Rosemary's Lobotomy

Bell Moon prefers to have his photo taken when there is a dead tiger around, so whoever is lucky enough to capture a glimpse of his life can assume he shot it—not out of sport or defense, but out of pity, and not for the Tiger but for the word, pity. For pity leaves a good taste in the mouth with those who share his transatlantic accent that teeters to the right of Bermuda and to the left of Lord Mountbatten’s. He is not a member of the Royal Family, but he prefers the prestige of a Lord’s accent. That taxation without representation panache, you don’t get in the land of the free, cultivated and ruined by Northeastern Elites and the Southern Planter Class—his fellow Americans.

“It was a pity, Mrs. Auchincloss,” he says, before pausing to look at the ice in his scotch beside the crackling fire. “Pitiful, the pity. Shot by Phillip Percival, the so-called ‘Dean of African Hunters’, or Francis MacComber, to the illiterate subscribers of Cosmopolitan and Hemingway.” He scans the study of twenty or so men and women, drinking and smoking, flirting with those pretending to listen to the details of their grandfather's patent. Decorated in pearls and perfume, cologne and cufflinks. They are on the Vanderbilt side of the Hudson River.

“I haven’t seen this many executors, Will’s, and testaments since the Nuremberg trials.”

A confused expression falls upon Mrs. Auchincloss's face. Bell twirls his drink some more until he can no longer ignore her expression.

“The Cosmopolitan-Hemingway demographic. The illiterati?” Still, nothing registers. “The tiger,” he continues, “Was shot and deserted. Left to its own devices, abandoned by God, or at least that's what Phillip Percival thinks of himself when he’s pointing a rifle, mortally wounded and fending off attacks from hyenas and wild dogs. I happened upon the cat with my guide, Choku. So I did what any lover of life would do in this sub-Saharan situation. I asked Choku for my gun, aimed and fired.”

“Did you kill it?” asks Janet Lee Bouvier-Auchincloss. “Why didn’t Percy kill it? I thought he was the best.”

Bell forces a sigh and looks at his drink, leaving a well-practiced appearance of consideration and contemplation. He knows what he is going to say, has known since walking into this room, but has allotted this small window to think of Anthony Eden’s political future, to whom he has been compared physically, as well as James Mason and Gore Vidal, until he grew a mustache that he found popular amongst veterans of England’s Burma campaign. He thought he would bring it home, though home is a funny word when applied to Bell Moon, a man with more passports than England’s commonwealth of dominions, colonies, mandates, and protectorates. His most cherished is from Tanganyika; the passport he uses the most is from Southern Rhodesia; and, despite being born 100 miles east of Tulsa, the passport without a single stamp is his US passport, which sends women to sea who claim he is American-flavored, plucked from the delta and sculpted by the world. He looks at the painting of the dead patriarch over the fire, wishing it were him.

“Wait, there are no tigers in Africa,” says Mrs. Bouvier-Auchincloss.

“There are when Phillip Percival wants to wrap puttees around his legs! That man will import anything to avoid a gift and shoot his rifle. Try offering him tailor-made mahogany, leather boots. He’ll scoff and leave a bleeding cat. Ask Choku.”

“Who’s Choku?”

Bell Moon stares at the fire and decides he is peeved. So peeved he forgets Choku, whose name usually conjures good feelings, but he downs the rest of his drink and laments about being confused with Robert Ruark, and how disgusting that is. Missing the Golden Age of Free Thought, and that the American Secular Union might still exist if he had been born earlier, instead of shooting imported tigers abandoned by Phillip Percival, like Joseph Kennedy abandons his lobotomized children.

Mrs. Bouvier-Auchincloss gasps. She grabs a cigarette that is available for guests, though she doesn’t smoke. She is one of the few privy to such information—Rosemary’s whereabouts and condition. Her daughter, Jacqueline, has just married Joseph’s son, Senator John F. Kennedy, and Bell swims in his own cool reception of the facts, witnessing firsthand what she wants most, and chokes on: Social advancement. Bell did not receive an invite to the wedding, but her discomfort and desire for secrecy regarding her daughter-in-law’s forced lobotomy remind Bell that he may have to borrow some money, probably from her. He accumulates the compounded emotional interest, apologizes, and puts a down payment on his thirst for attention.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to propose a toast.”

