The Orange Blossom Special

by Betsy Carter

  Ella interrupted the girls. “Mrs. Landy wants to know if your friend would like to stay for dinner.”

  “Can you?” asked Crystal.

  “I’ll call my mother.”

  Rich people inviting her kid over for dinner aroused uneasiness in Tessie. Yet the exuberance in her daughter’s voice made her put it aside. “You have a good time, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ll be waiting in the car outside at eight.”

  “MANNERS. THAT’S THE thing that distinguishes people with class from people who are coarse.” Tessie had a couple of maxims that she lived by, and that was one of them. She had the annoying habit of swiping Dinah’s elbows off the table and tapping her on the small of the back when she slouched. This night, at the Landy’s house, Dinah sat with her forearms resting on the kitchen table just so, and her back straight as a ramrod. She thanked Ella each time she served her some shrimp or rice, and was careful to address the Landys as Mr. and Mrs.

  She was seated next to the brother whom, she noticed, would cast swift glances at her then look down at his plate. The father called her by name several times, and once spoke to her directly. “Dinah, it sure must be something for a snowbird like you to find yourself on the sunny streets of Gainesville.” The mother never so much as looked her way. It seemed to Dinah that she just talked to fill the air. “Maynard, darling, don’t you think it’s time we took Crystal jewelry shopping?” she said out of nowhere. “She is fourteen, old enough for some starter pearls.” Crystal raised her eyebrows and mouthed the words “nausea pearls” across the table to Dinah. Dinah put her hand over her mouth trying not to smile. She could see why Mrs. Landy got on Crystal’s nerves.

  AT EXACTLY EIGHT O’CLOCK, Dinah thanked the Landys for “a really terrific dinner,” then ran outside to the green Plymouth parked outside their house. She was breathless with news about the day: the inside of Crystal’s closet, where all the clothes were arranged by color (her mother’s idea), the shrimp dinner, Mr. Landy. “He was really nice,” she said, without adding that, before she left, he put his arm around her and said, “You must come and visit us again real soon,” and said it as if he meant it.

  Tessie seemed distracted. “You’d think they’d have more streetlights in the rich part of town,” she said. Dinah could tell driving in the dark in this new neighborhood made her nervous. With Tessie’s unsteady foot on the gas, the car lurched forward like a drunk in the dark. Dinah wasn’t paying attention to the unfamiliar streets; Tessie wasn’t listening to Dinah describe the Landy’s pool table.

  Then came a sudden thump, an unearthly yowl, the shriek of brakes. Tessie and Dinah sat frozen. Fear, sour as sulfur, filled the car. The screams of a little girl got louder as she ran toward them. Before she reached them, Tessie stepped on the gas and sped away as fast as she could.

  “Mom, you hit a cat,” cried Dinah.

  “No, no I didn’t,” said Tessie, her voice trembling. “I hit nothing of the kind.”

  FOUR

  Above the receptionist’s desk at J. Baldy’s, where the women who could afford it dropped twenty-five dollars to have their hair washed and teased, was a framed document from the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce. “J. Baldy’s,” it said in block letters. “Business of Distinction. 1956.” The paper had an official offwhite color. On the bottom right-hand corner was a shiny gold seal.

  Jésus Baldisarri took a foreigner’s pride in that certificate of recognition. After he received it, he wrote his mother in Spanish: “The American government has given me an award for excellence. It is signed by the mayor and there is a big gold star on it. You must come here soon. Everything is possible in this America. Your loving son, Jésus.”

  J. Baldy was the name Jésus took after a teacher at beautician school told him that Jésus Baldisarri was too foreign for the people in this town. He earned his success by exploiting the otherness that his teacher had warned him against.

  His Cuban accent and rum-colored skin were a novelty among the slow drawls and white faces of Gainesville. That, plus his thick black curly hair and slight six-foot frame: How could the women resist a man like Jésus? “My friend,” he would say when one of his ladies came into the beauty parlor. “I am honored to have you in my shop.” Sometimes he would kiss her hand. “You look so rested, you have been on a vacation?”

