Constance Companion

My chronicle has no beginning, middle, nor does it have a convenient
denouement. How can that be? Omitting those fundamentals betrays the
sacred responsibilities handed down by the memorialized ghosts of
acceptable literature.


"Oh," you smugly declare, "he's attempting to be cute in
order to command self importance."


Au contraire. I'm not endeavoring to appear cute. Or artsy.
There's no beginning to my tragedy because I've been fettered by
Constance Carpenter's very existence since infinity. And since, by
definition, infinity hasn't a beginning, middle, or, by its very
interpretation, a conclusion - what else is it if not
perpetual?


I vacillate slightly, fearing my zeal will induce snobbery
from those unable to comprehend, although the threat of ridicule
doesn't make my words any less truthful. However, I do look to you,
dear reader, for some measure of sympathy and, yes, absolution if
that's how you choose to conduct yourself.


"It's only another love story," someone will sanctimoniously
sman behind wafted hand.


Another love story indeed. But nothing in the trashy novels
lying atop your bedside table could prepare you for my tale of
woe.


For your sake, however, I'll emanate from some sort of a
beginning. I'll be meticulous, otherwise I fear you'll not derive
sufficient interpretation, therefore, my doomed love will not be
thoroughly respected.


If my daughter, Wendy, hadn't left her bicycle in the front
yard, and if I hadn't tripped over it, shattering my kneecap,
conceivably none of it would ever have happened. But then, we'll never
know, will we?


However, Wendy did leave her bicycle in my path that moonless
night nine months ago and, because she did, I'll never see her precious
face again. Already her image is only a black and white configuration,
as is my namesake, Michael Junior, and Thea, my wife of ten years and
the mother of my children.


Unless you've existed in some drugged-out stupor you know me.
My face has adorned covers of numerous magazines and newspapers the
past few months. Also, my wife and that woman have monopolized the
talk-show circuit, slandering me with frightful
felicity.


For the benefit of those who've been living in a vacuum,
allow me to present myself and recount my side of this wretched black
comedy.


I was baptized Michael Raymond Fellows. Until nine months ago
I lived an affable existence in a small community near Hot Springs,
Arkansas. Thirty families made their homes on the south side of
beautiful Lake Catherine in houses built one and all from pastoral log
cabin kits. We were known as "Abe's Bunch," a dubious tribute to the
late, great president.


I maintained our sheltered lifestyle with a lucrative sales
position at the Razorback Printing Company in Hot Springs. Thea had her
sensible Chevrolet Caprice Station Wagon while I, on the other hand,
sat on pure leather in my 1960 fire-engine red Lamborghini Miura SV.
Yes. I was cool. And fast. Life was wonderful and I . . . but I
ramble.


Anyway, thanks to Wendy, my left leg was in full cast and I
was worried sick that Brad Tilley would surpass me in sales before I
returned to work.


Thea, an avid bowler, was competing in one of her numerous
tournaments while entrusting our son's care to the pink smocked ladies
of the facility's nursery. Wendy was in school where, judging by the
endless sheaves of wax-coated papers, she learned nothing but
crayoning.


I, robbed of my mobility by a child's toy carelessly
abandoned, was propped up on the sofa channel surfing through an
endless parade of insipid talk shows. Barely awake, my thumb jabbing
automatically, nothing prepared me for the vampy, heavy-lidded eyes
gazing into my psyche from a scene in a grainy black and white movie.
In that moment, fleet but forever, her haunting beauty cauterized my
soul.


The white, alabaster face filled the screen, looking only at
me. She had been crying. Her delicate lips fluttered but there was no
sound.


She wore a flapper-style dress. The tassels ringing the
bottom swayed provocatively as she walked toward the camera. Her
exquisite mouth moved but still no words could be
heard.


Printed words appeared beneath that breathtaking face, "I
love Rodney, I can never go with you." Then, realization dawned that I
was watching a silent movie.


