The Orange Blossom Special

by Betsy Carter

  Victoria had run into the bathroom and jumped out the bedroom window just before the explosion. She found Ella and Reggie and waited with them for Maynard. The two of them had to restrain her from running back in after Maynard. “Get your cotton-pickin’ hands off me,” she shouted. “Maynard, Maynard honey, I’ll be right there.” But they wouldn’t loosen their grip on her. When the Fire Department finally went in and got Maynard out, they said it probably was a heart attack that killed him. Other than the black smudges from the smoke, he didn’t have a mark on him—not even a scrape.

  IT TOOK UNTIL early morning to get the fire under control. Only part of the house remained intact: the part that contained Ella’s room and Reggie’s beneath it. The Skullys down the road took Victoria, Ella, and Reggie in for the night, though no one slept. At eight A.M., Victoria and Mr. Skully went back to the house. Victoria roamed the street in front of the house in her long silk robe and her shiny diamond ring. Stooped by shock, she looked wraithlike in front of the scorched landscape. The sky was still overcast with smoke, and the smell clung to everything.

  The metal circular staircase that connected Ella’s room with the kitchen was charred, melted into the shape of a seahorse. Plastic glasses from the soda fountain were curled like fingernails grown too long. There were black stubbles of things that once were other things. The springs from a bed looked rusted, as if they’d been left out in the rain for months. Victoria picked up a piece of paper from a magazine preserved in a nearly a perfect circle, its edges browned but still readable. Something—a pot, a plate—must have sat on top of it and kept it from burning. There was a photograph of a Mr. and Mrs. McCall, with a caption identifying them as “visiting snowbirds from Toronto.” The McCalls were leaning toward the camera smiling. His brown hounds-tooth jacket and her gray checked blazer looked as if they’d been hand painted. Mr. Skully came over to Victoria. “The wind was blowing to the north last night. If it had gone the other way, all the houses around here would be goners. Someone was watching over us.” He glanced up toward the smoky heavens before realizing that Victoria probably didn’t feel she’d been watched over terribly well. “It’s horrible,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulder. They were a builder’s hands, and she could feel his calluses through her thin robe. She stared at Mr. Skully, her blue eyes swollen. “Oh, Maynard,” she sobbed on his shoulder. “My poor Maynard.”

  Later that morning, Marilyn Grist came to get Victoria. As Marilyn got out of her car, Victoria embraced her old friend. “Everything’s gone,” she cried. “This is more than I can stand.”

  “You’ll stay with us,” said Marilyn. “C’mon, let’s go to my place. As they drove into the carport of Marilyn’s small redbrick house, Victoria leaned her head on Marilyn’s shoulder. It surprised her how irritated she felt by the two little dwarfs in Marilyn’s front yard holding, between them, the words “The Grists.” Inside, Marilyn brought Victoria into the pale blue study with Bill’s framed diplomas from the University of Florida on the wall. She opened the beige-and-brown-plaid pullout couch beside his desk and made the bed. It smelled old and musty, but Victoria climbed under the covers, grateful for the clean sheets. Marilyn tucked Victoria into the bed and sat beside her. She held her friend’s hand. When Victoria cried, “It hurts, it hurts so much,” Marilyn wrapped her arms around her and rocked back and forth. “I know, baby, it hurts real bad.”

  ON MONDAY MORNING, July 5th, Tessie Lockhart was lying in a queen-size bed next to Barone. They ordered up breakfast from room service and drank coffee and ate from a basket of sweet rolls. There was a silver vase with a single tea rose in the middle of the tray. Tessie was rubbing her nails lightly up and down Barone’s back as he read the newspaper. Barone was thicker, more muscular than Jerry. She liked how her thin white fingers looked so small against his dark hairy skin, and wondered how much it would cost to get a manicure at Baldy’s. Suddenly Barone straightened his spine. “Holy Christ!” he said, breaking the lazy rhythm of the morning. “Look at this.” He thrust the Tallahassee Democrat in Tessie’s face. There, on page two, was the headline: “Maynard Landy, 49, Prominent Gainesville Businessman, Killed in Early Morning Fire.” They stared at the photo of the blackened remnants of the house. In the right-hand corner, they could see the pool and the cabana, which appeared to be unharmed. The article said that the cause of the fire was unknown. Neighbors claimed they’d heard an explosion, leading police to surmise that the fire might have been caused by faulty electrical wiring, but they hadn’t located the source. Mr. Landy was found lying facedown dead in the garage. The cause of death was a heart attack. The other three residents of the house, Mrs. Maynard Landy, Ella Sykes, and Reginald Sykes, were unharmed. Mr. and Mrs. Landy’s two children, Crystal and Charlie, were away at camp.

