Anteaters Don't Dream and Other Stories

Salinger's Mistress

Salinger's Mistress SOME PEOPLE HAVE perfect pitch. Others sew or paint or do square roots in their heads. Me? I lie. I've been a semiprofessional prevaricator ever since I studied Tall Tales in eighth-grade Englishwith Mrs. Mancuso. The way it works is this: I pick an announcement out of the paper—a store opening, a lecture, a benefit. I go, but not as myself."Hello," I say, extending my hand to whoever ends up standing or sitting beside me. "My name is Sylvia Cassidy. Perhaps you've seen me on daytime TV?" Or, "Glad to meet you. I'm Princess Flavia Wittgenstein, and I'm enjoying your country so much." Actually, I'm Glory Hackley. I live in Manhattan, I'm five foot ten, twenty-eight years old, and I haven't done much remarkable except find a rent-controlled apartment that one person has alreadythreatened to kill me for.I have aboring job as a frame restorer and maybe three friends I can really count on. None of which is the stuff good stories are made of. And believe me, I learned about stories from the best. 134 Meredith Mancuso had a mole in the corner of her mouth, just where her upper and lower lips met. I used to wonder if it hurt when she talked. I spent a lot of time pondering weighty questions like that in English 8B. I read Tom Sawyer in a daze, studied Catcher in the Rye in a stupor, and sort of sleepwalked my way through Our Town. But I woke up when we got to Paul Bunyan and the rest of those preposterous stories. Suddenly English was the shortest period in the day. Mrs. Mancuso asked us to write our own Tall Tales, and told us that nothing in them had to be true. It was as if she'd created an eleventh commandment: thou shalt not lie, unless you're a writer. I poured my heart into that assignment. My heart and one whole section of my five-subject note pad. My story was about a girl who had spaghetti for hair. Her parents loved her, but they loved spaghetti, too. They couldn't help nibbling once in a while. Her friends werejust asbad, and strangers were even worse. Pretty soon, poor Babe (I named her in honor of Bunyan's ox) was entirely bald. Every time her hair started to grow back, some greedypasta lover would waylay her and crop it down to nothing. The story ended happily when she married a chef and they opened a restaurant and bought a house on the Riviera and a set of wigs so lifelike that Babe became a movie star. Mrs. Mancuso gave me an A—."This piece shows a great deal of imagination," she wrote across the bottom of the last page with a fine-tipped felt marker. "I wish you had been equally creative with your heroine's name." Still, considering that the rest of my grades traditionally hovered around C+, SALINGER'S MISTRESS 135 that wasencouragement enough. Soon I had doubled my output (and saved notebook paper) by becoming a purveyor of Once Told Tales. I distinguish the fabrications that have become my specialty from Tall Tales on several counts: first of all, they're spoken and not read. I realized early on that people mistrust what they read, but are more than willing to believe what you tell them face to face. Secondly,while simple TallTalescan be read over and over, my Once Told Tales are ephemeral, never to be repeated performances.Each one is inspired by the setting in which it unfolds, the people with whom I interact. There is no script, no plot, no charted course. It's been over sixteen years since Mrs. Mancuso unwittingly introduced me to myavocation.And,though I've skirted disaster , I've never regretted a singleintoxicating trip into free-for m falsehood. I remember, in particular,the night I wandered into a bar mitzvah at an eastside hotel where I was looking for the bathroom. My muse did not desert me as I mingled with the guests. I told everyone that myname wasDr.Hortense Frisbee. (I've taken Mrs. Mancuso's criticism to heart, and now focus considerable creative energyon names.) I was,I confidedto those who asked,a scientist who specialized in cloning genetic materials. This scholarly background, I hoped, would explain both...