A Stiff Critique (19 page)

Then she covered her pale face with her hands and ran from the room.

- Fourteen -

“What the hell did I say?” I asked the silent room.

“Vicky has some unresolved issues involving food,” Carrie answered when no one else did. She kept her voice down and looked over her shoulder before going on. “I would guess that she didn’t realize they were reflected so obviously in her work.”

“An obsession?” I asked in a whisper, remembering Vicky using that word earlier in talking about writing. My stomach felt queasy as I made the connection.

Carrie nodded.

I sat there feeling as guilty as if I had tormented a child. A helpless, disabled child. A poor, helpless—

“Don’t you worry, Kate,” Mave said softly. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Vicky’s a few sandwiches shy a picnic where food is involved. But she’ll get over it. She’ll have herself a good cry and be back.”

“Uh, thank you,” I said, trying to figure out if the sandwiches Mave had mentioned were actually part of Vicky’s food problem or merely metaphorical.

“She’s probably in the kitchen stuffing her face right now,” Nan stage-whispered. “Vicky’s true unrequited love affair is with food. At least she satisfies it occasionally.” She winked largely in the direction of the other couch. “Some of us just deny our needs altogether.”

I would never have known where that wink was directed if I hadn’t seen Joyce’s skin redden. She glared at Nan for a moment. Then she took a long breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, and her face softened again.

Now what was that all about? Probably Joyce’s celibacy, I answered myself. Damn. This group wasn’t one big happy family anymore.

“‘Oh, for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts,’“ Mave said. I knew it was another quotation when she added, “John Keats.”

“Food can be incredibly sensual,” Donna added. She leaned forward suddenly, rocking the sofa with her motion. “But women are trained into all this weirdness around food and body type and all that stuff. I took this class on it. See, it’s no wonder we’re ambivalent. You have to eat. And food’s like a metaphor for emotional nurturing on top of everything else, but it makes you fat. And no one in this culture wants to be fat—”

“Vicky isn’t fat,” said Nan dismissively. She shook her head. “I don’t know why she’s so hung up on food. It’s no big deal.”

“It is a very serious issue to Vicky,” Carrie corrected Nan. “No matter how petty it may seem to others.”

“Well, if she has to be so hung up on food, she could at least use it more effectively in her writing,” Nan argued. “Henry Miller wouldn’t have done a scene like that. If he used food, he used it.” She giggled, but then her face grew solemn. “Of course, I met Henry Miller as a child. He was a truly amazing man—”

“Food’s pretty damn important if you can’t have it,” Travis said. He glared at no one in particular. “There are plenty of hungry people in this country, plenty of folks who don’t get enough to eat. Did you know that a bunch of activists who feed the homeless in the parks were arrested last week? The cops told them they had to stop feeding these folks and they refused and the cops arrested them. If Jesus Christ came, the cops would arrest him!”

He threw out his arms, looking crucified again. Now I wondered if he was trying to look that way on purpose. With his long black hair he was a dead ringer for Christ. Except for the scowl.

“Oh please,” Nan drawled. “Do we have to hear all this gloomy-doomy stuff again? We’re not here to talk about world hunger—”

“What would you do if you couldn’t get food?” Travis persisted. He jumped to his feet and began to pace. “The U.S. will go bankrupt soon if they can’t pay the interest on the national debt. And then the banks will fail. And then you’ll need a wheelbarrow of cash to buy a loaf of bread. How will you get food then? Huh?” He gesticulated wildly. “Huh?”

“Pizza parlors are always open,” Nan said.

I wondered if she was joking. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Vicky sidling back into the living room, with Sinbad trailing behind her.

“How will you keep warm when the heating goes off?” Travis demanded. When Vicky sat down, Sinbad switched his allegiance to Travis, pacing along with him as he spoke. “No more Pacific Gas and Electric!” Travis shouted. Sinbad arched his back. “No more Versateller! Rioting, looting! The inner cities will be war zones. And how many of us know how to protect ourselves?”

