It’s the way he says “at work” that makes me understand that he wasn’t expecting the call, and that it wasn’t a fun call. It was a call about me, and it wasn’t good news.
“Really?” I ask.
“I landscaped a yard over on Seaspray Lane about a year ago. Nice woman. Retired. Home all day. Basically a busybody, but who can blame her? See something, say something. Everybody and his brother’s got an eye out for everybody else these days.”
Okay, now he’s torturing me, giving me way too much information and trying to break me down so that I’ll either stab him in the hand with my fork or shout, “What the hell happened?” But I don’t do either of these things. Instead, I calmly continue shoving moo shu around my plate.
“She saw you inside the house next door to hers,” Doug says in a flat tone that’s meant to imply nothing more than just the plain facts. And then for his big finish, he adds, “In the company of some other kids.”
Here he waits to see how I’ll respond. I don’t. I look up at the ceiling and adopt a distracted expression, as though I’m trying to recall where I was earlier in the day. I pretend I can’t remember.
“Really?” I ask, which is a signal that I don’t know what he’s talking about, and he’ll have to provide more information before I say another word.
“Really,” he says with certainty. “She saw you break into the house. Well, not actually break in, because apparently the key wasn’t hard to find. But she knew you didn’t belong in there. So she called me. Did you take anything?”
“What?” I ask, stalling.
“Did you steal anything?”
“Whoa. Who do you think I am?” I ask, adding as much indignation to my voice as I can find on short notice. This seems to cover the issue without having to flatly deny the fact that I have, indeed, been inside that house.
“No. That’s not the question,” Doug says, placing his elbows on the table and leaning toward me. “The question is not, Who do I think you are. The question is, Who do you think you are? That’s what I want you to tell me.”
We look at each other and wait. Neither of us wants to be the first to blink, so we just sit there, staring. I never noticed that his eyes have the same thin blue nimbus edging around the pupils as mine. Genetics. What else have I inherited from him, I wonder?
Finally, he looks down at his plate and says, “I told her that she must’ve mistaken you for some other kid. But just to shut her up, I drove over there. That’s when I saw you coming out the house.”
I Seen Stuff Happen
As punishment, I’m forbidden, until further notice, to hang out with the members of the Virgin Club. And I’m being forced to stick by Doug’s side day and night until he figures out what to do. This could take forever. He says that he’s mulling things over. He’s not about to ground me, he says, because he knows from previous experience that if he leaves me at home alone I’ll just end up sitting in my room all day, strumming my guitar and not washing my hair. With the summer winding down, he also knows I’m not about to find another job. Then presto, he gets an idea: why not take matters into his own hands and make my life miserable all by himself? Having your son lug equipment around behind you and then clean up after you does not make you a professional documentary filmmaker. But for Doug it will do for now. I’m now busy trailing him as he stalks after various people whom he feels are perfect for his reel.
One of my jobs is to attach the microphone to those people. I have to lean in close, fiddle with their blouse or buttons or shirt collar or jacket.
“You out here looking for a miracle like the rest of us?” asks a big pink woman from Kansas who has a determined smile and two of the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m fiddling with the mic, and I can see her bra peeking through the opening in her cotton blouse. I try not to look.
“I’m not,” I tell her. “I’m out here because of my dad. He’s the one who needs a miracle.”
She nods her head, and the fluff of her hair bobs in time. Her little crablike fingers reach out, and she gives my forearm a quick understanding squeeze. Her fingernails are painted hot pink, and there’s something about the color of the polish and the paleness of her flesh smack up against my own brownish arm that makes me realize for the first time all summer that I must look like a kid who lives in Florida full-time. Somewhere along the way I’ve lost my ghostly, New York pallor and have adopted the sun-kissed patina of a golden boy on permanent holiday. Although still a denizen of my own private darkness, I am now a full-fledged citizen of the Sunshine State.
“I know,” she says, and then bites her lips to keep herself from brimming over with emotion. Her eyes are welling with tears. “That’s how it was with me. I came out here for my son. I thought he was the one who needed a miracle. Turns out, I was the one.”
I don’t bother to tell her that she’s got it all wrong.
“Guess every one of us is in need of some kind of a miracle,” is how she sums it up. And then she turns her attention to the inside of her purse, rummaging for a tissue that will wipe the single tear that’s rolled down her cherry cheek.
“What happened to him?” I ask. “I mean, your son.”
“He developed Lou Gehrig’s disease,” she said as evenly as she could manage. “Do you know what that is?”
“It’s ALS, isn’t it?”
“You’re a very smart young man,” she said, narrowing her eyes and smiling at me. “That’s exactly what it is. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Thanks to the BVM, we got two extra years together. But of course, our Gary isn’t with me anymore. He’s gone on.”
Shadowing Doug is no picnic. I have to wake up at the crack of dawn, and I’m so tired throughout the day that I sometimes literally fall asleep on my feet. I wake with a jerk when my head flops forward. I make the mistake of asking Doug how long I’m going to have to endure this punishment, and he looks at me long and hard, as though he is the one who is being punished. He delivers a speech about how this whole situation is my own damn fault and could have been avoided and how I am not to play the victim if I know what’s good for me. I am learning to keep my mouth shut and trying to burn a hole through Doug’s head by concentrating all of my anger through my eyeballs.
