Ferris Beach Page 18

  Merle was walking by, and though he couldn’t see me there behind the screen, I instinctively stepped back. He seemed to walk more slowly as he passed. His hands were in the front pockets of his jeans—new jeans they looked like—and he wore a plain white T-shirt. His hair was as blond as corn silks, and his face and arms were already tan. I had seen him pass back and forth just about every day as he went to and from work at the Cape Fear Warehouse, where he was loading tobacco.

  He paused in front of our walk, and I imagined that he was looking for the pebble he had tossed the other day, a smooth pink pebble that I had picked up and placed up on the porch right after Misty went home. He bent down and held his hand out, made a clicking noise with his tongue. In a minute, Oliver was there, tail straight up as he nuzzled Merle’s knee and then flopped over on his back, twisted from side to side on the walk. Merle rubbed his hand up and down the cat’s stomach.

  “Kitty? Oh Kitty?” Angela’s voice echoed through the hallway, and Merle looked up quickly. I backed into the darkness of the hall so that he couldn’t see me. “There you are. What are you doing just standing here?” Before I could duck into the living room, she had pushed open the screen door and was motioning for me to go out on the porch. My father was right behind her. Merle stood as soon as he heard the door, and I lifted my hand involuntarily in a nervous wave. He nodded quickly and was gone without a word, poor Oliver alarmed by the quick motions and staring after him.

  “Did we interrupt something?” Angela asked, and ran her hands under my hair, twisting and lifting it off my neck. She bent forward to look at me and then glanced down the street where Merle was just turning the corner there at Whispering Pines. “Were you courting?”

  “No way.” I pulled away from her, shook my hair out.

  “How about I put your hair up for you?” she asked. “Or better yet, we’ll do a whole make-over.” She cupped her hand under my chin and turned my face from side to side. “I took a course in beauty school once.”

  “She was so beautiful they told her not to come back.” My father sat in the swing and propped his feet on the lawn chair, lit a cigarette. “You know, I wonder if there’s some kind of solution you could put on a person’s hair and poison him through the scalp.”

  “Probably,” Angela said, and laughed, then glanced across the street, where Sally Jean was throwing grass seed. “Who is that?” she whispered, still staring as Sally Jean bent down to pick something up, probably another left-over pebble.

  “That’s who Thomas Rhodes married.” My father thumped his cigarette out into the yard as Angela continued to stare, head shaking in disbelief. “I wonder where I can find out about scalp poisoning. What do you think?” Angela turned quickly, rubbed her hands all over her head as if lathering, and then gripped her chest and began staggering towards my father; he was trying to light another cigarette but was laughing too hard to succeed.

  “Mary Katherine?” My mother’s voice from behind the screen brought silence. “Come here one minute, please.” I went inside and then followed her through the house and out onto the sun-porch. Her cologne was like an invisible thread leading me, and along the way I noticed how the whole house smelled wonderfully clean, and I knew she had used her old trick of filling all the sinks with Spic ‘n’ Span and Lysol, swishing the cleansers around. She probably had apples and cloves boiling on the stove and had sprayed the curtains in the guest room with cologne. I could still hear Angela and my father laughing.

  “What is it?” I asked when she finally turned to face me, lush green ferns hanging behind her like a jungle. Again I felt torn as I watched her fiddle with the sash of her silky aqua blouse. Not only had she thrown the house into shipshape, but she had also been working on herself. She had put on the cream-colored skirt she normally wore to church, hose and matching cream pumps, a thin gold bracelet on her wrist. She was wearing lipstick and a touch of color on her cheeks.

  “How do I look?” she asked, and held her hands out to the side. Something in her behavior, a vulnerability that I had never seen, made something inside me snap.

  “That’s why you called me back here?” I glanced out the kitchen window just in time to see Merle make his way through the overgrowth to his house. I wanted to say, Pretty is as pretty does, but I resisted. “You look fine,” I said. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know, Katie.” She sat down on the edge of a chair, hands folded in her lap, ankles crossed. She was in her own house, her own clothes, with her own family, and yet she looked like a stranger, like Sally Jean in Mo Rhodes’s kitchen.

