"Oh, listen to you. So you didn't take the cocaine and Benedictine?"
I admitted that I had, but that I'd had a legitimate reason: it was helping me stay alert through the long hours of writing. It was quite a different situation, I said, to indulging day after day, the way she did.
"You're exaggerating," she said.
In my fine self-righteousness I made a list for her. There was nothing she wouldn't try. She smoked opium and chewed coca leaves; she ate pharmaceutical painkillers like candies and washed them down with tequila and rum; she liked heroin and cherries in brandy and hashish brownies.
"Lord, Maddox, you can be so tiresome sometimes. If I play music and the music's worth a damn, I'm altering my state. If I touch myself, and I give myself pleasure, I'm altering my state."
"They're not comparable."
"Why not?" I drew a breath before replying. "See? You don't have an answer."
"Wait, wait, wait-" I protested.
"Anyway," she went on, "I don't see that it's your business what I do with my head."
"It becomes my business if I have to deal with your mother."
Marietta rolled her eyes. "Oh Lord, I knew we'd get round to that eventually."
"I think I deserve an explanation."
"She found me going through some old clothes, that's all," Marietta replied.
"Old clothes?"
"Yes… it was ridiculous. I mean, who cares after all this time?"
Despite her cavalier attitude she was plainly concealing something she felt guilty about. "Whose clothes were they?" I asked her.
"His," she said with a little shrug.
"Galilee's?"
"No… his." Another shrug. "Father's."
"You found clothes that belonged to our father-"
"-who art in Heaven… yes."
"And you were touching them?"
"Oh for God's sake, Maddox, don't you start. They were clothes. Old clothes. I don't think he'd even worn them. You know what a peacock he was."
"That's not what I remember."
"Well maybe he only did it for my benefit," she said with a sly smirk. "I had the pleasure of sitting in his dressing room with him many times-"
"I've heard enough, thank you," I told her. I didn't like the direction the conversation was taking; nor the gleam in Marietta's eye. But I was too late. The rebel in her was roused, and she wasn't about to be quelled.
"You started this," she said. "So you can damn well hear me out. It's all true; every word of it."
"I still-"
"Listen to me," she insisted. "You should know what he got up to when nobody else was looking. He was a priapic old bastard. Have you used that word yet by the way? Priapic?"
"No."
"Well now you can, quoting me."
"This isn't going in the book."
"Christ, you can be an old woman sometimes, Maddox. It's part of the story."
"It's got nothing to do with what I'm writing."
"The fact that the founding father of our family was so oversexed he used to parade around in front of his six-year-old daughter with a hard-on? Oh, I think that's got everything to do with what you're writing." She grinned at me, and I swear any God-fearing individual would have said the Devil was in that face. The beautiful exuberance of her features; the naked pleasure she took in shocking me.
"Of course I was fascinated. You know the origin of the word fascinated? It's Latin. Fasdnare means to put under a spell. It was particularly attributed to serpents-"
"Why do you insist on doing this?"
"He had that power. No question. He waved his snake and I was… enchanted." She smiled at the memory. "I couldn't take my eyes off it. I would have followed it anywhere. Of course I wanted to touch it, but he told me no. When you're a little older, he said, then I'll show what it can do."
She stopped talking; stared out the window at the passing sky. I was ashamed of my curiosity, but I couldn't help myself.
"And did he?" I said.
She kept staring. "No, he never did. He wanted to-I could see it in his eyes sometimes-but he didn't dare. You see I told Galilee all about it. That was my big mistake. I told him I'd seen Papa's snake and it was wonderful. I swore him to secrecy of course but I'm damn sure he told Cesaria, and she probably gave Papa hell. She was always jealous of me."
"That's ridiculous."
"She was. She still is. She threw a fit when she found me in the dressing room. After all these years she didn't want me near his belongings." She finally pulled her gaze from the clouds and looked back at me. "I love women more than life itself," she said. "I love everything about them. Their feel, their smell, the way they move when you stroke them… And I really can't bear men. Not in that way. They're so lumpen. But I'd have made an exception for Papa."
"You're grotesque, you know that?"
"Why?" I just made a pained face. "We don't have to live by the same rules as everybody else," she said. "Because we're not like everybody else."
"Maybe we'd all be a little happier if we were."
"Happy? I'm ecstatic. I'm in love. And I really mean it this time. I'm in love. With a farmgirl no less."
"A farmgirl."
"I know it doesn't sound very promising but she's extraordinary, Maddox. Her name's Alice Pennstrom, and I met her at a barn dance in Raleigh."
"They have lesbian barn dances these days?"
"It wasn't a dyke thing. It was men and women. You know me. I've always liked helping straight girls discover themselves. Anyway, Alice is wonderful. And I wanted to dress up in something special for our three-week anniversary."
"That's why you were looking through the clothes?"
"Yeah. I thought maybe I'd find something special. Something that would really get Alice going," Marietta said. "Which I did, by the way. So anyway thank you for taking the heat from Cesaria. I'll do the same for you one of these days."
"I'm going to hold you to that," I said.
"No problem," Marietta said. "If I make a promise, I'm good for it." She glanced at her watch. "Hey, I gotta go. I'm meeting Alice in half an hour. What I came in here for was a book of poems."
"Poems?"
"Something I can recite to her. Something sexy and romantic, to get her in the mood."
"You're welcome to look around," I said. "I presume, by the way, that all this means you think we've made peace?"
"Were we ever at war?" Marietta said, as though a little puzzled at my remark. "Where's the poetry section?"
"There isn't one. They're scattered all over."
"You need some organization in here."
"Thank you, but it suits me just the way it is."
"So point me to a poet."
"You want a lesbian poet? There's some Sappho up there, and a book of Marina Tsvetaeva."
"Is any of that going to make Alice moist?"
"Lord, you can be crude sometimes."
"Well is it or isn't it?"
"I don't know," I snapped. "Anyway, I thought you'd already seduced this woman."
"I have," Marietta said, scanning the shelves. "And it was amazing sex. So amazing that I've decided to propose to her."
"Is this a joke?"
"No. I want to marry my Alice. I want to set up house and adopt children. Dozens of children. But first I need a poem, to make her feel… you know what I mean… no, come to think of it, you probably don't… I want her to be so in love with me it hurts."
I pointed. "To your left-"
"What?"
"-the little dark turquoise book. Try that." Marietta took it down.
"It's a book of poems by a nun."
"A nun?" Marietta went to put the book back.
"Wait," I said to her, "give it a chance. Here-" I went over to Marietta, and took the book-which she hadn't yet opened-from her hand. "Let me find something for you, then you can leave me alone." I flicked through the musty pages. It was years since I'd perused these lyrics, but I remembered one that had moved me.