Anna in Chains (10 page)

“If
you
got it, it would be fatal,” Gert warned her. “You never laugh at low humor, so don't imagine you could start now. I remember when you were a girl you got nauseous from Groucho Marx, from Jack Benny, even from Eddie Cantor. So cover your nose.”

“It's impossible that I got nauseous from Groucho Marx,” Anna said. “…and the word is
nauseated
. I never could bear him, the man disgusted me.”

“Exactly,” Gert agreed. “You were always too good for everything.”

“Why do you make things up?” Anna demanded. “You're always telling me things from the old days that never happened.”

“They happened,” Gert said. “It's just convenient for you not to remember.”

“I never tell
you
ridiculous things about yourself!” Anna said.

“That's right—you never paid attention to me, you never gave me a thought. You were too busy looking in the mirror, combing your crowning glory.”

“I thought it was Ava who never paid attention to you.”

“She's another sister for the books. When it comes to sisters God wasn't good to me. I always wished we could be like the Andrews Sisters. But at least I don't have to deal with Ava now—let her stay in Miami Beach till the cows come home.”

“Let's not get into how much you hate Ava,” Anna said, “or I'll be sorry I invited you along.”

“I'm sorry I came already,” Gert said.

The truck blurped three shots of black smoke into the air and tooted its horn. Anna looked up. The driver leaned forward toward the windshield and made a fish-mouth kiss at Anna as he pulled away from the curb.

“Disgusting,” Gert said as they watched his tail end merge into traffic. “The world is a sewer these days. Whatever happened to parties and wholesome hayrides?”

“Hayrides!” Anna echoed.

“You can be sure what kind of guest Donahue's having on today,” Gert went on.

“What kind?” Anna asked.

“A sex guest,” Gert said. “Donahue always has sex on his show.”

“I thought you never watch Donahue.”

“I click by him fast on the dial.”

“Look,” Anna said, “since sex is a fact of life, since you're a woman who's had two husbands by now, why can't you finally face it? If you paid a little attention to what's going on in the world these days, you might come out of the fog of the old days and learn something.”

“You should talk! You're the one who doesn't have any understanding of these things. You don't have animal appetites, Anna. You were born with some kind of cotton stuffing inside you instead of flesh.”

“
I
was! What about you, the famous virgin at thirty-nine?”

“You weren't a virgin on your wedding night?”

“Of course I was. But I was young! I was still a girl!”

“I know some girls who aren't virgins,” Gert said ominously.

“Who?”

“Your granddaughters,” Gert said.

“What have
they
got to do with anything? What do you know about them anyway? They don't tell me about their private lives! I'm sure they don't tell
you!
They probably don't even tell their mother!”

“They're college girls,” Gert said, “and I know what college girls are up to these days. They live in co-ed dorms. They share the same bathrooms with men!”

“You know everything, don't you?” Anna said in disgust. “If you listened to Donahue like I do, you'd be more understanding of the way the world is today. You could learn something.”

“I've watched enough to know exactly what I would learn! I could learn how to be a lesbian and have a baby with my lesbian lover's brother, so we can all be one big happy family.”

“Oh, get your head out of the Middle Ages,” Anna said in disgust. “This is almost the year 2000.”

“I'm glad Papa didn't live long enough to see what's become of the world.”

“You think Papa was so innocent?” Anna said. “When he married Mama, what do you think he was marrying? Her brains?”

“Bite your tongue,” Gert said. “Papa was a religious man.

“He was a
man
,” Anna said.

“So was Abram a man,” Gert said. “Or didn't you ever notice? You think Abram only wanted to pray on his wedding night?”

Anna tried to remember her wedding night. Could such a thing be possible—for a woman to forget her wedding night? “Thank heaven—” she said, “this line is beginning to move.” She gave Gert a little shove. “Will you walk?” she said impatiently. “I want to get in there before they fill up.”

