Tallulah lowered her lashes and looked at Malcolm through hooded eyes. “You’ll know what to do when you see him.”
“How am I supposed to know that I have seen him. I’ve never laid eyes on Carl A. Vogel.”
“Lucky,” she said lighting a fresh cigarette from her old one. She delicately put the butt into a silver ashtray, as large as a birdbath, that rested on a mother-of-pearl table near her elbow.
“I’ve had nightmares better than this,” Malcolm said. “I have one nightmare where I am sitting in a classroom about to take a math exam, and I haven’t opened the book all year. That nightmare is better than this assignment.”
Tallulah said, “That’s strange. I used to have that nightmare, too. I always thought it was because I never had opened the book all year. Math,” she said making a face that turned everything in her face downward.
“I happen to like math very much, and I happen to be very good at it. It is one of my talents.”
Tallulah took a deep puff of smoke and blew it out before turning to Malcolm to say, “Mathematics is for the dentists of the soul.”
“If it weren’t for mathematics, you wouldn’t have computers.”
“No, darling,” Tallulah said, “you wouldn’t. I never wanted one. I once had to learn how to operate an electric toaster, but I really didn’t care for the work. There was no controlling the rye bread, and I never could get the bagels to fit into those narrow slots. Tallulah always burned her fingers pulling them out, and the one time she tried to get them out with a fork, she caused the lights to go out for five city blocks.”
“About Carl A. Vogel. Can you give us a hint about how we are to do this assignment,” Malcolm asked.
“Very well.”
Malcolm moved closer to her, clearing the air in front of him by waving his hand. Tallulah continued looking at him. “Well,” he said. “What is it?”
“What is what?”
“I asked you to give us a hint about how we are to do this assignment, and you said Very well.’ I’m waiting.”
“That’s how you’re supposed to do it: very well. I want you to get these preliminaries over with so that you can find my necklace.”
“What necklace?” I asked.
“My necklace containing The Regina Stone. It is simply beautiful, darlings. It was given to me by a fan in honor of my most famous role. As long as she wore it, Tallulah had good fortune.” She looked into the distance and let the cigarette in the holder burn down. “Run along now. Upstage left and through the Orgone. Mr. Carl A. Vogel is your assignment.”
We started out, but Tallulah called us back. “Left is right onstage, darlings. Upstage is back, and downstage is front. In the theater, darlings, the stage makes the world a mirror image. And remember, you are players now.” As we started to leave again, she called out to us, “Bring me a pack of cigarettes, darlings. Herbert Tareyton is my brand. I like them king size and mentholated with filter tips.”
“You really ought not to smoke,” Malcolm said.
“Don’t worry, darling. It won’t kill me.” She tilted her head back and laughed. “King size,” she said, settling back into her bank of pillows. “Surely, someone up there must still smoke. The way they pick on smokers is enough to make me glad I left the real world when I did. Back of the bus. Back of the plane. Move your seat in a restaurant. The whole United States is becoming a health spa. Sometimes I get such a migraine from the pounding of the joggers’ feet that I want to dig the ground out from under them, but they would be back within a week, pounding, pounding, pounding. Do you want to know the best kept secret in the western world? It’s this: Baryshnikov smokes. Now if you can find anyone who moves better than he does, you kidnap him and bring him to me.” She put a fresh cigarette into her holder. “Oh! I almost forgot,” she said, sitting bolt upright. “You must say something beautiful when you’ve finished, so I’ll know to bring you back. How about fettucini alfredo. Yes. Say that.”
“Fettucini alfredo? What kind of a password is that?” Malcolm asked. “Even Jeanmarie could think of something more beautiful than that to say.”
Tallulah said, “Well, it must be something that doesn’t come up in ordinary conversation.” She rubbed her forehead for a minute. “I have it. Say Papillon! That’s French for butterfly. In the Middle Ages, butterflies were thought to be symbols of the soul.” Then she looked at Malcolm and said mischievously, “That’s s-o-u-1, darling.”
