Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

“My husband, ha!” the woman said. “I’d never laid eyes on that man before the six-thirty seating.”

“I bet you’re a professional woman who doesn’t believe in men,” Jane said slyly.

“Crystal, how did you guess! It’s true, men are a collective hallucination of women. It’s like when a group of crackpots get together on a hilltop and see flying saucers.” The woman picked at her chicken.

Jane looked surprised, then said, “My father went to a costume party once wrapped from head to foot in aluminum foil.”

“A casserole,” the woman offered.

“No! A spaceman, an alien astronaut!”

Dan giggled, remembering when Mr. Muirhead had done that. She felt that Jane had met her match with this woman.

“What do you do!” Jane fairly screamed. “You won’t tell us!”

“I do drugs,” the woman said. The girls shrank back. “Ha,” the woman said. “Actually, I test drugs for pharmaceutical companies. And I do research for a perfume manufacturer. I am involved in the search for human pheromones.”

Jane looked levelly at the woman.

“I know you don’t know what a pheromone is, Crystal. To put it grossly, a pheromone is a smell that a person has that can make another person do or feel a certain thing. It’s an irresistible signal.”

Dan thought of mangrove roots and orange groves. Of the smell of gas when the pilot light blew out on Jane’s grandmother’s stove. She liked the smell of the Atlantic Ocean when it dried upon your skin and the smell of Jim Anderson’s fur when he had been rained upon. There were smells that could make you follow them, certainly.

Jane stared at the woman, tipping forward slightly in her seat.

“Relax, will you, Crystal, you’re just a child. You don’t even have a smell yet,” the woman said. “I test all sorts of things. Sometimes I’m part of a control group and sometimes I’m not. You never know. If you’re part of the control group, you’re just given a placebo. A placebo, Crystal, is something that is nothing, but you don’t know it’s nothing. You think you’re getting something that will change you or make you feel better or healthier or more attractive or something, but you’re not really.”

“I know what a placebo is,” Jane muttered.

“Well that’s terrific, Crystal, you’re a prodigy.” The woman removed a book from her handbag and began to read it. The book had a denim jacket on it that concealed its title.

“Ha!” Jane said, rising quickly and attempting to knock over a glass of water. “My name’s not Crystal!”

Dan grabbed the glass before it fell and hurried after her. They returned to the Starlight Lounge. Mr. Muirhead was sitting with another young man. This one had a blond beard and a studious manner.

“Oh, this is a wonderful trip!” Mr. Muirhead said exuberantly. “The wonderful people you meet on a trip like this! This is the most fascinating young man. He’s a writer. Been everywhere. He’s putting together a book on cemeteries of the world. Isn’t that some subject? I told him anytime he’s in our town, stop by our restaurant, be my guest for some stone crab claws.”

“Hullo,” the young man said to the girls.

“We were speaking of Père-Lachaise, the legendary Parisian cemetery,” Mr. Muirhead said. “So wistful. So grand and romantic. Your mother and I visited it, Jane, when we were in Paris. We strolled through it on a clear crisp autumn day. The desires of the human heart have no boundaries, girls. The mess of secrets in the human heart are without number. Witnessing Père-Lachaise was a very moving experience. As we strolled, your mother was screaming at me, Jane. Do you know why, honeybunch? She was screaming at me because back in New York, I had garaged the car at the place on East Eighty-Fourth Street. Your mother said that the people in the place on East Eighty-Fourth Street never turned the ignition all the way off to the left and were always running down the battery. She said there wasn’t a soul in all of New York City who didn’t know that the people running the garage on East Eighty-Fourth Street were idiots who were always ruining batteries. Before Père-Lachaise, girls, this young man and I were discussing the Pantheón, just outside of Guanajuato in Mexico. It so happens that I am also familiar with the Pantheón. Your mother wanted some tiles for the foyer so we went to Mexico. You stayed with Mrs. Murphy, Jane. Remember? It was Mrs. Murphy who taught you how to make egg salad. In any case, the Pantheón is a walled cemetery, not unlike the Campo Santo in Genoa, Italy, but the reason everybody goes there is to see the mummies. Something about the exceptionally dry air in the mountains has preserved the bodies and there’s a little museum of mummies. It’s grotesque, of course, and it certainly gave me pause. I mean it’s one thing to think we will all gather together in a paradise of fadeless splendor like your grandma thinks, lamby-lettuce, and it’s another thing to think as the Buddhists do that latent possibilities withdraw into the heart at death but do not perish, thereby allowing the being to be reborn, and it’s one more thing, even, to believe like a goddamn scientist in one of the essential laws of physics which states that no energy is ever lost. It’s one thing to think any of those things, girls, but it’s quite another to be standing in that little museum looking at those miserable mummies. The horror and indignation were in their faces still. I almost cried aloud, so vivid was my sense of the fleetingness of this life. We made our way into the fresh air of the courtyard and I bought a pack of cigarettes at a little stand which sold postcards and film and such. I reached into my pocket for my lighter and it wasn’t there. It seemed that I had lost my lighter. The lighter was a very good one that your mother had bought me the Christmas before, Jane, and your mother started screaming at me. There was a very gentle, warm rain falling, and there were bougainvillea petals on the walks. Your mother grasped my arm and reminded me that the lighter had been a gift from her. Your mother reminded me of the blazer she had bought for me. I spilled buttered popcorn on it at the movies and you can still see the spot. She reminded me of the hammock she bought for my fortieth birthday, which I allowed to rot in the rain. She recalled the shoulder bag she bought me, which I detested, it’s true. It was somehow left out in the yard and I mangled it with the lawn mower. Descending the cobbled hill into Guanajuato, your mother recalled every one of her gifts to me, offerings both monetary and of the heart. She pointed out how I had mishandled and betrayed every one.”

No one said anything.

“Then,” Mr. Muirhead continued, “there was the San Cataldo Cemetery in Italy.”

“That hasn’t been completed yet,” the young man said hurriedly. “It’s a visionary design by the architect Aldo Rossi. In our conversation, I was just trying to describe the project to you.”

“You can be assured,” Mr. Muirhead said, “that when the project is finished and I take my little family on a vacation to Italy, as we walk, together and afraid, strolling through the hapless landscape of the San Cataldo Cemetery, Jane’s mother will be screaming at me.”

“Well, I must be going,” the young man said. He got up.

“So long,” Mr. Muirhead said.

“Were they really selling postcards of the mummies in that place,” Dan asked.

“Yes, sweetie pie, they were,” Mr. Muirhead said. “In this world there is a postcard of everything. That’s the kind of world this is.”

The crowd was getting boisterous in the Starlight Lounge. Mrs. Muirhead came down the aisle toward them and with a deep sigh, sat beside her husband. Mr. Muirhead gesticulated and formed words silently with his lips as though he was talking to the girls.