We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong.
We thought it was more likely, though, that the framers had not noticed that it was natural, and therefore almost inevitable, that human beings in extraordinary and enduring situations should think of themselves as composing new families. Eliza and I pointed out that this happened no less in democracies than in tyrannies, since human beings were the same the wide world over, and civilized only yesterday.
Elected representatives, hence, could be expected to become members of the famous and powerful family of elected representatives – which would, perfectly naturally, make them wary and squeamish and stingy with respect to all the other sorts of families which, again, perfectly naturally, subdivided mankind.
Eliza and I, thinking as halves of a single genius, proposed that the Constitution be amended so as to guarantee that every citizen, no matter how humble or crazy or incompetent or deformed, somehow be given membership in some family as covertly xenophobic and crafty as the one their public servants formed.
Good for Eliza and me!
Hi ho.
Chapter 7
HOW nice it would have been, especially for
Eliza, since she was a girl, if we had been ugly ducklings – if we had become beautiful by and by. But we simply grew more preposterous with each passing day.
There were a few advantages to being a male 2 meters tall. I was respected as a basketball player at prep school and college, even though I had very narrow shoulders and a voice like a piccolo, and not the first hints of a beard or pubic hair. Yes, and later on, after my voice had deepened and I ran as a candidate for Senator from Vermont, I was able to say on my billboards, “It takes a Big Man to do a Big Job!”
But Eliza, who was exactly as tall as I was, could not expect to be welcomed anywhere. There was no conceivable conventional role for a female which could be bent so as to accommodate a twelve-fingered, twelve-toed, four-breasted, Neanderthaloid half-genius – weighing one quintal, and two meters tall.
Even as little children we knew we weren’t ever going to win any beauty contests.
Eliza said something prophetic about that, incidentally. She couldn’t have been more than eight. She said that maybe she could win a beauty contest on Mars.
She was, of course, destined to die on Mars.
Eliza’s beauty prize there would be an avalanche of iron pyrite, better known as “Fool’s Gold.”
Hi ho.
There was a time in our childhood when we actually agreed that we were lucky not to be beautiful. We knew from all the romantic novels I’d read out loud in my squeaky voice, often with gestures, that beautiful people had their privacy destroyed by passionate strangers.
We didn’t want that to happen to us, since the two of us alone composed not only a single mind but a thoroughly populated Universe.
This much I must say about our appearance, at least: Our clothing was the finest that money could buy. Our astonishing dimensions, which changed radically almost from month to month, were mailed off regularly, in accordance with our parents’ instructions, to some of the finest tailors and cobblers and dressmakers and shirtmakers and haberdashers in the world.
The practical nurses who dressed and undressed us took a childish delight, even though we never went anywhere, in costuming us for imaginary social events for millionaires – for tea dances, for horse shows, for skiing vacations, for attending classes at expensive prep schools, for an evening of theater here in Manhattan and a supper afterwards with lots of champagne.
And so on.
Hi ho.
We were aware of all the comedy in this. But, as brilliant as we were when we put our heads together, we did not guess until we were fifteen that we were also in the midst of a tragedy. We thought that ugliness was simply amusing to people in the outside world. We did not realize that we could actually nauseate strangers who came upon us unexpectedly.
We were so innocent as to the importance of good looks, in fact, that we could see little point to the story of “The Ugly Duckling,” which I read out loud to Eliza one day – in the mausoleum of Professor Elihu Roosevelt Swain.
The story, of course, was about a baby bird that was raised by ducks, who thought it was the funniestlooking duck they had ever seen. But then it turned out to be a swan when it grew up.
Eliza, I remember, said she thought it would have been a much better story if the little bird had waddled up on shore and turned into a rhinoceros.
Hi ho.
Chapter 8
UNTIL the eve of our fifteenth birthday,
Eliza and I never heard anything bad about ourselves when we eavesdropped from the secret passageways.
The servants were so used to us that they hardly ever mentioned us, even in moments of deepest privacy. Dr. Mott seldom commented on anything but our appetites and our excretions. And our parents were so sickened by us that they were tongue-tied when they made their annual space voyage to our asteroid. Father, I remember, would talk to Mother rather haltingly and listlessly about world events he had read about in news magazines.
They would bring us toys from F.A.O. Schwarz – guaranteed by that emporium to be educational for three-year-olds.
Hi ho.
Yes, and I think now about all the secrets about the human condition I withhold from young Melody and Isadore, for their own peace of mind – the fact that the human afterlife is no good, and so on.
And then I am awed yet again by the perfect Lulu of a secret that was concealed from Eliza and me so long: That our own parents wished we would hurry up and die.
We imagined lazily that our fifteenth birthday would be like all the rest. We put on the show we had always put on. Our parents arrived at our suppertime, which was four in the afternoon. We would get our presents the next day.
We threw food at each other in our tile-lined diningroom. I hit Eliza with an avocado. She hit me with a filet mignon. We bounced Parker House rolls off the maid. We pretended not to know that our parents had arrived and were watching us through a crack in the door.
Yes, and then, still not having greeted our parents face-to-face, we were bathed and talcumed, and dressed in our pajamas and bathrobes and bedroom slippers. Bedtime was at five, for Eliza and I pretended to sleep sixteen hours a day.
Our practical nurses, who were Oveta Cooper and Mary Selwyn Kirk, told us that there was a wonderful surprise waiting for us in the library.
We pretended to be gaga about what that surprise could possibly be.
We were full-grown giants by then.
I carried a rubber tugboat, which was supposedly my favorite toy. Eliza had a red velvet ribbon in the mare’s nest of her coal black hair.
As always, there was a large coffee table between Eliza and me and our parents when we were brought in. As always, our parents had brandy to sip. As always, there was a fizzing, popping blaze of pine and sappy apple logs in the fireplace. As always, an oil painting of Professor Elihu Roosevelt Swain over the mantelpiece beamed down on the ritual scene.
As always, our parents stood. They smiled up at us with what we still did not recognize as bittersweet dread.
As always, we pretended to find them adorable, but not to remember who they were at first.
As always, Father did the talking.
“How do you do, Eliza and Wilbur?” he said. “You are looking very well. We are very glad to see you. Do you remember who we are?”
Eliza and I consulted with one another uneasily, drooling, and murmuring in ancient Greek. Eliza said to me in Greek, I remember, that she could not believe that we were related to such pretty dolls.
Father helped us out. He told us the name we had given to him years ago. “I am Bluthluh,” he said.
Eliza and I pretended to be flabbergasted. “Bluthluh!” we told each other. We could not believe our good fortune. “Bluth-luhl Bluthluh!” we cried.
“And this,” said Father, indicating Mother, “is Mub-lub.”
This was even more sensational news to Eliza and me. “Mub-lub! Mub-lub!” we exclaimed.
And now Eliza and I made a great intellectual leap, as always. Without any hints from anybody, we concluded that, if our parents were in the house, then our birthday must be close at hand. We chanted our idiot word for birthday, which was “Fuff-bay.”
As always, we pretended to become overexcited. We jumped up and down. We were so big by then that the floor began to go up and down like a trampoline.