Ferris Beach

by Jill McCorkle

  “Kitty? Little Kitty?” she called, and rose from the swing when I came up the steps. “Look at you.” Her voice was higher, flatter than I recalled. She hugged me close, her gauzy Indian-print shirt smelling of incense and cigarette smoke. She kissed my right cheek then pushed back, holding me at arms’ length. “You’ve grown so. You’re what, thirteen?”

  “Yes.” I stood while she returned to her seat in the swing and took a little beaded cigarette case from her suede fringed purse. “I’ll be fourteen the first of August.”

  “Of course,” she said, and lit her cigarette, took a deep draw and pushed off the porch floor with the toe of her black crushed patent-leather boot. “I remember that day well.”

  “You do?” I waited for her to say more but she just smiled, pulled a tube of lip gloss from her little bag and applied it. Across the street Mo Rhodes pulled up in the driveway and began unloading groceries from the trunk of her Camaro. The baby was due in only two weeks and she looked like it could come any minute as she stood there, hands pressing in the small of her back. Reaching one hand in the driver’s side, she beeped the horn several times for someone, Mr. Rhodes or Dean, to come and help her. I yelled hello and she turned and waved a bunch of carrots.

  “Are you going to spend the night with us tonight?” she called, and I nodded. “Are you going to eat dinner?” She looked both ways and came across the street while she motioned for Dean, who was in his sock feet, ankle weights on those thin ankles, to take the groceries inside. She came up our walk, hands in the pockets of her gray pea jacket, which did not stand a chance of buttoning, her dark curly hair pulled up in a twisted knot on top of her head.

  “I think Mama expects me to eat here but I can go ask,” I said. Angela stood up to look over the hedges and then the two of them just looked at one another, then smiled slightly. “I’ll just eat here.”

  “No,” Mo said, and came up our steps, hands clasped on her stomach. “You go ask your mother if you can eat with us. I think we’re just going to go to Hardee’s, and then I thought we could ride around and look at decorations. There’s not much else I can do these days.” Then she turned slightly and nodded to Angela, who was lighting another cigarette. “Hello.”

  “Hello.” Angela leaned her head against the chain and blew out a thin curl of smoke. “Looks like you don’t have much of a wait.” She laughed and Mo nodded. The late afternoon light made Angela’s hair brighter, the coppery glow of a new penny. “If I were you,” she said, her attention on me, “I’d go out to eat. It’s always nice to go out to eat.”

  “This is Angela, Angela Burns,” I said, stumbling to think of what I should call her, my father’s niece, my cousin, the relative I haven’t seen since I was five. “And this is our neighbor, Mo Rhodes.” Again they smiled at each other. “Mrs. Rhodes used to live at Ferris Beach.”

  “Of course,” Angela said, eyes squinted as if she were giving Mo a careful study. “Yes. I knew I had seen you before.”

  “Yes,” Mo said quickly, and then turned her attention to the open trunk across the street, Dean standing there with two bags and trying to lift a third. “I better go help him,” she said. “Kate, just give us a call. Nice to see you, too.” She nodded quickly in Angela’s direction and then headed back, her boots making a grainy click on our sidewalk. When she got to the Camaro, Mr. Rhodes wrapped his arm around her, his other hand rubbing her stomach. Angela stood against a post, cigarette held up near her cheek as she watched them. “Is that Mr. Rhodes?” she asked and I nodded. “Hmmm.” She shifted her weight and turned towards me, blowing a short puff of smoke off to the side. “He’s not the type I’d imagine her with.”

  “Why?” I asked, still feeling awkward under her gaze.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She laughed. “Don’t you ever look at people and ask that?” She waited for me to nod, while taking a deep drag on her cigarette. “I thought it when I first met Cleva,” she whispered. “Cleva was not what I expected for Fred.”

  “How long have you been here?” Now I was wondering if she had even knocked on the door or rung the bell. Did my mother even know that she was out here? I could smell the faint traces of onions, garlic, and peppers browning, the beginnings of spaghetti sauce, and I knew my mother was just on the other side of that door and down the hall. Already the light was on in the foyer, and any second she would turn on the one over the front door.