The line suddenly began to shoot forward. A young woman carrying a walkie-talkie and wearing an NBC peacock emblem on her jacket pocket ran along beside them and herded them into a vast ceilingless cavern. It was like the dark inside of a refrigerator. She rushed them over cables and wires taped to the floor, she sent them up wide flat stairs to find seats.

“Be sure to take an aisle seat,” Gert advised Anna, “or he won't be able to get to you.”

“What makes you think I care if he gets to me?” Anna asked.

“Because you always have to be the center of attention,” Gert said. “But don't bother to toss your hair for him,” Gert added. “Your charms had their day, Anna, but face it—their day is over.”

Donahue's guest was a young woman who looked like a school teacher but was really a whorehouse madam. Her ancestors had come over on the Mayflower. She was dressed like a girl going to church. Pretty, blonde, and blue-eyed, she sat on a chair and folded her hands in her lap. Her dress resembled a kind of middy-blouse Anna used to wear as a child. A string of white pearls lay on her throat. Anna observed how respectful Phil Donahue was to her; she disapproved. Why should a man as educated and intelligent as Donahue have to knock himself out for a woman like that—running around the audience with his coattails flying and his microphone sticking forward like a giant mushroom.

They were talking about the madam's business—how her “girls” were very smart and cultured, that many were college students, one was even a medical student. What other jobs could they find, she said, that had such good hours and such high pay? She provided regular medical care for them. Her girls carried little charge-card machines in their purses. They carried extra pantyhose and business clothes for the next day. They were refined, intelligent women, just women earning a decent living.

The floodlights, burning brightly now and heating up the room rapidly, seemed aimed at Anna's face. She squinted in the glare. Donahue went on smiling and nodding as if the whorehouse business was just fine with him; the trouble with liberals was that they forgave everyone for everything.

Gert poked Anna.

“Does anyone know what kind of part-time jobs your granddaughters have at college?” she demanded. “Do you think Janet knows what her children do?”

“You're crazy,” Anna said. “My granddaughters are not prostitutes.”

“Do you know for sure where they sleep every night?”

“No!” Anna said. “Do you know for sure where I sleep every night?”

“I have no doubts about you,” Gert said. “You aren't the type to sleep around. You only like to tease.”

Anna was feeling dizzy. She was the older sister, she had always believed she understood everything better than Gert. Now her head was reeling. All these questions raised about her granddaughters, about her wedding night! Was she a tease because she liked to wear her skirts short? She had always had pretty legs, why shouldn't she? She saw in her mind the red truck, the spurting black smoke, the truckdriver throwing her a kiss.

“Let's leave,” Anna said, “This show is worthless.”

“I'm more than willing,” Gert said. “For this I had to waste a taxi coupon.”

“Look,” Anna said, “Donahue could have had on Ralph Nader talking about poison in hair dye. He could have had on someone from the PLO. He didn't send me a program. He's only in LA for a week and this is what we got.”

“We got sewage! From the sewer of the world!” Gert said. She waved her arm to dismiss the whole thing, and suddenly Donahue came bounding up the steps with his microphone quivering in front of him and grabbed Gert's arm. He leaned right across Anna. He was so close she could see the thin white stripes on his pinstripe suit, the glare of the spotlights on his wedding ring. The hairs on his hand holding the microphone were glowing like hot electric wires.

“C'mon, help me out here!” he said to Gert as he thrust the black knob toward her mouth, bending toward her as if he cared with all his heart exactly what Gert thought about every issue in life. He took her hand and pulled her gently to a standing position. “Tell us what you think.” He had a voice like a lover.

“What I think,” Gert said, “is with all the troubles in the world, who needs to put a woman like this on national television!”

A round of applause rose up all around them. The Mayflower Madam smiled sweetly and cast her eyes down; the applause for Gert was deafening. Donahue smiled at Gert and squeezed her hand. Anna could smell his cologne or his aftershave or something from his beautiful white hair. She was the one who had got the free tickets, and Gert was the one who had got to air her small-mindedness all over the United States of America.

