“You,” she murmured. “You here.” Each word sailed toward Gigi on a wave of alcohol breath.
“You hear me? I can’t wait all day!” Roger warned.
Gigi waved her free hand across the woman’s face to make sure she was blind as well as drunk.
“Stop that,” said the woman, whispering but annoyed.
“Oh,” said Gigi, “I thought. Why don’t you let me get you a chair?”
“I’m gone, hear? Gone!” Gigi heard the engine rev and the hearse shift from neutral into reverse.
“I’m missing my ride. What you want me to do?”
The woman turned over on her side and folded her hands under her cheek. “Be a darling. Just watch. I haven’t closed my eyes in seventeen days.”
“Wouldn’t a bed do the trick?”
“Be a darling. Be a darling. I don’t want to sleep when nobody there to watch.”
“On the floor?”
But she was asleep. Breathing like a child.
Gigi stood up and looked around the kitchen, slowly swallowing cake. At least there were no dead people here now. The sound of the hearse grew fainter and then slipped away.
Fright, not triumph, spoke in every foot of the embezzler’s mansion. Shaped like a live cartridge, it curved to a deadly point at the north end where, originally, the living and dining rooms lay. He must have believed his persecutors would come from the north because all the first-floor windows huddled in those two rooms. Like lookouts. The southern end contained signs of his desire in two rooms: an outsize kitchen and a room where he could play rich men’s games. Neither room had a view, but the kitchen had one of the mansion’s two entrances. A veranda curved from the north around the bullet’s tip, continued along its wall past the main entrance, and ended at the flat end of the ammunition—its southern exposure. Except from the bedrooms no one in the house could see the sun rise, and there was no vantage point to see it set. The light, therefore, was always misleading.
He must have planned to have a lot of good-time company in his fortress: eight bedrooms, two giant bathrooms, a cellar of storerooms that occupied as much space as the first floor. And he wanted to amuse his guests so completely they would not think of leaving for days on end. His efforts to entertain were no more sophisticated or interesting than he was—mostly food, sex and toys. After two years of semi-covert construction, he managed one voluptuous party before he was arrested, just as he feared, by northern lawmen, one of whom attended his first and only party.
The four teaching sisters who moved into his house when it was offered for sale at a pittance diligently canceled the obvious echoes of his delight but could do nothing to hide his terror. The closed-off, protected “back,” the poised and watchful “tip,” an entrance door guarded by the remaining claws of some monstrous statuary, which the sisters had removed at once. A rickety, ill-hanging kitchen door the only vulnerability.
Gigi, as high as possible on her limited supply, and roaming through the mansion while the drunken woman slept on the kitchen floor, immediately recognized the conversion of the dining room into a schoolroom; the living room into a chapel; and the game room alteration to an office—cue sticks and balls, but no pool table. Then she discovered the traces of the sisters’ failed industry. The female-torso candleholders in the candelabra hanging from the hall ceiling. The curls of hair winding through vines that once touched faces now chipped away. The nursing cherubim emerging from layers of paint in the foyer. The nipple-tipped doorknobs. Layabouts half naked in old-timey clothes, drinking and fondling each other in prints stacked in closets. A Venus or two among several pieces of nude statuary beneath the cellar stairs. She even found the brass male genitalia that had been ripped from sinks and tubs, packed away in a chest of sawdust as if, however repelled by the hardware’s demands, the sisters valued nevertheless its metal. Gigi toyed with the fixtures, turning the testicles designed to release water from the penis. She sucked the last bit of joint—Ming One—and laid the roach on one of the alabaster vaginas in the game room. She imagined men contentedly knocking their cigars against those ashtrays. Or perhaps just resting them there, knowing without looking that the glowing tip was slowly building a delicate head.
She avoided the bedrooms because she didn’t know which one had belonged to the dead person, but when she went to use one of the bathrooms, she saw that no toilet activity was not meant to be reflected in a mirror that reflected in another. Most, set firmly into wall tile, had been painted. Bending to examine the mermaids holding up the tub, she noticed a handle fastened to a slab of wood surrounded by floor tile. She was able to reach and lift the handle, but not able to budge it.
