Читать книгу Blue Money - Janet Capron - Страница 12

Escape

“Get up, get up!” my mother screamed, alarm in her voice, as she shook me. “It’s Saturday afternoon already. You’ve been sleeping since you got home yesterday. I thought maybe you were dead. Hurry up, somebody’s on the phone.”

I turned over. “What’d you say?”

Maggie continued to shake me. “I said there’s a call for you. Says his name is Tommy. Tell your street friends I don’t want them calling here. I don’t want them making their drug deals on my phone.”

I jumped out of bed and started running to the phone in the big front hall. On the way I said, “Mother, that’s Tommy Shelter, the singer, the one who was at Woodstock, you know?”

“Oh, no, I didn’t know,” she said. But she sounded chastened, even impressed. After spending her youth in the theater, she still worshipped fame, secretly of course.

“Hi, Tommy, sorry it took me so long, I was crashing.”

“Your mother told me. She said you’d been asleep since yesterday.”

“She told you that? What a pal, huh?”

“Don’t worry about it. You can get out of there now.”

“Really?”

His low voice was soothing. I hung on to the receiver and started to nod. I was dreaming.

“Janet, Janet, are you still there?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said I just spoke to Sigrid. She wants to meet you. Call her. Here’s her number. Got a pencil? She mentioned something about this afternoon.”

“It already is this afternoon,” I said.

“Her pad is right across the Park from you. Are you busy?”

“Busy? Let me think. Hold on a minute. Tommy? Hold on, I’ll be right back. Tommy?”

“Yes, I’m here,” Tommy said.

I ran in my room and went straight for my little black brocade purse. A dim memory was pushing its way to the surface. I was hoping I hadn’t just imagined it. But no, there it was, a square of tinfoil, a care package of speed that Michael had slipped into my bag before I left, whenever that was. Wonderful Michael, in my life again. I sighed with contentment. Then I ran back to the phone.

“Tommy?”

“Are you OK?”

“Absolutely OK. I can go anywhere anytime. What’s her number?”

The Sigrid solution came my way not a moment too soon. Maggie and I hadn’t been hitting it off very well lately. It might even have been that she was preparing to kick me out. In the beginning, a couple of months before, when my roommate took in her new lover and asked me to leave, and I had to go home (no place else to go as usual), Maggie was undeniably delighted to have me back. I was her only child, and she and I had always been a smidgen too involved, according to every shrink I ever knew. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that when I first returned, Maggie was spilling over with an inappropriate amount of enthusiasm. She started laughing at her own jokes, buying tickets for us to Broadway matinees, ordering steamed lobsters from Rosedale Fish Market. She was full of hope. We joined Weight Watchers and cooked chicken livers stirred up with apples and onions in Pam and did the crossword puzzle together on Sunday. She honestly believed that I was turning over a new leaf.

Then I remembered to pull myself out of this jolly stupor.

My mother had been seducing me, as was her wont, and I’d been falling for it. My biggest nightmare was that, unless I fought it, she and I would float off into the sunset together like something out of Tennessee Williams, like Sebastian and his mother in Suddenly, Last Summer, only the single-sex version.

So my tactic was to turn churlish and mean. I never left the house. Maggie came home after doing the grocery shopping, and I was sprawled out on the sofa, my hiking boots—left over from the radical feminist stint—propped on the upholstered pillow. Maggie stood there in her low-heeled Florsheim “comfort pumps,” shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Then she wrinkled her nose as if the air smelled and looked longingly at her sofa.

“I don’t have a place to sit in my own house,” she said.

“What’s wrong with the club chair?”

“But you can’t see the TV from there.”

“You don’t want to watch anyway. The movie’s almost over,” I said, wishing she would shut up.

“Yes, I do. I want to see the news,” Maggie said, standing there in her miracle-fiber skirt-and-blouse ensemble, a big clumsy pocketbook hanging off one shoulder, still carrying two shopping bags full of groceries, one in each hand.

“It’s OK,” I said, never taking my eyes off George Raft, “this movie will be over at six. You won’t have to miss a minute of Vietnam, Ma.”

My attitude wore her down. She looked so miserable by the end of the day—her soft, reddish-blond-dyed hair matted to her forehead, a faded housecoat thrown over her wilted body—a weaker child might have taken pity. Not me, though. I wasn’t about to fall into her clutches. Just because I had to be there didn’t mean I belonged to her, I told myself. As far as I was concerned—and several of my shrinks had backed me up on this—my mother was out to get me.

Before Tommy and I got a chance to hang up, Maggie came out into the hall where I had draped myself over the loveseat and started gesturing to me.

