Venus Envy (6 page)
Authors: Rita Mae Brown
Carter reread the letter to make sure he’d understood it. He thought a minute and then threw back his head and yelled, “Ye-haw!”
A
NN HAVILAND OPENED THE DOOR TO HER PRETTY DOWNTOWN
home. Built in 1892, with high ceilings and ornate fireplaces, the house was Ann’s pride and joy. Since housing in downtown Charlottesville was cheaper than out in Albermarle County, she could afford the place. The mail, shot through the slot, was scattered all over the floor. Ann kicked off her shoes by the door and bent down to pick it up. Hurt because Frazier sought solitude after her brush with death, she grabbed Frazier’s letter and walked into the living room.
Assuming the letter would be tender and romantic—well, as romantic as Frazier could muster, which wasn’t much—Ann built a fire in the fireplace. A cold wind whipped outside, reminding her that winter still had power despite the signs of spring.
She plopped into her favorite wing chair and opened the letter.
Dear Ann
,
By the time you read this I shall most likely be dead.
Ann’s eyes moistened in expectation. She read on.
I
haven’t given you much in life. Perhaps I can
give
you something in death. The truth.
You always said you wanted me to love you. I could never figure out if you wanted love or if you wanted unconditional surrender. Obviously, I’m no good at either. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s you, maybe it’s the way most women are raised. You wanted
to
hear about my feelings. You wanted to process our relationship constantly.
Ann, I didn’t want a relationship that felt like another job. You seem to have more feelings than I do. I like to play golf, read a good book, or go to a movie when I’m not working, even
though
that’s seldom. You got offended when I didn’t send you sweet cards or tell you how lovely you looked or how much I needed you, or whatever it is that
I
didn’t do. Mostly, I didn’t spend enough time with you.
And the time we spent together we hid. God forbid anyone should know we slept together. We went out in public with escorts. Of course, they’re as gay as we are but the facade must be served. I was worse about this than you, I know.
You said you’d lose your job at the bank. Maybe you would have and maybe not. Better to lose your job than your integrity. Easy for me to say, I know. I’m dead—almost. What I’m realizing is that I was dead while I breathed, dead to passion, dead to honesty, dead to sharing myself, dead to the pain that life brings us all, but it brings it in such a special, vile little package if one is gay.
Look, I’m probably not making much sense. I tore that morphine tube out of my arm. I feel awful, like I’m spiraling
downward into some abandoned canyon of anguish. You like people to be articulate and I’m losing it.
I’ll spare you more of my muddle but let me try to be concise with what I have left in me. You’ll destroy every relationship you have if you aren’t willing to claim that person as worth your time, your body, your soul, etc. I was the wrong person for you but
I
did like you. I do hope you can be happy sometime. Fight for yourself. If you don’t think you can be yourself here, then go to a bigger city. You’ve got a good resume, you’re good-looking, and you’re good at what you do. Lots of goods. Go to New York or Los
Angeles
or Houston. I love New Orleans. Go there. Is there anyone who doesn’t love New Orleans? Just go.
And remember, you are as sick as you are secret—so get going!
Love,
Frazier
The sound of Ann’s hard breathing filled the room. Finally she gasped, “I will break every bone in her beautiful body!”
T
HE RICH GLOW FROM THE MAHOGANY PANELING EMBRACED
visitors to Billy Cicero’s office. His silver tennis trophy from the previous year’s country club finals had a place of pride on the mantel. Since he spent more time at work than he did at home, he kept the trophy there.
Atlantic Tobacco supplied Henrico County and the city of Richmond with thousands of jobs either in the plant itself or in related industries. Zephaniah Cicero, Billy’s great-grandfather, used to say that Atlantic Tobacco’s history was the history of Richmond.
Each day Billy eased into his jet-black Aston-Martin Volante and drove the forty-five minutes east from his estate in the Green Springs district of Louisa County to Richmond. Some days when his radar detector, illegal in Virginia, told him the coast was clear, he could fly door to door in thirty minutes. He never tired of seeing the Virginia countryside, nor did he ever tire of the tobacco
industry. From the first green shoots triumphantly bursting through the earth to the long fragrant leaves curing in the sheds, he loved the cycle of the weed, as he and his family referred to it. He made trips to Connecticut to inspect cigar-wrapper tobacco and trips to Kentucky for cigarette guts. If there was one tobacco plant in a state, Billy paid it a visit. He knew which leaves to brighten and which to let be. He could take a leaf between his forefinger and thumb, gently rubbing it, and tell you its qualities.