“I’ve taken self-defense classes,” Mave answered as if the question hadn’t been rhetorical. She crossed her arms and glared, looking anything but frail. “No bully-boys are going to bully me. Not this old lady.”

“Who needs self-defense?” said Nan languidly. “You should buy a gun. I did.”

“Now, that really is dangerous,” Russell put in quietly.

“Not for me,” Nan replied. “I know how to use it. Squeeze gently. Aim for the upper torso or the head—”

“How can you talk that way?” Joyce demanded. Her skin was flushed all the way to her permed black hair. Her low voice shook with emotion. “When you’re talking about aiming a gun, you’re talking about real injury. You’re talking about taking human life.”

“That’s the idea,” Nan agreed with a flash of white teeth.

Russell’s voice was less passionate than Joyce’s, but his words were at least as frightening. “One study of residential gunshot deaths showed that a gun in the home is at least forty times more likely to kill its owner, a spouse, a friend or a child than to kill an intruder,” he said dryly.

“Oh, that’s so terrible,” Joyce whispered. She laced her fingers together as if in prayer. “I would never own a gun.”

“Well, you can’t just meditate yourself out of a riot,” Travis said from where he stood. “If the U.S.—”

“But that’s exactly what we must do,” Joyce argued. “Violence breeds more violence. How can we hope to live peacefully if our lives are agitated by anger and hate? By attachment and fear?” She twisted her laced fingers. “We have to cultivate peace in our minds. As a way of life.”

Travis put up his hands, palms outward. “Okay, maybe
you
can meditate your way out of a riot,” he conceded. He sat back down in the easy chair, smiling for a moment at Joyce. “If anyone can, you’d be the one.”

But Joyce didn’t return his smile. She opened her mouth as if to say something more, then closed it again.

“Perhaps we could return to Vicky’s work,” Carrie said quietly. I turned to her, startled for an instant. I had almost forgotten Vicky’s work. Carrie turned to Vicky. “I thought the piece you read aloud today was very well written. My only suggestion would be that you use more sensory detail.”

“Like what?” Vicky asked. I was glad to hear her speak normally. I snuck a glance. Her face didn’t particularly show her recent upset. It just looked pinched as usual.

“I would like to have a better idea what Doug looks like,” Carrie answered. “Except for the color of his skin, I’m unclear. I’d like to know what his voice sounds like. What his skin feels like.”

“Okay,” said Vicky, nodding eagerly. “I get it.” She wrote something down on a pad of paper.

“How about what he smells like too?” suggested Mave. “Smell can be an evocative detail.”

It sounded to me as if Carrie and Mave had covered every sense but taste between them, but I didn’t comment.

“A few words seemed to be overused,” Russell added, his low voice even lower now. “You might look through each chapter for repeated words and try to use different ones.”

Vicky nodded and wrote something else on her pad. She looked back up.

“It was incredibly sexy,” Donna offered, twirling a dark curl of her hair around her finger. “Um, I like Doug a whole lot, but I’d kinda like to know more about his life. Like what makes him tick, you know?” Donna yanked her finger, but it was stuck in the curl she’d been twirling. “Is he from an abused childhood, maybe?” She yanked again.

I couldn’t stand it.

“Untwirl it,” I whispered.

“What?” she asked, turning to me with wide open eyes.

“Twirl your finger the other way and your hair might untangle,” I explained, uncomfortably conscious of the faces watching us.

“Oh, thanks,” she said. She circled her finger the other way and pulled it away from her tangled hair. “But it was really incredibly good writing. Really sensual.”

Vicky smiled wanly. Donna might be a klutz, but she seemed to have a kind heart.

“Any other comments?” Carrie asked.

“Read Henry Miller,” Nan said.

Vicky frowned, but wrote something on her pad anyway.

“Joyce?” Carrie prompted.

Joyce shook her head, blushing. I wondered if she felt unqualified to comment on the explicitly sexual material.

“Travis?” Carrie asked.

Travis blushed too. I didn’t even try to figure out why he was blushing.

