Kinflicks (53 page)

The others gave me looks of reprimand to indicate that I wasn't displaying the appropriate collective feeling.

‘Well, it was kind of crowded and noisy, don't you think? And the
mess
of all those bodies trying to eat and sleep and shit at once…'

‘Those “bodies” were our sisters,' Mona pointed out.

‘Sisters or not, it's nice to have them gone,' I insisted with good humor.

No one replied.

We skied on, our tips clacking together, and the snow crunching under us, and the sun flashing on our faces. If not God, then Someone equally influential was in heaven, and all seemed right with the world — which sentiment was a considerable relief after my seizure of unutterable loneliness yesterday morning in the midst of my eighty sisters. We herringboned briskly up a hillside.

As we began to descend the opposite side, a deafening boom enveloped the countryside. We looked at each other with concern.

‘A sonic boom,' Eddie said confidently.

At that point, we almost ran head-on into a chain-link fence.

‘What the fuck?' Eddie grumbled.

With annoyance at having our course disrupted, we turned south and skied alongside the high barbed-wire-capped fence. After fifty yards we came to a sign — white with red lettering — saying, ‘Keep Out! Gun Testing Range.'

We looked at each other in astonishment. We were in the middle of a woods in an underpopulated area of a rural state. For several miles we had seen no other person, and only a handful of houses.
What
guns, for God's sake, and who was there to test them?

We skied on, following the fence, intent upon satisfying our curiosity. Meanwhile, shattering blasts kept rocking the small valley. Abruptly, the fence turned a corner. So did we, following it like Dorothy of Oz on the Yellow Brick Road.

Several hundred yards and one right angle later, we found ourselves at a locked gate on which was a large sign reading ‘Keep Out. Gun Test Range. General Machine, Inc., Ludbury, Vermont' Inside were clutches of men in army fatigues tending large mortar-type guns.

‘Christ, they're everywhere,' Eddie whispered. ‘They won't be content until they've killed us all.' She began trembling. I'd never seen her frightened of anything. But here she was, clearly having an anxiety attack such as seized all the rest of us on a regular basis. The confrontation with the snowmobilers must have drained her of her weekly allotment of courage.

I took one of her arms, which was rigid with terror, and Atheliah took the other, and between us, we managed to slide her back into the woods, where she regained command enough to yell back toward the firing range, ‘Goddam butchers!'

However, when we were about halfway back to the cabin, toiling through deeply drifted snow in the broad field, we heard a roar overhead. Stabbing our poles upright in the snow, we clapped our gloved hands over our ears. Three low-flying jets, in perfect formation, came straight at us. They were the flat triangular kind that looked like silver airborne stingrays.

Eddie screamed, ‘Oh Christ! They've
got
me!' And she threw herself headfirst into a snowdrift, tangling her skis around her in the process.

The planes passed by well above us. The three of us dragged Eddie out of her snowbank. She sat quivering in the snow, her face buried in her hands.

‘Are you okay?' I asked finally, disturbed by this display of weakness in my tower of strength.

Wordlessly, she untangled her skis and stood up, and we pressed on.

The next morning everyone left the cabin but me. Eddie and Laverne went down to the clinic. And Atheliah and Mona skied to their old farm to borrow some soybeans.

I was sitting in the kitchen, my feet propped on the stove, savoring my solitude like the counterrevolutionary that I was beginning to think I really was: I was sick to death of sharing with the sisters. Suddenly I heard a snowmobile in our meadow. Reluctantly, I plunked my feet to the floor and looked out. Hopping off his Deluxe Sno Cat 44 and pulling off his helmet was Ira. I felt a fleeting pang of pleasure, which I promptly squelched. After all, but for Eddie, he would have carried me off into the night last Saturday.

‘Yes?' I inquired coolly, sauntering out onto the porch.

Ira wore a quilted snowsuit; his dark curly hair was a scrambled mess from his helmet, and his smiling white teeth were dazzling against his ruddy complexion.

‘Howdy. Ira Bliss,' he said, slipping off his huge black leather glove and offering me his hand.

