Walters Art Museum: Turkish version of the Wonders of Creation W.659 fol 119a (1717)
Mrs. Billingsley asks Rachel’s mother, not Rachel, if Rachel would like to accompany them to the beach for two weeks. “There’s no television, no A/C. It’s almost embarrassingly primitive, but Rachel is just so entertaining. Such a delight. I know she’d make my girls happy.”
This is how Mrs. Billingsley puts it to Rachel’s mother over the phone, one evening after Rachel has been particularly engaging at tennis, and Rachel’s mother, in her outdated kitchen, still humiliated by her divorce, her hatchback, her teeth, replies: “Yes! Yes! Absolutely!” without even asking Rachel if going to the beach for two weeks with the Billingsleys is something she wants to do.
If Rachel’s mother’s own life is unsalvageable, her daughter’s still has a shot.Complete story available online at Pinch
At first I was annoyed: oh no, not another Poor Little Rich Girl story, or something out of the We Weren’t Rich But We Were Free book of mythology. Given that poverty is an equal opportunity employer, the rich can’t be all that unhappy. I was also oddly defensive about the stereotype: the rich must be shallow, vain, and full of self-destructive neuroses.
But I don’t think that’s the actually story being told here. I mean, it can’t be, not at this level. Right?
I see some other interesting angles. One is the circle of disdain: the haves looking down on the haves-less who look down on the haves-still-less until eventually we come to the haves-less looking down on the haves, who are so obviously not happy. Mrs. Billingsley’s plea to Rachel at the end, to teach the girls anything useful, weakly attempts to elicit that kind of sympathy (why the hell doesn’t she do it herself?). Granted, this all boils down to the same mythologies and stereotypes mentioned above. But it’s still kind of interesting that everyone gets to sneer at some aspect of someone else.
The other interesting angle is the position of Entertainer, which, given the title, is probably more important. [Addendum: Jake Weber has an interesting angle on the jester role] A couple of years ago, I got interested in the concept of intrinsic versus instrumental value as it applies to people and relationships. The person renewing your driver’s license, or checking out your groceries, has mostly instrumental value to you at the moment of contact, but for most of us still retains a significant intrinsic value [Addendum: some of the reactions to the plight of essential workers becoming sick after COVID-19 got started has shaken that belief]. Completely losing sight of the intrinsic value of a human being results in things like genocide or kids in cages, but minimizing intrinsic value – seeing Rachel as an Entertainer, rather than as a person with feelings and preferences – might result in some of the things in this story.
Rachel’s mom really does think she’s acting in Rachel’s best interests by sending her with the Billingsley girls (hereafter referred to as D&D), hoping she’ll meet the right people and learn the right skills to become one of the Idle Rich. Getting her body into rich shape might be the most dramatic:
Rachel’s mother can at least teach her something about the not-eating. Think of your hunger as a wheelchair, she’ll tell Rachel before she leaves for the trip. Think of your hunger as a wheelchair, she’ll tell Rachel before she leaves for the trip. Something you can never get out of, but something that will get you where you want to go, even if it’s uncomfortable.
This is played for all it’s worth in the story, most dramatically when D&D ask Rachel to eat while they watch, vicariously enjoying every bite. Rachel starts thinking their fingernails and lips are chewed, not from nerves, but because they’re starving. Then they ask her to judge a “do we sound poor” contest: going to Sears and putting ketchup on steak are class markers. Rachel has her own take on the habits of the rich: when they show her around, they point out where drugs and sex have happened, not where to find extra towels or toilet paper.
This intrinsic vs instrumental value is dramatized by a story D&D tell, about the time their father found an owl and brought it in to be entertainment for the party:
“Dad just walked in with that owl on a beach towel. Everybody went out of their fucking skulls and the owl didn’t do a goddamn thing,” Davenport says. “It had to be sick.”
Devlin blinks slow, remembering. “It just sat on that towel and stared. Everyone was passing it around and Dad was standing there like it was no big thing except it turned out to be a big thing.”
“A real owl,” Rachel says.
“Turns out owls are beautiful,” Davenport says. “Who knew?”
“Thanks, Dad,” Devlin says as if he’s right in the room with them. “People were so-so before you brought the owl in, but now they’re happy as fuck.”
Rachel feels something close to fear, rising. “What happened to the owl?”
Devlin lays down on her bed and closes her eyes. Davenport pulls off her shirt and sits there, topless, using her shirt to pat under her armpits. “It’s hot,” she says. “I’m wasted.”
Davenport falls forward on her bed. Her bare, brown back is as slight as a child’s. Rachel stands there, alone for a moment, thinking about the owl. She wonders if they let it go. If the owl let people touch it. She imagines the owl, startled, flying around the living room, the guests both delighted and afraid, Mr. Billingsley really getting his money’s worth, even though it cost him nothing. Rachel leaves Devlin and Davenport the way they are: passed out, with the lights on.
The eventual fate of the owl is either so unimportant to the girls that they don’t remember, or don’t care enough to answer; or, it was something they don’t want to talk about. Maybe that’s shame; if so, a good sign. In any case, Rachel must be identifying with that owl pretty strongly right now.
All this is well and good, but not particularly enlightening. Rachel’s dad, who left his job at the bank in order to be an entertainer – apparently a not-very-good comic – lost his instrumental value as provider so Mom left him. Ok, that’s an interesting twist, emphasizing it isn’t entertaining itself that is the problem. But it’s the final paragraph that expands the Entertainer theme into something else:
Outside, the ocean fades and crashes, fades and crashes. Finally, it occurs to Rachel that it sounds like applause.
This opens up the story for me, zooming out to see the whole human condition as entertainment for some outside entity, be it nature or the gods or eternity. It brought me back to the puppet show in Don Quixote, where the puppets were embedded in the storytellers and DQ was embedded in the audience and the whole bunch of them were embedded in a story written by a fictitious narrator who was embedded in the novel written by Cervantes who was embedded in the universe written by God: who is Entertainer, and who is Entertained, just keeps expanding.
The problem is, it really reads like the simple surface story of stereotypes and Eat the Rich attitude (almost literally) with a little Entertainment thrown in. Or maybe that’s just the easiest way to read it, especially now.
A Just Recompense 