Roll with the Punches (50 page)

What a relief not to have to discuss her name further. "Always glad to be in good with the full-timers." Alice performed her “I-love-this-job-so-much-couldn't-I-just-have-an-office-and-tenure-with-a-side-of-benefits?” smile.

A wiry young woman with low-slung cargo pants, tiny tank top, four-inch platform clogs and Coke-bottle glasses slouched in. She reeked of cigarette smoke and fresh nail polish. "Lunch time, Maya. Get a move on! I f-messed up my toenail. Gotta get to a nail place. Now.”

"Go ahead, Lila," Maya said. "I'll lock up if we're long." She frowned. "Wait. Alice Chalmers. Isn't that a famous actress?"

Joe fingered his beard. "No, I'm thinking a porn star.”

"Joe," Maya laughed. "No sexual harassment. Please!"

Lila clomped back to her desk, shaking her head.

Then the corner of Joe's mouth went up. "Oh. Allis Chalmers." His eyes twinkled like a sandy Surfer Santa on a Laguna Beach Christmas card. "Listen, I've got car trouble. Do you rent out for towing? Or even better, for spring planting? My garden really needs work.”

"It's not easy being green," Alice sang. "Eight cylinders. Always towing a wide load, sowing seeds of knowledge, spreading around loads of sh-manure.”

Maya said. "Seeds? Manure? Are you a gardener, Alice? But a green toe? Isn't it a green thumb?"

Joe cocked an eyebrow. "Alice will tell us over lunch. Won't you?"

"My maiden name was much worse. Believe me." Alice set her china cup down on the desk, gathered her purse, and rose, still clutching the scripts. "Dr. Singh, thanks so much for the food.”

"Here." Maya wrapped the last two samosas in a napkin to go.

Alice's new purple purse, 50 percent off at Nordstrom’s after Christmas, bulged with cell phone, charger, long distance glasses, extra reading glasses, reading book, crochet project, coins for beach meters, six months’ worth of receipts, hand wipes, makeup, pill bottle, knee-high hose, emergency chocolate, emergency olive oil, credit cards, library cards, staff ID cards, insurance cards, parking gate cards, gift cards, business cards, and hundreds of coupons: Buy ten sandwiches and get a side of fries free. Buy thirty bras and get a boob job free. Rent forty videos and take home Tom Cruise.

When her samosas hit the bag, the tiny extra weight tipped the perfectly balanced bag off her shoulder so it hit the little chai saucer, flipping the cup into the air. Alice and Joe both grabbed for it, smacking into each other's shoulders. And the pile of lurid monologue scripts found wing once more. Alice bounced back to her chair, Maya caught the cup, and Joe scooped up scripts with a ringless hand.

Ringless? Get a grip! No way would Alice consider dating Birkenstock Guy with classes full of cute young female students. She’d been there, done that, and bought the sad T-shirt to prove it.

"Wow. What's a ‘Venus Workshop’?" Joe said.

“The monologue or the class?” Maya shoved another chai cup at Alice, who absently drank some, trying to regain her cool.

Joe persisted, "Is this a class where you build giant pink and purple Venus De Milos out of clay and papier maché?"

Alice choked and sent a mouthful of chai in a wide arc.

Joe pressed on. "Or do you construct voluptuous prehistoric Venus of Willendorf figurines out of cupcakes, frosting, and cherries?"

Maya passed out Kleenexes. "Very funny, Joe. Actually, it's where we daughters of Venus find our Venus essences in the flesh." She mopped her desk. "With the help of mirrors and mood music and lighting, of course. You okay, Alice?"

Alice, coughing furiously, blotted her skirt.

Joe rubbed his hands in glee. "Oh, goody. Can I enroll? I'm a master at finding Venus essences. Man. My department seems so stuffy and out of date now. I mean Botticelli, Picasso, and Ingres are one thing, but this is genius.”

Alice coughed harder.

Maya brought her some water. "Honestly, Joe. You're like a little kid."

Joe smiled. "Fascinating curriculum. You teaching the workshop Alice?"

Alice sipped. "I wouldn't—" cough "—know where to begin to teach it. Well, actually, you'd have to be pretty—" cough “—dumb not to be able to find your own—" cough, cough.

Joe rocked on his Birkenstocks, eyes watering, beard quavering.

