"So in Love," and, as your final encore, "Another Op'nin'; Another Show." Even then they clapped and howled and begged for more. God!
Do you remember?
I wrote my story about that night, and everything I felt during it, the way my heart brimmed with pride in you, Mama, standing out there in your glittering sequintrimmed crimson strapless, knocking all those fancy folks for a loop. And then how you brought me and Millie out. "I want you all to meet my two girls," you announced. "It's way past their bedtimes, but they wanted to be here to see if their old ma could really sing." And the crowd went berserk again! I remember one fat old man in particular, with slicked-back gray hair, who stood and clapped until the rest of them followed suit. And then some bosomy lady yelled, "Bravo! Bravo!" and you glowed, Mama, you positively lit up electric in the smoky, booze-scented dark of the lounge.
That's what I wrote about, and the grip of little Millie's hand in mine, and the swelling up I felt inside, the warmth of my pride in people knowing I was your daughter. I wrote, too, about how, late that night back home, you came into my room to tuck me in and how you smelled, the faint scent of perfume on your skin, the remnants of powder on your cheeks, and the glow on you still, the glow that comes from being applauded, and the aliveness of you, the pulsing energy, the power I felt when you reached down and grasped me in your arms. I wrote about how I fell asleep remembering the applause, listening to it echo, and how, just before I slept, I whispered four words to myself. I think you know them, Marna. "A star is born" is what I whispered.
And I wrote how I smiled then and fell asleep and how I thought that was the happiest, proudest, most sublime night of my entire life, Mama, and I wrote about it that way, too, trying to capture the special quality of its magic.
A week later I was positively thrilled when Miss Parce announced she was going to read my story aloud in class. Except she had barely read a couple of paragraphs when I realized what she was trying to do. She read it in this mean, sarcastic way, and soon, sure enough, she had the other girls tittering, smirking, glancing at one another, and rolling eyes. And then, caught up in the spirit of the thing, she broadened her satiric attack, making funny little faces while relentlessly decimating my story, assassinating my every line, until finally all my words lay shattered and broken on the floor.
When she was finished, when there was nothing left of what I wrote except the sporadic tittering in the back of the room, she looked straight at me, eyes glowing, and said: "Tell us one thing please, Beverly: Is there a single line in this entire tale in which there resides one tiny particle of truth?"
I stared back at her uncomprehending, too stupefied to reply. The classroom went silent. You could hear a pin drop, as they say.
"Well, dear?" she asked, and, when I still didn't answer: "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?"
She stared cold stone hard at me, her black pupils tightened down to points. And then she smirked. I wanted to speak. I wanted to cry out, beg her to stop staring at me. But I couldn't; I was too humiliated. And still, the mean old witch would not relent. She kept staring, and then her mouth turned cruel, and she dabbed her tongue to her lips like a snake readying to strike and said: "I've heard your mother actually does sing in nightclubs. Is that correct, my dear?"
I must have nodded faintly, for she went on. "Well, I must say that is a unique occupation for a mother. And I'm sure she does very well at it, too. But Beverly"-and here her voice turned false-friendly"there are things we write about when the assignment is 'Describe a sublime moment in your life' and there are things we don't write about, we don't even mention in polite conversation. I would have hoped you understood that."
With that the old witch wrote a great big F in red ink across the front page of my story, then daintily placed it facedown on her desk.
The girls in back had gone quiet again. And at just that moment (and she could have timed it so perfectly only by design) the bell rang to announce the end of class. The others shuffled out of the room in mortified silence, leaving me and the bitch alone. I began to cry. Miss Parce smiled at me and, in the phony manner of a wise, friendly teacher, said: "Now, now, my dear, no need to weep, I'm sure. – ."
As I sat there choking on my tears, I knew, Mama, that I would pay her back one day. Yes, Mama, I knew I would live to see her dead, mutilated, too, if I could manage it. But most importaht@ead! dead! dead!
Listening to the tape Diana brought back from Central Park, feeling her excitement rise at the sound of Diana's running feet, Tool's "uh!" as she plunged in the pin, the delicious squeal of the jogger victim, his "yeeeeeow!" as he was stuck, then his curses receding in the distance as Diana's feet hit dirt when she dodged off the running path and into the woods, Beverly knew she would always want Diana to bring back something from her missions.
It was only later, upon her realization that the quick kills Diana would be making would preclude the possibility of recording her quarries' cties of pain, that she evolved the notion of trophies. She wanted always to have something, some object taken from the Scenes of Bloodletting, to touch, caress, and hold. It would give immediacy to Diana's reports, and perhaps most important, it could be offered up to Mama on the wall.
Mama told her: "Truly now, dear, in your training of Diana, you've found your true vocation. I think at heart you were always a behaviorist hiding in an analytic therapist's cloak. Rewards and punishments, increasingly complex tests of obedience-these are the only ways to dominate and compel. Certainly the progress you've made with the lynx proves the efficacy of your approach. My God, Bev, take a look, will you, at the incredible little tool you have wrought!"
The vigorous training workouts-long, slow, loping jogs along the bridle paths of Central Park; short, sharp wind sprints along the East River esplanade; huffing and puffing calisthenic sessions on the cold basement floor of the house; sweaty muscle building on the Nautilus machines at the Eight-sixth Street Health Club; harsh, exhausting martial arts training at the West Side dojo; the special intensive ten-day commando course in Boulder, Colorado; endurance exercises; obedience tests; ice pick attack drills performed against straw dummies in your holiest of holies, your bedchamber-all were carefully designed to build strength and speed, refine coordination, increase response time, restore vigor in the face of fatigue, and, most important, inspire a yearning to kill.
Once the craving was instilled, the obsession would build, and once the obsession was implanted, the command to execute would be ardently obeyed. "It's all in the preparation," Mama told you. "The long, hard months of training will pay off," she said, "in the swift split seconds of attack." But since the kills will be so very swift, you and Tool must receive gratification some other way. Perhaps through slow rituals performed afterward upon the cadavers, rituals of vengeance by which your rage will be satiated and the humiliations you endured will be many times repaid. "Remember, Bev," Mama said,
"it's not sufficient to settle your old accounts at par value. Too many years have passed; the interest has built up and by now far exceeds the original charges entered in your ledger."
Diana Proctor stands poised in a corner of the cellar, sleek and slinky in her black cotton bodysuit. Two specially designed holsters, each containing an ice pick, are strapped to her forearms. Across the room a scrawny tiger cat, abducted from the street, prowls around a plastic dish of kitty tuna bits.