“Perfect,” says Lorena.
“Perfect? Perfect? You think the post office is going to think it’s perfect? My record was perfect. Not one day off, not one missed day, always on time, always there, rain, snow, sleet, whatever, I forget how it goes. And now this.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
Binky is silent, then, “Yeah?” he asks. “How’s that?”
“Remember in your truck? That little trick?”
“You mean, that thing with the rubber bands?”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” She lowers her voice to a purr. “Any time. Any place. You name it.”
She can almost hear him thinking. “Thursday,” he finally agrees. “In my car. On the ferry home.”
“It’s a deal.”
“WELL? DO YOU love it?” Lorena twirls for Delia in her new dress, an explosion of red poppies gathered at the waist by a wide red cinch belt. On her feet are new red shoes, three-and-a-half-inch heels, she tells Delia, three-and-a-half. She’s never worn such high heels before because they’d make her taller than Pete. Now that she’s left him, it doesn’t matter.
Delia surveys Lorena from her perch on her kitchen counter because there’s no place left to sit. Lorena’s clothes are scattered everywhere, over the couch, the chairs, even over the TV set, where she’s hung several pairs of stockings to check for runs against the light from the screen. She’s moved in with Delia—just temporarily, just until she can get herself together for her audition with Wally.
When she’s not shopping or undergoing hair transformation at the hands of Mr. Ralph, Lorena practices her routine, tapping away on Delia’s kitchen linoleum until its surface has become as pitted as the moon. Tappety tappety, she perfects her routine, tap tap tap, adds flourishes to the steps she learned from Cassie—the monkey step, the swimming step, that backward-forward sliding step. She doesn’t stop practicing until she hears “The Star-Spangled Banner” signal the end of the broadcast day and Delia call “Nighty-night” on her way to bed.
After three days of this, Lorena feels she’s ready. She leaves for Norfolk tomorrow on the early-morning ferry. She knows her costume for the audition itself is perfect. But … the dress. Will it do?
“It’s a great dress,” Delia says.
“So why do you look like you just ate a pickle?” Lorena twirls again. “Be honest. Is it too sexy? Should I wear something a little more … church-y to meet Wally?” She flips up the hem of the dress to reveal a crunchy crinoline, flirtatiously points the toe of one red-clad foot. “Maybe I shouldn’t dazzle him too much at first.” She fluffs out her newly dyed curls with Flame Red-lacquered fingernails that almost match her hair.
“I don’t know.” Delia is quiet, for Delia. She dangles her legs over the counter and studies Lorena.
“You hate it.” Lorena folds her arms and pouts. “I can tell. What is it? Too low-cut? Red’s not my color? What?”
“It’s not the dress.” Delia shifts uncomfortably on the hard countertop. “It’s just … this is such a big step. Leaving your family and all. I mean, it’s one thing to develop your talent. But … what about Cassie?”
Lorena’s pout deepens. “I’m not leaving leaving. I’ll come back for Cassie.” She releases the cinch belt, exhales with relief. “This could be my only chance to be discovered, to follow my star. Would you let opportunity pass you by?”
“What opportunity? My only talent is being able to type sixty words a minute.”
Lorena pulls her skirts up like a cancan dancer, gives a little kick with one black-stockinged leg. “Now don’t you go talking about yourself that way. You’ve got loads of talent. What about your art? That Twin Scotties painting you did for your bedroom, well, nobody would even guess it was from a kit.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“And that adorable little toilet-paper cover you crocheted for my birthday, the one that looks like a hat? You could go into business making those things, that’s how cute it looks sitting on my toilet tank.”
Delia ponders that possibility for a moment. “Nah,” she decides. “That’s not what I really want to do with my life.” She sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe if I had your talent, I’d do what you’re doing, leaving and all. But… I still think it would be hard to leave a kid, if I had one.”
“I told you, it’s Pete I’m leaving, not Cassie. If I don’t get away from him, I’ll wind up crazy as Lula.”
“Well,” Delia says after taking a deep breath, “as your very best friend, I got to be real honest with you. When you told me what happened last night with you and Pete and the gun, I thought to myself, Lorena’s gone bonkers. Nuts. Crazy as Lula.”