A cigar man, himself, although Atlantic Tobacco specialized in cigarettes, Billy longed to see the great cigar makers of Cuba. If only Cuba would wake up. But he had cast his eyes over the undulating crop of cigar leaf in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, and sweating like a laborer, he’d bent over those old masters who had escaped Cuba in 1959 and set up shop in Tampa. Old men with nimble fingers could roll a cigar in seconds. Machines were for phonies.
Tobacco, glory of the New World, along with chocolate, the banana, maize, and chicle. Tobacco, that soother of raw nerves, that congenial drug to puff merrily amidst friends. Doctors, health fanatics—oh, sure, they could add a few years to your life, maybe, if you listened to them and gave up smoking. If you didn’t live longer, it would seem longer.
Billy believed devoutly in self-determination. No one had the right to tell anyone else how to live his or her life. Smoking, drinking, drugging, and fornication were individual decisions, as well as what career one pursued, where one lived, and so forth. Who the hell were these people swooping down on Congress, that assemblage of carrion, these crows of retro-Puritanism? Except that now Puritanism had to do with your health and not just sex. He sighed and lit up a contraband Montecristo.
His secretary, a curvaceous bombshell, tottered in on her Ferragamo high heels and put his mail on his desk. She also kissed him on the cheek. Georgina adored Billy, but then most women did. He winked and she exited. He observed the sway to her rounded backside. He didn’t get it. How could that turn men on?
He read a letter from the Jockey Club, another from Atlantic’s lobbyist on the Hill, and then he picked up Frazier’s letter. As he was accustomed to Frazier’s personal stationery, he didn’t recognize the blue-speckled paper as hers, although the handwriting looked familiar. A call interrupted him. He dispensed with that in short order and opened the paper, folded over once.
Dear Billy
,
By the time you read this I shall most likely be dead. I shall, however, be a dazzling corpse because Terese worked overtime. Thank you for that gift.
I
have many things to thank you for, not the least of which is the gold Montblanc pen, which I cherish and adore. And what about the sensational Jean-Léon Gérôme painting we found in Poland and smuggled out? Or the time we went to Venice to pick up the Tintoretto you just had to have, along with those well-hung gondoliers? I think my favorite memory of you is the summer that you met Kenny Singer and we hopped in the car and drove to Harper’s Ferry on a whim…. Those little brick buildings with high-water marks on them and the dates that the river flooded.
I don’t
know, there was something special about that trip. And the raid—John Brown wasn’t playing with a full deck. Then we climbed up to the rock where Jefferson supposedly said there wasn’t a better view in all of Europe and we ate sandwiches and talked about everything and nothing.
We’ve trotted out to every damned ball in the United
States. We’ve swirled at the Waldorf-Astoria for the Disease of the Week, all those dreary Palm Beach fundraisers—for new face lifts no doubt—the Polo Ball—that’s more fun—and we’ve never yet missed any ball that Carolyn Devane has organized, whether it’s been in Houston, New Orleans, or Timbuktu. We’ve opened libraries and held vigils at condemned theaters on 44th Street.
Town & Country
ought to put us on staff.
We’ve even saved the whales but can we save ourselves? Well, yourself. I’m out of this joint. My first thirty-five years were a near-life experience. If I had a second thirty-five they would be very different.
Maybe you’re not willing to read on but if I can sit here and write this feeling like death eating a cracker, oops, I guess I am, well, you can read it.
In the slot machine of life you hit the dark side of the jackpot, Billy. You’re gorgeous, incredibly intelligent, and driven. You’ll double Atlantic Tobacco’s profits before you’re fifty. If anyone can do it, even in these contracting times, you can and you will. But you’ve also been abandoned by your parents, oh, abandoned to the best schools, culminating in St. Paul’s and then onward and upward to Oxford. Your childhood was a succession of nannies, governesses, trainers, and tutors. Mumsy and Popsy rode camels under the Sphinx’s chopped-off schnoz, skied in Aspen during our winter and Bari Loche during our summer. Who ever loved you for you? Love wasn’t the operative word but expectation certainly was. You delivered except for one glitch in the program: you’re gay. Why tell Mumsy and Popsy? They don’t deserve the truth, they don’t care, and it would besmirch the postcard family they carry in their minds and display to their friends. So, on the surface everything is okay. On the surface.
