The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter (27 page)

The more she thought of these words and made of them a litany in her mind, “wonderful, successful, unstoppable,”
the more she craved to return to her own childhood and start over, find for herself such a figure to help her—as if a child could actually do this.

These past months, especially, she had found herself if not falling, at least stumbling over the smallest of hurdles, and worse than this, becoming mind-clumsy. The more she tried to do everything right—to coordinate her walk with her talk, the more she strived for gracefulness, the more she fell short and it was clear that this was becoming obvious to others. However much she attempted to cover up her awkwardness and panic when she was with people—especially if there were more than one person to deal with—increasingly, she was becoming outwardly brittle. If there had ever been any suppleness to her actions, it had dried and the false confidence she publicly exhibited to compensate for this only added to the escalating pressure of a final break inside of her. She knew this.

As did I.

“Right now,” she thought, “Arletta is definitely the It Girl of the academic circus and with this it is inevitable she will begin to have her own cabal—however small—of enemies hovering nearby, hoping she'll misstep—perhaps even break her neck or at least slip on some unnoticed black ice, which would force her to wobble off for at least a while.” To her mind this had already happened, with Arletta's relationship with Ivan Durmand, a man fading in attractiveness—his face sagging a bit, his waistline thickening, his thought processes most likely slowing—yet still maintaining enough charisma and connections. She could only think Arletta must have her own insecurities about her ability to move forward alone and the all-too-familiar
need of females for male help with advancement. Or perhaps, Arletta was just a realist, knowing that this path was still, unfortunately, the most propitious and rather than rail against it, to just use it.

To her it was obvious, too, that Arletta knew how to keep her story of where she had come from—her struggle up from the restrictive, heavy Cuban mud—strong. She had seen how she glowed on stage—almost ignited—when she gave the details of her early life. She behaved as if she had never told any of it before—like a brilliant actress does reciting her lines, becoming the character she plays each night, even though she has played the part a hundred times before and it, quite likely, has grown somewhat stale inside her. “Maybe Arletta's deftness with this should also make one wonder further about her true self, or selves.” She added this to her basket of Arletta thoughts.

She believed Arletta shut herself down when it came to any rumors concerning Ivan Durmand, put metaphorical blinders on and earplugs in if someone directly approached to confront her about him or even alluded to any talk about the damage he had done.

She once, quite by accident, found herself in a room with her and it was clear from the high alert look on Arletta's face, she wished she were not there. She could tell Arletta had made a connection with her last name when they were introduced for she took a step back from her and more than this, averted her eyes from hers and arched her spine too straight. Even Celine, who was with her, noticed this, which made her believe Arletta's actions were filled with even more discomfort than she had realized at the moment, given Celine's absence of sensitivity to nuance about anyone other than herself. Celine had said of the encounter, “That woman seemed
almost
afraid of you. How could
anyone
be
afraid of you? You
are
strange it's true, but to
fear
you?
Right?
No one should fear you?”

She just grabbed Celine's hand in a cousinly fashion.

She continued to think about Arletta while she was stuck in the impossible city traffic. Beads of sweat were forming on her forehead and the palms of her hands felt fevered. Her mind was becoming a cold, wet rag, heavy with too many thoughts. Even with the heat in the car on full blast, she could not get warm enough. It was below zero outside and that was without factoring in the wind chill. She imagined when she stepped outside the beads of sweat would turn to frost and her face would glitter like on a clear night when all the stars are out and can be so clearly seen. Thinking this gave her some peace—that more than ever, she would at that moment merge with the outer atmosphere. She would no longer be alone with the snarled, closed-off upset inside of her. Finally, she would be in sync, conjoined with something infinitely larger than herself. This image of her face twinkling like the stars made her feel religious in a Zen-like way and brought her a momentary calm.

Her thoughts wandered even more as she looked at the barren trees—the funereal lace of their branches on both sides of the highway. Their stripped, over-extended, broken patterns were more consistent with the way she felt inside. Then, she imagined the carefully mapped, clear-sighted plan Arletta had for herself—that soon she would leave Ivan Durmand and make a move to someone higher on her totem pole of ambition, and how she, with this trip, would cut her own notch into the wood of it and make this easier for her. She would free Arletta, just as her parents had freed themselves and her when they arrived
in Miami with great secrecy and she learned to grow up shrewd enough to say to people with great earnestness in this country what she thought they wanted to hear, maybe to the point of actually believing it herself—her voice at once vulnerable and articulate.
She
had lost that touch, if she truly ever had it.

She envied her, hated her, and wanted to help her escape, because it was important to her that
some
female feel that free. In the Slaughter family it seemed no woman got out alive—deadened or dead was their destiny. “Except for Aunt Rose,” she thought, “who lives forever, with her feeding tube and crew of attendees, always demanding and receiving more than any ten persons' shares of attention.”

Her anger and impatience with everyone had definitely grown weighted and ungainly. For months now whenever she went outside she had a terrible aversion to all strangers—strangers walking too fast, too slow, strangers driving what seemed too close to her. Strangers in stores not waiting their turns, talking too loudly on their cell phones about the mundane matters of their lives—the unending details of their comings and goings from here to there, as if every move they made was crucial to their world, to the
entire
world—while pushing too near her body, the foulness of their breath polluting her insides further.

