But Dwayne’s face wasn’t forgettable; you’d have thought I was telling—or living in—a fairy tale the way the handsome men lined up: the Sheriff, Ben Queen, Dwayne Hayden. Any one of them could have stood in for the prince who saves the girl (me)—that is, if you go just by looks alone. I, of course, do not. I tried to get down as far as the running board to look under it and see his face. “I only wanted to ask you something.”
The pallet slid out again. He just looked at me.
“Can’t you at least get off that for a minute?”
I didn’t think he’d pay any attention to that, but he surprised me and stood.
“I gotta look under the hood, anyway.”
He said this as if he wanted to be clear he wasn’t coming out just to see me. Then he pulled a cloth out of his rear pocket—confirming my impression that mechanics always have to do this—and began wiping his fingers with it.
“The way things went, I’d think you’d remember me. How many kids do you meet up with out there?”
He didn’t smile; I should say he gave me the impression of someone trying not to smile.
“I was just wondering if you go around there much on a regular basis? Where I saw you night before last?” When I get nervous I sometimes stand on the sides of my feet the way little kids do. I’m embarrassed when I catch myself doing it. I stood up straight.
Still wiping his hands free of oil, he said, “Uh-huh. And just what do you want to know that for? You planning on turning me in?”
I thought of Ben Queen and felt a sudden bleakness. “I don’t turn people in. Anyway”—I lowered my voice—“I carried the rabbits, so that makes me a ... accessory coconspirator.” I frowned. Was that the word?
“So why do you want to know?”
“I’ve got a really good reason.” I made myself look as earnest as possible.
“Yeah. You keep saying.”
I looked around at where I’d left the Woods and Mr. Root. They were all taking to Abel Slaw as if they’d been in some car graveyard for years and were just now surfacing.
Again, I lowered my voice. “I can’t tell you here; it’s too public.”
“Well, better you come over to my place later on and we’ll split a beer.”
I frowned. “I don’t drink.”
Now, he stuffed the rag back in his pocket. His hands didn’t look much cleaner.
“I’m surprised.”
I guess he was making fun of me, but I would ignore that.
“Listen: I could meet you out there at Brokedown House. But you’d have to promise that you’d come.”
He screwed his face up in the most utter surprise I’d ever seen, except when Will was playing innocent. “Promise? You’re talking like you’re doin’ me a favor.”
I shook my hands in impatience. “Well, but will you?” He paused for some moments, watching me and probably thinking I was crazy. A crazy kid.
“Hey, Dwayne!” Abel Slaw was calling him. “Ulub wonders will he get his truck back this year?”
That, of course, was ridiculous. Ulub wouldn’t have strained himself putting that into words.
“Yeah, Abe. Won’t be but another few minutes.”
And he went around to look under the hood. I followed. “Will you do it? Meet me at where we were before?”
“My Lord, girl, you are crazy to go around asking strange men to meet you in some deserted place at night.”
I laced and unlaced my fingers, another nervous habit. “That’s just it. It’s not deserted.”
26
Tamiami Trail
We set the meeting for seven-thirty that evening, which would allow time for serving dinner at six. It was an annoyance to have to stop my life just to wait on Miss Bertha, but I couldn’t make Walter do all the work. Also, I didn’t want Miss Bertha reporting back to my mother that he was doing it.
When I got back to the hotel I checked my Florida map again with Walter looking over my shoulder as he wiped a big oblong pan. (I wondered where he found all these dirty dishes and utensils that had him washing and drying all day.)
“Where do you think they are on the Tamiami Trail?”
“Along in here, mebbe.” Walter poked a finger in the middle of the red line I’d drawn.
I told Walter my vacation plans and that if he wanted, he could share them. He’d be sharing by waiting on me, but I didn’t exactly put it that way. He said he always wanted to go to Florida, which I doubted, for I didn’t think he was even aware of it until everyone decided to go there. Right now, I asked him to mix up some of the coconut drink and I’d be back as soon as I changed clothes.