“That’s enough now. Tell him you’ll call him back later. I want to talk to you.” Maggie spoke loud enough for Tommy to hear.

I waved her away.

“That’s enough I said.” The volume was pitched even louder now.

I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “Don’t bother me when I’m talking on the phone. Go away,” I hissed.

“How dare you speak to me like that. You are on my phone in my house.” The volume was turned up full blast now, to shrieking level.

“Tommy? I have to go. Thank you.” I slammed down the receiver. “You love humiliating me, don’t you? It’s how you get your jollies, isn’t it, humiliating me. Always was, you sadist bitch. All my life.”

“That’s it! That’s enough. You can just pack your bags and leave right now. I don’t care where you go. I’ve had it!” Maggie screamed.

She looked ridiculous as usual, I thought, standing there little and pudgy in her shapeless, chocolate-colored miracle-fiber pants and a lavender T-shirt, which had, coincidentally, a chocolate-colored stain on the front of it. Were the pants and shirt supposed to go together? Never exactly chic, Maggie had been extremely glamorous when she was young. Daddy’s little girl, the gay divorcée about town, sexy and colorful; she was a lush, sweet orchid that bloomed at night. This was so right up until lately. Then I don’t know what happened. Once she passed fifty, she simply let the whole thing drop as if it were a stage role that had ceased to amuse her.

“It just so happens I was planning to leave today anyway,” I said.

“And go where?” she asked. Her voice fell so fast, she sounded almost timid by comparison.

“Never mind where. It’s none of your business.”

“Oh yes, it is. How do I know you won’t come creeping back here when this one doesn’t work out. Is it that man you just talked to? Are you going to live with that man? Fine with me, as long as he’s willing to pay for everything. Does he know how spoiled you are? How messy you are?

“And, Janet, put some clothes on. Maybe he won’t mind, but I don’t like you parading around my house naked.”

“No, Mother, it isn’t that man,” I said, ignoring the last part but feeling, suddenly, naked. “It’s a young woman, around my age. She lives off Central Park West and she’s looking for a roommate.”

“Who is she? Someone you know?”

“Not yet, but I understand she’s very nice.”

“You’re going to move in with some stranger sight unseen?”

“I thought you wanted me out, no matter what.”

“Yes, but I think you should leave here the right way. Get a job first, then find an apartment when you have some money saved. I know your father, if he were ever willing to take any interest at all, would agree with me. I’d call him right now, but he absolutely refuses to get involved. Might as well face it, whenever there’s a crisis, I’ve got to handle it alone. He’s useless, your father.”

I was tempted to tell her that my handsome Yankee cavalier of a father, with his history of wives—four of them, present one included—had just been passing through. He was an empty well, I wanted to say to her, an empty well. Instead I said, “But you’re doing fine all by your lonesome. Didn’t you just kick me out?”

“Maybe I did. And probably that’s what I should do, but you know I’d worry. OK, I’m sorry. I lost my temper. You can stay.”

“Tough shit. I’m going.”

“Please stay, Janet. I think you’d better stay, Janet. You’re asking for trouble. This isn’t right. You’re not going about this the right way.”

“Too bad. I’m already gone,” I said.

“What are you going to do for money? That girl isn’t going to put you up for free.”

“I said none of your damned business.” This over my shoulder. I was eager as hell to just split. Suddenly, the desire to break free was acute. Must get out quick, before she destroys me. Must get away from the cloying pink-and-cherry-red bedroom of my childhood, the ever-widening mesh of private jokes, shared Weight Watchers recipes, and heated after-theater discussions. This was a warm and easy life but not the one I chose. Help. A few more tricks and I’d have the rent. God, hooking was great, the money changing hands in a flash. Hooking was my ticket to ride—ride or otherwise fall into the great gaping maw that was Maggie.

It could only have been a bullet hole smack in the middle of the plate glass oval in the front door of Sigrid’s apartment house. This was right before gentrification, when the West Eighties still looked like the working-class neighborhood it once was, only worse, dilapidated. No buzzer system, so, as we had arranged over the phone, I banged on the ground-floor window, which was where Sigrid lived. The face of a princess, of a blond Rose White, peered at me through the venetian blinds.

“It’s plenty big enough for two,” she said once we were inside.

The apartment was one room, with a homemade plywood partition about five feet high that ran down the middle. Sigrid had decorated her home with beds. Beds were everywhere. One queen-sized number was made up with sheets, the others, three or four single beds, were draped with tie-dyed cotton coverlets in various hues of green and purple, big pillows in psychedelic primary colors thrown around on top of them. Besides the extensive bed collection, there was a card table with some metal chairs over by the kitchenette.

“This looks great,” I said.

