The Orange Blossom Special

by Betsy Carter

  “No, it would be a very kind thing to do. I’d say, just what the doctor ordered.”

  Buoyed by the intimacy of their conversation, Tessie felt now was as good a time as ever to bring up her little bit of news.

  “Speaking of things that are crazy,” said Tessie, already wishing she could rephrase her opening sentence. “I have something to tell you.”

  Dinah took another lamb chop and seemed distracted.

  “Are you ready?” asked Tessie, trying to get her attention.

  “Yeah, sure. What is it?”

  “Well, I might as well just say what it is. I’m pregnant.”

  Dinah put down her chop and stared at Tessie. “That’s a joke, right?”

  “Nope, I’m two months and then some pregnant.”

  “Mom, aren’t you the one who’s supposed to be telling me not to get knocked up and not the other way around?”

  “Do you go around saying things like ‘knocked up’?”

  “I may say it, but at least I don’t do it!” said Dinah. “Are you going to keep it?”

  “Why does everyone ask me that?” asked Tessie impatiently. “Yes, I’m going to keep it.”

  “It’s Señor Swanky’s kid, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it’s his. Do you think I just sleep around?”

  “Why not,” shrugged Dinah. “You’re just full of surprises. Are you going to marry him?”

  “He wants to, but no, I don’t think I will. He’s got his life down there and I’m here. You’re here. Besides,” she said glancing at her Jerry Box, “I’ve already been married once, I don’t need to do it again.”

  They looked at each other as if each knew what the other was thinking.

  “What do you think Daddy would say if he knew?” said Dinah.

  “I’ve given that a lot of thought,” said Tessie. “I think he would say that we’ve both lived with the dead for so long that having a new life among us is a blessing. He’d also say that I’d better name it after him.”

  “What if it’s a girl? And what about Barone’s dead wife, Fran? Won’t he want to name it after her?”

  “We haven’t had that conversation yet,” said Tessie.

  Dinah reminded her mother about the first time she met Barone. They were in the car on the way back from Eddie Fingers’ funeral and he was sitting in the driver’s seat muttering to himself, “A fine pickle, a fine pickle.”

  “He always says that,” said Tessie. “Everything’s ‘a fine pickle’ to him.”

  Tessie giggled then placed her finger over her mouth. It was the coquettish gesture, the side that was somebody’s girlfriend that Dinah had never seen. It occurred to Dinah that she must be scared about this new baby, even though she was determined to go ahead with it by herself.

  “You know, Mom, this baby thing could be fun,” she said, suddenly wanting to reassure her. “I’ll help out with little Fran or Jerry or Ferry or whatever you call it.”

  “It’s nice that our little family is growing, isn’t it?” said Tessie, lighting a cigarette. “Now if I can only figure out how to break the news to the Glenns.”

  Dinah smiled at the realization that her mother worried about things the same way she did.

  “What do you think I should say to Charlie?”

  “About the baby?”

  “No, you know, I haven’t talked to him in all these years.”

  Tessie took a long drag on her Marlboro. “You know that whatever you plan to say isn’t what’s going to come out anyhow. Besides, you and Charlie never had problems in the talking department.”

  Dinah left her mother’s house that night with too many thought fragments bobbing in her head. She grew up having imaginary conversations with people; a lifetime of being an only child necessitated that. Lately she’d been practicing what she’d say if she ever ran into Crystal. Sometimes, she would even conjure up things people said about her when she wasn’t there. Dinah could get lost in her thoughts that way. So it was inevitable that by the time she actually went to see Charlie Landy, she’d scripted their conversation dozens of ways.

  It was the week before Thanksgiving when she finally got the nerve to call. Ella answered the phone and seemed genuinely happy to hear from her. After some small talk, Dinah said, “I was wondering how Charlie was doing.”

  “To tell the truth, I’m worried sick about him. He stays to himself. He barely talks to anyone, doesn’t eat a thing. I’ve cooked all his favorite foods, and he just says to me, ‘Ella, let’s take it slow. A little at a time.’ I tell you, it’s a hard thing to watch.”

