Invasion of the Blatnicks

by Neil S. Plakcy

  Steve felt, as always, that he was walking between worlds as he stepped out of the woods and into the sun. In the distance, he heard the rough slurry of the concrete trucks and the sound of a motorcycle revving down the dirt road. On the radio, Junior was yelling at one of the superintendents, and Celeste interrupted to tell him to watch his language. Steve walked slowly back to the Welcome Center.

  As Christmas approached, Steve spent a lot of time at the desk across from Celeste’s, leaning back in the chair with his feet up on the woodgrain laminate top, a bunch of them talking about holiday plans and how bad the traffic was with all the snowbirds in town. The radio stations played Christmas carols about sleighs and snow even though the temperature rarely dipped below seventy. Brad wore red and green every day for a week and Celeste had a snow scene under glass on her desk. It seemed like everybody had to pick it up and shake it at least once.

  On Christmas Eve Steve bought a prepackaged turkey dinner for three, with all the trimmings. He kept it in his refrigerator overnight, and delivered it to John, Mary and Tunisia on his way to his parents’ the next morning.

  “Steve! How sweet!” Mary said when she saw him coming through the trees, his arms laden with packages. She had tied her hair and Tunisia’s up with red and green plaid ribbons, and they wore matching T-shirts with teddy bears and holly. “And I thought we weren’t going to have no Christmas at all this year.”

  At a toy store, Steve had found “Construction Worker Barbie,” who came with overalls and a hard hat, and a miniature tool belt to hang around her waist. Tunisia’s presents were wrapped in paper that had Mickey and Minnie Mouse decorating a tree, and as she unwrapped them her eyes were wide. She announced that it was the best Christmas ever. Steve and John hung candy canes and streamers on the Australian pine and taught Tunisia to sing “Jingle Bells.”

  From the site, Steve drove to his parents’ condo, where he picked them up and they all rode down to the Neuschwanstein Palace. The sky was as clear and blue as if it had been painted in by watercolor, and only a haze of cirrus clouds floated high above.

  Santa and his sleigh had landed on the lawn of the hotel. Strings of tiny lights ran from the reindeer’s horns up to a small generator hidden by a croton hedge, and a banner next to the sleigh read “Froeliche Weihnachten fun der Neuschwanstein Palace.” The banner had begun to fade in the sun, and the high winds off the ocean had already blown most of the fake snow into Collins Avenue, where car tires had trailed it for two blocks in either direction.

  The bellhops and desk staff were all dressed like Santa’s elves, with pointy red caps trimmed with white fur and little bells. The lobby jingled softly as the Bermans passed through on their way to the elevators.

  “Do you know where we’re going to eat?” Steve asked.

  Rita shook her head. “Well, who’s going with us?” Steve asked. “The usual suspects?”

  “Be nice, Steven. Yes, everyone will be there. And Wilma, too. She’s come down for the holiday.”

  “You mean that cult she belongs to lets her off for Christmas? I always imagine I’ll read about them in the paper, committing a mass murder or something. You know, a bunch of bald-headed goofballs in saffron robes shooting up some Fifth Avenue charity ball in the name of Krishna.”

  Wilma was weird, even in a family as strange as the Blatnicks. Once the Bermans had reached the suite and were relaxing with a drink before braving the near-suicidal act of holiday dining, Steve took a good look at her. Her religion required her to dress all in white, from her sandals to her turban. In her white cotton leggings and complicated sari-like white top, she looked like she was trying out for the part of the mummy’s bride in a low-budget film.

  Even in that funny outfit, the family resemblance between Wilma and Mimi was clear. They had the same nose, the same high foreheads and prominent cheekbones, as if some Russian Tatar had raped their great-grandmother. The living room of Mrs. Blatnick’s house in Brooklyn was littered with photo albums full of people with those foreheads and cheekbones, who had died or stopped talking to the Blatnicks years before.

