Deepak paused from his buffing, looked her up and down, one perfect brow arched, and then started swiping again. “You know, good posture is one of the five keys to happiness.”
“Oh yeah, and what are the other four?” Clarissa muttered, pulling the chemise over the slight rise of her belly. “Always sit like a lady? Don’t curse? Never pass gas?” She huffed, trying to dispel her agitation and self-revulsion. “No backtracking,” she whispered to her reflection, and then—pretending her head was attached to a string and God was pulling on it, stretching her taller, forcing her shoulders back and her head high—she addressed the fact of her poor posture.
“Ah! And now, only four more to go.” Deepak shot her a catty, drag queen smile.
She turned away from the mirror, shut the door on Deepak, and headed back to her closet, muttering, “Maybe. Maybe I can do this.” She flicked on the light and surveyed her shoes. Closed-toed, open-toed, sandals, sneakers, high heels, flats, babushka clompers with lots of support. Sensible? With this outfit? Not. She opted for a pair of sky blue, open-toed suede pumps with a three-inch heel. Gorgeous.
Once dressed, in a ritual that she could trace to her girlhood when she stood before the cracked mirror in the tin bucket trailer and tried on her mother’s glitter-and-paste Woolworth’s earrings, Clarissa donned her jewelry. She began with a silver charm necklace that held talismans of different sorts: a solid silver frog from Mexico bought at a flea market, a leaping dolphin procured at a roadside tourist trap, a scarab given to her by a former lover, a baby ring she found in the trash outside an apartment building she once lived in, a Tibetan prayer box containing an image of the Dalai Lama she purchased on eBay, a simple sterling silver disk she decided symbolized renewal, a St. Christopher’s medal because she felt like a traveler even in her own home. Then came her earrings: silver hoops—big ones because she liked the sizable circles they formed on each ear, fancying that the space within the twin spheres held all of life’s possibilities.
Finally, on each arm she stacked sterling bangles—some plain, some engraved, some pierced, some wide, and others deliciously narrow. They chimed shh shh shh as she walked.
Her jewelry was her armament; goddess protection designed to help hide and protect her heart, a trick that forced the male eye away from the breasts, the cleavage, the full lips. As she separated out the charms on her necklace and studied the smooth belly of her lucky frog, she thought that these pieces of silver were the only things that made her feel feminine anymore, little trinkets deflecting pain, flashes of light signaling that her life as a sensual being was not over even while they redirected—at least for a moment—the forever roaming male eye.
Clarissa shook her arms and delighted in the bangles’ music. She tossed back her curls and squared her shoulders. She didn’t know the woman in the mirror.
“Yes, you do!” Deepak said. “Embrace not just your butt. Embrace all of the sensual you.”
Clarissa rolled her eyes. She really needed to do something about her inner monologue. She turned away from the mirror and reached for her tote, which still smelled of the truck rot.
Deepak smacked her on the behind. “Take my clutch, silly girl. It’s much sexier.”
Clarissa rummaged through her box of handbags until she found the purse Deepak wanted her to take. There was just enough room in it for her lipstick, cell phone, compact, and keys. What more did she need? She looked in the mirror one final time. “Thanks, Deepdeep,” she said.
She walked through the house, her bracelets clinking, clutch and keys in hand, stinky tote over her shoulder, terrified that Iggy would come down from on high. But she did not have the nerve to simply waltz out. That would make her, she feared, a bad wife. So, as women in her predicament were wont to do, she struck a coward’s compromise. After hiding her tote in the laundry room, she stepped into the kitchen, out of sight of the upstairs landing, and yelled, “Hey, I’m leaving!”
She heard a scraping of a chair against the floor and thought, No, no, no, don’t come out here.
“It’s too late for you to take it back tonight. Do it tomorrow,” he shouted. And though he whispered what came out of his mouth next, the words tumbled through the heat, spiraling downward like autumn leaves, landing on Clarissa’s waiting eardrums: “Dumb ass.”
