Venus Envy (25 page)

Try as she might, Frazier hadn’t reached the thankfulness stage for her current situation.

The mists shone silver now and in the opposite direction she thought she saw Andrea Bittner in a yellow Saab. Hair in a French twist, well-dressed, the driver could have been Andrea. The Volvo station wagon following the Saab had a curly-haired square-jawed man behind the wheel. Taylor Anderson. He was smoking a pipe. So did Taylor.

Galvanized by the parade of people passing her in the opposite direction, she intently stared at each driver, scrutinizing his or her features. A parade of ex-lovers, bedmates, enemies, friends, ghosts. A parade of souls, some of whom she once held to her body, some of whom she thrust away, and some from whom she ran away. Could it be? Was that the reality of relationships? They pass you in the opposite direction as people move relentlessly toward their individual destinations?

And how many lovers had she had? None, in truth. She’d slept with people, starting with a Wolf’s Head man at Yale, a fine fellow, really, but just not for her. The first woman she’d slept with, a creature with shimmering black hair, majored in marine biology at the University of Miami. Furtive fucks. And fucks devoid of any technical skill. They didn’t know what they were doing and Frazier certainly didn’t know what she was doing except for wiggling around and wondering if any good would come of all that sweat.

Those drivers in the other lane moving into the city as she was moving out, out into the pastures and rich forests of Virginia, the mother of the nation, did they, too, stumble backwards into the future? We can clearly see the past or imagine that we do but who could see the future? And the square-jawed man you clasped to your chest tonight might awaken tomorrow to be an ordinary
fellow who had a hard-on but not a heart-on. And sometimes she awakened and she was the ordinary fellow. She shot out of their apartments and homes like a greyhound out of the gate, chasing a fake rabbit.

A sense of loss engulfed her as the mists lowered again and she could no longer clearly distinguish the facial features of the people she had imagined were her lovers. Did the center hold? If people didn’t stay together, then what held was the individual. If all relationships were transitory and quid pro quo, you’d better like yourself a lot because you were all you’d got. Frazier thought about this and she did like herself a lot, even though she’d never been in more pain in her three and a half decades on this planet. She may not have known shit from Shinola but she wasn’t a liar. That was some kind of moral victory in this time of trickery.

But the lovers, enemies, and friends—where were they going? Did she know when she was with them? And who became her enemies? Laura Armstrong certainly. And Billy—probably. And before that, those people she had refused, or slept with and then with whom she refused to become further involved. Those clients who wanted something for nothing. She’d tangled with a few of those. Weren’t enemies people with expectations you couldn’t fulfill? It wasn’t as if she’d set out to anger Laura or Billy. The simple act of being who she was, truly owning her own soul, disturbed them plenty. She didn’t play the part they had written for her in the scenario of their lives. Perhaps they didn’t know who she was, nor did they care. She was valuable when costumed and clearly enunciating her lines. As for the friends she let slip away, sometimes people grew in different directions. There were no fights, no spectacular blowups to demarcate a new and necessary barrier, no wrangling over an emotional Alsace.

Had Frazier failed somehow or did everyone feel this way? Those people passing her—did they, too, chalk up their losses, wonder if they had mistreated a friend or harshly criticized a child, or perhaps not criticized enough? How did you know? Two people slept in the same bed but had different dreams. How did you know that what you said, sensible to you, might not be misheard, misunderstood, miseverything? Did each of us speak a private language with our own multicolored metaphors?

The traffic thinned out and the light, opaque in the silver, faltered. The mists darkened to Prussian blue and the rain slashed against the windshield. Frazier picked up speed and the faster she went, the more the raindrops sounded like bullets. A flash of lightning and a roll of thunder startled her and she understood to her bones why those ancient Greeks made a thunder god the head of the gods. The animal in her told her to run and hide. The twentieth-century woman, on the verge of the twenty-first century, told her to keep driving. She had a schedule to keep, a fax machine to check, a Scottie to pick up, phone messages to answer, and she knew, again in her bones, that it was all make-believe. The thunder was real.

D
UNCAN SLEPT NEXT TO HER ON THE PASSENGER SEAT OF
the car. An adorable mop of black hair, he loved his Mandy. If he didn’t like someone, Duncan elegantly lifted his leg on their feet. Once he was so enthusiastic in his animosity that he fell over and peed straight up in the air. Unfortunately, what goes up must come down, so Mandy rushed him into the bathroom for a good scrub.