  “Not long,” Angela said, and pushed off again, thumped her cigarette over the banister. “I didn’t see Freddie’s car so I figured he wasn’t here.” Though different from my memory, she was still very pretty. I tried to imagine her meeting my mother for the first time; I had no idea when that even would have been, whether it was before or after they were married.

  “Kate?” I jumped at the sound of Mama’s voice and turned quickly. “Misty just called to see if you want to go to Hardee’s with them. I told her that I’m cooking spaghetti but that if. . .” She stopped when she saw Angela and just stood there with the door held open. She was wearing the size nine-and-a-half fluffy purple slippers I’d given to her for her birthday; I had known when I bought them, little satin heels and feathery wisps like from a boa on the toe, that they were way out of character for her; in this picture with her gray tweed skirt, long gray sweater vest, face frozen in dismay, the contrast was grotesque.

  “Why, Aunt Cleva.” Angela thumped her cigarette into the yard and stepped forward, hand outstretched. “It’s been such a long long time.”

  “Yes, it has.” Mama turned to me then and began speaking in high gear. Why didn’t I go pack my things to go to Misty’s and wasn’t it nice of them to invite me to go to Hardee’s but she insisted on paying for mine and just to go right in her bedroom and get the money from her purse. It was so sweet of Mo to even have me when that baby could come any day now especially since it’s the third child. I felt her pulling me, a quick hug and then she pushed me into the foyer and shooed me upstairs. There was a lilt in her voice and laugh that I’d never heard before; it was as unnatural as those strange yellow lights they had put up near the interstate to make you think it was daylight. My mother was not herself; it was as if Angela had some strange power that had reduced her to a nervous babbling stranger.

  I quickly grabbed my gown and toothbrush, a couple of dollars from my parents’ room, and then waited quietly at the foot of the stairs, hoping that I could hear what they were saying. “I don’t understand why you do this to us,” my mother said, and I leaned up against the dark wall as she walked past, the front door closing behind her, cutting off Angela’s words, what sounded like a laugh. I could hear Mama in the kitchen so I carried my overnight bag out onto the porch, carefully easing the door so Mama wouldn’t hear. Angela was still just sitting there with a cigarette, one leg pulled up under the other while she leaned her head against the chain. I spoke to her again and hopped up on the porch rail, my feet locked behind the spindles. It was getting colder and I pulled the neck of my coat up closer. It was not even five o’clock and already it was dark. Soon the streetlights would come on and slowly the neighborhood would light up, Christmas trees and all the adornments that Mrs. Poole had called sheer tackiness. “And to think they do all this bulb-blinking and snow-spraying and so forth in the Lord’s name,” she had said.

  “Kate?” Again Mama was at the door, and this time her face was serious as if I had committed a crime by coming back out on the porch without telling her. “Can you come help me just a minute?” She smiled and gave Angela a quick nod before closing the front door behind us. “Now, before you go over to Misty’s I want you to help me do one thing.” I followed her into the kitchen, where she had a little bag of garden peas which she wanted me to shell. I mentioned that they were having spaghetti and surely weren’t going to have peas with it, and she said she needed these for a casserole she was making to send to a woman whose husband was in intensive care and would I please just shell them. Her face was red as she stressed each syllable while buttering more garlic toast th
an the two of them would ever eat. I knew that she was nervous and that she had gone to great lengths to find something for me to do.

  “Why is Angela here?” I asked and she just shrugged, shoulders sloping as she leaned forward to wash the dishes in the sink. After having looked at Angela, I thought she looked so large; her broad back moved up and down as she rinsed each piece of flatware, turning it over and over in her hand, the steam making her hair damp and still flatter than before. “Is she here to visit or what?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Well, how did she get here?”

  “I don’t know.” I could see her vague outline in the window, but shifted my gaze instead to take in the houses on the other side of the field, several of them lined in brightly colored bulbs that had already begun the nightly blinking. “I guess your father will know why she’s here.”

  “Shouldn’t we ask her in, though?” I threw the hulls into the trash and stood there waiting for her to acknowledge me, and instead she watched those blinking lights that just the night before she had called a fire trap.