  Mimi had not left Miami since Thanksgiving. She was sharing Sheryl’s bedroom in old Mrs. Blatnick’s suite, which Steve imagined was putting a crimp in Sheryl’s dating plans. Dusty and Sheldon were still staying next door, and at the moment were holding up different sections of the living room wall.

  The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Sheryl said. It was Morty, in his best go-to-court suit.

  “Isn’t it sweet?” Mimi said. “Sheryl’s lawyer is joining us for dinner.”

  “Providing none of his clients get arrested and need to be bailed out,” Steve whispered to Rita.

  Rita said, “Steven,” but she smiled.

  Morty was introduced. “You must be very proud of Steve,” he told Rita. “He practically runs that site.”

  “Really,” Rita said, smiling. “He never tells me anything.”

  “I don’t see how they could get along without him,” Morty said. It was clear to Steve that Morty was just doing a snow job on Rita, but it was working. They had a whole conversation in which Morty conveyed the impression that Steve was a successful young executive, fully in command of a multi-million dollar project. Steve was embarrassed at how flattered he felt.

  Mrs. Blatnick had made reservations for them at a luxurious catering hall in Hallandale, a town just north of the Broward county border that was populated almost exclusively by very old, very slow people. They crept in traffic for several miles before reaching the restaurant, waiting through endlessly long “Walk” signals that were timed to allow even the frailest, slowest person a chance to cross the road in safety.

  Steve was already tense and irritable by the time he pulled his father’s car into the restaurant’s lot. Dusty’s big Cadillac convertible pulled in just behind him, nearly wiping a pair of eighty-year-olds off the map. Dusty yelled, “Hey, if you don’t like the way I drive, stay off the sidewalk!” and laughed.

  Crossing the parking lot, they passed a man dressed like Wilma, walking a little dog that had a white coat on and little white leggings wrapped around his legs. The dog yipped as Wilma and the man bowed to each other and made strange hand signals.

  Inside the hall, giant paper snowflakes dangled from the ceiling and fluttered in the breeze from the air conditioner. Each table had a centerpiece of red and green balloons and holly, and every now and then a balloon would drift onto the sharp spikes of a holly leaf and burst. The meal was punctuated with the sound of balloons bursting around the room.

  Steve, Sheryl, Richie and Morty sat at a small table attached to the larger one, in what they called “the children’s ghetto.” Sheryl grumbled about the segregation. “When are we going to be old enough to eat with the grown-ups?”

  “It has nothing to do with age,” Morty said. “It’s all a hierarchy. Probably back in the Stone Age, kids had to eat in a separate cave.” He launched into a dissertation on prehistoric man, another subject he knew nothing about.

  Wilma had a little difficulty ordering, because of the strict dietary rules her religion imposed on her. No red meat, no green vegetables, nothing that came from a bird that could fly or an animal with cloven hooves. She ended up eating a plate of stewed tomatoes over rice. Dusty seemed to be on a liquid diet, because he passed on the food and ordered another beer every time a course was served.

  Dusty had just divorced his fifth wife, and for every topic of conversation he had an ex-wife with an opinion. “Tomatoes made my third wife throw up,” he told Wilma when the main courses arrived. “Or was that my fourth?”

  The waiters and waitresses all doubled as entertainers, singing Christmas carols and Broadway show tunes with the band from a bandstand located in the center of the enormous hall. Their waitress’ turn to sing came just when Steve expected their food was due to come out of the kitchen, and all through her song he felt his stomach grumbling in time to the beat.

  There was a break between the meal and dessert. Rita came down
to the children’s ghetto. “That Morty is such a nice boy,” she said to Steve. “I want to apologize. I had no idea you were so busy. You should have told me.”

  “Mother.”

  “You don’t have to be modest with me,” Rita said. “I’m your mother, remember? I think I have been calling you a little too frequently. So I’ve agreed to go on this cockamamie trip to the Everglades with your father.”

  “That’s great! I’m sure you’ll have a good time.”

  “We’ll see. But it’ll please your father, and I’ll be out of your hair for a week. You can get some work done.”