The rain drummed a steady beat. Frazier pulled into her driveway. She still hadn’t gotten used to the sight of Carter’s now-repaired truck in her garage, so it gave her a start. She liked sitting high up while driving, so she was happy that she’d bought the truck after all, even though her left leg ached from shifting gears.

The dog and the cat greeted her rapturously and touched noses with Duncan. Everyone went to the bathroom quickly because they didn’t like getting wet. After she’d fed her little charges Frazier went into the
bathroom and removed her hoop earrings, her exquisite Cartier Panther watch, her signet ring, the crest of the Armstrong family hand-engraved in the gold, and her three-gold rolling ring, also from Cartier. When she opened her jewelry box she noticed that four pairs of earrings and one necklace were missing. A sick feeling hit the pit of her stomach and she hurried to the drawer where she kept her household cash. Untouched. Then she ran into the closet where she stacked the stereo equipment. Also untouched.

It wasn’t until she entered her clothes closet and noticed that a pair of Larry Mahan ostrich boots was also missing that she began to get the picture.

“Ann, what the hell were you doing in my house and why did you take my boots and my earrings?”

A pleased-with-herself voice on the other end of the line said, with great self-righteousness, “I gave you those and I wanted them back.”

“Then you can give back the Tiffany bracelet, the lapis box”—her mind raced because she couldn’t remember what tokens she had tossed to Ann during their flingette (her term)—“and all the earrings I gave you, goddammit.”

“You hurt me! You made me suffer and the whole town knows you’re gay. This is my reward for putting up with this crap. If you play, you’ve got to pay.” Ann was winding up for a litany of her wounds, the horrors of a relationship gone bust, when she heard a click on the phone.

Frazier hung up and dialed Brown’s, the best locksmith in the area. “Hi, I know it’s late but if anyone picks up this message could you meet me at my house tomorrow morning at your convenience? It’s Mary Frazier Armstrong in Somerset. Thank you.”

She put down the phone. After five minutes of fury she laughed at herself. “You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

T
HE LARGE ALFRED MUNNINGS PAINTING GRACED THE CENTER
of the cream-colored room. A lady riding sidesaddle on a beautiful chestnut beguiled the viewer from the center of the canvas, which, although not beige or pink, somehow gave that impression.

Frazier listed the painting at $225,000, which was fair market value. A dealer from San Francisco called and she flipped through the transparencies to find one she thought best represented the painting. She loved Munnings’s work; his sense of restraint and power appealed to her as much as his tirades against modern art repelled her.

“Hey, Sistergirl,” Carter hollered.

“In the center gallery.”

He strode in, wearing his oldest jeans, the ones with patches on the patches. “What you doing?”

“Sending out transparencies on the Munnings.”

“Where’s Mandy? Can’t she do that?”

“Mandy’s still in Richmond with Kenny. I gave her the day off. She needed it.”

“Hope she’s not fucking him. Those guys are walking time bombs.”

“She’s not fucking him and he’s had his blood tested. Negative, and it’s something you ought to do, the number of people you’ve crawled into bed with, Brudda.”

“Shit.”

“I’ll go with you and get tested too. Not that I’ve got anything to worry about.”

“I have to think about it.” Carter hated needles but didn’t want to admit it. “Seen Dad lately?”

“No. Why?”

“Just wondered if he was in a good frame of mind.”

“How can anyone be in a good frame of mind when he’s married to Mother?” She tidied up the pile of transparencies.

“You’ve got a point there.”

“Carter, spit it out, will you? You look like the cat that swallowed the canary, number one. Number two, you’ve come into this gallery maybe five times since I opened it.”

“I’ve been here more than that.”

“Yeah, yeah—so?”

“I left Laura.”

Frazier clapped her hands together. It was involuntary. “Sorry, Carter. I don’t mean to, uh, rejoice at what may be painful, but you know I’ve never liked that woman from the day you dragged her out of the Chi Omega house.”

“What can I tell you? She unzipped my pants and my brains fell out. Anyway, I was very young.” He coughed. “But I’ve thought it over. She’d never leave me. That’s
her glory, you know, so we’re chained until death do us part. Someone had to go or I’d perish a drunk.”

