Annie Oakley's Girl (4 page)

Then I clasp my free hand over my heart and say in my best fake sweet starstruck voice, “She's even more wonderful than I imagined. Oh gosh, oh gee. She's so — so — good.” I stare up toward the ceiling mocking the romanticism of the people I'd seen that day. I stand still a second then fling my hands out like I'm trying to strike at something. “Jesus Christ, you made me sick today. I mean it. You're something else. You really are something goddamn else.” I pause. “But hell, what am I being upset about?” I shrug my shoulders and smile my sweetest smile. “You're only giving them what they want.” I raise my voice in imitation again. “Gosh, were things really like that? Gee, Annie, you're a dream come true. Boy, Annie. I feel like I can really talk to you.” I catch my breath and clench my free hand into a fist. I walk to one end of the room then back, tossing the spurs back and forth from one hand to the other. I turn and face her directly. I look at her a second, and try to make my voice sound calm and matter-of-fact but I can't. I say with all the spite I can, “You fucking whore.”

Annie's eyes widen and her mouth opens slightly with sadness and surprise. She looks like she's about to cry. I feel horrible. I know I'm wrong. I want to take back everything but I'm too afraid and proud to change my mind so I raise my voice and spit out at her, “But what did I expect? You're Annie Fucking Oakley. Annie Fucking Jesus Oakley. You only give them what they want — ”

Then Annie interrupts me. It's the only time she ever interrupts me in her life. She says, “Yew said yew wanted them to like me. Yew said I should be like that. Yew said that's why
yew
liked me.”

Then she's quiet. Then she says, “I only did this fer yew.”

I don't know what to say to her. I look back at the movie and watch Gary Cooper mime a passionate appeal to my patriotism. I walk over to the set and turn the volume up full blast and look at Annie, knowing we won't shout above the movie.

On my way out the door I remember the spurs and spin round and hurl them at the set. I slam the door and hurry away before I can hear anything else.

I leave a message at the desk for them to call for Annie when the limo arrives and to tell her that I'll meet her at the airport.

I walk uptown. I don't go in any bars, but do pass one I glance at. The name of it's “The Dude Ranch.” Three blocks farther on I see “The Bucking Bronc,” but I try to walk past without giving it a second look. I see a couple in cowboy hats and try to see if they're really from out West or just New Yorkers trying to be chic.

I try to remember how long those bars have been here.

Annie's drinking a strawberry daiquiri in the airport bar when I find her. Just as I walk up to her I hear our flight announced. We're going to Los Angeles. I throw a twenty on the table and help her stand. I see she's crying. “There, there,” I say as I help her up, pretending it's just the departure that's made her cry.

In the first class compartment Annie orders daiquiri after daiquiri. She experiments with different flavors — banana, peach, lime. I don't know whether to pray that they do show a Western, or to pray that they don't. We're on our way to Hollywood to negotiate the rights to her biography. She's never been drunk before.

“I'z afraid yew wudn't be comin' back.” It's the first word she's said to me since I found her in the bar.

“I told the clerk I'd meet you at the airport.”

“But I didn't know if yew meant it. All the stuff y' always used t' tell me 'bout leavin'. I was just tryin' t' figure it out.”

I close my eyes and remember, with shame, things I'd tried to tell her, but I can't remember anything clearly, just vague words and unconnected thoughts — something about self-fulfilling prophecy, trying to sound mysterious and tragic, foreshadowing, the seed of doubt. I flinch when I think of what I've cooked up and fed to her.

Her eyes are closed beneath her hat which tips awkwardly over her face. I take her hat off and put it in the cabinet above us. Then I smooth her hair down. I hold her hands and look at them. I wipe her face and hold the tissue as she blows her nose. I feed her her lime daiquiri.

“Annie?” I whisper, “Annie? Annie?” I don't know what else to say.

She's mumbling things I can barely make out. I wave away the stewardess who offers us the movie earphones. Then I think I hear Annie say, “I don't belong . . . I miss the gang . . . cain't we go back? . . . please, cain't we go back? . . .” I wipe the moisture off her face then hold both her hands in mine. Annie sleeps. I don't think of anything. The lights go dim and the cabin screen gets light and I see the camera pan across the great vast open plains, a classic Western sunset. Just as the cowboys start across the screen, I close my eyes and thank God I can't hear the sound track. The cabin air feels cold and dry. I hear the chilled air coming in. Then I know that I will send her back. And I'll awake alone in California.

