Almost Famous Women (22 page)

Dolly had cried to me that night. “They used to call Uncle Oscar elephantine. I'm the same way. I'm not built like a woman.”

I knew she'd made efforts to shorten her stride and straighten her shoulders. I still felt anger toward whoever had written such a cruel sentence, the kind of sentence that stays with a woman.

I followed Dolly to the small bathroom, which smelled strongly of bleach. The white plaster walls were chipped, and blue curtains framed one small window. Dolly stood in front of the sink blotting her armpits with paper, then her face.

“The cancer makes me sweat more,” she said, wrinkling her nose, sniffing.

“I know what's in that compact,” I said, standing behind her.

Dolly didn't say anything, but shrugged her shoulders and resumed blotting her face in the mirror.

I returned to the table and sat with my arms crossed. Dolly had a way of making me feel like a petulant child.

“I'm short on cash,” Jeanette said, rifling through her leather purse.

“I'll cover you,” Dolly said, sitting down. I could tell she was impatient to get home and away from my judgment, maybe away
from Jeanette's bony and depressed face. But while she hated to suffer through inconvenient social situations, she also hated being alone.

Dolly's black book—I'd looked through it before—contained contact information for one-night stands, theater boys, dealers, doctors, fake doctors, nurses, ex-girlfriends, aristocrats, art thieves, sodomites, artists, race car drivers, actresses, writers, amateur philosophers, politicians, soldiers, housewives. She wasn't picky, not these days. She just wanted company, or maybe drugs. She went to parties in abandoned underground stations and on rooftops and God knows where else.

We said good-bye to Jeanette and walked to Dolly's flat in silence.

“It amazes me,” she said as we reached her front door, “that you still find the energy to be disappointed in me.”

“I'm not disappointed,” I said, clutching her hand. “I'm worried.”

“I'm late with rent again.”

I took a few bills from my purse—half of my monthly allowance—and pressed them into her hand. I had never been good at telling her no, and I wanted to be useful—to anyone, but especially to Dolly. Decades into our relationship, helping her was a reflex.

She kissed the top of my forehead. It was a sisterly gesture.

“Call if you need me,” I added.

She nodded and the lock clicked behind her. I headed for the train, aware that after every visit with Dolly I felt exhausted. But these visits were the only breaks in the monotony of my life with Mum, of teas gathered around the wireless, long stretches of reading time, unsatisfactory sessions at my easel.

A few blocks away I heard something moving behind a trash
can. Cowering among crates of rotting produce was a brown dog so emaciated I could count her ribs. The dog bared her broken, black teeth and I inched away, wishing I had a few pieces of bread, or anything, to give her.

I hurried into the station.

Safely on the train, I pulled out Dolly's letters and read from them, as I'd developed the habit of doing. This letter was to Natalie, a lover she'd lived with on and off in Paris, and who never had anything to say to me the times I'd visited Dolly in the little garden there.

I hope you'll forgive me for what I said yesterday. I know I've outstayed my welcome, but for Romaine to call me a rat—my temper rose. I'll find a way to repair the vase, darling.

I think, some days, that I'm a broken human being. Last week, the pop of a champagne cork made me sweat. If I stare too long into a fire or smell certain brands of cigarettes and tea, I feel sick, as if the night is coming on in Verdun. Dearest Natalie, please understand—I dream of burned flesh.

Were these drafts of letters, or were they never sent? I folded the papers, carefully tied the ribbon, and stared out of the window. Dolly had a habit of using people like me and Natalie; this was not news. There were years when I convinced myself that she had to rely on others because she was a woman without means who didn't want to marry, and there were years when I got tired of trying to save her, tired of trying to coax her into the incredible woman she should have been. There shouldn't have been flashes of greatness; there should have been a lifetime of it.

A general uneasiness came over me. The train ride was long, cold, and silent.

The next time I came to her door it wouldn't open. The maid had called me.

“I haven't seen Dolly in two days,” she said, “but I've heard her and she's howling again, and throwing things at the wall. I think you should come.”

“I'll be there tomorrow morning,” I said. “Offer her some coffee or even some bread.”

Sensing the maid's hesitation, I added, “I'll pay you. Plus a service fee. Just offer her food and drink and let her know that someone cares about her. That part is important.”

When I got to Dolly's at ten the next morning, the place was silent. I knocked on the door—nothing. No footsteps, no hello, no swearing. It occurred to me that the inevitable might have happened, that she might have overdosed. I tried my key but couldn't budge the door; she'd pushed something in front of it.

“Dolly!” I screamed, jostling the doorknob, shouting through the small opening. “Let me in.”