The man to whom she spoke appeared. The worm. Slicked-back,
greasy hair, parted in the middle. An oily mustache curled upward
toward rodent eyes, his mouth twisted into a sarcastic smile. He dared
to put his filthy hands on my love and pulled her, kicking and
screaming into a tank-like limousine. It thundered away into swirling
fog. The camera pursued her wheeled prison until the words THE END
flashed on the screen.


Too soon, I longed for one more glimpse of my silent darling.
The movie credits flashed by but only one line would mean anything to
me. I sought the name of the most ravishing female ever to grace the
skin of this wretched planet.


Constance Carpenter!


I picked up the yellow pages and looked up the number of the
television station. I established the film's title was Paulette's Folly
but, no, they didn't know where to acquire more of her movies. And no,
they didn't know how to get in touch with her.


I dropped the phone into its cradle, drenched with
perspiration, my brain accelerating to Mach 5. By the time Thea
returned, I was hanging up the phone after calling every video store in
Hot Springs searching for her movies. I was also a human time bomb
primed to detonate.


Only one store had a film of her. I asked them to reserve it,
turned to Thea who was depositing her bowling ball bag in the hall
closet.


"Go to Movieland Video on Euclid Street and rent, no, buy
this movie." I hastily scribbled down the title and held it out toward
her.


Thea closed the closet door, shifted her body in my direction
and gave me a portentous stare. Looking back, I can appreciated that
she had justification to be moderately perplexed. But consider my
state! I'd been on the phone for over an hour searching for anyone who
knew anything about the woman I loved.


Yes, indeed, my heart belonged to Constance Carpenter. How,
you say, could that be? Was I demented? No, gracious reader, I was in
love.


Love! The purist sensitivity of my soul had fulfilled itself
and I realized something few mortals are ever blessed to know. That
hidden deep within us all, a treasure chest overflowing with
unblemished, virginal love awaits for a worthy recipient. Most of
humanity is doomed to never experience this wonderful sentiment in its
full intoxicating intensity.


I'd smoked nearly a pack of Benson-Hedges, a nasty habit I
cannot stop, and half-smoked butts had fallen from the tiny ashtray
onto Thea's teakwood coffee table.


"Michael, what in heaven's name is wrong
with-"


"Go to the video store on Euclid Street and bring back the
fucking movie I've written down on this piece of
paper!"


Thea's body constricted as she drew an irregular breath and
stared at me with bulging eyes. Her mouth opened and closed, closed and
opened; tiny hands clenched into tight, infinitesimal fists. She took a
step toward the devastated table; stopped, resumed her guppy
interpretation before abruptly fleeing down the hall soon to return
with furniture polish and rag.


"You've ruined the coffee table, Michael." She charged,
brandished rag and polish but stopped short of her destination when I
hurled an end table in her direction. Fortunately, it missed, and
fractured against the wall instead. The stunned silence that remained
sucked all the air from the room.


Searching out the source of the hubbub, Wendy appeared beside
her mother. Remember Wendy? There they were, mother and daughter.
Mirrors of the other. Mouths opening. Mouths closing. In
unison.


When Michael Junior bellowed from the nursery it sounded like
something between a scream and a blubber. A wet, choking sound. Loud.
Demanding. Thea and Wendy looked at each other, their mouths drooped,
eyes wide.


I laced my fingers behind my head and, with extraordinary
difficulty, without shouting, said, "Wendy can watch Michael. Please go
to the video store and bring back the movie they're holding for
me."


Thea contemplated me, her mouth snapped shut, and she held
the furniture polish and rag in front of her, like an Andy Warhol
tableau. She seemed about to speak but instead reached for Wendy's hand
and left. I heard her gather up Michael, the front door slammed and
soon the station wagon roared out of the driveway reminding me that I
should see about getting her a new muffler. The only sound in the house
was the irritating whine of an obese woman on the tube exhorting how
much better her life was since she began using Preparation
H.


I chain-smoked another half-pack of cigarettes before Thea
pulled into the driveway. She stalked into the living room, a glacial,
unyielding scowl frozen on her face. She inserted the tape into the
VCR, and left me to my Constance. Already I was in ecstasy, marveling
at the film's title, Captain Kidd's Marriage.


