Finding Mrs. Ford

by Deborah Goodrich Royce

  Susan had never seen a torn car before. Annie just laughed when asked about its deplorable condition, repeating what her stepfather told her: The Corvette Stingray was made of fiberglass, thus had the curious ability to tear, rather than dent like normal cars.

  If possible, the disarray of the interior of the car managed to exceed its exterior. Annie kept all manner of items in it: clothing, shoes, makeup, and a large array of drinking glasses. These she carried out of Frankie’s at the end of a shift and dropped on the floor when she finished consuming one of her innumerable cranberry juices.

  The effect was dizzying. As the car lurched through traffic—Annie drove the same way she walked—the glasses rolled first one way, then the other, pausing as the car halted, then continuing on in their ongoing, tinkling motion. Susan offered to drive whenever the girls went anywhere together.

  Today, Annie stumbled out of the car—no easy exit even from a clean Corvette—wearing short shorts, a tube top, and flip-flops. At the front of the Bentleys’ ranch house, Annie rang the bell several times in quick succession and rattled the handle on the screen. Because of the heat, Susan had left the wooden door wide open with only the screen door locked.

  Susan rounded the corner with her book in hand—Stendhal’s, Le Rouge et Le Noir. Her outfit wasn’t much different from Annie’s but managed to cover more flesh.

  “All right, I’m here!”

  “Wanna go shopping?”

  Susan let Annie in. “I need to read this. I have to write about it before classes start.”

  “Oh God, are you serious? It’s such a nice day.”

  “Don’t you have any summer reading?”

  “Not really, no. I haven’t picked my major,” said Annie, evasive, as ever, when the subject of her college career came up. She sat briefly in a kitchen chair, then rose again immediately. “Can I use the bathroom?”

  “Use the one down the front hallway. You know where it is.” Susan tried to resume her reading, but, sitting in a stiff kitchen chair waiting for Annie’s return, she knew she’d lost the thread.

  “C’mon.” Annie was back. “Go with me. I’m bored, and I need to do something.” Annie play-tugged on Susan’s arm.

  “Maybe. As long as I drive.”

  “Nope. I’ve gotta get gas and I can’t be late tonight, so I need you to remember.”

  “You may remind me of my mother but I’m starting to feel like yours.”

  “C’mon, Mama, please?” Annie pulled Susan’s arm again.

  “You’re relentless! Let’s go out the back so I can leave the front door locked. My dad’s sleeping and his nurse isn’t here right now.” Susan ushered Annie out of the kitchen and around the side of the house.

  “I want to go to Winkleman’s, but I don’t want to see Nancy, so let’s go to Oakland Mall.” Annie said as she steered her Corvette into the street.

  “Annie, it’s awful, what we did to Nancy.”

  “Oh, come on! She had tons of girls there and she just needed to work out the schedule. Aren’t you glad we went to Frankie’s? Aren’t the tips great?”

  “Sure, the tips are good. You’ve got to admit, though, it’s a weird place. I know you’re dating Frankie, but don’t you feel like Alice going down the rabbit hole?”

  “I don’t know. I’m having fun. You’re too prim, Susan. You’re like some old librarian.”

  “I’m hardly a librarian when I put on my work outfit. I’m practically a Playboy bunny.”

  “Loosen up,” snapped Annie, oddly sharp-edged. The conversation had become strained, as many did these days. Annie shifted so precipitously from one topic to the next that Susan couldn’t find stable footing.

  “I’ll try.” Susan gave up trying and concentrated on the scenery passing by. Suburban sprawl—mile after mile of gas stations, medical buildings, and fast food places—was all she had to look at to keep from looking at Annie.

  “Aren’t you going to get gas?” Susan finally broke her own silence. She imagined them running out and being stuck at the side of the road.

  “See! I told you I needed you.” Annie reached over and playfully ruffled Susan’s hair with one hand as she whipped the car into a nearby gas station with the other.

  “Fill ‘er up!” Annie smiled at the attendant as she hopped out of the vehicle. “Do you have a bathroom?”