My swimsuit was over a year old and too little by now and flouncy, with its gathered skirt, which I thought was babyish, and its bright daisy design, which I disliked also. But I wasn’t about to go to the expense of buying a new swimsuit. I forced myself into the daisy design and wrapped a big towel around me, which I’d taken from a guest room. I stuck my feet in sandals, gathered up my reading matter, went down to the kitchen to pick up my drink, and made my way to the Pink Elephant.
I imagined the Tamiami Trail. It was straight and white and lined with royal palms stretching away into the blue distance. We were too far inland to catch sight of the ocean yet, but I still thought I could make out the sigh of the waves coming from the invisible sea, as well as the rustle of the palm fronds. Cooling breezes holding the smell of the sea washed through the open car windows and stirred up little eddies of sand by the road. The day was as soft as a feather bed; it was a day you could lie down in and be comforted.
The car sped along, passing shacks and stores that didn’t come clear in my mind until we passed a petting zoo and ReeJane chimed in that we weren’t going to stop, thinking I wanted to. I didn’t because the animals I glimpsed looked awfully sad. I had enough sadness going on without adding more to it. We went through a little town that I didn’t want to bother with. On the other side, though, was a coconut grove and a stand where a girl was opening coconuts and carving up pieces from the shell. She also had a big pitcher of the coconut drink sitting in ice. I said we should stop, and we did stop. (This was clearly one of the benefits Father Freeman was talking about.)
Ree-Jane howled with impatience and my mother told her to shut up, a thing she would never do if left to her own devices. But these were now my devices. We got out and all had a glass of the coconut drink. (I picked mine up from the picnic table before me.) I told them all it was excellent. Mrs. Davidow said a little rum would liven it up and we all laughed, except for Ree-Jane, of course, who was in a mood. The coconut milk was really good. We piled back into the station wagon and Mrs. Davidow said we should look out for a place to eat lunch.
I thought it was really too bad that the graceful palm tree landscape had to be broken up here and there by clapboard buildings selling souvenirs, surfboards, and conch sandwiches. Boys in shorts and sneakers were milling about in front of one, and Ree-Jane, of course, wanted to stop there, and got into a real snit when her mother said No, she had no intention of eating a conch sandwich.
A little farther along, I spied a hamburger place. It was impossible to miss, for a giant hamburger atop iron legs stood outside like a water tower. There was something about this hamburger that awoke in me a rush of nostalgia, but I couldn’t grasp for what. And I think it was the bun instead of the hamburger itself that did this. It was silky smooth, a light brown running into copper at the edges. Where had I eaten such a hamburger? How was it I could still taste it in my mind?
But Ree-Jane didn’t want to stop at a “kids’ place” and her mother was on the lookout for somewhere that served cocktails, so I was outvoted, even though my mother would have been willing to have hamburgers. It was not really a tie, though, as my mother’s agreeing with me was pretty weak.
Not too much farther along we passed—well, nearly passed—a place called Trader Bob’s. The sign outlined in neon sported a martini glass, also in neon and winking on and off. Lola Davidow slammed her foot on the brake so hard it
nearly sent me through the front window. It was a little way off the Tamiami Trail, and we drove up a rutted road to its fake island-cottage front.
Inside, it was dark, dark even after my eyes adjusted from the brightness outside. The shadowy interior made it hard to report on what I saw, except for Mrs. Davidow’s drink when it arrived. It looked stronger even than one of Aurora Paradise’s Cold Comforts. It seemed to sit in rainbow layers of liquor and was as tall as her forearm. My mother had something with a splash of rum in it and Ree-Jane hautily asked for a wine spritzer. I had a Trader Bob’s Special, which left out the alcohol but put in everything else. All the drinks were decorated with tiny paper umbrellas in turquoise and pink.
The six-piece band started in playing.
(Here, I left my chair and put “Tangerine” on Ree-Jane’s phonograph.)
The band in Trader Bob’s didn’t have a female singer and I offered my services. They were delighted when I sang:Tan-ger-eeen,
She is all they claim,
With her eyes of night and lips as bright as flaaaame ...
