The Orange Blossom Special

by Betsy Carter

  “How can I pass this up?” Crystal asked Mark. “Even if it is in Gainesville.”

  CRYSTAL DIDN’T VISIT Gainesville often. When she did, it was mainly to see Dinah, Charlie, and Ella. They lived in a big old farmhouse outside of town. When she went down for her award, she would stay there instead of at the Windsurfer. It had a freshwater pond on the property, and the last time she was there, they went fishing at sundown and caught some catfish that they cooked up for dinner. Dinah had thought that buying a house with so many rooms was foolish, but Charlie told her there’d be plenty of room for the children when they came. But the children never came. Charlie didn’t care about knowing why or getting help. “If we can’t have them naturally, I’m not interested in manufacturing them,” he told Crystal. Charlie had become an avid gardener—corn, mangoes, squash, beans, grapefruits, hibiscus flowers the size of tambourines. The first time Crystal came to visit and saw the acres of vegetation he had spawned, she declared, “My word, Charlie Landy’s seed is spread over half of central Florida.”

  Charlie had his own congregation now. After white families started buying up the grand old homes on the north side of town and renovating them, the area became integrated. For a long time, Charlie preached alongside Reverend Potts. And when Reverend Potts passed away, Charlie became the pastor. Each Sunday Ella, who was nearly ninety now, would sit with Dinah in the front row and listen to Charlie preach. Often his words misfired or he spoke too loud or rested too long on the wrong syllable, but never mind that—Ella still said it gave her goose bumps the size of anthills to hear that boy’s sermons. Crystal had been meaning to go hear Charlie, but she never quite got around to it.

  She’d visit her mother, though mostly out of obligation. Inevitably, the conversation between them would come down to Crystal’s weight and who she was dating, and frankly, she didn’t feel like discussing either of those things. Victoria still dressed like a former beauty queen. Behind her back, Dinah and Crystal would joke that old Miss Pearly Whites had become Mrs. Crowns and Bridges. It wasn’t just that she was aging. As Crystal explained to Charlie, “Look at Tessie and Barone. They’re exactly who they’ve always been, just more creased and frail. But our mother, she leaves herself wide open for ribbing. The whole thing with her and Reggie—excuse me, Reg—is a scream.”

  Victoria and Reggie had moved into a big house near where Victoria and Maynard used to live. As far as Crystal, Dinah, or Charlie could tell, they spent their days shopping and renovating. Reg still drove her wherever she went, and they were seldom apart. “Let them think whatever they want,” Victoria would say if anyone ever brought up the two of them. But since they sold the saloon five years earlier, people in town had long stopped gossiping about the nature of their relationship. Crystal happened to be in town for the last party they ever gave at the Orange Blossom Special in 1977, the tenth anniversary. It was one of Victoria’s usual hyperkinetic affairs, and would have been relegated to the society pages but for one incident. Anita Bryant, who now lived in a thirty-three-room mansion in Miami Beach and had become the spokesperson for Florida Orange Juice, was the guest star of the evening. She still had the dark auburn hair and flashing smile that had dazzled everyone twelve years earlier at Maynard and Victoria’s anniversary party. Time had only added richness to her voice, and when she sang, “Til There Was You,” a hush fell over the room. The clarity of her voice and the innocence of that song brought people back to their own thoughts. It was a lovely reflective moment.

  Too bad it didn’t last. Outside, a crowd had gathered and was shouting, “Oh No, OJ” and “Anita Bryant, Save Yourself.” Bryant, who was now a fundamentalist Christian, had recently launched a national crusade against homosexuality called “Save Our Children.” Across the street from the Orange Blossom were protestors who were protesting the protestors and shouting, “Thank God for Anita Bryant,” and “OJ, OK.” Shortly after she finished singing, two fleshy men in bulky suits took Anita Bryant by each arm and escorted her out the back door, across the alley into Florsheims, where she safely ducked out the front door and into a waiting car.

  The Bryant story was the one that made the front page of the Gainesville Sun the following day. “Why does everything have to be so damn boring and political?” fumed Victoria when she saw the paper. “Whatever happened to good old-fashioned fun?” The whole thing was too much of a circus for Crystal, and she never went back to the Orange Blossom Special again.

  ON THE FRIDAY MORNING of the ASAE convention, Crystal flew into Gainesville. A black limousine picked her up at the airport. They passed through the middle of town on the way to the luncheon. Crystal asked the driver to take a two-block detour so they could pass the old saloon. There it was, smaller than she remembered, and a great deal shabbier. The smoky tinge of the window made it look gray and faded. It was still called the Orange Blossom Special, but underneath the orange and green neon sign, the words Girls and Nudes were also pulsing in garish reds and purples. The place had become a strip joint. Crystal laughed to think how that probably pleased her mother.

