Ferris Beach Page 19

  “That would’ve been when she was pregnant with me,” Misty said, and rubbed more lotion on her freckled pink legs.

  “Well, you should be proud to have had such a beautiful mother. You have her eyes,” Angela said, and Misty beamed, her hair pulled up and wrapped in a little knot like Angela had suggested, loose tendrils falling onto her neck and around her forehead. Her beauty advice had not done much for my mother and Sally Jean, but she had worked wonders on Misty; I had high hopes that the same sort of transformation would come to me.

  “Thanks,” Misty whispered. “I wish I could look just like my mother.”

  “You’re getting there,” Angela said. “Your hair will never be as dark as hers, but your features are identical” She said the word with such authority that I believed her, too. “I love this hair of yours,” she continued. “You know, I’ll bet with a little Sun-In you can be blond, like a pretty strawberry blond.”

  “Yeah?” Misty looked to me for my opinion and then turned back to Angela, playfully punching her arm. “But if it turns out like Kate’s mama’s hair or Sally Jean’s legs, we’re gonna run you out of town. Right?”

  “Right,” I said, and watched my mother as she worked in the gazebo, wearing those rolled-up shorts, her hair hanging in wild angles. She was clipping roses from the vines that grew up and down the trellis sides, and she had an armful, pale pink petals against her tan arms. I tried to imagine her pregnant, tried to imagine my father catering to her, helping her in and out of chairs, stroking her full abdomen.

  “Did you have a boyfriend when you were our age?” I asked Angela. In answer she quickly cut off her “yes” and softened it with a but: “But people seemed to get together so much younger, got married so much younger, you know? So many people married their high school sweeties.”

  “Who was your high school sweetie?” Misty asked. “Some real stud, I bet.”

  “He wasn’t bad.” Angela stared out at the field and shook her head, laughed. “And yeah, he was pretty cute.”

  “How long did you date him?” I asked, and she shrugged, waved her hand. “A year? Two?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Was he the only one?” I asked, conjuring my own picture, a seventeen-year-old Angela, her auburn hair swinging shoulder length; I imagined white socks and saddle shoes as she raced out onto an empty football field to meet him, tall and thin with pale green eyes, and all the while she was trying to decide how she was going to break the news to him, this accident that had happened, this accident of a child who she would have to get rid of in some way or another if he didn’t marry her.

  “What is this, Twenty Questions?” she asked. “We’ll call you Curious George.” Misty smiled a drowsy smile and pulled a magazine up over her face, the smooth flawless face of Cheryl Tiegs staring up into the bright blue sky. The Huckses’ back door slammed shut, and within seconds, I glimpsed Merle as he cut through the cemetery; he was wearing a white T-shirt and I could see him in and out through the trees as he made his way to the street. I felt Angela nudge me with her toe, and when I looked up, she nodded her head in the direction Merle had gone, and winked at me. “Maybe I should ask you guys some questions,” she said.

  “Fire away,” Misty said, her voice muffled by the slick pages. “I have no secrets.”

  My mother was humming “Strangers on the Shore,” as she moved out into the yard and over to the bed of hybrid roses. Despite the hair and rolled-up shorts, she was attractive in her own way, with her high cheekbones and full lips. Her steps quickened as she walked around the yard, ending her repertoire with “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree,” which had been playing on the radio incessantly for a couple of months.

  “Your mama ain’t half bad,” Misty said, and lifted the magazine. She wrinkled her nose, mouth screwed up to one side in what was supposed to be the look of a learned critic. “Her singing, I mean.” Under Misty’s supervision of song choice and Temptations-style stepping, Lily and the Holidays had come in second in the school talent show. I was still amazed that I had been up on the stage with them, my arm entwined with that of Roslyn Page, while we did several Yes, I wills in the background of “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” as Misty and Lily alternated parts, Misty sounding as much like Diana Ross as Diana Ross.

  “Maybe your mama wants to be a Holiday,” Misty said, and laughed, nudged me with her elbow, and then whispered, “Halloween,” which made Angela laugh a drowsy laugh as she lay stretched out on her towel, all of my secrets in the palm of her hand.