You treat people as though they are props in a play, starring you. You even treated me as an extra. Even me,
Billy, even me. If
I
had lacked wit, if
I
had lacked beauty
, I
would have been forgotten or passed over. I was convenient. Marriage to me would have been convenient, too, if you meant it and I don’t think that you did.
Let me approach this another way because I’m starting to sound like my mother—a fate worse than death and coming from me at this moment you know
I mean
that. An obsession with style dulls you to suffering. Sometimes it’s your own suffering. Underneath your perfect exterior there is a painful and imperfect interior. Stop and look inside.
No, I’m
not saying this is
The Picture of Dorian Gray
but you have so distanced yourself from everybody and everything that isn’t shimmering and shining and profitable, you’re more lonesome than you know.
Maybe all the men are a symptom of that or the cocaine. Don’t get me wrong—if anyone can handle the stuff, you can. I don’t think people become addicted unless it’s in the blood, like alcoholism. But you’re grabbing at handsome men, white powder, exquisite paintings, all these things, material things, all outside yourself. Don’t get hard, Billy. Don’t shut people out, or real feelings. Don’t repeat my mistake on your grander level.
And stop lying about who and what you are. You’re so goddam rich nobody can touch you. What do you care what they think? We both lied and we were so good at it. It frightens me to think about it. If you lie about being gay, doesn’t it stand to reason that you’ll lie about other things? Lying gets to be a habit. Finally, you lie to yourself. I did.
I know you aren’t going to like this letter but I’m praying something will connect, something will get through to you. I never fell in love with anyone. Had you been a woman
I
probably would have fallen in love with you. I don’t know, maybe if you’d been honest and I had, too, we would have fallen in love in a nonromantic way. I
don’t
even know what love is anymore except there are more kinds of it than I can fathom. But for what it’s worth, I loved you as best I knew how and I want you to come home to yourself.
I left my business to Mandy. When the will is read she will also receive a set of instructions. I forget how long that kind of legal silliness takes but I have willed you the John Frederick Herring, Jr., that you so admire. Mandy is great-looking, great company, and she has poise. Take her out, make sure that she meets the right people. It’s good for business and she’ll know what to do. Look out for her until she gets her feet under her, okay?
As for me, I’ll put in a good word for you with the Almighty. I expect you’ll need it.
Ta-Ta,
Frazier
“I’ll be damned.” Billy whistled under his breath.
K
ENNY SINGER, DOG-TIRED AND READY TO BITE, CAME HOME
late from work. He threw his mail on the bed and took a shower. Then he got under the covers, fought the temptation to “win a million dollars” if he’d subscribe to a magazine, and finally opened Frazier’s letter.
Dear Kenny
,
By the time you read this I shall most likely be dead.
What good times we had together on our double dates. Billy, ever the center of attention, distracted me from you but upon reflection I realize you have become very dear to me.
I was a fool in this life. If there’s such a thing as reincarnation, I’m not going to be a fool in the next one. The trouble is I can’t imagine coming back as anyone but myself. I want to be open and loving and warm. How do you do that? You do it all the time. You give of yourself.
Forgive me for not knowing how special you are.
I’m wearing down. I’d best be brief. If you’re in love with Billy, well, love is irrational.
I
can’t say much about it but I can say that straight or gay is irrelevant. What matters is that you be in a relationship with someone who respects and honors you. And I hope that happens for you. If Billy can achieve that, great.
No matter what happens with Billy, please think about having children sometime. You were meant to be a father and I believe you will find some kind of fulfillment with that kind of love.
If all the world’s a stage and I am merely a player, I am leaving the theater for a brief intermission. Wonder if there’s popcorn in the celestial lobby?
May I see you in the next life and may
I
know, early on, how special you are.
Love,
Frazier
