Venus Envy (5 page)
Authors: Rita Mae Brown
“The nurse probably put them out at the front desk.”
Frazier bolted out of the room like an Olympic sprinter off the blocks. Yancey, astonished for a moment, hurried after her. Frazier skidded into the huge, round reception desk in the middle of the floor.
An older nurse stood up, alarmed. “Miss Armstrong, you’ve got to conserve your strength. Let me help you—”
“The letters. Where are my letters?” Frazier’s pupils were as big as a cat’s on the prowl.
Yancey came up behind her and spoke in his doctor voice to the nurse: “The patient has had a shock—a happy shock, I’m glad to say—but she put some letters on her nightstand and she seems quite concerned about them. If you know—”
“Brenda picked them up at seven, just like she always does.” The nurse looked at the clock. “Those went out on the mail truck at seven-thirty.” Then she smiled. “We’re very efficient around here. Don’t you worry about a thing. Your letters will be safely delivered, Miss Armstrong. Your loved ones will be receiving them tomorrow if they’re local, and in two or three days if they’re not. You just go on back to bed and don’t give it a second thought.”
The blood drained from Frazier’s face. Yancey attributed this to morphine withdrawal. Caused mood swings too.
“I’ve got to get to the main post office. I’ve got to get those letters back.”
“Can’t do that.” Yancey put his arm around her to lead her back to her room. “It’s a federal offense to tamper with the mail. Once it’s in the chute or the bag it’s history. Even the President of the United States couldn’t get a letter back once it’s in the postman’s hands.”
“The President of the United States couldn’t find his ass with both hands.” Frazier’s color flushed back into her face. “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”
“Mary Frazier, what’s so damned important here? You’re going to live. Sit down and call your family and tell them the news. You’re experiencing mood swings and possibly a mild obsession. That’s quite natural under the circumstances.”
“Will you kindly shut up!” Frazier’s eyes flashed. “I am not experiencing mood swings. I do not need to be
managed. I am in a shitload of trouble because of those
letters.”
Yancey dropped his arm around her shoulders. He was more puzzled than insulted. Anyway, Virginia women were devastatingly direct. He’d come to Virginia from New York University Medical School and discovered that the myth of the Southern Belle was just that. These women were polished, achingly polite, and heroically poised, but damn, they were tough as nails and they were straight shooters.
Frazier inhaled deeply through her nostrils, then coughed. That damned rattle again, the bronchitis. “I wrote everyone and told them the truth—the truth about myself and the truth about them.”
He patted her back again. “Is that all? Your family and friends will know you thought you were dying, and besides, it can’t be that bad. You’re overwrought. This is a joyful experience but a jarring one. After all, you thought you were dying and that changes everything. Don’t worry about it.”
Frazier stopped and turned to face him squarely. “Yancey Weems, what do you think would happen if you wrote to the people in your life and told them what you really thought of them?”
He paused for a skinny minute and then spoke in a genuine voice: “I get your point.”
F
RAZIER DROVE HERSELF HOME. SHE CALLED EVERYONE: BILLY
, Kenny, Mandy, Auntie Ru, and Ann, of course. Hosannas filled the skies. What she didn’t tell them was that within a day her verbal grenades would be lobbed into their mailboxes. She figured she’d hear about it soon enough and she might as well get twenty-four hours of quiet. She’d given up on peace as soon as she knew she couldn’t retrieve those letters.
The other phone call she made was to Harvey McIntire, president of the country club, to inform him that she would be available for fireworks duty on the Fourth of July. Harvey was thrilled on two counts. One, she was alive and two, he wouldn’t have to train anyone else to handle the light explosives.
F
ORCING JONQUILS TRIED LIBBY ARMSTRONG’S PATIENCE.
She was planning a dinner party in honor of Frazier for the following week and she wanted the house filled with blooms, a precursor to Easter and spring.
The odd flap of a loosening fan belt alerted her to the mailman’s arrival in the front drive. If she didn’t hear the Jeep, the dogs usually did. Libby wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and ran out to the box just in time to wave to the mailman on his way to the next gruesomely expensive house on the country club grounds. In the distance a golfing foursome, bundled against the cutting wind, teed off.
Libby hurried inside to the kitchen. She carefully deposited the mail on the table and made herself a sandwich. Then she sat down to sort the mail into piles. The bill pile grew and grew. That was depressing. A few magazines, including Frank’s beloved
Field and Stream
,
relieved the bill gloom. Finally there were three letters: one from the church and two on beautiful blue-speckled paper addressed in Frazier’s strong vertical handwriting.
Libby slit open the envelope with her name on it, laying down the silver Tiffany letter opener parallel to the magazine pile.
She opened the letter and soon her jaw was hanging open too.
Dear Mother
,
By the time you read this I shall most likely be dead. It wasn’t a bad life but it wasn’t a really good life either. I realize this was mostly my own fault but you had a hand in it.
Not being a mother I can only sympathize with the tedium of the task. Carter and I gave you fits
, I
know we did, but then children are self-centered little monsters requiring close to two decades of discipline to break them to the minimum of civility. This was a task you chose. Neither Carter nor I chose it, obviously.
