Amy Bloom: Lucky Us

Look, Rose said. Shmundies on parade. Iris didn’t know the word but she got the idea. There were naked women everywhere, drinking and eating and smoking and dancing, all naked and nearly naked. A chubby girl lay over the back of one of the divans, her head almost touching the floor. A woman sat underneath her, kissing her face and neck and cradling her head while another woman pulled the girl’s legs over her shoulders and buried her face between them. All Iris could see was the girl’s pearly, round stomach heaving, and the back of the other woman’s head, her smooth platinum hair pulled up with combs shaped like tulips. A woman in a pale-pink chiffon toga walked by and waved to Rose. Her toga came only to her thighs and it was held together by one big ruby starburst at her shoulder. Her small breasts and her large, bushy and bright-orange triangle were not at all covered by the chiffon, just softened, as if by candlelight. A Negro girl, in silver lamé pumps, danced by herself, near the piano. She wore her hair up, rhinestones twinkling in her chignon and more rhinestones sparkling like dewdrops in her dark, curly pubic hair. Iris saw an unfortunate olive-skinned girl near the oysters, with dark hairs around her nipples and a thick cloud of darker hair growing up from the middle of her thighs, like moss climbing a tree and spreading up and across her stomach, almost to her navel. Iris thought the girl was going to feel terrible when no one picked her. Iris wondered if the girl would just eat a few oysters and head home to cry. A tiny blonde, with a big white bow in her hair and a pair of white Mary Janes on her little feet, skipped over and put her face between the dark girl’s breasts.

“A lid for every pot,” Rose said. She spilled a little of her Champagne on Iris’s breast and licked it off, like a cat. The Champagne soaked Iris’s bodice, down to her lap. To her shmundie.

Iris thought the top of her head would come off, shooting through the room like a cannonball of dense, rocketing pleasure. The room did not spin, the way it did when there was too much beer at a party back home. It opened like a flower, the walls falling back to contain the smoke and scent and shmundies —and another one appeared, an inch from Iris’s Champagne flute, blond, dyed blue, and shaped like a heart. The walls yielded and began to melt from every kind of body heat. Even when Iris was much older, even after years of Champagne and cigarettes and silk underthings and a wonderfully varied and pleasing parade of shmundies in her own life, she could recall every single minute of the Hollywood orgy with Rose Sawyer.

WHEN SHE GOT HOME, damp but fully dressed, from garters to gloves, Iris lay on her bed, a few feet away from Eva’s bed. Eva gave a little sniff, about the smokiness in Iris’s clothes, and she turned toward Iris, ready to listen.

“I met a girl,” Iris said. “I’m in love.”

Iris thought it was to Evie’s everlasting credit that all her little sister said was, That’s nice.

Firenze Gardens

Hollywood

February 1, 1942

Dear Dad,

Things sure are changing fast around here. We moved into a really nice apartment, now that Iris is under contract at MGM. Mr. Arthur Freed signed her — after just one audition on Sunday night at The Derby (and another at the studio, later). We’re pretty sure Iris is going to be a star. She has a new friend, Rose Sawyer, who you might have seen in the magazines. America’s Sweetheart Rose is what they call her. Rose is showing Iris the ropes, as much as she can, and Iris has already gotten two speaking parts, one in Evening Romance (she gives Robert Taylor a cup of coffee) and one in Something Special. They didn’t make her change anything for that movie, which says a lot. (The girls here change their noses and their names and their eyebrows and everything. One girl has to pad everywhere, front and back and even on the sides. A girl Iris works with had to pluck every hair out of her hairline because they said she had to make her forehead bigger.) Iris doesn’t have to do much. They put some more red in her hair and Francisco Diego, the makeup man, who is really becoming a friend, told her to wear pink-orange lipsticks, not blue-red, because that’s for real brunettes (like me, he said).

ROSE RUBBED SUNTAN LOTION ALL OVER IRIS. SHE SQUINTED IN the sun and gave each toe a dab, and each ankle two whirls around and then up and down the shins. Inner thighs right to edge of the white bathing suit. It was a great choice for Iris, Rose thought. Iris stood out in that suit, like a diamond, and the suntan lotion made her fair skin and tiny blond hairs gleam pale gold all over. Rose always saw the best and prettiest parts of every woman she met and she’d point them out and tell how they could look even better. At the studio, she sometimes dressed girls she hardly knew, hat to shoes, just because it pleased her. She didn’t have dolls, or friends, growing up.

Rose smeared cream on Iris’s face (“Don’t wind up with a red nose,” she said. “Mr. Freed’ll kill me.”) and her chest, to the wired edge of the suit, slipping her fingers under the shoulder straps. She told Iris to turn over so she could do her back.

“Oh, this is nice,” Rose said.

“Yes.”

Rose could hear Iris breathing loudly in her ear. Rose massaged her shoulders, stroking her arms. She pulled gently on Iris’s fingers. Rose had never had a massage but she’d heard two women talking about massages at the commissary. They said Hedy Lamarr had one every morning for her lymph nodes and that was why she looked so amazing. Everything drains out of you, said one of the women. Rose wanted to drain everything out of Iris. She splashed oil on the backs of Iris’s legs and pulled Iris’s legs apart. Everything that was draining now swelled up and came back in little waves, up one leg, then the other, rushing up Iris’s spine and down her calves. Iris’s feet flexed under Rose’s hands. Iris buried her face in the beach blanket. Rose had brought everything she could think of: sandwiches, oranges, hard-boiled eggs, soda pop, a beach blanket, and the slick gold oil for Iris’s skin. The sun had started to drop, just a little, still bright orange above the horizon, and the beach was still warm. A little girl with pigtails, wearing just her underpants, did a couple of cartwheels through the waves, and her parents gathered her up in a big towel. Rose and Iris watched the three little figures trudge to the parking lot, and then the beach was empty.

Rose lay back and untied the straps of her suit. Iris said nothing. Rose unrolled her suit top to below her breasts. No one’s here, she said. Look.

Iris looked carefully in every direction. After the orgy, Iris told Rose that she’d hardly seen breasts until that night, and that they’d never mattered to her. She said that she’d seen her mother’s a few times and she saw Eva’s little nothings, a pair of fried eggs, all the time — how could she avoid it. Walking to the beach, Iris said to Rose, Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, and that’s how I look at you.

Rose kissed Iris’s nipple. She pulled Iris’s hair and kissed Iris on the forehead, on the cheek, on the lips, on her neck, behind the ear. Iris kissed her back. Rose pushed Iris off and stood up. Rose pulled down her bathing suit and stretched, the sun glowing behind her and through her legs.

“You too,” she said.

Iris kicked off her suit and they clasped hands and ran into the water.

“Geronimo!” Iris yelled.

They swam like seals, and before it got too dark, they ran out of the water and dried each other off. Rose packed everything up and carried the basket on her head like an island woman.