  The first thing Angela did when she and my father came inside was to go on and on about how wonderful my mother looked, what a lovely blouse, a nice hairdo, what cute little pumps, all words that seemed to make my mother look even larger and more awkward than she was. Though the tension during the chicken Kiev was so thick I felt I’d choke, it began to lift, slowly, quietly. Angela said that she had never tasted anything more delicious, that she didn’t know how my mother kept our home looking so beautiful, that she loved mandarin oranges dipped in fondue chocolate, and how did my mother ever know? It was working and my father kept talking about the women in his life, all three of you.

  When dinner was over and we were sitting out on the porch, Angela presented my mother with a present, the giftwrap a piece of aluminum foil; it was a silver pin, a crescent moon with a star at the bottom. A fairy tale moon, she said, a token of my appreciation for you having me visit a few days. I recognized the pin; my father had bought it at a craft fair at the community college and had been saving it for my mother’s birthday. He winked at me when I turned to look at him. “How thoughtful,” my mother said, and pinned it on her blouse; Angela laughed and said it was no big deal.

  “I love you, Cleva,” I heard my father say later as I stood in the doorway of their room; I was about to ask if I could run over to Misty’s but changed my mind when I saw them hug tightly. My mother was wearing her slip and those lavender bedroom shoes; the moon pin was carefully placed in the center of a doily on her dresser.

  “I can’t believe she brought me that,” my mother said. “Maybe all your good intentions and beliefs are finally paying off.” I stepped back so that they wouldn’t see me there as he nuzzled her neck, gave her those peck peck peck kisses that usually irritated her.

  “Didn’t I tell you, honey?” he whispered, pushed back and cupped her chin in his hand. “It just took time. She’s a different person now. She’s older, wiser.” He kissed her again, and then at what looked like the most romantic of all moments, asked if she would call her beautician in the morning to find out a few things for his research.

  Sixteen

  No one knew how long Angela planned to stay. My mother asked questions trying to find out, such as would she be going with us to the town picnic on the Fourth of July, but the answer was never there. Every time the Fourth was mentioned, she turned the topic back around to Mo Rhodes leaving home the year before and what a terrible tragedy it all was. I would have guessed from seeing those two little bags, one just for make-up, that she had come for the night. However, as she unpacked I saw that the weekend-size piece of Samsonite was filled with little short T-shirt dresses all rolled up, a week’s worth of underwear, one very brief bikini, a pair of faded jeans, and a couple of halter tops. It seemed that she had come with every intention of staying awhile.

  By the end of the first week and many trips to the shopping center, she had twice as many clothes as when she arrived. One afternoon she took me shopping and insisted that I try on very grown-up and glamorous evening dresses. She got a long frosted fall from the wig department and convinced me that I needed to grow my hair waist-length. Then she got some sexy spike heels from the shoe department and convinced me that being tall was sophisticated. She had me believing that I was beautiful. Then she bought one plastic bangle bracelet, and we left while the irritated saleslady rehung the pile of formals that Angela had tossed on a chair. “Wasn’t that fun?” s
he asked when we stepped from the air-conditioning of the department store into the broiling sun. She laughed and held the red bangle out to me. “A gift,” she said.

  Angela was like the Pied Piper, and I felt important just walking along beside her, going to the movies or shopping or just lying on a blanket in the backyard to sun. I had never done that before, always afraid that Merle would be out in the field or up on his roof to yell something. With Angela I felt brave. Even my mother, at Angela’s invitation, had begun pulling up a yard chair and stretching her legs out in the sun, a sight I had never thought I’d see.

  “I feel like I have two daughters,” Mama said one day when she came outside with a pitcher of lemonade. She was talking to Sally Jean, who was following, needlework in hand. I had never imagined that my mother could have such a smooth dark tan but there she was, living proof. Sally Jean was also wearing shorts, and her legs were stained orange with QT. It had been Angela’s suggestion after Sally Jean told us how she sometimes had an allergic reaction to the sun. “You can’t lay out with us, but you can still get a tan,” Angela had said, and my mother had not even corrected her for saying “lay,” rather had encouraged Sally Jean to take Angela’s advice.