Taaaan-ger-eeen ...
I was up now singing and swaying to the music, a little in the way of a palm tree, I hoped. The customers (who I couldn’t see clearly and it was just as well) applauded many times. They didn’t want me to sit down but I explained we were driving the Tamiami Trail and couldn’t stay. I returned to the table where Ree-Jane was laughing in that dark and soundless way of hers that was more like charades than an actual laugh. My mother told me I was good, and Mrs. Davidow ordered another drink and shrimp salad.
There was a knock at the door of the Pink Elephant and I called, “Come in!”
Walter entered carrying a plate of grass I had told him to cut and set it on the table. “Here’s your seagrass salad, ma’am.” I thanked him, and he left. I did not eat it, of course.
My mother and Ree-Jane were now arguing about which one would drive as we more or less had to support Lola Davidow out to the car and slide her in the passanger seat while she sang “Tangerine” at the top of her lungs. My mother won, naturally. She might have entrusted a plate of fried chicken to Ree-Jane, but she wasn’t about to entrust our lives to her.
So eastward we drove on the Tamiami Trail into a deep coral sky, the sun going down behind us, darkening into a grainy blue dusk with the black silhouettes of the royal palms vanishing into the distance. It was just like the picture I had tacked up on the wall of the Pink Elephant. It was just like it, down to the faintest bluish-pink line of the horizon.
It was a relief to know that some things are real, that some things don’t lie.
27
My real life
My real life is what I thought about, standing at the stove watching Miss Bertha’s dinner heat up.
My mother had cooked a lot of food (having no faith in Mrs. Eikleburger) and put it in the freezer, clearly marked. She had left oven temperatures and cooking times for me, too. Tonight it was to be meat loaf with mushroom gravy. I had told her Miss Bertha’s favorite, or one of them, was meat loaf, which it wasn’t. Mrs. Fulbright liked it a lot. As for the mushroom gravy, Miss Bertha really hated it because she was sure all mushrooms were dangerous and called them toadstools. She was certain she’d get a poisonous one, which she probably would if I knew where they were. Since she wouldn’t eat the mushroom gravy, I cut her square of meat loaf open, scooped out some, and stuffed the sauteed mushrooms inside. I sealed it back up. You really couldn’t tell.
Now I stood before the stove, watching the peas warming in one pot and the mashed potatoes in the other, thinking about my real life. Was it now, waiting for the food to heat up? It made me uncomfortable to think my real life was watching over Miss Bertha’s dinner.
I walked over to the tin-lined counter at the end of the draining board, where Walter was washing dishes, and set down some dirty utensils and the frying pan in which I’d re-sauteed the mushrooms. I asked, “Walter, do you ever wonder what your real life is?”
“Uh-uh.” He shook his head.
He could be so annoying. “Well, wonder now. Wonder what your real life is.”
“Okay.” He went around and around a glass platter with a dishrag.
There was this exasperating silence. I didn’t know whether he was wondering or not. Probably not. I was scraping bits of blackened onion grit from the frying pan, waiting.
“Well?”
“I guess it’s washin’ this here dish.”
Deesh, he said. Walter was so practical about life.
“Not just your life. Your real life. What you’re meant to do.”
He was silent for a moment, then he said, “Washin’ these here pots and pans, looks like. Looks like the same thing to me.”
I heard Miss Bertha’s cane smarting the wood floor of the dining room and picked up their basket of rolls from the serving counter. I took them in with the water pitcher.
As she looped her cane around a third chair at the table, Miss Bertha complained again that the “two of them” had no business going off both at the same time, and what was for dinner?
Meat loaf with mushroom gravy.
There came a sound of satisfaction from Mrs. Fulbright and a big grunt from Miss Bertha. She complained that my mother wasn’t there to cook her something else, and wasn’t that part-time German cook here?
No, not tonight.
I let Walter dish up the food, as he really enjoyed doing that and was very neat about it. After taking in their plates, the steam rising from the potatoes, I went back to the kitchen and waited.
There came a yell and a chair overturning and I started for the back door, asking Walter to go see what was wrong.