  Seventeen

  Angela told me that she had come to visit us because she needed to get away from the beach for awhile, to take a break, get the salt out of her joints. “I had a failed romance,” she said one night as she sat on the foot of my bed in the slat of light from the corner streetlight, her legs pulled up under her thin cotton gown. “He was so handsome,” she said, and paused, thinking. “He kind of looked like the guy who played Maverick.”

  “James Garner,” I said, sitting forward and waiting for the rest of her story. I was already in bed, the covers over my legs. These late-night talks, what Angela called our “heart to hearts,” had happened every night of the two weeks she’d been there. Pd hear her creep into my room and stand ghostlike beside my bed. “Kitty? Kitty?” she would call. “Are you asleep?” Sometimes she sat at the foot of my bed, and other times she crawled in beside me to whisper her stories.

  That same night she told me about her first marriage. “It only lasted a couple of months” she said. “I was so dumb to have done it.” She sighed. “Old Cleva has never let me forget it either.” Once again I imagined the teenage Angela with her long ponytail swaying from side to side as she slow-danced around a jukebox, “Young Love” or “True Love Ways” playing sofdy.

  “We couldn’t wait,” she said, “and then as soon as it was all done, as soon as we came away from that justice of the peace, I knew in the pit of my stomach that we’d never last.” She laughed. “It’s amazing what being sixteen and in the backseat of a car can do to your head.”

  I lay there beside her, lulled by her voice.

  “Then of course I went and married a man who wanted to keep me locked up like a little doll,” she continued. “He got insanely jealous if I even spoke to another person. Fred and I were always so close that I just naturally talked about him a lot and Ken, that was his name, Ken just couldn’t stand it.” She rolled towards me, head propped in her hand, the streetlight catching and lighting only one side of her face like a Harlequin doll. “I was waitressing at the time and I knew all the regulars so you know I was always chatting, not flirting, mind you, just talking.” She paused and I strained to open my eyes wider, to stay awake so as not to miss any of her story. “Ken just jumped to the wrong conclusion is all.” She paused, breathed deeply. “One thing led to another and Ken ended up slapping me one night, in the face. I got scared and I called Fred. He came to help me, and I was almost through with my packing when Ken walked in and slugged Fred right in the stomach. I was scared to death he’d broken a rib. I said, ‘I hate you, you big son of a bitch,’ and now, Kitty, you for one know that I don’t normally talk that way.” I nodded and sat up a little. “And of course you remember how Fred brought me here and let me get myself pulled back together while I got the separation all legalized.” I nodded. “Cleva was fit to be tied. You remember, don’t you?” I didn’t respond. “Well, she was, whether you knew it or not.”

  “Why?” My question was simple, but it left Angela completely silent, the glowing clock by my bed ticking off the long quiet pause.

  “Why not?” she finally asked, and then quickly continued. “You remember the day that I came over here before that, the day I saw Mo Rhodes? Well, I came to tell Fred that I was afraid, and I really was. I really feared for my own safety.” She sighed. “I mean maybe Cleva felt I shouldn’t have involved Fred, but I didn’t have anybody else to help me. You know she is real insecure; I mean it’s not like she was ever the belle of th
e ball.” She leaned closer, her head touching mine as she whispered. “Good grief, she was over thirty when they got married. I mean, people are doing that more and more these days, but when she was coming along, she was considered old, an old maid” She laughed. “Okay, now it’s your turn to tell me something.”

  “I don’t know what to tell.” I lay staring at the ceiling, the streetlight casting a distorted image of the window. Just the night before I had looked out and would have sworn I saw Merle sitting on the tombstone, the glow of a cigarette near his face.

  “Well, you can think of something” she said. “I’m not going to tell anybody.”

  “Well.” I paused, trying to think of something to tell her. “I’d like to have a boyfriend.” I waited for her to respond.

  “And?”

  “Well, that’s it. That’s a wish that I have.” I waited and then felt her side of the bed shake as she muffled a laugh in her pillow.

  “Oh, Kitty,” she said. “You don’t ask for much, do you?”

