Better Luck Next Time

by Julia Claiborne Johnson

  Like the cashmere coat at the Flying Leap, that Yale sweater had gone unclaimed for months, so before I left for home that summer I adopted it. I thought my parents would enjoy the joke of their brainy little Dumpling swaddled in an article of clothing my father, a Yale man himself, should have known went to star athletes, not the tubby likes of me. What I hadn’t expected was the way my mother’s eyes welled up when I stepped off the train wearing that sweater, or how she hugged me to her and choked out, “Oh, my angel, look at you! You earned a letter sweater!”

  I hadn’t had the heart to tell Miss Pam that I hadn’t come by that sweater honestly. I wondered what sport she thought I’d taken up. Bowling? Darts? The Chemistry Decathlon? She never asked. I assumed Big Howard had some idea of the truth and kept it to himself. In retrospect, I wonder now if the real reason he didn’t speak up was that he was easily duped, as my uncle had discovered and as we were all about to learn. The pilfered piece of clothing didn’t return to Yale in the fall because I didn’t either, not after the bottom fell out of our lives in Tennessee. I’d forgotten all about it.

  The shoes still fit, though they were a little tight. The funny thing about the sweater was that my pick-and-shovel work at my previous job had given me the proportions of whatever careless athletic titan it originally belonged to. I wore it whenever I needed to play dress-up. Sort of an inside joke, worn on the outside.

  So that Saturday night I squired our ladies into Tony’s Spanish Ballroom in my Joe College mufti. Sam had on a loose-fitting cotton tunic and pants with the crotch down around his knees that our maharaja had sent him all the way from India after getting a load of how Sam danced. My cowboy colleague may not have talked much, but that boy could cut a rug. He specialized in a wild, unfettered Lindy hop, turning backflips when there was room, tossing exhilarated and slightly terrified women between his legs and over his shoulders, dropping to a split and pulling himself upright again using just the strength of his thighs. I think the day that package arrived from the maharaja may have been one of the happiest of Sam’s life. No more dancing at a masquerade ball in unforgiving dungarees for him.

  “Dance, ma’am?” Sam asked Mary Louise as soon as we arrived. He didn’t have any special affinity for her—Sam was never much of one for playing favorites—but he knew she’d been a showgirl once and also she happened to be wearing trousers. Overalls, specifically—or, as Sam always called them, “overhauls.” When I suggested once that they were actually called “overalls,” Sam looked at me narrowly and said, “Don’t you think I know that, son? My folks called them overhauls. That’s how come I do.”

  I’ll say this for Mary Louise—she may not have been the sharpest blade in the drawer, but she was a brilliant dancer. “Mercy,” Zep said as we foxtrotted past that pair. “I never would have imagined Sam would be such a live wire on the dance floor.” The Zeppelin was dressed like a soothsayer in layers of ruffles and swirling skirts and extravagant costume jewelry that actually might have been the real thing. I had the paisley library tablecloth draped over one shoulder because she’d found it too hot to dance in along with all the other folderol she had on.

  “His sisters taught him,” I explained. “They figured if they worked up a family act, it might get them off the farm. Into the movies, you know, the way dancing did that for Ginger Rogers and Jimmy Cagney.”

  “I guess it didn’t work out.”

  “Oh, they made it to Hollywood, but they like to have starved while they were waiting to get discovered. So the girls went back to Arkansas. Sam said he’d rather die of hunger than go back there. Lucky for him, he knew a guy in Hollywood who knew Max. Sam’s worked at the Flying Leap since day one.”

  “I wonder why Sam didn’t want to go back to Arkansas? It’s nice,” the Zeppelin said. “I got divorced there once, in Hot Springs. Everyone was so friendly, and I saw Al Capone and Lucky Luciano eating pimento-cheese sandwiches on the porch of my hotel. Or two men who looked like them, anyway. I don’t really like pimento cheese. Do you?”