  Steve felt good about Morty for the rest of the afternoon. After dinner they all lolled agreeably in their chairs, sipping cognacs and picking at the remnants of their desserts. The bandleader announced, “Now’s the time, ladies and gentlemen, when we invite members of the audience to join us up here on the bandstand. Do we have any singers among you?”

  “Right here!” Of course, Steve knew it had to be someone in his family. And of course, it had to be the weirdest one, the one anyone in the audience could see was stranger than fiction. It had to be Wilma.

  She was a little unsteady on her feet after gulping down her brandy, but she made her way up to the bandstand, navigating between close tables and waving graciously to the scattered applause. The Blatnicks were whistling and hollering and Steve sunk down low in his seat, hoping there was no one in the room he knew.

  Wilma had once been an aspiring actress in New York, and before she gave it up to become a religious weirdo, she had acted in several off-off-Broadway productions, though her career was more notable for the variety of her outside occupations. She had been a hat-check girl, a waitress, a secretarial temp and had parked cars at a midtown garage for several months. Rita was sure she had been a prostitute at some point, but had no proof.

  Wilma had always been prone to sing at family events. She once had a beautiful voice, he remembered, the only Blatnick who could sing. The others couldn’t hold a tune if it was Velcroed to their hands.

  Wilma leaned down and whispered something to the band, who broke into “Downtown,” by Petula Clark. Though her first few notes wobbled, she was fine by the chorus.

  To Steve’s surprise and pleasure, she had a beautiful voice, rich and melodious, with great power for low notes and long blasts. He sat back in his chair and tapped his fingers along with the beat.

  Wilma finished big, and there was tremendous applause. “Thank you very much,” she said. “I want to ask you all a favor. When we were younger, my sister and my two brothers and I used to dance and sing in a terrific routine we haven’t done in years. I want to convince them to join me, and I’m going to need your help. Please help me clap for Mimi, Dusty and Shelly!”

  Mimi, Dusty and Sheldon all exchanged glances as the crowd applauded. Finally they stood. Steve shuddered. He had no recollection of the rest of the Blatnicks ever singing. “This is terrible,” he said.

  “At least it’s not your mother,” Sheryl said. “Imagine how I feel.”

  The four Blatnick siblings stood in a straight line in front of the band. “Hit it, boys!” Wilma said, and they broke into You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling by the Righteous Brothers.

  Steve stared in horrified fascination. They were all a little rusty, but there was a definite choreography going on there. First some synchronized hand movements, then a few experimental turns. Sheldon lost his balance but caught himself. Wilma’s voice dominated, but all the others remained on-key.

  When they were finished, the crowd gave them a big round of applause. And Steve found himself applauding, too, and feeling curiously pleased that he was with the Blatnicks after all.

  18 – Evelyn of the Everglades

  Harold and Rita were gone from the fourth of January to the eleventh, as the site came back to life after the long holidays. The first few days, Steve was happy to be free of his mother’s calls, but by the end of the week he found himself missing them, even though there was plenty of work to keep him busy.

  The carpenters and electricians and tin-knockers returned, their cars and trucks jamming into a dirt lot next to building A. The mall was filled with the sound of buzz saws, gas-powered generators, and hammers hitting nails. The air smelled like diesel gas, swamp muck and sawdust. The ground shook whenever a loaded semi roared past.

  The buildings began to look complete. The bulkhead dividing the mall common area from the stores had been installed, as had the stud walls between the tenant spaces. Work continued on the skylights, on the fountains, on the elevators and escalators, and inside the stores. Steve had a sign built that read “Everglades Galleria 14 Weeks to Opening” and every Monday morning he had to prop a ladder against it, climb up and change the numbers.

  By the eighth of January, when he took Maxine, Miranda and Brad for a site tour, the concrete had finally cured on two sets of stairs linking the upper and lower levels of Building A. “You know,” Maxine said as they walked through the atrium, where three large skylights flooded the center of the mall with sunlight, “I think this place looks good. We could have a party out here.”

  “Why would you want to have a party out here?” Steve asked. “It’s not finished.”