The dark study, a cathedral of first editions and revolutionary wood, is ready for a toast. Its Fifth Avenue parishioners have moved closer to the fire. The rumors of a declared annulment from the Vatican have left them feeling cold.

“Please, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mrs. Auchincloss, as we all know, and her daughter, Jackie, who the world will one day know for the reasons we pretend to.” The ceilings are high, but not high enough to avoid being tickled by the laughter of wealth that curls like banknotes on impact. “Recently married, I hear.” He turns to Mrs. Bouvier-Auchincloss, who reacts to everything he says, trying her best not to look too happy that the toast is for her, rolling her eyes as if he wouldn’t have gotten an invite. “You don’t have an address!” she declares. “This is true, but let me finish showering you with the drops of my thawing heart.” With the faintest touch of her white glove, she shields her lips. “To our dear friend’s son, Senator John F. Kennedy, a four-leaf clover, and future President if I ever saw one…and I have, ladies and gentlemen, I have seen future Presidents.” The room may be too small for these witty remarks. At 6’3, any more and the reaction, like a rising sea, will pass his well-proportioned nose. “My family arrived in this great land of ours when France still had a King with a head, and like all good American citizens, we have avoided soccer and taxes ever since.” Rapturous laughter. Bell of the ball. “So here’s to America’s future mother-in-law, a guiding star when you need one, the beautiful, the best, Mrs. Janet Lee Bouvier-Auchincloss!”

“Cheers!”

Bell’s voice earned him an A at Exeter, or Phillip’s Exeter Academy. He was captain of the debate team, not because of masterful, persuasive oratory, but because of his penchant for wearing ascots and smoking jackets, no matter the occasion. Something he still does but is now considered age-appropriate at 45—an idea he never agreed with.

“Oh, Bell,” says Mrs. Auchincloss. “You’re too much.”

“Then I succeeded. Do you have a thousand dollars?”

“I beg your pardon?”

He looks out the study door, down the hall of Carvagios, Vermeers, and Ruisdaels.

“I’m afraid I've got to go, darling. Take care, and don’t forget to invite me to Jackie’s next wedding.”

She smacks his arm before they kiss each other's scented cheeks.

“Where are you off to now?”

“Received an invitation to the Rand Club in Johannesburg, and from there, well, that is between me and my Gods: Moloch, Adramalech, Mot, Yahweh, The Dulles Brothers, and the Enola Gay.”

“Did you get a chance to see your children?”

“Still in Korea, I’m afraid. The Truman administration gave the boys a donkey and musket.”

“Oh.”

She finds that odd, but is distracted by the beautiful fire. She turns to inform Bell that the war is over and Eisenhower is President, but he is gone, sitting in the back of a 1938 Chrysler Custom Imperial Town limousine, on loan from former Ambassador Joseph Kennedy to a British Civil Service Commissioner he has known for ages, named Percy, and a Permanent Undersecretary from Wales named Peter, so Percy tells him. They drive through the night and set sail in the morning, south, along the east coast. For four days, Bell refers to the still visible America as “our cousins,” with a fake Cambridge communist accent so dreadful that they talk of taking away his gin, but no one wants to be on the other side of that. They stick to the plan until they realize they forgot to frisk him while he slept.

Bell removes a rarity from his Bespoke Savile Row trousers, a Smith & Wesson 1950 45 cal. ACP revolver as they sail past Fort Sumter outside Charleston.

“Stand back, lads, this is between the Confederacy and me.”

Open to the public and run by the National Park Service, Bell misidentifies a tour guide for a P.T. Beuaguard holdout, and shoots the National Monument until his British escorts tackle him to the ground.

“Still angry about the blockade, ey, redcoats? Need your precious cotton for your cotton gins? Sorry, lads, slavery is over.”

They abandon Bell and turn the boat toward international waters before the US Coast Guard can get to them. Packing a pipe, Bell admires the tan on his hands and takes a whiff of the sea, looking up as if the scent came from the shining sun. “Heading to international water? I can smell it! It is the way to go, I hear.” He opens the jar of Grey Poupoun and asks, “Are we out of prosciutto?”

Bell is an arms dealer, and Peter is out of patience. Discovering they are out of prosciutto, Percy gives Peter the nod he has been waiting for. They cannot get Bell to Miami if he continues to bear a grudge against the Confederacy and eat all the charcuterie. Before he can say, “Chiang Kai-shek,” to whom he has sold many weapons, Bell is tied to the mast of the boat, aptly named the Mary-Todd.

