A Stiff Critique Read online

  “Excuse me,” Joyce cut in, rising from her chair. “I have more ratatouille in the kitchen. I’ll bring it in.”

  “She’s kinda shy,” Travis explained once Joyce had left the room. “She does all this good stuff, but she won’t talk about it.”

  “Isn’t that nice?” Nan drawled next to me. “Some of us could take a lesson from her.”

  “You know what’s even crueler to animals?” Travis went on, ignoring Nan completely. Maybe he hadn’t even heard her. “Animal research. And what has it gotten us? Bigger and better drugs for the pharmaceutical companies to push. Cosmetics that we don’t need—”

  “Oh please,” Nan interrupted. “Haven’t we heard this tirade enough times already?”

  Travis crossed his arms and glared across the table at her. But his reaction didn’t seem to bother Nan. She speared a piece of watermelon and lifted it to her mouth with a languid hand.

  As I watched Nan, I noticed Vicky on her other side. Vicky’s eyes were on that fork. As the watermelon disappeared into Nan’s mouth, Vicky blinked her eyes and swallowed. Vicky didn’t appear to be eating anything more than she had on Saturday. Once again, all she’d put on her plate was a small portion of her own green salad. And even that was untouched. Nan took another leisurely bite of melon, and again Vicky followed its progress with her eyes.

  If she hadn’t been so thin, I would have sworn Vicky was on a diet.

  “Vicky, why don’t you tell Kate about your work,” came Joyce’s quiet voice from the doorway.

  Vicky’s head jerked, startled, I was startled too. I had become lost in her surveillance of Nan’s fork. Joyce set another dish on the rosewood table and sat back down.

  “Soft porn,” Vicky said brusquely, brushing her short brown hair away from her face with a twitch of her hand. “I write soft porn.”

  “Oh,” I said, smiling politely. “That must be fun.”

  Vicky lifted her shoulders in a quick shrug without smiling back. I picked up what was left of my slice of sweet-potato bread and brought it to my mouth. Her eyes followed the movement of the bread. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like eating it. I set it back on my plate, looking at her bony face and thinking of starving children.

  “Vicky’s writing is incredibly sensual,” Donna said, flinging out a hand in her enthusiasm. I was glad I wasn’t sitting next to her. “And it isn’t just porn. It’s like…like a metaphor. You know, a higher communion. Male and female aspects of the godhead.”

  “Is that what they call screwing these days?” Nan asked, her voice a passable imitation of Donna’s higher, childlike one.

  I chuckled before I could check myself. Nobody else laughed. I had a feeling Nan’s particular brand of humor got old fast.

  “Perhaps you can talk about your own work, Nan,” Carrie suggested in a stern voice. But Nan responded to the content of Carrie’s words rather than the rebuke in their tone.

  “I’m writing another historical novel now,” she said, her voice serious now that she was discussing her own work. “A different one than I read from last week. This one takes place in Canada during the seventeen hundreds, when the French Acadians were forced to leave Nova Scotia. Antoinette is an Acadian woman who’s in love with an English soldier. It’s going to be a classic story. My agent thinks it could make the best-seller list.” Her voice deepened with desire. “Not to mention oodles and oodles of money.”

  “What’s it called?” I asked.

  “Love’s Passionate Embrace” she replied with what looked like a genuine smile in my direction. “Isn’t that an adorable title?”

  I nodded and smiled back. Who was I to judge?

  “The title is real catchy, but it seems to me I’ve heard it somewhere before,” Mave said slowly. She frowned and shook her head. “Can’t say where, though.”

  “Well, maybe someone else has used it before,” Nan replied with a shake of her blond bangs. “But I haven’t. So who cares?”

  I didn’t want to get in the middle of that one. I returned my attention to my plate and took a bite of Travis’s tofu-stuffed potato. I resisted looking over at Vicky to see if she was watching me eat.

  “The Acadians sure got dumped on by the British,” Travis told us a few minutes later. He glared in solidarity. “But the Native Americans—or Canadians or whatever—got dumped on worse. You gonna put anything in your book about them?”