Suddenly she was fiercely hungry again and returned to the kitchen, to eat and do as the woman had asked: be a darling and watch while she slept—like an antique tripper afraid to come down alone. She was finished with the macaroni, some ham and another slice of cake when the woman on the floor stirred and sat up. She held her face in both hands for a moment, then rubbed her eyes.
“Feel better?” asked Gigi.
She took a pair of sunglasses from an apron pocket and put them on. “No. But rested.”
“Well that is better.”
The woman got up. “I suppose. Thank you—for staying.”
“Sure. Hangover’s a bitch. I’m Gigi. Who died?”
“A love,” said the woman. “I had two; she was the first and the last.”
“Aw, I’m sorry,” Gigi said. “Where’s he taking her? The dude in the hearse.”
“Far. To a lake named for her. Superior. That’s how she wanted it.”
“Who else lives here? You didn’t cook all this food, did you?”
The woman filled a saucepan with water and shook her head.
“What you gonna do now?”
“Gigi Gigi Gigi Gigi Gigi. That’s what frogs sing. What did your mother name you?”
“Her? She gave me her own name.”
“Well?”
“Grace.”
“Grace. What could be better?”
Nothing. Nothing at all. If ever there came a morning when mercy and simple good fortune took to their heels and fled, grace alone might have to do. But from where would it come and how fast? In that holy hollow between sighting and following through, could grace slip through at all?
It was the I-give woman serving up her breasts like two baked Alaskas on a platter that took all the kick out of looking in the boy’s eyes. Gigi watched him battle his stare and lose every time. He said his name was K.D. and tried hard to enjoy her face as much as her cleavage while he talked. It was a struggle she expected, rose to and took pleasure in—normally. But the picture she had wakened to an hour earlier spoiled it.
Unwilling to sleep on the second floor where a person had just died, Gigi had chosen the leather sofa in the used-to-be-game-room office. Windowless, dependent on no longer available electricity for light, the room encouraged her to sleep deeply and long. She missed the morning entirely and woke in the afternoon, in a darkness hardly less than she’d fallen asleep in. Hanging on the wall in front of her was the etching she had barely glanced at when poking around the day before. Now it loomed into her line of vision in the skinny light from the hall. A woman. On her knees. A knocked-down look, cast-up begging eyes, arms outstretched holding up her present on a platter to a lord. Gigi tiptoed over and leaned close to see who was the woman with the I-give-up face. “Saint Catherine of Siena” was engraved on a small plaque in the gilt frame. Gigi laughed—brass dicks hidden in a box; pudding tits exposed on a plate—but in fact it didn’t feel funny. So when the boy she had seen in town the day before parked his car near the kitchen door and blew his horn, her interest in him had an edge of annoyance. Propped in the doorway she ate jam-covered bread while she listened to him and watched the war waged in his eyes.
His smile was lovely and his voice attractive. “Been riding around looking all over for you. Heard you was out here. Thought you might be still.”
“Who t
old you that?”
“A friend. Well, a friend of a friend.”
“You mean that hearse dude?”
“Uh huh. Said you changed your mind about getting to the train station.”
“News sure travels fast out here, even if nothing else does.”
“We get around. Wanna go for a ride? Go as fast as you want.”
Gigi licked jam from her thumb and forefinger. She looked to the left toward the garden and thought she saw in the distance a glint of metal or maybe a mirror reflecting light. As from a state trooper’s sunglasses.
“Gimme a minute,” she said. “Change my clothes.”
In the game room she put on a yellow skirt and a dark red top. Then she consulted her astrology chart before stuffing her belongings (and a few souvenirs) in her backpack which she slung into the car’s rear seat.
“Hey,” said K.D. “We just going for a little ride.”
“Yeah,” she answered, “but who knows? I might change my mind again.”
They drove through mile after mile of sky-blue sky. Gigi had not really looked at the scenery from the train windows or the bus. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing out there. But speeding along in the Impala was more like cruising on a DC-10, and the nothing turned out to be sky—unignorable, custom-made, designer sky. Not empty either but full of breath and all the eye was meant for.