  Dinah could feel her heart squeeze. “I’d like to visit him. Unless you think it’s a bad idea.”

  “Miss Lockhart, if there is anything that can bring the sunshine back into that boy’s eyes, you’re it. When would you like to come?”

  They arranged that she’d come to the house at three the following afternoon. It happened that Reggie was taking inventory at the store and Victoria was home. When Dinah rang the bell, it was Victoria who answered. She hadn’t counted on the lioness at the gate.

  “As I live and breathe, it’s Dinah Lockhart, daughter of the blessed virgin Tessie Lockhart.” Victoria sure knew how to crack herself up. Dinah suddenly remembered why Crystal chose to live with her and Tessie for all those years. When she finally stopped laughing long enough to invite Dinah inside, she gave her the once-over. “You have turned into one pretty thing. Mia Farrow. That’s who you look like, Mia Farrow with a little fat on her bones. You sure as hell are not here to see me, are you? The warrior is in his room. Have a seat, I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  One of the virtues of Victoria Landy was that you never had to worry about what to say to her: more than likely, she’d have the whole conversation for you. Dinah wondered, as she had so many times in the past, how Crystal and Charlie managed to be pretty normal, despite their mother. She noticed that the living room had been newly decorated in the current mod style, and thought about how the saloon business must be booming. How should she talk to someone with a severe hearing impairment. Should she yell or exaggerate the way she moved her lips? Before she could figure it out, she heard the sound of Charlie’s footsteps. They were lighter now. “Hello Dinah,” he said, standing before her. “It’s really nice to see you again.”

  It made Dinah sad, the way he smiled apologetically.

  “Hi Charlie, it’s so good to see you, too.”

  The conversation might have frozen there had it not been for Victoria, who was bouncing around the living room like a moth off a lamp. “You two need to get the hell out of here and go off by yourselves. Charlie honey, take the car,” she said shoving the keys into his hand. “Reg will be back with the other one soon enough.”

  They were barely out the front door when Charlie broke into a smile. “Don’t ask me what the ‘Reg’ business is all about, I have no idea. My mother, what a piece of work!”

  “Well at least your mother isn’t about to start a serious relationship with ‘Captain Kangaroo’!” said Dinah. “Can you imagine?”

  They stood in front of the car: Victoria’s behemoth Oldsmobile 88. Something passed across Charlie’s face as he handed the keys to Dinah. “Will you please drive? That way, I can watch your face and understand what you’re saying.” Dinah took the keys and pretended that it was no big deal. “Sure thing, I’d love to drive this little beauty.” But it broke her heart to think that if Charlie were the old Charlie, he’d hear the catch of sadness in her voice.

  It would have been natural for them to go to the lake but neither of them mentioned it. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to just drive around,” said Charlie. “So much has changed, I’m still getting used to it.”

  They drove in silence until Dinah said, “It’s true, everything is different than when you were here last. Does it feel different?” He studied her face, squinting to read her lips.

  “You have no idea. I feel as if I left the world altogether.”

  “Where did you go?�
�� she asked, wondering if articulating her words so carefully would ever feel normal.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I could never see it. All I saw was mud and vines and the jungle, and I knew if I ever stood still too long, it would grow around me and in me and eventually strangle me.”

  “Do I take that to mean you’re glad to be back?” asked Dinah, as they drove by the new mall at the edge of town. She could tell he missed that completely. She spoke louder: “Oh, look in there, there’s this gigantic fountain in there shaped like a seahorse. It’s what Crystal and I would have called the Nausea Seahorse Fountain, it’s so ugly.”

  Charlie understood that she was trying to lighten up the mood.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to be melodramatic. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to about any of it.”

  “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

  Charlie shook his head. “My mother, even Ella, they just stare at me waiting for me to say something. They mean well. Ella’s cooking everything I’ve ever said I liked. Even my mother, in her own imbecilic way, is trying to be nice. The other day she offered to take me shopping now that I have—and these are her words—a new physique.”

  “What would you like them, us, to do?”

