To the Guy Williams Friendslist
The Continuation of My Adventure
Episode 3: I am Beautiful and Other Metaphysical Mysteries
During the ride to the Montez – that is, my – home, my emotions were all over the place. You know that I was so-thrilled-I-can’t-wait-to-post-it feeling. It was like being on the best amusement park ride ever. Better than a movie based on an amusement park ride. But I was also by turns confused, disoriented, angry, logical, questioning, and getting used to the carriage and my clothes. Naturally, Aunt Inez talked our heads off without interruption from me or my father, so I grew a headache, too. Once in my own elaborate room, above my father’s orange and olive groves, I flung myself down on the great bed.
I had begun to realize that She Who Was Magdalena had a few things to say to me.
Why is this happening?
Well, that’s a good question.
You are not me.
At the moment, you’re stuck with me.
I do not believe in demonic possession, but are you a demon?
No. I tried to calm her down. No. No. I am one of your admirers. (No, that had a funny sound to it.) Your fame has been kept alive to a time in the future. I am from that future. I am from something called the Guy Williams Friends List. That is a fan group.
Who is Guy Williams?
How was I going to explain that one?
For a moment, we were both quiet.
Fan group. What is that? Would that be a group of ladies who teach the art of sending messages of love through the use of fans? Are you French?
That was not a bad idea for a story, actually.
Something has happened.
I felt sadness and frustration.
The Eagle did not want to send me. No, he sent you. I took the feathers and put them on my fans, and now you are going to complete his mission. Was I such a fool?
Perhaps we should talk about that later.
He did not trust me, but he would find a fan group.
No, no, you have it all wrong. Listen. The Eagle did not send me, but I know who the Eagle is. Why do you follow him?
Sadness, frustration. Magdalena, what is this about?
My mind seemed to quiet down. I felt an impetus to open my trunks, but when I tried to lift one lid, it was locked.
I am not going to be caught up in the Eagle’s machinations. I will work with Zorro to defeat the Eagle. I know these episodes inside out. I will be able to forestall the Magistrado, point out the soldier loyal to the Eagle, and I would give Diego valuable information to defeat the whole Eagle mess in days.
Or would that cancel a bunch of episodes?
The metaphysical questions were getting overwhelming, so I determined to live this thing moment by moment.
I heard a tap at my door, and then two maids ran in. I recognized one. Teresa. The other, a younger girl, brought water. Two young native women followed with a small marble tub, bowing, eyes down, before leaving the room.
“Wait,” I called. “What are your names?”
But the door closed. And boy, did I get a workout. Was it ever wonderful, once I got used to it, being undressed, washed, rubbed with oils, plucked, perfumed, and dressed in a fine embroidered gown.
How wonderful, too, to weigh thirty or forty pounds less!
On my way to my dressing table, I caught sight of myself in a full length mirror. I stopped, amazed.
I was beautiful. No, I wasn’t Julia Van Zandt. She was beautiful, but I didn’t look like her Magdalena. Think Catherine Zeta Jones in the Mask of Zorro, and be amazed. I certainly was “twenty, dark, exquisitely dressed, and lovely,” just the way John Meredyth Lucas described Magdalena. My face was not fat but oval with blue eyes and well shaped eyebrows that took up half my face it seemed, an elegantly curved neck, and a blessedly lighter and lovelier chin. My black hair, about to be brushed into gleaming brilliance, hung down my back. Or perhaps all this was light from the window that deceived me. What is reality, anyway, but a reflection of light?
Look again, look again. I am beautiful. It made me cry.
I haven’t felt beautiful very often. Maybe once or twice. Cute as a child, of course. When I grew older, I thought I was beautiful, but a massive campaign of cruelty on the part of the stupid ones who made up junior high took care of that.
Since then, I have pretty much always felt ugly. I look back at pictures of me then, and I blow a fuse. I see a skinny, tall girl with an interesting, lively and aristocratic face with good bones, long legs, and direction in life, standing next to the faded, sweet flowers of those popular girls I wanted so much to be like. And they called me ugly?