Lorena opens her mouth to protest, but Delia plows right on: “You coulda killed him, Lorena. If it wasn’t for Cassie, you’d be sitting in jail right now, wearing stripes ‘steada that fancy dress. How do you think Cassie feels with her family all broke up? And still, all you want to talk about is your stupid routine.”
“It’s not stupid!” Lorena says, lip quivering.
Delia looks contrite. “Yeah, okay, I’m sorry. It’s not your routine I’m talking about. It’s your family. Seems like you just forgot about them, forgot about Cassie and what she’s going through.”
“I haven’t forgot Cassie. I saw her yesterday.”
“And …?”
“She’s not ready to talk to me yet. Crimminy, it’s not like I haven’t tried, you know.” Lorena makes a pouty face.
“Well, try some more,” Delia says. “She’s the only daughter you’ve got.”
Lorena’s ebullience deflates at Delia’s forlorn expression. “I’m not leaving leaving,” she says again, more to herself than to Delia. And this time she thinks she really means it.
LORENA FEELS ENERGIZED. Wind off the water—wind crisp with a touch of autumn, crunchy as her crinolines—kicks up her skirt as she stands on deck. Waves lick the ferry with black tongues in the predawn darkness. There had been no moon that night.
As Newport News fades into the watery distance, she sees, like a fragment of dream, the image of Cassie’s face last night when Lorena came over to pick up her top hat, forgotten when, a few days earlier, she hastily packed her costume with her clothes. She had tried to hug Cassie, almost said “I love you,” but Cassie’s tear-streaked face was a mask, her body stiff as a mannequin. She didn’t hug her back.
Lorena yawns and stretches. Oh well. You don’t have to tell somebody you love them for them to know it. She’s sure Cassie would have hugged her if Pete hadn’t been skulking in the darkened living room, trying to make her feel guilty. He hardly looked at Lorena when she came inside. She could barely make him out in the shadows, his polished head the only gleam of light aside from the flickering TV.
The wind is whipping her hair like an eggbeater. She’d better get back in the car. She looks over at Binky’s Henry J hunkered among all the other cars on the ferry deck, their owners snoozingaway like Binky is, slumped against the door like a bag of laundry. He wakes up with a snort when she climbs into the car and flicks on the overhead light.
“Are we there yet?” he asks.
“No. It’s pitch-black out. I still don’t understand why we had to leave so early.”
“I told you. I gotta be back for the late shift. I traded hours with one of the guys. Thanks to you, I’ll be working till midnight tonight, shuffling mail in the back room.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” she promises. “On the way back.” She slides her hand over his orange-and-green plaid shirt and down one leg of his shiny brown slacks. She’s never seen him out of uniform before—at least, not when he was wearing clothes. She turns to examine him. Clumps of lubricated hair from his hatless head cling to the low ceiling of the Henry J. A spot of blood targets the shred of toilet paper on his chin. He picks at a tooth with his little fingernail.
Lorena gasps at the sudden revelation which rides in on a high tide of nausea: Out of uniform, Binky looks a lot like Uncle Rudy.
The more she stares, t
he less he resembles Errol Flynn. His eyes aren’t the color of rain; they are pavement gray, crusted in the corners with sleep. There’s a blob of doughnut custard on his mustache. Binky catches her glance and grins—not the slow-moving grin that made her heart turn quick flips, but the maniacal chimp grin of J. Fred Muggs.
“Rubber bands,” says Binky, and gives her a wink.
She stumbles out of the car, scurries to the railing, inhales the sharp seaweed scent of the bay. Way off in the darkness glimmers the vanishing aurora of the lights of Newport News. Lorena’s whimper harmonizes with the ferry’s mournful toot, a wail that ends in a melancholy woo-o-o.
She bends her head and presses her face to the cold metal railing. What was that commercial? “Don’t trade a headache for an upset stomach"? Is that what she’s doing? Trading a Pete for a Binky?
She snaps her head up at the next toot of the ferry—a proud toot, an insistent toot, a toot that announces, rather than mourns. Splashed against the sky, twinkling upon the water, a dazzling array of lights dispels darkness and regret. The ferry glides into the harbor. Norfolk rises before her, a shimmering crown of neon that illuminates the heavens and heralds her arrival. She opens her arms and embraces the light.