Yesterday, we ran into Angela, Des, and Crispy by the parking field, and Doug went ballistic. He started yelling at them from a distance of about twenty feet, telling them to back off or he’d be forced to call the police and get a restraining order against them. He told them they were a bad influence. I was mortified. Almost immediately, I received a flurry of text messages telling me not to worry and to just give a shout when Doug was acting human again.
It’s been a couple of days of this routine, and today I’m not even putting up a fight—which I guess was Doug’s plan all along. He’s managed to wear me down, and now I just go with whatever is happening, drift from thing to thing as if I’m in a dream. But somewhere along the way, something changed. I guess I actually started to listen to what people were saying when Doug asked them if they believed in the Blessed Virgin or what had inspired them to get in the car and travel several hundred miles from home. Each person has an amazing story, full of reversals and plenty of tragic detail. But no matter how much heartbreak they’ve endured, how much loss or sickness they’ve survived, every person is possessed with a crazy kind of hope.
There was this one woman from Idaho whose name was Tami. We interviewed her earlier today. She drove all the way to Jupiter because her husband was suffering from some incurable disease, and she had a problem with her hand, though what the problem was I wasn’t sure. She wore a Bon Jovi T-shirt and big round glasses. Her face was wide open and friendly, and her skin looked as though it had been worn thin, pinched, the result of many generations of wind and worry.
“To a lot of folks, we’re just a big joke,” she said into the camera as she fussed with her hedge of hair. “Bunch of women and children and cripples who got nothing much better to do than run around from state to state in hopes
of getting themselves a miracle. But I think it’s more the energy that gets us out. It’s like a good-luck zone that we can step into. For free! And you can feel it. Everyone can. It’s all forward motion. Maybe it’s ‘hope’ charging the air particles and making things move and heal. I dunno. I ain’t no scientist. But I seen stuff happen. I have.”
That’s when she held up her hand. Even without looking over my shoulder, I knew Doug was zooming in for a close-up of the hand. To me, it looked as regular as any hand I’d ever seen on any middle-aged woman. But Tami offered it as though it was made of diamonds.
“Look,” she said, her voice filled with wonder. “Just look at that hand. Will ya?”
Even though I don’t believe in the Blessed Virgin Mary, I have to admit that there’s something happening in the hearts and minds of the believers out here, something as plain as the back of Tami’s bum hand.
I’ve just finished dinner, and Doug has left the house without a word. I figure he’s meeting up with Mary Jo, but as usual we don’t talk about what he’s up to after hours. He just slips out. I’m thinking that since he never mentioned the fact that I’m grounded, maybe the whole thing has finally blown over. For a while, I just sit at the table listening to the house settle. I briefly consider checking in with the Wedding Archives or maybe listening to Bob Dylan, but somehow I can’t see the point.
I send Angela a text telling her to come over because Doug has left me alone and I don’t know when he’s coming back. I have so much to tell her … so much has happened. It’s a short text, but I try to communicate that something’s changed without spelling it all out. Not that long ago, this was my place, my safety zone, and the survival of the whole world depended on my ability to refuse visitors. Now I’m standing by the sliding-glass doors, waiting for Angela and hoping that we will lie down together on the seafoam-colored carpet and kiss.
Everything in the backyard is in its proper place—the hedge, the slope of the house next door, the scrabby patch of grass, the overly lush garden—but it’s all slicked in silver moonlight, giving every bit of it a diamond-like appearance. The breeze is madly tossing the palm fronds every which way, and bougainvillea blossoms are falling down onto the pavement like big red paper raindrops. Some of the hardier plants look to me as though they’re shivering from the cold, but this is Florida, and it’s just a warm night wind shaking everything to its roots. Overhead, the sky is heartbreakingly clear. A random cloud scuds by, and a few stars shine like dropped bits of glitter on a just-polished surface. I think about Pluto and pretend to pick it out in a sky flooded with light. It’s just up there, I think, doing its thing and unaware of its demotion.
“You’re late,” I say when Angela finally appears.
“Yeah,” she replies as she breezes past me. “But we came. And that’s got to count for something.”
“We?” I say.
“Yeah,” she replies with the trace of apology in her voice. “And hold on to your hair. Desirée’s cooked up a whole new plan. And we’re all involved.”
Desirée marches in, turns on her heels, gives me a peck on the cheek, and continues into the living room. She doesn’t look that happy to see me. But when Crispy enters, I realize that he’s the cause of her unhappiness. She scowls at him and says, “Go ahead and laugh. Go on. But you watch. See if you’re laughing when I win.”
“Win what?” I want to know. “What’s going on? What’d I miss?”
“You better sit down,” Angela tells me once we’re all gathered in the living room. “Our lives are about to change forever.”
I perch on the arm of the sofa and brace myself for some kind of news, and I try to imagine how my life will be forever altered. Nothing comes to mind. Crispy stretches out on the carpeted floor and stares up at the ceiling. Occasionally, he erupts in a guffaw, but I need details.