From that moment I ceased belonging to the world as a
functioning human being. I lived only for Constance. How could a woman,
whom I didn't even know was alive, infatuate me, you say. And if she
were alive, she be as old as dirt.


If that is your realistic approach I'll not denounce you.
Nevertheless, you must appreciate the depths of my euphoria. I wasn't
pragmatic. The exquisite creature had claimed my immortal
soul.


Oh, all right.


I acquiesce that I knew she was a film star of the silent
era, and being such she was old. But I also knew God would never mold
such perfection, put her on this miserable planet, and allow the aging
process to defile her. No! One hundred thousand times no. He'd not
alter one atom of her being. Of this I was as positive as I was that a
politician could not be truthful.


For the next six weeks I lived on the sofa, driving Thea
insane with errands, searching for tidbits of information about
Constance. Her social life ceased. She dropped all outside activities
to look after the house and children and follow up leads I might have
concerning my mysterious obsession. I plastered the living room with
faded photographs and movie posters of Constance until the room became
a paper shrine. Wendy refused to enter my sanctuary and Thea strung up
a bed sheet blocking its view from the hall.


Why did she scour the countryside for information about a
woman who had taken possession of her husband? I don't know. Oh, I know
what she has spewed forth on the talk shows. That she assumed I was
going through early male menopause.


Though Thea failed to discover where Constance lived, she was
alive. An actuality I'd never doubted. The day after the cast was
removed from my leg Thea walked in bearing the information I lived
for.


"There's a fan club, Michael."


I lay on the sofa exercising my leg, accelerating the healing
process so I could investigate Constance's whereabouts myself. I never
believed Thea searched as assiduously as she might
have.


If I hadn't been so completely possessed in those days I
might have observed Thea's physical state more closely, though I doubt
the deep, swarthy circles beneath her eyes would have mattered to me.
Or the loose way her clothes hung on her. But I never saw Thea anymore.
I spoke and looked at her but I only saw my Constance.


She stood before me, mouth twisted into a lifeless grin. The
skin so tight across her face the bone structure showed
dramatically.


She looked like one of the starving children from Ethiopia
they keep showing on television. Her complexion resembled mildewed
chalk.


My cursory examination came to an expeditious end when her
communiqu? penetrated my eardrums. "Fan Club? Where? What's the
address? Phone number?"


Thea raised a transparent, blue-veined hand that had been
hanging motionless at the end of a sleeveless arm and, with a small
grunt, held out a piece of paper. When I snatched it from her she
sighed theatrically, then methodically trudged from the room; a
rumbling, liquid cough seemed to call out for sympathy.


A man's name and the name of a town were written on the
paper. After checking information and finding no listing, I knew
immediately what must be done.


After everyone was secure in their beds that night, I spent
the remainder of it stockpiling what I had accumulated concerning
Constance Carpenter. It took two suitcases and I even managed to catch
a nap before Thea drove Wendy to school the next morning. As I knew she
would, she took Michael Junior with her. She never left the house
without the children anymore.


I lugged the suitcases to the Lamborghini and left forever
the piney woods of Arkansas. I stopped by the bank and withdrew half of
our joint savings and checking account. I'm not a cad. I didn't leave
her destitute.


Aided by a map and a peace I'd never known, I headed for
Silver Hawk, Colorado to find one Reuben Barlow who, for all I knew,
was the last member of the Constance Carpenter Fan Club. Like a
mindless creature I drove west on I-40 to Albuquerque, New Mexico then
got on I-25 headed north toward Denver.


Silver Hawk lay due west from Leadville along the inflexible
spines of the Rocky Mountains. As I drove through the town made famous
by little Molly Brown, survivor of the sinking of the Titanic and the
cruelty of Denver's elite, I was in rapture. Would Reuben Barlow be an
obstacle or a resource in my search for Constance? Either way, a few
miles were all that lie between him and me.


After asking around I located Reuben's rustic cabin. When I
stepped from the Lamborghini the thin mountain air reverberated with
the sound of a single gunshot. The missile shattered the window on the
driver's side and penetrated the seat that I had a moment before
vacated.