BY THE TIME they get to Binky’s aunt Edna’s house, the sun is up and so is Aunt Edna. She waves at them from the porch, where she’s drinking something from a cup the size of a mixing bowl. “Hey, y’all,” she cries, “come on in, take a load off.” Lorena swivels the rearview mirror for one last makeup check, although she had freshened up in the ladies’ room at the ferry landing.
“Lawdy mercy,” says Edna as Lorena wobbles up the porch steps in her three-and-a-half-inch heels. “You showbiz people sure know how to dress.”
Lorena bats down her flyaway crinoline. “Oh, this old thing,” she says, and reaches out a white-gloved hand. “You must be Edna. The birthday girl!” She cranes her neck around Edna’s girth. Where is Wally?
“Postum?” asks Edna, waving them inside. “I got a potful in the kitchen. Lemme go see if Wally’s got hisself up yet.”
Wally stumbles into the kitchen several minutes later, bleary-eyed and cranky in a silk dressing gown. “What time is it?” he wants to know, then, “Binky? What are you doing here?”
“This is Lorena,” Binky blurts. “She’s going to dance for you.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, Wally honey, I forgot to tell you,” Edna says as she sloshes Postum into bowl-sized cups. “Binky’s mom called, said Binky wants you to meet this real talented person"—she indicates Lorena with a cheery nod—"who wants to try out for Talent Scouts.” Lorena gives a little acknowledging curtsy.
Wally closes his eyes, seemingly in pain. “Thanks, Mom,” he says.
“I just want you to know how much I really and truly appreciate this,” Lorena says, fluttering. “If you’ll wait just a teensy moment, I’ll change into my costume.” She turns to Edna. “Can I borrow your bathroom just a teensy moment?”
“Make sure you give it back when you’re done!” says Edna, slapping the counter in her mirth.
Lorena wiggles into her tap pants, buttons up the tuxedo top, ties on her tap shoes, slaps on her top hat. This is it. Her big chance. All those months of pain and practice have come down to this moment. Feet, she says to her beaming reflection in Edna’s bathroom mirror, don’t fail me now.
“I brought my own accompaniment.” She plugs in the record player, plunks the record on the fat spindle. Wally nods warily. Wally is a crab of a man, hard round body perched on a stool, hands clutching his scrawny knees like claws. His tiny black eyes are so close together they almost seem to touch, and they stare, unblinking, at Lorena as—WOO-O-O—she begins her routine.
Chug-a-chugga chug-a-chugga. She’s a little nervous, but the music revitalizes her and she mouths the lyrics along with it. Faster now, arms and legs churning, she starts singing along. Wally sits up attentively, little crab eyes bulging, shiny as buttons, until the last “woo woo” leaves her panting lips.
There’s a change in Wally’s face. It softens, it smiles, and before she finishes the monkey step, laughter beads his tiny eyes with tears that roll down his cheeks. His laugh—more creak than laugh—puzzles her, but his delight impels her to head full throttle into her grand finale until the last “woo woo” leaves her panting lips. Lorena plunges into her split, leaving Wally crumpled in breathless hysterics.
Edna takes a sip of Postum and lifts an unplucked eyebrow at Binky. “Your momma been feeling okay lately?”
* * *
“HE LIKED ME. He really liked me.” Lorena squiggles happily in the seat of Binky’s car as the ferry pulls away from the dock.
Binky shakes his head, looks bewildered. “Wally always was strange,” he says, then retracts at Lorena’s angry glance. “I mean he did, he really did like you.”
Lorena leans back, kicks off her heels, closes her eyes. She sees Wally, tight face stretched into a lipless grin, beady eyes shining as he grasped her hand in his. “I’ll be in touch,” he had said, and before he let go, scraped his thumbnail along her wrist in a strangely sensuous motion.
She feels exhausted, exhilarated, and somehow redeemed. “What talent?” Pete had said. She’ll show him. She’s on her way to stardom. Behind closed eyes, she pictures herself in her new life: a night on the town with Gene Kelly, an intimate lunch with Lucy. She’s just drifting off into self-satisfied sleep when she feels a hand shuffle her crinolines and land on her leg. She gasps and jerks away. “Rubber bands,” murmurs a voice in her ear.
