Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  ALSO BY DIANE WILLIAMS

  Epigraph

  MY DEFECTS

  BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND 6 AM

  IF TOLD CORRECTLY IT WILL CENTER ON ME

  PEDESTAL

  DEATH BED

  GLEE

  MY FIRST REAL HOME

  BROOM

  ON THE JOB

  MOOD WHICH GRIPPED ME

  THE USE OF FETISHES

  WOMAN IN ROSE DRESS

  WEIGHT, HAIR, LENGTH

  COCKEYED

  THE WEDDING MASK DOOR PULL

  RELIGIOUS BEHAVIOR

  HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TWILIGHT

  THE NEWLY MADE SUPPER

  PONYTAIL

  CHICKEN WINCHELL

  THE EMPORIUM

  GIVE THEM STUFF

  THE DUCK

  IF YOU EVER GET THREE OR FOUR LAUGHING YOU WEREN’T SOON TO FORGET IT

  PROTECTION, PREVENTION, GAZING, GRATIFIED DESIRE

  VICKY SWANKY WAS A BEAUTY

  CARNEGIE NAIL

  STOP WHEN THE PERSON BECOMES RESTLESS OR IRRITABLE

  STAND

  ONE OF THE GREAT DRAWBACKS

  COMMON BODY

  HUMAN BEING

  I LIKE THE FRINGE

  RUDE

  MRS. KEABLE’S BROTHERS

  NEW LIFE FROM DEAD THINGS

  NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN REMOTELY FEASIBLE

  TAN BAG

  ARM UNDER THE SOIL

  BEING STARED AT

  EXPECTANT MOTHERHOOD

  COMFORT

  THE STRENGTH

  THIS HAS TO BE THE BEST

  A MAN, AN ANIMAL

  SHELTER

  ENORMOUSLY PLEASED

  HELLO! HI! HELLO!

  DEFEAT

  AS THE WORLD TURNED OUT

  LORD OF THE FACE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Copyright Page

  ALSO BY DIANE WILLIAMS

  This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate

  Some Sexual Success Stories Plus Other Stories in Which God Might Choose to Appear

  The Stupefaction

  Excitability: Selected Stories 1986–1996

  Romancer Erector

  It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature

  Perfectly safe; go ahead.

  —DIANE WILLIAMS

  MY DEFECTS

  I’m happy at least to do without a sexual relation and I have this fabulous reputation and how did I get that in the first place? I am proud enough of this reputation and it stands to reason there’s a lot that’s secret that I don’t tell anyone.

  I want to end this at the flabber, although I am flabbergasted.

  I opened the cupboard, where the treats are stored, and helped myself and made a big mess, by the lakeshore, of the food, of the rest of my life, eventually.

  Michelle, the doctor’s nurse, showed me a photograph of her cats. The smart cat opens the cupboard, Michelle says, where the treats are stored, and she can help herself, and she makes a big mess!

  I crossed the street to survey the lake and I heard crepita-tions—three little girls bouncing their ball. I used to see them in perspective—my children—young people, one clearly unsuitable. She can’t help herself—she makes a big mess.

  With my insight and my skill—what do I search for at the shore?—the repose of the lake. But sadly, although it does have a dreamy look, it is so prone to covering familiar ground.

  BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND 6 AM

  Women were not a major ingredient in my thinking at that time.

  She was blonde, very small, and if I remember right she had big breasts. Uh, Arthur was sleeping on a couch in the living room so I can imagine there was traipsing going on. Mother had her bedroom next to the kitchen. The girl had to go through the apartment in order to get to the bathroom.

  I spent the night on the stairs, not dozing off.

  She was a bankrupt.

  As for me, I could have put more into this. Mother wants her sons to get ahead.

  It must have been very soon after that that Mother said, “Ohhhh, Ka-a-a-a-a-y!”

  We loved Kay better than we loved our mother. But by glancing back, as I approach middle age, the scale of things quite slowly, calmly, becomes a peep-show.

  And everybody had to share. And there was a sliding glass door into the breakfast nook—so there was a curtain over it.

  I met with some success. I took a job as a chemical mix-man—to store, order, and prepare wet and dry chemicals.

  O Kay!

  I’m only warming up. Most of my work is routine labor. There’s an element of physical danger. It is not easy to have this job. I’m not the outdoors type.

  Today I got the temperature level too high in the chemical levels in the glass plate processing room and had to get buckets of ice.

  Sometimes I’m over a barrel—my wife and I agree.

  To get anywhere in my life at this time!—rather, to get anywhere near my wife at this time!—that can take days. I have to go through the kitchen, the laundry—I have to go through hell! Not entirely true.

  I ate by myself.

  I went to our bedroom with a glass of water for her in the hopes of hearing her cheery cry.

  She’s so warm—she’s kind and she’ll likely say, “Hi!”

  Her hands were folded behind her head. She whispered, modestly.

  This will pep me up.

  From all outward appearances, there was substantial risk for lack of concentration, overenthusiastic response, unrealistic desires, emotional craving, weak discipline, pettiness, a tendency to show off, and temporary stops to take a breath.