The words entered her as if delivered by a flame-tipped arrow. For a moment, she imagined her sky blue pumps had morphed into those sexy, superhero cerulean boots. She heard her superhero cape flap in the imaginary superhero breeze. She reached through her skin, wiggled her hand past cartilage and bone and into the pulpy mess of her heart. She withdrew the flaming arrow and snapped it in two. Keep your voice steady, she thought. “I’m going to Adams’s reading. I’ll see you when I get home.”
She closed her eyes, hid her face in her superhero cape as protection against his response. But none came. She stood alone, dressed up, her sky blue pumps pinching her toes, waiting for him to say something, anything—go to hell, good-bye, you can’t go, have a nice time. For the second time that day, she heard what sounded like a marble roll across the floor.
Olga Villada swirled in, amazed at Clarissa’s star shine. She was glad that Amaziah was upstairs. Death had not extinguished Olga Villada’s jealous streak.
Standing underneath the crystal chandelier, looking beautiful and confident (two things she did not feel), Clarissa realized that her husband had chosen, in his calculated way, not to respond. There she stood, shut out again. She felt that anger—still controlled, still leashed—rumble through her. “You have no idea,” she whispered, her words furling like smoke but not rising high enough for her husband to hear, “how independent I can be.”
“Brava!” Olga Villada said. “Brava!” She clapped twice in her flamenco way. Her black ringlets bounced. She, too, in the early evening light, though spectral, looked beautiful.
Clarissa went into the library. The ghost followed. The research dossier was on the fainting couch, its pages a messy jumble. The newspaper Clarissa had used to kill the fly was still on the floor. Clarissa picked it up and tossed it into the wastebasket in the corner. The fly’s carcass remained stuck to the weapon’s wide, blunt blade.
Olga Villada, again violating the family rule, thinking it would be more noticeable to Clarissa if it was on the library table, reached for the file.
Clarissa turned away from the wastebasket and swept it up before Olga Villada had it in her hands. She tapped the file on the table, straightening the papers. She couldn’t wait to share with Adams what she’d discovered about her house.
I’m more powerful than I know, Olga Villada mused as Clarissa left the library, crossing into the chandelier room, dossier in hand.
Clarissa, refusing her urge to offer one last good-bye to her husband, walked out the front door and closed it gently.
Olga Villada stood at the window and watched Clarissa slide behind the steering wheel of the giant steel-and-chrome crazy horse. She saw her place the dossier on the dash. In the early evening light, Clarissa and the El Camino glowed.
The closest Clarissa could park to the bed-and-breakfast was a block north, within walking distance of the old state Capitol and its red-and-white candy-striped awnings, under the vacant glare of a streetlight. She turned off the ignition, gripped the steering wheel, closed her eyes, and decided she did not have the strength to go through with this. Maybe she could just drive aimlessly in her splendid new car-truck for an hour or so, head home, and lie to her husband about what a wonderful time she’d had.
“Are you nothing but a big chicken?” Deepdeep piped up. “A chicken—bwaak! bwaak!—and not a woman?”
“Deepdeep,” Clarissa said, fully annoyed, “you’re not even real. You wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for me.” She opened her eyes, reached for the rearview, paused because she was afraid she’d break it off, and then gingerly tilted it toward her. There she was, in the solstice’s slow fade: Her face, the one that after fourteen years still felt like a stranger’s, reflecte
d back at her. “I am not a chicken,” she said. “I can do this.”
She smiled. Everything was fine. No lip gloss–smudged teeth, no clumped mascara, no raccoon eyes. She was good to go. But still she sat, afraid to open the door. Afraid to step into the world alone. Afraid to gallivant down the street on her way to see a man who was straight, single, talented, and gorgeous. She could simply scurry back into her solitary marital existence and not see an old friend who just happened to be a male. There was still time. Adams would understand. Hell, maybe he’d prefer it: out on the town alone, without the encumbrance of a married woman. But he had asked, and she had given him her word. It was a professional relationship—one writer to another. And she had not lied to her husband; he knew where she was going. Even on the off chance that Adams was willing, Clarissa Burden would not cheat. Maybe flirt, but sex was not on the table. Ever. Evidently not even with her husband, she thought ruefully. Yep, she’d keep her vows even if they and all her sex organs were moldering from profound neglect.