  “It’s a lot,” I told her. “I mean, I’ve never really had one before and sometimes I wonder if I will. Maybe I’ll be an old maid. Maybe it’s hereditary.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” She sat up and leaned over me, and I held my breath as I imagined the dream come true: Why, it can’t be hereditary because you are not your mother’s daughter, you are my daughter, Kitty, mine. “Why, there will be hundreds who’ll like you, who’ll love you,” she said instead. “Why, poor old Fred will have to beat them off with a stick. He has said so himself. He’s told me so many times that he plans to deal with your dates the same way he dealt with mine.” She paused. “You know Fred was like my daddy. He’d sit a boy down and ask him what his intentions were, where were we going and when would we be back and what is a logarithm.”

  “He did?”

  “I’m exaggerating but he did give those poor guys a hard hard time.” She laughed quietly and then stopped, rubbed her hand over my head. “But, Kitty, there will be plenty of boyfriends for you, just mark my words. You’ve got to believe in yourself.” She rubbed her hand over my cheek and then just held it there, pressing in. “What about that cute little blond-haired fella who was on the sidewalk the other day?”

  “Merle Hucks?” It sounded funny to hear his name whispered in my room as if by the very sound I had invited him in.

  “Yeah, I think he’s kind of cute.” She shook me. “He walks by here all the time, too. I’ve seen him pass every day.”

  “He has to walk by here,” I said. “It’s on his way to work.”

  “Oh,” she said, paused. “I know what.” Again her hand brushed my face. “Tomorrow I’m going to give you a complete make-over, what do you think?” I told her I’d like that, and from then on I let my comments get further and further apart, feigning sleep to her final whisper of good night when she got up and tiptoed back across the hall. It seemed I could feel every creak of the house as it settled; every sound was harshly magnified. I thought of Anne Frank tiptoeing through darkness, fearful of loose floorboards or a simple sneeze as she waited for those brief moments when she could stand in front of the attic window, with bells chiming in the distance, sea gulls circling overhead. I thought how spatially she could have been my mother, the years just right, and yet confined to the pages of her diary, she was my own age. I tried to imagine all of them at my age, my mother and Angela, Mo, and Sally Jean. I got up once to look out the window; the ivy hung ghostlike on the columns of Whispering Pines, the huge granite tombstone smooth and pale in the moonlight. I think I half expected to see Merle sitting there, blond hair blown back from his forehead as he stared at my window, and I got back in bed with that picture in mind.

  It was late afternoon the following day when Angela finally sat me down in front of my vanity, spread out all of her cosmetics and gave me the make-over she had promised since her arrival. She wanted me to close my eyes so that it would all be a surprise, and so I sat for what seemed like hours while she rubbed her lotions around my eyes, over my cheeks and neck. As usual she talked about all of the places she had been and the things she had seen, Disney World and the big hotel at Myrtle Beach with the rotating restaurant. It had been in that very restaurant where the James Garner-man had told her that he was going back to his wife; if only he’d met Angela two years earlier, their lives would have been so different.

  “He was married?” I asked incredulously, only to have her swat me playfully and say, How was I to know? “It’s not like his wife was my best friend or anything. You know, like Mo Rhodes.” Then she brushed my hair, lifting it up from my neck, back from my face.

  “Where were you all day?” I finally asked, the question my mother and I had exchanged since early that morning, when my mother thought she was giving Angela a bread-baking lesson.

  “Can you keep a secret?” She leaned in close, her cheek next to mine as I nodded. “I had a date.”

  “Who?” Without thinking I started to open my eyes and she held her hand in front of them.

  “Here, face away from the mirror and you can open them.” She pulled me around on the bench. “There.”

  “Who did you meet?” I asked again.

