The tape recorders are on the floor in front of the TV, their counters turning from one to two. It is four hours later. “We found the tapes,” Marcia told Joan when they went to see her after supper. “We’re going to play them as soon as we get back. We’re going to have a concert.” Marcia claims that Joan clicked her tongue at that. Nobody else heard, but they are all feeling encouraged.
Gordon has just taken his seat. Beside him, in her chair, Sonja knits. Marcia lies on the chesterfield with her legs across Doris’s lap to pin her there, keep her still for this. Doris has already gotten up once because she thought that a cricket was the kitchen tap dripping.
“Now, no talking,” Gordon says.
Out of the tape recorder nearest him a voice says what sounds like tone, tone, tone. But after several repetitions, it is obvious that it’s Joan. Joan, Joan, Joan … Not sung and yet describing a familiar melody.
“Mister Sandman!” Marcia says.
“Shh,” Gordon says.
Once more, at the same slow tempo, another string of Joans instead of the bums that “Mister Sandman” begins with.
“Who is that?” Doris says.
“You,” Marcia says, realizing.
“Shh!” Gordon again.
“I never said Joan like that.”
“No!” Marcia says. “I know what she did! She taped you saying it once, then copied it, then she sped it up and slowed it down—“
“Quiet!” Gordon says.
Now the song itself starts, still that creeping tempo and not sung so much as spoken on key. Except that those aren’t the right words. It is difficult to make out what the words are because of a muffling hum in the background and because, as Marcia said, half of them sound mechanically altered. No two words in a row seem to be from the same voice. “Is that me?” Marcia whispers, hearing a girl say shrivel at a normal pitch. “That’s me!” she whispers, hearing chuck. Heck she hears and nudges Doris, who nods.
“We’re all in it,” Doris whispers, amazed. She has picked out Gordon saying orange and peanuts, Sonja saying nostrils, father and jeepers.
Gordon has heard nostrils and jeepers. Peanuts, to him, was penis, but he instantly decided it must be Venus. He is concentrating on the second tape, which is playing a short passage of murmured words whose rhythm is syncopated to the “Mister Sandman” rhythm. This voice is not different voices joined together, it is a single voice, female, either Doris’s, Sonja’s or Marcia’s, it would have to be. He has figured out that much, that Joan was taping them, and he is already a bit apprehensive. What is the voice saying? He is about to get up and fiddle with the dials when the voice says distinctly and at such a high volume that it sounds shouted—“YOU CAN KEEP A SECRET, CAN’T YOU?”
Sonja stops knitting. “Was that me?”
“It sure sounded like it,” Doris says.
“She taped us,” Marcia says excitedly. “I wonder when she did.”
“Well, those heaps of tapes she has,” Doris says. “She might have been doing it for years.”
“But I thought it would be her playing the piano,” Sonja says.
On the first tape the “Mister Sandman” tune has begun again as before, with all of their voices speaking a word in turn. The words seem to have been chosen for no other reason than that they have the right number of syllables and the right pitch, although, as in the first verse, many words (and in some cases only parts of words) sound sped up or slowed down. Despite the hum these words are easier to make out than ones in the first verse were. Tibby retard fly breast shebang carrot top Negro albino worms darn. A nonsense jumble. And yet startling, some of them. Tibby. Breast.
Meanwhile, on tape 2, a voice (Gordon’s) is murmuring another broken sentence of about seven or eight words. You can tell how long the sentence is because it is a rhythmic phrase being played over and over. Again the words are unintelligible until the end of the verse when suddenly they blare out, perfectly clear: “I THINK ABOUT HIM ALL THE TIME!”
Doris looks at Gordon. “Who do you think about all the time?”
He shakes his head. “My father,” he says after a moment.
“Quiet,” Marcia says.
A third verse of the same “Mister Sandman” melody has begun on tape 1. On tape 2 there’s that incoherent voice—female and, even this early on, recognizably Marcia’s. Marcia covers her mouth with her hands as she waits to find out what she’s saying. She hopes it’s not too personal. Chinless neglected Bill Cullen tongue blood type …
“Blood type?” Doris says.
“Bill Cullen,” Sonja says with a smile. She has resumed knitting.
… pediatric mango pop tongue erection …
“Erection!” Doris says.
“Quiet!” Marcia says and glances at her father.
But Gordon is hardly listening. His heart is flopping around like a fish. He can’t think. He can’t remember. Did he ever mention Al Yothers to Joan? Did he say he loved him? My God, he has a feeling he might have. With a quaking hand he pulls his handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and dabs his forehead. Okey-dokey bean virgin from tape I. Is bean Jack Bean? Virgin? Who said virgin?
“I think maybe we should turn this off now,” he says.
“What?” Doris says. “Why?”