  “Time. I need time. Don’t expect me to come home and be me right away. Eight weeks ago, I was there. Then, like in some science fiction comic, there’s this great KABOOM! My body flies through the air, and the next thing I know it’s three years later and I’m sitting in my mother’s car with my old girlfriend. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

  Dinah noticed how the words loosened in Charlie’s mouth. Sometimes they stuck to his tongue like toast crumbs; other times they came out in gummy misshapen syllables. Occasionally he’d touch his fingers to his Adam’s apple to make sure he wasn’t speaking too loud. The conversation was difficult and unnatural. She was driving this tank of a car and trying to make herself be heard. He never took his eyes off her, afraid he’d miss something. There had to be a better way. “I have an idea,” said Dinah. “Let’s walk around the mall. I promise, after a half an hour, you’ll know exactly where you’ve landed plus what everyone there is wearing. What do you say?”

  “Good idea.”

  She showed him the seahorse, a dragonlike creature spitting plumes of water into a tiled pool. They looked through the men’s clothing stores and had a slice of pizza at Genero’s. He’d often dreamed about pizza in Vietnam, he told her. When Dinah thought how this day might go, she’d envisioned them sitting by the lake talking about the war, about his injury, and, of course, about them. Funny how after an hour at the mall, none of it had come up.

  Then they went to the bookstore, where the best-selling titles seemed to wink at them from their shelves: Masters and Johnson Human Sexual Response, The Games People Play, In Cold Blood. The joke followed them into the record store, where there was a poster for The Sound of Music; another for Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.” Was Barry Sadler really singing “The Ballad of the Green Beret” in the background? Dinah remembered a skit she had seen somewhere, maybe on the Jackie Gleason show. For some reason, Alice and Ralph were about to meet Sammy Davis Jr. “Now, Ralph,” Alice said in that whinnying voice of hers. “Remember: Sammy Davis Jr. has a glass eye, so don’t stare and don’t bring it up.” Ralph is visibly nervous when he is finally introduced to the singer. He shakes his hand and says out the side of his mouth, “Very nice to meet you Mr. Davis. How’s your eye?” That’s what this felt like.

  Thinking about it, Dinah couldn’t help laughing out loud. Charlie didn’t know why she was laughing, but he started to laugh too. Suddenly, they were both breathing the same air again. They sat down on a bench in front of the spitting seahorse. He told her to imagine that someone was talking to her while she was swimming underwater.

  “That’s how I hear things now,” he said. “I read lips, I hear sounds, I feel the vibrations of things. It’s just hard for me to distinguish words sometimes.”

  She watched the effort that it took for him to hear her and to speak back. Life had always been full of struggles for Charlie, and this particular one was just beginning. She told him about Hedda and how she missed Crystal and was hurt by her absence.

  He pulled out his wallet and showed her the now-frayed and yellow clipping from the Gainesville Sun. It was a picture of her and Eddie taken at the opening of the Orange Blossom Special. He said he’d kept it in an old tin of rolling tobacco. “All the guys had good luck charms. This was mine, I had it in my rucksack the whole time.”

  She studied the photograph. “God, was I in a bad mood when that was taken. In fact, this is the first time in a long time that I haven’t been in a bad mood.”

  He said that he’d felt dead for so long and that being here reminded him how much he liked being alive.

  “Time,” she said. “You need time. Remember?”

  He was grateful she understood.

  They kept talking for nearly an hour. The shopkeepers were beginning to lock their doors, and a nighttime chill crept into the air. I only have one more thing to say,” said Charlie.

  “What’s that?”

  “This seahorse is the most hideous creature I’ve ever seen.”

  WHEN CHARLIE’S HEARING was intact, he’d barely noticed Reggie’s limp. It was just another of his features, like the mole on his neck. But since he’d come home, each of Reggie’s steps sounded like thunder. He could feel the vibration of Reggie’s steps humming up his legs from the wooden floor. It made him jumpy and was another reason he chose to stay in his room.

