Gilbert Sorrentino - Aberration of Starlight

Do you want to go around looking like Astor’s pet horse?

Sure. She wants to go around dolled up like Astor’s pet horse. The mother of a six-year-old boy!

She suddenly pulls at the skirt and wraps it closely around her thighs, which are, despite her fears, still firm and smooth. They are not the thighs of an old woman, not even those of a mother of a ten-year-old boy, they might be the thighs of a, what do they call them? career woman? A mature woman who just never married. She knows, with absolute clarity, and in misery, that it is the bathing suit that has filled her with doubts about her attractiveness. She is not her mother! Damn it to hell, she is not. And her breasts are still firm. Surely she might be childless, she might be in her late twenties.

She hears Mr. Thebus and her son on the lawn below, although she cannot see them, her one window facing across the road to the old white church. They are laughing together, having a catch with a beach ball, while they wait for her to appear. Appear in this bathing suit, that she now pulls at — the waist, the skirt, the bodice, the shoulder straps — in frustration and embarrassment. She will soon be at Budd Lake with her son and Mr. Thebus. The latter will be in his navy-blue woolen trunks with the immaculate white web belt and its gleaming brass buckle, and his white athletic top. She will be in her flowered rag. Eleanor Stellkamp and her fiancé, Dave Warren, will be there, with the Copan girls, Helen and Peggy. Eleanor will wear her white, shiny, bathing-beauty suit; her flat breasts and oddly protruding belly will be displayed to all, but she will be in her white, shiny, bathing-beauty suit. Helen and Peggy will be the young, slim girls that they are, oh, how they are! The blankets will be laid on the sand next to each other, and she will sit, the heavy folds of this disgusting garment encasing her in ugliness.

She is not her father’s wife, she has a right to something, doesn’t she? She hears her son call: They’re all ready and waiting for her, and she pulls on her rubber bathing shoes and a flannel beach robe. She tightens its sash, rolls two towels together and takes her change purse, tightens the sash again. She will go downstairs now, the skirt of the bathing suit clinging to her thighs as if made of iron, out onto the lawn and into the sunlight and the appraising glance of Mr. Thebus. The beach ball will be under his arm, and he will smile, as he did that early afternoon five days ago when they got out of Louis’ car, fresh from the station at Netcong, to find him waiting on the porch, to see him rising from the glider in his white ducks, puffing aromatic wisps of smoke from his pipe, his finger in the pages of Gone With the Wind. Her navy dress with the white polka dots seemed to her wondrously fashionable, incredibly flattering, held, as it was, in his bright glance.

Dear Katie,

Thanks for your lovely postcard. Atlantic City must be beautiful this time of the year and what a relief it must be to get out of the hot city for a few days. Poppa was saying last night that he wishes you would think it over about coming up here for a week in August or more, if you want. There’s plenty of room and I know you’d enjoy it because you always have.

It’s funny here without Momma God rest her soul and I think that Poppa really feels it but he won’t say a word just plays his croquet as usual beating everybody. The Sapurty’s are here and Grace is still the same accident looking for a place to happen that she always was, trying to look like a school girl. There’s another family here through the second week of August a nice woman and her husband and, their two girls who are both Boy Crazy. Specially the oldest girl who makes a spectacle of herself at the lake with any thing that wears pants. Her father eats like a stevedore as he sure wants to get his moneys worth. You remember Helga Schmidt? Well, she is here too, the heart broken widow and it is pitifull to see how she is playing up to Poppa who doesn’t even know she is alive.

Eleanor and Dave Warren will be married in the Fall. Eleanor is still homely as sin but Dave would not win any beauty contests either so, they seem to be a match. God love them. There is another man here and the gossip according to Grace Sapurty and her Big Mouth is that he just got a divorce. He seems to be a real gentleman to me and has taken a shine to Billy and they get along together just like ham and eggs. He has a real sense of humor. Next week he is going to drive us on an outing to High Point. Remember going there when we were just girls? They were happier days God knows.

Well that seems to be all the news for now. Write to me and let me know how Leonard is doing with that back of his and drop a line to Poppa too? And really think it over about coming up for a week anyway. Say hello to Leonard and Arthur and Janet and give them my love.

Marie

I haven’t really had a chance to offer my sympathy to you, Helga. I mean poor Otto. A wonderful man. It was such a shock to us. 1

Ja. For me too, Marie dear. But you can know about it with your own poor mother passing away. Life is hard, hard. I was saying to Otto last winter, just last winter, before he took sick. Ach, we thought it was a bad cold, how Bridget was last summer not looking so good. Peaked, you know, and so pale, not like her skin always was so nice and fresh. Peaches with cream. 2

Yes. She was sick a long time before we knew just how sick she really was. The doctor, oh … the doctor said it was her blood was just tired. 3

Ah, ja! The doctors. They don’t know nothing!

Momma was always so strong and full of fun, you know? It was just terrible to watch her get weaker and weaker every day. But she was a soldier. 4Never a word of complaint out of her.

A swell regular sport she was. I remember like yesterday, right here, watching her play croquet with your father. Ja. Always a good sport she was. And ready for anything. Ach, life! Who would believe that you and me—? Always she had, always, a nice smile on her for everybody and a nice word. 5A real lady. I’ll miss her more and more. None of us are getting any younger. Ah! Your poppa must be so sad but always a gentleman. You never see him telling his troubles to the world. Polite and nice. You’re a lucky daughter, ja.

Poppa misses her so much, I know. Well, they’d be married thirty-six years this fall — October. 6That’s a lifetime.

Thirty-six years! Your poppa don’t look a day over fifty! 7God bless him. The boy — he misses his granma?

Oh my God, yes. He adored his granma. Well, you know how grandmothers spoil their grandchildren. But he seems to have gotten over it, you know how kids are — especially boys.

To have such strength to forget. Well, God is good. We don’t know how lucky we are when we are kids, ja? God makes it so they don’t suffer like we do.

Yes. God is good. If I didn’t believe that …

Now now now. You shouldn’t too much upset yourself. What’s past is past. Maybe it’s all for the best, poor Bridget and Otto, God bless him.

They say that God works in mysterious ways.

I believe this too. Very much. We got to go on living our lives no matter what, ja? You have your big handsome boy to make grow up to be a strong man, and to look after you have your poppa. Now more than ever your poppa needs you, ja?

Yes. Oh yes, we have to go on living. That’s what life is about. But it’s so hard. 8

But you need to have some fun and relax a little too. We don’t live on only bread, God said. I am starting again to play the piano. 9It’s nice and makes me peaceful. And you, I notice how nice it is you have a nice friend here for you.