  “Well”—she brushed over my eyelids with a little sponge brush—“really I already knew him.” Her brows arched as she said “him,” laugh lines stretching from her eyes. “The truth is that last night after you fell asleep, I called this restaurant where I sometimes used to fill in at Ferris Beach; you know, I thought it might be good for somebody to know where I am, check on my apartment, my mail and so on.” She pulled my hair back on the left side and clipped it; I didn’t say anything but I knew I’d never wear the left side clipped back. “Anyway, who answered the phone but Greg. I hadn’t seen him in over a year. Actually I was still with Ken the last time I saw him.” She lowered her voice and giggled. “Real, real good-looking.” When I thought of Angela’s loves, I saw the intersecting circles my father always doodled to pass the time, no circle isolated, no failed romance without another in the wings, hidden spouses within the shaded areas.

  “Good-looking like who?” I asked.

  “Ummm, let’s see.” She started braiding a thin strip of hair. “James Caan, that type, you know blue eyes, curly hair.” I nodded my approval and closed my eyes again as she braided. When I thought of James Caan, I saw him as Sonny in The Godfather, and I thought of the vivid death scene where his body is peppered and thrown by gunfire, but even more so, I thought of the scene at the wedding where he sneaks into the bedroom with the bridesmaid. That scene was on about page twenty-nine of the book; it had gotten passed all over the ninth grade, that one page dog-eared and worn smooth.

  “Anyway, Greg is such a sweetheart, volunteered to check on my apartment and then said he was going to be passing through Fulton and would I meet him for a quick lunch over at the Holiday Inn.”

  “But why didn’t you tell us?” I opened my eyes and she was staring right back at me, her head tilted to one side.

  “I was afraid, Kitty,” she whispered, eyes cast downward. “You see, I so want your mother to be my friend. I really want all of us to be a family.”

  “I think she wants that, too,” I said. “I think she’d be happy that you like somebody nice. He’s not married, is he?”

  “No, Miss Morality.” She sat back on the floor, her small tan legs crossed Indian style. “But I told you last night, I have to be so careful around Cleva. Have you ever felt like you had to prove something to somebody?” She waited for me to nod. Surely she had known that answer just from all the times Misty and I had talked about wanting to be popular. “Well, your mama has seen me go through a couple of bad relationships, and I just don’t want her thinking that I’m in another. I’d rather be sure about how I feel about Greg before I say anything. Like I’m going to see him again late tonight, and I’m going to ask him lots of questions about himself and just what he has in mind.”

  “But where will you say you’re going?” I asked,
trying to imagine myself in a position where I’d need to ask someone what his intentions were, what did he want from a relationship?

  “I’m going to tell them I am meeting an old girlfriend of mine who works at the Presbyterian church in Clemmonsville, that she is recently divorced and having such a hard time and I’m going to take her to the movies and try to perk her up. Now you can keep a secret, can’t you?” She turned me towards the mirror, waiting for my response, but I was too shocked by my own face; she had applied a fine coat of make-up that almost covered my birthmark and my eyes were outlined in charcoal gray, making them look larger, but not really made up. “What do you think?” she asked, and bent down close so that her face was right beside mine.

  “I like it.” I still couldn’t believe what a difference a little bit of make-up could make.

  “And about my secret?” Her eyebrows were raised as she waited, another of her expressions that Misty had already copied and put into practice. I nodded and in that second her arms looped around my neck, her lips pressed against my cheek as she squeezed. “I knew I could count on you, Kitty.” She squeezed again and then pulled away. “You know,” she whispered, and lifted my hair up from my neck, “it’s amazing how much you look like Fred.” I just laughed, turning my head from side to side to see how I looked from another angle. I had been thinking the exact same thing about her.

  Angela went out three nights in a row, and each time she went on and on about poor, poor Sue and what kind of woman allows herself to be so controlled, so beaten down by a man; honestly, she’d rather live her life as a nun. And each morning she raved about my mother’s bread and said how she had to get that baking lesson. My mother told her how wonderful it was that she was taking such an interest in another person’s problems, that Sue should certainly be grateful for such a loyal friend, that maybe soon Sue would understand that just having a man, any man, does not make for happiness in the same way that money cannot buy love and that moving into a house does not mean that it will prove to be a home. Angela just smiled and nodded, agreed with every word. When I asked her later if there even was a person named Sue, since I had also caught myself briefly believing the lies, she laughed and slung her arm around my shoulder, her hair sprayed with the musk cologne she carried in her Indian-print bag.