But I don't know when in the night she'll go. So I don't know if this is a dream I have or something I see that happens when she goes back:

Annie's riding Cowgirl. They're tearing through the desert with a leather pouch for the Pony Express. Her just-cleaned jacket gets blown with dust. Annie's getting winded. The sun is hurting her eyes. Her hand that grips the saddle horn lets up and she pats all her pockets, searching for what I can only guess must be her sunglasses. Her body jerks up and down on Cowgirl. There's nothing smooth or graceful between them.

And though I know she can't remember me, I wonder if she does because the look on her face is a mixture that's strange — a thing poised taut between a type of fear, and boredom, and something not at all unlike nostalgia.

THE JOY OF MARRIAGE

We go to the country for our honeymoon. I've chosen a small isolated cottage far from everything because I want us to be alone at last after our huge wedding and reception.

We unpack in the tiny room, and as I lift our empty clothes from our suitcases I'm suddenly overcome with desire for you. I try my hardest to be patient and then, when the suitcases are empty, you let me kiss you. I rush to unbutton my blouse and drop my slacks and give myself to you when I hear a car pull up outside and you say, “Don and Martha,” as I'm pulling your hand over my bare breast, “It must be Don and Martha.” You pull yourself away from me and dash for the window. I follow you and see outside a large black Rolls Royce. The chauffeur has just opened the car door and a woman's beautiful leg is starting out of the car. She and a man get out of the car and wave to us. “It
is
Don and Martha,” you say eagerly, waving back to them. Reluctantly I wave too, careful to hide my naked breasts with my free hand.

I lag behind you, pulling up my slacks as you usher Don and Martha inside. They address me by name and hug me. Martha helps me zip my fly. “You remember Don and Martha, don't you, dear?” “Of course, of course,” I say, fumbling with the button at my waist. And, though they remind me of lots of your friends, I can swear I've never met either of them before. Martha squeezes my hand and whispers to me, “I'm so happy for you.” You and Don tell the chauffeur to pull the car around to the back.

As I'm slipping my hands into my sleeves, wondering how we're ever going to feed the four of us, the doorbell chimes. I'm startled to hear such a majestic signal, especially in a little one-room cottage like this. I'm wondering what to make of this when a butler answers the door and in rush two men in tuxedos. “Bill! John!” you cry with joy. You give them handshakes and hugs. “Hey there, you old son of a gun,” John says as he slaps you on the back. Bill and John step toward me, each pecking me on the cheek with a kiss. John winks at me as I'm fumbling with my blouse, and whispers, “Looks like we've caught you at an awkward time.”

A servant carries in four matching pieces of leather luggage. I turn around to see if there's any way we can fit it all under the bed, but, when I turn, I don't see the small bedroom you and I had unpacked in, but a grand staircase straight out of a thirties musical. My fingers go numb with shock as I'm buttoning my blouse.

The butler starts carrying Don and Martha's suitcases upstairs and behind me I feel a maid slipping me into a housecoat. She guides me up to a bedroom on the second floor where evening clothes for me are laid out on the bed. She leaves me alone to dress, and after she closes the door behind her, I hear the doorbell downstairs ringing and ringing.

I don't know how much time has passed, but when I go downstairs, it's lively with noise. A doorman ushers me into the dining room and before me stretches a table so long I can't see the end of it. I stand at the door and peer over the half-filled plates and half-empty bottles, cloth-covered bread rolls, and silver-covered dishes. The brilliance of all the silver glitters at me. The tablecloth is long and white. The people alternate between fine black suits and pastel dresses. I don't see anyone I know. You sit at the end of the table close to me, and just above the edge of the chair I can see the back of your head.