“What?” Her eyes pop open. It’s Binky.
“Remember? In my truck? That little trick?”
“Oh. That.” She edges away.
He reaches into the pocket of his shirt, pulls out a nest of thick, postal-issue rubber bands. “I picked the stretchiest ones,” he says, sproinging them between his fingers.
“Forget it.” She squints out the window of the car. Sunlight glances off the roofs of cars, paves the bay with diamonds.
Binky’s face falls into a frown. “We had a deal.”
“Well, I didn’t mean here,” she says. “Not on the ferry, in your car. Not now.” Or ever, she adds to herself.
“I thought of that.” He reaches into the backseat, pulls out an army blanket. “We can make a tent. Cozy, huh?”
Lorena turns and gives Binky a hard, cold look. How could she have imagined he looked even remotely like Errol Flynn? She musthave been crazy. Without a word, she slides over the seat and out the door, ignoring his plaintive, “But we had a deal.”
She leans on the railing, lets the wind whip her hair into a wild red froth. As the ferry pulls into Newport News, Lorena feels herself recede. Lit by the glaring sun of noon, the city seems flat and dull, a black-and-white image that pales in the glow of her Technicolor dreams. Soon all this will be part of her past, a history she plans to recount with teary-eyed nostalgia when she’s interviewed on TV.
35
CASSIE
MOM LEFT. I don’t know if I’m glad or sad. I feel like a big hole’s been punched where I’m supposed to be feeling something. She tried to hug me good-bye but I didn’t want to hug her back, even though somewhere inside there was my little-kid self saying, “Don’t go, Mommy!” like when she left me at school on my very first day.
Maybe it was that fake kiss she gave me, smacking those candy-apple lips at the air when she touched my cheek to hers. Maybe it was because her hair matched her shoes and her perfume smelled like the ladies’ room at the Paramount. Maybe it was because she said, “Just wait, you’ll see me on TV and you can tell all your friends, ‘That’s my mom!’” All I know is I couldn’t wait for her to go, and next thing I knew she was gone, her high heels tapping down the sidewalk. Tappety tappety. Tap tap tap.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of a dream—the same dream I keep having, the one where Mom’s coming home—and think I hear that tapping. But it’s only the chinaberry tree tappingwitchy fingers at my window. A
nd I lie awake, wondering just what it is that I really feel inside.
DAD AND I are outside lying on the lawn chair, comparing feet even though we’re wearing shoes. It’s chilly out. The stars are crisp and clear over our heads and the leaves are turning on the maple tree. My saddle shoe comes up to where the laces start on Dad’s work boot. His hair’s growing in good now. It looks like teddy-bear fur, and he smooths it down as he talks about how he’s going back to work, soon as his boss gives him the word.
“My daddy worked in the shipyard,” he says. I nod. I know that. “I always worked in the shipyard, too.” I know. “It’s all I ever wanted to do. Except"—he smiles a little—"once upon a time, I thought I could play in the big leagues.” I didn’t know that.
“You played baseball, Dad?” And then I remember the newspaper clipping in his night-table drawer. “Were you a star?”
“Yeah,” he says, laughing with his voice but not his face. “A shooting star.”
“What happened?”
“I hit a home run. It won the game, but it was just an accident.”
“Home runs aren’t accidents, Dad. You musta been good.”
He shakes his head and says, almost to himself, “I’m not much good at anything.”
“Sure you are, Dad,” I say, and then I remember what Mrs. Finkelstein said: “Everybody’s good at something. The hard part is knowing just what that something is.”
When I say that to Dad, he gives me a look. “Where’d you get that?”
He doesn’t even get mad when he hears the word “Finkelstein.” “Well,” he says finally, “if my something’s not the shipyard, I don’t know what it is.”
“Maybe it’s not the shipyard that’s the problem, Dad. Maybe it’s what you do there.”
“I do what my daddy did.”
“But your daddy got killed doing that. And,” I say, shivering in the chill, “I’m scared you will, too.”
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