  “Pimento cheese is not for everybody,” I said. “As for why Sam didn’t want to go back to Arkansas, I guess that’s his secret. Most everybody has one, at least.”

  Zep arched an eyebrow and dug the fingers of her right hand into my shoulder to pull me a little closer. “What’s yours?” she asked.

  I used to be a merchant prince, I thought but did not say. “If I told you it wouldn’t be a secret anymore, would it?” I said, and winked.

  Margaret had said during my interview that she liked hiring southern boys because even poor ones like me had nice manners and flirted with everybody they came across without setting any store by it. I was fine with the flirting but I confess it made me uncomfortable when somebody who was the contemporary of my dead grandmother tweaked me while we were dancing. Years later, during the war, if I found myself on leave and in a dance hall in Europe, I always tipped taxi dancers extravagantly.

  “I think I know what your secret is,” Zep said.

  “Oh, do you,” I said.

  “Your mother taught you how to dance.”

  I hoped I didn’t look as relieved as I felt. “Guilty as charged,” I said. “How can you tell?”

  “Because you dance like people my age do, instead of like a maniac the way Sam does.”

  “You’re too kind,” I said.

  “Too old is more like it. Your mother must be almost as old as I am.”

  Give or take fifteen years. “She is,” I said.

  “Is she still with us?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your father?”

  “Him, too.”

  “Are they still married to each other?”

  “Last I heard,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because as much as it hurts, I have to admit you’re too young for me. So I was thinking maybe your apple didn’t fall far from your father’s tree.”

  “Aren’t you sweet,” I said. “But Miss Pam and Big Howard are still in love and living back home in Whistler.”

  “They’re lucky,” Zep said. “Are they still in the house you grew up in? On a farm, I’m guessing?”

  “No, ma’am. I was a city boy. More a town than a city, really. My parents let the old house go a few years back and moved into a little place that was easier to take care of.” I could still see my mother standing in the kitchen, sobbing into a tea towel after Big Howard told her we’d lost the house as well as the business. But I’ve lived here half my life, Miss Pam had wailed. I thought I’d live here until I died. There was nothing like the Depression for taking things away from people who thought it couldn’t happen to them.

  The Zeppelin laid her head against my chest and I closed my eyes and pretended I was dancing with my dead grandmother, also an armful, in our parlor back in Whistler.

  I surprised myself then by saying, “If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m getting that house back. My children and my children’s children will grow up there, trip over all the things I cherished, and say, ‘What are we going to do with all this junk when Big Daddy dies?’”

  Zep picked her head up, considered me, and nodded. “My parents gave our house to my oldest brother. Nobody asked for my opinion because I was a girl. I’ve never forgiven them, even though they’ve been dead for thirty years. You’ll get that house back someday if you really want it.”

  “You think?” I asked.

  “Of course you will. You’re smart and you’re male. The cards are stacked in your favor.”

  Before I could respond, Sam tapped on my shoulder to cut in. “Give me the keys to the Chevrolet,” he murmured in my ear as I handed over Zep. “Your turn with cleanup.” He tilted his head to indicate something going on behind her back.

  I slipped him the keys. Sam and I traded off who got stuck taking care of the women who were about to get their business in a bad fix. As a rule our ladies weren’t used to how heartbreak and high altitude affected their ability to hold their liquor, so sometimes things got messy.

>   As Sam artfully rumbaed the Zeppelin away I looked in the direction he’d indicated and saw a pair of women weaving unsteadily in my direction. The shorter one was dressed as a fairy, in a gossamer costume that looked familiar for some reason. Glittery wings and a disconcertingly expressionless full-face mask that I recognized once I got a load of the papier-mâché donkey’s head the taller woman was wearing. They were costumes from the college’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The woman in Bottom’s head also wore a string of pearls, and nothing else. Though I couldn’t see her face, I recognized those pearls. Also, from the evidence on display, I gathered Nina was a natural blonde.

  Chapter Ten

  “But she had clothes on when we got outta the car,” Emily said. “What happened to the rest of your donkey costume, N—?”