Then I'm sitting next to you and I realize I've just missed dinner. My stomach growls as the servants clear the plates. I hold your hand under the table. Just as I'm starting to caress your palm, you stand up to deliver a toast. The toast you deliver is for me, for our happiness in marriage. Everyone stands and toasts me. They clink their glasses and smile at one another and tip their glasses back. I search the empty place-setting in front of me for a glass, but there's not a drink in sight. Right then a corps of cooks wheels out a tremendous cake with our names, yours and mine, written on it. You sit down and I think how long it will take to serve everyone from this huge cake. Under the table, I slide my hand up your thigh, slowly, as tantalizingly as I can, and just when I feel you want me, and I'm about to touch you, you stand up to propose another toast. Embarrassed, I stare into the empty place setting in front of me and try not to listen as you talk about the joy of marriage. I hope the guests supply their own reasons why I'm blushing.

After dinner, some of the guests drift into the billiards room and smoke cigars, and some of them drift into the parlor and fan themselves and eat after-dinner mints. Others dance in a tremendous ballroom where a small orchestra plays waltzes. I wander from room to room, lost, looking for you. When I open the door to the study, the lights are out and someone says “Sshhh” and hastily closes the door behind me. It smells like smoke and whiskey and sweat. On a screen in the back of the room, a movie is flickering. It's a sex movie and I'm embarrassed to see it. I turn to leave but someone's crowded in behind me and when I look for the door I can't see it. I turn back to the screen and, in horror, I realize that I recognize one of the figures in the movie: it's you. Then I recognize the other one: it's me. I'm about to shout a protest or lunge for the light switch and put a stop to this when I hear your voice and you're saying, “Here comes the best part,” in the same tone as if you were describing “Old Faithful” from a Yellowstone National Park vacation home-movie. Then, you slow the camera down and I hear your voice soothingly narrating our love-making with move-by-move coverage. I watch and listen, rapt, as you describe us. Then, when I feel the movie is about to near its end, I close my eyes and put my hands over my ears in shame.

The next thing I know, all the lights are on and everyone is clapping. The smoke is heavy in the room and I hear folding metal chairs scrape against the floor as people stand up to leave. Men roll their sleeves back down and slip back into their jackets. The few women who are there dab their necks and foreheads with handkerchiefs. I try to leave quietly, but someone catches me, shakes both my hands and says, “You were marvellous, just really marvellous.” A young woman with tears on her cheeks comes up to me, stares deeply into my eyes, hugs me close, whisper s, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.” A middle-aged man with a five o'clock shadow grabs my hand and murmurs “All I can say is thank you. You have no idea how much this has meant to me.” Then he shakes his head as if he can't find any words.

When I look over at you, you're smiling broadly, shaking hands with someone. Then you lean over the projector and patiently show him how it works.

Our honeymoon house is full of people and they just keep staying on and on and on.

In the evenings women wear satin and chiffon and men wear dark tuxedos. In the afternoons everyone wears tennis clothes and everyone looks sleek and tanned and has beautiful muscle tone. Some people play tennis and some people play polo in the field that's materialized on the east lawn, or go yachting in the lake that appeared here mysteriously. Some people just play cards and sit on the veranda drinking cool, iced drinks.

I wander from game to game, looking for you. Everyone always tells me I've only missed you by an instant.

Soon I take to walking around with my clothes only half-buttoned, half-zipped, because I'm so eager to be with you when I find you, and you're so hard to find and you move so fast that I want to be sure that, when I do find you, I won't have to spend time unbuttoning and unzipping. Eventually, I take to walking around completely naked.

Every night after dinner there is dancing and drinking and cigar smoking and the movie. Every night it's the same film which you call
The Joy of Marriage
. The first part of the film is of our wedding and reception. This part shows the countless happy party-goers you invited to “share in the joy of the day of our communion,” as you put it then. I guess that the popularity of this part of the film is due to the fact that some members of the audience had been our wedding and reception guests and enjoy seeing themselves on film. We had packed out the cathedral, and then we'd packed out half the Fairmont. You and I had had an understanding about the social necessity of doing all this partying: we reasoned it wouldn't be too much because we'd follow it with our secluded honeymoon. One scene in this part shows a shot of the bridesmaids standing right outside the cathedral door. I'm the diminutive figure in white, and though the print is perfectly clear, it's hard to tell exactly who the dark squatting figure that catches the brilliant blue garter I throw is. Oddly enough, you too are in this sequence, crouching in front of us, then squatting and clicking the same still camera you're carrying as you scurry about for the best angle. I don't know who got this footage. But in the last few frames before the scene change, you throw your arm around me and point me to the camera, press your cheek to mine and smile broadly. You wave to the movie camera with your free arm, which holds your still camera. Then the movie camera zooms in to our two faces. This shot fades into the second part of the film, the part that gives the film its title,
The Joy of Marriage
; our two bodies familiar and comfortable and kind with each other.

