Too Close to the Falls (32 page)

Nee-Nee brought over a box full of Elvis Presley bubble-gum cards that she traded with her friends. She carried them around in a robin's-egg-blue plastic-covered box labelled
My Ponytail Treasures
that had ponytailed bobby soxers sketched on the cover. When she came to our house, she always brought her blue matching diary with a lock and key —
My Ponytail Diary
. That was not all. There was a blue plastic 45 RPM record carrier with folding handles —
My Ponytail Platter Tote
. She carried all of Elvis's latest hits in order of their popularity in the American Bandstand countdown top ten, from “Love Me Tender” to “Heartbreak Hotel.” She danced with the fridge door to “Don't Be Cruel.” She told me it would be embarrassing for me to wear ankle socks for Elvis's performance on
Ed Sullivan
. I had to wear popcorn bobby socks, which I immediately went out and bought, but my legs were so thin that they fell down around my ankles.

As we neared the performance date, there was a note on the blackboard in pink chalk under the area marked “Special Events.” Coloured chalk was reserved for important SOS messages. (The last time pink chalk was used was when the Russians sent Sputnik
into orbit and we all had to fall to our knees to pray that there would not be another war.) The notice read, “2:00 today — assembly meeting — speaker Principal Mother Agnese — addressing a delicate matter.” Mother Agnese never called an assembly unless the topic concerned one of the seven deadly sins. . . . Sure enough, her mission on this occasion was about the sin of
lust
.

She told us that Elvis Presley was a Southerner who was a member of an “offshoot religion” (presumably from the Catholic trunk) that baptized people in rivers by dunking them underwater. I had to admit it did sound a bit primitive. She said if we watched Elvis on the
Ed Sullivan Show
the following week, we would be committing a venial sin. Linda Low, who loved to find the fly in any ointment, asked, “What if someone makes us watch against our will?” (As though someone is going to chain you to a television to watch Elvis Presley! Why she never got yelled at, as I always did, was beyond me.) Mother Agnese answered this question as though it were normal, that maybe there were actual kidnappers who would round up children for the sole purpose of forcing them to watch Elvis Presley against their wills. Mother Agnese suggested one should spend the time with their eyes closed whispering “ejaculations.”

Mother Agnese said that in the event that we “forgot” to tell our parents about this, there would be an announcement on Sunday “from the pulpit,” warning parishioners that they would be sinning if they watched the degrading, lascivious performance of Elvis Presley, who was no more than the devil's disciple. There was an audible moan in the audience as the older girls in grade eight sank into despair.

I really wasn't interested in watching Elvis Presley on television when Nee-Nee was making such a fuss about it. I was only going to do it so I wouldn't seem like an only-child freak, like Trent McMaster who was out of it — that is, until I heard that it would be a sin. Then I really wanted to see it with “every fibre of my being” (a phrase I got from Nee-Nee). What could he do that was
so
bad? Since I wanted to be perfectly clear as to what the sin was, so that when it happened I wouldn't miss it, I raised my hand in the assembly and asked, in front of the whole school, how you could hold a guitar, sing “Hound Dog,” and be sinning at the same time? The older grades began tittering and I realized I'd asked something stupid,
more
stupid than Linda Low's idiotic question which I had previously not thought possible. Mother Agnese answered me in a tone that assured me the answer was obvious. “Catherine, it would clearly be the sin of lust.”

Lust?

I sank into my seat, but fortunately the attention was taken off me as Anthony McDougall jumped into the aisle and began gyrating around with his heels in one spot, swinging his pelvis and howling. Presumably, although it was hard to guess what Anthony might be thinking, he was demonstrating Elvis's sin. Everyone knew Anthony because even the older classes had had him in their grade at some point or other. Mother Agnese charged over to him and smacked him with a yardstick, a yellow one that said “McClure's Drugstore — Inches Above Its Competitors,” until it splintered at the twelve-inch mark and he flopped back into his seat laughing his head off, appearing impervious to pain. (I noted
she
didn't get sent off to Dr. Small for violence against Anthony McDougall.) Clearly Anthony, who couldn't add two numbers,
knew something about the sin of lust that I didn't know. I was puzzled. I looked up
lust
in the
Oxford English Dictionary
on a stand in the front parlour. It said, “Pleasure, delight (sometimes coupled with liking)”. . . . Big deal. What was the mystery of lust? As far as I was concerned, Anthony McDougall, with all his bullying antics, had done much worse things than shake his hips in the aisle. Others, however, seemed scandalized by his behaviour. Sister Immaculata told Anthony he was the scourge of grade three. The grade-six girls ignored Anthony and dabbed their teary eyes as they were still absorbing the Edict of Elvis.

