Testimony and Demeanor (9 page)

Miss O’Rourke said, “Well, I saw him going into the Huddle, and you know who was with him?”

Miss Quist said, “Yeah, Honorée. That’s just because she waitresses there. You want to know something about her? She told me she had a boyfriend in high school and she’d done it with him. And then we talked some and I could tell she was lying like a rug. Then she said she’d gained weight from taking the pill and I asked which doctor she’d gone to and she said her doctor back home. Yeah, well.”

Miss O’Rourke must have looked blank, because Miss Quist said, “Would you go to your doctor back home? Well, there. And Honorée comes from a
real
small town. And she won’t even use Tampax. But the real way I knew was that she was just lying like a rug.”

Miss O’Rourke said, “Well, I feel sorry for her—being so nervous. She talks to herself in class. You can see those big lips of hers waving away if you watch close. And then she makes those little disgusted faces when old Hendricks calls on someone
and they’re answering. It just drives me nuts. You know another thing? She was a big jock in high school and now she won’t talk about it. What a mute!”

I recognized the slang “mute.” It did not mean dumb. The nursing students all took an elementary biochemistry course in which the term “mutorotation” occurred. As shortened and adapted to conversational use, it meant “alien,” “strange,” or, as in this case, “perverse.”

I slipped away, keeping the pioneer woman and pedestal between Misses Quist and O’Rourke and me. I’d guessed that Miss Quist didn’t like me, although she was strangely flirtatious during our conferences. But I’d thought Miss O’Rourke had a better opinion of me. I had thought of her as a silent heroine—physically powerful and even graceful, but modest and pent up. I imagined she would be a handsome, sympathetic nurse. Perhaps her worse side was only brought out by the venomous Miss Quist, but I was sad to learn there was a worse side.

Honorée came to visit me at my house one Saturday afternoon. She announced the purpose of her visit on the front porch—as though requesting an audience. She was preparing a scene from
Twelfth Night
to audition for an acting class and wished to read it aloud with me.

It was a still, gray day, no color in the sky or in the fields or in the gravel road that looped over the slight rise that separated me from the edge of town. Honorée’s face was bright from her walk, and her eyes were shining. She was vividly pretty against the gray day. For that moment I thought it wouldn’t be hard to adjust to her simplicity. Simplicity was generally a difficulty for me. I never had any trouble sympathizing with Lear’s irritation with Cordelia in Act I. There are of course a great many complications revolving around this point of simplicity, but the only one that I applied then is this: Simplicity that is stubbornly blank is quite different from simplicity that is promising, or at
least expectant—cheerfully willing to become part of approaching elaboration, or, as in Honorée’s case, advancing itself to be elaborated.

Twelfth Night
. Act II, Scene iv. The
DUKE
lectures his page, Cesario (actually Viola disguised as a boy), on love. They listen to a melancholy song sung by the jester. The
DUKE
and Cesario/Viola discuss love. The
DUKE
claims that his love for Olivia (the neighboring beauty he pines for) is heroic as only a man’s love can be. Cesario/Viola contradicts him with a sad love story about his (her) sister, that is, herself. Viola is of course in love with the
DUKE
. One of the necessary comic premises is that Viola cannot reveal herself as a girl. The intended delight for the audience in this scene is how close she comes to coming out of her masquerade and how pompously insensible the
DUKE
is. In the end the
DUKE
sends Cesario/Viola traipsing off one more time to Olivia to woo Olivia for him.

I was not flattered when Honorée told me, over tea and oatmeal cookies, that she thought I would be a wonderful
DUKE
. I explained that the
DUKE
is an ass. Honorée said that that couldn’t be, since Viola is in love with him.

I said, “Well, let’s get on with it, Miss Hogentogler. Perhaps the text will resolve the problem.”

She said she knew her part by heart. She gave me her book.

She did know her part, but her acting was all a monotone of yearning. I told her so. I told her there was meant to be some clever playfulness in Viola, not just pathos.

Honorée said with some exasperation, “Well, what do you want me to do, then? Say ‘Dukie-wukie, you’re a cutie’?”

That made us both laugh.

Honorée got the idea that we could make it funnier if she got dressed up as a boy. I said that she was, insofar as she was wearing pants. She said, “No. You know—in one of your suits.”

She nipped off to my bedroom, the only other room in the
house, and returned in my checked three-piece suit. She took my tweed hat from the hook behind the door and tucked her hair up into it. She rolled the pants legs up. It wasn’t a grotesque fit. She pulled the back strap on the vest tight so that it was quite trim.

“O.K.,” she said. “Let’s do this part here. O.K.? You start at ‘Once more, Cesario, get thee to yond same sovereign cruelty.…’ ”

I read the speech.

Honorée acted outraged—stood with her fists on her hips, silently mouthing an indignant “What!” Some director must have told her, “Acting is
re
acting.”

I looked up from the text and was surprised to find Honorée’s face looming up just below mine. She faltered. She repeated, “ ‘… like Patience on a monument …’ ” Her confusion thickened my view of her head, as though I was looking at it through swirls of heat.

