She’s become more adept at makeup. Swivels out her flat-topped tube of Red Flame. Draws on semisymmetrical cupid’s-bow lips. Blots them, folds them in until all that’s left is a thin slash of red, then out they pop, bright and shiny as a cinnamon heart. She smiles. She does like the way she looks.
She knows by now to greet Binky in her lingerie. She enjoys the ritual, sliding black stockings over freshly shaved legs, centering the seams exactly from heel to thigh. Bending over to shimmy her breasts into the lacy cups of the bra. Turning to admire the contrast of taut black panties arching above the smooth white cheeks of her butt. She loves the transformation these simple acts create. They make her feel like a showgirl.
She hears the doorbell, peeks out the window for a verifying glimpse of gray hat, opens the door just enough to let him in. She poses, flaunting the bits of black beneath her flannel robe, which she then lets fall in a heap at her feet.
Binky drops his mailbag with a thunk. He grabs both cheeks of Lorena’s thinly clad bottom, pulls her to him, and gives her a long, breath-sucking kiss. He leans back to admire her. His gaze meanders leisurely over her lace-clad bosom, her skimpy see-through panties, her garter-clamped black stockings. It stops with an almost audible screech at her shoes.
“What are those?” he croaks, backpedaling. Instead of high heels, she’s wearing a pair of big-bowed, shiny black tap shoes.
“Surprise!” She gives him a sly smile. With a hip-slinging pirouette and a crook of her finger, she clickety-clacks up the stairs. “Well?” she says, looking down at him. “You coming?”
“Uh. Yeah.” He follows her, slowly undoing his tie. He looks worried.
“Now you just lie down and relax,” Lorena purrs. She unbuttons Binky’s shirt, unties his thick-soled oxfords, slides his double-pleated postman’s pants over his black nylon socks. She places the hat at the foot of the bed. Stripped down to his Jockey shorts and socks, he props himself stiffly against the pillow on Lorena’s side of the bed and watches her over the tops of his toes.
She carefully slides a lime-green record over the fat spindle of the 45 player by her bed. The record drops, the plastic arm reaches over, and the speaker wails the first note--WooWoo--of Chattanooga Choo Choo.
“Ooooo,” sighs Lorena with a provocative wiggle. Her right foot goes into palsy, tap-tap-tapping against the wood floor. Her left foot follows and she is into her routine, arms flailing, feet tapping, torso contorting in a thigh-jiggling frenzy. Binky looks dazed.
She mouths the lyrics, reaches for Binky’s cap, pops it on her head, anchors it with a perky pat. Tapping nonstop, she twistsher arms behind her back and unhooks her bra.
Binky, suddenly alert, sits up. She rips the bra off, flings it to Binky, who misses the catch as it flies by him and lands on the pleated lampshade, almost knocking it over. She turns her back to him—teasing, tapping, shock waves quivering the cheeks of her buttocks—then twirls forward again to cup her breasts and play peekaboo with her nipples.
Binky is now on his knees. “I never knew you were such a good dancer,” he says, his voice breaking.
She gives him a cartoon wink as she sings along. Now she’s bumping, grinding, a snapping tapping whirlwind of syncopated rhythm. She throws in a few moves she’s seen Cassie do, that backward-forward step, some up-in-the-air arm movements with a twist of the hips. Binky leans forward, grabs at her crotch, but she dips away, tapping madly, faster, faster …
“Mom?”
“Cassie!” Lorena freezes in midtap.
Cassie stands in the doorway, pale, unmoving. Looks at Binky, looks at Lorena. “What’s going on?”
Lorena whips the cap off her head to cover her bare breasts. “Why are you home?”
“I quit my dancing lessons.” Cassie is staring at Lorena now. “Who’s that? What are you doing?” Her voice ripples around the edges, ruffling and stretching like a crepe-paper streamer.
Lorena edges toward her robe, hastily ties it around her, tosses the hat to Binky, who has slid off the edge of the bed and is sitting on the floor, pulling on his pants. All Lorena can see is the top of his pomaded hair and she gapes at it as if expecting words to balloon overhead like a comic strip, words that would excuse her, words that would somehow make what happened vanish, go away, never have happened at all.