  “Shhh,” I said. “No names.” Emily and Nina weren’t titled aristocrats or Vanderbilts, but showing up at a costume party naked from the neck down might be enough to land a plain vanilla rich girl in the gossip rags on a slow night.

  Nina’s muffled voice fell from the lips of Bottom’s papier-mâché head. “Too hot,” she said.

  The donkey’s glass marble eyes rolled toward the ceiling, but its mouth was open wide enough for the person inside to see out. When I peeked in I saw the faint glimmer of Nina’s eyes, the way you’ll see light reflected in a possum’s retinas if you surprise one rooting through the garbage.

  “Hi, Cash,” Nina said. “You see me naked?”

  “Not anymore.” I was swaddling Nina in the tablecloth I was now grateful to have draped across me. Once I had her wrapped up tight I tucked its fringed edge under one of her armpits as if it were a sarong.

  “So now we even,” she said. “I saw alla you, you saw alla me.”

  “That’s right,” I said. I scanned the crowd to see if anybody else had seen alla Nina. It really said something for what a hopping spot Tony’s was that night that nobody seemed to have noticed the entrance of a six-foot-tall woman wearing nothing but a donkey’s head and pearls.

  “I tol’ her, take off Bottom if it makes ya sweat,” Emily said. “Meant tha head, not tha drawers. Why masks so hot? Ima take mine off.”

  “Nobody takes off anything else until I say so,” I said. “Outside. Follow me.”

  Nina started shaking her head from side to side like a toddler with a dried crowder pea lodged in her ear canal. “Nuh-uh,” she said. She stamped her foot and almost toppled over.

  “Stilts,” I said, “you’re a mess.”

  “Whass new,” she said.

  “What’s new is that it’s time to go. Half past let’s get out of here.” I swept her into my arms and carried her to the exit, the way a mother forcibly evacuates a child from a birthday party when the kid’s having a tantrum over leaving before the cake is served. “Chickadee, grab the back of my sweater and hold on tight.”

  Outside, I nipped into the mouth of the closest alley and propped Nina against the wall. Then I noticed something on the sidewalk that looked like roadkill coyote. “Is that what I think it is?” I asked, and pointed.

  I’d hoped the fresh air would help the pair of them sober up, but both seemed even more intoxicated. Nina didn’t respond at all. Emily at least turned her blank ivory mask in the direction I’d just pointed. Finally she covered one of her eyeholes, considered the thing for a year or two, and finally said, “Thass Bottom’s bottom.”

  When I looked back at Nina she was sliding down the wall. I caught her before she hit the dirt and gathered her up in my arms again. She was so light that I wondered if her bones were hollow, like a bird’s. Once I got the length of her arranged against me, I looked around to see Emily bent double, heaving. There are probably worse places to be sick than inside a full-face mask, but I can’t think of one.

  “Emily,” I said. “Take off the mask.”

  Emily straightened, pushed the mask up onto her hair, and wiped her eyes. I realized that she’d been laughing. “Sa funny!” she said. “Bottom’s bottom. Bot-tom’s bot-tom.”

  I sighed. “What got into you two?”

  “Shots,” Emily said.

  “I figured it was something along those lines.” Nina seemed much worse for the wear than Emily did, which surprised me. “How many shots did Stilts have?”

  “Too many,” Emily said. She made a stab at calculating on her fingers, but was having a hard time finding one hand with the other. “Three. Or four. Five? Shickadee starta feeling sick, so starta tossin hers ina back seat. Always thinkin.” Emily tried to tap her forehead but then gave up on locating that as well.

  A horrible thought occurred to me. “The back seat? You were sitting up front with the cabdriver, doing shots?”

  “No cab,” Emily said. She shook her head, then put a hand against the alley wall to steady herself. “Ma car.”

  “Don’t tell me you drove here like this,” I said. “Please.”

  “I did not,” Emily said, straightening up and enunciating carefully. “Nina did.”