  Tessie reached for the phone to call Dinah.

  A woman with a chipper voice answered, “Good morning, this is Camp Osceola, how may I help you?”

  “This is Tessie Lockhart, I’d like to speak to my daughter, Dinah.”

  “Oh yes,” her voice got terse. “They’ve been trying to reach you. I’ll get her.”

  While Tessie held on, she exchanged looks with Barone. She reached for his hand.

  Dinah finally got on the phone without even saying “hello.” “Where’ve you been?” she shouted. “Everyone’s been looking for you. We even tried calling the Bechs. How can you just disappear like that? This is so awful. I just want to come home.”

  “Don’t worry, honey,” said Tessie, “No one’s disappearing. We’ll come and get you right away.”

  “Everyone is disappearing!” cried Dinah. “And who’s ‘we’?”

  “You know, me and my friend from work. You’ve met him.”

  “Oh, him.”

  PART 2

  1962

  THIRTEEN

  It’s not just because you’re Cuban, but you remind me so much of that fellow Fidel Castro.”

  For weeks, Victoria had been watching the Cuban dictator on the news, and each time she’d say to Charlie and Ella, “Damn, that face is familiar.” Finally, she got it. “My God, he looks like Jésus, that’s who it is.”

  Charlie said, “Do you think every Cuban person thinks that every American man looks like John Kennedy?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she answered. “Not nearly half of them are that handsome.”

  Jésus did look like Fidel. He had the same petulant bottom lip and those spooked brown eyes that often gazed into nowhere.

  “Charlie says I think all Cubans look alike,” Victoria continued, “but he’s a silly. You don’t look anything like Desi Arnaz.”

  “How is the young Mr. Landy?” asked Jésus, eager to change the subject.

  “Work, work, work. He’s in that store fourteen hours a day. That’s not normal for a boy his age.”

  “There is nothing wrong with the son taking care of his mother,” said Jésus. “It is an honor.”

  “It’s an ordeal, that’s what it is.” said Victoria. “Me and him living under one roof with Ella and Reggie. And he’s a boy who should be getting drunk at fraternity parties rather than standing behind a counter and selling liquor. That is not normal. No sir, that is not normal.”

  Victoria’s voice was harsh now, the sound of metal against metal. Since the fire, her face had become fuller. It seemed as if her eyes were setting into her cheeks. She was still beautiful; she’d always be beautiful. But with the veneer of loss that set over her, it was a more ordinary beauty, like a washed-ashore fragment of coral that was once part of a magnificent reef.

  “I think this bob makes my cheekbones more prominent, don’t you?” asked Victoria, running her fingers across her face.

  “Like Raquel Welch,” answered Jésus, grateful that she could never stay away from the subject of herself very long.

  Jésus sprayed her hair, shielding her face with his hands. Victoria squinted through the mist as Tessie walked in for her twelve o’clock appointment.

  “There she is now, Mi
ss Hot Type of Gainesville, Florida,” shouted Victoria.

  Tessie gave her a friendly punch on the shoulder. “You’re too much.”

  They now had the easy friendship of two women who had seen the worst of each other and had nothing left to hide. After Maynard died, Tessie offered to have Crystal come and stay at her house. “The girls could share a bedroom. Dinah would love the company,” she said. It was all Victoria could do to hold herself together, and after thinking about it for less than a minute, Victoria said, “Yes. That is a very kind offer. Of course I will pay her expenses.”

  Three years later, Crystal still hadn’t come home.

