Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty (2 page)

I put my arms around him, released him.

Such business as his! A corner of his stair hall was covered by old dry leaves that yield all by themselves.

He looked like a man whose leader has failed him time after time, as he asked the seller awkward questions—not hostile. He was looking for a better belt buckle.

The seller said, You ought to buy yourself something beautiful! Why not this?

He paid for the buckle, which he felt was brighter and stronger than he was. His sense of sight and smell were diminishing.

He could only crudely draw something on his life and just fill it in—say a horse.

“Can I see that?” he said, “What is that?”

It was a baby porringer.

At the close of the day, the seller counted her money, went
to the bank—the next step. She hates to push items she doesn’t approve of, especially in this small town, five days a week, where everything she says contains the mystery of health and salvation that preserves her customers from hurt or peril.

That much was settled, as the customer entered his home, approached his wife, and considered his chances. Hadn’t his wife been daily smacked across the mouth with lipstick and cut above the eyes with mascara?

She had an enormous bosom that anyone could feel leaping forward to afford pleasure. She was gabbing and her husband—the customer—was like a whole horse who’d fallen out of its stall—a horse that could not ever get out of its neck-high stall on its own, but then his front legs—their whole length—went over the top edge of the gate, and the customer made a suitable adjustment to get his equilibrium well outside of the stall.

“It’s so cute,” he said to his wife, “when you saw me, how excited you got.”

His wife liked him so much and she had a sweet face and the customer thought he was being perfectly insincere.

He went on talking—it was a mixed type of thing—he was lonely and he was trying to get his sheer delight out of the way.

To a ludicrous degree I could have been in a very good mood looking forward. I am going to be married—followed by dessert, fruit, and bonbons in dishes.

And my furniture cheers me up. We sat in side chairs, packed with springs or foam, accompanied by a moth, who lounged.

It turned out Wayne had been missing me. He was depressed and had, therefore, come to my enclosure after many months.

So Wayne and I now loitered at the edge of the room, ahead of my marriage to Jim.

Over across the—how can I make this wonderful?—the large turf bog!—the sky showed fewer than a hundred birds and at its near top, zero.

Wayne said caringly
–It hurts me that I can’t stay because I was unfaithful once or twice.

Wayne! Stay!
Jim said.

I was too restless to save time. I leaned against dear Hallam, and Ardolph—isn’t he wise?—a divine spear?—a linden on a hill!—a man from the east who has come to the west. He is well born, noble, a home-loving wolf.

Wayne said,
Lady, you owe me up the wazoo!
He resumed his departure which is such a gloomy tradition.

Another one of my boyfriends said helpfully there is a great difference between love, hatred, and desire, but nothing compels us to maintain these differences.

“I was a lucky person. I was a very successful person,” said the woman. She was not entirely busy with her work. She took cups and tumblers from her cupboard to prepare a coffee or a tea. She thought, We have some smaller or even smaller.

Her Uncle Bill said, “Have you been able to have sexual intercourse?”

She said, “Yes! And I had a climax too!”

This idea is compact and stained and strained to the limit.

Her sex worries will be discussed when people worry what happened to her at the end of her life when her chin droops and when her eyes are hooded. Not yet.

Her fervor and her youth irritate her for they provide a sort of permanent entry into a shop. She lifts a bouquet of broccoli rabe. Oh, how awful it is!

“I don’t know how to cook these. Do you cook the leaves?”

The man says, “You chop off the ends and chop them up—look!”

She’s got some pent-up gem on her finger. (Those colored stones, they’re all cooked, you know.)

Didn’t she used to appreciate its rays of light? And she used to appreciate the man.

Ask yourself sincerely at odd moments, “Am I prone to deep feeling?” for it is less than necessary—that very small, bright, enlarging thing. The passions do not knock one out, but they may permit you to have carnal complaints before proceeding further. Let’s visit another woman—Deirdre—and then Donna. What’s more—Doris grew up exhausted by shock and word of mouth. She hadn’t been married long, it was a spring day, and she was uninterested still in her own love story.

They had admired a bronze sphinx with an upraised paw and an elegant and extremely fine clock on skinny legs.

The husband tried to buy a jug, enameled and gilded.

A number of his parts are modern and wide. He looks well made for sustained and undemanding and justified indulgence.

She was cockeyed on her settee—her face considerably close to the cushioned seat. She righted herself, but she dropped the book.

She was sick and her mother had died of typhoid, her sister of parasitic worms.

This had been one of the few occasions when she had been charming and tactful.

There were bruises on the lady’s face and indications of other injuries upon her delicate structure.

Her library table desk is made of sycamore, painted in the classic manner—the type of thing that seems peculiar.

They’ve selected Concord Gray Thermal—after working with Steve—for the deceased wife.

The newly married pair had had to stay in Montpelier overnight, as if on the sly, to buy her headstone.

“It still hurts,” the wife says, when they’re back on the road. “I wonder what’s wrong.”

Gently, from time to time, the husband had placed firm pressure to a point slightly below the tilt of the new wife’s torso at the pubic bone.

At Greg’s Place en route to Westport where they live, the wife says, “This wine is sour if you’d like to taste it.” She says, “Maybe the doctor injured my tooth.”

Akin to their lion mask front door pull, they both have brown circles under their eyes and yellowed teeth.

Indignation shows on the lower ledge of the wife’s eyes. Her pointed chin is so unlike her predecessor’s.

“What are you doing?” the husband says.

“I am checking out my jawbone.”

Her husband turned his head this way, away from her, half-pleased. Then the thought came to him. He still hesitated. He did not want to rush. He wanted to live a little.