  But on the night he came back from the seahorse fountain, Charlie didn’t go straight to his room. He went into the kitchen where Ella was grilling pork chops. “My favorite,” he said. “I am so hungry I could eat a horse.”

  “There’s enough here for Miss Dinah,” said Ella.

  “Too late, she’s gone. But I’m sure she’ll be back.”

  It was the longest conversation he’d had with Ella since he’d come home.

  At dinner, the four of them sipped a musky Cabernet. As his mother and Reggie fussed over the wine, Charlie winked at Ella. Ella rolled her eyes, as if to say, “Here we go again.” Afterward, Charlie asked if maybe they could have one of their chats.

  “It’s about time,” she said.

  They sat on Ella’s bed the way they always did. Charlie ran his fingers over the reassuring lumpiness of her cotton bedspread. When he leaned back against the wall, his legs didn’t touch the floor. He dangled them back and forth, and a warm feeling came over him. Was it possible that he was the same person as the little boy who used to sit on this bed and talk about everything under the sun? Not much had changed in here except the books. How many times had he imagined this room and tried to put himself back in it?

  “It sure was lonesome around here without you,” said Ella.

  “It sure was lonesome where I was, too.”

  They didn’t talk about everything on this night, but they did become old friends again. Once, she stroked his hair and said he’d gone away a young boy and come back with the face of a man. He moved her chin so that he could look directly at her face.

  “Everyone thinks it will be easier for me if they talk louder,” he said. “It doesn’t help. I just need to see their faces and for them to speak clearly.” He told her that the sound of Reggie walking made him realize how painful each step must be for him.

  “No need to worry about Reggie, he’s doing fine, thank you.”

  “The Orange Blossom’s been quite a success.”

  “To think that people in this town drink enough liquor to make Reggie Sykes a rich man is beyond my comprehension.” That brought to mind Reverend Potts and the conversation they’d had only weeks earlier. Charlie stared at Ella’s down-turned mouth as she told him about her troubles. Then he said, “I know what trouble looks like.”

  “Honey, I’m afraid we all do.”

  “No, I mean I can really see it.
” His voice got louder. “It has a color and a shape and a certain smell even. I can tell it’s coming before it shows up.” He folded his arms across his chest. “It’s not anything I choose to know.”

  Ella caught his eye. Was there something of the old Charlie, or was she just hoping?

  “How was your visit with Dinah?” she asked, hoping to see a smile on his face.

  “You and she are the only people I can bear being around.”

  “What about Crystal?”

  The smile vanished. “I need to see her soon. I’m thinking I’ll go to Atlanta this weekend.”

  “Why don’t you take Dinah with you?”

  “You read my mind.”

  TALKING ON THE phone wasn’t possible anymore, so Ella called Dinah to ask if she would meet Charlie tomorrow at four by the seahorse.

  “I won’t beat around the bush,” said Charlie as they sat beside the fountain. “I’m driving to Atlanta this weekend to see Crystal. I’d like you to come with me.”

  This invitation was fraught for so many reasons, and Charlie and Crystal were just two of them.

  “Let me think about it,” she said. “I’ll call Ella tomorrow.”

  It was Hedda who convinced Dinah to go to Atlanta. “You told me about the car rides you and your parents used to take in Car-bondale, and how much you enjoyed them,” she said. “Atlanta is six and a half hours away from here. It could be fun.”

  Dinah’s father had loved Broadway musicals. Often the three of them would try to sing the entire score of Pajama Game, or Guys and Dolls, in one car trip. She could still hear his warbling falsetto as he reached for the high notes in “Younger Than Springtime.” Tessie never stopped listening to musicals, and after dinner some nights, they would trail off into “Oklahoma” or “On the Street Where You Live” as Tessie washed the dishes and Dinah dried. Maybe six and a half hours in the car with Charlie would be fun. And even at the risk of being snubbed by her, Dinah was eager to see Crystal.

  “Tell him yes, I’ll go,” said Dinah when she called Ella the next night. “If it’s okay with him, I’ll borrow my mother’s DeSoto.” She secretly hoped that somehow he would know all the words to Carousel.