I flattened out on the ground and constricted myself under
the low-riding Lamborghini. "Constance!" I screamed, mouth full of
dirt, heart full of terror. "I've come about Constance!" Spitting mud,
I peeked out at scuffed brogans planted inches from my face. After an
eternity, from somewhere above those worn shoes, a voice
spoke.


"Whot ya wont wid 'er?" The words were as ominous as
thunder.
As he hadn't invited me out, I spoke to the brogans from under the
Lamborghini. I explained my feelings about Constance and, after an
eternity, the brogans allowed me to squirm from under the car. When I
did I was staring into the barrel of the longest gun I'd ever seen. I
learned later that it was an ancient, but efficient, muzzleloader,
circa 1800s.


Reuben Barlow was a midget. Almost. The muzzleloader was
longer than he was tall. A scraggly beard fell to his crotch, and he
spat a gusher of brown tobacco juice between my feet and aimed the
weapon at my already queasy stomach.


After he understood I meant no harm to Constance he loosened
up. He'd been her third husband. She would eventually wed five more.
Reuben escorted me inside his rickety cabin where I passed ecstatic
hours thumbing through his scrapbooks devoted to
Constance.


"Yeh," he said, watching as I went through his precious
memories, "you be possessed wid 'er. I knows that look. Ourta. Bin
carrin' it 'round wid me fer some fifty some-odd
years."


I spent the night with the grizzled, archaic man, sharing a
tremendous jug of homemade whiskey. My tongue was raw for days after.
He confirmed what I already knew in my heart, that the years hadn't
touched Constance. Reuben became bleary-eyed as he reminisced. He'd
been a director during Hollywood's budding years and an educated man.
When Constance left so did his taste for civilized company. He'd lived
in the mountains so long he'd acquired the articulation and mannerisms
of the rural culture.


Fighting sleep, I listened to his tales. He filled my head
with stories of Constance only a man who had been intimate with her
would know. Like her affair with the surrealist painter and
photographer, Man Ray, who painted a very private, sensuous portrait of
the cleft between her buttocks, calling it "Shadow Valley." She refused
to have it displayed so, in spite, he went on to paint his celebrated
"Lips." By the time my eyes closed for the night I felt like I had
known Constance forever.


Next morning I awoke with a world-class hangover. Reuben
stood in front of an old wood-burning stove stirring something in a
huge black pot. He dipped a ladle into it, poured up a bowl, and gave
it to me.


"Eat." He grinned toothlessly and wickedly through his beard.
"It'll make ya human again. It's sour'd rice, with a tetch of the dawg
whot bit ya."


It looked dreadful. Bits of brown rice floated in a bowl of
thin, blackish gruel. Not desiring to hurt his feelings I slurped down
some. Miraculously it stayed down and wasn't nearly as bad as it
looked. I drank a cup of coffee that could have liquefied tempered
steel, politely refused another, and left Reuben in the doorway
promising I'd keep him informed on my progress.


I drove back down the tortuous mountain road directly to
Denver's airport and bought a ticket to Dallas, Texas. Six hours later
I applied my foot to the brakes of a rental car near the Redbird
Airport in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Leaving the car to its
fate, I walked down Westmoreland Road searching for my
Constance.


Soon I was standing in front of an old unpainted,
Colonial-style house surrounded by dense, untrimmed shrubbery. Four
columns rose upward from the decaying front porch giving a spooky
impression of former days of grandiosity. I hunkered down inside the
thick shrubbery to wait for nightfall.


Why hide? Why not just march up to the front door and knock?
Why not openly declare my eternal love for Constance? Would that it had
been that effortless, dear conscientious reader.


I was hiding from that woman, Gloria
Dodsworth.


Reuben had warned me about her, calling her Lucifer's
daughter through tight jaws. Gloria Dodsworth had been Constance's'
personal secretary since the early thirties and, if Reuben is to be
believed, her only consistent lover.