  When one of his ladies sat in his chair, he would snap a white gown closed behind her neck like a giant bib, rest his large hands on her shoulders, and stare at the reflection of the two of them in his mirror. His mahogany eyes would widen with interest as they explored the possibility of bangs or the latest bubble cut. Then he’d brush his fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her face or sweeping it above her head. Sometimes he’d lightly stroke her face for emphasis. “These bones are so—ah, expressive. I will make it that everyone can see the sparkle in your eyes.”

  If Jésus knew that there was something sensual in his touch, a seductive promise in his voice, he kept it to himself. It was something the women looked forward to. They would never admit it, of course, but they kept coming back for more. They told him things, stories, indiscretions, nearly forgotten dreams. He never repeated what he heard or made judgments about what he intuited. Behind his back they gossiped about whether or not he’d left a wife in Havana or dated one of the customers. No one could remember ever seeing him outside of his shop.

  Victoria Landy had a standing appointment, Saturdays at eleven. Jésus had a high regard for the natural beauty of this woman and chose his words carefully around her. “How your skin glows today,” he would say, or “You are a happy woman. This is true, no?” Accustomed to being flattered, Victoria would answer with a flicker of a smile, then fall into easy conversation with him. He’d been teasing her hair for the past three years. When she and Maynard had their twentieth wedding anniversary party, it was Jésus who suggested floating flowers in the pool. And the time she had to go into the hospital overnight to have a cervical cyst removed, Jésus was the only one she told, and the only one who sent flowers to her room.

  The morning after Dinah came to dinner, there was an unusually ferocious rainstorm. Victoria ran into the beauty parlor, her auburn hair tightly packed under a clear plastic bonnet. “Honestly,” she said to Delilah, the receptionist, “sometimes I think all of Gainesville will just float away.”

  “We should be so lucky,” answered Delilah.

  Victoria changed her clothes and went, like a schoolgirl, to her usual chair. “El beso del sol,” said Jésus. “You look like you’ve been kissed by the sun.” They both stared at her damp matted hair in the mirror. “I don’t either,” she said. “I look like some toad come out of the rain.” They laughed, she at his transparent attempt at a compliment, he because he thought she was right.

  “We have a new girl today,” said Jésus, leading her over to the magenta sink. “Sonia, a friend of the family from Havana. She will shampoo you.”

  Victoria usually ignored the women who washed her hair. She’d lie back in the chair, arch her neck into the crook of the basin, and close her eyes as the warm water and the smell of ripe apple shampoo washed over her.

  But Victoria noticed that the girl had a pouty lower lip and a gap the size of an almond sliver between her two front teeth. Sweet face, she thought, as she rested her neck in the crux of the cold sink. Gently, as if she were lifting a baby, Sonia picked up Victoria’s head and placed a rolled towel beneath it. She washed Victoria’s hair, massaging her scalp at the same time. Her fingers danced deftly beneath the storm of lather and the sweet smell.

  “Cream in my coffee.” The song came unbidden to Victoria. “Her skin is the color of cream in my coffee.” The words took on a tempo of their own, in time to the tango that was playing in her body. Only when Sonia wrapped a towel around her head and pointed to Jésus’s chair—“Mr. Baldissari, please”—did Victoria remember where she was. “Well, Sonia,” she said, “you do that awfully well.” Later she slipped a five-dollar bill into her hand, more than Sonia earned for the
day. She looked at the money and then at Victoria. “Is too much,” she said, holding it in her open palm like an offering. “No. Is too much.” “Don’t be foolish,” said Victoria in a hushed voice. “Just keep it.” Sonia tucked the bill down the front of her pink blouse. “Thank you, miss,” she said, then began sweeping the floor before Victoria could change her mind.

  “Who’s the new girl?” she asked Jésus.

  When Jésus smiled, feathery laugh lines played around his eyes. “Sonia. She is the daughter of a friend. She is one good looker, eh?”

  Next to them, Sonia began sweeping up the damp pieces of Victoria’s hair that had fallen from Jésus’s scissors. She wore tight white capri pants and leather sandals with straps that tied around her bony ankles. Victoria noticed her narrow waist and imagined that if she held it with both hands, her fingers would practically touch. She had no hips, which only accentuated the surprising slope of her rear end.