“Listen!” Marcia shouts, and a second later her voice on tape 2 says, “WE WENT ALL THE WAY TONIGHT!”
She yelps, embarrassed.
Doris subtracts the number of years ago that Joan presumably stopped taping everybody (it would be when she began editing in the basement) from Marcia’s age. “Hey, you weren’t even seventeen!”
Marcia laughs. “So?”
“I don’t know if this is the right time to be listening to this,” Gordon says.
“If you don’t want to listen, don’t,” Doris snaps. “Go for a walk. I’m staying right here.”
“Can we just listen?” Marcia yells.
… yours canary Ziggy cream cheese soft spot…
The next voice on tape 2 is Sonja’s. “THE TRUTH IS ONLY AVERSION!” it eventually hollers. Then on to the next verse and more of the same: from tape I a list of random words—bosom baloney chinky crown lard—spoken to the tune of “Mister Sandman,” and from tape 2 an inaudible, repeated phrase providing a jazzy counterpoint.
What verse are they at now? The voice is Doris’s. When it shouts, “WELL, IF THAT DOESN’T BEAT THE BAND!” she says, “Do I say that a lot?”
“You never stop,” Gordon teases. His heart is settling down. The next murmurer is female, and the last two declarations have been innocuous enough. Each verse is roughly two minutes long, so if the piece continues like this until the end, that works out to, what, twenty-five or twenty-four more verses, of which maybe six will feature him. And what percentage of everything he uttered at the threshold of that closet could possibly have been indiscreet? Less than one percent of one percent. “I suppose she wanted us to hear it,” he concedes. “She wouldn’t have left instructions—“
“Shh,” says Marcia. The voice on tape 2 is hers. The clarification of the murmured phrase is all any of them are really listening for now, although they can’t help hearing that oddly disturbing catalogue of words on tape 1—padded dingdong hammer pass—as if a lunatic were raving in their ears while they were straining to catch an important announcement. “Boys,” Marcia says. “I think it’s something about boys.”
“Oh, great,” Doris says grimly.
It’s about boys, all right. It’s: “1 HAVE SLEPT WITH so
MANY BOYS I HAVE LOST COUNT!”
“What?” Doris cries.
Marcia sits straight. “I never said that!” Did she? She may have thought it, but did she say it?
“Before you were seventeen?” Doris cries.
“I just said, I never said it!”
“We heard you!”
“Maybe you meant ‘had a little snooze with,’” Sonja offers.
“I hope you’re taking the pill!” Doris says.
“I’m taking it,” Marcia says. “Not that it’s anybody’s business.”
“Look,” Gordon says, “let’s keep in mind that these are edited tapes, and there are unnatural breaks between words. I think that what she did was extract a word from this conversation and a word from that conversation to manufacture her own sentence.”
“Why would she do a thing like that?” Doris cribs.
“I don’t know,” Gordon says. He doesn’t even believe it. He is thinking of himself. Ahead of time, from a state of savage, efficient dread, he is constructing his excuse.
“Well, it’s a big—“ Marcia says and her breath snags. She can’t say “lie.” She can deny having said it but not having done it because that would be calling Joan a liar. Why did Joan tell everybody, though? She folds her legs into her chest and presses her forehead to her knees. Robin queen quack bare Vaseline… the song goes. The end of the verse is approaching.
IT’S SONJA’S VOICE THIS TIME, “IN MY LAST LIFE I WAS THE LADY ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE!” IT YELLS.
“Well, now you know,” Sonja says with a chuckle. “But I’ll bet you anything I was.”
The next voice is Gordon’s. He grips the arms of his chair. Love, he thinks he hears, and burning halos begin radiating from his skull, “WHEN YOU FALL IN LOVE, OTHER MIRACLES ARE INSPIRED TO SHOW ?HEMSELVES!” his voice finally proclaims.
He exhales. That wasn’t so bad. He smiles at Doris, who stares at him. “I must have read it to her from some book,” he says. Right! That’s it! If anything risqué comes up, he’ll say he must have read it aloud!
But for the next quarter of an hour, the declarations are harmless. Gordon’s voice saying, “I FEEL LIKE BUCK ROGERS AT THIS POINT!” Doris’s saying, “WHAT DO YOU THINK, SHOULD I LOSE TEN POUNDS?” “I ALMOST WENT THROUGH THE FLO?R!” from Sonja, and from Doris “GIMME A PIGFOOT AND A BOTTLE OF BEER!” Marcia snorts at that one. “It’s a song,” Doris says stiffly. Marcia’s voice says, “I SURE KNOW HOW TO PICK THEM, DON’T I?” and along the same lines, “WHY AM I ATTRACTED TO LEPER KEEPERS?” (“Leopard keepers?” Sonja says. “Leper keepers,” Marcia says.) When Marcia’s voice says, “I AM A WALL AND MY BREASTS LIKE TOWERS!” Doris glances at her.