“That’s the shortest skirt I ever saw.” He smiled his lovely smile.
“Minis,” said Gigi. “In the real world they’re called miniskirts.”
“Don’t they make people stare at you?”
“Stare. Drive for miles. Have car wrecks. Talk stupid.”
“You must like it. Reckon that’s what they’re for, though.”
“You explain your clothes; I’ll explain mine. Where’d you get those pants, for instance?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Nothing. Listen, you want to argue, take me back.”
“No. No, I don’t want to argue; I just want to…ride.”
“Yeah? How fast?”
“Told you. Fast as I can.”
“How long?”
“Long as you want.”
“How far?”
“All the way.”
The desert couple was big, Mikey said. From any angle you looked, he said, they took up the sky, moving, moving. Liar, thought Gigi; not this sky. This here sky was bigger than everything, including a woman with her breasts on a tray.
When Mavis pulled into the driveway, near the kitchen door, she slammed the brakes so hard her packages slid from the seat and fell beneath the dashboard. The figure sitting in the garden’s red chair was totally naked. She could not see the face under the hat’s brim but she knew it wore no sunglasses. A mere month she’d been away, and for three weeks of that time couldn’t wait to get back. Something must have happened, she thought. To Mother. To Connie. At the squeal of the brakes, the sunning figure did not move. Only when she slammed the Cadillac door did the person sit up and push back the hat. Calling out, “Connie! Connie?” Mavis hurried toward the garden’s edge. “Who the hell are you? Where’s Connie?”
The naked girl yawned and scratched her pubic hair. “Mavis?” she asked.
Relieved to learn she was known, spoken of, at least, Mavis lowered her voice. “What are you doing out here like that? Where’s Connie?”
“Like what? She’s inside.”
“You’re naked!”
“Yeah. So? You want the cigar?”
“Do they know?” Mavis glanced toward the house.
“Lady,” said Gigi, “are you looking at something you never saw before or something you don’t have or you a clothes freak or what?”
“There you are.” Connie came down the steps, her arms wide, toward Mavis. “I missed you.” They hugged and Mavis surrendered to the thump of the woman’s heart against her own.
“Who is she, Connie, and where are her clothes?”
“Oh, that’s little Grace. She came the day after Mother died.”
“Died? When?”
“Seven days now. Seven.”
“But I brought the things. I have it all in the car.”
“No use. Not for her anyway. My heart’s all scrunched, but now you back I feel like cooking.”
“You haven’t been eating?” Mavis shot a cold glance at Gigi.
“A bit. Funeral foods. But now I’ll cook fresh.”
“There’s plenty,” said Gigi. “We haven’t even touched the—”
“You put some clothes on!”
“You kiss my ass!”
“Do it, Grace,” said Connie. “Go, like a good girl. Cover yourself we love you just the same.”
“She ever hear of sunbathing?”
“Go on now.”
Gigi went, exaggerating the switch of both the cheeks she had offered Mavis.
“What rock did she crawl out from under?” Mavis asked.
“Hush,” said Connie. “Soon you’ll like her.”
No way, Mavis thought. No way at all. Mother’s gone, but Connie’s okay. I’ve been here almost three years, and this house is where we are. Us. Not her.
They did everything but slap each other, and finally they did that. What postponed the inevitable were loves forlorn and a very young girl in too tight clothes tapping on the screen door.
“You have to help me,” she said. “You have to. I’ve been raped and it’s almost August.”
Only part of that was true.
SENECA
Something was scratching on the pane. Again. Dovey turned over on her stomach, refusing to look out of the window each time she heard it. He wasn’t there. He never came at night. Deliberately she drove her mind onto everyday things. What would she fix for supper tomorrow?
Not much point to garden peas. May as well use canned. Not a taste bud in Steward’s mouth could tell the difference. Blue Boy packed in his cheek for twenty years first narrowed his taste to a craving for spices, then reduced it altogether to a single demand for hot pepper.
