sound different. Never heard you shout.”

  You had been telling me for a while that my voice was changing. That was understandable, of course. I couldn’t hear myself speak anymor
e, and I didn’t speak much anyway. Hardly to anyone except you.

  I wondered what I sounded like now. I had almost forgotten what I had sounded like before. But I didn’t want to dwell on things or miss things. Besides, I had you. And what I didn’t have, you did.

  When we got home you called the hostess of the reception and told her you were too exhausted after your big return to party, but thanked her graciously. It was going to be just a short conversation, but you stayed on the phone a long time, unconsciously unbuttoning your shirt as you talked.

  I watched your face as you undressed. I tried to read your lips but it was hard because the phone was over your mouth. But I saw your face light up. During the first part of the conversation you didn’t say much. You just listened and smiled and said, “Oh, thanks, thanks,” nodding. You always nodded your head slightly when you said this, and put your lips together. “Oh thanks, really.” In the latter part of the conversation you started asking questions. You were sitting on the side of the bed and your right hand motioned in those little forward circles, the way you always did when you asked anything. You asked short questions then long ones prefaced by statements. You nodded slightly, unconsciously, to the answers. Your whole face looked like pleasure and I thought that, now, your being unable to see other peoples’ faces, somehow made you forget anyone could see yours. Your face hid nothing anymore. Your flesh colored and shone. Your eyes were like cloudy steel balls.

  When you got off the phone you stood up and faced me. You were beaming.