“Another,” she said, feeling lightheaded. “On second thought, just bring me two.”
“Anything else?” he asked.
“How about that man over there?” She closed one eye and pointed. “Right there.”
The waiter gave her a helpless look.
“Forget the man,” Clancy Jane said, waving her other hand dismissively. “Just bring those drinks.”
The waiter fled, and Clancy Jane turned her attention back to Byron’s table. They were rising from their chairs. Clancy Jane felt her temper rising. Stop, she wanted to cry. Come back! The redhead stepped around a rubber plant, and Byron’s fingers grazed the small of her back. It was an inconsequential gesture, yet it told Clancy Jane everything she needed to know. If they hadn’t already slept together, they would soon. It was time for Clancy Jane to get on with her life.
She didn’t wait for the drinks. Instead, she threw a wad of cash on the table and stood up, veering toward the private bar, through an upholstered door with a porthole. Even the walls in the El Toro Club were padded, like something you would see in a lunatic asylum.
“Screwdriver,” she told the grizzled old bartender.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She glanced sideways at the smooth-faced man beside her. He was peering gloomily into a glass of beer. His straight brown hair flopped onto his forehead. Mechanical pencils protruded from his shirt pocket, and he wore thick horn-rims. When he saw Clancy Jane staring, he straightened up. “Hey, aren’t you Violet’s mother? Violet Jones?”
“Why, yes,” she said. The bartender slid a large glass in front of her.
“It’s so nice to see you,” the boy said. He grabbed her hand and pumped it enthusiastically.
“And you are…?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Daniel Walker, but everybody calls me Danny. I went to U.T. for two years. Violet and I would’ve graduated together, but I had to drop out. Want to play backgammon?” he added, grinning.
Danny had been working at the Sunbeam plant ever since he’d flunked out of U.T. He worked the day shift, maintaining the machines. When his shift ended, he rode his bicycle to Clancy Jane’s house in the country—a ten-mile trip, with steep hills. She was grateful for the privacy of her mountain, because if she lived in town, people would think she and Danny were lovers, and they most definitely were not. There was nothing romantic between them. True, they drank a lot, and he often fell asleep on the living room floor; but she thought of him as a child.
Apparently her family did, too. “Isn’t he a little young?” Mack said, when he stopped by one night for a beer. Danny was out in the yard, looking up at the stars with Walter’s old telescope. A tortoiseshell kitten jumped into Mack’s lap and meowed.
“The same thing could be said about Byron’s girlfriend,” Clancy Jane pointed out. “I saw them at El Toro a few weeks ago, and after his date finished eating, he had to burp her.” Then she told Mack about her evening at the steak house, starting with the mysterious letter and ending with Danny.
“You ought to show Byron the letter,” Mack said.
“I threw it away. Did I mention that a deputy drove up here the other day and served divorce papers?”
“Son of a bitch.” Mack slapped his leg. “On what grounds?”
“Irreconcilable differences.” Clancy Jane laughed. “What about irreconcilable redheads?”
“Well, don’t rush into anything with this crazy boy. I know you’re hurt, but take it easy.” Mack’s eyes narrowed. “Do you think Byron was seeing her on the sly while y’all were still together?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But I almost wish he had.”
“Why?”
“Because he left me for no reason.”
Grateful for Danny’s company, she took him in like another stray, feeding him endless bowls of vegetable broth. He was small-boned and frail, even if his thigh muscles were overly developed from riding his bicycle. He lived on quaaludes and salted peanuts, which he kept in his trouser pocket. He had seen every episode of Star Trek, and he had an unusual interest in films like Forbidden Planet and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Also, he suffered from allergies, and he sneezed whenever Clancy Jane’s biggest tom cat, Mephistopheles, jumped on his chest and began kneading.
One night while they shared a marijuana cigarette, he put his hand on Clancy Jane’s shoulder and told her that she was in danger. She thought maybe he was referring to her single status, living alone in the country, but it turned out he meant something vastly different.
“Aliens are among us,” he said. Behind his thick eyeglasses, his pupils were dilating.
“Yeah?” Clancy Jane said, inhaling smoke, holding it deep inside her chest. She thought he was referring to Vietnamese refugees.
“The Vellagrans have us under constant surveillance,” he said.
“Who?” Clancy Jane said, sputtering smoke.
“The Vellagrans,” he said, surreptitiously glancing over his shoulder.
“Excuse me?” Clancy Jane stared at the joint, wondering if he was referring to her diet. Vegans and Vellagrans sounded awfully close. Or maybe she had gotten some tainted marijuana. Sometimes it could induce paranoia.
“They hail from the planet Vellagra,” he explained. “It’s somewhere on the edge of the Milky Way. I’ve been wanting to tell you, but I had to make sure you weren’t one of them.”
To protect her from Vellagran rays, which were apparently as powerful as the magnetic beams on Star Trek, Danny taped Clancy Jane’s attic windows with a triple layer of heavy-duty Reynolds Wrap, explaining that it would block the rays. From the outside, the windows looked like a church-bound casserole. Next, he sealed up the second-story windows and was making his way downstairs when Clancy Jane stopped him.