“It’s from the Bible,” Marcia mutters.
“The Song of Solomon!” Gordon says heartily.
Doris sighs. Maybe what Gordon said about Joan manufacturing sentences is true. Who knows? The whole thing sounds crazy to her. She pulls Marcia’s feet onto her lap and begins plucking lint balls from her socks and flicking them away. (As if, Marcia thinks, but is not offended, they are the countless boys she has slept with.)
In unison, the two tapes click off their reels. “That’s the end of side one,” Gordon says, slapping his knees and coming to his feet. He is feeling fine now. More than fine—fired up. As far as he is concerned, Joan’s rhythmic variations are as sophisticated as anything he ever heard on a David Rayne recording. “This is extraordinary,” he says as he turns the tapes over. “Disquieting in places, there’s no question about that. But once you accept that her intention is to provoke, there are levels within levels—“
“I think it’s weird,” Marcia cuts him off. Her feelings are still hurt. Why did Joan pick on her? “And I think it’s weirder that she was secretly taping us like a Russian spy.”
“Those lyrics, or whatever you want to call them, are sure weird,” Doris says. “When you think of all the thousands of words we must have said. And she goes and picks humdingers like orgasm and bosom! Who said chinky, by the way?” She twists around. “Oh, look, it’s raining out.”
“I suspect she chose them partly for their sound,” Gordon says. “And to juxtapose a shocking word with a bland one. Okay.” He flicks both switches. “Here we go.”
“I hope we’ve heard the last of Mister Sandman,” Marcia says.
“Well, I would think we have,” Doris says, surprised.
“No, we haven’t!” Sonja says as the first words come traipsing out—blowing doughnut jerking kiddo …
On this side, the tape 2 voices turn out to be spouting platitudes, “WELL, YOU CAN’T WIN ‘EM ALL!” “LIKE I SAID, IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE!” “GIVE A GUY AN INCH AND HE’LL TAKE A MILE!” “SO I GUESS IT’S OUT OF THE FRYING PAN AND INTO THE FIRE!” “I’M NOT GOING TO COUNT MY BLESSINGS UNTIL THEY’RE HATCHED!” (THAT ONE FROM SONJA.)
Gordon laughs, an attack of enormously relieving and slightly out-of-control guffaws. “This is terrific,” he says, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.
Another malapropism from Sonja (“A BIRD IN THE HAND is WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD!”) has them all laughing, Sonja as well, she isn’t sure why. By now the tapes are almost running out. Only a few more verses to go.
“That sounds like me,” Doris says, as the next murmured phrase starts up. “Hold on to your hats,” she says, grinning. And from the tape recorder her voice shrills, “I LOVE TO HAVE SEX WITH BARE-NAKED WOMEN!”
Sonja blurts out a laugh, imagining this to be another joke (one she thinks she gets).
“Oh, my God,” Marcia says.
“I never said that,” Doris says quietly. A blush starts climbing her throat.
“Of course, you didn’t,” Gordon says. He forces a laugh.
“I never said that,” Doris says again.
“This is what I was talking about before!” Gordon says. “She took a word from here, a word from there and spliced them together!”
Doris holds her hands in her lap. Her bearing is regal. “I would never have said anything like that,” she says in the same quiet and startled voice.
“We know, Mommy,” Sonja says. Of course they do! Why is her mother so upset?
“I didn’t…,” Doris says. And it’s true, she didn’t. She is certain she didn’t. And yet it’s as if her clothes have been ripped off and she is protesting that these aren’t her breasts, this is not her pubic hair. “A word from here, a word from there and spliced them together” is the perfect cover-up. Not even a lie. The lies that are tumbling into her throat she can swallow away and simply agree with what Gordon is saying. So why doesn’t she? She opens her mouth. Breathes out nothing.
… juicy twitch dead Cedric cleavage dumbbell climax …
Meanwhile, Marcia has brought her knees back into her chest. She has never been on a bad acid trip but this is beginning to feel like one. Her mother’s face is a colour of red you don’t see anywhere in nature. In her mother’s folded hands is a tiny naked woman. Her left hand, her wedding-ring hand, slipped under the waistband of Angela’s bathing suit and went too far down. That happened. There is a shuffling in Marcia’s head, an amassing, but from all directions her father’s voice trombones and she can’t concentrate. “Shut up,” she says.
Gordon hears her, ignores her, goes on telling them about Brad Wagner. “You remember him, Doris! Great big guy, a football player before he became a writer. In Poker Face he had this character who was the spitting image of his own mother, he even used her real name, Thelma or Velma! I met her once. Sweet little old lady. But what does Brad have this Velma character do in his book? Chop up the milkman!”