  “Hello. Hello.” The front door slammed, and my father kept calling out his greetings of hello, good evening, happy holidays, seasons greetings, bon appétit, and peace be with you until he found us in the kitchen. “Why the long faces? Ho, ho, ho.” He grabbed her around the waist and nuzzled her thick neck. It was one of those moments when I couldn’t help but wonder what the Sprats had ever seen in each other. He kissed her cheek, peck peck peck like a starving chicken after some corn, and finally she turned and looked him in the eye, her shoulders dropping as she sighed.

  “Where’s your niece?”

  “Gone.” He waved his hand. “You know Angela, breeze in and breeze out. Here today and gone tomorrow.”

  “Yes.” Mama sat down at the table and just left the spaghetti sauce lid jumping and spitting and the sink half full of dishes. He went and readjusted the eye of the stove, then stood behind her chair, his fingers stroking her cheeks. “Anyway, what are we doing tonight?” he asked, his voice light as he playfully shook her shoulders.

  “I’m spending the night at Misty’s,” I told him, at the same time showing Mama the bowl of little green peas. “How did Angela leave?”

  “A friend picked her up,” he said, while Mama traced her finger up and down the little squares on the oilcloth. I pictured the man from the beach, cap pulled low on his forehead as the two of them loved up in the cab of a truck.

  “I bet Misty is waiting on you, honey,” she finally said. I kissed them both, then lingered in the hallway waiting to see what I could hear. They must have known I was waiting, listening, because there was a pause and then my father told her a joke about Round John Virgin. He told her what the weather forecast was for the weekend, who was number one in the NBA, how many people made a C on his exam. She said, My and Isn’t that something and Well.

  As I walked out, I heard my father go to his study and within moments Jolson’s voice burst through loud and clear with “Mammy.” I stood on the porch and the cold air felt good as I took a deep breath and tried to reconjure the picture of Angela there in the swing; already her voice was leaving me again.

  Misty’s yard was all lit up, little red and green blinking lights in the azalea bushes and up and down the pagoda mailbox. There was a plastic reindeer up on the roof, his nose blinking red; and in the picture window, which was edged in spray-on snow, I could see their tree, a silver tinsel one with pink and blue ornaments, a silver star on top. It was not my taste in decorations either but I loved seeing them; I loved the nerve behind doing something so elaborately. “I don’t believe in killing trees,” Mo had said when she refused Misty’s begs to buy a real one.

  We were supposed to get our tree the next day, and I couldn’t wait. My dad didn’t believe in killing a tree either, so we always got one with the roots bound in burlap and then set it out in the backyard down close to the property line. Our Moravian star, simple and white, was my favorite of all decorations, but we had not even gotten it out yet; that night I welcomed the loud and lively lights up and down Misty’s side of the street. I needed something dancing busily in my mind. I stepped into the middle of the road and just stood there, the streetlights stretching in either direction, glowing in the damp chilly air. I could see my breath, could feel my own warmth as it formed there in front of me. Behind me, our house looked dark, faint lingerings of I’d walk a million miles, and I wasn’t even sure if it was really playing or if I was imagining the familiar, the same way a bright light will remain when you close your eyelids, the way I imagine the sight of an eclipse would burn its image into your eyes forever.

  The street was completely still, empty; it was one of those times when I told myself that I would remember this moment forever and needed to do something that would later remind me. I had picked up a piece of coal on my last day at Pine Top Elementary School and still had it in my jewelry box. It was just that important. I saw Misty run through their living room and put a package under the tree. Then she was getting her coat from the closet. They would be outside within five minutes; they would be looking for me, blowing the horn to go. I looked around, walked quickly back up our driveway where it was dark, the slight glow of the kitchen light coming off the side porch. My own room was dark, the sleeping porch faintly lit by the upstairs hallway. I turned quickly towards the tall stone gates of Whispering Pines and felt a sudden chill, a sudden dare issued to myself. “Come on already.” Dean Rhodes was standing in their carport and leaning in the side door. “Kate isn’t even here yet.” It was in that split second that I took a deep breath and ran in, eyes straight ahead as I went midway up the first small path to the large monument that said McCarthy, and then on, farther, until the bare branches of the large oak creaked and whined over my head. I reached and felt in the darkness, there around the large gnarled roots, looking for something, a rock, plastic flower, lost marble or penny. I could feel the thick damp clay on my hands, the dead grass brushing against the legs of my jeans. “Kate? Katie?” Misty’s voice was like she had a megaphone, and I could imagine my mother’s ears perking with the sound of my name in spite of Al Jolson and cars on the interstate and spaghetti sauce gurgling and spitting.