“That’s enough,” she said. “I need sunlight and fresh air.”
“You like to live dangerously,” he said and retreated to the attic, where he had situated Walter’s old telescope aimed out a peephole in the foil. Danny turned the attic into a command post. He drew a crude diagram of the solar system that featured a close-up of each planet just on the edge of the star-strewn Milky Way, and beyond, clumps of galaxies, which he painstakingly labeled in black India ink. Every night he stood out in the backyard, looking up into the night sky, mistaking airplanes and weather balloons for mother ships.
Clancy Jane didn’t know what was wrong with him. A bad diet, but she also suspected paranoid schizophrenia. She dug out Byron’s Merck Manual from where she’d packed it away. Danny had every symptom of schizophrenia except auditory hallucinations. Still, she was lonely, and his craziness was more amusing than frightening. Their odd alliance might have continued indefinitely, if one night she hadn’t suggested they sit in the hot tub. “Come on,” she said, pulling two thick towels from the dryer. “It’ll relax you.”
“We’ll be sitting ducks out there for the Vellagrans!”
“I’m not a happy woman, Danny. If they want my body, and the life that goes with it, then they’re welcome to it.”
She strode out the back door, onto the deck, letting the screen bang behind her. When she reached the hot tub, which was built into the plank floor, she began to undress. The night air felt silky and cool as she eased down into the bubbling water. Above, the moon drifted between clouds. She shut her eyes and tried not to think of the few times she and Byron had enjoyed this tub. Now she grasped the spout and her body floated up to the surface.
Danny stepped onto the deck, holding a bottle of tequila. He glanced furtively at the moon, then at her.
“I’m still here,” she said. “I guess the Vellagrans have business elsewhere.”
“You don’t know the risk you’re taking,” he said hoarsely. He lifted the bottle to his lips. Tequila ran down his chin.
She raised her right hand. “Pass it down here, buddy.”
He squatted at the edge of the tub. As he handed her the bottle, the tips of their fingers touched. Her breasts floated just beneath the surface. After a minute
she handed up the bottle, giving him a view of naked flesh. “Funny, but I’ve never heard of waterborne abductions. They always seem to occur in the woods.”
“That’s true!” He took another drink and started walking toward the tub. “I’m coming in.”
“In your clothes?”
“Oh, right.” He set the bottle on the edge of the tub, yanked off his shoes, and pulled off his T-shirt. Then, turning his back to her, he stepped out of his jeans and underwear. Before Clancy Jane got more than an impression of white buttocks, he clasped his hands over his groin and spun around. Curly brown hairs protruded through his fingers. Then he slipped into the water.
She swam toward him, her feet skidding on the bottom of the tub. Then she noticed how he was staring. What if he thought she was in league with the Vellagrans? He might push her head under the water and hold her down until she stopped flailing. He lunged forward, sending a sheaf of water over the tub, and fell on his knees in front of her. He clasped his arms around her waist.
“Hey,” she said.
He pulled her down and silenced her with a kiss. She tried to push him away, but he seized her wrist and shoved it down between his legs. She felt something the width of a celery stalk, but only half as long. It occurred to her that he might be a Vellagran. She wrenched away from his grasp and surged through the bubbling water, trying to climb out of the tub. He grabbed her arm. “Hey, don’t rush off,” he said and fell on top of her, pinning her against the steps.
“I’m not rushing, I’m—”
His mouth closed over her lips and nose, as if he were giving her artificial respiration. She felt him grope between her legs and insert his finger. She gripped the sides of the tub, desperately trying to stay above the churning water. He blew air into her mouth, and once again she was reminded of CPR. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand. He was still probing with his finger. Then she felt his hands on her waist—both of his hands. So if it wasn’t his finger down there, what in God’s name was it? She began to struggle for air, and the boy, apparently mistaking her movements for passion, began to gasp. He groaned, and pushed hard against her.
“God, that was good,” he said, panting. He rolled off, and the celery stalk floated between his legs.
Oh, my God, she thought. That’s what a Vellagran’s penis looks like.
“Was it good for you, too, Mrs. Falk?” He gazed up at the stars. “I sure hope the Vellagrans didn’t see.”
At the mention of aliens, she sobered a little. She scooted to the far end of the hot tub, then climbed out rather ungracefully and reached for the tequila bottle.
“Don’t leave just yet,” he called. “I’m just getting revved up.”
That night a possum crawled into an electrical transformer, plunging the entire county into darkness. Danny was still outside, and he began to scream for Clancy Jane. Still feeling woozy from the tequila, she made her way to the deck. Danny was wild-eyed.
“It’s an alien plot. They want to distract us,” he yelled, pointing at the sky. “So they can abduct us. Without any lights, they can do what they want.”
“I don’t see anything.” Clancy Jane looked up. The moon was hovering over the trees. The air smelled of pine needles.
“Listen,” he whispered.
She was just about to tell him to leave, that she’d had enough, when she heard faint rumbling. At first, she thought it might actually be a spacecraft, but then four National Guard helicopters chugged across the sky, stirring the trees beneath them. They flew over her land regularly, and she always cursed them for waking her up.
