I yawned and could barely keep my eyes open to think. I put the bear back against its pillow. I had stopped playing with him some time ago, but I kept him around, just as I kept a photo album to remind myself of what I used to look like and what I used to do.
34
Bartending
Miss Bertha threw her buttered toast on the floor at breakfast the next morning, much to Mrs. Fulbright’s “mortification.” Mrs. Fulbright had lived in the days when young ladies grew “deeply mortified” instead of just getting embarrassed. I think
“mortify” is a nice word and does seem to suggest an embarrassment of the soul instead of the face (in other words, blushing), as if the mortified person has a lot more at stake. I did not pick up the toast.
Aurora usually didn’t eat breakfast, but as I wanted more information from her, I decided she wouldn’t say no to one of the “brunch” drinks listed in Mrs. Davidow’s drink encyclopedia. The brunch drinks all had names meant to suggest flowers and summery flowery smells, like “Mimosa,” and used a lot of champagne, all this to make you think you weren’t really drinking at this early hour, at the same time knowing that champagne is just as good as anything else to get drunk on if you drink enough of it.
I knew I would need some fruit juice and knew we had orange and apple, but I had to look at the liquor supply before deciding. I made my way through the dining room, ignoring Miss Bertha’s shouts for raspberry jam. I was making for the back office, where Lola Davidow kept her select bottles, the ones she liked to keep by her side in case of an earthquake. When she goes on a trip anyplace, she locks these bottles up in the black safe; I know the combination because she was out on the porch one evening and didn’t want to get up herself and told me the combination. I made a note of it for future use.
Besides the Smirnoff and the Gordon’s gin, there were bottles of Myers’s Jamaican rum and Dewar’s Scotch. I took these two out, figuring they’d be a nice change from vodka and gin. I closed the safe and marched back through the dining room with the rum and Scotch, again ignoring the howl Miss Bertha set up when she saw a slave walking by. As I slapped through the swinging door to the kitchen she was saying something about telling my mother on me. If Miss Bertha only knew how little my mother depended on her word to mete out punishments.
Orange juice and rum were probably good together, but then what wouldn’t be if it was tossed in with Scotch and a thimble of brandy? I had out the orange and apple juice and was trying to think up a name. “Jamaica Juice” might do. I studied the bottle of Scotch. I had it! “Appledew”! Now that sounded like a beautiful morning-after drink! I jumped up and down a couple of times, cheering myself on for originality. Walter (back in the dishwashing shadows) called over to ask if I was on my vacation up here. I called back Not yet, but I would be after I took this Dewar’s and apple juice up to Aurora.
“Appledew,” I said to her, as she was turning it this way and that, inspecting it as if it were a precious gem. “It’s a morning drink, a brunch drink.”
She hmpf’d and said, “You know and I know only reason people eat brunch is so’s they can vacuum up the Bloody Marys.”
I found it interesting that she was beginning to think of me as the hotel bartender who’d heard it all. I watched her sipping and tasting, sipping and tasting. That was just for show, to let me know she wasn’t a guzzler.
“Pretty good, pretty good. What’d you say its name is?”
“Appledew. It’s mainly Dewar’s Scotch and apple juice. Then there’s the secret ingredient, too.” Aurora loved secret ingredients. I stood as always with the small tin tray under my arm. She never asked me to sit down. She was playing solitaire and cheating as she always did. A queen of clubs sat atop a king of spades. It just exasperated me, but I told myself not to say anything. I think got drawn in because her reasons for cheating were so ridiculous.
“You can’t put black on black.” I couldn’t help myself.
“You can if it’s the queen of spades.”
“That’s the queen of clubs you’ve got there.”
“I meant the queen of clubs.”
“It’s no fun if you cheat.”
“It ain’t no fun if you don’t.”
“You admit it! You admit you’re cheating!”
“I never did; I never said I was having fun.”
I gritted my teeth. This could go on for hours if I let it. “Okay, never mind the cards. I have a question.”