“Well, this has been oodles and oodles of fun,” Nan announced, rising from her chair. She clasped her hands behind her back and stretched. “But it’s time to call it an afternoon.”

Then everyone began getting up. Nan stopped as she was walking past Travis and stared intently at the side of his head. I was pretty sure she was looking at his earring. I’d noticed it before. It’s hard not to notice a metal skull with a flapping jaw hanging from someone’s ear lobe.

“Oh, your earring’s just too, too precious,” Nan cooed. Her raised eyebrows adding a mocking note to her words. But Travis didn’t seem to notice.

“Hey, thanks,” he said. “My dad bought a pair from this cool craftswoman in Maryland named Judy Danish. Then we split up the pair—”

“You mean, you both wear earrings?” Nan demanded, the mocking note gone now from her face and her words.

“Oh yeah,” Travis assured her. “My dad’s cool.”

Nan shook her head slowly, but departed the room without further comment. I took a minute to wonder about Travis’s dad. Was he some kind of Hell’s Angel? Probably an old hippie, I decided. And here I’d thought all the old hippies had given birth to accountants and dentists.

Joyce was the next to say goodbye. Russell offered her a ride home and she accepted, telling him she’d gather up her things and wait for him outside.

I was about to say goodbye too, when Travis descended on Carrie with an offer of protection.

“Let me stay here with you,” he said. “I’ve got my stuff out in the car. You’ll be safe—”

“I will be perfectly safe here by myself,” Carrie interrupted him. She stood up, her back as straight as the back of the chair she’d been sitting in. “I am not some helpless woman who—”

“But Carrie,” he protested, flinging his arms wide. “These guys have broken into your house twice. I’m not gonna—”

“Travis, it is not up to you—”

I tried to catch her eye as they discussed the issue, Travis’s tones ringing and Carrie’s tone even. Should I stay to protect her from Travis’s protection? But Carrie didn’t see me. Her eyes were on Travis as they circled each other with identically outflung hands.

“Ain’t love grand?” Mave whispered in my ear. I swiveled my head around and saw a grin on her weathered face. “I’m going to mosey on out of here myself, but you be sure to tell Carrie goodbye for me,” she added, and left.

Donna tiptoed out after Mave, tripping over the edge of the carpet on the way. And then a new voice whispered in my ear.

“If you’re concerned about getting home safely, I’d be glad to accompany you.”

It was Russell Wu. Of course. He stood less than a foot away from me, motionless, his eyes hidden by his tinted glasses.

“No thank you,” I croaked. My mouth had gone too dry to speak normally.

He nodded and withdrew without a fuss. That was more than I could say for Travis, who was still trying to talk Carrie into his protective custody.

“Come on, Carrie,” he was insisting. “It’s not sexist to wanna take care of you. I just…”

“Carrie, can I speak to you for a moment?” I cut in. But Carrie didn’t seem to hear me. And Travis just kept on talking.

“…think I oughta stay. What’s so bad about…”

I took a step in Carrie’s direction. A hand tapped my shoulder. I turned, trying to remember who the hell was left.

And came face to gaunt face with Vicky Andros.

- Fifteen -

“I think I owe you an explanation,” Vicky whispered. Her deep-set eyes stared out of her skeletal face with all the urgent appeal of a starving child. Then she blinked. “You see, I’ve got this food problem.” Her words were louder now, tumbling out faster than the whisper could handle. “I’m such a fat pig. I can’t seem to stop eating. I just eat and eat and eat—”

“But you’re not fat,” I interrupted, knowing even as I did that it was probably useless. I couldn’t be the only one who had tried to give Vicky a reality check. “You need to eat. Everyone does—”

“I gobble up food,” she cut in, her words tumbling out faster and shriller still. “Gobble and gobble, cramming it in like an animal. Like a pig. A fat pig. Potato chips and cakes. Frozen cheesecakes and raw cookie dough. I can’t stop. And then I’m so ashamed, I throw up. But I can’t seem to stop eating, I’m so hungry—”