  “Yeah, on the left of the building,” answered the gangly kid.

  Annie retreated around the side of the garage. Susan turned the rearview mirror toward herself and worked to smooth down her hair.

  The attendant pumped the gas, washed the windows, and checked the oil. He did not return to the building but stood at attention waiting for Annie. Susan sat waiting as well. They both looked in the direction Annie had disappeared. They did not speak to each other.

  After an eternity, Annie returned. She paid the kid and flopped back into the driver’s seat, kicking a glass out of her way as she started the car.

  Susan searched her mind for a topic of conversation—any topic—about which they could have a pleasant conversation.

  “Annie, I have something to tell you. I mean, I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I’m kind of excited about a possibility.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?” Annie leaned forward to fiddle with the radio.

  “Well, I think I may have met someone—a guy who might be different. Or special. I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  Susan really wished Annie wasn’t driving. Each time she turned the radio dial, she synchronized both hands. The car kept making little coordinated lurches to the right.

  “Annie, are you listening to me?”

  “Huh? Of course, I’m listening to you. I’m just trying to put on some music. So, who do you like? One of Frankie’s brothers? We could double date!”

  “God, no! They’re definitely not my type!”

  “Well, you don’t have to act so superior!” Annie was still cranking the dial in tandem with the steering wheel and it was making Susan carsick.

  “Here,” Susan offered. “Let me do that.”

  Susan bent over to take charge of the radio. As she did so, she noticed a necklace that Annie was wearing, a pendant at the end of a long silver chain, a cheap key-chain style with little metal balls along the length of it. Until then, the pendant had been nestled between Annie’s breasts. Somewhere between the bathroom and the car, it had spilled out to dangle down the front of her tube top. Susan squinted at it, not quite sure what it was.

  Then it became clear, all at once, like in a magic act, when one thing turns out to be another thing, entirely. The pendant revealed itself to be a coke vial. Amber glass, black plastic screw-on lid with a little spoon attached inside. In the sunlight, Susan could see that the vial was about half full of white power, the spoon hanging down into the middle of it.

  Here was the key to the map. Annie’s extremes of personality since coming to work at Frankie’s were cast in a new light. The highs, the lows, were obviously cocaine induced! Susan didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. Annie had become erratic. She’d become capricious and even paranoid. She must have been doing a lot of cocaine. Was Frankie her supplier?

  But that didn’t make any sense. Cocaine was not an asset to Annie’s personality. Even Susan, as easy-going as she was, was finding it hard to cope with her unpredictability and intensity. She could guess that this wouldn’t be amusing to a man like Frankie, who might like his women unchallenging. Maybe Annie was buying it herself? That was a more likely scenario.

  Annie quickly grabbed the vial and dropped it back into its resting place, hidden once again by the striped elasticized fabric stretching across her bust. Cozy little vial, all tucked in. She cut a glance over at Susan and laughed.

  “Jesus Christ, Annie!” Susan surprised herself with the anger that welled out of her.

  “Oh, fuck you, Susan! You’re so high and mighty. You’re working at a disco too, babe. And you’ve got your own little secrets you keep.”<
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  Annie hadn’t ever spoken to Susan like that. She’d been churlish but had never mounted a direct attack.

  “I will never tell you another secret!” Susan gasped. “Ever!”

  “Who cares?” Annie snapped back at her.

  “You know what? I want to go home. Take me home now.” Annie kept driving toward the mall, increasing Susan’s agitation. “I mean it, Annie. Turn the car around!”

  At Annie’s lack of response, Susan repeated, “Now!”

  Precipitously, Annie whipped to the left and made a complete U-turn in the middle of Fourteen Mile Road, across two lanes heading west, the middle turn lane and both lanes going the opposite way. She looked neither to the right nor the left, not in front of her and not in her rearview mirror. Brakes and tire squeals were heard on all sides of the spinning Corvette while inside the car, several glasses vaulted over the transmission tunnel to land on Susan’s feet.