“Are you going to live with Sarah?”

“No. My lawyer says I have to keep my nose clean for six months or Laura can peel me down layer by layer, except that I’ve got nothing much to take.” He walked over and sat heavily in a Barcelona chair along the gallery wall.

“The house still in Dad’s name?”

“Yeah, that’s why I want to see him.”

Frazier sat next to her brother in a second Barcelona chair, the two of them looking like twins. “When did you legally separate?”

“This minute. I just came from my lawyer’s office.”

“You’re doing the right thing, Brudda, although there are going to be some rough bumps along the way. Laura is vicious, as only a spurned wife can be vicious.”

“I don’t give a good goddam what she says about me. They can all talk. Hey, the Armstrongs are giving the town a real show.”

Frazier snapped the fingernails of her right hand under those of her left. “Remember when we used to do that?”

“Yeah. I remember feet-to-feet the best.” He smiled, recalling when they’d bound into each other’s beds at night, put their feet together, and see who could push the other one off the bed. The loser usually retaliated with a pillow fight.

“You okay?” She leaned against him, bumping the chairs together. “Don’t give up on love.”

“I’m not giving up. I’m, uh, I don’t know. I’m treading water for a while. In some ways I can’t be but so mad at Laura. She thought we’d live forever after like the bride and groom on top of the wedding cake. I didn’t turn out to be the most responsible guy in the world. She felt abandoned maybe, or cheated. Her response was to keep
the house as clean as a museum and to take more classes. That’s the deal, right? I bring home the bacon and the wife cooks it? She kept up her end of the bargain with a vengeance and I didn’t do shit. And I didn’t give her children. I knew I wasn’t ready for fatherhood.” He put his arm around Frazier’s broad shoulders. “You sorry you won’t marry?”

“How do you know I won’t marry?”

“Seems unlikely. Probably okay with me. There isn’t a man good enough for you.”

“Don’t brown-nose your own sister.”

“True.”

“What if I married a woman?”

He waited a moment, considering this new possibility. “Be okay with me but it would put Mom six feet under.” He straightened up. “You know, I made fun of you when all this started but I’m not making fun now. If you want to walk down the aisle with someone, okay. Okay. I don’t know if it would seem weird to me or not. Guess it doesn’t matter as long as it felt right to you. I’ve been thinking about how wrong Sarah is. You know all the reasons but she feels right. Well, if that can happen to me, maybe what’s happening to you isn’t that different. Maybe it’s right.”

Frazier shrugged. “I don’t know my ass from my elbow, except in a curious way I feel lighter.”

“Think there’s someone out there for you? You know what Aunt Ru says: ‘There’s a lid for every pot.’”

“Who would want me? Most gay people I know are so busy lying about who and what they are to people who aren’t gay that they aren’t going to want to be near me. I’m tainted with the truth. Tarred and feathered by honesty. Straight people are furious because I’ve disturbed their false picture of the universe, and gay people fear me because my actions might rub off on them and
blow their cover. It’s a real sinkhole, Brudda, and I’m going to spend my life alone.”

“Got me.”

“Is this a case of blood is thicker than water?”

“Long as we don’t fight over the same girl.”

“Scumbag.” Frazier laughed.

He laughed in return. “You know what I forgot to tell you?”

“God, now what? Who am I accused of seducing now?”

“You heard that mess about Laura, then?”

“What?”

“Oh.” He plopped back against the wall.

“Tell or I’ll pull the hair on your arms.”

“There’s a rumor that you made a pass at Laura. Believe me, I laughed when I heard that.”

Frazier shot off her chair. “Jesus H. Christ on a raft. Talk about adding insult to injury. I wouldn’t touch your wife, soon to be ex but not soon enough, if she were the last woman on earth.”

He roared, “Neither would I.”

“So what did you want to tell me?”

Carter, still laughing, choked out, “That weasel Billy Cicero is marrying Camille Kastenmeyer—like in six weeks.” Frazier’s mouth dropped open. Carter continued: “Heard it over at Court Square. Be in the papers, like all the papers,
The New York Times
on down, Sunday. Indecently fast is the word. I hear she’s pregnant and I bet it’s not by Billy.”