There I was, camouflaged among the unkempt hedge, formulating
a plan to get inside. I'd have to remain hidden until dark for my
scenario to work. I simultaneously suffered from sweltering heat and
being consumed alive by a multitude of insects as I waited for cover of
night.


Finally darkness descended and a light came on in a corner
room. Great. Now I knew where they were. Commando-like, I crept behind
the house, flattened myself on the ground and wriggled into the
spookiness of the crawlspace. Spitting out cobwebs and flying things, I
slithered along, using my hands to probe the termite-infested flooring
above me.


Joy overwhelmed me when my hand penetrated the flooring that
was so rotten I pushed right through it before hitting something which
stopped me but gave way to the touch. Linoleum. I had found the way
inside. Working quietly, I punched out a hole large enough to squeeze
through. Heaving a noiseless sigh, I crawled into the
room.


Huddled in the darkness, I paused to catch my breath and
examine my surroundings. I controlled my breathing but seeing anything
in the night-shrouded room was hopeless. Moving slowly, with my hands
held out like a sleepwalker's, I encountered a doorknob. Carefully
turning it I found myself at the end of a long hall where, at the other
end, artificial light bled from beneath a door.


Constance was behind that door.


My mouth went dry as wind-swept sand as I inched toward it.
My heart thudded against its ribcage akin to voodoo drums and each step
echoed in my ears like the clatter of a hundred Clydesdales against
cobblestone.


Finally my hand clenched firmly around the light-seeping
room's doorknob. Twisting slowly, I suddenly swung the door back and
stepped inside.
The woman for whom I'd abandoned my family, and career (never mind the
Lamborghini) looked into my eyes, pointed a slender finger at me, a
smile stretched across her ing?nue-like face. She wore a flowing,
diaphanous nightgown, looking like the angel-from-heaven she most
assuredly was.


"Phillip! Gloria, it's Phillip. He's come back!" She clasped
her hands, prayer-like, to her flawless breasts. "Phillip! Thank God
you've come at last."
She looked at Gloria Dodsworth, an ancient woman with a hawk-like nose
and a face covered with purple and brown age splotches. A most horrible
monstrosity.


Constance jabbed the air with a delicate finger. "I told you
Phillip would come back to me someday."


Gloria Dodsworth propelled herself from her recliner as if
catapulted. "Aarg!" she bellowed, charging like a fusion of Nazi Storm
Troopers and Japanese kamikaze pilots. I was ready. My fist connected
just below her temple. Her eyes unfocused for a few seconds, hate
burning through the pain, then she crumpled ungraciously to the
floor.


"Oh, Phillip!" My Constance came to me, arms outstretched,
just as I had fantasized a million times. Then we were kissing and
crying and laughing and that's when I realized that I was seeing
everything in black and white.


While my heart struggled not to explode, we sank to the floor
beside the insensate Gloria Dodsworth, and made love.


Actually that doesn't accurately describe what took place.
The truth is I was a total failure. It was over in a matter of
seconds.


Even so, her face glowed as she looked up into my eyes.
"Don't worry, Phillip, I'll instruct you in the ways of karezza."
Little did I know what wondrous things were in store for
me.


After we untangled, I cut the Venetian blind drawstrings and
hogtied Gloria Dodsworth. I found a roll of electrical tape and taped
her mouth, then deposited her in a closet in the room where I had
gained access to the house.


That was my mistake.


At this point and time you might well question my methods and
ask what Constance was doing as I set about my unsavory but necessary
task.


She was gushing over with her love for me. Or rather Phillip.
It seems she had me confused with someone from her cluttered past.
Hell, I didn't care, I'd have answered to 'Tinkerbell' if it meant
having my Constance.


After securing Gloria Dodsworth I turned my attention to her.
As I said, I saw everything in black and white. She was the same
alabaster white I recalled from her movies I had seen. Everything else
was an assortment of whites, grays and blacks. It was as though I had
journeyed into a mad scientist's time machine and been transported back
to the black and white days of early film. I felt trapped inside the
celluloid with my Constance.