Clarissa took in her new car; it was all jazzy with gleaming knobs and gadgets she didn’t know how to work. Its cream-colored leather upholstery was cool to the touch. The windshield was wide and crack-free. She opened the glove box and peered in: just the manual; no telltale ephemera from the previous owner. She pushed a button on the dash, curious as to what it was for. Nothing happened. She loved this car.
“There is nothing you cannot do,” Deepdeep whispered. And for moment, amid all that chrome and steel, Clarissa decided to believe him.
“Just give me the strength to get out of the car,” she said. She straightened the rearview, stuffed the dossier out of sight under the passenger seat, grabbed the blue silk clutch, dropped her keys into it, opened the El Camino’s heavy door, and pushed herself into the night. Feeling impossibly underdressed, overdressed, miserable, beautiful, grotesque, and a tad A-OK, she wondered how she could even walk given the conflicted condition of her heart and mind.
She opened the clutch and checked the time on her cell phone: 7:58. Daylight still shifted through the oaks, their burled limbs laden with curling trails of Spanish moss. The slow-building dusk had brought with it little relief from the day’s swelter. It remained so hot that the evening birdsong was labored, stifled. She cut across the street and headed west, hoping she didn’t look like a streetwalker, fearful that her makeup was going to experience a Salvador Dalí meltdown, thankful for the double dose of deodorant she’d wisely swathed on. At the next intersection, she hung a left. The B and B was moments away. She decided that breathing was no longer involuntary; she had to think about it. Do not panic. Even though you fear you look like Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot, again, do not panic. Adams was just a friend. Nothing more. Ever. He wasn’t interested in her sexually or romantically. He knew her husband; they’d met twice before at readings. He was an honorable guy. She was just doing her duty: mentoring a young writer.
The Old Florida Magnolia Inn was on a corner lot—a rambling, aged jewel of a structure set amid oaks, camellias, azaleas, palm trees, and jasmine so fragrant that Clarissa imagined herself rubbing a bouquet of tiny white blossoms on her wrists, shoulders, temples. Before crossing the cobblestone street, she paused, struck by how much the place looked like her house, only larger, with a more manicured lawn. It was beautiful. Even the porch’s gingerbread scrollwork was identical. So, too, were the glass-and-paneled front doors topped with narrow transoms. How odd, she thought, twin houses.
She stood alone in the slow-waning light, the thick heat, the jasmine wind, contemplating the day. For the first time in her marriage, she had defied her husband, and he was so self-absorbed that he did not get the significance. Come morning, she thought, when he realized the El Camino was not going anywhere, perhaps he’d finally begin to understand the depth of her discontent and stop ignoring her.
An abundant hedge of yellow roses hugged the length of the B and B’s picket fence. What a wonderful idea, she thought. Come fall, she would do that: line her fence in yellow roses. She stepped into the street, her blond curls blowing in the soft, hot wind, her mind pondering a hedge flush with bright blossoms. Halfway across, a stone’s throw from the hedge, her sky blue heel caught firmly in the uneven bricks. She tried to wrench free. She looked toward the Capitol. A car was barreling down on her. She slipped off the shoe, knelt, and tugged as hard she dared, cognizant that if she pulled too hard, she would snap the heel. Despite the oncoming vehicle and the knowledge that she was laced in dusk’s shadows, she could not abandon the shoe. How could she go through the night wearing only one blue pump? Surely the idiot would stop.
“Boo!”
Startled, she jerked her body toward the sound but lost her balance. In the crab crawl that ensued, she tumbled off her one shod foot, landing on her ass. The car slowed but did not stop. The driver honked.
“Jesus, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Clarissa looked up and saw Adams standing over her, wearing an ear-to-ear grin, a taut, pearl-buttoned rockabilly shirt, and jeans that fit real, real well. The car—another freaking Civic, thought Clarissa—skidded to a stop. The brakes squealed. Again, the driver honked.
“Hey, buddy, give it a rest. Can’t you see I’m helping my lady friend here?”