Her confusion now seemed to me to gel into an outer layer of skin, transparent but palpable. I could feel her press it against me as if it were her flesh. I was terrified—if we kissed I would be at fault for this travesty, for this corniness.

I said, “Well, that’s much better.”

Honorée said, “You have some more lines.”

“I’m sorry. I lost track.”

But Honorée sat back on her heels, satisfied. She said, “That’s all right. We did the most important part.” She crossed her arms and clasped her elbows. “That was wonderful. I could feel more feeling. Oh, that sounds silly!” She clapped her hands to her forehead and closed her eyes. “Oh, dear!” She lowered her hands to hold her cheeks and looked at me again. “But you know what I mean. You’ve probably been all through this so many times.” Honorée sat back again, this time not on her heels but between them.

“You’re very limber,” I said.

“Oh, that’s part of acting,” Honorée said. “I’m auditing body movement. You probably can’t tell, but I’ve lost four pounds. And look at my hands.” She held out her hand. “Do you see? I haven’t chewed my nails for a week. And—you probably can’t tell because I’m being silly now, but I feel older too.”

Honorée stayed until suppertime. Since she showed no sign of leaving, I invited her to eat something. She then offered to cook supper. She ended by making a casserole that took an hour and a half to prepare. But the time passed quickly; she listened to records while I read.

Honorée was talkative at supper, much more at ease than during our talks at the Huddle. As usual she asked me a lot of questions, but they seemed less awkward, her curiosity less avid. She also made suggestions: she said I should go for walks along the river—she could show me a path through the woods along the bank. She seemed quite knowledgeable about trees and animals.

By the time we’d finished eating she’d had almost half a bottle of wine. She wasn’t drunk, but she was very sweetly looped. I didn’t notice until I detected a huskiness in her voice.
It was quite attractive in this new form, much less pinched. It reminded me that she was solidly large in an attractive way—well-sprung ribs, large collarbone, her neck a tower of ivory (as the Song of Songs describes this feature of female beauty, with curiously martial enthusiasm).

I realized that Honorée had been holding herself in in some way—probably trying to look like her roommate, Miss Quist, who was a slinky string bean who expressed herself in small gestures, like cocking one plucked eyebrow, or adjusting her snake hips. Now that Honorée was relaxed, her larger proportions made sense. It was pleasant to think of her voice rising from her deep rib cage through her wide throat, past her big white teeth and full, equal lips. This was the first good aimless conversation I’d had in a long time. It was very sturdy; nothing could spoil it, not even Honorée saying, “This is so much fun!”

But as we approached the curfew for first-year women students, it became clear that some set code of expectations began to operate. Honorée said, “Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just babbling away. I just babble away when I’m having a good time. Most boys don’t like that too much. They think talking a lot means you’re trying to keep them in their place.”

I quoted Malvolio. “ ‘I would they would know their place as I know mine.’ ”

Honorée said, “Oh, not that kind of place. Just keeping them from getting too fresh. That’s what they
think
it means.”

It was ten minutes before curfew when we pulled up to the curb in front of Honorée’s dorm. There were swarms of couples on the front steps, spilling over onto the sidewalk and lawn. They were all entwined in one way or another. The effect was that of seeing any natural force deploying itself through individual organisms, each independently but identically possessed by the same ghost of nature—salmon or herring all running upstream to spawn, new-hatched sea turtles scraping across the sand and into the salt water.

My Volkswagen was soon surrounded by couples taking part in this necking frenzy.

I said, “Extraordinary. It wasn’t like this in my day.”

Honorée giggled. “People kissed good night, didn’t they?”

I said, “Well, not
en masse
. Of course, my memory may be dim.”

Honorée said severely, “Now don’t you talk that way. You pretend to be old, but that’s about enough of that.”

A couple standing on the walk pressed itself—that is to say, the back of the female half—against the rear side window. At the top of the window I could see the boy’s hands pressed between the pane and the girl’s back. I felt we were in a diving bell in deep water, seeing deep-sea life.

Honorée said, “You’ve got to stop talking like that or I’ll get cross with you.”

A couple walked across our bow, stepping up onto the curb without disconnecting their mouths. Our craft might be swept away by an underwater current of hot kisses.

I said, “In England they call this snogging.”

Honorée said, “What do they call snogging? Just kissing?”

“Snogging means necking.”

Honorée said, “Snogging,” and laughed. She said, “Do people say, ‘Let’s snog,’ or ‘May I snog you?’ ”

The car moved slightly from a readjustment of the couple on our starboard quarter. Honorée noticed it, then pretended not to.

I said, “No. Does this go on every night?”

“Fridays and Saturdays. After January we don’t have curfew, so I guess it’ll be different after that. But you shouldn’t say you’re so old. You really shouldn’t. I’ll bet there’re lots of girls who’d like to kiss you.”

I said, “Not to the best of my recollection.”

“There you go again,” Honorée said. “Now I’m really going to get mad at you.”

She gave me a playful shove on the shoulder which turned me toward her. She said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you if you’re going to be like that.” She put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me.

It was an abrupt movement, but her lips were firmly shut—perhaps puckered—so that my mouth felt it was being jostled by a ripe plum.