Gradually, word gets around, and the movie becomes so popular that it draws the crowds from the other evening activities. Gradually, too, the whole crowd increases and we have to move the film-showing into the theater that's appeared in the basement.

All the people who see the film come up to me and tell me how sweet I am in it. They also tell me they've never seen a pair like us and tell me we remind them of Valentino and what's-her-name, Bogart and what's-her-name, Gable and what's-her-name. I think they mean me to take these things as compliments.

Eventually, everyone is in the theater from morning to night and you run the film continuously. You run the film for weeks, months. Sometimes I try to make my way over to you and talk to you, but, with all the expansion, you've had a projection booth built and you're sealed inside. Once I get close enough to tap on the glass, but either you can't see me in the dark or you just choose not to respond to me.

After a while, you sense some restlessness on the part of the audience because, arty, strange, and beautiful as the film is, even the most interested audience tires of infinite reruns. So you decide to do a retrospective show and run all the films you've ever made that led up to this film.

This night you show films of you and all of your exlovers. You preface the progam with an introductory statement, the theme of which is an homage to me, a grand testament to our love. Your tone is that of an evangelical sinner saved by grace, and your showing of these films is your confession. There are countless films, and we watch them for hours and hours and hours, starting with your first lover when you were fifteen. The print is Technicolor and everything looks fake. Then you show a succession of lovers before me, black and white, color, a couple of slide shows, a multimedia presentation. Then you end with the three other lovers you had during our engagement. These last three films are very painful to me. Then these three are followed by footage of you speaking into the camera, confessing the error of your ways and sharing with your audience how much you've learned, especially about faith and patience, through me. You look so innocent and sincere, and this makes me realize that this is one of the reasons I love you. The soft lighting behind you makes you look like a novitiate. I hear several soft sighs in the audience.

But much as I am drawn into these films, I keep glancing back up at the projection booth to see if I can see more than the orange nub of your cigarette burning above the machines.

After the confession footage, you again show
The Joy of Marriage
. The applause following this is deafening. Clearly, everyone is moved by the honesty with which you present your difficult struggle. People admire you and identify with you. I think I could even say they love you. Yes, they do, they idolize you.

After this showing several people come up and draw me aside by my naked arm and tell me first how moved they were by the presentation. How proud I must be to know you, to be part of you, they say. They ask me to tell them what you're “really like,” no really, what you're
really
like. Their eyes are greedy and full of desire. Naked as I am, I find myself sweaty and hot and shaky, not the way I used to feel when I used to rip my clothes off in desire for you during our engagement, but in a different way. People offer me money to tell them about you and I tell them I can't. They sigh and say how good and noble it is of you to tell me to keep our special, private selves to us alone. They tell me I'm sweet for not selling out and telling the delicious secrets of our honeymoon.

And this is our honeymoon, isn't it? A bit extended, sure; a few more honeymooners, sure, but it is, as I tell myself repeatedly,
our honeymoon.

During the day sometimes I leave the showings and walk around and try to imagine the place before it grew, before the theater, when I still felt like wearing clothes. When I walk into a room now, I feel invisible or, rather, I feel fully clothed; that is, no one comments on my exposed flesh, though I feel heat and chill and the brush of others' bodies against my body more.

And at night when I go back to our room alone, as I have done since the first day we arrived here, I dream of a small cottage in the country, a honeymoon cottage. And I dream of you, despite the fact that I've forgotten what you look like in 3-D, the flesh.

Sometimes I even prowl around the house and grounds to see if I can find you. Because, though everyone else thinks you are with me, I know that that's a lie. I wander through the gardens where the cool night air tingles on my skin. I wander through the rooms and even through the theater.

You must take a break some time. And this is when I hope to catch you some time, alone, off guard, without your loving audience, without the perfect face you are on film.