I pressed my ear to the crack. I heard faint sobbing, then louder cries. I jostled the door some more, but to no avail. At least she was alive.

Because it was a ground-floor apartment, I went around to the outside window and rapped repeatedly.

“Dolly!” I shouted, over and over again. “Let me take you home. Let me take you to the country.”

A middle-aged man opened his window and yelled down to me. “Can't you two keep it together? Must you cry and shout so often?”

I glared at him. For the first time I felt as if I had the will to
hurt someone. I started to go to the train station, then turned back toward Dolly's flat, feeling as if I'd left something unfinished. I could try harder. I could do more.

I should tell you about her death. No one came to Dolly's funeral but me and two other friends, one who was on crutches. There were fires burning in the city from the evening's raids when she was buried; we could see the smoke and there was, I think, a universal feeling of dread. An urge, maybe, to put Dolly's life and death in context. Did it matter? What was more suffering in a year like this? How many people we knew and loved were dying each day?

The police didn't know the cause of death, and I don't think they cared. Here was an addict who was already dying of cancer; what was her life valued when there were so many children and heroes at risk?

There was a coroner's report, and they asked me to identify the body. I remember looking down at her face in the morgue. It was a large face, moonlike, original except for the fact that it had already been around the block once before as her uncle. Her eyes were closed. I could see the track marks, her brittle hair. Gone was the socialite, the sexpot, the conversationalist. Here was an abused body.

“Goddamnit, Dolly,” I said.

At the end, I could no longer pretend she was good, or a valuable member of society. At the end, I could no longer watch what she was becoming. The decline was too disgusting, too steep.

Perhaps the war had made us obsessed with honor and bravery.

Perhaps I became impatient.

When I was younger I wrote her a love letter. I told her that I wanted more from her. That she was beautiful and capable of becoming a great writer and a great human being, and that I could help her if she'd let me. She was twenty-two and just back from the war and I'd missed her so much my stomach hurt and I ran to greet her when she visited the house.

She never responded to the letter, and acted as if she hadn't received it. I was too embarrassed to ask, to force the issue.

Now, reading her letters, I knew more about the woman I thought I loved. Or maybe I knew less. Maybe what I knew was that there was more mystery and hurt than I could have imagined. Maybe the world had been bad to its great and unusual women. Maybe there wasn't a worthy place for the female hero to live out her golden years, to be celebrated as the men had been celebrated, to take from that celebration what she needed to survive.

And then in the yellowed packet I found an unsent letter addressed to me, from the early days, when she'd first run away to France and I'd lost many nights of sleep worrying about her.

What troubles me about our friendship, darling, is that you live in an alternate universe. You say you want to understand, that you wish you were here with me, so let me tell you about my day:

I back my ambulance into the tent, and jump out of the driver's seat and onto the hard earth, snow to my ankles. I open the rear doors. The putrid smell of gangrene and vomit rushes at me and I dry-heave, covering my mouth with my shoulder. There's no time to clean the ambulance between loads.

It's six a.m., and the shelling has stopped, which means we have
a chance to collect bodies. The capable survivors, draped like ghosts in foul wool blankets, hoist the injured out of the dugout with strange efficiency. There are bodies half-lodged in the rubble, arms cocked as if still ready to throw grenades.

I kick my tires to check the air pressure; you don't want to get stuck on the road here, because people die out on the roads. Good tires save lives. My tires are fine, so I wait for orders.

Sixteen, one of the soldiers says, giving me my count. I nod my head, and log the figure with shaking hands in a small black notebook.

Shit, I think.

I will never understand how they decide which bodies are capable of living, but the first one they give me is no longer in human form. The flesh has been burned from his body, what's left of his body. There's no hair, no nose or mouth, just eyes. A face of fire. I could not tell if this man, this body, wished to live, or die.

I hate them for making me see this, for knowing this state of being is possible, for knowing that if I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time and a flame is thrown
—

But I hold the soldier's hand—the one he has—and sing to him as I help secure him in the back of my ambulance. I sing “Au Clair de la Lune,” and I do not wince, though I am terrified.

Fifteen more are loaded. Trench foot. Lost arm. Legs full of shrapnel.

I climb into the ambulance, start the engine, and pull away from the tent. I can hear a sound more animal than human coming from the back; I know it is the burned one. I drive as fast as I can, the roar of planes overhead, up the icy roads toward camp, knowing he will not be alive when I open the back doors.

Years later, I still imagine how it feels to live inside that body, even for one moment.

I've never heard of women feeling this way. After returning home from the War, am I expected to be beautiful again? I do not feel beautiful inside. I'm expected to respect those who serve, and I continue to tend to soldiers. But who will tend to me when I am home? Will you?