I carefully ignored the hand and asked, ‘What do you want, Mr Bliss?'

‘Ira,' he said, flashing his smile, his nostrils flaring. ‘May I come in for a minute?' He blew on his hands and rubbed them. He was right. It was cold. I was shivering in my turtleneck.

‘I don't see the need for that.'

‘Look, ma'am, I'm freezing,'

‘Then don't roar around on your toy sled at sixty miles per hour.'

‘All right, look,' he said, raising his arms as though someone had stuck a pistol in his ribs. ‘I run with a rowdy bunch. Sometimes they do things I don't care for, and I go along with them because I don't have the strength of character to stand up to them. But that's really why I'm here. To apologize for Saturday night.'

Ira had captured my sympathy. I knew what he meant: I ran with rowdy groups, too, and often lacked the gumption to be different when I didn't approve of their activities. I smiled in spite of myself, a faint smile that acknowledged kinship. ‘All right, Mr. Bliss. Come in and warm up by the stove.'

He sat down opposite me and unzipped his jumpsuit to the waist. He was wearing his tight red shirt, the one from the Vietnam blood drawing that displayed his impressive musculature. I studied those taut sinewy muscles, trying not to be too obvious about it. His body was so different from a woman's, with which I had been mostly occupied for almost three years. Eddie's body was all firm mounds and smooth curves and secret folds. One model probably wasn't any better or worse than the other, but they certainly were different.

I cleared my throat, trying hard to think of some unprovocative topic for discussion. ‘Well,….' we said in unison. Then we laughed nervously in unison.

‘I have a second reason for being here,' Ira admitted. ‘I sell life insurance. No, wait! Before you tune me out, just listen to what I have to say. Now, I know that you and your friends are pretty independent women. But have you ever thought about what happens if one of you were to die? That sounds pretty morbid, but it's a topic we all have to face sometime or other, right? Okay, so traditionally, people have thought of life insurance as something a man takes out to provide for his wife and children should he die. Well, you don't have children to look out for, I gather, but you
do
have a chance to provide for the people closest to you, should something happen to you. There must be someone who could profit from your death, right? Uh, that's not exactly what I meant…'

I hadn't tuned Ira out. I was listening carefully. This wasn't the first time the topic had occurred to me, of what would happen to Eddie if I suddenly died, which I was bound to entertain as an ever-present possibility, considering who had reared me. There was no way I could alter my trust fund so that Eddie could have my dividend checks. The fund would revert to the Major, who conceivably had gunmen on my trail for that very reason, since I hadn't written home since picketing his factory. What could Eddie do to support herself when I lay six feet under? Things she would hate, things that would destroy her defiant spirit — waitressing, chambermaiding, secretarial work. She was poor, I was rich. It was through no fault of her own, and it was not to my credit. I should share the wealth, should make provisions to continue sharing it once I was gone.

Seemingly surprised at not being put down, Ira continued, his Victor Mature forehead gleaming with sweat from the stove heat. ‘Now, there are two types you might want to consider -term and whole life. Term requires a relatively small premium in return for which your beneficiary receives the face amount of the policy should you die within the term period. Whole life is more an investment. You pay premiums during your lifetime and should you live to ninety-six, you get the face amount back. Which plan you would choose would depend on your financial circumstances and your insurance goals. Do you mind if I ask what you live on?'

Abruptly I snapped out of my calculations. ‘Yes, I do. I don't see that it's any of your business.'

His eyes became wide and alarmed. ‘I'm sorry. I was just trying to help.'

‘I'm
sorry, I didn't mean to bark at you. I'm interested in what you've been saying, and I'm not sure how to proceed.'

‘Well, first of all, who's living here with you?'

I glared at him suspiciously. ‘What does
that
have to do with anything?' Suddenly, I was seeing him as the front man for the Stark's Bog Marauders.

‘Well, I mean, if you're thinking of insuring yourself, it helps to know how many people you're trying to provide for, right?'

Just then our truck roared up the driveway. I glanced around guiltily. I had been talking alone with a man, with a Stark's Bog snowmobiler — and I had been enjoying it. What was Eddie going to say?