Tallulah says, “Onstage, an actress must remember that right and left, down and up are the exact opposites of what they are to the audience; backstage, she must forget it.”
three
WE EXITED as Tallulah had told us to and were stopped dead by a jolt of air that was like a sock in the stomach. We remained paralyzed for what seemed like several minutes—time and space are difficult to measure when things are happening for the first time—with our hands hanging limply by our sides. Then another jolt of air, as forceful and as sudden as the one that had stopped us, pushed us up from where we stood, and we were swept side by side and upright into a huge box that vibrated with a soft sound, like the surface hum of a buried high power cable. The box glowed with a straw-colored light that deepened to amber as we waited. Malcolm appeared as calm and patient as I felt.
Soon we began twirling, and except for the feeling of air moving across my face and the worried messages I was getting from my stomach, I would never have known that I was twirling, for it was happening to Malcolm at the same speed and at the same time. Since I was pretty sure that I was not yet invisible, I hoped I would not throw up. I didn’t want to create a mess in the buttery golden light of the Orgone.
Before I had time to decide what I would do with the mess if I made one, I found myself sitting with Malcolm on the edge of a stage set up in the front of a large tent. Row after row of people were sitting, waiting for something to begin. There were men in their shirt sleeves and women in three-piece pants suits with elastic waistbands. People were shuffling their feet or clearing their throats in the way that audiences do when they have settled down but not settled into the program they came for.
No one noticed that we had arrived. Malcolm was as clear to me as the hand at the end of my arm, and I guessed that I was clear to Malcolm, but no one, no one at all, noticed that we had arrived uninvited at the gathering.
I looked at Malcolm, and he looked at me. Then he faced the audience and stuck out his tongue. Nothing happened. We smiled at each other. Malcolm faced the audience again and crossed his eyes. Nothing happened. Once again we looked at each other and smiled. Then he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, and no one, no one except me, noticed. We sat there on the edge of the stage and beamed.
We were truly, absolutely there for all the world not to see.
I had never felt this way before. Of course, I had never been invisible before, but that was not the greatest difference I felt. This invisible person both was me and was not. This invisible Jeanmarie sat relaxed on the edge of the podium and studied the audience. How wonderful to see and not be seen. It was a feeling so new that I had to define it by what it was not. It was not ... it was not. . . hurried, and it was not. . .worried. I felt that a small, tight ache between my eyes had gone away, an ache that I had had for so long that I didn’t know I had had it until it had gone away.
So, I thought, I can dance naked across the stage if I want to, and no one except Malcolm will know. I can smile, frown, make faces, spit—maybe not spit—scratch, throw up—maybe not throw up—and no one will notice.
But I didn’t want to waste my invisibility doing things like that. I wanted to do the job we were supposed to: Mr. Carl A. Vogel. Without that little worry knot between my eyes, I clearly saw that I would know what we were sup posed to do, and I knew that Malcolm and I would do it very well.
I sat there for another minute feeling perfectly relaxed in front of this strange audience. After I said strange audience to myself, I realized that it was strange. Not rather strange, but very
strange. In the front row alone, seven people had crutches and one had an aluminum walker like the one Mrs. Quinn used. It seemed that every seventh person was in a wheelchair, and as I continued to study them, I was able to spot other things: twelve hearing aids; six people with dark glasses and white canes.
I felt a tap on my shoulder: Malcolm.
“What is this?” he asked. He pointed to a huge banner in back of the podium. It said, JOG WITH GOD. “Is it some kind of Special Olympics?” he asked.
At that point, a man with crutches in the front row turned to the woman with the aluminum walker and said to her, “That was very clever.”
“What was?” she asked.
“What you called this: A Special Olympics.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. That was clever.”
I realized then that we could be heard but not seen. I looked at Malcolm, and we both laughed. We reminded each other to be quiet by holding our fingers to our lips. That made us laugh more, and the people in the front row looked at each other and smiled, too. I was the first to jump down off the edge of the stage. Malcolm followed.