  “Are you crazy?” Susan didn’t know if she should grab the wheel or crouch down on the floorboards. She kicked a glass forward only to have it bounce back, hard, onto her foot. Pain and rage overtook her, and she screamed again, “Are you totally crazy?”

  Miraculously, within moments, it became apparent that they hadn’t been hit. And soon, it also became evident that there were no sirens—ambulance or police. Annie could have killed them both, could have landed them in jail, but they had somehow escaped this stunt unscathed. Susan was livid. She opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, and shut it again. The girls drove silently back to Susan’s house where Annie hit the curb at full force.

  Susan fought with the door before she could get out of the worthless Corvette, scattering glasses as she did so. She slammed it hard, stomped up the drive and turned to see Annie peel off—leaving one, lone highball glass spinning, unbroken, on the pavement.

  22

  Saturday, August 11, 1979

  Like a fata morgana, the molecules that were Sammy Fakhouri coalesced in Susan’s peripheral vision. As was his custom, he arrived at Frankie’s with someone, presumably a Chaldean, and always the same man. Apart from the night of Susan and Sammy’s first conversation, Sammy was rarely alone. On this particular night, Susan had just turned from the service bar, tray loaded with drinks, when she saw Sammy and his companion enter. It was clear that he saw her, too, and she reddened. When he smiled, she fumbled her tray.

  Susan watched Sammy now, as he moved across the floor. Like most of the men who frequented Frankie’s, Sammy wore polyester pants and shirts, and black was his color of choice. That color made him look taller and the fabric gleamed in the lights.

  Ironically, it was the advent of all types of synthetics—Ban-Lon, Dacron, Qiana—that had ruined Susan’s father. Elton had owned several dry cleaners scattered in the northern suburbs. Even the working classes dry-cleaned their clothes until that ended with Wash-and-Wear.

  Elton had lost his business and his eyesight all in the same year—the year that Susan was twelve. Life in the Bentley family got hard and it got there fast. It was the bleakness of it that had undermined her mother, the unrelieved dreariness of those years that brought her to despair. There was no exit until one day there was. A heavy smoker, her lung cancer was stage four when discovered, treatments were ineffective, and it was soon over. She wasn’t even forty.

  Then the world grew still.

  They coexisted, Susan and Elton, moving wordlessly around the house. It was only when Maggie was gone that it became clear that she had been the voice, the life, the spark of their family. Susan and her father were quiet, introverted people and silence soon engulfed them. Like the castle in Sleeping Beauty in the hundred years when the princess slept and the briars encased it, the Bentley household retreated into itself. Susan felt an invisible wall rise around them, shielding them from the world.

  She had her routine, like all teenage girls, and she plodded through it day after day: school and homework, homework and school. She saw a boy, Todd. They went to movies. Films, like books, excited her more than her own life managed to do. She was a dreamy, fanciful girl, living alone with an old man, untouched by her sallies into the outside world. Susan had come to rely upon, to hide behind, that wall.

  “Beauty.”

  “Beauty!”

  “Et alors, ma belle? Are you alive? Are you awake? Are you here?”

  Susan blushed when she realized that Sammy had been trying to get her attention.

  “I’m sorry! I was a million miles away.”

  “I see that. May I introduce you to my cousin, Jacob?”

  “Oh!” Susan thrust out her free hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Enchanté,” Jacob gallantly raised her hand to kiss it. “And might you tell me your name?”

  “Susan. I’m sorry, I should have said that.”

  “Susan,” interjected Sammy. “It means ‘graceful lily’ in Hebrew.”

  “How did you know that?” Susan asked, amazed.

  “Excuse me.” Jacob lifted her hand a second time and turned back to Sammy. “Salut, mon vieux. Monsieur Frenchy.” He grabbed Sammy by the shoulders and kissed him three times: cheek, cheek, and cheek. Sammy shoved him playfully and Jacob moved off.

  “How did you know that?”

  “What?”

  “The meaning of my name.”

  “Ah, chérie, I’m from the Middle East. We learn a little of many languages there. Actually, I’m joking. I looked it up.”