Alice drank more. "I mean, I just teach English grammar, writing, reading, oral presentation. The only body part I teach my students to—uh—find is their alveolar ridge." She pointed to the roof of her mouth. "Where you put your tongue to make English
T, D
, and
J
. And how to put teeth to tongue to make the /th/ sound, and teeth to lips for … " Babbling in the spotlight had gotten her through school. Sooner or later, the teacher would cut in just to shut her up.

Joe started convulsing. The Groucho eyebrows were just all over his face. "Yes, correct tongue position. Important for so many things." His face worked furiously, but mirth finally won and he blew like a Yellowstone geyser, laughing loud enough to topple Kali off her shelf.

"Enough, Joe." Maya threw a pencil at him, and he ducked into the hall. "I'll have a sexual harassment lawsuit on my hands." She turned to Alice. "Sorry. He's a Neanderthal. Want to come discuss monologues over lunch? Without him?"

Joe yelled from the hall, "Make sure to get your hydraulics checked before you perform, Alice!" He dodged another pencil. "I'll be there opening night to watch you plough through your piece." Howls echoed down the hall as he left.

Alice just shook her head. Despite fifteen years of marriage, she was about as likely to discuss private female body parts in public as her kids were to ask her if she needed help with the dishes. "I have to go. My kids will be home soon." In three hours.

Maya became a car salesman. "So which piece are you reading with us at the audition on Monday?"

"Uh, how many people come to see this? Ten? Twenty? Women only?"

Maya smoothed a few stray hairs into her bun. "The theater holds four hundred, and we were sold out last year. We made over ten thousand dollars for the local women's shelter. That's our mission—to help women in crisis.”

Guilt hit Alice like a cold washcloth. She'd eaten all this free food and taken up so much of Maya's time without any intention of helping the cause. She sighed and skimmed reluctantly through more pages, rejecting the graphic “Venus Erycina,” goddess of prostitutes. The poetic “Venus Libertina” about a black incest survivor was just too sad. The profane, funny, “Venus Victrix,” goddess of war and victory over men's hearts? Not familiar ground for her in this lifetime. Then there was “Venus Cloacina.” Cloacas? Chicken eggs and bird poop and Venus? Please. But “Venus Obsequens”—an adulterous romp in lurid color—yeah, right. She wasn’t in the mood for adultery. The last one in the pile, “Venus Genetrix,” was about mothers and domestic goddesses. That was Alice, all right.

She leafed through the story of a woman giving birth to triplets eight weeks early—a vaginal birth, of course. No Caesarian births for Venus.

She read: "
And my v-v-vagina expanded enough for one ecstatic, pulsing p-p-penis, then two, then a hundred, before it wound around a life, a real, round, warm, wet, thinking life with eyes that had seen only God's before mine. Then it bloomed and became a sacred passage, a blessed hallway to accommodate blossoms and carriages and joy from a pre-world of soulful images into this hard, angular, black and white plane of five seething senses. Three living, thinking, feeling people, my loves, my soul, my legacy, the kings of tomorrow, paraded, stomped, and gouged their way through my vagina, leaving deep permanent ruts for later travelers like the Oregon Trail. And finally my vagina became a throughway, a channel, a many-laned highway that brought squirming life to a whole nation of solid Roman souls
.”

Ouch. Alice did an involuntary Kegel.

“Wait. I think that one’s taken. How about Venus Cloacina?" Maya said, “The Roman goddess of the sewer! Goddess of purity! The Romans really valued a good sewage system as key to their success.”

That seemed innocuous enough. Or was it like Aunt Beth referring to her period as "draining the cesspool", way before women's lib and
Our Bodies, Ourselves
? Alice was skimming through the selection for lurid poetry and vaginal vocabulary when Maya said, "Sold! To the lady with the chai on her shirt."

How to back out politely? "Um, Maya, my kids can't come. They're just the wrong age and they fight a lot. I'll need to check with my babysitter, Juanita. She's so busy. And everyone says teenagers need an adult at home, and I'm already gone two evenings a week teaching." She smacked her forehead. "And the relatives are visiting in two weeks. I'll miss too many rehearsals.”

"No problem," Maya gushed, "I can see you doing this part. Your voice is perfect." Her black eyes charmed like snakes. "And last year we even had some Hollywood talent scouts here in the audience. It was so exciting."

Under Maya's spell, Alice suddenly saw herself earning millions doing voice-over parts in Hollywood films. Well, maybe thousands. But, if she buttered Maya up now, when the next full-time ESL teaching position opened up, Maya, who seemed to live on all hiring committees, might simply usher Alice straight from the hand-to-mouth world of the part-time freeway flyer to the nirvana of full-time, tenured community college faculty with her own office, a grown-up salary, and—part-timers only whispered this word reverently late at night under the covers—benefits.