Well, now I was. For when I grew older and stopped performing and worked at a desk and went to grad school at night and started writing and taking care of my mother, I gained weight. My mind was interesting, but my body was a mess, and I couldn’t shake the weight. All the women in my family are heavy and live into their nineties. If that’s a comfort. My mother had been skinny, pretty, and smoked like a chimney, and she died at 65 of lung cancer.
No, I’ve only felt beautiful a few times in my life. In New York City, skinny is what people see. Oddly enough, those of us who take up more space aren’t seen at all. Is it them or me?
Here’s a parable. I sing professionally – classical and popular. Once, when my mother was sick, I entered a competition and was told I sang off key and sounded ugly. This was awful, because if there was anything beautiful about me, it was my singing. Even though so many people told me, over so many years, that I sounded beautiful and had a pretty, commercial voice, a lovely coloratura, a deep sense of lyrics, and all that, who did I believe? And what did I do? I shut up. I didn’t sing for a year. I didn’t want to impose my awful singing voice on people. It’s the same way when people tell you that you are ugly. You want to hide yourself, not care about your body or how you look or anything, while all the time, you want so much to be beautiful, feminism be damned.
Yeah, I said that. More women look like me, but who wants to look like me? Oh, the whole thing has put a hole in my life. I know there’s a whole movement for plus sizes and plus pride, but when I go clothes shopping, I wander into the limbo of size 16, and I deny, deny, deny. And I know that there’s a whole line of romance novels with real sized women now, but the heck. And I know that I replaced that hole in my life with really interesting, fascinating things I have done and talents I have developed. I became a rebel. And wouldn’t I prefer being a rebel, questioning authority, than a beautiful woman?
Ask me again, as I look in the mirror.
I am beautiful. It is like a delightful surprise, and despite whatever I may think of this later, it is as if I am the way I should be. Because, I guess, when you are beautiful, the culture around you sees you. I wonder if you will understand this. It is hard to explain, and yet it is important to know how I felt with regard to the story I will tell you. I can say that I felt that She Who Was Magdalena understood, which surprised me. Because from that moment, even though we were both confused to all heck, we began to be friends. Though we had a long way to go.
Maria, the other little maid, curtsied to me, and I went to sit at the dressing table. She was pretty, too, with wide black eyes and shining hair, and I hoped someone told her that. She dressed my hair with combs, while Teresa was unpacking and brushing off my dresses.
And I thought, would Diego give me a second look if I were Me as Me and not Me As Magdalena or any of the beautiful ladies Disney Casting had sent across his path? What was that dialog between Diego and Bernardo (courtesy of John Meredyth Lucas):
DIEGO: Who’s here?
(Bernardo holds up three fingers.)
DIEGO: Three people? People we know?
(Bernardo turns his hand in the asi-asi gesture.)
DIEGO: You’re not sure we know them?
(Bernardo imitates a pompous man and nods.)
DIEGO: We know one of them? What about the others?
(Bernardo’s hands describe generous curves in the air. He rolls his eyes.)
DIEGO: A woman. A pretty woman?
(Bernardo nods happily, yes –then shakes his head, no.)
DIEGO: She’s not pretty?
(as Bernardo nods)
DIEGO: really, Bernardo, you must learn to speak more distinctly.
Oh, poor Aunt Inez.
This was why I was crying. Because the little girl who had known she would be beautiful finally was. For here was the place of being whatever we dream and whatever we desire. However we are, there is always a place we can find to be whatever we dream and whatever we desire.
So-- Yes, yes, enjoy! Be beautiful, desirable, shrewd, and clever. And above all, give Magdalena a happy ending.
Yes, please, above all, if you can.
Suddenly, I jumped up. Maria dropped a comb.
“Where are my fans?” I found myself shouting. “Give me my fans!”
What made me speak like that?
Teresa obediently removed an elaborately carved wood box, which I grabbed, my fingers sliding over the cute carved putti and the discreet lovers on the box lid. Touching a spring, the box opened. I smiled. Here were six fans lying in wait for their mission. I unfurled one, black with gold enameling, and gilt with gold along its edges. He had given it to me himself that last night we were together. Three eagle feathers were placed at the center of the fan, each one cut differently. The effect was so subtle, no customs official or stupid soldier would have thought it was anything but part of the fan’s design, if they were even looking for eagle feathers, which they were not.