We were and remain your hostages to the future. We were trotted out at parties, dressed in whatever was the latest fashion. We were given every lesson conceivable to develop the proper friendships and form: tennis, swimming, golf, music, cotillion—I know my coming out cost a sweet mint. You watched lacrosse and field hockey, which you loathed. You liked Carter’s football better, but then you liked everything Carter did better than what
I
did
.
You taught me right from wrong. You performed the endless chores of motherhood. You instilled in me wonderful work habits and a cast-iron sense of responsibility but, Mother, you never loved me. Perhaps I’m just not lovable
—to
you anyway
—or
maybe I was a convenient weapon in the low-level war between you and Dad. Whatever, I have no memories of you kissing me or hugging me,
if not for show in front of your friends. What I do remember is incessant criticism. I was never good enough.
You’re rancid with unhappiness, Mother, and I really don’t know why. Did life not turn out as you expected? Does it for anyone? Was it my fault? Oh
, I
know, it was Dad’s. Why don’t you let the poor man off the hook? So excitement isn’t his middle name. He was a good father, a good provider.
If there were anything I could do to get you to look at yourself, to change, to just let go of all that heavy baggage you cart around with you, I’d do it, but I can’t. Your un-happiness has become part of your identity. I don’t think you want to part with it.
I could write reams about how you’ve pitted brother against sister but I won’t. Stay out of Brudda’s life, Mom. Let him go.
One other little thing. You never really knew me. You never really wanted to. I lived in your house for eighteen years and, after college and New York, not twenty miles from you, but you don’t know a thing about me. I used to want you to know who I was, what I thought and felt, but by sixth grade I gave up. I want you to know I’m a lesbian. Actually, I’m bisexual, I suppose, but I have always felt that someday I
might
fall in love and that it would be with a woman. I wish that fact were not important but in our narrow-minded little world it looms as large as Mt. Rushmore. What I regret is that I hid, that I slithered away from this. I lived as a coward but at least I’m not dying as a coward. You no doubt will be glad I’m dead after reading this. I’ll spare you social embarrassment. What would the Garden Club think?
Well, Mother, you’ll cry tears at my funeral but you won’t really miss me. You’ve lost more than you can imagine, but then so have I. I never had a mother. I had a drill sergeant.
Mary Frazier
Libby’s enormous diamond cast rainbows of light around the room; her hand was shaking so badly that the colors splashed the walls. She ground her teeth in anger, then snatched up Frank’s letter. In her distracted state she ran to the bathroom. She couldn’t find a place to stash it. She opened the bedroom closet next and flipped through her clothes. Then she spied a hatbox on the upper shelf, stretched on her tiptoes and wiggled it off the ledge. She opened it and placed the letter inside. Then she threw the box up on the shelf but it kept falling down. Cursing, crying, shaking, Libby pulled over the floral-patterned wing chair, stood on it, and finally secured the hatbox on the shelf.
It didn’t occur to her to read Frank’s letter. Whatever Libby’s faults, invading another human being’s privacy wasn’t one of them.
M
ARY RUSSELL SPITLER, FRANK ARMSTRONG’S OLDER SISTER
, tore open the end of her blue envelope. Ruru, as she was known, lacked the patience to open anything neatly. She shook out the letter, put on her spectacles, and read.
Dear Auntie Ruru
,
By the time you read this I shall most likely be dead. I didn’t want to exit without telling you I have loved you always, and I loved being your namesake even though it killed Mother to call me Mary. Well, she never did call me Mary, did she? I guess Frazier suited me better.
I love you because you never tried to be anyone but yourself. You’re straight from the shoulder, no airs, just down to earth. I used to wish you were my mother. I still do. I love your sense of humor and I love that you never compared Carter to me and vice versa. You loved us both and accepted us for who we were and who we became.
On the surface of it, I’ve lived a decent life but, Ruru, I had no generosity of spirit as you have. I never gave anybody anything without calculating the consequences to myself. Quid pro quo, that’s me. I covered it up splendidly, I think, but then after all the money Mom and Dad spent on cotillion and private school I surely acquired manners and a good education too.
I wish I had spent more time with you. I wish I were more like you.
I want to tell you something about me. Why, I’m not sure. It won’t matter but I feel guilty keeping me from you, and I did. Don’t feel bad
—I
kept me from everyone. I’m thirty-five years old and I’ve never fallen in love with anyone.
Not
once. Oh, I’ve jumped in bed with people, not
that
many, but enough to make me think I was doing something. But love?
Not
me. I’d have to get too close, I guess, or maybe I was afraid I’d wind up like Mom and Dad. The other reason I declined this invitation to vulnerability is that I’m gay, whatever that means. If I let myself go I’d lose everything I’ve worked for—that’s what I thought and I’m not convinced that wouldn’t have been my fate.
I’ll never feel what you felt for Uncle Paul, God bless his soul, and if I see him I’ll give him a huge hug and kiss from you. You knew love and you were wise enough to pick a good man.
