John Irving - Until I Find You

Alice was tattooing a small scorpion on a young woman’s abdomen. The scorpion’s narrow, segmented tail was curled up over its back. The venomous stinger, at the tip of the tail, was directly under the girl’s navel; the arachnid’s pincers were poised above her pubic hair. The young woman was obviously disturbed—she would be a handful under the best of circumstances, Jack thought, although he held his tongue about that, too. He could see that Claudia was enthralled with the atmosphere of the tattoo parlor; he didn’t want to be the voice of disbelief, about either the Raul Julia sighting or the forbidding location of the scorpion tattoo.

The film festival was good for Daughter Alice’s business. Alice told them she’d been tattooing a guy who was a die-hard moviegoer when she saw Glenn Close walk by on the Queen Street sidewalk. Jack seriously doubted it. He didn’t think Queen and Palmerston was a Glenn Close part of town, but all he said was: “I’m surprised Glenn didn’t stop in for a Rose of Jericho.”

Claudia, who was instantly fond of Alice—as Emma had said she would be—was angry at Jack for what she called his disrespectful tone of voice. This created some tension between Claudia and Jack, and they had different reactions to My Beautiful Laundrette, which Alice and Mrs. Oastler and Claudia loved. Jack didn’t hate the film. All he said was: “I was expecting the laundrette to be a beautiful woman. ”

“That would be a laundress, dear,” his mom said.

“I thought the word for the place was a launderette, not a laundrette, ” Jack said.

“God, you’re picky, ” Claudia told him.

“Talk about a ‘disrespectful tone of voice’!” he said.

And Jack was less than thrilled to see Desert Hearts, which even Leslie Oastler described as a lesbian love story—she’d been dying to see it. (Alice visibly less so.) The film drew a crowd of women holding hands. Claudia, who wouldn’t hold Jack’s penis at any film they attended with Alice and Mrs. Oastler, wouldn’t even hold his hand at Desert Hearts. It was as if Claudia were contemplating her own trip to Reno, without him; maybe Claudia imagined discovering herself with Helen Shaver, or something.

All Jack said was: “The characters are a little sketchy.” This was enough to turn all three women against him: he was homophobic; he was threatened by lesbians. “I like Helen Shaver,” he kept saying, but this didn’t save him.

The festival marked the beginning of an Asian boom, some guy hitting on Claudia told her at a screening party. Jack thought it was cool to say nothing; he just kept his hand on Claudia’s ass, in a clearly nonplatonic way. When Claudia went to the women’s room, Jack gave the Asian-boom asshole his Toshiro Mifune scowl. The guy slunk away.

Alice and Leslie lit into Jack about being “too possessive.” They loved Claudia, they told him. No woman likes to be touched in public—not to the degree that Jack touched Claudia, they said. (This advice from the couple who’d held hands and played footsie during Jack’s ground-breaking performance in A Mail-Order Bride in the Northwest Territories !)

Jack had had it with going to the movies and the parties with his mother and Mrs. Oastler. That night, in bed, he complained to Claudia about it. They were staying in Emma’s room. (“The bed’s bigger—as you know, dear,” his mom had reminded him.)

Claudia thought that Alice and Leslie were a cute couple. “It’s obvious that they adore you,” Claudia said. Perhaps Jack lacked the perspective to see this.

He decided to take Claudia to St. Hilda’s—not only so she could see his old school, which had been so formative of his older-woman thing, but also to meet his favorite teachers. What a mistake! All the girls looked preternaturally young. (Of course they did—Claudia and Jack were twenty- year-olds!)

Jack took Claudia first to meet Mr. Malcolm, who always left school in a hurry—wheeling Mrs. Malcolm in her wheelchair ahead of him. Wheelchair Jane, who couldn’t see Claudia, reached out and touched Claudia’s hips, her waist, even her breasts. (A blind woman’s audacity is like no other’s, maybe.) “Following in his father’s footsteps, isn’t he?” she asked her husband.

Jack was still trying to explain this reference to Claudia when they encountered Mr. Ramsey emerging from the boys’ washroom. “Jack Burns!” he cried, zipping up his fly. “Patron saint of mail-order brides!” This reference, Jack realized, would take somewhat longer to explain. Claudia seemed unnerved by her close proximity to a man so small who never stopped bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Mr. Ramsey insisted on bringing them to his after-school drama rehearsal of the day; the senior-school girls were doing The Diary of Anne Frank, which Jack knew brought bitter memories to Claudia. In junior high school, she had auditioned for the part of the doomed girl, but she had already looked too old. (Her boobs were too big—even then.)

Mr. Ramsey presented Jack to the girls as the best male St. Hilda’s actor in memory—despite the fact that his reputation rested on his female roles. Claudia was introduced as Jack’s actress friend. “They’re here for the film festival!” Mr. Ramsey exclaimed, which led the star-struck girls to imagine that Claudia and Jack were promoting a new movie. Mr. Ramsey made it seem as if they were up-and-coming names in the industry.

Jack was reminded of his irritation with Claudia for refusing to let him pass her off as a famous Russian film star of the not-English-speaking variety. Her courage was not of the improvisational kind—without lines, she was lost. And not only did she always seem older than she was; she was also inclined to lie about her age. “I’m in my early thirties, and that’s all I want to say about it,” she would say. It was a good line, but it was bullshit—by ten years, and counting.

The St. Hilda’s girls looked forlorn. Jack Burns was very much an object of their keenest desire, but he was with this voluptuous woman who made them feel sexually retarded. To make matters worse, Mr. Ramsey wanted Claudia and Jack to perform something. (Jack had written him that he and Claudia had been in plays together.)

Against Jack’s better judgment, he let Claudia persuade him to sing a Kit Kat Girl number. “Mein Herr” was Claudia’s choice, not Jack’s; it was a little raunchy for St. Hilda’s, he told her later. (In retrospect, in the context of the play the girls were rehearsing, the insensitivity of Claudia and Jack singing a song from that sleazy Nazi nightclub in Berlin took Jack’s breath away.) And to make “Mein Herr” more confounding, they both sang it as if they were Sally Bowles, causing Claudia finally to realize how much Jack had wanted her part.

When they finished the lascivious song, Mr. Ramsey was a virtual pogo stick of enthusiasm. The poor girls swooned, or died of envy and embarrassment. Claudia said that she and Jack should let them all get back to The Diary of Anne Frank.

But Mr. Ramsey was pained to let them go. He wanted to know what they thought of the festival and the films they had seen. “Have you seen the Godard? Hail Mary or something,” Mr. Ramsey said. “The Pope has condemned it!”

“Jack has condemned it without seeing it,” Claudia said. “He hates Godard.” Jack tried to look friendlier than Toshiro Mifune, if only for the sake of the mortified girls.

The young girl cast as Anne Frank was pushed forward to meet them. Claudia seemed fixated on her flat chest. Jack observed that the poor girl was terrified of them, as if they represented a blatant contradiction of Anne Frank’s most memorable observation, which Claudia knew by heart and recited (without a hint of sarcasm) on the spot. “ ‘It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.’ ”