  We followed the bread crumbs of Nina’s costume around the corner of the building and toward the river, Emily picking up every piece we came across. She only fell down once. I couldn’t help her to her feet, either, since I was carrying an armload of ass-headed millionairess. That evening I think I must have started codifying the advice I would someday pass along to parents of idiot children whose foolish hijinks landed them in the emergency room. Better here than in the morgue, I’d say. Now is not the time to lecture. Save it for tomorrow, when your little knuckleheads will have a better appreciation of how lucky they are to be alive.

  The Pierce-Arrow, when we found it, was over by the river, top down, front doors open, keys still in the ignition. It was a wonder somebody hadn’t stolen it. After a few tries Emily managed to open the back door for me. What looked like one of the bedsheets from the ranch house had been spread across the back seat, something I was glad of but Margaret probably wouldn’t be. I eased Nina down onto it, holding her upright with one hand while I pulled the donkey’s head off with the other.

  Nina’s hair was plastered to her head with sweat. She blinked a few times and squinted at me. “Cash!” she said. “Izz you!”

  “Who did you think was carrying you?” I asked. “Emily?”

  “Nope,” Nina said, and kissed me full on the mouth. She smelled like peppermint gone sour, and tasted like it, too. “You so pretty, Cash,” she said when I pulled away. “Why?”

  “People say I look like my father,” I said, “who looked like his father. The Bennett genes are strong.”

  “No,” Nina said. She shook her head vehemently, almost tumbling from the seat to the floor. When I righted her she put a lot of thought and effort into making a fist and thumped the middle of my chest. “Y,” she repeated. “Shouldna Y be a scarla A? Ors scarla A jus for girls?” Then she flopped back across the seat and closed her eyes.

  I circled the Pierce-Arrow once to check for damage. Miraculously, there was not a scratch on it. I picked up the donkey’s head and put it in the trunk, then looked around for Emily so I could take Bottom’s bottom off her hands. The gray terry cloth pieces lay abandoned in a pile. Alarmingly, there was no sign of Emily anyplace.

  She hadn’t wandered far, though. I found her kneeling by a storm drain, the tips of her wings tucked neatly under her ankles and her empty-eyed mask flipped to the back of her head. I knelt alongside her, eased the mask off, and held her hair while she retched. After she finished, I scrambled down the riverbank and dipped a bandana into the cold, fresh river water. Emily wiped her face with it and sat back on her heels. After a few deep, shaky breaths she said, “Drinking too much is less fun than Nina made it out to be.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “When I was pregnant with Portia I threw up all day long, for months,” she said. Her purge seemed to have sobered her up considerably. “My doctor worried I’d starve to death. Only thing I could hold down, and only sometimes, were saltine crackers.”

  If I had b
een to medical school already by then I could have explained that her problem might have been hyperemesis gravidarum, a somewhat rare condition experienced mostly during first pregnancies. The other thing we doctors used to call that was “nature’s birth control.” It took a brave woman to step up for another at-bat after suffering through it once.

  I hadn’t been to medical school yet, however, so I said, “That couldn’t have been much fun.”

  “It wasn’t,” she said. “Do you know, my husband never held my hair for me when I was sick? Not once.”

  I helped Emily out of her wings and put them in the trunk while she crept into the front seat for the drive back to the ranch. When I fired up the ignition I could see in the light from the dashboard that her face was sweaty and a few shades paler than her mask had been.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Let’s wait until my stomach settles?”

  “Fine by me,” I said.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled it. “I don’t think I’m cut out for Nina’s thrilling adventures.” Her voice sounded even croakier than usual.

  “I thought she said she’d rather be shot than come to a masquerade.”

  “Maybe that’s why she asked me to have you hide her gun,” Emily replied. “To avoid the temptation.”

  “Where were your car keys?” I asked.

  “Nina found them in one of my boots.”

  “After she hid them there.”

  “Probably so.”

  “So she planned on the two of you going to the party all along?”