My Three Husbands (11 page)

I had to find some kind of job. Pete didn't want me to go back to Terry's Topless. He couldn't stand the idea of having his wife dance in front of other men. I called Darlene. She'd left Terry's Topless and was now doing lingerie modeling.

There are all these secret worlds out there. Worlds you never knew about as a kid. Worlds your parents hoped you'd never discover. Worlds you don't know about unless you're poor and looking for a job.

Like the world of lingerie modeling.

It worked like this. There was a dark, stuffy, windowless room with a bed and a chair in the center. It was like a theater set, surrounded on three sides by creaking chairs taken from an old movie house. Men paid to come in and furtively jerk off as you strolled around and posed provocatively in lingerie.

The goal was to get them to hire you for private modeling sessions. If you agreed, you got thirty bucks guaranteed plus whatever tip they gave you. For fifteen minutes of work.

The private modeling rooms contained a bed and a chair. The owner didn't want his business to be raided as a house of prostitution so there were strict rules. The client had to sit on the chair while you posed on the bed or stuck out your rear end for him to drool over. They could j.o. but you couldn't touch them. And you didn't want to. In fact, you didn't even want to look at most of them.

Except there was this one guy. An older gentleman, about my dad's age, beautifully tanned, with thick silver hair and a hawklike nose. He was always impeccably dressed, as if he'd just come from a board meeting. Dark suit, white or pale blue shirt with French cuffs, an expensive-looking tie, and Italian shoes. Every week he'd hire me for a private modeling session. He would always give me a fifty-dollar tip.

He wanted to get friendly, so I let him talk. He told me his name was Marcello. “Like Mastroianni,” he said, but I didn't know what he was talking about. He had a deep voice with a foreign accent. Italian, I guess.

He was so polite in his requests for poses that I never minded. It was like working for a cameraless photographer. “Could you just pout a little bit more?” he'd say. “Good. Ohh,
buonissimo.
Now, cross your beautiful legs and lean back. Look impatient! Now pout. Now look angry.”

All the while he'd be pumping his dick and dabbing at his face with a white linen handkerchief. With an agonized sigh, staring into my eyes, he'd ejaculate into the hanky. He'd sit for a postcoital moment, eyes closed, breathing deeply. Then get up, toss the hanky into the wastebasket, and leave.

I wouldn't date him. Wouldn't even meet him for a coffee. “I'm married,” I said.

“Married?” He looked surprised.

Every week he pried out a little bit more. “Why is a beautiful young woman like you working in a place like this? Why isn't your
marito,
your husband, supporting you?”

“He can't. And he doesn't know that I'm working here.”

“What does he think you do all day long?”

“He thinks I'm out selling cosmetics.”

“So you do this because you love him. You want to help him. You're a very noble girl.” He was silent for a moment. “Why don't you become my mistress?”

 

No, I didn't become Marcello's mistress. But I was really losing it with Pete. One of us had to do something to get us out of the credit-card quagmire, and it wasn't going to be him. He spent all his free time arranging and cleaning and trying to please me.

“You must be the top-grossing Lorrie Ann Lady in Portland,” he said, watching like a hungry kid as I counted out my tip money.

I felt kind of guilty for fooling him. But when I said I was “selling Lorrie Ann,” it was sort of true. “Laurie Ann” was the alias I used for lingerie modeling.

I don't know how he found out. Maybe he always knew. Maybe he was just too shy to say anything. One afternoon while I was modeling, I looked up and saw him staring at me from the last row.

Some people split their assets when they divorce. Pete and I split our debts. There was no rancor between us. On the day the decree came through I was feeling kind of sentimental, so I called Pete and we reminisced a little.

“I'll always remember those beautiful flowers you sent me at Terry's Topless,” I said. “I think that's what made me fall in love with you.”

“What flowers?” Pete said. “I never sent you any flowers.”

 

So that's how I finally ended up in bankruptcy court. And it was in bankruptcy court that I met Tremaynne Woods, the man I was going to marry tomorrow.

“Okay, you like?” the Vietnamese girl asked.

I held up my hands and gazed at my black nails. “Perfect.”