Anna raised her hand, but Donahue's back was to her, he was rushing down the stairs—her chance was lost forever. She turned to Gert and saw how flushed her cheeks were. A smile as big as a freeway was on her face.

“He's a real
mensch
,” Gert said. “I could go for him.”

“I thought he was too liberal for you.”

“He's only that way on television. In real life he's married to a good Catholic girl,” Gert said. “He knows what's right. He's a good family man. I would be happy for my daughters to marry a man like that.”

“You have no daughters,” Anna said. “You have no children, and it's lucky for them you don't.”

“I wonder if my friends in New Jersey saw me,” Gert said as they waited at the curb for a taxi. She had insisted on staying till the very end of the show, and then rushed to join the crush of women as they filed forward to shake Donahue's hand.

“No doubt they saw you all over the continent. Probably the President of the United States heard you, too.”

“I hope so. He would agree with my opinion,” Gert said. “He and I have the same politics.”

“What do you know about politics?” Anna said. “All you ever read is ‘Dear Abby.' “

“I know the world used to be a better place. That's all I need to know.”

“Oh!” Anna said. “
Why don't you grow up?
“

“You think it's grown up to cry for an hour in the bathroom on your wedding night?” Gert said. “Sitting on the tile in a brown silk dress and bawling your head off?”

“That's nonsense,” Anna said. “I never cry. I didn't cry then and I don't cry now.”

“You were afraid to be left alone for the night with Abram.”

“Not true.”

“He came to me and begged me to calm you down. He had a hotel room reserved in Atlantic City, but you didn't want to go away from home after the ceremony. You were hysterical.”

“Ridiculous.”

“He thought maybe I could arrange it so you and he could spend the first night alone at our house, then you wouldn't be so scared. What I had to go through!”

“What did you have to go through?” Anna asked. She couldn't remember a single thing about her wedding except the violent odor of her corsage of gardenias, curling brown at the edges almost as soon as she got them.

“First I had to get Mama farmed out. The Bronx relatives finally agreed to take her home with them and bring her back the next day. Then I had to find a place for myself. Do you know where I had to sleep on your wedding night?”

“No,” Anna said coldly. “The way you adored Abram, maybe it was with him. How should I know what else you're making up in this crazy story?”

“He really should have married me,” Gert said. “I have a sweeter nature than you. He would have had a better life with me. The fact is, Rosie Dubin and her husband had just taken an apartment on Ocean Parkway, and they agreed to let me come and sleep there after the ceremony. But they had only one double bed. So I had to sleep in it with them. They made me get in the middle, between them, to prove there wouldn't be any hanky-panky to embarrass me.”

“It must have been a big night for you, the famous virgin, sleeping in a bed with a man.”

“We laughed all night,” Gert said, smiling. A big bus blasted past them, and her hair blew back in the wind. She looked almost young and pretty.

“Late as I married, I always enjoyed sex, Anna. Did you?”

“When Donahue has me on as his guest, I'll discuss it in public, not before.”

The taxi they'd ordered pulled up, and Gert held the door open as Anna got in. As hard as Anna tried, she could not remember her wedding, her wedding night, her honeymoon. Had she ever enjoyed sex? What a question. She could hardly remember sex. When it happened, it was in the dark, late at night, she was always tired, she kept her eyes closed. Abram never stayed there long, he didn't bother her too often. What was to enjoy? Did Gert know something she didn't know? Did her granddaughters? All her life she had considered herself so advanced, but could it be she was the one still in the Dark Ages?

The taxi driver, a handsome Armenian, drove them toward home. He had some music playing on the radio with a low, hard beat. He seemed to be in another world. On Santa Monica Boulevard they passed a porno movie. They passed young girls strutting about in short shorts. They saw two gay men looking in the window of an underwear store, their arms around each other's waists. They passed a billboard with a half-naked woman in a bikini, advertising an airline. Gert had a satisfied expression on her face. Anna suddenly grabbed her arm. “I slept in the same bed with Abram thirty-one years, Gert. I had two babies. Doesn't that prove something to you?”