  “But it will be,” Maxine said. “And most people have enough imagination to see that. They may not be able to read plans, but this, this is real.”

  Steve showed them the progress on the site, from the stockpile of common area floor tile to the rough plumbing work in the restaurants. They finished up out at the lake, where a pile driver was putting in the foundations for the fishing pier.

  “Thanks, Steve,” Maxine said. “This has been very informative.” She motioned to Brad and Miranda. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

  In between running out to the site to handle crises, Steve spent the next few days locked in his office reviewing a stack of bills from contractors. Every one was wrong, and he spent most of his time arguing on the phone. He understood why Junior liked to hit walls. Rita called on Thursday afternoon to say she and Harold were back from the Everglades. “How was it?” Steve asked.

  “It was much nicer than I expected,” she said. “And if you spray yourself with insect repellent once an hour you hardly get bitten. Your father loved it-- he took a hundred pictures of birds and animals and plants.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Why don’t you come over for dinner on Saturday night? He’s going to upload them all to the computer instead of looking on that tiny camera screen.”

  Steve agreed. After work on Friday night he joined Celeste, Miranda and Brad for a few drinks at a yuppie bar in a western suburb of Fort Lauderdale. He would rather have gone out with Junior and Bill, whose idea of a good time was rowdier, but they never invited him, and he was too shy to tag along.

  He had dinner with his parents on Saturday, in what was turning out to be a ritual. His father showed off his pictures, many of which were, in Steve’s opinion, good enough to be printed and framed. He tried to convince his father, but Harold wasn’t sure.

  Steve spent most of Sunday in bed with the New York Times, which he had delivered on the weekends, but he still didn’t feel rested enough to start the week over again. Back on the site, there was so much work to do. Celeste buzzed him around four o’clock on Monday afternoon. “Your father is here,” she said. “Should I send him in?”

  “What does he want?” Steve asked.

  “I don’t know. My ESP isn’t working today.”

  “All right, send him in.”

  “Well, hello, Steven,” Harold said when he came in. He was wearing a yellow polo shirt and green, white and yellow plaid pants. His thinning white hair was, as always, parted with military precision. “I was hoping I’d find you here.”

  “I don’t get away much.”

  “Boy, it’s hot out there,” Harold said as he sat down. “I don’t know how you stand it, this heat.” He fanned himself. “At least by us we have breezes, off the ocean. Way out here, phew.
”

  From the conference room across the hall, Steve could hear the muffled sound of the multi-media presentation on the Galleria. “All right, Daddy, get to the point,” he said. “You didn’t drive all the way out here by yourself to talk about the heat. Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong? No, nothing’s wrong.”

  “Then why are you here? Why isn’t Mother with you?”

  Through the wall, Steve heard the surf crashing against the beach, seagulls cawing, a bell buoy chiming. One of the goals of the presentation was to convince out-of-town tenants how close the Everglades Galleria was to the ocean. It was fifteen miles away, which was close compared to Iowa, but when local tenants saw the tape they laughed.

  “All right,” Harold said. “There is something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Ah-hah! I knew it. Did you two have a fight?”

  Harold’s eyes opened wide, and he put his hand up to Steve. “Your mother and I don’t fight. We discuss things.”

  “Yeah, and when Mike Tyson discusses like that they give him trophies and silk bathrobes.”

  Harold leaned forward. “You know I can’t stand to sit around the house all day. Your mother is enough to drive a sane man crazy, with shopping and cleaning and errands.”

  Harold sat back. “I’m very glad you put us in touch with the Florida Club,” he continued. “They do good work.”

  “So?” Steve asked.

  “The Club sponsors these little outings. We call them ‘Meet the Wilderness.’ Once a month we go somewhere and take a nature walk.”

  In the conference room, the presentation finished with a roar of music and crowd noise, as artists’ renderings of the Galleria on opening day flashed on the screen. For Steve, the wheels clicked in his brain, and all the tumblers fell into place. “And you want to come here, don’t you?”