  The luncheon was being held at the SkyHigh Club atop the newest—and tallest—building in Gainesville. There was a large plaza around the building and two outside staircases that fed inside. She rode the elevator up to the fifteenth floor and when she stepped out all she could see was sky, that and some gulls who had nested in the building’s crevices. She walked around the windowed room and looked down on Gainesville, so tiny and used up from this steel and glass perch. As her eyes adjusted to the view, she could identify neighborhoods, even houses. She searched for the Harwoods’ street, now nearly completely obscured by the loblolly pines. She hadn’t seen Mr. and Mrs. Harwood since the funeral and wondered if they still lived in that house. Maybe if things had turned out differently, she and Huddie would have come back to live here. She imagined Huddie watching her today as she got her award. What would he make of her now, big, bawdy, successful Crystal Landy? She picked out the house where she lived with Dinah and Tessie, and trained her eyes on the back windows. For a moment she could swear she saw two young girls lying in bed, their bodies hunched toward each other as though they were sharing a confidence. So many secrets everywhere I look, she thought. She saw the spot where their old house burned down and where the people who bought their land had built a hideous mansion. “Nouveau riche trash,” her mother would spit each time they drove by it. And what exactly did her mother think she was? She took a deep breath. This wasn’t the time to be thinking thoughts like that.

  The more than one hundred people in the SkyHigh Club that afternoon cheered when the president of ASAE introduced Crystal. She looked smart in her royal blue suit. Many women her size might have worried that the skirt was too short or the blouse was too tight, but Crystal was as comfortable in her skin as she’d always been. When they called her name, she offered a spellbinding smile and walked quickly to the microphone.

  “It’s good to be home,” she said, her voice a little tentative. “You probably don’t know this, but I grew up here. My brother’s the pastor of a church not far from here. He and his wife got married at the river out yonder.” She bobbed her head from side to side: “I was the maid of honor at their wedding, of course. In fact, if you look out that window,” she said as she pointed to the back of the room, “you can see where I went to school. And down that street,” she pointed to the window on the right, “was Harmon’s Luncheonette, where we had our first civil rights demonstration.

  “Don’t worry,” she caught herself. “I am not up here to give you Crystal Landy’s tour of Gainesville. It’s just odd, seeing your whole past in one sweeping glance. Personally, I prefer small sound bites to big pictures, which is why I chose this profession in the first place.” Then she went on with her prepared speech. After it was over, one of the hotshots from New York asked if she would like to have lunch on Sunday with him and another bigwig in an Armani suit. “Thanks so much,” she said, thinking it was a little late for that, “but I’m spending Sunday with
my family.”

  For the next two days, Dinah drove Crystal back and forth from the conference in their old Jeep. Crystal wondered what Dinah, who dressed mostly in jeans and wore no makeup, thought of her fancy life and designer clothes. Sometimes she wondered if Dinah felt left behind. Life hadn’t turned out for either of them as they had bargained. Crystal never married after Huddie died, and Dinah now spent most of her time caring for Charlie and doing work for the church. Dinah worried that Crystal resented her domestic happiness. She wondered if, with all her professional success, Crystal was happy. For her part, Crystal wondered how Dinah could stand living in that old farmhouse back home. If she’d had to bet which one of them would have moved on to the big city and success, it would have been brainy Dinah, not party-girl Crystal.

  When they passed by what used to be J. Baldy’s—now the Cut Rate Hair Salon—Crystal asked, “Whatever happened to wonderful Jésus and that beautiful shampooist who turned out to be his daughter?”

  “Oh Sonia,” said Dinah. “They moved to Miami. My mother still gets Christmas cards from them.”

  “I hope they’re happy,” said Crystal.

  “Are you happy?” Dinah asked.

  “In my own way,” said Crystal. She talked about her job, and how she’d gotten another offer to move to New York. It was a big agency and, just between them, she said, she was scared to take the plunge. “Big fish, little pond, Big Apple, little fish,” she said, accustomed to packaging things in tidy phrases. “And what about you?” She turned to Dinah. “Is being a preacher’s wife what makes your clock tick? Tell me the truth, don’t you ever get tired of being Mrs. Do Right all the time?”

  Dinah wondered if Crystal ever had a thought that she kept to herself. In that way, and so many others, she’d become more like her mother than she’d ever want to admit. “It’s funny,” she said. “You and Charlie were always centerstage, and I always felt like the curtain. Now I’ve found a place in my life and in Charlie’s, so yes, I would say I am really happy. I can’t wait for you to see him preach on Sunday. You’ll be so proud.”

  The plan was that after the conference, Crystal would go to the Old Stone Church and hear Charlie. Then they would have an early Sunday dinner with Tessie and Barone before she flew back to Atlanta. Maybe they’d get Ella to come, too.

  There was a reason Crystal had never heard her brother preach. She was scared he would stumble over his words or garble things. She couldn’t stand to see him humiliated. So it was with some anxiety that she sat in the front row with Ella and Dinah on that Sunday morning.

  Charlie stood at the podium, all eyes upon him. Clearly he was completely at home here. As he began speaking, he leaned forward and propped his elbows up on the lectern. “I’ve chosen as my topic today ‘Listening.’ You may think that’s an odd subject for a nearly deaf man to talk about, but I didn’t say ‘Hearing.’ I said ‘Listening.’”

  The audience stirred a bit. Crystal started paging through the prayer book.