T
he wedding ceremony took place in Carolee's hot, tiny living room. The temperature had shot up to a broiling 95 degrees, so we kept the front door open and Mom's big electric fan turned on full blast. The colorful streamers Mom tied on to the front snapped and buzzed as the fan swished hot stale air back and forth.

I waited nervously in Mom's bathroom, unable to sit down, while all the guests gathered in the living room. I'd chosen my wedding attire with special care, knowing that I had to stand out and make an indelible impression on Tremaynne. I had to dress like a memory that he'd carry around with him for the rest of his life. No one knew what I was wearing, not even Mom. It was going to be a huge surprise.

Tremaynne and I had worked out a short ceremony with one of my old club friends, Pastor Lucifer of the Church of Now. I'd done all the planning because Tremaynne had never been married before and didn't know the basics.

For an altar, I dragged out my mom's computer table and decorated it with two red roses and four black candles. Pastor Lucifer and Tremaynne were going to wait for me there, at the altar, right in front of the TV. The CD player was all set up and ready to play “Raging Hearts,” the music I'd come out to, walking down the hallway from the bathroom to the altar in the living room. All Carolee had to do was press one simple button. I showed her a million times.

Of course she fucked it up. A violent rap number came blasting out of the CD player. Everyone stopped talking. I had to stick my head out and call for her.

“That's not the right song!” I hissed.

She looked frightened. “I pressed the button you showed me.”

“It's supposed to be ‘Raging Hearts.' Track six!”

“What should I do?” Mom asked.

“Turn it off. Tell Daddy to play track six if you can't figure it out.” I pulled my head back into the bathroom and shut the door in her face.

A few minutes later the right song came on. When I heard those woozy guitars, I opened the bathroom door and started down the hallway, walking slowly, carrying two red roses.

I was all in black, feet bare, my toenails and fingernails painted black. My dress was a cross between a tight, low-cut gown and a voluptuous satin negligee. It showed off the tattoos on my chest and back.

I thought I looked beautiful. I thought I looked stunning. I thought I looked hot. I thought I looked totally original, unlike any bride I'd ever seen in any magazine.

But the first face I saw, when I entered the living room, happened to be Whitman's. And he looked so shocked that it shook me. I quickly turned away, toward Tremaynne, waiting at the altar.

My husband-to-be was wearing what he always wears: blue jeans, cotton shirt, hiking boots. I approached him, smiling, and handed him one of my two red roses. He was so nervous he didn't know what to do. Just stared at me with a frozen smile. “Take it,” I whispered.

Pastor Lucifer kind of fluffed out his long black cape. While he gave his short spiel about why we were all gathered there, etcetera, I secretly checked out my audience in the mirror beside the TV. Mom was dressed like she was going to a garden party. She wore a billowing floral-print muu muu with various diaphanous scarves and a large, weird hat. Grandma was in a lime green polyester pants suit with white running shoes. Daddy wore his lightweight Armani summer suit and Ferragamo dress shoes. He looked incredibly handsome.

Whitman was in Kenzo and Kenneth Cole. Very tailored and up-to-date. He couldn't see me looking at him. He stood very erect, next to Daddy, and seemed to be staring down at my bare feet, unable to hide the appalled expression on his face.

His horrified disapproval sliced right through me. For a second it was like I knew
exactly
what was going through his mind. How shocking it must have been for him to see me not in a chic, white, Donna Karan A-line but a tight black negligee with bare feet and black nails. In his eyes I probably looked ridiculous.

It suddenly dawned on me: Whitman came from a completely different social class, and because of that he had a completely different set of values and expectations for me.

But I wasn't from his class. I was from
this,
from a tiny house in a crummy neighborhood. A house with interior decor that centered around an enormous TV set and a Felix the Cat clock with ticking eyes and tail. That's who I was. I wasn't a girl who'd gone to finishing school. I was a girl who'd gone to the worst public schools in Portland, where I was constantly afraid for my life and never fit in. My tastes and values were probably more like my mom's than I ever dared to admit to myself, because she was the one who'd raised me most of the time.

Whitman was brought up in a world where weddings were held in big churches, with organ music and ushers and bridesmaids and flowergirls. Everything was proper, traditional, done in a certain way.

And that's why nothing I did
my
way would ever please him.