Again, no problem. I was exactly where I wanted to be. We
spent five glorious days in exhilaration and mutual devotion. She
reunited with her Phillip, I communing with my Constance. She made love
commensurate with the goddess she was. She disciplined me in the art of
lovemaking in a way that will never be duplicated.


She modeled old costumes she had saved from her movies. For
me! Some I recognized; the flimsy, tattered dress she was wearing in
Captain Kidd's Marriage. The flapper dress, with its tassels at the
bottom and the little skull hat from the very first movie. And many
others. It was like I was having her for the first time, every
time!


The karezza method of lovemaking in which my Constance
instructed me caused me to feel deliriously happy to have been born of
the male gender. I'm quite sure she had saved that most gratifying,
sensual experience for me, and me alone. Or Phillip. At any rate it was
an adventure of sexual undertaking no one but gods and goddesses should
share.


Her prescription for making love intensified the primitive
act of coupling into prolonged and mutually gratifying object d'art.
The karezza way is to prolong the act for hours. Just thinking about it
causes libidinous urges; regardless of the medication they place in my
food to inhibit such erotic sensations.


Constance spoke soft, soothing words during lovemaking and
experienced numerous small deliverances, gradually building up to the
one where she talked in tongues and screamed Phillip's name. Our
glistening, sweaty bodies would then lie there for the few precious
moments of rest we allowed ourselves. It was only after they came for
me that I realized I was near starvation and had lost over thirty
pounds.


I recollect the day they came for me as vividly as I do the
soggy toast I had for breakfast this morning. We had been trying, or so
it seemed, to eclipse the universal record for lovemaking. I knew she
was building toward the world's greatest liberation by the contortions
in her face and her breath, which had become more of a whoop than
anything else. She was astride me, bucking, sweating, gasping for air,
riding me without discipline. Her eyes rolled up into their sockets and
she screamed, "My God, Phillip, I'm dying."


And, as she fell across my heaving, contracting body, in the
throes of my own explosive deliverance, she did. I thought I might join
her, my exhilaration was so intense.


Abruptly, hands lifted her from my tormented body. I was
rudely, embarrassingly, yanked to my feet and steel manacles bit
sadistically into my wrists.


I've been in the hospital for three months now. Hospital. Big
joke. It's a friggin' nuthouse. They say they're keeping me here until
I become a rational, sane person again. Then they'll lodge rape and
murder charges against me. Somehow, that doesn't sound right, does
it?


I mean, if I was insane when I did what they say I did, how
can they make me sane, then prosecute me for something I did while I
was insane? It boggles the mind.


I don't dwell on it. I just think about my Constance. In
black and white. I still don't see colors and, as of late, I even think
in black and white. The quack doctors here call it achrona. I'm not
concerned. I think only of Constance, and black and white is how I
remember her.


I watch TV some as they have been considerate enough to
permit me that privilege, providing I don't give them aggravation.
Which I don't. At least not until they commence to lying about my
Constance. When they try to coerce me into signing forms acknowledging
that I ravished, tortured, and murdered a ninety-year-old
crone.


It's then that I beg to differ with them. I ask if the
celestial goddess that they pulled off me that day looked like a
ninety-year-old woman. The shrinks shake their heads and produce photos
of an elderly woman they claim is My Constance! It's at those times
they have to restrict me with a straitjacket and move me to the scream
room.


I know who spread that fabrication. My wife and that woman.
On the talk shows. Spreading relentless falsehoods. Lies. Every
slanderous word.


How that woman escaped is beyond me. She was bound, gagged,
and stuffed into a locked closet. Oh, I know. I saw her on Geraldo
sniveling about her ordeal. How she'd broken down the door and found
the opening I'd made getting into the house. How she'd crawled through,
under, and across to wave down help from a passerby with her last ounce
of strength.


And lies about how she lay there hearing screams coming from
my Constance. I don't deny she heard Constance cry out, but they were
cries borne from rapture not torture.


They both are writing books and talking movie rights, getting
rich while spreading their libelous lies. And who cares what I've been
through? I mean, what do I have to look ahead to?


Nothing except my memories of Constance.