But no words are coming from Binky. Just some grunts as he leans over to tie his shoes, and some indecipherable mutters. He stands, claps his hat on his head, and, shirt still unbuttoned over his pale chest, smiles feebly at Cassie as he edges by her in the doorway. “Gotta run,” he says, and Lorena hears him bound down the stairs and out the door.
The record wails its final note before Lorena drags the player’s arm across it in a teeth-chilling shriek.
She can’t look at Cassie, so she stares at the record she’s removed from the spindle. “I was just … um … practicing my routine,” she says to the record. Shut up shut up, she says to herself, but she can’t, she has to fill the silence in the room with words, lots of words, any words, it doesn’t matter.
“I know it looks funny but that’s my costume, maybe it’s a little daring, I want to do something, you know, different, and I just wanted to get someone’s opinion and he just happened to be here when I was trying out everything, so I thought …”
She looks at Cassie’s still face.
“… so I thought …” What did she think? She feels as if someone took a big eraser and wiped out her mind.
When Cassie turns without uttering one word and slams the door of her own room behind her, one thing surfaces in Lorena’s brain like the floating question in a Magic 8 ball: Now what?
19
CASSIE
I AM LYING on my bed, staring at my brown wall. It’s like a movie screen. On it I see Mom, dancing. Her behind is shaking like Jell-O. She’s naked, except for see-through underpants and stockings. And tap shoes. And a hat.
It’s his hat. The mailman’s. He’s watching. His eyes go googly as Mom’s titties bounce all around and he reaches out and tries to grab at her.
I feel like I’m going to throw up.
I close my eyes but I still see them, Mom and the mailman. Mom’s mouth moving, talking to me. Shiny red lips, twisting. Lips, teeth, the pink tip of her tongue. Puppet mouth.
I hear her. Knocking. I can’t move. I feel heavy, heavy. Lying on my side, staring at the wall, sunk in the bed like quicksand. Knock, she goes. Knock. Knock. “Cassie?”
The doorknob jiggles. I locked it. She could open it with a nail file but she doesn’t.
“Cassie?”
I don’t answer. I’m not here. Go away. I’m not here anymore.
I know about you, I feel like saying. You think I don’t know these things. You think because you gave me that dumb book about menstruation, that’s all I need to know. Well, I know more than that. I know all about sex.
I see lots of it on TV.
Not your TV. My TV.
Naked ladies. I see them. Men touch them, touch their titties, get on top of them. Do sex with them. Last week I saw that on test-pattern TV, saw the way it’s done. I never saw that before.
Before, I saw people just talking about doing sex. Like those shows where leaders get the audience and people on the stage to yell at each other. I wonder if any of those people have a mother who did sex with the mailman.
“Cassie!” She hasn’t gone away. “Cassie, I know you’re in there.”
I still don’t say anything.
“We have to talk. It’s not what you think.”
Oh, yes it is.
DAD MAKES ME come down to dinner. When I won’t open my door, he unlocks it with the nail file. “What’s the matter with you?” he says. His face is pulled into a knot. When he gets angry, his neck turns red. Right now it’s the color of a kickball.
“Wash your hands.” He steers me into the bathroom, turns on the faucet with a yank, watches while I spin the sliver of Ivory between my palms until it foams with gray bubbles. Before I’ve even drie
d my hands, he’s shoving me out the door, growling “Get yourself to the table.”
He’s mad at Mom, mad at me, mad at everybody. When he gets like that, I know something bad happened at work. I scuff downstairs, sit down, stare at my plate. I don’t want to look at Mom but there she is across the table from me, looking scraggly.
All her lipstick is gone, face scrubbed white as my plate. Puffy eyes, pink and ugly. Ratty bathrobe, those dead-squirrel slippers I hate.
“No biscuits?” Dad says to Mom. “What’s this?” He pokes at some stiff pink slabs dealt out on a platter. “Spam? For dinner?”
“I don’t feel good,” Mom says. She doesn’t look at me. “I think I’ve got the flu.”
“Great. Don’t breathe on me.” Dad stabs a piece of Spam with his fork, flings it on his plate. “I guess it would be too much to ask if you had any bread.”
