Rubyfruit Jungle

by Rita Mae Brown

  “We’ve finished the bottle. I don’t suppose anyone else can produce liquor in this desert?” Connie looked mournfully at the bottle.

  “There’s enough booze on Jade Beach to float the navy, but we’d have to sneak some off a blissful couple when they aren’t looking.”

  “Not worth it, Moll, let’s go back.”

  Getting up, Carolyn stumbled. The vodka hit her like a sledgehammer. She draped her arm around my shoulders and giggled that she needed support. She was perfectly blasted, and at that point I wrote off the fact that her hand kept falling against my breast. Besides, I wasn’t stone sober myself.

  “Which of us is going to drive?” Connie asked.

  “Carolyn loses for sure. I can do it. I’m okay, a little tight, but okay.”

  “Good,” Connie sighed, “because I’m going to look out the car window and dream about Paul Newman’s shoulders and eyes. Doesn’t he just get to you? Too bad it wasn’t him instead of Sam Breem.”

  I wasn’t about to volunteer any information about who was getting to me. “You have to start somewhere. Anyway, nobody starts at the top, right?” I slid behind the wheel and tried to figure out how her damn car worked. I also tried to blank out Paul Newman, the woman in the black slip, and Carolyn’s hand on my breast.

  We started down AIA and Carolyn zonked out in the back seat. “Hope she doesn’t puke,” Connie growled.

  “Me too, I hate that worse than anything. Blood’s a lot better than puke.”

  At the first traffic light I pulled up next to a ’60 blue Chevy Bel Air that looked familiar. “Hey Connie, that car looks like Mr. Beers’.”

  “It is Mr. Beers. Hey look whose right next to him in the seat, and he’s got his arm around her! Mrs. Silver, that’s who.”

  “What!” I pulled up for a better look and saw that it was our esteemed principal and our respected dean of women. Before Connie could slouch down in the front seat I honked and waved.

  “Bolt, what the fucking hell are you doing? You wanna cause our expulsion?”

  “Just wait. You’ll see what I’m doing and thank me for it.”

  “You’re drunk, that’s what you are.”

  “Not a chance.”

  Mr. Beers and Mrs. Silver looked at us with utter, miserable recognition. The light changed, and he floored it.

  “What a Monday this is going to be.”

  Connie gazed in my direction. “They saw us, that’s for sure. How are we ever going to face them. You and your big mouth.”

  “Use your smarts. It’s not us that has to worry about facing them, it’s them that has to worry about facing us. They’re the married ones surrounded by the patter of little feet, not us. We’re just a couple of high school student leaders out on a drunk.”

  She put her hand to her lips and thought it over. “You’re right. Wow. We hit the jackpot. Think we oughta tell Carolyn?”

  “God, no, she nearly had a hemorrhage hearing about our adventures. If her prince, Mr. Beers, turns out to be a philandering toad, it will wreck her for sure.”

  “Let’s not tell anyone else, either. It will be our little secret,” Connie laughed.

  Once at Carolyn’s house we had to sneak her in because her parents were religious and would have shit blue if she’d come in drunk. But we woke up her brat of a sister, Babs. We had to pay the little cherub off to keep her quiet. It was hard to believe they belonged to the same family.

  Connie took over the wheel and drove me to the flamingo-pink eyesore next to the railroad tracks. I tiptoed out of the car and whispered goodnight to Connie.

  The two of us rendezvoused in the cafeteria before school to make certain our Saturday night experience was confirmed and to reaffirm our vows of secrecy. Right in the middle of homeroom, over the squawk box comes this announcement: “Will Molly Bolt and Connie Pen report to the principal’s office following homeroom.” We looked at each other with a shiver of apprehension, then pulled ourselves together and went into Main Building, heads high.

  I had to go see Mrs. Silver while Connie drew Mr. Beers. Mrs. Silver was maybe forty-five years old and she looked okay except she had a blue rinse on her hair. She greeted me nervously and asked me to sit down.