  “When I ask God to watch over one of your children or to protect our homes from a hurricane, He doesn’t say, ‘Speak up, Bub, I can’t understand what you’re saying.’ He doesn’t move me to the end of the line and say, ‘Take a number, I’m too busy planning the next solar eclipse.’ He doesn’t judge me by how well I articulate my words or by how loud I speak. He hears the truth of what I ask, then answers as He sees fit. And no matter how confounding or untenable His answers may seem, it is up to me to accept them.”

  Crystal glanced at Dinah as he spoke. Her face was filled with pride. Then Crystal noticed something else. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she was moving her lips, mirroring every word that Charlie was saying.

  “Since my injury,” he continued, “I hear more than ever. I hear the people who are gone now, my father, Maynard Landy, whose temperate voice would quiet the chaos in our house. I hear my father-in-law, Jerry Lockhart, a man I’ve never met but whose voice lives within me though he left this earth many years ago. Old friends, like Huddie Harwood and other men I knew in Vietnam, speak often to me. The voices of the living fill my head always: I hear my sister, Crystal, funny and perceptive; the wisdom of my friend Ella; the unvarnished truth that comes out of my mother’s mouth. When I step inside this house of worship, the walls resonate with the kind and knowing truths of my friend Reverend Potts. If I never hear another sound again, the words of these people will always be alive in my heart, and I know too that God hears them just as I do.”

  Crystal saw Dinah mouth the words “just as I do.” Next to her, Ella closed her eyes and bowed her head.

  NO ONE SPOKE until they all got back into the Jeep. “Man, am I starving,” said Crystal. “I gave up eggs and toast with Mr. and Mr. Armani. This better be good.”

  “My mother’s still a terrible cook,” said Dinah. “Only the silverware has improved.”

  TESSIE HAD SINCE moved to a bigger house in the fancier section of town, near where the Landys used to live. She and Barone had never gotten married, though he lived with her now since his crippling arthritis made getting around difficult. She was slim as always and still had her hair pulled back in a Joanne Woodward pony-tail. Barone wore his flashy sports shirts and the silver ID bracelet, scratched and nicked but with the initials B.V.A. clearly readable. By now Old Spice flowed in his veins. His hair was white and thinner, but curly as it was when Tessie first met him. Their house was filled with pictures of Fran and Jerry. They talked of them as if they both were running errands and would be back at any moment. Their son, Jann, was twenty now. He had Jerry’s will and Fran’s salty humor, and could well have been the child of the four of them. While he went to school, Jann worked part-time for Glenn Bech Jr. at Lithographics.

  “Oh, the Bechs,” said Crystal. “Did Glenn Jr. turn into the same lech his father was?”

  “Let’s just say that I wasn’t there but two weeks when he said to me”—Jann winked and imitated the older man’s lascivious voice—“‘Your mother was quite a dish in her day. We all thought she was the cat’s meow.’ ”

  Barone lifted his arm slowly and placed it around Tessie’s shoulder. It was obvious what pain that gesture cost him. “She’s still the cat’s meow,” he said.

  Tessie rolled her eyes and the six of them looked around the room at one another. Once again, it was Crystal who broke the silence.

  “So Charlie, Mr. ‘I-Can-See-the-Future.’ What do you predict is in store for this motley group?”

  Charlie had a smile on his face, the same one he’d had as a little boy who said if he met Khrushchev he could achieve world peace. But before he could even open his mouth, Ella gave him a hard glance and spoke in slow, carefully delineated words: “Charlie Landy, don’t you go answering that question.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MY GRATITUDE ALWAYS to Kathy Robbins, whose friendship and wisdom means the world to me. Elisabeth Scharlatt, new friend, and editor, has made my collaboration with her and Algonquin Books a joyous one. Thank you to Brunson Hoole, Kathy Pories, Tammi Brooks, Anne Winslow, Dove Pedlosky, and everyone else at Algonquin for their care and time.

  I am fortunate that my friends are also astute editors: Lisa Grunwald, Kathy Rich, Victoria Skurnick, Jill Bauer, Carl Lehmann-Haupt, and my sister, Miriam Brumer, read early versions and made valuable suggestions.

  Lisa Auel, executive director of the Matheson Historical Center in Gainesville, Florida, provided me with history and photographs of the area, and I am grateful for her generosity.

  My husband, Gary Hoenig, welcomed the characters of this novel into our home and then nurtured them onto these pages. Like so many things in my life, he has made this book possible.

  Published by

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  WORKMAN PUBLISHING

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2005 by Betsy Carter. All righ
ts reserved.

  “Lollipop” by Beverly Ross and Julius Dixon © 1958 by Edward B.

  Marks Music Company. Copyright renewed in 1986. Used by permission.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Carter, Betsy, 1945–

  The Orange Blossom Special: a novel / by Betsy Carter.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  HC ISBN 978-1-56512-449-3

  1. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Gainesville (Fla.)—Fiction.

  3. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Railroad stations—Fiction.

  5. Single mothers—Fiction. 6. Widows—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3603.A7768O73 2005

  813′.6—dc22

  2004066037

  E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-880-4

  ALSO BY BETSY CARTER

  The Puzzle King

  Swim to Me

  Nothing to Fall Back On: The Life and Times

  of a Perpetual Optimist