When they got married, Dovey was sure she could never cook well enough to suit the twin known to be pickier than his brother, Deek. Back from the war, both men were hungry for down-home food, but dreaming of it for three years had raised their expectations, exaggerated the possibilities of lard making biscuits lighter than snow, the responsibility sharp cheese took on in hominy. When they were discharged and back home, Deek hummed with pleasure as he sucked sweet marrow from hocks or crunched chicken bones to powder. But Steward remembered everything differently. Shouldn’t the clove be down in the tissue, not just sitting on top of the ham? And the chicken-fried steak—Vidalia onions or Spanish?
On her wedding day, Dovey had stood facing the flowered wallpaper, her back to the window so her sister, Soane, could see better. Dovey held up the hem of her slip while Soane drew the seams. The little brush tickled the backs of her legs, but she stood perfectly still. There were no silk stockings in Haven or the world in 1949, but to get married obviously bare-legged mocked God and the ceremony.
“I don’t expect he’ll be satisfied at table,” Dovey told her sister.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. He compliments my cooking, then suggests how to improve it next time.”
“Hold still, Dovey.”
“Deek doesn’t do that to you, does he?”
“Not that. He’s picky other ways. But I wouldn’t worry about it if I was you. If he’s satisfied in bed, the table won’t mean a thing.”
They laughed then, and Soane had to do a whole seam over.
Now the difficulty that loomed in 1949 had been solved by tobacco. It didn’t matter whether her peas were garden fresh or canned. Convent peppers, hot as hellfire, did all the cooking for her. The trouble it took to cultivate peas was wasted. A teaspoon of sugar and a plop of butter in canned ones would do nicely, since the bits of purple-black pepper he would sprinkle over them bombed away any quiet flavor. Take late squash, for example.
&
nbsp; Almost always, these nights, when Dovey Morgan thought about her husband it was in terms of what he had lost. His sense of taste one example of the many she counted. Contrary to his (and all of Ruby’s) assessment, the more Steward acquired, the more visible his losses. The sale of his herd at 1958’s top dollar accompanied his defeat in the statewide election for church Secretary because of his outspoken contempt for the schoolchildren sitting in in that drugstore in Oklahoma City. He had even written a hateful letter to the women who organized the students. His position had not surprised her, since ten years earlier he’d called Thurgood Marshall a “stir-up Negro” for handling the NAACP’s segregation suit in Norman. In 1962 the natural gas drilled to ten thousand feet on the ranch filled his pockets but shrunk their land to a toy ranch, and he lost the trees that had made it so beautiful to behold. His hairline and his taste buds faltered over time. Small losses that culminated with the big one: in 1964, when he was forty, Fairy’s curse came true: they learned neither could ever have children.
Now, almost ten years later, he had “cleaned up,” as he put it, in a real estate deal in Muskogee, and Dovey didn’t have to wonder what else he would lose now because he was already in a losing battle with Reverend Misner over words attached to the lip of the Oven. An argument fueled in part, Dovey thought, by what nobody talked about: young people in trouble or acting up behind every door. Arnette, home from college, wouldn’t leave her bed. Harper Jury’s boy, Menus, drunk every weekend since he got back from Vietnam. Roger’s granddaughter, Billie Delia, disappeared into thin air. Jeff’s wife, Sweetie, laughing, laughing at jokes no one made. K.D.’s mess with that girl living out at the Convent. Not to speak of the sass, the pout, the outright defiance of some of the others—the ones who wanted to name the Oven “such-and-such place” and who had decided that the original words on it were something that enraged Steward and Deek. Dovey had talked to her sister (and sister-in-law) about it; to Mable Fleetwood; to Anna Flood; to a couple of women in the Club. Opinions were varied, confusing, even incoherent, because feelings ran so high over the matter. Also because some young people, by snickering at Miss Esther’s finger memory, had insulted entire generations preceding them. They had not suggested, politely, that Miss Esther may have been mistaken; they howled at the notion of remembering invisible words you couldn’t even read by tracing letters you couldn’t pronounce.
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