“Percy, what in the devil is going on? You guys don’t actually believe all that lost cause mambo-jumbo, do you?”

Percy was born into the upper echelons of London's upper class, where Peter worked, first penetrating the outer rings and mining his way to the Royal heart. Bell was born in Oklahoma, something they have wanted to remind him of as he simultaneously insults England in an English accent, which gets richer and more refined with every drop of gin. Peter picks up his revolver.

“Careful, Pete, only 22 of those were made. You know what 22 is, right? Just take your East End Family and divide them in half.”

Peter points at Bell. He is dressed head-to-toe in navy blue and wears a black cap. His sideburns are ruthless, and his teeth remind Bell of corn.

“You’s veery luckah, Mr. Muin.”

“You're not a Permanent Undersecretary from Wales. Who are you? Percy, who is this man?”

Percy, soft around the edges, appears beside Bell. Once a well-sought-after cricket scout who made inroads with the knighted, befriending all High Commissioners in the civil service, Percy wears a three-piece suit, wire-framed glasses, and a mustache that makes him look more like a pout Clemette Attlee than Henriech Himmler. His posh accent derives from the space between his back teeth, with a strong emphasis on his enunciation. O sounds like Err. The words are drawn out and educated, and between sentences, statements, and ideas, there is a polite pause from Percy to allow the listener to think about what he is saying.

“A rather rough figure from the East End, I’m afraid. Born within earshot of the Bow Bells.”

“Why am I tied up?”

“Well, Peter was getting rather close to killing you, and it is…”

“Are we still going to Miami?”

“Yes.”

“This rope has inflamed my thirst, Percy. Be a dear and make me a gin & tonic.”

“Lime or lemon?”

“Percy, if I have to answer that…”

They share a laugh.

“Lime it is, Bell.”

Two days pass, and Peter develops an equal loathing for Percy, doing all the work, while he and Bell catch up over drinks. It isn’t until they reach the inter-coastal, near Ft Lauderdale, and Miami Beach, off the mainland, that Bell asks, “What is happening? I’m not late, am I?”

“I’m afraid you are not going to Singapore, Bell. There’s been a discrepancy.”

“A discrepancy? Where?”

Percy looks away and lets out a sigh while holding his bowler cap with both hands.

“In the books.”

Bell wishes he could stroke his chin, thinks of asking Percy to do it for him, but settles for reality. He is tied up.

“I see. Whose books?”

“Joseph Kennedy. He’s angry about the 50,000.”

Bell closes his eyes, knowing this will be the last time he can say this without being interrupted.

“I told him once, I told him twice. One civil war or legislative body arrested and I will loan him the money.”

Percy looks at his tweed and feels he is not suited for confrontation.

“I’m afraid that won’t do, Bell.”

Peter has had enough of Percy’s pussy-footing.

“Whatevah et iz yer referrin, yer wrong. We’re toklin abat aneether deel: Mis-tah Canidy and Mis-tah Canidy’s munney. Ya haven’t fourgot yer good freend, Mis-tah Canidy? Have ya, Mr. Muin?”

“Don’t get upset,” says Percy. “Mr. Kennedy has a favor to ask. A way to settle the debt.”

“Percy, will you tell the Elephant Man over there to stop pointing my extremely rare revolver at me?”

“Wot?”

Bell squints, and it is not because of the sun.

“I remember you now. Peter. You’re the one who drove Rosemary to get the ol’ needle up the nose!”

“That wosn’t me! That didn’t happen!”

“Oh, but it did, Peter. You took a perfectly normal 23-year-old girl when Joseph was ambassador, flirting with the likes of Oswald Mosley, and God knows who else. You, obviously. I remember you liked Rosemary. She was quite promiscuous from what I recall.”

“Another word out of yer mouth bout’ Rose and I’ll send you to the bells with one punch.”

“Mhm, Peter. Mhm. Where is she now? It happened, and you're upset.”

“She was depressed! I’ll kill that bastard!”

“I can help you kill something else, Peter. Some things are far more important to that man. The political careers of his sons.”

“Wot did you half in mind, Mr. Muin?”

"Half in mind, indeed."