  The new Landy home was U-shaped with white lap siding and an orange shingled roof. There was no sunken living room, no garden in the bathroom that conjured up Bali. There was little room for Eric, Victoria’s landscaper, to work his magic, not that she cared anymore. Still, Charlie had made good on the promise he made to Victoria the day after the fire. “I’ll take care of you,” he’d said. “I promise, I won’t leave you alone.” On the Monday before the funeral, he called the Auburn admissions board and said he wouldn’t be coming in the fall, and on Tuesday, he put the whole chain of liquor stores up for sale except for the one right in Gainesville. The joke around town was even people who never touched the bottle bought from him just to keep his business up. He was a saint, that Charlie Landy. That’s what everyone said.

  Charlie insisted that Ella and Reggie move in with him and Victoria. Had Victoria been less depleted, she would have never let things get that far; never would have let Reggie live under the same roof; Reggie with his watery eyes that she would never meet, for fear she would see reproach within them. Reggie and Ella knew that Maynard Landy would be alive today had Victoria not run back to find her ring, and the knowledge haunted all of them in different ways. Reggie dwelled on the fact that for once, the horrible consequences were not a result of his drinking, womanizing, or lying when it would get him somewhere. If a man can be redeemed by being faultless for once, then Reggie was that man. Each day the conviction that it was his destiny to serve Victoria Landy for the rest of his life became more powerful, and despite her irritability and severe aversion to him, he made a vow to himself that he would do just that.

  The way the house was arranged, Reggie and Ella had the rooms at the upper arms of the U, and Charlie and Victoria had the rooms at each end of the curve overlooking the backyard. Reggie called his tiny room off the garage My Palace. Ella lived in the little bedroom off the kitchen. The Nun’s Room, Victoria called it, because it was white and sparse with just a small hospital-style bed, her birchwood and pine cross hanging over it, and a small oak night table standing next to it. Ella had a small book collection. There was the Bible, of course, the latest Harold Robbins novel (The Carpetbaggers), and a book about puppies by Charles Schulz. But she was slow to add things to her room, just as she was slow to rebuild her life since the fire.

  The fire tested Ella’s faith. You could see it in the way her shoulders had rounded and her pace had slackened, as though she was yoked and dragging a heavy load behind her. You could hear it in the sadness of the songs she sang: “. . . When nothing else could help, love lifted me.” Shame had gnawed a hole in Mrs. Landy, and Ella prayed for her salvation with the same fervor that she prayed for Mr. Landy’s soul. If she ever spoke of the loss, she would only say, “God has his reasons. I am in His hands now.”

  AS THEY DID nearly every Saturday, Tessie and Victoria went to Harmon’s after their hair appointments. Each time, they’d pick up the pink menu with its line drawings of pillow-size burgers and creamy malted milkshakes and pretend to study it for a while. “I guess I’ll have a BLT with mayonnaise on white toast and a Cherry Coke,” Victoria would say. Then Tessie would say, “Sounds good. That’s exactly what I want,” as if they hadn’t been ordering the exact same thing every Saturday for the past three years.

  Even their conversation took on a routine. First they’d discuss each other’s hair, then they’d share some gossip. Inevitably Victoria would talk about the latest thing Reggie did to try her patience.

  “The other day he was hanging around me. ‘Miss Landy, can I drive you to church? Can I pick up the groceries? Do you think the garage could use a fresh coat of paint?’” She mimicked his slurry speech. “I finally said to him, ‘Listen, Reggie, if I am going to be seen in a car with you, or let you go into town and do errands in my name, you cannot wear those scuzzy overalls and the same brown polo shirt. And those curls out of control. My God, you look like Methuselah on a humid day.’” Victoria threw her head back and laughed. Tessie noticed a thickening around her neck. “So I said, ‘Here is twenty-five dollars. Get yourself a haircut and buy some decent clothing.’ When he came back, his hair was short and he was wearing a pair of chinos and a blue blazer, and I said to him, ‘Now Reggie, that’s what a respectable man ought to look like.’”