“And I have an empty glass.”
When had she drunk it all? But I was sly. “Well, I’m not making you any more Appledew until you answer my question.”
She, of course, was slyer. “Well, I ain’t answering your question till you bring me another Appledew. How you like them apples, Missy?”
She thought that was so funny. Slapping her leg, she laughed and laughed, but it wasn’t real laughter. It was put on for me. “Okay, I’ll go ask Walter. He knows as much about Spirit Lake as you do.”
“That man? He don’t know—”
“Walter’s lived here all his life.”
“So’ve you and you don’t know squat.” Leaning forward in her rocking chair, she slid a ten of diamonds on a jack of hearts and looked up at me from under her stubs of gray eyelashes.
But I was sticking to my guns. I turned on my heel and marched out.
“Just you come back here, Miss! Ain’t you got no manners? You don’t walk away from your elders unless you’re excused.”
My back to her, I stuck my tongue out at the stair railing. I didn’t want to push my luck; anyway, sticking your tongue out is something little kids do when they can’t think of a good comeback, like Ree-Jane saying You’re so stupid! I never wanted to get that desperate. Then I put on my blank expression, which is similar to but not exactly like my dumb look and turned back into the room.
“Oh, all right, all right, ask your question. One question.” She held up a bony forefinger.
“Do you know a house over near White’s Bridge called Brokedown House?” One question, she’d said, so I hurried on “... and whoever lived there? And the house might not have been called Brokedown years ago, as it probably wasn’t broke down until—”
“Oh, stop runnin’ at the mouth! Yes, I know that place. Long as I can think back that’s what people called it. They was Calhouns lived there.”
Calhoun. That was one of the names the Sheriff had listed.
“Last ones were Ethelbert Calhoun and his family. Had five or six kids. Kids is hard on a place as I am sure Jen Graham knows.” She made shooing gestures with her fingers. “Get goin’ . I’m parched.”
“Well, but did this Calhoun family have—”
“One question, Miss Smartypants. I already answered two. You cheated and stuck an extra question onto the first one, don’t think I didn’t notice.”
“Oh, all right.” My tone was a bit too pouty for my tastes, and I turned and left and made my noisy way down the three flights of steps, running down them as I wanted to get back with the Appledew as fast as I could to hear more about Brokedown House.
Out in the kitchen where Walter was still polishing up the same serving platter, it looked like, I carelessly tossed rum and apple juice into the glass (not terribly concerned about proportions, not with all of my bartending experience) and thought about the Calhouns as I poured in the Dewar’s. Calhoun: another name I’d never even known forty-eight hours ago, which now would attach itself to all of the other names, a cat’s cradle of names that loosened or tightened depending how you pulled. Why is it, when you’ve got a mystery to solve, instead of getting answers along the way, you get still more questions? But maybe that’s the way mystery goes—something like a painting, where the artist fills in more and more brush strokes, details, but the filling in makes the painting wider and wider.
I poured in orange juice, some more Dewar’s, added a couple of maraschino cherries, and was off again up to the fourth floor.
“Ah!” said Aurora, whether to the Appledew or slapp
ing a red king on a red ace, I don’t know. She took the drink in her mittened hand.
“So, go on,” I said.
“With what? This is better’n the last one. Did you add anything different?”
Only a quart more Scotch, I didn’t say. “Go on about the Calhouns.”
“What about them?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, as if the effort would keep me from bonging her over the head with my tray. My sigh could have blown her off her balcony. “I thought you might just remember something useful about the Calhouns.”
“No’m, I cannot think of a useful thing.” She slurped her drink.
I would have to plod. “First off, did you know them?”
“Knew him, knew Ethelbert Calhoun, the daddy. He used to work around here doing odd jobs and such. Bert had a crush on me.”
I nearly dropped my tray, I was so astonished. “The Calhouns were connected with the Hotel Paradise?”
“He was, so was his oldest girl, Rebecca. She waited tables sometimes. Brought her little sister with her to baby-sit.”