As we walked between the rows of chairs, we bumped the knees of the people that we walked in front of. Unlike at the movies, no one here seemed to mind. But what seemed peculiar was that no one seemed to find it peculiar that their knees were being jostled and jogged. Jogged by God? I wondered. I couldn’t resist testing my invisibility. I blew on the back of a man’s neck, and he swatted it as if an insect had crawled there. I ran my fingers through the hair of a woman whose hair was as stiff as dacron from hair spray. The woman’s hands flew up to her head to rescue her hairdo, and as she started patting it in place, I started patting her hands. There was a soft slap, slap sound, and the man who was sitting to her left watched in fascination as the woman tried to save her hairdo. Finally, she lowered her arms and did nothing while her curls unrolled one by one, and then just as miraculously rolled right back up and were refastened in place.
“How do you do that?” the man sitting next to her finally asked.
“I think about it. It’s what you call a mind set.”
“Oh!” he said. “I’ve heard that evil only exists in the mind, but I never have heard that said about beauty.”
“Well, it does,” she said.
“Suppose so,” he answered.
Malcolm saw a woman lighting a cigarette from a pack that looked like Herbert Tareyton’s. He signaled to me that he was heading in that direction. I followed.
As he moved between the rows, he bumped a gentleman’s elbow, and out of habit he said “Excuse me,” and the gentleman, out of habit said, “That’s all right,” without looking around.
Oh! I loved being invisible.
The woman had finished lighting her cigarette; she had blown out the match and was looking around to see what she should do with it—there were no ashtrays—when Malcolm delicately picked the match out from between her fingers. The woman hardly paid attention. As she put the package of cigarettes back into her pocketbook, she began talking to the old woman sitting in the wheelchair next to her. The old woman’s face was twisted to one side, and spit was drooling out of the down-turned side of her mouth. Her left eye was sealed shut; her left hand was turned inward and stayed clenched in her lap. She was wearing a cockamamie black hat that had slipped over her right eye. In the band of the hat were three blue jay feathers. I knew we were where we were supposed to be.
The woman who had lighted the cigarette spoke to the old lady in the wheelchair. She spoke very softly. If Malcolm and I had been visible, we would not have been able to stand close enough to hear what she was saying.
“Now remember, Mary Frances, you don’t get to be cured until after Uncle Henderson over on the other side of the room has had his sight to come back.”
The old woman in the wheelchair answered without changing her position, “You told me that four times already. What you have not made clear is when I get my money.”
“You’ll git your money after the tent is good and empty. Carl and me expect a Academy Award performance for what you’re charging.”
Through her twisted face, the old woman managed to say, “Union wages, Mrs. Vogel. Union wages. I’m a professional.”
Mrs. Vogel noticed that that old man with the crutches on the other side of the aisle was watching them, so she straightened Mary Frances’s hat and patted her hand and said, “Soon, soon, Mother dear. It won’t be long now.” She threw her cigarette butt on the dirt floor of the tent and ground it out with her shoe. Her purse sat in her lap.
Malcolm was itching to get his hands on that purse. Just as he leaned over, ready to pick it up off her lap, Mrs. Vogel said out loud, “Just you wait, Mama. You will walk again.” Malcolm jumped back as her voice boomed. She suddenly seemed to get excited to a tizzy; she smiled and began nodding her head as if she were answering yes to twenty rapid-fire questions, and she started repeating, “You will walk again, old Mama. You will walk again.” After she said it about a zillion times, she stood up to her full height and hollered, “Pray, let the music start. It will be Mama who will jog with God tonight.” She was shouting loud enough for everyone in the audience as well as those backstage to hear.
Mary Frances produced a drooling, crooked smile, and one of her eyes rolled up as if it operated on a circuit that had nothing to do with the other.