Adams offered his hand, which Clarissa accepted, and he pulled her to her feet. Feeling like a three-hundred-pound moron in a single shoe, while silently cussing Deepak (she felt the need to blame someone), she dusted off her jeans and studied the distance between herself, the shoe that was jammed in the cobblestone, and the car that had almost hit her.
The idiot in the Civic laid on his horn a third time.
“Mister, if you honk that horn once more,” Adams said, calm and cool, as if he were discussing the vitamin content of a watermelon, “I will personally shove that steering wheel up your ass. Now just give us a second.”
The moonfaced, bespectacled Civic driver, who sported a comb-over that started below his right ear, appeared stunned that anyone would say something so rude, even in the wake of his insistent honking. But he kept his hands away from the horn.
Adams walked over to the trapped sky blue shoe and with one firm tug freed it. He headed back to Clarissa and said, “Sweetheart, I’ve always wanted to do this.” And with that, he picked her up.
This was, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, a literal manifestation of sweeping her off her feet, but Clarissa, given how stunned she was, did not think of the obvious, the sublime, or even the ridiculous. She experienced solely, and unfortunately for her burgeoning heart, a flood of overanxious gratitude.
Adams carried her the remaining width of the street, deposited her on the sidewalk, bent down, and slipped the sky blue pump onto her bare ruby-toed foot. Deepak whispered, “Nail lacquer: It is a girl’s best friend.” Her ovarian shadow women were fanning themselves in a collective swoon.
The Civic sped by, its driver grimacing at the couple. But he did not honk.
“Thank you!” Clarissa said, breathless, off-kilter, an insane happiness tapping the pulse points of her wrists. She pulled the bottom edge of the chemise even with her hips. “You are quite the gentleman.”
Adams rose to his full height. Clarissa did not remember him being so tall. “And you look beautiful, Ms. Burden.”
Clarissa thought that there was a rule somewhere that married women were not to accept compliments from young, handsome, single guys—especially single guys whose blue eyes were nearly black and whose brown hair fell in the sexiest little tendrils down a long, tan neck and whose jeans fit the way orange peels fit fruit. But she couldn’t remember the details of said rule and therefore decided, given various other circumstances, she was under no ethical mandate to obey it.
“I’m sorry I missed your reading,” she said, brushing an unruly curl off her face. “Today’s just been”—she looked past his shoulder, trying to gather the right words, but soon realized that specificity in this instance was not in her best interest—“crazy.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it, baby. No big deal. I’m just happy to see you.”
“Me too,” Clarissa said, grinning, self-conscious, tugging at the spaghetti strap that had slipped down her shoulder. “I mean, I’m happy to see you.”
He reached over and plucked something off her cheek. “Bug,” he said.
Holy crap. She wanted to die. How long had it been there? Was spontaneous combustion due to embarrassment an option? Tingling from his touch, she had to do something and do it quick. She could not just stand there, grinning, nearly drooling, cockeyed as a drunken sparrow. Through the magic of self-preservation, she managed to sputter, “How was your trip?” but even as she spoke, she feared it was in Deepak’s singsong lilt.
“Fine, just fine.” He put a polite hand on her elbow and they drifted uphill, toward the bed-and-breakfast.
“The reading?”
“Not bad. I read from some new stuff. Maybe I’ll let you take a look at it.”
“I’d love that.”
He put his arm around her, squeezed her shoulders, and said, “It’s good to see you, Clarissa.”
“It’s good to see you, too.”
He swung open the picket fence gate—the scent of those yellow roses mingled with the heavy intent of the jasmine—gestured for her to go in, and asked, “How’s Iggy?”
“Fine. Busy. Working on a wire sculpture exhibit, other stuff. You know. He tried to make it but is”—she zipped through her mental Rolodex of excuses—“dealing with some sort of deadline.” Clarissa flashed a big smile, trying to sell it. “Were there a lot of people at the reading?”
“A fair number. One writer—he’s about to graduate from some junior college near here—he had a big family. That saved us all.”
They gained the steps of the veranda. Clarissa coveted the wicker rockers and fern baskets. “And this was sponsored by the public library?”
How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly Page 19
