TAPE RECORDING POM-9JUL68-EVERLEIGH. TIME is approximately 2:45 P.M.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Let me get you a big drink. I want you to sit quietly for a while. I want to show you some pictures—my photo album.
ANDERSON: All right.
[Lapse of sixteen seconds.]
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Here … just the way you like it—one ice cube. Here we go. I bought this album at Mark Cross. It’s nice, isn’t it?
ANDERSON: Yes.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Here … this tintype. This was my great-grandfather on my father’s side. He was in the Civil War. That’s the uniform of a captain he’s wearing. The picture was made when he came home on leave. Then he lost an arm at Antietam. But they let him keep his company. They didn’t care so much about things like that in those days.
ANDERSON: I know. My great-grandpappy went through the Second Wilderness with a wooden leg.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Then, after the war, he came home and married my great-grandmother. Here’s their wedding photo. Wasn’t she the tiniest, sweetest, prettiest thing you’ve ever seen? Raised seven children in Rockford, Illinois. Now this is the only picture I have of my mother’s parents. He was an older man, had a general store near Sewickley in Pennsylvania. His wife was a real monster. I remember her vaguely. I guess I got my size from her. She was huge—and ugly. My mother was an only child. Here’s my mother’s graduating class. She went two years to a teachers’ college. The one with the circle is her. This little fellow is my father at the age of ten. Wasn’t he cute? Then he went to Yale. Look at that hat he’s wearing! Isn’t that a scream? He rowed for them. And he was a great swimmer, too. Here he is in a swimsuit. This was taken during his last year at Yale.
ANDERSON: Looks like he was hung.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Bastard. Well, I can tell you he was all man. Tall and muscular. He met my mother at a prom, and they got married right after he graduated. He started as a junior clerk in Wall Street about three years before World War One. My brother Ernest was born in 1915, but when America got into the war, Daddy enlisted. He went overseas in 1918. I don’t think he ever actually saw any action. Here he is in his uniform.
ANDERSON: Those wraparound puttees must have been murder. My mother’s first husband got killed with the Marines on the Marne.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: That couldn’t have been your father?
ANDERSON: No. My pappy was her third husband.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Well, here’s Mom and Daddy with Ernie and Tom—he was the second-born. He was missing in action in France in World War Two. Then here’s Mother holding me in her arms—the first picture ever taken of me. Wasn’t I cute?
ANDERSON: Yes.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Then here are some pictures of me growing up. Bloomers. Gym suit. Bathing suit. We went to a cabin on a lake up in Canada. Here are all the kids—Ernest and Thomas and me and Robert. All of us.
ANDERSON: You were the only girl?
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Yes. But I could keep up with them, and after a while I could outswim them all. Mother got sick and was in bed a lot, and Daddy was busy with his business. So the four of us kids were together a lot. Ernie was the leader because he was oldest, but when he went to Dartmouth, I took over. Tom and Bob never had the authority that Ernie had.
ANDERSON: How old were you when that one was taken?
MRS. EVERLEIGH: About thirteen, I think.
ANDERSON: A great pair of lungs.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Yes, I matured early. The story of my life. I started bleeding at eleven. Look at the shoulders I had, and those thighs. I could outswim my brothers and all their friends. I think the boys resented it. They liked frail, weak, feminine things. I had this big, strong, muscular body. I thought the boys would like a girl who could swim with them and ride horses with them and wrestle and all that.… But when dances came along, I noticed it was the frail, weak, pale feminine things who got invited. Mother insisted I take dancing lessons, but I was never very good at it. I could dive and swim, but on the dance floor I felt like a lump.
ANDERSON: Who copped your cherry?
MRS. EVERLEIGH: My brother Ernie. Does that shock you?
ANDERSON: Why should it? I’m from Kentucky.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Well, it happened when he was home one Easter vacation from Dartmouth. And he was drunk.
ANDERSON: Sure.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Here I am at my high school graduation. Don’t I look pretty?
ANDERSON: You look like a heifer in a nightgown.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: I guess I do … I guess I do. Oh, God, that hat. But then, here, when I started going to Miss Proud’s school, I slimmed down. A little. Not much, but a little. I was on the swimming team, captain of the winning intramural field-hockey team, captain of the riding and golf teams, and I played a good game of tennis, too. Not clever, but strong. Here I am with the cup I got for best all-around girl athlete.
ANDERSON: Christ, what a body. I wish I could have stuck you then.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Plenty of boys did. Maybe I couldn’t dance, but I discovered the secret of how to be popular. A very simple secret. I think they called me Miss Round Heels. All you had to do was ask, and I’d roll over. So I had plenty of dates.
ANDERSON: I’d have figured you for a lez.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Oh … I tried it. I never made the first advance, but I had plenty of those sweet, pale, soft, feminine things touching me up. I tried it, but it didn’t take. Maybe it was because of the way they smelled. You didn’t shower this morning, did you?
ANDERSON: No.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: That horsey, bitter, acid smell. It really turns me on. Then I met David. He was a friend of my youngest brother, Bob. Here’s David.
ANDERSON: Looks like a butterfly.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: He was … but I didn’t discover that until it was too late. And he drank and drank and drank. … But he was funny and kind and considerate. He had money, and he made me laugh and held doors open for me, and if he wasn’t so great in the sack, well, I could excuse that because he always had too much to drink. You know?
ANDERSON: Yes.
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Lots of money. Cleveland coal and iron and things like that. Sometimes I wondered if he was a little Jewish.
ANDERSON: A little Jewish?
MRS. EVERLEIGH: You know … way back. Anyway, here we are at the beach, at the prom, at a horse show, at the engagement party, the wedding pictures, reception, and so forth. I wore low heels because I was just a wee bit taller than he was. He had beautiful hair. Didn’t he have beautiful hair?
ANDERSON: Beautiful. Much more of this shit?
MRS. EVERLEIGH: No, not much more. Here we are at our summer place in East Hampton. Some good times. Drunken parties. I walked in on him once when he was getting buggered by a Puerto Rican busboy. I don’t have a picture of that! And that’s about all. Some pictures of me on buying trips—Paris, Rome, London, Geneva, Vienna. …
ANDERSON: Who’s this guy?
MRS. EVERLEIGH: A kid I bought in Stockholm.
ANDERSON: Good lay?
MRS. EVERLEIGH: Not really.
ANDERSON: What the hell are you crying for?
[Lapse of seven seconds.]
MRS. EVERLEIGH: These pictures. A hundred years. My great-grandparents. The Civil War. My parents. The world wars. My brothers. I just think of what all these people went through. To produce me. Me. I’m the result. Ah, Jesus, Duke, what happens to us? How did we get to be what we are? I just can’t stand thinking about it—it’s so awful. So sad.
ANDERSON: Where’s your husband now?
MRS. EVERLEIGH: David? The last time I saw him, he was wearing lipstick. That’s what I mean. And look at me. Am I any better?
ANDERSON: You want me to go?
MRS. EVERLEIGH: And leave me here counting the walls? Duke, for the love of God, get me out. …