“What?” I’m dying to know.
“Okay, so the Virgin Club needs a new activity,” Desirée begins. “Breaking into houses is obviously a thing of the past. So the other day, when I was tying up the newspapers for recycling at that house on Sweet Bay, I saw this, tore it out, thought, Why not?”
She hands me a scrap of newspaper torn from the Jupiter Courier. It’s a boxed ad for a local contest.
Miss Jupiter Christian Teen Contest
Seeking Contestants! Young women of faith,
charm, courage, and patriotism,
dutiful to her family and church.
Ages 15 to 19
BE the TRUE Queen that you already are
In
God’s Kingdom!
You’ll be judged …
25% for your opening-number outfit
25% for evening wear
25% for biblical insight
25% for video presentation
Call 561-555-0124
“It’s because of all the attention the town’s getting,” Desirée continues. “I thought maybe I’d enter myself as a contestant.”
Crispy is on the floor literally rolling with laughter. The fact that Desirée gives him a sharp kick on the leg might disqualify her as a model Christian teen, but it’s just what the guy deserves for being such a flat-out jerk.
“Let her say her piece,” Angela chides.
For the next ten minutes, Desirée defends the pageant and the possibility of her participation. She explains how it works, who is eligible, and she describes in agonizing detail what she wants to be wearing when she’s crowned the winner. In an effort to convince us that the contest is worth it, she lists the prizes she could win (a scholarship to Florida College, public-speaking engagements, jewelry, and cosmetics), and she describes the places she could go (Miami, the Epcot Center, Tallahassee, Tampa). We aren’t that impressed. I suggest that she’d do better to enter a contest where the prizes include actual cash and perhaps a car. Desirée shakes her head and says that I’m missing the point. She tells me that it’s easy for me to make fun and pooh-pooh the whole idea, because I’ve plenty of opportunity in my life, but what does she have?
“Nothing. Except this.”
She stands up and presents herself to us as though she’s on an auction block.
“Look at me. I’m not that smart. Not smart like you guys. But I can dance and sing, and if I put my mind to it and wear my hair right, I can look like a million bucks. That ought to be worth something in this world, right?”
She tells us that she intends to go to college with the scholarship she’s going to win. After that, she’s going to keep one foot in the beauty circuit, compete at the state level, possibly even rise to become Miss Florida. She’s got everything all figured out, and there’s no sense trying to talk her out of it, because (a) this is what she wants, and (b) she’s going to take a big risk to get it. And what’s more, we are going to help her whether we want to or not. Why? Because we’re her friends, and that’s what friends are for.
Of course, she still needs to come up with the $175 application fee, a video presentation, an evening gown, a killer swim-suit, and a five-hundred-word essay on what Jesus means to her. But she’s passed the first test—we’re with her.
“I think it’s great,” Angela declares. “I really do. It fulfills both club requirements: (a) want something, and (b) take a risk. And the club needs a new challenge.”
Crispy raises his hand as if he’s in a Bible study class.
“Question: Why haven’t you mentioned Jesus? I mean, isn’t this supposed to be the Miss Jupiter Christian Teen Contest?”
“Oh, everybody knows I’m crazy about Jesus,” Desirée replies. “He’s my personal savior and all that. That’s where you guys come in. I need you to write me an essay that says it perfectly. But here—I’ve got my platform together.”
Platform?
She pulls a slip of paper out of her back pocket.
“Okay, I found this quote to use as a slogan for my campaign. Found it in the Bible, naturally. Ready? ‘Good works work good.’ ”
We stare at her blankly, but she doesn’t seem to n
otice, because she continues reading: “ ‘Charm is deceptive, and beauty fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gates.’ ”
When she looks up again, we are still staring, still blank.
“It’s from Proverbs,” she says meekly. And then she adds, “Good works work good. What do you think? I mean, as a campaign slogan.”
“Good works work well,” I say.
“What?” she asks.
“Work well.”
Angela leans in and gets Desirée’s attention by gently touching her forearm. By way of an explanation, she offers: “His mother was a poet.”
“Was she famous?” Desirée wants to know.
Admitting that my mother was never recognized as a genius in her field makes her seem like some kind of a loser. But Kat never cared about other people’s opinions of her or their assessment of her work. She understood that being a poet was something she’d been called to do, not something she called herself. She wasn’t in it for the success or for the fame or for the money. As she often said, “Being a poet isn’t a career; it’s a life.”
Thanks to a citywide program that employed local artists, Kat got a job teaching poetry in the public schools, mostly in the Bronx and Harlem, where poets were scarce. She convinced fifth and sixth graders that they had a third eye and then got them to write about what they saw with that invisible organ. She made them paper poetry crowns and had them speak their poems aloud like kings and queens. She gave them superpowers and coaxed their dreams out into the daylight of the classroom. She taught them to write and use language so they could express everything they felt for the rest of their lives. She encouraged them week after week, year after year, to describe the world into which they were born, the places they knew best, the people they loved. She made them the subject of their own sentences, she gave them verbs that had the power to move them out into the larger world, and taught them the difference between good and well.
Virgin Territory Page 10