  “Molly, you are one of Ft. Lauderdale High’s most outstanding students. You’ve made straight A’s all the way through and you’ve proven yourself to be a very effective leader. In addition, you’re the best female athlete we have. Next year you can expect many awards and hopefully scholarships as I know your family is financially—well, I know you need those scholarships.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “If you would allow me, I’d be happy to write one of your college recommendations and try to help you get a full tuition scholarship.”

  “Thank you very much, Mrs. Silver. I’d be honored to have you recommend me.”

  “Do you know what you want to study?”

  “I waver between law or film but the only film schools are in New York and California and that’s a long way off.”

  “Well, you think it over and we’ll try to work something out. You ought to think about schools like Vassar and Bryn Mawr; they have geographical quotas. With your all-round record, I’m certain you’ll make the grade provided that your Board Scores are high and I’m sure they will be.”

  “I promise to think about it. The Seven Sisters never appealed to me but then I never thought seriously about them.”

  There was an awkward pause, while Mrs. Silver pushed her useless ink blotter around on her desk pad. “Molly, have you thought about running for student council president next year?”

  “I’ve thought about it, but it looks as though Gary Vogel has it in the bag. Anyway, girls have a hard time getting elected.”

  “Yes, girls have a hard time in the world, generally.”

  She looked suddenly beaten, old and worn-out. Mrs. Silver, I’m not going to blow the whistle on you. Damn, damn, you look so unhappy. “If I use my imagination maybe I can come up with something that will beat out Gary Vogel, but you know the student council hasn’t set a limit on campaign funds and he’s rich.”

  She blinked and a smile crossed her lips. “Either the spending will be limited or you’ll have campaign funds. I promise you that.”

  “I hope so, Mrs. Silver; it would equalize things.” Another pause and then out of nowhere I said, “Mrs. Silver, you don’t have to buy me off. I won’t tell anyone about last Saturday night no matter what happens. I’m sorry you’re upset.”

  Relief and surprise registered on her face. “Thank you.”

  I left her office and waited by the trophy case for Connie to barrel out. She emerged five minutes later with a grin all over her round face. “You are looking at the newspaper editor for 1962,” she beamed.

  “And you are looking at the next student council president.”

  “Oh wow.” Connie shook her head and continued in a low voice, “That poor bastard was shaking when I was in his office. How was she?”

  “Same way. I told her I’d keep quiet and she shouldn’t worry. Wha’d you tell him?”

  “Same thing in a roundabout way. Looks like we have this school sewed up, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sewed up.”

  The summer between junior and senior year I worked at the tennis courts. Connie was in Mexico and Carolyn went to Maine to counsel at a multi-denominational Protestant camp. Leroy had passed ninth grade and finally was in tenth. He came down a couple of times on his bike but we didn’t do it. I was pretty much done with him that way, especially after the fight we’d had over the bike. Sometimes I felt sorry for Leroy. He followed the herd, like any dumb beast, vaguely realizing he was unhappy. He was impressed when he found out I’d been elected student council president by a landslide vote. But our conversations ran out of gas more frequently and we’d fall back on bikes, cars, and movies. Once he confessed to me in a pathetic voice, “You know, I can talk to you like any regular person. I can’t talk to other girls. I pick them up, d
rive to the movies, go out fucking, and then drive them home. What happens when you get married? I mean, what do people talk about when they’re married?”

  “Their kids, I guess.”

  “Maybe that’s all they have in common.”

  And it became increasingly clear that all Leroy and I had in common was a childhood full of ice cream, raisin boxes, and a mattress full of holes. But then I had never thought I had much in common with anybody. I had no mother, no father, no roots, no biological similarities called sisters and brothers. And for a future I didn’t want a split-level home with a station wagon, pastel refrigerator, and a houseful of blonde children evenly spaced through the years. I didn’t want to walk into the pages of McCall’s magazine and become the model housewife. I didn’t even want a husband or any man for that matter. I wanted to go my own way. That’s all I think I ever wanted, to go my own way and maybe find some love here and there. Love, but not the now and forever kind with chains around your vagina and a short circuit in your brain. I’d rather be alone.

