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Authors: Lynne Tillman
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her chin, she raced her fingers through her hair and encircled one breast with her other hand. She struck another pose and looked again into the mirror. She rarely dreamt—remembered them—but lately she’d begun to dream of cats, and it predated the reading of “The Black Cat.” It was as if she were reading “The Black Cat” because of her dreams, her cat dreams, the few that stuck. Mark laughed when she recounted how in one there were kittens everywhere, but then it turned weird. Grace’s baby is attacked by a small kitten, wounded in the stomach, and while the mother cat tries to kiss the baby, by now the baby is paranoid that it will be attacked again. “Only you,” Mark insisted, “could turn kittens into instruments of the devil. My dear, you’re the baby.”
Celia’s letter in return, if Grace were an archivist, which she wasn’t, on the contrary, was the kind of document one might keep as evidence of the morals of women in transition in the second half of the twentieth century. Rather than attacking Grace as she’d expected—for being a tramp and a fool—Celia opened up her heart, and it caught Grace entirely by surprise. For one thing Celia wrote that all the time in high school when Grace had flirted at the borders of propriety and then crossed over and Celia hung back or sat on the fence, she had been envious of Grace’s courage. Courage was not the word Grace expected. “You’re crazy,” she answered, “if you call that courage.” But Grace liked the idea that she was brave and that it had been courage and not something fashioned from weakness that had driven her so fast and so hard. She didn’t look again at what she’d written, sealed it up, jumped into her clothes, and raced outside. It was the tail end of the day. She’d watch
Psycho
again and meet Mark for a drink at a bar where she would look and wait for the rest of the night, looking and waiting were sympathetic activities, similarly requiring her only to be present in the simplest way. And there was a chance of being looked at, which was better than being spoken to: it was as if she were being taken, unaware and involuntarily, and not taken. That other’s interest, that gaze on her which felt physical and implied the sexual and left it up to her. Had someone forced himself upon Grace, that would have been another story altogether.
It was a typical night at Oscar’s. A few heavy hetero drinkers who looked like small-time gangsters, several drag queens, the singles, the couples, everyone in between. Grace left alone, it was not yet morning, and walked around the good Brown campus where, at dawn, a long, blond man ran wildly through this sedate, plush setting, swinging his arms to chase what turned out to be pigeons. Grace started it by just walking over and staring at him. He was hoping, he told her, to die running. He ran five, six miles a day till his heart banged madly in this thin chest, and he lay panting by the side of the road, smiling. He reminded her of someone who might laugh aloud in his sleep. A true madman, here for her. He talked about death almost immediately. They smoked dope and drove around Providence as people were leaving their houses to go to work. His car veered to the right as he talked and Grace would’ve jumped out were she not so intent on being brave. She didn’t care about dying, anyway.
A list about Bill: studying to be an engineer; loves John Coltrane; wishes he were black; would never fight in Vietnam; intensely political; twenty-one; and a virgin. They would take care of that, Grace surmised, but not right away, she’d nurse it along. She was a good nurse. Let it develop, the way she had developed from good to bad, from a girl without breasts to a girl with breasts. A woman, so-called. You aren’t and then you are. You haven’t and then you have. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the girls are marching. They go to war. We go to hell. I am a tramp. Which means I’m a poor old man. A loose woman. And
Celia’s letter in return, if Grace were an archivist, which she wasn’t, on the contrary, was the kind of document one might keep as evidence of the morals of women in transition in the second half of the twentieth century. Rather than attacking Grace as she’d expected—for being a tramp and a fool—Celia opened up her heart, and it caught Grace entirely by surprise. For one thing Celia wrote that all the time in high school when Grace had flirted at the borders of propriety and then crossed over and Celia hung back or sat on the fence, she had been envious of Grace’s courage. Courage was not the word Grace expected. “You’re crazy,” she answered, “if you call that courage.” But Grace liked the idea that she was brave and that it had been courage and not something fashioned from weakness that had driven her so fast and so hard. She didn’t look again at what she’d written, sealed it up, jumped into her clothes, and raced outside. It was the tail end of the day. She’d watch
Psycho
again and meet Mark for a drink at a bar where she would look and wait for the rest of the night, looking and waiting were sympathetic activities, similarly requiring her only to be present in the simplest way. And there was a chance of being looked at, which was better than being spoken to: it was as if she were being taken, unaware and involuntarily, and not taken. That other’s interest, that gaze on her which felt physical and implied the sexual and left it up to her. Had someone forced himself upon Grace, that would have been another story altogether.
It was a typical night at Oscar’s. A few heavy hetero drinkers who looked like small-time gangsters, several drag queens, the singles, the couples, everyone in between. Grace left alone, it was not yet morning, and walked around the good Brown campus where, at dawn, a long, blond man ran wildly through this sedate, plush setting, swinging his arms to chase what turned out to be pigeons. Grace started it by just walking over and staring at him. He was hoping, he told her, to die running. He ran five, six miles a day till his heart banged madly in this thin chest, and he lay panting by the side of the road, smiling. He reminded her of someone who might laugh aloud in his sleep. A true madman, here for her. He talked about death almost immediately. They smoked dope and drove around Providence as people were leaving their houses to go to work. His car veered to the right as he talked and Grace would’ve jumped out were she not so intent on being brave. She didn’t care about dying, anyway.
A list about Bill: studying to be an engineer; loves John Coltrane; wishes he were black; would never fight in Vietnam; intensely political; twenty-one; and a virgin. They would take care of that, Grace surmised, but not right away, she’d nurse it along. She was a good nurse. Let it develop, the way she had developed from good to bad, from a girl without breasts to a girl with breasts. A woman, so-called. You aren’t and then you are. You haven’t and then you have. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the girls are marching. They go to war. We go to hell. I am a tramp. Which means I’m a poor old man. A loose woman. And
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