  “Love’s Passionate Embrace is an historical novel, not a thinly disguised political diatribe like some people’s work I could name,” Nan replied. Her tone didn’t seem to hold any real malice, though. “But don’t worry, there’ll be some Indians in there somewhere.”

  “Huh,” Travis snorted, looking down at the table. I wasn’t sure whether the sound was a comment on Nan’s words or on the emptiness of his plate. “Hey, can you pass the pilaf down here?” he asked. “And some more fruit salad.”

  Russell complied silently, stretching his arm across the table to pass down the food. Travis filled his paper plate for the fourth time. I wondered how soon the paper would wear through to the table as I tasted my own serving of ratatouille. Yum.

  “My work isn’t a political diatribe,” Travis announced after he’d inhaled another half a plateful of pilaf and fruit salad. Maybe Vicky could take eating lessons from him. “It’s a practical manual. If you’re living in a city when the United States collapses, you’re gonna be glad to know how to survive. No electricity. No plumbing. No heat. No food.” He shoveled in a few more mouthfuls as if to protect himself from that terrible fate. “People killing each other in the street. You gotta be prepared.”

  “If I was a betting woman, I’d bet on you to whup the apocalypse,” Mave commented. Her eyes were creased with affection as she looked at Travis.

  And so were Carrie’s, I noticed. I hadn’t seen an expression that soft on her dark, freckled face since her children were babies. Just what was her relationship with Travis?

  “Guess it’s my turn to talk about my work,” Mave said. “You could say I’m writing something historical too, though mine’s not fiction like Nan’s. Never got a yen to write fiction, myself. Though I sure do love to read it. Marge Piercy, Carolyn See—”

  “Your work, Mave,” Nan cut in.

  “Now, don’t you jump out of your britches,” Mave admonished gently. “I’m getting there at my own pace.” She took a bite of something and swallowed before going on. “I’m writing the biography of one Phoebe Mitchell. Lived 1830 to 1920. And she was one helluva woman, if you’ll pardon my language.”

  “What did she do?” I asked, curious now.

  “Phoebe was an American painter,” Mave answered. She sat back in her chair, her eyes drifting out of focus behind her glasses. “And a lover of women like myself. And did she have herself a life?” Mave shook her head and laughed.

  I nodded encouragingly, wanting her to go on.

  “Phoebe painted nude women in scenes from classical Greek mythology during the Victorian years, when that was just not done, especially by another woman. And she even worked from undraped models. Whooeee, did that get folks riled!” Mave laughed again. “Her portrait of the goddess Artemis—as naked as a jaybird along with all the other animals in the forest—got her some press all right. She was called ‘shockingly indecent’ and ‘disgusting’ and ‘wanting in modesty,’ just to name a few. And she wasn’t only criticized for her work, but for her life.

  “She lived like a man, people said. She never married and lived most of her days with one Emily Early, a ‘lifetime companion.’“ Mave winked largely here, then went on. I suspected the wink was meant to emphasize the sexual aspect of Phoebe’s relationship with Emily, but I wasn’t sure. “Phoebe rode horses bareback, set up her own art school for young women and lived her own life. Golly, did she live it! She was even known to cross-dress and visit men’s clubs. She didn’t stay too long in Minnesota, where she was born, though. The local citizens probably would have had her tarred and feathered if she had. So she went to Europe. Lived in Par
is and earned herself quite a name as an artist there. Lived in Rome for a while too. Only wish I’d have been with her.

  “Phoebe came back to the United States for the last twenty years of her life, though. And she lived those last years raising a ruckus just like she had before. Stumped for ‘Red’ Emma Goldman, the anarchist, and Margaret Sanger, the birth control advocate. Boy, you think the fundamentalists are donkey’s bottoms now. Back then, they were meaner than polecats, and just about as intelligent. But all their conniptions didn’t bother Phoebe a mite. She did illustrations for Sanger’s pamphlets and a cover for Goldman’s Mother Earth. Good golly, what a woman she was! I was lucky enough to meet her as a child—”

  “Wait a minute,” Nan interrupted. “Slade said you weren’t old enough to have met her. Remember?”