I shook my head, so stunned by this bit of news I could hardly get off another question. “Well ... when? When was all this?”
Aurora was busy poking her straw at the melting ice cubes. “Oh, forty, fifty years ago.” She glanced up from her glass with that cunning look. “When I was just a girl.”
Forty years ago, Aurora would have been middle-aged. But I thought it wise to let that go.
“My, yes. That was back in the days when every man from miles around was after me.” She sat back and looked up at the ceiling, its plaster swimming with fine cracks. “Let me tell you the story of my youth.”
Oh, no, I thought. We’d never get back to the Calhouns now. When Aurora got on herself, it meant we’d be here till the cows came home. Besides which, you couldn’t tell what was truth and what was lies. But I would have to humor her if I ever wanted to find out more about Ethelbert Calhoun and his family.
She pointed behind her with her stick, too lazy to actually turn and look. “See that steamer trunk there? Got all them labels on it? I been everywhere, Miss Priss, and I mean everywhere .”
The old trunk, with its drawers open and spilling out silk scarves and underclothes and its small hangers holding beautiful, elaborately decorated gowns, looked to me as if it were on display, a stage setting. I groaned inwardly to think I might have to travel with Aurora to Rome and Hong Kong and India before I could get back to Brokedown House.
“It was in Sydney, Australia, when we all went to the opera house ...” Again, she motioned behind her. “Go over to that old Victrola and put a record on. Put on the one on the top. That’s Maria Callas, who invited us to supper after the performance.”
Still carrying my tray, I went to the phonograph by the window and set the tray on the floor so I could wipe dust from the record with my arm. There were arias, it said, from different operas. I dropped it on the turntable.
“We traveled to the outback of Australia, then after Australia ...”
I was prepared to be bored, not only by Aurora, but by opera. Instead, I was transfixed. As the music and Maria’s voice swelled, I looked at the ceiling as if this heavenly sound were leaking through the honeycomb of cracks up there. Aurora talked and I listened. Every few seconds, Aurora’s voice lapped over Maria’s.
“... Copenhagen’s just full of prostitutes.”
But her voice only registered for a moment, then it was gone. I dropped my head and closed my eyes, the better to hear Maria, and wondered why everything in the universe didn’t sound like this record, I mean, if there was a God.
“... then skinny-dipped in Lake Como.”
Aurora cackled so hard she choked.
My thoughts seemed to turn liquid: the White’s Bridge Road running into Maud’s house and the end of the pier where Dwayne and I sat; light coming from the lamp moving across the Sheriff’s face; the empty fields on the way back melting into the Tamiami Trail. It was all as if it was endless, seamless, with no starts and stops, no beginning and no end.
Something pointy dug at my shoulder. I lurched to find Aurora waving her stick in the air. “Ain’t you payin’ attention, Miss? That record’s done. Put on ... hmm ... Patience and Prudence.” Her drink finished, she licked the straw and smacked her lips.
Wearily, I got to my feet. I might have been as old as Aurora at that moment, what with the weight I felt on my back. I took Maria off the turntable, then looked through the dusty stack for the Patience and Prudence song. When I found it, I wiped it and put it on.
At the opening bars, Aurora said, “Good! We can have a sing-along!” She pounded the floor with her stick and started in:I knoooow that you-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoooo
Have fow-ow-ow-ow-ound
Someone new-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo,
But to-night you be-loong to meeee.
I just shook my head. I ought to have been more careful with that second drink. At this point I knew the Calhouns would have to wait; it was no good trying to get anything out of Aurora now. So I turned on my heel and left, saying good-bye, good-bye to her and Patience and Prudence.
I knooow with the daw-aw-aw-aw-awn
That you-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo
Will be gah-ah-ah-ah-one
But to-night—
It followed me down the stairs.
—you be-loong to meeee.