“You think you are a do-gooder,” Mother said, “don’t you? You’re a do-gooder.”

After a minute, no more, a newcomer looked toward me, a toddler with
her
mother, I’d bet.

“These type of people,” Mother said.

“See that large bird?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Mother said.

The toddler acted as if she knew me.

It’s so interesting when a little person is so clearly distinguished. I can tell—by the superciliary arches above her eyes, the ultra-tiny hands. I regard this visitant as unreal.

The clerk reminded me of my dead husband who used to say he was always going around all the time with his penis sticking out and that he didn’t know what to do.

“Lady!” the clerk said.

A little old lady jerked herself toward that clerk.

A motley group of us was looking at a wristwatch and inwardly I prayed I’d see a glow of dancing matter to lead me. I am another little old lady.

“Mrs. Cook,” a clerk said, “are you here to have some fun?”

This is a shop with a bird on a branch in diamonds and pearls, a ruby-eyed dog, a ram’s head, a griffin, a cupid in gold.

“It’ll be entirely discounted if I understand you correctly—” my clerk said, “this is all that you want!”

“I can’t afford it and I’ll have that one!”

“You’ve broken it! You’ve ruined it!” the clerk said.

I said, “Don’t look so awful,” but he had already so imprudently advanced into my hell-hole.

The guest’s only wish is to see anyone who looks like Betsy, to put his hands around this Betsy’s waist, on her breasts. He’s just lost a Betsy. He followed Betsy.

In front of Betsy, who supports on her knees her dinner dish, you can see the guest approach.

“You got your supper?” he says, “Betsy?”

And Betsy says, “Who’s that in the purple shirt?”

“That’s not purple. You say purple?” says the guest.

“What color would you say that is?” says Betsy.

“That’s magenta.”

“I have to look that up. Magenta!” says Betsy.

“That’s magenta,” says the guest.

“That’s lavender,” says another woman who’s a better Betsy.

The woman secured her hairs together in a string. The child ate a donut. The woman suggested someone throw a ball. The woman fetched the ball, and then the woman fetched the child, and she bunched up a section of the child’s T-shirt, as she bunched up a section of the child’s neck, and she secured the child.

The waitress who is badly nourished or just naturally unhealthy has a theory about why the daughter never returned.

The daughter did return, for only a little stay, to ask which chicken dish her father had ordered for her.

The mother experiences her losses with positivity. She even frames the notion of her own charm as she heads into her normal amount of it.

Yes, she confides in the waitress, both her daughter and her husband have disappeared, and yes, her daughter is a darling, but hasn’t she made it clear to her there isn’t a boy her age to admire her within a hundred miles?

The mother roams home, wearing the fine check jacket and her black calf heels, alone.

She sees the pair of doors of a little shop where they are selling magic and all kinds of things. Inside, the clerks with elf-locks are dressed for the cold. There is a bakery the mother thinks would be nice and warm. It is okay, and after that, she goes to the gift shop, and gets those sole inserts.

Normally, the family’s frugal. They eat at home, buy groceries.

The mother’s legs are trembling, yet she has a good conscience and a long life.

She used to weigh one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Now she weighs one hundred and fourteen pounds, but it’s been very hectic.

As she sleeps, the telephone rings, wakes her, and she thirsts for a glass of water. She finds that one thing neatly, reasonably, takes her away from yet another.

I had stretched my body into a dart, inhaled deeply, and passed through the aisles at top speed and then a man with a red-nailed woman and a girl came up to me, and the man said, “You don’t remember me! I’m Kevin! I was married to Cynthia. We’re not together any more.”

They had been the Crossticks!

What he wanted now, Kevin said, was peace, prosperity, and freedom.

And I more or less respected Cynthia Crosstick. I didn’t like her at first. She is not very nice. She’s odd, but that’s the whole point.

I didn’t like my fly brooch at first either. It’s fake. You can’t
get it wet. It’s very rare and the colors are not nice and I get lots of enjoyment from that.

I picked up Glad Steaming Bags and Rocket Cheese.

“It’s very cold. Do you want some lemonade?—” said a child at a little stand, “we give twenty percent to charity.”

“No!” I said loudly, as I exited the emporium, although there might have been something to enjoy in swallowing that color.

“Why is she crying?” the child had asked an adult.

I had tried to hear the answer, but could not have heard the answer, without squatting—without my getting around down in front of the pair, bending at the knee, so that the proverbial snake no longer crawls on its belly.

I should have first stooped over.

The lemonade girl hadn’t mentioned the gumdrop cookies they had hoisted for sale.

Just the mention of cookies brings back memories of Spritz and Springerle and Cinnamon Stars—party favors—attractive, deliciously rich, beautiful colors, very well liked, extra special that I made a struggle to run from.

I ate everything I had and had cramps that somehow fitted together. PIE was on the sign. This was well beyond where the poor people live in their hamlet. PIES VEGETABLES. A woman who took orders there popped a lozenge the color of bixbite into her mouth.

She wore a hat, tasseled magnificently.

In the style of a train trip, we take other trips or a car trip or we go away in a fictitious form.

We’re not sure how many parts or places can be put past us—but all this I slyly enjoy.

I think of intimate friends from days gone by and how exquisitely my pie has been traveled.

I am a disappointment, so I drank the milk. I finished the milk quickly, and then took a low dosage of the tea. I lit a lamp—nearly blushed in the company of myself.

With this sort of blow, I am very unpleasant. Delmore and Constantine know how unpleasant I am.

On such a night, I normally display figurines on the table—a bear holding a staff; a man holding a house; a man holding a house standing on another man—you know, how birds sit on each other.