  - Eight -

  “Aw, fiddlesticks!” Mave snapped. She slapped her hands palms down on the rosewood table and leaned forward, scowling through her glasses at Nan. “Maybe I’m not old enough to have met Phoebe Mitchell, but my mother talked about meeting her so often it was as if I had too. And that’s enough, I think, for this old woman.”

  I wondered how much Mave cared about her claim to have met Phoebe in the flesh. She was obviously in love with Phoebe in spirit. Just how angry had she been when Slade exposed her cherished memory as fiction?

  Mave leaned back again, her face softening.

  “‘The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space,’“ she recited softly. “S. T. Coleridge wrote that. Mighty fine words and a mighty fine meaning in my opinion.”

  “Bravo,” Joyce cheered quietly.

  “Right on!” Travis boomed, raising a clenched fist into the air.

  “Oh, I know exactly what Coleridge meant!” Donna added her unconditional support. “It’s like reality has all these incredibly different continuums, you know. Who’s to say which one is real? I feel like I know the Yogananda too, like he’s my friend, but he died in 1952 before I was born. I’ve got his picture on the wall so my kids will feel like they know him too. It’s a real gift from the universe!”

  “Thank you, dear,” Mave said, a rueful smile on her wrinkled face.

  I was still absorbing the news that Donna apparently had children. It was a frightening probability. I wondered how often she had dropped them as babies.

  “Listen, Mave,” Nan said from beside me. “I didn’t mean to rain on your parade about Phoebe. I don’t care whether you met her in real time or not. I just remembered what Slade had said—”

  “Aw, that’s okay.” Mave cut her off with the wave of a hand. “A tad of reality won’t hurt me every once in a while.” She picked up her fork again. “So who else wants to tell Kate what they’re writing?”

  “I suppose I could,” Russell said, his low, soothing tone a pleasant counterpoint to Mave’s rasp. “I write what’s called true crime, documentary accounts of real-life crimes and criminals. Right now, I’m chronicling the events leading up to the alleged murder of six young women by Dobie Jay Johnson, also known as John Johnson. He played drums for The Dithyrambs. Hopefully, he’ll go to trial next month on schedule. And hopefully, at least for me, he’ll be found guilty.”

  Russell kept his gaze fixed unwaveringly on me as he spoke. His tinted glasses made it hard to see the expression in his eyes, if there was any expression. I felt like ducking under the table to avoid his scrutiny. But I only squirmed a little in my chair instead, not wanting to embarrass Carrie or myself.

  “Dobie’s pled not guilty, but he’s still been willing to speak to me.” Russell’s lips twitched in a hint of a smile. “Much as his attorneys disapprove. Dobie likes to talk about music and criminal psychology mostly. He keeps it abstract. And he refuses to talk about the murders he’s accused of. Or about his childhood, which is classic. His unmarried mother shuffled him off to various unloving relatives, most of whom abused him. He grew up a loner with poor grades in school, though he was above average intelligence. Dobie’s a quiet man, especially for a rock ‘n’ roll drummer.”

  Russell paused for a moment, then went on. “The other guys in the band still say they can’t believe he killed the women, even though they’re going to testify against him. One of them actually saw him disposing of a body.”

  Goose bumps formed on my arms. Russell stopped speaking, but he was still staring at me. He was a quiet man, too. I wondered what his childhood had been like.

  “That’s about it,” he finished up after a few more heartbeats. He shifted his gaze to the space above my head.

  “Very interesting,” I told him. My mouth felt too dry to say more.

  I looked down and saw food I had forgotten on my plate. I took a bite of fruit salad to moisten my mouth. When I looked back up, I saw Russell’s eyes on me again. At least his tinted glasses were faced in my direction.

  “I think you’re really brave to talk to Dobie Jay Johnson,” Donna said. Russell turned his glasses toward her. “The poor guy sounds like he’s had an incredibly painful childhood. I mean, it makes me almost physically ill just to think about it. Is he getting therapy?”

  “Oh please,” Nan objected. “This guy killed six women.”

  “He’s still a human being,” Donna replied, her soulful eyes widening. “He can still learn. We’re all children of the same universe, after all. We need to take loving care of each other no matter what.”

  “Including your father?” Nan inquired, her voice dripping with false sweetness.