  Carrie and Florence were scandalized that I had been elected student council president. Carrie had her heart set on me being prom queen and she knew you couldn’t be both president and prom queen. She felt I was a traitor to my sex. Florence wasn’t so het up about it but she did think it was odd. Her theory was that government was so dirty we should leave it up to the men. I stayed out of the house as much as I could but then I’d been doing that since I could move on my own two legs. Whenever I was home there was always a fight. One night after a huge mouth battle over my cutting my hair, I stormed out of the house and started to get in the car. Carrie ran out the door screeching, “Don’t you go taking that car, your father wants to use it.” So I got out and slammed the door as hard as I could. Carl came outside and asked me where I wanted to go.

  “Nowhere. I just wanted to drive, that’s all. Anyplace to get away from our friendly neighborhood harpies.”

  “Well, you can drive with me.”

  Carl drove out Sunrise Boulevard and turned left at the beach. Up by Birch State Park we found a quiet spot and got out. He sat on a green bench and looked at the ocean.

  “Ocean’s really beautiful. I can’t believe there’s countries on the other side of it and someone over there is sittin’ looking at it right as I’m sittin’ here now.”

  “Yeah.” I was still pissed.

  “I don’t think I could live without the ocean. All those years in Pennsylvania. I couldn’t go back to that.”

  “Yeah. I love the ocean too, but I don’t know if I’ll live by it all the time. Anyway, I don’t really like Florida.”

  “I guess it is kind of a place for old people. Kids don’t like to stay where they was raised anyhow so you’ll probably move on.”

  “I want to go where I have a chance. I don’t have a chance here. Besides I want to get away from all the people we know. They just get in my way.”

  “You and your mother are like oil and water. You can’t just say ‘Yes’ to her and go about your business. You have to flare up at her. Pride, girl, pride. If you’d pretend to give in to her you wouldn’t have all these fights.”

  “She’s wrong. I give in to her and it confirms her mistakes.”

  “She’s set in her ways. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s all the time wrong.”

  “I say she’s wrong, leastways when it comes to messing with my life she’s wrong. She’s got to have her own way. No one is telling me what to do. No one. Especially when they’re wrong.”

  “I dunno. Me, I don’t like fights, right or wrong. I smile and say ‘Yes’ to the boss at work and ‘Yes’ to Carrie and ‘Yes’ to my folks when they was alive. I slide by.”

  “I can’t do that, Dad.”

  “I know. You’ll pay for it, honey. Tears and bitterness, ’cause you’ll be out there fighting all by yourself. Most people are cowards, like me. And if you try to get them to fight they’ll turn on you, bad as the people you originally fightin’ with. You’ll be all alone.”

  “I’m all alone now. I’m a tenant in that house and that’s all I ever was. I got no one but my own sweet self.”

  Carl looked startled and said, “You got me. I’m your father. You ain’t gonna be alone when I’m around.”

  “Oh Daddy, you never are around.” He looked so hurt I could have bitten my tongue off.

  “It’s that I’m so tired when I come home from work these days. When you was little and I got home you’d be asleep. Then as you grew you’d be outside with the kids. Now I can’t seem to work up a head of steam. Some days at work I think I’ll go home and eat supper then drive down to school to watch you run the show. Then I sit down and read the paper and fall asleep. I don’t get around you much. Too old, I guess—I’m sorry, honey.”

  “I’m sorry too, Daddy.” I stared out at the dark waves and tried not to look him in the face.

  “Molly, I’m real proud of the things you been doin’ at school. You’re something else again, you are. You’re gonna go on and be something someday. And you keep on fighting for yourself. Hell, if you can fight Carrie anyone else will be small potatoes.” He chuckled and continued, “Do you know where you’re gonna go to school and what you’re gonna take up?”

  “Not yet—the schools I mean. Maybe I’ll go to one of those snotty Seven Sisters where the rich brats go or maybe a big city school. Depends on who gives me the best deal. But I know what I want to do, sort of—gonna be law or film directing. Those are the only things I care about.”

  “You’d make a good lawyer. Nobody can outtalk you, you mix’em up worse than a dog’s breakfast. But now this director business, I dunno. You gotta go to Hollywood, don’t you? That’s a bad place, they say.”