Well, fuck you, Whitman,
I said to myself, working myself up into a lather of defensiveness.
You can disapprove all you want to, but it's not going to change a single thing in my life. I'm not you, and I've never even met your rich family, and you don't see them anymore yourself, so how important can they and their old traditions really be?

Pastor Lucifer brought me back to myself when he bound my wrist to Tremaynne's with a leather thong. I'd come across the idea in a fantasy novel.

We spoke our vows.

The Church of Now has no special prayers or anything. In the Church of Now, you can believe in whatever you want. So in our ceremony there was no reference to an Almighty, and no request for supernatural blessings. Instead, we simply promised to love, trust, and cherish each other.

“I'll make my home in you,” I said in a soft, nervous voice, looking into Tremaynne's dark eyes, trying to remember the words he'd written, “and I promise I won't stand in the way of your personal fulfillment.”

Tremaynne spoke of “celebrating how we feel now, as two unique people in an evolving world in need of radical change.”

“Venus and Tremaynne, by the power vested in me by the State of Oregon, I pronounce you man and wife.”

On cue, we threw our roses, clasped one another, and kissed.

My eyes strayed from my husband's face just long enough to see Whitman take a deep Buddha breath. It was kind of a relief to see that both dads were crying.

T
remaynne's bloodshot eyes were full of longing, a kind of wild sexual yearning. I felt it too. We both wanted to fuck like crazy.

But the dads were paying for our honeymoon, so there we were, holding hands and yawning in the backseat of their SUV, barreling east along I-84 through the Columbia Gorge.

Dad One was driving, which meant we were going faster than the speed limit. Dad Two was talking back to NPR as he flipped through a stack of CDs.

It was the fifth of July, the morning after my wedding. Tremaynne and I didn't get any sleep and the dads were there to pick us up at seven. We were both so tired and hung over we could barely lift giant lattes (thoughtfully provided by the dads) to our lips.

Outside, it was Oregon. We plunged into thick soupy fogs one minute and then came out into hot bright sunshine the next. Ribbons of gauzy white vapor snaked along the tops and sides of the mountains looming above us. Waterfalls squirted out from black cliffs.

“Wake up back there!” Whitman clapped his hands and pretended to be a tour guide talking into a microphone. “You are now entering the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area. Notice the magnificent basaltic rock formations rearing up two thousand feet on either side of you. The explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were the first white men to explore this area in eighteen oh five. But Native Americans used this mighty river for salmon fishing thousands of years before whitey arrived. Radiocarbon dating has established that Kennewick Man, the skeleton of a male found on the banks of this river, was—would anyone care to guess how old?”

“Nine thousand three hundred years old,” Daddy said. “He was in his forties when he died.”

“Correct. Now does anyone know what makes this skeleton so controversial?” Whitman asked.

“Some paleontologists have suggested that Kennewick Man had European or Polynesian features,” Daddy said.

“Correct again. Nine thousand three hundred years ago a forty-something male with possible European or Polynesian features was ambushed on the banks of the Columbia River.”

“Why do you say ambushed?” Tremaynne asked.

Whitman turned around as far as his seatbelt would allow. “Because they found arrowheads embedded in his chest and thigh.”

I yawned and cuddled up next to my handsome new husband. I tried to put my head on his shoulder but it wasn't easy. I'm almost a foot taller than Tremaynne. I sort of rested my cheek on his black hair and zoned out.

“Anyone want to stop at Multnomah Falls?” Whitman asked a few minutes later. “Sixth-highest waterfall in the United States.”

“Not really,” I said.

“Yes, really.”

“I meant, I don't really want to stop at Multnomah Falls.”

“Just asking.”

We drove on in silence for another fifteen minutes.

“Don't you kids take any interest in your surroundings?” Whitman asked. “Look, there's Bonneville Dam. National Historic Landmark. Franklin Delano Roosevelt came out for the opening in nineteen thirty-seven.”

“They should blow it up,” Tremaynne said.

Whitman ignored the remark. “Your father,” he said to me, “designed the Visitors Center.”

“You designed it, Daddy?” The old surge of pride every time I saw one of his buildings. I nudged Tremaynne and we both peered out, trying to figure out what we were looking at. The dam was this big ugly concrete sucker. “When?”