Added to this were the salespersons' talk—talking down to her with the detestable “Honey” or “Dear,” not just giving her what she asked for, always trying to sell her something
more,
taking advantage of her all-too-obvious vulnerability which made her seem that she could easily be intruded upon and convinced to purchase anything they pitched—as if they could make her believe that a change in eye shadow, a new fragrance with a hyper-seductive
name, or the cheery color of some lipstick could stabilize her. “If only,” she would think as each one chattered on. It was hard enough these days for her to just enter a store—any store—and ask for what she needed.

Everywhere she went it seemed everyone used too many words, making her mind even more a clutter. It was as if no one could appreciate the precision of efficient discourse so as to lessen the outside noise—their tongues all thickened thumbs, thumping out more sound, drumming out more nonsense of self-importance and condescension. There seemed a competition out there with so many people trying to trounce each other in the narcissistic territory of the “I,” using her current most hated word—busy. “Yes,” she emphatically thought, “more and more, people seemed to be going for the Olympic gold in busy.”

Yet, now that she realized she was about halfway there—on her path to straighten out what had been done, done to her in her twisted life story—in this jammed traffic, she felt only compassion for the people around her. She listened calmly as they pressed on their horns and studied their impatient, angry faces—all the animated energy they used as they poured more redundant, trivial talk into the receivers of their phones, and she looked at each one with a sincere patience.

She felt both a pity and an empathy for their lone-liness—as if everyone were trying to cover the jagged potholes of their lives with the thin pages of a newspaper, trying to run over the news, the truly sad stories imprinted on the fragile sheets and on themselves. Silently she thought, as she watched them, “Someday, one by one, each of you will tear or burst from all the damage done from the rock-hard edges of your life you so
ceaselessly try to ignore.” But, at least on this ride she did not have the almost uncontrollable urge to roll down the car window and shout this message out to them. She wanted to tell them quietly, “The pliability and softness of the cushions all of us use to comfort ourselves can only be temporary. The multiplying hungers for distractions can only give us the feeling of safe passage to a point. Eventually all diversions lead to the same isolated destination.” The truth was, even on this mission that felt so right, she was still her old, glum self.

However, with the gun quietly resting in her purse, the voices that sometimes would scream at her saying, “Everything you do is wrong. You're not good enough. Not pretty enough. Not smart enough.
Nothing
enough,” had silenced. She had bound herself to the Old Testament version of revenge. At least by her interpretation. She thought, “It's being practiced every day if you just listened to the news—in the world, in
this
city, in backyards, inside homes.” She became the God of Israel, the Ineffable One. She became Yahweh, the name observant Jews never say out loud and with this thought she said His name out loud.
Yahweh. Yahweh. Yahweh.
And it made her feel giddy and wildly happy.

As I watched her, I could only hope some other thoughts would rise up in her to calm her, to stop her.

She ruminated on how easy it was to buy a gun—fill out an application—hedge a bit on the truth of how balanced you were—have your picture taken, and wait for it all to be processed. Just a couple of months—if that. Then come back and make a purchase. Or better yet, use an old one.
One that looks like a harmless relic, but is not. One with a family history.

She deeply felt Arletta's vision of the world was unrealistic—so simple-minded and wondered why people lined up to buy tickets to her lectures. To her it was as if when they entered the Great Hall to hear her, each picked up a blindfold to the world—all the complexities of history, all the misery caused by humans.

Arletta would tell her audience how lucky they were to be living in this country and how easily the problems here could be solved. She would do this with seemingly great respect for their intelligence, making references to the Greeks and Romans, to their history and mythology, paralleling these to the present—to current events, movies, music—and what they could learn from the long, lost past—its lessons, its mistakes, and all its glories. She did this without being pedantic—without arrogance—pronouncing that anything wrong now could be fixed through generosity of spirit, good deeds, and friendship. Her speech pattern was the perfect balance of angelic and evangelistic.

She went to listen to her three times. Since she had an insatiable craving to know everything about Ivan Durmand, to examine him from every possible angle—piece by piece, particle by particle in as microscopic fashion as possible—she also had the need to know more about the woman with whom he was living. Even though she sat hunched in a far corner with a scarf covering her head and dark glasses on so no one would notice her, she could still see that on stage Arletta looked as composed as Queen Katherine of Aragon and she remembered thinking even that elegant, aristocratic woman had lived
with a monster. Yet when she thought of the comparison of Henry VIII to Ivan Durmand, she smiled at the stretch of this and how it was far too much a compliment to the latter and his very limited polluted puddle of power.

Each time she saw her, Arletta was dressed in a dark, trim, perfectly fitting designer pants suit with a striking necklace of Spanish stones, as if to remind everyone of her lineage—her adventurous and powerful heritage. Of course, she never spoke of its violent history—the tortures, the awful, senseless carnage, which, in fairness, could be the history of any country and always in the name of some god. No, Arletta would not ever go into that.

The necklace she remembered most was quite large and made of saffron colored carnelian. It had geometric squares and ended with a large, highly polished tear drop which fell at the perfect place on her skin so as to delicately, purposely, cover any hint of cleavage. Yet, the suggestion of sensuality was clearly intended and definitely effected. The color of the stones intricately entwined in the shine of thick, pink gold wire only added to the glow of her smooth, naturally sun-kissed tan skin. She thought of Celine and how that
was
the color she always strived for, only to end up with some variation of orange on herself from the many brands of cream she purchased during the winter months.

She imagined every woman in the audience wanting to ask her where she had bought such a necklace—and all the others she was known to wear. She certainly wanted to—however superficial the impulse. To her the brilliance of this self-decoration with its subliminal effects were far more fascinating than anything Arletta wrote or said. She just could not react the way the others did.