  “I don’t know. The studios are falling apart, that much I know. Seems like there ought to be some openings somewhere—new companies and stuff. But I got to get the skills first. There aren’t any women directors, so I will have a fight for sure and law, well, I know I have a good shot at it. But I’d rather make movies than talk to some sleepy jury.”

  “Then make movies. You only got one life so do what you want.”

  “That’s how I figure it.”

  “What about gettin’ married?”

  “I’m never doing it. Period.”

  “I could see that coming. You wouldn’t look too hot on the other side of an apron and between us, it’d kill me to see you buckle under to anyone, especially a husband.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it ’cause it’ll never happen. Besides, why should I buy a cow when I get the milk for free? I can go out and screw anytime I damn well please.”

  He laughed. “People are silly about sex. But if you’ll take a word of advice from your old man—do it all you want but be quiet about it.” There was a strange sadness in his voice; he paused and bent over to make a circle in the sand. “Molly, I haven’t done much good with my life and now it’s almost gone. I’m fifty-seven. Fifty-seven. I can’t get used to it. When I think of myself sometimes I think I’m still sixteen. Funny ain’t it? To you I’m an old fogey but I can’t quite believe I’m old. Listen to me,” his voice got stronger, “you go on and do whatever you want to do and the hell with the rest of the world. Learn from your old man. I never did a goddamned thing and now I’m too old to do anything. All I got is dead dreams and a mortgage on that house with ten years left to pay. I worked my whole life and all I got to show is that square, pink house sitting next to the railroad tracks with other square houses. Shit. You damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, kid; don’t listen to nobody but your own self.”

  “Dad, you’ve been watching those war movies again.” And I gave him a big hug and a kiss on his gray salty stubble.

  The middle of July was hot. I had returned from Girls’ State triumphant as governor. Carrie and Florence mumbled there’d be no living with me now. Carl went to work and told everyone he saw that his daughter was going to be the real governor someday. One night shortly after I came back from Tallaha
ssee, Carl and I watched Peter Gunn on the tube. We took bets on who was the villain and Carl won because it was a repeat. He didn’t tell me that he’d seen it before until after the show and he laughed his way into the bedroom.

  I went to bed around eleven and fell asleep with palm leaves rustling outside. Palm fronds sound like—rain—it’s a soothing sound. I was jolted out of a deep sleep by someone clawing at my face. Fingernails scratched at my throat. The room was jet black but for an eerie red light from outside flickering through the drawn Venetian blinds. I could see another shape on the bed pulling at whoever was clawing me. Gradually my eyes focused and I saw that it was Carrie who was attacking me, making strange noises.

  She’s gonna kill me. She’s off her nut and she’s trying to strangle me. Then she started wailing at the top of her lungs, “Wake up, wake up. Carl’s dead. Wake up, Molly, your father’s dead.” Florence had her hands full getting Carrie off me. She confirmed the report. “He’s out there in the living room if you want to see him before they roll him away. Go now ’cause the ambulance is here and so is the doctor.” I threw on my robe and ran into the living room with the big mirror that had flamingoes painted on it. There under the mirror in front of the door was Carl’s body. His eyes were staring straight up into mine and he was all blue in the face.

  “Why’s he blue?”

  The doctor answered, “Heart attack. It happened very suddenly. He had time to warn Carrie and he said he thought it was his heart, then boom, he was gone.”

  The ambulance men came in and looked at me curiously in my robe. Made no difference to them that my father had died. I was another piece of sixteen-year-old ass in a bathrobe. The doctor told me to put Carrie on tranquilizers she was so whacked out. All that night even though we crammed her full of pills she kept waking up and crying, “What day is this? Where’s my Carl?” Then she’d call him like she was calling the cat, “Carl, oh Carl, come hereee.” There was no use trying to get back to sleep, so Florence and I stayed up the whole night and discussed funeral arrangements. Florence was looking at me with the searching eye, waiting for me to falter or cry. If I’d cried, she would have told me to pull myself together for Carrie’s sake. Since I didn’t cry, she accused me of being heartless and not truly loving Carl because he wasn’t my natural father. She upbraided me for being adopted and how adopted kids got no true feelings for their parents. I was wordless. I had nothing to say to that woman. Let her think what she damn well pleased. People like that, I don’t give a shit what they think.