  IF TOLD CORRECTLY IT WILL CENTER ON ME

  Jack Lam sat me on the bed. He didn’t sit me—first he had to park the car.

  Then Jack Lam sat briefly himself, put his chin down, frowned. I acted as if I was biting the top of his head—setting my teeth on, not into him—not to mention the fact that I was also swallowing darker areas.

  Over the next seven years that I kept this project close in mind, I came to understand that my devices belonged to a lost age.

  I took measures.

  Jack had lost his vigor. I was unwell.

  My luggage was packed. I’d be solitary when I arrived in Tarrytown. Stella Arpiarian still had The Curio Shop. Nikos had gone back to Greece.

  I like Jimmy here. I have to face Marlene.

  I heard the dog next door making a good imitation of what my asthma attacks sound like. Everyone is sounding like me!

  Don’t forget me!

  PEDESTAL

  He had chafing and I’m not having luck with anything I’m using. We had agreed to meet where they know me. The server put drinks down.

  “Hey!” he said. “I happen to have a chicken. Why don’t you come over?”

  I would say that to a friend, and it would be true!

  My anus is now irritated. My vagina’s very delicate. My stomach hurts.

  His sconces were shaded in a red tartan plaid and there were side-views of sailing boats in frames.

  I was getting to see the hair cracks in his skin that suggest stone or concrete as it hardens.

  Back out on Ninety-first Street, a man and a woman were walking their dog. The woman had turnip-colored hair. The man wore a felt hat and he motioned to me. They could have both been exhausted and penniless. No! As it turned out they were assembled there to talk me out of that. Let me think about this further. At a stand, I bought a few strands of daisies. Every bone in one of these blossoms is mended.

  DEATH BED

  “Now, say good-bye to your mother,” Ruth Price says, “before you die.”

  I’ve got
that confident feeling.

  Then we hear the toilet bowl water.

  “Go away!” I said to Mother.

  Everybody in the original cast appears at my door—my father who was the President of the United States; Mother, who was also a President of the United States. I was a President of the United States. My two children are here who have been Presidents of the United States. My neighbor Gary Dossey who was in my high-school graduating class was a President of the United States.

  GLEE

  We have a drink of coffee and a Danish and it has this, what we call—grandmother cough-up—a bright yellow filling. The project is to resurrect glee. This is the explicit reason I get on a bus and go to an area where I do this and have a black coffee.

  I emphasize, I confess, as well, that last night I came into a room, smiled a while and my laughter was like a hand on my own shoulder. As I opened up the volume of the television set, I saw a television beauty and a man wants to marry her and she says, “I don’t do that sort of thing.”

  While in their company, the woman changes her clothing and puts down an article of clothing and folds it. How finely she shows us her efforts. Even as we have that behind us, the man speaks. His side-locks are worn next to his chin and his hair is marred by bright lights. The woman’s head is set against a dark-purple shield of drapery. But when something momentous occurs, I am glad to say there is a sense of crisis.

  And for Vera and me—we are no exception. I’ve lived for years. In Chicago our sunsets are red creases and purple bulges and we can amuse ourselves with them.

  MY FIRST REAL HOME

  In there, there was this man who developed a habit of sharpening knives. You know he had a house and a yard, so he had a lawnmower and several axes and he had a hedge shears and, of course, he had kitchen knives and scissors, and he and his wife lived in comfort.

  Within a relatively short time he had spent half of his fortune on sharpening equipment and they were gracing his basement on every available table and bench and he added special stands for the equipment.

  He would end up with knives or shears that were so sharp they just had to come near something and it would cut itself. It’s the kind of sharpening that goes beyond comprehension. You just lean the knife against a piece of paper.

  Tommy used to use him. Ernie’d do his chain saws.

  So, I take my knives under my arm and I drive off to Ernie’s and he and I became friends and we’d talk about everything.

  “I don’t sharpen things right away. You leave it—and see that white box over there?” he’d said. That was his office. It was a little white box attached to the house with a lid you could open and inside there were a couple of ballpoint pens. There was a glass jar with change. There were tags with rubber bands and there was an order form that you filled out in case he wasn’t there.

  He wasn’t there the first time I came back, at least I didn’t see him.

  I went up to the box and those knives were transformed.

  As I was closing the lid, he came up through the basement door that was right there and we started to chat and he has to show me something in the garden, so he takes me to where he has his plantings. It’s as if the dirt was all sorted and arranged, and then, when I said he had cut his lawn so nice, he was shining like a plug bayonet.

  All the little straws and grass were pointing in one direction.

  “I don’t mow like my neighbor,” he said.

  Oh, and then he also had a nice touch—for every packet he had completed there was a Band-Aid included. Just a man after my own heart. He died.

  I was sad because whenever I got there I was very happy.

  BROOM

  I felt, off the start, right at home with him in this gorgeous New England spread-out home with a fantastic lawn and a pond with an island on it where Olivia de Havilland had gotten married and a tennis court and vegetable garden and a rose garden and what time of the year was it? Hmmm. Must have been summer because he introduced me to sweet corn and he had Platt, who lived to be twenty-two years of age and who died shortly after I got married—a cat.