“Holy moly,” Sonja says.
“That’s creative licence for you!” Gordon says. The pounding in his lungs seems to have locked into the rhythm of his voice on tape 2. Keep talking, he thinks. Drown it out. He can’t. He is suddenly empty of words. And there go the words on tape I—mute squat Greenville flophouse—marching right by him to the finish line. The rain outside he hears as Sonja (who is nearest the window) crinkling Saran Wrap. He looks at her, and her face is so untroubled that he experiences one sweet moment of safety before his voice on tape 2 shouts, “I HAVE ORGASMS WITH QUEER MEN!”
He stands. “What the hell?” Filtered through a sickly laugh.
“Oh, my God,” Marcia whispers.
“Did you hear orgasms?” Gordon says at a strange tenor pitch. “That wasn’t my voice! See, there you are right there! She spliced in one of you saying orgasms. Was that you, Marcia?” A blind careering in her direction. “What’s she up to? Shock value, I guess. Bringing the piece to a climax.” He yanks out his handkerchief and punches it at his wet face. “Here—“ He strides over to the tape recorder. “I’ll play that back. You’ll see that it wasn’t my voice.”
“No!” Marcia cries. She leaps off the couch and grabs his arm. “Leave it!”
“I’m just going to demonstrate—“
“Leave it!”
They look at each other.
“That’s me,” she says about the next voice on tape 2.
He listens. Yes.
“I want to hear what terrible thing she has me saying.”
“Well,” he says, shaken.
They stand there in front of the second tape recorder listening to blubber smokes Nazi candy bladder and so on from tape 1. Behind them (neither of them can quite believe this) Sonja hums along with the melody. A moment before the murmurs clarify, Marcia realizes that the voice isn’t hers after all, it’s Sonja’s.
“ALWAYS REMEMBER, BUNNY, I’M YOUR REAL MOTHER!”
“Uh-oh,” Sonja says.
Neither Marcia nor Gordon budge.
“Me and my big mouth,” Sonja says, and quickly rolls up her knitting.
Marcia turns to her. A trance-like rotation during the course of which Gordon swerves to otherworldly calm.
“You’re Joanie’s mother?” Marcia says faintly.
“Let’s keep calm,” Gordon says with a slow, pushing-down motion of his hands.
“Gulp,” Sonja says. Her eyes squirrel around the room.
“Are you?”
“Yes, she’s Joanie’s mother,” Doris says flatly. “She gave birth to her.”
“Who’s her father?”
The tapes flap from their reels. “We don’t know,” Gordon says. He switches the recorders off. “We never learned his real name.”
“It was … I guess you’d call it a one-night stand,” Sonja says. Now she is red and Doris isn’t.
Marcia lowers herself to her father’s chair. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
“We should have,” Doris says. “Ten years ago.”
“So, you got pregnant and that’s why you went to Vancouver,” Marcia says, more to herself. She looks around at everyone. “So, Joanie’s my niece,” she says.
“I’m sorry, Sweetie,” Doris says. Her eyes are tired and sad and affectionate. “Brother, this is some night, isn’t it?”
“I just wish you’d told me. I don’t understand why nobody told me.” By “nobody” she means especially Joan. She means before now.
Gordon sits next to Doris. “I guess our thinking was, you’d tell Joanie, you know the way you two are, and that she had enough on her plate as it was.”
“But she knew!”
“As it turns out,” Doris says. She shifts on the chesterfield to study Sonja.
“Me and my big mouth,” Sonja says again and covers her mouth with both hands.
“She’s not my sister,” Marcia says. Her eyes flood. “She’s my niece.”
“She’s still Joanie,” Sonja says, muffled through her fingers.
“That’s right,” Gordon says serenely. “Who she is has nothing to do with who you, or any of us for that matter, think she is.”
He is so tranquil! Has he lost his mind? I have orgasms with queer men! roars in his skull but as if from behind glass. I have orgasms with queer men! It has the ring of an odd translation. He did not say it, of course. Under no circumstances would he have put it that way. So what did he say that she knew about him? And why did she want everyone else to know?
“I have orgasms with queer men,” he says out loud. “I wonder how she came up with that one?” His tone of baffled innocence sounds just right to him.
Nobody seems to be listening. Doris is telling Marcia about the stigma of out-of-wedlock pregnancies back in the fifties. “Your life was over,” she says. “Kaput.” Gordon looks at Doris. Does she love having sex with bare-naked women? Given that his declaration told the truth, he supposes that hers did, too. He looks at Marcia. She has slept with more boys than she can count. How is it that he can conclude these things without feeling appalled? Well, he can. “Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness,” he thinks, “shall be heard in the light. And what ye…” How does it go? “And that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”
“Holy, Geez,” he thinks. “Right on the money.”