The music did start, and from behind the back flaps of the tent, there appeared two women dressed in white satin gowns with star-spangled belts. They approached the microphone and sang two hymns. After finishing with the words of the second song, the two songstresses began humming. They hummed through the better part of a whole song before they began clapping their hands and chanting, “Reverend Carl, Reverend Carl, Reverend Carl,” louder and louder and louder until the audience picked up on it and started chanting, “Reverend Carl,” in huge swells of sound. By now the two songstresses were stamping their feet and snapping their fingers and wagging their heads enough to make their hair fray at the edges. Soon they backed further and further off stage until finally they retreated outside the back tent flaps.
The next thing that happened was that the lights went down, down, down, while the audience kept up the chant, “Reverend Carl, Reverend Carl . . .” The lights went out for a second and then came back on full force to show a man dressed all in white except for his necktie, which was a big blue bow. He was a tall, lean man. Up close you could see that he was wearing pancake makeup; it had gotten caught in his eyebrows and in his hairline and gave them a dusty peach look. He had the biggest set of false teeth I had ever seen. When he smiled—which he did often—his mouth looked like a piano keyboard with the sharps missing. He whistled the letter s. He lifted the microphone from its stand and said, “Brothers and Sisters, the time has come for us to talk together and walk together and jog with God.”
Malcolm and I had moved to the front of the tent and stood just under the stage and listened while Reverend Carl E. Vogel told everyone that only the pure in heart were ready to jog with God, and if they were not pure in heart or were not sure if they were, he could lay his hands on them and make them pure and ready and able to jog with God. I noticed that the two songstresses had circled around the outside of the tent and reentered through the back. They stood to the rear of the audience.
Reverend Carl was saying, “There is no crippled body but that there is a crippled soul. Tonight, good people, we will stop the suffering, cure the crippled, heal the helpless. We will unleash the powers of good and imprison the forces of evil. Amen to you, I say. Come forward, the lame, the halt and the blind. Come forward unto me. I will have my assistants to move throughout this audience, and they will be happy to help to bring forward those of you who want the purifying touch of my hands upon your crippled souls.” He paused and lowered his head and left it down for a good minute while the audience stayed so quiet that not even a cough was to be heard. He lifted his head slowly, as if it was a weight too great to bear. And maybe with those t
eeth it was. He said, “Come forward, come to me,” he said softly as he held his hands outward in a beckoning gesture and closed his eyes.
And that is when Malcolm walked onstage and unzipped his fly.
The Reverend Carl felt himself becoming undone and looked down, which had the happy result of making everyone in the audience look, too. He turned his back to the audience and quickly zipped his pants and circled back, smiling saying, “Come unto me, I say,” leaning forward and moving his arms in a gathering motion.
Malcolm struck again.
The Reverend Carl’s smile melted faster than Jell-O in a microwave. He spun around and refastened his pants in such a hurry that he forgot that he was still holding the microphone, and everyone heard the sound of the zipper, magnified like—well, like the buzz of a fly.
Reverend Carl quickly turned to face his audience again, “Bring me your crippled souls, your crippled bodies. Bring them unto me so that. . .”
Malcolm, again.
The Reverend Carl was so distracted that he could not finish his sentence. He turned his back to the audience again and called, “Sister Booth and Sister Love, we need more of your songs. Come ye back to this platform, and let your voices sing forth the coming down the aisles of these broken bodies and souls.” He zipped again and held his hands high, keeping his back to the audience and his eyes on his fly. Sisters Booth and Love must not have heard him or not believed him, for they were not forthcoming, and the Reverend made the plea once again, louder. “Sister Booth and Sister Love, will you please to get back up on this here stage now and sing us some songs.”
One of the Sisters called from the back of the tent, “Will you be wantin’ Sister Love to do the stage lights now, Reverend?”
“Ah, Sister Booth, step on up here and raise your voice in song in praise of our Lord.”
Sister Booth said, “Sure thing, Rev.” She put the brake on a wheelchair she was rolling forward and called across the rows, “Sister Love, honey, the Reverend wants you to make that nightly miracle of the lights, while I go on and give these here folks another of our Lord’s marching songs.”