Mom gives him her beagle-dog look, shuffles into the kitchen, comes out with half a loaf of Wonder bread. “Here,” she says, and flops it on the table.
“Mustard,” Dad growls.
Back in she goes, comes out with the French’s, clonks that on the table. “Anything else before I sit down?” she asks in a prissy voice. If I talked to her like that I’d get smacked.
Dad doesn’t say anything. Forks the Spam onto a slice of bread, paints a streak of mustard across it, folds it like an envelope, and bites it. Chews, jaw pumping up and down, cheek bulging, prickly and stubbly. Swallows. I see his Adam’s apple jump, imagine a pink jumble of Spam and bread going down his stomach tube like in my science book, wiggling down and down till it hits bottom. He stares at his plate, throws what’s left of his sandwich on it.
“I got a good mind to quit,” he says.
“Quit what?” Mom’s eyes go big.
“Work.”
“Oh.” She takes a breath. “Why?”
“Foreman’s got it in for me. Knows that I shoulda had his job, knows that if it wasn’t for this gimp leg of mine I’d be his boss.” He picks up the sandwich again, jams the meat back in with his finger before he takes another bite. “Know what he did?” Dad says, still chewing. I can see the soft white bread mushing in his mouth. “Called me an asshole!”
Mom’s eyes flicker over at me for a second, like I never heardthat word or anything, like I never hear it all the time on my test-pattern shows. “Watch your language,” she mutters.
“Asshole. Right in front of everybody. Nobody calls me asshole,” he says. “I like to punch him out right then and there.”
“You hit him?” Mom says, eyes getting bigger.
“Nah,” Dad says. “But I coulda.” He folds another slab of Spam into bread, bites it in half. “Maybe I can get transferred, just get away from the guy.” His eyes get droopy and his chewing slows down until it stops and he looks down at his plate. He looks like he might cry.
“What did you do? To make him mad?” Mom asks.
“Nothing!” Dad’s head snaps up and he slams the table with his fist. “Not a goddamn thing.” He shoves his chair away from the table and points his finger at Mom. “Why is everything always my fault?”
BAM goes the front door and Mom and I sit there staring at each other. She blinks and two fat drops race each other down her white-plate cheeks. Her nose is drippy, too, and I can’t look at her anymore. I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. I push myself away from the table and go into the living room. I flick on the TV. The Lone Ranger is on. I wish I was Tonto. I like saying “Kemo sabe.” Kemo sabe, kemo sabe, kemo sabe.
What happens to other kids when their moms and dads fight? I must be the only one. I don’t know anybody whose mom dances naked for somebody in her bedroom or whose dad is all the time mad about work. Part of me wants to tell Dad about Mom and what I saw, and the other part is scared he’ll find out. The way he’s been acting lately, he might do what they say on the news that guy, Dr. Sheppard, did: kill his wife and pretend somebody else did it.
If I try to remember when this Mom-and-Dad trouble began, it seems like it all started around the time we got the TV. That’s when Mom began talking about how she could’ve been a dancer, how she could’ve been famous. That’s when she started to practice her stupid routine. About that same time, Dad was gettingquieter, watched TV a lot. I thought he was mad at me but then I realized it wasn’t just me, it was everybody: Mom, Delia, people at work.
Before the TV, Dad and I used to play checkers after the dinner dishes were cleared off the kitchen table. While Mom did the dishes, we’d turn the radio up loud so we could hear over the noise she made banging pots and pans in the sink. Sprinkled between the clang of Mom’s pots and the rumbly voice of the Great Gildersleeve were the splash of running water, the tick-tick-tick sound of Dad sucking on a licorice twist, the click-clack of checkers being moved around the board. It all made a kind of music. Steam from the sink settled like fog all around us and it seemed like we were floating on a soft and singing cloud.
Now I remember times like that and wish I could get them back. I didn’t know it then, but that’s when I must have been happy.
20
LORENA
IT’S RAINING HARD, one of those early summer storms that boils up over the water and races inland. Gusts of soggy air rush through open windows that Lorena runs around slamming shut. The whole house feels damp, smells musky as a stray dog.