  “Yes sir, she is one good looker,” said Victoria. “Have I told you about the landscaping we’re doing around the pool?” They both embraced the new conversation.

  “Saw Palmetto grasses are perfect,” he agreed. “Nature as it was meant to be. You have a rare appreciation for beauty.”

  She did, and fortunately she had the money to surround herself with it. Indulging in her desires? Now, that was something separate and perhaps the one thing that she couldn’t afford to risk.

  TWO WEEKS EARLIER, Crystal’s friend, whatever her name was, had stayed overnight. She and Crystal had become inseparable, going to the drug store for Cherry Cokes after school, calling each other the minute they got home. Victoria worried that there was something unnatural about their closeness, and their secret language, and the way they’d both laugh so hard at the same dumb things that tears would stream down their cheeks. Victoria encouraged Crystal to bring home other friends, but it was always Dinah who ended up visiting. Victoria remembered how, the night she stayed over, they went straight to Crystal’s room after dinner. “We have a project to work on,” Crystal had said, with an irritating emphasis on the word project. The two girls could barely hide their smirks when Victoria answered, “Sarcasm is not a very feminine trait, young lady.” Later, she heard them laughing and realized that the drumming sound behind them was water running. They were taking a bath. Together!

  Steam blotted the mirrors and made everything in the pink bathroom foggy. The first thing Victoria noticed when she stormed in was Crystal and Dinah sitting in the tub. Their faces were red from the heat, and they had both fashioned hats and moustaches out of bubbles. Victoria reached down and yanked Crystal by the arm, pulling her out of the tub. “Oh no you don’t, not in this house,” she hollered. Dinah sat alone in the sudsy water with her arms wrapped around her knees. She suddenly felt humiliated.

  “You girls get dressed now and act decent,” she said, before throwing a robe at Crystal and slamming the door. When she walked out of Crystal’s room, Charlie was standing in the hall waiting for her.

  “Gee, Mom, don’t you think you were a little hard on them in there?”

  Victoria, her face scarlet, dried her hands on her blue cut-off shorts. “How the hell do you know I was hard on them?” she asked.

  “Well anyone who lives within a mile from here could hear,” he answered.

  “Listen, Charlie Landy. You are a smart young man, smart enough to get yourself into Auburn University. And Lord knows you have knowledge of things other people your age do not. But—and correct me if I’m wrong—it just might be possible that you do not understand every goddamned thing that goes on in the universe!”

  For all of his intuitiveness and sensitivity, Charlie drew a blank when it came to his mother. Try as he might, he failed to detect a glimpse of what was going on inside of her. Like his father, he had learned to back off whenever she started swearing. But this time felt different, as if there was something he needed to defend.

  “I may not understand every goddamned thing in the universe,” he shouted back, “but I do know one thing. Everyone in this house, including you, would be a whole lot happier if you cared less about how things looked and more about how they felt.”

  He waited for her to lob back that he was a self-righteous little pug, like she sometimes did. She’d scrunch up her face when she said “pug,” to remind him that he was thick and jowly, just like his father. But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she placed her hands together, as if she were trying to cup raindrops, and buried her head in them. When she spoke again, the anger was gone. “Well, darlin’,” she said with surprise in her voice. “I can’t remember the last time you and I went at each other like this. That was really something, wasn’t it?”

  That was an awful night, thought Victoria as she left J. Baldy’s. By that time the storm had passed and the steamy streets smelled like early morning. Her heart and head were running at different speeds, as if the two were disconnected.

  FIVE

  She had to know she’d hit the cat.

  Dinah lay in her bed, puzzled over why her mother hadn’t even stopped the car. God, she was weird. No friends, all the drinking and smoking, talking to her dead husband. And now this! Her mother was a liar; worse even, she was a coward. Dinah stared at the moon, so round and pale it looked like Khrushchev’s head out her window. She thought about whether she’d tell Crystal what had happened. Adults weren’t to be trusted, that was for sure. They’d disappear on you, just like that, or try to make you believe something that happened really hadn’t. Would Crystal think that was interesting, she wondered, as she concentrated on not listening to her mother talking to her father in the next room.