Mother Agnese explained to the weeping crowd, who longed for Elvis more than the wedding guests at Cana longed for wine, that not only was it a sin to watch Elvis, but that she was involved in stopping the performance, or curbing it to remove the wanton aspect of his performance. She informed us that Ed Sullivan was not responsible for the moral development of America's youth, and he and CBS would not be the arbiter of our salvation, as long as she and other concerned Catholics had a breath left within them.

When I told my household about the Elvis assembly, my mother said, “No wonder she used pink chalk,” and my father said Elvis had snowballed into big bucks and that Ed Sullivan took his cues from the Nielsen ratings and CBS, not from Mother Agnese, who was head of a parish school in a small border town. My father said that he didn't know whether that was a good or a bad thing, but it was nonetheless a fact. Dolores, who I had expected to say that Elvis was horrible since she thought most things were bad, surprised me. She pooh-poohed the whole thing and said that Elvis couldn't be more lustful than Frank
Sinatra was in his hot crooning youth. She said, “Given the choices in
this
town, a teenage girl's got to love
someone
.”

Love
.

I thought that was a strange context in which to use the word
love
. I wondered how
love
and
lust
were connected. I knew love was good and lust was very bad. I certainly hoped they didn't overlap. I wanted to love somebody sometime when I was grown up. Even Nancy Drew had Ned Nickerson as her boyfriend. Were they lustful? Could someone be lustful alone or did it take two people?

Finally at four o'clock on the fateful Friday before the concert there was a last-minute reprieve as the loudspeaker crackled to life. The triumphant voice of Mother Agnese, sounding as though it was submerged with Lloyd Bridges underwater, announced that due to pressure from God-fearing Americans, Ed Sullivan, who obviously would sell his soul for the almighty dollar, had been forced to make a compromise surrounding the appearance and agreed to show Elvis's body only from the waist up. Therefore it would not be a sin, but only bad taste to watch Elvis Presley live on
Ed Sullivan
. Much to Mother Agnese's shocked dismay, there was a deafening ecstatic wail from the students of Hennepin Hall as we all prepared for our evening of bad taste.

Our living room was packed to capacity Sunday evening at eight to see
Ed Sullivan
. By this time many people had their own televisions, but they got together to watch history in the making. I guess in case something lustful happened and it was really scary they could turn to each other.

I was really embarrassed to watch Elvis with my parents, and our neighbours, the McMasters, the Millers, and the Schmidts. All of us, Dickie, Frank, and Trent, sat in the front on the floor
and the Millers and their three boys sat in the back. What if Elvis did something lustful in front of everyone? This whole Elvis performance had actually made me nervous. I wouldn't have minded watching the lustful part
alone
, but all these boys and my parents all in the same room humiliated me. If I was going to learn about lust, I wanted to do it on my own. It was like having an audience watch you the first time you tried something. Was there no privacy in one's first experience of lust — one of the seven deadly sins? I wondered what was required of me. Deep down I was afraid that I might inadvertently humiliate myself and do something overtly lustful. After all, I didn't know that I was displaying my sinful and disgusting lack of faith in my doubting Thomas episode, yet I was forced to climb the ladder and repent in front of everyone in the class. I didn't want to be the only lustful person watching Elvis tonight, especially in front of all of these boys. I had learned there was something about me that told other people how I felt inside and, what's worse, it never seemed to be what other
normal
girls were thinking or feeling.