  He was sitting in front of the fire going through his briefcase that was filled with office business and now and then he’d toss pages and pages into the fire and then he would stop, he’d pet Platt and say—The poor pussy, such a bad life for a cat!

  One day after he had gone through a large amount of papers to be tossed and when he had chucked them into the fire—there was a lesson for us. We were chased out of the house by a rough sound and we looked up at the chimney and saw a violet broom of fire sticking out of the chimney. It just burned itself out and nothing was hurt, but that’s how a lot of his houses burned down.

  Some people speak of an energy stream in a village site or sacred place.

  I put my arms around him, released him.

  Such business as his! A corner of his stair hall was covered by old dry leaves that yield all by themselves.

  ON THE JOB

  He looked like a man whose leader has failed him time after time, as he asked the seller awkward questions—not hostile. He was looking for a better belt buckle.

  The seller said, You ought to buy yourself something beautiful! Why not this?

  He paid for the buckle, which he felt was brighter and stronger than he was. His sense of sight and smell were diminishing.

  He could only crudely draw something on his life and just fill it in—say a horse.

  “Can I see that?” he said, “What is that?”

  It was a baby porringer.

  At the close of the day, the seller counted her money, went to the bank—the next step. She hates to push items she doesn’t approve of, especially in this small town, five days a week, where everything she says contains the mystery of health and salvation that preserves her customers from hurt or peril.

  That much was settled, as the customer entered his home, approached his wife, and considered his chances. Hadn’t his wife been daily smacked across the mouth with lipstick and cut above the eyes with mascara?

  She had an enormous bosom that anyone could feel leaping forward to afford pleasure. She was gabbing and her husband—the customer—was like a whole horse who’d fallen out of its stall—a horse that could not ever get out of its neck-high stall on its own, but then his front legs—their whole length—went over the top edge of the gate, and the customer made a suitable adjustment to get his equilibrium well outside of the stall.

  “It’s so cute,” he said to his wife, “when you saw me, how excited you got.”

  His wife liked him so much and she had a sweet face and the customer thought he was being perfectly insincere.

  He went on talking—it was a mixed type of thing—he was lonely and he was trying to get his sheer delight out of the way.

  MOOD WHICH GRIPPED ME

  To a ludicrous degree I could have been in a very good mood looking forward. I am going to be married—followed by dessert, fruit, and bonbons in dishes.

  And my furniture cheers me up. We sat in side chairs, packed with springs or foam, accompanied by a moth, who lounged.

  It turned out Wayne had been missing me. He was depressed and had, therefore, come to my enclosure after many months.

  So Wayne and I now loitered at the edge of the room, ahead of my marriage to Jim.

  Over across the—how can I make this wonderful?—the large turf bog!—the sky showed fewer than a hundred birds and at its near top, zero.

  Wayne said caringly –It hurts me that I can’t stay because I was unfaithful once or twice.

  Wayne! Stay! Jim said.

  I was too restless to save time. I leaned against dear Hallam, and Ardolph—isn’t he wise?—a divine spear?—a linden on a hill!—a man from the east who has come to the west. He is well born, noble, a home-loving wolf.

  Wayne said, Lady, you owe me up the wazoo! He resumed his departure which is such a gloomy tradition.

  Another one of my boyfriends said helpfully there is a great difference between love, ha
tred, and desire, but nothing compels us to maintain these differences.

  THE USE OF FETISHES

  “I was a lucky person. I was a very successful person,” said the woman. She was not entirely busy with her work. She took cups and tumblers from her cupboard to prepare a coffee or a tea. She thought, We have some smaller or even smaller.

  Her Uncle Bill said, “Have you been able to have sexual intercourse?”

  She said, “Yes! And I had a climax too!”

  This idea is compact and stained and strained to the limit.

  WOMAN IN ROSE DRESS

  Her sex worries will be discussed when people worry what happened to her at the end of her life when her chin droops and when her eyes are hooded. Not yet.

  Her fervor and her youth irritate her for they provide a sort of permanent entry into a shop. She lifts a bouquet of broccoli rabe. Oh, how awful it is!

  “I don’t know how to cook these. Do you cook the leaves?”

  The man says, “You chop off the ends and chop them up—look!”

  She’s got some pent-up gem on her finger. (Those colored stones, they’re all cooked, you know.)

  Didn’t she used to appreciate its rays of light? And she used to appreciate the man.

  Ask yourself sincerely at odd moments, “Am I prone to deep feeling?” for it is less than necessary—that very small, bright, enlarging thing. The passions do not knock one out, but they may permit you to have carnal complaints before proceeding further. Let’s visit another woman—Deirdre—and then Donna. What’s more—Doris grew up exhausted by shock and word of mouth. She hadn’t been married long, it was a spring day, and she was uninterested still in her own love story.

  WEIGHT, HAIR, LENGTH

  They had admired a bronze sphinx with an upraised paw and an elegant and extremely fine clock on skinny legs.