I filled my life with things. I was successful. Everyone seemed to like me. I was popular, as we used to say at St. Luke’s, but Auntie Ruru, I was as hollow as a gourd.
I’m sorry I cheated me. I hope I didn’t cheat you. I did love you so very much.
Frazier
Ruru wiped the tears from her eyes. “Poor baby,” she said out loud to herself. Then she thought long and hard about what to do.
T
HE MAIN POST OFFICE, LARGE, OLD, AND UGLY, FILLED HALF
a downtown block. Carter Armstrong sauntered across the black-and-coral marble floor. He waved to the men and women behind the counter, nodded to acquaintances, tipped his Redskins baseball cap to the ladies, and then reached into his pocket for his box key. Finding it, he swung open the brass door with the little rectangular window. He pulled out a handful of irritants—every mail-order catalogue on the continent found its way into his mailbox. He didn’t mind getting them at home, but stuffed into the P.O. box, they seemed sacrilegious somehow.
He accepted his business mail at this box as well as the occasional letter from a lady friend. Everything else was addressed to his home.
Having flunked out of the University of South Carolina, which was hard to do, Carter had slunk home and
studied to get his real estate license. Fortunately, when he took it the test was easier than it was now, but then Carter wasn’t stupid, merely laze. He passed the test and worked as a realtor at the offices of Blue Sky Realty for three years. He studied some more and passed his broker’s test, then opened his own real estate office, Horse and Hound. Since this was the center of hunt country he decided to specialize in farms and estates. Given his easy manner and his feel for the land, Carter sold real estate and even collected a few energetic agents along the way. With more motivation and less liquor he could have made good money.
Frazier’s letter caught his eye. He’d recognize his sister’s handwriting anywhere. Her bold wide letters written in real ink stood up like soldiers. His handwriting leaned far to the right and was full of fat loops in the l’s, in any letter above or below the line.
He leaned against the big oak table in the middle of the P.O. box area and flicked his fingernail under the envelope flap. He took out the letter and read.
Dear Brudda
,
By the time you read this I shall most likely be dead. I meant everything I said to you when you visited me earlier today. I wish you’d cut the traces and go.
What I didn’t say is that I know you’re still carrying on with Sarah Saxe. I call her Sahara Sex because she must be hotter than those desert sands the way she gets you fired up. I know you promised Laura to give her up. Obviously, you can’t.
If you think I’m going to pitch a hissy fit on the page and tell you how rotten you are, I’m not. Whatever this woman has, you need. You’ve had affairs ever since your voice cracked but this one is different. I don’t know if you know that or if you think you’re just hanging around be
cause the sex is terrific. I do know she’s not “suitable,” as Mother would say, and you wouldn’t want to bring her to the country club. You’ve been rebellious about everything else—why are you such a conformist about this? What I’m saying, dear brother, is that I think you’re in love with this one.
Love hasn’t been
high
on my agenda. In fact, it isn’t on my agenda at all. I’ve been a major fool, and how funny, because when someone falls in love, usually people say that person’s the fool, but I swear to you with my last breath, the fools are the ones who don’t try.
Telling you to leave Laura will probably come as a shock to you coming from me, if you’ll forgive me for using “come” too often. Your favorite word, animal! As wives go I think Laura is okay but I’m not married to her. She’s conventional, she’s suitable, she pleases Mother. Give her the house, the car, and enough money to live on until she can get some job skills. It wouldn’t hurt Laura to give up her weekly hair appointments, manicures, therapy sessions, aerobics classes, gardening club with our mother, tennis lessons, bridge club, and whatever else she does. Guess I shouldn’t forget the Heart Fund. No proper lady forgets her volunteer work. At least it’s a worthy cause but aren’t they all? A dose of the real world and the value of a dollar would do Laura a world of good.
Today I die. Tomorrow it could be you. Love is worth fighting for, Carter. Do it.
I never did. I’m gay. I don’t know if you knew. We never talked about it and I don’t think I’ve ever
given
any indications that I might favor what is now called an alternative lifestyle. Bullshit. I’m nobody’s alternative. Truthfully, I’m a failure as a lesbian but if I had had the guts I think I would have fallen for a woman. Don’t confuse this with just sex. Men always do that. Well, it doesn’t matter now. I blew it.
You’d rather be wrong by yourself than
right with
some-body else’s help. You’re a flaming asshole and a bullhead, buddy, but heed these words from the grave. And as for being a flaming asshole, hey, maybe it’s a family trait. Remember Uncle Ray and the time he got shitfaced at the lake and he drove his Volkswagen off the dock into the water! He swam out only to have Mother screaming what a worthless drunk he was. He bowed to her, got into her Volvo station wagon, and drove it off the dock! When I see Uncle Ray in the hereafter, if there
is
a hereafter, I’m going to tell him it’s been dull around here since he’s been gone. He’s the only one who’d stand up to Momma. I never stood up to her. I retreated and did whatever I wanted to do. Better
than
caving in to her but still—
If I could live, Carter, Yd
give
Momma a piece of my mind. No lie.
kay. That’s it. Think about love. Oh, yeah, I did love you, even when I didn’t. Know what I mean?
Sistergirl