Another anxiety-provoking factor was that somehow I felt responsible for Elvis's behaviour. Was it because it was my TV? Who knows? Mrs. Schmidt embarrassed me in front of everyone by saying, “Well, I heard that Cathy was so nervous about seeing Elvis tonight, her mother told me she was up feeding her monarch butterflies this morning at 4:00 a.m.” Everyone's laughter sent my fair skin into a rose shade of blush. I longed for a trap door to fall through so I could miss this whole lustful evening.

My father brought home Skippy strawberry ice cream from the store and handed everyone a cup with a matching plastic spoon, and we tuned in. While the jugglers were on, my father, who was
going bald, said, “Well, I hope this Elvis hasn't stolen my haircut.” Mr. Schmidt said, “Well, if I get corrupted, I'm a lost cause, but you Catholics can always go to confession.” Not recognizing his jesting tone, I popped up and said that he needn't worry about going to hell since Mother Agnese was making sure that Elvis's lustful bottom half was cut off. Everyone started laughing and the Schmidt boys were rolling on the floor, poking each other and pointing at me. The ultra-sophisticated Presbyterian Miller boys, who went away to a prep school called Choate, were described by Trent's mother as fine young men who knew their manners and would make a mark in this world, only smiled politely. Jim, the eldest of the three, a teenager old enough to wear a herringbone suit jacket and read the paper, had adopted an accent sounding like Edward R. Murrow. “Cathy, I know your principal seems important to you, and in
your
world she is, but I frankly doubt that she will have the authority, nor will her cohorts have the power, to tell CBS what to do.” He smiled at his brother Phillip. Then Mr. Schmidt piped in, “Why, the crooner has already been on
The Steve Allen Show
— top
and
bottom. I think you'd better tell your nun there that the horse is out of the barn.”

I was horribly humiliated. Finally a chastened and more flummoxed than usual Ed Sullivan appeared on the screen, and said that they were going to have a “really big show, but due to some last-minute pressures from the powers that be,” he had to make a slight change to his format. Elvis would appear, but he would be filmed only from the waist up. I turned and looked at everyone and lifted my eyebrows, waiting for an apology. Phillip Miller said, “You don't actually believe that pressure was from your principal, do you?” “No,” I snapped, “I'm sure it was the principal of
Choate.” Then I stomped in to get another Skippy cup and my mother said there wasn't enough for everyone to have two. To this I responded, “So what!” Mrs. Miller whispered just loud enough for me to hear, “Boys, Cathy is only a little girl, now be nice.”

No one said any more and we all silently absorbed the performance. There wasn't one soul in Lewiston who didn't tune in to the face and shoulders of Elvis singing “Hound Dog” to a real live hound dog who was shown in a full-body shot. My father broke the ice by asking, “Which one is Elvis?” and my mother said that it was interesting that Topo Gigio called Ed Sullivan “Eddie” and Elvis Presley called him “Mr. Sullivan.” My mother, I'd begun to notice, didn't seem to focus on the same issues as other people, or at least she didn't come at them from the same angle.

The next day at school I told Mother Agnese that some Presbyterians who were home from Choate boarding school were sceptical about her having so much influence on the networks and on Ed Sullivan, to say nothing of Elvis Presley's agreement to be a TV amputee. She looked quite calm, as though she knew all about Choate and was not the least bit impressed by it. She acted as though she completely understood, and even expected, the condescension of the Miller boys. She said, “Catherine, our fight is not always with the obvious tempter. Elvis Presley is no more responsible for his behaviour than Anthony McDougall.” (I had no idea that Elvis was
that
stupid.) “We all have our own Sodom and Gomorrah. The powers of the eastern seaboard are the ones we must battle. They are the ones with little faith and deep pockets. I feel sorry for the Miller brothers as they are slowly being metamorphosed into pillars of salt.”

Many years later the Amigone brothers said Mother Agnese's
four Choate-educated (Protestant) brothers had flown in on their private plane from Connecticut for the funeral, and had seemed uncertain as to whether the corpse they saw was that of their once-beautiful debutante sister.