She’s making biscuits. The dough feels saturated, leaden under her palms. She works in silence, the only sound the static of the rain. Her fingers absently work the malleable lump, kneading it over and over until it looks old and used and gray as the sky. She stares out the window as she works, seeing, not the sheets on the line snapping like sails unfurled in a storm, but Cassie. Cassie, her face blank and unyielding to Lorena’s yammering excuse for what she and Binky were doing in the bedroom.
Cassie is at Molly’s. She left early in the morning without saying good-bye and hasn’t been back all day. Lorena had to run after her to ask where she was going. “Molly’s,” Cassie said, andthat’s all she said. Lorena supposes she’ll have to call there to tell her to come home for dinner. She doesn’t know if Cassie will.
Lorena has finished assembling the casserole for dinner, a Betty Crocker recipe she cut out of Life magazine: Dutch Pantry Pie. She had rifled her shelves to find something for dinner, something she could make without having to go to the A&P. She couldn’t deal with the A&P right now. Too many memories. Thankfully, she had all the ingredients she needed for the Dutch Pantry Pie: leftover Spam from last night. Carnation evaporated milk. Velveeta cheese. A couple of potatoes. And Pete will have his damn biscuits.
Her mind races as she pummels the dough, skips right past too-painful thoughts of Cassie to Pete. What’s wrong at work? What’s wrong with him? And Binky. He hasn’t called. Not that she expects him to call, or even wants him to call. But why hasn’t he called?
The doorbell startles her. Somebody’s at the door in this weather? She wipes a circle on the fogged-up window, peers out.
Max?
She opens the door, grabs it as a gust yanks it away. Max is dripping, hair curled in commas across his forehead. His mustache droops like an old mop. His paint-smeared dungarees and work shirt are soaked through and cling to his beefy body.
“Got caught in the rain,” he says, shivering.
“I see.” She doesn’t know whether to invite him in, whether he’ll shake off the water like a dog.
“I was walking over to talk to you about Cassie when it started to pour.”
Cassie? “Come on in,” she says.
“I’m soaked. Got a towel?”
She runs upstairs, returns with a couple of ratty beach towels. He stands on one, wraps the other around him. “I played hooky from work today so I could paint,” he says between chattering teeth. “Cassie and Molly are at our house playing Monopoly.”
Lorena nods.
“I overheard them talking,” he says.
Oh, God.
“Normally I wouldn’t
pass on to you the harmless little conversations I overhear, but I think this is something you need to know about.”
She can barely understand him. His teeth are clattering like castanets. “You’d better dry off,” she says, hoping to delay this talk. “Go on up to the bathroom and take off those wet things. I’ll give you a robe. Want coffee? Hot tea?”
“You got some Scotch?” He lumbers up the stairs, trailing a glistening wetness behind him like an overgrown snail. She can hear the suction of his wet sandals flapping on each step.
Robe. Robe. Her gray flannel robe would be too small for him. She rifles through the closet for the tartan plaid robe she gave Pete several birthdays ago. He never wears it. Does he still have it? She finds it crumpled on a hook in the back of the closet and hands it to Max through the bathroom door. He emerges, struggling to stretch the robe around his girth. Judging from its electrified appearance, his hair has been vigorously rubbed with the towel, wiry curls all whichaway, haloing his head.
“Much better,” he sighs. She sees his wet clothes hung to dry over the shower-curtain rod.
She hands him a Welch’s jelly glass half-full of Scotch. Pete doesn’t drink Scotch. He’ll never miss it. “This okay?”
“Perfect.” He takes a noisy gulp. “Aaaah.” He leans back into the couch, wiggles his bare furry toes. Lorena perches on the edge of a chair, one foot tapping nervously.
Max studies Howdy Doody’s embossed face on the jelly glass, thrown into contrast against the amber fluid he swirls in a slow circle. Takes another swig. “Cassie has a wonderful imagination,” he begins.
Lorena nods.
“Sometimes when she describes things she’s made up, it’s almost as if they’re real.” Max squints at Howdy’s face, doesn’tlook at Lorena. “Like those shows she says she sees on the test pattern.”
“Oh, those.” She rolls her eyes.
“You don’t think she really sees them.”
“Do you?” She gives him an incredulous look.
“Remember the things I told you she saw—that Ronald Reagan was the president and that she knew about the new integration law before it happened—those things that made me wonder?”
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