  “I am way too old to be your daughter and you know it now, Cleva.” Angela laughed and took a glass of lemonade. “We found that out years ago. I mean, I could be Katie’s mama as easily as you.” Again, I felt that old pang of wishing. “I mean, I would have had to have had her at age seventeen, but it does happen.” I felt Misty pressing my leg with her foot. My mother looked down at the lemonade pitcher; I knew she was hoping to avoid the story that was coming. “My mother was only seventeen,” Angela said, and Misty rolled over on her side, shielded her eyes against the sun. “Really,” she nodded, knowing that she had Misty’s full attention. “She never told who my daddy was.” She laughed and looked at my mother, who was studying the seed catalog she had brought out with her. “Imagine. She was ahead of her time, wasn’t she?”

  “My mom was only eighteen when Dean was born,” Misty said. “But my parents were married.”

  “Well, of course they were,” Sally Jean said, and drank a big swallow of lemonade. “Of course Thomas married her.”

  “Don’t say it like that.” Misty sat up, the shoulder strap of her suit falling to one side to reveal a stark-white band of skin. “You make it sound like they had to get married.” Sally Jean looked away but Misty continued. “They were in love, so much in love that my daddy couldn’t stand being away from her.” Misty breathed in, all the while staring at Sally Jean.

  “Well, I didn’t mean it to sound that way.” Sally Jean sat forward on her chair. “Really, Misty. Now, honey, I didn’t mean that. Sometimes what I say comes out, well, it comes out. . .”

  “Bass ackwards,” Angela said, and pulled down her big white sunglasses.

  “And I was talking about Misty seeming like a second daughter to me,” Mama said, and pulled her chair closer to Sally Jean’s, the seed catalog in her lap opened to a page with hollyhocks and snapdragons.

  “Hey, I see you used the QT.” Angela turned from my mother and pointed to Sally Jean’s legs. “It looks good, too, doesn’t it?” She looked around at all of us, with Sally Jean waiting for us all to nod. Her legs were orange and we all knew it but nodded just the same. “Delicious lemonade,” Angela said, and though it seemed tarter than usual, I nodded again. Things were going too well to spoil it. “If life gives you lemons,” Sally Jean said, and smiled, her arms orange, too, “make lemonade!”

  “You know, Cleva,” Angela said. “I think you should try your hair differently, maybe a short shag that curls on its own.” My mother’s hand immediately went up to smooth her bun. Sally Jean nodded in agreement while staring at her embroidery; hang in there, it said, and there was a kitten hanging by one paw from what looked like a swing set.

  “I’ve always had long hair,” Mama said, with a puzzled expression. “And Fred likes it this way.”

  “Fred? Fred?” Angela asked, pushed those big sunglasses up on top of her head. “Since when does he tell you how to look? Do you tell him how to wear his hair?” She paused. “You see. He has nothing to do with your hair.” Angela pulled her sunglasses back down. “It’s a woman’s world.”

  “That’s what they say,” Sally Jean said, and nodded firmly. “I saw a cute little picture right here that says it all.” She began flipping through her stitchery book, and when she got to the right page, cleared her throat. “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” She nodded and passed the book to my mother, who glanced at it, one eyebrow raised, and passed it right back.

  “Well, I disagree about that,” Angela said. “I mean, we do need those men. Right? Now, don’t you need Tommy, Sally Jean?”

  “Well, of course I do.” Sally Jean’s face was bright red as she tried to follow where Angela was leading. “I love the man. We love each other.” She looked over at Misty, who was stretched out on her back, one knee bent up and moving back and forth. “Thomas and I can’t stand to be away from one another.”

  “I can fix my hair any way that I choose,” Mama said. “I just like for Fred to like how I look.”

