Two Girls Fat and Thin (25 page)

They arrived at the hall late. Dr. Bean was already giving his speech to a crowd of about two hundred people. They sat too far back for Justine to get a good look at him; she could only see a grotesquely tall figure clutching the podium with both hands. He wore glasses and his long hair played with suppressed hysteria about his shoulders. He spoke as though describing something that had been done to him recently at the hands of a mob.

“What we’re seeing is a
systematic
attempt to de-rationalize and de-Americanize the educational system of this country. This is something that started in the forties and has gradually wormed its way into respectability. One of the first signs of this change was the mass acceptance of a book by a supposed scientist, Hilma Feeney, who went to live in the primitive island culture of Patagandria, came back, and wrote a book about how wonderful this primitive culture was—implying, quite clearly, that it is better to be a naked, bead-making Patagandrian living in a hut without so much as an outhouse than an American with houses, cars, skyscrapers, shopping centers, and art. That this work was hailed not only by anthropologists but by the public, was one of the first danger signs—recognized as such by Anna Granite herself, who attacked it as the perfidious evil it was when it first appeared. But it didn’t stop there.”

“I think I’m going to go to the train station,” whispered Justine. “I want to get back early.” She got up and turned to say good-bye. To her dismay, Bernard stood and said, “I’ll accompany you.” To her disgust, he put his hand on her shoulder. In this way, they walked out into the rain.

The night after I did the interview
with Justine Shade, I transformed it into a wonderful story which I told to proofreaders Debby and Sandra. We discussed Ms. Shade during our break over a metal tray of crumbling company-supplied cookies and Stryofoam cups of coffee.

“Do you really think she’s who she says she is?” asked Sandra. “I mean, what kind of reporter would dress like that?”

“And reporters use tape recorders, not note pads,” added Debby, picking some chapped extranea from her pink-coated lips. “Did she have any kind of I.D.?”

“No.”

“God, Dorothy, I can’t believe you let this stranger into your house. Anybody could say they were writing free-lance for the
Vision
.”

“But why would anybody want to? She was obviously writing an article for somebody.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because she knew Granite’s material so well. She asked a lot of well-thought-out questions.”

“That’s even scarier if you ask me,” said Sandra, jabbing at some tiny cookie crumbs with her moistened fingertip. “She’s probably a
crackpot gathering information for some sick purpose of her own.” She licked her harvesting finger.

“No,” I said. “I’m the crackpot. She’s the normal person coming to expose me. She tried to make me out as some kind of masochist.”

They exchanged glances. “How did she do that?”

“She just said a lot of things implying that Granite’s novels are based on masochistic sex, which is totally unfair. Then she tried to appease me by talking about her sex life, about how some guy did stuff to her she couldn’t control or something.”

The girls gasped in unison and simultaneously picked up cookies which they pried apart, Sandra getting white Oreo goo in the point of a false fingernail. I felt sort of guilty betraying Justine in this way, but I also felt that she deserved it.

“She talked to you about her sex life? And you believe she was a reporter? Dorothy, come on!”

“She even told me about the time she was sexually molested as a child.”

“Oh my God, Dorothy. Sicko. Sicko.”

“God,” said Debby. “What if she wanted to meet you for a personal reason? What if she somehow found out who you are and became obsessed with you? What if she’s a lesbian!”

I refrained from suggesting that Debby, who was continually obsessed with virtual strangers, might be projecting. “How could she have found out who I was? I randomly answered an ad on a bulletin board, remember?”

“I don’t know, maybe she’s a lesbian obsessed by Anna Granite who fixated on you because you reminded her of somebody.”

“Yeah,” said Sandra. “You never know with these nut cases. You saw
Fatal Attraction
, right?”

“You really think she might be a lesbian?”

“Could be. Sounds like there was something pretty intense going on there.”

I hadn’t considered this at all. “She didn’t look like a lesbian.”

“Well, whether she is or not, if she calls again, I hope you hang up.”

“Really,” said Debby. She tipped her head back and ferociously expelled her cigarette smoke.

Four
A.M.
found me in the toilet still wondering about the conversation,
undoubtedly the liveliest I’d ever had with my foolish coworkers. Debby’s theory that Justine was a dyke seemed ridiculous . . . and yet . . . What did that “Girlworld” on her T-shirt mean? Had it simply been my exhaustion that had given our interview its feverish dimension? I had told reporters about my father before (information which, strangely enough, I found easy to dispense to strangers but never revealed to those I saw everyday), but I had never received such a confidence in return, nor had I ever become so emotional with one of these people before. Justine had said stupid, irritating things, but so had all of them. Was it possible that I had been disturbed because I had been receiving sex signals from Justine? She had referred to her “awful” ex-lover as “he,” but perhaps he had been her last heterosexual affair before discovering her true sexuality, which would explain her odd coldness in describing what should have been rapture.