  When Victoria looked at Reggie, what she saw were gaping black holes where his teeth should be and a short impaired leg that threw his body into a disarray of awkward shapes and sloppy movements. It was an ugly and painful sight to see, and one that sometimes caused Victoria to wonder if the way he looked on the outside was what she was on the inside. If she could fix Reggie, maybe it was possible that she could fix herself. What happened to Maynard taught her humility, she believed. Widowhood had made her more compassionate. Her voice rose, filled with magnanimity. “And now to our favorite subject, the girls.”

  They talked about how, between her boyfriend and cheerlead-ing practice, Crystal didn’t have much time for schoolwork. “She doesn’t come home until after seven,” said Tessie. “And by then, she’s so tired, it’s all she can do to make it through dinner and a little homework.”

  “Let’s face it,” said Victoria. “She’ll never be an honor-roll student like Dinah. Maybe cheerleading is her true talent. Did it ever occur to you that these might be the best years of her life, and we should let her be? I’ll tell you this: It’s a good thing that girl will inherit some money, because she sure isn’t going to make any with those brains of hers.”

  Later that night, Tessie dropped a note in her stuffed Jerry Box: Had lunch with V. Cruel as ever but kinda funny.

  Even though she wrote to him in shorthand sometimes, Jerry’s capacity for sending her signs had not diminished. Last year, the night after she wrote “C & D fight all the time. Isn’t it time for C to go back home?” Crystal and Dinah had surprised her with a home-cooked dinner: chicken potpie, salad, ice cream, the works. Before they ate, Dinah held up her glass of Cherry Coke and said, “To the best mom in the world.” Crystal raised her glass, looked Tessie in the eye, and said, “To the best mom in the world.” Later, in her note to Jerry she wrote, “Tonight C & D made me feel like a million dollars. Crystal may never go home.”

  Begrudgingly, Crystal went to see her mother once a week. “At least call her sometimes,” Tessie would urge.

  “Why, so she can ask me if I’ve lost any weight yet? Think of it this way. I have broken up with my mother. If my daddy was alive, I’d go home all the time. Of course if my daddy was alive, I wouldn’t be here in the first place, would I?”

  When Crystal left Tessie speechless—which she often did—Dinah would step in. “Get off it, Mom. She thinks her mother’s a real yoyo, and she’s not going home.” It was more like three girls in a dormitory than two girls and a mother. Secretly Tessie felt that the arrangement gave her an edge over Victoria. Her daughter had chosen to live with her instead of her own mother. But more importantly, the arrangement was worth it to Tessie for how the two of them could help each other.

  Dinah and Crystal spoke the same language of loss. Often that meant not speaking at all, or letting one or the other of them cry without making a big deal of it. As they lay in bed at night, they would tell “daddy” stories. “My daddy once took me to the botanical gardens near Carbondale. He knew every flower by name.” Or, “Daddy never screamed or cussed, his voice just dropped and got re
al cold. Charlie used to call it Daddy’s ice voice.” The stories never had punch lines, and no matter how many times they’d repeat them, they’d laugh as if they were hearing them for the first time. Often they’d drop their fathers into conversation as a gift to each other. When Crystal got picked to be a cheerleader, Dinah said, “Your daddy would be so proud of you.” And when Dinah wrote a funny poem for Crystal’s birthday, she said, “That’s the kind of thing your dad would write.” They’d pretend that their fathers were friends in heaven, and would fantasize about what they were doing. “Tonight they had spaghetti and meatballs, don’t you think?” one would tell the other. Sometimes Dinah would pull an old Barton’s candy box out of her top drawer. Inside were her “treasures”—her father’s old harmonica, his pocketknife with its pearl handle, his address book, an old pair of pliers. She’d spill her treasures on the bed, and the two of them would pour through the address book and try to analyze her father’s loopy Y’s and wispy T’s. She’d imitate how he’d cup his hands around the harmonica when he’d play, like he was telling it a secret. They never spoke of their fathers to anyone else.

  Crystal had no treasures from her father; the fire took everything. Occasionally people would send her photographs of him, but her hurt was too fresh; she couldn’t look at them. All she had was the locket she wore around her neck: a little gold heart on a chain that he gave her when she turned thirteen. At every football game, right before she’d run onto the field with the other cheerleaders, she’d press the locket to her lips and look up at the sky. She’d rather no one noticed.