  “I think a man likes a woman who looks the way she wants to look,” Angela said. “A woman who is confident enough to do what she thinks is the best.” Misty stopped humming and sat up, nodded knowingly at Angela, and then turned over, her back sriow white against the bright blue suit.

  “You are absolutely right,” Misty mumbled. “I’m that kind of woman.”

  “Misty,” Sally Jean said, looking as if she were on the verge of spouting some proverb when my mother burst out laughing.

  “Misty is sure a card,” Mama said as she slowly pulled the pins from her hair and uncoiled it. “I don’t know what we’d do without her.”

  “Be boring,” Misty mumbled, which made Angela laugh louder and harder than ever.

  For the whole next day my mother toyed with her hair. I saw her several times just standing in front of the halltree mirror, pulling her hair this way and that, turning her head from side to side the way I had done so many times in an attempt to see what other people saw when I passed by. She even borrowed one of my Glamour magazines, the pages folded back to a make-over section, and Angela was right there egging her on. “You could surprise Fred.” Angela smiled knowingly, stepped closer. “He’ll love it.”

  By the end of the next day, my mother’s hair looked like it had been cut with pinking shears. It kinked and curled all around her face and was rinsed dark and free of the gray. Her bangs stood out from her forehead in a Cleopatra look. She kept looking in the mirror, a worried expression on her face. Even Mrs. Poole had walked into our house and not said a word, acting as if she didn’t notice anything new, and all the while studying my mother furiously when she could steal a glance.

  “Your mama looks like she just joined the Egyptian Marines, and Sally Jean looks like a damn carrot,” Misty said two days later when we were back out in the sun with Angela. “Damn it all to hell and back if she ain’t orange and if your mama’s hair doesn’t look like a frizzy pyramid.”

  “Oh, now,” Angela said. “I was trying to help the two of them.” Angela smiled, lips together, eyes filled with concern and pity. It was the same look she had given my father when he asked us what had ever made my mother think of doing such a thing to herself. “What do you really think, Fred?” Mama kept asking, and he replied, “One in a million.”

  Angela told Misty she shouldn’t talk about my mother and Sally Jean, but nonetheless she laughed every time the two were mentioned. My mother, on that very day, had her navy shorts rolled up three inches higher than she normally wore them. Clearly Angela had started something. Sally Jean was daily coating herself in orange, and Mrs. Poole had even been spotted in a pair of chartreuse polyester shorts.

  “You are so lucky,” Misty had said over and over. “Angela is so neat. Maybe she’ll take us to the beach and let us stay at her place. Maybe we’l
l meet some boys.” Now she turned and looked at Angela, lifting her sunglasses up the way Angela always did before speaking. “You knew my mother, didn’t you?”

  “I knew who she was.” Angela nodded. “And of course I saw her Christmas a year ago.” She looked at me to confirm the meeting. “What a beautiful woman she was.” Misty nodded and smiled. “I knew I had seen her before because how could you forget someone so pretty, right?” Misty nodded again. “The truth is”—Angela lowered her voice—“I wasn’t going to bring this up because I didn’t want to upset you, but I was at your mother’s funeral.” She sat back, looked first at Misty and then at me. “My boyfriend knew Mo, said he had for years, that she was a wonderful, wonderful person.” Angela leaned forward and brushed a piece of grass from the beach towel. “He said the same about your father, of course. He said he had never seen two people so much in love.”

  “You had a boyfriend?” I asked, quickly counting the short months between her visit to our house and Mo’s death. She was barely separated.

  “Yes.” She reached over and patted me. “I wasn’t divorced but I was separated and if you’re wondering, I met him after I left my husband, okay?” She waited for me to say something. “You are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you, honey?” I looked up and she laughed. “Friends?”

  “Oh, she doesn’t care if you had an old boyfriend,” Misty said. “Of course you had a boyfriend. I mean look at you. Why wouldn’t you have a boyfriend? That would be like my mother not having a boyfriend.” She stopped suddenly.

  “This boyfriend of mine,” Angela continued, “he said he remembered when Mo had a little toddler and was pregnant, how radiant she looked and how your dad was always right there beside her.”