44
The story of Catherine Tekakwitha’s feast is apocalyptic, as I started to say. In fact, it was my wife Edith who told me the story. I remember the evening perfectly. I had just returned from a weekend in Ottawa, where F. had arranged for me to have access to the Archives. The three of us were using the sunlamp in our basement apartment. F. said that I was the only one who could lie naked because both he and Edith had already seen my prick, but they had not seen each other’s parts (a lie). F.’s logic was infallible but still I felt queer about taking down my pants in front of them, and it was true I would never have let Edith get nude or let F. strut around.
– But I’d rather not, I said weakly.
– Nonsense, darling.
– At least one of us should get a proper tan.
They stared at me as I rolled them down over my knees, worried that I had wiped myself imperfectly maybe and there was tell-tale. Truth was, I felt that F. was using me like an advertisement for his own body. I was the tattered billboard for his reality. His expression seemed to say to Edith: If a thing like that can breathe and get up every morning, think of the fuck you can get off of me.
– Lie between us.
– Uncross your legs.
– Take your hands away.
And when Edith rubbed on the Sun and Ski I didn’t know whether to get an erection. On Sunday nights, such as this was, Edith and F. used to inject themselves with a little heroin, which is harmless and safer than alcohol. I was still of the old school in those days and considered it a killer drug, so I always passed up their offers to include me. That night it struck me that they were extremely ritualistic while preparing the hypodermic syringe and “toasting” the “horse.”
– Why are you both so solemn?
– Oh, nothing.
Edith rushed over to me and hugged tight, and then F. joined her, and I felt like some Maidenform dream in an airport for Kamikaze pilots saying farewell.
– Get off! You don’t have to suck up to me. I won’t squeal.
– Goodbye, my darling.
– Goodbye, old friend.
– Oh, get on with it, both of you. Go on, you degenerates, fly off to your crutch-supported Paradise.
– Goodbye, Edith said sadly once more, and I should have known that this was not an ordinary Sunday night.
They rustled among their veins for one that still carried blood, tapped the needles under the flesh, waited for the red signal of a “hit,” and then squirted the solution into circulation. Withdrawing the needles abruptly, they fell back onto the couch. After minutes of stupor Edith said:
– Darling?
– What is it?
– Don’t answer so quickly.
– Yes, F. added. Do us a favor.
– I can’t watch this, my wife and my friend.
Angrily I stalked into the bedroom, slamming the door. I suppose they saw my buttocks in a blur as I left. One of the reasons I had left was because watching them use the needles always gives me a hard-on and, since I had chosen not to get one when the Sun and Ski was rubbed, I considered that getting one now would put me in an abnormal light. Secondly I wanted to sneak in Edith’s drawers which I did every Sunday night while they were senseless in their narcotic world, and this illegal inspection, because of many failures which this chronicle has made clear, had become my chief amusement. But this was not your usual Sunday night. I loved her cosmetic drawer best of all, because it was bright and fragrant, and little bottles fell over when you pulled it out, and a solitary white-root woman’s whisker might still adhere to the tweezers, or her thumbprint on an oily pancake cap – it was strange, but with this evidence I somehow got closer to her beauty, just as a thousand pilgrims cherish a relic, a formaldehyde organ of a saint few of them would have acclaimed in the flesh. I pulled the drawer knob, anticipating the lovely tinkle, when! There was nothing in the drawer but smashed glass, two cheap-looking rosaries, several ampules of colorless liquid, and some scraps of paper. The wooden bottom of the drawer was wet. Carefully I extracted one of the scraps of paper which turned out to be a coupon.
But Edith’s legs were beautiful! And here was another:
THIN LEGS
Add Shapely Curves at Angles, Calves, Knees, Thighs, Hipsl
Skinny legs rob the rest of your figure of attractiveness. Now at last you too can help yourself improve underdeveloped legs, due to normal causes, and fill out any part of the leg you wish, or your legs all over as many women have by following this new scientific method. Well-known authority on legs with years of experience offers you this tested and proven scientific course—only 15 minutes a day—in the privacy of your homel Contains step-by-step illustrations of the easy SCIENTIFIC LEG technique with simple instructions: gaining shapely, stronger legs, improving skin color and circulation of legs.
Limited Time FREE OFFERI
For your free book on the Home Method of Developing Skinny Legs mailed in plain wrapper, without obligation, just send name and address.
SCIENTIFIC METHODS Dept SL-418
134 E. 92nd St., New York City 28
What was going on here? What could Edith want with these pathetic invitations? What went on at 134 East 92nd Street? Was it an amputated-leg pool? In a corner of the drawer, half-soaked, was the beginning of the explanation. I can still see it. I can still reproduce it in my brain, word for word.
The paper in my fist, I ran from the bedroom. Edith and F. were asleep on the couch, respectably apart. On the coffee table were strewn the gruesome appliances of their habit, the needles, the eyedroppers, the belt, and – a dozen empty Perpetual Lourdes Water Ampules. I shook them both by their clothes.
– How long has this been going on?
I visited each of them with a close-up of the ad.
– How long have you been putting this into your bodies?
– Tell him, Edith, F. whispered.
– This is the first time we’ve used it.
– Tell him everything, Edith.
– Yes, I demand to know everything.
– We mixed two different types of water.
– I’m listening.
– Well, some of the water was from the Lourdes Ampules and some of it was from –
– Yes?
– Tell him, Edith.
– Was from Tekakwitha’s Spring.
– So you’re not drug addicts any more?
– Is that all you want to ask? F. said wearily.
– Leave him alone, F. Come sit between us.
– I don’t like sitting between you naked.
– We won’t look.
– All right.
I checked their eyes with a match, I threw punches that didn’t land, and when I was sure they weren’t peeking I sat down.
– Well, what does it do?
– We don’t know.
– Tell him the truth, Edith.
– We do know.
And, as if she were about to begin an explanation with an anecdote, Edith fumbled for my hand and told me the story of Catherine Tekakwitha’s Feast long ago in Québec. F. took my other hand as she spoke. I think they were both weeping, for there was mucus in her voice, and F. seemed to tremble like someone falling off to sleep. That night in the bedroom Edith did whatever I wanted. I used not one radio command for her busy mouth. A week later she was under the elevator, a “suicide.”