“Back when I was not my own boss,” he said.

“Let's go visit the Visitors Center,” Whitman suggested. “I've never been inside.”

“I think they call it an ‘interpretive center' now,” Daddy said.

“You mean it'll
interpret
how this dam kills millions of salmon every year?” Tremaynne said. “Or how the dam's raised the temperature of the river and poisoned the water with PCBs?”

“I don't know,” Whitman shrugged, “let's go see.”

“We're
tired,
Whitman,” I grumbled.

His hands shot up. “Okay, okay. I simply thought you might be
interested
since your
father
designed it.”

“I am interested,” I said guiltily, “but just not now. We had a humongous night, okay? We drank too much and stayed up all night.”

“You don't think it was emotionally draining for your father and me?” Whitman snapped off the radio. “To see you barefoot with your toenails painted black?”

I couldn't tell if he was really upset or just pretending to be. “I told you it would be a surprise.”

“It was a surprise, all right. I felt like I was in
Rosemary's Baby.
I thought if I turned around I'd see Ruth what's-her-name staring at me.”

“What are you talking about?” my dad asked him.

“You know, Ruth what's-her-name. In the movie.”

“Ruth Roman?” Dad One hazarded.

Whitman let out a snort. “Ruth Roman was back in the forties. B-movies.”

“She was in the fifties,” Daddy said. “Biblical epics.”

“You're thinking of Debra Paget. And
Rosemary's Baby
was made in the early seventies.”

“Nineteen sixty-eight,” I corrected him. I read video boxes. I knew.

Whitman turned around and looked at me, irked that he was wrong. “Before you were born anyway. When were you born again?”

“Nineteen seventy-eight.”

“That's right, because you were five when I first met you and that was eighty-three.”

“The year before you moved to New York,” I reminded him. “You were still with Carl. You hadn't left him yet for Daddy.”

Whitman scratched his chin and looked out the window.

“And then Daddy moved to New York to be with you. In eighty-six. When I was eight.” Just saying it brought up an old angry hurt. At one point in my life I picked at that hurt all the time, scratched it like a scab on a wound I never wanted to heal. My dad left me in 1986 to go live with Whitman in New York. Because he loved Whitman more than he loved me. And certainly more than he loved my mom. I hated Whitman back then. He was an enemy. And some part of me has been wary of him ever since.

Wary and a little afraid. He was like a big ocean liner and I was a little raft made out of boards and string, and he could so easily swamp me if he wanted to. As a girl I cast him as a conniving, black-hearted bitch and was certain that he wanted to wrest total control of Daddy, or turn Daddy against me, or do any number of the horrible things that grownups do. I always got the feeling that as far as Daddy was concerned, Whitman was the gourmet dinner and I was the leftovers. I could not compete with Whitman at any level. Before I understood it as a woman, I understood as a daughter that no female can ever win the heart of a man in love with another man.

Whitman turned back around. “What were we talking about?”

“I wasn't talking about anything,” I said. “I was trying to get some sleep. You were talking about Ruth someone.”

“Yes, you know, Ruth thingamajig.” He turned to Daddy. “The one who was married to Garson Kanin. They wrote screenplays together. Then she started acting dotty old lady roles.”

“Well, what about her?” I asked. As usual he'd managed to snag my attention even though I didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

“Gordon!” he said, snapping his fingers in triumph. “Ruth Gordon! How did I ever get onto her? Oh yes, your wedding. It reminded me of
Rosemary's Baby.
It seemed somewhat—occultish.”

“Occultish?” Tremaynne said.

“You weren't invoking the devil or anything during that ceremony, were you?” Whitman asked.

Tremaynne and I looked at one another and burst out laughing.

“Whitman,” I said, “it was our
wedding.
It was the way we wanted it to be. Me and Tremaynne—”

“Tremaynne and I,” he corrected.

“We planned it all out together.”

“Okay, honey, I know I'm unbelievably square and hopelessly yupper-middle-class, but would you kindly tell me what the aesthetic was?”

I
hate
it when I don't know what he means. “The what?”