35
Deaf
Walter had one of the kitchen aprons on and was stirring a pot. I apologized for being late and he said, as always, “Oh, that’s all right,” in his lumbering, uncomplicated voice. He said he was stirring cheese sauce for the “rabbit” (the Welsh rarebit, but I didn’t correct him) and he could wait on Miss Bertha if I wanted, but I was feeling guilty for asking him to do so many things.
He stirred slowly; he did everything slowly. I stood next to him, watching. “We had this yesterday, didn’t we?”
“Yeah. She don’t like it, neither.”
I watched the spoon smoothing out the sauce. “Leave some lumps in, she hates lumps.”
He laughed his wheezy laugh.
It wasn’t too bad at all being here without the usual kitchen drama supplied by my mother and Vera and Mrs. Davidow, who liked to sit on the edge of the white-enamel middle table where I did salads. No, it was kind of relaxing and left a lot of time and space to think in. (Also, it was nice being able to tell someone else what to do.)
I thought of what Aurora had told me. I was sure there was more. “Walter, do you know any Calhouns.”
“Prob’ly. Which ones? There’s Calhouns all over.”
“This one’s an Ethelbert and he lived on White’s Bridge Road.”
“Ethelbert,” said Walter, in his thinking voice.
“See, he once worked here. Before your time, of course. Forty years ago. You’d only have been a baby then. He’s dead, I imagine, but some of his kids might still be around. The Calhouns is what Aurora told me; she says the daughter Rebecca waited tables here.”
Walter frowned thoughtfully and tapped the wooden spoon slowly on the pot to dislodge the oatmeal.
“Rebecca. There’s a Becky Calhoun I think married a Spiker.”
I was excited. “Where do they live?”
Walter paused for a long thought. Then he said, “I think Cold Flat Junction. There’s lots of Spikers around, too. I think she married Bewley Spiker. I ain’t sure, now,” he said, warning me not to put my complete faith in what he said and then be disappointed.
Cold Flat Junction! This was fate.
I figured if Rebecca waited tables here, she must have been at least seventeen or eighteen (although the management here never seemed much bothered by child labor). That would make her in her midfifties now.
There was noise coming from the dining room, though how two old ladies could make so much I couldn’t imagine. One old lady, I mean. I wasn’t going to fool around with her this lunchtime. I had things to do. Walter put the bacon he’d fried onto a paper towel to absorb the grease, before p
utting it atop the toast and cheese sauce. (I was going to tell my mother how Walter had a real eye for detail.)
“You can dish up, Walter.” He loved to do this.
“What about the old fool? You just know she’s gonna want an omelette or somethin’.”
“She’ll want anything we’re not serving.”
Walter tittered and got the warm plates from the shelf above the stove.
I heard laughter and talk choked with it coming from outside the kitchen screen door. “That’s Will and Mill,” I said, surprised. I wasn’t used to seeing them in the kitchen during the day.
It was laughter that could scarcely contain itself, doubled-up laughter. But the laughter ended the minute they walked through the door, as if God had cut through it with a cleaver. They were always like that; it astonished me how Will and Mill wanted everything they did to be a secret, and thus did not want to be caught out doing anything, including laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Huh?” said Will. “ ’Lo, Walter.”
“Hey, Will.”
Then I said to Mill, “You both were laughing fit to kill.”
Mill adjusted the glasses perched on his blade-thin nose as if that would tell him who this person was who was speaking to him. “Laughing?”
Walter had spooned cheese sauce over the toast tringles, which he then decorated with the bacon strips. I picked up my tray and headed for the dining room. When I reached the swing door, I got an idea and turned. “Will, come and do your hearing-aid thing so I can get out of the dining room quick.”
Will looked at me and said, “I’m too tired.”
“No, you’re not. I’ll do something for you later.” It was dangerous making an open-ended bargain like this with him, but I didn’t have time to think up anything better.
“Okay. Come on,” he said to Mill.
Wreathed in smiles, Will said good afternoon good afternoon to the two old ladies. Miss Bertha started in complaining when I put the rarebit in front of her.
Cold Flat Junction Page 23