  The next morning, Tessie woke up with a fiery rash. Prickly little blisters ran down her arms, behind her neck, and across her stomach. It felt as if there were pine needles inside her trying to get out. Her bed sheets were soaked.

  The heat, that’s what this must be about, she thought, rubbing her fingers over the nubby terrain of her arms. The books never mentioned the humidity. Tessie constantly felt as if she were wrapped up in a coat that was too heavy. It made her steps cumbersome and her thoughts sluggish. The air in Carbondale was brisk; it didn’t try to sink you. Here the heat took root and strangled everything in its path. Staying cool was the biggest accomplishment. They had fans in every room, but fans just moved the hot air around. Sometimes Tessie took three cold baths in one day.

  She stood in front of the bathroom mirror dabbing Calamine lotion on her skin. “Look at this,” she said to Dinah, who had just woken up. “All over me, just like the measles.” Dinah considered the little eruptions and saw the tension in her mother’s face as she tried to keep from scratching. “Don’t I look attractive today? How ever will I go to work like this?” Dinah wondered if it wasn’t as obvious to her mother as it was to her: it was the cat, scratching back. What Dinah didn’t know was that the night before, Tessie had placed a piece of paper in the Jerry Box. “Should I tell Dinah the truth?” she had written in a shaky hand. Now the answer was written all over her.

  “Dinah, honey,” she said, rubbing the Calamine into the crook of her arm. “We should talk about what happened last night.”

  “Forget it, Mom. I’ve got to get ready for school.”

  Suddenly Dinah couldn’t wait to get to homeroom. She knew Eddie Fingers would be in his seat when she got there. Without realizing it, Dinah had come to rely on him. She felt safe in his presence and took comfort in their silent dialogue.

  When she got to her seat, Eddie was waiting. She flashed him a quick four. What about the cat? He considered her message before responding. For the first time, he used all six fingers on his left hand to signal back. Maybe he smiled, Dinah couldn’t tell. She carried the number six with her through Phys. Ed, through Civics, English, and to the cafeteria. As she was looking out the window of Mr. Nanny’s Geometry class, the six words revealed themselves to her: The answer is clear as glass.

  It made her smile to hear her dad’s voice as she played the words
over in her mind. That afternoon, she and Crystal walked home together. “My mom ran over a cat last night,” she said.

  “Did it die?” asked Crystal.

  “I’m sure it did. The weird thing was, she drove off real fast and pretended like it didn’t happen.”

  Crystal bit the inside of her lip. “My mom’s like that too, you know, doing one thing and saying it was something else.”

  Dinah felt the warmth of relief flood her belly. She had told Crystal a forbidden secret. Crystal understood, even made it sound as if Mrs. Landy and her mom had something in common.

  The answer is clear as glass.

  Crystal. That’s what was clear as glass.

  “THE BARON’S COMING TODAY,” said Glenn Bech Jr., handing Tessie a bunch of carnations for her desk.

  “So that explains the suit,” she said.

  “And the haircut,” he answered, wiggling his ears.

  Ever since she started her job, the Bech family, owners of Lithographics, would tease her about her flat a’s, and ask her to pronounce words like pajamas. “Pajaahmahs,” she’d say, purposely stretching out the second syllable. Then she’d poke back: “Well, at least I don’t have that Florida y’all drawl.”

  Only one month into the job, Old Man Bech had said to her, “Just call me Glenn, and my son here Glenn Junior. Don’t you think that will be easier all around, Tess?” The Bechs were part of the business elite in Gainesville, yet they made her feel as if she could match up. No one had ever called her Tess before. It sounded efficient yet familiar. She liked the sound of her own voice on the phone, “Lithographics. How may I help you?” But her favorite thing was having her own desk. At Angel’s, she was on her feet all day. Some nights, she would hobble home and collapse on the sofa. Jerry would pull out his mother’s old white enamel basin and fill it with warm water and Epsom salts. “We’ve got to find you a sit-down job,” he’d say, taking one foot at a time in his hands and kneading her toes. She hoped, somehow, he could see her seated at her gray metal desk with the words Mrs. Lockhart engraved on the plastic nameplate in front of her.