“Supremely functional. Beds are all-around practical, the only kind of furniture worth having. You can do anything on them: sit, eat, read, sleep, fuck, anything. What else do you need?” Sigrid said. “Want some tea?”

I was quietly speeding. My pupils were crowding out my irises, otherwise you couldn’t tell. But, as always, the drug made me romanticize. What was really getting to me was the china-blue, angel-blond, porcelain look of my hostess as she elegantly poured the boiling water into a potful of bancha leaves. Even though she was wearing jeans and a faded-blue man’s shirt with a hole in the shoulder and padding around in bare feet, there was a quality she had that I was sure inspired men to throw their coats over mud puddles in her path, send her flowers. She was a lady, a very white, delicate lady.

“The thing is, I’d like to move in immediately if I could, except I don’t have a lot of cash right now,” I said.

“Oh, that’s easy, no problem. I know how to get money any time,” she said.

Sigrid made it sound like getting money was a hobby, something to do when you had nothing better to do.

“Tell me,” I said.

“OK, but I don’t know what you’d be up for. Maybe it would bother you,” she said.

“I doubt it.”

“Good. Then I’ll let you in on it,” she said, pouring the tea into two mugs and sitting down across from me, where she proceeded to tuck one foot over her opposite thigh, then the other one, lotus style. She took a dainty joint out of her pocket, lit it, and passed it to me. It was very good dope.

“I’ve got these friends, Vincent and Candy,” she said, sucking the smoke into her lungs and holding it. “You never met anyone like them, a trip, really. They run this, well, how should I put it, ‘emporium,’ I guess you’d call it, off Times Square. There’s a big theater in the back, where Vincent stages these live sex shows, only they’re actually morality plays that he wrote himself, allegories, you know? They’re really beautiful, except I don’t go in for that, that’s not my bag.

“But in the front, he’s got this mini–massage parlor going. It’s just a roomful of massage tables with screens to simulate privacy, you know? Here’s the best part: each customer gets a timer. Fifteen minutes. Hand jobs, that’s all. It’s a piece of cake. Twenty-five dollars for a hand job. We keep fifteen of it. Do ten of those and you got the rent plus mad money. And you can do it for as long as you want. The guys are lined up in the hallway. It’s so easy, it’s like having a trust fund. Any time I’m feeling broke, I just call Vincent. We could pop down there on Monday if you like.”

I shivered. Hand jobs—that is cold. I didn’t mind going to bed with someone for money. That had turned out to be a cinch, but mainly because it mimicked ordinary life and normal relations between a man and a woman. I could fantasize anything during the act; I could pretend, if it helped things along, that the john was my lover. But hand jobs? They were mechanical acts that exposed the whole enterprise for what it was: orgasm for money. Everybody likes to come, but men could and would pay for it. Even the poor ones would pay to come. The only sentimental note is that they preferred a delicate female hand to their own for a change. Meanwhile, I would be stuck with the reality of what I was doing. Hand jobs. But I looked at the fair Sigrid, the lovely lady who would inspire gallantry in the worst of heels, and I had to admit my attitude was silly and impractical.

“I’ll definitely think about it,” I said.

I went home and packed the few clothes I hadn’t lost or ruined somehow and generally got ready to move in with my new friend, Rose White. Before I left, I kissed and hugged Maggie good-bye, as if I were a kid on my way to Europe for the first time. She kissed and hugged me back, always willing to jump into the charade of a loving, uncomplicated parent-child relationship. We were the same size, so whenever we embraced, our bosoms collided. We were standing there in the hallway, pap to pap. It made me nervous. I had told her that my roommate did a term at Swarthmore, which was true, and that now she was studying to be an actress, which was also true.

Maggie seemed relieved. She would go to bed that night telling herself I was just a child of the sixties after all, rebelling in a harmless and probably short-lived way, and all was right with the world. It made me sad. I didn’t enjoy in the least deceiving her and disappointing her over and over again. This was because despite years of the best adolescent therapists money could buy, despite one eerily removed professional after another telling me to get away from that destructive bitch who actually unconsciously loathed me (one guy did say exactly that), in spite of all this, a part of me had to admit, as I stood there in the middle of the warm hug, that I wanted desperately to please my mother. Even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to love her, because in enlightened psychiatric circles you had to hate your mother first before you could finally love her, I was never able to bring myself to go through the required healthy hating part. OK, so she neglected me when I was a kid. OK, so what. We also had a lot of laughs then. Right after I started third grade, my governess, Josephine, quit because, she said, she only took care of young children, and, at the age of eight, I was no longer one. From that time on, my mother hired a series of live-in maids who did their best to keep their distance. After Josephine left, there had never been anyone else. It was Maggie then or nothing.