Then I ran across the grass to the other back door and up the stairs to my room.
As I changed my skirt for my jeans, I wondered again what my real life was. Or what it should be. I stared in the mirror, pressing my fingers into my cheeks, and watched as the skin whitened and the color returned when I took my fingers away. Then I pressed my fingertips against my forehead. I was seeing how solid I was. I felt ghostly, as if the inside of me had been scooped out and replaced with nothing, not even mushrooms
I was told to keep Aurora happy and that meant Cold Comforts. And that meant getting another bottle of Southern Comfort out of the storage room. I knew Mrs. Davidow kept the key way back in a cubbyhole in the rolltop desk in the back office (which would have been the first place I’d look if I’d been a thief). After I knuckled it out, I stuck my head into the dumbwaiter opening in the wall beside the desk to listen to what might be going on. Aurora could make more noise for her single self than any human being I have ever encountered. It often sounded like she had a party going on.
I went up to the third floor and got the bottle, stopping among the clothes and blankets to admire some of Ree-Jane’s clothes. I always had a secret hankering after one of her evening dresses (she had several): it was the one my mother had made for her for her Sweet Sixteen party. It was white tulle and chiffon, the skirt spangled all over with sequins, very small ones that seemed to show not themselves but their reflected light. It was white and silver. I took the dress down and put it over my arm and carried it, along with the Southern Comfort, to the kitchen.
After I poured the Southern Comfort and brandy, I mixed in the usual ingredients of fruit juice, some gin, and my secret ingredient, which changed every time I made it. I took the glass back to the office and called up the dumbwaiter shaft: “Aurora Paradise, I’m sending up your Cold Comfort!”
Then came a scuffling and a creaking and her voice bellowing down the shaft: “ ’Bout time you did!” She gave two knocks with her cane, the all-clear signal, though why it wouldn’t be clear was more than I could say. I set the glass—which reminded me of Lola’s drink at Trader Bob’s—in the box and pulled on the cord. Up it went.
“You got it?” I called, half of me in the shaft, looking up at semidarkness. She yelled back that she had. “I’ll have Walter bring up your dinner.” Silence. I guess now th
at she had her Cold Comfort she saw no need to put herself out by answering. “I have to go out,” I called up.
Then I heard her whine: “Go out? You? Wherever would you have to go to? It’s evening.”
“I do have a life of my own.”
“No, you don’t.”
That really irritated me. But the irritation only masked something else. A cold center gathered inside me. I was afraid she might be right.
28
Brokedown House, revisited
The Woods and Mr. Root were already at Britten’s when I got there a half hour later. They were gathered by the truck, talking at a great rate as if they’d just discovered a common language in a country of foreigners. Maybe they had.
As it was Ulub’s truck, he drove and I insisted Ubub sit in front as he was the brother and they could talk (which would save me from trying to talk to them). Mr. Root and I argued briefly over the jump seat; he said his rheumatism was really acting up, and I had nothing to go up against that, so I sat on a blanket on the floor.
“Dwayne must not have gotten around to fixing this truck,” I said, after we’d driven through La Porte and were bumping down the highway. My voice was as bumpy as the ride. Then I was sorry I’d commented, as both Ulub and Ubub went into the details of the repairs, none of which I understood, and Mr. Root was chawing at tobacco and seemed miles away. I never realized before how much Ulub and Ubub talked to each other. Their speech kind of fitted in with the choppy ride.
“Turn off!” I said. Nobody was paying attention.
Ulub swung the truck right to the narrower road, and soon I saw the Silver Pear, its big silver sign turning everything in its surroundings an eerie, ashy shade, flashing in and out among the trees like a knife that might at any moment bury itself in the ground, and I wondered if it would draw forth silver blood.
I was hanging over the front seat giving directions that the pond was just over the bridge. The bridge rumbled beneath us as if every plank was loose. It was just the truck, though. We braked to a stop beside Mirror Pond and got out and stood looking at the muddy, weed-choked pond.
Cold Flat Junction Page 18