  “Of course, including my father,” Donna answered, throwing up her hands. Unfortunately, one of her hands still held a fork, which went flying, just missing Travis’s head. “I may have…well…a complex relationship with my father, but love is still at the base of it.”

  “Then why are you trying to drive him crazy writing a book about his mob connections?” Nan demanded.

  “I’m not trying to drive him crazy,” Donna retorted, her voice squeaking on the high notes. “Just the opposite. The truth will set him free. It’s all part of the healing process. See, the thing is, my whole family is in this incredible state of denial. But if they can learn to communicate with real integrity, then they can learn how to be a real family again.” She smiled broadly in closing.

  “Oh sure,” Nan drawled. “Right after they pull their bodies out of the bay.”

  Donna’s smile disappeared. She frowned and looked at her plate. “Where’d I put my fork?” she murmured.

  Travis picked it up from where it had landed on the floor and handed it to her without comment.

  Everyone was quiet after that. I was surprised that no one jumped in to defend Donna, not even Travis. But maybe they were all considering Nan’s suggestion. I certainly was. Could Donna’s exposure of her father’s organized crime connections amount to a form of murder? His business associates weren’t going to be real happy about it if they were mentioned, that was for sure. No wonder he was so frantic to retrieve the copies of her manuscript.

  When Carrie broke the silence a few minutes later, both my mind and my body were full. Only my plate was empty.

  “As most of you know, I am endeavoring to write a novel of speculative fiction,” she said to the table at large. “I’ve written a few short stories. Two have been published. But this is my first attempt at a novel-length work. It’s set in the not-so-far future. The AIDS virus has infected the animals of the world.” She winked largely at Travis. “Everyone is a vegetarian now, of necessity. But there is a new plague upon the earth. One that affects the mind as well as the body. One that affects the spirit.” She opened her mouth to go on, then seemed to change her mind. “I don’t want to give too much away.”

  “Carrie!” I yelped. “You can’t leave it there. I want to know what happens.”

  “You’ll be the first to read a copy of my manuscript once I’m completely finished,” she promised.

  “That’s what she told us,” Mave said with a chuckle. “Gotta admit she’s whet my appetite. Great build
-up.”

  “It’s an age-old technique,” said Nan. “Fictionus Interrup-tus.”

  This time I wasn’t the only one who laughed at Nan’s words. She was a funny woman, even more so when she left the cruelty out of her jokes.

  After the laughter had died away, Joyce told me she was writing a cookbook to raise funds for Operation Soup Pot.

  “The recipes are easy,” she said, “but I’m supposed to insert little human interest pieces between them. About the people that work at the Operation and about some of our clients.” She sighed. “I’m not very good with that part, but the group here is helping me a lot.”

  That seemed to end the tell-Kate-about-your-work phase of the meeting. Russell got up and brought in his berry pie. I didn’t have to look at the label to know it wasn’t something I ought to eat. A sniff told me its first ingredient was sugar. But I had an inch-wide sliver anyway. I knew it had to be vegetarian, since Travis had already served himself a quarter of the pie as it passed his way. I sat, along with Vicky, watching him gobble it down, and wondered if it were possible to receive a metabolism transplant from a willing donor as he took his last bite.

  The meeting ended not long after that. Carrie and I helped Mave clean up the dining room and wash the silverware, then said our thank-yous and goodbyes. The sky was luminous with twilight by the time we left Mave’s house.

  “Well?” asked Carrie once we were alone in her car again. She stuck the key in the ignition without waiting for my answer.

  “Well, what?” I asked back.

  “Did you reach any conclusions?” she specified, her voice steady as she turned the key with one hand and gestured with the other. “Did you discover any clues? Do you have any suspicions?”

  “I suspect I’ll gain a lot of weight if I keep coming to your meetings,” I answered, patting my stomach.

  “Everyone’s a comedienne,” Carrie grumbled as she pulled away from the curb.

  “Nan certainly is,” I put in. “Is she a good writer?”

  “I suppose she is a good writer in her own way,” Carrie answered carefully. “Although the only examples I’ve read of her work are her romance novels. And I don’t have a real appreciation of the genre.”