  I felt something cool and hard and lifted it to see in the haze of the distant streetlight a petal from a hard plastic flower. It was a pink fake rose petal, caked in clay, and as I held it there, I would have sworn that I heard something move just on the other side of the path. I froze, waiting, knowing that I’d see Oliver playing there, but then it got quiet just as suddenly as I’d heard the rusde. Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes were coming out of the house now, and I had no time to linger. I heard the rustle again, this time caught a glimpse of something white, and in a sudden rush, I turned and ran as fast as I could, down the path and through the gates. “Coming!” I yelled in response to Misty’s calls, and grabbed my bag where I had left it at the corner of the house. My heart was beating so fast it felt like it was in my neck and my ears. The petal was in my coat pocket, and I squeezed it until it hurt my palm.

  “Where were you?” Misty was standing there with her hands on her hips. She had her eyes all made up and was wearing her new crushed-velvet pants and jacket. “Your mama said you were waiting on the porch.”

  “I was looking for Oliver.” I slowed down, released my grip on the petal. “Why are you so dressed up?”

  Misty nudged me and glanced over at Dean, meaning she didn’t want him to hear what she had to say. He just glared at me the way he always did. When he climbed in the backseat, she grabbed me and whispered that his friend, Ronald, you know the tall guy, was going to come over later to spend the night. Misty was always in hopes that one of these nights one of Dean’s friends would fall madly in love with her. We got in the backseat and, as Misty usually planned it, I was sitting right beside Dean, rigid for fear that my leg would accidentally touch his. Mr. Rhodes backed out of the driveway too fast, and it threw me in that direction; I tried to sit up but when I did, I
felt Dean’s hand on my forearm, holding me off balance. I turned suddenly, to look as we passed the cemetery, to see if there was someone out there, to see if I could see the exact spot where I had been, but when I turned, Dean was there looking at me, his dark-blue eyes almost black. His face softened as he pushed me back into my spot in the center and then with his arms crossed, fingers safely hidden, I felt him squeezing my upper arm. I wasn’t sure what to do so I just sat there, Mr. Rhodes and Mo in the front seat pointing out these or those decorations, Misty talking about how thejbur of us kids could sit up late and watch “Shock Theatre,” how we could fix popcorn and milkshakes and so on.

  Misty’s favorite song of the week was playing on the radio, “Have You Seen Her,” and she rocked back and forth while she sang along with The Chi-Lites. Misty had a good voice and was the only white kid in school who could get away with singing Jackson Five or Supremes or Chi-Lites songs without sounding like she was trying to sound black. As a result she had befriended several black girls that other people were scared of and spent a lot of her time in front of the warped bathroom mirrors singing backup to Lily Hadley, who had an Afro that would’ve put Jimi Hendrix to shame.

  “We’ll see about the sitting up late,” Mo said, but not once did Dean say no and that was so unlike him. Before we got to Hardee’s, he had worked his hand over to find mine and held it against the cold vinyl of the seat, carefully hidden by his fur-lined denim jacket. I began thinking that Misty and Dean had planned this and that she had conveniently forgotten to tell me; I wasn’t sure how I felt about Dean. He was not and never would have been my choice for a boyfriend, and yet, I had never really had one so what did I know. I sort of liked the way his hand felt, fingers curled around mine, our hands probably the same size, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I would feel this same way in the daylight, face to face with him. Misty kept singing along with the radio, never even elbowing me, so I knew that she had no idea what her brother was doing. Don McLean was singing my favorite song of the month, “American Pie”: Did you write the book of love. . . .