‘I think you'd better go.'

‘Wouldn't your friends like to hear about insurance possibilities?'

‘No, they wouldn't,' I assured him. ‘I want it to be a surprise,' I added, to soften the fact that I was kicking him out. I opened the door and shoved him out. He stepped off the porch, zipping his Ski-Doo suit. As he waded through the broken bits of the Women's Weekend ice sculpture, Eddie came stomping over.

She shook a fist at him, in which she clutched a piece of paper, and she yelled, ‘And you can tell your friends to go fuck themselves!'

He turned around, startled. ‘Look….'

‘Just
go,'
I said grimly, pushing him toward his machine.

As he roared off, Eddie turned on me, trembling with rage. ‘So
that's
what goes on here when I leave, you sneaky bitch! But I
caught
you.'

‘Nothing “went on,” Eddie, I assure you.'

‘Shit,
Ginny! I may be poor, but I'm not dumb! I
saw
the way you two were looking at each other, all guilty and conspiratorial! Goddam it, I
saw
him putting his clothes on as he left! Stop lying to me, whore!'

I decided to fight fire with fire. ‘Shut up, you maniac! I
said
nothing went on and I
meant
it! I don't lie, Eddie, and least of all to you. But so what if something
were
going on? Where are all your big ideas about sharing the wealth? Or don't those ideas extend beyond sharing my dividend checks? What about all the garbage you're always spouting about mingling with The People? Doesn't that include mingling on terms of warmth and affection? I'll tell you what, Eddie, I've put up with all I'm going to with this jealousy number. You're really fucking me over. I swear to God, I've never been unfaithful to you, but you're driving me right into Ira Bliss's bed!'

‘Stop threatening me,' she said, shocked to hear me talking back so forcefully.

‘I'm not threatening you. I'm just explaining what's happening. I'm outlining for you the dynamics of our relationship so that you won't be too surprised when things turn out the way you're programming them to.'

We stood glaring at each other over the mountains of snow from the tumbled statue. I shivered.

‘Christ, I'm freezing,' I mumbled, depleted of emotional energy. ‘Come inside and I'll tell you why he was here.'

As we sat around the stove with Laverne, Eddie said wearily, ‘Let
me
tell
you
what happened first. We got to the office and found that a window had been smashed and the lock on the door had been sawed off. Wait. There's more. Inside, red paint was splashed all over the walls and the furniture. The pamphlets had been burned in the metal trash can, and the ashes were dumped all over the floor. And one wall was literally papered with those damn “Abortion Is Murder” stickers.'

‘Oh God,' I moaned, burying my face in my hands. ‘Clearly we've gone about this the wrong way.'

‘Us?
What can you expect from a bunch of mentally retarded fascists?'

I decided not to point out that these ‘mentally retarded fascists' were The People, the hope of the radical left.

‘Read this.' She thrust her crumpled paper at me.

A childish, almost illegible handwriting on a piece of pink letter paper decorated with wild flower sketches read: ‘Dear Pinkos: If you want to raise your families in our town like normal people, and go to our church, and send your children to our school, we welcome you to Stark's Bog. But if you want to destroy the family and defy the will of the Lord, we don't need none of your kind around here corrupting our children. This is just a warning. Sincerely, Some Concerned Citizens.'

We three stared at each other with restrained terror.

‘I think we're in over our heads,' I suggested.

‘So you can see why I was upset when I drove up and saw that macho pig here,' Eddie said. ‘I do apologize, Ginny.'

‘It's all right.'

‘So why
was
that bastard here?'

‘Believe it or not, he was here to apologize for the other night. No kidding, he really was. And he was trying to sell us a life insurance policy.'

‘Oh
no,'
Laverne groaned.

‘You didn't
buy
one?' Eddie asked.

‘I considered it.'

‘Oh God,
life
insurance!' she wailed. ‘How bougie!'

‘Fine. Go ahead. Ridicule me. But what's going to happen to the Free Farm, and to you, if I die?'

‘If you
die,
well probably all die with you,' Eddie said jocularly. ‘Or maybe I'll throw myself on your funeral pyre.'