  Susan blinked for a moment then laughed.

  “But, Susan,” Sammy continued, “is rather a simple name for such a complicated girl.”

  “What makes you think I’m complicated?”

  “You seem to be here but not here.”

  “I think I’d better take your drink order.” Susan knew she’d been standing far too long in one spot solving riddles. Sergeant Sherry could pass by at any moment and give her a demerit.

  “Would you like to hear my story?” Sammy asked her straight out.

  “I…” she hedged. Was she getting in over her head?

  “You’ve asked me several questions,” he went on. “And now I’m ready to answer.”

  “Well.” She hoped she would not come to regret this. “Yes. I think I would.”

  “Then you may get me a rum and coke now, and I will tell you my story later. What time do you get off?”

  “Closing time is always two.”

  “Then at two, we will go to the beautiful and elegant Denny’s Restaurant next door.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “But the price, my beauty, is dear.”

  “I see.”

  “It is not what you think.”

  “I have a pretty good imagination.”

  “Imagination is a key that unlocks many doors.”

  Susan laughed. “You speak in parables.”

  “I want your story, as well.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You make it sound easy. I think it might not be so easy for you to tell things about yourself.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “You see more than you say.”

  At this, Susan laughed again. “You really do sound like some kind of gypsy.”

  “Maybe that’s what I am.” Sammy laughed with her. “I’ll take that drink now.”

  For the first time in a very long time, the castle walls were coming down.

  23

  Sunday, August 12, 1979

  At 2:15 on Sunday morning, Susan stepped out of the front door of Frankie’s. The night was dark and hazy, the moon waning from its peak on Wednesday, with the first hint of chill in the air. Summer would soon be over.

  She had changed from her uniform into jeans, a white V-neck sweater and white tennis shoes. She carried her heels and work clothes in an old Bonwit Teller bag, tattered and taped at the corners. Its sprigs of purple and blue violets were jumbled with green leaves and stems, as though little bouquets had been gathered on a white sheet, tossed up in the air and then painted where
they dropped, facing every which way.

  Susan held onto this bag, and a hatbox like it, as little talismans connecting her to her mother. Maggie had left Susan her pearls, her Longines watch, and her diamond rings. For Susan, though, the Bonwit Teller bag was her Madeleine, the item that, without fail, conjured the memory of her mother—the look, the feel, the smell of the way things were, before they weren’t that way anymore.

  It wasn’t exactly the shopping that had lodged itself in Susan’s sense memory. It wasn’t the acquisition of material goods that made her feel temporarily less vulnerable and exposed. Susan and her mother had frequented stores like Bonwit Teller not so much to shop, but as an act of willful shapeshifting. They liked themselves and each other better in the sealed and pristine environment of a luxury department store. It wasn’t reality and that was the appeal of it. Reality had lost its charms.

  When Maggie fell ill, the otherworldliness of these outings intensified. On their last trip, they had spent three quarters of an hour trying on hats. For those forty-five minutes, nothing else existed. Spring was coming, so many of the hats were pastel colored. Wide brims, narrow, felt, straw, grosgrain ribbons, flowers.

  Susan had made her mother buy a hat that day, navy straw with a very wide brim. Really, it was a summer hat—a hat made to block the sun’s rays. Maggie shouldn’t have bought that hat, as sick as she was. But it meant so much to Susan that she wouldn’t leave the store without it. Maggie yielded to her daughter’s will, then she died at the end of the month. She didn’t make the summer and she didn’t wear the hat.

  Susan never wore the hat, either. She had no affection for it. It was stuffed in a closet, unloved and unvisited. The box it came in, however, she’d used to store old journals, scraps of poems and stories she had written. Like the bag, it was torn and taped. The seams had come unstuck and Susan had wound masking tape around the inside edges, pushing it in with her fingers, pressing it flat, holding the box together.

  In the parking lot, Susan paused with the bag on her arm, slowly scanning for Sammy. Other than a few stragglers, cars that had been parked in the same spots all summer, the lot was empty.