Alice looked down at the chai on her shirt and the twenty extra pounds around her middle. She lunged with her virtual epee. "But don't you want students? Young, skinny, pretty things?"

"Oh, no," Maya parried. "This production is a joint effort of students, faculty, and staff. We need you older, more mature women for the more mature parts. “Venus Cloacina” is about a spinster in her seventies, mourning her sad, dry vagina. Perfect for you.”

Older? Mature? Seventy? Alice had just turned forty-one! And was the fact that she hadn't had sex for eons now stamped on her forehead in big letters: USED AND DISTRESSED? Or worse: CAN'T REMEMBER HOW?

En garde. "I've never acted before. I'll be awful. And memorizing? I forget my own phone number. And my kids' names.”

"Relax, it's reader's theater," parried Maya. "You sit on a stool in front of a mike and read your part off cards,"

"Won't the costumes be expensive?" Alice thrust.

"Just wear dressy black with jewelry. The cosmetology department can do your hair and makeup. Maybe add a feather boa. You'll look smashing, believe me." Counter-parry and riposte.

Alice made a final lunge. "Are you going to read a part, too?"

Maya disengaged. "No, no. I'm the producer. I have plenty to do coordinating everybody and running this office on a microscopic budget." Touché.

How bad would Alice look if she turned this thing down now, with the “I'm-volunteering-why-can't-you?” card sitting there?

Maya pushed a DVD into Alice’s hands. "Here. Watch last year's show. It was so wonderful. And be here on Monday at 12:30 to read for me and Rita, the director."

As Maya locked the office behind them, a resigned Alice asked, "What did you do to your wrist?"

A gold tooth showed in Maya's grin. "I arm-wrestled my three teenage sons, and I won."

On leaving Maya's office, Alice once again faced the rabbit warren of hallways. Still hoping to find her dean's office, she tried another room on that corridor, but inside, instead of her dean, she found a group of five women she knew sitting around a table: the ESL full-time faculty in a meeting.

All of them were single, between forty and sixty, and they ate, drank, and slept ESL. They were constantly revising curriculum, and they attended every national and state-wide English teaching conference and presented popular seminars at each one. Now, Karen Nakuta and Susan Sanderson looked up over their half glasses and adjusted their beige suits. Pudgy Mara Hassanian smiled wearily and sipped her diet Coke.

Jane Rohmer spoke. "Alice. What brings you this way?"

"Um. I was just talking to Maya Singh, and now I'm looking for the…"

The women's eyes got big. Karen said, "She didn't try to get you to do one of those monologues, did she? I went in there yesterday, and I mean really. Shocking!"

There was general tut-tutting.

Karen said, "Did you see Maya's Venus show last year, Alice? Oh. My. God."

"No." Alice had avoided the monologues before, assuming them to be intended for more artistic, adventurous, sexy types than she. Like soft porn in mythological clothing.

Mara stood. "Well, they did it in the little theater without much advertising, but some people were really up in arms. Thought it was offensive, didn't see the educational value to the students involved. The college nearly shut them down.”

Susan took up the tale. "Finally, Maya had a little private chat with the college president, Dr. Hamilton Smith, and convinced him of the campus women's right of free speech. Long and short, he let them do it, but he didn't even come and see it!"

“Oh, my.” Alice said, while internally screaming: Controversial? Offensive? Free speech? What if her stuffy colleagues found out Alice had agreed to be in the show? Well, she was only an adjunct. What could they do to her? Take away the low-level classes that she taught because they hated teaching them? Hardly. And it wasn't like she was trying to get tenure or anything.

"Guess what?" Mara changed the subject. "Blanche is retiring!"

"Uh, congratulations, Blanche." Alice's mind reeled. Oh, joy!! Blanche's full-time job would be open. The job of Alice's dreams. Happy dance!

And Alice would be making a fool of herself onstage next month, smack in the middle of the hiring process. A cold hand gripped Alice's chest. If she was seen by this crew spouting private words and sporting a feather boa on stage, how could she possibly turn around and charm them into giving her this plum of a full-time job? She needed this job. She wanted this job. It was her turn to get the job.

Jane said, "Would you like to join us, Alice? We're about to dole out committee positions for the state-mandated accountability standards group. Part-timers are always welcome."