Two proofreaders came in and loudly banged around in the stalls, peeing and yakking about the supervisor’s ridiculous infatuation with an eighteen-year-old temp, and what a fool he was making of himself. I sat quietly until they’d finished at the sinks and then emerged to examine myself in the mirror. As usual, my heart sank. I was fat and pasty, with dark bags under my eyes and visible roots. Even if Justine was a lesbian, she couldn’t possibly be sending out sex signals to me.

On my way back home to Queens via company car service, I considered my limited experience with lesbians. I’d noticed that things like fat and skin tone didn’t seem to matter so much to them as they did to men. There were a handful of lesbians in the Dance of the Spirit and Healing Circle group I went to when I was even more desperate than usual for human contact. They weren’t fat or dumpy, but they didn’t seem like they’d reject you if you were. I found myself dreamily imagining Justine at a Dance of the Spirit meeting as I lolled groggily in the leathern gloom of the car, my eyes on the aqua-colored bottle of liquid air-sweetener the driver had attached to the center of his dashboard. The convoluted landscape of downtown Manhattan slid by in the emergent light.

Perhaps my attendance at a Dance of the Spirit group would strike some as a contradiction of my belief in Anna Granite, who was an atheist and would probably have scorned auras, healing
crystals, and chakra meditation if she’d had the chance to. But one of the central beliefs of Definitism is in the right of the individual to seek out whatever serves and pleases him, as long as others are not trampled upon. Anyway, I enjoyed the meetings, and I thought Justine might too, although I’m not sure why I thought of her when I received my invitation to that month’s Dance of the Spirit, two weeks after our interview. But I did think of her, and my memory of her tense body made me feel she might be in need of the kind of gentleness I sought at these fests. Besides, I wanted to know how the article was coming.

I had better luck finding her on the other end of her ringing telephone this time. She sounded disoriented, especially when she realized who it was.

“I haven’t even started the article yet,” she said. “God knows when I will, there’s still so many people to interview.”

Her voice was expressionless save that it was sinisterly rimmed with the glowing wattage of raw nerves. It disturbed me; there was something desperate in it. Perhaps she was anxious about the article and my call had precipitated feelings of guilt.

“Oh well, take as much time as you need,” I chattered. “These things require a good deal of thought and meticulousness and care. Don’t let anyone rush you.”

Silence, underscored by the dull electrical pulse of the phone.

“Anyway, that’s not the real reason I called. There’s an event I wanted to invite you to that I thought might be of interest.”

“Yeah?” Her voice swelled with personality.

I described Dance of the Spirit as best I could, emphasizing the healings and niceness. “It’s almost all women,” I added at the end.

Another silence.

“Hello?” A little irritable, I admit.

“This is a Definitist meeting?” she asked.

“Oh no, no.” I gaily laughed. “Not at all. It’s something I felt that perhaps, on an intuitive level, you might enjoy.”

Another long throb of silence. “Well thanks but I don’t think so. To tell you the truth I’m surprised you’d go to something like that. It doesn’t sound very Definitist in spirit.”

“Well, maybe if you went you’d get a broader picture of Definitism,” I snapped. “But maybe you don’t want that.”

I felt her behind her silence, squirming. “Why don’t you give me the address,” she compromised. “Maybe I’ll drop in if I have the time.”

I placed the squares of information at her disposal and got off the phone. Debby and Sandra were right; she was obviously some kind of nut. I was sorry she’d been molested as a child, but ultimately one has to take responsibility for one’s self, including one’s phone manners.

Dance of the Spirit opened as usual; the Reverend Jane Terwilliger, a tall bright-eyed woman with long, sensitive fingers, stood beaming in the center of her loft before massive vases of roses and lilies, around which were heaped hunks of clear quartz, giant pink and purple crystals. She was further ringed by a half circle of white and blue candles and, beyond that, a circle of primary-colored folding chairs in which members of the group sat, their eyes happily shut, their open hands resting palms-up on their spread knees. Tonal music bloomed in stately bulbs of sound, and the healers moved among the seated celebrants, gesturing earnestly with their hands, pushing auras this way and that.

I have to confess that a large part of my reason for being there was the beauty of the ritual, the solemnity and delicacy of it all. Justine had been right; Anna Granite would not have approved.