Three feathers? Why three? On TV, Magdalena only delivered one feather, to the Magistrado.
I studied them. Did I know what their markings meant?
No. Darn.
I also thought, yes, they are fine. I can begin my work tomorrow.
I shut the box fast. What work? What did I know about these feathers?
“Go! Go!” I shouted at the maids, but one of the native girls had returned.
“Don Francisco wishes to see you in his study,” she said to the floor, curtseying, and then whirling around and fleeing.
Her behavior annoyed me, but my nerves were pretty taut now.
“Go! I repeated to the maids. “Tell my father I will be down directly.”
They ran.
I sat down hard on the chair where, just a few moments before, I had been feeling so beautiful.
What was happening to me that I would consider being a part of the Eagle’s scheme? Was I becoming Magdalena? Would She Who Was Magdalena become She Who Was Me, and would I disappear?
Other thoughts began to dawn on me.
This dream, this hole I’d gone down, whatever I had gotten into, this did not exactly replicate the TV series. Things were off kilter, but how far off kilter were they? And why?
Why hadn’t Sergeant Garcia known Capitan Monastario? Magdalena’s episode, “The Sweet Face of Danger” came several episodes after “The Fall of Monastario.”
Sergeant Garcia didn’t look like the wonderful Henry Calvin.
Los Angeles didn’t look like the Disney set.
I didn’t look like Julie Van Zandt.
And yet…Zorro existed. The reward wasn’t the right amount, not 1500 or 2000 pesos, but he existed.
Diego and the de la Vegas existed. I was going to meet them soon. Praise God, that seemed right.
More worries. What if the TV show was just a TV show and this hole reflected a dream reality that borrowed from whatever it felt like?
Did I even understand what I just thought?
OK. Let me translate that.
Would Diego look like Guy Williams?
And here’s another She Who Was Me Shaking Thought. Would this Diego even BE Zorro? Could Zorro in this hole in the Yahoo world be Diego or someone else, completely throwing me off my game and anything I knew about the world I found myself in?
Would I know Zorro, the way I had always known Zorro?
Now, just a dad-burned minute, I thought, relapsing into Hoss speak. If I am going to have a fantasy experience about being Magdalena in a non historical Disney based Zorro setting, can it be something on the order of a fantasy I would have? I mean if Some Mysterious Force had gone to all the trouble of getting me here, contact lenses and all. And looking like Catherine Zeta Jones, thank you.
And yet.
Did I want to be the TV Magdalena, after all? Wasn't it good that things were a little off kilter?
Magdalena herself had a miserable destiny. As the Wise MaryAnn wrote once:
“Diego did forgive Anna Maria. Diego is an extremely forgiving man. He forgives Sgt. Garcia repeatedly. He forgives Ricardo (who didn't, in my opinion, deserve it). He forgives Senora Tolendano. In fact, the only one he doesn't forgive entirely is Magdalena.”
I had come back to Zorro-land as Magdalena, the only person Diego could not forgive, and I would wonder why Zorro didn’t let me die.
Thinking that, I thought, oh why not just let me die, now.
But I didn’t think that way for long. That can’t be what would happen. I felt Magdalena’s great sadness in me, and I wondered what made her sad. Did she need my help? Could I help her? Was this why I had been brought here?
I stood up, admired myself again, and left the room, wondering why I had come here. Why hadn’t MaryAnn, who thought Magdalena the most interesting, fabulous Zorro heroine, been brought back in my pretty shoes? She might have been a better choice for this white hole adventure than me.
Couldn’t I be Moneta? I could be a good Moneta. I’d written two stories about her.
Or Anna Maria?
Oh, not her. If I were her, I wouldn’t be able to give myself a good kick.
Replenished by that humor, I prepared myself to hear what my “father” had to say to me that was so important it would come before dinner.
Before the dinner before the day when I would meet Diego de la Vega and, leaning back against a tree and looking up at him, welcome his lips on mine.
Tough noogies, MaryAnn.
Come on, Fantasy, I thought. Please be mine!
And this WAS real. Because I WAS hungry!