“Well, the bride wore a black negligee. The groom wore hiking clothes. You had bare feet and black toenails. There were black candles and two blood-red roses on the altar. And that so-called Reverend What's-his-name of the Church of Whatever-it-was—”

“Reverend Lucifer of the Church of Now,” I said.

“Yes, now, did I miss something here or isn't Lucifer one of the names of the devil?”

“You certainly have a bug up your ass all of a sudden,” my dad said to Whitman. Quietly. Like maybe trying to get him to shut up.

“Look, I don't mean to sound antagonistic.” Whitman offered us his pack of Trident sugarless gum. “I'm just trying to understand.” His eyes flicked over to me, then back to Tremaynne. “This wasn't like any wedding I've ever attended.”

I happened to look up and caught Daddy staring at me in the rear-view mirror. He'd been waiting to catch my attention. He smiled and his smile took me to that secret world we share, just Daddy and me, apart from Whitman, apart from Mom, apart from everyone else.

“It wasn't supposed to be like any wedding you've ever attended,” I said proudly. “We made it all up ourselves.”

“Mm,”
Whitman said, nodding.

Tremaynne suddenly sat forward. “Do you ever think about important things, like how the world's forests are being destroyed?” he asked Whitman.

The question seemed to take Whitman off-guard.

“Not just the forests,” Tremaynne went on. “The whole earth. Water, air, land. All the animals. Everything.” His body was tense. “You ever think about that?”

“Yes,” Whitman said, “actually I do think about that.”

“In your travel stuff,” Tremaynne said, “when you write about fancy resorts, do you ever talk about the damage they do to the environment?”

“People don't go to resorts to look at environmental damage,” Whitman said.

“So anything a developer does is okay as long as it brings in rich people?”

I couldn't tell where Tremaynne was coming from with all this. His voice always took on an angry edge when he talked about environmental issues. I liked his passion. I liked it that he was challenging Whitman, putting him on the defensive, making him squirm.

“I think you're misinterpreting my politics,” Whitman said. “My sympathies are entirely Green.”

Tremaynne smiled, only it wasn't a friendly smile. “So how many trees did you cut down to build your house?”

Whitman raised his eyebrows and turned to Daddy.

“If you look at the structural support and framing system of our house,” Daddy said over his shoulder, “you'll see it's mostly fabricated steel. Wood was used mostly for the interior finishes.”

“I meant,” Tremaynne said, “how many trees did you cut down to clear the lot, before the house was built?”

“Two,” Daddy said.

“Do you know how many organisms depended on those two trees?” There was an aggressive thrust in his voice that made my heart beat a little faster. It was the first time anyone I'd married or been involved with had engaged with the dads as an equal.

“Tremaynne,” Daddy said, “I'm an architect. Wood is a building material to me. It's a renewable resource.”

“Those corporate forests are sick,” Tremaynne said. “They plant only one fast-growing species. Mono-culture. There's no diversity, so one bug or virus can wipe it all out.”

“People have been using wood for building for thousands of years.” Daddy kept his voice calm.

“You know how much wood people waste to build their stupid trophy homes and luxury resorts?” Tremaynne sounded almost belligerent. “There's alternative forms of building materials. Why don't you use those?”

“I'm not interested in buildings made out of hay bales or old tires,” Daddy said. “Sorry.”

“Everyone's going to be sorry when we're all dead.” Tremaynne folded his arms and sat back.

There was an uneasy silence until Whitman said, “Would anyone mind if I put on an opera?”

Don't ever ask me a question about geography.

When I was eight, and flying out to New York for the first time by myself, I dared myself to look out the plane window. I'd never realized how huge America really was. It was incomprehensible and really scary.

Like now. Where were we? Tremaynne showed me on a map. But none of it meant much because I'd never explored the Pacific Northwest. I'd lived there all my life, but I didn't have a clue where we were or where we were going. All I knew was that we'd crossed the Cascade Mountains via the Columbia Gorge and there was a luxurious spa and a free honeymoon suite waiting for us at the end of a nine-hour car ride. It was the grand opening of Pine Mountain Lodge, a resort my dad designed and that Whitman was writing up for
Travel.
Their millionaire Dutch friend Fokke Van der Zout was one of the developers. Whitman said the opening was going to be a big to-do, and there might even be celebrities there.