The Reverend Jane saw me and floated towards me. “Dorothy, so nice to see you, it’s been a while.” She rested her long arm across my shoulders, and her body warmth sank into my outer flesh and vanished. I uttered my greeting, and she stepped slightly away from me, her hand still resting on my shoulder. She looked at me, and her expression seemed to spiral inward as her eyes released darts of light that covered my forehead and cheeks with bright barbs.

“There seems to have been a change in you,” she said. “Quite recently. Yes.” Slowly her eyes eased back into their normal function and she smiled, emitting nothing but kindness and interest. “You’re probably not aware of it yet but you will be. A nice opening is taking place.” She nodded happily, and I was embarrassed by the little lilypad pulse that answered her from somewhere in my chest, eager for her words and voice simply because they were kind.

I saw Jodie and Marie, a couple that faithfully attended the meetings.
I felt for Jodie a strange affinity born of our mutual awkwardness and our politeness in the face of it. We had nothing to say to each other, yet we felt a bond based on the unspoken sense of an elusive similarity between us and the fear that if we actually got to know one another the result would be disappointment. The similarity was not physical; she was a tall, sharp-featured strawberry blonde with an almost expressionless face and stiff Kabuki grace. Her girlfriend Marie, a young, sarcastic, alcoholic Southerner with gorgeous green eyes and bad skin, scared me, but I approached them anyway as they lounged by the snack table.

Marie regarded me resentfully as Jodie and I made our usual pointlessly locked-in eye contact and clumsy small talk. I wanted to talk to them about Justine and the interview but could find no way to do so as they knew almost nothing about me. Instead I made oblique references to a certain “strange person” who had appeared in my life and who was “playing games” with me, a person I could see was trouble, yet felt drawn to. In between sentences I directed hard, confusing thoughts at Jodie, and she seemed to sense the scrambled text beneath my banal phrases, for I could feel a reaction pressing against her austerity like a curious animal. Even Marie seemed sympathetic. “Get rid of her,” she said. “Don’t cut her any slack.”

Reverend Jane clapped her hands and called out, “Okay! Let’s begin!”

We sat in our circle of chairs, and Jane began her talk. She’d been thinking about the limitations we place on ourselves. She told of a story she once read in a
National Geographic
which reported that when tigers accustomed to captivity were taken to nature preserves, they refused to leave the perimeters of their cages, even after the cages were removed. My eyes scanned the attentive faces. Who were these people? Mostly attractive, healthy-looking women in their thirties who wore bright-colored clothing. One of them, a Puerto Rican woman with a sternly beautiful face and huge starved eyes, had recently lost her mother to cancer and her brother to AIDS. She sat in her chair as if she were a cactus drinking in the tiny rivulet of nourishment at the center of Jane’s voice; it was very little, but she was drawing on it with all her deep plantlike might. I felt for her.

“. . . and I just kept seeing that strong beautiful tiger in the midst of that lush greenery, with those wonderful tropical flowers and the fresh air all around him, yet unable to step out and live it. And I said to myself, that’s been me. That’s been a lot of people I know.”

I wondered if it had ever been me. It didn’t seem like it. I looked around the circle. People were nodding their heads. Then it was time to link hands, close our eyes, and focus inward, visualizing pure golden light bathing our heart chakras. Usually when we did this I found that while there was nothing much in my heart chakra, my head was a-boil with nasty little memories. The teenagers on the subway who called me “porky,” the cab driver who’d called me a cunt, bitchy Ms. Feigenbaum, the lawyer with illegible handwriting, all chattering hatefully to the accompaniment of the Top 40 trash I was subjected to from my work-mate’s desk radio. I sighed, linked hands, and encouraged my thoughts to skip with idiotic lightness over my recent plans for joining a gym and losing weight. Salads, I thought. Water. Threads of tonal music penetrated my skull. I must’ve been tired for I experienced a sudden cerebral dip, the startling change of level one feels when stepping into sleep, not one layer at a time, but down several layers with one elongated step. I yawned. I thought of my mother. This was not unusual; I thought of both my parents on occasion, usually with intense anger. But at this moment I felt acutely my mother as she was in Ohio, still young, still pretty, and in my child’s eyes so much more than pretty that “pretty” would demean features that to me were the fine articulation of her deep internal life, which made meaningless the social concept “pretty.” I remembered her rubbing my shoulders as I lay in bed ready for sleep, remembered her gentleness, her innocent undefended nature entering my body through her fingers. I remembered my body responding to her. All at once I felt my heart chakra, which was filled, not with light, but with pain.