“Man, it’s a fucking invasion,” Danny was saying.
“No, it’s not,” she said. The helicopters were making a grinding noise, and the windowpanes began to rattle. Danny began to jump up and down, his tiny penis swaying. “They see us!”
“These aren’t aliens, they’re just National Guard,” she said.
“No, these are black helicopters!” he cried.
“Now hold on just a minute,” she said testily. “These helicopters fly over here once a month. It’s the goddamn Guard!”
“No, it’s them.” He strode to the edge of the deck. “And it’s high time I faced them. So don’t you worry. I’ll protect you, Mrs. Falk. I’ll throw up a smoke screen and make them abduct me instead of you.” She could still hear the helicopters, way off in the distance. Danny hurried down the steps, then took off running across the meadow. Clancy Jane opened the door to go in, then glanced over her shoulder. Danny stood poised against the sky, as if he might heave himself into it. “Over here!” he cried. “I’m the one you want.”
A TAPED MESSAGE TO ROSALYN CARTER
December 28, 1977
Dear Rosalyn,
I am writing to thank you for the Kodak Christmas card of you, Jimmy, and the kids. I am impressed that you can send cards and still find time to buy presents for everybody. I am dead to know what you got your mother-in-law. Lord, that woman looks like she’d be hard to deal with. Earlene thinks I am difficult. She didn’t like what I gave her for Xmas. I gave her a copy of Jamaica Inn that I found at a tag sale. Earlene lied and said she’d read it, but when I quizzed her, I found out that she’d only seen the movie.
My son just sat there and didn’t say a word. But if Earlene lies to me, she will lie to him.
I gave my daughter a pretty black pocketbook from the Episcopal rummage sale, and she hugged and kissed me. We get along real good these days. When Bitsy was little, I never dreamed that she’d turn out to be a good daughter, but she is so kind and easygoing. We didn’t get to spend Xmas with her little daughter, Jennifer, as her other grandparents have taken her to Hilton Head. They won’t be back until January. But we are leaving up the tree and keeping all her presents—exactly ten—crowded under it.
Anyway, thank you for the card. I will treasure it.
Fondly,
Dorothy
Part 5
POSTCARDS FROM BITSY
May 2, 1978
Princess Hotel
Montego Bay, Jamaica
Dear Dorothy,
Thank you again for this lovely graduation present. It’s so pretty in Jamaica. When I come home I’ll be rested and sunbaked, and ready to find a job with my decorating degree. I bought Jennifer a pearl bracelet and a seashell one. I wish I could give her the stars and moon.
Your daughter,
Bitsy
P.S. I’ve sent a card to Jennifer too. I hope they let her get it.
May 3, 1978
Princess Hotel
Montego Bay, Jamaica
Dear Jennifer,
I just got here and already I’m missing you like crazy. You’d like it here except for the food. They serve a lot of curried goat, which tastes awful. I have bought you some cute gifts.
Love,
Mother
May 4, 1978
Princess Hotel
Montego Bay, Jamaica
Dear Violet,
Today I walked on the beach and some island guy tried to sell me a marijuana cigar. I told him to go away, that I was a missionary. He told me that I should try a different position. Ha-ha. At first I was real scared, but then it hit me—I’ve never been anywhere by myself! Not in my entire life. That’s sad. Now it’s time for me to kick up my heels and have fun. I went to Ocho Rios with a tour group and climbed a waterfall. Everybody held hands, making a human chain. There are some cute men here on vacation, but I’m scared to talk to them. On the way back to Montego Bay, I got to see a wild pineapple growing beside the road. So far, I’ve signed up for a Jeep tour of Cockpit Country and a hot-air balloon ride. But this afternoon, I’m relaxing by the pool. I can’t come home without a tan.
Love, Bitsy
Bitsy and Louie
A bee dropped out of the sky, emitting a halfhearted buzz, and landed on a martini glass that lay crooked in the sand. The bee rested on the rim, wings flicking, and began a slow counterclockwise crawl. I straightened my sunglasses and watched the insect,
wondering how a bee could be attracted by the bitter remains of a martini, especially when the island was full of sweeter offerings.
Yesterday, on the way back from Ocho Rios, the tour driver pulled off the road and pointed out a pineapple plant. Another passenger, a man with curly black hair and deep-set eyes, smiled at me. He wore a red Izod shirt, white shorts, and flip-flops, but his cultured voice suggested a mansion back home filled with children and a beautiful wife, so I just brushed him off. Later, at the hotel swimming pool, I saw him again. Treading water in the deep end, we exchanged superficial information. His name is Louie DeChavannes, and he is a cardiovascular surgeon from New Orleans.
“I’m recently divorced—for the second time,” he told me, swimming closer. “Do I sound dangerous?”
He did. I flashed what I hoped was a mysterious smile, then swam over to the ladder, got out of the pool, and climbed to the high diving board. Below, in the blue water, the doctor was swimming laps, a perfect American crawl. I waited until he reached the shallow end, then I dove into the pool. When I surfaced, the doctor paddled over to me. “You look like Aphrodite,” he said. “Would you have dinner with me?”
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